by Timothy Zahn
It took every bit of Jinzler's strength to keep his face from reacting. With all of Uliar's politeness and hospitality, and the almost homey atmosphere of the place as the inhabitants had fixed it up, he'd nearly forgotten what had actually happened here. Hearing Uliar's straightforward reminder had hit him harder than he would have expected. "Yes," Formbi murmured. "Though it was not the will of either the Nine Ruling Families or of the Chiss people that that happen."
"Well, it was the will of someone with blue skin and red eyes," Uliar said bluntly. "And I'm constrained to point out that even after all that, knowing that it had happened, you waited until now to come see what had become of us."
He peered closely at Formbi. "Or is this your first time here? Have you actually been watching us all along, just for your own amusement?"
"Not at all," Formbi said, his voice even. "We didn't even know this vessel had survived until a few handfuls of days ago. Even then, we had no reason to assume anyone had survived."
"Then why did you come?" Uliar countered. "Was it the ship itself you wanted? Secrets from the Republic you hoped to plunder?"
He turned his unblinking stare on Jinzler. "Or was it you and this so-called New Republic of yours? Were you the ones who wanted it?"
Jinzler shook his head. "We came solely from a desire to see the place where so many of our people had died," he said, trying to match Formbi's calm diplomatic tone.
"And to honor those who gave their lives defending our people," Bearsh spoke up from the rear.
"That's correct," Jinzler said. "No one here wants to take anything away from you."
Uliar smiled coldly. "No. Of course not."
The smile vanished. "At the very least I'm sure you didn't expect to find anyone aboard who still remembered," he said. "You see, Ambassador Jinzler, I recognize your name. I knew that other Jinzler, too, the one who deserted us at our time of greatest need. Who was she, a relative? Sister? Cousin?"
"She was my sister," Jinzler said, staring at him in disbelief. Lorana, desert these people in the middle of trouble? No—that had to be a mistake.
"Your sister," Uliar repeated, the darkness in his voice deepening. "Deeply beloved, of course, which is why you've come all this way to honor her memory." He crossed his arms across his chest defiantly. "Well, we don't honor her memory here, Ambassador. Are you still so eager to help us?"
Jinzler took a careful breath. "She wasn't beloved," he said, fighting to control the trembling of emotion flowing into his voice. "At least, not by me."
Uliar lifted his eyebrows with polite skepticism. "No?"
"No." Jinzler looked the other man straight in the eye. "As a matter of fact, I hated her."
The statement seemed to throw Uliar completely off his stride. He blinked, then frowned; opened his mouth, then closed it again. "Of course you did," he said at last, clearly just to have something to say. He eyed Jinzler another moment, then turned resolutely back to Formbi. "The fact remains that it was your people who attacked us," he said, apparently trying to get back on course with his earlier tirade. "What do you and these Nine Ruling Families of yours intend to do about that?"
Formbi opened his mouth— "I'd like to see the school," Jinzler put in, suddenly tired of hearing Uliar talk. "As long as we're here anyway."
Again, Uliar seemed to falter. He looked at Jinzler, hesitated, then nodded. "Certainly," he said. "Instructor Tabory, perhaps you'd be kind enough to show the ambassador around?"
"Uh... sure," Rosemari said, her face puckering uncertainly. Jinzler's comment about his sister had apparently thrown her for a loop, too. "This way, Ambassador."
She turned and headed toward the door at a quick walk, her daughter beside her. Jinzler followed, fighting his way through the images and memories swirling around him...
"This is the second-tier classroom."
Jinzler blinked the images away, to find himself standing in a low-ceilinged room equipped with perhaps a dozen small desks arranged in a circle. In the center of the circle was a holoprojector showing a tree with three animals of various species standing beneath it. The children at the desks, four- and five-year-olds by the look of them, were busily scribbling away on their datapads while a young woman wandered around the outside of the circle silently inspecting their work.
"I see," Jinzler said, trying to generate some genuine interest in the proceedings "Art class?"
"Art, plus elementary zoology and botany," she told him. "We combine disciplines and lessons as much as possible. The third-tier classroom is through here."
