I walked up to the door, but before I could ring the bell, a small, wiry man with olive skin pulled the door open. He wore a black uniform festooned with white buttons. White gloves encased his hands and he eyed me suspiciously. He gave me no smile and looked me over carefully before he stepped aside and let me into the home’s grand foyer.
The man spoke in the same clipped tones I’d heard over the comlink. “Director Horn is waiting for you in the garden.” He set off at a brisk pace, his shoes clicking sharply against the rose and black granite flooring. In the center of it, fashioned out of black marble and slices of malachite, the old CorSec logo had been rendered beautifully. I hopped over it, breaking my stride, which brought the man’s head back around to see what I was doing.
It didn’t surprise me that my grandfather was in the garden. When he retired he said he wanted to dig and plant there, until he was dug in and planted. After a long walk, we emerged onto a veranda that was amply shaded from the noontime sun. Beyond it, down a short green pathway leading to a central fountain within an amphitheatre of colorful flowerbeds, stood my grandfather.
Taller than me, taller even than my father had been, Rostek Horn had a lean, aristocratic bearing about him. Despite his age, his white hair grew in full and thick. His grey eyes never seemed to rest, and while I had only ever seen love and affection in them, colleagues who had chanced to be disciplined by my grandfather said they could be colder than the darkest iceball in the galaxy. While he seemed thinner than when I had last seen him, he was no less vital and, for the first time, I saw him as the predator colleagues had reported he could be.
What struck me as most unusual was that there he stood, full in the noon sun, wearing a formal black suit, with a high, stiff collar. He was not dressed for a day in the garden, but a day dealing with the variety of things that had occupied him during his days with CorSec. With his right flank toward me—providing less of a target, perhaps?—he brought his head around to look at me. Those cold grey eyes sent a jolt through me.
I started past my guide and onto the path, but the small man pressed a hand against my stomach, stopping me.
I looked at my grandfather and half-closed my eyes. I projected into his mind an image of my running and screaming and falling and laughing as a child on the same expanse of green that separated us now one from another. Opening my eyes fully, I said, “It has been a long time, Director. Perhaps you do not remember me.”
My grandfather remained rock still for a moment, then nodded. “Tosruk, he is known to me. You are dismissed.”
Tosruk’s brown eyes narrowed. “He scanned cleanly on his approach, but he might have skills.”
“I have nothing to fear from Halcyon here, do I?”
I shook my head. “No, sir.”
My grandfather slowly smiled. “You see, Tosruk, I am safe. Go about your other duties. Have the cook prepare us a light luncheon—and I mean light, not just with less gravy.”
Tosruk snapped his head forward in a bow, then spun on his heel and retreated.
I approached my grandfather slowly, not daring to break into the run I would have preferred to use in greeting him. I extended my hand to him and he took it, then pulled me into a firm hug. I wanted to say something, but I felt a lump rise to my throat and tears beginning to fill my eyes.
He pulled back and held me out at arm’s length. “Emperor’s black bones, you shouldn’t be here.”
“I had to come. I’ve been away too long.” I glanced back at the house. “Many changes.”
My grandfather’s smile broadened and a sinister laugh accompanied it. “Yes, there have been many changes.” He waved me toward the greenhouse across the far side of the garden. “If you would join me, I’ll show you some of my newer efforts. Prize winners, all.”
I dropped into step with him and said nothing until we had reached the greenhouse and stepped inside. My grandfather stripped off his jacket and hung it on a peg inside the doorway. He flipped a couple of switches, and glowpanels went on with all but one of them. The rising illumination revealed row after row of potting benches covered with seedlings, all the way to the back to the small bay of machines he used for genetically manipulating flowers for color and size of blossom.
He gave me a cautious grin. “We’re safe to speak in here—I have it swept each week.”
“Good.” I glanced back at the house. “What happened to your house?”
