That evening, after dinner, I found myself thinking about what Luke had said. The idea that I had to first feel the Force before I could employ it made me reevaluate what I had learned so far. Luke had also said that prior to what we tried earlier we had only been using the Force pa.s.sively, to enhance our senses. This made me wonder if I had been tapping the reservoir of Force energy that my body pro-duced. It occurred to me that each living creature generated enough of the Force to keep them aware of and in touch with the world, but to push beyond that required an expanded flow of energy.

It required tapping into the Force itself. Luke said that I had to believe, but that meant letting go of doubts. This brought me back to the realization that my doubts were part and parcel of who I was, and unless or until I could push beyond them, I would be blocked from access to the Force. I felt as if I had to sacrifice myself to be able to feel the Force and use it, and yet I did not want to do that.

Still, my little chamber reeked of sacrifice. The names sunk in the stone made it crystal clear. Porkins and Biggs had died at Yavin, sacrificing all they were and could ever be. Wedge's life had been sacrificed to the Rebellion; his dreams deferred, his access to a life others would consider normal denied. And if I included Luke in the group, he was left with a mission to re-create an order of peacekeepers that his father had destroyed, to be able to rebuild a galaxy his father had helped take apart.

Suddenly my room became cloying and close. Here three men had vowed to put an end to the Empire or to die. Knowing less about their probable futures than I did about mine, having lived less of a life than I have lived, they made their choice; and a similar choice was asked of me. And my choice was easier, since all I needed to let go of were my preconceptions and prejudices, not my flesh and blood and brains and life.

I have to stop thinking and feel. I have to let go. I sighed aloud. Maybe Iella was right, maybe Conlscant's sun will go nova before I can do that.

I fled my room and quickly found myself in the turbolift to the rooftop.

Our moon was slipping behind the gas giant and had turned its face away from it, so we were entering Truenight, not just Twilight night. I expected it to be cold and got a good chill blast of air when the lift door opened. I reveled in the way the breeze sucked warmth from me and hoped my thoughts could be as cold as my flesh.

I knew my fear of change was silly. Intellectually I could see my transition as that of an insect moving from one life stage to another.

The creature was the same, had the same genetic code, but moved into a phase that gave it greater abilities. In my case the greater abilities would bring with them greater responsibilities. I didn't think I was afraid of them, but in the questioning mood I was in, I wasn't sure of anything about myself.

I began a slow circuit around the Temple's squared-off top and saw a figure sitting on the northeast corner. I tried to reach my senses out to see who it was, but they never got very far. He turned to face me, letting the wind tease his fluffy beard, then turned back to look out over the forest and at the black blanket of sky in which billions of stars nested.

I approached him, but hung back several paces to give him s.p.a.ce. "I didn't think anyone else would be up here, Streen."

The old man shrugged. "I am so used to being alone that I can only stand so much in the way of company."

'Tll leave you, then."

"No, no need." Though shadows hid his face as he turned toward me again, I felt an intensity radiating out from his invisi-ble eves. "You hold yourself in tightly enough that your pres-ence is not painful."

"Thanks, I think."

e 'Forgive me. My personal relation skills are not what they should be."

He smiled as the undulating cry of hunting stintarils seemed to mock him.

"For years my only companions were Bespin rawwks-large black scavengers with leathery wings. They have a rudimentary intelligence. Never taught one a useful trick, but they would come when I had food to feed them."

I smiled and sat down on the cold stone. "I've had friends I couldn't say as much about."

"Gas prospecting on Bespin was lonely work, but I didn't mind." The old man tapped his head with a finger. "Kept hear-ing voices in my head, feeling people's moods. Only by getting away could I shut them out. Now Master Luke's training is helping me do that consciously. Don't miss it.

Puts mystery back into life."

I shot him a bemused smile. "Mystery?"

"Yeah. Like you, for example."

"Me?"

