by Kathy Tyers
“Talk with me.” Bluescale settled his glistening mass alongside Dev. “How goes your project?”
Suddenly delighted by the elder’s attention, Dev let his weight sag on the upper railing. “It goes very well. My latest effort is a translation of the announcement we delivered to Bakura, a few weeks—”
“Stop,” said Bluescale. He bent his massive head closer to Dev and peered down with one eye.
Dev smiled back fondly.
“You are human,” Bluescale said. “Think for a moment what that means.”
Dev pushed up one sleeve and stared at his soft, fuzzy arm. “It means … inferior.”
“Are you certain?”
Bewildered, Dev shut his eyes. From the deepest recesses of emotion, he released something controlled and repressed and stinking and hateful and—
The huge lizard loomed nearer. Dev howled and struck its forelimb.
“Harder,” it whistled. “You can do better than that, weakling.”
Gritting his teeth, Dev plunged a fist into its upper arm. “You killed my world. My parents, my people. Every one of them gone, absorbed, murdered, mutilated.…” He trailed off, sobbing.
“Nothing new to be angry for?”
Dev raised his fists in front of his chest. What was the lizard doing, pumping him for information? It wouldn’t get any this time.
It bent closer and blew lizard stench at him. “You’d like to poke at this eye, I’ll guess.”
Dev stared at the eye. It seemed to grow and surround him with blackness. It sucked him in. He fell into its depths, clutching the trailing edges of freedom.
He tumbled.
Horrified, he lay curled up on cold gray deck tiles. He had abused Bluescale. He could only guess his fate.
“Dev,” Bluescale said softly, “you should never say things like that.”
“I know,” he said miserably.
Bluescale trilled, a soft throaty purr, “You owe us so much.”
How could he ever think otherwise?
“Dev,” Bluescale whistled.
He looked up.
“We forgive you.”
He sighed deeply and pushed up to his knees, gripping the enclosure’s lower railing.
“Here, Dev.” Bluescale held out a hypospray. Gratefully, Dev leaned his shoulder into another sting. His shame melted magically away.
“I angered you deliberately, Dev. To show you how close to the surface your temper lies. You must never show anger.”
“I won’t again. Thank you. I’m sorry.”
“What so disturbed you this afternoon, Dev?”
He vaguely remembered that he’d hoped not to tell, but he couldn’t remember why. The Ssi-ruuk protected him and met all his needs. They gave him pleasure, even when he did not deserve it.
“It was remarkable,” he began. “The sense of another Force user, close by.”
“Force user?” Bluescale repeated.
“Someone like me. It’s not that I’m lonely, but like seeks like. I wished I could seek him out, but I guessed he was an enemy of the fleet, since he arrived with the new ones. It made me sad.”
“Him? It was male?”
Dev raised his head with an effort and smiled up at Bluescale. Whatever had been in the hypospray, it was making him so sleepy he could barely move.
“Perhaps I’ll dream about him,” he murmured, and he slid down off the railing.
Gaeriel lay resting in midair above a circular repulsor bed. A knitted fur coverlet wrapped her from shoulders to knees. The bed hovered over a slightly faded carpet. Yeorg and Tiree Captison’s home was one of the finest on Bakura, so she’d heard, but as Imperial taxes increased, even the prime minister had to defer repairs and replacements. Gaeri’s new salary helped with upkeep. She didn’t care about “finest,” but she did care about Uncle Yeorg and Aunt Tiree.
It’d been months since she’d needed a midafternoon rest, and the nap hadn’t helped. She’d awakened in a cold fright that the repulsor bed only chilled. The Jedi Luke Skywalker had appeared in a disquieting dream, hovering over her head in a repulsor field he generated with his Jedi powers. Before she could wake herself up, his skin and hair darkened. He became the Ssi-ruuvi envoy, Dev Sibwarra. Sibwarra floated slowly downward into the repulsor field and through the coverlet, drawing life out of her—
Frustrated, she wriggled out of the coverlet and punched a wall control. The Imperial Symphony Orchestra struck up a soothing melody around and inside her ears. She’d returned from Center thrilled by the latest Imperial sound technology, a hydrodynamic music system. For her graduation gift, Uncle Yeorg had ordered a system built into the walls of this room. Each surface, even the long window, functioned as a huge speaker. Fluid slowly circulated between panels, carrying and amplifying sound. Workers had restructured her long, rectangular room into an oval for better acoustics.
