"Padawan, you may not stand up at Skywalker's
wedding."
"What?!"
"I don't believe you suffer from any sort of deafness,
Sionnach. You heard what I said and you know
what I meant by it."
"But --"
"You have some objection?"
"Yes, I --"
"You suppose
anything you have to say here --"
"Master, I gave my
word!" Surprise, distress and
incomprehension warred across the girl's features.
"Indeed?" Joma clenched her fists, inside the
sleeves of her robe, to avoid gritting her teeth.
Outwardly, she merely raised an eyebrow.
"And aside from what it would mean to
me, it
would mean so much to
them." Surprise was
winning now.
"They know, or at the very least Skywalker knows,
that nothing of any personal importance should ever
take precedence over a direct order from a
padawan's master." Joma's fingernails dug
uncomfortably into her palms.
Incomprehension. "But Master, I don't understand
--"
"It's not important that you
understand, Padawan.
It's important that you
obey. Do you understand
that?"
Distress. Sionnach's golden eyes were dangerously
full of tears. Her voice was tight as she whispered,
"Yes, Master."
"Good. And do you trust me?"
Sion sniffed and turned away. "Of course, Master."
"I'm glad. Because I didn't mean it."
Incomprehension pulled ahead again. Sion looked
over her shoulder. "What?"
"I meant every word of that except the part about
your not being allowed to stand up at the wedding."
Joma bit her tongue between her back teeth. It did
hurt her to see her apprentice so upset, to
make
her apprentice so upset; but it was a lesson that had
to be taught, and it couldn't be done without
messing a bit with her mind.
But that apprentice hadn't yet caught up with the
conversation. "What?"
"You want to stand up at Skywalker's wedding?"
Incomprehension won the whole match. Sionnach
evidently decided to humor her master, despite her
belief that the latter was talking nonsense. "You
know I do."
"Then I think you should."
Sionnach knit her brow and thought for a moment
before she spoke again. "Master, may I sit down? I
think you should, too."
Joma breathed a sigh of relief that none of this had
exploded in her face. So many padawans,
particularly those with caring and thoughtful
masters, lived their young lives not really
understanding the potential of the sacrifice they
were making in choosing the life of a Jedi. They
reached knighthood and were unpleasantly surprised
by the notion that interests other than theirs were to
be their primary concern. A padawan's adherence to
the word of his or her master was to be even greater.
It was absolute. But many, many padawans lost
sight of this, in their occupation with adolescence
and the persistent idea of entitlement. Padawans,
for their own safety, needed to know almost
instinctively that "Because I'm your master and I
said so" was all the reasoning necessary to grant or
refuse them any favor or privilege. The Council
would never fault a padawan for obeying an order
from his master, even if he had to disobey the
Council itself to do so. Of course, a padawan could
bring a grievance before the Council, if he thought
his master was abusing the responsibility of mastery
-- ordering him to behave illegally or immorally, for
instance, or to endanger his own or anyone else's
safety without good cause -- and the Council would
not assign padawans to any knight or master
believed to be unfit for the task; but the burden of
proof was on the apprentice.
This was not such a case, however. Joma felt that it
would be wrong to let Sion hit sixteen still believing
that she would never be denied anything, or even
anything reasonable; it was important that the girl
understand that if Joma chose to forbid her from
standing in the wedding, she simply would not
stand. Sion's own immediate interests were not to
be her primary concern, and neither, frankly, were
they her master's.
But Joma knew her plan could easily have
backfired. Thankfully, however, Sion had turned
from tears and anger toward concern for her master.
That, in itself, Joma reflected, was a demonstration
that the Jedi upbringing had been effective. "Sion,"
Joma said as she sat down, "I want you to stand up
in Anakin's wedding. But I wanted you to believe
that I wasn't going to permit it."
Sionnach was plainly several steps beyond
confusion. "But why?"
"You are many things, Padawan, of which the most
important is a Jedi. Specifically, you are my
apprentice. In any circumstance, you must be
prepared to sublimate every other interest to that
fact. Is that clear?"
"Yes, Master."
"And now that we've established that, the goal
wasn't actually to keep you from standing up at the
wedding. But I know you know I was deadly
serious in that I could, at any time, have forbidden
it."
"Yes, Master."
"For as long as you are a Jedi, and especially as long
as you are my or anyone else's apprentice, there are
very real chances that your interests may conflict
with your duties. You must be careful not to make
promises you don't know you'll be able to keep."
Sion nodded, a thoughtful expression wrinkling her
brow. "So are you trying to say, Master, that --"
"I'm not trying to say anything other than what I
have said." The chime rang. "You can come to me,
of course, for any guidance," Joma said as she got
up to answer the door, "but I'm through volunteering
instruction for the day." She smiled warmly and hit
the panel.
