involving the removal of another access hatch and the reat-tachment--by
temporary clips, this time--of his data couplers and ports to the main
trunkline of the central core.
"Artoo, what are you doing?" demanded Threepio irritably. "This is really
outside of enough! Captain Bortrek will be awake by this time, if you
restored the oxygen to his hold, and will be most displeased! I shouldn't be
surprised if he sold you by the pound for scrap."
Still no reply, except the heavy clank of the outer airlock door
locking. The small comm screen flickered, displaying a view of the empty
bridge. "Really, the ideas you get in your head . . ."
Threepio turned away, and tried the door. "What?" he demanded irritably, to
Attoo's imperative beep. "Come back to the screen? If as you say you've let
Captain Bortrek out, why would you need me to .
. ."
On the main bridge, visible through the viewscreen, Captain Bor-trek came
slamming through the doors in a violently disagreeable mood. At the sight of
the patched-up wires and systems where Artoo had been he began to curse,
with great vehemence and little imagination and continued to curse until, at
Artoo's urging, Threepio called his name four or five times.
Swiveling where he stood, Bortrek faced the screen with eyes red and bulging
with rage. "You stinkin' little garbage can!" he screamed.
"You don't think I can see where you are? I'm gonna come there and .
. ."
He strode to the door and almost broke his nose on it when it would not
open.
"Artoo!" cried Threepio. "Tell the core system to open that door for him at
once!"
Artoo-Detoo made an apologetic noise, then issued another set of
instructions.
"You want me to say what?
It took quite some time to get Captain Bortrek's attention; even more, to
wait until he ran out of breath and ceased his wholly anthropomorphic
remarks on the droids' parentage, ancestry, reproductive proclivities, and
ultimate destination, in terms impossible to apply to droids and probably
not even to the human-appearing synthdroids of which he had seemed so fond.
"Captain Bortrek, I am terribly, terribly sorry," said Threepio. "I
apologize wholeheartedly for my counterpart here, and I am overcome with
embarrassment at his behavior. But he requests that when we emerge from
hyperspace, you . . ." He hesitated, knowing that the words would evoke yet
another spate of furious imprecations. "He requests that when we emerge from
hyperspace you proceed by the most direct route to Nim Drovis, and there
land and let us out."
Threepio found he was absolutely right about the effect of his words, though
he felt that Captain Bortrek's commentary on himself was hardly fair,
considering he was only Artoo's translator. A certain allowance should be
made, of course, for the disinhibiting effects of alcohol, gylocal, and
hyperdrive coolant on the human system.
"I'm terribly sorry, sir," he said, when the irritated captain had once
again shouted himself breathless. "I simply don't know what's gotten into
him. He says that if you do not comply, the moment we are clear of
hyperspace he will flood the entire ship with carbon dioxide again and, when
you are unconscious, send out a distress signal to the Galactic Patrol.
Those are his words, not mine," Threepio added, in the face of more unfair
adjurations and implications. "None of this was my idea at all."
"You stinkin' hunks of scrap metal!" screamed Captain Bortrek, whose face
had returned to the rather livid hue of cyanosis despite the 20.78 percent
oxygen present in the cabin. "You think you're gonna get the better of me?"
I can rewire this crate in twenty-five minutes and pull the two of you out
of there . . ."
"I'm sure you could, sir," said Threepio diffidently. "But according to the
chronometer on the wall immediately to your left, the ship will reach the
hyperspace target zone in less than four minutes, and though I am myself not
a pilot, I believe that if you miss the zone you will condemn us all to
before either one of us would even suffer boredom.
And your last remark," he added, finally stung, "is not only untrue but
physiologically impossible for any nonorganic life form."
As if for emphasis, Artoo-Detoo did something that caused the lights to dim
and the faint thrum of the central core readjusting itself to penetrate even
to the secondary airlock, and a small puff of pink gas swirled out of the
ventilator on the bridge. Captain Bortrek swung around, terror in his eyes
at the sight of it. Then he veered back, screamed curses at both droids in
the safety of their airlock for a few moments more, and threw himself into
the pilot's seat to begin the procedures to take the ship out of hyperspace
on target.
He did not cease to blaspheme, however, and though he repeated himself
frequently and never emerged from the realm of purely mundane and
unimaginative scatology, he continued to relieve his emotions
at the top of his lungs throughout the journey to Nim Drovis, during
planetfall at a small smugglers' pad in the bayous south of the Bagsho
spaceport, and was still cursing when Artoo-Detoo jammed the airlock open on
a timer, See-Threepio quickly disattached the temporary wiring, and the two
droids hastened down the ramp. Extrapolating from statistical probability,
Threepio assumed that Captain Bortrek was still cursing when the Pure Sabacc
lifted off.
With the fading of the Sabacc's launch engines in the gluey warmth of the
night, darkness settled around the two errant droids. In every direction
around the wide, smoke-stained permacrete rectangle of the pad, hillocks of
brush-furred mud alternated with forests of reeds whose thin heads rose no
more than a few centimeters above the ambient water, a desolation of
marsh-gunnies, gulpers, and the blinking green eyes of wadle-platts like
ghost lights among the sedge. Against the dark hem of the sky, a sprinkling
of lights marked Bagsho, largest of the planet's free ports, settled largely
by Alderaan colonists but transformed in the past five years into a major
crossroad between the New Republic and the neutral systems of the Meridian
sector.
Had he been capable of doing so, See-Threepio would have heaved a sigh.
As it was he turned from the glimmer of the lights to regard his comrade and
said, "Well, I hope you know what you've gotten us into."
