by Sean Stewart
Slowly he nodded. "No more can we watch you struggle as an apprentice in the
Temple," he said gently.
Deafness rushed in on Scout—a numb feeling, as if she had gone stiff inside.
She closed her eyes and shut out what he was saying. I won't hear this. I won't
hear this. It's not fair.
"—Padawan, and send you off Coruscant."
Scout opened one eye. "Urn, sorry, what was that?"
Master Yoda prodded her shoulder—very carefully!—with his stick. "Ears
bruised, are they? To be Jai Maruk's Padawan are you, and come with him on a
mission beyond Coruscant."
She gaped.
Master Yoda snickered. "Look like a fish, do you, Tallisibeth
Enwandung-Esterhazy. Little pop-mouth, gulp, gulp, gulp!"
She looked wildly at Jai Maruk, the gaunt, fierce Jedi Master who had come
back from his last mission with a Lightsaber burn on his cheek. The burn had
healed, but he still had a livid white scar running from his jaw to his ear to
show for his encounter with the infamous Asajj Ventress. "You're making me your
Padawan?" She turned back to Yoda. "You're not going to send me to the
Agricultural Corps?"
He shook his old green head. "A reward for your fighting technique, it is
not. Too few Jedi have I already. But even had I a crop of thousands, small one,
I would not let you go without a fight. Spirit and determination you have.
Between the stars, so much darkness there is. Why would I throw away one who
burns so bright?"
Scout stared. All her life, it seemed, she had been trying not to let Master
Yoda down. Clearly they all expected her to bubble with joy, but instead her
eyes grew hot and filled with tears.
"What's wrong?" Jai Maruk said. He turned to Yoda, mystified. "Why isn't she
happy?"
"She will be," Master Yoda said. "A band around her heart has there been,
years on years. And now she feels it loose, and the blood running back into her
heart: stings it does!"
"Yes!" Scout cried between sniffles. "Yes, exactly! .. . How did you know?"
Yoda scrambled up onto the bed and sat beside her, letting his little legs
dangle in space. His ears perked. "Secret, shall I tell you?" He leaned in
close, so she could feel his whiskers rasping against her face. "Grand Master of
Jedi Order am I!" he said loudly right in her ear. "Won this job in a raffle I
did, think you?" He snuffed and waved his stubby fingers in the air. "How did
you know, how did you know, Master Yoda?" he said mincingly, followed by another
snort. "Master Yoda knows these things. His job it is."
Scout laughed, and now, finally, the happiness started to hum in her, and she
was fine and sharp and humming, her spirit switched on and glowing like a
lightsaber blade. That sharp, and singing inside.
The holomap room in the Jedi Temple was a large domed chamber given over to
celestial navigation. Here hologrammic projectors created three-dimensional star
maps for students to walk through. These could be set to almost any scale, so a
student might examine, say, one solar system in great detail, with each planet
and satellite displayed in increasing resolution, showing every mountain and
sea. Or the entire galaxy might be compressed into the space of the room, so
nebulae of a thousand blazing suns were only pinpricks in the deep reaches of
black space.
Whie had always liked the Star Room. No place in the Temple was more magical.
When he was upset, or frustrated, or just needed time to himself, he would come
here to walk among the stars. This afternoon had been trying. He had walked
Scout to the infirmary and stayed to hear Master Caudle say the thumb she had
sprained was not a serious injury. Then he had returned to accept polite
congratulations from Master Xan and his fellow students for his performance in
the tournament. He had done these things gracefully and well, because that was
the standard to which he held himself; but it hadn't been easy, and he had
slipped away as soon as he felt he could gracefully do so.
For a while he inspected his lightsaber, making sure it hadn't been damaged
in the sparring, and carefully taking out a blemish on the handle where a stray
blow had left a char line. Then he had tried to force himself to do some
studying, sifting through the news dispatches to try to form an accurate picture
of the war since the Honoghr disaster. The older apprentices talked about it all
the time, and some of their instructors were very direct about using Clone War
scenarios for their training. Last week Master Tycho, who was teaching military
strategy this term, had demanded a rigorous evaluation of what had gone wrong on
Honoghr, along with a set of recommendations from every student about what could
have been done to prevent the debacle.
Whie had done well on the assignment—he always did well; that, too, was a
standard to which he held himself—but in his heart, he wasn't sure that
implementing his suggestions would have saved the day. He had the uneasy feeling
that the reality was both more complicated and more simple than even Master
Tycho wanted to believe. More complicated, because the lesson of the catastrophe
was that no plan, however beautiful, long survives the harsh chaos of war.
More simple because Whie was coming to believe that situations, like people,
could give in to the dark side: and once the 'dark side had one in its grip, it
never, ever let one go.
After an hour of inefficient studying he had given up and come here, to the
Star Room. The last person to use the room had been studying the Battle of
Brentaal—with key terrain color-coded by which side currently controlled them,
watery blue for the Republic, and gleaming machine silver for area the Trade
Federation's battle droids had held at the decisive moment of the conflict.
