Mace got to his feet, smiling broadly at the sarcasm. “Welcome, Thracia.”
Obi-Wan bowed his head in respect.
“Anakin, may I stand beside you?” Thracia Cho Leem walked slowly toward the center of the chamber where Obi-Wan and Anakin stood. Her gray hair was cut to a close cap on her long skull, and her aquiline nose sniffed at the cool air as if she judged all by their scent. Her eyes, large and bright, irises like ultramarine beads, swept the empty seats. She gathered her long dark robes and pulled up her sleeves to reveal strong, thin arms. Then she thrust out her chin. “I should have warned you I’d return, Mace,” she said.
“It is always an honor, Thracia,” Mace said.
“You seem to be ganging up on this boy.”
“It could be worse,” Mace said. “Most of the Council are away today. Yoda would be much harsher—”
“That big-eared tree stump knows nothing about human children. And for that matter, neither do you. You’ve never married, Mace! I have. I have many sons and daughters, on many worlds. Sometimes I think you should all take a break, as I did, and sniff the real air, see how the Force manifests in everyday life, rather than mope around learning how to swing lightsabers.”
Mace’s smile became one of delight. “It is wonderful to have you with us, Thracia, after so many years.” There was not a hint of irony in his tone. He was, in fact, pleased to have her in the room, and seemed even more pleased that she had surprised them. “What do you suggest for young Skywalker?”
“There’s something wrong with me,” Anakin interrupted, and then clamped his mouth shut, glancing around the chamber.
“Nonsense!” Thracia cried, her face wrinkled in irritation. She was about Anakin’s height, and looked him straight in the eyes. “None of us can see into another’s heart. Mercifully, the Force does not do that for us. I ask you, boy, what do you want to prove?”
“You know what happened?” Obi-Wan inquired of her.
“You came back this afternoon covered with slime and smelling of garbage. It’s the talk of the staff in the Temple,” Thracia said. “Anakin amuses them. He’s brought more energy and spark to this gloomy old pile than anyone in recent memory, including Qui-Gon Jinn. Now, boy, what do you want to prove?”
“I don’t want to prove anything. I need to know who I am, as Obi-Wan tells me over and over.”
Thracia sniffed once more and regarded Obi-Wan with a mix of affection and sharp judgment. “Obi-Wan has forgotten ever being a child.”
Obi-Wan gave her a small grin. “Qui-Gon would have disagreed.”
“Qui-Gon! Now there was a child, all his life a child, and wiser than most! But enough banter. I sense there is real danger here.”
“There was an assassination attempt,” Obi-Wan said. “A Blood Carver.”
“We suspect involvement from dissident forces within the Republic,” Mace said.
“He knew all about me,” Anakin added.
“All?” Thracia inquired, arching a brow at Mace.
“I let him—” The boy’s eyes widened in realization. He stared at Obi-Wan. “Master, I realize my error!”
Thracia pressed her lips together and turned to Obi-Wan.
Obi-Wan folded his arms. He and Anakin might have been brothers, separated by only a double handful of years, yet Obi-Wan was the closest thing the boy could ever have to a father. “Yes?”
“I sought out personal peace and satisfaction in the pit race, rather than thinking of the greater goals of the Jedi.”
“And?” Obi-Wan encouraged.
“I mean, I know it was wrong to sneak out of the Temple, to mislead my master, to engage in illegal activity that could have brought disrepute on the order—”
“A long list,” Mace Windu said.
“But … I pursued personal goals even after it should have been obvious to me that the Temple was being threatened.”
“Very serious, indeed,” Thracia murmured. She took Anakin by the shoulders, then glanced at Obi-Wan to see if she could intervene. He assented, though with some misgivings. Thracia was renowned for training female Jedi, not for preparing young males.
“Anakin, your powers, someday, could surpass those of anyone in this room. But what happens when you push something harder?”
“It moves faster,” Anakin said.
She nodded. “You are propelled by an inheritance few can understand.” Thracia dropped her hands from his shoulders. “Obi-Wan?”
