by Greg Bear
Vergere’s face seemed to glow with enthusiasm. “There is a great secret here, which you may discover in time. The heart of a great living creature has started to beat, and a great mind has become aware of itself. I have witnessed the birth of an amazing being—”
Vergere turned aside, and the message ended abruptly.
There was no more.
“What are you staring at?” Ke Daiv asked, thumping the lance on the bulkhead over Anakin’s seat. The lance tip left a mark that quickly closed up and healed.
Anakin jumped. “Just let me fly,” he said, frowning.
Suddenly, the Sekotan ship, his childish enthusiasm for machines, his resentment at the turns his life had taken, everything that had before now defined Anakin Skywalker, seemed vague and unimportant.
Vergere might have sacrificed her life to pass this information to another Jedi.
Anakin now saw more clearly the shape of his trial. He knew why he was important, and why he must defeat Ke Daiv and all the others who might try to destroy him.
The survival of the Jedi themselves could be at stake.
Shappa rose high into the mesosphere, on the edge of space, and pushed his ship until her skin glowed from the heat of friction. They were catching up with Anakin’s ship, now about forty kilometers ahead and thirty kilometers below them. The air was a deep purple here, and the curve of Zonama Sekot was clearly evident. The forward ports had narrowed against the transmission of heat from the ship’s skin, but Obi-Wan could still make out the endless blanket of clouds below, and the peak of the Magister’s mountain on the horizon.
Charza Kwinn was now a thousand kilometers behind them, and trouble was following the Star Sea Flower.
“My people won’t hold fire for much longer,” Shappa said. “I wonder if they know what they’re getting into, attacking us?”
“Clearly, they don’t,” Obi-Wan said. He could not figure out a reason for any attack on Zonama Sekot. Something had gone awry during the transition, the assimilation of Trade Federation ships into the Republic forces. Perhaps outlaw elements in the Trade Federation had broken ranks and gone off on their own. That would explain the presence of droid starfighters, but not their actions.
“Those are Republic vessels,” Shappa said, glancing at Obi-Wan. “Minelayers, I think.”
Obi-Wan studied the images from Shappa’s sensors. They were indeed sky-mine delivery ships, and above them, ten thousand kilometers out, Corellian light cruisers found only in the Republic forces.
“Forgive me,” Shappa said. “But if you represent the Republic …”
“I know nothing of this,” Obi-Wan said grimly.
“Little matter,” Shappa said. “We have regarded ourselves as outside the jurisdiction of the Republic, the Trade Federation, or any other governing body. Our Magister foresaw our need early on—and the Magister before him. We knew that in time we would have to find an even more obscure hiding place. It is the will of the Potentium.”
That word again, a discredited concept from the past.
“Was the original Magister given Jedi training?” Obi-Wan asked.
“Yes,” Shappa said with an odd reluctance.
“What was his actual name?”
“That name is sacred to Zonamans, and must not be spoken,” Shappa said.
Obi-Wan tried to recall the more obscure bits of the Jedi history he had been taught in the Temple. The Potentium had meant a great deal of trouble for the Jedi a hundred years before. Advocates of the concept had believed that the Force could not push one into evil, that the universe was infiltrated by a benevolent field of life energy whose instructions were inevitably good. The Potentium, as they called it, was the beginning and ending of all things, and one’s connection with it should not be mediated or obscured by any sort of training or discipline. Followers of the Potentium insisted that the Jedi Masters and the Temple hierarchy could not accept the universal good of the Potentium because it meant they were no longer needed.
But in the end, those Jedi apprentices who had been caught up in the movement had left the Temple, or were pushed out, and dispersed around the galaxy. As far as Obi-Wan could remember, none of the believers had actually succumbed to the dark side of the Force—something regarded as a prodigy by Jedi historians. From time to time, young Jedi caught up in their first experience of the Force broached the Potentium philosophy and had to be patiently retutored in the history of the Force, in the many and various reasons why the Jedi understood there were definite divisions and pitfalls in life’s tenure in space and time.