Artoo whistled a sorry little whistle, dropped himself forward onto his
roller-leg, and snapped on his headlamp. A trifle unsteadily--be-cause of
the switching box still space-taped to one side and the clusters of wires
looped up from a jack on his back that hadn't been there before--he led the
way across the permacrete pad to the narrow ribbon of trail that led toward
the city, Threepio clanking resignedly in his wake.
"There," said Umolly Darm, sitting back in her chair and pecking through a
save command on the ramshackle keyboard. "Eight and a half months ago, on
Buwon Neb
's run in from Durren. One human passenger, female, hundred and
seventy-five centimeters tall--she's the only human female that height all
year. Cleared port authority under the name Cray Mingla."
"That's her," Luke said in a breath. His whole body felt strange, tingling
with pain and grief and joy. He was almost afraid to speak, in case the
grimy orange lettering should be swallowed into the monitor's dark again.
"Thank you."
"No occupation listed," went on Darm. Her violet eyes flicked kindly to his
face, then away; she kept her voice matter-of-fact.
"Though in Hweg Shul . . . drat!" The screen fuzzed out. Luke felt as if
he'd been knifed through the heart; a moment later, he was aware of the
prickling lift of the hair at his nape and turning quickly toward the
window, saw the racing blue tentacles of ground lightning pouring across the
gravel, writhing between the pylons of the Newcomer houses, crawling up the
cable tethers of the antigrav balls and the battered, pitted metal columns
supporting towers where bransved and topato grew.
"Not a big one." Darm got up and crossed to the open door. "It'll pass in
about ten minutes."
They stood together in the doorway, watching the electricity race and
chitter under the pilings of the house, the light of it splashing like water
up over their faces from the faceted gravel. Like most of the Newcomer
buildings in Ruby Gulch, Darm's house doubled as her office, storeroom, and
workshop--two rooms fabricated from recycled packing plastene and mounted on
buttonwood pilings a meter and a half tall.
ike most Newcomer buildings it stood just beyond the belt of terraformed
land that followed the water seam, arable being too precious to waste, and
its enormous transparisteel panels, double-glazed in an ineffective effort
to keep the cold at bay, flooded the rooms with the harsh, broken, strangely
colored sunlight reflected from below.
"What are they?" asked Luke, and Umolly shrugged, twisted her white hair up
more firmly and reset its wooden combs.
"Exactly what they look like--ground lightning. They seem to start either in
the mountains or from those crystal chimney formations-tsils, the Oldtimers
call them--out on the wastelands. Couple of years ago one of 'em was strong
enough to knock out Booldrum Caslo's computers, but they're usually not more
than an inconvenience. I've been caught in them half a dozen times, out
prospecting. It's like being knocked down and having your bones polished
from the inside, and
you're sick for a day and a half, Newcomers, anyway. The Oldtimers get over
it faster. They don't even bother putting their houses on poles to avoid
them, just pick themselves up afterward, dust off, and go about their
business, though they do hang their kids' cradles from the ceilings to keep
them clear. I used to hate 'em, but after that Force storm, if that's what
it was, these don't look so bad."
The walls and furniture of Umolly Darm's little dwelling, like every other
building Luke had been in since his arrival in Ruby Gulch last night, bore
the marks of the maelstrom of poltergeist activity that had swept over them
the very hour--Luke guessed the very minute--he had drawn on the power of
the Force to confuse and distract the Theran raiders. Dishes, tools,
furniture, even transparisteel had been broken; walls were gouged where
small farm machinery or implements had been hurled against them as if by a
giant, invisible hand. Sheds and fences lay smashed on the ground and cupas,
blerds, and grazers had scattered at large through the Oldtimers' standing
crops. In many cases the blerds had mixed in with the Oldtimers' alcopays,
which had also escaped in the confusion and which carried parasites inimical
to the more fragile blerds; and on his way across to Umolly's place that
afternoon Luke had witnessed a dozen altercations between the two factions
in the little town.
Aunt Gin informed him that morning that the two men injured when their
smelter leapt off its base were still in critical condition in the Hweg Shul
hospital. A woman who'd been in the care of Ruby Gulch's Oldtimer
Healer--who by the sound of it used the Force to effect her cures--had died
gasping as all the gentle psionics of the Healer's art had been stripped
away.
He had done that. The thought made him sick with guilt.
"You said the Oldtimers talked about Force storms."
"Only to say their granddads and grandmas spoke of 'em being common, way
back in the days." The delicate little prospector seated herself gingerly on
the top step, keeping warily ready to leap up should the lightning below
show signs of crawling up the pilings; Luke sat down beside her. "The last
ones were two hundred and fifty, three hundred years ago, and even the
Listeners don't have stories about how they started or what they really
were. Except the Listeners say, there was a span of only about a hundred
years when they took place. There weren't any before then, either."
Luke was silent, thinking about that. "Is there any chance... ? Do the
Oldtimers ever talk about there being some kind or--of beings living on this
world? Invisible, maybe? Or hidden, back in the mountains Something that may
be causing this?"
Umolly Darm chuckled. "Bless you, pilgrim, this planet was surveyed six ways
from next week by the Grissmaths before they ever dropped a soul here. You
can bet they'd never have set up a prison colony where there'd be the least
chance of getting local help. I've been darn near all over this rock myself
and never saw nor heard a thing.
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 balls,
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 balls 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 amusement 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 buttercream over a robotic armature. But
seeing the dark patches of necrosis on its face and neck, she felt a surge