“Moving faster gives you little time to think,” Obi-Wan continued where she had left off. “You must temper your passions, but be less concerned, for now, with being free from your pain. Youth is a time of uncertainty and unrest.”
“Couldn’t have put it better myself,” Thracia said. “Anakin, be a child. Revel in it. Test your limits. Irritate and provoke. It is your way. Time enough for wisdom when you’ve worn more holes in your shoes. Run your master ragged! It’ll be good for him. It’ll remind him of when he was a boy. And … tell us what you need, now, to go where you must finally go in your training.”
Mace Windu seemed about to violently disagree with this, but Thracia gave him a radiant smile, brows high on her wrinkled forehead, and his shoulders drooped. Thracia was one of the few who could outjape Mace Windu, and he knew it.
Anakin looked around the room, realizing that whatever the mood at the beginning of the meeting, there was little chance now of his being expelled from the Temple. Thracia had made her point, as only she could, by lightly stinging them all.
“I need a job, a mission,” he said, his voice cracking with emotion. “I need something to do. Something real.”
“How can we give you our trust?” Mace asked, leaning forward and staring at the boy. Anakin did not avert his eyes. The power of his spirit, of his personality, was almost frighteningly apparent.
“Indeed, Padawan, how can we trust you, after all these errors?” Thracia asked, her voice level. “It is one thing to be what you are, quite another to drag others into danger.” Anakin stared at her for long seconds, searching her face as he might look over a map, trying to find his way home.
“I never make the same mistake twice,” he finally said, blinking slowly. He faced the other Council members. “I’m not stupid.”
“I agree,” Thracia said. “Mace, give these two something useful to do, rather than stewing in the Temple pot.”
“I was approaching that conclusion,” Mace said.
“Taking all day and terrifying the boy!” Thracia exclaimed.
“Anakin is not easily frightened, not by us,” Mace said wryly. “Thracia, there must be another reason you honor us today.”
“How observant!” she said. “The danger grows daily, and our enemies, whoever they are, within the senate or without, may again try to target our students before they are ready to defend themselves.” Thracia flapped out her sleeves and sat in an empty Council seat beside Mace. “You sent my former apprentice, Vergere, on a mission, and we have heard nothing from her in a year. Vergere is self-reliant, as Jedi are trained to be. It is possible she has extended her mission, or found another. In any case, I request that Obi-Wan Kenobi be sent as backup.”
“With me?” Anakin asked, his face eager. He remembered Vergere, an intense, trim, and diminutive female who had treated him with polite reserve—as if he were an adult. He had liked her. He had especially liked the patterns of feathers and short whiskers around her face and her large, quizzical eyes.
“Would this be a long mission?” Obi-Wan asked.
“To the far side of the galaxy, far beyond the rule of the Republic,” Mace said thoughtfully. “If we agree.”
“A chance for adventure and growth, away from the seethe and intrigue of the capital world,” Thracia said. “Obi-Wan, you are not enthusiastic?”
Obi-Wan stepped forward. “If the Temple is in danger, I would rather stay and defend it.”
“I see the path we all tread,” Mace said. “Thracia is concerned about her apprentice, even now that Vergere ha
s become a Jedi Knight. This mission involves mystery, long journeys, and an exotic world—all things that could focus the attention of a young Padawan.”
“We must not encourage adventurism for its own sake,” Obi-Wan protested. Anakin looked up at him, dismayed.
Mace’s somber face showed he shared some of Obi-Wan’s concerns, but not all. He raised his hand. “Matters are not yet at crisis on Coruscant. That may be decades away. While you are gone, Obi-Wan, we can probably fend for ourselves.” Mace’s lips cracked the faintest of smiles. “A Padawan must attend his Master. Anakin, do you agree?”
“Absolutely!” Anakin squirmed with the hope of being out from under so many critical eyes. “Is the meeting over?”
“In due time,” Mace said, eyes languid once more. “Now, explain to me again how you got involved in this race.”
