“Yes, it does have a certain Imperial utilitarianism,” Cilghal said. “I wish there had been time to design something less dismal, but this configuration was the quickest to assemble.”
“Speed is important,” Luke assured her. “It will only take Han a few days to repair the damage to the Falcon, and I’d like to have this thing figured out before he and Leia start back to the Qoribu system.”
Cilghal studied him out of one bulbous eye. “You can’t convince them to wait until we learn more?”
“Not with Jaina still there, not after what happened to Saba.”
“Saba will recover, and Jaina…” Cilghal turned up the palms of her fin-like hands. “If Jaina would not return before, what makes them think she will listen to them now?”
“I don’t know,” Luke said. “But they’re convinced we need to return to Qoribu as soon as possible… and I think I agree with them.”
Luke had heard reports of Jacen’s visit to Tenel Ka and rumors of unexplained Hapan fleet maneuvers, and Leia had told him flatly that the balance of power at Qoribu was about to shift. He and the other Masters were still debating if that was a good thing or bad, but events were clearly moving faster than the order’s ability to deal with them. Whether the Jedi understood the Killiks or not, they had to take action soon.
After considering Luke’s words for a moment, Cilghal said, “Then I should just tell you what I need and not waste time reporting failures.”
Luke frowned at the hesitation… shame… he felt from the Mon Calamari. “If you think that’s best,” he said cautiously.
Cilghal turned to her assistants-a trio of apprentice healers - and sent them out of the room.
“That bad?” Luke asked.
“Yes.” She pointed at the chambers holding Alema and Gorog. “I need to hurt them.”
“Hurt them?”
“Inflict pain,” she clarified. “Torture them, in truth. Not for long, and nothing that will injure. But it must be intense. It’s the only way to test a critical hypothesis.”
“I see.”
Luke swallowed and forced himself to look through the transparisteel doors at the two prisoners. There was a time when he would not even have considered such a request-and when Cilghal would never have made it. But now that the Jedi had elected to embrace all of the Force, to utilize the dark side as well as the light, nothing seemed off limits. They deceived, they manipulated, they coerced. To be sure, it was all done in the name of a higher purpose, to promote peace and serve the Balance, yet he occasionally felt that the Jedi were losing their way; that the war with the Yuuzhan Vong had turned them from their true path. He sometimes thought this must have been how Palpatine started, pursuing a worthy goal with any means available.
“Perhaps we should back up a little,” Luke said. “Have you made any progress at all?”
“Of a sort.” Cilghal pointed to her data-holo, which was basically a flat grid plotting each subject’s name against various brain regions, with colored data bars above each square. As the level of activity changed, the bars rose and fell, changing colors and glowing more or less brightly. “As you can see, all of our subjects display similar levels of activity in their sensory cortices, which suggests they’re experiencing the same physical sensations.”
“And they shouldn’t be?”
The corners of Cilghal’s lips rose in a broad-mouthed grin. “Not really. The environment in each chamber is different-hot, cold, rank, fragrant, noisy, quiet.”
Luke raised his brow. “Doesn’t that confirm your theory about the corpus callosum receiving impulses from other brains?”
“It does.” Cilghal pointed at four red bars near the end of Alema’s and Gorog’s data rows. “But look at this. The hypothalamus and limbic system are the center of the emotions. Alema’s is correlating to Gorog’s.”
Luke noticed that this was true only of Alema and Gorog. The hypothalami and limbic systems of Tesar, Tekli, and Tahiri remained independent. Jacen’s readings were, as usual, completely useless. He was playing with the brain scanner again, moving his color bars up and down in a rhythmic wave pattern. It was, Luke knew, a not-so-subtle form of protest; his nephew believed that the Jedi order should have more faith in its Jedi Knights than in Cilghal’s instruments. Under normal circumstances, Luke would have agreed-but circumstances were not normal.
“Alema and Gorog are in a meld?” Luke asked.
Cilghal shook her head. “No. They’re not perceiving each ether’s emotions, as Jedi do in a meld. Alema and Gorog are sharing emotions, the same way Tesar and the others are sharing sensations. This takes the collective mind a step deeper than we have seen before.”