Star Wars_ Splinter of the Mind's Eye - Alan Dean Foster [29]
“Very well. Since I am the Imperial law here, I will consider your appeal myself.” Grammel paused a moment, then said easily, “Your appeal is rejected.”
“Then I appeal to the Imperial Department of Resources representative in charge of mining operations,” the man riposted. “I want to see the judgment reviewed in another fashion.”
“Certainly,” Grammel agreed. He walked over to the wall behind his desk. Taking a long thin bar of plastic from its place there, he pressed the switch at one end as he came back around the desk. “The conversation has been recorded,” he informed them all.
He depressed another switch and the bar showed a moving line of words across its waxy surface. When the record had finished, he raised and abruptly thrust one end of the unyielding plastic into the argumentative miner’s left eye.
Blood and pulp squirted in all directions as the man collapsed, screaming, to the floor. One of his terrified companions bent over him, tried to staunch the flow of blood from the ruined socket. It ran in a steady stream down the man’s face and coverall front.
“You three are dismissed,” Grammel told them perfunctorily, as if nothing unusual had happened. “Sergeant?”
“Captain-Supervisor?”
“Take these three into the rear holding cells. Their two companions can join them as soon as they’re well enough. Let them sit and think for a while. Record their names and identification codes so that they may more easily pay their fines. Unless,” he finished conversationally, tapping the recorder rod in one palm, “someone else would like to appeal my judgment?”
As the two miners half-carried, half-dragged their unconscious companion to the exit, under guard, Grammel gestured at them with the rod. “He still has his eye, you know. It’s recorded permanently on this. Bring him back when he recovers and I’ll let him see it again.”
The sergeant saw the guards and miners out, then returned to stand watch beside the door.
“I dislike these administrative details,” Grammel said amiably to Luke and the Princess. “But this is a largely unknown, unexplored world and I have little time to waste. Sometimes my decisions must be fast and harsh.
“Only the degree of their ability to devise more sophisticated debasements for themselves separates the human animals that work here from the natives. This kind of inventiveness has been a persistent and lamentable quality of mankind’s for millennia. Realizing that as you must, I’m sure you two will be more sensible than those lower types who just left us.” He sat back on the edge of the desk, commenced tapping his lower leg with the red-tipped rod. Luke watched it nervously.
“I told you, Captain-Supervisor,” he reiterated, “we must have lost our identification in the fight. It must have fallen in the mud. If you’ll just let us go back there I’m sure we can find it. Unless,” he added with seeming concern, “someone came by after the fight and stole it.”
“Oh, I don’t think any of our hard-working citizens would do that,” Grammel commented, turning away. He looked sharply back over his shoulder. “In fact, I don’t think it’s lying there, either. I don’t think you two had any identification to lose.
“From what I’ve been told, you both are more than strangers to this town. You’re strangers to the mine, to the Imperial presence here, to this very world. How you arrived undetected and unauthorized and in one piece I can’t imagine.” He gritted his teeth and added dangerously, “I will find out, however. I always find out what I want to know.”
“That’s funny,” noted the Princess, “because you strike me as having a particularly limited capacity for learning.”
Her remark didn’t faze Grammel. If anything, the Princess’ studied insults appeared to please him. “A little while ago, young lady, you called me incompetent. Now you belittle me intellectually. I am no intellectual, but I am also neither incompetent nor uneducated. I got that way by learning how to get answers to my questions.
“But your first comment was correct, about my manners.” He drew back his left foot and kicked her in