by Timothy Zahn
“I was right,” one of the men growled, glaring accusingly at Obi-Wan. “The war’s here. And he’s the one who brought it.”
“Easy, Hanco,” Kirlan cautioned.
“Easy, my foot,” Hanco shot back, his eyes still on Obi-Wan. “Well, Jedi? You have an answer for that?”
“It depends on what you mean by ‘the war,’” Obi-Wan said evenly. “If you mean the struggle for the Republic’s survival, then the war is everywhere.” He looked around the room. “If what you mean is battles and death and destruction, Dagro might still be able to avoid that.”
“Why are you here?” a woman asked.
“We heard rumors that the Separatists had set up a presence on your world,” Obi-Wan told her. “I came to see if the reports were true. Apparently, they were.”
“Maybe; maybe not,” Hanco countered. “We never saw anything like those battle droids until you showed up. Maybe they followed you in, hey?”
“Possible, but unlikely,” Obi-Wan said. “And, actually, the fact that you haven’t seen them before now is a good sign. That might mean they’re still in the process of moving in and can hopefully be chased away with a minimum of trouble.”
“Is that what you’re going to do?” a youthful voice spoke up.
Obi-Wan blinked as he focused for the first time on the far right of the room. Kit and Zizzy were sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of a seated woman, presumably their mother, both children gazing up at him with wide eyes. “Excuse me?”
“I said, are you going to chase them away?” Zizzy repeated.
Obi-Wan glanced up at their mother’s stony expression, then looked down at the children again. “Even a Jedi wouldn’t be so bold as to tackle an enemy base by himself,” he told them solemnly. “No, at this point all I’m planning is to wait for the rest of my survey team to come get me.”
There was a subtle but definite lowering of the tension in the room. Clearly, there had been some fear that he was here to draft them all into Republic military service. “So what do you want from us?” one of the men asked.
“Only that you don’t betray me to the Separatists.” Obi-Wan looked at Kirlan. “And perhaps that Kirlan will allow me to help around the farm.”
Kirlan’s eyes narrowed. “What kind of help?”
“Whatever needs doing,” Obi-Wan said. “You told me that Coruscant never paid a crippled droid’s worth of attention to you. Maybe I can make up a little for that neglect.”
“You could start by raising the price of sargheet,” someone suggested.
A small but genuine ripple of laughter twittered around the room, “I was thinking more along the lines of helping get the crops in,” Obi-Wan said with a smile. They weren’t opposed to the Republic, he realized now, or even to Obi-Wan himself. They were simply hardworking people who didn’t want their lives made any harder than they already were.
“Actually, what I need most right now is someone to strip my crop stubble,” Kirlan said. “I’ll show you how in the morning. Everyone else, thanks for coming. And if something made of metal and carrying a blaster comes around asking questions, play dumb.”
With a rustle of chairs and a low buzz of conversation, the crowd got to its feet and began to drift out, a few people lingering behind to talk to Kirlan or his wife. Obi-Wan stayed at the door, exchanging silent nods with the farmers as they filed past, until finally only he and the Swens family were left. “You must be Kirlan’s wife,” Obi-Wan said, stepping back into the room and nodding to the woman still seated with the children.
“I’m Trissa Swens,” she confirmed, nodding back at him, her face marginally less stony but still unsmiling. “I wish I could say it was an honor to have you here, General Kenobi.”
“But with Separatist forces hunting me, all you can see is the threat I pose to your family?” Obi-Wan suggested. Kirlan took a step toward him.
“Stay out of my wife’s mind, Jedi,” he warned.
“I wasn’t in it,” Obi-Wan said tiredly, a ripple of frustration and sadness pouring through him. “It’s just that I’ve been fighting this war long enough to know how people react to me.”
Trissa’s lip twitched, and Obi-Wan caught her flicker of guilt. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean it to sound that way.”
“No apology needed,” Obi-Wan said, rubbing his temples. “Unless you’ve got other questions, though, I’d like to go back to the barn and get some sleep.”