For days now, a name had remained on the tip of his tongue—a particularly prominent young Jedi apprentice who had left the Temple voluntarily and renounced his training.
“Was your original Magister named Leor Hal?” he asked Shappa.
Shappa stared straight ahead through the port on the pilot’s side of the cabin, jaw tight. “I knew you would figure things out soon enough,” he said.
“He was a powerful student,” Obi-Wan said. “Even after he left, he was regarded with respect.”
“He was regarded as a dupe and a fool,” Shappa said.
“An idealist, perhaps, but not a fool.”
“Well, his own prejudices against any political system or philosophical organization … they established much of the character of Zonama’s settlement.”
“He recruited among the Ferroans?” Obi-Wan ventured.
“He did. My people have always been a sunny people, believers in independence and basic goodness. We came here to escape and raise our children in a new state of bliss.”
“And when the Far Outsiders arrived …”
“It was a rude awakening,” Shappa said. “But the Magister’s heir insisted they were outside the Potentium. They knew nothing of its ways, and we must teach them.”
“How did he react to the presence of Vergere?”
“He shunned her, for his father’s sake,” Shappa said. “He gave her no assistance.”
“But he built weapons.”
“He did. He knew that many could misinterpret the Potentium, and that they might try to destroy us for our differences.”
“What did the original Magister build?”
“He was the one who began selling ships. He told us we needed to raise enough money to buy huge hyperdrive cores. And to import huge engines, study them, and use the Jentari to remake them as even more powerful engines, for our own purposes.”
“To what end?”
“Escape,” Shappa said. He drew himself up. “Now, I believe the time has come.”
“But he is dead,” Obi-Wan said.
“Nonsense. You met with him.”
“No. It is clear now.”
“The Magister is not dead!” Shappa cried out, and shook his fist at Obi-Wan. “He sends instructions to us from his palace!”
“Perhaps even the palace no longer exists,” Obi-Wan said.
“I will not hear of this!” Shappa shouted. “I will help you rescue your boy, and then … you must leave!” He turned away, intensely agitated, and studied his displays. “Perhaps the Jedi did send you here to disrupt us. And the Republic ships—”
The sky ahead filled with tiny points of light. Sky mines were descending through the upper reaches of the atmosphere, spreading out for thousands of kilometers around like diffuse orange blossoms.
“They’re trying to destroy us all!” Shappa groaned, his face a mask of fear and disappointment.
Anakin brought his ship low around the peak of the mountain, flying in a smooth, beautiful arc, with perfect control.
All was quiet within the cabin. Jabitha had curled up on her couch and seemed to be trying to sleep. Anakin felt very protective toward her, but there was nothing he could do now. Rash behavior would get him killed, and now was not the time to indulge his brash and youthful tendencies.
“The palace should be right around here,” Anakin said. Ke Daiv remained silent, the tip of his lance blade poised near Anakin’s neck. “I don’t
see anything … no landing field, nothing!”
“You have been here before?” Ke Daiv asked.
“Just a few days ago,” Anakin said. “It was huge … it covered the peak of the mountain.”
“And this is the only mountain,” Ke Daiv mused. “You wouldn’t trick me, Jedi?”
“No,” Anakin said, frustrated. “I tried that … it didn’t work.”
Ke Daiv made a small clucking sound. “Circle again.”
Jabitha spoke up. “Are we at the palace?” she asked. Anakin did not know how to answer.
“Come here and show us where to go,” Ke Daiv ordered. She rose from the couch and stepped forward gingerly.
“I don’t see it,” she said tremulously. Then her eyes widened. “Wait—that’s the Dragon Cave, full of steam right next to an underground glacier … We used to hike there, years ago. But what’s that? I’ve never seen that.” She pointed to a long slope of talus, huge pieces of rock tumbled into temporary stasis on one side of the mountain, jumbled terrain dropping below the clouds. “That’s new.”
