Children of the Jedi

by Barbara Hambly

  Had she planned it herself in her most malicious daydreams, Leia could have evolved no more wretched vengeance upon the man who had taught the Death Star's designers.

  Nasdra Magrody had been kept, drugged with mild doses of antidepressant just sufficient to rob him of any will to leave, in a comfortable villa on a planet so inhospitable, so dangerous, so teeming with bizarre insect-borne viruses, that to step outside the magnetic field that surrounded the gardens would have resulted, within hours, in his death.

  I can only be thankful I had already been soothed with Telezan before they demonstrated this fact to me [he wrote sadly]. I still don't know the name of the man they tied up outside the boundaries of the field, or his crime, if he'd committed one--the commander in charge assured me he had, but of course that could have been a lie. The bullyboys who took him out there wore t-suits, which they then cut to pieces in front of me. The man himself lasted two hours before he began to swell up; his decomposing flesh didn't begin to slough until nearly sunset, and he died shortly before dawn. If it hadn't been for the drug I don't think I'd have slept at all, either that night, or any night in the four years that I remained there.

  They supplied me regularly with holos of my wife. I was comfortable, and studied, and perfected the techniques by which subelectronic synapses could be controlled. I think that in spite of the drugs I was aware that in those two years there was no alteration of Elizie's face--nor of the length of her hair--in the holos. Of Shenna, who would have grown from girl to woman in that time, they never sent me anything at all. I did my best not to think about what that meant. The drugs made that easy.

  When Irek was seven, his training began. It was obvious to Leia, from what Magrody said, that the boy had already had training in the use of the Force, the swift and easy simplicities of the dark side. With the less punitive accelerated learning procedures Magrody had developed for the Omwat orbital station, he learned enough, by the age of twelve, to qualify for an advanced degree in subelectron physics or a position as a droid motivator technician--at what cost Leia, recalling Cray's desperate measures to accelerate learning, could only guess.

  Every now and then a tree feeder will go mildly amok and wander through the streets of the town squirting nutrient at passersby...

  Bizarre enough when Jevax had told her of it last night, but clear as daylight, Leia realized, when she understood that a twelve- or thirteen-year-old boy was developing his powers to alter the behavior of droids.

  Visualize the schematic, Roganda had said...

  Leia thought about the mechanical intelligences behind every ship in the Republic's fleet, and shivered again.

  Chewbacca had repaired Artoo, obviously not rewiring in the same fashion...and Irek had lost his power over the droid.

  Han, she thought desperately. Like Drub McKumb, even if she lost her own life, she had to get word out to them of the danger they faced, and how to circumvent the boy Irek's powers. They're there... they're gathering...

  Going to kill you all.

  More of that night at the Emperor's reception returned to her. Aunt Celly, plump and pink-faced with her fading fair hair looped into the sort of lacquered confection of twirls, pearls, and artificial swags popular twenty-five years previously, had taken her aside and whispered conspiratorially, "It's a hotbed of intrigue, dear; just terrible." She'd glanced across at the slender exquisite concubines. ”I'm told they're all at daggers-drawing, my dear. Because of course, whoever can provide him with a child, that child is going to be his heir."

  Leia particularly remembered Roganda, like an enameled image of crimson and gold, moving from dignitary to dignitary with that same air of vulnerable shyness...

  At that time, Leia realized, Irek had to have been at least four years old, and Roganda already gathering her own power base, laying her plans. From things Magrody said, she must already have been training her son in the ways of the dark side of the Force.

  There was no way Palpatine would have let such power exist without using it for his own ends. And having acted for him in some things, it would be easy to say, These orders come from him.

  She wondered how Roganda had come to the old man in the first place, and whether it was he who had turned her to the dark side, as he had turned Vader and for a time turned Luke, or whether Roganda had sought him out when she saw the fate of Jedi who tried to stay free. Somehow, Leia strongly suspected the latter.

  Looking back at that levee, she had the tremendous sense of seeing yet another palimpsest, one set of circumstances rising up through another in a complex jungle of double meaning, which at the time she--eighteen years old and filled with her father's Republican ideals--had been completely unaware of.