However, Wilek Nereus owned the only hard-copy catalogs on Bakura to go with the system. Data, literary, and musical recordings had to come through his office. So far, all his dealings with her could be justified as “sponsorship.” But Wilek Nereus did nothing for free.
Harmonies slowed overhead and muted brasses took up a melody. Maybe Bakura had a better chance of repelling the invasion with Rebel reinforcements. Idly, in this unguarded moment, she recalled the way she’d been drawn to the Jedi Skywalker before she learned what he was. If she’d been ten years younger, she reflected as she rolled over in the repulsor field, she’d have probably wished he were something else, and that he might stay for a while … or that she could go back in time and unlearn what she knew.
But the Cosmic Wheel rolled only forward, building tension and then balancing, building and balancing.
A bell rang. Gaeriel sat up as her door slowly slid aside. Aunt Tiree stepped through, looking elegant in a blue executive tunic and gold torc necklace. “Feeling better, Gaeriel? Headache gone?”
She felt obligated to tell the truth. “Yes, thanks.”
“Good. We have invited guests for a late dinner tonight. This is very important. Please dress nicely.”
“Who’s coming?” Gaeriel turned down the sound system. This wasn’t like Aunt Tiree. Generally, she used the intercom or sent a servant.
Tiree stood as still as a mannequin. Like Uncle Yeorg, she’d served Bakura for thirty standard years. Her poise had become a trademark. “The Rebel Alliance delegation and Governor Nereus need a chance to speak on neutral ground. It’s our duty to provide the opportunity.”
“Oh.” Blast. Rebels and Nereus? For the second time in two minutes, Gaeri wished she were ten years younger. She could’ve begged off.
“We’re counting on you to help us keep them from arguing, dear.”
So she’d delivered the news herself to make sure Gaeri understood its importance. Bakura needed Rebel help to repel the Ssi-ruuk, but snubbing Governor Nereus might bring on fresh purges. “I understand.” She swung her bare feet over the bedside. How long since she’d walked barefoot in Statuary Park? “I’ll be there. Dressed.”
To her surprise, Aunt Tiree sat down on the repulsor field beside her. “We are concerned about Nereus’s attention to you, too,” she said in a quiet, confidential tone. “He hasn’t done much yet—not that you’ve told us, anyway—but this is the time to choke it off.”
“I agree,” Gaeri said, relieved to hear Aunt Tiree talk this way.
“I’m seating you with Princess Leia Organa, unless something disrupts my seating plan.”
In other words, unless Uncle Yeorg had other ideas. “Maybe you could invite Senator Belden.” One more friendly face, and one more comfortable voice, would make her job much easier.
“Good idea, dear. I’ll see if he’s free. You start dressing.” Tiree patted her shoulder and hurried out.
Gaeri yawned and lay back down on the bed, but only for a moment. Bakura needed her. She was society’s child, bound down with duties to the Empire and Bakura and the Captison family.
But not in that order, and she
wouldn’t want to live any other way. It was time to go back to work.
“They’re here, Luke.”
“I’m hurrying!” Luke stuck his head under the water flow and scrubbed hard. Helping adjust engine brackets, he’d caught the edge of a lubricant shower. Would this day never end?
He told himself to stop whining like Threepio—but he had counted on a long, slow soak in an old-fashioned planetside tub. After growing up on desert Tatooine, he would never take rain for granted—or enough bath water to submerge in. Unfortunately Leia had met him at the door with news of their dinner engagement.
“I’ll stall them,” Leia clipped over the comlink.
Luke hustled to dress in his whites, then joined Han and Leia in the central room—Leia resplendent in a long red gown that left one shoulder bare, and Han dressed in an elegant, satiny black uniform with military-style silver trim. Luke wondered where, and on what pre-Alliance adventure, he’d found that outfit.
Then Leia brought her right hand out from behind her back. A massive bracelet made of long curling tendrils hung from her wrist, grooved and swirled to catch the light and shoot it in all directions.