The door slid aside to reveal Qui-Gon Jinn,
examining the palm of his left hand. "Hello," he
said, startled, when he heard the door open.
"Qui!" Sionnach jumped to her feet and ran into her
godfather's arms.
"Sha," he murmured -- that child never failed to
calm him, Joma thought -- as he squeezed her in his
arms. "I'll be in to see you in just a moment, love,"
he said as he set her away again, "but I need to
speak to your master for a bit, all right? Joma, will
you come outside with me for a moment?"
Both women were surprised by Jinn's manner, but
Sionnach did as he asked and went back to the
couch, picking up a datapad on the way. Joma
stepped through the door and let it close behind her.
"What's going on?" she started to ask -- but he
shushed her and bodily moved her over to a window
alcove where they could both sit, and where it was
thus much more comfortable for the two of them,
given their disparity in height, to speak quietly.
"Something's up, Jinn," she muttered. "Out with it."
"There is a lot of suspicious behavior in the senate,"
he said.
"They're politicians. Of course their behavior is
suspicious."
"No," the master said, waving away her retort. "It
begins to seem to us that several, if not many, of the
senators have been cloned."
Joma hadn't been what she would call speechless
since -- well, she had probably never been rendered
speechless. But now, a suggestion like this one was
the last thing she would have expected to hear.
"What?!" she whispered.
Qui-Gon Jinn nodded. "Bail Organa of Alderaan
has been thinking something was wrong for some
time, and arrived at this conclusion about two cycles
ago. We -- Obi-Wan and Anakin and I -- have been
observing ever since, and it doesn't look good."
"But -- who's doing it? Their own people?" Surely
not. It was inconceivable that any constituency
would elect a clone to the senate, or clone a sitting
representative.
Qui-Gon Jinn shrugged and showed his empty
hands. "We don't know," he said. "That doesn't
seem likely, but we don't have any other ideas
either. Whoever's growing them, though, they're
good. Quite difficult to spot. Likely all first-
generation. And the learned memories are very
nearly complete."
"Then what's the basis of your suspicion?"
"Temperament, mostly," Jinn admitted, "although
we have three definite cases of missing knowledge -
- senators who should have known things and didn't.
We won't know for sure until we can get a tissue
sample, but obviously we can't go scraping skin
from the entire assembly." He paused for a moment
and seemed to be gauging Joma's reaction. When
he spoke again, his voice was barely audible. "The
Council has refused to authorize an investigation,"
he said.
"Not surprising. They say it's not our affair?"
"They'd be right, but Organa has explicitly asked for
our assistance. So I'm telling you this as an
individual, to do with the information as you will."
"What are you hoping to accomplish?"
"If it turns out to be true, I'm after minimizing the
violence that will result when people become aware
of this. No matter who's behind it, most people will
be furious -- I'd like to get the original senators back
in office, and protect the clones from the mobs."
Joma gave a mirthless chuckle. "You would. All
right, Qui-Gon, I'm in. Keep me posted on what
Organa has to say, and I'll keep my eyes open and
see if I can't pull some hairs to look at under a lens.
You'd like me to spread this about a bit, I assume?"
"If you think it's wise. Do as you will."
Joma nodded once. "Right, then. We -- right."
Having lost her train of thought, she rose. "If you'll
excuse me, I have a class to teach soon, so I need to
run, but I think Sion is free for the day, if you
wanted to visit." Joma smiled and moved away
down the corridor, stopping to glance back over her
shoulder at Qui-Gon Jinn. He raised an eyebrow at
her, and she felt her face wrinkle in frustration at
her inability to nail down what she was thinking.
With a shrug, Joma resumed walking toward her
class. It wasn't until she was nearly there that she
remembered what had been predicted the last time
she and Qui-Gon had discussed something out of
the ordinary.
Qui-Gon remained sitting in the alcove, letting
abstract thoughts drift through his mind, after Joma
had gone. After a moment, he realized that his
attention was in demand elsewhere. Looking up, he
saw Sionnach standing beside him with an
expression of curious concern he'd never seen on
anyone but her father. On Dorim, it had been an
indication that the man was through joking and
wanted the straight story. Qui-Gon did not suspect
it would be any different from Sion, particularly
once the girl spoke. "Is that true?"
"Is what true?"
"What you said to my master, about --" she looked
around quickly, then raised her eyebrows as she
whispered: "clones?"
Qui-Gon stood swiftly and grabbed Sionnach by the
arm. "Inside. Now," he said through clenched teeth
as he steered her back across the corridor and into
her apartment. Neither spoke until the door had slid
shut behind them. "What were you doing,
eavesdropping like that?" he demanded
immediately, before his next thought could strike
him. "You were -- you were listening, weren't you?
You couldn't just hear us?"
"I was listening," Sion assured him. "I can do that.
