Rogue Planet

Chapter 38

With deep misgivings, Anakin watched Vagno toss their seed-partners into the same deep pit. Night had fallen over the arched canopy, and the only light came from torches carried by the shapers' assistants or hung from poles stuck into the cindery ground, and from the fires scattered at some distance around the valley.

"Some of the pits are huge," Anakin said to Obi-Wan. "I wonder what they make there?"

"I don't think they make anything while clients are around," Obi-Wan said. Their forger had said, "before they start up with more big ones." Big what?

Vagno's assistants gathered at the edge of their pit, which was about twenty meters across. Each assistant in the crew carried a long, razor-sharp, scythelike blade on the end of a metal pole.

Carapods dumped their loads of fuel-the detritus of the upper tampasi-on top of the seed-partners, and Vagno directed his crew to even out the piles and push aside holes with their long blades. He then inspected the pit, looked back at Anakin and Obi-Wan from the center, gave them a thumbs-up and a toothy grin, and deftly clambered along the top of the debris. "We need pellets here, and here," he told his men, and baskets of small red pellets, each round and smooth as a protanut case, were poured into the holes.

"Your seeds are quiet," Vagno said thoughtfully. "Moment of destiny."

"How many survive?" Anakin asked, his throat dry. He could still feel the separate flavors or voices of the seeds in his mind, lingering traces of their need, their affection.

"Most. Don't worry. We keep the heat distributed. It's better here than out in the tampasi. And remember-it's the way of Sekot."

Anakin had hoped Vagno would say "All." The boy hunkered down beside Obi-Wan and played with a bit of dry stick. Vagno walked toward him, stared down, and pointed for the stick to be tossed into the pit. "It's our way," he said. "The ground must be clean."

Scattered around the valley, other clients-Anakin counted three, each half a kilometer or more from the others-watched their own partners be heaped with fuel.

"How many new clients?" Anakin asked.

"Three, apparently," Obi-Wan said. "I see three other active pits."

"Right," Anakin said. "I feel so nervous!"

"The connection with the seeds," Obi-Wan said. "Beware."

"Of what?"

"They are about to be transformed. No one here knows what that feels like to them-but you and I, perhaps, will learn."

"Oh," Anakin said. He swallowed a lump in his throat and stood, brushing off his pants and the edge of his tunic.

Vagno finished his inspection. He shone his torch beam up, and Anakin saw a circular shape, like a thick hoop, descend from the canopy. Carapods there were lowering it on heavy tendrils. As it descended over the pit, limbs unfolded from the underside and displayed a variety of implements, some apparently natural, others made of metal.

Anakin knew many cultures that had combined organic forms with technology. The Gungans were masters at that-but they had never built interstellar ships. Still, most of those procedures were kept secret-and now he was going to witness, if not understand, how the Zonamans worked to achieve even more startling results. He would have felt proud if he had remained the boy Qui-Gon had freed on Tatooine. Jedi training had, at the very least, taught him the perils of pride. Instead, he felt an intense curiosity.

Curiosity was the deepest expression, for Anakin, of a connection with the living Force.

He looked to his master. Obi-Wan wore an expression of both concern and curiosity. Anakin could feel the banked flame of his master's controlled spirit, and at its core, though more ordered, it was not so different from his own.

The descending circle of shaper tools stopped, and valves popped open between the hanging limbs, which all folded or retracted, making the hoop shiver. Vagno let out a shout, and his crew reached up and tapped the hoop simultaneously, all around the pit, with the flats of their long blades.

From the open valves descended an aromatic fluid that made Anakin's nose smart. He drew back just as Vagno planted his feet firmly in front of them. From his thick belt Vagno produced a wick and a flint, and with one chop of the flint, the wick caught fire. "Just in case," he said. "This can be tricky."

The hoop quickly ascended.

With a chant in Langhesan, the crew held out their blades and peered up. A hole about a hundred meters wide had opened in the overgrowth. Above the hole roiled thick, heavy black clouds.

Anakin saw long tendrils rise from the circumference of the hole, their tips glinting. Across the factory valley, other holes opened over other pits. The air smelled electric.

