“Do you wish these changes saved?”
I considered that. “No,” I said finally. “It is a fiction. Erase the changes and shut down.”
It did so.
I lay back on my bed. What I had told the computer to draw was worse than a fiction. I had asked two successive Imperial Governors to commission a mapping project of this region, with the same response: “We just don’t have the money.” Translate that: “We have too many people here who don’t want accurate maps made of what lies beyond the known settlements and farms, and if you want to live to bring your next water harvest to Mos Eisley, quit asking for such things.”
So I’d quit asking for them. But it wasn’t criminals who needed to hide places of illegal activity who threatened my life or livelihood, yet. It was Sand People violence and Jawa dishonesty and manipulation—all caused in part, I was coming to realize, by constant encroachments into what had no doubt been traditional Jawa and Sand People territories. Maps would be the first step to a secure peace for the farmers and Jawas and Sand People—if you could get them all to draw in negotiated boundaries on those maps and honor them. Without such agreements, farmers faced the equivalent of blundering around in the dark—setting up farms in areas where maybe no one should go, living in places that could—and did—get decent people killed. I wanted the killing to stop.
But for that, we needed a map. The government would not draw it.
So I drew it.
And I decided, that night, to take my map to the Jawas near my farm and talk to them about how to take it to the Sand People. If we agreed among ourselves on how to live together in these mountains and canyons, maybe someday the government would make our agreements official.
I looked at the monitor for another inevitable retina scan. “Computer,” I said, “redisplay the map I just requested and redraw the boundaries I had you erase. Copy this file to the portable holo-display unit.”
Day 3: In the Jawa Fortress
I knew these Jawas. I had been to the gates of their fortress many times, especially during the year I spent measuring the moisture in the canyons of my farm: They would come out to trade water for trash I’d found in the desert and for information about the Empire and its cities and the systems that made them work and the alien races and how to deal with them. I tried to be good to the Jawas, and fair. If they got the better of me in a few deals, I’d come out ahead in a few others, and the tally remained about even. Some of the Jawas even became my friends—the old ones, the ones I could learn from who had the patience to teach me their language, the uses of native plants, geographic lore.
Their thick-walled fortress blended into the walls of the canyon, but I knew how to fly straight to its closed and hidden gates. I stepped out of my speeder and held up the holo-display unit. “Oh, Jawas!” I called out. “I come to you with information and to barter.”
The gates opened at once—the word “barter” would always open their gates—and eight Jawas rushed out. I tried again to see inside, but could not in the darkness there. They had never invited me in. I had no idea what lay inside. This was a new family fortress, maybe only a hundred years old, with, I guessed, fifteen clans—four hundred Jawas. They were jealous of any secrets and wary of any alien, but they would talk to me and barter with me and spend hours outside on the sand.
The first Jawa to reach me was my old friend Wimateeka. He began chittering at me in Jawa, slowly, so I could understand.
“Do you still come here asking for water now that you farm it yourself?” he chittered, and they all laughed.
“No,” I said. “But I have brought you a gift of water to thank you for your generosity to me in the past.”
I set a pouch of water in Wimateeka’s arms, and he could barely hold it up alone. The others crowded around to help him set it on the sand and to touch it, to feel the water move inside it.
“What else have you brought us?” Wimateeka asked.
“The knowledge of maps,” I said, “and how the Empire uses them to decide questions about land. We can use them in the same way.”
I set the holo-display unit on the level sand outside the fortress, sand beat down and compacted by the comings and goings of Jawa crawlers, and I asked the unit to display my map close above the sand. The Jawas shrieked and rushed back, but not Wimateeka. He would not leave the water pouch: He kept his hands on it.
“What is this that you have brought, Ariq?” he asked.
A map, I explained. I told them what maps are and the purpose of them, how all the mountains and valleys and sand plains around us were represented here with small replicas, and they began to recognize and point out familiar features, marvel that at this scale their fortress was as small as the red dot.
I explained boundaries to them and what they could mean to us: How if they agreed to respect the boundary of the land grant the government had given me, I would not go to the government to claim land farther up the canyon toward their fortress—I would, in fact, help them fill out the forms to claim the land themselves. I suggested that they buy and put out vaporators of their own, all down the valley, to the border of my farm. Even if they didn’t do this, the imaginary line between their land and mine would give them some protection, and I told them how I hoped the Empire would come to accept the lines we agreed on and keep other humans from making farms in their valley.
When I finished, the Jawas hurried inside the fortress to discuss my information and proposal. They took the water. I asked Wimateeka to stay outside with me for a short time. We sat in the shade of my landspeeder to watch the sunsets while we talked.
“Can you teach me a Sand People greeting?” I asked him.
He looked up at me, surprised. After a moment, he said: “Koroghh gahgt takt. ‘Blessed be your going out from us.’ ”
“No, a greeting,” I said. “Not a farewell.” I thought I had mispronounced the Jawa word for “greeting” the first time I asked.
“That is a greeting,” he said. “The most polite. They greet each other like this because they are always traveling. They will seldom stay long in one place.”
