Star Wars_ Traitor Part 11

"Only because you stopped me."

"Who's stopping you now?"

He stared at her. She turned her quadrifid palm upward as though offering him a sweet.

"You want to kill? There is nothing around you but life, Jacen Solo. Take it as you please.

Even mine. My species has a particularly vulnerable neck; merely take my head in your hands, and with one quick twist, thus..." She jerked her head up and back as though an invisible fist had punched her in the mouth. "...you can satisfy this dark desire."

"I don't want to kill you, Vergere." He hunched into himself, resting his elbows on his thighs as though huddled against a chill. "I don't want to kill anybody. Just the opposite.

I'm grateful. You saved me. I was out of control..."

"You were not," she said sharply. "Don't make excuses."

"What?"

"Out of control is just code for don't want to admit I'm the kind of person who would do such things.' It's a lie." He offered her half a smile. "Everything I tell you is a lie."

She accepted his mockery with an expressionless nod.

"But everything you tell yourself should be the truth--or as close to it as you can come.

You did what you did because you are who you are. Self-control, or its lack, had nothing to do with it."

"Self-control has everything to do with it--that's what being a Jedi is."

"You," she said, "are not a Jedi."

He looked away. Remembering what she had done to him kindled a spark within his chest that grew into a scorching flame around his heart.

His fingers dug into the lush moss that carpeted the ledge, and he made fists, tearing up a double handful, and a large part of him wanted that moss to be her neck. But years of Jedi training had armored him against rage. When he opened his fists and let those shreds fall into the wind, he let his anger fall with them.

"Being a Jedi isn't just about using the Force." His voice was stronger now; he was on sure ground. "It's a commitment to a certain way of doing things--a certain way of looking at things. It's about valuing life, not destroying it. "

"So is gardening."

He hung his head, numb with memory.

"But I wasn't trying to save anybody. Sure, it started out that way--that's what I planned for--but by the time you caught up with me on the hive-island, saving lives was the farthest thing from my mind. All I wanted was a club big enough to smack the Yuuzhan Vong all the way out of the galaxy. All I wanted was to hurt them."

She blinked.

"And this is wrong?"

"It is for me. That's the dark side. It's the definition of the dark side. That's what you saved me from."

"I saved your life, Jacen Solo. That's all. Your ethics are your own affair."

Jacen just shook his head. His family history was itself the ultimate argument that the dark side is everybody's affair, but he wasn't about to get into that.

"You don't understand."

"Perhaps I don't," she agreed cheerfully. "You seem to be telling me that what you do is irrelevant; all that matters is why you do it."

"That's not it at all..."

"No? Then tell me, Jacen Solo, if you had pursued the n.o.ble goal of saving those thousands of slaves in the manner of a true Jedi, what would you have done differently? Anything? Or would you only feel differently about what you have done?"

Jacen frowned. "I... that's not what I mean..."

"Does killing a dhuryam for a n.o.ble goal make it any less dead? Do you think it matters to these dead dhuryams whether you killed them in a frenzy of rage or with calm, cool Jedi detachment?"

"It matters to me," Jacen said solidly.

"Ah, I see. You can do whatever you want, so long as you maintain your Jedi calm? So long as you can tell yourself you're valuing life? You can kill and kill and kill and kill, so long as you don't lose your temper?" She shook her head, blinking astonishment. "Isn't that a little sick?"

"None of those questions are new, Vergere. Jedi have asked themselves all of them ever since the fall of the Empire."

"Longer than that. Believe me."

"We don't have a very good answer..."

"You'll never have an answer, Jacen Solo." She leaned toward him, her hand on his shoulder.

Though her touch was warm and friendly, her eyes might have been viewports into infinite s.p.a.ce. "But you can be an answer."

He frowned. "That doesn't make any sense."

She turned her palms upward in a gesture of helpless surrender.

"What does? "

"Oh, well, yeah," he sighed. "I've wondered that myself."

"Look around you," she said. "Look at this world: at the patterns of the fern forest, at the rugged curves of terrain, the braided colors of the rings overhead. It is very beautiful, yes?"

"I've never seen anything like it," Jacen said truthfully.

"That is 'sense' of a kind, yes?"

"Yes. Yes, it is. Sometimes when I look out at the stars, or across a wild landscape, I get the feeling that it does make sense--no, more like what you said: that it is sense. Like it is its own reason."

"Do you know what I see, when I look at this world? I see you."

Jacen stiffened. "Me?"

"What you see around you is the fruit of your rage, Jacen Solo. You made this happen."

"That's ridiculous."

"You stole the decision of the tizo'pil Yun'tchilat from the shapers on the seeds.h.i.+p. You chose the dhuryam that has become the pazhkic Yuuzhan'tar al'tirrna: the World Brain. You destroyed its rivals.

You gave it the overlords.h.i.+p of this planet. This planet takes its shape from your dhuryam friend's intention, its personality--and its personality has been shaped by your friends.h.i.+p. All this beauty exists, in this form, because of you."

He shook his head. "That wasn't what I planned..."

"But it is what you did. I thought we had agreed that why you did it is of concern only to Jedi."

"I... you always twist everything around," he said. "You make it way more complicated than it really is."

"On the contrary: I make it simpler. What you see around you, Jacen Solo, is a reflection of yourself: an artificial construct of the New Republic, remade by the Yuuzhan Vong into something new--something more beautiful than has existed in the galaxy before."

"What do you mean, an artificial construct?" The sick dread that had curdled in his stomach when he found duracrete beneath the moss slammed back into him. "Where are we?"

"Yuuzhan'tar" she said. "Did you not understand this?"

"No, I mean: what world was this before?"