  Her own response to Celly's words still made her wince at her own naiveté: She'd indignantly quoted a dozen points concerning the transfer of power from the Senate Constitution, just as if Palpatine weren't going to tear up that document later in the year.

  But in fact, in the power vacuum that had succeeded Palpatine's fall, the generals, with a few notable exceptions, had mostly gone each for him- or herself. None had wanted a regent, particularly not one for an infant child.

  The boy is now thirteen years old [wrote Magrody in his final paragraph]. His control over droids and mechanicals increases daily; his use of the various artifacts of the Jedi his mother brings to him is ever more adept. He can alter sensors and sensor fields, keeping abreast of the wiring patterns of all the standard makes; he amuses himself by causing minor machinery to malfunction. His mother demands much of him, and in consequence of this I fear he has begun dabbling in substances of which she disapproves-- telling himself they increase his perceptions and his abilities to use the Force, but in actual fact, I believe, simply because he knows she would disapprove.

  I see well what I have created. Mon Mothma--my friend Bail--all those who tried to enlist my support and help against the rise of Palpatine's power... I can only beg for your understanding, for I know that what I have done is not something that can be forgiven.

  I will try to get these notes to you in some fashion. Should I not, I fear that all will believe the worst of me. I tried to make the best decisions I could... with what results, I pray that you will never have occasion to see.

  To you I sign myself in all wretchedness, Nasdra Magrody

  Leia folded the notes together and slipped them into the pocket of her t-suit.

  I fear that all will believe the worst of me...

  With all her power, once the Emperor was dead Roganda had not joined in the immediate and general grab for power--possibly because Irek was too young to use his powers, and possibly because warlords like High Admiral Thrawn had something against Roganda that Roganda considered insurmountable... a DNA comparison, for instance, between the Emperor and the child Irek that proved that the boy was not, in fact, Palpatine's son.

  Possibly Thrawn simply didn't like the woman.

  It was a viewpoint for which Leia had a good deal of sympathy.

  Instead Roganda had come here, to her own childhood home, where she knew she could raise and train her son unnoticed--and where she knew the Jedi had left at least some training aids. Raise him and train him until he could not be ignored.

  It occurred to her to wonder whether Roganda had been grooming and preparing her own child to replace Palpatine at all.

  It sounded very much more, thought Leia uneasily, as if Roganda's intent had been to raise up not another Palpatine... but another Darth Vader.

  Chapter 19

  "Master Luke?"

  It was very important.

  "Master Luke?"

  He had to wake up, come out of it, cross back over to the conscious world from the peaceful subsurface darkness of dreams.

  "Please, Master Luke..." Why?

  He knew that on the other side of that fragile wall of waking lay the fire heat of nearly unbearable pain. Much better to stay unconscious. He was tired, his body desperate for rest. Without rest, all the Force he could bring to
bear on self-healing was wasted, as if he were trying to fill a jar up with water before he'd patched the hole in its bottom.

  His leg hurt, a raging infection and stress injuries exacerbating the original severed tendons and cracked bone. Every muscle and ligament felt stretched and torn and every centimeter of flesh ached as if he'd been pounded with hammers. The dreams had been unpleasant. Callista...What could be so important on the other side that it couldn't wait?

  After Callista had left--or perhaps while she still lay in his arms, her head pillowed on his shoulder in the aftermath of loving--he had drifted into deeper sleep. He had seen her far off, in the girlhood left behind on Chad, riding mermaid-like behind the sleek black-and-bronze cy'een with her brown hair slicked where the waves broke over her head, or sitting alone on an outbuoy to watch the sun drown itself in the sea. Conversation replayed in his mind: "You sound as if you've studied them." "You could say they were my next-door neighbors growing up..."

  Only he and Callista were no longer in the dark office, orange words coming out of the black screen like stars at sunset. Rather they sat side by side in that old T-70 he'd sold for bantha feed to pay passage for Ben and himself on the Millennium Falcon, all those distant forevers ago. It surprised him that he hadn't known Callista then. That she hadn't always been someone he knew.

