by James Luceno
“And one more thing,” Palpatine said, emboldened. “I don’t know precisely why you’ve taken such a keen interest in my son, or he in you, but you’re to have no further dealings with him.”
Plagueis turned to him. “Your son has great potential.”
“Potential I don’t wish to see despoiled by your kind. We’re moving him out of your reach, in any case.”
“I’d been given to believe that the Naboo were an open people. But then, the Gungans probably wouldn’t agree, either.”
Palpatine stood up sharply. “Enough of this. Guard!” he said. And when three of them hurried in: “Get him out of my sight.”
11: AVATAR OF MORTALITY
The planet Chandrila sponsored a monthlong retreat for members of the Legislative Youth Program. Once a year young beings from a host of worlds arrived to participate in mock Senate trials in and around Hanna City and to tour Chandrila’s vast agricultural projects, wilderness areas, coral reefs, and garden parks. It was in Gladean Park — a game reserve outside coastal Hanna — that Plagueis paid young Palpatine an unannounced visit. But it was Plagueis who was surprised.
“I knew you would come, Magister,” Palpatine said when Plagueis and 11-4D turned up at one of the game reserve’s viewing blinds.
“How did you know?”
“I knew, that’s all.”
“And just how often are your premonitions correct?”
“Almost always.”
“Curious,” 11-4D remarked while Palpatine was hurrying away to excuse himself from the company of two friends.
Plagueis recognized the older male as Palpatine’s mentor in the youth program, Vidar Kim, and sensed that the comely black-haired female was Kim’s paramour. At the conclusion of Palpatine’s animated explanation, Kim turned his head to show Plagueis a look of disapproval before moving off with his companion.
“Your mentor doesn’t care much for me,” he said when Palpatine returned.
Palpatine dismissed it. “He doesn’t know you.”
Standard weeks had passed without any communication between the two of them. Judging by Palpatine’s mood, he knew nothing about the forced meeting in the Lake Country, and yet he was agitated just the same, possibly in reaction to something Cosinga had done to monitor or foil his son’s offworld holotransmissions. With Damask Holdings’ secret agent silenced, the royals had gained ground. Despite Tapalo’s denials that the deal with the Banking Clan had dissolved, the travel ban imposed on the Muuns had planted seeds of doubt among the electors, and the contest for the throne was becoming more heated with each passing day. Worse, the Banking Clan’s interest in Naboo was beginning to wane.
“We’ll have to keep this meeting brief,” Plagueis told Palpatine while they were following an elevated pathway that connected the viewing blind to one of the park’s rustic lodges. “Your father may have dispatched surveillance personnel.”
Palpatine ridiculed the idea. “He is monitoring my offworld communiqués — that’s why you haven’t heard from me — but even he knows better than to have me watched.”
“You underestimate him, Palpatine,” Plagueis said, stopping in the middle of the pathway. “I spoke with him at Convergence.”
Palpatine’s mouth fell open. “The lake house? When? How—”
Plagueis made a soothing gesture and explained in great detail what had taken place. Concluding, he said, “He threatened, too, to place you out of reach.”
All the while Plagueis spoke, Palpatine was storming through circles on the narrow path, shaking his head in anger and balling his fists. “He can’t do this!” he snarled. “He hasn’t the right! I won’t allow it!”
Palpatine’s fury buffeted Plagueis. Blossoms growing along the sides of the pathway folded in on themselves, and their pollinators began to buzz in agitation. FourDee reacted, as well, wobbling on its feet, as if in the grip of a powerful electromagnet. Had this human truly been born of flesh-and-blood parents? Plagueis asked himself. When, in fact, he seemed sprung from nature itself. Was the Force so strong in him that it had concealed itself?
Palpatine came to a sudden halt and whirled on Plagueis. “You have to help me!”
“How can I help you?” Plagueis asked. “He’s your father.”
“Tell me what to do! Tell me what you would do!”
Plagueis placed a hand on Palpatine’s shoulder and began to walk slowly. “You could use this incident as a means of emancipating yourself.”
Palpatine frowned. “Naboo doesn’t honor that practice. I’m in his sway until I’m twenty-one years old.”
“The legalities of emancipation don’t interest me, and they shouldn’t interest you. I speak of freeing yourself — of completing the act of recreation you began when you rejected your given name.”
“You mean disobey him?”
“If that’s as far as you’re willing to go. And without thought to consequences.”
“I’ve wanted to …”
“Uncertainty is the first step toward self-determination,” Plagueis said. “Courage comes next.”
Palpatine shook his head, as if to clear it. “What would I do?”
“What do you want to do, Palpatine? If the choice was yours and yours alone.”
The youth hesitated. “I don’t want to live as ordinary beings live.”
Plagueis regarded him. “Do you fancy yourself extraordinary?”
Palpatine seemed embarrassed by the question. “I only meant that I want to live an extraordinary life.”
“Make no apologies for your desires. Extraordinary in what way?”
Palpatine averted his eyes.
“Why are you holding back? If you’re going to dream, then dream large.” Plagueis paused, then added, “You hinted that you had no interest in politics. Is that true?”
Palpatine firmed his lips. “Not entirely.”
