Destiny's Way Page 17
But Jacen had shown no resentment of Vergere; in fact, he had spoken of her with profound respect and admiration. Luke hadn’t understood this until later that evening, when he and Mara were alone, and Mara quietly reminded him how hostages sometimes grew strangely attached to their captors. Sometimes captives even grew to love their warders, particularly if the warder was skilled enough in manipulating people. Vergere—old and experienced and serving her own agenda—had been able to manipulate young Jacen’s growing psyche.
And so Luke, angry, certain he knew what had happened, had traveled to Vergere’s cell to confront her with her actions. But somehow it hadn’t quite come out the way he’d anticipated.
“And what do you know of Jacen’s destiny?” Luke asked.
Vergere pondered a moment before answering. “I believe that Jacen is intimately connected with the fate of the Yuuzhan Vong,” she answered.
Of all things, Luke had not expected that. “He can destroy them?” he asked.
“Destroy them. Save them. Transform them.” The tilted eyes opened, gazed expressionlessly into Luke’s. “Perhaps all three.”
“Can he open them to the Force?” Luke asked.
“I don’t know if that’s possible.”
Luke felt bitterness poison his heart. “Then the Yuuzhan Vong will remain … outside.”
Vergere’s head tilted. “That bothers you?”
Luke blinked. “Yes. Of course. The Force is life. All life is the Force. But the Yuuzhan Vong are outside the Force. So are they outside life as well?”
“What do you think?”
“I think it was easier dealing with enemies from the dark side.” Luke looked narrowly at Vergere. “I also think you’re very good at interrogation. This conversation started with me asking the questions.”
“If you didn’t want me to ask questions,” Vergere said, “you should have explained that at the beginning.” Her piebald body stirred on her stool. “I’ve been answering question after question ever since I arrived, and I’m tired of it. So if you insist that the only questions in this room must come from you, then I decline to answer them.”
“Very well.” Luke rose to his feet. Her head craned after him on its odd little neck.
“But I will ask one more question before you leave,” she said. “You may answer it or not, as you like.”
“Ask,” Luke said.
Her eyes blinked slowly. “If the Force is life,” she said, “and the Yuuzhan Vong are alive, and you cannot see them in the Force—then is the problem with the Yuuzhan Vong, or is it with your perceptions?”
Luke, choosing not to answer, nodded politely and left.
“Tricky, isn’t she?” Ayddar Nylykerka asked a few moments later.
“You heard?” Luke asked.
“Of course. Everything in that room is recorded.” The Tammarian inclined his head. “What do you suggest we do with her?”
“Hold her here,” Luke said, “and keep asking her questions.”
Nylykerka smiled. “Just what I planned, Master Skywalker.”
Mon Calamari, goggle eyes gleaming in the floodlights, swam easily past Cal Omas’s window. The scent of mildew in the room was greater than ever. Mara looked up as Luke entered.
“Vergere?” she said.
“It’s complicated,” Luke said. “I’ll explain later.” He looked at Cal Omas, who was sharing a hasty meal with Mara. “What news from the Senate?”
Cal swallowed the mouthful he’d been chewing, and said, “The Senate had a vote this afternoon. I got twenty-eight percent.”
“And Rodan?”
“Thirty-five.”
“And Cola Quis got ten percent,” Mara added, “and Ta’laam Ranth eighteen. Pwoe got three votes total—though he sent a message saying that the vote was illegal and that he was still Chief of State. The rest of the votes were abstentions, or scattered among half a dozen others.”
Luke and Mara had decided that, of the two of them, Mara would be the one who would work more openly with Cal and his campaign. Luke had other business, with Jacen and Vergere and the Jedi, and Mara could move more openly among the politicians and lobbyists than he could.
Luke joined the others at the table, and Cal amiably pushed a bowl of giju stew in his direction. “Where’s Triebakk?” Luke asked.
“Talking to Cola Quis,” Cal said. “By now it must be clear to Cola that he can’t win, so we need to find out what it would take for him to drop out of the race and endorse me.”
“I’m sure Rodan’s asking him the same thing,” Mara said.
“And then we ask the same thing of Ta’laam Ranth,” Cal continued, “though I don’t suppose Ta’laam is ready to answer yet. He’ll want a few more floor votes first, just to show what a valuable ally he could be.”
“What’s he likely to want?”
“A place on the Advisory Council, certainly,” Cal said. “Plus he’ll want places in the government for his friends—he’s always been very serious about controlling patronage.”
Luke finished his bite of stew and spoke. “In order to control patronage, there has to be a government for him to control patronage in. If the government falls apart in the meantime …”
Cal shrugged. “Ta’laam wants what he wants. If we start giving him speeches about patriotism and duty, he’ll think we’re trying to put something over on him. He’s the sort who thinks that patronage is the whole point of government.”
“In that case,” Luke said, sighing, “you may as well point out that if the war goes on, his people will gain access to a lot of military contracts.”
Cal grinned. “We’ll make a politician of you yet.”
“I hope not,” Luke said.
