“Is that so,” Lando said, his face as unreadable as if he were at a sabacc table. “What fortuitous timing.”
“Indeed. So—is that interesting enough?”
“It’s an interesting story,” Lando said pointedly. “I don’t see anything interesting to do yet, though.”
Drayson’s expression turned gravely serious. “I’d like to put you on Pakkpekatt’s ship—nominally as Fleet liaison. Boldheart was regular navy, after all. Intelligence can’t deny that they have an interest.”
“But I’d really be there for you?”
“No,” said Drayson. “I could have put any number of Alpha Blue agents in the task force. In fact, you don’t know that I haven’t. No, I don’t want you to report to me.”
“Then why do you want me on the mission?”
“Because you think like a smuggler, and Pakkpekatt thinks like a colonel. Because you have a way of getting yourself where people don’t want you, past traps that others don’t see until it’s too late. Because I think the mission has a better chance of succeeding if you’re there than if you aren’t.”
“That’s all?”
“That’s all. That’s my job,” Drayson said. “To make sure that some things happen, and make sure others don’t. So, make up your mind. Are you interested? Want to go chase the Teljkon vagabond?”
Lando just grinned.
Chapter Four
In the first quiet moment of the day, Han’s comlink unit chirped at him.
“Han, this is Luke,” a familiar voice said. “Will you come see me?”
“What? Luke? Hey, kid, your sister’s been looking everywhere for you—”
“I know,” Luke said. “Will you come see me, alone?”
“Uh—all right. Where are you? Are you really on Coruscant, like Leia says?”
Luke did not answer directly. “Take your speeder due west from Imperial City. When you reach the coast, turn off your nav system and release the controls. I’ll bring you here.”
“Well—okay. That’s easy enough. But it’ll have to be later,” Han said apologetically. “Tonight. Somebody’s got to watch the kids.”
“Of course, I’ll see you tonight.”
“Wait,” Han said quickly, before Luke could break the link. “Is this supposed to be a secret? Can I tell Leia where I’m going?”
“If you need to. I don’t want you to lie to her.”
“You sure you don’t want to just call her yourself, talk to her?”
“I’m sure,” Luke said. “Tell her what you need to. But please come alone.”
The shore of the western sea had been a glittering playground, a gay and glorious world that never slept, before the clone Emperor’s Force storm had ravaged Coruscant. It had yet to fully recover. Only the lights of a few scattered resorts marked the broken lines of the coast as Han’s speeder flashed overhead and bored into the dark sky over the western sea.
Han waited several long seconds, until he realized he couldn’t say what exactly he was waiting for. “Okay, Luke. Hope you’re listening, wherever you are. I really don’t want to go swimming tonight.”
Leaning forward, Han reached out and switched off the nav system, a process that took three confirmations and two overrides. A third of the speeder’s cockpit controls went dark, while a bright orange legend across the bottom of the viewshield warned MANUAL FLIGHT MODE.
“Here goes nothing,” Han said with a sigh, sitting back and crossing his arms over his chest.
Almost immediately the speeder veered sharply right and dived toward the water. It was all Han could do to stop himself from grabbing the controls again.
But the speeder soon leveled off, though at an alarmingly low altitude. The moon was still well below the horizon, but Han could see the undulating surface of the sea by the pale phosphorescent light of millions of tiny creatures riding the swells and currents. The sight was eerie and marvelous, but it was also barely an arm’s length below the flat underside of the speeder, and racing by at a dizzying clip.
“Hey, Luke—you out there?” Han said, slouching as much as the speeder’s seat and his long legs would allow. “Is this gonna be a long flight? Do I have time for a nap? Hey, pal, you can start food service anytime.”
There was no response.
“Lousy spacelines,” Han muttered, closing his eyes. “They’re all smiles till they have your money and herd you on board. Then see if you can get a glass of water—”
A long-winged sea shrike rose from the rocks to fly in formation with Han’s speeder as, slowing, it arrowed toward the beach. Wakened by the change in the pitch of the speeder’s thrusters, Han strained to make out where it might be headed.
