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They had dimmed for perhaps the fifth time in an hour, one of several small fluctuations of power that Threepio had been aware of. Most of them—alterations in the temperature and mix of the atmosphere and shifts in the thrum of the Pure Sabacc’s engines—had been below the level of human perception.

“I suspect, sir, that those are readjustments of the system as it accommodates Artoo-Detoo’s presence as a central memory capacitor.”

Captain Bortrek pettishly hurled a necklace of priceless flame opals against the opposite wall. “Festerin’ droids,” he muttered. “Blasted hunks of machinery. I was hopin’ I’d run across one of them new droids, them synthdroids, on Durren. A hundred thousand credits they bring, and I wouldn’t sell. You seen ’em, Goldie? Beat you by a kilometer.”

He wagged an owlish finger at his unwilling assistant. His fair hair hung sweatily over his eyes now, and he had unlaced his red-and-gold leather doublet to expose an expanse of gold chains and chest hair. “Centrally programmed. They do this crystal attunement stunt—CCIR—Centrally Controlled Independent Replicant.” He pronounced the words with great care, as if afraid of tripping over them. “None of this wired-brain stuff you got goin’. They leave their brain back in some central location and do what you festerin’ tell ’em—six, eight, ten of ’em, however many of ’em you want. Central brain. You tell that brain what each of ’em should do, and they go do it without givin’ you any festerin’ lip about it, y’unnerstan’?”

“Yes, sir,” agreed Threepio.

“Brain processes it all. Huge distances—you can leave the brain on your festerin’ ship and go down to a planet with six or ten or however many of ’em, and you tell ’em, fetch me that, or paste that guy, and they do it. They figure out how to do it without none of this, ‘Oh, and how do I do that, sir?’ ” His whiny voice took on a sarcastic inflection, imitating precise droid speech.

“And they can make ’em like a man or a woman or whatever. Doesn’t matter. They got steel skeleton, they grow synthflesh over top of it, and as long as they got that little hunk of crystal in their skulls, that can listen to the Central Controller, they’re yours. And boy, wouldn’t I like to have one shaped like Amber Jevanche.” He named the newest holo star popular on Coruscant, a woman of whom Threepio had also heard Captain Solo speak highly, though to his knowledge Captain Solo had never met the young lady.

He proceeded to describe, in great anatomical detail, exactly what acts of sexual congress he would have such a synthdroid perform, though Threepio was somewhat at a loss as to why any human would wish to couple with a machine, and went on to expound his philosophy of Man’s Needs and Man’s Rights—meaning, Threepio gathered, his own immediate desires irrespective of the wishes of the other party. His speech was deteriorating in both form and content all the while, but it wasn’t until the man pitched forward onto his face that Threepio thought to take a sample of the cabin atmosphere, to discover that it consisted of nearly 12 percent carbon dioxide and not much oxygen at all.

“Good heavens!” he cried, and hastened to the comm port on the wall. “Artoo! Artoo!”

A quick series of bleeps answered him. Threepio immediately obeyed, hurrying to the door and up the corridor toward the bridge. He had gone four or five steps when the door, which had closed automatically behind him as usual, emitted an ominous clank. The noise stopped the protocol droid in his tracks; then he sought the nearest comm port and flicked the toggle. “Artoo, now the doors of the hold have locked!”

A soothing warble. “Well, if you’re sure it’s all right,” replied Threepio doubtfully, and continued his steps to the bridge.

He found Artoo still enmeshed in the console boards, the entire core system ablaze with lights like a Midwinter Festival tree and fluttering with the soft chatter of new systems being installed or altered. “Artoo, you really must do something about the cabin atmosphere in that hold!