by Greg Bear
“This is really beautiful,” Anakin said. “The air smells great, and the jungle is wizard.”
“Don’t grow too attached,” Obi-Wan warned.
“I’ve never been to a place like this.”
“Remember your earlier feelings about Sekot.”
“I do,” Anakin said.
“You mentioned a single wave, something happening now or in the future.”
“Yeah,” Anakin said. He nodded his head forward, to the door that hid the pilot from them.
Obi-Wan held up his hand. “He is oblivious to our talk. It’s important we analyze what’s happening before we get drawn in further.”
“It comes and goes, this sensation of a single wave. I might have made a mistake.”
“You made no mistake. I feel it myself now. Something coming toward us rapidly, something dangerous.”
Anakin shook his head sadly. “I hope nothing happens before we get our ship made.”
Obi-Wan narrowed his eyes in disapproval. “I am concerned you are losing your perspective.”
“We came here to get a ship!” Anakin said, his voice breaking. “And to find out about Vergere. She didn’t get her ship, so it’s even more important for us. That’s all.” He folded his arms.
Obi-Wan let these words sit between them for some seconds before asking, blandly enough, “What does the ship mean to you?”
“A ship that tunes itself to a need for speed … Wow!” Anakin said. “For me, that would be the perfect friend.”
“That’s what I thought,” Obi-Wan said.
“But it won’t distract me from my training,” Anakin assured him.
Once again, Obi-Wan felt he was losing control of the situation. Before Anakin had been Obi-Wan’s apprentice, Qui-Gon had encouraged behavior in the boy that Obi-Wan had disapproved of. And now, the Council and Thracia Cho Leem, sending them to this world, were once more tempting Anakin in ways that made Obi-Wan uncomfortable.
“We’re going where the Force sends us,” Anakin said quietly, anticipating the direction of his master’s thoughts. “I don’t know what else we can do but observe and accept.”
“And then act,” Obi-Wan said. “We must be prepared for the course laid out for us and receptive to the unexpected. The Force is never a nursemaid.”
“I’ll know when something is about to happen,” Anakin said with quiet confidence. “I like this planet. And the living things here like me. And you. Don’t you feel it—something is watching out for us?”
Obi-Wan did in fact feel that—but the sensation gave him no comfort. He did not know who or what could extend such an influence over them, and especially over his Padawan.
The journey continued for another hour. Anakin looked east and pointed out a huge brown scar on the landscape, stretching over the horizon. Obi-Wan had seen this, or something like this, briefly from space—but Charza Kwinn had brought them down before completing a full orbit of Zonama Sekot. The scar had dug clear through to bedrock. Iron-rich red crust opened like the edges of a wound over dark tumbled chunks of basalt.
“What made that?” Anakin asked.
“It looks no more than a few months old,” Obi-Wan said. Thin white threads of waterfalls slipped over the red cliff sides into the gouge. “It resembles a battle scar.”
The craft now turned and headed due south, flying between and through the tops of the unbroken deck of cloud. A seemingly endless scape of billows and whorls puffed and streamed beneath them.
Anakin turned in his seat. “Look,” he said excitedly, and pointed to their right. They were veering southwest toward a jagged reddish black mountain that pushed up through the clouds, its sloping flanks almost bare of Sekotan growth and its leveled summit capped with snow. It looked like an old, weatherworn volcano.
“We will be at the Magister’s home in three minutes,” the pilot said. “I hope you’ve had a nice nap.”
Anakin smiled at Obi-Wan. “Well rested!” he said.
They crouched low once more to exit the transport, and stood on a level field of crushed lava. A few meters away a flat stone pathway led to a magnificent, fortresslike palace of skewed blocks stacked around a squat central tower. Beyond the palace, four volcanic terraces spilled orange-tinted water over broad, multicolored falls. The air smelled of Zonama’s depths—hydrogen sulfide—alternating with fresh breezes blowing from the south.
