Vision of the future swhot-2

by Timothy Zahn

  "Well, afternoon, actually," Luke amended. "But Han once told me that anytime you woke up was technically morning."

  "That sounds like his casual slant on things," Mara said. "How long—in real time—have I been lying there?"

  "About five days," Luke told her. "Easy, now."

  "Oh, you bet," she agreed, wincing as muscles that had been laid on for five straight days continued to complain loudly about their mistreatment. "I'm impressed. I don't think even a bacta tank would have done the job that fast."

  "You have a strong Force gift," Luke said, his hand hovering ready by her arm. "That usually helps the healing process."

  "It's definitely one I'm going to have to learn," she decided, looking around. That aroma she thought she'd dreamed was still there...

  "It's some kind of roast avian," Luke explained, nodding toward the back of the landing. "A wake-up gift to you from the Qom Jha."

  "Really," Mara said, hoisting herself carefully to her feet and hobbling over there on unsteady legs. It was a roast avian, all right, simmering on a cooking pad. "Awfully nice of them. Where did you get the cooker?"

  "I sent Keeper Of Promises back to your Defender for the rest of the survival gear," Luke explained. "I'd rather have sent them back to my X-wing—the spare kit Karrde put together was a lot more complete. But after our brush with the Threateners they're not all that eager to go roaming around outside."

  "This from the species that eats fire creepers raw?" Mara pointed out as she eased back into a sitting position by the cooking pad. "Pretty selective skittishness."

  "It's a little more complicated than that," Luke said, seating himself cross-legged on the floor across the cooking pad from her and gesturing toward the food. "Hence the gift, actually. They've come to the conclusion that you saved their lives in there."

  "I don't know how they figure that," Mara grunted, tearing off a piece of the roast. "We were the ones being shot at, not them."

  Luke's lips puckered. "Actually, there's some question about that. Splitter Of Stones thinks it was the Qom Jha who the Threateners were firing at, not us, at least until you started shooting back. And as I've gone back through my memories of the battle, I think he's right." Mara took a careful bite. The meat was a little overcooked for her taste, but not bad for all that. Anyway, as her loudly growling stomach reminded her, a person who hadn't eaten in five days couldn't afford to be too choosy. "Interesting thought," she said, "but I'm not sure where it gets us. Whoever they were shooting at, the fact is, they're still touchy about strangers."

  "Maybe," Luke said, his tone odd. "But maybe not. Haven't you wondered why the Threateners never came into the cave looking for you after you knocked yourself out?"

  "Are you sure they didn't come in?" Mara countered around a mouthful of food.

  "The Qom Jha say they didn't," Luke told her. "There were a couple of flybys with their ships, and that was it. In fact, as far as Child Of Winds knows, they never even conducted an outside ground search of the area."

  Mara chewed thoughtfully, resisting the urge to point out that Child Of Winds was not exactly the most reliable source of information around. "Okay," she said. "Let's assume the Threateners lost interest in me. Where does that get us?"

  "If they simply lost interest, I don't know," Luke said. "But what if they didn't lose interest, but just decided to wait until you found your own way into the High Fortress?" Mara took another bite. That was a disturbing thought. In fact, it was an extremely disturbing thought. All the more so since that exact course of action was one she had actually considered early in her captivity. "I don't know if Karrde mentioned it to you," she said slowly, "but the way we found this system was by tracking the escape vectors from two of their ships to an intersect point. My assumption has always been that they simply didn't know we could track their vector for a few microseconds after they jumped to lightspeed. But now I'm not so sure."

  "You think they wanted you to come here?"

  "It would fit with them not searching all that hard for me after I landed," Mara pointed out. "Of course, if we argue that direction we then have to come up with an explanation as to why they tried to shoot you down."

  "Maybe they're not interested in having more than one guest at a time," Luke suggested, gazing out into space. "Or maybe they don't want to talk to anyone from the New Republic until they've talked to you first."

  Mara eyed him closely. There had been a flicker in his emotions just then... "Is that just off the top of your head?" she asked. "Or are you getting something from the Force about it?" He shook his head, still gazing at nothing. "I'm not sure," he admitted. "But I have the feeling... no, never mind."

