The Crystal Star

by Vonda McIntyre

“Your eyes, and your hands—and your voice!” Rillao said.

  All right, Lelila thought, I’m a bounty hunter, I can sit quiet and wait if I have to.

  She glared at Rillao, who gave no sign that she owed Lelila either explanation or apology. Lelila sat cross-legged and let her hair spread around her. The ends fanned out on the cobbles.

  I can still see, she thought with satisfaction, but now no one can tell where my eyes are looking. No one can tell where my eyes are.

  So she sat beside Rillao and watched the boneless beings lounge and spout and push agates into new swirls and patterns. Every so often she glanced at the being in the central pool. It breathed and blew bubbles and occasionally caressed an agate or two with its prehensile limbs.

  Rillao balanced on her toes, her forearms relaxed on top of her knees. Her eyes were closed. Lelila thought, This is hardly the time or place for a nap!

  She felt agitated. Anger and impatience trickled across her like the water in the agate pool. Beneath the surface, despair lurked.

  Don’t get so involved in your prey, she said to herself. You’re a bounty hunter, if this one gets away you’ll always have another case to go after. Above all, you must stay calm.

  A spark of light ignited at the back of her mind. She came to full awareness, full attention, thinking, I’m here, who’s calling for me—

  The being burst upward, all its tentacles extended and twisting, and landed with a great gush of water. The fountain erupted from the agate pool and splashed Lelila from the top of her head to the ends of her hair.

  With a shout of surprise, Lelila pushed herself back from the edge of the path. Her hair was so thick that it had protected her clothing from being drenched. The spark of light vanished, forgotten.

  The wave soaked the path. Water flowed around her. She jumped up and sat on her heels like Rillao, out of the wet.

  Artoo-Detoo squealed and rolled backward and rotated its carapace back and forth, shaking off the water like a dog. Lelila grabbed the droid as its back wheels touched the edge of the path. It rolled a handsbreadth forward, no closer, and settled stolidly on the cobbles.

  “Enough, cease!” the being cried, speaking through one of its prehensile trunks. The central bulge of its body projected above the water and the ends of its tentacles writhed. Fine tendrils covered the tips of several of the tentacles (it had at least ten; ten was when Lelila lost count of the snaky limbs). Its mass of crystalline eyes swiveled toward Lelila and Rillao, like so many tiny antennae.

  Rillao, who had endured the soaking without a sound or motion of protest, slowly opened her eyes.

  “I have business, Indexer,” she said quietly.

  “Business! Speak to my assistants. Why are you here, disturbing my concentration?”

  “To solve a difficult problem,” Rillao said. To Lelila’s wonder, the Firrerreo offered a compliment. “Only the Indexer can make suitable connections.”

  Mollified, the Indexer subsided into the agate pool.

  “A challenge, you say,” the Indexer said.

  “A very difficult one.”

  “State your question.”

  “We are in the trade,” Rillao said, in a voice flat and cold. “And we have been engaged to fulfill the requests of our employers.”

  “Ah,” the Indexer said. “Employers of your own planetary group?”

  “Yes,” Rillao said.

  “Wishing the same?”

  “Yes.”

  Lelila struggled to decipher the code of the conversation. She wondered what difference the background of employers made. She started to say she was her own employer. The scratch on her hand gave her a brief, stinging twinge. She remembered Rillao’s caution to keep control of her voice.

  “That is a challenge,” the Indexer said. “For you, that is to say.” The faceted eyes clumped together in the direction of Lelila. “In the case of her, who knows? We will worry about her later.” The faceted eyes returned their focus to Rillao. “I thought your people were extinct.”

  “Not … quite,” Rillao said.

  “I thought the Firrerreo did not participate in the trade,” it said.

  “We are highly adaptable.”

  “I see, I see. That is good—a good way to keep from becoming extinct. Ah, I do see, you wish to widen the gene pool.”

  Rillao remained silent.

  “Or perhaps withdraw your people from the trade. Cause trouble, publicity—”

  “All that concerns you is the shape of my money.”

