by Greg Bear
"Our accents give us away?" Obi-Wan asked.
"Even a few months on the capital world imparts a distinctive speech," Gann said. "Zonama Sekot has its own approach to letting time pass. I feel as if I have spent my entire life here, and yet, it might have been only a year, a month, a week…"
Obi-Wan gently interrupted this reverie. "We wish to purchase a ship," he said. "We have the money, and we are ready to engage in the tests and the training."
Gann dramatically drew up his thin black eyebrows. "Ritual first. Answers and tests much later."
The Ferroan turned at some vagary of the wind, a brief whistling sound through the canopies high above. "The view from here is not the best," he said. "Come with me. I need to introduce you to Sekot."
Obi-Wan and Anakin followed Gann to a gap between two of the huge trunks that enclosed and supported the platform. He opened a small gate thickly woven from reedlike stalks and gestured for them to pass through. Walking between the trunks, master and apprentice stepped out onto an exterior platform bathed in sunlight and overlooking a scene even more spectacular than that which Charza Kwinn had shown them aboard the Star Sea Flower.
Gann folded his arms and smiled proudly. Morning mists were rising from a wandering river valley, its depths still lost in shadow fully two kilometers below the platform. Along the upper walls of the valley, tier upon tier of dwellings and platforms covered the bare rock faces, held in place by great brown and green vines. The vines hung from great-rooted boras straddling knife-sharp ridges, topped with more brilliant purple and green canopies. Several airships navigated the calm morning currents between the ridges. These were made up of clusters of rigid tube-shaped bone-white balloons strapped side by side and stabilized by more outrigger balloons. The airships followed lengths of ca ble strung across the valley, supported at hundred-meter intervals by trunks thrust up from the sides. Even now, an airship was threading its way through the circular crown of foliage at the top of a support.
"The planet is named Zonama," Gann said. "The living world that covers it is named Sekot. This is a small part of Sekot, as are the boras around and behind us, and, we believe, as are we who live here. To be worthy to fly a piece of Sekot, one of our ships, you must tune yourself to our way. You must acknowledge the Magister and his role in our life and history, and you must acknowledge union with Sekot. It's not an easy course-and there are real dangers. The power of Sekot is awesome. Do you accept?"
Obi-Wan's expression did not change. Anakin looked up at Gann with a questioning squint.
"We accept," Obi-Wan said.
"Follow me, please, and I will show you where you will stay."
Chapter 20
Why don't you just go and ask about Vergere?" Anakin said to Obi-Wan as they settled into their rooms for a night in the clients' quarters of Middle Distance.
"I get the impression we must be patient," Obi-Wan answered as he opened a pair of shutters and looked down over the valley. "We must learn more about this Magister, whoever he is."
The airship ride to the training district, near a particularly expansive rise in the eastern ridge, had been routine enough, but still beautiful-and to Anakin, very exciting. All of his odd sensations and premonitions had faded in the glory of bright sun and open air-rare enough on Coruscant, impossible aboard the Star Sea Flower.
"It's different here," Anakin said. "Not like Tatooine… but I still feel at home."
"Yes," Obi-Wan said ruefully. "So do I. And that concerns toe. The air is rich with many substances. Perhaps some of them affect humans."
"It smells great" Anakin said, leaning out the window and staring down into the shadows at the river coursing far below. "It smells alive."
"I wonder what Sekot would be saying if we could understand these odors," Obi-Wan mused, and tugged his Padawan back in before he leaned too far. "Keep a grip."
"I know," Anakin said brightly. He artificially deepened his voice. "Things are not what they seem."
"What else do you sense?" Obi-Wan asked, the very question Anakin had hoped to avoid. He made a sour face.
"I don't want to sense anything now. I just want to enjoy the daylight and the air. Charza's ship was wet and cramped, and I've never liked space travel. It always feels cold to me, out there in the middle of nowhere. I prefer being in the middle of living things. Even Coruscant. But this. ." Anakin looked up at Obi-Wan. "I'm yakking my head off, aren't I?"
Obi-Wan grinned and touched Anakin's shoulder. "Cheer is a useful emotion at times, if it does not mask carelessness." Obi-Wan thought of Qui-Gon, and of Mace Windu-he had seen both of them almost ebullient even in difficult situations requiring deep concentration.
A talent he had not yet mastered.
"Are you ever cheerful, Master?" Anakin asked.
"I will have time to be cheerful when you tell me what you sense. I need a baseline against which I can measure my own perceptions."
Anakin sighed and pulled up a tall stool with four slender legs. His fingers felt the dark green substance of the piece of furniture, and he suddenly dropped it, letting it thump to the floor. "It's still alive!" he said in wonder, then bent to set it upright again.
"They call their building material lamina," Obi-Wan said. "It is not necessary to kill to make their homes and furniture. All the furniture is still alive, and the dwelling itself. Extend your feelings for a moment, and see what is there, rather than what you wish to be there."
