The Way of the Mystics
by Tilt
(continued from Part 8)
"So let me get this straight," Taslimi Choi said as she leaned back against Rhyonluppa's black and gold-furred chest. "You and Kylan need a way to get around that doesn't involve the Temple. Why?"
Theri glanced around a little at the other Jedi surrounding them at the other tables in the lunchroom and reached for another slice of kralia bread from the bowl in front of her. "Think about it, Tas. If we depend on the Temple's good graces to travel, they can control us by denying us that freedom. If we have our own ship, paid for with our own money, they can't keep us here. We can go where we like whenever we want to. We can skitter out of here to Cae-Tauvon or Tatooine and go into seclusion." She shrugged a little. "And our own way out, if history repeats itself. Who knows, if we're totally independent of the Jedi they might not be so inclined to throw us out so quickly."
Rhyonluppa's feral grin showed the tips of his formidible canine teeth as Taslimi looked up at him sideways, and the low growl of a question from the young Wookie made Taslimi grin in answer. She reached up a hand to scritch the fur of his shoulder, and he chortled the odd chuffling grunts that were Wookie laughter.
"We may have an answer for you," Taslimi said guardedly. "But we'd rather not tell you about it here," she added, gesturing around them at the noontime bustle of the lunchroom.
Theri nodded once in understanding. [Kylan's not here eating with us because he's down in the sublevels,] she Sent to the two. [He said he needed to check some stuff out, that he may know of someplace we could use for a meeting place.]
Rhyonluppa's nose wriggled a little and he looked up and around, barking a greeting to Master Kee and Ben who were coming up the steps of the terrace behind them. Theri shot Tas a warning look, and the Corellian girl nodded understanding.
"Darling my dearest," Kee said, leaning over to kiss Theri's forehead as he sat down beside her. She smiled and caressed his cheek for a moment, reaching to him with her mind in wordless loving greeting. Ben smiled faintly as sat down on Theri's other side and she pulled him close in a hug before she kissed his cheek. Kee took a small, thin plastic case from his inside his vest and put it in Theri's hand. "Here you are, beloved."
Theri looked down at the black plastic disk cartridge and her eyes went round. "The translations? They're done? All of them?"
"Finally, yes," Kee smiled at her. "All of the old teachings you brought from your old Master, translated and recovered. Qualara helped with some of them, you know, he's quite the linguist. He tells me some of them were in some strange dialect of Iskorvan and that they had to go over the computer translations line by line to check them. That's why it took so long." Kee tapped her nose with one finger playfully. "And Qualara wants to talk to you about the teachings. He says they're similar to some of the deeper Soritsu-ji philosophy."
Theri blinked and nodded. "Not a moment too soon, either." She looked down at the disk in her hand in wonder and sudden dazzling anticipation. All those Mystic teachings, translated at last! There was so much here to read, so much to learn! Kylan would be ecstatic! [Kyl!] she Sent joyfully, arrowing her thoughts down through marble and duralanium and other minds, down to the presence she sensed far below them. [The teachings! The translators got done with them! We're in business!]
[What?! The translations!? You're serious?] Kylan's Sending was as bright with surprised joy as her own.
[Serious as a heart attack, love,] she Sent back. [I've got to scoot, Ben's giving me a funny look.] She Sent a swift mental hug and brought her thoughts back to herself to grin at Ben who was giving her a very amused look.
"I'm going to put a timer function in your textreader," Ben said as he reached over to thump her knee lightly. "Otherwise you'll be spending every waking minute trying to absorb those teachings through your skin by osmosis."
"Don't you dare!" she said with a laugh. "You do and I'll hide your remotes!"
Kee reached over and took the disk from her hand, put it back in his vest pocket. "Eat, you two. The teachings have waited this long, beloved, I'm sure they can wait until you've had a good meal." He put action to words by taking up a handful of lixee nuts from the bowl in front of her and popping one into her mouth.
"I will if you will," Theri returned, reaching for the bowl of tsala fruit and putting one of the greenish oblongs in his hand.
Ben humphed slightly. "Lifemates."
Tas and Rhyon both laughed at this.
"So, children," Kee said to the Corellian girl and the Wookie. "What class are you taking now instead of Kylan's?"
Theri kept nibbling idly on a tsala fruit as she listened to Kee talking to the girl and the Wookie, wondering anew at what Kee had said a few nights before. Tas and Rhyon as her students? Certainly the two were very good friends, much more so than Serala or Shosin-ka. Adara had drifted away some months ago, losing interest once she realized Theri was indeed more committed to learning than socializing. Serala and Shosin-ka were busy with their lives and duties. Serala's confirmation had been postponed because of her pregnancy, but she was helping Master Mundi in Operations. Shosin-ka was rarely at home now, she and her Master had transferred to the Justice . But her friendship with Tas and Rhyon had more in it than simple socializing. They all three shared an intense interest in spirituality and philosophy, a need to look beyond the simple everyday reality of three dimensions and time. Taslimi and Rhyon had gravitated to Kylan over the last several years for this very reason, because Kylan was willing to question the realities everyone else took for granted. Certainly Mistress Goza was not truly training them. From what she'd gathered from the two, Mistress Goza rarely even spoke to them. It was Kee and Windu and the other Masters who watched over the two. The Corellian girl and the Wookie were both resourceful, bright, quick-minded, thoughtful. Theri had often felt like Tas and Rhyon were wasted here, that they were capable of so much more than simply garden-variety Jedi. But that all meant nothing if the two had no true interest in learning the Way.
[I can hear those gears grinding in your head again,] Kee Sent softly as she nibbled on more lixee nuts.
[Hmm. Tas and Rhyon,] she replied. [Wondering if what you said about them could really be true. If it is---]
[--you'll be happy as a Hutt with a bag full of frogs,] Kee finished. Theri laughed at this, looked up into his smiling sapphire eyes. [You know, you have even less chance of keeping anything from me than you did before, dearheart. So you want a ship for the Mystics?]
Theri frowned. [I didn't want--oh, hell, you weren't snooping, were you?]
[Nope. I didn't have to,] Kee answered. [These new connections in our lifebond are going to take some getting used to. I suspect I knew your idea at the same time you did, as if the thought was mine and not yours. But why do you want to sneak around about this? I should think that would make things worse for the Mystics. If you were open about it--]
[Inda was open and honest with everyone,] Theri Sent abruptly. [If not as tactful as he could have been. And he and his students ended up being chased out of the Temple by half a squadron of starfighters. Thank you, no. I intend to be as 'underground' as I can, as independent as I can manage. I'll stir things up occassionally to see what turns up, but for the most part we'll be rumors and shadows.]
Kee looked faintly worried at this, but didn't protest. Then he smiled a little and nodded toward Tas and Rhyon. [I suspect they may have the answer to getting a ship of your own, beloved. You know Corellians and starships.]
Theri grinned slightly. [And I know Tas and Rhyon.]
"It's been about four years since I've been down here," Kylan said as Theri followed him later that day to a droid's room in a small side corridor on the Temple's first floor. "But nothing seems to have changed. Dust, noise and funny smells."
Theri grinned, as did Taslimi and Rhyonluppa behind her.
[Short places?] Rhyon Sent to them, his nose wrinkling.
"A couple short places, Rhyon," Kylan said. "Short enough that we'll all have to bend over. Droid passageways." He reached up to ruffle the young Wookie's fur. "You think it's bad now, wait til you're older. You know you'll probably get up to eight feet when you're full grown."
Rhyon chuffled a laugh and poked Kylan's shoulder with one hand playfully.
"It takes half an hour to brush him out now," Tas mock-growled up at her apprentice-brother. "Wait'll he's grown, you say? For what? The universe to be buried in gold and black fur?"
Rhyon gave a loud bark and put a huge furry hand on Tas' head. The girl giggled.
"Handlights?" Theri asked as they squeezed inside the dark skinny passageway, wriggling around the deactivated metal bulk of old power droids.
"Here," Kylan said, and Theri passed two back to Tas and Rhyon as she turned on the one Kylan gave her. The small triangular beams of light showed the door of a droid service elevator, featureless and without the normal lift-call buttons. Kylan reached back to one of the pouches on his belt and took out a small electronic device, pointed it at the door and pushed a sequence of buttons on it. The door hissed open. "We'll need to get more of these, one for each of us, if we're going to come down here often," he said, holding the small device up to show Theri. "Many of the droid doors can't be opened by a humanoid unless you have one. They operate on ultrasonics. And there are places down here I wouldn't want to get stuck in for long."
"All the better," Theri said quietly.
The door of the elevator opened to a narrow corridor, so narrow that Kylan and Rhyon had to turn sideways to go through. The hum and rattle of heavy machinery swamped them in a sonic wave, the air almost vibrating with the sounds. Pipes and wires and cables lined the walls and ceiling in the red half-light glow, stretching forward in front of them through pools of yellow light at various intervals. Other doors and corridors opened off on either side down the one they faced. Far down at the other end the corridor ended at another droid elevator. The air smelled faintly metallic and mildewy. Kylan wriggled to the front of the line and they began following him down the corridor.
"This level is the laundry and has some of the machinery for the waterfall," Kylan explained. "Next level down is hydroponics and recycling. Waste not, want not, y'know." He tossed a grin over his shoulder at them all. "Then below that the main computer archives and the fusion plants and the heating and cooling systems. Below that are ten levels of storage rooms. And that's where we're heading. Unfortunately these droid elevators usually only go one or two levels at a time, so it's a bit of a slog. But if you want to go somewhere no one will bother to come looking for you, this is how."
Kylan stopped abruptly as a small wheeled droid scurried out of a doorway just in front of them, turned to zip down the corridor ahead of them with a string of beeps. Theri listened intently, but she couldn't understand it. "Odd. I can understand astromech droids, why can't I understand that one?"
"Droids have different languages just like everyone else," Tas said with a shrug. Her handlight bobbed along the corridor wall beside them. "Wonder how much EMF we're taking down here. Half these are power cables."
"We'll bring a meter down here one of these days and check it," Kylan said absently. He nodded and they continued through the circles of red and yellow light til they got to the droid elevator at the end. He turned to Taslimi. "Tas, this elevator is only big enough for two at a time, so I'll punch for the lift and give you the controller to bring it back for you and Rhyon. Punch in two-five-three and the 'call' button, but give Theri and me a minute to get down to the next level before you do."
"Two-five-three," Tas nodded. "Got it."
They followed Kylan down into the underworld of the Temple, down past the levels where droids zipped around them unheeding of the humans and Wookie that had invaded their domain. Finally, after three levels of machinery and droids, they got to the storage levels. The cables along the walls disappeared after the third sublevel save for a single thick bundle along the ceiling connecting to the small glow-strips that illuminated at their approach and dimmed again as they passed. Their feet kicked up the layer of dust on the floor, and soon even Rhyonluppa was sneezing from it.
"It's so dry down here," Theri whispered at one point, sweeping the beam of her handlight along the walls close beside them. They were rough plascrete and showed no signs of mildew or mold or even condensation. "It's cool as a cave down here, but there's no moisture in the air."
"Yeah, there's dehumidifiers and ionizers on each level," Kylan said, and his voice echoed a little in the bare corridor. The hallway was only about four feet wide, and they were still walking single-file. "With all the stuff that's been stored down here for who knows how long, if they didn't have dehumidifiers half of it would have rotted away by now. There's probably stuff left down here from when Master Yoda was our age." He looked back at Theri and grinned. "I should get my sister and my parents here, they'd turn the place into a Galactic Treasure. My father would have it gridded off in no time and my sister would be analyzing everything in sight."
[Which level is this?] Inda Sent suddenly. [I've gotten lost.]
Theri grinned in the half-light. [Sublevel Five,] she Sent to the spirit. [Along for the ride?]
[Heh. I have a surprise for you two. Kylan, go down one more level and stop when you get off the elevator.]
Kylan and Theri traded looks, and she nodded to him.
When they got off the droid-lift on Sublevel Six, the little group stood at the intersection of three corridors, right, left and straight ahead. Rhyon gave a low grunt of a question, and Taslimi nodded slowly. "He says which way now? That makes two of us."
"Three of us," Kylan said.
"Four of us," Theri added with a smile.
[Heh. Full house!] Inda Sent with a chuckle.
Tas and Rhyon both yelped and jumped simultaneously as the unknown mindvoice laughed in their heads. Tas landed in the second guard position of Soritsu-ji and Rhyon gave out a truly frightening growl and bared his teeth as he balled up his furry fists and jumped in front of Tas to protect her. The growl turned to a low questioning grumble as a drift of blue-white energy began forming in the air in front of them and spun down into the blue-glowing form of Sowelu Inda smiling at them lopsidedly.
[You enjoy frightening people, don't you?] Theri asked the spirit. [You love making these big dramatic entrances.]
Theri heard Inda's snort of amusement before the spirit turned to look at Tas and Rhyon. [Hiya, kids! We're having some fun now, ain't we? Giant game of scavenger hunt down here! Better watch out, I heard they let a Rancor loose down here once and it came crawling back with two legs chewed off. Wouldn't want to meet whatever did that, now would we?]
Tas and Rhyon looked blankly at the spirit for almost a minute while Inda's grin got wider and he raked his hair out of his eyes as casually as if he were flesh and blood. [Is it a spirit?] Tas Sent in a squeak to Theri.
"It's a spirit," Theri confirmed. "Taslimi Choi and Rhyonluppa, meet Sowelu Inda, the founder of the Mystics."
Rhyon blinked, his nose wrinkling and twitching in nervousness, and reached forward one hand to poke at the spirit tentatively. His furry fingers went through the ghost's arm and the Wookie gave a low grunt and quickly drew back that hand.
Inda reached forward one hand and poked the Wookie's arm in return. [Yep, I'm dead and you're still alive, kiddo.] The spirit looked over at Taslimi. [What about you, girl?]
Tas looked over at Theri and Kylan. "You two know this guy?"