Then a hole opened in the sky ahead, a brightly lit oval that hung above the beach like a doorway to morning. The sea shrike veered off, and the speeder coasted through the oval of light and settled on the floor of an otherwise empty high-ceilinged chamber. Han twisted sideways in his seat to see where he had come from, just in time to watch the opening seal itself behind him.
Hello, Han, a voice said in his mind. Come up.
“Come up?” Han said, scrambling out of the speeder. “There’s no—”
As he began his protest, the nearest wall deformed into a ladder, and an opening appeared in the ceiling above it. “Sure,” Han said. “As if it would have been any more trouble to make stairs.”
But he reached out and clambered up the rungs all the same, taking them two at a time as a point of pride. He wasn’t happy, though, to hear his own grunts at the bottom or feel his heart racing at the top.
Han found himself standing at the bottom of a large spherical room containing no furniture or technology—at least, none that he could spot. “Now what?”
Keep coming, said the voice in his head. Walk up the wall.
“Easy for you to say,” Han said, starting to feel annoyed.
But the opening he had climbed through had already vanished, leaving him with little choice. He started up the curving wall, and found to his surprise that wherever he stood seemed to be the bottom of the sphere.
There was no telling whether it was a trick with grav fields, some sort of Jedi legerdemain, or the room itself was turning under him. Han tried not to think about it, though his steps became cautious as he went past the halfway point up the wall—or, at least, what should have seemed like halfway up the wall.
After he had gone a dozen more tentative steps, a section of the floor—wall? ceiling?—ahead of him dropped away to form a ramp leading out of the sphere. It seemed to Han as though he must be upside down in relation to the rest of the structure, but he found himself, apparently right side up, entering a large pyramidal room from one of its three sloping sides. It was as lacking in amenities as any space he had seen so far, and lit by the same curious uniform glow that seemed to come from behind the walls without making them bright to the eyes. The light was as cold as the air.
“Nice little tree house,” Han said, moving slowly toward the center of the room, looking up at the apex of the chamber. “And you’ve done a wonderful job of cutting down on clutter. I think you’ve taken the idea of concealed storage to a new level. You’ll have to give Leia the name of your decorator.”
“Thank you for coming, Han,” a voice said behind him. “It’s good to see you.”
Han spun around and found Luke standing one long stride away, almost as if he had been following Han. Han’s face broke into a boyish lopsided grin. “Well, hey, I wanted to get out of the house, and since I was in the neighborhood—You know, you could’ve come to see us, too.”
“No, I couldn’t,” Luke said. He wore an ankle-length patchwork robe that seemed to be made from bits of several other garments, including a pilot’s uniform and a Tatooine sand cape. His demeanor was relaxed but remote, quelling Han’s impulse to grab him in a bear hug and clap him on the back. “I hope by the time you leave, you’ll understand why.”
“Well—you’ll have to start at the beginning, because I don’t u
nderstand a thing about what’s going on,” Han said. “What is this place? Why are you here? Why are you hiding? Why am I here? Why didn’t you want Leia to come?”
“Leia wants something from me,” Luke said. “You don’t. Your other questions will take longer to answer.”
Han looked around with a frown. “If this is gonna be a long conversation—I don’t suppose you have anything like a chair anywhere?”
“Sorry,” Luke said, dropping gracefully into a cross-legged meditation posture. “Sit where you like, and I’ll put an air cushion under you.” He waited until Han was comfortably settled, then went on. “As you see, I can hide well enough, even from Leia. But I’d rather be left alone. I hope that you’ll go back and ask her to accept that. If she doesn’t—well, she’s not going to get what she wants. She’s only going to drive me away from Coruscant.”
“I don’t get it,” Han said. “Why? You two have always been close. What happened?”
