Attack of the Clones (14 page)

A
nakin Skywalker and Jar Jar Binks stood at the door separating Padmé’s bedroom from the anteroom where Anakin and Obi-Wan had kept watch the night before. Looking through the room to the broken window, the pair watched the Coruscant skyline, the endless lines of traffic.

Padmé and her handmaiden Dormé rushed about the bedroom, throwing the luggage together, and from her sharp movements, both Anakin and Jar Jar knew that they would do well to keep a fair distance from the upset and angry young Senator. As the Jedi had requested, Chancellor Palpatine had intervened to bid Padmé to return to Naboo. She was complying, but that did not mean that she was happy about it.

With a profound sigh, Padmé stood straight, one hand on her lower back, which ached from all the bending. She sighed again and moved before the two observers.

“I’m taking an extended leave of absence,” she said to Jar Jar, her voice thick and somber, as if she was hoping to inject some of that gravity into the goofy Gungan. “It
will be your responsibility to take my place in the Senate. Representative Binks, I know I can count on you.”

“Mesa honored …” Jar Jar blurted in reply, standing at attention, except that his head was wagging, and his ears were flopping. One could dress a Gungan up like a dignitary, but such a creature’s nature was not so easily changed.

“What?” Padmé’s voice was stern and showed more than a little exasperation. She was entrusting something important to Jar Jar, and was obviously not thrilled to hear him acting like his old, goofy self.

Obviously embarrassed, Jar Jar cleared his throat and stood a bit straighter. “Mesa honored to be taken on dissa heavy burden. Mesa accept this with muy … muy humility andda—”

“Jar Jar, I don’t wish to hold you up,” Padmé interrupted. “I’m sure you have a great deal to do.”

“Of course, M’Lady.” With a great bow, as if trying to use pretense to cover up the fact that he was blushing like a Darellian fire crab, the Gungan turned and left, flashing a bright smile Anakin’s way as he passed.

Anakin’s eyes followed the retreating Gungan, but any levity or sense of calm he felt from that last exchange was washed away a moment later, when Padmé addressed him in a tone that reminded him that she was not in the best of moods.

“I do not like this idea of hiding,” she said emphatically.

“Don’t worry. Now that the Council has ordered an investigation, it won’t take Master Obi-Wan long to find out who hired that bounty hunter. We should have done that from the beginning. It is better to take the offensive against such a threat, to find out the source rather than try to react to the situation.” He meant to go on, to claim credit for asking for such an investigation from the very
beginning, to let Padmé know that he had been right all along and that it had taken the Council long enough to come around to his way of thinking. He could see, though, that her eyes were already beginning to glaze over, so he quieted and let her speak.

“And while your Master investigates, I have to hide away.”

“That would be most prudent, yes.”

Padmé gave a little sigh of frustration. “I haven’t worked for a year to defeat the Military Creation Act not to be here when its fate is decided!”

“Sometimes we have to let go of our pride and do what is requested of us,” Anakin replied—a rather unconvincing statement, coming from him—and he knew as soon as he spoke the words that he probably shouldn’t have phrased things quite like that.

“Pride!” came the roaring response. “Annie, you’re young, and you don’t have a very firm grip on politics. I suggest you reserve your opinions for some other time.”

“Sorry, M’Lady, I was only trying to—”

“Annie! No!”

“Please don’t call me that.”

“What?”

“Annie. Please don’t call me ‘Annie.’ ”

“I’ve always called you that. It is your name, isn’t it?”

“My name is Anakin,” the young Jedi said calmly, his jaw firm, his eyes strong. “When you say Annie, it’s like I’m still a little boy. And I’m not.”

Padmé paused and looked him over, head to toe, nodding as she took the sight of him in completely. He could see sincerity on her face as she nodded her agreement, and her tone, too, became one of more respect. “I’m sorry, Anakin. It’s impossible to deny you’ve … that you’ve grown up.”

There was something in the way she said that, Anakin
sensed, some suggestion, some recognition from Padmé that he was indeed a man now, and perhaps a handsome one at that. That, combined with the little smile she flashed him, had him a bit flushed and put him back up on his heels. He found an ornament sitting on a shelf to the side, then, and using the Force, picked it up, letting it hover above his fingers, needing the distraction.

