“Hey, Chatty!” she called to a human in a purple-splotched coverall with a packer’s stained and bandaged fingers. “Here’s old Drub McKumb’s long-lost brother, come searching for his bones at last!”
“What, you think there’s secret crypts down under Plett’s House, too?” Chatty was if anything more wrinkled and decrepit than Oso Nim, though, looking at him, Leia realized he wasn’t much older than Han. “Secret tunnels filled with jewels?”
Han made an I-didn’t-say-it gesture, and Chatty winked. One of his eyes was a replacement, the cheap kind manufactured on Sullust with a yellowing plastic cornea.
“If there’s jewels in them crypts, why ain’t Bran Kemple richer, hunh? Why’s he playin’ penny-ante stakes smuggling coffee and running card games over at the Jungle Lust?”
“Bran Kemple’s the town boss?” Han raised his eyebrows in genuine surprise. “I thought it was Nubblyk the Slyte.”
“What hole you been hidin’ in for the past eight years, Sugardrawers?” laughed the Durosian, and Chatty took the bottle from Han’s hand and poured himself a glass, courteously offering Leia a refill as well. Leia, thoroughly amused, refrained from remarking that people who’d been living at the bottom of a volcanic vent for decades had no business accusing others of hiding in holes. “The Slyte pulled his stakes out seven years ago. Whole scene’s gone to pieces since then.”
“Gone to pieces,” Chatty agreed, nursing Han’s bottle mournfully. “Hot rockets, boy!” he yelled furiously, his attention suddenly riveted by the activities of twenty-five skaters on the planet Lafra, “you call that festering shooting? For a million credits a year I’ll festering join your festering team and lose your games for you, you stupid sons of slime devils!”
“You sure the Slyte actually pulled his own stakes?” Leia leaned her elbows on the bar and looked innocent and fascinated.
The Durosian grinned and pinched her cheek with fingers like mummified knotgrass. “Your girlfriend catches on quick, Angelpants. The Slyte was a clever old bug. If he was goin’ snoopin’ around where he had no business, he wouldn’t come in here half drunk like Mubbin the Whiphid did, carryin’ on about how he’d found a big secret about Plett’s House, or like old Drub with his ‘calculations.’ Oh, I don’t doubt there’s somethin’ up at those ruins the high-ups around here don’t want people snoopin’ with. Maybe enough to load dim-cells like Mubbin or Drub or what’s-his-name, that Wookiee who worked as a mechanic for Galactic … enough to load them into an outbound ship.”
She shook her head, polished off another glass, took the bottle from Chatty, and tilted it, regarding with profound sadness the few remaining drops that trickled into her glass.
“Well, whatever it is, it ain’t worth it, so why put yourself in trouble, I say.” She shrugged. “Maybe Drub just fell down a repair shaft in some orchard someplace and the kretch ate him.”
“Kretch?” said Leia sharply.
The orange eyes glittered in unholy amusement. “How long you been in town, Pretty-Eyes? You’ll see the kretch mighty quick. As for old Drub, what was it to him what the high-ups are hidin’, long as there was no money in it? And you can be sure there wasn’t, else the big corporations’d be sellin’.”
She smiled beatifically as Leia signaled and another bottle materialized on the stain-repellant lexoplast of the bar. “Why, thank you, darling …” She nodded toward Han and leaned forward to whisper confidentially, “You’re way too good for the likes of him.”
“I know,” whispered Leia, and Oso Nim cackled with delight.
She saddened again, and tossed off another drink. “Well, the whole scene’s turned to garbage now anyway. Pity, ’cause eight, ten years ago this place was really movin’. You’d get twelve, fourteen ships a week in on the sly, goods slippin’ in under the ice, and this place was as jammed at noon as it was at midnight, maybe more. The Slyte was one who knew how to run things. Since he left it’s all turned into nerf-feed.”