Plagueis came to a stop in the middle of the walkway. “How deep does your interest go? To what position do you aspire? Republic Senator? Monarch of Naboo? Supreme Chancellor of the Republic?”
Palpatine glanced at him. “You’ll think less of me if I tell you.”
“Now you underestimate me, as you do your father.”
Palpatine took a breath and continued. “I want to be a force for change.” His look hardened. “I want to rule.”
There! Plagueis thought. He admits it! And who better than a human to wear the mask of power while an immortal Sith Lord rules in secret!
“If that can’t happen, if you can’t rule, then what?”
Palpatine ground his teeth. “If not power, then nothing.”
Plagueis smiled. “Suppose I said that I would be willing to be your ally in the quest.”
At a sudden loss for words, Palpatine stared at him; then he managed to say, “What would you expect of me in return?”
“Nothing more than that you commit to your intent to free yourself. That you grant yourself the license to do whatever is necessary to realize your ambitions, at whatever risk to your alleged well-being and in full expectation of the solitude that will ensue.”
They had not yet reached the lodge when Plagueis steered them into a gazebo that occupied the center of a luxuriant garden.
“I want to tell you something about my past,” he began. “I was born and raised not on Muunilinst but on a world called Mygeeto, and not to my father’s primary wife but to a second wife — what Muuns call a codicil partner. So I was a young adult before my father was finally returned to Muunilinst and I had my first taste of the planet that gave rise to my species. Owing to Muunilinst’s regulations governing population growth, no Muun of less influence than my father would have been allowed to import a nonindigenous offspring, let alone a half-clan. And yet the members of my father’s family regarded me as a trespasser, lacking proper legality and the social aplomb that comes to those born and raised on Muunilinst. For if there is anything the Muun detest more than wasteful spending it is nonconformity, and I had it in abundance.
“Th
ey were model citizens, my fair brothers and sisters: insular, self-important, identical in their thinking, thrifty to a fault, given to gossip, and it angered me deeply to have been accepted by the galaxy’s downtrodden only to be rejected by this hive of self-serving parochial beings. Much to their further displeasure, they were forced to accept that I was a fully bonded clan member, entitled to the same share of my father’s vast wealth as the rest of them. But as is the case with all members of the elite clans, I had to prove myself worthy of the status by preparing successful financial forecasts and allowing myself to be judged by the ruling elect.
“I passed my tests and trials, but soon after, my father took ill. On his deathbed I sought his advice concerning my predicament, and he told me that I should do whatever I needed to do, as my very survival was in jeopardy. He said that lesser minds needed guidance, and punishment on occasion, and that I shouldn’t hesitate to use whatever means necessary to protect my interests; that I owed as much to myself, my species, to life itself.”
Plagueis paused.
“The cause of his premature death was determined to be a rare genetic abnormality that affected the tertiary heart, and one that all of my siblings had inherited, but I — having been born to a different mother — had not. Panicked by the thought of early death, my siblings launched a galactic search for the finest geneticists credits could procure, and ultimately one surfaced, claiming knowledge of a curative procedure. And so they underwent treatment, each and every one of them — my clan mother included — in full confidence that they had dodged the family curse and could soon return to their primary passion, which was to have me legally ostracized from the family.”
He looked hard at Palpatine.
“Little did they realize that I had hired the geneticist, and that the treatments he provided were as phony as his credentials. And so, in due course, they began to grow ill and die, each of them, as I watched from afar, gloating, even entertaining myself by feigning sadness at their funerals and indifference at the allocation rituals that transferred portions of their accumulated riches to me. Eventually I outlived all of them and inherited everything.”
His amalgam of fact and fiction concluded, Plagueis stood tall and folded his thin arms across his chest. In turn, Palpatine trained his gaze on the gazebo’s wooden floor. Plagueis detected the quiet whir of 11-4D’s photoreceptors focusing on the youth.
“You think me a monster,” he said when a long moment of silence had elapsed.
Palpatine raised his head and said, “You underestimate me, Magister.”
Hanna City Spaceport was chaotic with the launch of starships returning youth program trainees to their near and distant homeworlds. In the central passenger cabin of the Naboo vessel Jafan III, Palpatine and a young trainee from Keren were comparing notes on their experiences during the previous week. On a track to becoming close friends despite their political differences, the pair had segued into discussing Naboo’s upcoming election when a flight attendant interrupted them to say that Palpatine needed to return immediately to the spaceport terminal. The attendant didn’t know who had requested his presence or why, but no sooner had he entered the connector than he recognized the stern countenance of one of the security guards his father had recently hired.
“Palpatine won’t be reboarding,” the guard told the attendant.
Confused, Palpatine demanded to know why he had been removed from the ship.
“Your father is here,” the guard said after the attendant had reentered the starship. He pointed through the connector’s transparisteel viewport to the far side of the field where sat a sleek starship bearing the crest of House Palpatine.
Palpatine blinked in surprise. “When did he arrive?”
“An hour ago. Your mother and siblings are also aboard.”
“They didn’t say anything to me about coming here.”
“I wouldn’t know about that,” the guard said. “You’ve already cleared Chandrila customs, so we can proceed directly to the ship.”
