A Long Time Ago
5. A Miniature War
Almost a week later, Tass had almost forgotten that particular vow. All the students were being bombarded with homework, and Regimesh didn't care that she had an important project to fit into her busy schedule. She had no time to herself whatsoever. Neither did Dekabyn, but he didn't seem to mind.
"How are you getting on?" he asked her as they walked through the morning crowds to school.
"Alright, I suppose," she said. "I've covered the Sith Lords. Maul, Tyranus, Sidious, Vader. And most of the important Jedi."
"Have you done the beginning of the Clone Wars? There was a programme on the holo last night..."
"There was? I missed it." She sighed. "But yeah. Done it. Tyranus was the one who was once a Jedi, right?"
"Right."
"Yoda's Padawan, Jinn's Master?"
"I think so. Can't remember. Probably."
"That's quite interesting then," she said thoughtfully. "Jinn was the one who freed Anakin Skywalker. Maybe he knew..."
"Knew what? About the Jedi Purges?"
"Yeah...maybe his Master put ideas in his head...maybe they both wanted the Jedi destroyed."
Dekabyn tilted his head to one side. "Well, you never know," he said. "It could've, I suppose. Jinn seemed like an alright person, though...I mean, he was the one who kept going against the Council, wasn't he?"
"Yeah, he did," Tass said, remembering. "Why, d'ya think it was good that he did that?"
Dekabyn nodded. "The old Jedi were corrupt. Anyone could see that."
"You think it's a good thing they all died?"
They stood in a crowd of people, waiting for the bridge to lower and provide a way across the airlane.
"Well, no..."
But he evidently couldn't think of anything to say after that. The two of them started talking about other things, like holovids and the reconstruction work on Coruscant, and they didn't stop until they got to school.
At lunchtime, Tass studied on her own while Dekabyn went to the school shop to buy some things he needed in order to finish all the work he had to do. It hardly seemed fair...Dekabyn didn't have enough money anyway, and shouldn't the school provide everything they needed? Maybe Dekabyn and her brother and everyone else who'd said so were right...the school was designed to cater to Coruscant's elite.
She'd found another holopad...'The Life Of Luke Skywalker'. It was proving to be interesting. Very interesting. Like the stories she'd read when she was little...
What really happened in the throne room on the Death Star no-one we ever be completely sure, but there is no reason to think Skywalker would lie. He told many people in the course of his life: when Vader threatened his sister, he attacked him, then stopped when he realised he could never kill his father. He threw away his weapon, and prepared for death. The Emperor unleashed his powers on the young Skywalker, but he lived for one reason: his father, who he'd never known as anything more than a Sith Lord, picked up the Emperor and threw him down the Death Star's reactor shaft. But the effort killed him...and more than that Skywalker never said, except perhaps to his sister and closest friends...
All the stories she'd read had had heroes in them, but this, for some reason, was affecting her more than the stories. There was something in this that none of her favourite authors had managed to tell her, but she couldn't work out what...
Someone came and slid into the seat next to her. She looked up. It was Faith.
"Tass," she whispered. "I thought I could talk to you..."
"What?" Tass asked urgently.
"Well...you know I said about the ship crashing because I made it crash by being nervous? Or whatever I said?"
Tass nodded.
"Well...weird things keep happening. Yesterday I was fighting with my mother...and I went to my room and slammed the door, and I just sort of glared around, and..." She shook her head. "The holovision sort of lifted up, and so did a few other things, and then they crashed down again and left a mess. And I think that was me too..."
Tass thought about this. Only one idea was half-formed in her mind, but she didn't know how Faith would take it...
But she was spared having to say it, because the Rinakels walked in. Faith looked at them, looked at Tass, whispered. "Better go, see you later!" And she went to join them, a wide smile on her face.
Tass shook her head and went back to the book. Ought she to tell Dekabyn about all this? But he didn't like Faith, and might tell her parents something...oh, alright, he wouldn't really do that, not if she didn't want him to, but the less people she told the less chance it had of getting back to the Mélenions. What would Faith's parents say if they thought their daughter might have some Force powers in her? Because she knew about them, she knew -and so did everyone else really- that in generations past they'd been big supporters of the Empire, helped fund the Death Star, been good friends with the Tarkin family...
...and had fully condoned the Jedi Purge.
She'd keep it quiet. Maybe the Force in Faith would just go away, if she stopped using it.
Dekabyn came in, looking slightly annoyed.
