by Kathy Tyers
Almost persuaded, she resisted his seeming genuineness. “The Cosmos must balance.”
“I agree. The dark side calls constantly for aggression, revenge, betrayal. The stronger you become, the more you’re tempted.”
That made her hand tremble. “Then if you, you loved someone, you could easily hate them.”
He glanced down at the generator and raised an eyebrow.
She forced herself to ignore the hurt in his eyes. “No need for the generator,” she said. “We could easily be eating in silence.”
“Here’s another balance.” He pressed a hand to his dirt-streaked forehead. “The mountaintops in my life are balanced by canyons. I’ve lost friends, family, teachers. The Empire killed most of them. If I’d never even begun my Jedi training, they’d still be dead.” He frowned. “Actually, I’d be dead too. The day I met my first teacher, the Empire struck our farm. They butchered my Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru while I was away. Everyone who was home died. Haven’t they done that here too? Do you approve of the Empire?”
“That’s a loaded question.”
“Do you?” he pressed.
Of course she did. Didn’t she? “The Empire has seized more power than any government needs,” she admitted. “Yet it balances submission with privilege. One advantage to living under the Empire is a wonderful range of educational opportunities. Bright children may study right at Imperial Center.”
He made a wry face. “I’ve heard that the brightest don’t get to go home.”
How did he know that? Some stayed on, offered lucrative employment. Some vanished. She’d preferred to go home. “Let’s say we learned to hold back a little. Imperial leadership has been good for Bakura, anyway. It restored order when we were close to civil war. It has drawbacks, but I’m sure your people would tell you that the Alliance has problems.”
“They’re the problems of freedom.”
That stung. “You frightened us when your battle group arrived. The Rebel Alliance’s reputation is destructive, not constructive.”
“I guess from an Imperial point of view, it could be. But we’re not. Honest.”
He’s no diplomat. “Thank you for talking this through,” she said. “I feel better—”
“I wish I did.”
“—And more certain of myself,” she lied firmly. She reached into the satchel, twisted her wrist, then slipped the bag over one shoulder. “We will work together against the Ssi-ruuk.”
He made a hand-twisting motion. She switched on the generator one last time. “Is there a chance we—I—could buy a few of those?” He pointed inside the string bag.
She shook her head. “This is Eppie’s. There are only a few of them left on Bakura, property of the original families. We’ve kept them secret from Governor Nereus.”
“That’s too bad.”
“Yes, it is,” Gaeri agreed. “I’ll take the hover cart out.”
He clipped his lightsaber back onto his belt.
Luke walked her to the door. He wanted to stroke her hand, reason with her, erode her defenses with the Force. Even begging seemed reasonable. Instead, he palmed the door open and then thrust his thumbs through his belt.
“Thank you,” she said. The stormtrooper guards watched as she pushed the hover cart out and strode down the hall without looking back. Once she vanished around a corner, Luke dropped his hands. He clenched them, loosened them, and clenched them again. His abilities had always opened doors. Doors into danger, both in space and in the brighter, darker, wider spaces of his own soul, but he’d always had the freedom to walk through.
Gaeriel had tried to slam this door in his face, but she hadn’t succeeded. He’d felt the conflict within her. She might not fight him forever.
Then again, she might. Exhausted, he shut the apartment door behind him and strode up the hall in the opposite direction. A roof access door opened on his left. He pushed through and rode the lift up.
By night, the roof garden could have been primitive, isolated forest. Still air cooled his face. Clusters of white tree trunks branched out of protruding root wads, then swept up and ended in bright yellow-orange twigs, damp but no longer dripping. Two small round moons and several dozen bright stars shone overhead, and night glims edged a stone path between dark, mossy banks.
As he paced away from the lift shaft, the path branched. Several meters down the narrow spur toward the complex’s edge, he knelt on a bench, rested his elbows on the restraining wall, and looked down. The circles of the city stretched out around him, lit by hovering blue-white street lamps at the center, then pale yellow, fading to reddish—
Like a diagram of star types. The comparison leaped into his mind. Salis D’aar’s founders must have laid out the city for navigation by star colors, with the finest homes—like the Captisons’ mansion—in the zone that represented warm, hospitable yellow suns.
