by Greg Keyes
mounted, peaked-and then they were tumbling free. When they finally
stabilized, the water in the eyelamps had gone dark blackish red, and nasty
chunks of pulverized meat floated all around them.
"Well, that was disgusting," Corran said.
"Yes," Tahiri informed him. "And this tube is sucking."
"I agree. So let's get out of it."
"No," she said, trying to remain calm. "I mean it's sucking us up it-
capillary action, probably, like the roots of a succession pool."
"Surely not too hard to counteract with the dovin basals?"
"Not at all," Tahiri replied. "If, that is, the dovin basals were
working."
ELEVEN
"The dovin basal is dead?" Corran asked.
"Not dead," Tahiri said. "But it's badly damaged. I'm trying to coax
something out of it, but it's sort of in shock right now."
Of course, it could also be dying, but she kept that thought to herself.
"We're going faster," she said, instead. " Whatever's pulling at the
other end of this tube is increasing its draw."
"How fast?" Corran asked. His voice was maddeningly calm now. Did he
think this was her fault?
"Only about sixty klicks a minute," she said.
"That's fast, when you don't have anything to damp inertia, which I'm
guessing we don't right now. If we hit something at this speed..."
"Like another predator?"
"I'm thinking more along the lines of a full stop," Corran said, punching
at the datapad. "This tunnel is going to split eventually, and again, and
again-little rivers flowing into the big one, streams into the rivers, sewers
into the streams-eventually we're going to hit tubes too small to go through."
"That was going to happen anyway," she pointed out.
"You must have had some plan for us to exit this thing in the first
place."
"That sort of assumed we were going to be under power," Corran said
wryly.
"We may have some power. I'm starting to feel some-thing in the dovin
basal."
"It's coming back on-line?"
"It's a living thing. It can't go on - and off-line."
"Fine. It's coming around?"
"Somewhat. I might be able to nudge it into responding, but it won't be
able to keep it up for long, so I'll need to pick my moment. Or moments-I
think short bursts of power would be okay."
Corran frowned down at his chart. "Originally, there was a nexus up here
where six smaller tubes branch off. It's probably coming up fast. If you can
take the third from your left, do it."
Almost as he said it, they burst into a flattened sphere full of water.
Something black with a lot of tentacles went whip-ping by them, fu riously
fighting the current. Tahiri bit her lip, trying to interpret the ship's
failing senses through the murk.
"One, two, three-it might be four," she muttered.
"There's not time for a better count."
She sent a gentle command to the dovin basal, which quivered and then
reached out. It didn't take much-just enough to divert them into the right
stream.
"I think I did it," she said.
"Good," Corran said, "now-"
"No!" Tahiri yelped. The rim of the tube loomed.
A sudden shock nearly tore them from their crash couches, and an unholy
shriek of impact filled the cabin. A series of lesser shocks followed as the
ship rattled down the smaller tube, turning end over end.
Tahiri's stomach churned, and her last meal made a good try at escaping
its intended fate.
"Sorry about that," she managed.
"Can you get this tumble under control?" Corran asked.
"I could," she said, "but I really like tumbling." Didn't he think she
was trying? "What's our next turn?" she asked. "The next node, we take the
second from the right."
The dovin basal was starting to come out of its funk, though Tahiri could
tell it was very weak. They couldn't fight the current, but her control of
their forward motion improved. They made the next turn without clipping any-
thing, and the next. The tube had narrowed so much that they had only a few
meters' clearance.
"This is almost it," Corran said. "The next intersection used to be a
cooling tower. We should be able to go up into the water jacket. We can park
the ship there and go the rest of the way on foot."
"Let's just hope they haven't replaced the cooling tower with, I don't
know, a lorqh membrane," Tahiri said.
"Don't tell me what that is, okay?" Corran said. A few moments later, the
ship bobbed to the surface in a large, open area. Tahiri made out a flat,
sturdy-looking sur-face a tier above, and gently coaxed the ship up to it.
"Well done," Corran said.
"Thank you. Are we where you thought we were?" Corran studied the chart.
"Yep. From here, we can find access tunnels to the place we were supposed to
meet this Prophet. All we have to do now is find him, bring him back here, and
do all that in reverse."
Tahiri sighed. "And find another ship. I don't think we can even make
orbit in this one, much less a hyperspace jump."
Corran's jaw clamped, then he shrugged. "Well, we've stolen ships before.
We can do it again." But she could tell he was worried. The quipping was to
set her at ease, because he still thought she was a kid.
"Fight what's in front of you," she said. "Let's go find out more about
this Prophet."
"Can't say the Vong have improved much on this," Corran remarked, as they
wound their way through the dark cav-erns that had once been Coruscant's
underworld. Now it was a mass of corroding metal, strange, pale growths, and
luminescent lichen. It looked as if it had been abandoned for centuries rather
than months. Despite the setbacks Jacen had engineered with the dhuryam-the
World Brain-the Yuuzhan Vong shapers seemed to be making headway.