"Well, that's less lunch for me," he said, slumping into the chair that Faith had previously occupied. "They charge you a fortune. For the things we ought to have anyway! I hate this place sometimes."
Tass nodded. "I know. Here, I'll lend you some credits." She reached about in her pockets...there wasn't much in there really. She fished out about half of it.
Dekabyn shook his head. "I'm not taking your money. No way."
"Take it or else." When he still shook his head she went on. "Use it to buy both of us lunch, then."
Dekabyn still looked uncertain, but then he nodded. "Well...okay. Shall we go to lunch now then?"
Tass placed the Skywalker holopad in the tray on the table. It vanished, and reappeared on the shelf. "Yeah, okay. I'm finished."
They got up and started to walk away. Tass thought of something she could talk about.
"Hey Dekabyn, you've heard of Luke Skywalker, right?"
"'Course I've heard of him. Honestly. Everyone's heard of Luke Skywalker."
"I like him," Tass said, with a smile. She'd worked out what she'd thought about him. "He...well, y'know how mostly wars are won because of strength, power, all that stuff?"
Dekabyn nodded.
"He didn't. It was like the biggest war ever...we might not be here if they'd all lost...and he won. And not because of power or whatever...just because he loved someone."
Dekabyn shrugged. Tass felt rather let down.
"Makes you wonder why he loved him, though," he said finally. "I wouldn't love someone who'd killed my friends."
Tass considered this. "I suppose most people wouldn't. Maybe he was different."
"Maybe," Dekabyn said warily.
They wandered through the corridors and into the cafe.
"Y'know, Tass...if someone'd told me a few months ago that shortly you'd be talking about nothing but History, I'd have been laughing."
"Well, yeah," She felt a bit worried suddenly...she hadn't annoyed everyone with her jabbering, had she?
"I suppose we get a different subject every so often." Dekabyn said with a quick smile. "Like that time last year when you just went on and on about that band. Or when everyone was into nature all of a sudden, just because they'd announced they were starting work on the parks."
Tass nodded, grinning slightly. "Yeah. But even I dunno why I've been talking about History so much." She wondered whether to change the subject. "It doesn't really seem like History anymore, you know? Anyway...d'ya want to go somewhere later? My parents probably won't mind. How about the HZEA?"
Dekabyn drummed his fingers on the table. "I dunno...how about the hydrostadium? Or the theatre or something. The HZEA's too expensive."
"Oh," Tass felt herself redden a little. "Well, I don't mind. We don't even have to go anywhere, we could just wander around."
"Well, whatever you want, Tass." He smiled. "I'll get the food, then. Want the usual?"
"Yes please."
He went to join the queue for food. Tass found herself looking around the room. Human kids, Twi'lek kids, Calamari kids, Cerean kids, Torgruta kids. Eleventh level kids, twentieth level kids, fifty-seventh level kids. Rich kids. Poor kids.
I am in a strange mood...
Reading, though, about the...well, the Final Battle, as was the term used to describe the climax of a book in Interplanetery Literature...had affected her somewhat, though, and she didn't know why. It just seemed like...if lots of people had died for this galaxy, their galaxy, it seemed wrong beyond all reason to just screw it up again.
Yeah, but that's the way of things. Things go wrong, things get put right, things go wrong again. Circles, balance, y'know? Besides, the galaxy's going wrong already. Been wrong for ages. There's that war on Neimodia, been going since before you were born, still not finished...
She watched Dekabyn. Something suddenly occured to her.
Dek never knew who his father was...did he? Just like Luke. And I suppose Dek's thinking that whoever he was, he's not likely to be a tragic fallen Jedi who he can redeem...
Dekabyn gathered up the food for her in his arms, and turned to go back to the table. The light caught his hair. And suddenly, he looked like all the heroes she'd ever read about or dreamed of.
Which was so strange.
Lunch that night, back at Tass's house, was subdued. Nerra, too, had suffered from too much homework and the school shop's prices, and he was as unhappy about it as Dekabyn, if not more so.
"It's not fair," he muttered at the dinner table. "They don't want kids like us in their school. The type without money."
"That's not true, Nerra-" Jek began, but Nerra cut him off.
"It is true. You know it is. You know that they didn't used to let anyone below twentieth level attend that school. Or any of the schools around here..."
"Times have changed now, Nerra," Lelleri said with a sigh. "Things could be a lot worse for us. A lot, lot worse. Be thankful for what you've got."
