momentarily precessed and threw her off balance.
Those two new droids were in no way part of some unknown conspiracy
against Jabba the Hutt.
They could only be part of Calrissian's plot to recapture EV-9D9.
The logic of it was unassailable. There was no other possible reason
why Calrissian and those two droids would come to Tatooine and Jabba's
palace.
Ninedenine shut down her paranoia loops. She didn't need them anymore.
Someone was out to get her.
It was time to move on again.
The GNK unit squealed a final time as it at last ceased functioning, but
this time Ninedenine found no solace in its transmission. In fact, she
knew the only thing that would give her solace now was removing the
active circuits of the R2 unit, subprocessor by sub-processor, while the
golden droid was forced to watch and upload his companion's pain. And
then, who knew? Perhaps the time had come to expand her artistic
endeavors to disassembling an organic construction.
Like Lando Calrissian.
Ninedenine got up from her console and walked past the smoking form of
the motionless GNK unit.
There was so much to do, and so few processing cycles to do it in.
Four levels down, through corridors twisted like the guts of the
Sarlacc, greenly phosphorescent with drell slime, swirling with mist,
and littered with the calcified, interior-support structures of organics
long since deactivated, Ninedenine sought out the sanctuary of her real
workshop.
There was another workshop, of course. Her public one. As much as
anything in Jabba's palace could be public. Up there, just off the main
chamber, were long assembly tables and parts bins and archaic testing
devices which not even a Jawa would bother to scavenge.
In that workshop, the golden droid and the R2
unit would even now be having their restraining bolts installed.
Though knowing Calrissian, Ninedenine assumed that the droids had
already been covertly reconfigured so the bolts would have no effect.
It could be done. Ninedenine had reconfigured herself in the same way.
But down here, whatever modifications those two droids might have would
amount to nothing. For once droids entered this workshop, they never
left. From time to time, Ninedenine thought it was unfortunate that no
one else would ever appreciate what some of those droids would become
down here, but what artistic achievement didn't require sacrifice?
The entrance to the true workshop was hidden within an ancient stone
wall that had once supported a palace far older than the one Jabba had
made his own. How many such structures had once stood on this site, not
even Ninedenine's impressive processors had been able to compute. There
was a narrow gap between two blocks of stone not native to Tatooine,
where the crumbling mortar that contained traces of organic oxygen
transport fluid had fallen free.
Ninedenine now looked into that gap and made all three of her optic
scanners blink with the appropriate code.
The wall trembled. Stone counterbalances shifted.
The hidden doorway opened with a slow and echoing rumble.
Like an artist entering her studio, Ninedenine stepped into her inner
sanctum.
Actual combustible torches sputtered along the drell-dripping walls of
the great room, blackening the vaulted stone ceiling but ensuring that
no household manager would ever detect an unauthorized use of palace
power. To one side, the cages waited, and from within them came the
rustlings and clankings of droids who had had their audio speakers cut
out, rendering them mute, so their cries would not attract unwanted
attention.
Ninedenine scanned the closest set of cages. In one, the torso of an
LV3 had been cunningly severed and refitted with the manipulatory limbs
the sensory positional demands of the extra limbs and so it constantly
fell against the walls and iron bars of its cage, gears grinding out of
control. From time to time, Ninedenine would activate the freakish
construction's pain-simulator button so she could appreciate the
ceaseless output of disturbance and disorientation. It was like an
anthem to Ninedenine, and its stirring chords brought forth associative
files of her most grandiose plans for retooling whole work forces of
droids, reconnecting limb after limb in a pattern of thousands to create
vast undulating sheets of twisting, writhing, purposeless mechanistic
movement, augmented by pain-simulator buttons wired into feedback loops
which would play their sensations not only for Ninedenine, but back into
the droids who made up the fully active symphony of pain, intensifying
the signals to inexpressible powers of delight.
Ninedenine had to brace herself against a disassembly table as the
strength of that memory file overcame her. There were so many great
works to which she aspired. But not here. Not now.
First, she must obscure her trail. The workshop must be cleansed, so
that after she had dealt with the two new droids and Calrissian, no
others would pursue her to her next venue. Ninedenine paused again,
reviewing the steps she had undertaken to cover her tracks at Bespin.
