On the uppermost level of detention they heard a faint mewling sound like something crying. It was plaintive and child-like, with a despondency all the more resonant to Trig because he recognized it in his own heart. He stopped and looked in the direction of the noise.

"You hear that?"

Kale shook his head. "It"s not our business."

"What if they need help?"

Kale flashed him a tired look but didn"t argue. They filed up the hallway, pa.s.sing more cells of dead inmates, reminding Trig once more of neglected domesticated species that had been forgotten and left to rot by their masters. Kale kept the blasters half raised at his sides. The mewling noise grew louder until Trig stopped and stared into the final cell in the line.

A young Wookiee was crouched inside the cell. He was much smaller than Trig, probably not much more than a toddler. He was crouched down over the bodies of what had to be his family, two adults and an older sibling, clutching their hands to his face and holding their arms around himself as if to simulate a hug.

"Look at this," Kale murmured.

Trig saw what his brother was pointing at. The sickness had affected the dead Wookiees differently. Their tongues had swollen until they dangled like grotesque, overripe fruit from their mouths, and their throats had ruptured completely, splitting open to expose deep red musculature within. When the young one looked up and saw Trig and Kale standing outside the cell, his blue eyes shone with fear and dread.

"It"s okay," Trig said softly. "We"re not going to hurt you." He glanced at Kale. "He must be immune, like us."

"So what are we going to do about it?"

"Wait here." Trig ran back down the hallway to the abandoned guard station, the door left wide open by whoever had left their post to creep off and die in private. Stepping inside the booth, he found the switch to open the cells-the one that Wembly had died activating for them down on their own level. The bars rattled open, and he went back to where his brother still stood, looking in at the young Wookiee.

"Come on out," Trig told him. "You"re free now."

The Wookiee just stared at them. It wasn"t even making the crying sound anymore, but somehow its silence was worse. That was a lesson Trig was already learning-the silence was always worse.

"You can"t stay here." Trig extended his hand toward the Wookiee. "Come with us."

"Careful," Kale said, "he"ll take your hand off if..."

"It"s okay," Trig said, keeping his hand where it was. "We won"t hurt you."

Kale sighed. "Hey, man, look..."

"He"s all alone."

"And he obviously wants to stay that way, all right?"

For a moment the Wookiee peered at him cautiously, as if-like Wembly"s BLX-it was actually considering the offer. Trig waited to see if anything was going to happen. In the end, though, the youngster just bent forward and picked up the slack arms of its parents and pressed them to either side of its small frame. It wouldn"t look up at Kale and Trig again, not even when they turned and finally walked away.

They were at the far end of the corridor when they heard it start to scream.

Trig froze, the fine hairs p.r.i.c.kling all down his back. Just the sound made him feel as if his entire body had been coated with a layer of slick, half-melted ice. His breath lodged inside his lungs, caught just below his throat. The Wookiee"s screams kept going-strangled, agonized screams, mixed with a horrifying, s...o...b..ring sound of something eating.

The screams stopped, but the grunting eating sounds continued, greedy and breathless, slurping and crunching. His mind flashed to Aur Myss in the cell next to theirs, the whispering and giggling and the sensation that it had been following them.

But that"s impossible. Myss is dead. You saw it yourself.

"What is it?" he whispered.

"Not our business." Kale grabbed his hand. "Keep going."

Chapter 17.

Tisa The last of Zahara"s patients died that night. In the end it happened very quickly. About half of them had been human, the others different alien species, but it didn"t make a difference. In the last moments some of the nonhumans had reverted to their native languages, some had clutched her hand and talked to her pa.s.sionately-if brokenly, through uncontrollable coughing-as if she were some family member or loved one, and she"d listened and nodded even if she didn"t understand a word of it.

At Rhinnal they taught her death was something you got used to. Zahara had met plenty of physicians who claimed to have adjusted to it and they always seemed eerie to her somehow, more detached and mechanical than the droids that served alongside them. She tended to avoid such doctors and their cold, clinical eyes.

Waste brought the news of the final deaths with a neutral tone that she"d never heard before, a lack of affect so peculiar that she wondered if it had been programmed for the worst eventualities. Perhaps it was what pa.s.sed for sympathy in the droid world.

Then, in an almost apologetic voice, the 2-1B added: "I"ve finished the a.n.a.lysis of your own blood as well."

