Parova’s expression suddenly became sober. “I have that worked out. It will be sad … but let’s just say that it will serve two or more purposes, and that I have no room in my navy for a vessel whose commander consistently fails to exceed minimal expectations.”
HWEG SHUL, NAM CHORIOS
AS NIGHT FELL ACROSS THIS PORTION OF NAM CHORIOS, EVEN THE listless heat provided by the violet sun diminished—and so did the atmospheric agitation on the planet’s surface. Winds died; the dust storm that had blanketed the capital town throughout the daylight hours faded, leaving Hweg Shul caked with a new layer of dust the approximate color of dirty snow. Overhead, a starfield like an empire’s collection of royal jewels poured carelessly across a bed of black velvet gleamed down at the residents of this rocky, unrewarding world.
So beautiful. Luke, standing outside the Admirable Admiral with his son and Vestara, looked at the expanse of shining, twinkling lights. Farther out from town, where the inhabitants’ lights don’t interfere, it will be more beautiful still.
It was a strange dichotomy, that a world so poor, which had provided such a mean and meager living to its inhabitants for so many hundreds of years, should be lovely in so many ways. Its ravines and rises full of gloriously colorful crystals below, its clear and unpolluted nighttime skies above … it was little wonder that so many hardy citizens had remained behind when the world opened up for trade and emigration thirty years earlier, or that the population had even grown in numbers since then.
In the stillness of the painfully cold night, Luke glimpsed a flicker of light far up the street. It was hard to make out at this distance, even with the air as still and clear as it was, but it had a familiar, almost organic quality, like a legless sidewinder species made of golden illumination hurtling toward them at Podracer speed.
He caught the teenagers’ attention. “Brace yourselves. Don’t resist it. Let it flow through you.”
Vestara caught sight of it, now plainly visible, just a few blocks from them. Her eyes widened.
Ben, his attention on his father, didn’t. “Let what flow—”
Then it was on them, under them, through them, a blinding flash of light and a tingling throughout their bodies as if each had accidentally brushed a high-voltage line. Luke felt his muscles spasm, felt his mind go blank just for an instant. He saw his son and Vestara fall. He himself stayed upright, not out of force of will, but out of control of the Force—he let the Force energy pass through him, barely a trace interacting with his body.
Then the light was gone, crackling across the ground behind them, curling serpent-like beneath the elevated foundation of the hostel and other Newcomer buildings before vanishing among the homes and streets a block away.
Ben scrambled to his feet, a little shaky. “Uh … can I take it that this was ground lightning?”
Vestara rose more slowly and gracefully. “It’s like a tedious old nursemaid who wants to tickle you … except she’s switched to using an electrowhip.”
“Ground lightning, yes.” Luke stretched his legs to make sure they were still limber. The ground lightning jolt had aggravated his injured knee, which throbbed. “It can be surprising and sometimes painful … but it also kills drochs.”
“Ah.” Ben’s voice became cheerful. “Then it’s my new best friend. I want to bathe in it.”
Moments later, Sel appeared, turning the corner a block up the darkened, almost empty street. Over her jumpsuit were a fur-lined jacket and heavy boots in cu-pa hide dyed bright yellow, plus a heavy tan hooded cloak. Her features were largely hidden by a woolen veil and goggles, but she waved as she approached. “Were you outside for that?”
Luke nodded. “I see some things haven’t changed.”
Sel reached them, did not break stride, moved past, leading them onward. “Yes. Some things are eternal.”
Luke, Ben, and Vestara caught up to her, Luke falling in place to her left. “So, we have permission to see this mnemotherapy being performed?”
“Yes. The Listener-Master Taru will conduct.”
“Did the Oldtimer weapons emplacements have any sensor data that might be relevant?”
Sel nodded. “Two nights ago, someone made an adroit atmospheric insertion in a craft the size of a small shuttle. The pilot had a good fix on the Golan platforms around the planet, limiting their ability to fire on it—which they wouldn’t anyway, since it was arriving, not departing—or to get useful sensor data. The ground weapons emplacement at Bleak Point got a fuzzy image of it. The operator says it was roughly spherical, but larger than a TIE fighter.”