Not even long enough to develop greetings, I thought, only hasty blessings because they left each other so soon.
“Say it again,” I asked, and Wimateeka did, and I repeated it till I could say it.
“Why do you want to learn this greeting?” Wimateeka asked me.
I explained to him about the Sand People and the water and my questions about the land—their land.
Wimateeka was quiet for a time, looking at me. “The young Sand People are dangerous in the days that come and for a time,” he said. He explained that this was the time when the adolescents had to perform some great deed to earn adulthood, deeds that often included acts of mayhem against non-Sand People races.
“All our crawlers are coming home to wait here through this time,” he said. “You should take your fellow humans to Mos Eisley and do the same.”
He told me how a vast army of young Sand People had once attacked a Jawa fortress south of us and slaughtered the inhabitants. That fortress was still an empty, burned ruin that Wimateeka had once visited. I was lucky the Sand People around my vaporator had not been adolescents out to earn adulthood.
Wimateeka asked me how to operate the holo unit, and I told it to obey Wimateeka’s voice when he asked it to display the map, nothing more. He displayed the map three times, then asked if he could take it to the discussions in the fortress.
“This is not a trade,” I said. “I want this holo unit back, unharmed.”
“I will bring it to you personally,” he said. He abruptly snatched up the holo unit and hurried into the fortress.
I ate the supper I’d brought with me. After the last sunset, I laid blankets out on the sand. I expected to sleep there, blaster in hand—especially after Wimateeka’s story about the young Sand People’s rite of passage—in the relative safety outside the Jawa gates. But in the night, the Jawas came out to me, with torches.
Wimatee
ka led them. “You have honored us,” he said. He set the holo unit in front of me. “Extend our boundaries to include the valley west of us to the Dune Sea, and we will accept your proposal.”
I displayed the map and told the holo unit to make the boundary changes. The Jawas chittered softly when their black lines moved to include the valley they asked for. It was a valley their crawlers traveled through to get to the Dune Sea to scavenge. Everyone would agree that they needed that valley.
“It is not safe out here on the sand,” Wimateeka said. “Bring your blankets, your speeder, and your holo unit and come inside to spend the rest of the night with us.”
I hadn’t expected this. I got up at once and folded my blankets and stowed them and the holo unit in my speeder and walked the speeder through their gates.
We did not sleep. The Jawas took me to a great room, and in the heart of their fortress we talked by torchlight about maps and water and the Sand People and how to talk to them about maps.
Day 5: A Greeting
Eyvind and I sat openly in front of our speeders on the dune southwest of the vaporator and my day’s gift of water to the Sand People.
“So they come here for this water?” Eyvind asked.
“Every day.”
“And they don’t break into your other vaporators?”
“No.”
“I still don’t like this. Your farm’s the farthest out, and you’re separated from the rest of us—so maybe you have to deal with the Sand People—but my farm’s the second farthest out and I don’t want to do anything to encourage Sand People to come around it. I won’t give them any water—but how long before they show up on my farm expecting it?”
“There—I can see one of them. Watch the dunes to the northwest. They come most often from that direction. They must camp somewhere to the northwest.”
“And you’re luring them down here.”
I didn’t answer that. We’d argued about this again and again over the last few days. I was not going to argue with Eyvind when Sand People were so close to us. To give Eyvind credit, he stopped arguing, too. The canyon was utterly still, then. No wind blew. I could not hear the Sand People moving. It was the first time I’d brought anyone else to see the Sand People take my gift of water.
I stood and put my hand on Eyvind’s shoulder. I did not believe that the Sand People would harm me. I hoped that if they saw me physically close to Eyvind they would learn not to harm him or ever want to. I’d made decisions, and I meant to stick by them—but I realized my decisions had moved the boundaries of racial interchange for everyone out here, I hoped for the good, that’s what I hoped.
Suddenly one of the Sand People stood in the shadow of the vaporator, near the water pouch. I hadn’t seen him come up. He was just suddenly there. I raised my arm and clenched my fist in greeting, but he would not raise his fist in return.
“Maybe this wasn’t a good idea,” Eyvind whispered. “Should I leave?”
“Not yet,” I said. I kept my arm up and my fist clenched. “Koroghh gahgt takt,” I called out.
The Sand Person stepped back, out of the shadow and into the sunlight, almost as if he were going to run.
“Koroghh gahgt takt!” I called again. I hoped I was pronouncing the words right—that Wimateeka had learned the greeting right to begin with before teaching it to me, that I wasn’t challenging the Sand People to a fight or cursing their mothers.
Slowly, the Sand Person began to raise his arm and clench his fist. “Koroghh gahgt takt!” he shouted back.
So I had it right, I thought. This was working.
I heard the greeting shouted at me from somewhere over the dunes to the east—then from all directions and from the canyon walls, again and again the same greeting: Koroghh gahgt takt.
Eyvind stood up. “They are all around us!” he said.
But we could see only one of them. That one picked up the water pouch and disappeared into the dunes.
Eyvind and I took our speeders and got out of there and saw no more of the Sand People that day. We went to my house and talked late into the night.
