Star Wars_ Tales of the Bounty Hunters - Kevin J. Anderson [111]
An old woman dressed in rags rose to meet him. The shop was still as dark and dirty as it had been all those years before. “4-LOM!” the woman said. “Welcome.”
She could not stand up straight She leaned over the few cases in front of her, bent with age. An old program 4-LOM had not used in a long time activated in his mind, and 4-LOM let it run. “How are you?” he asked the woman.
“Old,” she said. “But I can still work. I still sell jewels.”
“When I left here, you had three jewels of mine on consignment,” 4-LOM said. “Have you sold them?”
“Two, yes. And I have credits to pay you with. How do you want to be paid—Imperial credits, other jewels? I will show you my stock.”
“Which jewel is left?”
“Ah, I will show you.”
She gathered all the jewels on display and put them in pockets in her dress, then she rolled back a rug on the floor behind her cases and opened a trap door there. “Come,” she said. She lit a candle and started down steps into the blackness.
4-LOM followed. Beneath the shop lay a room that glittered with jewels. She had never shown him this room before. He wondered why she did now. She knew he was a thief.
“Can you see it?” she said, holding up her light.
4-LOM looked around the room and saw his jewel, glinting blue in the woman’s light: the Ankarres Sapphire.
“I had hoped you would still have that one,” he said. He picked it up. It glittered beautifully. She had kept it polished.
“You wouldn’t let me cut it down, and no one could ever afford the whole stone,” she said. “I was glad of that, actually. I touch it to wherever I hurt, every day. It heals me.”
“That is why I need it now,” 4-LOM said.
“To heal you?” she said. “You are metal. Go to a foundry.”
“The sapphire will not heal me,” he said. “I need it for a mortal friend.”
He held the jewel out to the woman. “Touch it to where you hurt one last time before I take it,” he said. She touched it to her wrists and ankles, held it to her forehead for a time, then handed it back to 4-LOM.
They climbed up to the shop, and Toryn walked in. She smiled at 4-LOM. It had been many years since anyone had smiled at him. Other old programs rose, unbidden, to his mind: programs for kindness, service, and selflessness. He wondered if the jewel were affecting him, after all.
But that was illogical. It had had no effect on him when he had first touched the sapphire to his forehead years before. The old programs ran because he allowed them to run. He did not stop them. Maybe it was time to run those programs again. He could analyze them for their usefulness.
“Are you ready to leave?” he asked Toryn.
“I am,” she said. “The others are waiting outside.”
4-LOM turned to the old woman. “I want you to keep the credits you owe me. Thank you for helping me years ago when I needed it.”
She bowed to 4-LOM, and he and Toryn left for the ship. Rivers, Bindu, Rory, Darklighter, and Samoc went with them. “Samoc,” 4-LOM called when they got inside the ship. He held up the jewel in the shadows of the corridor there. “Do you know what this is?”
She looked at it for a moment. “No,” she said. “But it is beautiful.”
4-LOM explained it to her. “Touch it to your burns,” he said. “It might help you heal.” He held it out to her.
She held it in her hands for a moment, then touched it to the bandages still on her face even after a month. After a moment, she had to sit down on the deck.
“Did it help you?” 4-LOM asked.
“I don’t know. I feel so different—in a good way. Rested, maybe?”
“I must take it to Zuckuss,” 4-LOM said. He took the jewel and found Zuckuss in an acquisition’s cell. Zuckuss had filled the cell with ammonia and lay there out of his suit, coughing now and then. 4-LOM entered the airlock, waited while ammonia replaced the oxygen, then entered the cell. Zuckuss looked up at him and said nothing. 4-LOM laid the jewel on Zuckuss’s chest.
Zuckuss looked at it. He knew what jewel it was. He had heard