Whie deleted Brentaal and set the chamber's projectors to show the whole
galaxy, running at a million years per second. Through these deeps of history he
paced, watching stars form and burn and go out, feeling the wheel and swing of
the whole spinning galaxy around him. From this view, none of it mattered—not
his dream last night, not the war today, not the whole long watch of the Jedi
Order. Indeed, the rise and fall of sentient life passed in an eyeblink, a
barely perceptible ripple in the grand pavane: comets and constellations dancing
in the dark; the Force the music and the dancing, too.
The door of the Star Room cracked open, and a voice disturbed the great
impersonal whirl of time. "Whie?"
"Master Leem." So much for his private time. Even so, Whie smiled. Master
Leem was fond of him, and he of her. She was older and wiser than his fellow
apprentices, of course; she was the only one he dared complain to about the
difficulties that came with being enormously talented. The responsibility. The
pressure.
"I thought I might find you here." In the darkness she, too, was swimming in
stars. The constellation of Eryon, which on Coruscant was called the Burning
Snake, spun slowly across her shoulders and drifted away. "I hope you don't feel
bad about that last match. You were perfectly right to stop."
He shrugg
ed. "Was I? But maybe that's the difference between the dark side
and us. So long as they allow themselves to do things we will not, they will
always have an advantage."
He faltered at the end of the sentence, struck by an overwhelming sense of
recognition. He had been here before. Said this before . . .
Ah—last spring he had dreamed this moment. Did that mean that even now, the
self from last spring was trapped inside his head somewhere, watching the
conversation unfold? Whie felt cautiously inside himself, but it was like
putting his hand down a snake hole—a panicking dreaming Whie, locked up in his
skull like a boy being buried alive, was the last thing he wanted to find.
"Ah, but the dark side eats its young." He listened as Maks Leem said, word
for word, all the things he had already heard her say. "After all, if you and
Scout were to fight again right now, who would be better able?"
"Oh, that doesn't signify," Whie said. To himself, his voice sounded
perfectly calm and reasonable, but it felt mechanical, as if he were producing
the lines of a play. It was almost as if his current attention was mingling with
his dreaming self, leaving him nothing but a spectator of the present, unable to
change what was about to happen. "What If is a game you can always win. In the
real encounter, the one that mattered, she wanted it more, and she won."
"Perhaps," Master Leem said. "But I'm just as glad not to be patching up your
thumb. Speaking of which—"
"Master Yoda wants to see us in the infirmary."
Master Leem blinked all three eyes. "How did you know?"
"I dreamed this moment last year. Just recognized it now. I wondered for
months who we would be talking about; who it was that would have bested me. Now
I know."
And that was two dreams, now, in which Tallisibeth Enwandung-Esterhazy had
figured. A fragment of last night's dream came back to him—Scout staring at him,
blood running like tear tracks down her face. Eyes bright with longing.
He forced his mind away. The dark side lay down that path; he could feel it
there, waiting for him like a beast in the jungle.
Maks Leem's three brows furrowed, and her long, thin jaw began its customary
chewing motion. "We should go, Whie. I don't want to keep Master Yoda waiting."
"End program," Whie said, following her. At his words the whole galaxy of
stars like birthday candles flickered and went out.
Footsteps hurried across the infirmary, and a moment later Master Leem joined
Jai Maruk beside Scout's bed. "This is fun," Scout said giddily. "Like being a
languishing princess and having my courtiers come stand attendance around my
bed." Whie appeared a moment later, standing at Master Leem's side. He was
Leem's Padawan, of course—just as Scout was Master Maruk's. The thought made her
absurdly happy. Truthfully, she hardly knew Master Maruk, but that didn't
matter. What mattered was that she was going to be a real Jedi after all. Now
all I have to do is go on missions, battle against terrible odds, and carve my
way through the armies of the Trade Federation! Nothing to it!
Scout found herself grinning so hard her face ached. She laughed.
Master Leem looked dubiously at the bandaged girl lying on the infirmary cot.
She turned to Jai Maruk. "Is she drugged?" she murmured to the Master.
"No, ma'am!" Scout chirped. "I'm just a little beam of sunshine."
Master Leem's shaggy eyebrows climbed slowly toward her hairline.
"Glad you are here, am I," Yoda said. He shifted around until he was sitting
cross-legged at the bottom of the bed. "News for you I have, Tallisibeth and
Whie. Master Leem and Master Maruk, going on a mission for the Temple, they are.
As their Padawans, you will go with them."
"Already?" Scout said, shocked.
"They made you a Padawan?" Whie said, no less shocked.
"Where are we—" Scout checked herself, and glared at Whie. "What did you mean
by that?"
"I mean, congratulations!" Whie said smoothly.
