Star Wars_ Children of the Jedi - Barbara Hambly [6]
HAN SOLO
ITHOR
THE TIME OF MEETING
BELIA’S BOSOM—SULLUST—BAY 58
SMELLY SAINT—YETOOM NA UUN—BAY 12
FARGEDNIM P’TAAN
“P’taan’s a medium-big drug dealer on Yetoom.” Solo rubbed unconsciously at the scar on his chin, as if contact with it reminded him of his own rough-and-tumble contraband days. “If Drub was on yarrock he could have got it from him, provided he’d found some way to make himself a millionaire in the past seven years. And you’d have to be a millionaire to take enough of that stuff to give yourself that kind of damage.”
He shook his head, and looked again at the starved body on the table, the filthy, clawlike nails.
“I take it the Smelly Saint and Bella’s Bosom are ships?” Leia’s eyes were still on the nightmare readouts above the bed.
“The Saint runs ripoff copy agri-droids out of the Kimm systems, sometimes slaves from the Senex Sector. Makes sense. Yetoom’s on the edge of the Senex.”
He shook his head again, staring down at what was left of the man he had known. “He used to be bigger than the three of us put together; I kidded him about being Jabba the Hutt’s younger, cuter brother.”
“Children,” whispered McKumb again, and tears leaked from his staring eyes. “They hid the children down the well. Plett’s Well.” His head jerked, spastic, face contorting with pain. “Han … Kill you. Kill you all. Got to tell Han. They’re there …”
“Got to tell Han,” repeated Luke softly. “That doesn’t sound like a threat.”
“Plett’s Well.…” Leia wondered why the name tugged on her mind, what it reminded her of …
What voice had said it, and who had hushed the speaker at the sound of those words?
“He’s definitely suffering from severe and prolonged malnutrition,” said Tomla El, surveying the line of numbers on the bottommost readout screen. “How long since you saw him last, General Solo?”
“Eight years, nine years,” said Han. “Before the fighting on Hoth. I ran across him on Ord Mantell—he was the one who told me Jabba the Hutt had major money on my head. I never heard of anything called Plett’s Well.”
“Plettwell.” Drub McKumb spoke in an almost natural tone, turning his head toward Leia, who stood nearest, though his eyes, momentarily calm, seemed to see something or someone other than her. “Get to Solo, honey. Tell him. I can’t. All the children were down the well. They’re gathering …” He flinched, and the right-hand screen scorched to blood; his body spasmed, twisting up into a heaving arc.
“Kill them!” he screamed. “Stop them!”
Tomla El moved forward swiftly, slapping another patch of gylocal to the row already on the man’s neck. McKumb’s eyes slipped closed as the raw color of the monitor faded and darkened.
“Children,” he whispered again. “The children of the Jedi.”
The brain-wave patterns of the left-hand monitor dipped and eased as he sank into sleep, but those on the right continued to flare as he slid into dreams from which he could not be waked.
“Plettwell.” Dr. Cray Mingla spoke the word as if tasting it, turning it over like a circuit board of unfamiliar make to look at all sides. At the same time her long, exquisitely manicured fingers stirred through the little heap of debris retrieved from Drub McKumb’s pockets—credit papers, broken ampoules, and tiny packets of black plastene coated with fusty-smelling yarrock residue, and half a dozen pieces of old-fashioned jewelry: a pendant of three opals, a bracelet, and four earrings which did not match, their intricate lacings of bronze wire and dancing pearls crusted thick with pinkish gold mineral salts. Her straight brows, darker than the winter-sun silk of her upswept hair, tweaked down over the bridge of her nose, and Leia, on the opposite side of the Guest House’s dining table, heard again the name in her mind.
Plett’s Well, someone—her father?—had said … When?
“My mother,” said Cray after a time. “I think my mother talked about it.” She looked hesitantly over at Luke, standing in silence near the door. “She and my great-aunt fought about it, I think. I was very little, but I remember my great-aunt