I’d sent Wimateeka’s warning about the Sand People’s rite of passage to all the other farmers in this region, and everyone agreed that we couldn’t run to Mos Eisley. If we did, we could never expect to stay out here at all. But to stay, we had to have peace, and most farmers felt that could only be guaranteed with blasters and maybe Imperial protection. A few listened to my ideas about maps and good neighbors. Not Eyvind.
Never once did Eyvind tell me about his wedding plans.
Day 15: Eyvind and Ariela
I took my speeder to Eyvind’s farm to pick up one of his old broken-down vaporators, and he walked out of his house with a beautiful girl.
“This is Ariela, my fiancée,” he said. “We’re getting married in five weeks.”
As simple as that. Eyvind hadn’t told anyone about this, not even me. I hadn’t known he’d kept boundaries like this between our friendship.
“I’m pleased to meet you,” I told Ariela. “And congratulations to both of you.”
“You’re the farmer with the big plans for us all,” she said.
Eyvind looked closely at me. “Can you understand now why I don’t want Sand People coming around my farm?” he said.
The arguing wouldn’t stop. I’d barely met Ariela—I’d barely been told about their wedding—and already the three of us were arguing. “Look,” I said. “I just believe that none of us can survive out here if we can’t make peace with the Sand People and the Jawas. At any rate, I’m sure the two of you don’t want to argue with me five weeks before your wedding. Sell me that old vaporator, Eyvind, and I’ll go.”
“But I think you’re doing the right thing, Ariq,” Ariela said, and that stopped me, fast. I didn’t know what to say.
“I think we should help you—and I believe I know the way to start. Would your Jawa friends come to our wedding? Would you invite them for us? As neighbors, they should be part of the important things in our lives.”
“She’s never smelled them,” Eyvind said.
“They’ll come,” I said. “I’ll go today to invite them.”
And I did. I dropped the old vaporator off at my house, packed up provisions for a night in Bildor’s Canyon, and set off. I reached the Jawa fortress before the sunsets.
“You have honored us again!” Wimateeka chittered after I extended the invitation. “But what of presents? We should take something, but we can spare so little! Our gifts will seem cheap and tawdry.”
“They will honor whatever you give them,” I said.
They took me, again, inside their gates to the great council chamber. We talked late into the night about wedding gifts—of rock salt, which they thought might make a good gift; of water, which they couldn’t spare; of cloth, which was never in adequate supply; of reconditioned droids, which would make elegant but prohibitively expensive gifts.
“Offer to teach them your language,” I said. “That would make a fine gift.”
But they liked best the idea of rock salt.
We did not resolve the question that night.
Day 32: Some Neighbors Pay Me a Visit
I finished installing the second old vaporator I’d bought from Eyvind just after dark, and if the diagnostics I’d run on it were accurate it would be a decent producer—maybe as much as 1.3 liters a day. My farm would be producing one to two liters above my old average, so I knew I was definitely not going to miss the water I was giving the Sand People.
I packed my tools in the landspeeder and headed slowly back toward my house and supper. I went slowly because it was dark and there were things out here to be wary of. At least I didn’t have to worry about the Sand People as I had before. At least there was that.
I dropped down into the canyon where I’d built my house, and there were lights around my house—a lot of lights. I sped up then.
“It’s him!” I heard people shouting when I stopped.
What had
happened?
It was Eyvind and Ariela, the Jensens, who’d home-steaded next to Eyvind, the Clays, the Bjornsons—and six or eight others.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
Eyvind stepped forward. “We’ve come to ask you, as your neighbors, to stop giving water to the Sand People. You don’t know what you’re doing.”
I’d imagined Imperial trouble of some kind—maybe the razing of Mos Eisley to stamp out corruption and the need to house refugees—trouble on that level to bring people out here to my farm. Not this. “Have the Sand People hurt any of you since I started giving them water?” I asked.
“They killed my son five years ago,” Mrs. Bjornson said.
“You don’t know that,” Ariela said quietly.
“I found him dead in the canyon north of us! Who else is out there chopping people apart with axes? The Imperial investigators said Sand People killed my son.”
No one said anything for a minute. No one wanted to point out that so many people could have been out there, not just the Sand People. No one wanted to say that Imperial investigators might have wanted to fix blame on suspects who could never be brought to trial.
“They destroyed five of my vaporators,” Mr. Jensen said.
“They broke into my storage shed and tore it apart,” Mr. Clay said.
“One of them threw a gaffi stick that lodged in a rear stabilizer when I was driving into Mos Eisley,” Mrs. Sigurd said. “I barely made it to the city.”
Ariela stopped them. “So bad things happened out here, and all of you jumped to blame the Sand People.”
Mr. Olafsen cut her off. “It’s outsiders like you, coming here from where was it—Alderaan?—with your ideas of how we should start living, it’s outsiders like you—and this Ariq, here—who cause the most trouble.”
“I’m not an outsider,” I said, but that was not the point. My ideas were new. There could be trouble before they worked, before we could all live in peace. It looked as if all the trouble wouldn’t come from the Sand People.
Star Wars: Tales from Mos Eisley Cantina Page 34