by Greg Bear
It should have been among the proudest moments of Raith Sienar’s life. He had been given the rank of commander, in charge of a squadron, putting to use training he had once thought forgotten. The squadron of four ships was preparing to enter that most entrancing of places, hyperspace—entrancing for an engineer, if not a tactician—and yet he felt nothing but a cold, seedy dread in his viscera.
This was not what he wanted, and it was certainly not what he had imagined when he had purchased the Sekotan ship two years before.
Even learning the probable location of Zonama Sekot seemed a hollow triumph, since he had to share the knowledge. Sienar rarely liked sharing anything, especially with old friends. Most especially, now, with Tarkin.
Sienar was a competitive fellow, had recognized this since boyhood, but it had been a fragile knowledge, as he had realized over and over again, that his competitive nature had its limits. He had had to focus his efforts to win, and after a while, he had never failed to choose arenas in which his talents were most suited, and avoid those where they were not.
It was disheartening to be shown how much he had come to overestimate his greed, and to underestimate the infinite ambition of others. Of Tarkin.
But there was little time for ruing his precarious position. The adjutants, impatient and less than obsequious toward their new commander, had arrayed themselves on the command deck of the Admiral Korvin, and they expected dispatch.
He had to give the order for coordinated entry into hyperspace.
It was the final commitment he dreaded, leaving the system, in which he had pooled most of his armor, most of his political cronies and contacts, and all of his wealth.
Leaving home.
There had not been five seconds strung together in the last six hours since he had seen Tarkin off the ship in which he had been free enough to think things through. No time for arranging backup plans, escape plans. Instead, he had been involved in the minutiae of command: system checks, drills, and the inevitable, infuriating delays of old equipment breaking down.
Tarkin had from the very beginning herded him down a narrow chute like an animal in a slaughterhouse.
No time for self-pity, either. Sienar was not without resources. But getting his reflexes back into shape was going to take some time. He had built up considerable mental flab on Coruscant in the last decade, giving in to discouragement at the decline of the economy, embittered by the increasing corruption of the aristocracy that had been his mother even more than his real mother had.
He had put on a hard face and found that the expression was comfortable, and not entirely false. It seemed natural for his uniform, which he had chosen the day before—that of an old-line Trade Defense officer, black and gray and red with opalescent striping.
He now had at least the illusion of control over these ships, these men. Might as well use that as a beginning, a stable ground on which to regain his footing and test how much power and independence he actually had.
“Are the squadron cores in synchrony, Captain?” he asked.
“They are, Commander,” Kett responded. Kett wore a merchant’s uniform, a holdover from the Trade Federation, no doubt something he was used to, and less formal than Sienar’s. Rumpled, actually.
We are all of us little better than pirates, but we choose our images carefully, Sienar thought. “Then let’s blow the stardust off our tails,” he said, hoping that language was not too antiquated.
“Yes, sir.” Kett made a small, secret smile.
Sienar stared through the forward ports, hands gripping the railing of his command pulpit. Kett, half a level below him, stood at bridge-rest position, hands folded behind his back, knees slightly bent, as the order was carried through to the linked squadron droid navigation system.
“Departure, Commander,” Kett murmured to Sienar as the forward view skewed and fanned outward, then drew in to a brilliant point. “We are entering hyperspace.”
“Thank you, Captain Kett,” Sienar said.
“Estimated journey time, three standard days,” Kett said.
“Let’s use that time to examine and do more drills on defensive systems,” Sienar said. That would serve as a good distraction for the flagship crew while he did other tasks. “And present me with the service records of every command officer in the squadron. The complete records, Captain Kett.”
That sounded better.
“I’ll prepare a plan and submit the records within the hour, sir,” Kett said.
Much better. It felt right, a good beginning to a complicated mission.
Sienar drew up his shoulders and set his jaw firmly, staring with steely determination at the potentially nauseating and twisting view outside the ship until the port covers closed all the way.