She led the way through an archway into another room with larger desks and no students or teachers. "Run out of thirders?" Jinzler asked.
"They must be on a field trip," she said, crossing over to a larger desk in the corner and peering down at a datapad lying there. "Yes; they're down in the nursery today learning about the proper care and feeding of babies."
"Sounds like fun," Jinzler commented. "And the art of proper changing, too, no doubt. You said down? I thought we were on the lowest deck."
"The nursery's on Six, the next Dreadnaught down," Pressor's voice said. Jinzler turned, vaguely surprised to see the Guardian walking behind him. Preoccupied with his memories, he hadn't even noticed the other follow them inside. "There's less solar radiation down there, so that's where all the pregnant women and those with children under three are housed."
"And their families, too, of course," Rosemari added. "We'd all move down there except that it suffered so much more damage in the battle that there's less usable space for people to live in. And besides, Director Uliar doesn't want us living too close to—"
"Rosemari," Pressor cut her off sharply.
Rosemari flushed. "Sorry."
"Sorry for what?" Jinzler asked.
"So, did you really want to see the school?" Pressor asked. "Or was that just an excuse to get away from Uliar and his ranting?"
Jinzler hesitated, studying Pressor's face. The man's eyes were hard, his expression set in pale stone. It would not, he decided suddenly, be a good idea to lie to this man. "Mostly the latter," he conceded. "He seems so... angry."
"Wouldn't you be?" Pressor countered. "The universe turned upside down, with everything you'd planned to do with your life suddenly cut off at the knees?"
"I suppose," Jinzler said. "Are he and the other two the last of the original survivors?"
"No, there are ten left," Pressor said. "But the other seven are old and weak and keep pretty much to themselves."
"Most of the fifty-seven Survivors were either injured in the attack or suffered badly in the months after Outbound Flight arrived here," Rosemari said. "It affected both their health and their life spans, which is why there are only ten left."
"We're talking about the adults, of course," Pressor added. "There were also several children like me who were alive during the Devastation but were too young to know what exactly was going on. We certainly didn't have any plans for our lives yet." His eyes bored into Jinzler. "Though of course, plans or otherwise, our lives were pretty well destroyed, too."
"Tell it to Aristocra Formbi," Jinzler advised, holding his gaze evenly. "He's the one accepting guilt for all this, not me."
To his mild surprise, Pressor actually smiled. "You're right," he said without apology. "I'm sure Uliar will remember to bring that up."
"Did you really hate your sister?" Evlyn asked.
Jinzler looked down at the girl. She was gazing up at him, her eyes steady, her face expressionless. "Yes," he said. "Does that frighten you?"
"Why should it frighten me?" she asked.
"Maybe you're wondering if I hate all Jedi," Jinzler suggested. "Maybe you're wondering if I hate you."
"No," Pressor bit out before Evlyn could answer. "Whatever you're thinking, stop it right now. There's absolutely nothing special about her."
Jinzler frowned. An unexpectedly harsh reaction, far more vehement than the comment deserved. "I just meant—"
"No," Pressor said, his voice
softer and under better control now but just as firm. "You're imagining things. Leave it alone."
Jinzler looked at Evlyn; and in his mind's eye he saw her calmly leading them into the turbolift trap. Unafraid of armed alien strangers, as if she somehow knew they wouldn't shoot her the minute her back was turned.
And then stepping casually through the doorway with exquisitely precise timing as the trap was triggered.
He looked at Rosemari. "Am I imagining things?" he asked.
Rosemari sent a hooded look at her brother. "Jorad worries about things," she said obliquely.
"There's nothing to worry about," Jinzler assured her. "If she has Jedi abilities—"
"I said to let it alone," Pressor warned harshly. "She's not going to have that kind of life. I won't let her. Neither will Rosemari. You hear me?"
Jinzler swallowed. The Guardian, he suddenly noticed, had his hand wrapped around the grip of his blaster, and the knuckles were white. "I hear you," he said quietly. "But you're making a mistake."
