Chapter 7: What the Droids Said

Count Dooku was so mad, it looked like he might burst a blood vessel and die. If only. He called Nan and Grievous down to his evil hideout and pointed at a small group of battle droids. They appeared to just be standing there, doing nothing. Nan said as much.

"Just wait, just wait," said the Count. "They say it every few minutes."

A few birds flew by. The sound of Dooku's gardener starting up the lawn mower was heard. Grievous' joints creaked. Then finally one of the droids spoke.

"Chancellor Palpatine was scratching his ass and picking his nose."

Nan and Grievous snorted with laughter. Dooku snapped at them to shut up and wait. So they did wait until several other droids had spoken. These were the things they said:

"Anakin Skywalker and Jar Jar Binks got married in secret."

"General Grievous got his head stuck in a toilet."

And finally…

"Count Dooku was jacking off to a hologram of Jabba the Hutt."

"This is an outrage!" Yelled Dooku while Nan and the General could barely contain their laughter. Nan got a cramp in her side. Dooku glared at them. It never occurred to him that they were responsible, that they had snuck off to a droid factory and implanted the calumnious files into the droid manifold. He thought they were just being stupid.

"Don't you two idiots understand what this means? Some Republic hacker must have infiltrated a droid factory! They're out to make a fool of me. What if Jabba takes it seriously?"

Nan calmed down and said, "I highly doubt that, my lord. I think this is a childish prank from somebody on our side, probably some bored senator's kid."

"We must have all the droids with this serial number recalled. Grievous, make sure it's done. Specious, you're a good hacker, see if you can find the culprit."

"Clearly it's not slander only against you," said Nan. "It makes fun of Grievous, the Jedi, and seriously calls into question the Chancellor's personal hygiene if he was performing those actions in that order."

"What would you know about personal hygiene?" Asked Grievous. "You clean yourself with your tongue."

"That's irrelevant," said Dooku. "I'll take over damage control. Jabba does not exactly like me since I tried to kidnap his son and this slander can only make things worse. Now then, General, I want you here tomorrow at sunrise to oversee battle simulations."

The droids repeated their statements. Grievous and Nan went off again, laughing and shaking. Dooku wiped a hand across his face. It did not occur to any of them that at that moment, the scales of the Universe could have tipped away from the darkness that seemed overwhelming. If Count Dooku had only laughed too, if he had only recognized the ridiculousness of the fake allegations and laughed at himself, perhaps the future could have been radically different. All it takes, sometimes, is a laugh. But he just stomped off.

In the Jedi Temple on Corusant, the Jedi Council was in session. Obi Wan Kenobi had captured a battle droid and brought it in. They had been listening to its four statements for several hours. Master Yoda was deep in meditation, but he could not find the meaning of this strange calumny.

"Do you think it's some sort of code?" Asked Shaak Ti.

"Our strongest computers have sorted through it," said Plo Koon. "The letters do not rearrange into anything useful and no numeric code can be found."

Anakin had come by, and he was certainly not pleased that one of the statements concerned him. It hit a little close to home. Chancellor Palpatine could not make sense of it either. Could it be possible that the statements were just a dumb prank? Who would be foolish enough to risk their neck for a joke? The Jedi Council finally broke up. Obi Wan and Anakin walked through the halls together.

"None of it makes sense," said Anakin.

"Indeed it does not, though it would explain a lot about Count Dooku if the statement concerning him were true. All I can say is that this war is a toilet, and it's not just Grievous who has his head stuck in it."

Obi Wan was the only one who got that implied metaphor.

The last thing Grievous wanted to do was oversee battle simulations, but he had to at least pretend he still cared about his job. He got in a shuttle with Nan, who decided to come for the hell of it, and flew off for Dooku's planet again. Nan sniffed suspiciously at the sandwich she was eating on the way.

"This doesn't smell quite all right."

"Then why did you keep eating it? You'll get a stomachache."

Nan burped long and loud and said, "Nah, stomach of steel."

When they got close to the planet, Nan started to whine that she didn't want to oversee battle simulations after all. Grievous suggested that he could drop her off somewhere else so she could explore the planet. It had woods with berries and stuff that she could eat.

"Oh yay, woods!" Said Nan. "I haven't been out in nature since I entered S3F, except for that time Dr. Levian's genetically engineered plants took over the East Block and turned it into a jungle. Clare Myoollen would have fired her only the plants supplied us with fresh fruit for weeks."

