Star Wars_ Traitor Part 7

The pain from the slave seed was actually a form of communication, a primitive language that Jacen was slowly coming to comprehend, though he had not yet learned how to reply. If the Force is life, how can there be life without the Force? The realization did not come as a blinding revelation, but rather as a slow dawning of awareness, an incremental gathering of comprehension, so that on a steel-colored noon when he looked down from a hillock onto the dhuryam hive-island, he knew, and understood, and was neither suprised nor astonished at his new knowledge and understanding.

This was what he knew and understood: the answer for the Yuuzhan Vong was the same as the answer for himself. There is no life without the Force. The human eye does not register electromagnetic energy outside the tiny band of frequencies called visible light--but even though you can't see them, those frequencies exist. The Yuuzhan Vong and their creations must partic.i.p.ate in a part of the Force that is beyond the range of Jedi senses. That's all. Jacen stood on the hillock, staring down at the dhuryam island with its ring of warrior-guards, and he thought, The Yuuzhan Vong aren't the only ones who partic.i.p.ate in a part of the Force that is outside the range of Jedi senses.

I do, too. He had always had a particular gift for making friends with alien species. He used to call it empathy, but it had always been more than shared emotion... It had been an improvised language that operated through a part of the Force that other Jedi didn't seem able to sense. That flash of empathy he'd gotten from Vergere... he had thought that was something she had projected, something she had done.

What if it wasn't? What if his empathy came from part of the Force that he could still touch? Standing on the hillock under the blue-white fusion-ball noon, Jacen began a cycle of breath that would ease his mind into Jedi focus. He reached down inside himself, feeling for the presence of the slave seed that was the dhuryam's link to him--and his link to the dhuryam. He felt it, where it coiled along his nerves: an alien animal, sharing his body.

Hey there, little guy, he said inside himself. Let's be friends.

The viewspider stood on a spray of nine slim jointed legs that arched high from its central hub before curving down to support its weight on grip-clawed feet. Below its central hub hung a transparent sac large enough to hold a Wookiee, filled to bulging with optical jelly. The central hub also held the viewspider's brain, which integrated telepathic signals channeled from a variety of the slave seeds that drove the creatures in the Nursery.

It integrated these signals into a holographic image, created within the jelly medium by the intersection of phased electromagnetic pulses from a cl.u.s.ter of glands where the jelly sac attached to the brain hub. Nom Anor studied this image with a certain satisfaction, as did Vergere, who crouched on the chamber floor beyond the viewspider.

Though he was not inclined to the doctrinaire fanaticism of, say, a Tsavong Lah, the executor had to admit that there were some ways in which Yuuzhan Vong bioformed creatures truly were far superior to their mechanical counterparts in the New Republic. The viewspider itself, for example. Though not very intelligent, it did at least understand that its task was to maintain a real-time image of the Nursery centered on one specific subject, and to follow that subject wherever he might go. This it did very well. The subject in question was Jacen Solo. Nom Anor stretched onto his toes to stroke the viewspider's hub in a specific way, so that Jacen's image shrank, bringing into view more and more of the Nursery around him: the slaves who toiled in the wheel of domains that radiated from the dhuryam hive-island. Jacen seemed to be splinting the wrist of a slave who had taken a hard fall, but to Nom Anor's eye, much of Jacen's attention was clearly directed toward the hive-island in the distance.

"So," he said. "You say the second step is complete? The dhuryam has successfully seduced him?"

"Or he the dhuryam." Vergere leaned to one side to meet his eye through the thicket of viewspider legs. "It is the same. To create the empathic bond, as he has done, requires each of them to downplay their differences, and focus on all they have in common. Yes: the second step is complete."

"So." Nom Anor leaned back, and folded his long, bony fingers across his chest. "Jacen Solo has, for the moment, an alarming degree of freedom."

"Freedom is always alarming," Vergere agreed. "Though more alarming is that he is now aware of it. I wonder if Tsavong Lah may have been overconfident in agreeing to this phase of the plan."