  They were on the cliffs above Beggar's Canyon, passing his old macrobinocs back and forth to watch the startlingly unobtrusive progress of a line of banthas among the rocks of the opposite rim, the clumsy beasts moving faster than one would guess from their appearance, the dry wind fluttering the sand-covered veiling of their riders and the slanting sun flashing harshly on metal and glass. "Nobody's ever figured out how to tell a hunting party from a tribe moving house," Luke said, as Callista made an adjustment to the focus. "Nobody's ever seen children or young or whatever--nobody knows whether some of those warriors are females, or even if there are male and female Sand People. Mostly when you see Sand People--or even hear the banthas roaring--you just head the other way as fast as you can.”

  "Has anyone ever tried to make friends with them?" She handed the binocs back, brushed a blowing trail of hair from her eyes. She still wore the baggy gray coverall she'd had on in some earlier dream, but her face was clean and unscarred now and she looked less strained, less exhausted, than she had. He was glad of that, glad to see her happy and at ease.

  "If anyone tried, he didn't survive to talk about it." Out of sheer habit Luke scanned his own side of the canyon rim, and the rocks below. He saw no sign of the Tuskens, but then, one frequently didn't. "There was an innkeeper over at Anchorhead who had the bright idea of trying to get them on his side--I think he wanted to go into the desert pirate business. He noticed they raid pika and deb-deb orchards--those are sweet fruits they grow in some oases--and cooked up sugar water in a still to see if he could use it to bargain with them. It supposedly got them paralytically drunk and they seemed to enjoy it. He made up another batch and they came back and killed him."

  Luke shrugged. "Maybe they didn't like feeling good."

  She turned, her gray eyes widening, like one who has seen a revelation. "But that explains everything!" she cried. "It's a clue to where they come from!"

  "What?" said Luke, startled.

  "They're related to my uncle Dro. He hated to have a good time and didn't think anybody else should either."

  Luke laughed, and all the diamond hardness, the dark-forged Jedi strength of his heart, was transfigured into light. He swung the speeder in a swooping dive away down the trail.

  "Wow! That means your uncle Dro is related to my aunt Coolie..."

  "Which means we're long-lost cousins!"

  Luke mimed a wildly exaggerated double take of recognition; they were laughing like teenagers as they sped down the trail. "C'mon," he said. ”We're gonna be late--it's past noon now and we've got to be there at sixteen hundred."

  The speeder's shadow fluttered after them, like a blue-gray scarf dragged over the rocks.

  Sixteen hundred, thought Luke. Sixteen hundred. It's past noon now and we've got to be there at...

  Sixteen hundred!

  He came to consciousness with a cry, as if he'd been tipped into an acid bath of pain. All the aches and stiffness of his struggle against the droids fell on him like a collapsing wall; he stifled a moan and Threepio cried, "Thank the Maker! I was afraid you were never coming around!"

  Luke turned his head, though to do so felt as if he were breaking his own neck. He lay on a pile of blankets and what felt like insulation on the worktable in the fabrications lab just beyond his old headquarters in the quartermaster's office on Deck 12, illuminated by sputtering yellow emergency lights. The antigrav sled floated near the floor along the far wall. Threepio stood beside his makeshift bed with the air of one who had paced at least fifty kilometers back and forth across the four-meter room, the black box of an emergency medkit in his hands.

  "What time is it?"

  "It's thirteen hundred hours thirty-seven minutes, sir." He set the medkit down beside Luke and opened it. "Miss Callista informed me that you ran afoul of the ship's maintenance droids--and I must say, sir, that I'm absolutely shocked that even the Will could induce such disgraceful behavior in mechanicals--and gave me the coordinates to find you. In addition to changing the dressing on your leg, on her instructions I've administered anti-shock and a mild metabolic enhancer. But frankly, sir, even with proper first aid I don't consider you in any condition to fight the Gamorreans, although I can only speak from personal observation, not being a medical droid myself. How do you feel, sir?"