"And?"

"You"re obviously immune to the pathogen. What I meant was that I believe I"ve had some success in a.n.a.lyzing the immunity gene within your own chemical makeup and synthesizing it."

She stared at him.

"You found a cure?"

"Not a cure, necessarily, but a kind of anti-virus, if what we"re dealing with is indeed viral in nature, something that can be administered intravenously." The droid held up a syringe filled with clear fluid and looked around at the infirmary, the bodies in their beds. "If there are any survivors aboard the barge, they ought to get this as soon as possible."

Zahara looked at the needle, belated salvation dripping from its spike. She should have felt some kind of relief. And later, perhaps, she might. But her first reaction to the news-if there are any survivors aboard the barge-was a profound sense of personal failure, manifesting itself as a sandbagged heaviness in the legs and belly. The health of the barge and its inmates and staff had been her responsibility. What had happened here over the last few hours was unthinkable, a collapse of such glaring magnitude that she couldn"t look at it except through the filter of her own personal culpability. Sartoris might have been taunting her, but he was right. She would never live this down.

There"s no time for self-pity, a voice inside her head said. You need to find out who"s left, sooner rather than later.

As usual the voice was right. She did herself the favor of recognizing that fact, and pushed down on the black feeling inside her belly. To her mild surprise, it collapsed, or rather burst like a bubble.

"I"ll be back."

"Dr. Cody?" Waste sounded alarmed. "Where are you going?"

"Up to the pilot station. I need to run a bioscan on the barge and locate any survivors."

"I"ll go with you."

"No," she said. "You need to stay here in case anyone else comes for treatment." And then, sensing the droid"s reluctance, "That"s an order, Waste, get me?"

"Yes, of course, but given the circ.u.mstances I would feel much more comfortable if you would simply allow me..."

"I"ll be fine."

"Yes, Doctor."

"Watch for survivors," she said, and walked out the door.

She didn"t have to go far before the notion of survivors struck her as an increasingly unlikely prospect.

She stepped over and around the bodies, breathing through her mouth when the odor became too much. Almost immediately she wished she"d allowed Waste to come with her. The droid"s prattling would"ve made everything else easier to take.

She arrived at the pilot station and slipped through the doors, braced for what she found there. The Purge"s flight crew had not abandoned their posts, even in death. The corpses of the pilot and copilot, a couple of rough-hewn Imperial lifers she"d never really gotten to know, slouched backward in their seats, mouths gaping, algae-gray flesh already beginning to sag from their bones. As Zahara approached them, the barge"s instrumentation suite recognized her immediately, panels blinking, and a computerized voice cut in from some hidden speaker.

"Identification, please." The voice had been synthesized to sound female, business-like but pleasant, and Zahara tried to remember what the pilots called her and then remembered-Tisa. Word was that on the longer flights, various guards had been caught up here after hours, chatting her up.

"This is Chief Medical Officer Zahara Cody."

"Thank you," Tisa said. "Confirming retinal match." There was a pause, perhaps five seconds, and a single satisfied beep. "Identification confirmed, Dr. Cody. Awaiting orders."

"Run a bioscan of the barge," she said.

"Acknowledge. Running bioscan." Lights pulsed. "Bioscan complete. Imperial Prison Barge Purge, previous inmate and administrative census five hundred twenty-two according to the..."

"Just tell me who"s left."

"Currently active life-form census is six."

"Six?"

"Correct."

"That"s impossible."

"Would you like me to recalibrate the bioscan variables?"

Zahara stopped and considered the options. "What are the variables?"

"Positive life-form reading is based on algorithmic interpretation of brainwaves, body temperature, motion, and heart rate."

"What about alien species whose normal body temp or pulse don"t fit within those parameters?" Zahara asked. "They wouldn"t show up on the scan, would they?"

"Negative. Scan parameters are continuously recalibrated to incorporate the physiological traits of every member of the inmate population. In fact, current calibration standards reflect accurate life-form census with a point-zero-zero-one percent margin of..."

"Where are they?" Zahara asked. "The six?"

