by Kevin Hearne
“True, but you couldn’t trust anything he said anyway, so why talk?”
“Like it or not, he’s one of the few people remaining in the galaxy who can even discuss it with me.”
Nakari blinked. “So what are you saying? You want him to teach you?”
“No, of course not. I just think I could learn something from him.”
She made a noise like steam escaping a pressure valve. “I don’t think you’d like anything you learned. He’s not going to make you happy.”
“No, I suppose not.”
“Vader probably doesn’t even know what happiness is. You know what? I bet he’s never had a slice of cake.”
The abrupt change of subject startled me. “What, cake is happiness?”
“Absolutely. You want to ask him something when he’s defeated, ask him that.” Her voice changed this time, not to imitate her father but to imitate me. “ ‘Lord Vader! Have you ever had any cake? Answer me!’ ” She sounded strange and kind of nasal.
“Hey, I don’t sound like that, do I?”
“Don’t get distracted! We’re discussing Vader’s dessert preferences. If he says yes, he’s had cake, then he was human at one point and remembers what it was to be happy, and you can continue to talk because there’s some common ground there. But if he says no, he’s hopeless. Chuck him out the air lock and end his misery.”
We started laughing, and even though it wasn’t that funny, we laughed until our stomachs hurt and tears streamed from the corners of our eyes. When you laugh at something that scares you, it’s not so scary anymore, which is probably the reason Vader had Nakari’s mother sent to the spice mines. He wanted to be feared and couldn’t bear to be mocked.
I never told Nakari, but I thought those stolen moments with her in a Kupohan hotel were so much better than cake.
WE CHECKED ON OUR PRISONERS in the morning, and aside from being annoyed with us they were fine. Room service provided berries and a selection of strange cheeses, and after eating we let them use the facilities one at a time, making sure the bathroom had no avenue of escape and keeping them in blaster sight to and from. We got them settled, bound yet comfortable, and made sure Artoo was fine on power. Nakari hooked up an interface with her datapad so he could download a report for us. Favvin had attempted to get up and hurl himself at Artoo at one point in the night and received a debilitating shock as a result. He had been perfectly docile since then, and Migg Birkhit had enjoyed a day of rest and entertainment in a hotel room that was no doubt far nicer than his apartment.
“Just one more day on vacation, guys,” I said. “We’ll let you get back to work tomorrow.” Favvin scowled, but Birkhit waved as we left the room.
That visit was quite friendly compared with the reception we got across the hall from Drusil. The Givin never let us in the door; she simply spewed math at us through the comm and threw in the words “Go away” at one point, so we gave up and said we’d be at the garage if she needed us. She must have been involved with something complicated if she couldn’t stop to talk.
At the Nessin Courier & Cargo facility, we spent the remainder of the morning and the entire afternoon helping Ruuf Waluuk, the Duros, and the Wookiee remove the totaled engine from the Desert Jewel. When the Wookiee warbled something to Ruuf, the Kupohan shook his head and said, “I don’t know where Migg is. Could be sick, or he could be off playing around with one of his girlfriends. Good thing these people are willing to help us; I don’t think we’d get the job done otherwise.”
I didn’t know where Nessin was, either, and it was mildly worrisome. So was the fact that we hadn’t heard anything positive from the Alliance regarding Drusil’s family. On the plus side, we had the old engine out and the chassis prepped for the new engine by the time it arrived at the end of the workday.
Drusil finally joined us shortly after its arrival, hooded. Her arms were laden with food containers; she took them over to the dining area, where she laid them on the table and invited us all to dig in. Nessin’s mechanics took some of the containers at her urging but begged off sitting down.
“Mr. Nessin has a policy about us fraternizing with customers,” Ruuf explained. “We’d love to stay, but we can’t. Thank you kindly for dinner, though,” he said. “Wish all our customers were so considerate.”
The Wookiee grunted in agreement and added a nod of gratitude, and they bade us farewell for the evening after promising to return first thing in the morning to begin installing the new engine.
