by Timothy Zahn
"It's rather ironic, really," Car'das said, angling off through the conversation room toward a door to their right. "When I arrived on Exocron I started building my home under these mountains purely for defensive reasons. Now that defense is no longer an issue, I find I enjoy the place for its solitude." Karrde glanced at Shada. Defense no longer an issue? "Was Rei'Kas that much of a threat?" Car'das frowned. "Rei'Kas? Oh, no, Talon, you misunderstand. Rei'Kas was a threat, certainly, but only to the rest of Exocron. I helped get rid of him in order to protect my neighbors, but I myself was in no danger at all. Come; you'll particularly want to see this." He waved the door away, and gestured them forward. Karrde stepped inside—
And stopped in amazement. He was standing at the outer rim of a circular room that appeared to be even bigger across than the garden they'd just left. The floor of the room dipped, amphitheater fashion, toward the center, where he could see the edge of what looked like a work station or computer desk. Arrayed in concentric circles around the desk, with only narrow walkways separating them, were circle after circle of two-meter-high data cases.
And filling each of the shelves on each of the data cases were datacards. Thousands and thousands of datacards.
"Knowledge, Talon," Car'das said quietly from beside him. "Information. My passion, once; my weapon and my defense and my comfort." He shook his head. "Amazing, isn't it, what we sometimes persuade ourselves are the most important things in life."
"Yes," Karrde murmured. Car'das's library... and the Caamas Document.
"So Entoo Nee lied to us," Shada spoke up, the edge in her voice cutting into Karrde's sense of wonder. "He said he didn't know what happened to your library."
"Entoo Nee?" Car'das called. "Did you lie to them?"
"Not at all, Jorj," Entoo Nee's distant voice protested from behind them. Karrde turned, to see the little man still on the far side of the conversation room, busying himself with drinks. "I merely said that whatever you had done with it had been done before I came to be in your service."
"Which is perfectly true," Car'das agreed, gesturing them back out of the library. "But come sit down. I know you have so many questions."
"Let me start with the most important one," Karrde said, not moving. "The reason we came here was to look for a vitally important historical document. It involves—"
"Yes, I know," Car'das said with a sigh. "The Caamas Document."
"You know about that?" Shada asked.
"I'm not the frail bedridden old man you met a few hours ago," Car'das reminded her mildly. "I still have a few sources of information, and I try to keep in touch with what's happening back home." He shook his head. "Unfortunately, I can't help you. As soon as the Caamas matter first broke I checked through all my files to see if I had a copy. But I'm afraid I don't." Karrde felt his heart sink. "You're absolutely sure?"
Car'das nodded. "Yes. I'm sorry."
Karrde nodded back. After all the work and danger in getting here, there it was. The end of the road; and at its finish, an empty hand.
Shada wasn't ready to let it go quite that easily. "And what if you had found a copy?" she demanded. "You can talk all you want about keeping in touch, but the fact is that for the past twenty years you've been taking it easy out here and letting everyone else do all the work." Car'das lifted his eyebrows. "Suspicious and unforgiving both," he commented. "That's rather sad. Isn't there anyone or anything you trust?"
"I'm a professional bodyguard," Shada bit out. "Trust isn't part of the job. And don't try to change the subject. You sat out the whole Rebellion, not to mention Thrawn's first bid for power. Why?" Something unreadable flicked across Car'das's face. "Thrawn," he murmured, his eyes sweeping slowly around his library. "A most interesting person, indeed. I have most of his history with the Empire on file here—pulled it all out recently, reading through it. There's more to his story than meets the eye—I'm convinced of it. Far more."
"You still haven't answered my question," Shada said.
Car'das lifted his eyebrows. "I wasn't aware you'd asked one," he said. "All I heard were accusations that I'd been letting others do all the work. But if that was intended as a question..." He smiled. "I suppose it's true, in a way. But only in a way. I've merely let others do their work, while I've been doing mine. But come—Entoo Nee's rusc'te will be getting cold." He led the way across the conversation room to the sunken circle. Entoo Nee was waiting patiently there, his now loaded tray set on a pillar table. "What have you told the lady about me, Talon?" Car'das asked as he gestured the two of them to seats on one side of the circle. "Just to avoid repeating things."
