Star Wars_ Cloak of Deception - James Luceno [44]
It was a wonderful place to be for someone who had long been a scholar, a historian, a lover of art, and a collector of rare objects; someone with a passion for exploring life’s manifold heights and depths.
Frequently he would shrug off his elaborate cloak and take up the simple dress of a trader or a recluse. He would throw a hood over his head and wander the lightless abysses, the dark paths and neglected plazas, the tunnels and alleyways, the seedy underworld. Anonymous, he would make trips to the equator, the poles, and other remote places. Beneath his ambitions—for himself, for Naboo, for the Republic at large—he had always been unassuming, and that apparent lack of guile allowed him to pass without being recognized; to all but disappear in a crowd, as only a person of solitude might—as one who had kept his own company for so many years.
And yet, others sought him out. Perhaps for the very reason that he revealed so little about himself. Initially he assumed that others found his reclusiveness intriguing, as if he led a secret life. But he quickly learned that what they really wanted to do was talk about themselves; to solicit not his counsel but his ear, trusting that he would guard the secrets of their lives as closely as he guarded his own.
That had been the case with Valorum, who had forged a relationship with Palpatine at the start of the Supreme Chancellor’s second four-year term of office.
What Palpatine lacked in charisma, he made up for in candor, and it was that directness that had led to his widespread appeal in the senate. Here was Palpatine, with his ready smile; above corruption, above deception or duplicity, a kind of confessor, willing to hear the most banal confessions or the basest of misdeeds without passing judgment—aloud, at any rate. For in his heart he judged the universe on his own terms, with a clear sense of right and wrong.
He looked to no other guide than himself.
Among the delegates who represented the worlds of the outlying systems, his reputation was particularly exalted, primarily because tiny Naboo was one of those worlds, all by itself at the edge of the Mid Rim, with Malastare—home to Gran and Dugs—its only neighbor of significance. Like many of its neighbors, Naboo was ruled by an elected monarch—and an unenlightened one, at that—but it was a peaceful world, unspoiled, rich in classic elements, and inhabited not only by humans, but also by a mostly aquatic indigenous species known as Gungans.
When most of his peers had left public service at the accepted age of twenty, Palpatine had elected to remain a politician, and his tenure on Coruscant had provided him with singular insight into the afflictions that vexed the outlying star systems.
It was while befriending a group of Bith delegates that he first learned of the Nebula Front, and later, it was a Bith who introduced him to some of the members who commanded the organization. By rights Palpatine should have had nothing to do with terrorists, but the founding members of the Nebula Front were neither fanatics nor anarchists. Many of their grievances with the Trade Federation, and Coruscant, were legitimate. More important, wherever the Federation was involved, it was difficult to remain impartial.
Had Palpatine been one of the many senators receiving Trade Federation kickbacks, it would have been easy to look the other way, or to turn a deaf ear—as Valorum had put it. But as the representative of a world that depended on the Trade Federation for food and other imports, as Naboo did, it was impossible to dismiss what he had heard and seen.
Eventually, the Bith had introduced him to the Front’s newest leader, Havac.
For previous meetings with Havac, Palpatine had selected out-of-the-way places in Coruscant’s lawless lower levels. But the current crisis in the senate had necessitated that they exercise a greater measure of secrecy,