Theri snorted a laugh. "He's the founder of my order, Tas. If a Mystic has time to consciously go into the Force when they die they can choose to come back as a ghost. Inda's been with me since my old Master died, but I didn't start hearing and seeing him until I went home to Thretketh and Maul trapped us in that cave." She and Inda traded smiles. "Now he won't leave me alone," Theri finished jokingly.
[Not that you want me to,] Inda Sent smugly. [Must be my looks. No, wait, you said you loved me for my brains. Or was it my money?]
[Uh, none of the above?] Theri Sent mischievously.
Inda's laugh was answer enough.
[And I thought I was a flirt,] Kylan Sent, rolling his eyes.
[Well, kids, let's go. I've got something to show you all. Or, at least, I hope so. If it hasn't been filled up with stuff.] The spirit turned and started walking down the left-hand passageway. The spirit's presence did not trigger the light-strips and after a few yards down the corridor he stopped and looked up at the ceiling.
[I forgot again,] Inda Sent to Theri sheepishly. [No body, motion sensors don't register me anymore.]
Theri smiled faintly at this and went down the corridor toward him, the light-strips triggering as she came forward. Inda stood waiting, his head hanging a little.
[Silly,] Theri Sent narrowly to Inda as she came up beside him. ['Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter.' I'll take you just the way you are, oh great Master Inda.]
Inda's embarrassed smile warmed her again, and the little group kept going down the passage.
[All right, kids, now shine your lights up here near the ceiling,] Inda said as they came to an intersection of passageways. The spirit lifted a hand to indicate the wall to their left. [Up here by the cable guides, these brackets here.]
All four focussed their handlights on the metal strips that bound the thick bundle of cables on the wall near the ceiling, and the round, pipe-like cable bracket.
[See the symbol there?] Inda asked. [Down at the lower left side, just under the cables. Might have to move the cables a little to see it.]
Kylan reached up and touched the edge of something beneath the cables, moved the cables up a little. The familiar three-armed spiral of the Mystics was burned into the plascrete beneath the cables.
[I made that with my lightsaber, turned down the blade as short as it would go and turned it to low power,] Inda explained. [Now here's the deal. You look for these symbols at the cable guides. Only one symbol means 'keep going down this corridor'. If you see one in plain sight on the left side of the corridor at an intersection, turn left. Same with right side of the corridor. If you don't see any symbols at all on the cable guides, you've taken a wrong turn, go back until you find the symbols again.]
The spirit led them down the corridors in a twisting path, having them check at every cable guide and intersection for symbols to follow, light strips glowing to life as they approached and fading behind them to darkness. Finally they came to a half-height droid corridor and the spirit grinned as he held up a hand for them to stop.
[Now then, the fun part,] Inda Sent. The spirit dropped to his knees and looked down the dark tunnelway as Theri knelt beside him and directed her handlight beam down the dusty darkness of the tunnel. [Looks clear. Come on, kids, down this crawlspace. Sorry, Rhyonluppa, but your fur is going to get full of dust. For that matter, you kids are going to need baths when you get out of here.] The spirit gave Theri a broad grin. [And I've never been one for gathering dust.]
They all groaned at the pun.
Inda led them about halfway down the crawlspace, then stopped and sat back on his heels and looked up. [Shine your light up here, kiddo.]
Theri and Kylan both arrowed their lights upwards.
There was a round hatchway in the tunnel's ceiling, a lockwheel like that on airlocks in the middle of it. Theri and Kylan gave out startled exclamations which Taslimi and Rhyon echoed as they too saw the hatchway.
[Old escape pod hatch,] Inda Sent with a smile. [Airtight inside with a passive air-recycler of it's own with an ionizer. If no one's found the place, that is. Unlock it, kiddo.]
Theri reached up to turn the lockwheel, but couldn't get it to budge even when she used both hands. Rhyon whuffled at her softly, pushed her hands away gently, and grunted as he gave a tug at the wheel with both hands. It turned in the young Wookie's hands, and Tas grinned proudly and scruffled the golden hair on Rhyon's back as he pushed the hatchway open.
The four looked at each other then. "Who'll go first?" Tas asked in a whisper, her eyes wide in the half-light glow of their handlights. They directed their lights up into the darkness in the hatchway, but saw nothing but dust dancing in the beams of light.
Theri swallowed. "Well, I'm the leader, I guess I will," she answered. [Leader! Listen to me! I couldn't lead a Hutt to a pile of fire-gems if I had a map and a gyrocompass,] she Sent to Inda.
Inda quirked an eyebrow at her. [Oh? Then why are you volunteering to go first?]
[I'm expendable!] she Sent back with a laugh in her mindvoice.
She stood up carefully beneath the hatchway, pushing the hatchway open as she straightened up. It was stiff with age but she managed to get it folded back on the floor of the room beyond.
It was a large space beyond the hatchway, a room on many different levels, a place between the half-height levels of droid corridors and storage rooms. A forgotten space, an in-between space, not so much a room as simply space left over from the construction of other rooms around it. Theri thumbed the diffusion control of her handlight to widen the beam and swept it around the room and up to the ceiling.
There were no cobwebs, no signs of moisture or mold on the walls. The air within was stale with time and stillness. The rough gray plascrete had a layer of dust over it, of course. There was a low platform made of siliplastic slats over against the wall several yards away, a cracked and dried out gelfoam mat on top. A wooden meditation bench on a wide ledge to the right, grimed with dust, and a dark-colored siliplastic box of some sort on the floor nearby. Cris-crossing the airspace above were pipes and struts with some sort of metal chains strung between.
Theri gulped and hoisted herself up through the hatchway and into the room. The place felt forgotten, overlooked, hidden. Private, as few places in the Temple were private. "It's safe," she said absently to the others behind her as she walked a few steps inside the room, the sound of her footsteps echoing in the bareness of the room.
Inda appeared beside her, his energies drifting up from the hatchway to reform into his image as she swept her handlight around the room. [It's good to be home again,] Inda Sent to Theri narrowly, softly.
[You lived here?] Theri Sent to him in faint disbelief.
[More my home than any other place could ever be, except the Temple on Cae-Tauvon,] Inda Sent back. [It was safe to think here. And that spells home to me.] He looked down and shrugged a little. [Master...was not pleased. At least not at first. I found this place when I was thirteen during one of Master's tests. I ended up getting lost, scared myself half out of my mind, and curled up in here in blind blubbering panic until Master found me. He was a bit more spry back then and could hobble around the sublevels as well as anyone. But it was several hours before he found me, so there was plenty of time for the 'safe' designation to get worked into my subconscious. So when I started...thinking...this was the first place I escaped to.] He looked over at her with a faint smile. [And later on, I escaped from my own students here, before we were exiled.]
The others were climbing up into the room now behind her, their handlights brightening the room enough to see the Mystic spiral burned into the wall opposite the hatchway. Theri was reminded of the cave-tombs on Thretketh; flickering yellowish light like firelight, the ledges and rough walls.
[It's so...empty,] Theri Sent to Inda.
The spirit shrugged. [Why collect things? They don't last, and the more you have the more you want. I had a droid bring me food and clean uniforms every few days. There's a bathroom a few corridors over, for when people come down to the storage levels looking for stuff. I rigged a power tap for lights and a heating unit and the air recycler. I'd stay down here for months at a time, meditating and thinking and writing.] Inda grinned slightly. [I wrote most of the Book of the Force down here.]
[Sounds like paradise,] Theri Sent wistfully as Kylan walked past her toward the dark siliplastic box a few yards away.
[It was,] Inda Sent softly.
Kylan knelt in front of the box, looking for a latch or locking mechanism, then shrugged and put a hand to the top of the box and lifted the lid. Dust drifted off as he did so, and he waved the motes away with a cough. Tas came over to see what he was doing and held up her handlight to shine into the box. Kylan, seeing what was in the box, looked up at Inda quickly in surprise then reached inside.
Inda's lightsaber.
No one spoke for a long moment. Theri swallowed down a lump in her throat and gently took the old lightsaber from Kylan's hand. The grip was made of silver, nearly black with tarnish, deeply engraved with twisting braided knotwork around the emitter assembly and the pommel. A silvery-black stone was set in the pommel, smooth but irregularly shaped. A flat silver ring on the pommel had a short length of braided cording threaded through it, silver beads flashing where they were woven into the braid. The dial for adjusting the length of the blade would not move under her fingers. And she was not so foolish as to try to turn it on. The powercels had probably drained long ago.
Inda simply looked at it in Theri's hand, and it was plain from the solemn look on the ghost's face that he was remembering events from long ago.
[Why didn't you take it with you when you left?] Theri Sent to the spirit.
Inda looked up at her again blankly for a moment. [We were given two hours to pack up and leave,] Inda Sent quietly. [I didn't have time to come down and get it. We had to save what teachings we had, we had no time for goodbyes. And I wasn't about to come down here with a half-dozen angry Jedi dogging my trail.] He looked at Tas and Rhyon and Kylan, then back at Theri. [But there was another reason. I'd made my decision. I wasn't a Jedi anymore at that point. I'd completely turned away from violence, turned away from the conflict between Light and Dark. My saber was the means of that violence. I turned my back on everything Yoda taught me. I decided there would never again be a reason great enough to cause me to fight, even self-defense or defense of someone else. I decided I would follow my own Way. So I left it here.] Inda grinned fleetingly at her then. [But what's right for me isn't right for you, kiddo, so don't think you can skiv out of lightsaber practice.]
Theri smiled a little. [What shall I do with it, then?]
Inda shrugged. [Whatever you like.]
Theri looked at the old lightsaber for another moment, then took her own lightsaber from the ring on her belt and shoved it into her tunic, carefully sliding Inda's saber onto the ring instead. [I'll show it to Kee and Ben, then I'll take it to Master Yoda,] Theri Sent to Inda. The ghost nodded.
"You'll need these too," Kylan said with a faint smile, holding up an old sock tied in a knot, several small objects clicking together inside. "Spare crystals, I think."
"What else is in there?" Tas asked as Rhyon whurfled inquisitively. Kylan reached back inside and brought out a small black box, some sort of electronic device.
"A holoprojector?" Kylan asked, peering at the dust-coated optics on the box's top. He handed the box to Theri, and she began peering at the worn buttons.
Theri felt Inda's silent protest, and she looked up at the spirit inquiringly. [I'd rather you didn't...didn't play that thing, kiddo.] he Sent, his mindvoice choked. Theri felt the pain behind the Sending, nodded understanding.
Kylan and Tas and Rhyon were still poking into the box, bringing out an old textreader and the cartridges that fit into it. And that was all.
They were all silent again for a long moment. Theri closed her eyes and felt for the Force, let the turning spiral carry her mind along for a moment, sifting through the dance for the threads of timelines in this room. "This is the place we need," she said suddenly to the others. "We'll be safe here, as Master Inda was. We can think here, we can talk without fear of being overheard. We're away from the world here."
[But you'll never be truly alone,] Kee's mindvoice said softly, the caress of his thoughts in hers. [I still think this is wrong, dearheart. But I will not stop you.]
Theri swallowed and Sent silent agreement and gratitude.
"Perfect!" Tas said. She looked up at Rhyon and the young Wookie whuffled and went to close the hatchway in the floor. "Okay, Theri, here's the deal! You said you wanted a ship of your own. Well, Rhyon and I know how to get you one!"
Kylan closed the lid of the siliplastic box and sat back on his heels and Theri looked over at him questioningly, but he shook his head. "All right, Tas, how?"
Tas pulled Kylan to his feet and tugged him over toward the low ledge nearby, and they all sat down, adjusting their handlights down to low power. Rhyon came over and sat down beside Tas, grinning as she began. "Well, you two know that there's ships that went down below the safe levels here on Coruscant and never came back, right?" Kylan and Theri nodded. "We have salvage laws on Corellia, so I wondered if there's the same here too, so I looked it up. The law says that if you find an abandoned ship you can claim it and get the registry for it transferred to your name so long as a search of the previous registry comes up empty. You only have to pay a salvage rights fee and a processing fee, then you can haul the ship wherever you want and it's yours! So all we'd have to do is find a ship that's been abandoned down in the Undercity and get it hauled up to a docking bay somewhere. Then Rhyon and I rebuild it, and we've got a ship!"
Theri and Kylan looked at each other, blinking in surprise.
"No, it's true! I looked it up! And Rhyon and I took a Law course last semester and used that as our project." Taslimi looked up at Rhyon and the Wookie chuffled a little at her, his muzzle wrinkling in a feral grin. "I asked Master Sleen about it, and he checked into the details. Salvage rights fee is a hundred credits and the processing fee is twenty credits. Getting a repulsorlift hauler to tow the ship to a docking bay is two hundred credits. So for three hundred twenty credits, we could have our own ship."
"Plus however many hundreds or thousands we'd need to rebuild it," Kylan added with a faint grin at the girl.
Tas and Rhyon both sighed and nodded at this. "Yeah. That's true. Rhyon and I could do the work on the ship once we got one. But we'd need parts."
Kylan crossed his arms on his chest and tossed his hair back, grimacing at the dust in the fall of black strands. "Well, it's definitely a way to get a ship of our own, teacher mine. And the Council couldn't say anything about it if we salvaged a ship and worked on it on our own time."
Theri nodded, thinking. "Let's think this through. What do we need? One, we need to find a ship that's not so damaged we couldn't rebuild it. Two, we need money for parts. Three, we need a place to keep the ship while we're working on it. Four, we need to do a registry search on whatever ship we do find. Five, we'd have to have the ship hauled to wherever we're going to keep it. "
Tas nodded. "Finding the right ship and getting the money are the hard parts."
[Why is finding a ship a hard part?] Inda Sent. The spirit was sitting beside Theri listening to them all.
Taslimi looked over at the spirit a little worriedly. "Well, we'd have to go flying around in cloud cars looking, and we'd be going down into the Undercity."
[Fribble. Why not just Find one?] Inda Sent with a wave of one hand, dismissing the girl's words.
"Find one? You mean use our Finding powers to locate a ship?" Kylan asked.