I'm Adept." She grinned.
Qui-Gon raised an eyebrow. There were a lot of
things Adepts could do that regular Jedi couldn't,
but they didn't often do them. Their greater
sensitivity to the Force meant they could do some
high-energy tasks with much less effort than other
people; conversely, though, they often had to
concentrate a great deal to avoid overwhelming a
lower-energy task. This had been the Council's
concern over Joma, when she was young; its basis
was valid, although their solution had been
misguided. Most Jedi kept their fields of perception
purposefully limited to just above the level of a non-
Force-sensitive person, and did it as a matter of
course, only relaxing those limitations when a
specific situation called for it; Adepts had greater
difficulty doing so consistently. As a result, an
Adept trying to restrict her hearing to normal Jedi
levels might well see something she shouldn't,
outside most others' field of vision -- or she might
be dazzled by light that seemed brighter to her than
anyone else. An Adept trying to keep her sight
sense in line might be swamped with perception of
others' emotions. Just the concentration required
was impressive, so a distracted Adept was
vulnerable to sensory overload. Migraines and
mood swings, as Joma had pointed out once -- the
hallmark of an Adept.
So Sionnach had evidently been risking the
headache to listen to Qui-Gon and Joma's
conversation. "It didn't occur to you that the reason
I wasn't speaking to your master in this living room
might be because the discussion was meant to be
private?"
"Of course it did." Sionnach sat down on the arm of
the couch. "But I thought you might be talking
about Ani's trials. Once I heard what you
were
talking about, I tried to stop listening, but I couldn't
seem to turn away." Her smile faded. "I know the
difference between secrets and gossip, Qui. I hope
you aren't angry at me because you think I'm not
deserving of your confidence."
"No, not at all," Qui-Gon said, puzzled. "What
would make you think --"
"Nothing," Sion said, waving the question away.
"So. Is it true?"
"Sionnach --"
"Come on, Qui. I'm almost sixteen. My master's
going to tell me everything you just told her when
she comes home anyway; all I want is for you to tell
me a little bit more." She smiled again, brilliantly,
as she had when she was a child and knew he could
scarcely deny her a thing.
"There's no more to tell. All we can do is hope
we're wrong." Qui-Gon paused for a moment and
looked at Sionnach. She didn't seem at all
concerned about the prospect of a senate full of
clones. "How much do you know about clones,
Sionnach?"
"Not a lot," the girl admitted. "I know they can be
grown in vats, instead of implanted and then born or
hatched or whatever."
"And what else?" Sionnach thought for a moment
and shrugged. Qui-Gon sighed. "Sha, that's an
elementary bit of the mechanics of cloning. That's
nothing to do with this. The social issues are much
more important. A lot of people
hate clones."
A frown wrinkled her brow. "Why?"
"Why. Why do people dislike droids? Why do
people dislike Twi'leks?"
"But clones aren't a different race. I mean, it's not
right to dislike a different race either, but clones
aren't even that. They're just like us, aren't they?"
"Well,
that might be what people don't like about
them. They're
just like us, literally, of course.
But whatever the reason, you'll find that across the
galaxy, clones are treated quite poorly -- not unlike
slaves, in some places. And they don't fight back,
because they're not allowed to be bothered by it.
Their minds are selections of their originators'
memories, learned when they're activated."
Sion thought even harder. Qui-Gon could almost
see the logic falling into place behind her eyes.
"So ... people don't
trust clones, because their
thoughts are controlled? But --"
"Now, a natural-born clone is a different thing than
a hydroponic clone. It's the second sort people
really have trouble with."
"Okay, okay," Sionnach said, shifting to sit more
comfortably as she tried to think and speak at the
same time. "But people don't have any trouble
trusting droids, and their thoughts are controlled,
too, aren't they?"
"Ah. People
rely on droids. A droid is a
machine. You can't trust it to make sound decisions
of its own accord, but you can rely on it to do what
it's been programmed to do or die trying. A clone
doesn't have even that, nine times out of ten. It
doesn't have the life experience to make sound
decisions,
and they're volatile creatures. Short-
lived, unpredictable. That's because," he went on,
seeing that she didn't understand, "grown in vats as
they are, they don't have the time to develop as
completely as humans do. Sometimes they're fine,
but more often than not there's something wrong.
Occasionally it's skeletal unsoundness, or something
wrong with one or more internal organs, but mostly
it's the brain, because that's so intricate. The more
complex a thing, the more ways it can go wrong.
Have you met mad people? Spice addicts, or old
people who are losing their minds?" Sionnach
nodded, wide-eyed. "It can be like that. Erratic
behavior. Gaps in their memory, even though it was
intact when it was implanted. And the quicker they
grow them, the wilder they are. All in all, it's a very
dangerous practice, hydroponic cloning."