"You just keep your mouth shut," Pressor said. His voice was still tight, but his gun hand seemed to have relaxed a bit. "You hear me?"
Jinzler sighed to himself. "Yes. I won't mention it again."
"Why did you hate your sister?" Evlyn asked.
Jinzler looked at her again, feeling a tightness in his chest like a logjam starting to break up. For more than half a century he'd kept these thoughts and feelings locked away in the dark privacy of his own mind, never speaking of them to family or friends or confidants. The closest he'd ever come to even hinting at them before today had been his admission to Luke and Mara that he and Lorana hadn't parted on good terms.
Perhaps he'd kept all of it in too long.
"She was my older sister," he said. "Third of four children, if you care. I was the youngest. We lived on Coruscant, pretty much in the shadow of the Jedi Temple. My parents worked there, in fact, as maintenance engineers on the electrical equipment."
His gaze drifted away from his audience to one of the empty desks, where a spare datapad was lying. "My parents adored Jedi," he said, the words coming out with difficulty. "Adored them, honored them—practically worshiped them, in fact."
"Did the Jedi return the affection?" Pressor asked.
Jinzler snorted. "What makes you think the grand exalted guardians of the Republic even noticed a couple of lowly workers scurrying around beneath their feet?" He shook his head. "Of course not. They had better things to do with their time.
"But that didn't matter to my parents. They still loved the Jedi, and they thought the greatest thing in the universe would be if they could have a Jedi child of their own. As soon as each of their children was old enough, they hustled us over there and had them run us through the tests."
"Was your sister the only one who made it?" Rosemari asked.
Jinzler nodded. "Right at ten months," he said, his throat aching. "It was the happiest day of my parents' life."
"How old were you when that happened?" Evlyn asked.
"I wasn't even born yet," Jinzler said. "Parents weren't allowed to even see their children once they'd been taken into the Temple, and my parents lost their jobs. Still, they would hang around outside and finagle a glimpse of her every once in a while as she passed by. I was four when I first saw her."
"The same age I was when I first met her," Pressor murmured.
Jinzler blinked. "You remember her?"
"Of course," Pressor said, sounding surprised that he would even have to ask. "Jedi Lorana, we called her. What, I look too young to you?"
"No, of course not," Jinzler said. "It's just that so much has happened since then that it seems like... you know. So what did you think of her?"
Pressor shrugged, too casually. "She seemed nice enough," he said, his voice guarded. "At least, for a Jedi. I didn't know any of them very well, of course."
"Yes, I suppose she could have become a nice person by then," Jinzler said, and immediately regretted it. "No, that's not fair," he amended. "She was probably just as nice when she was six. I just... I suppose I wasn't in a position to notice."
"Let me guess," Pressor said. "You'd already failed your own test."
"Very good," Jinzler said sourly. "My parents never said anything about it, but I knew without asking that they were disappointed. Anyway, when I was four they brought me to the Temple. The Jedi were coming out for some kind of public holiday. We waited and waited."
He took a deep breath. "And then, finally, there she was."
He closed his eyes, a whole flood of hated memories sweeping back through him. The rustling of Lorana's robes as she walked by them, a tall Jedi striding along watchfully beside her; the sudden tight grip of his mother's hands on his shoulders as she bent down and whispered Lorana's name in his ear.
"They were proud of her," he went on in a low voice. "So very proud of her."
"I take it you weren't impressed?" Pressor asked.
Jinzler shrugged. "She was six. I was four. How impressed should I have been?"
"What happened?" Rosemari asked. "Did she talk to you?"
"No," Jinzler told her. "The Jedi who was with her spotted us, and leaned over to say something. She looked in our direction, hesitated a second, and then the two of them turned and headed off. She never even got within ten meters of us."
"That must have been disappointing," Rosemari murmured.
"You'd think so, wouldn't you?" Jinzler said, hearing the bitterness in his voice. "But not with my parents. Even as she disappeared into the crowd of Jedi I could feel them practically swimming in love and respect and adoration. None of it, of course, directed at me."