"I've told her the basics," Karrde said, gingerly sitting down. Despite all of the geniality and surface friendliness, he couldn't shake the feeling that there was something more going on beneath the surface. "How you started the organization, then abruptly left twenty years ago."
"And did you tell her about my kidnapping by the Bpfasshi Dark Jedi?" Car'das asked, his tone suddenly odd. "That's where it all really began."
Karrde threw a glance at Shada. "I mentioned it, yes."
Car'das sighed, not looking up at Entoo Nee as the latter put a steaming cup into his hands. "It was a terrible experience," he said quietly, gazing into the cup. "Possibly the first time in my life I'd felt truly and genuinely terrified. He was half mad with rage—maybe more than half mad—with all of Darth Vader's power and none of his self-control. One of my crewmen he physically ripped to shreds, literally tearing his body apart. The other three he took over mentally, twisting and searing their minds and turning them into little more than living extensions of himself. Me—" He took a careful sip of his drink. "Me, he left mostly alone," he continued. "I'm still not sure why, unless he thought he might need my knowledge of ports and spacelanes to make his escape. Or perhaps he simply wanted an intact mind left aboard who could recognize his power and greatness and be properly frightened by it."
He sipped again. "We headed across the spacelanes, dodging or avoiding the forces gathering against him. I thought up scheme after scheme to defeat him as we traveled, none of which ever made it past the planning stage for the simple reason that he knew about each of them almost before I did. I got the feeling that my pitiful efforts greatly amused him.
"Finally, for reasons I still don't entirely understand, we made for a little backwater system not even important enough to make it onto most of the charts. A planet with nothing but swamps and dank forests and frozen slush.
"A planet named Dagobah."
There was a whiff of some exotic spice from Karrde's side, and he looked up to see Entoo Nee hand him his cup. The little man's usual cheerful expression had vanished, replaced by a profound seriousness Karrde had never seen in him before.
"I don't know if the Dark Jedi expected to be all alone down there," Car'das went on. "But if he did, he was quickly disappointed. We'd barely stepped outside the ship when we spotted a funny-looking little creature with big, pointed ears standing at the edge of the clearing where we'd put down.
"He was a Jedi Master named Yoda. I don't know whether that was his home, or whether he had just flown in specially for the occasion. What I do know is that he was definitely waiting for us." An odd shiver ran through Car'das's thin body. "I won't try to describe their battle," he said in a low voice. "Even after forty-five years of thinking about it, I'm not sure I can. For nearly a day and a half the swamp blazed with fire and lightning and things I still don't understand. At the end of it the Dark Jedi was dead, disintegrating in a final, massive blaze of blue fire." He took a shuddering breath. "None of my crew survived that battle. Not that there was much left of what they'd been anyway. I didn't expect to survive, either. But to my surprise, Yoda took it upon himself to nurse me back to life."
Karrde nodded. "I've seen a little of what Luke Skywalker can do with healing trances," he said.
"Better than bacta in some cases."
Car'das snorted. "In my case bacta would have been completely useless," he stated flatly. "A
s it was, it took Yoda quite a while to return me to health. I still don't know how long. Afterward I was able to jury-rig the ship well enough to get it spaceworthy and limp home.
"It wasn't until I was back with the organization that I began to realize that, somewhere in that whole procedure, some part of me had been changed."
He looked at Karrde. "I'm sure you remember, Talon. I seemed to have gained the ability to outthink my opponents—to guess their strategies and plans, to know when one of them was planning a move against me. Abilities I assumed I'd somehow absorbed from Yoda during the healing process."
He looked up at the ceiling, a new fire in his eyes and voice. "And suddenly, there were no limits to what I could do. None. I began expanding the organization, swallowing up any group that seemed potentially useful and eliminating everyone that didn't. Victory after victory after victory—everywhere I went I conquered. I saw the Hutts' criminal cartels and planned how I would take them down; foresaw the gathering of power around Senator Palpatine and considered where and how I could best insert myself into the coming struggle for my own advantage. There was literally nothing that could stop me, and I and the universe both knew it."
