Planet of Twilight

by Barbara Hambley

  of the crystals, they couldn't let anyone be sure of her fate.

  Dzym couldn't argue with that--and this whole treaty with Getelles to get

  the mining rights for Loronar Corporation was Dzym's idea, to get himself

  off the planet--but he doesn't think like human beings. I kept him away from

  her as well as I could."

  He let his head fall back again, on the jacket Luke had wadded up underneath

  it. "I say' that as if I think it mitigates what I've done.

  It doesn't. It's just that I . . . that Dzym . . . I could not go against

  him. But when she escaped, I couldn't let her go alone.

  Unarmed, with nothing. She's .... It's been a long time since I cared for

  anything or anyone except remaining alive another day. But Leia--Lady Solo,

  I should say . . . she was kind. And very brave.

  Certainly braver than I, though that could be said of the average lizard."

  Luke's head was swimming. With part of his consciousness he was acutely

  aware of Dzym's malice, of his attempt to draw away the energy that kept

  Luke's flesh warm and his heart beating. But through his dizziness he heard

  the voices again, whispering, very close to him now.

  They were saying something. Saying something to him. About Leia, he thought,

  or at least about the image of her. He saw a slim dark-haired woman doing

  something with what looked like an antigrav unit.

  Programming it?

  The vision slid away.

  Who are they? he wanted to ask. Those invisible beings, the watchers in the

  hills? Where were their cities, or where had their cities been before the

  dying of the seas?

  Instead he asked, "Who are you?"

  In the dark at the bottom of the canyon, Liegeus was only a sense of living,

  an echo of the Force, but he heard the man's chuckle. "A failure," he

  replied softly. "The blackest sheep the House Vorn ever produced.

  A philosopher, I've styled myself. But my art has always been imitative,

  mocking up holos, striving for perfection and the belief of others. I was a

  harmless prankster as a child, and I loved the precision of it. I think that

  usually reads as 'holo forger' to law enforcement agencies, though men of my

  talents can make fortunes in the entertainment industry. But for my sins I

  was that rare treasure for such as Ashgad a man whose family would not miss

  him. To them, for years, I have been as one dead."

  He sighed, and for a time there was no sound but the faint hissing of the

  speeder's electrical system, and the occasional pops of the free-flowing

  circuits jumping.

  "Don't be too hard on Ashgad," he whispered. "He's more a slave to Dzym than

  I am.

  "Ironic, isn't it? That Dzym, who started out his life as an appetizer,

  should . . ."

  "As a what?" asked Luke, startled.

  "An appetizer." Liegeus blinked up at him. "I'm sorry. I'm getting ahead of

  myself. Forgotten . . ." He shook his head, trying to clear it, but the

  lassitude did not leave his eyes. "It was Beldorion's greed--or I suppose

  one could say his gourmandism--that was his downfall. That Kubazi chef of

  his, Zubindi, was always experimenting with enzymati-callv enhancing and

  gene-splicing new types of insects so they'd be tastier, juicier, more fun

  for Beldorion to eat. Hutts like to eat sentient things, you know. They like

  the game of chasing them around the plate for a bit. Vile things."

  He shook his head again, and this time Luke glimpsed the echoes of ugly

  scenes long ago witnessed in his eyes.

  "Well, Zubindi finally got the idea of enzymatically enhancing, feeding,

  raising a droch, mutating it in the dark, far longer than its normal

  lifespan. Before anyone realized what was going on, the droch had grown, and

  achieved intelligence, to the point where it enslaved Zubindi. It drained

  energy from him, but at the same time gave him back strength and

  energy--which goodness knows he needed, in dealing with Beldorion--in a sort

  of double vampirism. And in the end, of course, the droch Dzym enslaved

  Beldorion as well."

  He managed a faint laugh, gazing up at the stars. "It's certainly a lesson

  to us all, though I'm not sure about what. And, of course, once Dzym began

  draining his strength, Beldorion was finished as a power in Hweg Shul. It

  was easy for Ashgad to take over, when he arrived on this planet. He stepped

  into Beldorion's power, into his household and all his servants .... And, of

  course, into Dzym, too."

  Luke wondered if that was the reason the old Senator had built the

  house in the desert to protect his growing son from the influence of the

  creature that he himself could not be rid of. And of course it hadn't done

  any good.

  "In fact, I'm not sure how much of Seti Ashgad is left, in that body and

  that brain." Liegeus's voice had sunk to a murmur--for a moment Luke could

  not tell whether he was speaking of the elder Ashgad or the younger.

  "Certainly not enough to go against Dzym's will. And as the resident expert

  on local conditions here, it was his job to assure Getelles and the CEOs of

  Loronar that the drochs were in no way connected with the ancient Death Seed

  plague. It's not that difficult.

  They truly don't want to know. As I didn't want to know, and managed not to

  know, up until seven or eight months ago."

