If he finds me I shall die.

She fell through the door, lay panting, cold, unable to breathe or think, while the wan patticolored glow of the light-sculpture flickered over her, and the lightsaber, its blade vanished with the relaxation of her grip, glinted an inch or so from her fingers. I have to pick it up. I have to stand up. To get out of here. To get back to my room.

Dying would be easier, she thought. She wondered if Luke really would know.

At least if I died, they could appoint a successor.

As an idea it had its merits. But in the slow-sinking dimness of cold that surrounded her, she heard movement, the heavy, thick, sluglike panting of Beldorion. Somewhere near, she thought. Heading this way.

Don't let him find me, she prayed, trying to stand. She couldn't, but on her hands and knees she crawled, across the darkened chamber, up the endless stairs. He would take her prisoner for his own purposes, Liegeus had warned-but in time he would trade her to Dzym, as he had some other poor slave.

She thought there were parasites still on her, the pain of them chewing her arms and thighs and back, the weakness draining her, sapping her strength away. But when she crawled into the long, narrow office where the computer was, and lay in the ghastly tinted grayish purple bands of the setting sunlight, she felt better, and feeling herself after a time, found no sign of them.

I can't let them find me, she thought. I can't.

It took everything she had left to climb the stairs again, holding to the walls, exhausted and sick with the pain of the lightsaber burn.

She collapsed again on the floor after letting herself in the room, and lay there for a long time, curled in a fetal position in the fading bars of sunlight, wanting only to sleep until the universe was made new.

In time she got up and hid the lightsaber, the wafer she had copied, and all the printouts under the duvet and pillows of her bed. She called out again, reaching out with her mind, but it was little more than a despairing whisper: Luke... then she did pa.s.s out, into dreams like the colorless wells of death.

"Igpek Droon," boomed the deep voice of the masked and hooded pa.s.senger, and what looked like a bad prosthetic hand in a cheap black glove-so bad it might almost have been a droid's jointed metal fingers under there-held out fifty-seven credits worth of various bars and tokens to the captain of the freighter Zicreex. "I'm in the employ of the Antemeridian Freight Lines. It's necessary that my droid and I reach Cybloc XII as soon as possible."

The captain counted the money, looked at the glowing yellow lenses that were visible through the full-face breathing mask that covered most of her prospective pa.s.senger's head. Long, pale hair flowed out around it, giving it the eerie look of a decorated skull.

With the driving back of the Gopso'o rioters by government troops, every docking bay still operable in the port was jammed: with business people, stranded travelers, aliens of all sorts and descriptions fleeing the fire-ravaged city. Most were paying lots more than fifty-seven credits, but then, most were trying to get on to better vessels than the Zicreex, which would have been termed unprepossessing even by the charitable.

Captain Ugmush didn't care. She had a human for an engineer who kept the thing running, and her several husbands, when they weren't fighting one another, made a fair team for trading goods to the rougher worlds of the sector, which was about as good as Gamorreans could do in compet.i.tion with more sophisticated species. Ugmush herself, her long hair dyed pink and her heavily muscled arms and b.r.e.a.s.t.s sporting fifteen parasitic morrts to demonstrate her strength and endurance, was aware that few aliens could stand to travel on Gamorrean ships. She knew it wasn't likely she'd be besieged with offers as long as there was one other vessel in port.

"You got a deal."

The black-robed alien who called himself Igpek Droon, clanking just faintly as he walked, made his way up the ramp and into the ship, trailed by his little R2 unit droid. Ugmush wondered if this person Droon might be talked into selling his droid when they got to Cybloc XII.

It was all there, in black on the pale green plast.

Seti Ashgad's communication with Moff Getelles of Antemeridian, making arrangements to destroy the gun stations in return for weaponry and first cut of the profits when Loronar Corporation moved in on Nam Chorios to strip-mine it for its crystals.

Memos from Dymurra-who turned out to be CEO of Loronar for the Core systems-detailing which minorities, disaffected factions, and splinter groups would rise in revolt, suitably armed at Loronar Corporation's expense, in order to split the Republic peace-keeping fleet and allow Getelles's Admiral Larm to move in.

A comparison chart by Seti Ashgad, showing the trade-off in cost between the expenses of weaponry, bribes, agitators, and planted atrocity stories against the first year's profits on programmable CCIR crystals.

Details of the meeting, including a payoff to Councillor Q-Varg, coordinating Leia's disappearance with the poisoning-not to death, the memo a.s.sured Getelles, so that no successor could be appointed without hopeless legal wrangling among the Council-of Minister of State Rieekan.