Abruptly, the fire faded away. "And then," he said quietly, "without warning, everything suddenly collapsed."
He took a long drink from his cup. "What happened?" Shada asked into the silence. Karrde stole a look at her, mildly surprised at the intense concentration in her expression. Despite all her professed distrust of Car'das himself, she clearly found his story riveting.
"My health fell apart," Car'das said. "Over a period of just a few weeks, all the youth and vigor that Yoda's healing had woven into my body seemed to evaporate." He looked at Shada. "Very simply, I was dying."
Karrde nodded, the last mystery of that beckon call lying abandoned in the Dagobah swamp suddenly falling into place. "And so you went back to Yoda and asked for help."
"Asked?" Car'das gave a short, self-deprecating laugh. "Not asked, Talon. Demanded." He shook his head at the memory. "It must have looked quite absurd, really. There I stood, towering over him with a blaster in one hand and my beckon call in the other, threatening to bring my ship and all its awesome weaponry to bear on this short, wizened creature leaning on a staff in front of me. Of course, I was the single-handed creator of the greatest smuggling organization of all time, while he was nothing but a simple little Jedi Master." He shook his head again.
"I'm surprised he didn't kill you on the spot," Shada said.
"At the time, I almost wished he had," Car'das said ruefully. "It would have been far less humiliating. Instead, he simply took the beckon call and blaster away from me and sent them spinning off into the swamp, then held me suspended a few centimeters above the ground and let me scream and flail to my heart's content.
"And when I finally ran out of strength and breath, he told me I was going to die." Entoo Nee stepped to his side, silently pouring more of the spice drink into his cup. "I thought the first part had been humiliating," Car'das went on. "The next part was worse. As I sat there panting on a rock, swamp water seeping into my boots, he told me in exquisitely painful detail just how badly I'd squandered the gift of life he'd given back to me a quarter century earlier. How my utterly selfish pursuit of personal power and aggrandizement had left me empty of spirit and vacant of purpose." He looked at Karrde. "By the time he finished, I knew I could never go back. That I could never, ever face any of you again."
Karrde looked down at his cup, suddenly aware he was gripping it tightly. "Then you didn't... I mean, you weren't..."
"Angry with you?" Car'das smiled at him. "On the contrary, old friend: you were the single bright spot in the whole painful mess. For the first time since I'd left Dagobah, I found myself thinking about all the people in my organization. People who I'd now abandoned to the viciousness of internecine warfare as my lieutenants, most of them as selfish as I was, fought for their individual slices of the fat bruallki I'd created."
He shook his head, his old eyes almost misty. "I didn't hate you for taking over, Talon. Far from it. You held the organization together, treating my people with the dignity and respect they deserved. The dignity and respect I'd never bothered to give them. You transformed my selfish ambition into something to be proud of... and for twenty years I've wanted to thank you for that." And to Karrde's surprise, he stood up and crossed the circle. "Thank you," he said simply, holding out his hand.
Karrde stood up, a terrible weight lifting from his shoulders. "You're welcome," he murmured, gripping the extended hand. "I just wish I'd known sooner."
"I know," Car'das said, letting go and returning to his seat. "But as I said, for the first few years I was too ashamed to even face you. And then later, when your Mara Jade and Lando Calrissian came sniffing around, I assumed you would soon be showing up yourself."
"I should have," Karrde conceded. "But I wasn't exactly eager to do so."
"I understand," Car'das said. "It's as much my fault as it was yours." He waved a hand. "Still, as it turned out, your arrival was just what we needed to eliminate the threat from Rei'Kas and his pirates." He pointed toward the ceiling. "That's one of the many things I've been learning from the Aing-Tii, in fact. Though not all is predetermined, all is somehow still being guided. I still don't quite understand that, but I'm working on it."
"Sounds like something a Jedi would say," Karrde suggested.