[Yeah, kid.] Inda turned to look at Rhyonluppa. [Your friend the furball here could do it, right? Your Finding gift is strongest, isn't it, kid?]
Rhyon whurffled a little at this. [I could? Me? Find a ship?]
[Sure,] Inda Sent. [Look, kids. Theri's got the range, Rhyon's got the gift, Tas knows what you need, and Kylan can See what Rhyon finds and keep you all focussed and grounded. You link together, and your powers are combined. So Rhyon's Finding gift would have Theri's telepathic range. So long as Tas here keeps her mind focussed on exactly what is needed, Rhyon should be drawn to a ship that could work for you. With Theri's range, you could search the whole planet from right here at the Temple.]
"But--but we can't do something like that!" Tas said in protest.
[Why not?] Inda asked. [Who said?]
Tas and Rhyon both looked blank at this, as did Kylan. "Well, no one said it in so many words, but--"
[Then what's stopping you?] Inda Sent.
Theri grinned a little at this. She knew what Inda was doing.
Tas looked helplessly at Theri and Kylan, then up at Rhyon.
Inda quirked an eyebrow at the girl and the Wookie. [The only limitations we have are those we place on ourselves. Don't assume you can't do something just because everyone else says you can't or shouldn't do it. Don't be bound by anyone else's judgments or assumptions. Your potential is literally limitless.]
Theri reached over and took Tas' hand. " 'Do what you think you cannot do,' remember? That's what it means. What everyone else thinks and says doesn't ultimately matter. There are no limits."
Rhyon whurffled softly. [Will try if you will, Tas,] the Wookie Sent.
Taslimi looked from one to the other of them, blinked, then nodded. "If we could manage it just that easily, it'd eliminate a lot of dangerous poking about in the Undercity," she said.
Theri looked around them at the echoing cold plascrete walls. "Well, if we're going to do it down here we'll need to clean stuff up first and get some things down here so we won't have to sit on the floor and freeze our butts off." She turned to Kylan then. "Love, do you know how to get the droids down here to clean this place up? At least get the dust out?"
Kylan nodded and raked his hair back over his shoulder. He took the ultrasonic remote control from the pouch on his belt and began punching buttons on it. "Droids move much faster than humans down here. There'll be one or two here in a few minutes." He looked up and around at the room. "We'll need lights. And a heater. Meditation benches or chairs or pillows to sit on. I wonder if the power tap still works?"
Theri sat back on her heels and looked at Tas and Rhyon measuringly. "I don't mean to be pushy here, you two, but are you--are you hoping to be my students too? I don't want to get you two involved in something you don't want to be involved in, and I don't want to get you in trouble."
Tas and Rhyon looked at each other for a moment, and the Wookie whurffled softly at the girl. Tas swallowed, hugged him briefly, and sneezed abruptly as she inhaled some dust stuck in his fur. Rhyon chuffled a laugh at this as Tas snuffled a little and turned back to Theri. "We think we'd like to, Theri. There's so much more to the Force than what we've been taught. The Sith, the Jedi, they're only seeing two sides of it. Not that we're going to go Dark or anything, just...there's more to it than that. What we've heard from you and Kylan makes a great deal of sense to us. And the world is bigger than chasing Sith around. So, yeah, I guess you could say we'd like to be your students." She stopped and looked up at the Wookie again with a smile. "And we like the idea of making it up as we go along."
Theri chewed on her lip for a moment nervously. "It's not a joyride, you two. You can never lie to yourself in the Way, no matter how much you'd like to. It's damned masochistic at times. All your assumptions about the universe get turned upside down. And the Sith will always try to capture you or kill you, once you start learning the tricks. Do you think you can accept everything as the will of the Force? Even pain and suffering and thoughtlessness and stupidity?"
Taslimi looked Theri in the eyes then. "Isn't that the Way itself? Learning to live by the will of the Force? Learning to see the processes of the universe as the movement of the Force? If you say no to those things, aren't you denying the dissolution and death part of the process?"
Theri heard Inda laughing in her mind. [Yeah. These two are meant for it. The kid came out with that on her own.]
Theri looked at the girl and the Wookie for another long moment. "It's your choice. It's your life, your future. If you're ready to go against everything you've learned, if you're willing to take the heat for being different, if you're willing to stand with me and Kylan in this even if we get exiled again, then I'd be happy to accept you two as my students." She sighed a little and took their hands in hers. "Kylan and I need all the help we can get."
Theri sat alone after the others had gone, watching the little cube-shaped cleaning droids moving slowly about the plascrete floor vacuuming up the dust. Inda had disappeared but his presence was still with her. Both of them were silent, both mind and voice, just being there while Theri's thoughts chased each other around inside her head. She was holding Inda's lightsaber, rubbing futilely at the tarnish on the worn silver.
[You've come a long way from that cave on Tatooine,] Inda Sent softly.
[Have I?] she Sent back listlessly. [Then why am I scared?]
[You've a good reason to be scared,] Inda Sent. [Don't worry, this place has seen more than it's fair share of fear. It can take a lot more.]
[It's safe down here,] Theri Sent with a sigh. [It's a paradise down here, at least to me. Lately all I've wanted to do is lock myself away somewhere and do nothing but meditate for hours on end. Hide from the universe and let it go on without me. I don't want to take this responsibility, Master.]
[I know,] Inda Sent. [If there was any other way, I wouldn't let you.]
Theri fiddled idly with the leather cording on the lightsaber's belt-ring, looked up and around at the walls, the droids. [Are we sure this is the will of the Force?] she asked him. [Are we sure it's the way things have to go? Or are we fooling ourselves?]
Inda hesitated before answering, and Theri felt he was thinking and choosing his words carefully. [You've got to trust your feelings. You know what it feels like when something is definitely wrong. Remember that time on Korolis, when that assassin jumped you in that maglev station? That absolute feeling that something was wrong? That's what will tell you when something's not right, even if the situation seems perfectly fine. The Force will give you the knowledge. And no one can hide from the Force. The trick is learning to catch what it's saying to you.]
[ 'Darkness has a hunger that's insatiable, and lightness has a call that's hard to hear,' ] Theri quoted to him, trying to remember where she'd heard the phrase.
[Heh. Yeah. That's about it, kiddo.]
Theri sighed and got to her feet, retrieved the siliplastic box and put it up on the ledge beside the meditation bench so the droids could clean the spot where it had been. [I guess I'd better get back above. Kee is worried, I can feel it.]
[I am,] Kee Sent softly. [You've been down there for hours. Come home now.]
She nodded and lowered herself down through the old escape pod hatchway, leaving it open so the droids could leave when they were done cleaning.
"Think of a ball of energy, a spiral swirling in rainbow colors," Theri said quietly. "See it in your mind's eye, feel the power of it turning slowly in your mind. It's in the middle of your chest, inside you, where your heart is. It's pure energy, energy drawn from your physical form and from the world all around you. It's the dragon point within you, the point where the Force comes into being inside you."
Theri opened her eyes a little to look over at Taslimi and Rhyonluppa and Kylan where they sat in front of her, all of them with their eyes closed, concentrating on her words. Rhyon's nose was twitching and the fur over his eyes trembled as his forehead scrunched. Tas had her hands clenched. Kylan was relaxed and focussed both, his face blank in thought.
"Think of the Sra Yandra," Theri continued. "That point where the Force came into time and refracted into the universe. That's the dragon point within you. Where the Force comes into existence inside you. This energy ball is infinitely powerful. Yet it is always completely under your control." She concentrated for a moment, sank her awareness down into that energy inside herself, the spiral of the Force. This lesson was so basic a part of Mystic training that she'd had to really dig to bring up the memories. Zharvan, her old Master, the wind in the trees of the forest, that calm voice lulling her into focus and balance. "The energy has a pulse to it. You take in energy from the outside of you through your breathing. The cycle of your breathing causes that energy ball to surge and wane as the energy moves. Normally the energy comes in and goes out with your breathing. When you are calm and centered you can feel that energy moving in and going out. You can feel it as a tingle or a warmth. You can visualize it as a yellow or white glow filling your body as you gather it in. The pure light of the Force."
Theri watched the three for a few moments as they concentrated on feeling what she'd directed them to feel. She glanced up at the walls of the hidden room, the steady yellow half-light of the little hoverlight Kylan had tossed up into the webwork of chains near the ceiling. A small ferroceramic heating unit hummed in the corner of the ledge a few yards away, dispelling the cave-like cold. They'd found some pillows and meditation benches in one of the storerooms. Tas had found some rolled-up rugs and they'd wrestled three of them up through the hatchway. The rugs were old but they'd been wrapped up and rolled up and didn't seem to be fraying or deteriorating. The hidden room swallowed the light and color and still seemed wrapped in meditative calmness. She turned her attention back to the spiral of the Force and her students.
"Kee tells me that Jedi meditation is in concentrating on the present moment, being mindful of every sensation you are experiencing and every thought going through your mind. We do that in the Mystic Way too, but it's not our primary meditation. For us, moving our awareness to the spiral of the Force is our meditation, and we do that by concentrating on our breathing, concentrating on the movement of the Force coming and going. The energy of the Force is the fabric of the universe. It's like the water of a pond. When you're at peace and calm, the water of the pond reflects the true image of the Force. When the water is disturbed, the water reflects broken images or no image at all. The goal is to calm yourself to see that image clearly, to focus enough to not only see the image but to go through it to the peace of the true Force." Theri smiled faintly at the three, seeing the rapt look on Kylan's face. "So what is it that distorts the true Force, what are the things that keep us from seeing the Force as it is? There's the usual stuff, anger, hatred, fear, greed. All the stuff the Jedi Masters tell you to watch out for. And yes, those things are very big things to watch out for. But it's bigger than that, it's deeper than that. What causes the anger, fear, hatred, greed? Ultimately, they're caused by not letting go of things. It's our unchanging concepts that cause us trouble."
Rhyonluppa whuffled a little at this. [Don't get that one,] he Sent to Theri, opening his eyes to look at her.
"Me neither," Tas said.
Theri smiled a little. "What we sense is not the object itself. Our perceptions are simply that, ours. Not the real thing. One example is when people get into wars over territorial borders. One side may say, 'This border should be here,' and the other side may say, 'No, it ought to be here'. They're arguing over lines drawn on a hologlobe. And those lines are a matter of opinion. Opinions are judgments made from personal experience and bias. So what they're fighting over is ultimately stuff they've made up in their minds, concepts that are fixed. If they compromised, if they changed the concept a little, they might agree and stop fighting. If you and Rhyon got in a fight about something, you're defending your views of a thing or a situation. Views. Concepts. Not the thing itself. Objects are just objects, neither bad or good. Land is just land. It doesn't have lines painted on it. Even ownership of land is a concept that has no basis in reality. You can't own anything, really, because everything changes and so has no permanent form. You can't catch the wind. When you and Rhyon build something, did you create it? Or did the Force just work through you to manifest that thing? And if it was the Force, how can you say you own it?"
Tas and Rhyon looked at each other blankly for a minute. "People fight over opinions?" Tas asked. "Just--thoughts?"
"Yes," Kylan said. "When I was on Yon-Tyo, the Mard'khat asked me to negotiate a settlement in a land dispute between two of his warlords. They were arguing over who should have control over an island off the coast of their lands. The island happened to be right on the line where their borders met, so they both thought they had a claim to it. After I talked to them both for a while I realized that the argument had gone on for years and they were just arguing now to argue and not really because of the island anymore. The two warlords were old friends, actually. They felt it was a matter of pride to keep the argument going, they both wanted to win it just to win the argument. When I got them talking about swordfighting they were like two kids again, laughing and joking. I got them to start thinking of the island as a place where they could hold mock-combats, and suddenly there was no argument anymore. They started working together on the island to build an arena and they invited one of the most respected swordfighters on the planet to come and build a school there. When their ideas changed, they stopped arguing."
Theri smiled over at him gratefully. "But this idea applies to your own thoughts within yourself too. That's what the Masters mean by 'Do what you think you cannot do.' Your limitations are in your mind. Oh, sure, there are some limitations you can't do much about and you'd be crazy to try. If you try thinking you can Send halfway across Coruscant and you actually try to do it you'll give yourself a backlash headache. The physical world has limits. But we are more than simply bodies. Master Yoda likes to say, 'Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter.' And he's right. We're the Force made manifest because we're inside space and time. And because we're inside space and time we're limited by space and time. But the Force has no limits because it's outside space and time. So the Force has no limits and concepts are limitations, and the part of us that is the Force has no limits on it. You can learn to atune yourself to the Force in such a way that your physical limits are extended or eliminated."
"That's why we can run and move too fast for normal people to see us," Kylan said. "It's why we can jump higher, fight longer, heal ourselves of wounds that would be fatal otherwise. When you let the Force move you, your body can do things you'd never think were possible."
Tas and Rhyon blinked blankly at the two for a moment, then looked at each other, then back at Theri. "You two are ganging up on our minds," Tas said to Theri and Kylan.
Theri and Kylan laughed at this. "Yeah, sorry," Theri said with a grin. "We are. Damn, love, we did it again!"
Kylan smiled. "We can't cram all of this into your heads in one sitting. And we're supposed to be learning how to meditate. You two probably will need to call foul on us when we get to going on like that."
"Not that it wasn't interesting or educational," Tas said with a grin. "Just a bit much all at once."
Theri nodded. "Very true. I said I'd give you two copies of the Book of the Force, and you three are to get on to me when I get off track, all right? Now. Back to meditating." She sighed, resettled herself on the meditation bench, and tossed her braid of hair back over her shoulder. "All right. Let's start again. Think of that spiral of energy inside you, that spinning ball of rainbow lights. Don't just see it in your mind. Feel it. Feel the energy tingling there, feel the turning of the spiral, feel the oscillations of the energy as it surges and wanes with your breathing."
