Healing
Chapter VI
''
The next morning, the binary sun rose on an especially busy day for the moisture farmers of Tatooine. It was the first day after the end of the harvest season and it was the customary time for the seasonal overhaul of all farm machinery and equipment. The vaparators had to be completely drained and the liquid crop stored in one of the domestic vats. All the automated controls in the farms would be shut down in order to perform the necessary maintenance work on the systems in preparation for the next 'planting' season.
Owen had gone off early to help out a friend, but he made it clear that he would be back as quickly as possible. Beru and Cliegg started work on the farm.
Cliegg's hoverchair was five metres from the ground as it floated next to the vaparator. He was collating the sensor readings manually into the data pad on his lap. Not far away, Beru was supervising the vapo-tech droids, borrowed from the Darklighter's farm, as they overhauled one of the older vaparators. She was doing Threepio's old job, one that the protocol droid had performed very enthusiastically, throwing his weight over the mechanic droids.
Threepio was gone now … as well as other things. Yet life went on… And the Lars coped with it as best they could.
Shmi…
The ache was still there, along with the ache for Akia and the child he had never known. But Cliegg knew from experience that one day it would be bearable.
His thoughts went to Shmi's son. Had he done right by the boy?
Perhaps he would never know.
"Father Cliegg!"
Cliegg looked down to see Beru standing at the base of the vaparator he was working at.
"What?" He asked, as if he did not know.
"Time for your medicine."
Cliegg grimaced. "I'll take it when I'm done," he said brusquely, more out of force of habit than with any real hope that she would make an exception today.
He was right. She did not.
"You have to take it now." The sentence ended with an inflexion that was midway between an entreaty and a threat.
Cliegg muttered all the way down his descent of the vaparator. Beru grinned at his disagreeable face and they walked/floated side by side to the house together.
''
Owen's hair was slick under his hand as he pushed it off his forehead. The sweat was cool against his cheeks and between his skin and his clothes. As always, he relished the sensation of feeling the evidence of his work so close to his own body.
Jen handed him a half-cup of water. He sipped it gratefully. Cool, sweet and all too quickly gone. He sighed heavily.
"I owe you one, brat," she said gruffly as he jumped behind the driver seat.
Owen lifted his forelock respectfully and grinned at her. "Yes, ma'am," he replied promptly.
This time he recognised the smile.
The ride to town was the same trip he had made yesterday but in many ways it could not have been more different. Gone were the anger and the anxiety, instead his heart was light, almost carefree as the speeder flew across the Dune Sea.
Owen felt almost guilty being this happy and he had said as much to Beru last night. She had replied sensibly that they all felt this way and that was because they now had closure. Anakin had come back and Shmi had been returned. It was not at all in the way they had hoped for and they would have to live with the grief of losing her for the rest of their lives; but it would have been far, far worse if they had had to live the rest of their lives with never knowing for sure what had happened to Shmi.
The dome-shaped structures of civilization were approaching. He had reached town. He parked the speeder and made his way into the market. He drove a hard bargain with the merchant that he finally sold Jen's harvest to, got a fair price at just a little less than what he paid for the day before. Then he went looking for his loan shark.
''
The house was cool after the warm morning sunshine. Father Cliegg pulled up at the table, privately relieved to relax his muscles while Beru fetched the medicine pack from the cooler. She measured out the medicine but he gave himself the injection from the hypodermic syringe. From the moment he had regained consciousness after the 'accident', Father Cliegginsisted on administering to himself as much as possible and he still did so. He was not an invalid, he had declared, and he would not allow himself to be treated like one.
Watching her boyfriend's father push a needle into his body had long lost its morbid fascination for Beru; she went into the kitchen and started cooking. Although Father Cliegg would be the last person to admit this, he was always slightly disoriented after taking his medication. The meal would be a necessary deterrent to his insisting on returning immediately to work.
Predictably enough, he called from the table. "I'm through, let's go." His voice was thin and weak.
"Well, I'm not," she said firmly. "I need a glass of milk and some cakes."
"Time is money," Cliegg retorted. As weak as his voice was, it still managed to grumble.
"Sorry," she called back without any trace of apology.
There was silence from the table as she carefully filled two tall glasses with blue milk.
"Well, might as well take something while I wait for you," Father Cliegg finally said.
Beru smiled as she lifted the serving tray and stepped away from the counter.
They sipped and ate in companionably silence. Father Cliegg was breathing heavily between bites. Beru wondered if allowing him to work on the farm had been a good idea. He had argued, reasonably, this morning that she shouldn't work outside on her own. Ideally the new force fields should be enough protection but it would be foolish to take any chances. What had persuaded her was her own private trepidation: If anything were to happen to her while Owen was gone and Father Cliegg was left alone and defenceless, she would never forgive herself. So she had consented. The suns only knew when Owen would be back from town; Beru couldn't wait idly and indefinitely while the work on the farm piled up.
