of rage and pity.
The voice of the pilot Liegeus--whom she had deduced was considerably more
than a pilot--rose to her from below, soft and deep and patient.
"Every day at noon you are to come out onto this terrace and stand for
fifteen minutes in full sunlight. This is a standing order."
He walked out to where she could see him, clothed in a many-pocketed gray
lab coat with his long dark hair pulled out of the way with ornamental
sticks. He was a middle-size man, slight beside the synthdroid's powerful
height and bulk. Ashgad must have been trying to impress someone--probably
the local population--when he ordered
these creatures, Leia thought. The muscular bulk was purely ornamental.
Their hydraulic joints had the limitless, terrifying strength of droids, and
would have had they been the size and shape of Ewoks.
Liegeus took the synthdroid's hand, stripped open the sleeve-placket, and
examined its arm. Leia could smell the decaying flesh.
"You're quick to give orders," murmured the soft voice of Dzym, out of sight
within the shadows of the house.
Liegeus turned his head sharply. Leia could see his face, though she was too
far away to read any expression. Still, even hazy with the drug, she could
feel his fear. It was in his voice, as he said, "These synthdroids are my
workers and assistants. They don't die of the Death Seed but over a period
of time their flesh dies. I won't have you . .
."
"You won't have me what? Dzym spoke slowly, a deadly silence framing each
word. "You would prefer that the plague went aboard those ships in your body
rather than those of their fellows?"
Liegeus backed a pace, farther into the zone of the sunlight, and his hand
moved almost unconsciously up to his chest, as if to massage away some cold,
sinking pain.
"You would prefer that I took a little pleasure, a little sustenance, at
your expense rather than theirs?" Dzym went on, and his voice sank still
further. Leia could feel his presence, as though Death itself stood out of
sight below her balcony, where the shadow lay- thick. "I was promised,
little key tapper. I was promised, and I have yet to receive the payment for
those things that only I can do. You remember that there are many hours in a
day', and only half of them are hours of light."
He must have gone then, because Liegeus relaxed. But he stood for a long
time in the sunlight, and even from the distance of the upper terrace, Leia
could see that he trembled.
He was still shaky when he came up to her room, only a few minutes later. He
must have come directly from the terrace, she thought, when she heard the
door chime sound softly--Liegeus was the only one who ever used the door
chime. Ashgad, and the synthdroids who brought her water and food, simply
came in. She thought about going into the chamber to greet him, but somehow
couldn't come up with the motivation.
Cold as it was outside, and uncomfortable with the bitter dryness of the
air, she found the sunlight soothing. So she re mained curled up on the
permacrete bench, wrapped in the quilt from her bed and the
now-rather-scuffed red velvet robe, watching him as he looked around the
room for her, checked the water pitcher, and then, turning, saw her.
He always checked the water pitcher. They all did. Leia was rather proud of
herself for finding a place on the terrace rail where it could be poured
out, to make it look as if she were drinking the stuff. In the hyperdry
climate she had been flirting for days with dehydration and had a headache
now most of the time, but it was the only way to keep her mind even a little
clear. Since the first day she had been trying to figure out a way of
tapping the pipes that supplied the internal mist fields that made the house
livable or of distilling some of the moisture from the air, but the drug in
her system made it difficult to actually do anything. She'd think of
solutions and then discover with a slight feeling of surprise that she'd
been sitting staring at nothing for two or three hours.
Liegeus came out onto the terrace. "Your Excellency," he greeted her gently.
She hadn't meant to speak of what she had seen--hadn't meant to let him know
she knew anythingbut with the sweetblossom it was difficult to remember any
kind of resolve.
He looked so pale, his dark eyes so haunted, that she said, "You're as much
a prisoner here as I am."
He flinched a little, and looked aside. He reminded her of an animal that
had been mistreated and would shy at the raising of any human hand.
Compassion twisted her heart. "You seem to have the run of the place.
Couldn't you leave?"
"It isn't that easy," he said. He came over to the bench where she sat,
looked gravely down at her. The synthdroid, Leia could see, still stood on
the lower terrace, the pallid sunlight turning its dead, doll-like hair to
gold. "How much of that did you hear?"
"I . . . Nothing." Leia fumbled, and she cursed her own weakness for not
being able to do without some of the drugged water every day.
But she knew that most people were not aware of how their own voices
carried. "I heard you and Dzym talking, that is, but I couldn't hear what
you said. Only the way you shrank away, the way you fear him."
Liegeus sighed, and his shoulders slumped. A wan smile flickered
over his lined face. "Well, as you can see for yourself, Your Excellency,
even should I leave--and I'm being very well paid for my work here--there
really isn't anywhere for me to go." He gestured around them, at the wild
crystalline landscape, the dazzling gorges and razor-backed ridges of glass.