“Hey, Nakari, it’s quitting time,” I called, and her curly head popped out of the Jewel’s engine bay to reply.
“Not quite for me. I still have a couple things to do. Go ahead and start; I’ll be there in a few minutes.” She disappeared.
I turned to Drusil. “Well, I’m hungry enough to start without her, and she gave us permission, so let’s see what you brought.”
“Yes, please, be satiated,” Drusil said. The containers held an assortment of meats, vegetables, and noodles that could be combined with several different sauces.
“Ah, in addition to the pahzik meat, we have nerf nuggets! Nakari will be so pleased,” I said. In a lower voice, I asked, “How are our guests doing?”
“They continue to be well, though the Gotal is a surly creature.”
I began dishing out some noodles and nerf with a clean fork from the utensil drawer. “You sound like you’re in a better mood than when I spoke to you through the comm. Did you work out whatever was bothering you? The math, I mean?”
“The source of my agitation remains—I am separated from my family and worried about their fate. When you interrupted me, I was involved in probability ladders supporting the idea of further Imperial encounters before our departure, and the results were less than pleasing. Still, I have had only one request for status from Barrisk Favvin’s superior, and I believe they are content and free of suspicion for now. And I restored a sense of personal balance after dwelling for an extended period on experimental geometries.”
“How does that work?” I asked. “I mean, not the geometry itself, but how does that restore your balance?”
“Have you never meditated before, Luke Skywalker?”
“I have,” I said, thinking back to my exercise in the cockpit on the way to Nanth’ri.
“Do you find it centers you and restores your focus, grants you new perspective on matters great or small that trouble you?”
“To some extent, yes. I wouldn’t say I’m really skilled at it yet.”
“Presumably you focused on something to take you outside your routine patterns of thinking. I use experimental geometries. What do you use?”
“Visual noise helps,” I said, “but mostly I focus on my breathing.”
“Excellent. That is a common method employed by many beings. Regardless of how we achieve our alternative state of consciousness, it allows us to shift our perspective and reassess our challenges so that they appear manageable rather than insurmountable.”
I had never thought of it that way—I was simply trying to forge a stronger connection to the Force—but her ideas had merit.
“I am unsure how to interpret your current facial expression. Are you upset?” Drusil asked.
“No, just thoughtful.” I searched for a phrase to express my appreciation. “Your ideas are giving me the benefit of a new perspective without the meditation.”
“Indeed? Why were you meditating, then, if not for a different perspective?”
I considered whether to trust her with the truth. She was either my ally or my enemy. If the first, then trusting her couldn’t hurt. If she were my enemy, then telling her wouldn’t make her any more or less so, and since she’d already seen me use a lightsaber and pilot us through some challenging situations, my talents weren’t exactly a secret anymore. “I was reaching out to the Force.”
“Ah, the Force! The Jedi font of miracles. I find it a wholly mysterious subject.”
“I find your mathematics pretty mysterious, too.”
The Giv
in leaned forward and whispered. “Is it not wondrous that we have found common ground in our alienation?”
I chuckled and Drusil’s mouth dropped into that open smile as she made hoarse wheezing sounds that must have been laughter. But even her joke provided me with an insight into how people must see me: The quick, casual way in which I and many others dismissed her expertise as “math stuff” applied equally to how others must view the Jedi. I wondered if I could duplicate my small success with the Force on Denon here without Nakari around.
“Would you mind terribly if I tried something?” I asked.
“Try what?”
I scooped up a single noodle on my fork and let it fall with a wet smack onto the table. “I want to move that noodle using the Force.”
“I would find it vastly entertaining if you did. As long as you don’t plan on moving it into my mouth. I have doubts about the sanitary condition of this table.”
“Don’t worry. I just want a witness if I’m successful.”
