by Greg Bear
Anakin decided that now was no time to report this anomaly to his master. But he was interrupted. What looked like large red, black, and green insects marched along the causeway toward them. Their bodies were wide and flat, with three legs on each side and a seventh, central leg front and center. Two long, gray, thornlike spurs thrust up from beside the central leg. They seemed to have been born to carry heavy cargo.
On each of these creatures a stocky, soot-smudged man rode between the spurs, gripping them with hands covered with thick black gloves.
“Are those Jentari?” Anakin asked Jabitha.
“No,” she said, laughing lightly. “They’re carapods. The men riding them are forgers.”
“Are the carapods alive?”
“Mostly. Some of them are part machine.” She stared straight ahead at the many-legged creatures.
Gann looked down at Anakin. “We leave you here with the forgers. They will prepare your seeds and take you to the shapers and the Jentari.” He looked sad and a little resentful. “I have never been beyond this point. It is the Magister’s will.”
“Good luck!” Jabitha said. “I’ll catch up with you on the other end!” She returned to the steps with Gann and gave Anakin one last glance over her shoulder, eyes bright, lips pressed tightly together. Then she quickly descended.
“I grow weary of ceremony and mystery,” Obi-Wan said. “And I tire of being passed hand to hand like old clothes.”
“I think it’s wizard,” Anakin said. And he did. It was exciting, and it helped him in some way he could not put into words—helped him to visualize the task ahead. Still, he knew Obi-Wan was suspicious, and with good cause. Anakin frowned. “I’m so excited, and yet I’m a little afraid. Master, why do I feel that way?”
“The seeds are talking to us,” Obi-Wan said. “Some of them have been here before, perhaps with Vergere. You’re hearing their enthusiasm and responding to their memories.”
“Of course,” Anakin said. “The seeds! Why didn’t I think of that?”
“Because you carry so many they’re flooding you,” Obi-Wan said. “I wish I had the equipment to measure their midi-chlorian levels.” A funny, introspective look came over his face.
“They’d be very strong,” Anakin said, giving Obi-Wan’s arm a light poke, as a teacher might rouse an inattentive student.
Obi-Wan lifted an eyebrow. “But not, I think, as strong as you,” he said, and shook his head. “Listen to them, but control your connection with the Force, Padawan. Do not forget who and what you are.”
“No,” Anakin said, a little chastened.
The carapods were now within a few dozen meters of where they waited, alone, under the high, restless, arched canopy of the boras. Anakin wiped dust from his eyes and folded his hands in front of him, as if holding a practice lightsaber.
Each carapod stood as high as a man at the main joint of each leg. Glints of metal shone here and there on their bodies, as if the living organisms of Sekot had been melded with steel.
The expression on his master’s face had grown more and more peculiar. “Something’s distracting you, Master!” Anakin said.
The carapods drew up around them, yet Obi-Wan paid them no attention. “Vergere,” he finally said. “In the seeds … she’s left a message …”
He drew himself up and composed his features just as one of the riders clambered down from his mount and approached them with a dark and determined expression.
“What does she say?” Anakin asked, in a whisper.
“She’s left Zonama Sekot, to pursue an even greater mystery.”
“What?”
“The message is not clear. Something about beings from beyond the boundaries, unknown to the Jedi. She had to move very quickly.”
The rider’s thick-skinned, heavily wrinkled face looked squashed and sunburned, and his eyes were a reddish hazel, as if filled with fire. “Clients?” the rider asked in the thickest-accented Galactic Basic they had yet heard on Zonama Sekot.
“Yes,” Anakin said, stepping forward and thrusting out his chin, as if to protect Obi-Wan.
“Magister’s folks leave you here?”
“Yes.”
“Get on,” the rider said gruffly, smirking and pointing to the steplike first joint of his carapod’s center leg. “You’re late! We’re getting our last load!”
The rider looked up as Anakin and Obi-Wan climbed to the back of the stable mount, and his eyes widened. “We are your forgers. Team, in line!” he shouted. The carapods and their riders formed a tight single line.