  The code became clear to Lelila the bounty hunter. Rillao was asking to buy a slave.

  Your life has been too sheltered, she told herself. It’s a good thing that you’ve become a bounty hunter.

  She glanced sidelong at Rillao, through the curtain of her damp hair. She felt herself blushing with furious anger and humiliation, to be described as a slave buyer to a slave procurer.

  What does it matter, Lelila said to herself, what the Indexer believes you do for a living? What do you care what the Indexer thinks? Remember your job. Your job is to find the escaped ship. And if deception is the means for it … think of your reward when you succeed.

  “The search will be costly,” the Indexer said. “You must realize that. A great deal of data to be sifted for a small bit of information.”

  Rillao dismissed the cost with a gesture. She turned toward Lelila, who suddenly realized that Rillao had no money. Rillao had nothing.

  “Pay him whatever he wishes,” Rillao said to Lelila.

  “But I don’t—” She stopped, thinking, Of course I carry money. Why ever did I think I don’t carry money?

  Confused, distressed, she jumped to her feet.

  Balanced precariously on her toes on the wet cobblestones, she swayed and nearly fell. Rillao gripped her upper arm, steadying her, shocking her out of her momentary hallucination of being two people. One, Lelila the bounty hunter, straightforward and phlegmatic; the other, a stranger, stark-eyed and dangerous with the power of her rage.

  Rillao had caught several strands of her hair, along with her arm. Inadvertently she pulled them.

  “That hurts,” Lelila said. “Let go, I’ll pay him.” The enraged stranger vanished.

  Rillao reluctantly withdrew her hand, staring at Lelila with a curious, intent expression.

  Avoiding Rillao’s gaze, Lelila turned toward the Indexer. “How much shall I pay you?”

  “It depends on the search.” The being reached up with several tentacles and wrapped them around the glass superstructure. The rest of the being’s limbs burrowed down into the agates.

  Lelila crouched down again to wait.

  An eerie musical note of high, crystalline character emanated from the glass superstructure. The boneless beings lounging upon the glass hunched themselves into motion and climbed with careless fluidity toward the Indexer. Their motion changed the pitch and intensity of the notes, creating an ethereal melody. The closer they moved, the higher rose the pitch. Rillao narrowed her eyes and raised her shoulders, as if to block the tune from her perception. After the sound passed completely out of Lelila’s hearing, Rillao moaned softly, dropped her head, and slipped her hands over her ears.

  All the beings in the Indexer’s courtyard congregated nearby. Each one twined tentacles with the others, till their organic network cast an irregular shadow over the Indexer.

  The Indexer’s crystalline eyes focused into the pond; the Indexer’s free tentacles sifted through the agate gravel. The stones rattled and scraped together; the water made them sound hollow.

  “What’s he doing?” Lelila whispered.

  “Shh!”

  Her toes and her knees ached but she did not want to sit down in the puddle. Her wet hair chilled her. She stayed where she was, her legs trembling.

  A moment later, the Indexer relaxed from sifting through the agate gravel. The other beings disentangled themselves, and slipped back on twisting tentacles to their places in the ponds and on the glass framework. Whether they went back to t
heir original positions, Lelila could not tell. The melody dropped back into her hearing, then stopped abruptly in mid-trill when the Indexer’s tentacles dropped from the strands.

  The Indexer’s tentacles arranged themselves into a rosette around the boneless body. The crystal eyes projected above the water.

  One of the tentacles crept above the water and flattened out before Lelila, who slipped her hand into the pocket where she kept the money.

  “What is the price?” Rillao said, her voice tight.

  The Indexer named a figure. Lelila tightened her hand around the bills. The price was a significant fraction of their resources.

  This is no time to quibble, she said to herself. She put a handful of credits onto the Indexer’s prehensile trunk, which snapped into a coil around it and splashed back underwater. The tentacle burrowed into the agate gravel; the credits disappeared. When the Indexer’s tentacle appeared again, it carried nothing.