  His breath went out in another sigh. By a flicker of the moving current,

  Luke saw his hand grope feebly at the glittering pebbles beneath his

  fingers, stir at them aimlessly. "Eventually of course the matter was pushed

  under my nose in unmistakable terms. I told myself I had to do 'something'

  about it, get word out 'somehow. But the problem with 'somehow' is that it

  really means 'later. And there was always Dzym, waiting there for me.

  Hungering for true life, true energy, not that pitiful low-level field that

  synthflesh generates, though he absorbs that if he can get nothing else. It

  wasn't until Leia Lady Solo--came, and fought so hard, worked so hard,

  risked everything, that I understood how completely contemptible I had

  become. I did not . .

  ." He hesitated. "I did not wish to appear so in her eyes. Does that seem

  contemptible to you?"

  Luke remembered his days of puppy love for her, and the way he and Han had

  vied with each other as pilots to impress her. Not only they, but every

  unattached pilot in the Rebel fleet, it seemed, had been in love with her.

  "It's the destination that matters," he said softly. "Not the road."

  "i fear I've left it rather late." The philosopher's voice sank to a whisper

  again. "I was lying to Dzym. The program that will take the Reliant out past

  the gun stations is finished. It just needs to be input.

  And the first load of Spook crystals is ready to be shipped."

  Luke winced, as sudden pain stabbed through his head. At least, he thought,

  growing up on this world, Ashgad wouldn't have the educa tion that would

  permit him to input something as complex as a launch-vector.

  "And crystals," went on Liegeus, not noticing, "are not the only thing it

  will carry. It will bear Dzym to some headquarters, where he will not be

  affected by the sunlight and radiance of this world. Dzym and as ma
ny drochs

  as he cares to take with him, to draw lives from others that he may then

  drink those lives from them in his turn. And so it will go on, until half

  the worlds of the galaxy are planets of the dead."

  Deep in the dark of the Transit Galactic Shipping Warehouse on Cybloc XII, a

  flare of white light sparked. There was a hiss, as of an electric welding

  arm, and the sudden, choking stink of sizzling plastene.

  "Artoo-Detoo," complained a voice, close by but somewhat muffled, "W ould

  you please take a few more precautions to ascertain that it is safe before

  you undertake activities of this nature?"

  No reply. Plastene fizzled with heat; then the tenor snarl of popaway

  fasteners breaking loose. From outside came the dim, swift squeaking of

  wheels, the fleeing patter of feet.

  "Really, if i had known that Master Yarbolk's 'plan' to get us to Cybloc XII

  consisted of mailing us parcel post . . ."

  The light vanished. Silence returned, a dreadful silence far too deep for

  the hub of trade between the Meridian sector and the Republic whose gateway

  this lifeless moon was. Then another creak and pop, and the white plastene

  side of a particularly large crate fell with a clatter.

  Artoo-Detoo set forward his balance wheel and trundled slowly out, raining

  styrene packing in all directions. The white glow of his visual receptor

  moved across the contents of the warehouse crates and boxes stamped with

  shipping labels and addresses from every corner of the Meridian sector,

  bales of raw' materials, machinery and computer equipment still muffled in

  goatgrass casings. Apart from the cluster of containers stamped with the

  name and shipping number of the freighter Impardiac, out of Budpock, every

  crate, every bale, every casing had been opened and rifled. Machinery lay

  strewn across the rough gray crete of the floor. Gobbets of packing material

  surrounded broken boxes like

  wads of gristle after a butchering. Near the door, two men in the uniforms

  of the shipping company lay dead, with the blue faces and bloated bellies of

  those who have ceased to worry about the cares of this world quite some time

  ago.

  The huge chamber stank of death.

  Artoo's wheels squeaked softly as he moved around the pile of crates,

  seeking a particular one. The voice that had spoken before said impatiently,

  "Over here! Really, this may be the safest way for droids to travel, but it

  certainly has its drawbacks."

  The label on the crate said

  CALRISSIAN, CYBLOC XII HOLD FOR PICKtIP

  The return addressee was one Yarbolk Yemm, of Dimmit station, on Budpock. A

  sharp sound in a corner of the warehouse made Artoo swivel his cap, the

  light following the source of the noise. It was only a small, ranged,

  insentient scavenger, sniffing for what it could get.

  Artoo began to pry open the pop fasteners on Threepio's crate. The silence

  was dreadful.

  "Well, of course, it's quiet," said Threepio, when Artoo remarked on that

  silence. He carefully unfolded his much-mangled joints, stepping out of the

  crate and picking goatgrass and styrene beads out of his joints. "It's quite

  late at night. I suppose even major ports have to sleep sometime. Oh, all

  right," he added, "the main port on Coruscant is never quiet. Nor on Carosi.

  Oh, I suppose the one on Bespin is active even at the bottom of the

  graveyard watch. But that's no reason to say that it's 'too quiet." What is

  'too quiet?"

  The door of the warehouse hissed open. Artoo rolled immediately behind a

  gutted bale of dwimmery and, when Threepio showed no sign of following,

  reached out with his gripper arm and dragged the taller droid into

  concealment with him.

  The creatures that entered the warehouse were unrecognizable in e-suits.