"You're very closed, but bits leak out. Pride's hot enough to melt durasteel." Streen shrugged. "And pain. Sense of judg-ment cuts like a lightsaber."

"Really." My expression sharpened. Streen could easily be taken for a doddering old fool, but he clearly was perceptive. Dismissing him would be doing him a disservice. "What do you mean?"

Streen chuckled. "You don't like Gantoris."

"Doesn't take Jedi skills to figure that out."

"No, guess it doesn't. He doesn't like you much, either." Streen sat back, leaning on his elbows and forearms. "Remem-ber that exercise today?"

"With Gantoris putting rocks in orbit?"

"The same. You shouldn't be discouraged. When Master Luke and Gantoris came to Bespin to find me, they gave me a practical demonstration of how the Force can be used. Gantoris learned to push with his mind to make something move a ways away."

My head came up. "I see." Gantoris already knew how to use the Force to manipulate matter, which is why he excelled at the exercise. Luke didn't call him on it, on this advantage, when Gantoris started in on me. He could have had a thousand rea-sons for not doing that, not the least of which could have been to let Gantoris' words fuel my compet.i.tive sense. I didn't know if that was Luke's goal, or if what had happened would accomplish that goal, but knowing Gantoris wasn't above taking ad-vantage of an opportunity was another datapoint I willingly logged.

Regardless, even that information didn't bring me any closer to feeling the Force.

"Can I ask you a question, Streen?"

"You just did, but I'll give you another."

"Thanks." I leaned forward, resting my elbows on my knees.

"What does the Force feel like to you?"

"It feels like ten kilos of life in a five-kilo box." His voice gained in strength and lightened in tone. "I can only feel a trickle now, like dust motes floating in a sunbeam, one by one, just moving through me, but it's just so right there's no describ-ing it. It tickles a bit, feels like a first kiss, or the jolt you feel when the flux in sabacc just makes your hand better than what you were already betting."

I wanted to quip that I'd had dates like that, but the pure wonderment in his voice would have made the joke sound bit-ter. "Wow."

"What's it feel like for you?"

I shook my head. "Don't know. I'm not feeling it. I think the Force in me is strong enough to let me do little things, but I've not felt what you describe. Nothing even close."

"You will."

"I hope so."

"You will." Streen's voice sank back to its lower tone. "Let me ask you a question."

"Fair trade."

'Master Skywalker's talked a lot to us about the dark side and how it's selfish and evil and cruel."

"Right."

"Okay, now you remember them rawwks I mentioned, how I never could teach one a trick? Well there was this one time there was one that seemed to be smarter than the others. Just a bit, not a whole lot, but a bit. And I thought he had real prom-ise, so I tried to teach him to unfurl one wing, then the other and hop up and down in time with a tune I was whistling. I just wanted to see him dance a little, just a little."

The loneliness in Streen's voice started to squeeze my heart.

"I'm with you."

"Now I thought, maybe, somehow, I didn't know how, that if I could just convince him to do it once and reward him, he'd do it more. I was getting real frustrated and even angry. And I guess I used the Force to make him do the dance to the music. Just once. And I didn't hurt him and I gave him food and all." Streen's voice died amid a cacophony of stintaril howls. "Was I using the dark side? Was I doing evil?"

"I'm not sure that's a question I can answer."

"Give it a try."

I nodded and sighed heavily, watching my breath congeal into a cloud of white vapor. "In an absolute sense, based on what Master Skywalker has told us, yes, you might have brushed up against the dark side. In a very real sense, though, what you did was selfish, but so minor, that on a scale of one to destroying Alderaan, it doesn't even rate a decimal point."

The older man's nodding silhouette eclipsed stars. "And where would you rate your fabrications about your past?"

"What?"

'Tve been told you're from a Corellian Jedi family and that you fought with the Rebellion."

"That's all true."

"But that pride in you, that's the sort of pride built up from having done something. The story being told about you doesn't back it well."

