"Michael Stackpole "I, Jedi"" - читать интересную книгу автора

Luke's hand tightened on my forearm. “Your sense of guilt is natural, but you can't let it paralyze you. I am curious, though, about one thing. You say she has been 'taken away.' How do you know that?”
“I don't know, I just know. I was sleeping, waiting for her to come back home, when I heard her call my name. Then I heard her scream it, then there was nothing.” I opened my eyes and locked gazes with the Jedi Master. “I could feel she was gone- not dead, just cut off from me. And then I began to forget details of her and our life. I could look around the room and identify things that she had brought to the house or that she had owned or used, but I got no emotional details. It feels as if she is dissolving from my memory.”
Luke straightened up and sipped his chocolate. His eyes grew distant for a moment and his face became a dark mask. “Very curious.”
“What is?”
“Having the memories fade.” He looked at me again with an intensity in his eyes. “i'd like to try something, if you don't mind.”
I glanced at Wedge, who gave me a reassuring nod. “Fine.
What do you want me to do?”
Luke smiled easily. “Just open your mind to me. I want to probe you. You'll feel something-a little pressure. It might even tickle.” “Okay.”
He drew in a deep breath and as he exhaled I felt a wave of peace wash out over me. I did my best to relax as the Jedi's eyes half-closed. I felt something in my mind, something gentle yet firm, like a reassuring pat on the back, press against my con-sciousness. It grew more intense and shifted from point to point-if something as ethereal as a mind can be said to have points. I felt different angles of attack and an increase in pres-sure that verged on painful, then it evaporated and Luke sat back.
I looked at him expectantly. “What?”
He grinned boyishly. “Very interesting. Were you trying to resist me?”
I shook my head. “Not at all. Was there a problem?”
“A bit. I could pull off some surface impressions, but you were locked up pretty tightly.” He frowned for a moment. “Let me try it a different way. Wedge, I want you to start talking. What about doesn't really matter. Something simple. Maybe a joke. Corran, focus on Wedge's voice and what you feel about him. I'll do the same thing, which ought to bring our thoughts on roughly parallel courses. That might provide me an open-ing.”
I shrugged. “Worth a shot, I guess.”
We both looked at Wedge. “I'm not very good with jokes.”
Luke nodded. “The sound of your voice is the focus here, not making us laugh.”
“Okay. So there was this Bothan who walked into a tapcar with a gornt under his arm .... “
I closed my eyes and listened to the sound of Wedge's voice. I thought back on all the times I had heard it, and all the advice and congratulations he'd given me, all the danger we'd shared, and the good times as well. I marveled at how we'd managed to scrape through impossible situations, winning against odds longer than even a Corellian would have bet on. I thought about the people we'd helped, the lives we'd saved, and even the shared pain of comrades lost in our battles along the way.
The whole of that time I only caught a hint of Luke's prob-ing. This time instead of coming in directly, he allowed his exploration to begin flowing along in the same direction as my thoughts. The current of his sensing melded with me and what-ever mental defenses I had in place failed to fully recognize this other presence in my mind. Luke's inquiry slipped past them, still bumping along my memories of Wedge, then, when he hit upon a memory in which both Wedge and Mirax appeared, he veered off sharply and I felt as if a transparisteel fang had been driven deep into my brain.
I must have blacked out for a second because the next thing I saw was Wedge standing over me. I blinked away tears and found myself staring up at the ceiling, with my chair having toppled over onto its back. I clutched at the arms so hard my hands hurt. My legs had wrapped themselves around the chair's legs so tightly I heard the fiberplast creak and snap. I felt a burning in my lungs and realized I needed to remind myself to breathe.
Wedge dropped to a knee beside me. “Are you okay, Cor-ran? Luke, how are you doing?”
“A bit better than he is, I suspect.” Luke appeared on the other side of me and pressed his left hand to my shoulder. I felt something flow from him into me and my quaking limbs slack-ened. “Easy now, Corran. I know that was a shock. I'm sorry.”
I slowly snaked my left hand over to wipe my mouth and came away with a bit of blood from a bit lip. Pain still echoed within my brain and the hollowness in the pit of my stomach made me happy I'd not drunk anything. I coughed and forced a weak smile. “Not what you were planning?” “Not at all.”
Luke and Wedge disentangled my limbs from the chair and helped me to my feet. With a gesture the Jedi Master got an-other chair beneath me and I sat again. I had to fight to keep from slipping slack-spined to the floor, but I managed it. “Sorry for breaking your chair.” “Not a problem.”
Wedge frowned. “So what happened? I didn't think the joke was that bad.”
