The porter droids led them down gently curving corridors, past doorways of plush suites, until they came to the set of rooms Luke had reserved. Multicolored glow-lamps reflected off the polymerized ice walls, making it seem as if they walked through a rainbow caught in crystal.
Delighted, Callista stopped to kiss Luke. “This is so wonderful,” she said. “I can feel the power in this place, the energy. I know we’ll be able to do something here!”
Inside their spacious suite, fountains bubbled in the corners; mists drifted around the rooms, passing glowing heaters that made the multiple chambers comfortable and homey. The furniture was oddly shaped and of varying sizes, carved from rock inclusions that had been found inside the cometary ice crust, now bearing the ubiquitous company logo. The porter droids deposited their packs, and played prerecorded advertisements for the various restaurants and lounges available at the luxurious MC Quarry.
Luke hustled the droids out of the suite before they could begin a droning recitation of sightseeing opportunities. He shut the door and turned to Callista with a smile and a sigh. “We’re here,” he said. He slumped down onto a polished stone contour sofa. Callista joined him.
“According to the brochures, there’s plenty of things to do here,” Luke said. “We could explore the tunnels, or suit up and go out to the surface. The low gravity makes it fun to jump around,” he said. “Or we could see one of the erupting gas geysers. Those are supposed to be quite spectacular.”
She shook her head. “I just want to stay here with you, Luke. We can relax and talk … and just be alone for a while.”
He closed his eyes and realized how wonderful that sounded. “You won’t get any argument from me.”
Callista stared into the foaming fountain; her eyes took on a fixed, faraway look. Luke knew she must be focusing her thoughts, though he still could not sense her, as if the Force itself didn’t know she existed.
“I’m thinking of the oceans on Chad,” she said, not looking at Luke but fully aware he was watching her. “Especially at night at highest tide, when all the moons are full in the sky at the same time. The wander-kelp we kept corralled in mating season would begin to shimmer with captured phosphorus, glowing like an oil slick on fire.”
“What are wander-kelp?” Luke asked.
“We used to raise them at our sea ranch,” Callista said. “It’s sort of halfway between plant and animal—really stupid, but it moves under its own volition. A big mass of iodine-filled leaves that we could shear several times a year, distill, and sell for their medicinal content, while using the rest of the biomass as cheap protein fiber for animal feed.
“Times were tough. It’s not that the market went bad, but the Emperor’s crackdown fouled up the trade routes. All the tariffs and impossible regulations pushed our regular traders out of business. Sometimes we had to cook and eat the barnacles growing beneath our corral rafts. Of course, my family is all dead now … years ago, while I was trapped in that computer.”
Her lower lip began to tremble, and she fixedly refused to look at Luke. She clamped her lips together. “Part of me feels guilty for not staying with them—but I carried that around all the years I was a Jedi. I don’t have any regrets, just sadness.”
Now she turned and looked at Luke. Her eyes were dry and strong. “But my Jedi Master, Djinn Altis, came and showed me the Jedi way. He arrived on his big wandering ship the Chu’unthor, a ship with no destination, much like your own praxeum on Yavin 4.”
“I know,” Luke said. “We found the crashed and buried Chu’unthor on Dathomir and brought it back.”
Callista sighed soberly. “I suppose I must have known Djinn Altis was dead. Perhaps he ran afoul of the Nightsisters.” Her eyebrows knitted together. “I remember once when Master Altis took me on a long, low flight above the seas of Chad. We cruised over singing schools of cyeen and the patterns of tubular eels glowing pink in the moonlight. Master Altis taught me how to sense the life forms with my new abilities. I didn’t believe him at first, but when he showed me how easy it was, I knew I was a Jedi. He didn’t need to convince me. It was my family that required convincing—and I don’t think I quite succeeded in that.”
Luke stood up and went to a pitted black table and pulled out a small disc, a blue chit that gave them a meal discount in one of the Mulako Corporation’s fine restaurants.
“Let’s try something,” he said. Luke let his eyes fall half closed, channeling his thoughts through the Force in a simple exercise. The small chit lifted from the palm of his hand and hung suspended in the air. “I’m going to hold this up,” he said. “You try to nudge it. Bump it toward me. That should be easier than actually lifting it. Open yourself to the Force and let it flow. Just a slight push.”