Anakin lay on his cot in the small room, twirling a droid verbobrain in his hands. His face was utterly intent in the pool of light from his small glow lamp. His brows cast deep shadows over his eyes. He ran his hands over his short hair and peered deep into the unit’s connectors.
He did not like the fact that he had won. It seemed wrong that he had stepped so far out of line, and yet had been retained as a Padawan. He did not like the unease this victory, if victory it was, produced in him. Above all weaknesses, arrogance was the most costly.
They keep me here because I have potential they’ve never seen before. They keep me in training because they’re curious to see what I can do. I feel like a rich man who never knows whether his friends are true—or whether they just want his money.
This was a particularly galling thought, and certainly neither true nor fair. Why do they put up with me, then? Why do I keep testing them? They tell me to use my pain—but sometimes I don’t even know where the pain comes from! I worried my mother—and I tested her, again and again, to make sure she loved me. She sent me away so I could be brought up by stronger people. So I could control myself. And I still haven’t learned.
He sat up in a squat and plugged a test wire into the verbobrain. Small criticality lights flickered to dull red on the perimeter of the knobby sphere.
A compact protocol droid filled a corner of the room. Anakin stood and lifted the droid’s access panel, inserted the verbobrain, and arranged the leads again at different test points. Criticality lights showed that this unit could direct its own actions once more. With a flick of his finger, Anakin started the verbobrain spinning. It rolled back and forth on high-speed gimbals faster than even his quick eyes could track, seeking inputs from the many sensor brushes arranged within the droid’s head.
Another droid repaired. The Jedi had no use for them, but they were yet one more eccentricity they somehow tolerated. Usually.
One of Anakin’s smaller droids, a fancy home-maintenance model he had picked up half-crushed on the street, had been found in the Council chamber, working on light fixtures that did not need repair. That one had been returned to him neatly cut in half, the edges fused in an easily recognizable way.
A comparatively gentle warning.
Anakin took some comfort in this. Too much tolerance for deviation showed weakness, and the Blood Carver’s attempt on his life indicated there was real danger on Coruscant.
He sucked in a deep breath and resolved that these were probably the only people in the galaxy who could teach and train and direct him. And, of course, the weight of that job lay on Obi-Wan, whom Anakin loved and respected, and for that reason, needed to test all the more.
Tomorrow they would leave Coruscant, the destination not yet specified. He needed to get some sleep.
Anakin dreaded sleep.
It seemed, in his dreams, that something inside was testing him, something very strong, and it did not care whether it was loved or feared.
Vergere was my most able apprentice. I was with her from the time she was an infant fresh from her egg. She herself chose this mission.” Thracia Cho Leem accompanied Obi-Wan and Anakin onto the passenger ramp of the orbital transport. Alone, the transport occupied a special bay reserved for Jedi travel in the Capital Terminal. She handed Obi-Wan a small data card. Anakin stood with hands clasped behind him, watching the older Jedi with an eager expression.
“The details are too sensitive to talk about here,” Thracia said. “When you are with Charza Kwinn, he will give you another card, necessary to unlock the contents. Charza may seem a little difficult, a little strange, but he has served the Jedi well for over a century. I entrusted Vergere to him, and now, I entrust you. May the Force be with you!”
The transport carried them effortlessly into space. Anakin sat in the forward compartment as Obi-Wan closed his eyes and meditated in the seat across from him. The Republic transport was in good mechanical repair, as befitted a Senate-class vessel, but Anakin felt the decorative details were less than first-rate. Not that he appreciated luxury. He was just very much in tune with the way people maintained their machines.
“Master, this isn’t the mission you wanted, is it?”
Obi-Wan opened his eyes. His meditation had not gone very far, just to the point of isolating his thoughts from all language and social connections, to the edge of a simple unity with the Force, and he returned easily enough. Anakin seldom meditated, though he certainly knew how. “I have learned to accept what the Council assigns us,” Obi-Wan said, clearing his throat.
A service droid rolled forward and presented them with a variety of juices in squeeze bulbs. They were the only passengers this trip. Obi-Wan finished a bulb. Anakin took two and juggled them for a moment before sucking them dry.