"But they loved you, too, didn't they?" Evlyn asked, her voice low and earnest. "I mean... they must have loved you, too."
Even after all these years, Jinzler's throat ached at the memories. "I don't know," he told her quietly. "I'm sure they—I think they tried. But the whole time I was growing up it was clear that Lorana was the real center of their universe. She wasn't even there, but she was still their center. They talked about her all the time, held her up as an example of what people could make of their lives, practically made a shrine to her in a corner of the conversation room. I can't even count the number of times a scolding included the words not something your sister Lorana would ever do somewhere in the middle of it."
"Setting a standard none of the rest of you could ever live up to," Rosemari said.
"Not a chance in the galaxy," Jinzler agreed tiredly. "I tried, you know. I went into my father's own field—electronics—and pushed myself until I'd gone farther than he'd ever made it. Farther than he'd ever hoped to go. Droid repair and pattern design, starship electronics maintenance, comm equipment architecture and repair—"
"And politics?" Evlyn murmured.
Jinzler looked down at her, startled. She was gazing at him with a disturbingly knowing look.
Abruptly, he got it. Ambassador Jinzler. In the rush of ache and memory and old bitterness he'd completely forgotten the role he was playing here. "I tried as hard as I could to make myself into someone they could love as much as her," he said, wrenching himself out of his meanderings and back to the point. "And of course, they said they were proud of me and of what I'd done. But I could see in their eyes that I still didn't measure up. Not to Lorana's standards."
"Did you ever see her again?" Rosemari asked. "Lorana, I mean."
"I saw her a couple more times at the Temple," Jinzler told her. "Always at a distance, of course. Then we met just before Outbound Flight left the Republic." He looked away. "I don't want to talk about that."
For a long moment no one spoke. Jinzler stared at the empty classroom, watching the memories still parading themselves in front of his eyes, wondering why exactly he'd just bared his soul to a trio of total strangers that way. He must be getting old.
It was Pressor who eventually broke the silence. "We should get back to the others," he said, his voice sounding odd. "Uliar's suspicious enough of us as it is. W
e don't want him to think we're planning some conspiracy against him."
Jinzler took a deep breath, willing the ghosts of the past to go away. The ghosts, as usual, ignored him. "Yes," he said. "Of course."
* * *
They retraced their steps through the classrooms, Rosemari leading the way with Evlyn beside her. Not held quite so closely to her side, Pressor noted as he fell in behind Jinzler like a good Peacekeeper should. Apparently, his sister didn't feel quite as nervous about their visitor as she had a few minutes ago.
As for Pressor himself, he didn't know what to think anymore. He'd been fully prepared to hate Jinzler and the others, or at the very least to be extremely distrustful of them, their words, and their motives.
But now, all that nice convenient caution had been thrown for a twist. True, Jinzler's story just now could have been a complete lie, a performance carefully calculated to lull suspicions and evoke sympathy. But Pressor didn't think so. He'd always been good at reading people, and something about Jinzler's revelation had struck him as genuine.
Still, that didn't necessarily mean anything as far as the rest of the group was concerned. He'd caught the subtle hint in Evlyn's question about politics; clearly, Jinzler was no ambassador, or at least nobody who'd been officially sanctioned in that post. Either he was part of some complicated plot, which was seeming less and less likely, or else he'd wormed his way into this expedition under false pretenses. Either way, the logical conclusion was that the chief Chiss, Formbi, was the one in actual charge here, and so far Pressor hadn't been able to read him at all. Hopefully, Uliar was making some progress on that front. The outer school door slid open, and Rosemari stepped out into the corridor—
And nearly collided with Trilli as he shot past at a fast jog.
"Sorry," the Peacekeeper muttered, managing to avoid running them down. He caught sight of Pressor and came to an abrupt halt. "Jorad, I need to talk to you," he said.
Pressor glanced at Jinzler. Letting the pseudo-ambassador wander around alone would not be a good idea, he knew. But the look in Trilli's eyes was one that demanded immediate attention, and in private. "Rosemari, will you escort the ambassador to the meeting chamber?" he asked his sister. "I'll be along in a minute."
