“Is that so? The McPhersons, the Jonsons, and the Jacques all support me, and I don’t see any of them here. What about Owen and Beru? Have you talked to them? Or the Darklighters? Where do they stand?”
“In two days we have a chance to see firsthand how Ariq’s plans are working,” Ariela said. “Eyvind and I asked him to invite the Jawas to our wedding, and they are coming as our guests.”
That announcement started more arguing amongst these people than I had ever heard. Eyvind did not look happy to have had her say that.
“The Jawas were honored to be invited,” I said. “We can live with them—you’ll see. Maybe we can come to live with the Sand People.”
But no one listened to me. Ariela looked at me, and she looked worried. I could imagine plenty of reasons for her to be worried. It was clear she didn’t support Eyvind’s ideas about my ideas. I was sorry to be the cause of what was probably their first argument.
“We’ll take this to Mos Eisley—we’ll even take this to Bestine,” Eyvind said when everybody started to leave.
I walked my speeder into the shed and locked things down for the night. When I came back out, Ariela was still standing there.
“What are you going to do?” she asked me.
I wanted to ask her the same question. “I don’t know,” I said. We sat on the sand in front of my house and were quiet for a time.
“Are you really from Alderaan?” I asked her.
“Yes.”
“Don’t you miss it?”
“Not really,” she said. “I’m in love, and that makes up for it. But I do miss the water—we’re so wasteful with it there!”
“I can’t imagine such a place. I’m used to guarding every drop.”
“Not there. If I could take you and Eyvind to Alderaan you’d get fat on the water.”
“I’d swim in it all day.”
“You could take an hour-long shower and no one would care.”
“I’d keep plants in my house and water them.”
She looked at me and smiled. After a minute she stood up. “I won’t let Eyvind cause trouble for you in Mos Eisley or Bestine. I can’t answer for the rest.”
“Thank you,” I said. After she left to catch up to the others, I went inside. I didn’t have the stomach to eat. It was hot in the house, so I took the holo-display unit and walked outside onto a ridge overlooking my house and sheds. I’d shut down all the lights, so the compound was dark. I displayed the map, and it shone out brightly above the rocks. The rocks around the map looked like the mountains around my farm. The stars shone brightly, and I lay back on the rock to look at them.
I do not look up often enough. I am so busy all the time and so tired after dark that I do not look up often enough at the stars.
I wondered how all of this would turn out.
Day 50: Jawa Gifts, and the Wedding
Thirty-one Jawas came to the wedding, and they brought sacks of rock salt, a liter of water, a bolt of their brown cloth—and a diagnostic droid so small it could fit in the palm of my hand. They couldn’t decide on one gift, so they brought some of everything we’d talked about.
The diagnostic droid spoke the binary language of vaporators. The Jawas had polished it so finely that it hurt to look at it lying in the sun with the other gifts.
People just stood and stared at their rich gifts and wondered at the pleasure the Jawas had in being invited to this wedding.
Eyvind hurried up to me and asked me to come translate for him and Ariela. They wanted to thank the Jawas. I was standing by the punch bowl with the Jensens and Ariela’s mother and sister, who had come out from Alderaan for the wedding. Mrs. Jensen stopped me before I could leave. “Maybe you’re right about all this,” Mrs. Jensen said. “Maybe you are.”
I smiled at her and hurried off to translate. The Jawas all bowed to me, and I bowed back. I translated for Eyvind and Ariela, then started answering the Jawas’ questions about this human ceremony: Yes, the humans crowded here were all potential customers of their wares and, yes, the tiny diagnostic droid impressed everyone; no, Eyvind and Ariela would not consummate their marriage in public; yes, everyone hoped Eyvind and Ariela would have children; yes, the humans brought special foods to the wedding to make the day memorable. “Try the spiced juice,” I said. “You’ll love it. It’s better than plain water.”
I wondered what they would think of the spice. They followed me to the punch table, and I poured Wimateeka a cup of spiced juice and gave it to him.