He then stepped aside and climbed down. A slender, pipe-frame, dark blue navigational droid mounted the pulpit to perform its essential and quite boring duties.
Anakin squirmed on the cramped transport, unable to see through the small ports placed inconveniently behind the seats. All he could see was a flash of sky and a lumpy green horizon. As the transport flew south, they were moving in and out of the terminator, and the cabin grew light and dark alternately until the transport veered to the west and they flew toward the youth of the day.
The transport offered only the most basic comfort on their trip: four seats, narrow and slung beneath a low ceiling, and a closed cabin door between them and the pilot. Obi-Wan could sense a human behind the door and nothing more. The transport was a familiar enough model, a light expeditionary vehicle often carried inside larger vessels for close-in exploration. Nothing exotic here.
“This is no way to run a planet,” Anakin said.
Obi-Wan agreed. “They behave as if they have recently suffered problems.”
“With Vergere?”
Obi-Wan smiled. “Vergere was given no instructions to disrupt. Perhaps with the unknown visitors she was sent to investigate.”
“I don’t feel anything like that around here,” Anakin said. “I can feel the Force in this entire planet, and in the settlers, but …” He grimaced and shook his head.
“Nor do I feel anything unexpected,” Obi-Wan said.
“I didn’t say I couldn’t feel anything unexpected.”
Obi-Wan leaned his head to one side and looked at his Padawan. “What, then?”
“I don’t expect what I feel. That’s all.” The boy shrugged.
Obi-Wan knew that Anakin was often much more tuned to small variations in the Force. “And what do you sense?”
“Something … large. Not a lot of little curls or waves, but one big wave, a really big change that’s already happened or is coming. I don’t know how else to describe it.”
“I do not yet feel such a combined surge,” Obi-Wan said.
“That’s okay,” Anakin said. “Maybe it’s an illusion. Maybe something’s wrong with me.”
“I doubt that,” Obi-Wan said.
Anakin held his hands behind his neck and sighed. “How much longer?”
The transport landed with a shudder an hour later, and the hatch instantly swung down with a harsh squeal and banged against hard ground. Warm, thick air flowed into the cabin, scented with something at once floral and rich, like a freshly baked dessert.
Anakin found the smell appetizing. Maybe they had fixed food for the visitors—breakfast or lunch.
But as they bent low to climb out of the craft, no tables spread with food awaited them. Instead they found themselves on a broad platform suspended between four huge dark trunks, the middle portions of boras thick and squat as barrels, each over a dozen meters in diameter. Overhead, bright sun filtered through rank upon rank of layered foliage, many meshed canopies of growth that shaded their surroundings and made it seem as if they walked in deep twilight. Obi-Wan helped Anakin down the ramp, eyes darting right and left. They both straightened and faced a tall, strong-looking human male in long black robes decorated with brilliant green medallions. He stood well over two meters in
height, much taller than Obi-Wan, and his face was pale and blue as Tatooine milk.
“You’re on Zonama Sekot,” he said. “A planet of considerable beauty and firm tradition. My name is Gann.”
“A pleasure to meet you,” Obi-Wan said as he and Anakin approached the tall man. Judging by his color and bearing, he was native to one of the inner Ferro systems, reclusive and not always compliant with the laws of the Republic. Ferroans were a proud and independent people who seldom welcomed outsiders and almost never traveled far from home.
“Where are your ships, the really fast ones?” Anakin asked, bored by this adult show and his enthusiasm getting the better of him.
“This is my student, Anakin Skywalker of Tatooine,” Obi-Wan introduced. “I am Obi-Wan Kenobi.”
Gann looked down on Anakin and his expression softened. “I, too, have a son,” he said. “A special student. Many sons and daughters. That is what we call our students here. Whoever they are born to, we are all mothers and fathers and teachers. I’m afraid you will not see one of our ships for some days, young Anakin.” He returned his attention to Obi-Wan. He swung out his arm. “We are at what we call the Middle Distance, our first home on Zonama Sekot, where we settled twenty Ferroan years ago. Sixty standard years. Not that time means the same here as on any of the Ferroan worlds, or on Coruscant.”
