A Long Time Ago
4. Of Stupid Things

On the way to school the next day, Tass filled Dekabyn in on what happened. He looked outraged.

"That's not fair! They got you into trouble! Tass, you ought to go see Faith's parents and tell them what happened. And then smack the Rinakels hard."

"No point," Tass said. "They'll just devise a way to make my life miserable if I say anything."

"But it's just not...argghhh." Dekabyn trailed off. "Who gave them the right to do things like that?"

Tass shrugged unhappily.

"And what about..."

"Tass! Tass, wait a minute!"

Both Tass and Dekabyn turned to see Faith rushing across the platform to them, having just gotten off an airtaxi. She was wearing expensive jewellery, and a beautiful white dress that looked stunning against her dark skin. Dekabyn, however, didn't look impressed.

"What do you want?" he asked her.

"I came to apologize," she said, looking at both of them. "I'm really sorry, Tass, I know what the Rinakels are like and I should have said something...I'm really sorry."

"It's alright, Faith. Thanks." Had she been expecting that apology or not? "It's okay."

"I shouldn't invite them over again," she said, falling into step with them as they kept walking. "They're not nice. But Mum thinks people like that make good friends, and...well, you know what she's like..."

Tass didn't really, and she didn't suppose she wanted to. She nodded.

"I told her it was me who tried to fly the ship," Faith added nervously. "She was livid. She says I have to pay for it and everything."

"Oh..."

"I will. I have enough money..." Dekabyn gave a snort; Faith chose to ignore it. "Tass..."

"What?"

"I don't know why the ship went wrong like that. I think it happened because I was nervous...I can't work out why." She looked uncomfortable. "Any ideas?"

"None. Sorry, Faith."

They reached the glowing blue building that was the school. Faith spotted a smartly dressed Rodian girl waiting by the enterance.

"Reelia's over there...mind if I go talk to her?" she asked apologetically. She hurried off, calling over her shoulder "Won't be a minute..."

Dekabyn sighed. "Come on, let's leave her."

"Dek!"

"She'd rather hang out with her own kind..."

Tass sighed herself, and followed Dekabyn. She would have to talk to him at some point.

There was no History that day. Lunchtime came quickly, and Tass and Dekabyn wound up in the library once more.

"I've got this," Tass said, and pulled the book Nerra gave her out of her bag.

"You shouldn't bring that to school!" Dekabyn said. "Someone'll steal it. Those things are expensive! And that one looks quite old."

"It's not. It used to be Nerra's, he must have read it quite a few times." She opened it to a random page. She expected to see pages and pages of hard-to-read words, but instead...there were drawings.

"Wow." Tass breathed. She ran her fingers over them. A girl was staring out at her, her eyes slightly defiant, or maybe even just annoyed. On the opposite side a man clutching a blaster looked out. There was the shape of a Wookiee behind him, but it looked like the drawing hadn't been finished.

"Who are those two?" she said.

Dekabyn pointed to the bottom of the right hand page. "Princess Leia Organa of Alderaan, and Han Solo, her future husband," he read. "Interesting. They were in the Rebellion, weren't they?"

Tass could remember only bits of this. "Yeah...I think they were." She leafed over the page, looking for more drawings.

"I'll get you some holopads," Dekabyn said, and he walked off before Tass could stop him. She looked at these new pictures. Whoever drew them had been very good. On one page there was another girl, her hair done up in a style even more elaborate than anything Faith could come up with. She was smiling. On the other page there was a teenage boy. Well, maybe a little older than teenage...she wouldn't know. He was smiling too. She had a feeling she knew who he was. There were things written under the picture, a paragraph or two. She started to read.

Dekabyn returned with one holopad. "This talks about most of the political stuff. I know you hate it, but Regimesh'll be impressed if you go into it in depth."

Tass sighed. "Okay," Then she added. "Thanks for helping, Dek. Really thanks."

Dekabyn smiled at her and sat down. "Find out anything life-altering?" he asked.

"Dunno. This is just background information about Anakin Skywalker." She tapped the page with the drawing on. "He's kinda cute, isn't he?"