Trissa looked at her husband. “There’s no need to go to the barn,” Kirlan said, a bit gruffly. “We have plenty of room here in the house.”
“Thank you,” Obi-Wan said. “But tonight, at least, I’d rather stay outside. The droids might come back; and if there’s going to be a fight I don’t want it to be here in the house.”
Kirlan’s lips puckered. “I appreciate that,” he said, a little grudgingly. “I’ll bring you some blankets and a field mattress. Some food, too - I guess you missed dinner.” He looked Obi-Wan up and down. “And I’d better get you some clothes,” he added. “That outfit might blend in okay in town, but there’s no way anyone out here would wear anything that flimsy.”
“Thank you,” Obi-Wan said again, taking a step down the hallway. “Good night, everyone. I’ll see you in the morning.”
If the battle droids did indeed pass through the area again that night, they were considerate enough to be quiet about it. Obi-Wan slept soundly, not waking up until Kit arrived a little after sunrise to bring him in to breakfast.
The meal was quick but pleasant, with little of the underlying tension he’d sensed the evening before. Apparently, a good night’s sleep - perhaps, more importantly, an uneventful night’s sleep - had helped calm some of their fears.
After breakfast, Kirlan took Obi-Wan back to the barn to a huge stack of ten-centimeter-long grain stalks piled beside a bin made of wire mesh.
“Crop stubble,” he identified it. “The lower sections of the sargheet stalks. By the time we’ve finished the harvest, we’ll hopefully have enough of this to feed the zeles for the rest of the year.”
He picked up one of the stalks and pointed at a dozen fine blue bristles attached to the base and sticking up about half the stalk’s length. “But only if we pull these bristles off first,” he went on. “If the animals eat them, they accumulate in their digestive systems and you end up with a dead animal.”
Obi-Wan picked up a stalk and experimentally tugged at one of the bristles. It came off in his fingers with far less effort than he’d expected. “Yeah, they come off real easy,” Kirlan agreed. “Which is why they’ll come off in a zele’s gut, too. Anyway. That pail right there is for the bristles - Trissa makes a nice soup stock out of them. The clean stubble goes into that wire bin. Got it?”
“Got it,” Obi-Wan said, suppressing the reflexive urge to suggest that a droid might do the job more efficiently. Obviously it could. Just as obviously, Kirlan couldn’t afford to buy one.
“Great,” Kirlan said, moving toward the door. “The kids and I will be out in the fields all day, but Trissa will bring you some lunch when it’s time.”
“Will you be taking your lunch out with you?”
Kirlan hesitated. “I’ll have something for the kids,” he said. “Trissa and I usually don’t bother with more than two meals a day,”
Clearly another cost-cutting move. “Sounds very Jedi,” Obi-Wan told him, keeping his voice casual. “Please tell her not to bother with any lunch for me either.”
For a moment Kirlan’s eyes seemed to search Obi-Wan’s face. “In that case, I’ll send the kids to bring you in when it’s dinnertime,” he said. “Have fun.”
Rather to Obi-Wan’s surprise, he did. It seemed sometimes like his whole life since the Battle of Geonosis had been nothing but combat, life-or-death decisions, and long days of hyperspace travel. To do work that was useful yet took little mental effort was a welcome change of pace, soothing and satisfying. By the time Kit and Zizzy came to get him, he had the bucket half full of b
lue bristles and the kind of inner contentment and peace he usually got only from a period of Jedi meditation.
“How’d it go?” Kirlan asked as the children led their guest toward a large wooden table on one side of the kitchen.
“Very well,” Obi-Wan told him. “I finished about a quarter of the pile.”
Kirlan looked at the children with lifted eyebrows. “He did,” Kit confirmed.
“I’m impressed,” Kirlan said. “Actually, I’m ...” He hesitated, then gave a microscopic shrug. “To be honest, I’m surprised you were willing to take the job. It’s usually the sort of work the children end up with.”
“I was doing it before you got here,” Zizzy said, crinkling her nose. “It gets pretty boring,”
“Boring or not, there’s nothing wrong with honest work,” Obi-Wan told her.