As it were though, with Father Cliegg's obvious exhaustion, she might have no other choice but to wait.
Her thoughts and the silence were suddenly broken by a siren-like signal. Someone at the edge of the force field was activating the glockenspiel.
Beru looked at Father Cliegg in surprise. Interaction between the farmsteads had been very subdued recently. It had been a long time since visitors had dropped in unannounced on the farm.
Cliegg raised his eyebrows. "Are we expecting anybody?"
Beru was already on her way to the kitchen. She switched on the tiny viewing screen on the wall. The distorted holo-image of Mixer Lak's sunburnt face looked back at her.
"It's Mixer," she told Father Cliegg as she turned on the switch that would enable the audio signal.
"What does he want?" asked Cliegg, coming up behind her.
"Farmer Lars, Miss Whitesun," the altered, unnaturally high-pitched voice of the boy declared through the speakers, "there is something happening over at the Dune Sea that we thought you might want to see."
Both Beru and Father Cliegg froze in shock.
Cliegg unfroze first.
"Idiot boy! What the Hell are you doing up there?" He shouted furiously.
Mixer's face seemed to darken even more in the holo. "No, sir…"
"That is no place for tomfoolery!"
"It's nothing like that, sir… Honest…"
"Then what then?" asked Cliegg, still raging.
"There was… the settlement… the Tuskens…"
All three farmers shuddered simultaneously at the mention of them.
Mixer swallowed visibly. "You just have to come and see." The holo was getting smaller; he was moving away. "You just have to come and see. You won't believe it if I told you."
"Believe what? What happened?"
But the shadowy figure of Mixer was already climbing astride the scoop they could see in the background. There was a high-pitched whine as the engine came on and then he disappeared from the range of the holo view cam.
''
The creature flashed all canines when Owen threw the data chip on its desk.
"It be hard for me to exchange Republic credits," his business partner whined as his snout sniffed over the chip. "You will have to pay me extra for exchange tax."
"The tax is part of the total," snapped Owen.
"But it change almost on the hour, see?" came the earnest reply. Fake eye stalks jerked in Owen's direction. "Better add 5 to be sure," it said, with every sign of sensibility.
"You are not getting another credit out of me," Owen said grimly.
The lights in the creature's snout glowed. "I call 'collectors' for you," he threatened, his voice losing some of its fake geniality. "You better change mind fast."
Owen's hand lunged. His aim was far better and more technical than before when he was almost blind with anger. The creature's jaws snapped on air and then they fell open with a bloodcurling scream.
Owen had lifted up the loan shark by its eye stalks. The slimy tentacles squirmed frantically in his clenched fist while the creature bounced, all the while crying in pain. From the back doors, two large and furry, man-sized bipeds came out.
Owen spared them a glance. "Better go back to your cages if you don't want me to amputate your boss' feelers."
The goons paused uncertainly.
Owen tightened his grip.
The loan shark screamed louder. "Go back, go back!"
They went in hurriedly. Still holding onto the creature, Owen went to shut the door after them. Then he dropped the creature on the table with its stalks still firmly in his grip.
"Accredit the transaction," Owen said calmly.
"Cannot see. Cannot see. You blind me," moaned the crafty old thing.
Owen's fist tightened fractionally.
It was enough. "Okay, I manage."
With shaking limbs, the loan shark inserted his verification code on the data chip and into their transaction records. Owen verified the transaction, taking his time to ascertain that every clause had indeed been accredited and ignoring his business partner's monotonous squealing. Finally satisfied, Owen pocketed the data pads and shook the feelers in his hand. The being whimpered.
"It was a pleasure doing business with you." The young farmer declared. He unlocked his fist and the creature went sprawling on the table.
"You pay!" The loan shark screamed, scrambling on all fours. "You pay!"
Owen paused in the middle of wiping his hands on his robes. "Perhaps you would prefer to lodge a complaint with the Hutts?"
The being went completely rigid. His very feelers froze.
Owen extrapolated genially: "They were very interested in your loan charges when I spoke to them earlier today."
The chameleon complexion mottled.
Owen continued in the same conversational tone: "I was in too much of a hurry to go into details but since you feel so cheated …" He paused dramatically.
The loan shark finally found his voice. Remarkably, it was even thinner and higher than it had been when his feelers were in Owen's fist. "Me? Feel cheated?" He squealed rapidly and nervously. "You humans not know how to take joke, heh?" He made an inarticulate squealing noise that took Owen a couple of seconds to interpret as a laugh. "Everything always so serious always, heh?" He made that squealing noise again.
Owen gave a grim little smile, a final swipe of his hand on his tunic, and turned away.