She expected Dekabyn to roll his eyes, but he didn't. "He wiped out a whole civilisation, Tass...and all you can say is 'He's kinda cute'?" He looked aghast.

"I wasn't drooling over him or anything...it was just an observation." She looked at the picture. He looked a bit unhappy behind the smile he was wearing. She suddenly wanted to draw him herself. "Besides, he didn't wipe out a whole civilisation. This book says...'While undoubtedly Lord Vader commited a number of atrocious crimes against the galaxy, eliminating the Sand People in revenge was not one of them. It is true there are very few of them around today, but this is a more recent development...'" She trailed off. "See? He just killed one camp of them, it says...and they had just murdered his mother. They couldn't really expect to get away with that. So I guess maybe it wasn't so bad..."

"Honestly, Tass! 'Oh, it's just one camp, that's all right...' There were probably kids there, and babies! They didn't do anything."

"I don't mean it like that." She felt oddly guilty. "Of course no-one ought to kill anyone. But..."

"But what?"

"Actually, I can't think of a but. But he didn't commit genocide, that we do know."

"Well, genocide or not, it was stupid of him."

"I know it was stupid of him. As in really, really stupid, and pretty much evil if there were kids." She glanced at the picture of the smiling young man again. "It's just...well, you know...if you'd been looking for your mother and as soon as you found her she died and the people who'd killed her were just hanging around outside and you had a weapon...well, what would you do?"

"What makes you think I'd even go looking for my mum?" Dekabyn said. Tass stared.

"What do you mean? How can you say that? You...oh..." She trailed off. "Did you have another fight?"

Dekabyn looked down at the ground. "It was nothing to do with me...the unreasonable, pathetic..."

"Dek!"

"Sorry."

"What is it with you and your mum? I mean..."

"Drop it, Tass!"

"It's just.."

"Drop it!"

They stared at each other in uncomfortable silence for a few seconds. Then Tass turned her back to him and resumed her note-taking.

"Sorry, Tass," she heard Dekabyn say. "I didn't mean to yell."

"All right."

"Honest."

"I said all right. It's just, Dekabyn...it's just you ought to start appreciating what you have."

He opened his mouth, closed it again, looked from her to the floor and to her again. "Well, maybe." Then, "Wise words, Tass...you ought to be a writer or something."

Tass beamed, and then the smile slid off her face. Regimesh had stepped into view behind Dekabyn. He looked half impressed, and half annoyed. It was quite an interesting expression, especially for a Gungan.

"A good argument, the both of you." he said. "But next time you wish to have a debate such as that, I suggest you get a show on the commwave, and not yell in my library."

Both Tass and Dekabyn nodded. "Yes, sir." Regimesh strode away. Tass rolled her eyes. "It's not exactly his library. He acts like he owns the place sometime."

"Well," Dekabyn said, a lot more nervously than usual, as if afraid he'd hurt her feelings again, "it is a bit hard to get a really good job if you're a Gungan."

Tass hadn't known that. "Seriously? Why?"

"Who knows? I suppose us intolerant humans aren't used to them - although heaven knows we've had enough time to. There's just some sort of...thing...which says humans think Gungans are all stupid so therefore they must be. Y'know?"

"I've never heard about that before," Tass said, ashamed.

"I suppose a lot of people haven't. So yeah, there's not many Gungan teachers about. And not all Gungans talk like Regimesh does, you know."

"Yeah, I knew that. They sort of sound..."

"...like they don't have a very good grasp on Basic." Dekabyn finished. "I suppose that's why some people don't like them much...maybe they think the Gungans think they're all too good to learn the language properly."

Tass nodded. She thought back to everything she'd learnt about Naboo, where Gungans orginated. Not much. "So Regimesh sort of taught himself to act like humans do, or something?" she said.

"I suppose so." He shook his head. "I didn't really know...it was just on the news yesterday about how there's just one or two Gungans in high-up positions on Coruscant...anyway." He looked at her. "Maybe he's not a very nice person, but he must've worked pretty hard to get here."

Tass nodded. As she put her fingers back on the holopad buttons, she silently vowed to be nicer to Regimesh in the future.