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“Well, Coruscant’s got more ‘stuff,’ and now that I think about it, the lower levels make this look like a cloud city. But at least the air is clean. They don’t muck it up like this.”

“You mean this isn’t natural, this smell?” Tahiri asked.

“Nope,” Corran said. “They make things cheap and dirty here. The perfume you’ve noticed is one of the byproducts. If they don’t watch it, Eriadu will become another Duro. Well, what Duro was before the Yuuzhan Vong got hold of it, anyway.”

“I don’t think you ought to go barefoot here, Tahiri,” Anakin remarked.

Tahiri looked down at the grimy duracrete landing field and grimaced. “Maybe you’re right.”

Off to their right, a bulk freighter cut its underjets and settled on repulsorlifts.

“Okay,” Corran said. “I’m going to arrange for the supplies we need. You two—”

“Stay and guard the ship, I bet,” Anakin muttered.

“Right.”

Tahiri’s brow ruffled. “You mean I came all this way and don’t even get to see the place?”

“No,” Corran said. “When I get back, we’ll go into town and find someplace to eat. We’ll do a little exploring. But I don’t want to stay long; there’s no reason for anyone to double-check our transponder code, but if they do, we could run into a little trouble.”

“Well … okay,” Tahiri assented. She sat on the landing ramp, legs folded underneath her. Together she and Anakin watched Corran flag a ground transport and enter it. A few moments later, the blocky vehicle vanished from sight.

“Do you think people from here think clean worlds smell weird?” Tahiri asked.

“Probably. What did you think of Yavin Four, after all those years on Tatooine?”

“I thought it smelled weird,” she concluded, after a bit of thought. “But in a good way. Mostly in a good way. I mean, part of it smelled like a kitchen midden or a ’fresher sump. But the blueleaf, and the flowers …” She trailed off, and her expression changed. “What do you think the Yuuzhan Vong did to Yavin Four after we left? Do you think they changed it, you know, like they did some of the other planets they captured?”

“I don’t know,” Anakin said. “I don’t want to think about it.” It had been hard enough to see the Great Temple where so much of his childhood had been spent destroyed. To imagine that the verdant jungle and all of its creatures were also gone was more than he was willing to put himself through without proof.

Tahiri’s face stayed long.

“What?” Anakin asked, when she didn’t say anything for a while.

“I lied a minute ago.”

“Really? About what?”

She nodded at the cityscape. “I said it wasn’t ugly. But part of me thinks it is.”

“Well, I don’t think it’s all that attractive,” Anakin replied.

“No,” Tahiri said, her voice suddenly husky. “It’s not like that. It’s just that part of me sees this and thinks abomination.”

“Oh.”

The Yuuzhan Vong had done more to Tahiri than cut her face. They had implanted memories in her—of their language, of a childhood in a crèche, of growing up on a worldship.

“If you hadn’t rescued me, Anakin, I would be one of them now. I wouldn’t remember any other life.”

“Part of you would have always known,” Anakin disagreed. “There’s something in you, Tahiri, that no one could ever change.”

She shot him a startled frown. “You keep saying things like that. What do you mean? Is it good or bad? You mean I’m too stubborn, or what?”

“I mean you’re too Tahiri,” he said.

“Oh.” She attempted a smile and half succeeded. “I guess I’ll take that as a compliment, since you never give me any obvious ones.”

Anakin felt his face warm. He and Tahiri had been best friends for a long time. Now that she was fourteen and he was sixteen, things were getting very confusing. It was like her eyes had changed colors, but they hadn’t. They were just more interesting somehow.

She had cut her hair, right before they left for Eriadu—that had been a shock. She now wore it in a kind of bob, with wispy little bangs that tickled at her eyebrows.

She noticed his regard. “What? You don’t like my hair?”

“It’s fine. It’s a nice cut. About the same