They entered the atmosphere. When they were 200 meters above the ground, Grievous opened the door of the shuttle and told Nan to get out.

"What the hell?" She yelled, frantically putting on her seat belt.

"I said I'd drop you off!"

He landed the shuttle in a grassy clearing and kicked Nan out when she got close to the ramp. She showed him her fist, which wasn't very threatening from an upside-down position. Grievous jumped down and indicated the trees.

"There's nature. See if you remember how to get by in it."

"It'll be boring by myself! Can't you tell Dooku the shuttle broke down or something?"

"He'll just send another one after me."

Nan looked closely at the trees and recognized them from a botany book she'd read once. She really wanted her friend to play hooky so they could go rambling in the woods together. She got an idea.

"Hey G, can you get me one of those pink flowers? They look tasty."

"Get it yourself."

"Please?"

He unlatched his second pair of arms and said, "You should be ashamed that a monkey like you can't climb a tree."

Certainly, he would have made good progress with climbing the tree, if it hadn't been a sentient monster. When he was a few meters above the ground, the tree pulled a giant tentacle with a mouth out from a hollow in its trunk and grabbed him. It banged him against the ground and tried to swallow him. Nan filmed this and sent it to Count Dooku with the message: "Landed due to shuttle malfunction. General stuck in tree. May take hours to remove."

Dooku, exasperated, sent precisely the sort of message Nan expected: "Serves him right for constantly breaking spacecraft! Show up when you can."

Nan whispered something calming to the tree and it spat Grievous out with a ton of slime. Nan happily skipped over to him and showed him the messages. He grabbed her and submerged her in a pile of slime, but she didn't mind. The slime didn't taste half bad.

They locked the shuttle and walked off into the woods. Nan identified plant species and rambled on about evolution. Soon they came to a lovely meadow that sloped down for a bit, then dropped sharply. The view of rolling hills and streams in the distance was fantastic. They sat on the slope and chatted about nothing in particular. Nan could hear some baby birds in a tree nearby.

"I'd like some fresh chicks for lunch," she said with a wicked gleam in her eyes.

"Oh, let them be," said the General. "Why don't you eat something old and stringy instead?"

"Like you?"

"I promise, you can eat me after I'm dead."

"Or maybe a little before you're dead!"

Nan jumped on him and tried to rip his head off. He roughly threw her into a clump of yellow flowers that sent up a cloud of spores. Nan didn't get out and he got worried that he'd seriously hurt her. He came over and peered into the flowers. Nan leaped out and grabbed onto his head again.

"You crazy, rabid hamster!" He said, laughing.

Dicking around thus, they wasted about an hour. Then they heard a train whistle and went to the edge of the incline. A freight train was approaching. It was going in the direction of Count Dooku's battle operations and they decided to take the scenic route. Grievous slid down the slope, holding Nan, and jumped onto a wagon of the train carrying wood. They settled on the wood and watched the landscape speed by. Grievous kept an arm on Nan so she wouldn't be blown off. She got excited every few minutes and fidgeted around, pointing at whatever she thought was cool. She seemed so puerile, as if she had never lived through slavery and hardship.

"It's weird," she said. "I feel funny, and now I think I know what it is. I'm happy! You were right; I'm not in despair anymore because I'm here with you."

"I'm happy too. If you were not here, I would hate everything, but your respect and affection are enough to make me forgive even the Jedi!"

Indeed, for a few moments, the General was happy, but the feeling was fleeting. It flew off, like a favorite ribbon lost to the breeze, and Grievous took a while to understand why it left. As he watched Nan's childlike expressions of joy, something dark stole into his thoughts. It crept in slowly, so that he knew that when he finally realized what it was, it would destroy him. Fear prowled in too, by degrees, so that he clutched Nan harder. She looked at him in puzzlement and something made her anxious too.

"This train is accelerating," she said. "We'll be there soon."

Yes, they would be there, but Grievous was not thinking about Dooku's lame military operations. The train sped on and the feeling of darkness and bleakness intensified. He felt that the train was carrying him toward the inevitable, toward what had for so long been inadmissible, toward death.[1] This train marked out the course of his adventures with Nan, from the lovely, yellow-flowered hill to the grim war preparations. He looked at her again and now she looked worried. She sensed that something was wrong. He remembered her from only minutes ago, laughing and unafraid. What was it about that scene that bothered him? He did not begrudge her happiness, no, he wished it for her with all his being, but something was wrong. Just as they arrived, he realized what it was: she had no right to be happy and neither did he.