"Right," Anakin said. But almost immediately, his mind wandered back to the curiosity of the moment. "How does it stay alive, this. .lamina? What does it eat, how does it-"
"Padawan," Obi-Wan said, without a hint of sternness, but in a distinct tone that Anakin had long since come to recognize, and instantly react to.
"Yes." The boy pushed the stool aside and stood still in the middle of the room. His arms remained at his sides, but his fingers splayed out. He became intensely outward-alert.
A few minutes passed. Obi-Wan stood a pace away from Anakin, all of his own feelings neutralized, senses withdrawn, to give the boy greater range.
"It's an immensity, a unity," Anakin said finally. "Not a lot of little voices."
"The life-forms here are all naturally symbiotic," Obi- Wan agreed. "Not the usual pattern of competition and predation. It's part of what you felt before-the sense of one fate, one destiny."
"Maybe, but I was feeling something outside, something about us."
"They may be intertwined."
Anakin thought this over with a frown. "I can feel the newcomers, the colonists, separately," he said. "I don't sense Vergere anywhere."
"She has gone," Obi-Wan agreed.
"So let's go ask where she went."
"In good time." Obi-Wan lifted his eyes. "Observe your stool."
Anakin looked down and saw that one foot had fastened to the floor. He bent and touched the connection, then looked up in wonder at Obi-Wan. "It's feeding!" he said. "The floor's alive, too!"
"We should be prepared early in the morning for the arrival of our hosts."
"I'll be ready," Anakin said, getting to his feet. "I'll be charged!"
The boy's emotional energy level was still too high for Obi-Wan's comfort. There was an interaction between Anakin and Sekot he could not yet understand, and what puzzled him was that this revealed as much about Anakin as it did about Sekot. . and also revealed that Obi-Wan still knew very little about either.
Chapter 21
It was the first day of client celebration that had been held for some time at Middle Distance, and the air was filled with many-colored balloon ships flying back and forth along their cables, loaded with officials, workers, and the curious. Anakin and Obi-Wan stood by the rail of the gondola of the large airship that carried them down the length of the valley. The oblong gondola featured a small cabin and a long, curved roof made of sheets of lamina and thickly woven tendrils, all still alive.
Gann accompanied them on this trip. About midway down the canyon, he grabbed a handrope and st
epped forward around the cabin to the prow to confer with a tall Ferroan woman.
Wind carried snatches of string instruments and song from other airships. Obi-Wan listened to the musicians and singers with wonder. These ceremonies were important, but something else was in the air: a sense of renewal after a long ordeal.
He wondered whether Vergere had witnessed that ordeal. Had she left any messages for the Jedi who would follow? If so, Obi-Wan had not found them.
Anakin leaned out over the woven rail of the hanging gondola and peered down at the river, thin and white and roaring even from this height. He saw sleek, pale creatures as wide as a Gungan sub, and about the same shape, gliding back and forth above the river. Other, smaller shapes, dark and quick, veered around them.
"I'd love to ride a raft down there," Anakin said.
"It's too dangerous," the airship pilot warned. A young man of sixteen or seventeen standard years, barely an adult by the Ferroan measure, he stood behind three thick control levers aft of the cabin, steadying the airship's course.
"Nobody's tried it?" Anakin asked him.
"Nobody with half a brain." The pilot grinned. "We have better ways to take risks."
"Like what?"
"Wellll-llll-the pilot drew out the word to some length- "on Uniting Day…" Gann returned from the narrow prow and gave the pilot a look. He was telling tales out of turn.
"Ten minutes before we arrive," Gann said. "You have all that is necessary?"
Obi-Wan looked to Anakin, who winked and patted his waist. "Yes," Obi-Wan answered. "But I'd be much more comfortable if we were more familiar with the procedures."
Gann nodded. "I'm sure you would," he said. "Everybody would. There is only one client this day, counting you and the boy as a partnered team. So you are alone in your time of choosing. Any more than that- " He glanced at the pilot. "-would be telling."
The young pilot nodded soberly.
The other passengers on the airship were Ferroans, as well, with pale blue and ghostly white skins, long jaws, and wide eyes.The female Gann had been conversing with was larger and somewhat more heavily muscled than the males. She walked around the cabin as they approached the high, vine- suspended landing, and introduced herself to Obi-Wan and Anakin.
"I am Sheekla Farrs," she said, her voice strong and deep. "I am a grower and daughter of Firsts. Gann gives you to me now for the rest of this day."
"Sheekla," Gann said, bowing slightly and retreating a step. Farrs leaned close and sniffed at Obi-Wan's face, then drew back with a discerning squint. "You aren't afraid." She did the same for Anakin, who glanced at Obi-Wan in some embarrassment. "Neither are you," she concluded.
"I can't wait," Anakin said. "Are we going to see the ships?"
When Farrs laughed, her deep voice became high and quite musical. "Today you meet your seed-partners. When that is done, you design your ship. My husband, Shappa, will guide you in that task."
