Star Wars: Coruscant Nights III: Patterns of Force (14 page)

“Whose word?”

“What?” The prefect arrested his shambling gait and turned to look at Jax over his shoulder.

“Whose word would you give that we’d trust?”

“Now, that would be promising what I might not be able to deliver. Or it might be revealing an important source of information.
Or
it might be betraying a friend. Or all or none of the above. Have your droid patch into the ‘Net in about an hour. I’ll be sending you what I’ve got on the murder from the Imperial Security drones.”

Jax nodded, then watched the police prefect make his way down the corridor, looking nothing like what he was. There had been a time when Jax Pavan had regarded Pol Haus as a disorganized, easily befuddled Imperial functionary. Now he wasn’t sure what to make of him.

“He’s gone,” Jax said as he reentered the living room. “It’s all right, Kaj, you can come out.”

A moment later the boy appeared, looking highly spooked.

Jax smiled at him reassuringly. “It looks as if we may have another ally.”

“I’d withhold judgment on that,” advised Rhinann. “You can never be too careful.”

“Actually, you can,” I-Five said. “And you can miss opportunities that way.”

Still keeping tabs on Kaj through the Force, Jax turned his objective attention to the droid. “And is this an opportunity or a risk?”

“Aren’t they two sides of the same coin? Opportunity rarely comes without risk.”

“Oh, stop it, Five,” said Den. “You sound like a carnival oracle droid. Opportunity, my aunt Freema’s dewlaps. All this is, is one more person—one more person with a link to His Evilness—who knows Jax is a Jedi. I see no particular upside to that. I think we should relocate immediately.”

“Ah. Somewhere not on this planet, I assume.”

“I’m willing to compromise. I’ll consider the same galactic sector.”

“But where would
I
go?” Kajin asked. He hovered at
the very edge of the seating area, the light sculpture washing him with lambent hues.

“No one is going anywhere,” said Jax.

Den stared at him. “Haus could be on his way to Vader right this minute.”

“Den,” said I-Five, “you’re showing every sign of rampant paranoia.”

“You know the difference between paranoia and realistic concern? Breathing. The way I see it,” Den said, “Haus has little to lose by tipping Vader to us and much to gain in the way of prestige. I don’t trust him.”

Behind Jax, Kaj uttered a sick moan and, much to Jax’s astonishment, disappeared entirely from Jax’s Force radar. Startled, the Jedi turned just as the boy slid into a formchair, simultaneously coming back into sight, as it were.

Had Kaj just disconnected from the Force? Could he do this at will? From his attitude he seemed unaware of what had just happened. Even so, the implications were stunning. Jax opened his mouth to say something, but Dejah had launched into a disagreement with Den.

“That’s because you can’t sense him, Den. Not like Jax and I can. Right, Jax?”

“I …” Jax pulled his attention away from Kajin, who continued to brood. “What I sense from Haus is … anomalous. He’s got some dark ribbons of Force around him, but they don’t seem to be connected to Vader, or anyone else, which is unusual. There’s an underlying agitation there, though. My sense of it is that he’s more disturbed by Vader than he cares to admit.”

“Well,
I’m
not sensing anything anomalous,” Dejah said. “I don’t sense any duplicitous emotions from him at all.”

“You’re not getting your psychic impressions of him through the Force,” Rhinann pointed out.

“Which leads me to trust them all the more.”

A moment of somewhat stunned silence followed this. Then Jax said, “Before, when he was playing the bungling detective, did you realize that’s what he was doing? Did you sense duplicity then?”

Dejah stared at him in surprise. He felt suddenly contrite and nearly apologized aloud.

“I sensed no malice,” she answered.

“But neither did you realize that he was concealing his true nature,” said I-Five.

Anger flashed briefly in the Zeltron’s eyes. “I sensed he was hiding no hostility,” she repeated.

“Why would you assume that anyone who meant us harm must necessarily feel hostility for us?” the droid asked. “Beings often hurt each other for reasons other than emotional impulse. Some of the greatest atrocities in history have been orchestrated with complete dispassion. The Emperor’s annihilation of the Caamasi homeworld, for example, or, to put it on a more personal level, Tuden Sal’s betrayal of Jax’s father. In the latter case, Sal certainly held no malice toward him. If you had been privy to the last meeting Lorn and I had with him, you would very likely have come to the same conclusion: we were in no danger, because Sal wasn’t hostile toward us.”

