Star Wars_ Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor - Matthew Woodring Stover [145]
“But it’s not me. It’s just some made-up guy using my name. A holothriller hero. A storybook prince.”
“If you say so.”
Skywalker lowered his face into his hands, and for a long moment he just sat there, silent, motionless. Finally he said, “You didn’t write anything about my good-byes with Nick.”
“No. Too anticlimactic. The story needs to end with a nice, neat wrap-up. I like your little astromech droid. I think I’m going to end with him.”
“On the shuttle, later, after I asked Nick about an investigator and he told me about you, just before Nick and Aeona took off … Nick reminded me that I’d never told him what my ‘best trick’ was. You know what I told him? I told him he’d just seen it.”
Skywalker lifted his face from his hands, and his eyes were dark. Wounded. Haunted by shadows. “My best trick is to do one thing—to make one small move, even a simple choice—and kill thousands of people. Thousands.”
Geptun nodded noncommittally. After a moment, he said, “One of those heroes I mentioned liked to occasionally say Jedi are not soldiers. We are keepers of the peace.”
“Keepers of the peace,” Skywalker murmured. “Yes. Yes, I like that. I think that’s right. We are the light in the darkness.”
“A poetic metaphor.”
“I’m not surprised you like it; you made it up. But I think … I think it’s not just a metaphor. I think it’s the plain truth.”
“And all I’m doing,” Geptun said, “is sharing that light with the whole galaxy. I would think you’d want to play along.”
“I suppose …” Luke took a deep breath, sighed it out. “Maybe you’re right. How much harm can it do?”
“Well …” Geptun shifted on the settee. He had an uncomfortable feeling that he was about to do something he abhorred: tell the truth.
Something about Skywalker just seemed to bring that out of him.
“Let them tell their stories,” Skywalker said. “Let them make holothrillers and whatever else. It doesn’t matter. None of the stories people tell about me can change who I really am.”
“Yes,” Geptun said heavily. “But they can change who people think you are. And that, my young friend, can do considerable damage. Look at Luke Skywalker and the Jedi’s Revenge.”
Luke nodded thoughtfully. “I guess … I guess if people are going to tell stories about me anyway, I should make sure they’re telling the right kind of stories.”
“You’ll never have cause to complain of mine, at least. Just don’t start believing your own press.”
“No fear of that,” Luke said. “I’m not much of a reader, and holothrillers bore me. But there are a couple of changes you need to make.”
“Do I? My producers rather like it as is.”
“And if I were to visit them and talk it over, they might change their minds. They might change their minds about making the production at all.”
“Oh, please. After all the money they’ve sunk into it already?”
“I can be,” Luke said mildly, “surprisingly persuasive.”
“Ah, yes, I suppose you can.” Geptun sighed. “Very well. What changes?”
“You made the deaths of the shadow troopers seem almost like an accident. Like I didn’t know it would happen. But I did. I knew what I was doing. The story has to say so.”
“Well …”
“That lightsaber versus ‘vibroshield’ fight? That goes too. It’s stupid. Besides, who wants to watch me cut up one more villain with my lightsaber? Don’t you think that’s getting pretty old?”
“Perhaps,” Geptun allowed, “we can work a little bit of truth in there.”
“And then there’s Aeona Cantor. She’s not my love interest—she’s Nick’s girlfriend, and that’s the whole story. Anyway, she’s not my type. Too abrasive. And I don’t like redheads.”
“I’ll make a note of it. What did happen to Nick and Aeona? And to Kar?”
Luke shrugged. “Nick thinks Blackhole is still alive.”
“Really?”
“That’s what