by Tim Lebbon
“You don’t scare me,” she said.
“Hmm.” Tre’s lekku—those three long, curious tentacles growing from the back of his skull—twitched a little, one tip stroking over his left shoulder, the other two pointing like fingers tapping at the air.
“ ‘Yeah, well, this bitch is a Je’daii,’ ” Lanoree translated.
Tre’s eyes opened wide. “You know Twi’leki!”
“Of course. That surprises you?”
“Huh. Huh! Nothing about the Je’daii can surprise me.”
“Oh, don’t be so sure.” Lanoree took a drink and looked around Susco’s Tavern. With more than fifteen settled planets and moons and spread over sixteen billion kilometers, there were places like this all across the Tythan system. Places where people gathered to drink, eat, and talk, no matter what their color, species, creed, or breed. Where music played in the background—either a local tune or perhaps something more exotic from another continent or another world. Where travelers found common ground, and those who chose not to travel could hear outlandish tales of faraway places. And it was in these taverns that tongues could be loosened, news spread, and secrets overheard. Lanoree loved places like this, because often after a drink or two she could have been anywhere.
The drink she was sipping now had been recommended by Tre—a local wine, made from deep-sea grapes and fortified with swing dust from some of the air mines at Kalimahr’s north pole. It was incredibly strong, but she used a gentle Force flow to make sure the potent drink did not impede her senses. She might enjoy such taverns, but she had been attacked in places like these. And she had also killed in them.
“Master Dam-Powl vouches for you,” Lanoree said.
Tre Sana’s eyes glimmered with humor. “Oh, I doubt that.”
“Well, she says to watch you. And that I should kill you the first moment you display any hint of betrayal.” Lanoree looked around the tavern but probed for Tre’s reaction. Strange. She felt nothing. She turned back to him and said, “But Dam-Powl assures me you don’t have a traitorous bone in your body.”
Tre raised his brows and his lekku, resting now over his shoulders, performed a gentle, almost sensuous touch along their tips.
“Good,” Lanoree said, smiling. “Then let’s take a meal and at the same time share some information.”
“The sea beef is very good here,” Tre said. He raised a hand and caught the attention of the barman. A wave and a click of his fingers, and the barman nodded back, grinning.
Lanoree probed outward and touched the barman’s mind. She took a startled breath—she could never really prepare for experiencing another’s thoughts, as the first rush was always overwhelming—but she quickly filtered out the random, the violent, the sick and disgusting, and narrowed to what she sought. Tre so cool so calm so red sitting there with her that Je’daii and he’d be lucky, she’d eat him alive. She broke away and stared at Tre until he averted his yellow eyes. But she said nothing. She knew she was attractive, and if he was thinking of her that way, there was no real harm.
“I’ll be very open with you,” Lanoree said, “very honest. That’s a good way to begin, for both of us. There’s something about you I can’t read, but I don’t need the Force to understand people. You’re haughty and superior. Maybe that’s just you, but right now I think it’s because you think you have me at a disadvantage. Perhaps because Dam-Powl has told you most, if not all, of what I know and why I’m here.”
Tre blinked softly, his lekku touching in gentle acknowledgment.
“And so, you know whom I seek. You’ll know that he’s my brother. I have rumors and stories told in taverns, secondhand information from sources I can’t verify and don’t trust. And the sum of all the information I have gives me virtually nothing to go on. I don’t even know what planet he’s on right now.”
“You can’t”—he waved his fingers, raised his arms up and down—“Force his location?”
Lanoree glared at Tre. His childish display did not warrant a response.
“Master Dam-Powl sent me to you and said you might be able to help. I hope so. Because I don’t know how much more of this piss I can take.” Lanoree emptied her glass in one swallow.
“And now I’ll be very open with you, too,” Tre said, suddenly serious. “Along with talk of your brother, I hear rumors of Gree technology.”
Lanoree inclined her head, raised an eyebrow.
“I don’t mean the hypergate. Anyone with half a mind knows of the theories about the Old City being of Gree origin.” Tre leaned in closer, glancing around. “I mean what drives the hypergate.”
