himself retired. He says he's very selective about who he'll do this
kind of work for."
"Well--I guess the fact he's on Golkus and not in Tatos backs that up,"
Luke said, shaking his head. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"I did," she said. "Just now."
"That's a cheat," Luke said.
"Yes," she said. "The truth is I wasn't ready to trust you with that
information. I didn't really know whether I might need to hide myself
from you at some point. I have a lot to protect."
"But you're ready to trust me now."
"If I don't trust you, I'm completely alone," she said, a hint of an
old sorrow in her eyes. "And I can't do that anymore. I never wanted
to, and now I just can't. I can't hold you out when what I need is to
be close to someone again."
"Akanah--" "Secrets are like walls, aren't they? They separate
people.
And I've been alone behind these walls for as long as I can bear," she
said. "I'll teach you to read scribing, Luke. And if you want it, and
you allow me enough time, I'll teach you the rest. You will become one
of us in full measure--an adept of the White Current.
You will finally wa lk your mother's path."
Luke understood the significance of what he was being offered. "Thank
you," he said in a voice drawn tight by emotion. "Even the chance that
I might find her--I want to bring as much of her into my life as I
can--I want that balance--" "But you still have questions," she
supplied.
"Yes."
"Please don't hold them back because you don't want to seem
ungrateful.
Ask them."
Her words captured the flavor of his reluctance exactly.
"Is telepathy one of the adept's skills?"
She laughed lightly. "Are people now so afraid to 'look closely at
Luke Skywalker that ordinary attentive-ness seems remarkable?"
Luke's smile was rueful and faintly embarrassed.
"Perhaps."
"They should not be," she said. "Now ask me the real question.
Something else in those reports, I think."
"Something that wasn't there," he said. "You were right. There wasn't
a word about the Fallanassi-not on Lucazec, or Teyr, or Coruscant, or
Atzerri. Not that word."
"You must wonder whether there really is a circle," she said, "or if
this is just a fable spun by a lonely mad-woman to lure you away with
her." She showed a small smile, inviting him to demur.
"I just expected there to be something. Rumors, myths, legends,
superstitions---it's hard to understand how a people as powerful as the
Fallanassi, with as long a history as you've suggested, could leave no
trace of yourselves!"
"Because we have made it so," she said quietly.
"--Or are the traces there, and I don't know the right names to ask
after-- What did you say?"
"Because we have made it so," she repeated. "When such traces appear,
we remove them. But there are not many to remove, because we have not
made it our purpose to leave a mark."
Luke nodded slowly. "Not to conquer--not to con-vert--but to find the
place where one belongs--" "Yes. If you understand that, you
understand the most important truth of the Current," she said. "If you
let it, it will carry you to where you need to be, for the lessons you
need to learn, the work you need to do, and the people who need you in
their lives."
Nodding, Luke slid across to the pilot's seat.
"Speaking of which--we've been sitting here a long time.
We should get going," he said. "But I need to know where."
"J't'p'tan," she said. "The world is called J't'p'tan."
Luke turned away toward the controls. "Well--you've stumped me
again.
I'll have to look that one up in the navigation atlas."
"Luke--" "What?"
"Isn't there a question you haven't asked?"
Luke thought for a moment. There were many he still could ask, but the
urgency had left them. He believed she would answer them all, in their
turn. "Yes, one," he said finally. "Did you love Andras?"
"That isn't the question I expected," Akanah said, and bit her lower
lip. "Yes. I loved him. He held me lightly. He found something in
me that he thought was beautiful, and he never tried to change me. And
he was never cruel. It was like being a child--like being a child
should be. I wish that it could have lasted."
Curiously, J't'p'tan wasn't in the skiff's navigational database.
Since the spelling was so odd, he pressed Akanah about it.
"It isn't a Basic word," she said, calling forward to him from the
refresher. "It's the Basic transliteration of four mystical glyphs in
H'kig--'jeh,' the immanent; 'teh,' the transcendent; 'peh,' the
eternal; and 'tan,' the conscious essence. Only 'tan' may be written
out in full. The H'kig consider the others too sacred. The spelling I
gave you is the convention that respects that belief."
"You could have just said 'I'm sure,'" he said with mock grumpiness.
"Next time, I will."