“I’ll try,” Callista said doubtfully—then caught herself as Luke replied.
“There is no try.”
She answered, “I know, I know. I shouldn’t have said that.” Callista squeezed her eyes shut and concentrated. Her breathing grew shallow, her expression tighter, more compressed.
Luke sent out small, questing tendrils to see if he could detect her manipulating the Force. The blue disc hovered motionless in the air.
Callista’s face became flushed with the effort, and finally she let out a shuddering breath and opened her eyes, her forehead creased with frustration. “I can’t. There’s nothing.” Before Luke could speak, she held up a hand. “Please don’t lecture me. Not now. You don’t need to train me. I know how to do it—but I can’t.”
Luke squeezed her hand instead. “Don’t lose hope, Callista,” he said. “Please don’t lose hope.”
* * *
Later that evening, Luke sipped on a glass of primordial ice water distilled from the comet’s reservoirs. Beaded droplets clustered on the outside of the glass. He looked at the mist rising along the floors and breathed the damp air, filling his lungs and savoring the sensation. “This is so different from the place I grew up.”
Callista snuggled next to him in one of the oversized seats. “Tell me about it,” she said. “I want to know everything about you.”
Luke let bittersweet memories flow back to him. “I once said that if there was a bright center to the universe, Tatooine was the place it was farthest from.” He shook his head. “A dry, hot place—a hopeless place. Anybody born there was likely to die there, going nowhere. My Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru were moisture farmers, hardworking, closed-minded people. They knew the truth about my father, told me lies, hoping against hope that I wouldn’t follow in his footsteps, that I wouldn’t want to pursue a dangerous and glorious life as a Jedi Knight. They wanted me to stay home where I would be safe … and completely uninvolved. They loved me deeply in their own way—but when you feel the calling of the Jedi, there’s no denying it.”
“I know,” Callista murmured, resting her head against his shoulder.
“When Obi-Wan Kenobi began to train me,” Luke said, “I didn’t know how I was going to tell Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru.” He swallowed and felt his expression harden. “I never had the chance, though. The Empire killed them and burned their farm before I could get back. They would have killed me, too, if I’d been there.”
Callista brushed his arm with her fingertips, radiating a quiet warmth.
“Now Biggs is dead too,” Luke said. “Biggs Dark-lighter, the only one of my friends who actually escaped Tatooine. He went to the Imperial academy for a while, then joined the Rebel Alliance. I met up with him again at our base on Yavin 4, though I didn’t get much chance to talk with him. Biggs was my wingman when we flew against the Death Star. He saved me, but he died in the battle.”
“Was he your only friend there?” Callista said.
Luke stuck his finger into the fountain, letting the cool water trickle down his hand. “I had two other close companions, Camie and Fixer. We used to hang out at Tosche Station and talk about our dreams and how we were going to get off that dustball. Camie’s family grew hydroponic gardens underground and bought wate
r from my uncle. Uncle Owen always said we were just wasting time, but we were exercising our imagination, thinking of things we could do—even if we never would. It kept us from going insane on that hopeless planet.”
He sighed. “I wonder if Camie and Fixer are still there. My life seemed like it was going nowhere,” Luke whispered, “and now I’m a Jedi Master. I’ve found a twin sister I didn’t know I had, and she’s the Chief of State. The Empire is defeated, and I’m reestablishing the Jedi Knights.” He gave a little laugh. “A lot has changed.”
He smiled down at Callista and stroked her hair. She had fallen asleep in his arms.
KHOMM
CHAPTER 17
As Dorsk 81 piloted them to the main spaceport on Khomm, Kyp Durron stared out at the amazingly perfect gridwork of cities.
Dorsk 81 fidgeted at the control panel, looking anxious as he brought their craft in. A few other vessels sat parked in marked-off rectangles, out-system traders coming to the clone planet to offer their wares. The inhabitants of Khomm rarely left their world, preferring to stay at home and do what they had always done.