  "No never mind what?" Mara demanded suspiciously, pressing at the corners of his mind. "Come on, we don't have time for games."

  A muscle in his cheek twitched. "I get the feeling it's you they want to see," he said. "You, specifically."

  Mara lifted her eyebrows. "I'm flattered. My fame just continues to spread."

  "Eater Of Fire Creepers did say they'd heard the Threateners talking about you," Luke reminded her. "I wish we knew the context of the conversation."

  There was a flapping from the stairway, and one of the Qom Jha appeared. It spoke—"Thank you, Flyer Through Spikes," Luke said. "Go see if Keeper Of Promises has any news, if you would." The Qom Jha replied, and with a flurry of wings was gone down the stairway. "I've had some of the Qom Jha patrolling the upper areas of the stairway and listening for activity outside the doors," Luke explained. "Flyer Through Spikes tells me the upper areas of the fortress were active for a while this morning, but they seem to be quiet again."

  "Ah," Mara said, tearing off another bite with perhaps a bit more force than necessary. Those blasted Qom Jha and their blasted unintelligible voices—

  "Something wrong?" Luke asked.

  Mara glared at him. "You know, Skywalker, it's really hard to keep any thoughts to yourself when you're around."

  He gave her an innocent look that had far too much amusement in it for her taste. "Odd. I seem to remember a situation not too long ago when you couldn't wait to unload some of those choicer thoughts on me."

  Mara grimaced. "Feeling a little more cheerful about our past mistakes this morning, are we?" He sobered. "Not cheerful, no," he said. "Just learning how to acknowledge them, learn from them, and then pick up and move on. I've had a lot of time for thinking during these past five days, you know."

  "You reach any particular conclusions?"

  He looked straight at her. "I know why you didn't turn to the dark side," he said. "And why you keep coming up against limits on what you can do through the Force." With a casualness she didn't especially feel, Mara took another bite and settled her back against the stone wall behind her. "I'm listening."

  "The essence of the dark side is selfishness," Luke said. "The elevation of yourself and your own desires above everything else."

  Mara nodded. "Fairly obvious so far."

  "The point is that all the time you were serving the Emperor, you were never doing so out of selfish motives," Luke said. "You were serving, even if it was Palpatine and his own selfish ends. And service to others is the essence of being a Jedi."

  Mara thought about that. "No," she said, shaking her head. "No, I don't like it. Service to evil is still evil. What you're saying is that doing something wrong isn't really wrong if your motives are good. That's nonsense."

  "I agree," Luke said. "But that's not what I'm saying. Some of the things you did were certainly wrong; but because you weren't doing them for your own purposes, the acts themselves didn't open you to the dark side."

  Mara glowered at her food. "I see the difference," she said. "But I still don't like it."

  "Actually, it's not that much different from the situation with the Jensaarai that Corran and I ran into on Susevfi," Luke said. "They didn't know how to be Jedi, but were still serving the best they knew how."

  "And in the process had gotten themselves so bent around that you
were years untwisting them," Mara reminded him tartly. "Anyway, they at least had the memory of a role model to follow, didn't they? That what's-his-name Jedi?"

  "Nikkos Tyris," Luke said, nodding. "Which brings up an even more interesting thought. Maybe you had a role model, too."

  Mara shook her head. "Not a chance. There wasn't a single person in the inner court with a scrap of what I'd consider virtue or morality."

  "Then maybe it was someone in your life before you were taken to Coruscant," Luke suggested.

  "Your parents, or some close friend."

  Mara bit off the last bite of her meal and tossed the carcass back into a corner. "This is a dead-end conversation," she declared firmly, wiping her hands on her jumpsuit legs where the oils and grime would eventually flake off. "Let's get back to the job at hand. Where did you stash my blaster?" Luke didn't move. "I know you don't remember much about your past," he said quietly. "For whatever it's worth, I understand how you feel."

  "Thanks," Mara growled. "That certainly helps."

  "Would you like to have that past back again?"

  She frowned at him, conflicting emotions surging suddenly against each other. "What do you mean?" she asked cautiously.

