Balance Point Page 10

  It was Luke’s.

  By all the star dragons ever spawned, that could mean only one thing.

  Mara’s eyes flew open. Her arms and legs stiffened. Pregnant? This couldn’t have happened! She’d taken all precautions. Her bizarre disease had transformed molecules and cells and attacked discrete organs. It could be death or disfigurement—or some other, unimaginable horror—to an unborn child. She clenched a fist. What could she do? There were medical options—

  Like a garu-bear defending her cub, she attacked that thought instantly. She would let no medical aide harm her child—

  Again her own thoughts caught her up. Her child?

  Did she carry her posterity or her death inside her?

  The tall front door slid open. Luke plunged through, and before he even got close she felt his mind trying to grab her, protect her.

  “What’s wrong?” he demanded. “Mara, what is it?”

  “Do you always think you have to rush in and save someone?” she asked, making a vain stab at sounding wry and superior. But her voice shook.

  Luke dropped to his knees beside her chair. He seized her hand. “Mara, what is it? The disease?”

  She took his hand. She laid it over her abdomen. “Feel this,” she said softly. “Use the Force, and tell me what has happened.”

  He arched his eyebrows and frowned up at her.

  “Don’t argue,” she said. “Just do it. I want an unbiased second opinion.”

  She watched his eyes. They narrowed, and the line of his eyebrows softened. He was preparing to comfort her, to do whatever he must.

  Then his eyes widened, sending a sudden blue flash up at her face.

  “This wasn’t my idea.” Mara swallowed on a dry throat. “It’s already in terrible danger. The disease could attack it—cause mutations—”

  “Mara,” he interrupted. He seized her hand. “Mara, anything could kill any one of us, today, tomorrow. The Yuuzhan Vong could pull down one of Coruscant’s moons, or we could fall out a window.”

  She nodded silently, struck once again by Luke’s unwavering faith in goodness and his hope in the light. He shifted his hand slightly, shaking his head in plain disbelief.

  “Life is risk,” he murmured. “I don’t feel anything … dangerous about this.”

  “Not yet,” Mara whispered. “But this wasn’t supposed to happen.”

  “I know,” he said. His hand shifted again. His eyes fell shut. She felt his desperate concern.

  Softening a little, Mara laid her free hand over his, on her stomach. Finally, she dared to envision actually holding a child, looking into a face that was part Luke and part Mara—just as her niece and nephews were part Leia and part Han, but completely themselves. She’d pictured it many times, as an abstraction.

  Then she pictured the monster her disease could make of a defenseless cluster of cells.

  Defenseless? Not so long as I’ve got custody! Something deep inside her mind was shrieking, terrorized. Something else was dancing wildly, utterly and joyously abandoning itself to hope, to joy, to a new and total commitment.

  Luke spoke softly. “Maybe Vergere’s medicine made you vulnerable to the Force, as an agent of life.”

  She straightened her shoulders. “You want this. You’re glad,” she accused him.

  “Until this moment,” her husband said, “I had no idea how badly I did want it. I was prepared to be stoic, and give up hope—”

  “For my sake?”

  He raised his chin, and she felt a wordless caress.

  She twisted her mouth sideways. “For two people who know each other so well, somehow we missed something.”

  “No,” he said. “Something just changed. In me, maybe. Maybe you. Maybe in the Force itself. All I know is … this is the right risk to take. And that,” he concluded, shaking his head, “makes me happy.” He looked up again, wearing a foolish grin she hadn’t seen in months. “It could make me very happy, actually—”

  Mara balled her fists. “Listen, Skywalker. Nobody finds out about this. Nobody.”

  Still kneeling beside her chair, he slid his hands around her waist. “I agree, Mara, with one exception. You should have at least one good medic. They—”

  “No. Even Cilghal really couldn’t help me fight this disease. If she couldn’t help me, she couldn’t protect our child. That’s going to be my job.”

  “Other things could go wrong—”

  She silenced him with a glare.

  He frowned, then nodded solemnly.

