Chapter 15.

Because he needed to know, he returned.

He needed to know whether or not he was doomed, and along with him the revived Jedi Order he had created.

Vergere peered up at Luke from her perch on the stool. "Come to ask more questions?" she inquired. "I should warn you I've already spent my day answering questions from Fleet Intelligence, and I'm tired of it."

"I'll trade you," Luke said. "One of my questions for one of yours."

Her whiskers rippled. "You didn't answer my last. If you can't detect the Yuuzhan Vong in the Force, is the fault with the Yuuzhan Vong or with your perceptions?"

Luke settled onto the chair opposite Vergere. "You left out a third possibility. The fault may be in the Force."

Vergere's feathery crest rose in surprise. "Is this your answer?"

"No. I don't have an answer," Luke admitted. He looked at Vergere.

"Do you?"

Vergere smoothed her crest with one hand. "Is that your first question?"

"It is."

Vergere paused for a long moment, as if mentally rehearsing an answer. "Before I can answer, I need to know whether Jacen told you what happened to me on Zonama Sekot."

"He did," Luke said.

"So you know that I chose to accompany the Yuuzhan Vong in order to discover their true nature."

"You spent fifty years with them. And so if anyone should have an answer to the question of whether the Yuuzhan Vong are outside the Force, it should be you."

"Yes." There was a long pause while Luke waited for Vergere to continue. Then she said, "That was your answer."

Luke smiled. "The answer to my first question is 'yes!'"

"Correct."

"And I'll have to ask another question if I want further information."

"Also correct."

"Isn't this a little bit childish?"

Her feathers fluffed, then smoothed. "It's your game, not mine. And I believe it's my turn."

He shrugged. "Go ahead."

She fixed him with her tilted eyes. "If the Yuuzhan Vong arc completely outside the Force, what does that imply for the Jedi and our beliefs?"

Luke hesitated. This wasn't just a question, this was the Question of Questions, the issue he had been wrestling since the invasion began.

When he spoke, he spoke carefully.

"It implies that our knowledge of the Force is in error, or incomplete. Or it implies that the Vong are ... an aberration. A profanation of the Force. A thing that should not be." He hesitated again, but the implacable logic of his train of thought forced him to continue. "To life we owe our compa.s.sion and our duty. But I must wonder what we owe to something completely outside our definition of life, to something that is a kind of living death. I must wonder if we owe them anything but a real death?"

"You shrink from this thought." It was a statement, not a question.

"Any being of conscience must," Luke said. He could feel tension in his clenched jaw muscles. "But still it is my duty to the Jedi not to fear where this leads." He centered himself, and tried to send the tension into the far distance. "My turn," he said.

Vergere nodded. "Proceed."

He took a breath, and forced himself to ask the question that he suspected would doom him. ""Are the Yuuzhan Vong outside the Force?"

"I have only what amounts to an opinion."

"But it's the opinion of a Jedi Knight, experienced in the Force, who has spent fifty years among the Yuuzhan Vong."

"Yes. And my opinion is this: by definition the Force is all life, and all life is the Force. So therefore the Yuuzhan Vong, who are living beings, are within the Force, even though we can't see them there."

Luke felt months-long tension draining from his limbs, and a heavy stone fly weightless from his heart.

"Thank you," he murmured.

She looked at him and spoke with quiet intensity. "You owe to the Yuuzhan Vong the same measure of compa.s.sion you owe to all life. No war of extermination is justified. You will not have to eradicate this profanation from the heart of existence."

Luke bowed his head. "Thank you," he repeated.

"Why were you afraid of my answer?"

"Because if the enemy were not life, if they did not deserve compa.s.sion, then leading a war against them would have furnished a means of letting the dark side enter not only myself, but all the Jedi I have trained as well."

"My understanding of your position, then, is that such traits as anger and aggression are to be avoided, because they may lead to domination of the mind and spirit by the dark side of the Force."

Luke looked at her. "Was that your second question?"

"Young Master," Vergere said, "it was phrased very carefully so as not to be a question. I was merely attempting a clarification of your position."

Luke smiled. "Yes, your understanding is correct."

"Then my next question is this: do you believe that nature would have given us traits such as anger and aggression if they were not useful?"

"Useful for what?" Luke countered. "They are useful to the dark side. What use does a Jedi have for anger and aggression? The Jedi Code is specific: we act not from pa.s.sion, but from serenity."

Vergere settled onto her stool. "I understand now," she said. "Our difference concerns where this serenity originates. You believe serenity is an absence of pa.s.sion, but I believe it is a consequence of knowledge, and self-knowledge most of all."

"If pa.s.sion is not opposed to serenity," Luke said, "why are they paired in the Jedi Code?"

"Because the consequences of these two states of mind are opposed to one another. An unchecked pa.s.sion produces actions that are hasty, ill considered, and often destructive. Serenity, on the other hand, may well result in no action at all-and when it does, serenity produces actions that proceed from knowledge and deliberation, if not from wisdom." Her wide mouth suggested a smile. "My turn."

"I haven't asked my question yet."

"I beg your pardon, but you asked a question about the Jedi Code. I answered."

Luke sighed. "Very well. Though it seems to me that I'm conceding a great deal."

"On the contrary. You are acting from serene self-knowledge."

Luke laughed. "If you insist."