“What about you, I-Five?” Jax asked the droid. “You’re a student of humanoid body language. Do you think Pol Haus is enough of a threat that we should leave Coruscant?”

“I think we may wish to relocate somewhere else in the city, perhaps keeping this place up as a front. But not so much because I distrust Pol Haus as because I trust Vader to be hypervigilant. I also think that if Pol Haus is our enemy, he has the potential to be a bad one, because he will most certainly have all the usual means of escape watched, if not already closed. Getting offworld cleanly is probably not a realistic option at this point.”

Jax again felt Kaj’s emotions spike. Then he winked out again. Jax swung around to face him.

“What are you doing?”

The boy, Force-visible once more, froze as he was rising from the chair. Liquid light from the sculpture splashed his face.

“I was just—” he started, but Jax cut him off.

“No, I mean how did you shield yourself from the Force just now?”

The boy swallowed in obvious confusion. “I … I didn’t do anything.”

“Twice in the last couple of minutes you have virtually disappeared from view through the Force. Are you sure you didn’t make that happen?”

“I didn’t do
anything
,” Kaj repeated, a note of sullenness creeping into his voice.

“Not consciously, perhaps,” said I-Five, regarding the young Force prodigy with obvious interest. “But it could have been an involuntary part of your fight-or-flight response. What were you feeling just now?”

“Afraid. I was feeling afraid. Nervous. I don’t want to leave Coruscant. My parents said they’d try to come here to find me. If I leave …”

“Fear?” Jax looked at the droid. “You’re suggesting he disappears when his fear reaches panic proportions? I’ve never heard of any Force-sensitive who could do that. Besides, when he was confronted with the Inquisitor he didn’t just disappear. He fought. He used the Force to fight, not to hide.”

I-Five turned to the boy. “You’ve been dodging the Inquisitors for some time now. Are you certain there isn’t some trick you use—something that may even seem second nature to you—that allows you to hide yourself from them? Something that’s allowed you to escape them?”

“I’ve escaped them by knowing where they are and
using the Force as little as possible when they’re around.”

Jax and I-Five exchanged glances. “You mean you’ve learned to read the taozin signature?” asked Jax. “The damping field? In other words, you know where they are by sensing where they’re not?”

“Is that what it is?” Kaj shrugged, apparently unwinding a little bit. He cast a shy smile at Dejah, who continued to hover in the background. “It feels like ripples to me. Like weird little splashes—water flowing around a rock.” He looked into the light sculpture and took a deep breath. “Y’know, looking at this thing is relaxing. Maybe I could use it for meditation.”

He moved a step closer to Ves Volette’s masterpiece … and disappeared for the third time.

“What is it?” I-Five asked, and Jax realized he was staring once again at the boy.

“He just disappeared, didn’t he?” Dejah asked, her voice hushed. “You can’t feel the Force from him while he’s standing that close to the sculpture.”

“How do you know?”

“I lost him telempathically, too. Or nearly so. He’s … muted. Gray.”

“I’m gray?” Kaj looked at his arms as if expecting to see himself in black-and-white.

Jax felt a rising tide of excitment wash through him. “Kaj, step away from the light sculpture.”

“Huh?”

He waved the boy back with one hand. Kaj looked puzzled but did as asked. He reappeared in the Force as soon as he had cleared the dance of light by about half a meter.

“Dejah?” Jax murmured.

She nodded solemnly. “He’s back. Vividly.”

Jax motioned at Kaj. “Now walk around behind it.”

Kaj obeyed, moving behind the light sculpture at a distance of about a meter. His Force threads broke like
so many strands of hair-thin synthsilk. With his eyes, Jax could see him vaguely through the kinetic display, but he couldn’t see him at all with the Force.

“Walk away from the sculpture,” he told Kaj. “Move toward the wall.”

The boy did, and remained hidden from the Force.

“Incredible,” murmured Dejah. “I had no idea Ves’s light sculptures possessed this property.” Brow furrowed, she moved slowly around the display, stopping only when she stood next to Kaj opposite Jax. Then she peered at the Jedi through the moving pattern of lights.

“I can’t sense you,” she murmured, then glanced from Den to Rhinann. “Any of you.” The idea seemed to disturb her. Wrapping her arms about herself, she left the room without another word.