"Don't you mean," Vergere said with a sly half smile, "that you fear you were overconfident in proposing it?"

Nom Anor waved this aside. "Giving him room to act is one thing; giving him that room in this s.h.i.+p is another."

"You believe he could threaten the s.h.i.+p? How?"

"I do not know" Nom Anor s.h.i.+fted his weight forward, resting his chin on his knuckles as he stared into the optical jelly. "But I have not survived this much of the war by underestimating Jedi - particularly the Solo family. I am concerned. Even the slightest threat to this s.h.i.+p is far too great a risk."

He had no need to elaborate; Vergere knew already that the genetic material that had gone into the creation of the seeds.h.i.+p was irreplaceable: gene samples preserved through the incalculable millennia of the Yuuzhan Vong's intergalactic voyage aboard the worlds.h.i.+ps. Samples preserved from a homeworld so long vanished in the dust of history that not even its name survived.

"Ease your mind, Nom Anor. Has not each step gone perfectly so far?

He scowled.

"I distrust such easy victories."

"But easy victories are proof of the True G.o.ds' favor," Vergere said in that irritating chime, a tone that may or may not have been intentionally mocking; Nom Anor had never been able to decide.

"To distrust victory smacks of blasphemy--to say nothing of ingrat.i.tude..."

"Remember to whom you speak." The executor waved a dismissal.

"Leave me. Maintain your vigilance. In fact, intensify it. These last few days before seedfall will be especially dangerous. Take no chances."

"As you say, Executor." Vergere favored him with a millimetrically correct bow, then opened the chamber's hatch sphincter and climbed out.

And Nom Anor, in his cautious, methodical way, took his own advice.

As soon as Vergere left, Nom Anor sent a message by villip to the commander of a special detachment of warriors; this detachment had been brought aboard and specially trained for just such a moment as this. He issued a short string of orders. Before the end of the day, warriors in ooglith masquers would begin to infiltrate the other slave gangs in the Nursery. They would stay well away from Jacen Solo, conceal their presence, and wait.

Before seedfall, there would be more than a hundred of them. And meanwhile, Nom Anor made a mental note to have his coralcraft fed, groomed, and prepped for sudden takeoff. He would take no chances.

He had not survived so much of this war by underestimating Jedi.

When the Devaronian died, Jacen thought, Okay, maybe I was wrong.

He knelt on the hive-lake's verge. A mob of injured, wounded, and sick slaves surged and shouted around him, hands and tentacles and talons reaching for him, tugging at his robeskin. His robeskin had soaked up a lot of blood before Jacen had managed to tourniquet the stump of the Devaronian's arm; the Devaronian's silver-based blood was black as tarnish, and smelled of burned sulfur. From his link with the dhuryam through the slave seed in his chest, Jacen could faintly perceive his robeskin's primitive delight at the blood's unusual flavor. As weeks pa.s.sed, Jacen and the dhuryam had learned to communicate more precisely, through the medium of the slave seed.

Perhaps it was because the dhuryam, like its cousin the yammosk, was innately telepathic to a limited degree even with humans; perhaps it was because Jacen had long, long experience with empathic and telepathic communication. Perhaps it was because the slave seed's web of tendrils had become so intimately entwined with Jacen's nervous system that it was practically a part of his brain. Jacen did not trouble himself with explanations. Only results counted. He could now exchange information with the dhuryam, in the form of emotions and images. By using these in combination, they had developed a wide-ranging mutual vocabulary, but their connection had gone beyond this. As his bond with the dhuryam had deepened, Jacen had found he could tap into the dhuryam's own senses: with concentration, he could become as aware of the various life-forms within the Nursery as was the dhuryam itself.

