Star Wars_ Children of the Jedi - Barbara Hambly [31]
Scrims of mist flowed like streams among the hanging garden beds that descended from the lacework of transparisteel vaults and domes, pendant gondolas as big as houses, some high in the swift-shifting streams of mist just under the plex, others lowered on cables nearly to the level of the broken turret of the stumpy stone tower that stood on the lava bench that Jevax and his party had just achieved: all that remained of the citadel of the Jedi.
“That’s quite an engineering job for a bunch of folks who just ran around the galaxy with swords.” Han as usual was determined not to be impressed.
“In running around the galaxy with swords,” said Jevax, smiling and tugging on the end of one white braid, “I assume they encountered and befriended not only reliable engineers, but those trading corporations who were both interested in the exotic fruits and vegetable fibers our unique climatic conditions produce, and honest enough not to completely exploit the natives of this and the other volcanic rift valleys on the planet. The first representatives of Brathflen Corporation made their appearance, to the best of my calculations, within a year of the Jedi’s departure. Galactic Exotics started development of shalaman and podon orchards here very soon after that. They joined with Imperial Exports to dome the valley, mostly because of a plan designed by—I believe—the Jedi Master Plett himself, to grow vine-coffee and vine-silk on the adjustable platforms beneath the dome.”
He pointed upward. A large gondola, trailing festoons of pale, green-striped foliage, glided silently along one of the myriad tracks that followed the girders, halted under the center of the dome, and lowered itself with graceful ease a good ten meters. In doing so it put itself level with another hanging bed, from which tiny figures threw out a portable bridge made of a single line of chain ladder, and a second cable for handhold before they scrambled insouciantly across.
“Both plants depend on short-cycle temperature swings of thirty degrees or more. Few environments can sustain them, and those that can are seldom habitable enough to make the investment worthwhile. Those aerial plantations support a good thirty percent of our total economy.”
Leia refrained from saying that a quantity of vine-silk sufficient to make a decent dress would cost enough to support a good thirty percent of any planet’s total economy. Which was why Han’s gift to her of a gown and tabard of the stuff a short time ago had reduced her to speechlessness. Her friend Winter had picked them out. Han still had a weakness for clothing completely unsuited to the Chief of State, and had learned not to trust his own judgment on things to be worn in public.
Chewie, gazing upward, yowled appreciatively. Leia remembered her unnerving adventures on the Wookiee’s home planet of Kashyyyk and shivered.
“So you think they arranged commercial development of the planet as a … a kind of thank-you?”
“Well …” Jevax led the way toward the broken walls and half-ruined buildings that formed a clotted line where the bench joined the rise of the cliff behind it. “Brathflen, Galactic, and Imperial/Republic are the only three corporations with completely clean records as far as treatment of the local populations goes. Given the number of other companies operating in the Core Worlds, it can’t be a coincidence that they were the three who got the coordinates for this planet.”
The bench—the last giant step of rock at the end of the valley—was less than thirty meters wide, running back in an uneven triangle into the sheerness of the cliffs. A jungle-covered slope of debris blunted the inner point of the triangle, before which rose the tower,