“Nothing,” Luke said. “I just can’t be close with anyone right now.”
“Go on. I’m listenin’.”
Luke nodded, but looked down into his lap before continuing. “I don’t know if you can understand or not. When I first met Obi-Wan, he’d been a hermit on Tatooine for ten years or more. When I first met Yoda, he had been a hermit on Dagobah for a hundred years or more. I never thought to ask either of them why.”
“A little late for that now,” Han said with a wry smile.
“At the time, I assumed they were both in hiding. Hiding from the Emperor, from my father. But that makes no sense.”
“No? Nothing personal, but hiding from that pair makes great sense to me. I can think of a couple of times I’d have been glad to do it if I could have.”
“But why in the middle of a desert, or a jungle?”
“Eh—isn’t that obvious?”
“No,” Luke said, shaking his head. “It’s much easier for Han Solo to hide—even with a price on his head—than for a powerful Jedi, whether Knight or Dark Lord. A Jedi’s physical presence is only a small portion of his connection to the universe. Change his face, hide him from sight, and I’ll still feel his presence when he draws on the Force. It doesn’t matter if he’s in the next room or across the system. Remember when we were taking the stolen shuttle to Endor, to destroy the second Death Star’s shield?”
“Yeah,” Han said. “You were pretty jumpy. You said Vader could sense you.”
“He did sense me,” Luke said. “I didn’t have the skill yet to make the waters still. But Obi-Wan and Yoda were Masters. If they could hide from the Emperor—and I believe they could—why, they could as easily hide in Imperial City, or on Vader’s own Star Destroyer, as anywhere. And if their skills weren’t equal to Palpatine’s, neither distance nor isolation could save them from being discovered.”
“Maybe they hid out in the sticks so no one else would get hurt if Vader showed up,” Han suggested. “You’ve gotta admit, when you guys fight, it has a way of getting messy. We’ve got a few monuments to that fact downtown in Imperial City.”
Luke shook his head. “No. I discovered the real reason while I was on Yavin—the dilemma that every Jedi eventually faces. I discovered a very important and difficult truth, Han—a frustrating truth. The stronger you become in the Force, the more that you can do, the more that’s expected of you, and the less your life belongs to you.”
“Is this the answer, then?” Han said, gesturing at the room with one hand. “Running away?”
“Call it that if you must. It’s one answer. There’s another, even less appealing,” Luke said. “Han, I’m convinced that for each Jedi, there comes a point at which he or she must choose. When the world presses in on you, threatens to drive you mad, there’re only two ways you can find peace. One is to impose your will on everyone and everything around you. The other is to surrender your will, your ego, and withdraw from those who are always wanting you to ‘fix’ their lives.”
“I don’t see it,” Han said stubbornly.
Luke smiled. “Try to imagine that you’re at home. One of the children is screaming, and the other two are tugging at your elbows, each demanding that you punish the other for some slight—”
“Routine,” Han said.
“Chewbacca is playing tree-drum music at ear-splitting levels. See-Threepio is nattering on about nothing. Artoo-Detoo is behind your chair, arguing with the household droids in Basic. The hypercomm is blaring two channels at once, both too loudly. Your comlink is chirping in your pocket. You have three messages from people who want you to come do them a favor, and Leia’s insisting on your attention. Lando has a raucous sabacc game going in the next room, there’s someone at the front door, and a flight of airspeeders keeps buzzing right over your head.”
“Okay, that’d be a little worse than routine,” Han conceded. “A little.”
“Now imagine it goes on around the clock for a day, ten days, a month, half a year, a year—not only without a break, but getting worse all the time. Until you reach your limit, whatever your limit might be. What are your choices? Control your environment, or leave it.”
“Or go mad and destroy it,” Han said. “Which hardly counts as a choice. Yeah, I think I get the picture now.”