Silence then as all four of them began concentrating again, sinking thought and senses to the dragon point inside them. Theri could feel Rhyonluppa's aura shifting as he tried to do as she said, and reached out to him with her mind gently, linking with him to steady him. She felt the young Wookie studying the way she was touching the Force, then his aura stopped shifting as he comprehended what she was doing and reached to that energy point within himself. The almost tangible snap as he centered himself echoed through the link, and Theri Sent pleased approval to him before withdrawing her thoughts. Kylan had always known how to do this form of meditation, he'd learned it from the fragments of the Book of the Force he'd found years ago. Taslimi had figured out what she meant and would need only to practice, as would Rhyon.
[This is the most basic exercise of Mystic training,] she Sent softly to the three. [This dragon point, this ball of energy inside you, is your center. This is the point from which every other Mystic practice originates and builds. It's also the point through which you'll pass when you go into the Force. For the moment, this doorway is only one-way, from the Force into manifestation. One day, when you're ready, you'll learn how to go through this door the other way and into the true Force.] She smiled faintly, feeling the endless spiralling Force turning inside her, originating from and returning to that point inside her. [If there is such a thing as an immovable point in the universe, this would be it. Once you learn to find this point within you, it can never be taken away. That peace can never be blocked away from you by either Jedi or Sith, because the center is the center of every subatomic particle in your body. It can never be taken away.]
They sat for almost twenty minutes, meditating. None of them were strangers to meditating, of course. Jedi children were taught how to meditate practically from the moment they could comprehend simple words and concepts. They were taught to center and ground, to concentrate on their breathing and to watch the thoughts going through their minds. They were not taught that the center could be a quasi-physical point within their bodies. But even that concept of the dragon point would be abandoned with time, as they learned to access that energy directly.
Finally Theri directed her attention outward again from the spiral, let her senses focus on her surroundings again. She opened her eyes and looked at them all for a moment. Her students. Dismay and joy circled in her mind like the spiral itself.
[I keep telling you, you *do* know what you're doing,] Inda Sent to her softly. [Look at them. Kylan already knew what he was doing, he's already got this down. But look at the kids.]
Theri did, and smiled faintly at the look of concentration on Tas' face. She didn't have to reach for the girl's mind to feel the way the girl was trying to adjust to the energy Theri had directed her to find. And for the first time since her old Master died, she felt some sort of hope that the Way of the Mystics would live on beyond her own finite existence.
[The Way will go on,] Kee Sent quietly. [Qualara told me he copied all your teachings once they got them translated, and he put them into the permanent Archives. So even if you fail, the teachings themselves will still exist forever in the Jedi Archives.]
The spiral of the Force jumped in Theri's mind suddenly at her lifemate's words, and she gulped at the unexpected lurching. Some wave of dread from the future, some blast of icy cold from the center of the spiral, ripped through her mind. She questioned it silently as Kylan's eyes popped open and he reached for her with his mind.
[No, beloved,] she Sent to Kee then. [Nothing exists forever. And ultimately I will fail. The Way will die with me.]
Stunned silence from Inda and Kee both, while Kylan's eyes went wide and she felt his denial and disbelief. She looked up at him bleakly and nodded reluctantly.
[How long?] he asked in a small mindvoice.
Theri closed her eyes, thought about it, tested the spiral in her soul. [Less than ten years,] she Sent back.
[I hadn't wanted you to know about that yet,] Inda Sent softly, infinite sadness in the spirit's mindvoice.
[You knew?!] Theri blasted back at him. [You knew?! And you didn't tell me?]
[If you knew,] Inda Sent quietly back, [Would you have even tried?]
Tas and Rhyon were aware something was wrong now, and they were looking at her worriedly. She looked at all three of them, Kylan, Tas, Rhyon. Her students. All this soul-searching she'd done, all this struggling with whether or not she could teach at all, all this wondering how she'd do it...worthless, useless! A waste of time. She'd be dead before she turned thirty-five. She was certain of it. It was as plain in the path of the spiral as if someone had illuminated it in phosphorescent paint.
[I can't handle this,] Theri Sent in a quavering mindvoice. [I can't handle it! I'm going to die before I'm thirty-five! I can't--]
She lurched up from the meditation bench, stumbled over to the old escape pod hatchway, and dropped down through it. Kylan dove after her, but by the time he had crawled out of the droid corridor she was nowhere to be seen. Kee's frantic mindcalls met only with the wall of her shields, and no amount of calling could bring a response.
" 'Man is a gateway, through which from the outer world of Light, Dark, and souls ye pass into the inner world; out of the greater into the smaller world. Small and transitory is man. Already is he behind you, and once again ye find yourselves in endless space, in the smaller of innermost infinity.' "
Theri lifted her head from her knees, peered up through tear-filled eyes at the faint yellowish light lancing through the dust motes at the door of the tiny storage room. Kee stood there looking at her, sadness and worry written in every line of his face.
" 'To the Force goeth the long journey of the soul after death. In it shineth forth as Light all that man bringeth back from the greater world. ' " She quoted back to him listlessly. "But what's the point? So far as I can see, there is none." She put her head back on her knees and snuffled a little. "Go away. I want to be alone."
Kee stood watching her for a moment more, then came forward to her and knelt in front of her, took her arms from around her knees and pulled her from her withdrawn huddle into his arms. "No, beloved. I would never leave you alone." He chuckled a little as she freed one arm to hit him in the shoulder angrily. "Even perhaps when I should."
A slight noise from the doorway, and Ben appeared there, anxious, worried, then relieved to see his Master kneeling there with Theri in his arms. He came to them quietly, knelt beside them, reached tentatively to Theri with his thoughts. She turned to look at him for a moment then turned her face again to the comforting darkness against Kee's chest. " 'Four is the number of the principal Force, as four is the number of the world`s measurements. One is the beginning, the Force. Two is the creatura; for in life it binds the Force together and outspreadeth itself in brightness. Three is the Light, for it filleth space with bodily forms. Four is the Dark Side, for it openeth all that is closed. All that is formed of bodily nature doth it dissolve; it is the destroyer in whom everything is brought to nothing'." Theri continued to them both, still quoting from the Book of the Force. " 'Hard to know is the deity of the Force. Its power is the greatest, because man perceiveth it not. From the Light he draweth the ultimate life; from the Dark Side the infinite death: but from the Force existence, altogether indefinite, the Force of good and evil.' I could sit here and recite the entire thing to you verbatim. It makes no difference. I'm still going to die within ten years, and so will you, beloved."
Ben winced, and Kee sighed and shrugged a little. "If I die, I die. All living things cease to exist, dearheart."
"But why so soon?" she answered flatly. "Everything I've done to try to keep the Way alive has been for nothing."
"Everything you've done doesn't mean as much to me as what you do," Kee said. "What you've done is in the past, beloved. The future has yet to be. You can't change the past. The future is never definite. The only time you can act is right now. Past and future are illusions. Keep your focus here, in the present moment."
"But none of it matters! The Way will not go on after me! I'm going to fail," she said, her voice breaking as the tears renewed themselves.
"You don't know that for certain," Ben said.
"Indeed," Kee agreed. "Whatever factors may lead to our deaths may be changed at any moment. Precognition is a chancy thing, dearheart. Ask Torin. He only looked forward a few days and came up with three different possibilities. And he thought the most likely was that he'd die! Yet he's up in Operations right now with Windu. Or ask Master Yoda. He would tell you that the future is always clouded, always changing. Nothing is certain. Besides, it isn't how you die that's important but how you live."
Theri humphed softly at this. "How can I live knowing I'm going to die soon?"
"How could you die knowing you hadn't lived?" Ben said.
Both Kee and Theri looked at him in surprise, and he shrugged and grinned sheepishly. [These things just kind of pop out of my mouth, y'know,] he Sent to them in a small embarassed mindvoice. [Half the time I don't even know what I'm saying.]
Theri had to laugh at that, and Kee smiled. "The Force speaks through you," Kee said. "But Ben is right, dearheart. It does no one any good to sit around thinking about stuff like this. You'll just sit around moping and get nothing done at all. And then however long you live your life would have been wasted. And I don't think you'd ever want that." He tucked some stray strands of her hair behind her ear and kissed her forehead. "But think. You were with Therasslen only six years, yet you managed to go into the Force. If you have ten years or so, you should be able to get Kylan at least to the point where he can go into the Force too. And perhaps Tas and Rhyon too. And remember I said Qualara had put the teachings into the Archives. They will not be lost to the Jedi again. The Way will go on." He looked over at Ben, who nodded agreement. "We must think of the positive, not the negative." He reached over to put one hand on Ben's shoulder, hugged Theri to him with the other arm. "And we must have faith in the Force, now more than ever."
"So I'm just to go on like nothing's changed?" she asked them incredulously.
"Of course something has changed," Kee answered. "If you give up and do nothing, then certainly the Way will die with you. If you keep on as you have planned, there is a great possibility it will go on beyond you." He chuckled and scritched her back a little. "Silly! Do you think you're the only one ever to precog your own death?"
That jerked her mind sideways, and Theri looked up at him in surprise, then over to Ben who nodded. "Well, no. Torin did, as you said. There've been others?"
Ben and Kee both snorted a little at this. "Nearly everyone who has even a touch of the gift eventually has seen themselves dying," Kee said dryly. "Occupational hazard when you're a Jedi." He kissed her again. "Now let's go find Tas and Rhyon and Kylan. They're worried about you and waiting for us up above."
Indeed, the anxious faces of her students were the first she saw when she and Ben and Kee squeezed out of the droid room on the first floor of the Temple. Kylan's hair was full of dust where he'd gone running through the sublevels searching for her, Tas's face had the tracks of tears outlined with the blackish dust from the ferroceramic heater in the hidden room. Rhyon's fur was completely dissheveled. Yet all three reached out to her wordlessly the moment she came out the door from the sublevel accessway.
[You scared the hell out of me,] Kylan Sent softly to her. [Damnit, Ther, don't do that to me!]
Theri choked and nearly started crying again, hugged him tightly for a moment before she was buried in Rhyon's fur as he whurffled at her softly and Tas's skinny arms were hugging her from the other side. [I'm sorry I ran,] she Sent to all three. [Damned fool thing to do, but it scared me as much as it did you.]
[What--what are we going to do?] Tas Sent in a scared quaver.
Theri took a deep breath, let it out, hugged Tas and Rhyon again. [We're going to go on, kids. Just like we planned. I'm not giving up on any of you or on the Way.]
Behind her, Kee and Ben looked at each other, let out sighs of relief, and smiled.
[Well, now there's no doubt of it,] Inda Sent softly, narrowly, to Kee. [She'll never be recognized as such by the Council probably, but I'd call her a Master.]
[Did you notice,] Kee asked the spirit, [She had no fear of death itself. Only that the Way wouldn't survive her?]
[ 'That alone is fixed and certain which is subject to change,' ] Inda quoted to him. [She's gone to the Force and back already. She's living proof death is nothing to fear.]
The chrome-silver blurs of the remotes whizzed around Kee the next morning, the humming green lightsaber alive in his hands, the spring-steel readiness in the tall form. Theri, sitting on the bench outside the saber cube, felt the balanced one-pointedness in his mind, studied the way his mind felt, the emptiness of his mind save for the hum of the Force. The six remotes whirling around him began their attack, and Theri smiled a little as her gentle lifemate Kee became Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn in the blink of an eye, the humming green blade in his hands darting and flashing with inhuman speed to deflect every stun bolt fired by the flying chromed balls. Yet the emptiness of his mind didn't change, no fear, no excitement, no agitation. She was reminded of that part of the Book of the Force she often used to calm herself down, "There is no generation, there is no destruction, there is no continuation, there is no interruption. There is no unity, there is no plurality, there is no arriving, there is no departing." When Kee fought, there was nothing of Kee Jinn in his mind and body. There was only the Force.
She felt it as her own body moving. If she closed her eyes and reached to him even a little she felt the movement as real as if it were her own body.
"Eliminate thought, when fighting you are," Yoda said beside her. "See! No ego, no obstructions. Have only so much space in mind, like computer memory. Less ego, more room for the Force." The old one poked her in the leg with his walking stick lightly. "Think not you will hurt Obi-Wan when practicing. Fast he is, can take care of himself. Later, you will practice with Windu and Koon. Taller they are, like Qui-Gon. Fight against enemies your own size you may not always. Must learn to defeat those larger, stronger than you are."
Theri nodded understanding. "I can already fight and win against larger people with Soritsu-ji, Master."
Yoda humphed. "Get arms cut off, how fight then, eh? Never take a knife to a gunfight."
Theri grinned and beside her Ben snorted a laugh.
The thunk of a remote falling deactivated to the floor brought their attention back to the Jedi Master in the saber cube in front of them, the whirling green blade angling the stun bolts from the remotes to try to deactivate the others in the trick Windu had found. Theri felt the lance of pain as one of the remotes got a shot past the neon fire, caught her breath as her own shoulder began to go numb too.
Yoda thumped his walking stick on the bench beside him. "Qui-Gon! Pride and ego not neccessary! Showing off, you are. Impress Little One, you need not. Already she worships you."
Theri looked away, trying to hide her grin. Ben squeezed her hand, Sending only love to her. The balance of the Force in her lifemate's mind shifted, working around the stinging tingle of the stun shot. She Sent a wordless caress in reassurance, and felt his mind going blank again. The green lightsaber continued to turn and slash with deadly precision.
Ben slipped his arm around her, hugged her briefly. "The katas are only the formal training, love. The real training is with the remotes and fighting other people. That's why you're going to fight Shosin today. You can't fight with Master, y'know. Not with your lifebond, you'd hurt each other. You and I have fought some. So we'll see what you can manage with Shosin today."
A trilling whistle behind them as another remote thunked to the floor inside the saber cube, and Shosin-ka joined them. The young Kaivanin gave Theri a quick smile as she took her jewelled lightsaber from her belt and checked the charge indicator. "Master Kee's using all the remotes, isn't he? I need to warm up before we start."
Ben shook his head, reached for his pack under the bench. "I've still got a couple of the old ones in here," he said as he dug out two of the older, black-metal remotes and handed them to her. Shosin warbled thanks to him and winked at Theri as she moved to an empty saber cube nearby. Ben dug out the microscanner from the pack as well. "Take the crystals out of your saber, love, let me check them."
