Part 15 (2/2)

Luke had heard Croig speak of the place. The Cousins in question were tsils, the crystal chimneys standing in a ring instead of a line, markers of some unknown geological process. A smuggler's dream, a formation easily identified on a scan but small enough to search in a night.

”Can you use Owen here, too?” Arvid nodded to Luke. ”He's working for Croig. He could use the cash.”

Booldrum Caslo, a thickset, smooth-faced little man with heavy sight-amplification equipment bolted into his head, grinned, ”Anyone who works for Croig could use cash.”

Caslo studied Luke for a moment, then nodded. ”We can use as many as we can. I hear it's a good-size cargo. You got that speeder of yours running yet? ”

Luke nodded, though running was a matter of interpretation.

”You'll work pickup, then,” said Caslo. Arvid sniffed as the older man walked away.

”Doesn't trust you as a perimeter guard.”

”Hunh.”

”To keep the Therans away,” explained Gin, coming over and perching on the edge of the dais where they sat. ”Oh, the Listeners sometimes get word of drops and try to stop them, but mostly I think it's just keeping tabs on whatever's going on. Mostly they seem to concentrate on...”

The lights dimmed, save for a single one on the main dais, set un.o.btrusively in what had been an olympian feeding niche. A curtain at the back of the room parted, and Seti Ashgad stepped through.

Do not trust him, Callista had said. Do not meet with him, or accede to any demand he makes.

Why?.

It was the first time Luke had seen the man face-to-face, though on the Borealis he'd glimpsed him and his escort in pa.s.sing. He had not been born when Ashgad's father had been exiled by the Emperor Palpatine, but his teenage interest in the Rebellion had made him familiar with the older politician's easygoing charm and chameleon promises from holos.

The old man must be in his eighties now, thought Luke, watching the son mount the dais and exchange jokes and pleasantries with those in the audience who knew him best.

He hadn't heard Croig or anyone at the Blue Blerd of Happiness speak of the older man at all. Yet he'd defeated the (possibly Jedi) Hutt, taken over his power and his house. So he must have been a remarkable man. Was he dead, or just retired to the house in the Mountains of Lightning?

”Now, now', we can't have any of that,” Ashgad was saying, to a raucous suggestion that Republic troops would soon be on hand to ”settle for” the Therans. Good-natured sarcasm dripped from his deep voice.

”They're the majority, after all, you know. It's their planet.”

”It's our planet, too!” yelled Gerney Caslo, springing to his feet.

”We bust our backs putting plants on this motherless rock. Don't that count?”

”Does it?” Ashgad swept the crowd with a green eye suddenly cold and angry. ”I thought so. I was optimistic enough to a.s.sure you I could do something about that. It appears that I was wrong.”

Silence fell, but Luke felt anger pa.s.s like ground lightning through the crowd.

”As you know,” said the politician, now suddenly the focus of the entire quiet room, ”I had high hopes. Through connections I was able to obtain a meeting, not with some politician, not with some bureaucrat, not with some committee member, but with Leia Organa Solo herself-not,” he added bitterly, ”that she was at all enthusiastic about coming, as she made clear to me from the outset.”

They'd called the senior Ashgad the Golden Tempter. Luke knew, listening to his son, what he must have sounded like. Ashgad used his voice like a master artist used a light organ, evoking nuance, shade, twilight, and brilliance with the slightest s.h.i.+fts of tone and volume.

”I apologize,” went on Ashgad, ”for my enthusiasm and for my folly. I owe you all that apology, for raising hopes not destined to be fulfilled.” He gestured, and another man-at this distance Luke couldn't tell whether it was a synthdroid or not, though there was something suspiciously smooth about the way he moved-slipped through the curtain and set up a holo player in the niche.

”Perhaps I should let Her Excellency tell you in her own words.”

The light in the chamber dimmed still further. The holo of Leia was of crystal-clear quality, appearing almost solid in the near darkness, as if she were bathed in radiance from an unseen source. The scale was perfect-life-size, so that she truly seemed to be in the room, hands folded on her knees, the heavy folds of her robe of state spread around her. The Noghri bodyguards squatted on their bunkers, nearly a dozen strong, like shadows behind her. Her chin was up, and she spoke with a cold precision Luke had only heard her use when she was truly angry.