Dozens of riderless carapods ran at top speed from the rim of the valley down ramps flanking the staircase shaft down to the river. They must have traveled from the tampasi, and on their broad flat backs they carried heaps of boras foliage, shattered stalks, branches, deflated leaf-balloons, scraps dried and rustling and held down by up-thrust side legs.
The tinder-laden carapods rushed past with a staccato cacophony of drumlike calls, jostling their fellows in the tight line.
At the same time, overhead, other creatures, obviously related to the carapods but with different arrangements of grasping limbs, clambered along the underside of the arched canopy of boras, transporting more scraps in pendulous baskets.
“Forging fuel,” the forger said as he took his place between the carapod’s spurs. “That’s the last load! Let’s go and get our seeds in before they start up with more big ones!”
The carapods spun about and followed the herd at a remarkably smooth and comfortable gallop, legs thudding with hypnotic rhythm against the floor of the stone causeway.
Anakin looked once more at Obi-Wan. His master seemed to be in control again, face firm. The boy listened to the voices of his own seeds. With enthusiasm and joy, they were promising unmatched friendship and vital beauty beyond compare.
But Anakin realized, They don’t know what they’re going to make!
The carapods trotted to where the stone columns ended, and the shapers brought them to a halt. Here, beyond the basalt causeway, the factory valley broadened out onto a plain covered with tightly coiled tendrils arranged like markers on a game board. The fuel-laden carapods ran ahead between immense pillars of water-sculpted rock, each hundreds of meters high, acting as supports for the green vault of boras.
It was the biggest enclosed space Anakin had ever seen. Clouds bunched up around the tops of the pillars, and in the distance, kilometers away, a thick layer of mist below the interwoven canopy was actually condensing out as rain.
“We keep the forging pits here,” the red-faced forger told them. He dropped down from the carapod and pointed to where thick billows of smoke boiled up from red-lit pits near the overgrown valley walls. He looked up to count their seed-partners, his lips moving as he jabbed his finger. “You have a lot of ’em, boy. What do they say to you? Hear them?”
Anakin nodded.
“Well? Tell your forger.”
“They say they’re eager.”
“That’s what I like to hear. Give ’em to me and follow.”
Anakin took his twelve seeds and gently plucked them from his clothes. Each made a tiny squeak but did not attempt to hang on. He passed them to the forger, who tossed them to the back of the carapod.
“They ride, you walk,” the forger announced, and then took Obi-Wan’s complement of three. “The most and the least,” he added with a sniff. “Make ’em as one for the clients they hand over to us, that’s the way! Good thing you got me rather than them.” He flung his thumb back over his shoulder at the other forgers, who laughed. He hooted and laughed back. “They’re all amateurs compared to me. I can easily forge fifteen and persuade ’em to join!”
“Don’t listen to the braggart,” another forger called out.
“You’ll be lucky to end up with a handcart!”
“Ah, they’re giving you the complete experience,” their forger growled. “Never mind. We’re buds, us all.” He squinted at them and rubbed his arms, knocking off shed bits of white shell f
rom many seed-partners. The bits drifted down around him like flakes of snow. “The old Magister split us into the valley folks upland and down. We’re down, and we know this end of the run better than anyone. He picked us out by hand and told us to make families, the Ferroans upland, the Langhesi down. We know our places. He did right.”
Anakin had learned about a small and ancient world called Langhesa, read about it in the Temple map room on Coruscant. It had been overrun a hundred years before by Tsinimals, who had enslaved the Langhesi natives, forcing huge migrations to other parts of the galaxy. They had specialized in farming and the vital arts, learning how to mold the elements of life into new and novel forms. For many centuries, they had supplied exotic pets to rich families throughout the Republic.
The Tsinimals, graceful and intolerant, had regarded the Langhesi’s vital arts as a sin against their gods. Piracy and galaxywide conquest, however, had not bothered the Tsinimal gods in the least.