Still, he had to clear his throat to cover his embarrassment, for he was afraid that his voice would break apart as he admitted, “Master Obi-Wan manages not to see it. He criticizes my every move, as if I was still a child. He didn’t listen to me when I insisted that we go in search of the source of the assassination—”

“Mentors have a way of seeing more of our faults than we would like,” Padmé agreed. “It’s the only way we grow.”

With a thought, Anakin used the Force to lift the little globe ornament higher into the air, manipulating it all about. “Don’t get me wrong,” he remarked. “Obi-Wan is a great mentor, as wise as Master Yoda and as powerful as Master Windu. I am truly thankful to be his learner. Only …” He paused and shook his head, looking for the words. “Only, although I’m a Padawan learner, in some ways—in a lot of ways—I’m ahead of him. I’m ready for the trials. I know I am! He knows it, too. He feels I’m too unpredictable—other Jedi my age have gone through the trials and made it. I know I started my training late, but he won’t let me move on.”

Padmé’s expression grew curious, and Anakin could well understand her puzzlement, for he, too, was surprised at how openly he was speaking, critically, of Obi-Wan. He thought that he should stop right there, and silently berated himself.

But then Padmé said, with all sympathy, “That must be frustrating.”

“It’s worse!” Anakin cried in response, willingly diving into that warm place. “He’s overly critical! He never listens! He just doesn’t understand! It’s not fair!”

He would have gone on and on, but Padmé began to laugh, and that stopped Anakin as surely as a slap across the face.

“I’m sorry,” she said through her giggles. “You sounded exactly like that little boy I once knew, when he didn’t get his way.”

“I’m not whining! I’m not.”

Across the room, Dormé, too, began to chuckle.

“I didn’t say it to hurt you,” Padmé explained.

Anakin took a deep breath, then blew it all out of him, his shoulders visibly relaxing. “I know.”

He seemed so pitiable then, not pitiful, but just like a lost little soul. Padmé couldn’t resist. She walked over to him and lifted her hand to gently stroke his cheek. “Anakin.”

For the first time since they had been reunited, Padmé truly looked into the blue eyes of the young Padawan, locked stares with him so that they each could see beneath the surface, so that they each could view the other’s heart. It was a fleeting moment, made so by Padmé’s common sense. She quickly altered the mood with a sincere but lighthearted request. “Don’t try to grow up too fast.”

“I am grown up,” Anakin replied. “You said it yourself.” He finished by making his reply into something suggestive, as he looked deeply into Padmé’s beautiful brown eyes again, this time even more intensely, more passionately.

“Please don’t look at me like that,” she said, turning away.

“Why not?”

“Because I can see what you’re thinking.”

Anakin broke the tension, or tried to, with a laugh. “Oh, so you have Jedi powers, too?”

Padmé looked past the young Padawan for a moment, glimpsing Dormé, who was watching with obvious concern and not even trying to hide her interest anymore. And Padmé understood that concern, given the strange and unexpected road this conversation had taken. She looked squarely at Anakin again and said, with no room for debate, “It makes me feel uncomfortable.”

Anakin relented and looked away. “Sorry, M’Lady,” he said professionally, and he stepped back, allowing her to resume her packing.

Just the bodyguard again.

But he wasn’t, Padmé knew, no matter how much she wished it were true.

On a water-washed, wind-lashed world, far to the most remote edges of the Outer Rim, a father and his son sat on a skirt of shining black metal, watching carefully in the few somewhat calm pools created by the currents swirling about the gigantic caryatid that climbed out of the turbulent ocean. The rain had let up a bit, a rare occasion in this watery place, allowing for some calm surface area, at least, and the pair stared hard, searching for the meter-long dark silhouettes of rollerfish.

They were on the lowest skirt of one of the great pillars that supported Tipoca City, the greatest city on all of Kamino, a place of sleek structures, all rounded to deflect the continual wind, rather than flat-faced to battle against it. Kamino had been designed, or upgraded at least, by many of the best architects the galaxy could offer, who understood well that the best way to battle planetary elements was to subtly dodge them. Towering transparisteel windows looked out from every portal—the father, Jango, often wondered why the Kaminoans,
tall and thin, pasty white creatures with huge almond-shaped eyes set in oblong heads on necks as long as his arm, wanted so many windows. What was there to see on this violent world other than rolling waters and nearly constant downpours?

