Part 11 (2/2)

”Well, it's tricky,” Leia said. ”We have a lot of general information about what's going on in Corellia but it's very hard to get solid detail on a lot of things. It makes a big difference. It's like if someone you knew you two twins loved each other, and that's all they knew. They wouldn't understand if they saw you fighting with each other-and then saw you playing nicely together two minutes later. We sort of know the broad outlines of what's been going on in the Corellian Sector, but we don't really know the background to it all. And we don't know what details are really important and which don't matter.”

”Even in the old days, you had to do a lot of guessing if you were studying Corellia,” said Han. ”It's always been sort of inward looking, not much worried about the outside.

And don't forget that half the galaxy is still recovering from the Imperial-Alliance war. Corellia has probably taken its lumps along with everyone else. But Corellians don't like to show their dirty laundry in public. So we might find out it's the beautiful, well-run planet we hear about, the kind of place it was when I lived there. Or we might discover it's a hardscrabble sort of place, with lots of problems and lots of things not working very well.”

”I don't want to go to any place that's all crummy, Jacen said.

”But it might do you some good if you did,” Han said.

”Your mother and I both feel it'll be good for you to see something of life besides the cushy deal you have on Cornscant. You should see how the other half lives. After all, it's how your parents lived, not all that long ago.”

”Were you guys poor and stuff?”

”Well, I always was,” Han said. ”And your motherwell, she lost everything she ever had in the war.”

That was an understatement, Leia thought. The Empire had destroyed her entire planet, for no better reason than to terrify the rest of the galaxy.

”Anyway,” Han went on, ”let me tell you about the Drall and the Selonians. An adult Drall is about as tall as you are, Jacen, but a lot heavier set. They have two short legs and two short arms in the usual places. They have short brown or black or gray fur-or sometimes red.

Their bodies look a little like taller, thinner Ewoks with shorter fur, but their heads are completely different. Rounder, more, ah, intelligent looking to human eyes, with a bit more p.r.o.nounced muzzle, and with their ears flat to the head instead of sticking up. They are very dignified, very sensible beings, and they expect to be treated with respect. Is that clear?”

Han looked around and made sure he got a nod out of all three kids.

”Good,” he went on. ”I won't have to warn you to take the Selonians seriously, because you'll know to do that five seconds after you see one. They are big and strong and quick, the average adult a bit taller than me. Most humans think they are a very refined-looking species. They're bipeds like humans and Drall, but they have long, slender bodies, and they can go on all fours if they want to. They probably evolved from some sort of active, nimble, swimming mammals. They have sleek, short fur and long, pointed faces with bristly whiskers. And very sharp teeth, and long tails just right for whapping you if you don't behave. They live underground mostly, and they are very good swimmers.

But there's one other thing you should know about them.

Chances are the only ones you'll ever see are going to be sterile females, and it's always a sterile female who's the boss. All their males, and all the females who can have children, have to stay at home, in the dens, all the time.”

”That doesn't sound very fair,” Jaina said.

”No, it doesn't-to a human,” Han said. ”Maybe it doesn't even sound that fair to some of the Selonians. But that's the way their society works. Lots of humans have tried to barge in and tell them to change their ways, but it just doesn't work.”

”Why not?” Jacen asked.

Han laughed. ”Oh no, you don't. Some other time. Ask me in about ten years or s(H”

”When I'm old enough to understand,” Jacen said, rolling his eyes.

”Exactly. Anyway, there are the three main Corellian species.

Every now and then a group from one world decides to move to one of the other worlds. So they pack up and off they go. Then, the next day, or a thousand years later, another group on another of the Brothers will decide to move, and off they go.

”Now all that's been going on for thousands of years.

Nowadays, all of the worlds are all scrambled up, with all the species on all of them. Sometimes, it's just one kind of people-humans or Selonians or Drall-in one town. Other places, like in Coronet, all three of the species live there.

Not only them, but species from a hundred other star systems besides. They all came to Coronet to buy and sell and trade.” Han hesitated a moment, and a look of sadness came over his face. ”At least there used to be that many traders from the outside,” he said. ”Things have changed, because of the war, and a lot of the traders left Coronet a long time ago.”

”How did the war make it change?” Anakin asked.