“You wouldn’t know it from some of the officials who’ve occasionally visited the valley,” Trissa said scornfully from beside the stove. “Particularly the women. They seem horrified that people actually live this way.”
“I know a few officials like that myself,” Obi-Wan agreed with a smile. “How’d the field work go?”
“We’re getting there,” Kirlan said, gesturing him toward one of the chairs at the table. “I’ve been trying to figure a way to sneak you out of here and up to the city. But those blasted battle droids have been zipping around overhead all day.”
“Really,” Obi-Wan said as he sat down. He hadn’t heard any STAPs from the barn. “How high were they?”
“Pretty high,” Kirlan said, sitting down at the head of the table. “You had to look close to tell they weren’t birds.”
“Did they ever come lower?”
“Not that I saw,” Kirlan said. “You think they’re worried about an attack from the ground?”
“Doesn’t seem likely,” Obi-Wan said, frowning. “All my long-range weapons are still with my scout ship. They’ve surely scooped up the wreckage and taken it away by now.”
“Unless they think you’re not the only one here,” Kit suggested as he maneuvered a bowl of vegetables onto the table. “Maybe they think you’re trying to sucker them into a trap.”
“We can hope so,” Obi-Wan told him. “There’s nothing I’d like better right now than for them to keep their distance.”
“When will your survey team arrive?” Trissa asked as she set a platter containing a small roasted avian in front of her husband.
Obi-Wan shook his head. “I don’t know. My Padawan was held up bringing his part of the group, which is why I went on ahead.”
“That wasn’t very smart,” Zizzy said primly as she set a glass of water beside Obi-Wan’s plate. “Even I know better than to go to a strange place alone.”
“I can’t argue with you there,” Obi-Wan said ruefully, taking a welcome sip of the water. “He was due in at the rendezvous yesterday, but from his report I know some of the ships had been damaged. Trouble is, I don’t know how badly. It’ll probably be several more days before they get here.”
Kirlan hissed between his teeth. “That’s a long time to keep someone hidden in a barn.”
“At least, in the same barn,” Obi-Wan agreed. “But if enough of your neighbors are wilting to help, maybe I can barn-hop my way to Vale City.”
“You mean like traveling to one homestead at a time?” Kit asked.
“Exactly,” Obi-Wan said. “I’d go at night, maybe slung underneath one of your zeles to help disguise my infrared signature.”
“Sounds risky,” Kirlan rumbled. He picked up a knife and fork and started to carve the meat off the avian. “Not just for you, either.”
“It couldn’t hurt to ask them,” Trissa said firmly, sitting down beside her husband.
“I suppose not,” Kirlan said. “Probably not a good idea to use the comlinks, but I’ll be seeing Pickers and Jurvi out in their fields tomorrow, I’ll talk to them then.”
Kirlan and the children returned the next evening with the news that Pickers and Jurvi were indeed willing, if not exactly enthusiastic. Trissa had made a thick and tangy stew for dinner, and as the Swenses ate they discussed plans for Obi-Wan’s departure.
But for that night, at least, all their plans came to nothing. The battle droids resumed their patrols as the stars appeared overhead, dropping lower in the sky as if anticipating an escape attempt on the part of their quarry. Sitting in the barn listening to the sounds of the STAPs, Obi-Wan finally gave up and settled down to get some sleep.
He was up before sunrise the next morning and had already put in half an hour of work before Zizzy called him to breakfast. A quick meal and he was back at work, determined to trim the pile of crop stubble down to half its size before dinner. By the time the others returned he had very nearly achieved his goal, with a warm glow of victory that lasted only as long as it took Kit to back the zeles and cart up to the stack and unload the additional stubble they’d collected during the day.
They all ate dinner together, and Obi-Wan returned to the barn to prepare to leave. Once again, by midnight it was clear that the droids’ vigilance would make that impossible, and he reluctantly returned to his field mattress to sleep. It was on the fourth morning, just as he finished getting dressed, that the droids finally came.
With his ear pressed against a cracked panel in the barn wall, he listened intently to the telltale sound of five more STAPs coming to rest out in the yard. If he’d counted correctly, that made twelve on the ground, with twelve or thirteen more running high patrol overhead.
