"It's not natural-not just taking the beating, but bowing down like that. and being able to come up with stuff like giving Kar the lightsaber-" "It requires a certain detachment of mind. When your emotions are not involved, answers are often obvious." "It's still not natural. Can I just say, here, how much you two creep me out?" "When I was Mace's student," Depa mused, "he would often remind me that nothing about being a Jedi is natural." "I thought you guys were all about going with the flow and using your instincts and stuff." "The difference," I said, "lies in the instincts themselves. It is possible for an untrained Force- user to wield as much power as the greatest of Jedi-look at Kar. But untrained, the instincts he falls back on are those granted him by nature. It is another of the central paradoxes of the Jedi: the 'instincts' we use are not instinctive at all. They are the product of training so intense that they replace our natural ones. That's why Jedi must begin at such an early age. To replace our natural instincts-ter-ritoriality, selfishness, anger, fear, and the like-with the Jedi 'instincts' of service, serenity, selflessness, and compassion. The oldest child ever accepted for training was nine- and there was much debate over that. A debate that has continued, I might add, for more than ten years.
"Being a Jedi is a discipline imposed upon nature, just as civilization is, at its root, a discipline imposed upon the natural impulses of sentient beings.
"Because peace is an unnatural state.
"Peace is a product of civilization. The myth of the peaceful savage is precisely that: a myth.
Without civilization, all existence is only the jungle. Go to your peaceful savage and burn his crops, or slaughter his herds, or kick him off his hunting grounds. You'll find that he will not remain peaceful for long. Isn't that exactly what happened here on Haruun Kal?
"Jedi do not fight for peace. That's only a slogan, and is as misleading as slogans always are.
Jedi fight for civilization, because only civilization creates peace. We fight for justice because justice is the fundamental bedrock of civilization: an unjust civilization is built upon sand. It does not long survive a storm.
"Kar's power comes from natural instinct-but he is also ruled by instinct, in a way no Jedi ever is. A single Jedi who succumbs to his natural drives for power, for respect, for success or revenge, could do damage that is literally unimaginable." "Mace," Depa interrupted me softly, "are we still talking about Kar? Or is this about Dooku?" Or, I wondered silently, was it about her.
I sighed and lowered my head, suddenly aware of how exhausted I was. But still I finished the thought, less for Nick's benefit than for Depa's.
And my own.
"Our only hope, against beings whose instincts control them, is to absolutely and utterly control our own." -
JEDI OF THE FUTURE N
ight in the jungle.
Korun bedrolls scattered in clumps. Low voices blending into the background mutter of the jungle. Smells of hotpack ration squares and smoke from homemade cigarras of green rashallo leaves.
Mace sat on a borrowed bedroll a few meters from where Depa's wallet tent had been pitched in an abandoned ruskakk nest under a tangled arch of thyssel bushes. While Nick treated his injuries, he had been watching her vague silhouette cast on the tent wall by the light of a captured glow rod.
When the light winked out, it was as though she'd never even been there.
The muddy pastel pulse of glowvine light had Nick squinting at the medpac's scanner.
"Looks like we took care of your internal bleeding," he said. "One more shot of anti- inflammatory, to keep the concussion swelling in your brain under control." Mace leaned his head to one side as Nick pressed the spray hypo against his carotid artery.
The Jedi Master stared sightlessly off through the night; he didn't even feel the brief sting of the injection.
He was tracking his lightsaber.
"He's not settling," Mace said.
IL "Who's not what?" "Vastor. He's pacing. Circling. Like a rancor staked out in the desert." "You surprised?" "I shouldn't be. He probably senses that even though the fight was real, my submission was fake. He's just not sure what to do about it." Nick clipped the spray hypo back into its receptacle. "Unless your idea of fun is quality time with me and a medpac, I'd suggest you stay out of his way." He tapped the bacta patch that covered the bite wound on Mace's trapezius. "You wouldn't believe how many different kinds of lethal bacteria I found in there. I do not want to know what he's been eating." "I am less concerned with what he's eating," Mace said, "than with what's eating him." "One easy guess." Nick nodded toward Depa's tent. "How is she?" Mace shrugged. "As you saw." "No-I mean, that whole dark side crap. Like what we were talking about before I left you at the outpost." "I. can't say." Mace's habitual frown deepened. "I would like to say she's fine. But what I would like has little to do with what is. She seems. unstable." "Well, y'know, a few months in the war could do that to anybody." "That's what I'm afraid of." FROM THE PRIVATE JOURNALS OF MACE WlNDU I am not sure what time it is. After midnight, I suspect, with some hours to go before dawn. I cannot be more accurate, as this datapad's chronometer function has suffered the same fate as its concealed transmitter. There is a time of night here when even the glowvines mute their light, and the prowling predators go quiet, and sleep seems the only activity that has meaning.
Yet here I am awake, though I have slept little in the past three days.
It was Depa's scream that woke me.
A raw shriek of impossible anguish, it yanked me from nightmares of my own. It was not fear, that scream, but suffering so profound that it could have no other expression.
Her scream woke her as well, and her first thought was to open her tent and exhaustedly reassure us that it had been only a dream. That seems always to be her first thought: to reassure the Korunnai, and me. From this I take considerable comfort.