Odd, thought Leia, as she sought out the Smoking Jets’ plumbing facilities a little while later. As far as she could ascertain from Oso Nim’s increasingly foggy conversation (Han had ordered still another blue glass bottle, and Chatty was absorbed in the second half of the doubleheader), Nubblyk the Slyte had departed, the “game”—i.e., smuggling—had drastically declined, and Mubbin the Whiphid, a friend of Drub McKumb’s, had vanished, all in the same year … the year after Palpatine’s death and the breakup of the Empire. A year later—when Drub McKumb had returned to Belsavis—he’d vanished, too.
Her aunt Rouge’s housekeeper had frequently observed, Just because you keep soap in the pantry doesn’t make it food.
The temporal proximity of the events could have been coincidence.
And yet …
With every possible inch of arable ground in the volcanic rift given over to cash crops, lots in town were small and buildings like the cantina—and the older stone house upon which it was built—were squinched right to the property lines, leaving no room for sanitary accommodations aboveground. An old-fashioned manual hinged door at one end of the bar bore the universal symbols, and behind it a thoroughly insalubrious stair plunged by the light of a minimum-strength glowpanel into the grotty obscurity of the foundations. Though most of the warm springs over which the old houses had been built had been diverted long ago, the heat belowground was even worse than above, the air held a lingering whiff of some sour gas and the dense black-red stone of the walls was patched with a crop of molds and fungus that made Leia glad she hadn’t ordered a salad off the cantina’s small food menu. At the far end of the narrow passageway something moved, and Leia, nervously activating the small glowrod that hung at her belt, got her first look at what had to be a kretch.
It was half again as long as her hand, possibly the width of three fingers together, and the color of a scab. Two sets of jaws—one above the other—were large enough that even at a distance of five meters she could see the serrated teeth, and the barbed grabbers on the tail. It lunged at her with a motion something between a hop and a dash, and Leia, who knew better than to fire a blaster in the closed space, scooped up the chunk of stone used as a doorstop at the top of the steps and hurled it at the thing in a reflex of panic and horror.
The stone cracked squarely on the thing’s jointed back, rolled off as the kretch spasmed, quivered, and then hauled itself swiftly to vanish between the pipes that ran along the wall. As Leia edged nervously down to retrieve the stone she could see the brown stain it left, and smell a kind of sweet nastiness, like fruit in the final stages of decomposition.
She checked out the repellent little cubicle at the end of the passageway very carefully with the light before entering and afterward hurried her steps along the passage to return to the bar above.
The kretch would eat us …
If those were the kretch, she thought, she was not looking forward to encountering them in the crypts where the Jedi children had once dared each other to hunt for Plett’s Well … provided they could find the crypts at all.
“Just because you keep soap in the pantry doesn’t make it food,” agreed Han thoughtfully, as they walked through the drifting glitters of mist on their way back to the house Jevax had arranged for them. “But it’s no accident you keep it close to where you wash the dishes.”
She nodded, accepting that train of logic, then grinned. “And what do you know about washing dishes … Angelpants?”
“When you spend three quarters of your life bumming around the galaxy, Your Highness-ness, believe me, you end up loading a lot of dishwashers and even washing dishes by hand.” He hooked his hands in his belt, but Leia knew he was watching everything around them to the limits of his senses. The eternal vapors of Plawal were unnerving. Thickest down at the far end of the valley where the true hot springs bubbled forth, even here, where the land lay low around the warm springs, visibility was down to a few meters. Even up on the raised streets that skirted the orchards, scenes had a tendency to appear and disappear like is
olated tableaux: fruit trees jeweled with orchids, up which sweetberry and bowvine had been trained so that every branch hung heavy with two or three different varieties of fruit; thousands of tiny bridges spanning the faintly steaming pools and streams whose fern-choked verges swarmed with salamanders and frogs; yellow, green, or sea-blue pittins dozing on the thrusting knees of shalaman and aphor trees or hunting insects in the grass; automated watch-critters crouched at the bases of the more expensive trees, beady eyes of green or amber gleaming eerily through the mists. Lava-block walls loomed unexpectedly out of the shifting vapors, topped by the sleek white plastic of the prefabs; ramps of wood or plastic ascending to the doors from street level, lined with pots of imported red plastic or local terracotta, lush with berries, slochans, lipanas.