“I don’t understand,” she said, but already she was thinking of what the Masters had told her back on Tython. Dark matter …
“I mean there are whispers of design plans. Tech details.” Tre shrugged. “Blueprints. And all Gree.”
Lanoree leaned back in shock. Gree? Really? So little was known about that ancient people. There were theories that the Gree had once inhabited the Old City on Tython, but theorists were split as to whether the Gree had built it themselves. Though the Gree were long gone from the galaxy, it was suggested by some that the Old City was even more ancient. Lanoree had met a man on Tython—not a Je’daii but someone allied to them in outlook—who had spent his life researching the Gree and their legacy, and even what he knew could be relayed in little more than an hour of talk. And now this mysterious Twi’lek who, if what Dam-Powl had told her was true, undertook criminal activities, was claiming that Dal had found something the Gree had left behind.
“Blueprints?” she asked.
“Only what I’ve heard. More wine?”
Lanoree bristled. He was toying with her. Playing a Je’daii Ranger as he would a weak-minded petty criminal looking to muscle in on some nefarious deal. She leaned back in her chair and feigned tiredness, but behind her drooping eyelids she felt the Force flow, stirring her senses, boosting them, and she probed outward once again to touch Tre’s mind.
But he was closed to her.
Tre’s eyes went wide, and for a moment he looked unaccountably sad, shoulders dropping and lekku slumping down exhausted. He looks like a battered pet, Lanoree thought. She wasn’t sure where the image came from, but she had grown to trust her first impressions. The Force resided in her subconscious, too, and sometimes it spoke.
He would not meet her gaze, staring instead into his half-empty glass.
She sensed around the fringes of his mind but could not get in, and it was something she was not used to. Some species were very hard to read—the Cathars’ minds worked in a very different way, thinking in symbols and abstracts rather than words and images—but usually she could at least touch another’s mind, whether human or alien.
Tre’s had a wall. It seemed to encircle his consciousness, and her efforts rebounded from it, almost hinting that there was no mind at all. Yet she knew that was not the case. Tre was very much his own person, intelligent and alert, harboring desires and aims, and she could see that he knew himself well. Very well.
“Tre, what’s been done to you?” she asked, because she sensed that he wanted to talk. The feeling was nothing to do with the Force; it was merely the empathy of one sentient being for another.
“Just another slave spy used by the Je’daii.”
“You’re altered,” she said, realizing the startling truth. “Genetic?”
“Deep and permanent.”
“No Je’daii would do that,” she said.
“Ha!” Tre spat. A few people nearby glanced around at his outburst, and he stared them down, red and ferocious when he wanted to be. They went back to their drinks.
“But it’s …” Lanoree said, but she did not finish her sentence. Forbidden, she was going to say. But she had that ongoing alchemy experiment on her ship, and she knew that some Je’daii would frown on that. What was considered forbidden to some was exploration to others.
“I’m Dam-Powl’s toy,” Tre Sana said, quieter now. “There are promises made to me.” He
sat up straighter, proud. “And they’ll be kept! Money. A new identity. An estate on a Ska Goran city ship.” He nodded firmly but his lekku writhed, displaying uncertainty and vulnerability.
Lanoree wasn’t sure what to make of him, and the fact that he was closed to her gentle probings unsettled her. But she could also not help admiring Dam-Powl’s work. Whatever subtle genetic adaptations she had performed, whatever strange alchemies kept Tre’s mind purely his own but made him very obviously hers, were perhaps immoral, yet startlingly brilliant.
“And you’ll get all that,” Lanoree said. “Master Dam-Powl is a Je’daii of her word.”
Their food arrived. Tre started eating immediately, chewing and swallowing with barely a pause. He seemed ravenous.
“The Gree,” Lanoree asked. “The blueprints. I need to know more.”
“And now you’re here, we can know more,” Tre said, spitting half-chewed meat across the table. Some of it landed on Lanoree’s plate.
“When?”
