Showdown at Centerpoint (27 page)

Anakin regarded him gravely for a moment or two, and then turned to his brother and sister. “Q9 is acting weird,” he announced.

“Am I?” Q9 asked. “A moment please, while I run a behavioral diagnostic.” Q9 activated the appropriate routines and ran them against his action log for the past hour. “You’re quite right, young Anakin. I
am
behaving somewhat erratically. It might well have something to do with being roasted alive and being stuck in a storage bin for hours on end, but that’s all as may be. We’re all friends here. In any event, rest assured that my actions and reactions are still within acceptable limits. Quite so.”

“It is one of the flaws of the Q9-series design,” Ebrihim said, speaking to the children in a quiet voice from the far side of the vertical wall that divided the containment. “At times, they do not respond well to periods of extended stress.”

“But then, who does?” Q9 asked.

“He may exhibit fairly drastic mood swings for a
time, but he should settle down after a while,” Ebrihim said. “We’ll just have to deal with him as he is for the time being.”

“Great,” said Jacen. “We’re counting on a manic-depressive droid to break us out of here.”

“And break you out I shall,” said Q9. “Just tell me how.” He spun his view dome about to check again on the assault boat, and then spun it back, a bit abruptly. “But be quick about it, before the guards have a chance to awaken.”

“Yeah,” said Jacen. “Right. Anakin is the one to ask.”

“Ah, yes,” Q9 said. “Anakin, master of all machines. Just tell me what to do, and I shall do it. So long as pushing the wrong button doesn’t drop the planet into the sun, or any such trivial inconvenience.”

“Q9,” said Ebrihim. “You must control yourself. Settle down. It is most important.”

“My apologies,” said Q9. Strange how they were all fussing over him now, when most of the time they barely gave him a moment’s notice. That is, when they weren’t actively
against
him. “Interesting,” he said. “I already seem to be slipping back into a depressive paranoid phase.”

“Just—just try and keep your thoughts ordered and balanced,” Ebrihim said soothingly. “Anakin, get him started.”

“Ah, okay,” Anakin said. “The control panel’s turned away from us, but I think there’s a big slot for a sort of metal key right in the middle of it. Can you see it?”

“How did you know that was there if you can’t see it?” Q9 asked suspiciously.

“I saw the other guy using it,” Anakin said, glancing toward Jacen a little doubtfully. “It’s there, right?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Ebrihim said that sometimes you can use your manipulator arms to pick locks and stuff. Do you think you could pick that one?”

Q9 extruded a close-up view cam on the end of a flexible arm. It carried a small illuminator light at its end, right next to the cable. He switched on the illuminator and brought the cam to bear on the lock. He examined it carefully, from several angles, then turned off the illuminator and retracted the close-up cam.

“No,” he said.

“Oh,” Anakin said. “That’s not good.”

“Is that it?” Q9 asked. “Can I go now?”

“No!” Anakin said. He shut his eyes and extended his hand out toward the control panel. “I can
almost
do it, but I can’t
see
the controls the way I can see the inside.” He shook his head and opened his eyes. “Read me what the labels say. Read me all the buttons and switches.”

Q9 extruded the close-up cam again and turned on the illuminator to examine the display. “It is a most archaic system of controls,” he said. “The first dial is labeled
MAIN POWER SELECT
—that’s the one with the lock on it. The selector can be set to
OFF, SINGLE CONTAINMENT, DOUBLE CONTAINMENT
, or
QUAD CONTAINMENT
. It is set to
DOUBLE
. Below that is a dial marked
OVERALL INTENSITY
. It is marked off from one to eleven, and is set to eight point five.”

“Twist that one down as far as it will go,” Anakin said.

Q9 extruded a manipulator arm and twisted the dial to the left as far as he could. “It will not turn any lower than the point marked two. I would conjecture that it cannot be turned lower without the key.”

“Right, right,” said Anakin. The boy reached out his hand and probed cautiously at the force field. He seemed to be able to push his hand slowly into it, but only by a few centimeters. “No, no,” said Anakin. “Still too strong. Read me the other controls,” he said.

