Star Wars_ The New Jedi Order 09_ Edge of Victory 02_ Rebirth - J. Gregory Keyes [63]
Nen Yim stiffened further. Tsup was the name of no crèche or domain she had ever heard of. It was, however, an antique word for the sorts of slave who tended their masters in unseemly ways. The word itself was so obscene it was rarely used anymore.
“Come, then,” the master said, with an air of detachment. “Acquaint me with my demesne.”
“Yes, Master Kae Kwaad.”
Feeling ill, Nen Yim led him through the moldering halls of the worldship to the shapers’ quarters, through a tremoring hall that had begun to have periodic spasms, past her own quarters to the master’s apartments, which had stood empty since before her coming to Baanu Miir. Five slaves staggered behind them, nearly buckling beneath the weight of enormous transport envelopers.
When the opening dilated, the master stood, staring into space.
“Where am I?” he asked, after a time.
“Your quarters, Master.”
“Quarters? What, by the gods, are you talking about? Where am I?”
“On the Baanu Miir, Master Kae Kwaad.”
“Well, where is it?” he screeched. “The coordinates. The exact location. Must I repeat myself?”
Nen Yim found herself twisting her fingers together, like a terrified crècheling. She stopped it immediately. “I do not know, Master. I can discover it.”
“Do so!” His eyes narrowed. “Who are you?”
“Your adept, Nen Yim.”
A crafty look came over his face. “I do not like that name. Use the one I gave you.”
“Nen Tsup,” she said softly.
He blinked, slowly, then snorted. “What a vulgar little thing you are.” He sneered. “Hurry. Find out where we are. And then we shall shape something, yes? It will amuse us.”
“Master, I wish to speak to you about the ship’s rikyam, when you have the time.”
“Time? What is that? It is nothing. The brain will die. You do not confuse me with your talk, Adept. No, you do not confuse or amuse or titillate me, though you think it. Yun-Harla herself could not have me! Flattering yourself. Trying to trick me. Get out of my sight.”
When she was alone, Nen Yim sank down into a crouch and softly beat the heels of her hands against her head.
He is mad, she thought. Mad and crippled. Tjulan Kwaad sent him to taunt me, nothing more.
Beneath her feet, she noticed, a patch of the inner hull was rotting.
A day passed without her seeing him, but when Nen Yim entered her laboratory, there was the twisted, demented Kae Kwaad. He’d somehow unsealed the dermal shelf where her experiments were hidden and was stroking her personal qahsa with the carapace of his right hand. She hadn’t tried particularly hard to hide anything, reasoning that doing so was wasted effort. Her modifications to the ship were ample evidence of her heresy. Hiding the experiments would only delay the inevitable.
“I like this,” Kae Kwaad said, waving at her tissue samples. “I like the colors.” He smiled vaguely and pointed his useless digits to his eyes. “They trickle in here, don’t they? After that they don’t get out. They just talk and whistle, wriggle and curl.” He scratched one dead hand absently against the other.
“Tell me what you’re doing, Adept,” he said.
“Master, I’m only doing my best to heal the ship. If I have strained protocol, it was only because I thought it best for the Yuuzhan Vong.”
“Strained it? Strained it?” He laughed, an unpleasant scratching sound. Then, as abruptly, he folded down onto one of the slowly shifting benches and placed his head between his hands.
“I requested a master because I do not have access to protocol records above the fifth cortex,” Nen Yim went on. “I had no answer to the rikyam’s dilemma, so I sought one.”
“And now you have a master.” Kae Kwaad chortled. “And now we shall shape.”
“Perhaps Master Kae Kwaad would like to review the damage to the spiral arm.”
“Perhaps the master would have his adept listen instead of speak. Today we are shaping. Recall the protocol of Hon Akua.”
Nen Yim stared at him. “We are to form a grutchin? But the fleet is replete with grutchins.”
“Inferior