Then he was silent a moment, looking down at her, helpless grief in his
eyes.
"Do you spend much time out here on the terrace?" he asked abruptly.
Leia nodded. "I know it probably isn't a good idea. It makes my skin hurt .
. ."
"I'll get you some glycerine," said Liegeus. "Did you hear what I said to
the synthdroid? it's convenient to have them all operated from a central
controller but it means you never can tell them apart."
"The only thing I heard was that it's supposed to spend fifteen minutes a
day standing on the terrace."
"I'd like you to do that, too. More, if you can."
"All right." Leia nodded. It couldn't be sunlight that was a cure for the
Death Seed, she thought. Billions had died of it, daytime or nighttime, on
worlds across half the galaxy. "Liegeus . . ."
He was starting to leave; he turned back within the shadow of the house.
"If there's anything I can do to help . . ."
The minute the words were out of her mouth she felt like a fool. The drug,
she thought, and cursed it again. Here she was a prisoner, her very life
under their control--for it looked to her like Dzym was able to call the
Death Seed into being and to take it away again--and she was offering to
help him.
But something changed in Liegeus's eyes Shame and gratitude for even that
small kindness, replacing the fear. "Thank you," he said, "but there's
nothing." He disappeared into the shad
ows of the house.
The house Luke sought lay deep in the heart of the Oldtimer quarter.
In many respects it bore a rather surprising resemblance to Seti Ashgad's,
which Arvid had pointed out to him that afternoon on the way into town. Like
Ashgad's, this house was built at ground levelsomething that surprised Luke
until he remembered that Ashgad's house had been built forty years ago by
Ashgad's father--and like Ash-gad's was new. This one had evidently once
been surrounded by a luxuriant growth of plants, not just the standard
vegetation common to low-light terraformed planets, but rarer growths and
trees watered by a complex of droppers and pipes.
But while Ashgad's dwelling still supported this arrogant display of wasted
water, this house bore only the detritus of former glory.
Broken pipes crossed the dirty white stucco of the walls. A few dessicated
stumps clung to niches, overgrown with snigvine like almost everything else
in the grubby Oldtimer quarter. The milky-white stucco of the walls
themselves had been smashed by winter windstorms, and beneath the gaps
showed the grayish plastopress of which everything in the town was
constructed. On the roof, most of the solar panels were broken as well, the
cables rattling in the wind. Decay seemed to ooze from the boarded-up
transparisteel like the foetor of a swamp Decay and the enormous sense of
something terribly wrong.
Not here, thought Luke.
It was something he had not considered That in eight months, Callista would
have ceased to be the woman he had known.
She had lasted thirty years inside the gunnery computer on the dreadnought
Eye of Palpatine. Could she have deteriorated so quickly in less than one.
But ,whoever it was, whose strength in the Force he had felt, was here.
The door opened before he knocked on it. The woman standing on the low slab
of crystal before its threshold wasn't Callista.
She smiled, and held out her hands to him, the smile transforming her to
beauty. "Another one," she said softly. "Thank all goodness."
It was impossible to tell her age. Luke knew immediately she wasn't young,
in spite of the porcelain perfection of her face. It was like a very good
reproduction of youth that succeeded only in not looking old.
She lacked the wrinkles and lines of human sorrow' and delight around her
mouth, the crow's-feet at the corners of the eyes that made Leia's so wise,
lacked the print of even the smallest thought on her forehead.
Her hair was raven black and hadn't been washed in weeks. Neither had her
trim, high-breasted, long-legged body or the dingy green dress that wrapped
it.
"Welcome." She drew him into the dense shadows within the first of the
house's many rooms. Her hand was like that of a goddess who bit her nails.
"Welcome. I am Taselda. Of the Knights." Her eyes met his, jewel blue under
the flawless brows. "But then, you knew that."
Luke looked around the shabby darkness. Most of the transparisteel had been
boarded shut and the room was illuminated only by a string of old-fashioned
glow-bulbs tacked to the ceiling. His heart went out to her in compassion.
Obi-Wan Kenobi had hidden himself for years in the obscure deserts of
Tatooine, mocked at as a crazy old hermit, willingly surrendering the use of
his Jedi powers that he might guard the last, chosen hope of the Knights.
But he, thought Luke, had had the disciplines of the Force to help him bear
it. This woman had been here for who knew how long, unable to use her powers
for fear of harming the innocent in another Force storm. From the Newcomers
she must have heard that Palpatine was dead, unable to harm her . . .
"I'm called Owen," he said, realizing that Skywalker was probably a name
anathema to most of the old Jedi still alive after Vader's persecutions.
"And I'm looking for someone."
