Her babies were at work. Jabe had taken the store’s LiteVan speeder truck to the dry goods distribution center in Bestine; Kallie was out back with the animals. That left her alone with Bohmer, the slow-motion Rodian, sitting at the luncheonette table, considering his caf. She wondered what he saw there, sometimes.
She slouched against the cabinets and sighed. FIND WHAT you NEED AT DANNAR’S CLAIM, the sign outside read. What she needed was a month away on a lush green forest planet.
“… but back then the first time I was workin’ for real money, on a vaporator, I just started crossin’ circuits. Beginner’s luck, they called it. That was the second time I seen rain—or maybe it was the first. I’ve spent the rest of my days tryin’ to figger out just what I did …”
Annileen looked up. Orrin entered through the back of the store, whistling and wearing the natty dress browns she’d picked out for him from the high-end catalog. Clicking his leather boots together, he smiled broadly at her. “How do I look?”
“Like you just landed from Coruscant,” she said, smiling wanly back.
“Thanks to my fashion coordinator.” Orrin’s expression hardened when he glanced at Ulbreck. Realizing the old man was in mid-rainfall, Orrin rolled his eyes and plunked down his satchel. “Got a meeting in Mos Eisley. That new hotel is taking bids for a water supplier.”
Annileen nodded. Since the last commodity bust, Orrin had redoubled his efforts to lock in regular purchasers at preset prices.
“I’ll talk to a couple of farms on the way back about joining the Settlers’ Call. Folks who actually care about protecting their assets.” Orrin shot a pointed look at Ulbreck, but the old man paid him no mind. Annileen knew that Orrin had tried again—and failed again—to sign Ulbreck up a week earlier.
Turning his attention to the counter space, Orrin patted his vest pockets. “Blast!”
“Forgot your credit pouch again?” Annileen knew this story, too. Orrin raised the hinged section of the counter and stepped to the cashbox—sealed, as it had been in her husband’s day, with the barrel of a blaster pistol inserted into a pair of metal rings. Annileen watched as Orrin removed the blaster and pulled out a handful of credits.
He looked at her, abruptly. “Oh, I’ll leave a—”
“Forget it.”
Money in one hand, he placed the other on her cheek and smirked. “Thanks, Annie. Nobody loves me like you do.”
“You’re probably right.”
She watched the man leave. Nobody had ever kept accounts between the two families when it came to the small things. But lately, Annileen had increasingly gotten the sense that whatever she owed Orrin for protection and helping to rear her son paled next to the meals, supplies, and petty cash he’d taken out of the store.
Still, a sunny nature counted for a lot, and if she wasn’t going to begrudge Wyle Ulbreck his audience, it was hard to refuse Orrin his little liberties—especially now that he was in his “big business” phase. Drunk divorcé Orrin had been a trial, years before. The new model verged on blowhard—especially now, as he seemed to be selling in overdrive lately. But that was a definite improvement.
Ulbreck plopped down a bottle of Fizzzz and a credit on the counter. “Say, did I tell you about the first time I saw a krayt dragon?”
Enough! Annileen’s eyes scanned beneath the side counter. There it was—the tub of goods Ben had left behind the week before. She’d gone back and forth for days about restocking the shelves with the material. Now, opening the window behind her, she decided to do something else.
“Kallie!” Annileen leaned out the window. Her daughter was behind the store, in the livestock yard. “Kallie, can you hear me?”
“No!”
“Can you watch the counter for a couple of hours?”
“No!”
“Great. Come on in.”
Annileen shut the window and pulled the tub from beneath the counter. She was looking in the little mirror behind the kitchen door when Kallie appeared from the back, a sodden, sullen mess. Annileen threw her daughter a rag. “Clean up. I need you to work the till.”
“Do I have to?” Kallie glared at her mother.
“You have something better to do?”
“I’m mucking out the dewback pen.” The girl peered in at Ulbreck, who was now nattering away to the hapless Rodian. “So the answer is yes.”