The pilot unhooked the airship from its cable and turned it into the shade of a ridge wall, then deftly strung it onto a secondary cable and toward the landing. The basket wobbled between a pair of heavy black dampers mounted on thick pilings. The cable sang as the dampers pinched in and grabbed the basket, tugging it down slightly before the gate was opened by attendants at the landing. A ramp was dropped, and Sheekla Farrs indicated they should cross ahead of her.
"That was rugged," Anakin told Obi-Wan as they disembarked. "If there's some sort of airship race here, can we try it?"
"We?" Obi-Wan asked.
"Sure. You'd be great," Anakin said. "You learn fast. But. ." He waggled his shoulders. "You got to be more confident."
"I see," Obi-Wan said.
"We are now at Far Distance," Sheekla Farrs said. "This is where we join our seed-partners and the prospective clients. There is a ceremony, of course." She smiled at Anakin. "Very formal. You'll hate it."
Anakin wrinkled his nose.
"But you'll be meeting what could become your ship," she added.
Anakin brightened.
"And you'll undergo what the Magister experienced, so many years ago, when he alone saw Zonama and knew Sekot for the first time."
"Who's the Magister?" Anakin asked.
Sheekla Farrs gave Obi-Wan a glance then that he could not read, though it seemed to mingle both respect and warning. "He is our leader, our spiritual adviser, and the knower. His father was founder of Middle Distance and the pioneer for all we do here."
Gann made his farewells, promising to meet with them later, and Farrs led them across the bridge that connected the landing to a broad tunnel dug directly into the rock wall. Water dripped to either side of a long walkway elevated above the floor of the tunnel, its lamina surface damp with seep. Green tendrils crisscrossed the wet floor like a grid. Everything was very regular, very patterned, almost too tidy.
"The seed-partners emerge from a Potentium," Farrs told them as they approached the end of the tunnel.
Surprised by that word, Potentium, Obi-Wan reached back far into his memory, to conversations with Qui-Gon Jinn before the Jedi Master had taken him on as a Padawan.
Farrs pushed through the door and took them into a broad courtyard open to the sky. The trunks of smaller boras leaned over the courtyard on three sides. On the fourth side, the neatly paved stone floor ended abruptly at the abyss. They heard the sound of the river beyond, apparently rushing into a subterranean cavern. "If you fail, they will return to the Potentium. All is conserved. The seed-partners are very important here."
"I don't know that word," Anakin said to Obi-Wan. "What's a Potentium?"
Qui-Gon and Mace Windu had once dealt with group of apprentices who had shown promise, but had not been accepted as Jedi Knights. In disappointment and anger, one of them had tried to start his own version of the Jedi, enlisting "students" from aristocratic families on Coruscant and Alderaan. Qui-Gon had mentioned the Potentium, a controversial view of the Force.
The theory of the Potentium had long since been judged by the Council to be in error, and abandoned. It was no longer even mentioned to Padawans.
"I'll be curious to discover the meaning myself," Obi-Wan said. And how and why it is being used, here!
The courtyard was filled with a brightly dressed crowd of celebrants, standing in clusters of five and six throughout, all silent. Anakin and Obi-Wan advanced slowly at the urging of Sheekla Farrs. A woman's low voice began singing-the same song they had heard coming from the other airships.
In Ferroans, maturity darkened the hair of males, but not females. Two older men with jet-black hair stepped forward, carrying sashes hung with bloodred, gourdlike fruits. The taller of the two slung a sash around Obi-Wan's neck, and the other slipped his over Anakin's head. Now all joined in the song, and the chorus of voices echoed from the courtyard's stone walls.
Farrs smiled broadly. "They like the way you look and smell. You aren't afraid."
The taller man backed away a step, walked in a circle, thrusting his chin at three points of the Zonama compass, and then turned back to Obi-Wan and held out his hands.
"Your offering to the Potentium," Farrs suggested.
At a gesture from Obi-Wan, Anakin slipped his hand through his loose tunic and drew out the pouched belt containing the bars of old Republic aurodium. He passed it to Obi-Wan, who passed it in turn to the elder, who accepted it with a smile and a slight bow.
"Now, we introduce you to Sekot," Farrs said, rewarding them with a beaming and most unmercenary smile. "I am so very, very optimistic!"
Chapter 22
The lengthy journey through hyperspace was beginning to wear on Raith Sienar. He sat in a chair facing a blank bulk head in the commander's quarters aboard the Admiral Korvin, shifting a small metal cylinder from hand to hand, lost in thought.
While the theory of hyperspace fascinated him-and while he was always interested in designing ships that could travel more and more swiftly by means of this mode of extradimensional travel-Sienar was much less interested in so
testing himself. The routines of command held even less interest. He much preferred working alone and had always structured his life so that he spent most of his time by himself, to think.
Now, that tendency was just one more weakness. There had been three inspections so far of the Admiral Korvin and the holds that carried the greater part of their armament. With some plan forming, as yet embryonic, he had ordered a personal and individual inspection of the various weapons systems-the walking droids, the flying droids, those that could both walk and fly, the large droids and the small droids, many no larger than his hand-so tedious, when he wanted little to do with these machines. He knew their limitations, whatever puff talk Tarkin had delivered.