"Similar, but not the same," Car'das agreed. "The Aing-Tii have an understanding of the Force; but it's a different understanding from that of the Jedi. Or perhaps it's merely a different aspect of the Force that they relate to. I'm not really sure which.
"Yoda couldn't heal me, you see. Or rather, didn't have the time the task would require. He told me he needed to prepare for what he said was possibly the most important instruction he had had for the past hundred years."
Karrde nodded, another piece of the puzzle falling into place. "Luke Skywalker."
"Was it him?" Car'das asked. "I've always suspected that, but was never able to confirm he actually trained on Dagobah. At any rate, Yoda said my only chance to postpone my death was to seek out the Aing-Tii monks of the Kathol Rift, who might— might—be willing to help me." Karrde gestured toward him. "Obviously, they did."
"Oh, yes, they did," Car'das said, his mouth twisting wryly. "But at what a price." Karrde frowned, a shiver running through him. "What kind of price?" Car'das smiled. "Nothing less than my life, Talon," he said. "My life, to be spent learning their ways of the Force."
He held up a hand. "Don't misunderstand, please. It wasn't their demand, but my choice. All my life, you see, I've relished challenges—the bigger the better. Once I'd gotten a taste of what they had discovered out here..." He waved his hand around the room. "It was the biggest challenge I'd ever faced. How could I pass it up?"
"I thought you needed a certain amount of inborn aptitude to be a Jedi," Shada pointed out.
"A Jedi, perhaps." Car'das nodded. "But as I said, the Aing-Tii have a different view of the Force. Not in terms of Jedi and Dark Jedi—of black and white, as it were—but in a way I like to think of as a full-color rainbow. Here, let me show you. Would you move your tray, please, Entoo Nee?" The little man picked up the tray, leaving the pillar table empty, as Car'das set his cup down on the floor in front of him. "Now watch," he said, rubbing his hands together. "Let's see if I can do this." He settled his shoulders and gazed hard at the pillar table...
And abruptly, with a sharp pop of displaced air, a small crystalline decanter appeared. Karrde jerked violently, his drink sloshing up the side of his cup and over the edge onto his fingers. Never in any of his dealings with Skywalker or Mara had he seen anything like that.
"It's all right," Car'das said hastily. "I'm sorry—I didn't mean to startle you."
"You created that?" Shada asked, her voice sounding stunned.
"No, no, of course not," Car'das assured her. "I merely moved it in here from the cooking area. One of the little tricks the
Aing-Tii taught me. The idea is to see the room, and then envision it with the decanter already here—"
He broke off, retrieving his cup and getting to his feet. "I'm sorry. I could go on all day about the Aing-Tii and the Force; but you're both tired, and I'm neglecting my duties as host. Let me show you to your rooms and let you relax for a while while I see about a meal."
"That's very kind of you," Karrde said, standing up and shaking the drops of spice drink off his fingers. "But I'm afraid we have to leave. If you can't provide us with the Caamas Document, we need to start back to New Republic space right away."
"I understand your commitments and obligations, Talon," Car'das said. "But you can certainly afford to take one night just to relax."
"I wish we could," Karrde said, trying not to sound too impatient. "I really do. But—"
"Besides, if you leave now, it'll actually take you much longer to get home," Car'das added. "I've spoken to the Aing-Tii, and they've agreed to send a ship tomorrow to carry the Wild Karrde anywhere you want to go."
"And how does that gain us anything?" Shada asked.
"It gains you because their star drive is considerably different from ours," Car'das told her. "As you may have noticed from the battle. Instead of using the usual hyperspace travel, their ships are able to make an instantaneous jump to whatever point they wish to go to." Karrde looked at Shada. "You were on the spotter scopes," he said. "Was that what they were doing?"
She shrugged. "It's as good an explanation as any," she conceded. "I know H'sishi scrubbed the data and she couldn't figure out what had happened, either." She looked suspiciously at Car'das. "So why can't they do this for us now?"
"Because I told them you wouldn't need the ship until morning," Car'das said with a smile. "Come now, indulge an old man's desire for company, won't you? I'm sure your crew could use a good night's rest, too, after all they've been through on this trip."