Each of the blocks around the tower was over ten meters high and fifty meters wide, its walls lined with windows that gleamed like rainbows in the sunset light. The promontory supported only a few tendrils, barely as thick as an arm, nestled haphazardly between the rocks and around the mineral-spring terraces like lines of red and green thread.
“The Magister lives far from his subjects,” Obi-Wan observed, rubbing his hands on the hem of his tunic, then holding them out palm up and dropping his chin. His eyes swept the horizon shrewdly. “And he makes do with very few attendants.” Looking at the torn wisps of clouds passing overhead, and the darker masses visible to the south, Obi-Wan estimated they were a thousand kilometers below the equator. “Peculiar customs. They seem to prefer their clients be misinformed and kept off balance.”
“At least they haven’t checked us for weapons,” Anakin said.
“Oh, but they think they have,” Obi-Wan said.
“You did that … without my knowing?” Anakin asked.
Obi-Wan smiled.
“You surprise me all the time, Master,” Anakin said with a touch of awe. “But that’s what an apprentice should expect from his teacher.”
Obi-Wan lifted one brow.
“We make a great team, don’t we?” the boy said with a sudden grin. His face colored with the expectation of adventure.
“We do,” Obi-Wan agreed.
“I’m glad you’re here. I’m glad you’re my master, Obi-Wan,” Anakin said. He gave a small shiver, then he, also, rubbed his palms on his tunic, held them out, and looked around. Obi-Wan had learned years ago that Anakin could become both expressive and imitative whenever he felt excited or ill at ease.
The boy looked up at the glowing pinwheel of plasma unwinding from the distant double-star system, obscured by rips and shreds of thin, high clouds. Zonama’s own sun perched on the horizon, turning the sky above into a flaming tapestry easily the match of the astronomical spectacle beyond. “It’s out there now. It’s closing in.”
“Do you see its shape more clearly?”
“It’s a time of trial. For me.”
“Do you fear it?” Obi-Wan asked.
Anakin shook his head but kept staring up at the red and orange sky. “I fear my reaction. What if I’m not good enough?”
“I have trust in you.”
“What if the Magister turns us down?”
“That … seems a separate issue, don’t you think?”
“Yeah,” Anakin said, but persisted with boyish stubbornness, focused on what seemed to him, for the moment, the most crucial of their many problems. “But what if the Magister doesn’t want us to get a ship?”
“Then we’ll learn something new,” Obi-Wan said patiently. The title Magister implied someone of accomplishment, of dignity and bearing, and for all his searching the landscape, Obi-Wan received no signs of any impressive human personality.
It was possible the Zonamans could conceal themselves. Jedi Masters could hide from detection, even at close range. Sometimes Obi-Wan could manage to conceal his presence from someone as perceptive as Mace Windu, but never with complete confidence.
Did that imply that whoever lived here could deceive a Jedi for minutes at a time?
Glow lights mounted beside the pathway switched on and illuminated the way to the lowest and closest block of the Magister’s dwelling. A small figure appeared at the end of the path and walked toward them with arms folded.
It was a girl, taller than Anakin but no older, and she wore a long green Sekotan robe of the kind they had become familiar with. It draped to her ankles with its own restless motion.<
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Anakin stepped back as she approached.
“Welcome! My name is Wind,” she said. The girl had long hair as dark as the stone on the walkway and of roughly the same hue. The pupils of her eyes were black, set in golden sclera. She scrutinized Obi-Wan with mild approval, and he returned her gentle dip of the chin. Anakin she seemed to find unworthy of much notice. This caused the boy to ball up his hands, then relax them. Anakin never liked being ignored.
“My father is bored and welcomes any distraction,” the girl said. “Would you follow me, please?”
The daughter watched them from the entrance to the Magister’s small workroom. Here, he kept only a small central desk and chair.
“I have four daughters and three sons. My sons and two of my daughters are in training around Zonama. They are concerned with defense. Who better to help us than Jedi?”