The moment of insight cheered him. It wasn’t wrong for a human to learn to use natural talents. If Gaeriel’s religion were carried to its logical end, everyone would have to be equal—even identical—in all respects, for fear of diminishing anyone else.
And his life was no longer his own.
He thought he could make out slow-moving pinpricks of light overhead that would be ships in the orbiting defense web. Locked in position with other ships, joined by common orders and a common enemy.
Many of those pilots had life mates to return to—or, at the last need, to grieve them. The stronger he became in the Force, the harder it might become to find a woman who’d have him.
He opened his empty hands. “Ben?” he whispered. “Ben, please come. I need to talk with someone.”
Not even a breeze answered. Along the wall’s surface, a black creature the size of his smallest finger humped on twenty legs. He concentrated on the rhythms of those legs, focusing his spirit. After it vanished into a crack, he called again. “Master Yoda? Are you near?”
Foolish question. Yoda was with the Force and therefore everywhere. But he did not answer.
“Father?” he called hesitantly, then repeated, “Father,” wondering if Anakin understood. He tried to imagine himself in Gaeri’s place. With her home world threatened and her life in peril, into the crisis came a man who frightened her. A Jedi.
He felt someone approach. Ben? he thought, but the intensity wasn’t that of a master, and it carried the restless striving of a living person. Light footfalls hurried down the path. Leia hesitated at the branching, her white gown glimmering between vine-shadowed white trees.
“I’m over here,” he called softly.
She hurried up beside him. “Are you all right?” She pulled a blue Bakuran knit shawl around her shoulders. “I heard—well, I thought I heard you call out through the Force.”
She’d tracked him this way at Cloud City, too. He sank down onto the bench. “It’s been a long, rough day. How was yours?”
“Uh,” she answered, “good. I left Artoo and Threepio with Prime Minister Captison.” A self-conscious excitement begged him not to notice. She tingled with eagerness.
Envious, he said, “Let it flow, Leia. He loves you.”
She glared. “No use hiding anything from you, is there? We went walking. We talked. We … it’s been hard to find time alone.”
Luke smiled, feeling bashful. “So this is what I missed. Growing up without siblings, I mean.”
Leia flicked the ends of her shawl. “It’s good to have a brother. Someone to talk to.”
“You also have Han. Someone ought to pass on the family strengths,” he added glumly. “It doesn’t look like I’ll get the chance any time soon.”
She laid a hand on his shoulder. “What’s wrong, Luke? Is it that senator?”
“A Jedi feels no passion.” Anyone who could manipulate his emotions could endanger him, making him unable to calm himself—unable to control. “But sometimes the Force obviously controls me, rather than the other way around. It favors life.”
“It is her. I was beginning to worry about you, Luke.
You’ve been so … detached.”
Her insight made him squirm. The easiest way to distract her was to rile her. “You and Han,” he said. “Let me ask you something I’ve no right to ask. You’re not … opposed to having children some day, are you?”
“Hey!” She snatched back her hand. “That isn’t an issue.”
“Sorry. It’s just that I’ve thought so much about it lately.” He had? Amazing, what his subconscious would tell somebody else before it informed him. For a moment, he pictured himself as head of a clan of young Jedi apprentices with mismatched green, blue, and gray eyes. “But a child who’s strong in the Force will have a great potential for evil too.”
“Of course.” Leia sat down and flipped the ends of her shawl into her lap, then plucked a purple trumpet flower off a vine and sniffed it. “That’s a risk humans have always had to take. It’s perilous to bring an intelligence into existence.”
“Doesn’t it make you wonder how our mother dared it?”
Her anger flared faintly, startling him. “Oh,” she said lightly. “That reminds me, I’m supposed to deliver a message. I’ve seen Vader.”
“Vader?” Luke’s mind went blank. “You saw … Father? Anakin Skywalker? Vader doesn’t exist any more.”