“You may recall I had something of a reputation for maintaining all sorts of files on local politicians, Imperial liaisons and the like? When CorSec became the Public Safety Service it was determined that my files would be an embarrassment. It was further assumed that I had them in the house. A mysterious fire consumed the house, and then the house you grew up in.”
He kept his voice low, but full of curious tones that suggested he found the fires somewhat funny. “What they discovered was that there were multiple copies of my files all over, in computer systems new and old. The encryption keys were what they lacked. A few people suddenly found interesting files on activities they would have preferred to keep hidden arriving on datacards in their homes, usually accompanied by a flower or two that were easily identified as a hybrid I’d created. The implications were clear, so, in recompense for my long years of service to CorSec, and to protect me—since now I am considered a treasure for my horticultural skills—the government bought up and ceded to me all this land. They built my new home and filled it with all sorts of interesting mechanical listening devices and scanners. Tosruk and the rest of the staff report regularly to petty officials—though those officials don’t realize that the staff’s loyalty is to me. The very files used by the officials to choose staffers who could be manipulated were files I created.”
I laughed aloud. “I thought, when you retired, you wanted to leave all this sort of thing behind.”
He nodded. “I would have been more than happy to, but others who want power were not content to leave me alone. Unfortunately, they have neither the grace nor sense for me to leave them alone, either.” He reached out and caressed the leaves of a small plant. “Now I can send a seedling to someone with a note suggesting I had read of this opinion or that which he holds. If I say I am disappointed, their thinking tends to be modified. If I say I support them, they move more strongly in that direction. I choose my targets and my issues carefully. I seek to curb the excesses of the young and foolish, or old and foolish. There’s even talk among the shadowy cabal of pundits who advise leaders about what it means for me to send a live plant versus a cut bouquet, or the true significance of a night blooming flower versus something that blooms once and dies.”
My grandfather smiled at me. “But you didn’t come here to ask after my gardens or to listen to me natter on about warping the small minds of politicians, did you?”
“I’m happy to see you, of course, and I do want to hear about your life, and tell you about mine.”
His smile broadened indulgently. “The name you chose to greet me and what you did out there tells me why you are here. You want to know what your father left behind for you, don’t you?”
I nodded slowly. “You don’t mind?”
My grandfather looked at me with surprise, then laughed. “Mind? My dear boy, I’ve spent nearly the last half century preserving your heritage for you and for your father. I would have been disappointed if this day had never come.”
I smiled. “Would you have sent me a flower to let me know how disappointed you were?”
“I would have sent you many, many flowers.” He opened his arms to take in the greenhouse and the gardens. “These flowers, Corran, are the Halcyon heritage. Where better to store knowledge of the Jedi and the Force, than in things that live?”
TWENTY-NINE
I watched my grandfather closely because I didn’t quite understand what he’d said. He was old and could be losing it, though I’d seen no evidence of that so far. “Your comments are sailing right past me.”
He laughed delightedly, a deep, ri
ch sound I remembered very well. “Don’t feel disappointed, Corran. I had to come up with a storage system that would befuddle even the most diligent of investigators. Come with me.”
I followed him toward the rear of the greenhouse to the computers and genetic manipulation processors. “You probably do not recall this from your schooling, but the genetic code in many lifeforms consists of four nucleotides arranged in pairs. They provide a genetic blueprint that produces what we are.”
I nodded. “I know. Imps messed around with genetics to produce the Krytos Virus.”
“Yes, a nasty piece of work, that.” My grandfather keyed something into the computer and the attached holopad showed me a double-helix slowly revolving in the air. It looked like two twisting ladders spiraling around each other. “What most people fail to realize is that while genes are very small, they consist of a vast number of these base pairs of nucleotides. What they also don’t know is that much of the coding for any gene is redundant and genes are often filled with pieces of nonsense coding, or bits of coding left over by evolution. These inconsequential bits of code are essentially inert and useless. What I’ve done is to manufacture replacement strings of base pairs to put in their place. These replacement strings use one pair to represent zero and another to represent one.”