“There are three dials. The first is lit up. It reads
DOUBLE CONTAINMENT LEFT SIDE RELATIVE INTENSITY
. The dial is marked from one to eleven, with the dial set at the center point, six. The other two dials appear
to control quad mode settings. As we are clearly in double mode, the quad settings are not of any consequence.”

“Twist the double level to one side as far as it will go.”

Q9 did so, and the force field forming the children’s containment promptly darkened, so much that the effect was plainly visible even in the near darkness of the repulsor chamber.

“Turn it the other way,” Anakin said.

Q9 did so, and the field faded away again, until it was completely invisible, even in infrared. Anakin pushed at the field again, and it gave a bit more this time—but even pushing as hard as he could, he could not get out.

“Any more controls on that thing?” Anakin asked.

“That is all,” Q9 replied.

“Thought so,” Anakin said. “Couldn’t feel anything else.”

“Then why did you ask me?”

“Because I wanted to be sure!” Anakin said. “Don’t act so weird, okay?”

“Am I still behaving strangely?” Q9 asked. “Or do you just want me to
think
I’m behaving strangely? Is
that
your plan?”

“Q9, we don’t have time for this,” said Jacen. “Later. Whatever it is you’re doing, do it later. All right?”

Q9 looked at him suspiciously. “I am not ‘doing’ anything besides following orders.”

“Never mind,” Anakin said. “Q9—is it all as low as it can go? So it makes the field as weak this side as it can be?”

“As low as it can go without the key, yes.”

“All right,” said Anakin. “Hope it’s good enough. Here goes.” He extended his arms in front of him and spread out his stubby fingers as far as they would go. He shut his eyes and stepped forward, until his hands
were in contact with the force field. “Gotta move slowly,” he reminded himself.

Pushing slowly, gently, he thrust his hand deeper and deeper into the weakened force field. The field around his hands began to shimmer and spark, brightly at first, but then fading away, until Anakin was standing in a pushed-out bubble of the force field, a bubble that was marked by dim, shimmering flickers of power. Anakin pushed farther on, but seemed unable to make further progress. “Help me,” he said to his brother and sister.

Jacen and Jaina stepped cautiously forward into the extruded bubble of the force field. Jacen shut his eyes and stretched out his hands. He frowned and shook his head. “I don’t see what you are— Oh, I get it.” He pushed out his hands farther, and Jaina did the same. The bubble lit up again with shimmers and sparks that did not light up quite as much as they did the first time, and that faded away more quickly and more completely.

“Try again, Anakin,” said Jaina.

Anakin pushed on the force field with just his left hand this time, with slow, steady pressure that stretched the field farther and farther. And then, moving quite slowly and gently, he bunched up his fingers into a fist and extended just his index finger. He pushed forward with his finger, stretching the field farther and farther until, at some gradual and indefinable moment, the tip of his finger was through and outside the field, on the other side. “Jacen, take my hand,” said Anakin. “Jaina, take his.”

Jacen grabbed his brother’s right hand in his left, and Jaina took Jacen’s right in her own left hand. Anakin pressed onward, until his whole finger, his whole arm, his shoulder, his head, his chest, were through. He leaned forward, pushing slowly, steadily forward. He lifted his left leg up, forcing it gently up and through the field. The field sparked and shimmered for a moment as his leg slipped clear of it and
he set it down on the outside. His right leg seemed to move through more easily.

And then, but for his right arm, he was through, and on the outside. He kept moving forward, very slowly, leaning forward as he pulled, dragging his brother’s arm out through the field. The field sparked and shimmered with greater violence when Jacen’s hand touched it. Jacen winced, and almost flinched backward. There was the crackle and spark of static electricity as his hand moved forward through the field. It was as if the field was resisting him more than his brother, and it was plain to see from the expression on his face that it was far from a pleasant sensation. The field seemed reluctant to let his head come through, and sparks and fire flickered about his face. His head broke through quite abruptly, and he let out a little grunt of pain as it did. His hair sprang straight out from his head, alive with static electricity, something that had not happened to Anakin. The sparks flared and flickered about him as he forced one leg and then the other through the field.

Jacen gasped with relief as his body broke free of the field. Anakin still held his left hand, and the two boys moved slowly out from the field as Jacen pulled Jaina’s hand through the field. Sparks shimmered again, but in a deeper, duller, angry color. “Ow!” Jaina said. “It’s—it’s like fire.”