She took her saber from her belt and unscrewed the emitter assembly, pressed the tiny catch inside to release the two water beryl crystals into Ben's hand. Yoda continued to watch Kee inside the saber cube, humming slightly to himself, his ears lifting a little each time another remote fell to the floor, the old one's eyes measuring the warrior inside the glowing amber walls of the cube. Theri watched Yoda as covertly as she could, but the old one smiled a little mischievously and thumped her leg lightly with his walking stick, never taking his eyes from Kee's movements. [What think you, Little One? Wrinkly old frog? Or Qui-Gon? Hmm?]
Theri smiled and turned to watch Kee again. [You've known him so much longer than I have, Master. I think I know him better than I've ever known anyone, but he was your Padawan since he was...what? Five years old?]
[Chose him when he was two years,] Yoda Sent serenely. [Waited til five, for body and mind to grow enough for teaching.] The old one nodded as the last remote fell to the floor of the saber cube. [The son of my heart, he is. Glad am I, he found you.]
The saber cube door opened and Kee stumbled out, the glowing green lightsaber retracting as he deactivated it. He was breathing hard now as he had not been during the practice session, and dropped to the floor at Theri's feet, leaning back against her and kissing her hand as she leaned down to hug him. He scrubbed the sweat from his face and neck with a towel, still trying to catch his breath. "I'm getting old," he said in a groan. "Didn't used to take me that long with six remotes."
Yoda humphed a little at this. "Age matters not. Practice more, you will!"
Kee smiled. "As my Master commands."
"Here, love," Ben said, handing her back the lightsaber crystals. "They're fine. Get your saber put back together and we'll get to work."
Theri hugged Kee again and got to her feet as Shosin unhooked the cube controller from her belt and opened the doorway in the glowing amber wall facing her. [Hope you realize I'm about as clumsy as a drunken Gamorrean with my saber,] she Sent to Shosin with a grin as she joined the older girl in the cube.
Shosin trilled a laugh. [You should have been with us on Teravin. Practice is a bit easier to do when you realize it's actually useful for something.]
"At least you had the sense not to go running right up to the droids like 'Lo and Seri did all the time," Ben grumbled to her as he retrieved the two remotes she'd been using for warm-up.
"Little One! Remember, let the Force move you. No ego, no mind, only the Force!" Yoda called from the bench outside.
Theri nodded as the cube door closed behind her, straightened her tunic absently, then nodded to Shosin-ka. The two blades burst into life in their hands, one yellow-orange, one purple-blue. The two dropped into ready positions as outside the cube Ben called for them to begin.
[Don't worry about me,] Shosin Sent as they looked up into each other's eyes. She grinned a little mischievously. [If it helps, pretend I'm Darth Maul!]
Theri laughed a little at this, then closed her eyes and reached for the spiral of the Force, letting the dance of it catch her up like the surge of the tide, sinking her awareness into the bright silent wave of it. There was no saber cube, no Shosin-ka in front of her, no loving watchful presences outside the walls of the cube. There was no star-bright lightsaber in her hands. Just the immense galactic silence of the Force filling her mind.
[Theri! Hold!]
She opened her eyes again to see Shosin standing backed against the wall of the cube, her open hands held up to show she'd been disarmed and her purple-blue lightsaber humming a few feet away on the floor. Theri blinked, seeing her own blade holding Shosin at bay. Ben had Sent the command, and she looked around as she hastily lowered her saber and backed away. [I don't remember fighting,] she Sent to Kee timidly. [I don't think I've quite got the balance of it yet.]
[No, you don't,] Kee Sent.
Ben was beside her then as Shosin trilled and went to retrieve her lightsaber. "Don't let the Force in as you did just then, love," he said quietly. "You don't need to block everything else out. When you fought the remotes before with Soritsu-ji you didn't need to go quite that far into it, did you?"
Theri sighed. "No, Ben." She straightened up and grinned a little sheepishly at Shosin-ka as the other girl took up her place in the middle of the cube waiting for Theri. "Hope I didn't hurt you, Shosin."
The Kaivanin trilled a little. "Oh, no! It's like fighting Ben!"
Ben smiled at this and turned to go back outside the cube as the two girls went back to ready positions again.
[It's not an all-or-nothing thing, dearheart,] Kee Sent. [It's an equal link, you and the Force, like two binary suns orbitting each other. Independent but linked, moving together.]
Kee's words sparked a memory, one of the symbols of the tree of life, the one for the dragon-point...
"Theri?" Shosin asked with a smile after a moment. Theri shook her head out of her memories and smiled lopsidedly at her, lifted her blade back to the ready. But this time she only reached out tentatively for the Force, visualizing only her hands reaching for the power, reaching and holding on, feeling the turning but not diving into that joyful tide. She saw Shosin's form outlined in light, felt the touch of the Force in her friend as she felt the Force in Ben outside the cube and Kee and Yoda watching. She saw the amber force fields of the saber cube pulsing slowly as the energy cycled through them. And Shosin's purple-blue blade moving up to meet her own.
Kee sat up, feeling the shift in her mind, the complicated unsteady balance point as she fumbled to control this new way to link to the Force. He looked up at his Master questioningly, but Yoda was watching Theri with great interest, the huge ears lifted and quivering in thought, the blue-green eyes rivetted to the two girls fighting inside the saber cube. Ben, standing right at the wall of the cube, was chewing on his lip in concentration as he watched the fight with single-minded absorption. And Kee caught an image from Theri's mind, a spherical construct, two interlocked teardrop shapes circling each other, one dark, one light. The image acted as a focus point, he felt the way the image locked her thoughts into the Force in symbiotic equality. He closed his eyes and reached tentatively toward his lifemate, and saw and felt what she was doing. She wasn't blocking everything out! She was seeing and sensing everything in concert with the Force.
[It's called the Tandava,] Inda Sent quietly. [Or that's what my apprentice Jyp named it, anyway.]
[Tandava?] Kee asked the spirit. [What, that symbol Theri's seeing?]
[Yeah. The Tandava. She must have picked it up from Therasslen. My apprentice Jyp was an artist, he had this machine we called a 'mindpainter'. A holoprojector hooked up to a webbing of neural interface sensors. He could project the things he visualized through the mindpainter. Jyp would come up with some of the best symbols for things. Just absorb some teaching, go out for a walk in the woods, come back, hook up the mindpainter, and out comes some incredible symbolic representation of the teaching. The Tandava was one of those. It represents the balance of the energies at the dragon-point inside us. All energies, that point where the spiritual meets the material, the whole balance that drives a sentient being. The ideal and true goal of the Way is to live always at that point within us.] Kee felt the spirit's wistful sadness for a moment, followed by a sort of feeble gladness. [It's good to know some of Jyp's stuff survived. I wondered sometimes if artists were more suited to sensing the Force than us hard-headed fighter types.]
Yoda grumbled a little for a moment beside Kee, then nodded in satisfaction. [Little One has found the balance point, all it is that matters,] the old Master Sent. [See, children! Hard to define, hard to speak of, is the way of the lightsaber! Yet when it is explained in such a way as to speak to the soul, she knows what to do.]
The two inside the saber cube moved in fluid harmony, an indescribable unity. Kee tried to figure out what it was, watching the two girls inside the cube darting around each other, the two humming energy blades striking with the familiar electric rasp and crackle. It was like watching a choreographed dance, like Shosin and Theri both knew every measure of that dance long before their feet and hands and saber blades moved. Kee had seen this same dance hundreds of times before with those he'd trained with, fought beside, fought against. Even when he'd watched Windu fighting Maul or Yensho fighting Darth Niharn he'd seen this same mirror-imaged dance. His own words to Theri a few moments since came back to him now. Binary stars, he'd told her.
Yoda's small green hand was on his shoulder then, and he felt his old Master's amusement in the touch. [When one sandlion chases it's tail, it gets nowhere. When the sandlion chases the kirimana, death for one brings life for the other. If the sandlion did not kill the weak and sick, the kirimana would all suffer for there would be no reason to change and grow. If the sandlion did not eat the kirimana, the sandlion would not be able to live and raise it's cubs. Always two there must be, to balance, in all things.]
Kee nodded up at his Master.
[Hmph. Well, I'd argue with you there, Master,] Inda Sent. [But we've been over and over all that already. Too many times to count.]
Yoda's serene smile then, as he looked back up at Theri and Shosin still fighting inside the saber cube. [Odd it is, to have both my sons with me, one spirit, one living. But complain I will not.]
"I think I've got an idea for how we can get the money we need for the ship," Theri said later that day to Kylan, Tas and Rhyon. "Just that I'm not so sure that what I want to do is right or ethical."
They were all four of them sprawled on the largest of the rugs Theri and Tas had managed to wrestle up into the hidden room, a thick fraying square of Alderaanian weaving some six meters on a side. The half-dozen cleaning droids that had bumbled all over the hidden room vacuuming up the dust had begun bringing some old throw pillows from one of the storage rooms too, and within two days they'd amassed a pile almost a meter thick. The rug and the pile of pillows made a very good place to meditate, or just to sit and talk.
Or to bury themselves under the pillows, as Rhyon had done a few minutes before. A low "uuurrr?" sounded from under the pile of colorful brocaded and embroidered cushions in response to Theri's statement, and the young Wookie's head poked out of the pile inquisitively. Tas laughed and bopped him on the head with another pillow. "So what's the idea?" she asked.
Theri was laying on her back looking up at the webwork of chains that hung across the ceiling of the hidden room, looking at her green streak of hair where she held it up above her head. Kylan sat beside her with his graphicspad in his lap, flipping through images trying to find the one of the Tandava in the hundreds of pictures he'd taken on his trip to Cae-Tauvon. "Well, when Master and I were on Korolis, I used to play like I was a drug dealer. When the junkies would come to me wanting to buy drugs, I'd put subliminals and impulsion loops in their heads to make them think I'd given them the drugs. I wasn't selling real drugs, of course. And there were a few people that came to me that I helped to get off the drugs. They never knew it was me that did it, naturally. Just that sometimes I'd see junkies who I knew could be so much more than drug addicts, so I'd just plant a few choice impulsion loops in their minds and they'd do the rest themselves. All they needed was a good swift kick in the brain to get things going. But I was wondering if I couldn't go to the hospitals here on Coruscant and offer to fix their hard-core addicts and get paid for it."
Kylan looked up at her at this. "Yeah, that could be a problem. Normals and mutes aren't going to know a Mystic from a Jedi, and by tradition Jedi never get paid for what they do."
Theri grimaced a little at this. "That too, love, but I was thinking it's just plain wrong to ask for money for something like this. Or am I being silly?"
Kylan grinned at her a little. "If there wasn't anything wrong with it you wouldn't be wondering if there was something wrong with it."
"But I can't figure out what!" Theri said with a frown, punching one of the pillows beneath her hand. "I mean, doctors and medics get paid for healing people, and this is a sort of healing, so why should I feel there's something wrong with it? And why should I feel guilty for wanting to take money for it anyway?"
Kylan sat back against the pillows and his eyes went distant in thought. "Well, if you were patching up a physical wound, a laceration or a concussion or something like that, would you feel guilty for asking for money?"
Theri was quiet for a moment as she thought about it. "Well, yes, actually, I think I would."
Kylan nodded. "So it's not just because you'll be using your mindpowers to heal?"
Theri shrugged. "No, I guess not. They're just as much a part of me as my hands, so why should that make a difference?"
"Because you'd be touching the addicts' minds," Tas said. The Corellian girl shuddered a little. "I wouldn't want to do it myself. Yuck! I can't stand addicts."
Kylan tossed her a grin then turned back to Theri. "I assume you never asked the junkies for money for fixing them up on Korolis?"
"No. I never told any of them what I'd done," Theri answered.
Kylan nodded. "Is there anything in the Book of the Force or the other teachings that would speak against it?"
Theri was silent for such a long moment that the others looked up at her wonderingly. Her eyes were distant, flickering as she thought back over the teachings she had memorized and those she had begun reading from the new translations. "That may be it. I keep thinking of the Jedi Precepts. In the first part it says not to contrive for self-advantage, but later on it says to help those who are suffering. But I can't think of anything similar in the Mystic teachings."
Kylan nodded again. "That's true. I can't either, at least not the ones I've read so far. So does that make us selfish uncaring bastards?"
Theri shrugged a little. "I don't know. I hope not. I don't intend to be."
Rhyon came wriggling up out of the pile of pillows with a whurfle to sit up next to Tas. [Jedi Precepts also say in last verse, ' Know that even great worldly wealth, and the accumulation of material things are of little worth, compared with the priceless treasures; love, peace and the freedom to grow.' If you are helping the drug addicts to find the peace and freedom, that is helping them, isn't it?]
Theri grinned over at him. "Yeah, Rhyon. That's true too. What kind of responsibility do we have to the rest of the universe? As Mystics, I mean?"
Tas leaned back against Rhyon's furry chest and thought for a moment. "Well, what's our main goal in life as Mystics? I mean, the purpose of the Jedi is to create harmony between all sentient beings and to preserve life of all forms. So from that we've got this idea that we're the ones who intercede in wars and conflicts and such. So what do Mystics believe in?"
They all were quiet at that, thinking. Theri thought back over all that she'd learned as a Mystic, all she felt it meant to her. She felt Kee listening in silently and Sent him a mental hug. [When the students make the teacher think it's a good thing,] he Sent softly to her, his mindvoice sounding amused.
[What do you do when they ask something you don't know how to answer?] she Sent back with a grin.
She heard Kee's laugh. [Look wise and say nothing.]
[So this strong silent type stuff is just an act?] she Sent back teasingly.
[I've been fooling Ben for years,] he Sent back, and she felt him still laughing.
[I'm telling on you when I get home tonight,] she Sent. [Now go on and let me think!]
She felt Kee's smile and the caress he Sent before he turned his attention away from her, and she turned her own thoughts reluctantly away from him and back to the topic at hand.