“You said you haven’t been here in a year,” Anakin said. “Not since the attack?”
Jabitha’s face colored. “Father said never to discuss the attack with strangers.”
Ke Daiv watched and listened with cautious interest.
“It looks like the mountain’s been hit by laser cannon fire, or something even more powerful,” Anakin observed, mindful that this was probably not what the girl would want to hear.
“Ridiculous! Father told us the mountain was—”
She clamped her mouth shut and shook her head stubbornly. “I won’t tell secrets.”
“Too late now for secrets,” Ke Daiv said. “Tell all.”
“I don’t know what to say!”
“She doesn’t know anything,” Anakin said. “I was here just recently, and I saw a palace.”
“It is still on the maps at Middle Distance,” Ke Daiv said, by way of agreement. “We must find fuel, whatever has happened.”
“We have to find the palace!” Jabitha insisted. “It’s here. My father’s here. They have to be!”
Anakin swung the ship up for a higher-altitude sweep. It was now that he spotted the blossoms of sky mines spreading out overhead. Ke Daiv saw them at the same time.
“Looks like they won’t mind losing you,” Anakin said tersely.
The Blood Carver stared through the port, his face unreadable, but the lance tip fell slightly. Anakin knew that now was the time to bring the ship down, release Jabitha, and take on Ke Daiv once again, all by himself.
The sky mines would provide the perfect excuse. They were designed to prevent ships from leaving a planet; they rarely if ever exploded on the surface.
“We have to land somewhere,” Anakin said.
“Do it,” Ke Daiv said.
Jabitha had crowded up beside Anakin to stare through the port. Suddenly she gave a sob. “There!” she cried.
They had come halfway around the peak of the mountain. Buried in a massive landslide from the higher elevations lay the ruins of a huge complex of buildings. The area had been altered so drastically, and the complex covered so completely, that they had missed it on their first circuit.
Anakin saw the spare edge of the old landing field, with its reddish black lava surface. “I’ll put down there,” he said.
“Where’s Father?” Jabitha asked, her cheeks wet with tears.
The sky mines zigged and zagged in search of prey, their contrails catching the sunset light over the clouds like flaming letters in the sky. They numbered in the hundreds of thousands, tiny highly explosive oblate spheroids equipped with fierce tracking ability and split-second maneuverability. They were forcing Shappa to drop lower and lower.
“We won’t be able to stay in the air for long,” he said. “A few minutes at most, and then they’ll find us.”
Obi-Wan said nothing for a long moment. Following the sky mines would come hunter-killer starfighters, and the air over the clouds would be filled with swift destruction. The Sekotan ship was unarmed. They wouldn’t stand a chance.
“Then take her down,” he said.
“They’ve landed on the Magister’s mountain. At least they will have some protection in the palace.” Shappa glared at him, challenging Obi-Wan to contradict his beliefs, his hopes.
The Sekotan ship dropped through the cloud deck, and they were surrounded by a silvery gloom. Winds whipped them this way and that before Shappa brought his craft down on a scourged prairie of bare, blackened rock. All around, jagged outcrops of twisted stone showed that a fury of destructive energies had melted and rearranged the landscape, killing all life.
Shappa removed his hands from the controls and bustled around the rear of the cabin, making checks on the equipment installed there. He came forward and found Obi-Wan still in his seat, lost in intense thought.
“Look what they did,” Shappa said softly, peering through Obi-Wan’s port. “What did we ever do to deserve such destruction? How could the Potentium have allowed such evil?”
Obi-Wan rose from his seat. No sense contradicting Shappa now. Didacticism—always a tendency in him—was of no use here. Shappa was an ally and had to muddle through as best he could with the beliefs that gave him strength.
“How far are we from the mountain?” Obi-Wan asked.
“About a hundred kilometers.”
“And where is Charza Kwinn?”
Shappa looked at his displays. “The other ship has also descended below the clouds.”
