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.Given the number of other companies operating in the Core Worlds, it can't be a coincidence that theywere the three who got the coordinates for this planet."The bench--the last giant step of rock at the end of the valley--”less than thirty meters wide, running back in an uneven triangle into the sheerness of the cliffs.Ajungle-covered slope of debris blunted the inner point of the triangle, before which rose the tower, itsfront wall broken out to reveal two stone floors and the remains of two more, reduced to little better thanledges around the tower's inner wall.What looked as if it might have been a curtain wall lay about fifteenmeters out from that, more or less halfway between the point of the triangle and the edge of the bench.Ithad been shattered in a dozen places, as if some huge creature had taken bites out of the stonework.Another curtain wall, reduced to a chain of dark rubble, skirted the edge of the bench itself, punctuatedwith trees, and between them lay a lush, rather unkempt lawn pitted with old blast craters in whichthickets of lipana grew around small, silvery rain pools."How many of them stayed here?" asked Leia, making quick mental calculations and feeling a sort ofshock of surprise and disappointment."It can't have been very many, that's for sure." Han surveyed the narrow space of the inner courtyard,hands on hips and a slight frown between his brows."Not unless they were real friendly.""They may have had perishable dwellings--tree houses or brush huts con the lower bench where theMuniCenter now stands, or on the valley floor," said Jevax."Though before the dome was built the valleywas intermittently subject to cold--nothing like the cold up on the surface, of course.And I suspect that ifthey'd stayed in the houses of the villagers, more people would have remembered."He gestured with a long arm to the roofless buildings, the tower whose every open floor and windowembrasure, like the cliff behind it, sported its own pendant garden of fern, spider plant, Wookiee-beard,and sweetberry vine."As far as I know, this is all there ever was.""This can't have been more than Plett's original laboratory," objected Leia."You couldn't fit ten familiesinto the place.""You obviously haven't been in a tenement in Kiskin," muttered Han.He walked through the brokengateway to the inner court and stepped through a gap in the wall of the single square building left standingroofless against the cliff at the foot of the tower."So Plett was here first?""He was a botanist and a savant," said Jevax."A Jedi Master of great age, we've heard; a Ho'Din fromthe planet Moltok.We've deduced by the growth of the lichens at the foot of the walls that he built thisplace about a hundred years ago, and since many of the plants that grow in the valley have beengenetically tailored to our climate of geothermic heat and low light--even to the microclimates of highacidity down in the more active lower end of the valley--we assume he was an ecologist and scientist ofconsiderable skill.Legends say he could talk to birds and animals as well, and send away the storms thatperiodically swept down even into the valleys.Some of this we know from the original inhabitants of theother rifts, of Wutz and Bot-Un, where, apparently, their memories were not tampered with.""Meaning that the Jedi didn't stay there." Leia gazed around her at the square of heavy lava-blockwalls, over a meter thick and the hue of old blood.Despite the fortress-like appearance of the place,Plett's House was filled with the most profound sense of peace she had ever encountered.Good people lived here, she thought, not knowing why the sense of it filled her so strongly, like thescent of forgotten flowers.Power, and love like a sun's light.She closed her eyes, overwhelmed with theimpression that, if she listened hard enough, she could hear the voices of children playing."Exactly," she heard Jevax say, his voice diminishing as he and Han walked around the chamber's innerwall."We think Plett originally chose this place not only because of the singular climate of the rift valleys,but because the glacial winds and extreme atmospheric conditions on the surface make landing any kindof spacecraft extremely difficult, and any kind of signals or sensors almost impossible.""Yeah, tell me about it." Han had had some scary minutes bringing the Millennium Falcon down thetightest guidance beam he'd encountered in years and into a vertical hundred-meter landing silo boredstraight into the rock, virtually blind."What about the tunnels?" Leia opened her eyes.Jevax turned, raising his white shelf of brow.Han, who'd been inspecting one of the line ofkeyhole-shaped openings in the wall--doors or windows, though if they were doors they were so narrowonly someone as slight as Luke or Leia could have slipped through--looked surprised at the question."That's just it, Your Excellency," said Jevax."There are no tunnels.No "secret crypts," in spite of therumors.Every few months someone comes up with a new theory and makes a search, and believe me,nobody has ever found a thing."A sleek, small, green mammal Leia didn't recognize ran along the top of the wall; a yellow manolliumperched in one of the window arches and fluffed its feathers, regarding the intruders into his domain withbright ruby eyes.The manollium must have come in with the Ithorians of Brathflen Corporation, shethought automatically.She'd seen hundreds of them already and she and Han had arrived only thatmorning."They hid the children down the well," she repeated softly."Nichos mentioned tunnels--I assumedMcKumb meant there were crypts of some kind under Plett's Citadel.I suppose that's the "well" inquestion?" She nodded toward the heavy disk of durasteel, sunk into the stone of the floor."One of them," said Jevax."All of these rift valleys were called wells at one time, because of the hotsprings.This." He gestured up toward the green-hung dome visible high above the roofless walls, thetown hidden within the mist, the varying microclimates of hot springs, warm springs, and mud pots thatranged up and down the vent; the towering dark cliffs with their suspended volutes of fern and orchid, thetrailing banners of mist, his.this is all Plett's Well [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]