A Familiar Face

Chapter 10

The town had not changed much in the single planetary rotation that had elapsed since the hermit's innocent foray into civilization – or what passed for it here on Tatooine – the previous morning. The two suns were just peeping over the dull horizon when the Jawa transport lumbered its way to a halt outside the city limits, a location also conveniently just outside the jurisdiction of the purely nominal law enforcement agency. The nomadic traders and their erstwhile guest sallied into the outskirts of the settlement before many pedestrians yet crowded the lanes and alleys, before the streets were abuzz with gossip and flies.

The first order of business was, of course, the settling of the hermit's debt. He regretfully untied his eopie from its corral, where it had spent a comfortable night in the company of other beasts, steadily munching through the remainder of its feedbag.

"I am sorry, my friend, but it seems we must part ways," the hermit told it, with an almost affectionate pat on its shaggy and decidedly unintelligent rump. The eopie happily allowed him to lead it away to the market place, which was a jumble of hastily erected vendor's stalls and heaped wares. He sold the poor creature to a feisty old Toydarian junk dealer who had come to purchase spare parts and needed a beast of burden. The hermit even allowed the obnoxious little fellow to cheat him badly. Anything else would have raised suspicions.

The vast majority of his profits he was obliged to yield over to the Jawas, who pocketed them with manifest joy and gamboled away on their next errand. The hermit found his way to the main street, where cantinas and gambling houses lined both sides of the dusty thoroughfare. Steeping over the drunken form of his young Rodian friend, sprawled indecorously in a gutter, he entered the same establishment in which he had fist laid eyes on Womprat.

Womprat. A free man. An individual, not a mere clone – a unique spark kindled in the Living Force, unfettered by the Empire. Perhaps there was hope for the galaxy after all. He sank into a dark booth in the room's corner, and massaged his temples. He was stranded here, without a ready way to travel back across the open desert to his lonely retreat in the hills, and without sufficient credits to buy discreet transport thither. But never mind…a solution would present itself. In the meanwhile, he still felt too ill to bother much about it.

"Hey!" a young woman's voice interrupted his half-dazed reverie. "We're not open yet, You gotta scoot- if the boss finds you in here before business hours, he'll dock my wages, maybe fire me. We don't let tramps stay overnight."

The woman held a cleaning tool, and surveyed him with hands on hips. He raised his head and stroked a weary hand over his dust-encrusted beard. "Forgive me. I just stopped in for some demudo. Surely if I pay for breakfast, it is business hours?" He gently set the small remaining stack of credits on the greasy tabletop.

"Huh," the girl smiled, scooping up the whole pile. "Guess so."

She returned a few minutes later with a steaming platter of the local hangover remedy. The hermit choked it down, confident in the folk remedy's power to assuage the aftereffects of intoxication – or toxic shock – but unwilling to speculate at all upon its composition and origin. When he had cleaned the plate, he shoved it aside and discreetly took his leave.

The streets were filling up again. Morning sunshine warmed the earth; the Rodian in the gutter stirred and dragged himslef into an adjacent cantina, presumably for a generous helping of demudo. People thronged the busy central aisle, gathered to chat and haggle on corners and in the shaded awnings of the local businesses. The Wanted posters still hung, a little tattered and faded, upon walls here and there. The hermit looked askance at the first two he passed, but found his way over to the next one and surreptitiously studied its array of images and posted bounties. Many of the names and faces had been crossed out. His remained. He lifted a hand to swiftly tear the thing down….and then he stopped.

Let it stay. Let all who saw it be reminded that at least one of the undesirables, the enemies of the Empire and all that it stood for, had escaped and remained defiant and unbroken, a tribute to the imperfection and limitations of the new Order. Let it be a spitwad in the Empire's eye. Yes. That was better. He tugged his hood further forward, in what had become an unconscious habit, and continued on his way, wandering along the length of the street, reveling in the sheer undiluted glory of the Force. Even here, it shone invisibly around him, effulgent in the drab setting, as unfettered and wild as the future which the Empire sought so vainly to shape and control. He brushed shoulders with an Imperial trooper patrolling the street, excused himself with an insincere apology, moved on unnoticed. The Force murmured, amusement rippling in its depths, so much like Qui Gon's Jinn's long-forgotten but once familiar chuckle . It told him to turn left, away from the pedestrian center, and he did.

The blare of a speeder's horn brought him abruptly to a standstill. Owen Lars sat in a dilapidated vehicle, idling at the edge of the road.

"Need a ride?" he offered gruffly. "I'm headed back your way."

Surprised, taken off guard for the second time in as many days, he agreed. Something must have showed on his face, for Lars cleared his throat apologetically. "Look – I know what you did over at the pharmacy. It wasn't necessary."

The man was proud and stubborn. One had to tread carefully. "Oh, but it was," he replied gently. "The food Beru gave me a few months back – during the famine. I was deeply grateful. It made that time tolerable. I only wanted to pay back the favor."

"She gave you food, eh?" The moisture farmer was caught between irritation at the beggar and admiration for his wife. The latter sentiment won out in the end. "Oh, well. That's different, then. We're even."

"Yes," the hermit concurred. "Quite."

They rode in silence, the hot sun beating down on them as the klicks rolled away, with delicious speed. Lars stopped the speeder at a short distance from the rocky outcroppings where the hermit made his dwelling. "You should be good from here," he said, by way of dismissal.

"Thank you- very much," his passenger said, clambering over the speeder's side a bit stiffly. "May your kindness be rewarded."

Owen Lars nodded, and then paused. "Look," he added, suddenly, as though giving up an internal battle. "I've got the medicine. The baby should be fine now. Thought you'd like to know."

The hermit nodded once and smiled. "Yes, I'm glad to hear it."

But that was all the farmer was willing to give him. He kicked the speeder back into life and zoomed away, not looking back.

The hermit sighed with relief, and with bone deep weariness, and began the short hike back to his hidden cave. His thoughts strayed momentarily to other caves, to other times, to circumstances less lonely and diminished. But the Force shone here, too. It was no respecter of persons, nor of lofty and glorious surroundings. Indeed, eschewed by the vast Empire, perhaps now it favored such downtrodden places as this. Perhaps.

He reached the humble refuge of his home and retired gratefully into its spare, cool interior, closing the door behind him. The planet slowly turned on its axis, the suns crawled across the ecliptic, sank on the eastern horizon, suffusing the sky with a riot of color. The stars came out of exile, one by one, to keep their serene nighttime vigil….waiting patiently, like the hermit, for the future to unfold.