“Sorry, sweetie.” Annileen stepped out from behind the door. Her hair was pulled back in a bun, and she was wearing her light cloak and hood. “I need to run to Arnthout to see a man about some dricklefruit.”
“Dricklefruit, my eye. I know where you’re going.” Stepping behind the counter, the girl watched her mother pick up the tub of goods. “You’re the one that said nothing good ever comes from the Jundland Wastes!”
“Hush,” Annileen said, already to the exit. “I’ll be back before lunch.”
Kallie’s voice went up two octaves. “Tell Ben I said hello!”
The whir of a landspeeder sounded outside—and Ulbreck reappeared at the counter before Kallie, continuing his winding tale. He didn’t even seem to notice that he’d switched Calwells.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THOOM! THOOM! THOOM!
If not for the sound, she would’ve driven past it. White-on-white under the climbing suns, the squarish hut with its pourstone dome neatly blended with the Jundland Wastes. Only when Annileen banked the X-31 along the desert floor did she see the glint from the vaporator out back. The hut squatted low on a southwestern bluff—likely, she figured, situated over a cave. Another Last-Ditch Lodge.
The term was fully pejorative, referring to frontier dwellings built on the theory—never proven—that the uplands of the wastes yielded more condensation at night. No one knew for sure, because even the hardiest farmers seldom lasted more than a season. These were places for grubbers on their last chance and would-be wizards who just knew they had magical combinations of vaporator settings no one had ever thought of before. The whole thing was ludicrous to Annileen. Assuming anyone hit it lucky, what investor in his right mind would build an industrial farm out here? Crazy.
She wasn’t crazy, though, to pick this direction. Annileen had seen Ben head out from the oasis days earlier, and Orrin had reported meeting him out this way. After the past airless week, a hint of a trail still existed. Now she spotted Ben’s eopie quivering out front, less worried about her approach than the noise from out back.
Thoom! Thoom!
Annileen parked the speeder and reached into the rumble seat. That had been an invention of Dannar’s: ripping out the back of the middle console to make room for the younglings—or, in this case, Ben’s tub of supplies. Realizing what the sound was, she suppressed a laugh as she walked the goods up the hill.
“All right,” Ben called out from behind the house. “I take your meaning. You’re upset. You can stop now!”
Thoom! A mountain of hair, easily his match for height, backed up and charged again, horns-first, into the side of Ben’s hut. THOOM!
Annileen propped the tub on her hip and watched with a barely concealed smile. “Having a problem with your bantha?”
“No, no. Why do you ask?” Ben gripped a rope and tried to get the calf’s attention. He’d been at this a while, Annileen saw. His blousy white shirt was dingy, and sweat dripped from dark blond hair exposed to the sky. The animal snorted angrily and returned to its mission.
She pointed to the rope. “What are you planning to do with that?”
“I’m considering hanging myself.” He looked up at her, exasperated. “I don’t know what I did to set it off. Normally, I’m good with animals.”
“Well, as you saw with Kallie the other day, they’re still animals,” she said, setting down the tub. “Forget the rope. Let me have a try.”
He gestured indifferently. “Be my guest.”
Annileen removed her gloves and strolled toward the massive creature. “Raising animals isn’t like raising teenagers. Kids don’t know what they want, and they
want it now. Animals, on the other hand, usually do know what they want. Like this guy,” she said, edging toward the bantha calf. “He thinks your house is his mother.”
“His mother?”
“Yep.” Feeling the steaming breath of the wild behemoth, Annileen reached out gently and touched the calf’s face. The bantha stamped its feet impatiently. “Mama’s probably wandered farther up into the wastes.”
“He can’t find her?”
“If you had this much hair over your face, you might lose your way, too. To a bantha calf, everything that’s bigger than food is probably Mom.”
“A good rule of thumb.” Ben crossed his arms and watched with concern as Annileen inserted herself fully between the animal and the battered wall. “What do we—I mean, what do I do?”
“Shhh.” Annileen traced the calf’s eye sockets with her fingers. Leaning forward, she nuzzled its face. The bantha’s hooves stilled. The woman whispered to Ben. “You are going to watch me point him somewhere else.”