Cal reached across the table for a datapad. “It’s Fyor’s supporters that worry me.” He tapped the display. “I’ve been looking at the people who voted for him, and if I were to make a mental list of the members of the Senate who would want a truce with the Yuuzhan Vong, or even a surrender, I’d find quite a number of them among Fyor’s supporters.”
“Senator Sneakaway,” Luke said, with a significant look at Mara. “Senator Scramblefree.”
Cal frowned at the datapad. “I count at least a dozen Senators who either ran away from Coruscant during the fighting or found reason to flee before the fighting started. And some of them are influential.”
“Rodan told me that he didn’t trust the Yuuzhan Vong to keep a truce,” Luke said.
“He repeated it publicly, this afternoon,” Mara said.
“But can he hold out against his own supporters?” Cal said. “When the people he depends on for his position tell him they want peace with the Yuuzhan Vong, how can he resist?”
“I don’t understand,” Mara said. “Rodan was brave during the fight, maybe even heroic. How can he associate with these people?”
“Some people don’t question the folks who give them what they want,” Cal said, and then his long face creased in a sly smile. “I haven’t exactly made my own supporters fill out a questionnaire, either.”
Luke finished his stew. “We need a government soon,” he said. “And one the military can respect. Because the military won’t hold still for a surrender or a truce. And then we’ll have a military government that won’t hold any legitimacy other than what they acquire at blasterpoint.”
Cal looked serious. “Mara told me what you saw this afternoon. I agree we need a government soon. A parliamentary system like ours is inefficient in certain ways, but it’s what we’re stuck with.”
“The question is,” Mara said, “does the military understand that?”
It was a question to which none of them had the answer.
Luke and Mara found Jacen in the suite when they returned. Jacen sat on the floor in a meditation pose, and Luke could feel the Force surrounding him, swirling in great eddies through the boy’s body, cleansing, healing, strengthening, and restoring. Jacen’s eyes opened as soon as Luke and Mara stepped into the apartment, and he smiled.
“I spoke with her myself,” Luke said.
Jacen’s smile broadened. “What did you think?”
“I think she’s not simple.”
Mara had scowled at Jacen’s pleased reaction to the mention of Vergere, but she put the frown away and sat next to Jacen. “I have to wonder about her loyalties,” she said.
“They’re not simple, either,” Jacen said. “She’s very harsh sometimes.”
Mara’s mouth twisted, and Luke knew why, because his own insides were queasing at the thought of torture. He swallowed back a bitter surge of stomach acid and dropped cross-legged to the floor in front of Jacen.
Jacen looked at him. “I’m still your apprentice, Master Skywalker,” he said. “Do you have any assignments for me?”
Harsh, Luke thought. Whatever he was going to be, he wasn’t going to be Vergere. He smiled. “A very difficult assignment, Jacen,” he said. “You’re to take a vacation.”
Jacen was surprised. “What kind of vacation?” he asked.
Luke almost laughed. “Whatever kind you like,” he said. “You’ve been through a lot, and I want you to take the time to think about it. Many of your friends are here—I want you to reconnect with them. Meditate, as you were doing. Try to discern what it is that the Force wants for you, if anything, and whether it’s what you want for yourself.”
Jacen tilted his head in curiosity. “You’d give me that option?”
“You of all people,” Luke said, “should know that you’ve always had that option.” He looked into Jacen’s solemn eyes. “I want you to get beyond what I want for you, beyond what Vergere wants, beyond any of us. I want you alone with the Force. A dialogue, with just the two of you, alone.”
“Harsh,” Mara said. Luke could feel her muscles tense. “Days and days of torture. Harsh.”
They were alone in bed, lying nested like spoons, Mara in the curve of Luke’s body. Jacen was presumably asleep in the next room, and they conversed in low tones so as not to be overheard.
“She claims she had good reasons for what she did,” Luke said. “And they sounded plausible, if—well—harsh.”
Mara looked thoughtful. “She helped heal me with her tears.”
“Perhaps a gesture of compassion, perhaps a coldhearted calculation to pave her way to a defection—or should I say a re-re-defection, to our side.”
“She tortured Jacen, but she brought him back.”
“And she collaborated in the deaths of hundreds of billions of citizens of the New Republic,” Luke said. “The reasons she gives are, perhaps, adequate. Or perhaps she is simply a being with absolutely no conscience and an agenda of her own.”
Mara’s eyes turned hard. “We’ve got to get Jacen out from under her influence.”
“That’s why I told Jacen to take time off and to reconnect with his friends,” Luke said. “I can’t order him not to feel a connection to Vergere, but I can tell him to connect to all the parts of his life that aren’t Vergere.”
Mara nodded. “Good idea.”
“Whatever may have happened to Jacen while he was gone, he’s more mature than he was. More balanced. And more centered than ever in the Force.”
Mara bit her lip. “I agree. Not everything that happened to him was negative.”
“After Jacen’s gotten his bearings back, I’ll send him on a mission. After he’s had a chance to think and regain his balance, he’ll need to reconnect with his job.”
“Yes.” She hesitated. “That may be hard, but it’s necessary.”
“I spoke this morning of Jacen’s having a special destiny,” Luke said. “Vergere thinks he has one as well.”
