Rogue Planet

Chapter 36

The carapods trotted to where the stone columns ended, and the shapers brought them to a halt. Here, beyond the basalt causeway, the factory valley broadened out onto a plain covered with tightly coiled tendrils arranged like markers on a game board. The fuel-laden carapods ran ahead between immense pillars of water-sculpted rock, each hundreds of meters high, acting as supports for the green vault of boras.

It was the biggest enclosed space Anakin had ever seen. Clouds bunched up around the tops of the pillars, and in the distance, kilometers away, a thick layer of mist below the interwoven canopy was actually condensing out as rain.

"We keep the forging pits here," the red-faced forger told them. He dropped down from the carapod and pointed to where thick billows of smoke boiled up from red-lit pits near the overgrown valley walls. He looked up to count their seed-partners, his lips moving as he jabbed his finger. "You have a lot of 'em, boy. What do they say to you? Hear them?"

Anakin nodded.

"Well? Tell your forger."

"They say they're eager."

"That's what I like to hear. Give 'em to me and follow."

Anakin took his twelve seeds and gently plucked them from his clothes. Each made a tiny squeak but did not attempt to hang on. He passed them to the forger, who tossed them to the back of the carapod.

"They ride, you walk," the forger announced, and then took Obi-Wan's complement of three. "The most and the least," he added with a sniff. "Make 'em as one for the clients they hand over to us, that's the way! Good thing you got me rather than them." He flung his thumb back over his shoulder at the other forgers, who laughed. He hooted and laughed back. "They're all amateurs compared to me. I can easily forge fifteen and persuade 'em to join!"

"Don't listen to the braggart," another forger called out.

"You'll be lucky to end up with a handcart!"

"Ah, they're giving you the complete experience" their forger growled. "Never mind. We're buds, us all." He squinted at them and rubbed his arms, knocking off shed bits of white shell from many seed-partners. The bits drifted down around him like flakes of snow. "The old Magister split us into the valley folks upland and down. We're down, and we know this end of the run better than anyone. He picked us out by hand and told us to make families, the Ferroans upland, the Langhesi down. We know our places. He did right."

Anakin had learned about a small and ancient world called Langhesa, read about it in the Temple map room on Coruscant. It had been overrun a hundred years before by Tsinimals, who had enslaved the Langhesi natives, forcing huge migrations to other parts of the galaxy. They had specialized in farming and the vital arts, learning how to mold the elements of life into new and novel forms. For many centuries, they had supplied exotic pets to rich families throughout the Republic.

The Tsinimals, graceful and intolerant, had regarded the Langhesi's vital arts as a sin against their gods. Piracy and galaxy-wide conquest, however, had not bothered the Tsinimal gods in the least.

"But never mind the details. You'll get your ship, and then the uplanders will bring on a forgetting! Still, you'll have the complete experience. You'll remember the forging pits. And-" He leered, making a grotesque, ruddy mask of his face. "-my name is Vagno. You'll remember me!"