“Do you see what a thin line separates Palpatine and Yoda?” Luke said earnestly. “Palpatine sought power over others. Yoda sought power from within. Palpatine wanted control of everything, in the hopes of building what he thought would be a perfect universe. Yoda gave up the idea of controlling or perfecting the universe, in the hopes of understanding it.”
“You know,” Han said slowly, “I always kind of wondered why you drew the short straw, why Yoda and Obi-Wan didn’t team up and take on the Emperor themselves—”
“Yes!” Luke said, his face more animated than Han had seen it since arriving. “I think that’s why it fell to me, Han. That’s why I had to be the one to face Vader. I still had the passion to reshape things, a passion Obi-Wan and Yoda had moved beyond. Surrender disarms you.”
Han’s expression showed his disgust. “It’s pretty useless, then, isn’t it? Jedi Knights who won’t fight?”
“Han, try to understand. The essence of the dark side is using the Force to control others. I know that temptation firsthand. If you champion that idea, you’re thinking just as Palpatine and my father did—‘I have the power, and it’s mine to use as I wish.’ Do you want that to be the code we live by? Should the Jedi rule the galaxy, simply because we can?”
“Well—now that you put it that way—”
“Good,” Luke said. “But then understand that there’s a price. When a Jedi renounces that path, it becomes very hard to be a warrior, to lead a crusade. Obi-Wan and Yoda weren’t afraid to fight, or to die. They felt the suffering the Empire was causing just as acutely as any of us did—probably more so. I wasn’t stronger than them, or wiser. I was raw, headstrong, reckless. But I had to be the one to challenge the Emperor—because I still could.”
Han frowned and cocked his head. “What about now?”
“Now? I don’t know,” Luke said, shaking his head. “I don’t know if I could do it now. I don’t know if I could summon the outrage. I feel myself standing on a dividing line, at a cusp. I don’t know what I should be doing with these gifts—these burdens. It’s the question I’ve come here to explore.”
“And you want to be left alone to do it.”
“I need to be, Han. Will you help Leia understand?”
“I can try,” Han said dubiously.
“I can’t ask more than that.”
“Um—look, with everything you’ve said, I already know the answer. But I gotta ask, so I can tell her I did. Leia wants your help with something.”
“I know.”
“She wants you to come live with us for a while. She needs help with the kids.”
“She thinks she does,” Luke said. “I’m sorry. I have to say no.”
“Okay,” Han said with a shrug. “I had to ask. I guess she th
ought, you know, family and all, maybe you could become a hermit next month instead of this month—”
Luke stood. “She’s important to me, as are the children, as are you. You know that.”
“Sure—”
“That’s why my answer is no. It has nothing to do with this other matter.”
“It doesn’t?” Han asked, struggling to his feet.
“My sister Leia has all the talent and wisdom she needs to be not only the mother, but the model, your children need,” Luke said. “She has only to believe in herself, and she’ll find that nothing is beyond her. Which is why the worst thing I could do for your family right now is come to her rescue, to encourage her to look to me to solve her problems. She’ll only undercut her own authority with the children, and yours with it. They must learn their first and most important lessons from you. In that, they’re no different from any other children.”
Han pursed his lips as he considered Luke’s answer. “All right,” he said, offering his hand. “Good luck, Luke. I hope this won’t be the last time I see you. But you call us—we won’t call you. Okay, buddy?”
Taking the offered hand, Luke looked intently into his visitor’s eyes. “Thank you,” he said, with a small but affectionate smile. “I couldn’t ask for a better friend than you, Han.”
As always, the open emotion made Han uncomfortable. “You could ask, but you don’t deserve one,” he wisecracked, patting Luke on the arm and then pulling away. He circled around Luke toward where the chamber’s entrance used to be. “You get right to work moving that mental furniture around, or whatever it is you hermits do. I’ll just go home and tell Leia you’ve cracked up—it’ll be a lot simpler. No, don’t bother, I can find my way out. I never have seen a maze that couldn’t be greatly simplified with a good blaster—”
Before the Storm Page 7