The Magister was a small man, wiry in build, with a long, narrow face and large eyes as black as those of his daughter. His hair, however, was of a pale shade of gray-blue more typical of a Ferroan. He did not wear Sekotan garments, just a simple pair of pants woven from plain beige Republic broadcloth and a loose-knit white shirt.
He had met them in the hall of the uppermost of three levels in this branch of the palace. The interiors of the three rooms they had seen thus far were plain to the point of austerity, though the furniture was well designed and comfortable, apparently made off Zonama. Obi-Wan was not familiar with Ferroan styles, but he judged that all the furniture here was from the Magister’s birth world and had been carried here by the original settlers.
“My assistants at Middle Distance tell me you paid in aurodiums,” the Magister said. “That was a tip-off. And then … your experience with the seed-partners confirmed my suspicions.”
The last of the sunset glanced from golden clouds down into the room through a spherical skylight, shading golden-orange the top of the desk and a pile of extracts and readers.
The room smelled of ashes, and also of the eternal sulfide of the springs.
“We did not intend deception,” Obi-Wan said.
“You did not announce yourselves as Jedi,” the Magister said. His fingers moved restlessly, rubbing against each other. “Well, there was never a need for deceit. I have nothing against the Jedi. In fact, I owe them a great deal. I have nothing against the Republic they serve, and I have nothing to hide … except an entire planet. My home.” He chuckled. “That’s all I’m protecting.”
Anakin stood relaxed and ready, assuming nothing, as he had been trained. With the barest of signals, at the appearance of the Magister, Obi-Wan had alerted his Padawan that they were now acting as Jedi, representatives of the order and the Temple, but in a covertly defensive mode.
Something was not right. Something was incomplete.
“We’ve come here for another reason,” Obi-Wan said. “We’re looking for a—”
The air seemed to shimmer inside the large room. Obi-Wan shook his head. He had been about to ask a question, and it had fled from the tip of his tongue, leaving no trace.
“Our way of life is precious to me,” the Magister said calmly. “As you can see, we have something unique on Zonama Sekot. Customers, clients, come and go with only a vague notion as to where they’ve been.” He smiled. “Not that our little tricks will work against Jedi. And of course, we do have to trust those who deliver our clients to us.”
A second girl walked from a door on the opposite side of the room. She was identical in appearance to the first, of the same age and size, and wore the same long green Sekotan dress.
Anakin stared at the second girl with a puzzled expression. Obi-Wan’s critical faculties were fully engaged. Something is being playful, he thought. Or testing us. Something hidden.
“Still, I’m pleased you’ve come,” the Magister continued. “I wanted … needed to meet with you personally. You appear to be the genuine article—a Master and an apprentice.”
“You’ve studied the Jedi?”
“No,” the Magister said, grimacing as if at an unpleasant memory. “I was a promising student. There were difficulties, not entirely of my own making … Misperceptions. But that was fifty years ago.”
Obi-Wan judged the man before him to be no more than forty. But then, deeper still, a question: What man? His facial expressions are subtly false. Like a marionette.
The Magister lifted his hands. “Sekot seems to have taken a liking to you! All is explained. Sekot is sensitive, and it favors Jedi … Very well. I accept you as clients. You may proceed. Please excuse me. There’s so much work to do. I trust you’ll be comfortable on your way back to Middle Distance.”
The Magister smiled warmly at Anakin and left the room.
“That’s it?” Anakin asked, eyebrows arched. “He’s not going to, like, put us through a test or something? We’re home free?”
Obi-Wan pressed his temples with finger and thumb, trying to clear his mind, but he could not penetrate whatever illusion surrounded them.
The second daughter escorted them from the block-shaped building and across the stone pathway, now black in the late twilight gloom. She said nothing and barely glanced at them.
Obi-Wan was tempted to reach out and touch her, but controlled the impulse. No need to reveal his suspicions at this point.
The double star and the brightest coil of the spiral lay below the horizon. Scattered stars and faint spills and streaks of nebular gas showed between thin veils of swiftly moving clouds.