  “And you can get that out of your mind, too,” she snapped. “I am not going to lie down and keep watch on my symptoms, waiting for something to go wrong.”

  She marveled, though, at how suddenly and how completely she wanted to protect this child that didn’t even vaguely resemble a child yet. Maybe, her conscience whispered, this sudden protectiveness was like the way Luke felt about her—a love so fierce and uncontrolled that sometimes it threatened the beloved’s independence.

  Maybe there was no such thing as real independence. Not with contentment.

  This child, though, could already be under the influence of Yuuzhan Vong biotechnology. It—no, a child was not an it—he could die before he ever saw daylight. He could deform in a thousand deadly ways. He could …

  “Are you all right?” Luke’s hands caressed her shoulders. “Mara, we should at least have Cilghal do a few basic tests.”

  “No,” she muttered. “No one, Luke. Not Leia, not the Solo kids.”

  “Just how do you expect to keep this from Anakin?” he demanded.

  She laughed shortly. “The last thing a boy his age even considers is an old woman getting pregnant. Keep a lid on your feelings, and he won’t suspect.”

  “He does expect me to be concerned for you—”

  “Then I’m sure you won’t disappoint.”

  Luke exhaled slowly, and she felt some of the tension leave him. “You’re right,” he said. “There are people who would pin hopes on this child that maybe they shouldn’t have. He—or she … can you tell?”

  Mara fell into the Force again, absorbing everything it would tell her. She had extraordinary powers to communicate with certain people. She’d been able to sense Palpatine from anywhere in the galaxy. So far, though, this sense was utterly primitive. Caressing the life-signature, she felt again those faint echoes—of her own savor in the Force, and Luke’s.

  A new thought distracted her. Her mind worked backwards, counting days, wondering … when?

  She half smiled and answered Luke’s question. “No. I can’t tell. But I don’t want to say it.”

  “Then, for now … she?”

  “He,” Mara said firmly, though she honestly couldn’t tell. Then she finished the sentence he’d interrupted with his own question. “If he survives, he could be truly great—or greatly evil. Or,” she added grimly, “greatly damaged, by this disease. I won’t let that happen, Luke. I swear.”

  “This is my child, too.” He seized her other hand. “Mara, you’re going to have to make an allowance for that. If I get protective, please don’t take it personally.”

  “You’d better not,” she growled.

  Then she folded around Luke, embracing his shoulders. He struggled up off his knees, then pulled her to her feet. His arms tightened around her back and her waist. His lips pressed hard against her mouth, his breath tasted sweet and musky, and at the back of her mind, she could feel him rejoicing.

  Some hours later, Mara sat staring out the transparisteel window, watching traffic lights flow across the skyline. Flaming auroral veils framed the traffic lights.

  She’d wrenched her thoughts back to Duro—and Centerpoint Station, nonfunctional again. She had the sensation that a pattern was emerging. Give her an hour or two, and she’d find it.

  If she could concentrate.

  “Do you think Leia is on top of this shipping problem?” she asked.

  Luke’s voice spoke out of the darkness, from the floor beside her deep chair. “By
now, she’s probably either solved it or sent Han to fix it. They’ve got to be in close contact.”

  “But you’d like to ship over to Duro and check it out.”

  “Stay out of my mind, Jade.”

  Without even trying, she sensed his glee at having turned her customary rebuke back on her.

  “I’d rather go myself than send somebody else into danger,” he said, “and I should talk with Jacen. I’ll take Anakin, if you don’t m—”

  Mara glared into the darkness.

  “Mm. You do mind.” Almost hidden by shadow, he ran a hand over his hair. “Mara, I don’t want to put you in danger right now. I—”

  “Who’s got the better danger sense?” Mara touched a control, admitting more of the city’s night light through the window and illuminating her husband’s concerned face.

  Luke uncrossed his legs and leaned forward. “You can’t deliberately risk that child.” The intensity in his eyes reminded her of the worst days of her illness, and his despondency.