“Just keep coming,” Jacen said. “Your hand is free of the field. Keep your eyes shut. It’s easier that way, believe me. Keep coming. Keep coming. There’s your arm free. Here comes your head. Hang on!. Hang on! Almost free. All right, your face is clear. That’s the worst part. You should see your hair! No, don’t open your eyes yet, but it’s sticking straight up from your head. Good. Good. Now push your leg through. Steady. Easy does it. Good. Good. Now the other one. Up, over, through. Good. Just the foot to come—whoops!”

Jaina tumbled down onto her brother as she broke free of the field, and Jacen went down, taking Anakin with him. The stretched-out part of the force field shimmered and sparked one last time, and then retracted, shrank, pulled back, merging smoothly back into the rest of the field, as if there had never been such a thing as a distortion in the field’s surface.

“Boy, that hurt,” Jaina said. “Like getting a shock all over my body.”

“I think it was worse for you than me,” Jacen said as the three children disentangled themselves from each other and helped each other up. “Did it hurt you at all, Anakin?” he asked his brother.

Anakin shook his head. “Nope. It sort of
tickled
a little bit. Well, it didn’t feel nice like tickling, but sort of like that.”

“That was impossible, of course,” said Q9. “What you just did was quite impossible. No one can walk through a force field that way.”

“We didn’t go through it, really,” Anakin said. “It was more like we went
between
it. Stretched it out until there was room
between
the field, sort of. Then I just pushed the parts apart, and went through. That’s all.”

“Ah. That’s all. Thank you. That makes it all
quite
clear, I assure you.”

“Anakin—what about Chewbacca and Ebrihim and Aunt Marcha?” asked Jaina.

Anakin shook his head. “I don’t think I can do it from this side,” he said. “Not to pull people through. It’s harder to do, the bigger and heavier you are.”

“Can you do anything with the control panel?” Jaina asked.

Anakin went over and looked at the panel, put his hand over it, and shut his eyes. He concentrated, focusing his attention deep inside the device. At last he took his hand off and opened his eyes. “No,” he said.

“But you can make all sorts of machines do whatever you want,” Jaina protested.

“Yeah, but that’s easy,” Anakin said. “Real
little
stuff I can move around. I can make stuff do what it’s supposed to do. But the lock insides are too big. And the lock’s
doing
what it’s supposed to do. It’s already working.”

“I couldn’t ask for a clearer explanation,” said Q9. “But I take it you can’t get the others out?”

“No,” said Anakin. “Not without the key.”

“I see you had this all carefully planned out in advance,” Q9 observed.

“The plan was that
you
would be able to pick the lock,” Ebrihim said, rather severely. “But that is all to one side. If we indeed cannot get out, obviously the children must attempt to escape on their own. With your help, of course, Q9.”

“What?” Q9 asked. “How? How are we supposed to get away?”

“By flying away in the
Millennium Falcon,
of course.”

“Wait a second,” said Jacen. “You want
us
to fly the
Falcon?
”

Chewbacca looked at Ebrihim, made a yawping sound, and then bared his teeth and shook his head.

“I agree that it is foolhardy and dangerous,” Ebrihim said to Chewbacca. He turned to the three children. “But it is nonetheless the best of many bad choices. Chewbacca, you yourself said the repairs to the
Falcon
were all but complete. I feel quite certain that you would have no trouble explaining to the children what still needs to be done. And I have no doubt at all they could perform the repairs.

“As for the rest of it, we three in here have far, far less value as hostages, and Thrackan knows it. The three jewels are already outside this force field stockade. Anakin, Jacen, Jaina—the danger would be great if you tried to escape on your own. But I sincerely believe that the danger to you, and to ourselves, and to others, would be much less than if you stayed.
Thrackan is a cruel and heartless man, and I do not wish you in his clutches. As I see it, there are only two possibilities. The first is that your mother goes along with what he tells her to do.”

“She’d never do that,” Jacen said.

“I quite agree. But if she did, I believe your uncle would decide you were too valuable to give up. He would keep you, in hopes of extracting further concessions. And every time she gave in, he would have more reason to hold on to you. I believe you would be permanent prisoners.”