Star Wars_ Millennium Falcon - James Luceno [103]
I remember telling him that everything dies in time. And I remember him telling me that the base had left before its time.
On our return to the village, the Falcon was scrubbed clean of her mask, rubbed with oils enough to make a protocol droid envious, and adorned with flowers, inside and out. In small ceramic pots placed throughout the ship, sticks of fragrant incense burned. Though Noneen never said as much, I believe the ship became a kind of temple for his people. They would find the slightest excuses for visiting me—aches and pains, minor cuts and rashes—and they would submit without complaint to blood draws and scans performed by the medical droids.
My studies over the course of the next year turned up some remarkable findings. Noneen's people seemed to know beforehand when someone was about to die—though the term they used was leave. Noneen would sometimes say that this person or that was gone—even though I would be looking directly at the person, sometimes speaking with him or her. And sure enough, the person would die soon after, often without evidence of disease.
I asked him if his people had known before about the Imperial assault, and he said that they had. They saw the village gone.
Was this precognition the result of the Force? I wondered.
Noneen's answer was it might be.
Shortly into my second year of living among them, the entire village began to lapse into an uncharacteristically somber state. When I finally asked Noneen the reason, he told me that I was going. It was understood that I didn't realize I was going, and so everyone had kept it to themselves.
While I refused to believe it, I subjected myself nevertheless to every imaginable scan, all of which showed me to be in near-perfect health. Noneen, however, was insistent. I was going. But if I would allow a ritual to be performed on my behalf, it was possible that my leaving could be postponed for a time. I eagerly agreed to it, and when the ritual was completed Noneen told me that it had been partially successful.
Almost immediately I became terribly ill.
Had they done this to me? I asked myself. Was it a plan all along? Tests carried out by the droids eventually revealed that I had a congenital disease that had somehow gone unnoticed in almost thirty years of medical scans. By all rights I should have been dying, but I wasn't. Something was holding the disease in check. But for how long? I wondered.
I realized then that I was destined to remain with Noneen and his people for however long it would take to unravel the secret of their uncanny abilities. I became positively giddy with grandiose dreams. With all the progress the human species had made in the realms of science and technology, the secrets that would allow us to see into the future and perhaps extend our life spans had yet to be unlocked. And here I stood, poised to solve the mystery.
Save for one problem.
For months, I had been working up the nerve to ask Noneen how long he and his people would live, though I phrased the question differently. I said: “Are you here to stay?”
He gave his head a resigned shake. “We are going.”
“When?” I pressed, my voice betraying my utter sense of loss.
“Soon. Long before you leave.”
I doubled my efforts to learn everything I could about Noneen's people, but without success. And in the face of failure I'm afraid I morphed into more of a mad scientist than a medical practitioner.
Another year passed.
The Millennium Falcon had in large measure become part of the village landscape. But then one day the entire village turned out to clean the ship from stem to stern, removing the flowers and incense before coloring her with tree sap of the brightest hues I had ever seen them use. At least it wasn't war paint, I assured myself. Still, I found the sudden attention to be as worrisome as it was baffling.
By way of explanation,