“What was that about?” Den asked.

“Perhaps,” said Rhinann, “one of us should inquire. She seemed … unhappy. I’ll go,” he added, before anyone else could respond, then moved after Dejah with an alacrity that was no less surprising than the gesture itself.

To his further amazement, Jax could swear that Den had also made a move in Dejah’s direction. He didn’t have time to give headspace to the Zeltron woman’s peculiar reaction to their discovery, however. The overall implications of it as far as their current predicament was concerned were too important.

Jax, I-Five, and Kaj all gathered around the undulating display of colorful light. A moment later Den joined them, and they all stood looking at the thing like a flock of art gallery patrons gawking at the newest exhibit.

“Any theories, I-Five?” Jax asked the droid. “Any idea how or why the light sculptures might cause this sort of damping effect?”

“The display itself uses a combination of electro- and bioluminescence, so I suppose there is a possibility that
it could somehow warp the kinetic energies of biological entities. But I think it more likely that it’s the power source. The light sculpture creates a cohesion field capable of bending light to the desired shape by using a lightsaber crystal. Perhaps it bends more than light.”

Jax stared at the droid. “You’re saying the Force might not be blocked, but instead shunted somewhere else?”

“Possibly, but not necessarily. I would suggest, given the challenges inherent in training your Padawan, that you may wish to conduct some simple experiments. There are still at least half a dozen of these sculptures in Ves Volette’s studio. It would be interesting to know if they all create the same effect, and if they damp telekinetic and other psionic forces—or, as you suspect, shunt them off somewhere else.”

“What I’m wondering,” said Jax, “is what would happen if a Force-user was surrounded by them. Would they make an effective wall?”

“A redistribution enclosure?” suggested I-Five. “Something like an EM cage?”

“A what?” Den wanted to know.

“An electromagnetic cage is an enclosure lined with conducting metal designed to block various frequencies of radiation,” I-Five explained. “It’s extremely versatile and has been used for millennia. What Jax is postulating is essentially the same concept, applied to the Force.”

“Hard to believe that someone hasn’t stumbled across such a basic concept already,” Jax said.

“Not really. For centuries the only ones really interested in the Force were the Jedi, and their R and D was much more esoteric and theoretical than practical. Their emphasis was always on ways to augment the Force, rather than restrict it.” The droid looked closely at the light structure. “We’ll no doubt have to tweak the frequency for optimal results.”

Jax glanced toward the closed door to Dejah’s quarters. “Not without her permission. She loves those sculptures. They’re all she’s got left of Ves Volette.”

“Naturally, we would get her permission,” I-Five conceded. “But I can’t imagine she would withhold it. She has, after all, been an outspoken proponent of you pursuing a serious training regimen with Kajin.”

“You really think a shield of these things would work?” the boy asked, staring up into the play of light.

“There’s only one way to find out,” Jax said, and turned toward Dejah’s quarters.

I-Five put a pewter-shaded hand on his shoulder. “I think perhaps you should wait until Rhinann has had a chance to ascertain what’s bothering her.”

Jax felt a twinge of remorse. He’d been so wrapped up in their discovery that he hadn’t given thought to Dejah’s apparent discomfort with it. He should have gone after her, he supposed, but this … he gave the light sculpture another appraising glance. This could be the perfect solution to his current quandary.

He wondered how the Elomin was faring in his attempt to comfort the Zeltron. He’d thought Rhinann completely immune to Dejah’s gentle emotional tugging and prodding. Apparently he’d been wrong.

“Dejah, are you unwell?” Rhinann stood on the threshold of the Zeltron’s room and peered in at her.

She had gone immediately to sit in a false window seat, staring at a projected image of her late lover’s equally deceased homeworld, Caamas. The Empire had seen fit to all but extinguish the elegant and gentle Caamasi, Rhinann recalled. Only a handful of those living on the planet, and emigrants to other worlds, had survived the scourge.

“Hiding,” she said softly. “Ves was hiding from me, Rhinann. He had surrounded himself with objects behind
which he could hide from me emotionally—withhold himself from me—whenever he wished.”

“Perhaps he didn’t realize that,” Rhinann said. He felt excruciatingly uncomfortable—the only species that found speaking about emotions more anathema than Elomin were Givin.