“I need to find someone,” he said. “Someone who’s not easy to find. But … on my own. A Ranger will attract attention. You know the saying, ‘When a Ranger comes calling, trouble quickly follows.’ Well, so, they hear of you with me and they’ll melt away. Maybe for a long time. So leave it to me, meet me here at dusk. I’ll know where they are by then.”
“Who is this person?”
“A rich Kalimahr. A dealer in swing dust and other air spices. And a Stargazer.”
“That word again,” Lanoree said.
Tre wiped his mouth and took a drink. “Not one that many know. Don’t use it too freely.” He nodded down at Lanoree’s plate. “You going to eat that?”
“No. Help yourself.”
Tre pulled her plate across to him and started eating. It was as if every bite was his first.
“So, here, at dusk,” Lanoree said.
“Hmmm.” He nodded without looking up from the food. He exuded indifference, yet he had called himself a slave. A conflicted character, complex, troubled. Exactly who she would not want guiding her during her investigations.
“Fine,” she said. As she stood to leave, she saw faces turning away from her, and she walked to the doorway in a bubble of silence broken only by awed whispers of Ranger! and Je’daii! and darker mutterings of trouble. She hoped the old saying Tre had reminded her of could be put to rest on Kalimahr.
But hope alters nothing.
And soon after leaving Susco’s Tavern Lanoree knew that she was being followed again.
“The first day is always the worst,” the human Master Ter’cay says as he leads Lanoree and Dal toward the surface. “The Silent Desert can be an unsettling place.”
We know, Lanoree thought. We know for sure.
They climb up through the vast cavern.
It’s more like a city than a temple, Lanoree thinks, and Ter’cay glances back at her.
Listen when I’m talking, or you’ll learn nothing, he speaks in her mind. He’s not angry. More amused, if anything. Her surprise at how easily he silently communicates is obviously evident in her expression. Force telepathy is well-known to her, but such control and command must have taken many years of meditation and study to master.
Ter’cay laughs aloud, and Lanoree smiles sidelong at Dal. He’s frowning. He didn’t hear a thing.
She is still stunned at the size and scope of Qigong. She’s heard all about it, of course, from her parents and from those Journeyers venturing through Bodhi Temple after having visited Qigong previously on their travels. Their talk is always of the temple first—its incredible size, the complexity of its caverns and tunnels, the strength of the Force in this natural nexus—and then inevitably they will finish with stories of the Silent Desert.
A haunting place. Almost unnatural.
She and Dal have already spent days crossing the desert to Qigong and encountering some of its dangers. But she senses that their real experience of those strange sands has only just begun.
“It’s cool down here,” Ter’cay says. “Sometimes the sands are hot enough to melt your shoes and a slightest breeze will blister your skin. But that’s usually later in the day. Down here we’re protected from the sun, and the climate is controlled by six conditioners. There’s one over there.” They are crossing a wide cavern bounded on three sides with sheer walls, each of them speckled with ledges and stairwells, people bustling all about. Ter’cay points at the fourth side of the plaza, and there stands a huge machine, the height of thirty people, with curved protuberances that flex and bulge like something biological, not mechanical. It steams, groans; and moisture speckles its surface and pools around its base.
“That’s a machine?” Dal asks.
Of sorts, Ter’cay sends. He glances at Lanoree, raises an eyebrow, then speaks the words aloud.
He expects Dal to be hearing all this, Lanoree thinks. Her brother seems unaware, enrapt as he is with the giant conditioner.
“Of sorts?” Lanoree asks.
“Many of its inner working are … grown at Anil Kesh.”
“So it’s alive?”
“Far from it.” Ter’cay turns and strides across the cavern floor, and they have to hurry to catch up.
When we reach the surface, all will fall silent, Ter’cay says in Lanoree’s mind. But silence is subjective. You and I can communicate as we are now, and this is the first lesson. Force telepathy is a talent that some Journeyers already have when they arrive here; but those who don’t, pick it up quite quickly. He glances back over his shoulder at her, grim faced. It’s a fundamental talent. Not like farsight, or using the Force to cast illusion. If you flow with the Force, then so can your words and thoughts. But your brother …
He shrugs as they continue walking.