  “I found no one of your species, Firrerreo,” the Indexer said. “Not a single one ever sold publicly in the trade.”

  Lelila jumped up, outraged. She nearly stumbled, for her feet had fallen asleep.

  “Nothing!” she said. “You charged us for nothing!”

  “I charge for my time, and my experience,” the Indexer said calmly. “I cannot produce results that do not exist!”

  “You could have warned us!”

  The Indexer shrank back.

  Rillao put her arm around Lelila’s shoulder.

  “Never mind,” she said.

  “But we’ve been cheated—!”

  “Don’t make accusations you cannot support,” the Indexer said dangerously.

  “The Indexer cannot produce results that do not exist,” Rillao said. She sounded calm, not so much resigned as relieved.

  Lelila was astonished that Rillao did not erupt in a fury, that she did not pounce on the Indexer, rend the tentacles, and fling them all over the courtyard.

  “Thank you, Indexer,” Rillao said quietly.

  “Firrerreo!” the Indexer said suddenly.

  “Yes, Indexer?”

  “I found no public record. I would have no record of a private transaction.”

  Rillao tensed. Her fingers dug into Lelila’s shoulder.

  “I will tell you something I have heard, if you will promise to confirm or disprove the rumor for me.”

  “State your question.” Rillao’s voice was a low, ominous whisper.

  “It is being said,” the Indexer told them, “that the Asylum Station imagines it can compete with Chalcedon.”

  Artoo-Detoo warbled in distress.

  “Asylum?” Lelila said. She knew no place called Asylum Station.

  “I would have thought,” Rillao said softly, “that the Republic would have destroyed that evil den at its first convenience.”

  The glittery faceted eyes of the Indexer oriented toward Rillao.

  “Perhaps the Republic finds it useful,” the Indexer said, and subsided into the water. Its skin mottled and it disappeared against the luminous earth colors of the agate nest.

  Artoo-Detoo, anxious to escape the dampness, spun a quarter turn and bumped away along the cobbles. As Lelila followed Rillao from the courtyard, the smooth round stones rattled and shifted in the bottom of the pool.

  Outside, on the street, Lelila frowned.

  “Why would the Republic want to destroy Asylum Station?” Lelila asked.

  “It’s a place where the Empire tested its methods of coercion and death … on sentient subjects.”

  “But that would have stopped!” Lelila cried. “It would have stopped when the Empire fell. Wouldn’t it?”

  “I don’t know,” Rillao said. “I’ve been out of touch.”

  Outside the lodge, Han strode down the path.

  He was furious. Furious at Luke for being suspicious in the first place, and for refusing to have a sensible conversation about his suspicions in the second.

  Han still had feelings for Xaverri; he could not deny them. He would not. But he did not believe he should be chastised for them.

  Am I supposed to forget that I ever loved Xaverri? Han thought. I chose Leia, and she chose me. Because we loved each other. None of that has changed. I love her. I love her now, What I felt for Xaverri was … a long time ago.

  He wondered if he should find Xaverri and ask her to stay away from Luke for the next little while. Or find Xaverri, then go find Luke and both tell him about last night. But that felt too much as if Han had something to apologize for.

  He swore softly under his breath. He had no idea where Xaverri lived. He did not know where to look for her, except at Waru’s compound. For the moment, he could not face returning there. He could not face seeing again what he had seen yesterday. He could go back to the lodge and ask Threepio where he had found Xaverri when he sought her out.

  But he did not want to do that either.

  That’s quite a list, he thought, of things you can’t do or don’t want to do. Forget them all. Xaverri can take care of herself—as she’s told you in no uncertain terms. And Luke may be angry, but he isn’t stupid. If he was going to lose his temper completely, he’d’ve lost it back at the lodge, with me.

  Choose a problem you can do something about, he said to himself, turning his steps toward the welcome dome, the taverns, the gambling dens.

  And while you’re at it, start thinking—hard—about what to do about Waru.

  Jaina opened the door cautiously and peeked outside. Her light glowed from behind her, casting her shadow all the way across the dark stone floor. She quickly let the light go out, afraid someone was watching.

