"I had hoped you would."

"And Triebakk, as Senatorial representative-the Senate will need to confirm that, but I don't think we'll have any trouble. Dif Scaur, the chief of Intelligence. Someone from the Justice Council-I haven't worked out just who as yet. Releqy A'Kla, who will also head the Ministry of State."

"Her uncle was a Jedi."

"I know."

"You don't have any of Fey'lya's people. Or Fyor Rodan's."

"I know." Cal smiled. "They'll have to be satisfied with seats on the Advisory Council, won't they?"

"You haven't mentioned the sixth."

"Sien Sow, as head of the military." He looked troubled. "If I decide to retain him. He offered me his resignation practically the second I finished my acceptance speech."

Luke gave Cal a serious look. "You need to call on Ackbar."

Cal looked curious. "To be Supreme Commander?"

"No, but you need to talk to him. He has a plan to deal with the Yuuzhan Vong."

"I'll talk to him."

"Very soon, Cal," Luke warned. "You know how good he is."

Cal nodded again. "Fine. Soon."

The voice of Cal's comm droid came from the speakers on his desk.

"Senator Rodan is here for his appointment."

Cal rose. "I shouldn't keep Fyor waiting."

He escorted Luke to the door, allowing the Jedi Master to precede him into the outer office.

Fyor Rodan stood there, wearing a stainless gray suit and a cold demeanor. Luke gave him a polite nod, but Rodan only returned a glare.

"I see you have the compliant Chief of State required by your plans," he said.

"I don't believe you ever asked me my plans," Luke said. "You only a.s.sumed you knew them."

"You interfered," Rodan said. "You and your wife did some-tiling to my supporters."

"We did nothing of the sort," Luke said.

"Then it was your pirate friends. Do you deny that?"

"I deny that I have pirate friends," Luke said mildly. "And I have no idea what my other friends may have done, if anything."

"Jedi virtue!" Rodan said. "You remain stainless, while your friends do the dirty work. I couldn't help but notice that your friends'

droids are guarding the Chief of State whom they created."

"The YVH droids in the corridor belong to the government," Cal Omas said. "You voted for the appropriation yourself, Fyor."

Fyor Rodan turned his scornful eye toward Cal. "I thought you had more pride than to sell yourself to a bunch of renegades and their witch-doctor accomplices!" he said. "I refuse to have anything to do with supporting the illusion that your government is anything but illegitimate. I'll thank you to keep my name off any list of appointees."

He turned, stiff-spined, and marched out. Luke and Cal looked at each other.

"Stickier than I thought," Cal said.

Chapter 19.

Jacen spent his first day of freedom in the apartment, marveling at its strange solidity. The scratch of the carpet against his bare feet, air that didn't taste like a rich stew of organics, walls that were vertical and a ceiling that was a flat plane above his head. Holos on shelves. Popular music that bounced its rhythms from hidden speakers. A kitchen full of wondrous, gleaming appliances. A refrigeration unit full of food designed for the human palate.

Furniture. The Yuuzhan Vong didn't have furniture the same way that people did. It wasn't crafted or a.s.sembled, it was sprouted. And their sense of scale was different, the way they placed it in one of their rooms with its resinous floors and walls of coral or stabilized protein.

Jacen had said farewell to furniture, to holos and kitchen equipment and refrigeration units and to everything else that was human.

Finding it again was a rediscovery.

Messages appeared on the comm unit. WAY TO GO SPROUT. And ONCE AGAIN, JACEN, YOU HAVE ANSWERED A MOTHER'S PRAYERS. The messages gave him a singing joy that stayed with him for the rest of the day.

That evening his aunt Mara tactfully hinted that he might buy some clothes, so the next morning he set off to do some shopping. He borrowed some of Uncle Luke's clothes and threw a cloak over everything, but people recognized him anyway. His face had been everywhere in the holocasts. Many were friendly, many curious, and only a few turned away with angry glares or muttered asides. The Jedi, it seemed, were more popular than they had been.

He bought clothing from a Quarren tailor who a.s.sured him that the drape was perfect and in the mode, at least for humans. Afterward he wandered the city, enjoying the elegant architecture beneath the vivid blue sky, and tried to ignore the fact that wherever he went he was the center of attention.

