Firstmonth, 1098
It seems odd, now, that I never set foot off Alderaan until I was fifteen. Leia did run for Senator, and when she was instated, half the school went to Coruscant to see it. I was one of the eldest then, herding a gaggle of over-excited thirteen-year-olds through the Alderaanian Embassy. Ari Oharran was working there by that time, and he greeted me cheerfully. I did not see Leia close enough to speak to, at her inaugural speech, but I was part of the cheering crowd. She was a small, grave figure in her white dress, her hair in the double-bun hairstyle that would always be associated with her-although all the teenage girls on Alderaan copied her hairstyles, clothes and makeup. I did myself, when I could be bothered.
I found Coruscant bewildering, if impressive. The prospect of a planet-wide city was claustrophobic-endless buildings, stretching on and on with no mountains or grass or ocean. Alderaan, I realised, was next thing to empty. My world had been narrow.
After Leia's inauguation, I led my little group of first years back to the hotel where we were staying.
"Calli, stay on the walkway, please," I called. "Iruben Avram, if you don't stop doing that this second I will tell Shamma!"
My cousin Ged-Uncle Shan's son, falling between myself and Iruben in age-came over to me in the lobby.
"I asked permission to go to the Galactic Museum, and they said I could go if a third-year went with me, so will you, Keitin? Please?"
"Oh, all right, Ged."
We rode an air taxi to the imposing Galactic Museum. I was sure it was the largest building I had ever been in, bigger even than the Viceregal Palace at home in Aldera. In short order, we were lost. I did not much like the place, or the constant glorifying the Emperor, the exhibits that I knew to be outright lies. I felt uneasy.
"This is the history section," I said, peering through a doorway.
"Propaganda, you mean," Ged retorted, dropping into Alderaanian.
"Ged!"
"What? There's no one to hear and even if there were they couldn't understand it."
"All the same! Shamma would kill you herself if she knew you were being so foolish."
"Oh, Shamma this, Shamma that-just because you're the favourite-"
"Just because you're an idiot, you mean-" I rejoined hotly.
"Look, this is one of the main halls," Ged observed as we emerged from a tall archway.
"We should be able to find the way out now," I said cheerfully, instantly dropping the quarrel. Ged suddenly gave a muffled squeak and grabbed my hand so hard that it hurt. From the next archway ahead of us came the uniformed figure of a high-ranking Imperial officer. I echoed Ged's squeak with one of my own.
The Imperial paused a moment to gaze in what was probably surprise at these two strange teenagers who had almost just fallen over his feet. I straightened my shoulders, lifting my chin a little. His hard grey eyes looked me up and down. I was wearing my Inst uniform; navy-blue skirt, yellow sash, and wide-collared white shirt with the initials of the school's name embroidered on the pocket in Alderaanian script. The eyes paused at the pocket.
"You are Alderaani?"
"Yes," I said, adding an unwilling, "sir."
"Ah, the Princess," he said coolly. "I suppose you are very proud of her."
"Yes, of course," I replied, not liking the overtones I could sense in the Imperial's voice.
"Princess Leia should be careful of the company she keeps," he said, ominously and cryptically, and strode off.
"What do you suppose he meant by that?" I wondered aloud, when he was out of earshot.
"I don't care, Keitin. He gave me the creeps. Let's go home, shall we?"
"That's a very good idea," I said absently. "Best you've had all day, in fact."
Fourthmonth, 1099
I stayed on at school for my fourth year. It was Shama's decision, but, having nothing better to do and no career ambitions, I was pleased enough to stay on. I regretted it halfway throught the year, for I was shoved through the first two years of a degree in electronics, working in conjunction with the University.
"Students are a lazy lot," Shama said. "They only work a few hours a day. You're bright, I'll have you on your apprenticeship year by the time you should have gone up in the autumn."
Aunt Shosha didn't approve of this, because she said I was missing the social aspect, but I didn't care. I didn't socialize much anyway.
One evening in the spring of that year I padded downstairs in my nightgown to find Shamma sitting up, her datapad open in front of her.
"I dreamed," I said, curling up in the chair beside her. "I dreamed the one where I am on some steps, and everywhere is smoke and blood and pain."
Shamma gave me an odd look.
"You often dream that?"
"I dreamed it a lot when I was younger."
"They say my great-uncle had the two sights," was Shamma's next, oblique comment. I yawned.
"The 'two sights' is a superstition, probably due to undetected and latent Force-sensitivity in the individual," I said sleepily, quoting from a book called Alderaanian Traditions I had once read.