Dorsk 81’s olive green skin flushed a deeper hue. “It feels good to be back,” he said. “I was untrained when I left, but now I can trace what my senses told me as I grew up. I feel the calming influence of this place, the comfortable familiarity. After all the difficult decisions I’ve faced at the praxeum, I want to sink back into the pool of my own people, absorbing their warmth and welcome. You’ll sense it too, Kyp.”
Kyp nodded, masking his skepticism. “I can already feel a low-level … muffled sensation.”
Dorsk 81 nodded his streamlined head and innocently blinked his bright eyes. “Yes, yes, that’s it.”
When they opened the access hatch, Kyp was amazed to see that a crowd had been shuttled in from the tall buildings. He looked at the hundreds of smooth-skinned clones gathered to welcome them. They applauded when Dorsk 81 stepped into the hazy sunlight and raised his right arm in greeting.
Kyp stood beside his friend and whispered, “Why so many? This is amazing.”
Beaming, Dorsk 81 answered, “I am famous here, now that I’m a Jedi Knight.” He cast a sheepish glance at Kyp. “I’m the only person in Khomm’s recent memory who has done anything … unpredictable.”
Kyp stifled a laugh, knowing that Dorsk 81 was not joking. He watched as one of the cloned aliens came forward on a levitating raft encircled by handrails. The placid-faced alien piloting it wore some sort of uniform with insignia on the shoulders.
Dorsk 81 was impressed. “That must be our city leader, Kaell 115. I’ve never seen him this close before. He’s been our leader for decades. It’s in his genetic line.” But when the standing platform drifted in front of them, Kyp saw that the uniformed alien had a childlike roundness to his face that did not speak of many years wearing the burdens of leadership.
He raised his right hand in greeting, as Dorsk 81 had done. “I am Kaell 116,” he said, “the new leader of this city. Welcome, Dorsk 81! We are proud to have such an impressive personage return to us.” He gestured toward the open platform. “Please allow me to escort you to your domicile.”
The city leader gave Kyp a stiff greeting. They climbed aboard, and the levitating platform drifted just over the heads of the crowd. The olive-skinned aliens waved in unison, giving Dorsk 81 a hero’s welcome.
Kaell 116 cruised away from the spaceport toward the identical blocks of city buildings. Trees lined every street, pruned to look exactly the same. Lawns of purple and blue grass were carefully manicured in front of each building. The air held a dusty, mineral undertone that spoke of life-lessness.
The structures were squarish monstrosities made of polished green-veined rock, bordered with a rough sandstone. The outer walls bore no decorations, no sculptures or window boxes, merely a number engraved in each cornerstone at street level.
“How do you find your way around?” Kyp said. “Everything looks the same.”
Kaell 116 seemed to take this as a criticism, and his face grew pinched. “We have molded our city to be the way we want it, and we’ve maintained it that way. Everything is numbered and cataloged, and Khomm is a stable, understandable place. Our citizens are happy and content here.”
“I see,” Kyp said, forcing a smile. His dark eyes flashed toward Dorsk 81, who looked so pleased to be back home.
As the standing platform drifted by, other aliens leaned out the windows to wave at them. Finally, Kaell 116 lowered them to the ground in front of one building that looked like all the others. The city leader dropped them off with a perfunctory farewell.
Dorsk 81 rushed to the building unabashedly, gazing up at the stone edifice as if he had never seen anything like it before. “This is my home!” he said. Kyp followed as the cloned alien fairly ran up three flights of stairs to his personal abode.
The well-lit corridor was lined with a dizzying succession of identical doors, like myriad images reflected from nested mirrors. One of the doors popped open as Dorsk 81 hurried toward it.
Two figures emerged, wearing grins on their smooth faces; for a moment Kyp felt as if he had seen a vortex of alternate timelines, images of an identical person at different stages of life. They both looked like Dorsk 81, one older and more weathered, one younger and slightly smaller.
All three embraced and talked quickly in low voices. Kyp stepped back, feeling as if he didn’t belong there—but he didn’t mind. He observed with a pang of homesickness, thinking fondly of when he and his parents and his brother, Zeth, had spent warm times together on his own world of Deyer: the floating fishing platforms, the quiet lake sunsets … but the Empire had crushed that place, and Kyp hadn’t seen it since his childhood.