The battle simulations passed like a dream. Nan climbed onto a tank and watched the General and Dooku testing the other military leaders. Grievous could not concentrate and after an hour, Dooku told him to get the hell out of there and shut himself down for a bit.

"That tree must have scrambled your brains!"

They flew back to the Despair. Nan kept shooting questioning looks at Grievous but he did not say anything. In the main hangar, he patted her on the head and said he needed some rest. Nan followed him a few feet away, heart thumping for no reason she could see.

"Please tell me what's wrong," she said. "Is it me? Maybe I shouldn't have let that tree whack you so many times?"

"No, I do not mind. I love it when you do things like that but do you realize…"

"What? Realize what?"

"It makes sense that you do not. It was so long ago for you. But I can't say it yet. I have to think."

He stalked off to his cabin. Nan stood where she was for a bit, then followed again. Grievous went into his room and closed the door. Nan sat in front of it. What had happened? How had such a nice day turned foul? She understood that Grievous had come to some horrible realization. It was unfair of him to keep it to himself. Nan could not take the suspense any longer.

"I'm terrified!" She wailed. "Let me in and tell me! I'd rather know than sit here in dread!"

"You would not rather know," said Grievous, opening the door. "I would have you remain the way you are, for your peace of mind. It's too late for you to do anything."

"Tell me! You shouldn't suffer alone. We're in this together."

"Perhaps you're right. I'm not strong enough to suffer through this alone, if I can get through it at all."

He let her in and told her the terrible truth he had realized on the train. They were both vile, wretched murderers. They were despicable creatures that did not deserve happiness or fun like they had experienced together, even though they would never have realized this if they had not met. Their crimes, his in particular, could not be pardoned. They could never be redeemed. They had taken the lives of innocent people and stolen these innocents of thousands of beautiful moments like they themselves had felt in the lovely meadow. The conundrum—that if they had never met and enjoyed these moments they would not have discovered the horror of their actions—did not matter. They knew now and he did not know what to do.

Nan listened, feeling sick ("Now I've got a stomachache," some part of her brain noticed ironically) and wanting to run. When Grievous finished explaining, she did run. She ran around and around the main hangar, her mind in turmoil. It all came back to her. She remembered those early days on Taia and how she had murdered those poor people who had been chased out of their homes. She remembered the rage and despair that had fueled her actions, but that meant nothing now. That was no excuse. She had known the difference between right and wrong, if only from books, and had chosen the path of violence and revenge because her disillusionment with life had rendered her uninterested in morality.

Now she ran and cried, surprising battle droids going about their work. It was not possible! Had she really done all that? Yes, it was true, she was a monster! She kept hearing their cries. Some of those Vindolians had been so young! She had committed genocide, destroyed the last of a species, and played at being an evil God of vengeance. There was no punishment terrible enough for her crimes, except, perhaps, being forced to watch her only friend suffer torture and death. Nan cried, because she could not accept that punishment, and continued to run in circles.

Grievous experienced a similar crisis of conscience, though he sat still in his cabin. He thought of the Jedi he had mercilessly persecuted for no good reason. He recalled the clones he had cut down like ever so many blades of grass. War was no excuse. The fact that he had been born to a life of violence was no excuse. Everybody had a choice and he had chosen the easier path, the path of fear and strife. He was wrong! He was wrong! He had caused so much pain and it was too much to bear.

Nan came trudging back after a few hours. They did not know what to do. They felt that they needed to be punished, but the only punishment at hand was not enough. Still, that was all they had, and this remorse was too much to bear. Nan did not carry her vial of NaCN anymore. She had not carried it in a while, since she began feeling that life was worth living. They went to her cabin and found the vial in a drawer, but they did not proceed with the process. They sank to the floor and remained there, trapped in guilt and indecision.

Count Dooku called but they did not hear. The war went on. People were born and died. Planets orbited stars. The universe expanded.

"Should we do it?" Asked Nan, after many hours of contemplation.

"Will that help anybody?" Asked the General.

"Probably not."

"I feel that…"

"We need an outside opinion."