Luke laughed politely and even I had to smile. “No, Wedge, it wasn't. Even Corran will agree with that. What happened was that I managed to work my way in past his defenses and used a memory of you and Mirax together to make my connection to her. In doing so I poked Corran in a vast, open psychic wound.”
I shivered. “And somehow I threw you back out of my mind.”
“Yes, you did, and quite strongly.” Luke righted his own chair and sat down again. “I think I have a clue about your losing emotional details concerning Mirax.” “Tell me.”
“You've got flashburns. The trauma of hearing her shout for you and then having her gone pretty much burned out your emotions where she is concerned. Your mind is closing off ac-cess to certain points to prevent taking another shock like that.” Luke shrugged lightly. “Your defenses are quite strong and right now it's like swelling after a trauma. You're shut down emotionally and very tough to reach.”
Some strength had returned to my limbs, so I pulled myself into an upright sitting position. “It's not permanent, is it?”
“I don't think so.” Luke sipped at his drink. “The mind can be pretty hardy.”
I waited for him to swallow another mouthful of chocolate, then asked, “So, will you help me find her?”
“I would like to, very much. First we need to figure out why she is missing.”
Wedge frowned over the lip of his car mug. “She's missing because she went out to learn about the Invids.”
“That's the root cause, yes, but why her? And why wasn't she killed outright?” Luke pressed his hands together. “There have been points where I have felt friends being in danger over great distances, but the most powerful time was when Han and Leia and Chewbacca were on Bespin and being tortured by Darth Vader. He wanted me to come to him, so he could win me over to the dark side.”
“But he knew you had been trained as a Jedi by then. He knew you would be receptive to that sort of bait.” I poked a thumb against my own breastbone. “Almost no one outside the squadron knows my Jedi connections, and I haven't been trained. In fact, there's very little to link me to the Jedi at all.” Luke nodded. “Then what is there to link Mirax to them?” My heart stopped for a second. “Sithspawn, she has my Jedi Credit. I gave it to her when we were engaged. She wears it as a good luck charm when she travels.”
The Jedi Master's face darkened. “That could be it. From what I learned of the Corellian Jedi traditions, when a Knight became a Master, he had memorial coins struck. They were given to family, friends, his Master and students. It could be that someone saw the medallion, assumed a link there and took action.”
“But why?” It didn't make sense to me. “You said Vader tortured your friends to lure you into a trap. I can't find Mirax, so how can I fall into a trap?”
Wedge shook his head. “Might just be a warning, Corran, warning you off from doing something.” “Sure, but what?”
Luke held a hand up. “We don't know. Speculating now could be a waste of breath. My using the Bespin example might have set us off on the wrong trail. It could be nothing more than someone kidnapping Mirax because they recognized her and think they can ransom her, since both of you are known as part of the Rebellion. The warning you got may have come before any ransom demands and the kidnappers might not know you have been warned.”
My eyes narrowed. “Good, then we're a step ahead of them. With your help, we can find Mirax and take care of this situa-tion before it becomes more dire.”
“Agreed, but there is a problem.”
“What's that?”
Luke sighed. “I don't have your connection to Mirax. The abruptness with which your link to her was broken makes me wonder if she's in stasis. I'll have to ask Leia what she felt when Han was sealed in carbonite-I know it hurt her terribly. What you felt, I bet, was a lot of what she felt.”
I hugged my arms around myself. The thought of Mirax be-ing frozen in carbonite, or stuffed into a hibernation tube, filled me with dread. “You're saying that you have no way of finding her.”
“No, not right now, not over this distance.”
My heart sank. “So she's lost.”
“I didn't say that.” Luke set his mug down on the table and stared into my eyes. “I think you can find her. I think you are strong enough in the Force to pick her out, even if she is in hibernation. Her thoughts may have been slowed to the point where they barely register, but through the Force you can find them. They will lead you to her.” “But I need to find her now!”
“No,” he insisted calmly, “you need to find her. What you need to do now is learn how to find her.”
Luke stood, circled behind his chair and leaned heavily on the back of it. 'Tve been thinking a lot on what has happened recently and I know there is no way Leia and I and her chil-dren, as they grow to maturity, can shoulder all the responsibili-ties that we're called upon to deal with now. Down through the thousand generations that the Jedi maintained peace in the galaxy, there were lots of Jedi; hundreds certainly, thousands probably. The Emperor's best efforts to destroy the Jedi were not wholly successful and there are Force-sensitive people still out there. Just like you, Corran, and me and Mara Jade. We need to create more Jedi to share the burden.