Palpatine glared at him. “Just discharging your orders, is that it?”
Unruffled, the guard shrugged his broad shoulders. “It’s a job, kid. That’s the long and short of it.”
Surrendering to the inevitable but angered by the sudden change in plans, Palpatine trailed the guard through a maze of similar connectors to one that accessed the family starship. The elder Palpatine was waiting in the entry air lock.
“Why wasn’t I informed of this beforehand?” Palpatine demanded.
His father nodded for the guard to seal the hatch. “Your mother and siblings are aft. I’ll join you there once we’ve completed the jump.” Maneuvering around Palpatine, he slipped into the cockpit. Palpatine turned to the air lock hatch and considered leaving while he had the chance, but ultimately thought better of it and went aft, though into not the main compartment but a smaller one that housed the communications suite. Strapped into an acceleration chair, he stewed through the launch and the jump to hyperspace. Unfastening himself when the ship was between worlds, he stood up and began to pace back and forth in the cabin, and was still in motion when his father entered a few minutes later.
“Our course is set for Chommell Minor.”
Palpatine stopped to stare at him.
“For the foreseeable future, you’re going to be residing with the Greejatus family. Clothes and other items we thought you’d like to have with you are already aboard.” When Palpatine said nothing, he continued. “You and Janus got along well the last time we visited. A change of scene will do you good.”
“You decided this without conferring with me?” Palpatine managed to ask at last. “What about my university courses? What about my obligations to the youth program?”
“That has all been arranged. You can partner with Janus in Chommell Minor’s program.”
“The Greejatus’s hatred of nonhumans meets with your approval, then.”
“Their chauvinism notwithstanding, I approve of them a lot more than I do your current friends.”
Palpatine began shaking his head. “No. No.”
His father’s tone turned harsh. “This is for your own good.”
Palpatine’s nostrils flared. “Father of lies,” he muttered. “How would you know what’s good for me? Have you ever even cared? This is about my friendship with Hego Damask, isn’t it?”
The elder Palpatine snorted in derision. “Is that what you think it is? Damask is merely using you as a means of securing information about our strategies for the election.”
“Of course he is.”
Taken aback momentarily, Cosinga said, “And yet you continue to … befriend him.”
“What you consider the rape of Naboo, I consider to be an essential step forward, and Hego Damask a blessing. He’s powerful, influential, and brilliant — more so than any of my professors. Head and shoulders above you or any of your royal confederates.”
Cosinga’s lip curled. “It begins to sound to me that this confrontation goes beyond mere political differences.”
“You know it does. You’re using the situation as an excuse to put me under your thumb again.”
“Which wouldn’t be necessary if you showed even the slightest ability to conduct yourself appropriately.”
Palpatine sniffed. “My social infractions and trespasses. I refuse to go over old ground.”
“You’re easy on yourself, considering the shame you’ve nearly brought on us.”
“I’ve brought no more shame on the family than you have.”
“We’re not discussing me,” Cosinga said.
Palpatine threw up his hands. “All right. Leave me on Chommell Minor — but I won’t remain there.”
“I can see to it that you do.”
“By assigning some of your musclemen to keep me in line? I’m a lot smarter than them, Father.”
Cosinga made his lips a thin line. “After what you already did to counter our plans for Tapalo, there can be no hint of scandal. Have you no idea what’s at
stake for Naboo?”
“And for you,” Palpatine said, with a sly smile. “The brother of your mistress becomes king, and you attain the lofty position you’ve always desired but don’t deserve.”
Cosinga flung his words with cruel abandon. “It will be so good to have you gone.”
“Finally you admit as much.”
Cosinga was suddenly crestfallen. “You’re as much a mystery to me now as you were when you were young.”
Palpatine’s smile bloomed. “Only because you lack the ability to understand me fully.”
“Grandiose, as ever.”
“Grandiose, in fact, Father. You have no idea what I’m capable of. No one does.”
Cosinga exhaled deeply. “I know that you are of my blood, because I had you tested, just to be certain. But in truth, I don’t know where you came from — who or what you’re actually descended from.” He glared at Palpatine. “Yes, there it is: that glower I have been on the receiving end of for seventeen long years. As if you want to murder me. Murder has always been in your thoughts, hasn’t it? You’ve merely been waiting for someone to grant you permission to act.”
A darkness came over Palpatine’s face. “I don’t need anyone’s permission.”
“Precisely. You’re an animal at heart.”
“King of the beasts, Father,” Palpatine said.
“I knew this day would come. I’ve known it since the first moment I tried to swaddle you, and you fought me with a strength that was too powerful for your size or age.”
Palpatine looked out from beneath his quirked brows. “I was born mature, Father, fully grown, and you hated me for it, because you grasped that I was everything you can never be.”
“Hated you more than you know,” Cosinga said, allowing his ire to rise once more. “Enough to want to kill you from the start.”
Palpatine stood his ground. “Then you had better do it now.”
Cosinga took a step in Palpatine’s direction, only to be hurled back against the bulkhead separating the communications room from the main cabin. A female voice from behind the closed hatch asked in distress, “What was that?”