Still, even Kamino had its better moments. It was all relative, Jango supposed. Thus, when he saw that it was not raining very hard, he had taken his boy outside.

Jango tapped his son on the shoulder and nodded toward one of the quiet eddies, and the younger one, his face showing all the exuberance of a ten-year-old boy, lifted his pocker, an ion-burst-powered atlatl, and took deadly aim. He didn’t use the laser sighting unit, which automatically adjusted for watery refraction. No, this kill was to be a test of his skill alone.

He exhaled deeply, as his father had taught him, using the technique to go perfectly steady, and then, as the prey turned sidelong, he snapped his arm forward, throwing the missile. Barely a meter from the boy’s extended hand, the back of the missile glowed briefly, a sudden and short burst of power that shot it off like a blaster bolt, knifing through the water and taking the fish in the side, its barbed head driving through.

With a shout of joy, the boy twisted the atlatl handle, locking the nearly invisible but tremendously strong line, and then, when the fish squirmed away enough to pull the line taut, the boy slowly and deliberately turned the handle, reeling in his catch.

“Well done,” Jango congratulated. “But if you had hit it a centimeter forward, you would have skewered the primary muscle just below the gill and rendered it completely helpless.”

The boy nodded, unperturbed that his father, his mentor, could always find fault, even in success. The boy knew that his beloved father did so only because it forced
him to strive for perfection. And in a dangerous galaxy, perfection allowed for survival.

The boy loved his father even more for caring enough to criticize.

Jango went tense suddenly, sensing a movement nearby, a footfall, perhaps, or just a smell, something to tell the finely attuned bounty hunter that he and his boy were not alone. There weren’t many enemies to be found on Kamino, except far out in the watery wastes, where giant tentacled creatures roamed. Here there was little life above the water, other than the Kaminoans themselves, and so Jango wasn’t surprised when he saw that the newcomer was one of them: Taun We, his usual contact with the Kaminoans.

“Greetings, Jango,” the tall, lithe creature said, holding up a slim arm and hand in a gesture of peace and friendship.

Jango nodded but didn’t smile. Why had Taun We come out here—the Kaminoans were hardly ever out of their city of globes—and why would she interrupt Jango when he was with his son?

“You have been scarce within the sector of late,” Taun We remarked.

“Better things to do.”

“With your child?”

In response, Jango looked over at the boy, who was lining up another rollerfish. Or at least, he was appearing to, Jango recognized, and the insight brought a knowing nod of satisfaction to the crusty bounty hunter. He had taught his son well the art of deception and deflection, of appearing to do one thing while, in reality, doing something quite different. Like listening in on the conversation, measuring Taun We’s every word.

“The tenth anniversary approaches,” the Kaminoan explained.

Jango turned back to her with a sour expression. “You think I don’t know Boba’s birthday?”

If Taun We was fazed at all by the sharp retort, the delicately featured Kaminoan didn’t show it. “We are ready to begin again.”

Jango looked back at Boba, one of his thousands of children, but the only one who was a perfect clone, an exact replica with no genetic manipulation to make him more obedient. And the only one who hadn’t been artificially aged. The group that had been created beside Boba had all reached maturity now, were adult warriors, in perfect health.

Jango had thought that policy of accelerating the aging process a mistake—wasn’t experience as much a part of attaining warrior skill as genetics?—but he hadn’t complained openly to the Kaminoans about it. He had been hired to do a job, to serve as the source, and questioning the process wasn’t in his job description.

Taun We cocked her head a bit to the side, eyes blinking slowly.

Jango recognized her expression as curiosity, and it nearly brought a chuckle bubbling to his lips. The Kaminoans were much more alike than were humans, especially humans from different planets. Perhaps their singular concept, their commonness within their own species, was a part of their typical reproductive process, which now included a fair amount of genetic manipulation, if not outright cloning. As a society, they were practically of one mind and one heart. Taun We seemed genuinely perplexed, and so she was, to see a human with so little apparent regard for other humans, clones or not.