To reach the dying Devaronian, he'd had to fight his way through the mob of shouting, weeping, struggling slaves. Hundreds of them had gathered near the hive-lake, all hoping that Jacen might treat their wounds or illnesses. Many of the slaves had been driven here by other dhuryams, lashed by slave seed-web agony burning their nerves; though the other dhuryams had tried to develop medics of their own, they could neither find nor create other healers of Jacen's skill. His empathic bond with the slave seed let him use the dhuryams' own telepathic connections to feel the extent of wounds and diseases and internal injuries, and to treat them with an efficiency that would have astonished a trained meditech.

At fast, his own dhuryam had tried to stop Jacen from treating slaves who belonged to its sibling-rivals; for nearly a day, Jacen and the dhuryam had gone back to their war of unendurable pain against unbreakable will. Through it all, Jacen had kept hearing Vergere's voice echo inside his head. Which are flowers? Which are weeds? she had said.

The choice is yours. He had chosen. No agony at any dhuryam's command could unmake his choice. There are no weeds here. Every slave was a flower. Every life was precious. He would spend the last erg of his strength to save every one of them.

There are no weeds here. He had built an aid station near the bank of the lake that surrounded the dhuryam hive-island. Since the domains radiated from the lake like sections of longitude, here was the place where slaves from rival domains could reach him while pa.s.sing through the least amount of enemy territory. His own dhuryam had cooperated to the point of giving Jacen the occasional help of a few members of his slave gang, to gather medicinal mosses and herbs, supplies of clip beetles, and young robeskins that could be used for bandages.

The Devaronian had been one of these temporary a.s.sistants. Jacen had sent him upland for a bundle of grain-bearing gra.s.ses that grew on a nearby hillock; when ground fine, these grains made an excellent coagulant, and were mildly antibiotic. The Devaronian had given a nod of his vestigial horns, offered a smile full of needle-sharp teeth, and set off willingly, without requiring any spurring from the dhuryam. Before he could return, the crowd of wounded had grown to a mob. Shoving matches broke out as the competing dhuryams set their injured slaves against those of other sibling-rivals; some of these shoving matches had turned starkly violent before Jacen could intervene.

The Devaronian had been caught at the edge of one, and all that his hissing and sharp-toothed threat displays had accomplished was to get himself shoved off around the fringes of the mob. He couldn't fight back without dropping the bundle of gra.s.ses Jacen had sent him for, and the two stunted horns that curved from his forehead were far from intimidating. He had tried to skirt the mob by slipping around the hive-pond's sh.o.r.e, since the ring of Yuuzhan Vong warriors around it prevented the mob from extending in that direction. It was this that had killed him.

Jacen didn't know if the Devaronian had stumbled, or slipped on the sc.u.mmy reeds that lay flat at the bank of the pond, or if someone in the crowd had knocked into him or even purposefully shoved him. All he knew was that the Devaronian had gotten too close to the ring of warriors.

He'd heard the harsh bark of a warrior's order at the edge of the pond, and he'd looked up in time to see a flicker of amphistaff blade conjure a jet of s.h.i.+mmering black blood. He had pushed and shoved and fought his way through the mob to find the Devaronian lying on his back in a scatter of the gra.s.ses he had carried, one hand clutching at the stump of his other arm.

Jacen had done everything he could, which wasn't much. Before he could tie off the stump, the Devaronian was in deep shock; death had followed only a minute or two later. Jacen had had time to study the Devaronian's face: the bleakly pale hide, the spray of needle teeth behind thick leathern lips, the small forehead horns curving in growth rings that Jacen could count with his fingertips.

He'd had time to gaze into the Devaronian's vivid red eyes, to read there a puzzled sadness at the useless, empty, arbitrary death that now swallowed him.

That's when Jacen thought, Okay, maybe I was wrong. There were weeds here, after all. He lifted his head, and met the eyes of a weed.

The warrior who had killed the Devaronian returned his gaze impa.s.sively, black-smeared amphistaff at the ready.

Which are flowers? Which are weeds? It is not only your right to choose flowers over weeds, it is your responsibility. Vergere's words rang true. But Jacen doubted the truth he'd found in them was the truth she had intended. He discovered that he didn't really care what Vergere had intended. He had chosen. Expressionlessly, he rose and turned his back on the warrior and moved away into the mob.

