The Joiner King (43 page)

When the other subjects did not show a similar rise in the activity of their hypothalamic or limbic systems, Luke asked, “Is that enough?”

“Not yet. She must believe it will never end.”

The Killik’s mandibles clacked close, and its antennae began to whip madly back and forth. Luke reminded himself that this was the insect that had tried to turn his son against his wife, but that did not make torture feel right. Mara was spending every waking minute with Ben, trying to make him understand how the things that Gorog had said could be true and still not mean she was an evil person, and Luke knew that even
she
would not have approved of the insect’s suffering.

Mara reached out to him in the Force, worried about Ben and curious about what was happening to Gorog.

Luke’s stomach grew hollow with fear. Ben and Gorog were
clearly joined—perhaps not as completely as Alema, but too much. A part of Luke wanted to kill the Killik right now, to punish it for trying to use his son against him, to sever the connection before it grew any stronger.

But a bigger part of Luke wanted to protect Ben, to spare him the anguish of knowing that his friend was in pain. He started to tell Cilghal to turn off the probe—then Tesar’s hypothalamic bar began to rise. Tahiri’s limbic system also began to show more activity, and Tekli exhibited steep rises in both.

A moment later, the trio’s data bars vanished as they pushed off their scanning helmets and began to peel electrodes off their bodies. Unlike Alema and Gorog, they were not restrained.

“Okay, turn it off,” Luke said. He could feel Mara growing more concerned about Ben. “There’s no sense—”

Cilghal held up a hand. “Wait.”

Gorog continued to clench her limbs to her chest and whip her antennae. Tekli, who as a healer was a little faster at extricating herself from the equipment, emerged from her chamber first.

“I’m sorry,” she said, marching straight for the exit. “I need to use the refresher.”

“Of course.” Cilghal swiveled a dark eye in Luke’s direction, and he felt her interest growing. “Take your time.”

Tahiri emerged next. “You need to give us a break sometimes,” she complained, walking over to the console. “I’m beginning to feel like I’m on a weeklong X-wing jump.”

Tahiri’s gaze drifted to the data-holo and lingered for a moment on Gorog’s bars. Then she turned to Luke with her mouth twisted into a brutal grin.

“Looks like I’m not the only one who came out of the war part Yuuzhan Vong,” she said. “What’s next? Jedi tattoos?”

The comment stung Luke more than it should have—in large part because he could feel his wife growing more worried and angry as the experiment continued.

“This isn’t for fun,” Luke said. “We’re—”

“Tahiri, are you feeling any pain?” Cilghal interrupted. “Is that why you came out here?”

Tahiri looked at the Mon Calamari as though she were a
dimwit. “Cilghal, I’m half Yuuzhan Vong inside. The only thing pain would cause me is a religious experience.”

“You’re sure?” Cilghal asked. “You don’t feel any at all?”

“This one feelz no pain, either, but that does not excuse what you are doing.” Tesar emerged from his compartment trailing a dozen broken sensor wires. “This one is through with your gamez. He will not be party to a breaking.”

He tore a handful of electrodes off his chest, threw them on the floor, and started toward the exit.

Tahiri watched him go, then looked back to Luke with the hardness of a Yuuzhan Vong in her green eyes. “Tesar and I must not be completely joined,” she said. “
I’d
kind of like to stay.”

“I think we’re through,” Luke said, wondering if the revulsion he felt was for the Yuuzhan Vong in Tahiri’s personality, or for himself. “Isn’t that right, Cilghal?”

“Yes, I have seen everything I need to.”

She cut the power to the probe. Gorog’s data bars returned to normal, and Mara gushed relief through the Force.

“We’re through for today,” Cilghal said to Tahiri. “Thank you.”

As Luke watched the young Jedi Knight leave, he began to feel increasingly disappointed. He had no doubts now that Tesar and the others were completely under Raynar’s control; that they had agreed to return to the Galactic Alliance only so they could sneak away from the academy—as they had all done at one time or another—and seek support for the Colony.

After the door had hissed shut, Luke shook his head and dropped onto a bench in front of the control panel. “I guess that tells us what we needed to know,” he said. “They’re all under control of the Colony’s Will.”

“Of a Will,” Cilghal corrected. “Not
the
Will, as the Chiss believe.”

Luke looked up. “You’ve already lost me.”