“Have it your way, then. Anakin. But I saw him.”
A sense of loss wrenched him. Why had his father appeared to Leia, and not him? “What did he say?”
She stared past him over the complex’s edge. “I’m supposed to remind you that fear is of the dark side. He apologized to me, or tried to.”
Luke stared out over the city. “I only saw him once—just for a moment. He didn’t speak.”
“Well, I don’t claim any part of him, and I don’t want him popping in on me.”
Luke mulled over his father’s message. Fear is of the dark side. Gaeriel’s fear of him: It came from the dark side, too. “Hatred is also the dark side, Leia.”
“It’s not wrong to hate evil.”
“Did his, um, did anything he said, well, have anything to do with … ah.” He stumbled to a halt. “Oh. I interrupted something when I called this morning, didn’t I?”
Even by dim starlight, he saw her cheeks flush. “It’s been hard to find time alone,” she repeated.
“I’m sorry. But maybe Father accomplished something good, if he sent you to Han for comfort.”
“You can’t say that. When I saw him, looking normal like that, I … I realized that a normal person became … what he was. That I could, too.”
“For the good side,” he insisted. He brush-kissed her cheek. He’d loved her, long ago it seemed, before they learned what she refused to acknowledge. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Hold on!” She straightened. “You’re not sending me away.”
“Only for a while, Leia. Go to Han,” he murmured. “I’ll leave you alone.”
She stared into his eyes and took several breaths, plainly irritated. Finally she sprang up and hurried off.
Luke glanced down at the circles of the city and up at a passing repulsor bus’s lights, then clasped his hands in his lap and bent forward. “Father?” he whispered. The thought crossed his mind that he’d made his peace with Anakin. That would explain why he’d appeared to Leia instead.
He started one of Yoda’s meditations, concentrating his will deeper than himself. Personal troubles vanished in perspective, and the strength of the universe flowed through him. He had a sister; he wasn’t alone. Some day, as he grew in the Force, real love would unite him with someone else of his own kind. Every emotion of either partner, every ripple of pleasure or pain, would bounce back from the other, resonating until sweet echoes faded.
He opened his eyes and unclasped his hands. He hadn’t lost Gaeriel yet. He would help her as he could, and if she rejected him, he’d leave Bakura with only faint regrets.
Laughing unmatched eyes and swirling skirts danced in his mind. Who was he kidding?
And what was he doing up here alone? He stood up and walked to a drop shaft.
Dev stroked the sleek new entechment chair … or should he call this something else? Three dozen new chairs were under construction, to supplement the energy flow Skywalker would give them, but this one was special. More of an upright bed than a chair, a motor reclined it from zero to thirty degrees. Instead of a catchment arc it had in-built energy-attracting circuitry that would lie under Skywalker’s back. Larger restraints stood open along its sides and near its foot, and other medical attachments enhanced its obvious design for the long-term survival of an occupant (they’d tested those parts yesterday). All silver and black, it glistened under brilliant cabin lights. “It’s beautiful, Master Firwirrung.”
“I’m sorry, Dev,” Firwirrung sang low. “I know this will hurt your feelings—”
“I wish it were real, Master. But I know you need to test it. Let’s begin.”
Firwirrung nodded his huge V-crested head.
Dev had suggested most of the design features for initial installation and restraint. No catchment arc covered the bed, and it leaned back a few degrees from vertical. Cautiously he backed up to it. His left foot brushed an open binder. It snapped shut around his ankle. “It works!” Dev exclaimed.
“Try the other,” crooned Firwirrung.
Dev watched this time. Out of a groove in the bed protruded a flexible black arch. He eased his right ankle toward it—
Snap. That second catch activated another cycle he’d suggested. This one tipped the bed back twelve degrees. He relaxed and rode with it, arms crossed over his chest. As his torso touched another trip panel, a thicker restraint circled his waist. It held him down far more securely than the restraints on the old entechment chair.
“Beautiful.” Firwirrung swept closer and stroked the waistband with a foreclaw. “Is it firmly coupled?”