The evening breeze passed cool and sweet over them as the Magister’s daughter left them by the transport. She turned and walked with an even gait back to the darkened silhouette of the Magister’s dwelling.
It had been one of the strangest meetings in Obi-Wan’s experience. Strange, unsatisfying, and unrevealing. They knew little more than when they had arrived. Obi-Wan tried to remember the meeting in detail. He had not even bothered trying to persuade the humbly dressed man to tell them more about himself, about Vergere, because he was not sure the figure they saw could tell them more.
The man and his daughters were not real. Yet the illusion had been powerful and almost completely convincing. In Obi-Wan’s experience, no single being—not even a Jedi Master—could delude two Jedi at once. Hide, yes—that had certainly been done by Qui-Gon and others. Yet the Council had long suspected that the Sith knew how to disguise themselves and pass undetected by Jedi.
Obi-Wan was positive, however, that this was no Sith conspiracy. Even with time to ponder the experience, what they had actually witnessed was not at all clear to him.
“Maybe now we know why they call him Magister,” Anakin said in a low voice as they boarded the transport. “Maybe nobody really gets to meet him, and that’s how he protects himself.”
Obi-Wan again held his finger to his lips. Persuading the pilot not to listen was insufficient. The transport itself, as part of Sekot, was now suspect, and Obi-Wan doubted he could effectively use Jedi persuasion and deception on the living tissue, the biosphere, of an entire world.
The transport lifted away from the promontory and flew them north and east again, back to Middle Distance.
We’ve met our match, Obi-Wan thought grimly. Perhaps that is what happened to Vergere, and she is hidden … completely hidden from us.
Then he faced his Padawan across the space between the seats. He moved his lips without sound:
The planet’s recent past is closed to us. Observe the path of the transport—the weather is calm, the way is unobstructed, yet we fly a zigzag course. We may be avoiding other evidence of the battle—if there was a battle. We cannot avoid passing over the one scar—it was too large to miss.
Anakin agreed. Someone is hiding something. But why give us a chance to see the gouge?
The Magister may assume we saw it from orbit. He just doesn’t want to make things too obvious. “No,” Obi-Wan whispered, his eyes half-closed. He believes he has nothing to fear from Jedi. But he may be ashamed, perhaps, of a past weakness. A near-defeat.
I am speculating now.
And how! Anakin said with a slight chop of one hand. He faced forward. At least we’re going to be allowed to make the ship.
Obi-Wan found no comfort at all in that. The weak lie to survive. What would make an entire planet feel weak … out here, isolated, on the edge of nowhere?
Anakin shook his head. It was outside the range of his experience. The boy sighed. I’ll bet it all has to do with Vergere and why she came here in the first place.
The mood at Middle Distance was much subdued, a contrast to the festival that had begun the ceremony of choosing. People went about their business on the terraces as if this were a time like any other. From their apartment parapet, Obi-Wan watched the late-night lanterns flicker across the canyon and listened to the distant voices while his three seed-partners clung to him like a long-lost parent.
Anakin slept very little that night. His bed was crowded and busy with twelve molting seed-partners. The seeds were not used to being separated from a client after the choosing, and had suffered some distress, though nothing, Sheekla Farrs told them, they would not soon forget. They crawled about on his thin covers, mewling plaintively, and occasionally fell to the floor with soft plops, then cried to be picked up.
The seeds were splitting along one side, showing firm white flesh covered by a thick and downy fuzz. The spikes on each had twisted into three thick stiff feet on one side, and along the seam of the sloughing shell, the spikes were curling up and withering away.
In the morning, now that he and Obi-Wan had passed inspection by the Magister, or so Gann thought, they were given the keys to Middle Distance. Gann delivered client robes to them, red and black, conspicuous amid all the green, and they were allowed access to the valley’s small library, housed above the rim in the trunk of a huge and ancient bora.
Not that there would be much time to visit the library, or travel much of anywhere else around Middle Distance. The design phase was about to begin. Sheekla Farrs told them that her husband, Shappa, would guide them in this.