Jai Maruk's mouth quirked in a little smile. "Your boy is agile," he murmured
to Master Leem.
Yoda snuffed and waved all bickering aside with his stubby old hand. "This
may you tell your friends, when they see you making ready for the journey. What
you may not say, is that Master Yoda with you also will be coming."
"You wouldn't be leaving the capital unless it was for something extremely
important," Scout said.
"Something to do with the war," Whie added.
Yoda's ears drooped. "True it is, what you say. Better things than fighting,
should a Jedi Master be doing! Seeking wisdom. Finding balance. But these are
the days given to us."
"Where are we going?" Whie asked. It seemed to Scout there was something
strange in his voice—as if he knew the answer already, and was hiding his fear
of it.
Yoda shook his head. "Tell you that, I will not yet. But a problem I have for
you. Yoda must leave Coruscant—but in secret. No one must know."
In the silence that followed, a little medical droid rolled out from Master
Caudle's dispensary and approached Scout's bed, bearing a tray with a pot of the
healer's cut and burn ointment.
"It can't be done," Master Leem said. "The Senate and the Chancellor's office
expect to hear from you every day."
"Make a feint," Whie said. The Jedi Masters turned to look at him. "Tell
everyone you are leaving. Make a show of it, Master. Show pictures of you
getting into a Jedi starfighter."
"—But the pictures are a deception," jai Maruk said, picking up the boy's
thought. "While the world watches you go on a very public mission, in reality
you will slip onto a different ship with us. A clever idea, boy."
"But . . ." Scout waited for someone else to say the obvious. The little
medical droid pulled up to a stop at her bedside and handed over a pot of Master
Caudle's balm.
Master Yoda's green moon face tilted toward her. "Yes, Padawan?"
"Well, Master, it's fine to say you should sneak off in secret, but the truth
is, you're, urn, very recognizable."
Master Leem nodded. "What the girl says is true. Everyone on Coruscant
recognizes the face of the Grand Master of the Jedi Order. Your addresses to the
Senate have been broadcast many times, and pictures of you conferring with the
Chancellor are routinely produced by every journalist in the capital."
"As a child, disguise me, could we not?" Yoda asked. "Perhaps Masters Leem
and Maruk, traveling as a family with their three children—Yoda a sweet
stripling of five or six?" His old face crinkled into a hideously unconvincing
childish smirk. The others involuntarily recoiled.
Scout struggled with the lid of the pot of ointment and then gave up; it was
screwed on too tightly for her to manage with her damaged hands. "Open this for
me, would you?" she said, handing the jar back to the medical droid. Its gears
and servos whined as it extended its metal claws and popped the lid smartly off
the jar. The smell of beeswax and burned oranges stole into the room. "I can't
imagine how we could smuggle you off the planet. Unless . .." Her eyes flicked
over to Yoda. An idea bloomed in her
eyes, and she choked back a snort of
laughter.
"Unless what?" Jai Maruk, her new Master, said impatiently.
Scout choked back another laugh and shook her head. "No. Nothing. It's a
terrible idea."
"Let me be the judge of that," Master Maruk said, his voice gone alarmingly
soft.
Scout looked pleadingly at him, then at Master Yoda. "Do I have to say?"
The ancient green-faced humpbacked gnome was staring at her with narrow eyes.
"Oh, yes."
It was raining again on Vjun, harder than usual. A wind had come up, shaking
the blood-and-ivory rosebushes in the gardens of Château Malreaux. Ugly weather.
Count Dooku watched the acid raindrops hurl themselves against his study
windows, like the Republic troops who every day flung themselves against his
battle droids and computer-controlled combat installations across the length and
breadth of the galaxy. Each little splotch leaving the imprint of its death on
the glass, then dissolving into a featureless wet spill and trickle.
The half-mad old woman Dooku had found haunting the château when he moved in
claimed to be able to read the future in the fall of broken plates, the spill
patterns of drinks carelessly overturned. An amusing mania. He wondered what she
would see in the pattern of raindrops. Something ominous, no doubt. Beware: one
you love is plotting your betrayal! or You will soon hear from an unwelcome
guest. Some such claptrap.
Outside, the wind picked up another notch, shrieking and groaning among the
eleven chimneys, as if to announce the arrival of a hideous guest.
Dooku's comm console chimed. He glanced over, expecting the daily report from
General Grievous, or perhaps a message from Asajj Ventress. He reached over to
open the channel, recognized the digital signature of the incoming transmission,
jabbed the channel open, and snapped to his feet. "You called, my Master?"
The hologrammic projector on his desk sprang to life, and the wavering form
of Darth Sidious regarded him. As always the picture was oozy and unclear, as if
light itself were uneasy in the presence of the Lord of the Sith. Dark robes,
purple shadows—a patch of skin, pale and mottled under his hooded cloak like a
fungus growing under a rotten log. From under heavy lids the Master's eyes,
snake-cold and serpent-wise, regarded him.