Star Wars_ Children of the Jedi - Barbara Hambly [156]
“I’ve never seen anything like it.” Jevax flicked through another series of screens, the two technicians—another Mluki and a glum-looking Durosian—leaning over his shoulders. None of the three looked up as Han and Chewbacca thrust their way through the door and into the port’s central control.
The Durosian shook his head. “It has to be a malfunction somewhere in the slave relay to the bay gates themselves,” he said. “The program tests positive. All the gates couldn’t malfunction mechanically at the same time.” His earth-colored brow furrowed down over opalescent orange eyes, and he rubbed the hard beak of his mouth.
“What’s going on?”
Jevax looked up, seeing Solo and the Wookiee for the first time, and got to his feet. “I hope you’re not coming for takeoff clearance,” he said in a tone of voice half jocular, half puzzled—nobody in his right mind would take off into the nightly inferno of Belsavis’s winds. “Did Her Excellency find what she needed in the MuniCenter records? I’m afraid I wasn’t able to—”
“Leia never got to the MuniCenter at all,” said Han.
The Mluki’s eyes widened with shock, then flickered to the chronometer on the wall.
“There’s a woman living on Painted Door Street, in the house Nubblyk the Slyte used to own—Roganda Ismaren. Came here about seven years ago …”
“Ahh,” said Jevax thoughtfully. “Roganda Ismaren. Woman so high …” He gestured to someone about Leia’s small height. “Black hair, dark eyes …”
“I don’t know. I’ve never seen her. She used to be one of the Emperor’s concubines so she’s probably beautiful …”
“The human males who come into port treat her as if she’s beautiful,” said Jevax with a small smile. “When she’s seen, which is rarely. We’re a small town, General Solo, and everyone ends up knowing a great deal about everyone else’s business … and though it’s none of my business, I admit I have always nursed a deep curiosity about Roganda Ismaren.”
“You know where her house is?”
Jevax nodded.
At the Chief Person’s suggestion they stopped at a small apartment block, to include in their party Stusjevsky, a meter-tall, dark-furred Chadra-Fan who worked in the vine-coffee gardens as a sniffer. “Some things you just can’t explain to supervisors,” sighed the little creature as he bid a quick good-bye to the group of convivial friends who’d gathered in his apartment for a wine-and-grooming party. He trotted down the outside stair at Jevax’s side, big, clawed hands making quick work of the complicated latches on the silk vest he was donning. “The new girl keeps asking why the beans shouldn’t be harvested yet—‘They’re the right color,’ she says. Right color my left ear!”
As if called upon for corroborative evidence, his left ear twitched.
“They’re more or less the right color outside, but they smell green inside. Well, she’ll learn … What can I do for you, Chief?”
Black fog shut them in, huge moths and glowbugs dancing around the blurred yellow wool of streetlamps and windows. Overhead the lights on the hanging gardens twinkled dimly through the mists, like alien galaxies of flowering stars.
Jevax gave him a swift and bowdlerized version of the problem, ending with, “We have reason to believe the house itself is wired with alarms. Before we go in—before we tip anyone off as to our presence—we’d like to know whether anyone’s home or not. Can you do that?”
“Humans?” The Chadra-Fan’s huge ears cocked forward, and he glanced from Han to Chewie.
Jevax nodded.
Stusjevsky gave him the circle-finger sign universal among those races with opposable thumbs: No Problem. They turned to cross the market square, all lights retreating into dim smudges in the hot, eerie dark. “So what’s this I hear about the landing silos being locked up?”
The Chief Person gestured helplessly. “We think it’s a malfunction in the programming of the central servo between the computer and the doors over the silos. It looks like it fired and locked at once, and ground the main gear to pieces.”
Chewie turned his head sharply, with a long,