So what do we believe in? she asked herself again. And her mind went blank. How could she put it in words? Or even in Sending?
[Work backwards,] Inda Sent suddenly. [What are your favorite parts of the teachings? Which parts really get to you?]
[ ' What the Light speaketh is life. What the Dark Side speaketh is death. But the Force speaketh that hallowed and accursed word which is life and death at the same time.
The Force begetteth truth and lying, good and evil, light and darkness, in the same word and in the same act. Wherefore is the Force terrible.' ] Theri Sent to him. [And the Eight Negations.]
[So. What are these passages talking about?] Inda asked.
Theri thought about that. [That the Force is between and transcendent of all opposites. That the Force is all things and nothing at the same time. And everything that is manifested of the Force in this physical world is subject to change and creation and destruction.]
Kylan and Tas and Rhyon were watching her, and she felt their minds touching hers as they listened in on what Inda was saying. She heard Inda's chuckle as he began Sending to them all as well. [When you were on Korolis, those junkies you dealt with there, why did they start taking the Dreamweaver to begin with?]
[Despair, mostly,] Theri answered. [Stress, some of them. Trying to deal with bad situations. Looking for a way to escape.]
[Sounds to me like they were trying not to think about things,] Inda Sent. [Trying to escape from things means you don't want to face them. And that sounds like fear to me.]
[Yeah,] Theri Sent slowly, wondering where Inda was leading with this.
[ 'At bottom, therefore, there is only one striving, namely, the striving after your own being,' ] Inda quoted to her from the Book of the Force. [What do I got to do, kiddo, draw you a map and give you a ball of string?]
Theri snorted at the spirit's words. [They're afraid of being themselves?] she asked tentatively.
[No. Sheesh. I guess I better spell it out. They're afraid of what they're potentially capable of doing. Well, not so much that as afraid that they'd have to give up the stuff they're comfortable with in order to have a decent life. When they're in the rush with the Dreamweaver it's probably the best they've ever felt. The only problem is it won't last. So they chase after the next fix so they don't have to go through the withdrawal and be miserable. They don't want to face the fact that they're living on alga and protein kibble and water. They don't want to face the fact they're trying to stuff a life into a room that ain't big enough to swing a peko in. They're blinded by the fear that there's no way out. So blinded they can't see it when there really *is* a way out. There is a way to be who they want to be, to be at peace with themselves and the world, to live a life without fear. They have choices. Everyone has choices. Just they may not think they have the strength to make those choices. And they're afraid to try.]
Theri closed her eyes and let the spiral of the Force sweep through her for a moment, felt the rightness of Inda's words. [They're fooling themselves,] she Sent to him. [I can see why they'd do it, but it's still fooling themselves. And it all comes down to making choices again.]
[Yup. Somehow it always does come down to choice,] Inda Sent back. [Those who aren't aware of themselves as spiritual beings are not aware they can choose how they live their lives. So if you help people to find the courage to make their own choices, in a way you're helping them to evolve. Whatever way they choose is irrelevant to you, because it's not your life. The fact that you can help them to that point where they can choose is all that matters from where you stand.] The spirit laughed a little then. [As for the practical side of things, I'd say go to Coruscant General and ask the Health Services Directorate office if there are any drug-treatment programs that you could work for. You don't have to tell them you're Jedi or Mystic. Wear civilian clothes and tell them you're a freelancer with the Psi-Corps.]
Theri blinked at this, and Kylan laughed.
"That's it!" Tas said happily as Rhyon chuffled a laugh. "That's perfect!"
Theri held up a hand to the two warningly. "Let's not get our hopes up yet!" she said, but she was smiling at them. "But it gives us a place to start."
"Master Qui-Gon, may I have a word with you?"
Kee paused for a moment before swinging around to the vaguely familiar voice saying his name, took a deep breath as he recalled who it was. Goza. He turned then and nodded up at the woman standing before him wrapped in her brown cloak. "Goza. I wondered when you would get around to contacting me."
Goza's icy light-blue eyes showed faint surprise, the flaming red hair that had once been the centerpiece of her beauty now fading with the silvery strands that sprinkled it. "Then you know what I wish to speak of? Your apprentice, the Thretkethan. She has been influencing my apprentices Taslimi and Rhyonluppa."
Kee didn't react to this straight off, but rose to his feet from where he'd been sitting at a computer terminal viewing probe-droid reports. Around them, the usual bustle of Operations was a low hum of activity and talk. Ben looked up from the hologram display of Teravin that he and Torin were studying, glanced over at his Master questioningly, but Kee shook his head. Well, he couldn't play dumb forever. He'd known eventually Goza would notice Tas and Rhyon weren't going to classes anymore. It had taken four days, though. Kee snorted to himself bitterly at this. If Ben had skipped classes, he'd have known of it that day, not four days later. "Walk with me, Goza? Indeed, we have much to discuss."
They were silent as they left the Operations center and ducked down the emergency stairs to the next level below Operations, a level of conference rooms and the offices of Windu's Intelligence analysts. The hallway opened out onto a wide terrace, trellises of moonflower vines shadowing the wooden benches and the small ornamental water-pools. Kee wrapped his cloak about him as they came out into the sunlight, lifted his face to the breeze for a moment, gathering calmness around him. "Well, then. Tas and Rhyon. What do you wish to know?"
The openness of his question clearly startled her, but then Goza's chosen work was in dealing with the politicians of the Galactice Senate and she rarely saw such. She had expected defensiveness. "I wish to know what this girl of yours is teaching my apprentices, and where they disappear to every day. And I wish to know why you allow your apprentice to disrupt Tas and Rhyon's training, why you allow her to influence them to skip classes. And what you will do to correct the problem."
Kee nodded. "I see." He paced to the railing of the terrace and looked out over Coruscant for a moment before turning back to her. "To answer your first question, Theri is the last surviving member of an exiled Jedi sect called the Mystics. The order was founded more than five hundred years ago by Sowelu Inda, Master Yoda's second Padawan apprentice. Theri is teaching Tas and Rhyon from the teachings she inherited as the last member of her order. As to where they go every day, I am not entirely certain, but I know they do not leave the Temple." Kee smiled a little to himself then. Of course he knew exactly where Theri was and how to get to the hidden room in the sublevels, but he'd never tell Goza that. "Why do I allow her to disrupt Tas and Rhyon's training, you ask. Goza, you probably will not like to hear this, but there are many Masters here at the Temple who disapprove of the way you deal with Tas and Rhyon. And I am one of them. Your work with the Senate is too demanding of your time, and you have none to spare for Tas and Rhyon. You may hold the rank of Master but if you are going to be a teacher you need to devote your energies to that and not to troubleshooting for the Chancellor. We've all watched you essentially ignoring Tas and Rhyon. They cannot learn all they need to know simply by going to classes. They need your guidance and supervision." Kee took another deep breath, feeling the sudden tension between them. "Theri and I will give them that guidance if you will not or cannot. Tas and Rhyon have chosen to study the Mystic Way with Theri, and I will stand with them in that decision. I will not 'correct the problem,' as you put it. In point of fact I encourage the problem, if there is a problem."
Goza gave him a sharp look for a moment before turning away to look out over the skyline of Coruscant. Kee couldn't tell if she was holding back anger or not. Goza rarely showed her true emotions, a neccessity when dealing with politicians and lobbyists. He waited in silence for her reply. After all, he'd all but accused her of abuse by neglect, and she probably had not expected he'd take Theri's side in this.
"The girl is not qualified to teach," Goza said after a moment. "She's younger than Obi-Wan, isn't she?"
Kee nodded. "By two years, yes."
Goza turned to him again, and Kee thought he saw a flash of anger in the ice-like eyes. "She hasn't even completed her own training."
Kee shrugged a little. "That depends on which standard you judge by. As a Mystic, yes she has. The Mystics don't have confirmations as we do, but they have an equivalent called the questing. And she has done her questing. If you mean her lightsaber training, no, she has not completed her training."
Goza's mouth twitched briefly in a frown before her expression cleared again. "I want information on this exiled sect and their teachings."
Kee nodded once. "Qualara just completed the translations a few days ago, and they are now in the active Archives. I suggest you begin with the Book of the Force, it was the foundation text, written by Sowelu Inda himself. As to information on the Mystics and how they came to be exiled, Master Yoda could direct you."
"I do not intend to give up my claim on Tas and Rhyon," Goza said coldly.
Kee sighed. "Tas and Rhyon will suffer for it then," Kee said neutrally. "I suggest you decide which is more important to you, the Senate or Tas and Rhyon. And also to take into account that Tas and Rhyon have made their own decisions regarding who they want to teach them."
"I will take this to the Council if I must," Goza said.
"By all means," Kee replied. "As I said, there are many of us who feel you are not suited to teach. And Theri can speak for herself."
Goza gave him one more five-second stare colder than the vacuum of space, then whirled and headed toward the lifts.
Kee waited til she was out of sight, then slumped and sat down abruptly on the edge of one of the water-pools.
[Master?]
He turned to look, and Ben stood tentatively in the entrance of the terrace. Kee smiled wanly. [I'm all right, Ben.]
Ben came forward to him then. "No you're not. I saw Mistress Goza as she was leaving. So who won?"
Kee sighed and stood up again wearily. "Neither of us. We're both right and both wrong. And the trouble is just beginning."
"Hey, Jo, things are moving along here at a good clip. We should have you some definite info by tonight," Ben said as he punched up a holodisplay to show a tactical display of Teravin the next morning. He adjusted the mic and earphone, turning down the volume as the Carina began transmitting.
"Ghanbari managed to get the Council to agree yet?" Jovino said, and over the radio link Ben could hear other familiar voices, Pox and some of the other mech pilots.
"We haven't got an answer yet, but like I said we've got at least four of the twelve who are definitely on our side," Ben said. "One of those is Torin's own Master." Ben glanced up at Torin himself with a grin as his friend joined him at the terminal, raised an eyebrow questioningly. Torin didn't give him his usual manic grin, just sort of smiled a little, his eyes distant and distracted. Then Ben's quick eyes caught a flash of something silver-gold on Torin's left hand, and Ben caught the sleeve of his uniform to get a closer look.
A simple ring of braided red gold and auralanium and silver had caused the flash in the mid-morning sunlight streaming in the windows of the Operations center. Ben blinked, looked up at Torin in surprise. Torin shrugged with one shoulder, looked away, then a goofy grin spread over his face.
[Seri?] Ben Sent quickly.
Torin nodded. [Last night. Practically at saber-point.]
Ben snorted a laugh. [Who was the one in front of the saber, you or Seri?]
Torin laughed at that. [Both of us.]
[I sincerely doubt it was needed,] Ben Sent. "Jo, Torin's here now," he said into the radio link as Torin sat down beside him and put on a radio earphone and mic and plugged into the transmission.
Serala came up behind them slowly, and Ben turned and stood up to give her a hug in greeting. [How's the little one this morning?] he Sent to her as the heavy curve of her belly shifted a little against him as he hugged her.
[Does this kid ever sleep?] she Sent with a laugh. [I think she's doing somersaults in there. Either that or she's built a hoverboard arena in there, I can't tell which.]
Ben laughed at this. [Only one more month,] he Sent comfortingly. [And congratulations, Lady Ghanbari.]
Serala blinked at this, her face blank in surprise, then her smile lit her face like the sun. [You're the first person to call me that,] she Sent.
[Hands off, Kenobi, she's mine now,] Torin Sent with a grin up at them, still talking voice to Jovino on the Carina .
"All right, Kyl, go ahead and try it," Theri said. "Remember, think of a bubble all around you, a mirror-chrome bubble."
Kylan nodded, closed his eyes, his hands clenching a little in concentration. Theri felt the Force moving around him, swirling, then seeming to solidify around him. She shifted her attention from the inner world to look up at her apprentice again.
And saw nothing where he had been only a moment before. The large throw pillow where Kylan Hellstorm had been sitting was empty.
Rhyon whuffled a little and reached out a hand tentatively, and grunted as his hand stopped against something in mid-air. [Like force-shields,] he Sent to Tas and Theri.
"Wow, your own personal force-shield and cloaking device," Tas breathed in amazement. "I wonder if we could all link and do this to a ship?"
Theri grinned. "Let's not try it, kiddo."
Kylan reappeared then, fading into view again as he released his shields. "Good thing I've been using the dragon-point meditation for a while or this would be a real strain," he said, putting up a hand to rub his forehead.
"That's the truth," Theri nodded. "Just takes practice, that's all. It is a bit of a balancing act. If it helps, you can imagine the dragon-point expanding to become the shield around you, or throwing off a plasma shell like a supernova. That's the quick way to do it." She grinned a little in memory. "When Kee and Ben first brought me here I usually kept my full shields up all the time. I had to get in the habit of using only telepathic shields. There's very few people who know I can disappear like this."
"A very useful thing," Kylan said with a grin over at Tas and Rhyon. "But you say it doesn't work against droids?"
Theri shook her head. "Nope. They're inorganic. There's some kinds of aliens it doesn't work against either. Rodians, for one. The Malastairians, for another. I think what happens with the shields is that they bend away the light that's hitting you, so there's nothing to reflect back to the eyes of those looking at you. But those aliens that see in the infrared or ultraviolet will still see you since that's a different wavelength of energy." She reached over to scruffle the fur on Rhyon's shoulder. "Did you see him, Rhyon?"
[No. Wookie eyes are similar to human eyes, save we see better in the dark,] Rhyon replied. [Adapted for night hunting.]
"Now. If you're inside your shields and moving you can still be spotted in bright light," Theri warned. "You're still invisible, but moving makes a kind of ripple in the air around you that can be seen. The dimmer the light around you, the less visible this ripple is. And if you don't move at all you can't be seen no matter the light around you."
"We're invisible to Jedi and Sith," Kylan said quietly. "Even our aura can't be sensed."
"We're even invisible to each other," Theri said with a nod. "If I wasn't lifebonded to Kee I'd be invisible to everyone in this Temple. No one would ever know I was here unless I moved stuff around. Except for the droids, of course, but I could avoid them. With our shielding technique and the other tricks, we make incredible thieves and assassins. And that's why the Sith are after us. We make the perfect weapon against the Jedi."