I concentrated on the noodle and summoned the Force, but it didn’t answer. Examining why that might be, I realized I wasn’t as relaxed as I had been on Denon with Nakari. Then, I’d felt no pressure; now I did, which was silly, since I’d been the one to initiate this. Maybe it was the pale, implacable face of Drusil, which said to me that she had already calculated to fifteen significant digits how much of a fraud I was.
But I recognized that it was precisely such petty concerns that prevented me from connecting with the Force—a host of insecurities and stresses that acted like shielded blast doors against its flow. Keeping my eyes pointed down at the noodle, I pretended that it wasn’t Drusil sitting across from me but rather Nakari, her encouragement and confidence in me replacing the skepticism of the Givin, her smile and dark eyes gazing at me instead of Drusil’s skull-like visage. And then, when I reached out to the Force, it met not a barrier but a warm welcome, and I embraced it and felt a modest measure of its strength course through me. When I willed the noodle to move, it did, sliding across the table in a damp, uneven slither until I released it near the Givin’s bowl.
“Remarkable,” Drusil said, pointing a finger at the noodle. “Moving that may be a trivial feat to you, but it is an impossible one for almost every being in the galaxy. Do you realize how small your demographic is, Luke Skywalker? Statistically nonexistent, yet here you are.” She leaned back, crossed her arms, and tilted her head to one side. “The Force has never been mathematically described,” she said. “There are stories, of course—legends really—of a few Givin who became Jedi in the past, but they refused to share their insights with the rest of our species. They did their best—and it was quite adequate—to keep the workings of the Force an enigma. Therefore I do not know precisely what you did. I only know what you did not do.”
“What?”
“You did not move the noodle with your mind. Physics prevents it, so it would be more accurate to say that you moved something else, and that moved the noodle.”
“Oh!” The Givin had a talent for uttering sentences that altered the way I looked at a problem. Her observation made it clear that I’d been moving the Force, not the noodle, but I hadn’t perceived it that way until she said it.
“Have you tried this exercise on anything larger?”
“Not yet.”
“Shall we experiment? Attempt to move the fork in your bowl.”
“I don’t know. That’s quite a bit heavier than a noodle.”
“Are you speaking of the Force as being heavier? Or the fork?”
“Well, I …” Her words stunned me again. I’d been looking at it from the wrong angle—which only underscored my need for help. “I meant the fork, but I guess that’s not what I should be worried about. You’ve made me realize I’m in a mental rut and it’s going to take some effort to get myself out of it. If I’m moving the fork, I’m manipulating the Force instead of the steel. Okay, I’ll give it a try.”
I unconsciously stretched out my fingers toward the fork and stopped, taking the time to consciously note it. Why had I done that? My fingers wouldn’t move the Force; that was a task for my mind. But perhaps that unconscious gesture reflected the focus of my mind. Since my attention was directed at the fork my hand naturally followed, being used to doing my bidding. Maybe that’s all there was behind Obi-Wan’s gesture at Mos Eisley, then, when he did something to the minds of those stormtroopers. The hand movement wasn’t key to the procedure but rather an unconscious reflection of Obi-Wan’s mental focus. I felt foolish again, remembering my failure to influence the Rodian at the Chekkoo spaceport, waving my hand in his face like an idiot.
But even that small insight was easy to second-guess. If I ever had the good fortune to be trained by a real Jedi, he or she would probably tell me that hand motion was vital, serving a function I couldn’t even fathom, and all my halting progress was little more than staggering drunk in the dark and taking the wrong road home.
I refocused, took a couple of deep breaths, and reached out again to the Force, urging it to lift the fork out of the bowl. It didn’t twitch so much as shift lazily in the soup, like a teenager who, commanded to get up out of bed, rolled over instead and went aggressively back to sleep.
“I do not mean to presume, but perhaps you should close your eyes?” Drusil suggested. “The Force is an unseen power, so it is plausible that your sight may be interfering somehow, occupying a part of your mind that should be focused elsewhere.”
