Fate Of The Jedi_ Outcast Part 12

"Inspection." Ben felt a touch of outrage. "You're the Grand Master of the Jedi Order."

"And the brother-in-law of a smuggler."

"Well, your rank should count for something. Uh, prelim diagnostics run checks out in the green."

"Full diagnostics on all systems, please."

Ben initiated the program. As he did so, he saw an oval section of wall stretch itself toward them, elongating slowly toward a side coupling ring. "Here they come."

Ben and Luke met them at the air lock. It cycled open to reveal two humanoids, lean to the point of emaciation, dressed in black robes decorated in vertical black and sky-blue striping patterns. They were bald, with intelligent eyes that seemed very human, but their lower faces were obscured by breath masks. One carried an apparatus in a black backpack; a metal cable ran from it to a wandlike device, numerous sensor intakes along its length, which he held in his hand. The other had only a small card reader.

The one with the card reader extended a hand, palm up. "Identi-cards, please." His Basic was unaccented.

Ben handed his card to the Kel Dor an instant after his father. The inspector slid each one for a moment into his reader. "I am Lieutenant Dorss, customs. This is Sergeant Vult. He will conduct a brief inspection of your craft. Are all compartments accessible?"

Luke nodded. "They are."

Again Ben felt the urge to protest, to tell them, Don't you understand, this is Luke Skywalker. Why are you bothering? Don't you understand, this is Luke Skywalker. Why are you bothering? But his father seemed unperturbed, so he pretended to be as well. Still, he wondered what good it would do to travel under a name as famous as his father's if it didn't at least lubricate the wheels of bureaucracy. But his father seemed unperturbed, so he pretended to be as well. Still, he wondered what good it would do to travel under a name as famous as his father's if it didn't at least lubricate the wheels of bureaucracy.

The second Kel Dor disappeared aft, waving his sensor wand.

Now Dorss began his ritual interrogation. "Purpose of visit to Dorin?"

"Research," Luke said. "We seek an audience with the Baran Do Sages."

"Information brokerage, then?"

Luke frowned, perplexed. "I don't think so. I didn't plan to offer any credits for the information I'm looking for. Nor would I charge any for information I provide."

"No trade goods?"

Both Jedi shook their heads.

The Kel Dor hesitated, then handed back the identicards. "Tourism, then." There was an air of finality to his decision. "Will you require accommodations?"

"No, for convenience's sake, we'll be keeping quarters aboard the yacht."

The Kel Dor nodded knowingly. There was something in the gesture, as if he had concluded long before that celebrities were tight with their credits and was happy for Luke Skywalker to reinforce the stereotype, that irritated Ben further.

The sergeant returned and spoke a few words to Dorss in what must have been the native tongue of Dorin. Dorss nodded. "All personal effects within categorical limits. Enjoy your stay on Dorin."

"Thank you." Luke waved agreeably as they reentered the air lock.

Ben frowned. "This is worse than traveling incognito. They acted like they'd never heard of you."

Luke smiled, and there was just a touch of taunt to it. "You've been around, Ben. Wasn't that much nicer than arriving somewhere and finding that everyone is trying to shoot you?"

"Well ... yes."

"Don't get too used to the benefits of fame, son. You'll find yourself making mistakes in order to regain them when they're taken away from you."

"I guess."

"Now get on the planetary data grid and find us city maps, city directories, the location of the Baran Do headquarters, contact names, for our datapads. I'll check out our own breath masks to make sure they're up to the job."

"Right." Ben returned to the c.o.c.kpit, wondering if, in deciding to accompany his father, he had somehow consigned himself to ten years of dullness.

No, that was a child's perspective. He had to continue thinking like an adult. Like a Jedi.

Even a Jedi in exile.

CALRISSIAN-NUNB MINES, KESSEL.

"THE PIT", HAN SAID, "IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN AN ATMOSPHERE PLANT SITS on one spot for a few years. It digs up stones that have oxygen and nitrogen in them. It cracks the stone, spitting the dust out through the hole onto an ever-growing sand hill and spewing the gases up into the sky. Meanwhile, the hole underneath gets bigger and bigger until they have to dismantle the facility and move it. On Kessel, sometimes those pits punch their way into cavern systems." on one spot for a few years. It digs up stones that have oxygen and nitrogen in them. It cracks the stone, spitting the dust out through the hole onto an ever-growing sand hill and spewing the gases up into the sky. Meanwhile, the hole underneath gets bigger and bigger until they have to dismantle the facility and move it. On Kessel, sometimes those pits punch their way into cavern systems."

"And if explorers find spice, a mine is born," Leia said.