“But never mind the details. You’ll get your ship, and then the uplanders will bring on a forgetting! Still, you’ll have the complete experience. You’ll remember the forging pits. And—” He leered, making a grotesque, ruddy mask of his face. “—my name is Vagno. You’ll remember me!”
There appears to be a difficulty on Zonama Sekot,” Captain Kett said. He climbed to the navigation bridge and handed Sienar a decoded message from Ke Daiv. Sienar read the message with a blank expression, then, abruptly, his brow furrowed and he looked at Kett as if he might be to blame.
Kett’s eyes narrowed defensively.
“He’s been rejected,” Sienar said. “Something about seed-partners taking a dislike to him. Chewing off all his clothes.”
Kett did not have to feign ignorance.
“We cannot rely on Ke Daiv,” Sienar concluded.
“I also have a message from Tarkin,” Kett said with a twitch of his lips. He gave Sienar the second small cylinder, and the commander read the brief message on the secure rollout.
“He’s getting nervous. He wants an update,” Sienar said, pursing his lips.
“Shall we move into a diplomatic orbit, or a negotiation orbit?” Kett asked. “All systems and droids are ready. Taking action immediately could be the best foundation for a reply.”
“It would be, if I were Tarkin,” Sienar said, regarding the captain shrewdly. “But I am not here to play political games. There isn’t time. Ke Daiv still has his instructions, and I will give him another day.” Sienar wondered himself if that was a smart move, betting everything on a Blood Carver. But he had no choice! Something told him massive action on their part would be a mistake.
“Sir, we risk being discovered by even the most primitive sensors if we do not act soon. The element of surprise—”
“Have we detected any weapons systems on Zonama Sekot with our passive sensors?”
“No, sir, but I have never depended upon passive sensing alone. It is a shallow—”
“The planet has relied on stealth for decades. Maybe they’re complacent.” But don’t count on it, he told himself.
“Sir, I have been thinking about those signs of battle damage on the planet’s surface—”
“As have I, Captain Kett. And what have you concluded?”
“They could not have been produced by any weapons known to me, sir. The signature of turbolasers and proton weapons leaves very different residues in rocky targets. These gouges may have been made by neutron dissemblers, which in theory would leave the residues we detect, yet no one in the known galaxy has learned how to harness such weapons.”
Sienar listened to this as if he were being lectured by a grade-school child, but then looked away in frustrated silence, and his brow furrowed deeper. He tapped his fingers on the railing, his long nails making distinct rhythmic ticks. “Do you think they conceal such weapons, and have recently fought a war?” he asked, barely hiding his satisfaction.
“No, sir. The pattern is more like that of a preemptive strike, or a dramatic show of force, with no discernible follow-up. I can’t imagine a state of apparent peace, and a total absence of visible weapons, if the political forces on the planet have recently undergone such a challenge. We have been listening to communications from the planet since we arrived, and there is total silence. All comm systems are secure and efficiently channeled. All I can conclude with confidence is that there is too much we don’t know.”
Sienar was no fool. Hearing his own conclusions stated by another gave him no comfort, but if he was to survive this mission with status and reputation intact, comfort was the least of his concerns.
He keyed a quick reply into the secure datapad and handed it back to Kett.
Kett lingered as if he might be made privy to what was on the message. Sienar turned away, and Kett departed from the navigation bridge.
On the datapad, he had written, Your operative has tried to assassinate me and failed. I gave him a suicide mission-of-honor. Have discovered something unexpected and quite marvelous. Am proceeding with my own plans. Do not require assistance.
Sienar smiled. That would undoubtedly bring Tarkin running with the biggest force he could assemble, but it would be days before he arrived, and by then, Sienar would have tried all his plans and engaged all the forces at his own disposal.
And there was always Ke Daiv’s backup plan.
If that succeeded, they would have an intact Sekotan ship, a living—and very frightened—pilot, and perhaps even two Jedi, though Sienar hoped to avoid having to deal with them.
He knew what Jedi were capable of.