"The tampasi controls the weather," he whispered to Obi- Wan.

"A fair conclusion," Obi-Wan agreed.

Vagno's face wrinkled, and he drew his arm back in anticipation. He turned his head away and, with one hand, motioned for Anakin and Obi-Wan to do the same.

His crew raised their blades, and they, too, squinted and looked away from the pit.

The tension in the air became unbearable. Anakin's hair crackled and his clothes clung to his skin, writhing as if alive. His eyeballs felt as if they would dance out over his cheeks. It was an awful sensation and he wanted to cry out.

Simultaneously, sun-hot orange bolts of lightning tumbled from the thick, pillowing clouds, danced along the upraised, iron-tipped tendrils, and fell with sizzling rage to the pits below. The bolts raced around the upraised tools of Vagno's forgers, quicker than the eye could follow, flinging the lances back though the men held on with all the strength in their massive arms.

The crew sang out as one and pushed the lances forward, and the bolts converged on the pit.

Vagno cackled with glee and tossed the flaming wick aside, not needed. "It's a sky fire!" he shouted. "The best there can be!"

The burst of flame where the bolts struck was intense. The accelerant from the hoop spread the ignition in less than a second, and the entire heap of fuel and pellets blazed up against the smoky darkness. In just seconds, the pyre poured flame into the sky to a height of at least forty meters, illuminating the underside of the canopy and all the scuttling creatures and creature-machines there. The entire canopy seemed alive with movement.

Anakin felt as if he were inside a gigantic colony of myrmins.

Then he felt the voices of the seeds. They are afraid. The heat is baking them. Their shells are crisping.

Most of the heat rose in rippling sheets of air, but as the fuel blazed and embers settled out, the seeds were being roasted like sugar hulls in a campfire.

Perversely, Anakin shivered as if with cold.

Obi-Wan put an arm around his shoulders. Anakin saw that his master's face was beaded with sweat. He, too, could feel the seeds in the fire.

"Something wrong?" Vagno asked, his face glinting and flowing in the yellow light from fire, as if he were part of the blaze, a stray ember given human shape. He walked around them critically.

"We're fine," Obi-Wan said.

But Anakin did not feel fine. He wanted to curl up and hide, or run, but he knew the seeds no longer had legs, no way of escaping, even if they wanted to.

"I've never lost a client. No fear, no fear," Vagno said.

The seeds were afraid but did not move under their burden of embers and flame. Theirs was courage, and also an awareness of fate or destiny.

The seeds were not nearly as intelligent as a human-they did not really think for themselves-but inside of each was the potential for awareness and intelligence. The fire was bringing that awareness to the fore.

This will happen to you.

Anakin gasped. He was not dreaming.

This is your destiny, your fate.

Obi-Wan had said nothing. Anakin knew where the voice was coming from, whom it belonged to, but could not believe what he knew.

There will be heat and death and resurrection. A seed will quicken. Will it burn or shine'? Will it think and create or be ruled by fear and destroy?

And then the voice fell silent.

Obi-Wan's arm tightened around Anakin, as if he would protect the boy. "The wave is not what we expected," he said.

Anakin stared into the flames, his inmost self suddenly calm. The seeds were changing. They were no longer afraid.

"They'll pop like bombs! Stand back!" Vagno pushed Obi- Wan and Anakin back just as the first explosion sent a cloud of embers high into the air. Sparks showered around them, crisping little holes in their robes. For a moment, Anakin looked like a devil, his hair sending out tendrils of smoke. Obi-Wan extinguished the little fires with quick, light slaps of his hand.

One, two, three. . suddenly, there were many explosions, too many to keep track of. But Anakin knew that all the seeds had survived, and all had been quickened by the flames.

"It's going to be a fabulous ship!" he enthused, slapping his knees. "It's going to be the greatest ship ever made!"

"Not yet," Vagno said, grimacing critically. "They have to be gathered, annealed, and shaped-we'll teach them ways of the outer worlds! Come. Let the ashes be stirred." He herded Anakin and Obi-Wan back with his hands until they stood beside an empty carapod. "And stand back! Some of the seeds explode twice."