"Ah." The blue eyes smiled again, wise and twinkling. She crossed to a
cupboard and took out a pair of goblets, old Corellian glasswork, tulip
shaped, and very valuable. She flicked a droch off the base of one.
Past her shoulder, Luke had seen that the cupboard skittered with them.
She had a bottle of wine hanging out one of the few unboarded windows into a
shady courtyard's chill, which she retrieved and poured.
When she pushed aside the shutters and let a bit of pallid light into the
room Luke saw that her white arms were covered with droch bites.
The smell of the insects was fusty-pungent above that of dirt and
uncleanness.
"Callista."
"You've seen her?" His whole body, his whole being, was a shout of triumph;
he couldn't keep it out of his voice.
"How not'."" smiled Taselda. "I am her teacher now in the ways of the
Force."
The wine was from Durren and not very good. It had been cut with fermented
algae sugar a number of times and had all variety of odd backtastes, but
Luke sipped it, his eyes on the woman before him.
"Is she here?. How is she?" he asked softly. "How does she look?"
Taselda brushed back a lock of hair from her forehead, and behind the gentle
smile there was sadness in her eyes. "Like a woman who has endured much,"
she said. "Like a woman torn in her heart, trying to turn her back on her
own deepest need."
It was a curious thing about Taselda's smile. It was wide, and flat, and at
first sight little more than a stretching of the lips. But after a moment,
looking at it across the rim of the wineglass, it came over Luke that it was
very similar in some ways to old Ben's quirky, gentle, amused with human
nature. He wondered who this woman reminded him of. Aunt Beru, a little;
Leia, a little; and someone else, a woman he had only the dimmest traces of
in deep-buried memory. His mother?.
The deep sense of warmth was the same, the giving kindness and the comfort
of boundless, unselfish love.
"Where is she?" he asked, sensing that this woman knew and understood all.
"Can you take me to her?" The wine was sweet now on his tongue, subtle with
resonances he had not comprehended before. He drank deep of it, and she
refilled the glass. It soothed his weariness, as her smile did, and like her
smile left him thirsty for more.
"Of course. I have been waiting for you, since she spoke your name."
She reached out and took both of his hands in both of hers again.
"There's a cave in the hills, not so very far from here. The Force is strong
there. It's one of the places where the ground lightning emerges. I sent her
there to meditate. I'll take you, for it's impossible to find without
guidance."
She got to her feet and drew a deep breath, as if steadying herself, pulled
her raggedy romex dress more closely around her, and looked vaguely in the
corners for her shoes. Luke noticed, as if from a great distance away, that
her feet were filthy and her toenails overgrown, like yellowed claws. His
flash of disgust was followed immediately by his memory of
Yoda--unprepossessing to say the least--and then by anger at himself.
How could he think so about Taselda?.
And when he looked again her feet did not seem that dirty at all.
/>
He stood, too, and set his goblet on the edge of the table. To his own
surprise he almost missed the corner. It must be the dim lighting in the
room, he thought, for the wine she'd given him had cleared his head rather
than clouded it. Cleared it, it seemed to him, as if for the first time in
his life.
"Have you a speeder?" she asked, and he nodded.
"I have to get it fixed, but I can do that in a day or so." It crossed his
mind that he hadn't the money to do such a thing--he'd intended to sell the
grounded vehicle for cash to get himself and Callista off the planet. But
now that didn't seem to matter. His heart pounded faster even at that mental
phrase Himself and Callista.
"And weapons?"
He touched the blaster and the lightsaber at his belt.
Taselda's face fell. "It isn't enough," she said softly. "We will have to
wait." Her brow creased in a frown.
"Wait?" Luke felt a twang of panic. The hills were dangerous.
Callista would come to harm if he didn't get there soon. They might arrive
and find her gone once more, or dead. It was unendurable, to be so close.
"What's the problem?"
Taselda shook her head, with the air of one not wishing to burden a friend
with her troubles, and averted her face a little. A droch crawled out of
sight behind her collar. "It's nothing."
"Can I help?"
"I couldn't ask you to," she said. "It's my affair alone."
"Tell me." The world would be a bleak and terrible place if he didn't aid
her. He might not find Callista. And somehow it had become important to him
that she not seek the aid of another than he.
"Please."
Her smile was shy, and a little self-deprecating. "It's been a long time
since I had a champion. Your Callista is lucky, Owen." She raised those
flower blue eyes to his again and touched his chest with confiding fingers.
"It's an old story, a long story, my friend. When first I came to this
world--oh, many years ago--I had only intended to accomplish the minor
mission the Masters of the Jedi had ordered for me and to depart.
But seeing the way the people here lived, squabbling endlessly over pump
rights, and tree rights, and who was entitled to grow which crops on which
piece of land, I could not leave. There were Warlords, petty bullies with
hired bravos, and though it is against the way of our order to take sides, I
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