"I do." Vergere stroked her delicate whiskers and considered her next question. "It was my observation that on your last visit, you were angry with me. You believed that I had deliberately harmed your apprentice-which was accurate-though your anger was moderated somewhat when I explained my motivations."

"That's true," Luke admitted.

"Now my question is, was that anger dark? Was it an evil pa.s.sion that possessed you, such that the dark side might have taken you as a consequence?"

Luke chose his thoughts carefully. "It could have been. If I had used that anger to strike out at you, or harm you, particularly through the Force, then it would have been a dark pa.s.sion."

"Young Master, it is my contention that the anger you experienced was natural and useful. I caused deliberate harm-pain and anguish and suffering, over a period of weeks-to a young man for whom you had accepted responsibility and for whom you felt a measure of love.

Naturally you felt anger. Naturally you wanted to break my thin little neck. It is absolutely natural, when you discover that a person has inflicted deliberate pain on a helpless victim, to feel angry with that person. It is equally as natural an emotion as to feel compa.s.sion for the victim."

Vergere fell silent, and Luke let the silence build.

After a moment, Vergere bobbed her head. "Very well, young Master.

You are correct when you said that if you had entered my cell and struck out at me with the Force, that such an action would have been dark. But you didn't. Instead your anger prompted you to speak to me and find out the reasons for my actions. To that extent, your anger was not only natural but useful. It led to understanding on both our parts."

She paused. "I'm about to ask a rhetorical question. You need not answer."

"Thank you for the warning."

"My rhetorical question is: why wasn't your anger dark? And my answer is: because you understood it. You understood the cause of the emotion, and therefore it did not seize power over you."

Luke thought for a moment. "It is your contention, then," he said, "that to understand an emotion is to prevent its being dark."

"Unreasoning pa.s.sion is the province of darkness," Vergere said.

"But an understood emotion is not unreasoning. That is why the route to mastery is through self-knowledge." Her tilted eyes widened. "It's not possible to suppress all emotion, nor is it desirable. An emotionless person is no more than a machine. But to understand the origin and nature of one's feelings, that is possible."

"When Darth Vader and the Emperor held me prisoner," Luke said, "they kept urging me to surrender to my anger."

"Your anger was a natural response to your captivity, and they wished to make use of it. They wished to fan your anger into a burning rage that would allow the darkness to enter. But any unreasoning pa.s.sion would do. When anger becomes rage, fear becomes terror, love becomes obsession, self-esteem becomes vainglory, then a natural and useful emotion becomes an unreasoning compulsion and the darkness is."

"I let the dark side take me," Luke said. "I cut off my father's hand."

"Ahhh." Vergere nodded. "Now I understand much."

"When my rage took control, I felt invincible. I felt complete. I felt free."

Vergere nodded again. "When you are in the grip of an irresistible compulsion, it is then that you feel most like yourself. But in reality it was you who were pa.s.sive then. You let the feeling control you."

"My turn for a question," Luke said, and at that point a comm unit chimed.

"Master Skywalker." Nylykerka's voice. "A fleet has just arrived out of hypers.p.a.ce, and they wish to contact you."

Vergere blinked at him. "Next time," she said.

Luke rose. "Next time," he said.

Outside, Nylykerka met him with a bow. "Sixteen ships just arrived, mostly freighters or modified freighters, but including a Star Destroyer, Errant Venture. There are messages to you from Captain Karrde, and also from Lando Calrissian, who commands one of the ships."

"Thank you."

Nylykerka walked with him to the nearest comm unit. "I'm running out of questions to ask her," the Tammarian said. "And I'm running out of reasons to hold her."

"Keep her until I can talk to her one more time," Luke said. "I'm still not convinced that she's benign."

The Tammarian's air sac pulsed meditatively. "Then why would she rescue Jacen?"

"To gain access to the Jedi, perhaps so she can destroy us."

Air whistled from Nylykerka's sac. "No wonder you want her held."

The problem, Luke thought, was that if Vergere was as powerful as he thought, she wouldn't be in Nylykerka's cell any longer than she wanted to be there.

Luke stepped aboard Wild Karrde to a salute from a double row of skull-headed, glowing-eyed droids with ma.s.sive physiques and sloping foreheads. The ship smelled of machine oil. Luke returned the salute and marched down the line to be embraced by Lando Calrissian and to have his hand pumped by Talon Karrde.

"I see your droid factory is thriving," Luke told Lando.

"Everything you see," Lando said with a grin, "is for sale to the government for a very reasonable price."

Luke frowned at his friend's flippant remark. "That strongly depends on whether we get a government," he said.

Karrde looked serious and tugged his small goatee. "You'd better tell us about that," he said.

Karrde took Luke to his cabin, and Luke told Lando and Karrde of the latest developments in the Senate. "There have always been rumors about Fyor Rodan," he said finally. "Rumors that he's connected with smuggling operations on the Rim. If either of you know any of the details, perhaps you can help us . . ."

"Discredit Rodan by a.s.sociating him with us" Karrde said, and laughed.

"No offense," Luke said.

"None taken," Karrde said. "But I'm afraid I can't help you. It's not Fyor Rodan who's the smuggler, it's his older brother Tormak."

"Tormak Rodan used to fly out of Nar Shaddaa for Jabba the Hutt,"