Star Wars_ Planet of Twilight - Barbara Hambly [3]
In the shadow of the vine, Ashgad’s secretary, Dzym, smiled.
Leia wasn’t sure what to make of her irrational aversion to Dzym. There were alien species whom the humans of the galaxy—the Corellians, Alderaanians, and others—found repulsive, usually for reasons involving subliminal cues like pheromones or subconscious cultural programming. But the native Chorians—Oldtimers, they were called, whether they belonged to the Theran cult or not—were descended from the same human rootstock. She wondered whether her aversion had to do with something simple like diet. She was not conscious of any odd smell about the small, brown-skinned man with his black hair drawn up into a smooth topknot. But she knew that frequently one wasn’t conscious of such things. It was quite possible that there could be a pheromonic reaction below the level of consciousness, perhaps the result of inbreeding on a world where communities were widely scattered and had never been large. Or it might be an individual thing, something about the looseness of that neutral, unexceptional mouth or having to do with the flattened-looking tan eyes that never seemed to blink.
“Are you one of the original Chorians, Master Dzym?”
He was without gesture. Leia realized she had subconsciously been expecting him to move in an unpleasing, perhaps a shocking, way. He didn’t nod, but only said, “My ancestors were among those sent to Nam Chorios by the Grissmaths, yes, Your Excellency.” Something changed in his eyes, not quite glazing over but becoming preoccupied, as if all his attention were suddenly directed elsewhere.
Ashgad went on hastily, as if covering the other man’s lapse, “The problem is, Your Excellency, that seven hundred and fifty years of complete isolation has made the Oldtimer population of Nam Chorios into, if you will excuse my frankness, the most iron-bound set of fanatical conservatives this side of an academic licensing board. They’re dirt farmers—I understand. They’ve had centuries of minimal technology and impossibly difficult weather and soil conditions, and you and I both know how that makes for conservatism and, to put it bluntly, superstition. One of the things my father tried to institute on the planet was a modern clinic in Hweg Shul. The place can’t make enough to keep the med droids up and running. The farmers would rather take their sick to some Theran cult Listener to be healed with ‘power sucked down out of the air.’ ” His hands fluttered in a sarcastic, hocus-pocus mime.
He took a seat in the other gray leather chair, a blocky man in a very plain brown tunic and trousers obviously cut and fitted by a standard patterning-droid and dressed up with add-ons—gold collar pin, gold-buckled belt, pectoral chain—that Leia had seen in old holos of his father. He leaned his elbows on his knees, bent forward confidingly.
“It isn’t only the Newcomers that the Rationalist Party is trying to help, Your Excellency,” he said. “It’s the farmers themselves. The Oldtimers who aren’t Therans, who just want to survive. Unless something is done to wrest control of the old gun stations away from the Theran cultists, who forbid any kind of interplanetary trade, these people are going to continue to live like … like the agricultural slaves they once were. There’s a strong Rationalist Party on Nam Chorios, and it’s growing stronger. We want planetary trade with the New Republic. We want technology and proper exploitation of the planet’s resources. Is that so harmful?”
“The majority of the planet’s inhabitants think it is.”
Ashgad gestured furiously. “The majority of the planet’s inhabitants have been brainwashed by half a dozen lunatics who get loaded on brachniel root and wander around the wasteland having conversations with rocks! If they want their crops to fail and their children to die because they refuse to come into the modern world, that’s their business, I suppose, though it breaks my heart to see it. But they’re forbidding Newcomers