Dev tried to twist his body. “Yes. But loose enough that I’ve no trouble breathing.”
“The human form is so odd,” Firwirrung whistled merrily. Dev laughed with him. “Are you comfortable, Dev? We can only guess at his size.”
“Oh, yes.”
“Left hand, now.”
He laid out his left arm. Another broad restraint swung rapidly and firmly into place. Embedded in this one was a tangle of life-function sensor relays that his thin scaleless skin would not obstruct. Behind Firwirrung on a black bulkhead panel, pale lights started blinking. Firwirrung pivoted around and examined them. “Leave the right free,” he instructed.
How Dev wished he would really be enteched today. He envisioned the moment when he sparked to life behind eyes that would never close, but saw everything. Inside a new body that could do anything—and chose only to please its masters. Yesterday, they’d begun enteching immature and overage P’w’ecks off the other ships, preparing for the assault. Enteched P’w’ecks wouldn’t last as long as humans, but numbers were needed—briefly.
Firwirrung touched a red panel. Something stung the small of Dev’s back. “That works, too,” he called. That mechanism was also critical for long-term confinement, as was the upper-spine beamer. Now the procedure would not depend on disabling Skywalker’s nervous system first.
“Can you move your feet?”
Dev peered down. The angle of tilt held them off the gray deck tiles. “I can’t even feel them,” he announced happily.
“Good.” Firwirrung swept closer. “Ah, Dev.” He unhooked a clear tube from the bedside beside Dev’s left shoulder. “I know how badly you wish this were real. I am sorry to tease you this way.”
“My time will come.” Dev shut his eyes. He felt a little pressure at his throat, then a thrust that barely stung. He relaxed against the bed, savoring the sensation, while Firwirrung moved to the other side and repeated the motion. He wished, oh he wished …
Yet an undercurrent of fear lurked behind his longing. His right hand trembled against his chest.
Hearing a whoosh, he opened his eyes to see Bluescale and Admiral Ivpikkis stride in, followed b
y two P’w’ecks who dragged a limp human prisoner by his head and arms. Following Firwirrung’s new procedure, they had already prepared him with a paddle beamer. That was the one who’d actually be enteched. Dev tried again to wiggle his toes and felt nothing. Perfect. For that poor frightened human’s sake, he hoped he could do his part.
“Review for me,” demanded the admiral. “How will this differ from standard entechment?”
Firwirrung pressed foreclaws together in front of his chest. “We believe that a Force-talented individual will be able to draw energy from a distance—a short distance, in Dev’s case. If Dev is properly linked to catchment circuitry, the other subject’s energies will flow through him, but Dev will remain unenteched and will be able to repeat the procedure indefinitely.”
“Not like the … chair, then.” Ivpikkis glanced at it. Dev recalled how amused they’d been when he first described human furniture. P’w’ecks were enteched lying flat on the deck.
“No,” agreed Firwirrung. “The actual subject need not be caught. With Skywalker’s involvement, the subject will not even need to be within the range of a tractor beam—or so we hope.”
“But for convenience’s sake, we have caught and prepared this one. Is everything ready?” Bluescale’s scent tongues flicked out of his nostrils toward the prisoner. The poor human was probably unclean.
“It is.” Firwirrung turned his V-crest toward Bluescale, his right eye toward Dev, and his left toward the P’w’ecks and their prisoner. Then he pulled down the main switch.
Dev’s throat burned. This time the servopumps injected not simple magsol but a solution of magsol and other factors. It should orient the entire nervous system toward the bed’s in-built catchment circuit, drawing energy toward it. This eliminated the necessity of a catchment arc. First his neck, then his head, then his chest and his limbs felt the pull, rapidly becoming heavier as if gravity had shifted or the Shriwirr had reoriented. Abruptly he felt as if his upright bed had tipped. Firwirrung and the others looked for all the worlds as if they stood on the nearest bulkhead. The bio-gravity illusion virtually convinced his eyes. “I feel,” he said, “as if every nerve in my body were being tugged toward the focus point. It hurts a little,” he admitted.