  "There are techniques Jedi can use to pull out buried memories," he said. "And you could be a Jedi, Mara. You could be a powerful Jedi."

  "Right," Mara bit out. "All I have to do is declare I'm ready to serve the galaxy, right?" Luke's forehead creased, and she caught the flicker of puzzlement from him. "What is it about that that scares you?" he asked. "You've served and worked with people all your life—Palpatine, Karrde, Leia and Han and me. And once you've offered your loyalty, it's for keeps. You can do this—I know you can."

  Mara squeezed her hand into a fist, half minded to close the subject again and this time make sure she sat on the lid. But deep inside she knew he deserved an answer on this one. "I can't just offer that kind of blank-line invitation," she said. "Sure I can be loyal; but only to the people I choose to be loyal to. I'm not ready to open myself up to anyone who walks in off the street." She grimaced. "Besides, I keep remembering stories about how the last step to becoming a Jedi is usually making some supreme and rather ugly personal sacrifice. I'm not crazy about that one, either."

  "It's not always as bad as it seems," Luke said, and Mara could sense his discomfort as unpleasant memories of his own floated back to the surface. "Just before he died, Master Yoda told me that before I would truly be a Jedi I needed to face Vader again. I jumped to the conclusion that that meant I had to either kill him or let him kill me. As it turned out, it didn't happen either way."

  "But you had to be willing to make that sacrifice if necessary," Mara pointed out. "Thanks, but I'm not interested."

  "Then you automatically limit your capabilities," Luke said. "If you aren't willing to make a commitment—"

  "Commitment?" Mara snorted. "You're the one telling me about commitment? What about Callista, or Gaeriel, or any of the other women you've brushed paths with over the past ten years?

  Where's been the commitment there?"

  Luke's flash of anger was so sudden and so unexpected it physically shocked her back against the stone wall. "You should talk," he snapped. "What about Lando? Huh?" For a long moment they just glared at each other. Mara held her breath, bracing herself for another outburst, stories of uncontrolled Jedi anger running ominously through her mind. But instead, she felt his anger drain away, replaced by shame and a deep embarrassment. "I'm sorry," he said, dropping his eyes away from her face. "That was uncalled for."

  "No, I'm the one who should apologize," Mara said, trying to hide her own guilt feelings from him and knowing she was being only partly successful. She knew better than to fight like that. "I know how you felt about those women, and what happened to them. I'm sorry."

  "That's all right," Luke murmured. "What happened to them was probably partly my fault. Maybe even mostly my fault. I'm the one who dabbled in the dark side, not them."

  "You acknowledge your mistakes, and learn from them," Mara reminded him. "Then you pick up and move on. It's time to pick up and move on."

  "I suppose." Still not looking at her, he climbed to his feet. "You're right—we should get moving. I had the Qom Jha make some measurements while you were sleeping, and it looks like the upper door out of here should let us out in one of the top three floors of the fortress. Let's try that approach."

  "Just a second," Mara said, looking up at him. She had promised herself—rather cavalierly, she realized in retrospect—that she wasn't going to tell him this until he point-blank asked her about it. But her silence was childish. Anyway, the accusation he'd just thrown in her face was probably close enough. "You wanted to know about Lando and me. Right?"

  She saw the twitch in his neck. "That's all right," he said. "It's really none of my business."

  "I'm making it your business," Mara said, getting to her feet so she could look him straight in the eye. "What was between Lando and me was... absolutely nothing." His eyes flicked suspiciously to hers. "What do you mean?"

  "I mean just what I said: absolutely nothing," she repeated. "Karrde had an important mission for me to carry out, and because Lando had supplied the starting point he invited himself along. The—well, personal aspects to the whole thing were nothing but window dressing to keep people from figuring out what we were up to."

  She could feel Luke probing at the edges of her mind. "You could have told me," he said, not quite accusingly.

  "You could have asked me," she countered. "You never seemed all that interested." He grimaced, and she could feel a fresh wave of embarrassment wash over him. "I didn't, did I?" he admitted.

