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By Root 483 0

ready as though to defend it against unexpected attack; another ring of warriors held the shore of the central island itself. Dozens or hundreds of shapers clambered among the blocks, bearing bundles and implements and jiggling sacs of liquid. Occasionally one of the shapers would use an implement to pierce the plug at the end of one of the blocks, passing either a bundle or a liquid-filled sac within before sealing the block again, and Jacen realized that his wine-bee analogy had been unexpectedly apt. Those huge hexagonal blocks must contain some sort of living creatures—something already huge, perhaps the pupal forms of unimaginable giants—

“What are they?” he breathed.

“The real issue is not so much what they are, as what the single one that survives to maturity will become.”

Again she smiled, and her crest bloomed vivid orange. “Like all complex creatures,” she said, “the Yuuzhan Vong homeworld will require a brain.”

The creatures were called dhuryams.

Related to yammosks, dhuryams are fully as specialized as the giant war coordinators, but bred for a different, much more complex type of telepathic coordination. Bigger, stronger, vastly more powerful, dhuryams are capable of mentally melding many, many more disparate elements than the greatest yammosk that ever lived. A dhuryam will be responsible for integrating the activities of the Vongforming organomachines. The dhuryam will be less a servant than a partner: fully intelligent, fully aware, capable of making decisions based on a constant data flow streaming in from the entire planetwide network of telepathically linked creatures, to guide the planet’s transformation flawlessly, without any of the chaotic-system fragility that plagues natural ecologies.

When Vergere had finished describing them, Jacen said slowly, “These slave gangs—you’re saying they’re being mentally controlled?”

Vergere nodded. “You may have noticed the lack of guards, with the exception of the dhuryam hive itself. And those are there only to prevent the dhuryams from using their slaves to murder their siblings.”

“Murder—?”

“Oh, yes. Behaviors can be bred, but skills must be learned. Much of what the dhuryams are doing here is learning play—not unlike a pilot training in a flight simulator. Here they hone their skills, of mental mastery and the coordination of many disparate life-forms, that one of them will later use as the World Brain.”

“One of them …” Jacen echoed.

“Only one. The games these children play are more than serious. They are deadly. These infant dhuryams know already the basic truth of existence: win or die.”

“It’s so—” Jacen’s fists clenched helplessly. “—so horrible.”

“I would call it honest.” She smiled up at him, friendly, cheerful, untouched by the horror around them. “Life is struggle, Jacen Solo. It has always been so: an unending savage battle, red in tooth and claw. This is perhaps the greatest strength of the Yuuzhan Vong; our masters—unlike the Jedi, unlike the New Republic—never delude themselves. They never waste their energy pretending that this is not so.”

“You keep saying ‘our masters.’ ” Jacen’s knuckles whitened. “You mean your masters. This—this perversion—this has nothing to do with me.”

“You will be astonished, I think, when you discover just how wrong you are.”

“No,” Jacen said, stronger. “No. The only master I’ve ever had is Master Skywalker. I serve only the Force. The Yuuzhan Vong can kill me, but they can’t make me obey.”

“Poor little Solo.” Her arms rippled in another of her liquid shrugs. “Do you ever get embarrassed at being so thoroughly and consistently mistaken?”

Jacen looked away. “You’re wasting your time, Vergere. I have nothing to learn from this place.”

“You see? Doubly mistaken: my time is not wasted, nor is this your schoolroom.” She lifted her hand—a flickering, blurred gesture—and the two warriors at Jacen’s back seized his arms in grips hard as hull metal. Then the blur in her hand resolved into that wicked hook of bone.

The Force, he thought, panic surging into his heart. She Force-blurred it—she’s been carrying it all