Beautiful … But Leia was extremely conscious of the fact that visibility was down to two meters or less.
“So what’s this about smuggler tunnels?”
“Back when I was in the game,” said Han, “I never made it out here—too close to the Senex Sector—but I knew there were at least a dozen landing pads out on the ice. Judging by the number of people in the bars who’re still in the game, I’d be surprised if there’s more than one or maybe two still operational. Now, according to Lando, what’s left of the Empire hasn’t changed its tariffs and the export duties here haven’t changed any … gone up, if anything. Which means that seven years ago, something dried up.”
“Right about a year after the Battle of Endor.”
Han nodded. “Something you might want to keep in mind when you go through the town records—now that old Jevax has had time to pick out the parts that might tell you anything.”
“You know, Han …” Leia paused at the top of the wooden ramp that climbed the high, broken stone of their house’s foundations to the wide front door. “That’s the first thing that drew me to you. The childlike innocence of your heart.”
He caught her arm, grinning; she tried to duck away to open the door but he pinned her, a hand on either side of her shoulders, their eyes laughing into one another’s, his body warm against hers. “You want to see how innocent I can be?”
She reached to touch the scar on his chin. “I know how innocent you are,” she said, meaning it, and their lips met, isolated in the still cloak of the mist.
Only the padding footfalls on the ramp broke them apart, and the soft whirring of servos. They stepped back from each other in time to see Chewbacca’s tall form materialize out of the pearlescent shimmer of the air, trailed a moment later by Artoo. The glittering colors of the mist were darkening as the dome-magnified sunlight waned. Between the gray trees of the orchards that stretched downhill from the back of the house, the twilight was growing thick.
“Find anything?”
As they passed through the front door Chewbacca shrugged eloquently and groaned. He’d pursued his own investigation of the local scene in places that left the smell of strange smokes in his fur, and had learned, he said, very little. Very little was going on. One of the smuggler pads out on the glacier was still in operation sometimes, though there were fewer and fewer pilots looking to make the difficult run in through the Corridor. A couple of ships were buying vine-silk on the cheap—mostly grade-two skimmings from the factories. A couple of dealers running in yarrock, ryll, and various sorts of frontal-lobe candy for the old buzz-brains living in the grubby shacks and lean-tos behind Spaceport Row. Bran Kemple was evidently the only person selling it on a regular basis. Everybody said Not like the old days. You could make more money packing brandifert if you didn’t mind purple fingers.
“I’m going to take Artoo with me to the MuniCenter, if you don’t mind.” Inside the house Leia hunted out a dark green-and-violet tunic slightly more respectable than the garment she’d worn to go touring the bars of the Row—she owned underwear more respectable than that particular outfit, for that matter—and more comfortable shoes. “You find anything from public access while we were up at Plett’s House, Artoo?”
The astromech trundled obediently over to the small monitor-printer setup in the corner and extruded a comm plug, and the printer began to chatter. Han crossed the room to see. “Export figures for all seven main packing plants for the past week,” he reported with a grave nod. “Mmmm … oh, now we’ve got employee health figures … fuel intake of all vessels for the past week … Better and better. Wow, here’s a hot item! Repair costs for malfunctions of mechanical fruit pickers amortized over the past ten years. Leia, I don’t know if my heart can take this …”
She rapped him on the arm with the back of her knuckles. “Don’t tease Artoo … That’s very thorough of you, Artoo, you did a good job. You always do.”
The droid beeped. Past the bedroom’s line of floor-length windows and the narrow stone terrace beyond, darkness had settled, the lights that dotted the orchards below the house making raveled blurs of brightness in the mist. The house was one of the few in Plawal to consist mostly of the original stone—only the kitchen and half the living room were prefab—but had been remodeled in the past few years, the old keyhole windows replaced by modern crystalplex with sliding metal shutters to cut out the orchard lights. It was environment-controlled, too, after a fashion—better than the Smoking Jets, anyway. An ironic refinement, thought Leia, for a planet whose surface temperature averaged in the minus fifties.