”I'm afraid that any help from the Republic is out of the question, Master Ashgad,” she said. ”The Republic cannot afford to be seen to support a minority-any minority by prospective planetary councils still undecided about joining. Too much trade depends on our maintenance of the status quo and too many people see the efforts of the Rationalists on your planet as disruptive, unruly, and criminal.”

A buzz stirred the crowd. Beside Luke, Gerney Caslo mutttered, ”Criminal-I'll show you criminal, honey!”

”Criminal to make an honest living pumping water...”

”What's disruptive about wanting medicine for my son....”

Leia's image went on, ”I understand your problems, Master Ashgad.

But the Republic must look at the larger picture. And, quite frankly, the discontent of a handful of settlers on a world that isn't even a member of the Republic is not worth the two billion credits it would cost-not to mention the damage done to the Republic's image-should we intervene in your quarrel.”

Her last words were drowned in a rising roar. Someone yelled, ”Festering hag witch, what in blazes does she know?” and Luke was on his feet, his whole body aflame with rage, not at the man who had shouted insults at his sister but at the man who stood on the dais, just visible beside the glimmering holo, his head bowed in pious resignation and regret.

Luke yelled, ”Liar!” but his voice was drowned in other outcries, and before he could draw breath for another shout he realized that to protest that the holo was faked would only reveal his own ident.i.ty and make it impossible for him to locate Callista. The holo was as much a fake as the cheap sculptures in the niches, holographically altered to resemble family members. For one thing, even before Leia had eliminated the bodyguards, she had never appeared in public with the Noghri.

When ”Leia” rose from her chair Luke was sure of it: the chair itself was nothing like those in the Borealis's conference room or indeed anywhere on the executive flags.h.i.+p at all. The crimson robe was one she'd worn on a dozen state occasions over the past few years, easily copied. Luke had never seen it done this effectively, but presumably a really good slicer could get a holo of Leia's face and alter the movement of the lips to mesh with any voder-modified script.

But all this, he realized, was something he'd learned over the course of years with the Rebellion, years of dealing with the sophisticated technologies and scientific neepery available on Coruscant and its inner worlds. As a kid on Tatooine-and had he grown to adulthood there, as Uncle Owen and Uncle Owen's friends had-he'd had no more suspicion that truth could be skillfully edited than he'd had the ability to fly.

They believed what they saw.

They believed Seti Ashgad.

And they were furious.

Ashgad was up on the dais artfully giving the impression that he was mollifying the crowd without in any way lessening their outrage.

Luke slipped past the synthdroids by the door, crossed through the smaller chamber beyond, his boots making no sound in the carpet, too angry to remain. He was aware of the synthdroids watching him-their Central Control tinit, wherever it was, was undoubtedly programmed with the faces of every Rationalist on the planet. But no one stopped him.

He stepped through a pair of long windows to the outside, breathing hard with fury, and made his way through the thickets of blueleaf and aromatic shrubs to the street. The wind had died to a dull hammering with the coming of full darkness. The voices in the dining hall still echoed in his ears, yelling vituperation at his sister.

Beyond the edges of the settlements, the tsils glistened like spikes of ice in the cold-eyed starlight of the wastes. The ground was l.u.s.trous with frost, and the cold was like iron. He felt the Force all around him, breathing-waiting.

There were people out there in the waste, not far away. Though they bore no lights he sensed them dimly: eddies, stirrings in the Force.

Therans?

Probably. Watching Seti Ashgad's house.

Release your anger, his father had said. Release your anger.

He had meant it then as a lure, a come-on-use your anger in combat-a fool's trick.

But now Luke truly released his anger, let go of it: let it rise like steam, to be absorbed and defused by the stars. There was entirely too much anger afoot that night anyway, deliberately being stirred up, raised like a magician raising power back in that house. Rid of it, Luke was able to think clearly again, to ask questions. And the chief question was: What does Seti Ashgad stand to gain?

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