“Bleak Point.” Despite himself, Luke was drawn into his memories for a moment. Bleak Point was where his first trip to Nam Chorios had ended—where he’d been taken after crash-landing and persuading the tsils to destroy the craft carrying the Death Seed offworld, where he’d been reunited with Leia.
Where he’d seen Callista for the last time, waving her a farewell he did not know would be a final one. Where he’d taken a giant step toward abandonment of unhealthy attachment in his life.
For years afterward, he’d borne a diminishing sadness resulting from that good-bye, but had been certain it had been the right thing to do. Now, recently, doubts had arisen to plague him. If he had gone to her then, somehow persuaded her to leave Nam Chorios, persuaded her to follow some other road in her quest to regain her ability to connect with the Force, might she have avoided the Maw? Might she have escaped the fate that awaited her with Abeloth?
“We’re here.” Sel stopped and gestured for the others to enter a long, low, darkened Oldtimer building.
Luke snapped out of his reverie, glancing at Ben and Vestara to make sure they had not noticed his distraction. They appeared not to have. Luke followed Sel through the outer door.
In this place, there was an anteroom but no inner door. Instead, the doorway out of the antechamber was blanketed by heavy folds of woolen cloth, another insulating layer between the house interior and the subfreezing outer air.
Sel parted the blankets and led them into a chamber that might have been another pub’s taproom; its tables were of similar make and antiquity. But some of them had thin, uneven bed-mats on them, and folded blankets. There were a few chairs, and also a couple of rolling racks holding bins of old-fashioned examination instruments—directional glow rods, tongs, galvanic response meters, encephaloscanners, sonic probes. There was only one person in the chamber, an elderly man seated on one of the chairs; he waved at Sel, then went back to reading a flimsi printout.
Sel took them through a curtained, round-topped entryway at the back of the chamber. It led to a flight of stairs that looked as though they’d been cut long before from the living rock beneath Hweg Shul. Sel headed down.
Luke hesitated for just a moment. He had bad memories of stone steps leading into darkness on Nam Chorios. Leia’s memories, he knew, were even worse. But he could feel none of the consumption and waste of Force energy, as if the Force itself were rotting in a swamp, that had characterized the nests of drochs that had given him such trouble thirty years before. He headed down, Ben and Vestara following.
The chamber beneath was about the same size and shape as the one above, but had a higher ceiling and was dominated by a centerpiece—a crude hemisphere like half a gigantic geode, two and a half meters in diameter, positioned as if balanced on one edge. The crystals lining the hemisphere’s interior were of all colors, predominantly blue, green, white, and violet.
Directly in front of the geode was a raised cot of metal, like a gurney without wheels or repulsorlift buoyancy tanks, and on it lay a young woman. She was perhaps twenty, small-boned, with facial features characteristic of the Oldtimers, and she wore the rough, simple garments of the Oldtimers. Her dark brown hair was worn in a long braid that mostly lay beneath her, and her eyes were closed.
Beside the cot stood another Oldtimer, a strongly built man of thirty or forty, his dark hair graying. He turned toward Sel as she led the others into the chamber. He wore a
trim beard more appropriate to a dashing smuggler than a farmer, and his eyes were dark, expressive.
Sel gestured back at her companions. “Taru, I bring you Master Luke Skywalker, Ben Skywalker, Vestara Khai. This is Master Taru Durn, head of the healer hall of Hweg Shul.”
Taru shook hands with all three, in the fashion of someone familiar with offworld customs, and turned to Luke. “I know you both from holocasts and from the memories of the tsils.”
“I’m surprised to be remembered.”
Taru shrugged. “They remember everything. You have special meaning to them, though. You promised to bring back the tsils that had been taken offworld and enslaved, and by and large you made good on your promise.”
Luke nodded. He’d certainly tried. Tragically, some of the sentient crystals taken offworld and programmed as central processing units for droids, droid starfighters, and other devices could not be found, and others had been destroyed. But—with invaluable help from Leia, then the New Republic’s Chief of State—he had returned most of them, and the search still went on for the missing ones.