Ben stood back as Annileen strode forward, pushing the young bantha by the horns. It outweighed her by a metric ton, at least—and yet it was backing down the hill. At the foot of the bluff, she turned it to one side and gave it a swat. Long, shaggy hair swaying, it moseyed off.
“Won’t he die out there?”
“Nah.” Annileen pulled a handkerchief from inside her boot and rubbed her hands. “He won’t be alone that long. If he doesn’t find his herd, he’ll find a Tusken to adopt,” she said.
Ben nodded. “My house thanks you. I did try—well, to calm it.”
“It’s all right. You were probably its first human.” Annileen caught a trace of a smile before the man turned and started back up the hill to his house.
Ben’s expressions in the store had been happier, she thought; here, he seemed a little downcast. It must be depressing, living alone so far out here.
He looked back at her. “Why are you here, Annileen?”
“Special delivery.” Walking with him, she pointed to the tub of goods. “Most of our thieves take things without paying. You’re the only person I’ve met who paid and left his stuff.”
“I’m a very poor thief, then.” Ben moved the bin into the dubious shade of the vaporator. He scratched his head. “I’m sorry for the trouble the other day. I hope there weren’t any damages—”
“I should be apologizing to you. It’s a friendlier store than that,” she said. “When I didn’t see you again, I was afraid they’d scared you off.”
“Ah.” Ben looked around. “No, I’ve been busy.”
To Annileen, this side of the house looked like bazaar day for the Jawas—lots of gear sitting around and gathering sand. And while the doorway to the house was here, the door was not. The burlap curtain she’d sold him hung across the entrance.
“The former residents left me with a work in progress,” Ben said.
“A while ago, it looks like.”
“Yes. I’d thought to build my own home, but that’s more involved than I’d expected,” he said. “But there seems to be no shortage of abandoned buildings.”
“You should at least get a door.”
Ben looked amused. “Are you trying to sell me something else?”
“Just afraid you’re gonna freeze at night. A lot of this stuff needs to be inside, in fact.” She walked toward the eopie pen. “And you need to get a tarp over this feed, or it’ll be baked in an hour.”
“Will the eopie care?”
“No, but you might, if you have to live around her.”
“Ah.” Ben craned his neck. “I was just putting a tarp over my funnel plants.”
“No, those need to breathe. They won’t get drier than they already are.”
“Then everything balances out,” he said, lifting the cover from the gritty foliage. “I was afraid of a sandstorm.”
“Then you’ve seen one before. Anyone who has would be afraid. But no—if you see the rock hornets start to swarm, then you can worry. They beat the forecast half the time.”
Ben nodded. “Home delivery and the weather report. This is fine service.”
“It’s how I maintain my monopoly. I keep my customers alive.” She pointed to the hood sewn to the collar of his shirt. “For example, if you’re going to keep working out here, I’d put that up before double noon.”
He laughed. “I did survive before I met you, you know.” But he dutifully donned the cowl.
Annileen smiled. “Just looking out for you. Ever hear of Jellion Broon?”
“No.”
“There’s a reason for that.” She reached for the canteen strapped around her shoulder and offered it to him. When Ben declined, she took a swig and continued. “Broon was a great holovid actor when I was a kid. My mother loved him. Anyway, he came to Mos Espa for some race story he was acting in, and he caught the bug. Fell in love with the desert. The guy was raised in total privilege, and he sets eyes on the Jundland Wastes and becomes obsessed.” Annileen cocked her head over her shoulder toward the rocky hills and snorted. “I can’t imagine why.”
“Continue.”
“So Broon buys a dump out here—no offense—and tells people he’s doing research on his own production, a desert epic. And off he goes.”
“Ah. And no one ever saw him again.”
“Yes and no.”
“Hmm?”
“He survived all right. Showed up in Bestine six months later—looking twenty years older. The suns and the wind ripped him up something awful. It looked like someone’d taken a plastorch to his face. His own agent didn’t recognize him, and his studio wanted nothing to do with him.” She pointed to the eopie, munching away, its head under the tarp now covering the trough. “Take it from Rooh. Keep your hood on, or you’ll dry out like a sack of gorrmillet.”