Han nodded, gloomy.

Below, the shaft was ringed by a set of lights indicating a specific mine level. Descending past it, their vehicle lights revealed a large metal door in the side of the shaft just above the illuminating ring, suggesting that a side tunnel continued beyond the door. Many meters farther down, they could see another such ring.

On the pa.s.senger-side monitor, Leia brought up a schematic map of the mine complex. "So let me get this straight. The energy spiders feed on energy. Drain it right out of living things."

"Uh-huh."

"And they also spin webs to trap their prey."

"Well, mostly they sort of spit the webs up on rock surfaces. They don't usually spin them in the open air. Though they sometimes spin lines to climb."

"Where does the ma.s.s for the webs come from? And the ma.s.s to let the spiders grow? Not from matter-energy conversion. They couldn't be absorbing that much energy."

Han shook his head. "They eat a certain amount of stone. Kessel is laced with veins of ryll, and ryll is one of the major components of glitterstim." Neither as effective nor as rare a spice as glitterstim, ryll was a mineral found on several worlds, notably Ryloth, home planet of the Twi'leks. As information about the energy spiders had been released over the years by Lando's mining company, Han had kept up with it, out of a sense of horrified fascination.

They pa.s.sed another two light rings during that exchange. Leia tracked their progress on her diagram. "How low are we going to go?"

"All the way to the bottom, or until you feel something."

"Nothing yet."

"We could just go back up again, grab Allana, and go home."

"I feel something!"

"What?"

"Irritation. Stop trying to slither out of this mission."

Han sighed.

They descended in silence for a while. Eventually the speeder's lights illuminated rough stone all around and below: the end of the shaft, and there were no tunnels, artificial or natural, branching from it. Han increased power to the repulsors and they rose toward the next light ring up, the lowest tunnel entrance.

As they hovered outside the metal door, Leia touched a control on the board before her. The door slid open, revealing a dark tile-floored chamber beyond.

"Still," Han said, "it's much better than the first time I was down here. Doors open when you want them to, and the mine manager gives you drinks and weapons instead of sending someone to kill you."

"That's progress."

The tile-floored chamber was a ready room. Banks of lockers held equipment the miners would use in their work. There was no one present-Lando had said he was keeping all personnel out of the mine until the situation was resolved-and for some reason Han found the lack of people additionally unsettling. If he and Leia had to run from a monster they couldn't kill, there would be no nasty guards to distract the beasts. Han preferred to have slower-moving people behind him in situations like that.

They moved out of the ready room into a chamber where mine cars waited. The little train of six open-top cars sat on the dusty stone floor but if activated, they would rise on repulsorlifts, resembling a flying centipede. The cars looked like original equipment from Han's first visit to Kessel.

Another large metal door at the far end of the chamber slid open at Leia's transmitted signal, giving them access to the mine tunnels themselves.

"Don't worry," Leia said. "This isn't one of the feeding regions. Reduces the odds that we'll run into a spider here."

"Feeding regions." The last door slid shut behind them. Now only the speeder's lights kept total darkness at bay. Hair tried to stand up on the back of Han's neck; he smoothed it down.

"To help control the movements of the energy spiders and give the miners some predictable sites to look for spice, Lando and Nien Nunb send processed ryll and incendiary devices into specific shafts in rotation. While the spiders are eating in one area and spinning new webs there, the miners go to areas where they were before and get fresh spice. This"-Leia gestured, indicating their surroundings-"is not one of the tunnels in rotation."

"All that's on the map?"

"No, the map just says where the feeding zones are right now. I looked up what it meant in the prospectus Tendra gave me."

"Prospectus."

"You know, a business plan doc.u.ment. Used, among other things, to persuade people to invest."

Han looked at her, alarmed. "Did you want to invest in this? this?"

Leia sighed. "No. It was a convenient source of information, and that's why Tendra gave it to me. But I suppose I could invest in all the businesses that have brought you so much happiness over the years. For instance, Jabba the Hutt's trade empire."

"He's dead. You killed him."

"Yes, but his business lives on. Or how about some of the Death Star manufacturing subcontractors."

"Stop it."

"Maybe just the folk who make trash compactors. Everyone needs trash compactors. Oh, and frozen-in-carbonite dream vacations."

Han just gritted his teeth, determined to wait her out.

Ahead, the tunnel forked. Leia consulted her map, tracing the two routes with a fingertip. "This one, the lower one, Lando has marked as one of the places Tendra and Nien planted sensors. This other one, which doesn't go as deep but heads off westward at an odd angle, hasn't been recently explored. Let's try that one."