She rotated her hand. “The Ewok chief gave me this. I tried to refuse it. They have so little metal—it was obviously a treasure of the tribe, and offworld. But they insisted.”
Luke understood. Sometimes you had to accept an outrageous gift or else offend a sincere giver.
Chewie, immaculately brushed all over, emerged from the door beside Luke’s. An Academy-age woman who stood waiting beside the main door stumbled backward. “Oh,” she said. “Your … friend is welcome too, of course.”
Luke glanced at Leia and Han. As he understood it, there’d been another disagreement over whether the invitation included Chewbacca. Evidently Han had won the battle but was losing the war, because Leia—whose hair lay tight to her scalp in the front but flowed loosely down the middle of her back, like a living thing freed—looked everywhere but at Han. Han’s low-slung holster was missing. Carrying concealed, Luke guessed. Formal wear.
“Let’s go.” Leia tossed her head. “We’re late. Record any messages, Threepio.”
Their escort took them down to ground level, instead of up to the roof port. A closed white repulsor vehicle waited, running, in a garage along the eastern radial highway. They climbed in. The driver weight-stabilized the vehicle and then set off.
Luke glanced up and out as the vehicle purred along near ground level. A pair of brilliant blue-white lights hovered in midair over the street corner. The street seemed to be the same blue-white shade. But white stone would reflect any color. At one spot between tall towers, a steady stream of aircars whizzed overhead at right angles to their boulevard. Immediately after they passed under the aircar route, the escort turned left onto an avenue that curved to follow the circles of the city.
Luke craned his neck. The lights here gleamed warm and yellow, not blue-white—but at the very moment he noticed their color, the escort pulled into a short drive that arced to a portico lined with softly glowing pillars. Luke stared. The massive stone building behind that portico, built of white stone blocks, was shorter than Salis D’aar’s high-rises: a private midtown dwelling, on a world where stacks seemed to be the norm. He wished he could sneak away during dinner and see how anyone could fill so many private rooms.
A man and a woman in dark green military jumpsuits—definitely not Imperial, maybe leftover from pre-Imperial Bakura—opened the vehicle doors and then stood aside.
Luke sprang out first and looked around. Nothing seemed amiss. He nodded over the top of the car at Han. By then, Leia and Chewbacca had scooted out.
“There you are,” exclaimed a feminine voice from between the glistening porch columns. “Welcome.”
He felt Leia panic. Reaching for his saber, he scanned the porch for a threat.
Prime Minister Captison, dressed in a dark green military tunic that was crisscrossed with gold braid from epaulets to cummerbund, bowed to Leia. “My wife, Tiree,” he said. A spangled, black-caped figure stepped closer. Madam Captison wore a floor-length ebony hooded robe strewn with tiny gemlike beads, and she didn’t even remotely resemble Darth Vader—despite the black cape. “Tiree, may I present …”
Leia curtsied to the woman, struggling palpably to control her panic. Luke frowned. This Vader preoccupation was really getting to her.
Captison’s introductions made it obvious that Chewbacca’s presence caught him unawares. Recovering, Leia glared at Han, but Madam Tiree Captison looked delighted. She reached up, laid a hand on one of Chewie’s huge shaggy arms, and announced, “Let’s go in. Everything is almost ready.”
Leia ignored Han and took Prime Minister Captison’s arm. Luke saw and felt Han bristle. “Easy,” he murmured as they stepped into line behind Leia. “Show ’em your charm.”
Han lifted his head. “Charm,” he muttered. “Right.”
Along both sides of this indoor hallway ran another line of glistening rain pillars, similar to those in the senate chamber and outdoors, but narrower. Behind the rain pillars, flowering vines covered irregular white stone walls.
Leia paused to touch a rain pillar, then smiled at Prime Minister Captison. “I haven’t seen a home so lovely since I left Alderaan.”
“This house was built by Captain Arden, the city’s founder. Wait until you see the table my grandfather added.” He raised a white eyebrow.
Luke held Han back a few paces. “It’s only politics.”
“I know. I don’t like it. Give me an honest fight.”