“He’s …” Lanoree begins, but Dal looks at her. She coughs, pretending to have swallowed some dust. Then she tries to speak without words.
Her mother had taught her the basics. Sometimes her father touched her mind when it was late and they were tired, giving her a bedtime tale. Now was Lanoree’s chance to use those lessons.
He’s slow with the Force, she sends, and she knows that Master Ter’cay hears. But he wants to learn.
No, Ter’cay says. I sense no eagerness in him. Only resistance. No delight, only suspicion.
He’ll do his best.
They reach the edge of the cavern, where a large opening in one wall leads to small, busier tunnels. Six-armed droids amble back and forth offering drinks. Taller droids provide physical care to a group of people who are dressed in grubby clothing, their skin sun reddened, faces drawn, and eyes haunted. They don’t stop talking, as if it’s a novelty. Lanoree suspects these are Journeyer students having just finished another surface lesson.
If he will do his best, then so will I, Ter’cay says, but Lanoree already hears his doubt. It seems to echo her own.
Master Ter’cay speaks then, including them both. “The main climb to the surface. There are elevators and rising tubes, but I like my students to walk. Physical exercise.” He thumps his chest and laughs. “Good for the lungs! The heart!” And he strokes his forehead. “The health of the body feeds the health of the mind.”
They start climbing the naturally formed stairway. Lanoree counts more than a thousand steps.
Their first evening, as the sun blazes red across the western desert and the sands come alive with scorpions and serpents and other shadowy things, Lanoree Forces an illusion before Master Ter’cay. A shire with graceful veined wings and a single horn protruding from its head dances in the sand, beating its hooves against shadows that do not notice, snorting, and she hears every beat and breath. Ter’cay smiles at the solocorn that prances before him, and he nods once at Lanoree. Good work, he speaks silently. But you’ll find that making an illusion of reality that much harder. You know the solocorn is a creature of myth, rich in your mind, and so an illusion is easy to form. Try something more mundane. A rock, a fruit, a shoe. Not so easy.
Lanoree lets the illusi
on flitter away in the dusk and does as Ter’cay suggests. She cannot do it.
Your lessons have only just begun, Ter’cay says. He turns away from her and sits close to Dal, holding the boy’s hands in his own, touching his cheeks and his temples, and then the Master closes his eyes and Dal’s own eyes grow wide.
He hears him! Lanoree thinks, delighted. He feels the Force, and hears with it! But her excitement is short-lived.
Dal stands and kicks at the sand, sending it spraying into Master Ter’cay’s face. He reacts like he has been invaded or touched by something disgusting. Then he turns and walks away into the twilight. Lanoree wishes she could call her brother back.
Their first dawn camped in the Silent Desert with Master Ter’cay is one of the strangest times of Lanoree’s life. Camping with Dal on their way here had been nothing like this; they were times of fear and worry, not wonder. Perhaps being so close to the temple—a natural nexus of the Force—drew life to that place.
As the rising sun sets the eastern horizon aflame, the desert comes to life, and the silence seems more staggering than ever before. Night creatures have already gone to ground an hour before dawn, as if aware that sunlight will soon expose them. Shadows retreat, the coolness of the night is burned away, and shimmering heat haze dances across the sands. Desert birds take flight from wherever they sleep. A small species of shire—thinner than those elsewhere on Tython, with water humps on back and neck—moves in herds across a distant hillside. Lizards frolic and dance around rocky areas; gliding pendles flap their mighty wings as they ride the dawn air currents; and she sees a giant mankle stalking in the distance, its vicious spines raised for the hunt. Yet this magnificent display of life and diversity exists in the desert’s unnatural silence, the cries and calls, the flapping of wings, the growls and roars of the hunt, all unheard.
There, toward the hills. Look. Blink and you might miss it. She was not even aware that Ter’cay had risen; his tent looks undisturbed, untouched. Yet as he speaks in her mind she sees him hunkered down south of the camp, as motionless as the rock pile beside which he sits.
She looks where he said, and sees.