"Wait!" cried the loan shark. "You not go to Hutts, again, see? No need, see? We do good business, see?" The upper flesh of its snout pulled back shakily in a chattering grin.
In reply, Owen's smile broadened sinisterly; the rigid feelers of the loan shark snapped in violent reflex. But the young farmer merely gave the creature a sharp nod and without another word, walked through the door.
The two goons burst in moments later. After roundly cursing and biting them, their employer calmed down enough to allow them administer a soothing lotion to his inflamed tentacles. In the middle of their nervous administrations, the loan shark gave a sudden little chuckle.
One goon looked uneasily at the other. The other refused to catch its eye.
"These moisture farmers be not so stupid," murmured the loan shark to himself. "And I wanted originality. And got it. For no extra charge. Not bad business, all in all."
''
Cliegg reached across and switched off the audio comm and view screen.
"That idiot Lak and his gang!" he declared, still fuming.
He threw a glance at Beru and his irritation dissipated at once. She was still frozen, except for her hands which were shaking violently.
"Beru?" Cliegg asked, surprised.
Without answering, she moved to the table and started clearing the eating utensils. Her movements were quick and automatic. When she lifted the tray, it wobbled slightly and the utensils rattled. Cliegg's chair moved forward but she had already got it under control.
She smiled shakily and quickly walked to the counter and placed the tray down. "Mixer talking about them… shook me up, that's all," she said finally.
"Damn boys have no business wandering near those sand people," Cliegg repeated. "What trouble have they got into now?" he asked with no small anxiety in his voice.
Beru was carefully cleaning and drying their dishes. "He wanted us to see something," she said.
"Yes, he did." Cliegg was pensive for a while. Then he looked up at her. "Well, let's go. We'll take the clodhopper."
Beru froze. "You want us to go now?"
Cliegg looked at her in surprise. "Why not?"
"The farm… and shouldn't we wait for Owen…?"
Cliegg shook his head empathically. "I want to know what those kids have got up to. The sooner we go the better."
Beru methodically folded the drying cloth and placed it on the top of the cooler. She was very pale, Cliegg noticed suddenly. Her hands were still shaking.
"Beru, are you alright?" He asked.
"Of …. Of course, I'm fine. Why… why do you ask?" Her voice shook.
"Your hands are shaking," Cliegg said dryly.
At once, she balled them up into fists. "Mixer shook me up." She repeated.
Cliegg was unconvinced; his son's girlfriend was a level-headed girl who had stayed alone in the farmstead the night of the raid and had always risen admirably to the occasion several times before and after that; her problems with her family were an open secret on the farmlands but she never advertised them and behaved very responsibly at all times. Beru Whitesun was an extremely sensible girl and that was the highest compliment Cliegg could think of of any young female on the farmlands.
He decided not to press the matter further - for now. He had a fairly good idea what it was, anyway. In fact, it was to be expected: the girl had been doing the work of four people for the past four weeks: housekeeper, nurse and farmhand. And it was beginning to tell.
"Work on the farm can wait," he said firmly. She needed a break; and if he were frank with himself, so did he. His stump was aching, a sure sign that he was tired. "Let's go and see what's happening at the Dune Sea."
Beru nodded meekly, confirming his suspicions further. She really was tired if she could not even give him a decent counter-argument.
''
Owen walked with a spring in his step as he made his unflinching way back to his speeder. After that last cryptic message, he had no fear of the loan shark sending anybody after him. Owen had not really reported to the Hutts - he was as disinclined as his former business partner to tangle with them - but the loan shark would turn itself in rather than wait to find out. Owen had Padmé to thank for that - he would find a way to pay back that loan, one way or the other - and Anakin, who yesterday had unwittingly dropped a few hints about how to deal with this species of sentients while he and Owen talked and worked over Mother Shmi's grave.
All in all, it had not been bad business.
"Wiped out, completely."
"Jawas."
"Jawas?"
"Then who, the farmers?"
"Maybe another tribe?"
The conversation of a pair of sentients beside him passed over Owen's head. He was about to get into his speeder when one of them called his attention.
A Twi'lek male in purple robes and a red-skinned humanoid with the trademark tattoo of a cultist across its cheeks. Owen stiffened automatically.
The humanoid ignored his tension. "You're a moisture farmer, aren't you?" She asked in flawless Basic. Owen could tell by her voice that she was female.
Owen nodded warily.
"Are you people responsible for the killing of a tribe of Sand People two nights ago?
Owen stared.
"Are you not aware?" The Twi'lek asked in surprise.
"No. What happened?"
The pair exchanged glances. "That's the question every one is asking."
"Perhaps a herd of krayt dragons attacked them," Owen said slowly.
"And left the dead bodies, flesh and all?" the cultist countered. She shook her head at Owen and she and her companion drifted off.
Owen remained standing by the speeder, staring after them long after they were out of sight.
tbc