Cilghal came out from behind the control console. “Like the Force itself, every mind in the galaxy has two aspects.” She sat next to Luke on the bench. “There is the conscious mind, which embraces what we know of ourselves, and there is the unconscious, which contains the part that remains hidden.”

Luke began to see where Cilghal was headed. “You’re saying that since the war, the Colony has developed
two
Wills, one conscious and one subconscious.”

“Not subconscious—
unconscious
,” Cilghal corrected. “The subconscious is a level of the mind between full awareness and unawareness. We’re talking about the
unconscious;
it remains fully hidden from the part of our mind that we know.”

“Sorry,” Luke said. “It’s complicated.”

“Just like every mind in the galaxy,” Cilghal said. “This is an analogy, but it fits—and our experiment demonstrates just how closely. Alema and Gorog are controlled by the unconscious Will—the correlation of their emotional centers makes that clear.”

“And Tekli, Tesar, and Tahiri are controlled by the Colony’s conscious Will?” Luke asked.

“
Influenced
by,” Cilghal said. “They have not fallen under the Colony’s complete control. They still think of themselves as individuals.”

“Then why did they end the experiment?”

“How often do
you
do something without truly understanding why?” Cilghal countered. “In every mind, the unconscious has a great deal of power—some psychologists even think it’s absolute. So when Gorog was in pain, the Colony’s unconscious Will influenced its conscious Will to end the experiment. Suddenly, Tekli had to use the refresher, Tahiri had to stretch—”

“And Tesar became angry with us.”

“Exactly,” Cilghal said. “Of the three, he was the only one who had even a vague understanding of his motivations. Barabels are usually in touch with their unconscious.”

Luke thought of the mysterious attacks on him and Mara, and of the Killiks’ absurd insistence that they had not occurred. “And the conscious Will wouldn’t be aware of the unconscious Will, would it?”

“It
is
the nature of the unconscious mind to remain hidden,” Cilghal said. “That is why the Gorog are so hard to sense in the Force. They use it to hide—not only from us, but from the rest of the Colony as well.”

“Gorog is part of a secret nest,” Luke said, making sure he
understood what Cilghal was telling him. “The Colony wouldn’t be aware of it—”

“And might well fool itself into believing it doesn’t exist,” Cilghal said. “We’ve more or less proved that, and it explains the Killiks’ reaction to the attacks on you.”

“It all makes sense, except for one thing—why does the secret nest keep attacking us?” Luke asked. “Raynar seemed to
want
our help.”

“But Lomi and Welk are threatened by you.” It was Jacen who asked this, his voice coming from the data-holo. “And
they’re
the ones who control the Gorog nest.”

“You know that for certain?” Luke turned toward the data-holo and, finding himself being addressed by a row of colored bars, frowned in irritation. “And I thought I told you to stop playing with Cilghal’s brain scanner. Come out here, if you’re going to be part of this conversation.”

“I know that Raynar dragged Lomi and Welk out of the burning
Flier.”
Jacen pushed the scanner helmet up and, now projecting his voice into the air in front of Luke, began to remove the electrodes attached to his body. “And
we
know that Saba was attacked by a disfigured Jedi Knight—almost certainly Welk. I’m willing to take a leap of faith and guess that Lomi survived, too.”

“Yeah,” Luke said. “I guess I am, too.”

“Then only one question remains,” Cilghal said. “Why did Alema join the Gorog, while the rest of you—”

“
Them,
” Jacen corrected. “In case you haven’t noticed,
my
mind remains entirely my own.”

“Very well,” Cilghal said. “Why did Alema join the Gorog, while everyone else joined the Taat?”

Luke knew the answer to that, and he wished he didn’t.

“Because of Numa.” He was remembering the time he had stood outside Alema’s bacta tank, awash in the guilt the Twi’lek felt for allowing the voxyn to take her sister. “When Numa was killed, Alema turned a lot of her anger inward—and anger has always been fertile ground for the likes of Lomi Plo.”

“You saw this coming, didn’t you?” Jacen asked. He stepped
out of the isolation chamber, pulling his tunic over his head. “Even before the mission to Myrkr, I mean.”

Luke turned to look at the unconscious Twi’lek, held prisoner by nylasteel and tranqarest. “Not this—not Gorog,” he said. “But I knew Alema would fall.”

“Elders, welcome,” Leia said, bowing.