Twenty-five to one. Terrible odds, made even worse by the presence of civilians on the scene. Especially when they were civilians he’d grown to consider friends.
He stepped away from the wall and took a deep breath- “A Jedi knows only cairn,” he murmured to himself. Tucking his lightsaber inside the farmer’s shirt Trissa had given him, he started toward the door.
He was nearly there when the panel was flung open and a battle droid strode inside. “You - halt,” he snapped, swiveling his blaster to point at Obi-Wan’s chest.
“Hey, I didn’t hurt anything,” Obi-Wan said, holding up his hands in feigned surprise. “Really, I didn’t.”
The droid’s head swiveled as he looked around the rest of the barn, then came back to gaze at Obi-Wan. “Come,” he ordered. The rest of the family was gathered together in a tight knot in the middle of the yard when Obi-Wan and his escort arrived, Kirlan with his arm tightly around Trissa’s shoulders as she in turn pressed the two children close to her sides. Behind them, the house loomed dark and ominous against the pinks and reds of the sunrise coloring the sky behind it. Arrayed in a semicircle around them, a group of battle droids kept wary watch. “Ah,” said a droid with officer markings as Obi-Wan was marched toward the group. ‘The other, as expected. You - identify.”
“Hey, I didn’t take anything,” Obi-Wan protested. “I just slept there, okay? That’s all I did.”
“Identify,” the officer repeated, more sharply this time.
“I’m Marsh Fixter,” Obi-Wan said. “I just - look, I didn’t take anything, okay? I just slept there.”
To Obi-Wan’s mild surprise, Kirlan caught the cue. “He’s nothing but a rotten tramp,” the farmer growled. “I must have kicked him off my land a dozen times.”
“We shall see,” the officer repeated.
Carefully, Obi-Wan stretched out with the Force, reaching to the droid’s optical sensors and giving them a gentle vibration. His face was certainly in the enemy-agents listing that was undoubtedly now being transmitted to the officer, but fluttering the droid’s vision should blur his image just enough to make a positive identification impossible.
Apparently, it worked. “No matter,” the droid said with an electronic snort. “You are a liar. You have been working in the barn for two days. Otherwise, both children would not have been free to work the fields with their father.”
Obi-Wan felt his throat tighten. So that was what the high-flying droids had been looking for: an anomaly
in the farmers’ normal routines. He should have thought of that.
“So you are a spy,” the officer concluded. “Bring them all.”
Obi-Wan looked at the Swenses, standing silently gazing back at him. People who had fed and clothed him, who had risked their lives to help him. He could sense their fear, both for themselves and for him. And then he focused on the children’s faces and saw the trust and calm adding a sheen of hope to the fear in their eyes. He was a Jedi, one of those who claimed to be guardians of the people; and for all the cynicism of their elders, they still believed in him. Still believed that he could and would save them.
There was a flicker in the Force ... and suddenly he knew what he had to do.
“No,” he said, taking a step forward as the droids started to close in on the family. “Leave them alone.”
“Or?” the officer countered.
Smiling tightly, Obi-Wan lifted a hand, stretched out to the Force, and threw the droid backward to slam hard against the ground.
The yard exploded in instant consternation. Swiveling in unison, the entire group of droids turned its blasters away from the family and toward this sudden new threat. But they were too late. Obi-Wan snatched out his lightsaber and with a snap-hiss ignited it, the glowing blue blade throwing shadows against the darkened house. He took a step toward the Swenses, then pretended to think better of it and began backing up again.
The droids reacted exactly as he’d hoped. Their circle shifted in response, tightening in toward him and bypassing the other four humans. Obi-Wan caught Kirlan’s eye and gave a fractional nod; the other nodded back and began backing slowly toward the relative safety of the house, pulling his wife and children with him.
Overhead, the STAPs were closing in as well, tightening their part of the deadly ring around him. Obi-Wan kept backing up, shifting his lightsaber back and forth. If he could keep their full attention on him for just a few more seconds....
