Rogue Planet

Chapter 21

It was the first day of client celebration that had been held for some time at Middle Distance, and the air was filled with many-colored balloon ships flying back and forth along their cables, loaded with officials, workers, and the curious. Anakin and Obi-Wan stood by the rail of the gondola of the large airship that carried them down the length of the valley. The oblong gondola featured a small cabin and a long, curved roof made of sheets of lamina and thickly woven tendrils, all still alive.

Gann accompanied them on this trip. About midway down the canyon, he grabbed a handrope and stepped forward around the cabin to the prow to confer with a tall Ferroan woman.

Wind carried snatches of string instruments and song from other airships. Obi-Wan listened to the musicians and singers with wonder. These ceremonies were important, but something else was in the air: a sense of renewal after a long ordeal.

He wondered whether Vergere had witnessed that ordeal. Had she left any messages for the Jedi who would follow? If so, Obi-Wan had not found them.

Anakin leaned out over the woven rail of the hanging gondola and peered down at the river, thin and white and roaring even from this height. He saw sleek, pale creatures as wide as a Gungan sub, and about the same shape, gliding back and forth above the river. Other, smaller shapes, dark and quick, veered around them.

"I'd love to ride a raft down there," Anakin said.

"It's too dangerous," the airship pilot warned. A young man of sixteen or seventeen standard years, barely an adult by the Ferroan measure, he stood behind three thick control levers aft of the cabin, steadying the airship's course.

"Nobody's tried it?" Anakin asked him.

"Nobody with half a brain." The pilot grinned. "We have better ways to take risks."

"Like what?"

"Wellll-llll-the pilot drew out the word to some length- "on Uniting Day…" Gann returned from the narrow prow and gave the pilot a look. He was telling tales out of turn.

"Ten minutes before we arrive," Gann said. "You have all that is necessary?"

Obi-Wan looked to Anakin, who winked and patted his waist. "Yes," Obi-Wan answered. "But I'd be much more comfortable if we were more familiar with the procedures."

Gann nodded. "I'm sure you would," he said. "Everybody would. There is only one client this day, counting you and the boy as a partnered team. So you are alone in your time of choosing. Any more than that- " He glanced at the pilot. "-would be telling."

The young pilot nodded soberly.

The other passengers on the airship were Ferroans, as well, with pale blue and ghostly white skins, long jaws, and wide eyes.The female Gann had been conversing with was larger and somewhat more heavily muscled than the males. She walked around the cabin as they approached the high, vine- suspended landing, and introduced herself to Obi-Wan and Anakin.

"I am Sheekla Farrs," she said, her voice strong and deep. "I am a grower and daughter of Firsts. Gann gives you to me now for the rest of this day."

"Sheekla," Gann said, bowing slightly and retreating a step. Farrs leaned close and sniffed at Obi-Wan's face, then drew back with a discerning squint. "You aren't afraid." She did the same for Anakin, who glanced at Obi-Wan in some embarrassment. "Neither are you," she concluded.

"I can't wait," Anakin said. "Are we going to see the ships?"

When Farrs laughed, her deep voice became high and quite musical. "Today you meet your seed-partners. When that is done, you design your ship. My husband, Shappa, will guide you in that task."

The pilot unhooked the airship from its cable and turned it into the shade of a ridge wall, then deftly strung it onto a secondary cable and toward the landing. The basket wobbled between a pair of heavy black dampers mounted on thick pilings. The cable sang as the dampers pinched in and grabbed the basket, tugging it down slightly before the gate was opened by attendants at the landing. A ramp was dropped, and Sheekla Farrs indicated they should cross ahead of her.

"That was rugged," Anakin told Obi-Wan as they disembarked. "If there's some sort of airship race here, can we try it?"

"We?" Obi-Wan asked.

"Sure. You'd be great," Anakin said. "You learn fast. But. ." He waggled his shoulders. "You got to be more confident."

"I see," Obi-Wan said.

"We are now at Far Distance," Sheekla Farrs said. "This is where we join our seed-partners and the prospective clients. There is a ceremony, of course." She smiled at Anakin. "Very formal. You'll hate it."

Anakin wrinkled his nose.

"But you'll be meeting what could become your ship," she added.

Anakin brightened.

"And you'll undergo what the Magister experienced, so many years ago, when he alone saw Zonama and knew Sekot for the first time."

"Who's the Magister?" Anakin asked.

Sheekla Farrs gave Obi-Wan a glance then that he could not read, though it seemed to mingle both respect and warning. "He is our leader, our spiritual adviser, and the knower. His father was founder of Middle Distance and the pioneer for all we do here."

Gann made his farewells, promising to meet with them later, and Farrs led them across the bridge that connected the landing to a broad tunnel dug directly into the rock wall. Water dripped to either side of a long walkway elevated above the floor of the tunnel, its lamina surface damp with seep. Green tendrils crisscrossed the wet floor like a grid. Everything was very regular, very patterned, almost too tidy.

"The seed-partners emerge from a Potentium," Farrs told them as they approached the end of the tunnel.

Surprised by that word, Potentium, Obi-Wan reached back far into his memory, to conversations with Qui-Gon Jinn before the Jedi Master had taken him on as a Padawan.

Farrs pushed through the door and took them into a broad courtyard open to the sky. The trunks of smaller boras leaned over the courtyard on three sides. On the fourth side, the neatly paved stone floor ended abruptly at the abyss. They heard the sound of the river beyond, apparently rushing into a subterranean cavern. "If you fail, they will return to the Potentium. All is conserved. The seed-partners are very important here."

"I don't know that word," Anakin said to Obi-Wan. "What's a Potentium?"

Qui-Gon and Mace Windu had once dealt with group of apprentices who had shown promise, but had not been accepted as Jedi Knights. In disappointment and anger, one of them had tried to start his own version of the Jedi, enlisting "students" from aristocratic families on Coruscant and Alderaan. Qui-Gon had mentioned the Potentium, a controversial view of the Force.

The theory of the Potentium had long since been judged by the Council to be in error, and abandoned. It was no longer even mentioned to Padawans.

"I'll be curious to discover the meaning myself," Obi-Wan said. And how and why it is being used, here!

The courtyard was filled with a brightly dressed crowd of celebrants, standing in clusters of five and six throughout, all silent. Anakin and Obi-Wan advanced slowly at the urging of Sheekla Farrs. A woman's low voice began singing-the same song they had heard coming from the other airships.

In Ferroans, maturity darkened the hair of males, but not females. Two older men with jet-black hair stepped forward, carrying sashes hung with bloodred, gourdlike fruits. The taller of the two slung a sash around Obi-Wan's neck, and the other slipped his over Anakin's head. Now all joined in the song, and the chorus of voices echoed from the courtyard's stone walls.

Farrs smiled broadly. "They like the way you look and smell. You aren't afraid."

The taller man backed away a step, walked in a circle, thrusting his chin at three points of the Zonama compass, and then turned back to Obi-Wan and held out his hands.

"Your offering to the Potentium," Farrs suggested.

At a gesture from Obi-Wan, Anakin slipped his hand through his loose tunic and drew out the pouched belt containing the bars of old Republic aurodium. He passed it to Obi-Wan, who passed it in turn to the elder, who accepted it with a smile and a slight bow.

"Now, we introduce you to Sekot," Farrs said, rewarding them with a beaming and most unmercenary smile. "I am so very, very optimistic!"