Han thought for a moment before he answered. ”It was sort of like those games where you set up a whole line of little tiles and then knock over the first one in line. The first one knocks over the second, and the second knocks over the third, and soon, until they all fall over, one after another.

Even before the war really got started, the navy found it harder and harder to keep enough patrol craft out in the s.p.a.ce lanes. They kept getting called away to chase this bunch of Rebel raiders, or to show the flag in that outpost, or to deal with those crises. The more the navy wasn't there, the more the raiders and pirates showed up. The more the pirates chased the traders, the less worthwhile it was for the traders to do business. And when the traders went away, the trading went away, too, and lot's of people in the Corellian Sector got poorer and poorer.

”And then the war itself came,” Leia said. ”And the whole Corellian Sector might as well have built a wall around itself. The Emperor's Corellian government got scared,” she said at last. ”Not just scared of the Rebellion, but scared of everyone. They decided the safest thing to do was not to trust anyone at all. They decided they didn't want the traders. In fact, they didn't want any outsiders.

The sector's government stayed more and more to themselves. They didn't trust anyone else. The government started making up all sorts of rules to keep more and more things hidden and private. It got harder and harder to get the most ordinary sort of information, harder and harder for outsiders to send messages or visit any of the Corellian planets. And the Corellian leaders stopped trusting their own people, and put more and more of the same sort of restrictions on them. And with the Imperial government propping up the Corellian Diktat-that's what they called their chief of state-the Diktat could do whatever he wanted without any fear of the people protesting.”

”But you guys won the war a long time ago,” Jacen said. ”Without the Empire, didn't the Diktat guy have to quit?”

Leia smiled at that. If only the universe were that tidy, that sensible, so that the losers knew when it was time to quit, and gave up once it was over.

”The Diktat never did quit,” Leia said. ”Not in the way you mean.

There wasn't a day when the Diktat got up in front of the cameras and announced his resignation. But once there was no more Empire to provide outside support, people started to be less and less afraid. They started doing what they wanted, instead of what the rules said they should do. The more people got away with breaking the rules, the braver they got, and the more rules they broke. The security forces didn't feel brave enough to stop it all-and they didn't want to go on shooting their own people. It all just sort of collapsed. The Diktat was still there in his palace giving out orders and demanding that people be executed, but no one listened anymore, and no one obeyed his orders.”

”But what happened to him?” Jacen asked.

”Nothing much, really,” Leia said. ”The New Republic didn't want to arrest him. After all, the Diktat was the legal head of government.

Even if we had thrown him in jail, we would have angered a lot of the old loyalists we were trying to win over. We were still trying to decide what to do with him when he disappeared. We think he was taken off to one of the Outlier systems.”

”What are Outliers?” Anakin asked.

”That's just the name for the star systems in the Corellian Sector that are sort of small and far away from Corell itself,” Leia said. ”The Outlier systems are so secretive they make Corellia look wide open. Lots of people from the sector's Imperial government ran off to them and just dropped out of sight. The Republic installed a new sector governorgeneral,” Leia said, ”a Frozian by the name of Micamberlecto, but when the Corellians held local elections, a lot of the old Imperial types got back into office.”

”But can't you just kick the bad guys out?” Jacen asked.

”No,” Leia said, ”we can't, because, even if we don't like them, they followed the rules. The people elected them.”

”So this Governor-General Micamberlecto is a good guy who has a lot of bad guys working for him, and he can't do anything about it,” Jacen said.

Leia smiled. ”That's about the size of it,” she said.

”So how are you and Dad planning to fix it all?” Jaina asked.

That question threw Leia for a loop. It would seem that her daughter simply a.s.sumed that Leia was in charge of stomping out all wrongdoing. ”Nothing directly,” she said.

”If we went in and threw out all the elected officials we didn't like, we'd be just as bad as the Empire. Sometimes you just have to hold your nose and accept the situation.

But part of the idea of the trade summit is to make things tough for the bad guys in the future. They're the sort that do well when things are bad. They stir people up about their troubles. When things are going well, no one wants to elect that sort of rabble-rouser. We're hoping that if we can get trade going again, people won't have so many troubles for the wrong sort of candidate to exploit.”

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