With a goal in mind, they got up and Grievous made some lame excuse to Count Dooku about being poisoned by the tree. Dooku accepted it. He had a big evil plan in the works and wanted Grievous to participate, if he was feeling well enough. The plan involved killing Jedi and Dooku figured the General would want in on the action. Grievous was interested, but for another reason. After a conference call with Dooku and some droid commanders, he told Nan they would soon get their outside opinion.

"It may not be from the best source, but she's a do-gooder just like we want. Dooku wants to capture Skywalker and maybe Kenobi and he figures the best way would be to kidnap his Padawan and lure him in. I am to kidnap the Padawan and keep her hostage until Skywalker shows up."

"What's the plan?"

"We have intercepted some transmissions between the Republic and some beleaguered natives on the planet of Draganar. Ahsoka Tano is to bring relief materials to the people. We're going to catch her."

That part of the plan went well. Grievous dropped Nan off at the place where they were to keep Ahsoka and took a regiment of battleships to knock the Padawan's ship out of the sky. There were other people on the ship besides Ahsoka, such as pilots and clones, that Grievous would ordinarily have dispatched with. Now he couldn't do that, but if he gave droids the order not to harm anyone, they could relate it back to Dooku. He decided he would just have to act fast. His ships shot at the cargo transport and quickly brought it down. Grievous leaped out of his vessel while it was still in the air and landed on the roof of the stranded transport. Ahsoka came out first, ready to defend her crew. She did not expect Grievous to jump out from behind and pull a sack over her. Quick as a missile, he called over his ship as the clones started shooting and yelled, "Mission completed! Back to the rendezvous point!" He grabbed onto the rung of his ship and tossed Ahsoka in like a sack of potatoes.

They arrived on a ledge in some arid mountains with canyons. Grievous took Ahsoka's lightsabers and tied her up. He called Dooku to report on the proceedings. Dooku told him to keep the Padawan alive long enough for him to get Skywalker and Kenobi, who had already been notified of the incident. Grievous tied Ahsoka to a wall and filmed her struggling to send to the other Jedi as Dooku asked. Then he shut off the communicator and called Nan over. The canyons were filled with droids, bombs, and tanks, but there were only a few battle droids here on the ledge with them. Dooku doubted Skywalker and Kenobi would actually get to Ahsoka, since he was waiting to fight them too. Grievous and Nan didn't have much time for their own plan.

"Go stand right along the ledge and keep a lookout," said the General to some battle droids. They went off to the ledge. One went too far and fell over. Ah well.

"You'll never get away with this!" Said Ahsoka. "My master will find some way of rescuing me and then he'll kick your lousy tin butt!"

"There is a piece of glass in your hair, or whatever that is growing out of your head. Doesn't it hurt?" Asked Grievous.

"You're the one who will be in a world of hurt when I get out!"

He removed the piece of glass from her head and flicked it away. Nan looked worriedly at the messages she was receiving from the droid commanders. Kenobi and Skywalker had not shown up yet, but they were on their way.

"We don't have much time," said Grievous. "Now, I know you don't like me, and you're fully justified in feeling that way, but I'd like to have a civil conversation. I would like to present you with a hypothetical situation. It's actually not hypothetical, but I think there's no way in hell you'll believe me, so just pretend. Will you comply?"

Ahsoka was about to yell some more statements to the extent of, "When I get out I'll kick your ass," but her gaze fell on Nan, who looked strained and sad.

"Oh, that's the little cat creature you ran back to save that one time," she said. "We tried to figure it out for days until we gained intel that she's a valuable scientist."

"Me? Valuable? Do they know how much money I've wasted on nothing?" Said Nan.

"Yes, this is Nancy Tam," said Grievous. "Now please listen, because we don't have much time. I'll just tell you the truth. Nan and I were both angry and full of hatred before we met each other, but then we discovered that those feelings went away after we learned what it is liked to be treated as equals. Soon thereafter, we realized that we're criminals guilty of the worst possible crimes. Now we don't know what to do. The remorse is driving us insane and we're considering suicide. Tell us, please, what we should do. Even though you are only a child, you have been raised among great and good people and should know more about the proper course of action."

Ahsoka was about as flabbergasted as a Padawan can be. Was this really General Grievous, that egomaniacal psychopath who had tried to kill her a bunch of times? Was she dreaming?

