Vision of the future

CHAPTER

33

She waited until an hour after the background sounds of the household had quieted down. Then, getting up from her bed, Shada left her room in the vast underground complex that was Jorj Car'das's home and slipped down the darkened hallway.

The library door was closed, and the Aing-Tii hand-waving trick Car'das had used to get inside obviously wasn't going to work for her. However, before saying good night he had showed her and Karrde the more conventional method of opening their room doors, and she was banking on the library being set up the same way. Searching around the stones lining the doorway with her fingers, she found the slightly cooler one and pressed her palm against it.

For perhaps twenty seconds nothing happened. Shada maintained her pressure on the stone, alert for signs of activity in the area and wondering again at this ridiculous procedure. Based on the life story he'd told them, she couldn't see the Jorj Car'das who had first arrived here on Exocron being an overly patient man, certainly not the type to install doors in his home that took half a minute to open. She could only assume his thinking at that time had been that intruders bent on theft or violence would be similarly impatient.

Now, of course, with his Aing-Tii tricks, none of it mattered. At least not to him. Beneath her hand, the trigger stone gave a gentle bump. Shada held on; and a few seconds later the door finally slid ponderously open.

She'd expected the library to be as dark as the rest of the house, with only a handful of muted glow panels to show the way around. To her uneasy surprise, the room was lit much more brightly than that. Not as bright as it had been when Car'das showed it to them earlier, but brighter than an uninhabited room ought to be. She slipped inside, ducking to the left out of the doorway; and as she did so, she caught a glimpse of a moving shadow in the central circle near the computer desk. Car'das? She bit back a curse. Karrde had already scheduled an early-morning departure for the Wild Karrde's rendezvous with the Aing-Tii ship. This was her one and only chance to get to the datacard she needed to find.

And then, drifting up from the computer desk, she heard a muffled but very familiar voice: distinctive, somewhat prissy, and quite mechanical. Silently, she detached herself from the wall and made her way down one of the narrow aisles between the data cases and headed to the center. To find that her ears had indeed not been playing tricks on her. 'Hello, Mistress Shada,' Threepio said brightly, straightening up from his stooping lean over the computer desk. 'I thought you and the others had retired for the night.'

'I thought you had done so, too,' Shada said, glancing at the nearest data case as she stepped over to him. Each shelf completely packed with stacks of datacards; each stack of datacards standing eight to ten deep. An incredible collection of knowledge. 'Or whatever it is droids do at night.'

'Oh, I usually close down for a time,' Threepio told her. 'But during my talk earlier with Master Car'das he suggested I might wish to have a chat with his main computer. Not that the computer aboard the Wild Karrde isn't decent company, of course,' he added hastily. 'But I must admit I sometimes miss Artoo and others of my own kind.'

'I understand,' Shada assured him, a lump forming in her throat. 'It can be very lonely to be somewhere where you're out of place.'

'Really,' Threepio said interestedly. 'I suppose I've always assumed human beings were adaptable to most every place and circumstance.'

'Being adaptable to something doesn't necessarily mean you like it,' Shada pointed out. 'In many ways I'm as much out of place aboard the Wild Karrde as you are.' The droid tilted his head. 'I'm so sorry, Mistress Shada,' he said, sounding pained. 'I had no idea you felt that way. Is there anything I can do to help?'

'Maybe help me return to where I belong.' Shada gestured down at the computer desk. 'Have you gotten to know the computer well enough to be able to do a search of Car'das's library?'

'Certainly,' Threepio said, his voice suddenly wary. 'But this is Master Car'das's equipment. I'm not sure I should—'

'It'll be all right,' Shada soothed him. 'I'm not going to steal anything. All I want is one small piece of information.'

'I suppose that would be all right,' Threepio said, still sounding uncertain. 'We are his guests, after all, and guests often have the tacit run of the household—'

He stopped as Shada held up a hand. 'Can you do the search?' she asked again.

'Yes, Mistress Shada,' he replied in a somewhat subdued voice. 'What is it you wish to search for?'

Shada took a deep breath—

'Emberlene,' a quiet voice came from behind her. 'The planet Emberlene.'