He just held the cup and looked into it. “The cup is so cold!” he said.
“We usually serve cold drinks at important occasions,” I said.
“Why is it red? Does it have blood in it?”
“No—we don’t drink blood!”
Wimateeka looked up at me oddly, and I suddenly wondered if the Jawas drank blood at their weddings. I would probably find out soon enough. Wimateeka still hadn’t tasted the drink. “It’s quite good,” I assured him. “At least, we think so.”
“How much does this cost?” he asked, finally.
So he thought he’d have to pay for this. They’d all no doubt worried about having enough to pay for food and drinks—especially if they were pressed to try certain things. “Everything here is a gift to the guests of the wedding,” I said.
Wimateeka smiled then, and lifted the cup to his lips. His eyes went wide when he tasted the spiced juice—and I wondered if he would spit it out, but he didn’t, and soon he took another drink. I served the rest of the Jawas, and they all loved the spiced juice and asked me for more and I served Jawas for fifteen minutes straight.
Eyvind came up to me, nervous and anxious. “I want to get started,” he said, “but Owen and Beru aren’t here yet, and they were sure to come.”
“Who knows what’s kept them?” I said, while I handed a Jawa another cup of spiced juice. “But you’d better start soon or I’ll have all thirty-one Jawas drunk before the wedding.”
Eyvind laughed.
And the shooting started.
From over by the landspeeders. Everyone had parked west of Eyvind’s house, and the commotion came from there: Two or three men were shouting and firing at the landspeeders. I wondered why they would do such a stupid thing—and then I saw the Sand People.
The adolescents, I thought. They’d taken it into their heads to steal a landspeeder or two while we were busy with the wedding.
The Sand People fought back with their gaffi sticks, and threw a few with deadly aim, and people screamed and ran for cover, and Eyvind ran off to start shooting or to stop the shooting, I didn’t know which. I ran after him, but lost him in the crowd, and when I broke through I almost stumbled over Ariela holding something on the ground.
Eyvind. I knelt next to her. She was holding Eyvind with blood all over him, and there was shooting all around us, and then Sand People. I stood up and held on to Ariela so maybe they would recognize me and not kill me and Ariela, and some of them did step back when they saw me—
But something hit me in the back and sent me sprawling—a backhanded slap from the broad, flat face of a gaffi stick—and I couldn’t breathe for a minute, though I never blacked out. I heard screams, and I heard Ariela scream, and I couldn’t move, I could only see, for a minute, the feet of Sand People rushing around me, and then human feet, and a human pulled me up and leered into my face.
“This is your fault!” he shouted. “This comes from giving them water.”
He shoved me back down onto the sand, but I could breathe now and get up on my own, and they were carrying Eyvind away.
“He’s dead,” someone shouted at me, and the words hit me almost as hard as the gaffi stick had hit me. I couldn’t breathe again.
“They’ve taken Ariela,” someone else shouted. “They dragged her away from Eyvind and took her.”
Ariela’s mother grabbed hold of my arm. “You’ve got to save her,” she said. “The others are going after the Sand People to shoot them, and the Sand People will surely
kill my daughter before she can be rescued. You’ve got to save her.”
“I’ll take Wimateeka,” I said. “He can translate for me.”
And that eventually became our plan: I had twelve hours to find the Sand People and convince them to turn Ariela over to me. In the meantime, everyone else would organize a well-equipped posse. If I wasn’t back in twelve hours, they would come looking.
And they would come out to kill the Sand People.
I found Wimateeka and the other Jawas huddled in their crawler. I explained what I had to do, and I asked Wimateeka to come with me. He started shaking, but he got up and walked with me to my speeder. He was still shaking when I lifted him in.
After I’d started off, I wondered why I wasn’t shaking.