He'd decided who the weeds were. You want gardening? he thought with icy clarity. just wait. I'll show you gardening. just you wait.

FOUR.

THE WILL OF THE G.o.dS.

A battered, barren world circled a blue-white spark of fusion fire.

This world had seen the rise and fall of nation after nation, from simple provincial states to planetary confederations to interstellar empires and galactic republics. It had been the scene of a million battles, from simple surface skirmishes to the destruction of whole civilizations. It had been ravaged by war and reconstruction until its original environment survived only beneath sterile polar ice caps; it was the most artificial world of a galactic culture devoted to artifice. The whole planet had become a machine. This was about to change.

Its new masters began by stealing its moons. Stripped from orbit by dovin basal gravity drives, the three smaller moons were steered well away, while the largest was pulverized by tidal stress created by pulses from other yammosk-linked dovin basals. A refined application of similar techniques organized the resultant ma.s.s of dust and gravel and lumps of hardening magma into a thick spreading ring-disk of rubble that rotated around the planet at an angle seventeen degrees from the ecliptic. This, while dramatic in itself, was only a prologue. Dovin basals had been grown on the planet's surface.

The effect of gravity can be profitably described topographically, as an altered curvature of s.p.a.ce-time. The dovin basals on the planet's surface altered the curve of local s.p.a.ce-time in such a way that the direction of the planet's...o...b..t became, roughly speaking, uphill. The planet slowed. Slowing, it fell inward, toward its sun.

It got warmer. On its long slow fall toward its sun, the planet suffered a bombardment of small meteors, carefully sized and with their angle of atmospheric entry precisely calculated so that they would reach an average temperature sufficient to vaporize their primary mineral, without cracking it into its const.i.tuent molecules of hydrogen and oxygen. The primary mineral of these small meteors was a mineral only in the black chill of interplanetary s.p.a.ce; by the time it reached the warming surface, it had lost its crystalline structure, and was simply water.

For the first time in a thousand years, natural rain fell across the face of the planet. Once the planet had spiraled into its revised orbit, the dovin basals quieted, and s.p.a.ce returned to its customary topography. The three remaining moons were moved back into new, more complex orbits, whose tidal effects would eventually braid the striated disk of rubble that ringed the planet into a permanent sky-bridge of rainbow lace. By the time the seeds.h.i.+p fell back into normal s.p.a.ce and moved toward an orbital intercept, the planet duplicated--in its gross elements of orbital length, rotation, moons, and rings--the eon-lost homeworld of the Yuuzhan Vong.

It remained only to remake the surface, and bring Life to the shattered remnants of what once had been a single planetwide city, so that the planet could grow into the name it would bear: Yuuzhan'tar, the Creche of G.o.d. Coruscant was ready for seedfall.

In the Nursery, it was the tizo'pil Yun'tchilat: the Day of Comprehending the Will of the G.o.ds. In these last few hours before seedfall, teams of shapers fanned out through the dhuryams' domains, measuring, calculating, indexing, and evaluating. Each shaper team walked in company with a squad of towering, lanky warriors: heavily armored, weapons at the ready, glittering eyes scanning ceaselessly, moving with the ponderously sinister threat of reeks in mating season. Four squads guarded the shreeyam'tiz: a small, specialized subspecies of yammosk, this speeder-sized creature existed only to emit a powerful interference signal in the telepathic band used by yammosks and dhuryams alike.

The squads had carried the barrel-bodied shreeyam'tiz into the Nursery in a huge basin filled with nutrient fluid. This was the first act of the tizo'pil Yun'tchilat, because each dhuryam knew that this was the day that would decide life or death. The shreeyam'tiz ensured that none of the dhuryams could use its slaves for any desperate act of sabotage or self-defense. These slave seeds are designed with a fail-safe: when telepathic contact with a dhuryam is severed, each slave seed automatically immobilizes its slave by driving him mercilessly toward its parent, the coraltree basal from which slave coral was harvested.