I stared at him gap-mouthed. “You digitized data and inserted it into the genetic material of a plant, allowing the plants to duplicate the code with every cell division.”
“Correct. While random mutations might destroy little bits of the data, there are so many samples out there that comparing them will fill in any gaps.” He smiled broadly. “I recall at least one Jedi-hunter coming here and asking for some basic plant stock for his garden back on Imperial Center. I gave him as much as he wanted of my Jedi line.”
My eyes narrowed. “The flowers you send to politicians … they contain the decryption keys to the files that concern them, don’t they?”
“I must amuse myself, mustn’t I?” He rolled up his sleeves. “I spent enough time with Nejaa to know that the Jedi considered nothing coincidental. I knew if I put the Jedi information into these plants and ensured their distribution, the information would be discovered again. At the time I started I thought the discovery would not happen in my lifetime, but I wanted it available.”
I smiled. “I want you to tell me about him, about Nejaa.”
“I will.” He looked at me and shook his head again. “Your appearance, I didn’t know you at first. Your father had a saying, one he picked up from his father. Do you recall it? ‘If you cannot recognize the man in the mirror, it is time to step back and see when you stopped being yourself.’ ”
I nodded. “I remember.”
“Well, seeing you now, I must have you tell me who you have become.” He pointed back at the house. “First, however, we will have something to eat. Then you’ll join me turning the compost pile.”
“More data hidden in there?”
He winked at me. “I think you will find the work rewarding.”
We talked mostly of his flowers and the way the neighborhood had been in the old days. Because his household staff bustled in and out, Corran Horn was referred to in third person, as if Keiran Halcyon had been a playmate of his. By rights I guess I should have found the subterfuge awkward, but I slipped into the Halcyon role the way I would have slipped into any undercover identity. It was a game we shared and both took great delight in it.
Grandfather dispatched Tosruk to my hotel to pick up my things while the two of us went out to the compost heap armed with shovels. My grandfather directed me toward a pile of bantha dung that he used for fertilizer. He’d been getting it from the Coronet City Zoological and Botanical Gardens for longer than I could remember, in exchange for providing them with his latest hybrids.
“Dig deep and shift the pile over this way about three meters.” Leaning on a shovel, wearing bibbed splatter-slacks and knee-high rubber boots, he smiled at me. “If you can shift it any other way, feel free.”
I shook my head. “I could make you think it had moved.”
“Halcyons always have been notoriously weak in the telekinetic skill area.” He laughed. “Dice were the only game of chance in which I felt safe playing against Nejaa.”
“Someday I aspire to making dice move with the Force.”
My grandfather smiled. “The Halcyons have their strengths. The mental projection you allude to was something Nejaa did very well. He also could absorb energy. I was told this was a very rare ability among Jedi.”
I nodded. “That’s what I’ve heard as well. Well, without telekinesis, I guess I’ll have to use this shovel and elbow grease to move that pile.”
As I dug, my grandfather told me tales of Nejaa Halcyon. “We worked together for a good long time, or so it seemed, before he was called away to the Clone Wars. Our partnership was only ten years or so, as I recall. I guess I was seven years older than you are when he left. He was a bit older than me and his wife—I’d grown up living near Scerra, so I knew her quite well before they ever met. Your father was only ten at the time Nejaa left, but had been working with Nejaa for years to develop his skills.”
I swiped at the sweat on my brow. “Nejaa died in the Clone Wars, right?”
“Actually, he died shortly thereafter, before he could ever return home. He and I had joked about his going off to the Clone Wars, for it was said that a Corellian Jedi who leaves the system does so at his own peril.” My grandfather’s eyes clouded over. “Nejaa promised his wife and me that the Clone Wars would not kill him. He was right, but still suffered the fate of those Corellian Jedi who go away.