"I can see that. I guess it's all a matter of perspective." I climbed back to my feet again. "Fact is, what we were before probably isn't that important. I could tell you all sorts of things about myself. Some you might believe. Some you won't believe. Ultimately, though, not a one of them will help us become Jedi Knights. I'm proud of what I have done, but I'll be more proud to be a Jedi."

Streen laughed a bit. "So you're not lying, you're just not telling the whole truth because it won't mean much right now."

"I guess that's about it, yes."

"I can live with that." Streen hauled himself up to his feet and pointed to the turbolift. "Well, we might as well show the others we're smart enough to head in when it gets cold."

"Wouldn't do to have Jedi Knights seen as that stupid, would it?" I asked as I fell in step with him.

"Nope, wouldn't do at all."

Over the next several days we rotated through a series of exer-cises that underscored my inability to feel the Force. Other students had difficulties with various aspects of what I came to call pushing. Whether I was supposed to send something away, bring it near, raise it, lower it, move it at a distance or up close, I proved hideously inept at it.

Whereas Luke used the aphorism "Size matters not," to encourage others to forget their doubts; with me it became praise for even the least little twitch of a rock.

The fact was, however, that I couldn't make a ripple in a cup of water.

And while my ability to sense foes and what they were planning to do got better, I still didn't feel the Force entering me from outside. My progression in defensive areas came from opening up more of the Force within me, but that opening seemed to come as part of my instinctual desire for self-preservation.

And I was blocked by my internal desire for preservation of self.

Something had to give, and I thought I saw a way to make it give. Luke had arranged us in a circle around a huge boulder buried halfway into the ground. He nodded toward it. "You have all been told repeatedly that size does not matter. This is true. However, this does not mean all tasks will be simple. This rock, for all we know, is really just the top of a long plinth. We don't know how big it is. Moving it may not only take a t.i.tanic effort, but a sustained effort. With the Force flowing through you, you will be able to move it. If the Force is not flowing, the task will not be completed."

He looked at each and everyone of us openly. "Who would be first to try?"

Gantoris took a step forward. "Master, I would."

"Master, if you please" I bowed my head toward him. "I would be the first to do."

Gantoris sneered in my direction. "You? You will do noth-ing."

Luke looked at me. "Do you think you are ready?"

I shrugged. "I believe I must do this. Perhaps in focusing on small things I have closed myself down to the Force. To feel it I must open myself to something more grand." I looked around the circle, making eye contact with everyone. "I must move this rock, therefore I will move it.

This I believe."

I was counting heavily on the internal pressures of not want-ing to fail.

I accepted that failure was possible, and was willing to live with the consequences of failure, which meant my at-tempt would not be frenzied or full of the negative emotions that heralded the dark side. I would just put my honest best effort forward. I would do all the things I had been taught to do, and I would succeed.

The Jedi Master nodded. "It is yours to do, then."

Closing my eyes, I set myself and drew in a deep breath. Exhaling it slowly I let my senses expand and touch Tionne and Streen on either side of me. Then my consciousness leaped, link by link until I knew where everyone was in the circle. From there I began to work inward, and as I did so I began to feel the first faint tingles of energy. It felt almost like an ion bolt hitting close by. It made the hair on my arms stand up.

I didn't push, I didn't race after it, but spread myself out to let it come to me. As I made myself receptive, as I caught more of the Force the way a solar sail catches sunlight, my sense of the world became more complete. The blackness before my eyes did not lighten or brighten, but I found structures there and things. Spots that moved were insects. Lines that crawled beneath the dirt were worms. I traced bushes and gra.s.ses from leaf-tip to root. If it was alive I could feel it, and what I felt outside I could also feel inside.

The way Luke had molded his thoughts to mine to probe me about Mirax's absence came back to me in a rush. I looked at the currents of Force inside of me and the currents swirling about outside. Little by little, slowly modifying a thought here, calming a doubt there, setting aside fear and encouraging hope, I changed how the Force flowed within me. I let it erode from the inside out all the walls isolating me from the universal tor-rent of Force energy.