  “Do you think,” she answered, “that I ever—ever—deliberately risk myself? Grab some reality, Skywalker. If the Yuuzhan Vong get near Coruscant, I’m on the evac ship—in fact, I’m driving. But this isn’t even close to that danger level.”

  His lips firmed. She could almost feel him preparing to outflank her—to bury her objections under patriarchal affection, or pull rank. Mara cherished her farmboy’s sincerity, but she refused to be sheltered.

  She wondered if arguing was simpler for women who couldn’t tell what their husbands would say next.

  “My instincts are shifting,” she admitted, diverting his thrust before he could make it. “I’ve been running an inventory. I can already feel new hormones starting to kick in. I’m getting protective, too, Luke. Already.”

  He leaned away from her, looking so wide-eyed hopeful that she hated to burst his bubble.

  “But in me,” she explained, “ ‘protective’ is active. I’m going with you. In fact, maybe I should take Anakin and head out,” she suggested. “Then you could stay in touch with the Advisory Council. When they start using words like persecution, we have to pay attention.”

  He arched his eyebrows. He didn’t want to be left behind, either! “We have Thrynni Vae missing, and four of our family in an area that’s fallen under suspicion.”

  “What about the Advisory Council?”

  “Kenth Hamner is an excellent strategist. He can handle an advisory role.”

  “The admirals like having you around,” she said, pushing him just for the fun of it.

  As if he’d caught a flicker of that thought—or more likely her amusement—he slumped back down in his chair. “Don’t do that,” he pleaded.

  Mara laughed. “It’ll be good to get away from this place. I think we should take Anakin, too.”

  “What do you think Tresina and Thrynni stumbled into?”

  “That,” she said, “is what we’d better find out.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Randa Besadii Diori stared hard at the Ryn who had been assigned to keep watch on the communications board—and him. The creature seemed to be asleep.

  Silently, Randa activated a private frequency. Clicking the transmission switch did not activate his kajidic’s repeater network, because one of the Duros’ orbital cities was in the way.

  He resolved to be patient.

  With Jacen Solo self-righteously determined to do nothing, Randa had turned to the sister. Jaina was the more experienced pilot at any rate. Randa had been, he believed, more than polite—and solicitous. He’d praised her for her constant efforts to heal herself and regain her fighting trim. He’d hinted that he could get her back into action before Rogue Squadron could send another med runner, taking her back out to battle.

  Today’s news out of Nal Hutta had been ghastly: unknown and unknowable creatures released in droves, his relatives lying slain in their palaces. Randa must find some other way to use self-righteous young Jacen, so obviously a son of his Hutt-killing mother—and he would. The Yuuzhan Vong had trained Randa in prisoner transport.

  He clicked the transmitter again. This time, a soft series of tones answered.

  Splendid! He leaned close to the transmitter. “This is Randa,” he said softly, keeping one eye on the sleeping Ryn guard. “Who is on watch?”

  He heard static for a long time. Then, “Randa, where are you?”

  His parent’s voice! “I am well,” he told her, “and on Duro. I have only moments. I might be able to buy our people some concessions from the Yuuzhan Vong.” On board the clustership, he’d seen that they were desperate to get Jedi in custody, for study. “There are two young Jedi here. I might be able to deliver one. If they would be interested, have them contact me at the settlement they call Thirty-two. It’s near a large open-pit mine that’s been made into a reservoir.”

  “Well done, Randa,” Borga said. “Something with which to bargain—we have too little of that. The invaders do not seem to indulge themselves with any of our trade goods. We are trying to win rights to Tatooine as a safe world. I will do what I can.”

  The moment Randa signed off, he wondered if he’d done the right thing. Selling Jacen might be a mistake. Jacen still might join him, if Jaina led the way.

  Well, he could always claim the young human escaped. With two options open—his fantasies of a strike team, and the chance of buying his people a haven—one or the other would surely turn for his benefit. Maybe both.

  He turned his head slightly.

  The ineffectual Ryn guard slept on.