"Or against the Sith," Tas finished for her. "Right?"
Theri nodded. "Yeah, Tas. I defeated Maul when he trapped us in that cave on Thretketh without even a lightsaber." She gave them all very stern looks at this. "But we shouldn't go around picking fights with the Sith just because we can. Violence solves nothing. If you must fight, fight only to defend yourself or those who are helpless. Even in this I'm being more lenient than my old Master. My Master preferred to avoid fights and to run away. When Maul killed him, he probably made no effort to defend himself at all."
Tas and Rhyon squirmed a little at this, and Kylan's eyes went distant with sadness. Theri sighed heavily against the brief surge of sadness that swamped her, then put the thoughts gently aside. "Why didn't he fight?" Tas asked in a small voice.
Theri felt Inda's presence with her then, Sent reassurance to him wordlessly. She stood up from the pile of pillows and started pacing a little around the hidden room. The three small hoverlights up above cast a yellowish light onto the Mystic spiral carved into the plascrete of the wall. She went over to it and reached up one hand to touch it, the three-centimeter deep grooves cut five hundred years ago with a lightsaber, the melted basalt and granite still shiny inside the grooves. It was easily two meters in diameter, and at the very center Inda had left a small dot unburnt. She knew what it symbolized now.
"Think for a minute, Tas," she said softly. "All of this between the Sith and the Jedi, every created thing in this universe, everything that can be named or described....it's all just the shattered manifestations of the true Force. Even calling it the Force is wrong, in a way. We only call it that because that's a word the Jedi and Sith have used for thousands of years to describe something that can't be described in words. We had to call it *something*. In Soritsu-ji they call it 'jivana'. But those are only words. They aren't the real thing. If there is a 'real' thing." She turned to look back at them. "When the astrophysicists speculate as to what was here before the universe began they're asking the same questions we are. They go on about subatomic particles and giant explosions and the entire universe coming from a quark. The ones who ask where that quark came from are asking the same questions we are here. When somebody in a religious cult on Dirhina or Cyrinx asks where their god came from if nothing existed before that god, they're asking the same questions." She turned to point up at the unburnt dot at the middle of the Mystic symbol above her. "What's at the center of the spiral of the Force? What's beyond the Force? Is there anything there? Is there a 'there' at all?" She looked back at them again, leaned back against the wall, her eyes distant. "I've been there and back. And...even now, almost a year later, I can't describe it to you even with Sending. All concepts fail. And without concepts you can't have words. Even feelings are concepts." Theri shrugged a little, pushed herself away from the wall and steadied her lightsaber where it bumped her leg as she moved. "So why did my old Master not defend himself when Maul killed him? Because he had identified himself with that wordless nameless something beyond all the concepts. He had gone to the Force and back many times. He lived every moment as the Force moving through this world. Therasslen of Hyalos was as good a name as any. You could call him 'hey you' and he'd respond just as readily. The name didn't matter. He had no ego, no sense of himself as a separate entity save for only that which made dealing with others possible. He saw the material universe as being only ripples on the surface of the Force or the colors you see when you shine a light through a prism. It was all the Force, just that time and space create separateness and ego. Life, death, good, bad, fear, safety...none of that was real to him. To him, there was only the Force beyond all such things. So he saw no reason to stop Maul from killing his body. It just wasn't something he cared about enough to want to keep it from harm."
Silence then from the three. Kylan nodded slowly as she came and sat down again next to him. Tas and Rhyon looked a little stunned, trying to absorb what she'd said. Theri felt Kee listening in, felt him wordlessly sharing the wistful sadness as she thought of her old Master. [He would be proud of you, you know,] Kee Sent softly.
Theri swallowed down the lump in her throat at this. [I hope so.]
[I know so,] Inda Sent firmly.
Theri smiled a little at the ghost's words. [Well, if anyone would know, you would, since you're part of the Force now.]
[Yup. Damn straight,] Inda replied with a grin in his mindvoice. [Back to work, now.]
Theri nodded and straightened up again, tossed her hair back. "Okay. Let's keep ourselves on-topic here, kids. Try those shields again, Kyl. Tas, Rhyon, you watch what he's doing."
"This is getting to be a habit," Torin said in a grumble as he and Ben stood together outside the Jedi Council doorway.
Ben snorted a laugh. "Maybe this will be the last time," Ben said encouragingly. He tugged Torin's cloak straight and took his friend by the shoulders, looking down into the brown eyes. "Just keep your temper. You know we're with you. You've got Jo and C Unit and Seri and Master Windu and me. And what you want to do is right. The Force is with us."
Torin sighed and nodded, shrugged out from under Ben's hands and straightened his uniform tunic, looked over at the others behind them.
Serala stood beside him, smiling, wrapped in her cloak against the slight chill in the air this high above the main Temple building. Torin reached over to her and she took his hand wordlessly. Jovino looked really uncomfortable to be here, clearly he'd never expected to be brought to the Great Temple of the Jedi and taken before the Jedi Council. Most of the Council was near-legendary to the rest of the universe. Jovino wore his best set of fatigues and a bemused expression amidst the neatly trimmed beard.
"You look like something out of a recruitment poster, Jo," Torin said with a grin.
Jovino humphed a little at this. "Let's just hope they think so too, Ghanbari."
Torin nodded and slipped an arm around Serala. [Hungry, love? It's been two hours since we ate.]
Serala smiled faintly and leaned against him for a moment. [Too nervous to eat right now, but I *am* hungry.]
[You don't have to be here.] Torin Sent with a slight frown. [Ben and I can handle this.]
Serala gave him a very stern look. [I'm staying right here with you. It's my future too.]
[True,] Torin Sent back. [We're in this together now, aren't we?]
[You better believe it,] she Sent with a grin. [We've been in it together for the last eight months.]
A real smile on Torin's face then, then they all caught Master Windu's wordless alert from the Council chamber.
"Showtime, folks," Torin said, facing front again beside Ben. The Council chamber door opened in front of them and Torin led the way to the center of the mosaic circle.
The three Jedi bowed to Master Yoda as they came to the center, the bright morning sunlight streaming in the windows of the Council glinting off the white quartzite bits in the mosaic of the floor.
"Jedi Ghanbari," Yoda said from his place beside Windu, nodding up at Torin.
"Master Yoda," Torin said in return, nodding once to the ancient Jedi Master.
The two looked at each other steadily for a moment, Yoda measuring the young Jedi Knight before him, Torin well aware he was being measured. But aware also of the two steady presences behind him, one his wife, one his best friend. And beyond them and dimmer, Jovino. And aware that up above, orbitting Coruscant's moon, was the Carina and his Dervish. I know who I am now, old man, he thought to himself, knowing Yoda would hear it.
Yoda chuckled a little. [Are you so sure, youngling?]
Torin kept himself from grinning, but only barely. Windu gave him a warning look, and Torin Sent acknowledgement and calmed down and centered himself again.
Yoda let the three before him wait for a moment as the entire Council kept silence. Torin kept his focus on Yoda, breathing in the calmness of the Force, feeling Ben and Serala doing the same.
Yoda blinked slowly, then sat back in his chair and looked over at Windu and past him to Koon. The Vaikerian looked back at the old one steadily. Windu's face was unreadable. Yoda then looked to his right to Mundi sitting on his other side. Mundi's cybernetic arm whirred softly as he moved it to clasp his hands, resting his elbows on the arms of his chair as he looked up at his own apprentice Serala and her new husband.
Yoda sighed, and his ears quivered as he turned to look at Torin again. "Again you ask for Teravin, Jedi Ghanbari?"
Torin nodded. "Yes, Master Yoda."
Yoda's blue-green eyes seemed to bore into him. "Certain you are, your future is there? And that of your lady and child?"
Torin closed his eyes for a moment, drew himself up, took a deep breath. "The future is never certain, Master Yoda. I know this better than most. But I feel the good I could do on Teravin would outweigh that of a lifetime spent chasing Sith around the galaxy."
Yoda humphed at this. "Speaking for yourself, you are. Forgotten, you have, that now you speak for three."
Torin grinned fleetingly at this and felt Serala's amusement behind him. "Very true, Master Yoda. But my lady can speak for herself. And at the rate things are going, I wouldn't be surprised if my daughter spoke up as well even from inside my lady's body."
Yoda and Mundi traded amused glances at this.
"I wish to be posted to Teravin too," Serala said quietly. "I made a promise last night, and I intend to keep it. And I feel I have work to do on Teravin as well."
Yoda nodded. "Miss you, all of us will, child."
Torin quirked an eyebrow upwards at this. "Then you've given us the mission?"
Yoda might have grinned a little at this. "Commander Berengal."
Jovino startled, cleared his throat, and walked up to stand next to Torin and Ben. "Yes sir, Master Yoda. Jovino Berengal, commander, C Unit."
"Status of your mechanoid company?" Yoda asked.
Jovino nodded. "Twelve mechanoids, twelve scout vehicles, six recon fighters, and our drop ship the Carina , all fully operational and in good repair. Twenty pilots, twelve combat drivers, and one hundred technicians, all accounted for. We're ready to fly as soon as you give the word."
Yoda nodded. "Decided, you have, if you will accept Jedi Ghanbari's offer of a home on Teravin for your company?"
Jovino glanced at Torin, then back at Yoda. "We have, sir. C Unit will accept the offer, provided Jedi Ghanbari can deliver what he's promised."
Torin closed his eyes, trying to keep calm and centered when he was about to explode from nervousness and worry. He felt Serala's hand fold around his in comfort and felt her touch on his mind. Her patience steadied him and he looked back up at Yoda again.
The old one humphed a little with a slight smile, then looked over at Windu.
Windu shrugged and nodded. Beside him, Koon also nodded at Yoda when the old one looked over at him. Then Yoda turned his eyes to every member of the Council, silently questioning each and receiving affirmative nods. Finally, Mundi sighed heavily and nodded reluctantly, completing the circuit of the Council.
"Granted, your request is, Jedi Ghanbari," Yoda said at last. "Teravin is in your care."
"Guard it well," Windu added with a warning look at his apprentice.
Torin nodded solemnly to his Master. "I will, Master. If the Force allows."
[Beloved?]
Theri was startled out of her meditation by Kee's mindcall, opened her eyes and turned her attention outwards again. [What's wrong?]
[Nothing. But I've gotten lost down here.]
Theri smiled and relaxed into their link for a moment so she could feel his presence. She got up from the old meditation bench and jumped down from the ledge where she'd been sitting alone in Inda's hidden room. She didn't mind sitting in the huge pile of pillows when her students were with her, but when she was alone she preferred the old meditation bench. Just knowing it was Inda's somehow made it seem much more real, a connection with the past she felt increasingly in need of. She unlatched the old escape pod hatch and dropped down through it, landed in a crouch, and scuttled down the short droid tunnel to the hallway beyond.
Theri found Kee three corridors over, leaning against the wall waiting for her under one of the cable guides. [I think I've been going in circles, trying to find one of the symbols,] Kee Sent with a grin as she appeared.
She smiled and walked straight into his arms, and they held each other for a long moment in the dim illumination of the light strips in the ceiling. Then she took his hand to lead him back to the hidden room. [Well, I've had a lot of practice getting down here lately,] she Sent with a twist of amusement. [Kylan and I have been trying to find some architectural layouts for the sublevels, but that stuff's on the restricted access list. So sometimes we play 'follow the droid'. We've found at least half a dozen ways to get up to the first floor of the Temple from down here. I don't think anyone will ever be able to trap us down here.]
[Why would anyone want to trap you down here?] Kee Sent in a puzzled tone.
[I'm being paranoid, I guess, but I intend always to have at least two ways out,] she answered as they came to the droid tunnel. They dropped to scuttle through the tunnelway and hoisted themselves up through the hatchway, and she closed the hatch behind him and locked it.
Kee turned around slowly, taking in the rough plascrete walls, the Mystic spiral carved into one wall, the old rugs and pillows and the chains hanging across the ceiling, the dim light of the tiny hoverlights. He nodded as she slipped an arm around him, pulled his cloak around her. "It's cold down here, beloved. Like a cave."
Theri nodded. "Yeah. We've got a heating unit, I just normally don't turn it on until the kids get here. I don't mind the cold." She looked over at the ferroceramic heater in the corner and touched it with the Force, and it began to hum as it switched itself on. Kee smiled at this and hugged her against him in thanks. "So, Master Jinn, to what purpose is your visit to my humble hiding place?"
Kee chuckled a little. "Firstly, to see this place with my own eyes instead of through yours, and secondly to check up on what my apprentice has been doing with her time." She felt his amusement as she pulled him down onto one of the giant pillows and dropped onto another beside him. "And I needed to talk with you, beloved. And to be with you."
Theri nodded silently. "Goza. I felt you talking to her the other day."
"Yes, Goza." Kee sighed heavily at this and shook his head. "She's gone to Mundi and Windu looking for help to take Tas and Rhyon from you, beloved. And gotten nowhere, of course, though I would say Mundi might eventually see her side enough to agree with her. Mundi's always been one for tradition, and Tas is Goza's Padawan. But Windu, Yoda and Yaddle are on your side definitely. Of the others, I think Depa and Adi Gallia would see your side of things. Yarael is a random factor in this, but he always has been the unpredictable one of the Council. The others, though, will probably not see your side of things. Especially Eeth Koth."
"What about Master Koon?" Theri asked.
Kee smiled a little. "I doubt nothing short of Yoda's direct orders will pry Koon and Shosin off the Justice in the near future, beloved. One of the Sith is amassing a starfleet out in the Rim and Koon is ready to take his squadron out at a moment's notice. Plus there are some indications the Trade Federation is on the move again. Though I think he would probably listen to you fairly at least."
Theri closed her eyes and rubbed them with one hand wearily. Just thinking about going in front of the Council to face Mistress Goza worried her. "How long do I have to prepare some sort of argument?" she asked.
