Star Wars_ X-Wing 02_ Wedge's Gamble - Michael A. Stackpole [102]
Still, there are only four more days until her minimum deadline, two and a half weeks until the maximum. I’m close to success. Loor nodded slowly in the darkness. “If Derricote delivers what he promises with this Sullustan group, the Rebels will take a dying world and their movement will die right along with it.”
32
Corran wetted a small cloth swab with ethyl alcohol and rubbed it over the focal end of the BlasTech DL-44 Heavy blaster pistol. He peered at it closely, then gave it one more light pass with the cloth. As the alcohol evaporated, he saw Gavin reflected in miniature. “Ah, Gavin, this is the third time you’ve asked me if you could ask me a question.”
The kid blushed as he snapped the trigger assembly for his SoroSuub S1BR into the receiver housing. “I know, sorry.” Gavin kept his voice low enough that no one in the warehouse space aside from Corran could hear him. “I wanted to ask you about, urn, you know.”
Corran winced. He didn’t know, but that sort of thing was only said as preface to a question about killing or sex. Since Gavin had long ago become an ace and had acquitted himself well in the firefight in the warehouse across Invisec, Corran assumed the question had to be about sex. His parents should have told him about this before they let him go off to war, shouldn’t they? Corran looked around to see if Wedge was nearby, figuring he would do a much better job helping Gavin.
He couldn’t see Wedge anywhere. Corran shrugged his shoulders and eased the concentration element into the barrel of the blaster pistol. “What’s your question?”
Gavin set his face in what he clearly thought was a serious expression, but the general youthfulness of his features undermined the effort. “On Tatooine, well, in Anchorhead, well, in the area around the farm, it was small and so … We didn’t have a school the way you did on Corellia, see, we all took classes via a local HoloNet and sent lessons in on datacards, you know …”
Corran fit the barrel assembly together and snapped it into the gun’s frame. “Gavin, are you trying to tell me you don’t know how to kiss a girl?”
The young man pulled his head up and blinked, then frowned. “Anchorhead may have been small but not that small.”
“Kin don’t count.”
Gavin blushed. “I wasn’t related to everyone around there, you know.”
Corran raised his hands and smiled. “I know, I know, I was just giving you a hard time. What is it that you want to know?”
“Well, you’ve been around a lot. And you come from Corellia.” Gavin’s voice dropped precipitously. “You’ve seen, you know, two people get together, but they’re different, right?”
“Do you mean like Erisi and me? We come from different worlds, but we’re both human—though we haven’t gotten together.”
“No, I mean like Nawara and Rhysati.”
“Oh.” Corran nodded slowly. Throughout the galaxy the permutations of relationships between two or more individuals were legion, as were the rules, formal and otherwise, that governed their conduct. Prohibitions on relationships between races and classes and castes varied from planet to planet, but the rules governing interspecies relationships tended to be largely similar. The majority of them were set by official Imperial policy—a policy CorSec officials had called “look but don’t touch.”
“Exotic and different can be very attractive, Gavin. There are some folks who absolutely draw the line on dating outside their species while there are others who seem to be interested in experiencing anything and everything they can.” Corran shrugged. “I guess I don’t think it’s wrong, but it just may not be right.”
“I don’t think I follow you.”
“I wasn’t very clear. Look, would you like to have children someday,