“Our accents give us away?” Obi-Wan asked.
“Even a few months on the capital world imparts a distinctive speech,” Gann said. “Zonama Sekot has its own approach to letting time pass. I feel as if I have spent my entire life here, and yet, it might have been only a year, a month, a week …”
Obi-Wan gently interrupted this reverie. “We wish to purchase a ship,” he said. “We have the money, and we are ready to engage in the tests and the training.”
Gann dramatically drew up his thin black eyebrows. “Ritual first. Answers and tests much later.”
The Ferroan turned at some vagary of the wind, a brief whistling sound through the canopies high above. “The view from here is not the best,” he said. “Come with me. I need to introduce you to Sekot.”
Obi-Wan and Anakin followed Gann to a gap between two of the huge trunks that enclosed and supported the platform. He opened a small gate thickly woven from reedlike stalks and gestured for them to pass through. Walking between the trunks, master and apprentice stepped out onto an exterior platform bathed in sunlight and overlooking a scene even more spectacular than that which Charza Kwinn had shown them aboard the Star Sea Flower.
Gann folded his arms and smiled proudly. Morning mists were rising from a wandering river valley, its depths still lost in shadow fully two kilometers below the platform. Along the upper walls of the valley, tier upon tier of dwellings and platforms covered the bare rock faces, held in place by great brown and green vines. The vines hung from great-rooted boras straddling knife-sharp ridges, topped with more brilliant purple and green canopies. Several airships navigated the calm morning currents between the ridges. These were made up of clusters of rigid tube-shaped bone-white balloons strapped side by side and stabilized by more outrigger balloons. The airships followed lengths of cable strung across the valley, supported at hundred-meter intervals by trunks thrust up from the sides. Even now, an airship was threading its way through the circular crown of foliage at the top of a support.
“The planet is named Zonama,” Gann said. “The living world that covers it is named Sekot. This is a small part of Sekot, as are the boras around and behind us, and, we believe, as are we who live here. To be worthy to fly a piece of Sekot, one of our ships, you must tune yourself to our way. You must acknowledge the Magister and his role in our life and history, and you must acknowledge union with Sekot. It’s not an easy course—and there are real dangers. The power of Sekot is awesome. Do you accept?”
Obi-Wan’s expression did not change. Anakin looked up at Gann with a questioning squint.
“We accept,” Obi-Wan said.
“Follow me, please, and I will show you where you will stay.”
Why don’t you just go and ask about Vergere?” Anakin said to Obi-Wan as they settled into their rooms for a night in the clients’ quarters of Middle Distance.
“I get the impression we must be patient,” Obi-Wan answered as he opened a pair of shutters and looked down over the valley. “We must learn more about this Magister, whoever he is.”
The airship ride to the training district, near a particularly expansive rise in the eastern ridge, had been routine enough, but still beautiful—and to Anakin, very exciting. All of his odd sensations and premonitions had faded in the glory of bright sun and open air—rare enough on Coruscant, impossible aboard the Star Sea Flower.
“It’s different here,” Anakin said. “Not like Tatooine … but I still feel at home.”
“Yes,” Obi-Wan said ruefully. “So do I. And that concerns me. The air is rich with many substances. Perhaps some of them affect humans.”
“It smells great,” Anakin said, leaning out the window and staring down into the shadows at the river coursing far below. “It smells alive.”
“I wonder what Sekot would be saying if we could understand these odors,” Obi-Wan mused, and tugged his Padawan back in before he leaned too far. “Keep a grip.”
“I know,” Anakin said brightly. He artificially deepened his voice. “Things are not what they seem.”
“What else do you sense?” Obi-Wan asked, the very question Anakin had hoped to avoid. He made a sour face.