At no point in his letter did Ashgad mention the Death Seed plague of centuries ago. "The plague vectors do not appear on any sensor, since within the body they mimic exactly human electrochemical fields and tissue composition," he said-which explained why they needed the quasiliving flesh of the synthdroids. "Once the illness has taken hold, even regenerative therapy has no effect. However, be a.s.sured that it is in my power to completely control the outbreak and spread of this malady, and I offer you my personal guarantees that it will not affect anyone other than those on the Republic ships and bases."

And bases! thought Leia, breathless as if she had run for miles and hot with anger to the core of her being. Idiot! Idiot! "It is in my power to completely control the outbreak," my grandmother's left hind leg. Don't you have any idea, any concept, of what will happen if there's an accident? A miscalculation? Somethin you hadn't thought of, Master Know-All Ashgad?

She was almost trembling with rage. Accounts were scanty of the original Death Seed, but huge segments of the population of dozens of s.p.a.cegoing civilizations had perished before it had burned itself out.

In places it had been combated, but she wasn't sure how,, or how effective those remedies had been. As far as she had experienced, Dzym, and Dzym alone, seemed to have any control over it.

She thought about Ezrakh, and Marcopius, and her eyes grew hot with tears. I will kill them. Rage made her tremble, made her wonder how quickly she could master the Force, how quickly she could build strength to wreak wholesale vengeance for the innocent. I will gather the Force together in my hands and I will bring it down on their heads like a thunderstorm. Vader had done that.

And Anakin, in her dream.

She wrapped her arms around herself, fighting not to weep. It was better, she thought, not to know that you had the potential for that kind of power. Better not to know' that you really could do that, if you wanted to turn your heart and your life over to your rage.

Han would be looking for her. Han would be with the fleet. It will not affect any but those on the Republic shiPs.

The Republic was in chaos. They'd dared poison poor Rieekan, for no better purpose than to cause trouble...

And for what?

Hands shaking, she shuffled through the flimsiplast pages.

There it was. Loronar Corporation's plan to build a new facility on Antemeridias, for the manufacture of both synthdroids and something called Needles: controlled by the same CCIR crystals, programmable, long-distance miniweapons with infinite range and hypers.p.a.ce rendezvous capability.

And the source of the crystals was Nam Chorios.

CCIR technology. Deep-s.p.a.ce Needles, carving up the fleet like the Quamilla of the Kidton system carving up sodbeasts. And with Nam Chorios firmly in their sphere of influence, they'd have as many of those programmable crystals as they cared to use.

The Reliant. Paperwork was complete on that, too. A modified I-7 Howlrunner hull, with extra capacity. Loronar Corporation had been making drops of components and materials for months. Ashgad's requests and specs were very precise-Leia recalled her father saying that the man had been a ship designer himself-and his communications indicated where and when his Rationalist friends had picked them up.

There were occasional indents for second and third drops where the gun stations had blown the incoming cargoes out of the sky. Liegeus Sarpaetius Vorn was mentioned as the vessel's A.i. designer and programmer, but his chief value lay in expert holo faking. There were requests for specific digitalized sc.r.a.p of her and of her flagship and escort, to be mocked up into transmissions describing the safe conclusion of the conference between Ashgad and herself, and the two vessels'

departure from the rendezvous point and entry into hypers.p.a.ce.

Her stomach twisted with sick betrayal. He couldn't not know what was going on. He couldn't not know the dangers of the plague. Then bitter anger swept her, that she had liked the man.

Grand Moff Tarkin was probably good to his wife and children, too, if he'd had any, she thought, disgusted with her own naivete. The man who pulled the lever on the Death Star that destroyed Alderaan would undoubtedly have been kind to someone he cared for. Her hand closed tight on itself for a moment, her breath shaky with rage.

Then, face cold and still, she began looking through the plast sheets again, searching for something...

?????? nism for antigrav lifters and speeder buoyancy tanks, to make prospecting for crystals easier once the gun stations had been destroyed and the big trader vessel was free to take off. She studied the schematics for the vessel. A curious amount of shielding, she thought.

Double and triple hulls with internal baffles-What kind of radiation did they think they were going to encounter?

Leia sat back, staring out the windows at the gaudy sunset sky.

She felt she'd slept longer, though by the light she'd only been out for a few hours. There was fresh water in the pitcher and signs that someone-probably Liegeus-had been in the room. She'd waked with a blanket over her, and was gladder than ever that she'd forced herself to conceal the flimsiplast and the lightsaber before finally pa.s.sing out.