"Of course, it was never exactly homey down here," he added.
"Yuuzhan Vong," Tahiri corrected. "Did people live here back in the old
days?"
"Lots," Corran said. "The vast majority of people who lived on Coruscant
weren't what you would exactly call comfortable."
Tahiri shivered. "I can't imagine living like this, below-ground,
surrounded by metal, no sky, no stars."
"Is that Tahiri or Riina talking?"
There was something subtly testing in his voice. "Neither one of them
would have liked this," she said. "Tahiri grew up in the desert and in the
jungles of Yavin Four. Riina grew up in a worldship. Both were surrounded by
life."
"Riina didn't grow up anywhere," Corran said. "Riina was created in a
laboratory."
"You think that makes a difference?" she asked, stung.
"How do you know all your memories are real? If you found out your
memories of Mirax were implanted, that there was no such person, would she be
any less real to you?"
"Unh-unh," Corran said. "Not buying the sophomoric philosophy. Part of
you was once a real person. Part of you was created, like a computer program."
"You think Threepio isn't real?"
"You know what I mean."
"I know what you mean," Tahiri said. She'd pretty much had enough of
&
nbsp; this, because she didn't know whether to cry or hit him. "And I'll bet I've
thought about it a lot more than you have. What I don't know is why you're
pushing this, here, now. I thought we covered this before leaving Mon
Calamari."
Corran stopped, regarded her in the light of their lamps.
"No, we didn't. Or, rather, none of my worries were really resolved. You
asked if I trusted you. It's not that I don't trust you, Tahiri-I don't know
who you are. I don't know what might be sleeping in you, waiting to wake up
when the right stimulus comes along. And I can't believe that you can be sure
about that either."
That was a tu'q, a solid hit. "No, of course I can't," she finally
managed. "But I'm not part Tahiri and part Riina. There aren't two voices in
my head. Those two fought, and joined, and I was born. They were sort of like
my parents. Nothing about either one of them is perfect in me. Even if I
inherited something nasty from Riina, it will be flawed. I'll be able to fight
it."
"Unless you don't want to. Unless it's something that would have appealed
to both Tahiri and Riina."
She conceded that with a nod. "You've already taken the risk, Corran. Why
didn't we have this conversation days ago?"
"Because I wanted to see something of who you've become."
"And who have I become?"
"You're bright and talented and far too confident. I'm not sure you're
afraid of anything, and that's bad."
"I'm afraid," she said.
"Of what?"
"Fear. Anger."
"The dark side."
"Anakin saw me as a Dark Jedi with Yuuzhan Vong markings. He was strong
in the Force." She shook her head.
"It's not some hidden Yuuzhan Vong part of me that should worry you,
Corran. It's the Jedi part. Tahiri was trained as a Jedi from childhood. I-the
person I've become-was not."
His eyebrows beetled up. "That's an interesting thing to say. I hadn't
thought of it that way."
"Most people haven't."
"Okay," Corran said. "We'll take this up later, when we aren't skulking."
"Are we skulking now?"
"Yes, because we're almost at our destination. If there's anyone waiting
for us, I'd rather they didn't interrupt an in-teresting conversation."
A few moments later they passed an immense shaft of some sort. Faint
daylight illuminated it, so she could guess that it was perhaps two kilometers
in diameter. Looking up, she could see a faint circle of rose-colored light.
"How deep is this shaft?" she wondered aloud.
"About three klicks."
"What in the galaxy was this?"
"A garbage pit," he said. "They used to shoot dangerous garbage into
orbit from here, with magnetic accelerators."
"That's a lot of garbage," Tahiri said. "This is where we're meeting him?
"
"Yes. In about fifteen minutes, if he's on time." While they waited,
Tahiri looked around a bit. A lot of Yuuzhan Vong life had crept into the pit.
"What are those called?" Corran asked her. He was pointing at a plant
with thick, reedlike stalks that glowed a vivid blue color.
"I've no idea," she admitted. "I've never seen one before. There are a
lot of things like that down here-things from the homeworld that weren't
needed or wanted on the world-ships. Or maybe they're new, engineered to live
on metal." She touched the glowing cylinders. They were cool, and the fine
hairs on the back of her hand stood up.
Ten minutes later, they heard the faint echoes of footsteps. Tahiri put
her hand on the grip of her lightsaber. It might be the Prophet, but it might
be anything. A faint green luminescence appeared, carried by a tall, well-
formed warrior.
"It's a trick!" Tahiri whispered. She ignited her light-saber. Corran's
blazed on an instant later.
The warrior stopped, now fully illuminated.
"Jeedai!"
"Look at him," Tahiri said. "He's not malformed. He's not Shamed!"
But the warrior had dropped to his knees.
"Jeedai," he said in Basic. "Welcome. But you are not correct. I am
indeed Shamed."