Later, from the apartment, he tried to contact Vergere, but was told she wasn't allowed calls. He spoke to Luke about it, but Luke only said, "You're on vacation. And that includes being on vacation from Vergere."

Then Luke invited Jacen to sit by him. "I'd like to hear your ideas on the Yuuzhan Vong," he said.

"Vergere would be the one to ask," Jacen said.

"I have asked her. But I'd like to ask you. Their immunity to the Force aside, arc the Yuuzhan Vong so very different from us?"

Jacen considered. "No. They have a tyrannical government, and their religion is absolute poison. But they're no better or worse than humans would be if we were raised in their system."

Luke looked at him. "Do you hate them?" he asked.

"No." Jacen's answer was swift and very certain.

"Why not?"

This time Jacen had to think. "Because," he said finally, "it would be like hating a child for being raised badly. It's not the child's fault, it's the parents'. I could hate the leaders who made the Yuuzhan Vong what they are, but they're long dead, so why waste energy in hatred?"

Luke rose and put a hand on Jacen's shoulder. "Thank you, Jacen,"

he said.

"I ... understand them," Jacen said.

Luke seemed startled, his mind inward. "You do not hate, because you understand," he murmured.

"Sorry?"

Luke's attention snapped back to Jacen. "No. Go on."

"I was implanted with a slave seed, remember, and it interfaced with my nervous system. It was supposed to be a one-way communication link, to enslave me and give me my orders, but I discovered that it worked the other way. It's produced a kind of ... telepathy. I can extend my mind into the Yuuzhan Vong and into their creatures, and sometimes I can influence them."

Luke looked at him in surprise. "You can touch the Yuuzhan Vong with the Force?"

"No. It's different. I can't use the Force and my-my 'Vongsense' at the same time."

Luke's eyes narrowed in thought. "Can you teach this?"

Jacen had been wondering this himself. "I don't know," he said. "I don't think so. I think perhaps you need to be implanted with a slave seed, or some other form of Yuuzhan Vong control that can interface with your nervous system." A thought struck him. "I might be able to teach Tahiri. After what they put her through, it's possible that she . . .

might still be attuned enough to the Yuuzhan Vong to learn to do as I've done."

Luke frowned. "Tahiri found her experience at the hands of the Vong to be highly traumatic. And she's-had some traumatic experiences since. I wouldn't want to force her to revisit an experience that damaged her."

"Nor would I."

Jacen didn't tell Luke about one of the consequences of what he'd just called his "Vongsense"-the fact that he was still in occasional mental contact with the ent.i.ty whom the Yuuzhan Vong called the World Brain, the dhuryam who controlled the environment of Coruscant. He and the dhuryam were conspiring against the planet's worldshaping, sabotaging it in minor but annoying ways: through the creation of an itching plague, for instance. Jacen had just inspired the World Brain to cause a sickness in the maw luur, the creatures who recycled Yuuzhan Vong waste, during what the dhuryam sensed was an important occasion or ceremony.

Though Jacen could theoretically inspire the World Brain to more deadly action, from poisoning Yuuzhan Vong food to causing an ecological catastrophe, he had refrained. His empathy with the Yuuzhan Vong had grown along with his Vongsense: he would not be a ma.s.s murderer, not even of a deadly enemy.

In part, that was why he hadn't told Luke of this particular ability. He didn't want his ability known for fear that someone would want him to use it as a weapon. Though he realized that Luke would never ask such a thing of him, he felt that the more private he kept this secret, the better.

The conversation with Luke was interrupted when a holojournalist commed, asking for an interview. Jacen told the comm unit to refuse anyone it didn't already know was a friend.

The following morning Jacen felt delicate, ate a bland breakfast, and returned to his bed. Luke left to do political things, and Mara went off to play counterspy with her mouse droids. He was awakened by a call on the comm, which meant that the comm's artificial intelligence recognized the caller as family or a friend.

He answered and stared into a pair of green eyes framed by curling blond hair. Danni Quee.

"h.e.l.lo, Danni."

"Jacen. I hope it's all right to call."

"I'm not sick or in quarantine or anything. I'm allowed to talk to people."

"That's good. Would you like to see a bit of the city? Or are you being besieged by friends?"

"I'm not besieged by friends," Jacen said, "I guess because they're as tactful as you are. But I'd just as soon not go anywhere public, because I seem to attract crowds."