Taru turned to the woman on the cot. “This is Thei. When she was five, she and her mother departed their farmstead for Ruby Gulch on a cu-pa. Two days later, she came wandering in out of the barrens alone. She had no memory of how this came to be. She was adopted by a rock ivory mining family and lived a normal life until recently. Six months ago, she married a Newcomer speeder mechanic here in town … and shortly after began experiencing emotional breaks, total collapses. Triggered, often as not, by the smell of topato soup.”
Ben blinked. “If I didn’t suspect there was a tragedy behind that, it might even be funny.”
Taru nodded. “But mundane details can be strongly tied to memories. Smells are especially evocative.”
Vestara glanced around. “If she’s recently married, where’s her husband?”
“They have differing opinions about the efficacy of Oldtimer healing. Her husband is all for modern medical techniques and looks on what the Listeners do as superstition.”
Ben’s frown was thoughtful. “It’s not a good idea for husbands and wives to conceal big things from each other. That can lead to tragedy, too.”
Taru opened his mouth to respond, but Luke interrupted, deflecting the conversation in a new direction. “The geode. What’s it doing here?”
“Normally, the vein-routing technique—which Sel insists on calling mnemotherapy—is conducted by one healer, one patient, and a trance-inducing medicine, nothing more. But that gives nothing for learners to witness. We use reflecting bowls like this to allow others to witness and understand what’s going on. Since, with Thei’s permission, we will have witnesses today, we will conduct this session with a reflecting bowl. Please, bring up stools.”
They did. Vestara, first to sit, frowned. “If this is a Force technique, and use of the Force causes dangerous storms—”
Taru nodded, obviously having heard the question before. “The techniques taught to us by the tsils don’t cause the Force storms. Oh, every use of the Force has a magnified effect here, but very minor uses, and uses involving tsil techniques, are channeled by the tsils and manifest themselves as ground lightning. Harmless.”
When all were seated, Taru continued. “Thei is currently in a mesmeric state, one that enhances her mental connection to the Force. She will hear only me … I hope. Thei, can you hear me?”
The young woman spoke, her voice very quiet. “Yes.”
“You know where you are. Safe, surrounded by friends and protectors.”
“Yes.”
“We are going to recall an earlier time, but you will remember always that you are here, that there is no danger to you.”
“I’ll remember.”
“It’s just past the spring planting. You’re five years old. You and your mother are going in to Ruby Gulch. Why?”
“Cloth … There are bolts of cloth to pick up. I’m going to have a dress …”
“You ride out on your cu-pa.”
“Her name is Sparkle.”
“Yes, Sparkle. Can you see Sparkle for me?”
The young woman did not answer, but glints of light appeared at points on the geode’s interior, then flashed from crystal to crystal. In moments the glows resolved themselves into a wavering image of one of the two-legged beasts, this one long-furred, young, unusually long-legged. It turned its head to look at the viewers.
“Good. Now you’re on Sparkle, heading to Ruby Gulch.”
The image wavered, and abruptly the cu-pa was saddled, with an adult woman and a little girl, both brown-haired and similarly bundled against cold weather, in the saddle. The cu-pa vanished, replaced by a view of its neck and head from directly behind, a child’s-eye view from the back of the riding creature. Now there was noise, too, vibrating from the geode as though it were a speaker of ancient design, the thup-thup-thup of the cu-pa’s stride in the dust.
But the image would not stay consistent. First it showed a bleak gravel-encrusted wasteland ahead, then a woman’s face from below, then views of Sparkle without riders, with or without saddle, from the side, all in a swirling kaleidoscope of brief glimpses.
The images began to cycle, repeating themselves with variations.
Taru glanced at Luke. “She doesn’t want to go forward.”
“Ah.”
“It’s here we define and insulate the first memory vein.” Taru reached a hand, flat, palm down, over Thei’s forehead and closed his own eyes.
