It was Dr. Kavafi.
“What… what happened to you?” Tash asked in bewilderment. Now Kavafi looked as if he’d been locked in a Hutt’s dungeon for months.
“Wh-Who are you?” Kavafi asked in return.
Tash wrinkled her brow. “Tash Arranda. You know me. I’m Hoole’s niece.”
Kavafi pushed some strands of hair out of his eyes. “I knew a Shi’ido named Hoole years ago, but I’ve never met you before.” He suddenly stiffened. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter now. I’m afraid you have gotten yourself involved in something terrible.” He looked around nervously.
“I know!” Tash said in sudden frustration. She was getting a headache, and her skin felt hot and itchy from the room’s heat. “I thought you were behind the virus!”
“Not me!” the doctor said. He seemed more meek than before. “I came to this planet to do virus research. I did good work, too. But several weeks ago I was kidnapped right out of the Infirmary by someone who looked exactly like me. An imposter!”
An imposter? Tash shook her head. “No, it was you. My uncle Hoole brought us here so you could treat my brother Zak for a virus.”
The man shook his head. “I’m telling you, for the last six weeks I have been locked in a cell at the bottom of this ziggurat. Someone assumed my identity and took over the Infirmary, replacing my entire staff with his own scientists!”
“Why?” Tash asked.
The man pointed to the walls around them. “I chose Gobindi for my virus research because the humid climate is ripe for breeding viruses. But as I began my research, I discovered that the Gobindi had done their own research before they vanished. They knew that the jungles below their city were festering with viruses, bacteria, and all manner of organisms. But the Gobindi’s discoveries cost them their lives. They unearthed a virus on the planet’s surface that was too deadly for words. Even the Gobindi, with all their knowledge, had no way to destroy it!”
“So that’s how they disappeared,” Tash whispered.
“They were wiped out!” Kavafi said. “In a last attempt to control the virus, the Gobindi identified all its original sources. Caves, stagnant lakes, and forest groves where the virus spread from plants to animals and back again, waiting for another host to come along and help spread the disease. Since they could not kill the virus, the Gobindi built huge tombs that-they hoped-would seal it away forever.”
“These ziggurats,” Tash whispered. “They were built to stop the virus from spreading?”
The man nodded. “When I realized this, I sent all the information to my superiors in the Empire, recommending that Gobindi be quarantined forever. The next thing I knew, a Star Destroyer arrived. I was thrown into a dungeon. Someone took control of all my experiments. But instead of stopping the research, they began to dig into the ziggurats, looking for the virus itself!” He shuddered. “I think they are using my virus research to create a galaxy-wide plague.”
Tash looked at Kavafi’s clothes, his ratty hair, and his bloodshot, swollen eyes. He certainly looked like he’d been in a dungeon for weeks. And his story was convincing. She asked, “But who would do something like that? Who could impersonate you so perfectly?”
Ten meters up the wall, a panel slid back to reveal an observation viewport. Someone was standing at the transparisteel window. “I could,” the figure said.
It was Uncle Hoole.
CHAPTER 17
Tash blinked.
No, it wasn’t Uncle Hoole. The face was too round and the body too squat. Plus, the figure grinned evilly. Hoole rarely even smiled. No, this wasn’t Hoole.
But he was a Shi’ido, a member of Hoole’s species. Which meant that he could change shape at will.
“That’s how he impersonated you,” Tash realized. “That’s who I thought was Dr. Kavafi.”
“A convincing act, I thought,” the mysterious Shi’ido said, speaking through a comm unit. “It had to be, to trick Hoole. I even went to the trouble of actually healing your brother in a bacta tank, just to keep Hoole at ease.”
“Where is Zak?” Tash yelled.
The mysterious Shi’ido grinned again. “At this moment I’d say he is lying on the floor of his cell, covered in the virus. In another few minutes, he should be just another-what did you call it, Tash? - a blob creature.”
Tash’s knees felt weak. All this time she had suspected Hoole of doing something wrong. He was being fooled, just like she was. She could have talked to him at any time. Instead she had kept her worries to herself, and now they had all fallen into some sort of deadly trap.