Of course she was right. I wasn’t flying an X-wing now, and Artoo’s translated words weren’t scrolling past on a screen; I didn’t need to see. And I knew from recent experience that I felt the Force more clearly when I minimized visual distractions. “Okay, I’ll give it another try that way.”
I shut my eyes and let my awareness expand, and the Force took on a stronger presence, as if it were giving me its full attention now. It was probably the opposite—my full attention was on the Force. It built within me and I coaxed it to lift the fork out of the bowl, not a jerk or a leap but a slow, sustained levitation, laden with noodles that dripped noisily as they cleared the puddle of juices in the bowl, redolent of garlic and peanuts. To give Drusil credit, she made no noises that might distract me during the process. I was about to smile and savor the victory when a voice that was decidedly not Drusil’s whooped nearby.
“That’s right, pilot, feed your partner with magic noodles!”
Startled, I opened my eyes, lost my concentration, and the fork plopped down into the noodles with a loud glop and splashed me with what must have been half the broth.
“Aw, not again,” I said, looking down at the mess.
“Now, that’s a useful skill, Luke!” Nakari said. She pulled out a chair next to Drusil on the other side of the table and slid into it, her eyes sparkling behind a lock of dark curls. “I’m just going to sit down over here, and you can Force-feed me from over there, okay? Congratulations on the new stain, by the way. You really look like you smell good.”
Her smile was infectious, but I asked her, “Are you finished?” in an effort to cut off her teasing.
“Not even close. You know, you should exhibit your tunics on one of those fancy art planets. What do you think, Drusil? Does he have a decent chance at making it as an artist if the piloting career doesn’t work out?”
The Givin looked disturbed as she flailed about for an answer. She might have thought that Nakari was asking seriously instead of merely taking the opportunity to give me grief. “There’s no accounting for taste,” she finally muttered.
My embarrassment must have shown, for Nakari said, “Hey, Luke. Comparatively speaking, a little spilled broth is no big deal. Remember, I’ve seen you covered in poodoo and I still think you’re fine.”
NAKARI AND I DIDN’T waste any time in the morning. After checking on our prisoners, we were back at the hangar at daybreak, anxious to get the new engine installed. It proved to be more time consuming than we’d hoped; it was a surplus job from Kuat Drive Yards, ple
nty of power but not designed with a sleek housing in mind, so we had to make some rather ugly modifications to the Jewel’s clean lines to make it work, ripping up some plating and welding on basic gray replacements. Nakari wasn’t happy about it at all and it would make the ship tougher to fly in atmosphere—especially Kupoh’s—but she spoke to the Jewel as she worked, telling the ship it was only temporary and vowing to return her to her former beauty.
When Drusil entered the hangar midmorning brandishing a large carry-sack and holding her datapad like a weapon, I suspected that she had bad news for us, though I could not imagine how she would look different if she had good news. Nakari and I took a break from working on the Desert Jewel and met her at the metal table that constituted the staff dining area.
“Hey, Drusil—”
She held up a hand to stop me and shook her head once. Then she pointed to the carry-sack and beckoned us closer. Once we stopped next to her, she pulled out some thick fishbowl helmets with electronics inside. “Put these on,” she said, “and seal them before speaking.”
It was a strange request and I didn’t see an oxygen system, but I took the helmet anyway to humor her, figuring I’d take it off after a few minutes. Once we were all under glass and sealed up, Drusil’s tinny voice came through the built-in comm.
“I’ve been assured that these are soundproof. We need to speak now and cannot risk being overheard by Mr. Waluuk over there, or anyone else.”
“Where did you get these?” Nakari asked.
“That is unimportant,” Drusil said, her voice curt. “I have been monitoring Imperial communications while taking care of our charges and we are faced with a quandary.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“The Empire has blockaded all outgoing traffic from Kupoh. They are almost certain we are here.”
Nessin hadn’t mentioned that to us. “How did they become so certain?”
“I have not calculated the probability that they deduced it on their own versus the probability that they received intelligence from other sources like Migg Birkhit. Is it vital that I do so?”
