“Did you find all the stones they took out?” asked Ben.
“No.”
“Who’d want to steal diamonds made from bodies?”
The old man frowned at him. “Some people don’t care about that kind of thing.”
The man was hurt and angry. Ben could understand that. He bent down and helped him pick up the rubble, checking each chunk for fragments of diamond, because that was, after all, a person. While they cleared the chamber, one of the younger men wandered in and stood watching. He was about eighteen, with short blond hair scrunched into spikes.
“We can’t stand by and let them get away with this,” he said.
“Who’s them?” said Ben.
“Coruscanti.”
“You know who did this?” Ben sensed an echo of halfhearted malice from the chamber, no real plans or hatred or intention to outrage. He finally understood what Jacen meant by mindless violence. Some people really did seem to do it without thinking very much. “Then you ought to tell CSF.”
“Yeah, like they’d really take that seriously, I don’t think. Not when they’re looking for Corellians who planted a bomb.”
Ben went to sweep up the remaining dust but the old man took the broom from him and did it himself. Ben sensed some resentment. He bowed his head, even though the man had turned his back on him, and walked outside into daylight that seemed painfully bright. The blond man went with him, and they sat down on the honey-colored marble steps that led up to the sanctuary.
“I’m Barit Saiy,” said the blond man, and held out his hand.
Ben shook it gravely. “I’m Ben.”
“So you’ve got Corellian relatives.”
“Yeah.”
“Whose side are you on?”
“I’m a Jedi. We don’t take sides.”
“You reckon?” Barit laughed, but not as if he thought it was remotely funny. “Everyone’s going to be taking sides soon, what with this government trying to force its rules on everybody. I hate them. My granddad says it’s like the Empire all over again.”
“You live here, though.”
“I was born here. So was my dad. My folks own an engineering workshop in Q-Sixty-five. Never even been to Corellia, yet.”
“But you could live on Corellia if you hate it here so much.”
“Would that stop them treating us the way they do?”
Ben was finding it hard to understand the them and the us of the conversation. He’d traveled the galaxy with his parents; he’d seen less of Coruscant than he had of a dozen other worlds.
But Barit wasn’t just visibly angry: There was also a real sense of pent-up danger about him. Ben hadn’t realized just what an emotional thing the Sanctuary was for Corellians living here.
Ben probed cautiously. “They said on the news that the bomb went off in the room of a Corellian man over here on business.”
“They would say that, wouldn’t they?” Barit had his elbows braced on his knees, right hand clutching his left wrist, looking around at pedestrians walking along the nearby promenade. “I bet they did it themselves.”
“Who’s they?”
“The government. CSF. Galactic security. They do that kind of spy stuff. If they plant a bomb and blame it on us, then it gives them an excuse to attack Corellia.”
Ben thought of what he had done only a few weeks earlier: he’d sabotaged Centerpoint Station, Corellia’s military pride and joy. And here he was sitting with a Corellian who thought the Galactic Alliance played dirty tricks and who treated him like a fellow Corellian. Ben felt a little thrill, the kind that came from having a secret identity, and then he felt .
. . pretty bad about it all.
But he’d done what he had to.
Hadn’t he?
“What do other Corellians here think?”
Barit shrugged. “There’s a lot of us. And enough don’t want to be dictated to by the Galactic Alliance.”
Ben took that to mean that there would be a war after all, just as Jacen had warned-and just as Ben had felt when he sensed the anxiety in the Force. “So you’ll be going back to Corellia to join the armed forces, then.”
Barit lowered his voice. “Why do that, when we can fight better here?”
Ben thought about that for a moment. Adults often said things to him that they really shouldn’t, seeming to think that he was too young to understand. Sometimes he was, though he always remembered what was said to him. But he wasn’t too young to understand Barit.
It’s just talk. We all say stupid things when we’re angry.
Even so, he would remember it.
Chapter Five
My fee’s five hundred thousand credits each for Han Solo and his son. If you want the Solo womenfolk and the Skywalkers, too-that’ll be extra. I remember the Solo kids, but I don’t think they’ll recognize me again… .