She sighed. "You see, but you do not see. You know, but you do not let yourself know. Look, and your question is answered." He frowned at the fern forest below, where mountain shadows stretched away from the setting sun. Those flying creatures were out in greater force now, in the twilight, and they circled higher and higher through the shadows as though in pursuit of nocturnal insects. Their wings were broad, leathery, their bodies long and tapered, ending in a sinuous reptilian tail...

Then one swooped straight up in front of Jacen and soared above into the darkening sky, and he could no longer ignore what they were.

Hawk-bats.

He said, "Oh."

Those strange metric designs on the distant mountains--he knew what they were, now. And the impossibly complex topography of the jungle, that made sense, too.

Jacen said, fainter now, "Oh. Oh, no."

The designs were viewports. The mountains were buildings. This place was a nightmare image of Yavin 4: the valleys and ridges were patterns of rubble carpeted by alien life. Far more than just an ancient temple complex like one on the gas giant's moon--what Jacen looked upon here was the shape of a single planetwide city, shattered into ruins, buried beneath a jungle.

And all he could say was, "Oh."

Long after Yuuzhan'tar had turned this face away from its sun, Jacen still sat on the mossy ledge above the jungle, now shrouded in night. Flashes of bioluminescence chased each other through the shadowed canopy in jagged streaks of blue-green and vivid yellow. The Bridge was impossibly bright, impossibly close, as though he could reach up, grab on, and swing from one of its braided cascades of color. The colors themselves s.h.i.+mmered and s.h.i.+fted as individual fragments in the orbital ring spun in their own rotations. It cast a glow over the nightscape brighter, softer, more diffuse, than any conjunction of Coruscant's moons ever had.

This was the most beautiful place Jacen had ever seen.

He hated it.

He hated every bit of it. Even closing his eyes didn't help, because just knowing it was out there made him s.h.i.+ver with rage. He wanted to burn the whole planet. He knew, now, that somewhere deep in his heart, none of the war had ever seemed quite real; none of it since Sernpidal. He'd been nursing a secret certainty, concealed even from himself, that somehow everything would be all right again someday--that everything could be the way it used to be.

That Chewbacca's death had been some kind of mistake.

That Jaina could never fall into the dark.

That his parents' marriage was strong and sure.

That Uncle Luke would always show up just in time and everyone could have a laugh together at how afraid they'd been...

That the Anakin he'd seen die had been--oh, he didn't know, a clone, maybe. Or a human-guised droid, and the real Anakin was off on the far side of the galaxy somewhere with Chewbacca, and someday they'd find their way home and the whole family could be together again. That's why he hated this world spread before him. Because it could never be home again.

Even if the New Republic somehow, impossibly, turned the tide. Even if some miracle happened and they retook Coruscant what they won wouldn't be the same planet they had lost. The Yuuzhan Vong had come, and they were never going to go away. Even if Jacen had found a club big enough to knock the whole species back beyond the galactic horizon, nothing could ever erase the scars they would leave behind. Nothing could ever heal his broken heart. Nothing could remake him into the Jacen Solo he remembered: the cheerfully reckless Jacen, chasing Zekk into the downlevels; the exasperated Jacen, trying one more time to make Tenel Ka crack a smile; the Jedi apprentice Jacen, born to the Force, but still awed not only by the legend of Uncle Luke but by the power his uncle's teaching could draw out of him; the teenage Jacen who could wilt under his mother's stern glare, but still exchange roguish winks with his father and his sister the instant Mother turned away.

I spent so much time wanting to grow up. Trying to grow up. Trying to act like an adult...

Now all I want is to be a kid again. Just for a little while. Just a day. Just an hour.

Jacen reflected bitterly that a large part of growing up seemed to involve watching everything change, and discovering that all changes are permanent. That nothing ever changes back. That you can't go home again.

This was what the alien beauty of Yuuzhan'tar whispered constantly in the back of his head: Nothing lasts forever. The only permanence is death.

Brooding, he sat through the long slow roll of the night. Some unknown time later--by the wheel of the stars, constellations still mockingly familiar over this bitterly foreign landscape, many hours had pa.s.sed unmarked--he asked, "What now?" Vergere answered him from the darkness within the bower of ferns. Though no words had been exchanged between them since twilight, her voice was clear, chiming, fresh as always.

"I have been wondering the same." Jacen shook his head. "Don't you ever sleep?"

"Perhaps I will when you do."

He nodded. This was as much of an answer as he had learned to expect. He swung his legs back onto the ledge, wrapping his elbows around knees drawn up to his chest.

"So, what next?"

"You tell me."

"No games, Vergere. Not anymore. And no more shadowmoth stories, huh?"

"Is what has happened such a mystery to you?"

"I'm not an idiot. You're training me." He made an irritated gesture, a flick of the wrist as though tossing away something nasty.

"That's what you've been doing from the beginning. I'm learning more tricks than a monkey-lizard. I just don't know what you're training me to do."

"You are free to do, or not do, what you will. Do you understand the difference between training and teaching? Between learning to do and learning to be?"

"So we're back to the shadowmoth story after all."

"Is there another story you like better?"

"I just want to know what you're after, all right? What you want from me. I want to know what to expect."

"I want nothing from you. I want only for you. 'Expecting' is distraction. Pay attention to now."

"Why can't you just explain what you're trying to teach me?"

"Is it what the teacher teaches..." The darkness itself seemed to smile. ". ..or what the student learns?"

He remembered the first time she had asked him that. He remembered being broken with pain. He remembered how she had guided him to a state of mind where he could mend himself; like a healed bone, he'd become stronger at the break. He nodded slowly, more to himself than to her. He rose, and went over to the moss-covered couch at the edge of the black shadows cast by the broken walls and the screen of gently weaving ferns.