“Where would you rather be?” Anakin asked. “If you didn’t have to be my teacher.”
“We are where we are, and our job is important.”
“Where do you go when you meditate?” Anakin asked.
Obi-Wan smiled at the boy’s chatter. “To a state of mind and body where I reacquaint myself with simplicity.”
Anakin wrinkled his nose. “I don’t meditate very often.”
“I’ve noticed.”
“I get to a certain point and I just overload. It’s like I’m plugging into a supernova. Something goes blooey in me. I don’t like it.”
Anakin had not told him this before. Getting away from the Temple was already showing benefits. Thracia had been right. “We should work on that during our journey. As for now, direct your energy,” Obi-Wan suggested. “There are many Jedi texts yet to be learned. Mace insisted you keep up your studies.”
“I’ll work on them once I know where we are and where we’re going,” Anakin said.
Obi-Wan knew better than to question this. Anakin was no slouch at his studies. Indeed, he was much quicker than Obi-Wan had been at his age.
Once in orbit, the transport quickly sidled up to a transfer dock. Anakin recognized the class of ship on the opposite side of the dock: a small cargo transport, probably a modified YT-1150. It resembled a long oval loaf of bread sliced lengthwise into three pieces, the center fuselage the largest. Judging from the changes Anakin could see in the nacelle that held the outboard stabilizers and the hyperdrive integrator, the modifications easily made it a Class 0.8, faster than anything in the Republic or the Trade Federation listings.
Anakin eagerly watched as the connection tunnels linked. The smell of the air inside changed drastically.
Charza Kwinn’s ship smelled like an ocean, Obi-Wan thought. A not-very-fresh tide pool.
Charza Kwinn was a male Priapulin. In a galaxy of a great variety of life-forms, which any cosmopolitan traveler would find unremarkable, Priapulins still looked like an angler’s bad dream. Obi-Wan had heard of this legendary auxiliary to the Jedi many times, of course, but was still not quite prepared for his actual presence.
Most worms were without backbone. Charza had five knobby notochords arranged around his tubular length. Flattened lengthwise, he stretched at least four meters from tip to tail when fully straightened, which was rare.
As he greeted his two tra
velers, he was curled in an upright radical S, the top of that S nearly touching the bend in its first curve, like a squashed hook. His eyes rose in three pairs along the upper curve of this hook. His underside was covered with a brush of thick bristles that constantly rubbed against each other as if in speculation. His lower tail, or foot, rode on a similar stiff brush, scrubbing with a hiss through the thin film of water that covered the floor. Along his outside edges, long flexible spines stuck out like the fringe of a starched carpet.
Anakin was most fascinated by the shapes of these spines. Some were like tiny hooks, others were spatulate, and still others formed tiny thorny balls. Charza Kwinn used them as hundreds of exquisitely capable fingers.
“Welcome to the Star Sea Flower,” he greeted them. “Good once more to have Jedi accompany me between the stars.”
For all his dreadful majesty, Charza spoke in a smooth sibilant whisper, making these tones by rubbing bristles together near his spiracles, his breathing vents. That he spoke at all was remarkable. That his speech was clear, and his words disarmingly friendly, was startling.
The darkened and damp interior of Charza’s ship was enlivened by small wriggling things. Larger animals hid in corners and peered out as Charza escorted Obi-Wan and Anakin through his ship. Pumps and filters whined faintly and kept the water as refreshed as could be expected. The scant illumination came from a scattered glow of instruments and thin laser beams stretched at intervals across the corridors. Tiny spotlights tracked the larger creatures, including Anakin and Obi-Wan.
Obi-Wan took all this in stride, though he hoped there were special quarters for passengers less aquatic than Charza.
“It’s an honor to work with you, Charza Kwinn,” Obi-Wan said, and introduced Anakin. Anakin was both wary and fascinated.
Charza issued something like a chuckle. “Jedi young have big eyes when they come aboard the Star Sea Flower. Do not mind the fragrances. All will be freshened once we are away, cruising in hyperspace. Until then, energy is conserved, comfort reduced.”