  Keeping peace on a team of research scientists, who were competing for limited resources, was starting to remind Leia of trying to feed two-year-old, Force-strong twins from the same plate. Only her hopes for a reborn world and a refugee haven kept her going.

  One woman pounded Leia’s makeshift conference table. “Our best hope,” she said, scowling, “is to develop that ‘master net.’ Without a self-perpetuating web of interdependent organisms, everything we do will either undo itself in less than a generation or else overbreed without natural controls. We can—”

  “Overbreed?” Dr. Plee, the Ho’Din, folded his long, pale-green arms over his lab coat. “At the moment, unless they do overbreed, how in Kessel are we going to make any headway? They’ve given us a planet, and it’s a planet we’ve got to get under control … and he’s no help at all.”

  Overbreed? The Yuuzhan Vong had to breed like crazy, Leia reflected. Otherwise, how could they throw away so many warriors’ lives?

  Then she frowned at the single vacant chair. Once again, Dassid Cree’Ar had begged off by comlink. Once, she hadn’t minded it. Three times, she disliked it. But this made five meetings out of five. No wonder Cree’ar’s fellow workers resented him.

  “He’s reactive,” the meteorologist said. “He responds to crises only if we point them out.”

  The microbiologist raised a finger. “But he has solved every one of them. We’ve kept him so busy fixing our problems that he hasn’t had time to do anything original lately.”

  “So put him to work on your master web,” Dr. Plee growled. “Get this world seeded and clean it up, so we can take down these domes. I’m not claustrophobic, but—”

  “The Sith you’re not.” Aj Koenes, the big Talz, nudged him with a powerful-looking furry arm. “I’ve seen your—”

  Leia pushed wearily to her feet. “Does anyone else have a progress report?”

  Sidris Kolb stood. “Cloud seeding is off to a shaky start, but—”

  “Shaky?” demanded Cawa, a Quarren who had missed the previous meeting. “I asked you to delay that another six weeks. I’ve barely made headway with existing surface water. The last rainfall samples we took had six hundred parts per million of—”

  And they were off again.

  This time, Leia let them run. Sadly, everyone’s project seemed to threaten everyone else’s. Interlinked as they were, they ought to support each other. She would find a way to make them cooperate, or else
she’d send them all home and start over with a fresh crew. Duro was too important to lose to their bickering.

  Not many hours later, another emergency called Leia to the supply depot, where she released her frustration on a hapless shipping clerk.

  “What do you mean, the rest of it isn’t coming until next week? We need that allotment. The new hydroponics will stall without soluble potash, or whatever it is. Blast those Duros!”

  The supply clerk, to his credit, sat there and took it until she paused for breath.

  “Sorry,” Leia muttered. “Not your fault. We’re all getting a little short in the fuse, and I am glad to get that mining laser. Can you open a line to Bburru?”

  Ten minutes later, she was getting another runaround on the ground-orbit comm unit. “Listen,” she said, gritting her teeth to keep from shouting. “I want that stuff here, where it belongs. I’ve got the biggest population onworld.”

  “Sorry, ma’am,” the voice on the other end said. “CorDuro took that shipment to Settlement Thirty-two for their water treatment plant, with an allowance for next month. They do supply you with—”

  “Next month?” Incredulous, Leia glared at the GOCU. “They think we can stockpile? Who is this guy?”

  The shipping clerk shook his head. “He seemed to feel that since the water purification benefits your people even more than his own, you wouldn’t mind. Do you want to send a message?”

  “I’m too busy to waste the effort. Contact SELCORE and see if we can get a duplicate shipment.” And a new administrator for Settlement Thirty-two, she would’ve added, if she’d thought it would do any good. Maybe SELCORE could draft Lando and Tendra.

  Down a stone tunnel between Gateway’s laboratory building and the toxic marshes, Nom Anor had set up an underground office. Leia Organa Solo’s people had dug out the long tunnel; he’d created a side passage, using small organisms that fed on soft rock. As they bloated and died, he disposed of them by the thousands, deep in the marshes. There they decomposed, their gut bacteria working the “miracles” that delighted Organa Solo’s people.