With the first breach in my defenses the Force slammed into me like high pressure fluid jetting through a pinpoint gap in a pipe. It filled me up in an instant and I imagined it leaking from my eyes, nose and mouth. I wanted to shout and dance with joy because it was everything Streen had described. It was what I felt when Mirax first said she loved me. It was the scent of the perfume my mother wore, and the warm laugh my father used to have when he was proud of me. It was the hearty slap on the back from Wedge after a mission and even a touch of Whistler's triumphant serenades. It was everything that was good and right and positive and alive; and it was waiting for me to bend it to my will.

Newly empowered, I reached out for the stone. In a heart-beat I plumbed its depths. I knew its size and ma.s.s, I knew its contours and its weaknesses. I knew I could shape the Force into a hammer and shatter it, but that was not the task at hand. My task was to move it, to rip it from the ground, to raise it up so all could see what I had done.

I poured the Force into my effort. At first I felt resistance, but I expected that. The stone had been firmly stuck in the ground for years. I tugged at it and could see it rocking back and forth. Small pebbles cascaded off it, bouncing down into the gra.s.ses at its base. I worried it like a loose tooth, then I prepared to pull it.

I gritted my teeth against the effort. I felt the stone shift. Before my mind's eye I saw it quiver and shake. Slowly, slowly at first it began to move upward. A micron here, a millimeter there, then a centimeter, then two. And four and six and twenty. Rich brown loam fell from it as the lower half of the stone began to rise above the surface. Faster it moved now, slowed only by the occasional clumsy b.u.mp against the side of the hole it had inhabited. My control was not yet fine, but I knew it would get better, so I pushed on, working on lifting it higher.

The stone came fully clear of the ground, but that was not enough for me.

I could feel the Force pulsing into me, full and insistent. I channeled it back out through my mind and made the rock's ascent smooth. I lifted it and lifted it up so high that when I opened my eyes, I knew I would be able to see beneath it and find Master Luke across the circle from me. I would lift it so high, in fact, that not even Gantoris could deny what I had done.

Finally I had success. The stone hung in the air better than two meters above the ground. I held it there and redoubled my effort to quell the list in it. I wanted it as firmly embedded in the Force and air as it had been in the ground. When it stopped moving, I smiled and opened my eyes.

The rock remained in the ground.

I stared at it and tried to remember if I heard it crash back down into the ground. I couldn't remember such a sound, nor could I remember feeling the shockwave that would have re-sulted from a crash landing. I glanced up at where the rock should have been, then back down. I couldn't believe it had not moved because I knew I had felt the Force, and I knew the rock had flown.

Then I noticed that all the others, every single one of them, were looking at the spot in the air where I had seen the rock floating. Tionne and Streen wore open expressions of wonder-ment. Kam wore the smirk with which he rewarded good ef-forts. Gantoris looked as if he'd seen a ghost and the others just looked amazed.

Across from me Luke shook his head, then pa.s.sed a hand over his eyes. He glanced back at the spot in the air where the rock should have been, then his gaze flicked toward where it really lay. He looked around at the other students, then gently pa.s.sed a hand through the air, causing them to blink and rub their eyes.

Gantoris looked at the rock and then accusingly at me.

"What did you do?"

"What Keiran did, was feel the Force." The Jedi Master nod-ded to me, then advanced and rested a hand on Gantoris' shoulder. "He opened the pathway to his future. What he did or did not do here should not concern you. Instead, be happy knowing yet another of you is past the first hurdle on the road to becoming a Jedi Knight."

Te next morning I found Mas-ter Skywalker waiting for me in my chamber after I finished my run. Dripping with sweat, my chest heaving with exertion, I bowed to him, then remained hunched over, with my hands resting on my knees. "It is an honor, Master."

Cloaked in black, he nodded to me. "You can tap into the Force to revitalize yourself, you know."