  They could have been anything from Sullustans to lshi Tib, though one of

  them, by the nasal inflection of his voice, Threepio identified as a Rodian.

  What he said in that nasally voice was, "This must have come off that last

  ship."

  "Good," rasped another voice, tinny through the e-suit's voder circuit.

  "They haven't been touched . . . no, fester it, looks like some of 'em have.

  Let's see what we got."

  They entered, the tallest hauling an antigrav sledge behind him.

  The sodium light on the Rodian's helmet made jarring white slices of glare,

  huge black rhomboids of shadow. Vermin scampered behind the crates. One of

  the invaders kicked aside the bodies of the dead, and while he and one

  comrade began systematically prying open every crate and parcel in the

  untouched corner, the third knelt by the bodies and checked their pockets.

  "What you got there?"

  "'Puter system. X-70."

  "Piece of garbage." They loaded it onto the sledge nevertheless.

  "That silk there?"

  "Yeah. What's in the crate?"

  "Looks like wafers. Company payroll records."

  "Take 'em. We'll sell 'em wiped. What . . ."

  The speaker turned quickly, as the door of the warehouse slid open again.

  Two low', blocky forms stood framed in the almost-total darkness outside and

  whatever hour of the night it might be, Threepio knew that a working

  spaceport was never that dark. Gold rounds of light from their visual

  receptors identified the newcomers as droids.

  Both opened fire without hesitation or parlay on the looters, who fell in

  their tracks.

  The internal weapons had been reset--these droids had not fired to stun.

  Threepio was so indignant he would have spoken out in protest, had not Artoo

  sent a quick subsonic prod with his welding arm into Threepio's exposed

  wiring.

  The two new droids wavered and hissed a report over their remote

  transmitters, then, receiving an answer, proceeded to take up where the

  human looters had left off, loading up the sledge with everything of value

  that had been in the Impardiac's delivery, then stripping the e-suits off

  the looters before they left, silent as they had come.

  "What in the name of the maker," asked Threepio, "is going on?"

  The streets of Cybloc XII's main transit base were lightless, save for the

  occasional flicker of dying emergency circuits. Most of the docking bays

  were empty and dark, the buildings of its transport facilities a furtive

  whisper of scavengers, vermin, and occasional looters, the helmets of their

  e-suits glistening in the dark. The offices of the Port Authority contained

  horrors, bodies long dead and rotting in the alien bacteria that even the

  carefully controlled atmosphere of the domed facility could not completely

  exclude.

  The Port Authority, the Republic Consular Offices, the fleet

  head-quarters--all had been looted of their communications equipment.

  In the main infirmary of the base, bodies occupied every bed, every

  centimeter of spare floor space, every office and closet bodies unmarked,

  rotting, curiously peaceful in aspect, as if they had all slipped into sleep

  and from there to dissolution. Those bodies, that is, that had not been

  turned over, tossed about, pockets and clothing checked for what they might

  contain. The medical equipment in every lab
oratory was gone or partially

  dismantled for its microprocessors and transistors. A couple of decapitated

  Two-Onebees remained in what had been the bacta-tank room--the tank drained

  of its fluid and bereft of its control panel--silent, their chest cavities

  open and dangling wires, like corpses themselves in the horrible gloom.

  With a slight hiss, the emergency lighting of the medical center browned out

  and gave up its final, feeble ghost. With darkness came a skittering, brown

  insects with which Threepio was not familiar scrambling along the walls.

  "What are we going to do?

  Artoo maneuvered his way into one of the offices, where an Ithorian in the

  white coat of a physician lay dead over her console, and plugged into the

  computer jack in the wall. He tweeped worriedly, light from the street

  outside falling across him in pale orange bars.

  "At the same time as the Adamantine?" said Threepio. "That's absurd.

  Plague vectors don't operate that swiftly and the odds against a

  simultaneous mutation are seven thousand four hundred twenty-one against."

  A couple of tweets and a wibble.

  "When were the last reports from anywhere in the facility?"

  Artoo reported. Though the street below the med station had been deserted

  for some time, a small band of e-suited figures hurried along, dragging

  sheets heaped with what looked like random gleanings--monitors, circuit

  boards, jewelry, shoes. One of those figures staggered, caught itself

  against the corner of a wall. The others conferred hastily among themselves,

  not going anywhere near their afflicted comrade, and ran. The man they had

  left tried to stagger after them, then sank down, helmeted head resting on

  his knees.

  In ten minutes or so, during which Artoo gave Threepio a prcis of the

  progress of the plague in all reported quarters of the Meridian sector, the

  green light on the looter's e-suit went to amber, then to red, visible as a

  tiny dot of brightness across the street.

  Through the smoky transparisteel of the facility's environmental dome, the

  orange streak of a departing ship could be seen.

  A few moments later, the streetlamps went out.

  The nights on Cybloc XII are long. The small moon on which it is built has a

  rotation period almost synchronous with its orbit. The great, glowing mass

  of the planet Cybloc is only occasionally visible from the port facility