Luke felt something, a tenuous vibration in the Force. The image in the geode contracted just slightly, was outlined in a faint golden glow.
Taru opened his eyes. “Now we have identified a specific set of memories—with some patients, they could be hallucinations instead—that abut the ones that truly cause trouble. We surround them with our own identities, our own projections in the Force, like sheathing them in a flimsiplast casing.”
Luke glanced at the youngsters. Both were rapt, their attention on the geode images and Thei’s face.
“Thei, you need to go on.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’re safe. I’m here. There are Jedi here to protect you. Nothing will hurt you.”
Thei whimpered. But she did go on. Suddenly the image’s surroundings were foothills, crags of stone and spurs of crystal, as night fell.
Then they were in a cave, deep within it, the outside suggested only by a distant patch of stars at ground level—the cave mouth. Much closer, Thei’s mother had set up a little grill—a stainless-durasteel grating, half a meter square, atop a rectangular pan just smaller than that. In the pan was a can of heating fuel, ignited, and atop was a good-sized saucepan with liquid in it, beginning to simmer.
Taru gestured at the geode, a complex series of hand motions that reminded Luke of the sort of signed Basic used by elite military forces and deaf species.
A smell flowed through the room. Luke saw the others react to it, too. Topato soup, thick and heavy, flavored with spices. It startled Luke to be smelling a meal from fifteen years earlier. He could sometimes do that within his own memory, but to experience it from someone else’s was a novelty.
The image changed again. It had to be showing a later hour, still within the cave. Thei’s mother was asleep, bundled in her cloak and bedroll, a blaster rifle and glow rod near at hand. Sparkle could be seen just beyond her, lying on its side. The angle of the image was such that it had to be from the child Thei’s perspective, nestled up against her mother. The smell of the soup was reduced in strength but still distinct.
There was a crack, a sound like stone shattering.
The eyes of Thei’s mother opened. Sparkle sprang to its feet, making a startled noise, then seemingly collapsed again, though there was no sign, in the blurred and confused image, that the cu-pa’s legs had folded.
Sparkle wailed, then sank instantly out of sight.
Thei’s mother rolled away
from Thei as if helpless to prevent the motion, toward where Sparkle had lain. She shoved Thei, and the girl’s point of view tumbled, became incoherent.
It steadied again as the child Thei rose. The smell of soup was gone, replaced by another odor—
Luke felt his stomach lurch. It was the moist, enzymatic, decaying smell of a droch nest, a big one. He winced, knowing what had to come next.
The girl’s point of view moved forward. Where the cu-pa and her mother had been, there was now a hole in the cave floor, sign of a collapse. A chittering, skittering noise emerged from the hole, punctuated by shrill screams from the cu-pa, wails of fear from the woman.
IN THE IMAGE, WHICH WAS INCREASINGLY CLEAR, INCREASINGLY REAL, the shrieks of both human and cu-pa grew in volume.
The little Thei’s small hand reached down to pick up the glow rod, to activate it, to shine its light down into the hole.
The portion of the cave floor where Thei’s mother and Sparkle had lain, weak for who knew how many centuries, overburdened by the cupa’s weight, had collapsed into a lower cave. Its floor was some ten meters down.
And it crawled with drochs, a carpet of the tiniest ones, moving lumps the size of fingernails.
Sparkle struggled frantically, its legs clearly broken, and atop its flank was a droch the size of a Wookiee’s spread-fingered hand: a huge one. It turned to look at Thei, its multifaceted eyes evaluative, intelligent.
Thei’s mother stood at the edge of the cave, scrabbling against the wall, trying to climb it. But the stone there was too smooth, and she could get no purchase. Drochs had swarmed up her legs and back. They had already drawn so much strength from her that it was clear her legs were failing, trembling, barely able to support her.
Her eyes connected with Thei’s, and she managed two words: “Run, baby.” Then she toppled over backward and the drochs swarmed over her.
A sharp, high-pitched peal rose from the image, a child’s scream, and drochs by the hundreds or thousands began to climb the wall toward Thei.
Star Wars: Fate of the Jedi: Conviction Page 9