Shrieking sudden inexplicable agony, the slaves scrambled for each domain's coraltree basal. Only actual physical contact with the coraltree basal could quiet a slave's pain; even the sick and wounded had dragged themselves over rocks and through swamps, howling. This organized the slaves into neat little cl.u.s.ters, keeping them safely out of the way until they could be most conveniently disposed of. To the slaves, it didn't matter which dhuryam won. None of them were supposed to live long enough to find out.

Nom Anor glared at the image in the viewspider's sac of optical jelly.

"Why doesn't he do something?"

Vergere shrugged liquidly, and leaned to one side to get a better look through the viewspider's thicket of legs.

"He is doing something. Just not what you expected."

"He knows, doesn't he? He knows the slaves are to be killed? "

"He knows." The image in the optical jelly was barely more than a shadow in a twilit mist. The shreeyam'tiz blocked the viewspider's image links along with the dhuryams' control; to maintain its view of Jacen Solo, it was forced to generate a shadow shape using the infrared-sensitive eyespots of the sessile polyps in the amphistaff grove.

"He just stands there,"

Nom Anor growled. He s.h.i.+fted his weight, glowering at the image.

"How can he simply stand? The agony...!"

"Agony, yes. Suffering? Perhaps. He has learned much."

"Is he hiding? Is that it?"

Vergere shrugged again.

"If so, he has picked the perfect spot." The shadow of Jacen Solo stood at the heart of the amphistaff grove.

"And the polyps don't attack," Nom Anor muttered, gnawing absently on the edge of one knuckle. "They have slashed and slaughtered everyone within their reach for weeks: slave, warrior, and shaper alike. But this Solo--he's like one of those, what do you call them, trigger-birds, that sail along in perfect safety within the feeding tentacles of a Bespinese beldon."

"Perhaps he and the polyps have reached some... understanding."

"I do not find the prospect rea.s.suring."

"No? You should, Executor. It is for this that I have trained him, yes?"

Nom Anor pulled his knuckle away from his mouth and squinted at her.

"For this?"

"Of course. Here, now, at the crisis point, at the Day of Decision, Jacen Solo does not stand with others of his kind. Despite the worst pain his nervous system can suffer, he has chosen to stand among the life-forms of an alien galaxy. Our galaxy, Executor. He has more in common with the masters than he does with the slaves, and he begins to recognize this."

"Are you sure?"

"He may have journeyed so far along the True Way already that the fate of slaves no longer concerns him."

"I don't believe it," Nom Anor growled. "I don't believe it for a nan.o.blip. You don't know these Jedi as I do."

"Perhaps not." Vergere's crest fanned a faintly self-amused green.

"Does anyone?"

Abruptly, Nom Anor reached into a head-sized bubble-den in the wall near his knee and grabbed a villip.

"There is a slave in the amphistaff grove," he said into it. "Pick him up. Bind him and return him to my coralcraft."

The villip whispered with the reply from the commander of Nom Anor's ooglith-masqued warriors.

"I hear and obey, Executor."

"As you value your father's bones, do not fail in this. This slave is a Jedi infiltrator who must not be allowed to disrupt the tizo'pit Yun'tchilat."

"If he resists? "

"I would prefer that he lives--but I do not require it. Do not risk damage to the seeds.h.i.+p. Minimize any disruption."

"I hear and obey, Executor. "

Nom Anor commanded the villip to revert to its original form.

"So." He turned again to Vergere. "As you say: our Solo Project has progressed well. The Nursery has served its purpose. We'd have to remove him before the executions anyway; better to get it taken care of now, in case he still harbors any illusions of heroism.

The ceremony must continue without any risk of interference. You should be planning the next phase of his training; you'll want to continue as soon as he's safely aboard my coralcraft."

"My people, Nom Anor," Vergere said meditatively, "have a proverb about counting glitterflies when all one has is maggots."

"What?" Nom Anor scowled. "What does that mean?"