The failure of the skiff to identify their destination forced Luke to
make a query to Coruscant, and Mud Sloth to linger a while longer near
the Oort Cloud. When the Astrographical Survey Institute returned the
requested coordinates, they caused Luke's eyes to widen.
"A long way," he said, zooming and scrolling the nav chart across the
primary display. "And we can't go there directly, because that'd put
us on the wrong side of the Borderlands for the whole middle third of
the trip."
"Which would be unsafe, I take it."
"There are Interdictor patrols all in through there," Luke said. "But
that's okay, because it's too far to go in one jump anyway. We'd be
twenty hours over the skiff's endurance. I'm going to have to pick a
stopping place somewhere along the way." He waggled a finger over one
section of the map. "Somewhere in here--that'll keep us on the right
side of the line."
"I'll leave that decision up to you."
Luke drew a small square around their destination and zoomed the map in
to a more familiar scale. Legend marks and other identifiers popped
into view. "Farlax Sector," he said under his breath.
"What?"
"Talking to myself," Luke said. "I'm tired. My mind's already lying
down in the bunk."
He zoomed the map another order of magnitude. Not just
Farlax--Koornacht Cluster, he realized with a troubled frown. Pulling
the datapad from the tie-down keeper, he brought up the news abstract
and searched it for J't'p'tan. It was a relief not to find it listed
among the worlds involved in the fighting.
Still frowning, Luke next turned to the PIO reports still waiting in
the message queue. Skimming, he found confirmation for the key element
in the news reports--some colony worlds within Koornacht had been
attacked, and their populations exterminated, by the Yevetha. Some
colonies were given by name, some only by the origin of the
colonists.
But J't'p'tan was not mentioned.
Nor were the H'kig.
He zoomed the navigation map once more and studied the ge
ography of
Koornacht Cluster. J't'p'tan lay in the interior, out of scanning
range for a ship on the edge of the Cluster. If something had happened
there, Corus-cant might not have any way to know.
Do I tell her? Do we wait here until we know more, or do we go?
As he plotted an alternate course--one that would take them as close to
the border as possible without crossing the line--he allowed himself to
consider the horrendous possibility that the Yevetha had fallen on
J't'p'tan and exterminated the Fallanassi. It was possible that he and
Akanah had set out on their journey too late--by no more than a few
tens of days. It was possible that Nashira had been alive that short a
time ago--and was now dead.
Akanah emerged from the refresher, and Luke pushed the datapad back in
the keeper as she came forward. I can carry this. I can tolerate this
uncertainty--she can't, he told himself as he blanked the secondary
display.
"We have a good line to Utharis," he said to her. "A Tarrack world,
just inside the border. We should be able to take care of the skiff
there with no problems."
"Have you ever been there?"
"No," Luke said, sending the coordinates to the autopilot. "You?"
"No."
"Can't get a better recommendation than that," Luke said, suddenly
feeling as tired as he had pretended to a short time before. "When we
get there, I'll buy you a souvenir hat."
He did not wait for Akanah to settle in her couch.
Thumbing the hyperdrive safety and throwing the actuators forward, Luke
bent time, stretched the stars, and hurled the ship toward Utharis.
Lying on his back in the bunk, Luke stared up into the mesmerizer that
covered the bulkhead above the bunk.
The thin panel offered several holographic depth illusions intended to
combat shipbound claustrophobia, an array of hypnotic sleep-inducing
light and color patterns, and several other displays of a purely
recreational nature. Playing before Luke's eyes was the slowly
spinning disk of a great spiral-armed galaxy as viewed from outside, a
thousand light-years above the galactic plane.
Luke had seen such a sight once before--from the Alliance's medical
frigate, at the deep rendezvous point they had code-named Haven. The
sight took him back.
That had been after the debacle at Hoth, after the escape from
Bespin.
He held his right hand, the bionic hand, up before his face and flexed
the fingers, remembering--trying to remember.
Even more than leaving Tatooine in the Falcon with Han and Obi-Wan, it
was his encounter with Vader, there in Cloud City, that divided his
life into two halves.
Before that, Luke had been little different from any of the Empire's
many casual victims--uprooted from his home by Imperial brutality,
recruited-into the Rebellion more by rage and tragedy than ideology.