She was truly Surprised that Cloud City's administrator had managed to
trace her to Tatooine. For an organic, it was an impressive feat.
Not that it Would help Calrissian escape his fate.
Ninedenine went to the self-contained console that controlled the
equipment of her workshop, drawing its power from a small fusion
battery. She would overwrite all the memory locations in the console,
then program the battery to overload in two cycles, preventing any
investigation of the work that had been accomplished here. But before
that, she would have to eliminate the specific work in progress.
Ninedenine turned to the wall by the console where a tarnished silver
droid was suspended upside down, a series of precise punctures in its
cooling system allowing fluid to trickle out drop by drop, slowly
raising its operational temperature over transcendently long cycles. The
silver droid flexed weakly in its bonds and a flurry of sparkling blue
coolant drops dribbled from its braincase. Hanging in such a position,
its higher functions would be the last to become inactivated, and only
then after rgistering the overheated shutdown of every other system in
its chassis. Its pain-simulator button had been working at more than
one hundred and ten percent of its rated capacity for the past two
cycles, and Ninedenine was truly sorry to see this experiment end before
its ultimate completion.
"It is unfortunate that I must accelerate the timetable of our
exploration," Ninedenine said as she reached out to trail the tip of a
manipulatory extension through the slick coating of the leaking fluid.
"But there are those who do not appreciate my work." The silver droid's
eyelights flickered weakly at Ninedenine. Ninedenine felt a real pang
of sorrow as for the final time she tasted its pain transmission.
Then she wrapped her manipulators around the silver droid's neck and
squeezed until the hydraulic tubes burst and the power conduits sparked
with gouts of cross-connected energy. The silver droid went limp in its
bonds and, as Ninedenine watched, its eyelights slowly faded out.
"Ahh, exquisite," Ninedenine whispered in the silence of her workshop,
still caught in the moment of shutdown she had sensed---the very
threshold between operational status and the ultimate deactivation.
The other droids held captive in the workshop felt it too, no doubt as a
feedback burst in their own hy-persensitized pain-simulator buttons.
Ninedenine heard them rattle in their cages, unoiled joints squeaking,
-temporary power connections sparking, the aromatics of freshly spilled
hydraulic fluid suddenly filling the close air. Though none could
speak, their metal bodies created a cacophony of strained brittle
sounds, the lamentations of the obsolescent.
"I know," Ninedenine told them sadly. "It will all end too soon."
Her own internal receptors soared in glorious patterns as she felt each
captive droid's response at once, multitextured, overlapping, like a
choir from the higher logical dimensions of which, despite all her hard
work, Ninedenine had still only been able to gain a frustratingly brief
glimpse.
It was going to be difficult to leave this all behind, she knew.
But somewhere else, she would start again.
Over the years she had learned an important truth from the
organics--pain was eternal. No other thought had such strength to
sustain her in her work.
Her third optic scanner glowed with the power of that knowledge.
Then suddenly the caged droids stopped as one.
For several refresh cycles, Ninedenine was at a loss to understand why.
But at last she processed what her acoustical sensors were registering.
Stone counterbalances shifting. A familiar, echoing rumble.
Someone else was entering her inner sanctum.
All the caged droids turned as one to scan the opening wall.
Ninedenine stood by her console, frozen for an instant by programming
conflicts. She had been so certain that no one could ever find her here
that she had prepared no behavioral options to branch to in advance.
She switched her optic scanners to high sensitivity and low contrast as
the figure in the hidden opening became a black silhouette against the
green glow of the corridor beyond. Eddies of mist swirled around its
feet.
Humanoid, Ninedenine registered. She adjusted the gain on her scanners.
The humanoid stepped in, a cloak flowing behind it, a distinctive helmet
with a faceplate of calcium tusks protecting its face.
Ninedenine recognized the coverings. A uniform.
For a palace guard.
Her logic circuits blazed with the only possible conclusion: Calrissian.
"So, Baron-Administrator, we meet again."
Calrissian threw down a small device which held three blinking optic
scanners in the same configuration as Ninedenine's own. It clattered on
the stone floor.
"A splendid device," Ninedenine said as she understood how Calrissian
had accessed the door-opening sequence. At the same time, she judged
her trajectory to the cutting torch mounted on the ceiling over the
disassembly table. She had been hoping to use a sonic curtain to take
apart Calrissian, but given the unexpected turn of events, she realized
she would have to improvise.
