Star Wars_ The Adventures of Lando Calrissia - L. Neil Smith [169]
Now, in his special secret chamber aft of the Wennis’ drives, Rokur Gepta contemplated the temporary contents of a force-bubble stronger than the full battle-shielding of the cruiser. Perched upon its pylon, it contained a secret an entire race, the Sorcerers of Tund, had died to protect.
At greater strength now, its ghostly flicker filled the room with evil dancing shadows, all of them Gepta’s. He felt at peace. It was the only light he really liked. It reminded him of home. The home he had remodeled with its assistance.
Inside the bubble tiny forms seethed and sizzled at the border of visibility, like dust motes in a sunbeam. They were densest at the bottom of the bubble, yet many thousands more sparkled in the space above the bottom. They were lively, active, hungry.
Gepta chuckled to himself. In a manner of thinking, they, too, were his pets. He had harnessed the most dangerous forces in the universe and kept them there in a cage. He made and unmade them at his pleasure. And he had work for them to do. Again. There was enough … substance … there to eliminate the life in an entire globular cluster.
The ThonBoka, all its inhabitants, Lando Calrissian, Vuffi Raa, Klyn Shanga—yes, and perhaps this arm of the navy, which was, after all, another obstacle to his desire for power—all of them would feel the agony of first contact with this, the most unusual of all his pets.
And then they would feel nothing.
He shut off the switches. Where there had been activity before within the bubble, all movement stopped. The green glow died abruptly. The motes stopped dancing. It was drawing near the time that Gepta had arranged to have the drives shut down again, so that he could steer his small auxiliary through the zone of murderous radiation, back to the main hull of the Wennis.
The force-bubble grew smaller until it, too, disappeared, leaving the smooth, mirror-surface top of the pylon, a simple pedestal of polished metal. Gepta smiled to himself, pocketed the one small object he had removed from the pedestal as the force-field deactivated, and began cycling the airlock.
How beautiful to contemplate an entire galaxy of worlds glowing sweetly thus, to imagine the whole universe clean and sterile, linear and predictable.
The One said to the Other, “I observe that you have brought the Rest.”
They were arrayed before him, rank on rank, less for the sake of discipline (a concept utterly alien to those beings) or even orderliness, than for the simple reason that all of them wanted to see and hear what was going to happen next. Uncountable numbers of them bristled with unfamiliar tenseness. They were not altogether certain it was an improvement over their normal state.
“Yes,” confirmed the Other, like his companion, like all his companions, glittering in the cold diamond starlight, “and I believe that they wish for you to address them now, explain—”
“But they know as well as you or I,” the One protested, rude interruptions and strained emotions coming now with greater frequency, even at so vast a remove from their grand experiment. “They’re all perfectly familiar with—”
“Yes,” his friend said, but gently, “and yet they wish it as a kind of ceremony, marking the passage of one epoch and the initiation of another, unknown, somehow frightening one. I wish it, too, if you do not mind greatly.”
The One hesitated, even though he had already assented within himself. After all, if those he cared for felt the need … and perhaps it would help calm him, as well. What sort of result would issue when this project was mature, however, worried him. Already circumstances were nearly unbearable.
“My friends, as we all know, some while ago, a rather long time, even for we who are perhaps the most longevous race in the galaxy, at my suggestion we caused a being to come into existence among us who was, well, somewhat different, imbuing him with certain minor physical advantages, and a burning desire