The blaster boltg that killed Owen and Beru had destroyed one future
and sent him tumbling into another. But it had seemed a matter of
chance, not destiny.
His meeting with his father, though, had laid a greater weight on his
shoulders. Not until he was hanging from the power gantry, hearing the
voice from behind the black mask speaking unthinkable words, had he
understood what was being asked of him. Not until then had he known
that he and no one else could carry that weight. Looking back to that
moment was looking back to the moment he became himself. Looking back
beyond that moment was almost impossible.
You can hardly see twenty-one from thirty-four, he thought.
The soft click of the curtain release interrupted his introspection. A
moment later, Akanah slid the sections apart.
"Somehow I knew you were still awake," she said, showing that now
familiar quick smile. "What did I leave you wondering about?"
He shook his head. "I was just thinking about when I stopped being a
kid. And how long ago it seems."
"What if you live to be as old as Yoda?"
He smiled ruefully. "Then I'll probably laugh at myself for feeling
the way I feel right now."
"It's not the time. It's the responsibility," she said, and the smile
left her eyes. "Luke--I'm sorry to intrude on you this way. But there
was something I didn't tell you, and should have. And I didn't feel
right letting it wait."
Luke sat up far enough to prop himself up on his elbows. "Okay."
track ran. "Even though I held back some things you might wish I'd
told you, I've tried to always tell you the truth," she said. "But I
did lie to you about Atzerri."
Luke sat up a little farther. "Oh?"
"I took you to Atzerri under false pretenses," Akanah said. "The
circle was never there. You were right about Star Morning. The
writing at Teyr said to go to J't'p'tan."
"Then why?"
"I had to," she said. "I had to try to find my father."
Luke looked hard at her for long seconds, but his words were
surprisingly soft. "Did you think I wouldn't understand?"
"I was afraid of what I might find," she said, dropping her eyes. "I
was afraid of what you might think of me if my father turned out to be
someone even I can't respect."
"Well--I understand that, too," Luke said. "I think Leia's been afraid
to look for our mother. Maybe if I were Leia, I would be, too."
"Why?"
Luke considered for a moment before answering "Her. memories of our
mother--few as they are, and little as they've told us--are very
precious to her. They're a child's memories, innocent, idyllic. And
she's protecting them."
"Protecting them? From what?"
"Reality," Luke said. "There's nothing Leia could possibly learn about
Mother that could improve on those memories--and a lot she could learn
that could damage them. Leia's never had to consider our mother in her
full complexity. What kind of relationship did she have with Vader?
Why did she have his children? Why did she give us up? When you start
letting yourself ask questions like those, you risk getting an answer
you don't like."
"But it's different for you?"
"I don't have any memories to protect," he said, with a hint of wistful
regret in his voice. "I just want to know who I come from what else I
carry inside me. I'm not as worried about being disappointed." He
smiled wryly. "Though if I discovered that Mother had something to do
with turning Anakin Skywalker into Darth Vader--" "Oh, no," Akanah
said, looking up and touching his hand reassuringly. "I promise
you--Nashira is nothing like that. Please believe me."
He nodded. "I do."
"That's so important to me--and I'm afraid I've destroyed it," she
said, her voice quivering with anguish. "I didn't want you to have any
reason to doubt me, any reason to question coming with me." She smiled
sadly.
"So, of course, I lied to you. I'm so sorry, Luke. I knew better. I
knew I would never be able to deceive you."
Luke folded his fingers around hers and
squeezed.
"Did you find him?"
"Yes," she said, and her eyes began to glisten. "In a way, I did. I
found him in Trasli District. He's the very minor chief of a shabby
little tribe, puffed up with flattery and brain-burned on Rokna blue.
He didn't remember my mother. He didn't know he had a daughter." She
bravely tried a smile. "These little pieces of us that others hold
inside them--some know their value, and others are careless with
them.
When you find Nashira, I know that she will have more to give you than
Joreb Goss did me."
"You didn't have much time," Luke said. "You can go back." one else
lives in his body. I will never speak to that person again."
Luke could tell that her composure at that moment was simply an
exercise of will. There was a tremble in her hand, her eyes were
tear-bright with loss, and her skin was hot with her misery. But she
would not let herself ask him for anything but forgiveness.
"I understand that, too," he said gently. "I know how that feels, to