When she had lain down she felt like she was dying.

In fact, the sensations had been curiously similar to her brush with the Death Seed.

But Dzym hadn't been around. If Dzym had known where she was, and what she was doing, she certainly wouldn't have waked up here.

She pushed up her sleeve. Her flesh was reddened in a few places and she had picked up a couple more droch bites, but there was no sign of violence. No sign of the broken capillaries, the bruising that the secretary's fingers had left.

The purplish twilight of day was dimming into deeper night, windless and still with sunset. Leia thought about waiting until dawn, then shook the thought away. It wasn't as if any natural predators walked Nam Chorios's nights. Delay would only bring Ashgad's return eight hours closer. If she acted now, there was a good chance they wouldn't miss her until morning.

Leia got to her feet, unsteady at the knees. The water pitcher was of the vacuum type. A turn of the cap sealed it shut. it was heavy, hung over her shoulder by a makeshift strap of torn bedsheet. She rolled together two blankets and put on the two spare shirts Liegeus had given her. At the touch of them, her anger at him faded. He could not have known what he was getting into, and once in, it would have been too late.

The doorpad combination had been changed while she slept, and she activated her lightsaber and drove it into the innards of the lock.

It was now or never. She could afford no delay.

Ashgad's study first. There were two more things she needed to find out.

The study faced north, like her room. Its inner wall was currained in shadow, but the faded sunset reflected from the cliffs and faceted towers of crystal of the mountains beyond the plateau, and the ghostly crazy quilt of light lay across the white tiled floor with a strange radiance that was somehow comforting. Leia called up the main files, ran a scan-and-print on everything concerning the Death Seed. It was fifty or sixty sheets, double sided, closely s.p.a.ced, and she shoved those into her bedroll with the rest of the printouts she'd gotten earlier.

Then she paged through the directories until she found what she needed: maps of the area, elevations, travel guides. There was a village twenty kilometers away, on the other side of the mountain spur on which the fortress stood. Ashgad would look there, she thought. Odds were good they wouldn't have equipment strong enough to send a signal offplanet, anyway.

Sixteen kilometers in the other direction was one of the gun stations, on a shoulder of the mountains called Bleak Point.

She thought she could reach it, keeping to the hem of the foothills for cover. Deserted it might be, its automatic systems guarding this world as they had guarded it for nearly a thousand years, but there would be equipment of some kind there that she might be able to use.

She checked the household plan again. Through that door, right up the hall where she had turned left before; a flight of stairs and a locked door whose combination, according to the computer, was 339-05't-001-6.

The antigrav tanks were stored behind the second door. The light in the sunset sky was dimming, and she felt an obscure pang of fear.

Though she knew Dzym was active in daylight as well as at night, by day she felt safer from him. Whoever and whatever he was, she wanted to be out of the house before full dark.

A thought crossed her mind. Turning back, she opened the slatted doors into the small chamber where the CCIR Central Control [Init stood, amber power lights glowing like eyes in the dark.

This would have to be fast, she thought. Liegeus would be working with the synthdroids in the docking compound. Beldorion would certainly have one or two about his quarters and maybe one in the kitchen with his grubby little Kubaz cook. The synthdroids' wholesale collapse would get them on her trail, but the only ones on her trail would be Liegeus and Dzym, not twenty-something centrally controlled and extremely mobile synthetic humans.

Her hand was on the toggle of her lightsaber when the swish of the outer doors froze her where she stood. The next second voices sounded in the room, and she barely had time to pull shut the slatted doors that concealed the Control [Init in its vestibule.

Three days! she wanted to scream. He said he'd be gone three days!

The voice was the voice of Seti Ashgad.

"I told you not to go near her!" he was saying, and Leia was shocked to hear how broken and shrill was his voice. An old man's voice.

"Skywalker's her brother, and a Jedi Knight. He'll know if she dies, and it's to() soon to have them know they can choose a successor!

Our whole plan will come adrift if..."

"You've told me that before." Dzym's voice hissed in the twilight.

"Don't treat me like an imbecile, Ashgad. Are you telling me that you believe this puling little wreck over me? Are you?"

Leia turned one of the slats of the door, put her eye to it. No light had come up in the long study, and the fading daylight outside did not reach to its inner wall. She could make out faces, and the sharp white V of Ashgad's shirtfront... she thought he was wearing a gray or white cap of some sort, blurring into the blur of his face. Of Dzym she could distinguish almost nothing, save a slumped dark suggestion of evil, a gleam of eyes that reminded her unpleasantly of something else.

