Star Wars_ Children of the Jedi - Barbara Hambly [131]
“Please, Master Luke …”
Why?
He knew that on the other side of that fragile wall of waking lay the fire heat of nearly unbearable pain. Much better to stay unconscious. He was tired, his body desperate for rest. Without rest, all the Force he could bring to bear on self-healing was wasted, as if he were trying to fill a jar up with water before he’d patched the hole in its bottom.
His leg hurt, a raging infection and stress injuries exacerbating the original severed tendons and cracked bone. Every muscle and ligament felt stretched and torn and every centimeter of flesh ached as if he’d been pounded with hammers. The dreams had been unpleasant. Callista …
What could be so important on the other side that it couldn’t wait?
After Callista had left—or perhaps while she still lay in his arms, her head pillowed on his shoulder in the aftermath of loving—he had drifted into deeper sleep. He had seen her far off, in the girlhood left behind on Chad, riding mermaidlike behind the sleek black-and-bronze cy’een with her brown hair slicked where the waves broke over her head, or sitting alone on an outbuoy to watch the sun drown itself in the sea. Conversation replayed in his mind: “You sound as if you’ve studied them.” “You could say they were my next-door neighbors growing up …”
Only he and Callista were no longer in the dark office, orange words coming out of the black screen like stars at sunset. Rather they sat side by side in that old T-70 he’d sold for bantha feed to pay passage for Ben and himself on the Millennium Falcon, all those distant forevers ago.
It surprised him that he hadn’t known Callista then. That she hadn’t always been someone he knew.
They were on the cliffs above Beggar’s Canyon, passing his old macrobinocs back and forth to watch the startlingly unobtrusive progress of a line of banthas among the rocks of the opposite rim, the clumsy beasts moving faster than one would guess from their appearance, the dry wind fluttering the sand-covered veiling of their riders and the slanting sun flashing harshly on metal and glass. “Nobody’s ever figured out how to tell a hunting party from a tribe moving house,” Luke said, as Callista made an adjustment to the focus. “Nobody’s ever seen children or young or whatever—nobody knows whether some of those warriors are females, or even if there are male and female Sand People. Mostly when you see Sand People—or even hear the banthas roaring—you just head the other way as fast as you can.”
“Has anyone ever tried to make friends with them?” She handed the binocs back, brushed a blowing trail of hair from her eyes. She still wore the baggy gray coverall she’d had on in some earlier dream, but her face was clean and unscarred now and she looked less strained, less exhausted, than she had. He was glad of that, glad to see her happy and at ease.
“If anyone tried, he didn’t survive to talk about it.” Out of sheer habit Luke scanned his own side of the canyon rim, and the rocks below. He saw no sign of the Tuskens, but then, one frequently didn’t. “There was an innkeeper over at Anchorhead who had the bright idea of trying to get them on his side—I think he wanted to go into the desert pirate business. He noticed they raid pika and deb-deb orchards—those are sweet fruits they grow in some oases—and cooked up sugar water in a still to see if he could use it to bargain with them. It supposedly got them paralytically drunk and they seemed to enjoy it. He made up another batch and they came back and killed him.”
Luke shrugged. “Maybe they didn’t like feeling good.”
She turned, her gray eyes widening, like one who has seen a revelation. “But that explains everything!” she cried. “It’s a clue to where they come from!”
“What?” said Luke, startled.
“They’re related to my uncle Dro. He hated to have a good time and didn’t think anybody else should either.”
Luke laughed, and all the diamond hardness, the dark-forged Jedi strength of his heart, was transfigured into light. He swung the speeder in a swooping dive