"Is that just random interest, or a presentiment in the Force?"

"Random-" She paused, and a look of mild surprise crossed her face. "Both, maybe."

Han turned left, into the tunnel she indicated.

CITY OF DOR'SHAN, DORIN.

Ben did not often feel like a complete outsider, but this world seemed bent on convincing him that he was.

It started with his breath mask, a full-face rig that kept the planetary atmosphere, mostly helium with some other gases in the mix, at bay. It was attached to a backpack rig that included canisters of oxygen-nitrogen mix and a converter that broke a proportion of the carbon dioxide emerging from human lungs back into its component elements, reintroducing the oxygen into the breathing mix. A human could go for most of a day on a planet like this on only one charge, but Ben wasn't impressed with the rig's convenience. It was like being chained to his luggage.

Then there were the people. Luke had decided that he and Ben would walk to the Baran Do Sages' temple, as the map showed it to be not too far for a leg-stretching hike, and so Ben had the opportunity to see hundreds of the Kel Dors in the s.p.a.ceport terminal building and on the streets.

Like the two who had performed the inspection, most were tall and angular. Unlike the inspectors, they were bare-faced ... and what faces they had! Round bald heads, sunken eyes, narrow ridge-like noses that looked to Ben like failed attempts at becoming birds' beaks, and large, toothless mouths that looked like they belonged on very old humans ... Ben tried not to stare at every face he pa.s.sed, but he couldn't help himself, and did not like himself for the conclusion he reached.

When he and his father arrived at the street where the temple was to be found, a street almost free of speeders but still trafficked by pedestrians, and they were no longer near any crowds of natives, he said, "Dad, these are not a pretty people."

Luke considered. "From a certain point of view, perhaps."

"It sort of bothers me that I see them that way."

"Well, you know the answer to that. What's one of the first things you learned in training to be a Jedi?"

"Don't cut off your own head with your lightsaber."

"After that."

"Your eyes can deceive you. Be mindful of your feelings. Girls are fun but dangerous. Lando has extra cards up his sleeve."

"Well, the truth is in there somewhere ... Tell you what, if you think it's wrong for you to think of them as ugly, just think of how you you look to look to them. them." Luke made a sweeping gesture, taking in his son from head to foot. "Short, squat, unlined skin, a nose that puffs up like a rodent, tiny little mouth with jagged white things in it, a horrible shrublike growth on your head."

Ben laughed. "This, from the man who's worn a bowl-cut hairstyle almost all his adult life."

"You're young, Ben. You'll learn to see with wiser eyes. And if you deliberately set out to do that, it'll be faster."

The stretch of the city between the s.p.a.ceport and their destination had been thick with smaller buildings, the exterior signs in the Kel Dor language suggesting that most were businesses. Now the buildings were larger, some set within walled enclosures. Ben checked his data-pad, using a comfortingly familiar planetary positioning system to compare their location with the maps, and found they were only forty meters from their objective. He pointed ahead and across the street. "There."

What he was looking at was clearly an estate-one large ziggurat-shaped building, each of its four levels darker than the ones below it, graduating from thundercloud gray-black down to sky blue, surrounded by two-story outbuildings in similar colors, all within a wall made up of black wrought-durasteel posts with transparisteel sheets laid across them. The transparisteel was smooth and a little uneven, and Ben could visualize, perhaps as a tiny vision in the Force, Baran Do apprentices polishing it over the years, removing minute scratches, that had caused the transparent material to become slightly worn and misshapen. Through it, as he and Luke advanced, the buildings seemed to distort and sway.

They stopped before the gates, which were ajar and undefended. A path of red-orange flagstones led from there to the steps rising into the main building. The double front doors were also open, with light streaming out from the interior.

Luke looked at the approach and grinned.

"What's so funny?"

"Tradition. You'll see. C'mon." Luke put on his serene Grand Master face, made sure his robes were smoothed into presentability, and headed in. With a quick check of his own hair, Ben followed, a pace back and to the right.

The entrance chamber of the temple of the Baran Do Sages was large and imposing. Black stone walls reached up more than six meters. White stone columns against those walls, rounded and slightly narrower at the base than the top, not only suggested that the ceiling would be kept at a distance but helped offset the darkness of the decor. The ceiling was of a blue-black stone and sparkled like a starry sky, while the floor was a brown permacrete polished smooth, perhaps even waxed. It was all dimly lit by blue glow rods at floor level against the walls.

Ben nodded, instantly grasping the intent of the decorative style. Sky above, ground below, darkness of the black holes to either side, columns suggesting the constructions or intents of living beings keeping those nightmarish celestial anomalies at bay.