“A friend of his, a Caamasi Jedi named Ylenic It’kla, came here, bringing Nejaa’s effects home. He apologized for not bringing Nejaa’s body, but the bodies of Jedi Masters fade away upon death. He also didn’t have Nejaa’s lightsaber. He said the Galactic Museum had asked for it for their Jedi collection.” He smiled slightly. “I suppose it is still there.”
I shook my head. “Nope. It has served me well on a couple of occasions. Saved my life.”
He clapped his hands. “And mine as well. ‘Thieves run in fright from its silvery light.’ I used to kid Nejaa about that.”
I smiled, but kept digging. “He used to go out with you when you worked cases?”
“All the time. Most often he would be dressed in street clothes, just like me. He found a lot of people were wary of the Jedi and afraid of them. Without them knowing who he was, he could help victims. When it came time for us to go after criminals, he’d don his cloak and more traditional Jedi garb. Scerra used to refer to it as his hunting clothes. Criminals learned it didn’t hurt as much if they didn’t resist, so we were able to defuse many a tense situation just by having him show up as a Jedi. Of course, stories of what he had done spread throughout the underworld and became quickly exaggerated, so people reacted to his image and reputation, not reality.”
I cleared the area my grandfather had indicated and peeled back the plasticized tarpaulin that had been beneath the dung heap. I noticed, on the underside, a metallic sheen. “This is a diffuser pad?”
“Is it? I hadn’t noticed.”
I frowned. Diffusers came in all different shapes and sizes and simply channeled the energy from scanners away so return signals from scanners would not reveal whatever was hidden by the diffuser. Smugglers regularly used them to prevent cursory searches from uncovering contraband, but a little time and a little effort made finding the diffusers easy, and finding one of them meant finding whatever they covered.
In this case, the diffuser covered a bare patch of ground. “Let me guess: a buried door that no one has found because they didn’t want to dig through bantha dung?”
“See, it was effort like that which allowed your father to catch Booster Terrik. Not a surprise the man hated the Horns.”
“He’s got more reason now.”
My grandfather smiled. “Yes, how does he like having his daughter married to a Horn?”
I turned one spadeful of dirt, then looked at my grandfather with surprise. “You know?”
“Corran, I love you dearly and I think you will recall that we have spent many long hours discussing your love life and the disasters attendant thereunto.”
“Don’t remind me.” I growled at him. “Hey, is that just a leaning shovel, or can it dig, too?”
“It can dig. Do you want to use it? Is yours worn out?”
I arched an eyebrow at him. “You’re not going to help?”
“I did my part in burying it.” His smile slackened slightly. “Get going, it’s not that far down. Back to the point—when your garbled missives coming to me stopped mentioning romantic difficulties, I assumed you had found someone. I made inquiries.”
“And you’re not disappointed?”
“Disappointed? Why would I be?”
“She’s Booster Terrik’s daughter.”
My grandfather walked over and rested his right hand on the back of my neck. “Corran, if she was enough to win your heart and keep it, she has to be wonderful. I am happy for you, truly. Someday you will bring her here so I can meet her.”
“Sure, as soon as the murder warrants for me are lifted.”
He frowned. “Oh, yes, Gil Bastra’s work. I’ll take care of that. Perhaps that Imperial Liaison officer you had should be found guilty.”
“Loor? He’s dead.”
“So much the better.” He glanced down at the hole as my shovel hit metal. “There you go.”
I cleared the hole. “Old storm cellar?”
“It was here when I bought the house.” He crouched and helped me tug the metal door open. “It’s rather snug down there. You can go first.” He pulled a glowrod from his back pocket, flicked it on and handed it to me.
I clambered down the rusty ladder built into the side of the duracrete shaft. At the bottom the enclosure opened out into the area beneath the dung heap. The boxy room had been cleared of everything save one dusty and dirty old fiberplast trunk. It appeared to be of the sort I’d seen used a lot by smugglers—old pre-Imperial military surplus, cheap and in ready supply.