"But then why do people do it?"
"Well, for things they don't want to do themselves.
Weapons and machine testing, for instance. And
chemicals for drugs. They want to know how a
thing is going to affect a man before they give it to
him, so they keep clones to test them on in case the
thing is lethal." Sionnach physically recoiled. Qui-
Gon continued; he felt a bit ruthless, opening the
girl's eyes to the galaxy this way, and he hated that,
but after all, she had asked. "In general, clones are
used where droids would be too expensive and
sentients too unwilling."
"Clones aren't considered sentient?"
Qui-Gon made a face. That wasn't precisely what
he'd meant to say, but it wasn't entirely inaccurate
either. "Not ... entirely," he finally said. "Now,
there are also people who grow clones for the
express purpose of harvesting them for parts when
they themselves get sick or frail. I can tell you find
that as disgusting as I do, but they get around it by
not giving the clones a memory at all."
"Still!"
"I know. And another place where clones are useful
-- you'll like this -- is in extremely high-security
industries. Their life spans are so short, you see.
Dead men tell no tales."
Sionnach smiled. "But the people have to trust the
clones with top-secret information, and then trust
them to die expediently."
"Essentially, yes. So. Clearly, you can see why the
idea that there might be clones in the senate has
caused us some concern. They cannot be allowed to
serve; we don't know how stable they are, and
besides, their constituents would certainly never
allow it. But if we find one, the people will riot --
we want to sort the whole thing out as quietly as
possible. And, as you heard," he said with a wink,
"the Council won't make any official move -- so
we're operating independently. You and your
master will involve whomever she chooses. Obi-
Wan and Anakin and I are running underground
with this."
"So everyone will report to you?"
"Only informally, just so we can all keep organized.
Now. Is that enough more for me to have told
you?" Qui-Gon tapped Sion's nose. "I'd much
rather talk about something else now."
"We can talk about Ani's trials," Sionnach said,
grinning and looking keenly at Qui-Gon. "You
must know by now what they're going to be."
Qui-Gon struggled not to smile. "I'm sure they'll be
appropriately taxing," he said.
"In two cycles it's a year since you recommended
him," Sion persisted. "When does he get to find out
what they are?"
"Oh, he won't find out what he's facing until he's
facing it, of course," Qui-Gon said with exaggerated
mildness.
"But when do the
rest of us find out?"
Qui-Gon knew his godchild was growing frustrated,
but he couldn't answer her questions any more
truthfully. He grinned. "Perhaps a Council member
can be persuaded to describe Anakin's trials to you
before identifying them to him," he said. "But of
course, by then, you'll be occupied more with
Anakin's wedding."
To Qui-Gon's surprise, at the change of subject
Sionnach did not brighten; instead, she became
suddenly thoughtful, and when she spoke, she spoke
slowly. "I know. I've decided -- I've decided not to
swear to protect their children," she said.
Qui-Gon felt as stunned as Joma had looked when
he'd told her there were clones in the senate. "What
-- why?"
"Something my master said," the girl began,
twisting a corner of her sleeve between her fingers.
"She said as long as I was her apprentice, I should
be careful not to make promises I don't know I'll be
able to keep."
Qui-Gon felt a pin-prick of something like anger; it
began in his chest and crept around his heart,
making him squirm. "Will she prevent you from
keeping it?"
"Not intentionally, of course, but think about it, Qui
-- she has a point. My oath to her -- and hers to me
-- is -- is --" She looked intently at nothing, as
people always do when they're trying to think of a
word.
Qui-Gon supplied it. "Insuperable?"
"Yes. And so is the oath to protect children. But
then what if they conflict?" It was an astute point.
Qui-Gon reached across and took Sion's hand. "It
would be a disservice to those children to swear
myself their protector. I'm sure that's why my
parents only asked you. Obi was still a padawan, so
he couldn't swear that oath."
"What will you do?"
"Oh, I'll still stand for them. And I'll promise to do
everything I can -- but I can't
swear to get
between their children and danger, like Obi will.
Do you think Ani will understand?"
"I think he'll be delighted to have you at his side, no
matter in what capacity," Qui-Gon assured her.
"And if he asks, and you give him this explanation
you've just given me, he won't be able to help but be
honored."
Sionnach beamed and wrapped her arms happily
around Qui-Gon's neck. He hugged her just as
tightly as always, then kissed her forehead and
tapped her nose and reminded her he had other
people to see. As he walked through the corridor
thinking of whom to visit next and musing on his
conversation with Sion, Qui-Gon's pin-prick of
whatever it was -- not anger, any longer -- settled
next to his heart; he wanted to scratch at it, but the
only way to do so would have been to reach through
his scar into his chest cavity, so he gritted his teeth
and let it be.
Comments always
welcome!