"Ah, the wisdom of youth," Shamma said. "And now they try to say that the Force and the Jedi are superstitions as well."
I yawned again. Shamma's form blurred in my drowsy vision, seeming to move further away. I roused myself to look at her properly, my chin tipped to one side. It came to me that she had been looking tired and grey lately. Perhaps for the first time I realised that my grandmother was old, and my heart turned over. I moved to kneel in front of her chair, looking up into her face.
"Shamma, you're all right, aren't you? You're not ill?"
Instead of the easy reassurance I had been hoping for, Shamma sighed.
"I've been meaning to talk to you about that, m'lei."
I stared up at her fearfully, the breath stopping in my throat. I wanted to stop time, to not have to hear what my grandmother was about to say. She took my face between her two hands, saying, "I am indeed ill, Keitin. In fact the Hunter is snapping uncomfortably close to my heels now."
The Hunter was the old Alderaanian personification of death. My chin trembled.
"Shamma, you can't die! You mustn't! Can't-can't they do anything for you?"
And I hid my face in her skirt and burst into tears.
"There's one thing the medics haven't got a cure for, and that's old age," Shamma said. "Oh, little daughter, it would only be putting off the inevitable..."
She let me have my cry out, her hands stroking my hair. At length, I lifted my head and asked, sniffing, "What will become of me when you die?"
"There are your shares in the company I made over to you when you were born. They're yours, absolutely. You are sixteen years old, besides. You aren't a child any more. And there will always be a post at ATT if you want one."
"I'm not sure I do," I said, wiping my eyes on the back of my hand. I could see my future stretching ahead of me; it seemed very dreary and lonely. To my surprise, Shamma laughed.
"I am just remembering your mother at the same age, child. More excitement, she said she wanted. So she tried for the Vice-Reine's bodyguard-and got it on her looks I think, for the lady had brought her handmaiden decoy idea with her from Naboo.
"Excitement, humph! I just wonder how many young ones join the Rebellion from conviction, and how many because they were bored at home."
I sat up, interested. I wanted to question Shamma about everything, suddenly. I wanted to know and remember.
"Why did you join, Shamma?"
"So certain! How long have you known that, little eyes-and-ears?"
"Oh, always. Sure the Viceroy practically founded it-do you expect me to believe you wouldn't follow him?"
"I don't expect you to understand fully why I joined. You haven't seen the Empire at work, yet."
"I saw Coruscant."
"What did you think of it?"
"It put me in mind of fair flowers and grass growing on the surface of a stinking bog."
"Ah. Sharp girl. In the Clone War, and since then, we saw the bog plain, without the grass and flowers. And what are you going to do about it, Keitin?"
"Drainage work?"
She laughed, and said, "Drainage work it is-and your hands will get dirty. You know that your mother died because of the Rebellion?"
"On Coruscant, in a terrorist attack on the Organas that probably had Imp fingerprints all over it. Yes."
"And you would be willing to put yourself in that danger?"
"Yes. Do you want me to? After all, the Princess has doing it for years-why shouldn't I?"
Shamma shook her head, saying again, "Ah, but you're like Teludh, rushing in heedless."
"How much am I like her?" I asked, aware that I might not have more chances to ask.
"Very like to look at, though you're thinner, and her eyes were black and her hair was straight."
"Lucky her," I interjected.
"As for the rest, you talk much less than she did. You're both very strong, very loyal. I think you'd be the better pilot, but she was a good slicer, and you don't seem to have inherited that. You have more of a bent for healing than she had-I suppose you get that from your father. If you live to see the end of the Empire, you will need that."
I shivered. Even as we talked, I was constantly reminded that Shamma certainly would not outlive the Empire. I looked at my hands clasped across my grandmother's lap, considering myself-one quarter her, one quarter my grandfather, half my unknown father. Kei Bartoli, an underground agent in the young Rebellion, executed for high treason-that was the sum and total of my knowledge.
"Why didn't she marry my father?" I asked abruptly and resentfully.
"Sometime in war or great danger, people do things that go against their principles. I don't say that excuses her, but you are not guilty of it."
"Why do people act as if I were, then?"
"Families are symbiotic networks, Keitin. What affects one member affects them all. And so you suffer the consequences of your parents' wrongdoing, and your children too, if you have any."
"That's not fair."
"It's the way life is. Is it fair, either, that good things come out of bad? If it hadn't been for that act of your parents, would I have you today?"
I shook my head slowly, considering.
"And now," Shamma said, switching into Basic-we had been speaking Alderaanian-"I am old and tired and it is past both our bedtimes."
So we went to bed, but I at any rate had no sleep that night.