Mub’at
or Balancesheet, could generate and extrude additional cerebro-neural tissue in the form of an extended nervous system running through a web big enough in which to live and in the tethered subnodes that filled the space, so could that tissue be regenerated from the outside. A constantly monitored and adjusted stimulating pulse would actually restore the strands of dead tissue to functioning life, with the synaptic terminals seeking one another out and knitting themselves back together.
That basic rundown of assembler physiology had taken place in the cockpit of the Hound’s Tooth. Standing now inside the reconstructed web, Dengar looked down at the black, shimmering cables looped near his boots. Neelah was still back aboard the ship moored alongside, making sure that the necessary energy and controlling data kept flowing from the onboard computers. There was no danger of her disengaging the Hound’s Tooth and leaving them stranded inside the web; she was more intent on breaking through to the past and its secrets than either bounty hunter could have been.
Dengar looked up as another shimmering motion ran through the fibers of the web. The effect was less spasmodic and threatening than the previous one, and settled down to a barely discernible but constant trembling in the curving structure. At the same time, the vibration died in the black cables running out to the ship; they became as inert as the web itself had been when he and Boba Fett had commenced its resurrection from the dead.
“That’s it,” Boba Fett announced. He stood up from where he had been kneeling beside the empty nest at the center of the chamber and tossed the pulsator tool aside. “Now we’re ready for the last step.”
Which was exactly what Dengar had been dreading. He had been able to reconcile himself to being inside the living web; it was at least without personality or a guiding intelligence, the revivified neural circuits as empty of thought as some giant, hollow vegetation. But for the past to be retrieved, with all its secrets intact and readable, that idiot nervous system would have to be linked to the brain that contained the necessary memories. And we’ll be inside it, thought Dengar. It struck him as being even worse, in some ways, than the Sarlacc could ever have been.
“Come over here and give me a hand.” Boba Fett gestured as he spoke the order. “We need to get it into position for the hookup.”
Reluctantly, Dengar ducked his head beneath the horizontal beam keeping the web’s walls spread apart. He threaded his way through the maze of the other supports that had been so laboriously installed, mostly by him rather than Fett.
At the center of the chamber, the neural activity that Boba Fett had summoned up from the formerly dead tissue was more visible, the pulsing of the structural fibers overlaid with a shimmering network of sparks racing across the synaptic connections. Dengar tried to maintain his balance on the uneven floor of the space, without laying a hand on any of the surrounding structural fibers. There was no chance of receiving an electrical shock from the bright circuits of light, but the thought of touching the now-living mass unnerved him.
“Get on that side of it,” instructed Boba Fett. He pointed toward the one thing inside the chamber that was still part of the dead world they had found when they had come to this point in space. “We’ll need to lift it all the way clear. I don’t want the legs dragging across any of the neural fibers.”
He did as Fett had told him, still trying to avoid contact with the dead object for as long as possible. Dengar’s reluctance betrayed him; as he stepped gingerly toward it, the toe of one of his boots caught on a loop of black cable, tripping him and toppling him forward.
His hands automatically caught hold of the object’s
hard, chitinous exoskeleton, the stiff hairs on the spidery limbs poking into his own flesh like tapering needles. Dengar managed to push himself away, just far enough that he found himself looking straight into the largest of the empty multiple eyes.
There had been no need to bring any of the dead subnodes here inside the web; the small corpses had all been left outside, continuing to drift through the cold vacuum, their curled forms dragging across the hull and cockpit canopy of the Hound’s Tooth as before. But this one, the creator of all the others, was the most important element of the procedure.
Kud’ar Mub’at’s narrow face, only an inch or so away from Dengar’s, almost seemed to be smiling at his discomfiture.
In
this
small, nightmarishly claustrophobic world, the dead found enjoyment in mocking those still alive.
“Quit fooling around,” said Boba Fett with a trace of impatience. “Grab hold and lift.”
Dengar did as ordered, helping the other bounty hunter settle Kud’ar Mub’at’s corpse onto the waiting receptacle of the nest it had occupied in its previous existence. He stepped back, wiping his hands against the front of his gear, and watched as Fett picked up the pulsator tool and went back to work.