Mara looked at him over her shoulder. “Maybe you’d better tell me what she said.”
FIFTEEN
Because he needed to know, he returned.
He needed to know whether or not he was doomed, and along with him the revived Jedi Order he had created.
Vergere peered up at Luke from her perch on the stool. “Come to ask more questions?” she inquired. “I should warn you I’ve already spent my day answering questions from Fleet Intelligence, and I’m tired of it.”
“I’ll trade you,” Luke said. “One of my questions for one of yours.”
Her whiskers rippled. “You didn’t answer my last. If you can’t detect the Yuuzhan Vong in the Force, is the fault with the Yuuzhan Vong or with your perceptions?”
Luke settled onto the chair opposite Vergere. “You left out a third possibility. The fault may be in the Force.”
Vergere’s feathery crest rose in surprise. “Is this your answer?”
“No. I don’t have an answer,” Luke admitted. He looked at Vergere. “Do you?”
Vergere smoothed her crest with one hand. “Is that your first question?”
“It is.”
Vergere paused for a long moment, as if mentally rehearsing an answer. “Before I can answer, I need to know whether Jacen told you what happened to me on Zonama Sekot.”
“He did,” Luke said.
“So you know that I chose to accompany the Yuuzhan Vong in order to discover their true nature.”
“You spent fifty years with them. And so if anyone should have an answer to the question of whether the Yuuzhan Vong are outside the Force, it should be you.”
“Yes.” There was a long pause while Luke waited for Vergere to continue. Then she said, “That was your answer.”
Luke smiled. “The answer to my first question is ‘yes.’ ”
“Correct.”
“And I’ll have to ask another question if I want further information.”
“Also correct.”
“Isn’t this a little bit childish?”
Her feathers fluffed, then smoothed. “It’s your game, not mine. And I believe it’s my turn.”
He shrugged. “Go ahead.”
She fixed him with her tilted eyes. “If the Yuuzhan Vong are completely outside the Force, what does that imply for the Jedi and our beliefs?”
Luke hesitated. This wasn’t just a question, this was the Question of Questions, the issue he had been wrestling since the invasion began. When he spoke, he spoke carefully.
“It implies that our knowledge of the Force is in error, or incomplete. Or it implies that the Vong are … an aberration. A profanation of the Force. A thing that should not be.” He hesitated again, but the implacable logic of his train of thought forced him to continue. “To life we owe our compassion and our duty. But I must wonder what we owe to something completely outside our definition of life, to something that is a kind of living death. I must wonder if we owe them anything but a real death?”
“You shrink from this thought.” It was a statement, not a question.
“Any being of conscience must,” Luke said. He could feel tension in his clenched jaw muscles. “But still it is my duty to the Jedi not to fear where this leads.” He centered himself, and tried to send the tension into the far distance. “My turn,” he said.
Vergere nodded. “Proceed.”
He took a breath, and forced himself to ask the question that he suspected would doom him. “Are the Yuuzhan Vong outside the Force?”
“I have only what amounts to an opinion.”
“But it’s the opinion of a Jedi Knight, experienced in the Force, who has spent fifty years among the Yuuzhan Vong.”
“Yes. And my opinion is this: by definition the Force is all life, and all life is the Force. So therefore the Yuuzhan Vong, who are living beings, are within the Force, even though we can’t see them there.”
Luke felt months-long tension draining from his limbs, and a heavy stone fly weightless from his heart.
“Thank you,” he murmured.
She looked at him and spoke with quiet intensity. “You owe to the Yuuzhan Vong the same measure of compassion you owe to all life. No war of extermination is justified. Y
ou will not have to eradicate this profanation from the heart of existence.”
Luke bowed his head. “Thank you,” he repeated.
“Why were you afraid of my answer?”
“Because if the enemy were not life, if they did not deserve compassion, then leading a war against them would have furnished a means of letting the dark side enter not only myself, but all the Jedi I have trained as well.”
“My understanding of your position, then, is that such traits as anger and aggression are to be avoided, because they may lead to domination of the mind and spirit by the dark side of the Force.”
Luke looked at her. “Was that your second question?”
“Young Master,” Vergere said, “it was phrased very carefully so as not to be a question. I was merely attempting a clarification of your position.”
Luke smiled. “Yes, your understanding is correct.”
“Then my next question is this: do you believe that nature would have given us traits such as anger and aggression if they were not useful?”
“Useful for what?” Luke countered. “They are useful to the dark side. What use does a Jedi have for anger and aggression? The Jedi Code is specific: we act not from passion, but from serenity.”
Vergere settled onto her stool. “I understand now,” she said. “Our difference concerns where this serenity originates. You believe serenity is an absence of passion, but I believe it is a consequence of knowledge, and self-knowledge most of all.”
“If passion is not opposed to serenity,” Luke said, “why are they paired in the Jedi Code?”
“Because the consequences of these two states of mind are opposed to one another. An unchecked passion produces actions that are hasty, ill considered, and often destructive. Serenity, on the other hand, may well result in no action at all—and when it does, serenity produces actions that proceed from knowledge and deliberation, if not from wisdom.” Her wide mouth suggested a smile. “My turn.”