They said nothing for a moment. Finally, Ben picked up his tub of goods and started toward his doorway.
“So are you an actor?” she asked.
Ben chortled. “No.”
“Not out here painting pictures? Not writing about life in the desert?”
“Or in general.” Ben drew back the curtain just enough to set the supplies inside. He closed it before she could see anything. “No, there is nothing to tell. I am really quite uninteresting—except to wayward banthas.”
“Right.”
“Thanks for the supplies. I won’t put you to such trouble again.” Ben turned toward the debris-laden yard. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have much to do.”
“How long are you staying?”
Ben stopped in his tracks and gave her a look. A look, she thought, that said in the most pleasant but firm way that the interview was over.
Annileen backed down the slope toward her landspeeder. “Well, you know where we are if you need anything. And I almost forgot—four days from now there’s a big race at Mos Espa. If you’d like to see what the store looks like without so many rude idiots around, that’s your chance.” She looked keenly at him. “People depend on one another around here. It’s no place to live alone.”
Atop the rise, Ben cracked a small smile. “To hear you talk, anyone in my care would be dead in five minutes.”
“We’ll see,” she said, turning back to her speeder. “See you, Ben.”
If he’s hiding, he’s new at it, she thought, settling into the driver’s seat. In her years of running the store, Annileen had seen her share of people trying to disappear. From spouses, from Republic justice, from the Hutts—there had even been one runaway from a traveling circus. One thing she’d noticed: in an area where everyone knew everyone else’s business, the more nondescript someone tried to seem, the more curious the neighbors became. You needed a label, so people could forget about you. She’d always joked that when her kids finally drove her to run to the hills, she’d become known as the crazy lady who stewed mynocks for dinner.
Maybe Ben would figure that out, she thought as the engine revved. But he was certainly failing at shooing away interest. The man looked …
well, sad whenever he thought she wasn’t looking. Anyone like that just had to have a story.
Pulling away, Annileen circled a rock and looked back up the bluff. She saw Ben looking up at the suns—and removing his hood.
Strange.
Back at Dannar’s Claim, the hands from the Gault fields were in and gorging. Jabe was among them, back from Bestine. He didn’t look up when his mother walked in. She stepped past the diners to the tap to refill her canteen.
Two trays balanced on each arm, Kallie paused to study her. “You forgot the dricklefruit.”
“You’re the dricklefruit,” Annileen said, walking toward the back. “Any messages?”
“One from your daughter, wanting to know what Ben said.”
“He said thanks for the groceries.”
Kallie rolled her eyes impatiently. “Wanting to know what Ben said about her.”
Annileen emerged wearing an apron and looked primly back at Kallie. “He said he’s happy to know I have a daughter who’s such a good and loyal worker—and who minds her own business.”
Kallie swore. Annileen didn’t bother to scold her. Seeing Ulbreck in mid-conversation, she stepped in to clear his table. “So, Wyle. Where were we?”
A’Yark returned to The Pillars exhausted. Having seen the Airshaper depart the compound before double noon, the marauder had raced to a waiting bantha. But there was no hope of catching up with the landspeeder. The Airshaper’s route appeared to match her hairy-faced rescuer’s path from days earlier; it was a reasonable assumption that she had gone to see him. Perhaps they were spouses, after all.
More useful information. A’Yark had intended to tell the others on returning. The Tuskens did not have war councils; it was not the way of Sand People to discuss and connive. Tuskens were so single-minded of goal, so similarly driven, that little coordination was necessary. They moved as a single entity. The only need for words was in sharing information about a target. With that, they would all know what to do.
But a surprise waited in the shadows beneath the towering rocks. A gathering was under way—without A’Yark.
A’Yark recognized the low grunts of Gr’Karr, oldest remaining member of the tribe. “The omen is good,” the old fighter was saying, clutching the horn of a young bantha calf. “Bounty comes to us. The time is right.”
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