After the initial shock, Tahiri had begun to notice other details-like
the fact that the warrior wore no armor, and that some of his scars and
tattoos were incomplete.
"You speak Basic," Corran noticed.
"For your convenience I am equipped with a tizowyrm."
"Are you the Prophet?" Corran asked.
"I am not. I arrive before him, to make certain all is safe. My name is
Kunra."
"And is it?" Corran asked. "Safe?"
"You are Jeedai. I have no choice but to trust you. My fear was that our
communications had somehow been in-tercepted, and that I would find warriors
here."
Tahiri switched to Yuuzhan Vong. "Why were you Shamed?" she asked.
The warrior's eyes widened. "One-who-was-shaped!" Then his eyes switched
back to Corran, and he returned to Basic. "The slayer of Shedao Shai! We
expected Jeedai, but not the most august of them."
"Ah, there are still a few higher on the ladder than us," Corran said.
"Luke Skywalker, for instance."
"But he does not figure in our sacred tales!"
Tahiri was in no mood to let the warrior become dis-tracted. "I asked you
a question," she snapped. The warrior bowed his head. "I was a coward," he
said.
A cowardly warrior? Tahiri thought. No wonder.
"You seem to have some courage," Corran said. "You came down here, not
knowing if you would find us or an ambush."
"I serve the Truth now. It gives me courage, though I am still unworthy."
"And yet the most worthy of my disciples," a new voice said.
Tahiri glanced up. A tall figure had just come into the chamber. His face
was a mass of unhealed scars and fes-tering sores, his right ear missing. The
sacks below his eyes were distended, yellow, and...
No, something was wrong. She looked more closely. It's not real, she
realized.
He's wearing a masquer.
"You're Yu'shaa?" Corran asked.
"I am. It is my honor to meet the great Tahiri Veila and Corran Horn."
Tahiri acknowledged that greeting with a curt nod.
The Prophet bowed. "This is truly a blessed day," he said.
"Right," Corran said. "Though for a blessed day, we've had some fairly
unblessed setbacks. Including the fact that our ship was destroyed in coming
here."
"You were discovered?" the Prophet asked, a bit sharply.
"No. At least I don't think so." Tahiri watched him care-fully while
Corran described what had happened.
The Prophet nodded when he finished. "You are correct, Blessed One-it is
unlikely that you were discovered. I sus-pect your firing of the plasma weapon
caused some sort of malfunction in the maw luur's reflexes. There are
hundreds, if not thousands of such malfunctions every day, and I doubt this
one will be closely scrutinized. As to the other, once more we see that the
universe favors our cause. The final member of our party claims to have a ship
at her disposal."
"Final member of the party?" Corran made it sound like, Yow want me to
kiss a gundark?
; "Yes. A shaper who holds the secret to our redemption."
"I thought you..."
"I am the Prophet. I speak the truth and foretell what is to come. I am
not myself the key to redemption-I merely see it."
Corran glanced at Tahiri. "That's interesting," he said, "but our
mission, as I understood it, was to come here and get you and take you to
Zonama Sekot. Now you want us to change the mission to include someone else.
In my experi-ence, changes in the mission can lead to unpleasant results."
"I am sorry," the Prophet said. "But as you said, your mission has
changed already-now we must have a ship. As to the shaper-I could not speak of
her on the qahsa. She is placed very close to Shimrra-it is how she discovered
Zonama Sekot in the first place."
Corran sighed. "Explain."
"A commander named Ekh'm Val went to Zonama Sekot," Yu'shaa said. "He
fought there and was defeated. But he re-turned with something of the planet,
which this shaper has studied. She discovered a certain inexplicable kinship
be-tween the biology of Sekot and our own biotechnology."
"Again, interesting, but..."
"We are from another galaxy, Jedi Horn. We crossed the starless night for
age upon age. Our legends go deep, and yet nowhere is such a thing hinted at,
at least not in any-thing I ever heard. And yet here, in this time of
darkness, two things are given us. To me, a vision of Zonama Sekot as a sign
of our redemption. To the shaper, the revelation that we have some prior
relationship to this planet-a relationship that Shimrra fears. I do not know
what these things mean, but they can hardly be coincidence. But like me, this
shaper must see the world of salvation with her own eyes, to know the truth-to
know exactly what it all means."
"And how do you know she isn't betraying you?" Corran asked. "You say
she's part of Shimrra's inner circle? I'm sure he would like to get his hands
on you at least as much as on the two of us."
"No doubt. But I believe her. Ekh'm Val was murdered upon his return from
Zonama Sekot, along with all his sur-viving warriors. Shimrra fears even the
rumor of this planet. The shaper is already as good as dead, merely for
knowing what she knows. Shimrra would never allow her to leave his compound,
much less travel freely to the very planet he fears."
"So you're saying we have to break her out of Shimrra's compound?" Tahiri
blurted, incredulous.
"Yes. I'm afraid it's the only way."
