"You all right?" she inquired. She seemed unjustly composed.

"I was coming," he wheezed, wiping water from his face, "to rescue you."

"I appreciate the gesture," she responded courteously while continuing to tread water, "but I was really in no trouble."

Aware that their Masters and the two guides were watching from shore, he forced down the first retort that sprang to mind. "You didn't look like you were in no trouble. You were being pulled downstream."

"I know that. It was just a matter of getting turned around so that I could strike at the gairk." Her eyes bored unflinchingly into his own as she deactivated and resecured her lightsaber. "You could have stayed on your suubatar. Did you hear me yelling for help? Did I ask you to come in after me?"

His reply was curt. "I see. Well, now that I understand you a little better, I promise that you won't have to worry about it happening again." He started to kick toward shore.

She kept pace with him easily. "Don't misunderstand, Ana- kin. It was a gallant gesture, and I appreciate your willingness to risk yourself on my behalf." She chuckled softly, her laugh far more restrained than that of her Master. "Not to mention your willingness to get yourself soaked for me."

Stroking smoothly on his side, he looked down at himself. "I certainly did that, didn't I? You swim well."

She laughed again. "The Force is with me. Race you to shore."

"You're-" Before he could say "on," she had burst forward like an eel. He almost caught up to her, but her hands and feet touched the sandy beach an instant before his own.

Two solemn-faced Jedi were waiting to greet them.

"Well, you two are certainly a pretty sight." Luminara stood with hands on hips. "What happened, Barriss?"

Barriss looked away. "It was my fault. I leaned too far to one side to try to see what was going on up front, lost my balance, and fell. Then something started pulling at my back and clothing, and I found myself being dragged downcurrent. I could see that it was some kind of water creature, but in falling out of the saddle my robes became twisted around me. Wet, I had a difficult time unwrapping them before I could get to my lightsaber."

"Very good, Padawan," conceded Obi-Wan. He turned his attention to the other apprentice. "What's your excuse, Anakin?"

Moving one foot slightly in a nervous gesture his mother would have recognized instantly, the taller Padawan muttered uneasily, "I went in to help her. Once I reached her, I realized she didn't need my help. But I didn't know that at the time." Looking up, he met his Master's gaze. "All I had to go on was the evidence of my senses. They told me she'd been dumped in the water and might need help. I'm sorry if I did something wrong, or violated yet one more unfathomable Jedi rule."

Obi-Wan held his silence and his expression for a long moment-before breaking out into a wide grin. "Not only did you not violate any rules, Padawan-you did exactly what you should have done. You had no way of knowing your colleague's condition. Under such circumstances, to assume that she might need assistance is always the wisest course. Better to be berated by a live friend than absolved by a dead one."

For a moment, Anakin looked uncertain. Compliments from Obi- Wan were as rare as snow-crystal on Tattooine. When he realized that it was meant, and that both Barriss and Luminara were also smiling encouragingly at him, he finally relaxed. Anyway, he did not have much choice. It's hard to stay tense when one is dripping wet. Something about being soaked to the skin, with one's clothes hanging limp as seaweed from sodden limbs, is desperately debilitating to one's dignity.

"I just wanted to help," he muttered, unaware that had been his mantra since childhood.

"You can help yourself," Obi-Wan told him, "by getting out of those wet clothes and into your spare set." Turning, he regarded the line of waving grass that marched to the edge of the riverbank. "The wind's no warmer here than on the other side, and I'd rather you didn't get sick."

"I'll try not to, Master."

"Good." Obi-Wan stood squinting at the cloudless sky. "We don't have time to waste on illness, no matter how educational the experience."

Stripping off their clothes while their Masters unpacked their small personal kits, Anakin and Barriss dried themselves in the sun. The two guides attended to the patient suubatars and studied the visitors with academic interest.

"Haja," exclaimed Bulgan softly, "just look at them. They have no proper manes. Only a little fur on top of their heads."

"They have no true biting teeth," Kyakhta added. "Only those short, chisel-like white chips."

Bulgan stroked the snout of a resting suubatar. It snuffled appreciatively and pushed its muzzle harder against the guide's ministrating hand. "Look at their fingers. Too short to do any real work. And their toes-utterly useless!"

"And there are too many of them," Kyakhta noted. "Five on each-almost as many as on a suubatar! To look at them, one would think them more closely related to such animals than to thinking beings." He shook his head in an odd, sideways fashion. "One feels sadness for such deficiencies."

Bulgan sniffed through his single nostril. "It may be a good thing. The Highborn of the Borokii cannot help but pity them. The perception of pity is always a good place from which to begin negotiations."

His companion was not so sure. "Either that, or they will see them as abominations against the natural order and give orders to have them killed."

"They had better not try anything like that!" His one good eye blinking, Bulgan waxed indignant. "We owe these visitors, or at least the one called Barriss, for the restored health of our minds."

"Not to mention the fact," Kyakhta added as he rubbed the place where his artificial right arm joined his own flesh, "that if they die prematurely we will not get paid for this journey." Still eyeing the aliens, he wondered whether he and Bulgan might have time enough to dig in the beach for some vaoloi shells. Poached vaoloi would make a wonderful supplement to their supper.

Bulgan grunted and adjusted his eye patch. "I would rather sacrifice all our pay than the life of one friend."

Kyakhta's heavy eyelids closed halfway. "Bulgan, my friend, perhaps Barriss did not complete her Jedi healing on you. Perhaps you would benefit from seeking another treatment."

"It doesn't matter." Giving the suubatar he had been caressing a fond chuck under its sharp chin, Bulgan let the reins dangle down to his hand and started to lead it toward the best grass. "No one on this trip is going to die, anyway. We journey with Jedi Knights."

"That much cannot be disputed." But even as he agreed, Kyakhta thought back to how easily the one called Barriss had been dumped into the water by the aggressive gairk, and found himself wondering just how resilient and tough the aliens he and his friend were guiding were.