"Kenobi and Skywalker will come out of hyperspace in ten minutes," said Nan. "Can you come up with something soon?"

Ahsoka decide to put her mind to the task. She was no judge and could only give her honest opinion.

"I don't know what game you're playing," she said, "but I'll go along. If you guys really feel guilty and want to make up for your wrongs, I don't think you should just kill yourselves. That's a cowardly way out. If there wasn't a war on and people weren't dying every day, I think you two should be put on trial properly. However, you are in strategic positions to help us instead. You can never make up for the people you've killed, but you can redeem yourselves or at least do good with the rest of your lives. If you really care, you could save people and try to help the Republic win the war."

"The Republic is led by a corrupt senate," said Grievous. "I don't doubt that if you win this war, something will happen to bring chaos once again."

"I've felt that way too sometimes. But still, you just need to help people and try to do what good you can."

"Thanks for your time," said Nan.

"We're going to let you escape, but it needs to be believable," said the General. "Could you destroy the droids, knock out Nan, and cut off a few of my arms?"

Ahsoka went past him and slashed apart the droids on the ledge. She felt bad about hitting a little thing like Nan so Grievous knocked Nan out himself. She didn't even have time to protest. Then Ahsoka cut off all of his arms and legs.

"If you really think you've become a good guy, you won't begrudge me this small act of revenge," she said.

Dooku was so mad, it looked like he might burst a blood vessel and die. Since he hadn't done so when he heard the slander about him from the droids, Nan didn't hope for it now. This time, he knew they were the perpetrators of a terrible crime (failure) and unleashed his fury on them. He shocked Grievous with electricity and was about to do it again but Nan blocked the lightning with a lightsaber. Luckily he didn't realize she was protecting Grievous but decided she was protecting herself. He kicked what was left of the General over the cliff edge.

"Now you, Dr. Specious, have the wonderful task of putting that scrap pile back together," he said. "I have to get myself a new leading general, I really do. Literally anybody could do better, like a high school gym teacher or a chimney sweep. Would you like the position?"

"I'm not much of a leader," said Nan.

Nan went down and found Grievous wiggling around on the stubs of his limbs in the sand. He was fine, more or less. She called a drone droid to carry them to a ship.

"Our task will not be easy," she said.

"But it won't be that hard. You heard Dooku—he doesn't suspect us of treachery. He thinks I'm a moron whose brains are decomposing. I'm in the best possible position to thwart his plans…once I get all my limbs back."

"But he'll catch us in the end, G."

"That's part of the plan. Yes, it will be painful when he finds out, but what else can we do? We can't live with ourselves but we can't take the cowardly way out."

"I couldn't bear to watch you suffer."

"That's not something we'll be able to avoid."

So they began thwarting Dooku's plans. It was, at first, as easy as they predicted. Count Dooku was exasperated with Grievous' general incompetence. He told Grievous to take some time off and reflect on his lousy military skills. The time did not go to waste. No more messing around and droid bowling. Grievous and Specious took on the entire Separatist army from the inside. Dooku and his evil Sith master Sidious could not understand what was happening. Droids were falling apart on the battlefield, disobeying commands, getting lost, blowing up, giving up, and even expressing opinions. An entire regiment flew into a black hole. Another regiment flew to Corusant armed, not with blasters, but with fish. Yet another group of droids marched off into battle and suddenly turned on each other, yelling, "Death is freedom!" The droids were just going haywire. Dooku descended on the factories and yelled at the operators, but they could not find anything wrong in the software.

Information started leaking to the Republic. They intercepted the Separatists all the time now and were never outnumbered. They found secret bases and destroyed droid factories. Various documents concerning the Separatists' unethical practices leaked to Separatist planets and people rebelled.

That was the way things stood for several months. Dooku and Sidious guessed there was a traitor, but still they did not suspect Grievous or Nan. It was only a matter of time, though.

And one day, Grievous was walking down a hallway of the Despair when he ran into some droids carrying a box of cargo. They dropped it on his foot. The General did not destroy them. He patted them on the back and said, "That's all right. It happens to the best of us."

The droids were not programmed to understand that a miracle had happened.

Footnote

[1] A reference to a statement by W. G. Sebald in his novel, The Emigrants: "Railways had always meant a great deal to him—perhaps he felt they were headed for death."