After the brief and intense welcome, Dorsk 81 gestured for Kyp to follow him inside. “This is my friend Kyp Durron, another Jedi Knight. This”—he turned to the older image of himself—“is Dorsk 80, my predecessor, and here,” he clasped the shoulder of the younger clone, “is Dorsk 82, my successor.”
Kyp felt disoriented by the genetically identical copies, but he had seen many strange things in the galaxy. He glanced around where the Dorsk family lived, saw adequate furnishings and all the expected rooms. “Do any of you have wives?” he asked, seeing no one else.
All three clones blinked at him, and finally Dorsk 81 gave a short laugh. The skin on his forehead wrinkled. “Kyp, no one has wives. Everyone on Khomm is genderless. That’s why we use the cloning facilities. We haven’t had genders on this planet for thousands of years.”
Kyp chuckled in embarrassment. “Well, I just assumed … uh, obviously I was wrong.”
“We all make mistakes,” the elder Dorsk 80 said with a quick, meaningful frown in the direction of Dorsk 81. Kyp noticed, but his friend pretended not to.
Later, Dorsk 81 helped make up a bed in their small extra room, and Kyp used the moment of privacy to ask a question that had been bothering him.
“Dorsk 81,” he said. “Now that I’ve seen how …” he searched for the right word, “how stable and unchanging your world is, I don’t understand how you’re going to be a Jedi watchman. What are you going to do here?”
Dorsk 81’s yellow eyes suddenly filled with panic. “I don’t know!” he whispered, his voice hoarse. “I don’t know …” He repeated the words to himself, then he left Kyp alone, fleeing back into the outer rooms.
Kyp could not sleep for some time. He looked out the window into a night that glowed with a billion bright stars. Khomm was close to the galactic nucleus, near the dreaded Core Systems where the survivors of the Empire had gone into hiding. The stars made a blurry island in space, a lens that spilled across half the sky.
Kyp stared toward the Core Systems, fearing what they might hide, but also yearning to know.
Young Dorsk 82 spent the next morning showing off his work in the clone banks. The cloning facility was taller than the other buildings and of a different design: the only unusual structure Kyp had seen in the gridwork of the metrop
olis. Rather than the ubiquitous green-veined stone, the outer walls were immense rectangular sheets of transparent crystal, interlocked with chrome girders that reflected the hazy sunlight. The crystal windows were so clear that Kyp could look in from street level and see the carefully organized activity inside.
“We have maintained everything exactly as it was when you left it,” Dorsk 82 said, beaming up at his “father.” Inside, the air was damp and laden with a medley of chemical and organic smells that were not so much unpleasant as exotic and unusual. Dorsk 80 accompanied them like a stern schoolmaster, nodding in pride at his protégé Dorsk 82 and looking from side to side, touching controls and inspecting them as they passed.
“I didn’t know this was the work you did before,” Kyp said to Dorsk 81.
His friend nodded. “Yes, the computer database holds genetic blueprints of all the major family lines. When it is time to produce the next offspring, we call up the DNA strings and produce another copy of the preferred stock.”
“Each clone is usually the same,” Dorsk 80 interrupted. Kyp knew that Dorsk 81 was an anomaly, Force-sensitive against all odds, when he should have been identical to all previous incarnations of his clone pattern; but something inexplicable had changed.
Metal incubators lined row after row in banks carefully numbered and monitored where embryos were grown past the infant stage and accelerated to near adolescence, whereupon they were released and raised by their family units, trained in the duties of their genetic string.
The hissing of moving fluids, the whisper of mist generators, and the clicking of computer operators made the cloning facility a constant hive of activity, but tension grew around Dorsk 81 like a blanket of silence.
Dorsk 82 proudly led them to his own station. Flat terminal screens displayed the status of thousands of the embryo tanks. “Here is where you used to sit,” Dorsk 82 said. “Everything remains fully functional, and I have followed in our family’s footsteps—but now that you have returned, I gladly relinquish my position to you, so that I may continue my training and one day become your true successor.”
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