Tass agreed with this wholeheartedly, but Nerra didn't seem to want to let it go.
"You don't know what it's like, though. The teachers are always so nice to us, like we're all stupid and need more help...and the other kids...they don't want us here, I used to know someone who held his nose every time I walked past."
"Who?" Tass asked.
"Zarrielli Rinakel."
"Oh. I know him. Sort of."
"Stupid zit. Stupid name, too..."
"That's enough, Nerra," Lelleri said with a sigh. "Just hold your head up high and ignore it. You're worth ten of them, and you know it."
Nerra nodded.
Lelleri, evidently thinking she'd gotten through to him, looked at her husband then at Nerra. "Have you gotten back in touch with Mayalri?"
Nerra folded his arms and glared. Lelleri looked back at him.
"She's moving away," he muttered. "Back to Naboo. Her parents don't 'think the neighbourhood is good enough'," he said with an awful sneer.
"Oh," Lelleri said. "I'm sorry."
"Yeah. So was she."
He pushed his plate away and left the room. Lelleri looked a bit guilty.
"Oops. I really shouldn't have brought that up again." She placed her knife and fork neatly in the center of her plate, and looked at Tass. "Anyway, young lady. How is your History getting on?"
"Okay, I guess," Tass answered, with a smile. "I've learnt quite a lot. About the Jedi and the Sith and...stuff."
"The Jedi?" Jek looked up from the newspaper he was reading. "I was reading something interesting the other day..."
"What?"
"The Jedi opened up their Temple not long ago. People are allowed to arrange to come in and see it. Have tours of the place and everything," he said. "They weren't before."
Tass pondered this. "Really? That sounds good..." It sounded better than good.
"It's not that expensive, either."
He didn't say anything else after that, and Tass thought that was probably the end of it. But then Lelleri spoke up.
"I can tell...you want to go."
Tass shook her head. "Not if you don't want me to. I mean, I can do fine with my project without having to go places..."
But Lelleri shook her head too. "I feel guilty about you and Nerra not getting to go places as often as your friends do. Faith Mélenion, she must take...what, about three holidays a year?"
Tass nodded.
"So if you and Nerra want to go, I'd be happy to let you. You can find out all sorts of interesting things, and Nerra can look after you..."
There was the sound of Nerra coming downstairs. He poked his head through the door.
"What? Go where?"
"To the Jedi Temple," Lelleri said. "We were just talking about it. Tass would like to go, and it would make up for us not having had a proper holiday for a while..."
"No it wouldn't," Nerra said. "I heard what you were saying. I'm not going to be Tass's babysitter."
"You don't have to be..." Tass began, but Nerra cut her off.
"No way. It sounds boring. I'd rather stay here."
"And mope, I suppose?" Lelleri said, but Nerra had gone already. She sighed.
"Well, I don't know, maybe you could go with someone else," she said to Tass. "If he's going to be like that..."
"I'll take Dekabyn with me," Tass said automatically.
"Dekabyn..." Lelleri said thoughtfully. "Alright. He's the responsible type. I wouldn't mind."
Tass smiled. "I can really go?"
"During Shelova week, you can. We don't want you to miss school," Jek said.
"I'll make arrangements," Lelleri said. She looked thoughtfully towards the door. "Tass, could you go and find Nerra? I want to talk to him."
Tass went. She wondered if he'd gone out, but she found him in his room, sitting on his bed. She sat next to him.
"Go away, Tass, you're a pain."
She ignored that. "I know how you feel, you know. About school and things.
Dekabyn doesn't like it either."
"What level is Dekabyn on?"
"Forty-fifth."
"Hmmm..." He was playing with a piece of tape, winding it around his finger. "Did you say you knew Zarrielli Rinakel? Back at the dinner table?"
"Yeah. When I went round to Faith's house, him and his sister were there."
"Faith Mélenion's house?"
"Yeah, her."
"You're still friends with her?" He was incredulous.
"Sort of. I mean, we still talk."
"I wouldn't have thought you would have...you shouldn't have met at all, by rights."
Tass felt a bit of annoyance rise up inside her. "A few years ago she came down here...to our level, because she wanted to be friends with someone who'd like her for more than her money. We are still friends."
Nerra unwound the piece of tape. "If you say so,"
Tass got up to leave. "Mum wants to talk to you, by the way. She's waiting downstairs." Then she left the room, and went to her own. She didn't work on her project. She just thought for a while. Lelleri and Nerra bickered downstairs.
