Star Wars_ Planet of Twilight - Barbara Hambly [77]
He hadn’t heard Croig or anyone at the Blue Blerd of Happiness speak of the older man at all. Yet he’d defeated the (possibly Jedi) Hutt, taken over his power and his house. So he must have been a remarkable man. Was he dead, or just retired to the house in the Mountains of Lightning?
“Now, now, we can’t have any of that,” Ashgad was saying, to a raucous suggestion that Republic troops would soon be on hand to “settle for” the Therans. Good-natured sarcasm dripped from his deep voice. “They’re the majority, after all, you know. It’s their planet.”
“It’s our planet, too!” yelled Gerney Caslo, springing to his feet. “We bust our backs putting plants on this motherless rock. Don’t that count?”
“Does it?” Ashgad swept the crowd with a green eye suddenly cold and angry. “I thought so. I was optimistic enough to assure you I could do something about that. It appears that I was wrong.”
Silence fell, but Luke felt anger pass like ground lightning through the crowd.
“As you know,” said the politician, now suddenly the focus of the entire quiet room, “I had high hopes. Through connections I was able to obtain a meeting, not with some politician, not with some bureaucrat, not with some committee member, but with Leia Organa Solo herself—not,” he added bitterly, “that she was at all enthusiastic about coming, as she made clear to me from the outset.”
They’d called the senior Ashgad the Golden Tempter. Luke knew, listening to his son, what he must have sounded like. Ashgad used his voice like a master artist used a light organ, evoking nuance, shade, twilight, and brilliance with the slightest shifts of tone and volume.
“I apologize,” went on Ashgad, “for my enthusiasm and for my folly. I owe you all that apology, for raising hopes not destined to be fulfilled.” He gestured, and another man—at this distance Luke couldn’t tell whether it was a synthdroid or not, though there was something suspiciously smooth about the way he moved—slipped through the curtain and set up a holo player in the niche.
“Perhaps I should let Her Excellency tell you in her own words.”
The light in the chamber dimmed still further. The holo of Leia was of crystal-clear quality, appearing almost solid in the near darkness, as if she were bathed in radiance from an unseen source. The scale was perfect—life-size, so that she truly seemed to be in the room, hands folded on her knees, the heavy folds of her robe of state spread around her. The Noghri bodyguards squatted on their hunkers, nearly a dozen strong, like shadows behind her. Her chin was up, and she spoke with a cold precision Luke had only heard her use when she was truly angry.
“I’m afraid that any help from the Republic is out of the question, Master Ashgad,” she said. “The Republic cannot afford to be seen to support a minority—any minority—by prospective planetary councils still undecided about joining. Too much trade depends on our maintenance of the status quo and too many people see the efforts of the Rationalists on your planet as disruptive, unruly, and criminal.”
A buzz stirred the crowd. Beside Luke, Gerney Caslo mutttered, “Criminal—I’ll show you criminal, honey!”
“Criminal to make an honest living pumping water …”
“What’s disruptive about wanting medicine for my son …?”
Leia’s image went on, “I understand your problems, Master Ashgad. But the Republic must look at the larger picture. And, quite frankly, the discontent of a handful of settlers on a world that isn’t even a member of the Republic is not worth the two billion credits it would cost—not to mention the damage done to the Republic’s