With deep misgivings, Anakin watched Vagno toss their seed-partners into the same deep pit. Night had fallen over the arched canopy, and the only light came from torches carried by the shapers’ assistants or hung from poles stuck into the cindery ground, and from the fires scattered at some distance around the valley.
“Some of the pits are huge,” Anakin said to Obi-Wan. “I wonder what they make there?”
“I don’t think they make anything while clients are around,” Obi-Wan said. Their forger had said, “before they start up with more big ones.” Big what?
Vagno’s assistants gathered at the edge of their pit, which was about twenty meters across. Each assistant in the crew carried a long, razor-sharp, scythelike blade on the end of a metal pole.
Carapods dumped their loads of fuel—the detritus of the upper tampasi—on top of the seed-partners, and Vagno directed his crew to even out the piles and push aside holes with their long blades. He then inspected the pit, looked back at Anakin and Obi-Wan from the center, gave them a thumbs-up and a toothy grin, and deftly clambered along the top of the debris. “We need pellets here, and here,” he told his men, and baskets of small red pellets, each round and smooth as a protanut case, were poured into the holes.
“Your seeds are quiet,” Vagno said thoughtfully. “Moment of destiny.”
“How many survive?” Anakin asked, his throat dry. He could still feel the separate flavors or voices of the seeds in his mind, lingering traces of their need, their affection.
“Most. Don’t worry. We keep the heat distributed. It’s better here than out in the tampasi. And remember—it’s the way of Sekot.”
Anakin had hoped Vagno would say “All.” The boy hunkered down beside Obi-Wan and played with a bit of dry stick. Vagno walked toward him, stared down, and pointed for the stick to be tossed into the pit. “It’s our way,” he said. “The ground must be clean.”
Scattered around the valley, other clients—Anakin counted three, each half a kilometer or more from the others—watched their own partners be heaped with fuel.
“How many new clients?” Anakin asked.
“Three, apparently,” Obi-Wan said. “I see three other active pits.”
“Right,” Anakin said. “I feel so nervous!”
“The connection with the seeds,” Obi-Wan said. “Beware.”
“Of what?”
“They are about to be transformed. No one here knows what that feels li
ke to them—but you and I, perhaps, will learn.”
“Oh,” Anakin said. He swallowed a lump in his throat and stood, brushing off his pants and the edge of his tunic.
Vagno finished his inspection. He shone his torch beam up, and Anakin saw a circular shape, like a thick hoop, descend from the canopy. Carapods there were lowering it on heavy tendrils. As it descended over the pit, limbs unfolded from the underside and displayed a variety of implements, some apparently natural, others made of metal.
Anakin knew many cultures that had combined organic forms with technology. The Gungans were masters at that—but they had never built interstellar ships. Still, most of those procedures were kept secret—and now he was going to witness, if not understand, how the Zonamans worked to achieve even more startling results. He would have felt proud if he had remained the boy Qui-Gon had freed on Tatooine. Jedi training had, at the very least, taught him the perils of pride. Instead, he felt an intense curiosity.
Curiosity was the deepest expression, for Anakin, of a connection with the living Force.
He looked to his master. Obi-Wan wore an expression of both concern and curiosity. Anakin could feel the banked flame of his master’s controlled spirit, and at its core, though more ordered, it was not so different from his own.
The descending circle of shaper tools stopped, and valves popped open between the hanging limbs, which all folded or retracted, making the hoop shiver. Vagno let out a shout, and his crew reached up and tapped the hoop simultaneously, all around the pit, with the flats of their long blades.
From the open valves descended an aromatic fluid that made Anakin’s nose smart. He drew back just as Vagno planted his feet firmly in front of them. From his thick belt Vagno produced a wick and a flint, and with one chop of the flint, the wick caught fire. “Just in case,” he said. “This can be tricky.”
The hoop quickly ascended.
With a chant in Langhesan, the crew held out their blades and peered up. A hole about a hundred meters wide had opened in the overgrowth. Above the hole roiled thick, heavy black clouds.