Part 11 (1/2)
Even the Listeners will tell you, there's nothing out there.”
”Then what about the voices they claim to hear?”
”They say those are their old saints, Theras and the others. There's sure no invisible natives who're causing the Force storms, any more than they'd cause the ground lightning or those killer blows we get in wintertime. Me, I'm inclined to think it was sunspots.”
Sunspots, thought Luke, later in the day as from the bench of Arvid's speeder he watched the white stucco buildings, the floating antigrav b.a.l.l.s, and topato towers of Hweg Shul grow in distance. Or maybe a Jedi who had come and settled on the planet, perhaps taught a pupil?
Who had never realized what was causing the Force storms. Or who had tried, with no word for the storms, to control the effect?
A Jedi who had learned somethinq previously unknown about the Force?
He was deeply aware of the Force as, later in the day, he sat in the window of the room he took above the Blue Blerd of Happiness Tavern, watching the green-clotted antigrav b.a.l.l.s being slowly cranked down out of the hammering of the evening wind. Aware of its weight and its strength, disorienting, frightening; aware of the impenetrability of it.
He couldn't push, couldn't search for Callista through it, and in any case he didn't know how much he could manipulate it without causing further harm.
But he had to find Callista. He had to.
The grief came back on him, like a cancer choking his lungs, his throat, his heart. There had not been a day when it hadn't come back to him like this, with knifing pain, that she was gone. And without her laughter, without the wry glint of amus.e.m.e.nt in her eyes-without the scent of her hair and the strength of her arms wrapped around him-there was only night without end.
There was an old song, one that Aunt Beru used to sing-a verse of it echoed in Luke's mind.
Through dying suns and midnights grim, And treachery, and faith gone dim, Whatever dark the world may send, Still lovers meet at journey's end, He had to find her there. He had to.
The eight months since the descent of the Knight Hammer in flames to Yavin 4 had been a darkness in which there were times when Luke wasn't certain he'd be able to go on. He knew academically that there was still some point to life: that his students needed him; that Leia, and Han and the children needed him. But there were mornings when he could find no reason to get out of bed and nights spent counting the hours of darkness in the knowledge that nothing whatsoever awaited him with the dawn.
He closed his eyes, and pressed his forehead to his hands. Ben, and Yoda, and his studies with the Holocron, had taught him about the Force, about good and evil, about the dark side and the responsibilities that went with the bright. For eight months now he felt that he had walked utterly alone.
His mind relaxed into the silence of the room, seeking only rest. He listened to the noises of the taproom downstairs, the dim BronchinB of blerds stabled somewhere near; smelled the chemical stinks of the processing plants that were the town's heart, the musty curtains of the transparisteel behind him, and the not-terribly-clean blankets on the bed.
His mind settled and adjusted to the alien roaring of the Force.
And through it he felt the presence of a Jedi.
There was a Jedi in the town.
They had released the Death Seed.
Even through the haze of sweetblossom, the anger that filled her was a blind, sickened rage.
From the rail of her balcony terrace, Leia watched one of Ashgad's numerous synthdroids walk slowly, haltingly, out onto the greater terrace below. She knew these creatures weren't genuinely alive, only quasiliving synthflesh sculpted like a confectioner's b.u.t.tercream over a robotic armature. But seeing the dark patches of necrosis on its face and neck, she felt a surge 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 a.s.sistants. 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 s.h.i.+ps 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 ma.s.sage 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.
Compa.s.sion 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 gla.s.s. 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...”