Tisa"s holoscreen brightened to extend a transparent, three-dimensional diagram of the barge. It looked much cleaner in miniature, etched out with fine, straight lines, a drafter"s dream of perfect geometry. The pilot station occupied the uppermost level. On one end of it, rising like a periscope, stood the retractable docking shaft that still connected them to the Destroyer. On the other end of the pilot station, a wide descending gangway lead downward to the conjoining administration level, flanked on port and starboard sides by the barge"s escape pods. The mess hall, infirmary, and guards" quarters occupied the far end of that same level, and below that, the six individual strata that const.i.tuted Gen Pop. Any farther down, Zahara knew, and you"d find yourself amid a series of beveled hatches giving way to numberless sublevels, including the bottommost holding cells.

In all she counted the six tiny blips of red light distributed throughout it.

"Current life-form census," Tisa was saying, "indicates one active reading in the pilot station, one on the administration level, two in General Population, Detention Level One, and two in solitary confinement."

Solitary. She hadn"t even thought about that until now. Reserved for the worst and most dangerous inmates on the barge, a haven for maniacs and extreme flight risks, it was the one place where the sickness might not have had an opportunity to spread. The question was whether she should risk going down there alone. Of course there were plenty of weapons lying around, but she didn"t relish the idea of letting two of Warden Kloth"s worst inmates free only to blast them into oblivion when they attacked her.

Still, what choice did she have?

"Can you patch me through to the infirmary?"

"Acknowledged," Tisa said and the monitor above the hologram brightened to show the medbay. At one corner of the screen Zahara saw Waste walking from bed to bed, removing monitors from the last of the dead, gathering up old IV lines and ventilator tubing. He was talking to himself in a voice too low to hear, perhaps only reviewing the diagnostic data, but seeing him like this made her feel suddenly, inexplicably sad.

"Waste."

The 2-1B stopped and looked up from the screen. "Oh, h.e.l.lo, Dr. Cody. Was the bioscan a success?"

She wasn"t sure how to answer that one. "I"m going down to solitary. Can you meet me down there?"

"Yes, of course." He paused. "Dr. Cody?"

"Yes?"

"How many remaining life-forms are there?"

"Six."

"Six," the droid repeated tonelessly. "Oh. I see."

For a moment he glanced back at the infirmary full of bodies, all the patients who had died on their watch, despite all their efforts, and then up to the screen again. "Well. I suppose I"ll meet you down there then."

"See you there," she said, and signed off.

Chapter 18.

Solitary Zahara left the pilot station and took the turbolift straight down to the barge"s lowest inhabited level. She almost never descended this deep into the barge, had maybe been down twice since she"d started here, to treat inmates who were too sick or dangerous to come up to the infirmary. The only thing that lay beneath it was the mechanical and maintenance sublevel, the cramped domain of eyeless maintenance droids that never saw the light of day.

The lift doors opened to release her into a bare hallway with exposed wires dangling from the overhead girders. Zahara squinted, trying to make out the details. Apparently the main power circuitry didn"t work so well down here. Somewhere above her a steam vent hissed out a steady current of moist, rancid-smelling air like the stale breath of a terminal patient. She didn"t see any sign of the 2-1B anywhere and wondered whether she should go any farther without it. It didn"t really matter, if there were no other survivors except- "Oh!" she said aloud, startled out of her thoughts, falling forward and catching herself on the damp corridor wall, where her palm slipped, almost landing her flat on her face.

She"d tripped on the bodies of the guards in front of her. She counted five of them, sprawled out in a harrowing tableau. They were all wearing isolation suits and masks except for one, a younger guard whom Zahara recognized from a month or so earlier, when he"d come to the infirmary complaining of some minor skin irritation. She"d liked him well enough, and had fallen easily into conversation. She remembered him talking about his wife and children back on his homeworld of Chandrila.

Looking down at his body, Zahara saw a sheet of flimsiplast curled in his hand. She knelt down to pick it up and started reading.

Kai: I know I told you and the kids I would be home after this run. But that is not going to happen. I am sorry to say that something has gone wrong on the barge. Everybody is getting sick and n.o.body knows why. Almost everybody has died so far. At first I thought I was going to be okay but now it looks like I have it, too.

I am sorry, Kai. I know this is going to be hard on the boys. Will you please tell them their daddy loves them ? I am so sorry this is how things turned out, but tell them I served to the best of my abilities and I was not a coward and never scared.

And I love you with all my heart.

At the bottom the guard had attempted to write his name but the letters had come out so crooked and helpless, probably from his trembling hand, that the signature was little more than a scribble.