Other eyes, recently seen...

Liegeus stammered when he spoke. "I merely said-I thought when I found her yesterday afternoon... she hasn't wakened, my lord.

She's lying up there cold and barely breathing. I've checked on her all through today..."

"And you thought," whispered Dzym, and the shadow of him shifted with the slow ophidian turning of his head, "you jumped to the conclusion that I had disobeyed my lord's request-that I would only wait until his back was turned.. ."

Leia thought he reached out one hand toward Liegeus's face.

Though it was difficult to make out what was happening she thought the halo faker fell back a pace, his back to the wall. Thought she heard him whisper, "Please..." with utter terror in his voice.

"Did you check the room?" asked Ashgad, rather quickly. "Could it have happened another way? Could another...?"

"Of course not!" Dzym swung around on him, Liegeus stepping quickly out of his reach. "What other besides me has the strength? What other besides me is old enough, developed enough. I have told you.

Told you that and not to treat me as if I haven't a brain! Let us go to her and see if this whiner is even telling the truth."

Liegeus turned hastily, and Leia heard the swoosh of the door in the darkness; Ashgad said hoa.r.s.ely, "Wait."

It was hard to see, and the murmuring voices were barely audible, but Leia thought Liegeus had gone ahead, leaving Ashgad and Dzym alone in the darkening room. Ashgad spoke almost too low to hear, but she thought he said, "It was a long journey. I should have taken you."

Dzym made no reply, or if he did speak, it was too low to hear.

"I'd have taken care of that woman in Hweg Shul somehow. Kept her from you. Kept her from talking. Next time..."

"There is no necessity," whispered Dzym, "for 'next time."

"When Larm's troops land I'll have her taken care of. I promise. You won't need to worry about her betraying you. No one believes her anyway.

But I... look at me." The shrill, old-man voice cracked, and Leia, without quite knowing how, realized that he wasn't wearing a cap, as she had thought. His black hair had grayed almost to whiteness. "I had to get out of there late last night, after the meeting. I had to... to come back."

"To come back," whispered Dzym mockingly. "To someone you don't trust.

To someone you think will disobey..."

"I never thought you disobeyed."

"You believed the whiner."

"II didn't. I was just-taken off-guard. We need him, Dzym, until this is over. He was the best we could get, one of the best halo fakers in the business. After Larm's troops land, after the Reliant's launch tracks are in, you can do with him what you will. But please. Please don't be angry.

Please.. ." She didn't hear clearly what he said; she thought it was "help me" or maybe "give me."

Dzym stepped sideways a little. Leia saw the sleek black topknot silhouetted against the glint of the computer's power lights, and the spidery motion of his gloved hands as he unfastened the breast of his robe. In the reflected gleam of the lights in which he now stood, she saw clearly that below his neck his skin changed. It was hard, chitinous, catching green and amber glints-broken and blotched, too, all over Dzym's bare chest and shoulders, with tubes and orifices and groping little mouthed nodules that had no business on any human form.

All those little mouths and openings gaped and stretched, dark matter running down, glistening. Dzym's human mouth opened as well, the long tongue groping like a serpent.

With a noise that was not quite a whimper, not quite a sob, Ashgad bent his head down. He pressed his mouth to the dark, chitinous chest, and with a horrible movement impossible for a human neck, Dzym moved his head around, tongue probing at Ashgad's nape. The thready radiance sheened on a trickle of blood. Ashgad made noises for a while-thin ones, small and desperate-then was silent. The silence lasted nearly a minute, though it seemed to Leia, trapped in the dark of the shuttered vestibule, to go on longer than that.

At last, barely audible, Ashgad whispered, "Thank you." The crackle of age was gone from his voice. The room was fully dark now, and only the faintest stain of orange remained in the sky outside, but Leia thought his hair had darkened perceptibly, and when the two left the room, Ashgad moved like a young man. Leia thought, but couldn't be sure, that he wiped something from his mouth and chin.

She timed their footfalls ascending the stair, knowing she had only minutes now. The sky-colored blade of the lightsaber flashed to life in her hand, and she drove it deep into the center of the control unit in a vicious hiss of sparks and smoke. Then she caught up bedroll and pitcher and fled across the tiled floor, stabbing the combination of the locked door that led to the rest of the house, right down the hall, up the steps. Another combination, another door-a synthdroid standing in the laboratory beyond, blue eyes glazed and staring, androgynous mouth open as it staggered, numbly, from wall to wall. Leia brushed past it and it fell. Guilt touched her as she stepped past the body.