Like most houses in the old town it was built over a small warm-spring site, and though the spring had been diverted to warm the orchard, the basement floor still produced errant wisps of steam. Leia wondered with a sudden qualm of disgust if kretch lurked there.
“You’ll be okay here?” She paused on her way to the door.
“I’ll have a go at calling Mara Jade. She may know where those landing pads were, and something about why Nubblyk the Slyte left.” He made a show of checking his pockets. “And I know I picked up a card in the bar for order-in dancing girls.”
“Just make them sweep up the confetti when they’re done.”
They kissed again, and Leia strode down the ramp to street level, Artoo trundling in her wake. It had grown dark. Silver-winged moths fluttered crazily around the lamps; pittins and mooklas hunted frogs beneath the bridges. The world smelled of sweet growing things, of grass and fruit—fruit bred specially, calculatedly, to make the inhabitants of this rift, this world, wealthy and competitive in the galactic markets. In the darkness among the trees, luminous insects flickered like fairy candles.
A paradise, thought Leia.
If you didn’t know about the kretch underneath it.
If you didn’t know about Drub McKumb’s voice screaming, Kill you all … going to kill you all …
They’re gathering …
If you didn’t know that occasionally someone who followed up unsubstantiated rumors about the tunnels beneath Plett’s House would vanish without a trace.
In a market square among the sleek white prefabs, the dark huddle of old stone walls, barrow men and vendors were striking their awnings, folding up their wares amid the final desultory shoppers of the day. Above the market the MuniCenter reared on the first of the low benches above the town, only its lights visible as a blurred galaxy in the dark fog. The sloping path toward it wound among the orchards, and because of the multitude of hot springs that came out of the valley’s point there the fog was thick, the sodium arc lights with their unreal white glare edged a few leaves with light and left all else swallowed by the night. Now and then a mechanical tree feeder would stalk momentarily into view, unnervingly like a huge metal spider with its half dozen long, jointed arms, its blind turrets and proboscislike squirters, rows and rings of yellow lights outlining it like shining crowns and bracelets of jewels.
Unlighted, silent, not quite ruined enough, Plett’s House rose invisible in the dark behind. Leia remembered the vision she’d seen there, the deep sense of silent peace. Remembered the voices of the children, and old Ho’Din, beautiful with his pale-green skin against the black Jedi cloak; remembered his haunted ey
es.
She remembered also the urgency in Luke’s voice when he’d told her not to bring the children to this paradise of a place.
Had she brought them, she wondered, what would they have seen?
Abruptly, Artoo-Detoo, who had been following her along the path, made a right-angle turn and trundled off into the foggy darkness to her right. Leia turned, startled: “Artoo?” She could hear the crash of his heavy cylindrical body in the foliage, the furious yik-yik-yik of the guard-critters around the trees, the startled whoops of night birds.
“Artoo!”
His treads left deep marks in the soft grass. Leia followed, pushing at the leaves, wet ferns slapping at her boots, pulling out her glowrod and holding it before her where the darkness grew dense away from the lights.
“Artoo, what is it?”
The ground dipped sharply beneath her feet. She heard Artoo’s startled tweet, the crash of something falling. Branches caught at her hair, slithered damply across her face as she hurried forward.
The little astromech droid had come to a stop at the base of a wall, pressed against it and still trying vainly to go forward. Leia could hear the whirr of his servos, the grind of his treads in the soft ground. She flashed the light swiftly to the right and left but saw nothing, only the dark of the enclosing foliage, barely visible through the dense mists, the bob of firebugs among the sweet-scented trees. “Artoo, stop!” she ordered. “Stop!”
The whirring of the gears halted.
“Back up.”
He was mired. “Hold it,” said Leia, and after another careful scout around with her light, she took from her boot the small knife she carried and cut branches—making sure they bore no fruit—to lay in the deep tread marks on the muddy ground. “Back up.”
The droid obeyed.
“Artoo, what is it? What happened?”
Luke was better at understanding the little droid than she was, though she could interpret some of his odd beeps and warbles. But the reply he made was a quick, almost perfunctory double gleep, telling her nothing.
Star Wars: Children of the Jedi Page 13