  She listened carefully. She heard a soft buzzing sound.

  Is that a watcher droid? she wondered. She stepped back into her cell. She left the door open only the smallest crack. A watcher droid could see in the dark. It would sound the alarm. Then one of the Proctors would come and shut Jaina back in her cell. Maybe forever!

  The buzzing sound did not move. And it really did not sound like a droid. Scared but determined, Jaina rubbed a few air molecules together to make a faint glow. She sent them out into the middle of the gathering hall.

  A Proctor stood in the entrance of the corridor. He was supposed to be standing. But instead he was leaning. And he was asleep. The noise was his snore.

  Jaina slipped out of her cell. Her door closed behind her. She let the light fade to almost nothing. She walked a few steps forward and stopped. She was scared. The Proctor might wake up, any second. If she turned around and went back into her safe cell she would no longer be afraid. She could light the air up, and it would warm her.

  But if she did that, she would never find Jacen and she would never see Mama and Papa again and she would never know what had happened to Anakin.

  Across the room, a faint line of light glowed in the darkness. Jaina crept toward it, her hands out in front of her in case she bumped into anything. The line of light shone out beneath one of the other cell doors.

  “Jacen?” she whispered.

  “Get me out of here!” he whispered.

  “Shh!” It would be so much easier if they could talk at each other, in their minds. But if they did, Hethrir would know. Jaina was afraid even to try.

  Jaina looked over at the Proctor. His head nodded forward. He snorted and nearly woke up. Jaina froze.

  The Proctor muttered something. He slid down the wall and rested his forehead on his knees.

  He started to snore again.

  Jaina made some air molecules bump against each other. They made a soft humming, thrumming noise. Maybe now the Proctor would not hear her.

  “Hurry!” Jacen whispered.

  Jaina grinned.

  The cell doors were latched, not locked. They could not be opened from the inside. They did not need to be locked on the outside. Hethrir never thought that one of the children might get loose and open all the doors.

  Jaina grabbed the handle and pulled the door open.

  The door sque
aked.

  “What? Who’s there?” The Proctor stumbled to his feet.

  Jaina jumped behind the door.

  The Proctor ran over to the open cell.

  “What’s going on here? How did you open this door?”

  “I don’t know,” Jacen said. “It just opened!”

  Jaina could not see the Proctor but she heard him poking at the latch.

  She pushed the door toward him as hard as she could.

  The heavy wood banged against his head. He shouted and stumbled into Jacen’s cell. Jacen ran past him and Jaina slammed the door so the Proctor was locked inside.

  The Proctor started shouting, and pounding on the door, but Jaina did not pay him a single bit of attention.

  Jacen grabbed Jaina in a big hug. Jaina hugged him back.

  “Jasa, Jasa, I’m so glad to see you—”

  “Jaya, I thought they’d take you away—”

  “—but what about Anakin? And—”

  “—this is the most awful place—”

  “—this school is so—”

  “—boring! I think they’re all liars—”

  “—yeah, liars, because they said Mama and Papa—”

  “They aren’t dead!” Jacen said. “They aren’t!”

  “I know,” Jaina said. “They just want us to think so.”

  They stood in a faint pool of light as Jacen’s heated air molecules spun around at their feet.

  The Proctor banged on the door again. “Let me out!”

  “No!” Jaina said. She was glad she had not bashed in his head. Kind of glad.

  Jacen grinned at her. His front tooth was loose too, but he had not lost it yet.

  “Look!” Jaina said. “I’m getting a new tooth!” She stuck her tongue out of the space to show Jacen where her new front tooth was coming in.

  “Me, too. Pretty soon, I mean.”

  “Let’s go!” Jaina grabbed his hand and pulled him toward the darker darkness of the corridor.

  “Wait! What are we going to do? What about the others?”

  “We’re going to climb out past the dragon and run away and maybe we can get far enough away to think at Mama and Uncle Luke.” She had not thought about the other children.

  “Maybe they want to come with us. Or run away themselves.”