Day 50, Early Afternoon: I Wait by the
Vaporator with a Last Gift of Water
I waited by the vaporator because I thought the Sand People would take Ariela to their main camp, somewhere northwest of here. I could travel faster than the adolescents in my landspeeder, so I was ahead of them and they would pass by me. They would probably stop to see if I had left some water.
And I had worked out what I would tell them. These were adolescents who needed to prove themselves worthy to be adults. I could offer them a way to be remembered forever in tales and gain an adulthood always honored: negotiate with the Jawas and me to secure the boundaries of their land and thus their nomadic way of life. I knew their adults would have to be consulted, but the adolescents could start the process and convince them of the necessity of it.
I hoped they would agree with me. I hoped they wouldn’t behead me first. I hoped they would agree that Ariela was a trifling matter compared to this and that the water and cloth Wimateeka and I had brought from my house to trade for her would buy her back.
So we waited on the sand, with our water and cloth, and the holo-display unit and my map.
And they came to us, suddenly. All at once we were surrounded by young Sand People, each armed with a gaffi stick, glistening sharp-edged in the harsh sunlight. The dunes were covered with Sand People. I looked for Ariela, but could not see her at first.
I stood and raised my arm and clenched my fist and greeted them: “Koroghh gahgt takt.”
They were all quiet. None of them spoke or raised their arms. That’s when I saw Ariela: bound and gagged and guarded on top of a dune south of me. “Tell the Sand People what I say,” I asked Wimateeka, and I knew I had to speak quickly and well to save her life, and probably Wimateeka’s and my own.
I told them we could stop trouble like we had gone through today. I knew a way. I told them my plan, and my hope that the Empire would come to recognize what we had done, and what this would mean for their people and mine.
Wimateeka had trouble explaining the map, and I didn’t know if they could understand what a map was. Wimateeka and I smoothed out a flat space in the sand, and I set up the holo-display unit and displayed my map. Some of the Sand People rushed back, startled, but others soon crowded forward, and it began to make sense to them.
But I would not negotiate till they had freed Ariela.
“What we are about to do is better than more killing,” I said. “I want you to free your captive—release her to me. She is my friend. Accept this water and cloth as compensation for the trouble you’ve had in caring for her till now.”
They argued about that, but eventually they took the water and cloth and passed it back into the crowd somewhere, and they cut Ariela free and let her walk up to me.
She came slowly through the throng of Sand People. They would barely move aside for her. But she was taller than all of them, so she kept her eyes on me and Wimateeka and eventually got to us. I hugged her, and she hugged me and Wimateeka.
And we started to haggle and negotiate and draw the lines on my map.
It was working.
I thought of all the generations of anthropologists who would have wanted to be here with the Sand People. The day was bright with sunlight, and I could feel the tension ebb away from among us. My map had never looked so beautiful, I thought, as it did then shining out flat above the sand and divided by the black lines of boundaries.
We finished negotiating, six hours before my deadline.
Ariela and Wimateeka and I packed up.
The Sand People stood up and watched us, then started to move off into the dunes, heading northwest to their camp.
Ariela climbed into my landspeeder.
I handed Wimateeka to her and climbed in.
And the dune west of us exploded in flame. My vaporator blew apart, and steam rushed up from it like smoke. Explosions ripped the air—and the young Sand People were screaming and running.
Six hours before our deadline—after everything we had worked for had come to pass. I had to stop the shooting.
I flew straight to where the shots were coming from —a rocky rise south of us—and we were not hit. A path through the fire opened up for us.
Stormtroopers. There were Imperial stormtroopers in the rocks. The farmers who opposed me had called them in, that was all I could think. I slammed the landspeeder to a stop and rushed up into the rock. “Stop shooting!” I shouted. “Those aren’t even adults you’re killing!”
But no one listened or stopped firing. I pushed into the stormtroopers and shoved their guns up to make them stop—and I was grabbed from behind and slammed into the rock.
“Stop it!” someone shouted at me.
It was the other farmers who had me, eight or ten of them.
