Marchion had asked her, of course—many times—as had his father, and his grandmother. If Mari San Tekka’s gift could be replicated, then there truly was no limit to what could be accomplished. Mari had tried, but it was like explaining why there were always more stars the farther you traveled, the deeper you looked. Some things just were, and could not be explained.

Or duplicated.

When Mari San Tekka died—and that day could not be far off, despite the best medical technology in the galaxy being applied to extending her life span—the Paths would die with her. And at that point, the thing that made the Nihil more than just another marauder gang carving out territory in the Outer Rim would vanish.

Marchion pressed a control on the exterior of Mari’s medical pod, and spoke.

“Can you bring us back, Mari?” Marchion Ro said.

The old woman ignored him, and the Gaze leapt again. Marchion braced himself against the shock without thinking. Some people could barely keep their feet when Mari San Tekka took the ship on one of her little voyages, but he had been experiencing it since he was a child.

“Mari?” he said again.

No response. Hyperspace swirled outside the viewports, and Mari’s eyes tracked it, seeing paths visible only to her.

Marchion Ro frowned. He pressed another control on the medical pod’s console, and Mari’s entire body tensed as a mild electric shock coursed through it.

He wished she weren’t making him do it. The woman was not robust, and he didn’t know how many jolts she could take. Her doctor, a rotund Chadra-Fan named Uttersond, had once described Mari San Tekka’s heart as a paper lantern.

But he didn’t have time for her to be lost in her mind. He had plans, and questions, and the Nihil needed Paths, and the Paths came from Marchion Ro, but truly from this old woman to whom he had tied his entire future, this woman he kept alive and pampered and she just wanted to fly his ship halfway across the galaxy instead of just—

He pressed the button again, and Mari’s body went rigid.

—giving him—

Again.

—what he—

Again.

—needed.

Mari San Tekka collapsed back against the cradle in her medical pod, and then her body trembled and shook. Her mouth gaped open, spittle shining at its corners, and her eyes rolled back in her head.

An alarm began to sound, a low, insistent beep, which he knew would summon Dr. Uttersond. Marchion Ro tapped another control and the alarm ceased.

He leaned over the medical pod, watching Mari San Tekka endure her seizure. The pod went through its emergency procedures; needles extended on actuator arms from its sides and slipped into the protruding veins on the woman’s stick-thin arms, as flat metal paddles slid beneath her robes to stimulate her heart.