  "You learn, and move on," Mara reminded him. "Actually, if you want to come right down to it, you were the one who got the whole thing started in the first place. Remember that beckon call you found on Dagobah and took to Lando's place on Nkllon?"

  Luke looked at her sharply. "Yes. In fact, I was just thinking about it a few days ago. I wondered why it had suddenly come to mind."

  "Proddings of the Force, no doubt," Mara said. It was as good an answer as any. "It turns out that particular beckon call used to belong to someone Karrde once knew who had dropped out of sight some years back. Fellow named Jorj Car'das—ever hear of him?" Luke shook his head. "No."

  "Apparently, not a lot of people have," she said. "Made things so much more challenging. Anyway, with the beckon call we had a starting point, and Karrde asked me to try to track him down. And as I said, Lando—smelling profit, no doubt—insisted on tagging along."

  "Must have been a long search," Luke murmured. "The stories of you and Lando..."

  "It took some years," Mara said. "Off and on work, of course." She lifted her eyebrows. "For whatever it's worth, the romance part of the cover story drove me crazy. But finding Car'das was important to Karrde, so I stuck with it. Like you said, loyalty."

  She hissed gently between her teeth with the memories. "Though it did prove exceptionally embarrassing at times. There was one particular week on M'haeli where Lando was trying to sugar-talk the Vicebaron Sukarian out of some information we needed. I had to become a giddy, vacant-brained bit of decorative fluff, because Sukarian automatically put that class of woman beneath his contempt and the role gave me the freedom of movement I needed. The worst part was that Solo caught me in the act with a comm relay when I thought it was Sukarian calling. I've never quite had the nerve to ask him what he thought of that."

  "I don't think it would have ruined his opinion of you," Luke said, his voice an odd mixture of support, gallantry, and lingering embarrassment. "Though I imagine Sukarian's opinion is probably beyond repair at this point."

  "Oh, I don't think so," Mara assured him. "I usually wore one of Lando's shirts during Sukarian's late-night visits and comm calls, and I made sure to leave one of them hanging on the open door of his private office safe. After I'd gutted it."

  Luke smiled. A tentative, still somewhat shamefaced smile, but a
genuine smile nevertheless. At this point, that was enough. "His reaction must have been interesting." Mara nodded. "I like to think so."

  "Yes." Luke took a deep breath, and she could sense him forcing old memories and extraneous thoughts to the back of his mind. "But as you said, we've got a job to do," he said briskly, "and it's going to be a long climb. Let's pack up the gear and get going."

  * * *

  It was, as Luke had estimated from the numbers the Qom Jha had gathered for him, indeed a long climb. Nearly as long as it had been from the bottom of the hidden stairway to that first door, in fact. And with Mara's muscles still recovering from five days of idleness, and Luke himself therefore handling Artoo and all the rest of their equipment, it should have been something of a strain. But to his mild astonishment, it wasn't. And it didn't take any deep Jedi insight to understand why. The barrier he had set up between him and Mara was gone.

  The odd part was that he hadn't even realized there had been a barrier there. The communication they had together—their ability to sense each other's thoughts and emotions—had been so close that he'd simply assumed that was as strong as it got.

  He'd been wrong. He'd been very wrong.

  It was an exhilarating experience; and yet, at the same time, a somewhat intimidating one as well. He'd experienced close-mind contact with other people on occasion, but never to the same level as he was experiencing now. Mara's thoughts and emotions seemed to flow over him, their level and intensity now seemingly limited only by her personal barriers, as his own thoughts and emotions flowed the other direction back to her. There was a new rapport between them, a deepening of their old relationship that he only now realized how sorely he'd missed.

  Confession, apology, and forgiveness, Aunt Beru had been fond of reminding him, were the tools friends used to break walls down into bridges. Seldom if ever in his life had he had that truth so graphically demonstrated.

  With concern for Mara's physical condition and stamina foremost in his mind, he made sure the party took frequent rest breaks as they climbed, a policy that drove Mara just slightly less crazy than it did the Qom Jha. But he insisted, and as a result it took them nearly an hour to reach their target door. But when they did, at least, Mara was fully ready to go.