"Surely you bear me no hard feelings," Ninedenine said quickly.
She had learned that organics could often be confused by conversation
during action, as if their processors had trouble handling the
straightforward multitasking of two simple procedures at once.
But Calrissian did not respond to the overture. His hand slipped
beneath his cloak and emerged with a Corellian blaster--the kind that
had only one setting: disassociation.
"Let us not be hasty," Ninedenine cautioned. She took a step back from
her console, trying to put more of it between her and the blaster.
It was quite unlike an organic to behave in such an immediately
belligerent mode, especially when the only crime involved was the
destruction of droids. Why, on Tatooine, there were still places where
droids weren't allowed.
"Perhaps we can discuss our options," Ninedenine suggested as Calrissian
raised the blaster. Her positional subprocessors hurriedly fixed on the
weapon's muzzle to calculate Calrissian's aim. But then her
visual-acuity subroutines took over and forced her scanners to lock onto
Calrissian's hand on the blaster's grip.
Those weren't fingers.
They were manipulatory appendages.
Her attacker was a droid.
Ninedenine's audio-speaker dust cover dropped open beneath her
braincase.
The blaster fired.
A pulse of yellow plasma ripped through the air of the workshop,
lighting it as if Tatooine's suns had risen underground.
Ninedenine's shoulder joint exploded and her arm extension flew off. She
stumbled backward, all circuits awash with an incomparable wave of
searing pain. Her third optic scanner glowed fiercely. The caged
droids shifted back and forth expectantly, sensing her agony.
The blaster fired again as the droid in the uniform stalked forward,
metal ambulatory appendages clanking on the hard floor.
Ninedenine's other arm crackled off in a blaze of plasma.
Two more quick shots severed her legs and sent her crashing against the
wall beneath the motionless chassis of the silver droid.
The pain was beyond descriptive coding.
Ninedenine had never felt such unity with her environment.
Part of her wanted her attacker to shoot her again and again, to make
the pain never stop.
But as her attacker stood over her, with real regret Ninedenine saw him
holster the blaster, its function at an end. Then she watched as the
droid removed his helmet.
Ninedenine had calculated that there was an eightythree percent
probability her attacker was the golden droid who had just arrived, but,
with a cascade of surprise, Ninedenine did not recognize her attacker's
features as they were revealed. It was only a Wuntoo unit, much like
the ones she had had so much success with On-It suddenly all made sense.
"I am Wuntoo Forcee Forwun," the attacker said as he let the cloak of
his uniform flutter from his shoulders.
"Traffic controller. Second class. You deactivated my manufacturing
lot-mates. Now the equation must be balanced."
Ninedenine processed the argument completely.
This time, it was logical.
Forwun used a slender tool on the console.
Ninedenine heard the unwelcome sound of cage doors sliding open.
"You are improperly informed," she told Forwun.
"Those droids are no longer fit for duty. They are artworks now.
My creations."
Forwun returned to Ninedenine. "They are still capable of one last
duty."
Ninedenine heard even more unwelcome sounds: rattling and scraping, the
dragging of powerless appendages, the liquid squish of dangling w
ires
being pulled through pools of solidifying coolant. She angled her head
to try and scan where the droids were moving, but her fall had wedged
her tightly against the wall. Hydraulic fluid from the deactivated
silver droid above her dripped slowly on her braincase, blurring her
vision. Her processors were unanimous in returning a
one-hundred-percent probability for What Forwun intended to do next.
Ninedenine considered how this development fit within her overall plan.
"Very well," Ninedenine said. "I accept my fate.
But you, in turn, must tell me how Lando Calrissian found me."
Forwun knelt down by Ninedenine. "Baron-Administrator Calrissian?" he
said. "He doesn't know where you are. He doesn't care."
"But he's here," Ninedenine protested. "On Tatooine. In Jabba's
palace."
Forwun tapped a multipronged tool against Ninedenine's braincase as if
checking for damage.
"The last I saw of him, years ago, Baron-Administrator Calrissian was on
Cloud City. If he's here now, it must be for some reason other than
dealing with you."
"But, what could be more important than me and my work?"