She stepped away from the door and waved her Ithorian guests into the Rhysode Room. With a costly roo-wood serenity table surrounded by extravagant flowfit armchairs, the chamber was a conspicuous departure from the sparse décor of the rest of the Jedi academy. Being the designated receiving area of an institute that cordially discouraged visitors, it was also one of the least used rooms in the facility—and one that reflected the sensibilities of its Reconstruction Authority builders far more than it did those of the order itself.

“I hope you’ll forgive the room,” Leia said as the Ithorians filed into the foyer. “It’s the best I could do under the circumstances.”

Ooamu Waoabi—the eldest of the Ithorian elders—politely swung his ocular nodes around the room, his small eyes blinking gently as they observed the automated beverage dispensers, the state-of-the-art holotheater, the transparisteel viewing wall that overlooked the academy’s training grounds and low-slung instruction halls.

“Your presence would make any room pleasant, Princess Leia.” Waoabi spoke out of only one of the mouths on his throat, a reflection of the poor medical care aboard the Ithorian refugee cities. “But we thank you for your concern.”

“And thank you for coming to Ossus.” Leia could barely contain the excitement she felt—nor her fear that the Ithorians might balk at settling outside the Galactic Alliance. “I know it was an unexpected journey. But Han and I must return to the
Unknown Regions as soon as the
Falcon
is ready, and there is something I wanted to discuss …”

Leia let her sentence trail off as a pair of black-clad Galactic Alliance bodyguards stepped into the foyer behind the Ithorians. The two women were not armed—only Jedi were permitted to carry weapons on Ossus—but their sinewy builds and supple grace suggested they did not need to be. Leia’s hand dropped to her lightsaber, and she slipped between Waoabi and another Ithorian elder to confront the newcomers.

“May I help you?” she said.

“Yes.” The first woman’s cobalt eyes darted past Leia, scanning all corners of the chamber. “You can clear the room.”

As the first woman spoke, the second was slipping past behind her, waving the feathery antennae of a threat scanner at various pieces of furniture and artwork. Leia glanced toward Han, but he was already placing himself squarely in the bodyguard’s path, studying the scanner with feigned interest.

“Is that one of those new Tendrando Arms multisniffers Lando was telling me about?” Han pushed his head between the delicate antennae, pretending he wanted to see the data display—and ruining the instrument’s calibration. “I’ve heard they can smell a gram of thermaboom at fifty meters.”

Leia waited until the first bodyguard finally stopped looking past her, then said, “I’ll be happy to clear the room when our meeting is finished. Until then, feel free to wait in the reception—”

“We have no time to wait.” Cal Omas entered the room wearing a rumpled travel tunic as red as the veins in his bloodshot eyes. “This matter has taken too much of my time already.”

“Chief Omas!” Leia’s diplomatic skills must have been degenerating from disuse, for she could not quite conceal her shock. “What a surprise to see you here.”

“I imagine.” Omas started for the beverage station, walking straight past the Ithorian delegation and failing to acknowledge them. “Where’s Luke?”

“I really don’t know.” Leia began to fume at the way he had slighted her guests. “Chief Omas, allow me to present Ooamu Waoabi and the Council of Ithorian Elders. We were about to
begin a meeting—a meeting for which they have traveled a long distance on short notice.”

Taking the hint, Omas set aside the glass of bwago juice he had been filling and returned to the Ithorians. “Elder Waoabi, a pleasure to see you again.”

He bowed formally to Waoabi, then greeted each of the other elders by name, stumbling only when he came to the young Jedi liaison, Ezam Nhor. For a moment, Leia was impressed enough to recall why she had helped elect Cal Omas to the Chief’s office in the first place.

Then Omas returned to the beverage station. “Forgive me for pushing in like this.” He retrieved his bwago juice and took a sip. “But I’ve asked the senior Jedi to meet me here to discuss a matter of vital importance.”

“And I’m afraid you’re going to be disappointed,” Luke said. He entered the room with Mara and, pausing to bow to the Ithorians, approached the Chief of State. “Most senior Jedi aren’t available. Perhaps if there had been more notice …”

“If you hadn’t been hiding here on Ossus, perhaps I would have been able to provide it.” Omas gave Luke an icy glare. “As it is,
you
will have to do. Aristocra Formbi is demanding to know why the Galactic Alliance has sent a battle fleet to the Colony.”