They caught up with Leia at the entrance to a dining hall surrounded by indoor trees with dangling, drifting branches. More vine-covered white stone walls enclosed the trees, and at their center he spotted a table that was roughly triangular, with its corners blunted for extra seating.
Then he looked down. Blue-green water rippled beneath the room’s transparent flooring. Underwater lights cast small moving shadows of fish and an occasional long, snakelike creature.
Finally, amid the table stood a miniature mountain range delicately carved from some translucent mineral and lit from inside like one of the rain pillars. Tiny blue rivers trickled down its sides.
Ingrained habit reminded him to probe the room for hostile intent. Halfway down the table, he sensed …
Her—or else there were two women on this planet who could electrify him without even meeting his eyes. She already sat down, facing away from the door.
“Lovely,” Leia murmured.
Madam Captison looked back over her shoulder. “Thank you, dear.” She swept into the room, swirled off her cape, and handed it to a servant as she appeared to walk on water. Trees along the vine-covered walls raised their branches like arms. Luke wondered if her motion or some other cue signaled them, and if they were really flexible trees, some kind of primitive animal, or artificial.
Luke stepped forward, drawn almost against his will. Human servants scurried away from the table—he had yet to see a droid anywhere—probably having rearranged seating to accommodate Chewbacca. Captison escorted Leia to a spot next to himself along one side. Madam Captison took the other chair on that end. An elderly man wearing a voice box on his chest—Senior Senator Belden, Luke realized—already sat next to her on that corner. “Just beyond him, dear,” she told Chewbacca.
Luke grinned despite his distraction. Dear wasn’t a term he’d have applied to a Wookiee. Chewbacca ducked his head and chuckled softly. They’d left him almost an entire side of the table. No repulsor chairs here. The ambiance was antique and formal.
“Nice job of work yesterday,” the elderly man told Luke. “My chance to thank you. We were ready to run for the hills when you arrived.”
Han sat down next to Leia in the second corner spot. That left Luke only one chair, just left of that glimmer in the Force. He sat down, gathered himself, and glanced right.
Gaeriel Captison sat leaning away as hard as she could. Over her deep green dress, a sparkling gold shawl d
raped her slender shoulders.
“Our niece Gaeriel, Commander,” declared the prime minister. “I’m not certain she was introduced in the senate chamber. Too much hurry.”
“It’s all right, Uncle Yeorg,” she said. Before Luke could even say “Hello,” she turned to Chewbacca. “If you’d prefer to sit with your party, I’d be glad to trade places.”
Luke suggested subliminally to Chewie that he’d like to remain: Chewie snuffled.
“He says he likes it there,” translated Han. “Look out, Madam Captison. Wookiees make friends for life.”
“I’m honored.” The older woman adjusted a triple strand of blue jewels on her pale gold bodice.
Luke made it a point not to look in Gaeriel’s direction again until the matter of switching seats was settled. As conversations sprang up around the table, he turned toward her.
Caught by surprise, he looked closer. Senator Gaeriel Captison had one green eye and one gray eye. They narrowed. “How do you do, Commander Skywalker?”
“It’s been a long day,” he answered quietly, damping down his awareness of the Force to keep the seductive savor of her presence from monopolizing his attention. The entrance of another group robbed him of the chance to say more. Flanked by a pair of troopers in black dress uniform, Governor Nereus strode to the third corner, of the table and sat down. His troopers stepped into position behind him in unison, then stood at alert parade rest.
Everything looked terribly formal … and something smelled delicious. Luke’s stomach rumbled, making him feel more like a farm boy than ever. Great, he thought. All I need is to make a fool out of myself in front of these people—and embarrass Leia. He wished he had let her train him in diplomatic functions such as formal dinners. There was a truce at stake.
“Good evening, Captison. Your Highness. General. Commander.” Governor Nereus’s smile looked oily down the table. “Good evening, Gaeriel.”
The arrival of a soup course made answering unnecessary. By the time Luke was free to speak again, Senator Belden had engaged Madam Captison, Leia, and the prime minister at their head of the table (good: Leia would cultivate Belden and the elder Captisons). Governor Nereus leaned aside to let one of his bodyguard/aides whisper something in his ear. Han’s eyes tracked Leia.