She grinned, teeth white against her tanned face. "I saw you on the holonews yesterday. Was that cloak supposed to be a disguise?"

"Not exactly."

"If you're not ready to face your public, then, why don't I get a hovercraft and take you out to Mester Reef?"

"Sure."

Twenty minutes later, Jacen met Danni at a public pier. "Nice clothes," she remarked, and gave him a hug. Soon they were on a craft racing west on its repulsorlifts ten meters above the water. Danni had provided diving equipment for two, as well as a light lunch.

"Fast work," Jacen said.

"I was going to go anyway. If I hadn't reached you, I would have gone with another friend."

He looked at her. "Anyone I know?"

"Thespar Trode. She's another unemployed astrophysicist."

"You're not employed these days?"

Danni gave a wry grin. "We'll talk about that later."

Mester Reef was in such tropical waters that no insulation suits were necessary, but Jacen and Danni wore them anyway to minimize abrasions. The air supply was a light unit worn on the back that silently extracted air from the water and fed it to the diver, and was limited only by its power supply, which was good for about fifty years. There was a vest that could be inflated or deflated to adjust for buoyancy, with pockets for weights to make sure the diver didn't pop back to the surface.

Danni held up a pair of swim fins. "Old-fashioned transportation,"

she said. "I could have brought some drive units to speed us along under the water, but I think they're a distraction-it's better if it's just you and the reef and the ocean."

"Fine with me," Jacen said. "It's not like we're in a hurry to go anywhere."

The water was like a warm salt bath. Adjusting to the breathing apparatus felt natural and was easier than using a pressure suit. The inflatable vest was a little more difficult, and Jacen found himself sinking or bobbing toward the surface until he managed to equalize his buoyancy properly. Once he adjusted to the experience, he found he could think himself higher or lower-and he didn't need the Force for it either, just a kind of relaxation.

A current ran along the reef here, and he and Danni simply drifted along. The water that leaked past the mouthpiece tasted of salt and iodine and a thousand living things. Above was the rippled sunlight of the ocean surface; to one side the vivid colors of the reef; on the other side the boundless ocean; and below the profound blue of the ocean deeps, clear and seeming to go down forever.

They didn't dive below twenty meters or so, because below that depth the light faded away badly, and they wanted to see the brightness of the coral. The coral formations, the anemones, and the sponges were ablaze with brilliant color, and the fish and other animals were as incandescent as the coral through which they swam.

There were hierarchies here. The coral rose like great ramparts of a castle, occasionally breaking toward the surface in towers. Living things attached themselves to the coral, or sheltered inside its convolutions, or imitated the coral with its colors, its seeming quiescence, and its stinging spines. Reef fish hunted these, searching among the coral for their dinners and sometimes being engulfed and digested by a cunningly camouflaged predator, while torpedo-shaped pelagic fish from the deep water ate the reef fish, darting in from the open ocean to strike, kill, and devour, coming from a place far beyond the comprehension of the reef fish, like pirates from another world.

And everything on the reef was alive! The coral, the sponges, the fish, the crustaceans, and anemones-all were living things. Even the seemingly empty ocean was filled with microscopic life. That was the true wonder of it. Jacen summoned his Force-sense and let the song of the reef enter him, all the tiny creatures living together in a complex, interconnected pattern, basking for a moment in the sheer glory of it.

This was such a glorious change from the Yuuzhan Vong environment.

There everything lived as well, but all was alien, strange, and full of sinister purpose. It was like living in a void. Here, the reef and its life practically shouted at him through the Force.

Jacen extended his Force-sense toward Danni. She was Force-sensitive, but her training had been unsystematic, scattered into spare moments between battles and obsessive research. He sensed her startled surprise at the first touch of his mind, but she then relaxed, and he let the reefs existence flow into her, the great vital acc.u.mulation of all the tiny lives, and the two floated along the reef in silent communion, absorbed in the reefs complexity and abundance.

Eventually they grew chilled even through their insulation suits, so he and Danni rose to the surface, and Danni triggered the transponder that would bring her hovercraft flying toward them. It settled into the water five meters away and lowered its ladders so they could climb aboard. They took off their dive suits and let the sun warm them as they ate their lunch. And then, while digesting, they simply relaxed, stretched out side by side on the foredeck.