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The acolyte nodded his head in deference. “Nothing more than an observation, Eminence. To earn my respect, they would have to embrace willingly the truth we bring them.”

A herald of lesser station appeared in the roost, offering salute by snapping his fists to opposite shoulders. “Belek tiu, Eminence. I bring word that the captives have been gathered.”

“How many?”

“Several hundred—of diverse aspect. Do you wish to oversee the selection for the sacrifice?”

Harrar squared his shoulders and adjusted the fall of his elegant robes. “I am most eager to do so.”

The transport gullet’s diaphanous seal opened on an immense hold, packed to the bulkheads with captives taken on and in the skies above Obroa-skai. Harrar’s entourage of personal guards and attendants moved into the hold, followed by the priest himself, perched atop a levitated cushion, one leg folded beneath him, the other dangling over the edge. The throbbing heart-shaped dovin basal that kept the cushion aloft answered to Harrar’s quiet prompts, attracting itself to the hold’s vaulted ceiling when the priest called for greater elevation, drawing itself toward one or another distant bulkhead when Harrar wished to be borne forward, backward, or to either side.

Well illuminated by bioluminescent patches that rashed the walls and ceiling, the hold had been sectioned off into a score of separate inhibition fields, arranged in two parallel rows and maintained by larger dovin basals. Pressed shoulder to shoulder in each field stood scholars and researchers from a host of worlds, humans and others—Bothans, Bith, Quarren, and Caamasi—all jabbering at once in a welter of tongues, while black-clad wardens armed with amphistaffs supervised the winnowing process. Meant for coralskipper sustenance rather than living cargo, the immense space reeked of natural secretions, blood, and sweat.

Mostly, though, fear was in the air.

Harrar hovered on the cushion, surveying the scene with hooded eyes. His retainers fell back so that he could proceed directly down the center aisle and inspect prisoners to both sides. In order to reach the first pair of inhibition fields, however, the priest was obliged to circumvent a large access shaft that had been filled to overflowing with confiscated droids, hundreds of them, heaped together in a mound of entangled limbs, appendages, and other mechanical parts.

When Harrar ordered a halt alongside the small mountain of machines, those droids that constituted the summit began to tremble under his scrutiny. With a whirring of strained servomotors, domed, rectangular, and humaniform heads swiveled, audio sensors perked up, and countless photoreceptors came into sharp focus. A momentary avalanche sent several machines screeching and tumbling to the base of the pile, far belowdecks.

Harrar’s intrigued gaze fell on a contorted protocol droid whose upper right arm boasted a band of colored cloth. He commanded the cushion to bring him within reach of the immobilized machine. “Why are some of these abominations affecting garments?” he asked his chief attendant.

“They appear to have functioned as research assistants, Eminence,” the attendant explained. “Obroa-skai’s libraries could be accessed only by those who had contracted with trained researchers. The symbol depicted on the machine’s armband is that of the so-called Obroan Institute.”

Harrar was aghast. “Do you mean to say that serious researchers consorted with these things as equals?”

The attendant nodded once. “Apparently so, Eminence.”

Harrar’s expression changed to one of contempt. “Allow a machine to think of itself as an equal and it will soon come to consider itself superior.” He reached out, tore the armband from the droid’s arm, and threw it to the deck. “Include a representative sampling of these monstrosities in the sacrifice,” he ordered, “and incinerate the rest.”

“We’re done for,” a muffled synthetic voice whined from deep within the pile.

Living arms of sundry lengths, colors, and textures reached