“I don’t want to sense anything now. I just want to enjoy the daylight and the air. Charza’s ship was wet and cramped, and I’ve never liked space travel. It always feels cold to me, out there in the middle of nowhere. I prefer being in the middle of living things. Even Coruscant. But this …” Anakin looked up at Obi-Wan. “I’m yakking my head off, aren’t I?”
Obi-Wan grinned and touched Anakin’s shoulder. “Cheer is a useful emotion at times, if it does not mask carelessness.” Obi-Wan thought of Qui-Gon, and of Mace Windu—he had seen both of them almost ebullient even in difficult situations requiring deep concentration.
A talent he had not yet mastered.
“Are you ever cheerful, Master?” Anakin asked.
“I will have time to be cheerful when you tell me what you sense. I need a baseline against which I can measure my own perceptions.”
Anakin sighed and pulled up a tall stool with four slender legs. His fingers felt the dark green substance of the piece of furniture, and he suddenly dropped it, letting it thump to the floor. “It’s still alive!” he said in wonder, then bent to set it upright again.
“They call their building material lamina,” Obi-Wan said. “It is not necessary to kill to make their homes and furniture. All the furniture is still alive, and the dwelling itself. Extend your feelings for a moment, and see what is there, rather than what you wish to be there.”
“Right,” Anakin said. But almost immediately, his mind wandered back to the curiosity of the moment. “How does it stay alive, this … lamina? What does it eat, how does it—”
“Padawan,” Obi-Wan said, without a hint of sternness, but in a distinct tone that Anakin had long since come to recognize, and instantly react to.
“Yes.” The boy pushed the stool aside and stood still in the middle of the room. His arms remained at his sides, but his fingers splayed out. He became intensely outward-alert.
A few minutes passed. Obi-Wan stood a pace away from Anakin, all of his own feelings neutralized, senses withdrawn, to give the boy greater range.
“It’s an immensity, a unity,” Anakin said finally. “Not a lot of little voices.”
“The life-forms here are all naturally symbiotic,” Obi-Wan agreed. “Not the usual pattern of competition and predation. It’s part of what you felt before—the sense of one fate, one destiny.”
“Maybe, but I was feeling something outside, something about us.”
“They may be intertwined.”
Anakin thought this ov
er with a frown. “I can feel the newcomers, the colonists, separately,” he said. “I don’t sense Vergere anywhere.”
“She has gone,” Obi-Wan agreed.
“So let’s go ask where she went.”
“In good time.” Obi-Wan lifted his eyes. “Observe your stool.”
Anakin looked down and saw that one foot had fastened to the floor. He bent and touched the connection, then looked up in wonder at Obi-Wan. “It’s feeding!” he said. “The floor’s alive, too!”
“We should be prepared early in the morning for the arrival of our hosts.”
“I’ll be ready,” Anakin said, getting to his feet. “I’ll be charged!”
The boy’s emotional energy level was still too high for Obi-Wan’s comfort. There was an interaction between Anakin and Sekot he could not yet understand, and what puzzled him was that this revealed as much about Anakin as it did about Sekot … and also revealed that Obi-Wan still knew very little about either.
It was the first day of client celebration that had been held for some time at Middle Distance, and the air was filled with many-colored balloon ships flying back and forth along their cables, loaded with officials, workers, and the curious. Anakin and Obi-Wan stood by the rail of the gondola of the large airship that carried them down the length of the valley. The oblong gondola featured a small cabin and a long, curved roof made of sheets of lamina and thickly woven tendrils, all still alive.
Gann accompanied them on this trip. About midway down the canyon, he grabbed a handrope and stepped forward around the cabin to the prow to confer with a tall Ferroan woman.
Wind carried snatches of string instruments and song from other airships. Obi-Wan listened to the musicians and singers with wonder. These ceremonies were important, but something else was in the air: a sense of renewal after a long ordeal.
He wondered whether Vergere had witnessed that ordeal. Had she left any messages for the Jedi who would follow? If so, Obi-Wan had not found them.