"Some days yet," Kee answered, then brought her hand up to kiss it reassuringly. "The Council has a full slate right now and Goza is not a high priority in any case.
Theri nodded and flopped down across some of the larger pillows beside her, put her arm over her eyes. "Part of me is angry about all this and the other part is scared she'll win and Tas and Rhyon will have to go back to being her students. Though from what they've told me she teaches them very little, if anything. Don't Tas and Rhyon have any say in any of this?"
"Of course," Kee answered. "Tas is--what, now? Eighteen? She's old enough to know her own mind about things, and the Council will listen. Rhyon is about twenty, if I remember correctly."
Theri nodded. "Thank the Force Kylan is already confirmed and I don't have to go through all this with him."
"Have Tas and Rhyon moved out of Goza's rooms?" he asked.
Theri heaved a sigh and shook her head. "Not yet. Kylan said he'd let them stay with him if he had the room, but he doesn't. His apartment is smaller than ours, he's only got one big room since he's usually out on assignments. We can't take them, we don't have the room either. I suppose they could stay down here, though. Wouldn't take much more stuff to make it livable for them. Inda told me he used to spend months at a time down here. There's a bathroom a few corridors over and they could go up to the Temple for meals and classes if they wanted."
Kee nodded, and she felt him thinking. "Well, there may be something we can do about that. We'll see."
Theri took her arm from over her eyes to look over at him questioningly. "What?"
Kee smiled a little. "I said we'll see. But it'll have to wait a little bit." His smile disappeared then and he looked away from her. "Master Yoda wants Windu and me to leave for a few days on a mission."
Theri sat there stunned for several seconds. "A mission? Where? When will you be home?"
Kee winced at the silent protest in her mind that came with her words. "I don't know where we're going, but it shouldn't be more than a week." He looked up at her sternly as he felt her trying to link with him. "And don't peek! I truly don't know where we're going."
Theri bit her lip and nodded, pulled her mind away from his reluctantly. "What do you want me to do while you're gone?"
Kee just looked at her bleakly for a moment before he held out his arms to her, and she scrambled up to hug him tight. [You mean other than trying to ignore the emptiness?]
Theri sighed against his shoulder. [We knew someday you'd be sent out on assignments again, beloved. Ben's still here and Master Yoda won't send him out on another assignment for a few more months. At least, I hope he won't. So there's no reason you shouldn't go out on assignments now that we won't have headaches or go into comas from being apart.]
Kee nodded and settled her into his lap. [The world is going on around us, beloved, and we both have work to do.]
They sat holding each other silently for many long moments, their minds empty of all except the bleakness of impending separation.
"Responsibility. I've never been good at it," Theri said with a sigh against his neck.
Kee laughed a little at this. "Yes you are, beloved. You haven't even tried to convince me to take you with me when I go. You know your place is here with your students." He pulled away a little to look down at her. "But you're starting to enjoy teaching them, aren't you?"
Theri shrugged at this. "Yeah, I guess." She looked around at the rough walls and the Mystic spiral carved on the wall, the heat unit buzzing quietly in the corner, the mound of pillows and the fraying rugs. "When the kids are here I feel like I'm accomplishing something, even when we get off the subject and sit here talking philosophy. I'm trying to keep with a plan so I can teach them the neccessary stuff first, but we always seem to get distracted and end up talking about something completely different. But I *am* enjoying it. I don't feel like I'm having to pretend to be a Jedi anymore. I can be myself here with them."
"Situational ethics and all," Kee said with a faint smile. "So when are you going to call the Health Services Directorate and start that plan of yours?"
Theri thumped him on the shoulder. "I didn't want you to know about that yet!"
"Did you think I wouldn't know of it the moment you thought of it?" he asked, amused. "I think Inda's a bad influence on you. He's actually encouraging you to lie and tell them you're a Psi-Corps freelancer. Didn't it occur to you you'd need Psi-Corps IDs to make that plan work? The Directorate wouldn't believe you if you didn't have Psi-Corps identifications. And those would have to include your psi-rating and biometric information."
Theri looked sheepish at this. "Well, uhm, actually....I was planning on using subliminals to make them think I'd given them the ID and it all checked out..."
Kee shook his head in faint disbelief. "Lying is still lying even if it's done with good intentions."
"Do you have a better idea then?" she asked, exasperated. She shrugged out of his arms to sit beside him again. "This whole situation reminds me of the stuff we used to talk about in Ethics class. We need the money. I can help people. I've tried to think of other ways of getting money but they all involve more time than I can devote to it. I could always run scams again like I used to when I was with my old Master, but I don't think the Council would take kindly to an apprentice involved in blatantly illegal activites. If the junkies found out I was a Jedi trainee, word would get out and the Temple would be disgraced. If the Concil found out they'd toss me into orbit without a ship. At least with this plan we've got now I'm helping people and it's legal even if I have to lie to do it. I think the Council would be more inclined to go easy on me if it's found out."
"True," Kee said in a neutral voice.
Theri looked up at him sharply. She knew that tone of voice. The laughing gleam in the sapphire eyes told her even more. "What? What did you do?"
"I didn't do anything," Kee said, and Theri could see he was trying not to laugh.
"Then who did and what did they do?" she asked.
"Master Yoda," he answered. He reached back to one of the pouches on his belt, took a chipcard from it and gave it to her. "He sent your file to the Psi-Corps when Ben and I brought you home. We do that with all the strong psis we find. We have an agreement with them that we'll help each other out if a Jedi or a Psi-Corps telepath goes missing. Your brainwave signature has been on file with them since Windu gave you those tests. You've been qualified as a Level 1 telepath since three days after you got here."
Theri blinked, looked down at the chipcard in her hand, the familiar prismatic triangular vortex of the Psi-Corps. "You mean I'm in the Psi-Corps?"
"Not exactly. But if they had a telepath go missing you might be called on to help find them," Kee answered. He lifted her chin so she'd look him in the eyes again. "When you go, make sure you come home before they lock the doors and turn on the security grid upstairs. If you get in trouble have them call Yoda, not me. Master will send me to get you, but if you need help you're to call Yoda first. He's set this up for you on the sly, and we're trying to keep it that way. We'll keep it as quiet as we can for as long as we can, and maybe if things go quickly enough no one outside of your students and Yoda and I will ever know. You're right, you're not supposed to be doing this. At least by Jedi standards. But I think what Inda said to you was right so far as Mystic situational ethics are concerned. Certainly no one could come to harm from it."
"Only Jedi tradition," she finished for him. "But I don't see where that's a problem, really. I mean, I'll be working for the money I make, so it's not like it's a bribe or anything."
"True. But there are purists who won't see it that way," he said with a rueful grin. "Which I suppose indicates some outdated views on their part which could stand some revision and rethinking. But Master and I think it's good for the Jedi to be more in touch with the common people. There have been many who accused the Jedi of being elitist, and I'm sorry to say that view is not entirely unfounded."
"Ego and pride," Theri said with a shrug. "Though Inda told me once if I saw ego and pride everywhere I should look at myself first to see if I was the one with the ego and not everyone else. He said that whatever you accused other people of doing all the time you were probably doing it yourself and accusing others to cover it up."
Kee rolled his eyes at this. "It's a wonder he's not calling you out on that. You're talking about him and he's not backtalking at every word."
[I would if you'd say something worth making fun of.]
Theri giggled at the look on Kee's face as they felt the spirit's presence around them.
[Don't worry about Theri when she's outside the Temple. I'll be with her. And you'd know as quick as I would if she's in trouble, Jinn.]
Kee sighed worriedly at this. [I wonder if Maul has recovered yet. And Sidious has other resources than Maul. I am going out on assignment and I would not be able to go with Theri in any case. It would look suspicious if we were both gone outside the Temple at the same time. The same with Ben.]
[Kylan will go with me,] Theri Sent. [He looks dangerous enough in that black outfit of his that I don't think anyone would bother us. And I'd never go anywhere without my lightsaber, of course. I've been teaching Kylan and the kids how to disappear, and working on the junkies will give me a good way to teach him the subliminals and impulsion-loops.] She sighed and leaned against him for a moment. [Do you want me to wait until you come back from your assignment?]
[No, you don't have to,] Kee Sent reluctantly. [Though I would prefer it if you did.]
They were both silent for a long moment.
[I will miss you, beloved, no matter if we can still hear each other,] Kee Sent finally.
Theri nodded, swallowing the sudden lump in her throat. [The Temple is going to feel empty without you here.]
Kee pulled her into his arms again, and they held each other in the silence for many long minutes. Then something clinked against the hatchway insistently, and they felt Taslimi's aura beyond it. Theri sighed and pulled away from him to go open the hatchway for her students.
"Theri?" Ben called down the hallway on Sublevel 4, peering into the half-light gloom. This place gave him the creeps. Once you got down past the third sublevel there was no machinery noise and the droids moved so fast down here you barely had time to get out of their way.
A familiar string of beeps behind him, and he turned. R2-D2 zipped up to him with a wild series of jubilant squeaks and beeps and he nodded to the droid. "All right, R2, show me the way."
R2 hummed to himself contentedly and started down the corridor. Ben had to stretch his legs to keep up with the little astromech droid.
Within five minutes he was completely lost and turned around. All the corridors looked the same, all the doorways into the storage rooms were identical and could only be identified by ultrasonic signal. There were no humanoid footprints in the faint layer of dust on the floor. No sounds of people talking or of footsteps.
But there was something just at the edge of his awareness, a slight bump in the fabric of the Force around him. He cleared his mind, reached to touch the Force, reached out with his senses and feelings. [Theri?] he Sent, hoping it was her. But nothing answered him.
A noise, somewhere behind him. He whirled to look back--
Nothing there. No shadows moving.
The light strips in the ceiling brightened at his approach and dimmed as he passed. If there *was* anyone behind him they'd have triggered the light strips and he'd see it. Even droids triggered the light strips. The growing sense of something sneaking up on him.
Focus on the moment, he reminded himself. Deal with what's in front of you, not what your imagination is trying to conjure up. He started concentrating on his breathing and identifying everything in his sensing range, sharpening his focus on the present moment. The fear receded.
That bump in the Force had not gone away. It was definitely there, not something his mind had supplied out of nervousness. But he couldn't localize it, the trace was elusive and seemed to fade out as he concentrated on it. Look without looking, Master Kee would say, so he blanked his mind again.
The plascrete of the walls echoed his own footsteps down the corridor. Well, if Theri wanted to play games he'd show her he could sneak around as well as she could. He started walking silently, stepping carefully so that his feet made no sounds when they met the floor. He let R2 get a little bit ahead of him. If anyone was waiting to jump him they might be nervous and jump R2 first. He carefully built up his mindshields the way Theri had once taught him, wishing he had her ability to disappear from sight. Well, at least now she couldn't find him by his aura...
R2 came to an intersection of the corridors in front of him and stopped, whistling a cheerful greeting, his domed head turning to track something that moved in front of him.
Ben watched the little droid wonderingly. There was nothing visible in any of the corridors.
He reacted faster than the thoughts passed through his head, jerking his lightsaber from his belt and whirling around with the blue-white fire flaring to existence in his hand.
Small noises. Muffled laughter. And a second later Kylan, Taslimi, Rhyonluppa and Theri appeared out of thin air, empty space rippling and then parting to reveal the four leaning against each other laughing helplessly, the sounds echoing down the silent corridors.
When his heart stopped thumping Ben relaxed and switched his saber off and laughed with them. "Geez, you guys scared the hell out of me!"
[Scared of the dark!] Rhyon Sent with a chuffle of laughter.
"Hardly, furball!" Ben said, scruffling the fur on Rhyon's shoulder. "All right, who was that behind me a few minutes ago? And how did you keep the light strips from triggering?"
"We didn't," Tas giggled. "It was me and Rhyon! He put a subliminal in your head so you'd think it was still dark back there! And I shielded us both!"
"But she forgot not to laugh as she was doing it," Theri said. "And Kylan's been just in front of R2 since you met up with him. He was the one triggering the light strips, not R2. And since R2 saw you both together in the corridor he thought you knew Kylan was there already."
Ben shook his head and held out an arm for her as he put his lightsaber back on his belt. "Come here, you!"
Theri grinned as he kissed her, hugged him tight for a moment.
[Minx,] he Sent softly. [I'm glad to know I wasn't going crazy thinking things were following me.]
She smiled up into those wonderful sky-blue eyes and kissed him again. [Now we know we can all shield good enough to fool a Jedi,] she Sent with a giggle in her mindvoice.
[And presumably a Sith,] Ben added as he let her go with a sigh. [Are you sure you want to do this plan of yours alone? I'll go with you.]
"No, Ben," she said quietly. "Kylan's going with me. If you and I disappeared every afternoon things would look suspicious after a while. And I'll not have you or Kee screwing up your own lives getting tangled up in my Mystic nonsense."
"It's not nonsense!" Ben said, astonished at her words. "And my life is my own, minx! You've already got me wrapped around your hand like a moebius loop. And Goza can go look for fish in a tree for all I care."
Theri smiled again. [I know, love. But it's part of the cover. We have to be as quiet about this as possible. I know you'd rather go with me. But I should be okay, anyway. After all, I'm going to be working in the largest medicenter on Coruscant, so presumably I'll be safe.]
"Never assume anything," Ben told her mendaciously.
Theri nodded as they all turned down the corridors back the way Ben had come. "I know that too, love. And I'm not. Can you tell me where Maul is right now? And what he's been doing?"
Ben gave her a sideways look and reached to touch her mind gently, wordlessly, in comfort. The fact that Maul had been watching her for several months was one he had to keep himself from dwelling on too long. The anger at it tended to make him tense up to the point where he got caught up in it, and he'd end up with a migraine one of these days if he wasn't careful. [Korolis satellites logged his ship leaving about thirty hours after we left when Kylan and I came to get you,] he Sent reluctantly. [The trajectory worked out to put him on Syharath. We've not had any further reports since then.]
[His fortress,] Theri Sent with a grimace. [He's gone home to lick his wounds.]
Part 10
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