  "Like the last third of a hundred-kilometer road race with a busted stabilizer." Luke taped shut the gash in the leg of his coverall over the last three perigen patches he or Threepio had been able to find. "I think I want one of those about the size of a blanket." He gingerly moved his shoulder, which had been all but dislocated in the struggle--the shrapnel cuts on his face smarted with disinfectant and the flesh all around them was swollen and exquisitely tender to the touch. His left hand and arm, burned by shorting wires, had been clumsily bandaged and dosed with some kind of local anesthetic, which wasn't working very well. The skin of his right hand had been cut open, bloodless, to show the glint of metal underneath.

  "I don't believe they make them in that size, sir." Threepio sounded worried.

  As well he might, thought Luke. "I wonder if the foo-twitter is still up there?"

  "It's fine." Her voice was in his head, clear and soft--the words might even have been actually audible, because Threepio replied, "But, Miss Callista, diversion or no diversion, Master Luke is scarcely up to taking on Gamorreans--”

  "No, we've been going about this all wrong," said Luke. "If the Will can program droids to think I'm garbage that needs recycling-or can program Gamorreans to think Cray is a Rebel saboteur--it's about time we went into the programming business ourselves."

  Torches were burning all around the Gakfedd village when Luke limped through the wide doors of the storage hold. The place stank of acrid smoke and a suggestion of malfunctioning waste disposal, or at the very least too few visits by the increasingly scarce MSE'S. By the light of the huge bonfire in front of the central hut Bullyak was constructing a splendid mail shirt of red and blue plastic mess-room plates and engine tape. She looked up with a fierce grunt as the slender Jedi and his gleaming servant stepped into the ring of the firelight.

  She said something to him and gestured to him to advance. Threepio translated, "The Lady Bullyak asks if her husbands did this to you." Another long string of guttural rumbles. "She adds her opinion that neither of them is particularly intelligent or sexually competent, though I really fail to see what bearing that has on the matter."

  "Give the Lady Bullyak my compliments and tell her that I've discovered a path to allow her husbands and the other boars of the tribe to redeem themselves in truly heroic combat against worthy enemies." The sow sat up. Her greenish eyes gleamed like evil jewels in their pockets of
warty fat.

  "She says that her husbands and the other boars have all become stupid and idle from looking at the computer screens too much, and have neglected their duties to their tribe and to her. She would be grateful to you if you could recall them from this stupid enslavement to the thing in the monitor screens that thinks more about catching vermin than it does about the need of boars to act like boars. She adds further detail that has no apparent connection to the matter at hand."

  Luke suppressed a grin. In his mind he could almost hear Callista's snort of laughter. "Ask her where her husbands might be found."

  "Behind you, Rebel scum!"

  They were actually grouped in the doorway--empty-handed, for which Luke was profoundly glad. Having paid off the Jawas with the corpse of the G-40 to cut certain power lines, he'd feared his grubby hirelings would be caught in the act.

  Ugbuz shoved Threepio aside, sending the droid sprawling with a clatter. Two other boars seized Luke's arms. "This outage is your doing, eh?" snarled the Gamorrean. "You and your Rebel saboteurs..."

  Bullyak surged to her feet. "You can be brave warriors against a puny little cripple and a walking talk machine," translated Threepio, rather feebly, from the floor. His voice was nearly drowned by the sow's thunderstorm of shrieks. "But given the chance to meet and fight those stinking misbegotten soap-eating Klaggs, you all run away like morrts to do the bidding of something behind a screen that never even shows itself."

  Ugbuz hesitated. The Gamorrean in him was clearly at war with his indoctrinated stormtrooper persona. "But it's orders," he argued at last. "It's the Will."

  "It's the Will that you act like true boars," put in Luke gently. In spite of the sweat-stringy hair hanging in his eyes and the bruises all over one side of his unshaven face, his voice was the voice of a Jedi Master, reaching to touch the minds of those with little mind of their own. "Only by being true boars can you be true stormtroopers."

  The big boar hesitated, almost visibly wringing his hands. Luke added, to Bullyak, "I have heard that Mugshub laughs at you for having a feeble tribe that won't fight, and calls you Piglet-Mommy."