“The stormtroopers will kill you,” someone hissed in my ear. “Live through this day and we’ll talk later about what happened.”
I tried to break free, and they shoved me back.
“The Empire would never let your plan work,” someone else hissed in my ear, then Ariela was in front of me, her face white and tear-streaked.
“Don’t you see?” she said. “They want trouble on all the worlds so the majority will welcome their presence to keep the peace. If you make peace here, our real enemies would become clear—and what then?”
I should have seen this. I should have known this would happen from the day the Imperial Governors first refused to map this region.
The firing stopped. The other farmers thanked the stormtroopers for “rescuing” Ariela and Wimateeka and me.
“You’ll have to evacuate from your farm for a time,” a stormtrooper told me. “It won’t be safe to stay in your house, isolated as it is.”
I wouldn’t just have to evacuate for a time. This could be the end of my farm. The Sand People would want to kill me for sure—unless I could find a way to convince them I hadn’t betrayed them, unless I could find a way to convince them just who had betrayed them.
“We’ll escort the Jawa home,” another stormtrooper said.
“No,” I said. “I’m taking him myself.”
And I did. I would not let them take him alone. I thought they might kill him if they got him alone—to anger the Jawas and to drive a wedge between them and the farmers. So a stormtrooper contingent escorted us to the Jawa fortress.
I lifted Wimateeka out of my speeder, near the gates of his fortress, and he rushed inside without saying a word to me.
Day 50, Night: I Become a Rebel
The Imperial commander ordered me into Mos Eisley to make a deposition, and I had to go. Ariela asked me to take her mother and sister to the spaceport. She stayed with the other farmers to prepare for the Sand People’s onslaught of revenge.
“Eyvind left me his farm,” Ariela told me. “I’d like you to help me run it after this is over—when we can go back to it.”
So I had that to think about on my way into Mos Eisley.
I left Ariela’s mother and sister at the spaceport. In a short time, they would be safe on Alderaan. I made my deposition, and the Imperials confiscated my map and let me go.
I wondered for how long.
In the meantime, my farm was abandoned.
My hopes for maki
ng peace with the Jawas and the Sand People were ruined.
The Sand People would surely feel betrayed and kill innocent people.
My maps, my dreams, my successful negotiations meant nothing to the Empire.
All because the Empire did not want us to have peace. All because the Empire did not care about the safety and the work and the lives of its citizens. We were pawns to be used and discarded—our efforts channeled as long as possible into “approved” paths.
I stopped at the cantina for a drink. I could not go straight back.
I sat in a dark corner and watched the people around me—people from all corners of the Empire. Representatives of peoples who had each, in their own way, been oppressed by the Empire. We had all endured it.
But there was another way. I knew there was another way.
There was the Rebellion.
The Empire had driven me into rebellion.
I took another drink and looked around. I didn’t know how to find the Rebellion. I didn’t know how to join. But this cantina would be the place to find out, I thought. If I asked a few judicious questions, maybe I’d find out. I decided to ask the Ithorian a few tables down.
I took another drink, for courage, but before I could move, Owen and Beru’s nephew, Luke, walked in with somebody I didn’t know and two droids that got ordered out.
Where were Luke’s aunt and uncle? I wondered. And that started me thinking. Owen and Beru’s farm was quite far from mine and Ariela’s. Maybe they could use an extra hand or two till things settled down and it would be safe for Ariela and me to go back to our farms.
Then we could start our work for the Rebellion.
Ariela would follow me into the Rebellion. Most of the other farmers probably would too after what had happened today. The Jawas would help. In time, maybe even the Sand People might come to understand what had happened to them—and that restoring the Republic would stop Imperial atrocities. Farmers like me, in an odd alliance with Jawas and maybe Sand People, would have to fight for our right to live in peace on the world we called home.
After I thought this through, something told me I’d find the Rebellion just fine, out in the mountains and valleys of the water farms of Tatooine.
Tales from Mos Eisley Cantina Page 35
