Star Wars_ Children of the Jedi - Barbara Hambly [172]
He looked, he realized, a little like old Ben.
Leia helped him to his feet. She, too, had the appearance of someone who’d been through the mill.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
She nodded, brushing away his concern. “What about Cray? Did Nichos …” He saw her hesitate on the word “die,” as she remembered that Nichos, after what Cray had done for him—to him—had been incapable of death.
“It’s a long story,” he said, feeling utterly weary. “I’m … surprised she took the escape pod. My impression was she didn’t want very much to live anymore.”
Over the tannoy he heard Mara say, “Got it. Bringing it in through the shield.”
Leia put her shoulder under his arm, and helped him down the hall, the two droids and Chewie trailing in their wake. “Apparently Trooper Pothman has succeeded in calming the Klaggs and the Affytechans on the Blue Shuttle, Master Luke,” Threepio informed him. “General Solo has already sent a subspace message to the Contacts Division of the diplomatic corps, and they’re arranging a party to deal with reorientation of the Eye’s prisoners. They say they would like your help on that.”
Luke nodded, though it was hard to think more than a few minutes ahead, a few hours ahead. He saw now why Cray had done everything in her power, had wrung her body and her mind to keep Nichos with her, to try to keep Nichos with her.
Because she could not conceive of what life would be like without him as a part of it.
He is on the other side, she had said.
As Callista, now, was on the other side.
Whatever had changed her mind, he thought, she would need him there when she came out of her chilled sleep.
The lights on the hold door cycled green and the door hissed open. The pod lay on the square of the doors, directly under the hooded, cooling eye of the quiescent tractor beam. It was barely two meters long and eighty centimeters or so wide, matte Imperial green, and icy to his touch with the cold of space.
He slid the cowling back. Under it, she lay in the comalike sleep of partial hibernation, shallow breasts barely moving under the torn and smoke-stained uniform and long hands folded over her belt buckle. Despite the bruises that still marked it, her face was so calm, so relaxed, so utterly different from the brittle, haggard features of the woman she had become that he almost didn’t recognize her.
Had she looked like this, he wondered, that first day over a year ago, when Nichos had brought her to Yavin? The most brilliant AI programmer at the Magrody Institute—and strong in the Force as well.
The standoffish elegance she had worn as a protective cloak was gone.
She was a different woman.
A different woman …
Luke thought, No …
He shook his head.
No.
It wasn’t Cray’s face.
The features, the straight nose and delicate bones, the full, almost square shape of the lips, were the same …
But everything in him said, It isn’t Cray.
No, he thought again, not wanting to believe.
For a long time the universe stood still.
Then she drew a long breath, and opened her eyes.
They were gray.
No.
He put out his hand and she raised hers, quickly, as if fearing the touch. For a few moments she simply looked at her own hands, turning them over like one marveling at the shape of palms and fingers, some unfamiliar piece of sculpture, stroking the backs of them, the fingers and the knobby, stick-out bones of the wrists. Then her eyes met his, and flooded with tears.
Very gently, afraid to touch—afraid she would vanish, evaporate, turn out to be only a dream—he helped her to sit. Her hands were warm where they touched his arms. For a time