There was nothing Obi-Wan could do for now. His sense of the future was as clouded as the sky. Anakin’s fate was pushed up against a knot, a fistula in the pathways to different futures. What struck Obi-Wan most was the terrifying connections between so many futures that bunched up in these next few hours. So many events whirled around his Padawan, so many interconnected lives.
He wished he could speak with Mace Windu, Yoda. Qui-Gon. This was completely beyond his comprehension.
If he felt this way, after more than a decade and a half of Jedi training, Obi-Wan could hardly imagine how Anakin felt.
Obi-Wan closed his eyes to consult the wisdom that Qui-Gon had left behind.
The boy’s trial … he will face it alone. You must trust in your Padawan. And you must trust in the Force. After Qui-Gon’s death, in a way, you lost that trust. You relied on a sense of duty and a daily regimen of work and study and training to replace what had once been a marvelous sense of awe and wonder at the ways of the Force.
The Force disappointed you, did it not, Obi-Wan?
It allowed your Master to die.
It could allow Anakin to die.
And if it does, that will kill any chance of your remaining a Jedi.
The future could not be read. The Force was silent and compressed around them all, as if holding in a giant breath.
Jabitha walked across the barren field, climbing up and over ribbons of once-molten rock. She breathed in thin, ragged jerks. The air was too thin for her. She was used to the luxurious and rich atmosphere of the northern valleys, not the desolate and dead atmosphere on her father’s mountain.
“The palace should be over there,” she said, her voice little more than a whisper.
Anakin’s vision swam for a moment, and he worked a small Jedi technique on his blood pressure and chemistry to give himself more strength and clarity with less oxygen.
Ke Daiv stood a few steps behind them, lance blade ready. Anakin measured all the distances, estimated the times. The Blood Carver was closer to Jabitha. He could easily kill her before Anakin could reach him, and what would Anakin do to him anyway?
Bank the anger. Bank the frustration. Convert them and store the energy.
Anakin gave a small nod. Jabitha turned. “There’s almost nothing left,” she said. And then again, “Where’s my father? Where are all the others who worked here?”
“They are all dead,” Ke Daiv suggested. “Our only concern is fuel.”
“There were fuel reserves near the palace,” Jabitha said with a strange tone of defiance. “If we can’t find the palace, we won’t find the fuel!”
Anakin saw a corner of stone masonry jutting from a pile of rocky rubble about a hundred meters away. He turned to Ke Daiv. “Maybe over there,” he said.
Jabitha was on the edge of collapse. The Blood Carver seemed to find the thin air no trouble at all. Anakin wondered why they hadn’t noticed it when they were first taken here. Surely the palace had been in this condition already. Something had worked an even more startling deception on them.
The girl stumbled, then turned in a daze and walked for the ruin as fast as she could. Anakin and Ke Daiv followed. Anakin made sure he was closest to the Blood Carver. He tracked the motions of the lance, the yellow and red glitter of the blade in the last of the sunset light. The mountain’s peak, black and deep brick red at other times, was now a ghastly orange, backed by the cryptic glyphs of the sky mines, endlessly and hungrily searching. Beyond the violently calligraphed sky rose the pinwheel of the distant companion stars, purple against the orange and red and gold.
Anakin looked over his shoulder at their ship. We haven’t even given her a name yet, he thought. What would Obi-Wan call her?
Jabitha’s shoulders trembled. She was expending her little remaining energy on racking sobs. “The messages were all lies. Nobody came here, he said everything was fine … But you!” She turned on Anakin. “You came here!”
“We saw the palace,” Anakin said. “At least, we thought we did—”
“Fuel, and quickly,” Ke Daiv insisted sharply. “The sky mines will drop low enough to find where we’ve landed. And others may come soon, as well.”
“They’ll sacrifice you, won’t they?” Anakin said. The wall of the building loomed above them. A small door, possibly a service entrance, showed to the right, half-obscured by rubble. “They don’t care what happens to you.”
Ke Daiv did not dignify this with a response.
