Entropy
The senate rotunda looks just as it did the last time I was here. I was startled for that one, first moment, but I shouldn't have been: the rotunda has not been remodeled, or altered, in over one hundred years. I have seen the moments frozen in holostills to prove it. It even smells the way I remember it, of the silksmooth, recycled air and carpet wool. I did hear (in various, handed-down rumors) that after the Senate was disbanded, it became a locked-shut monument. But today, for the first open Senate session of the New Republic, it is just cleaned, the pods all gleaming with reflected lights. They wanted it to look the same.
I stand back in the velvetsoft shadows of one of the entrypoints, where I have a good view across the abyss of the rotunda. More than a few of the pods are empty—despite all the best wishes and intentions the leaders of this new government have, not all of the worlds that were part of the Old Republic are interested in joining them.
But most of them go along with this government as easily and thoughtlessly as they ever did when it went under other names, and the rest of the pods are occupied. The people-the beings, I still have to remind myself—inside look like the little pocketdolls I used to have, their faces made out of dinner plate porcelain.
Several of the pods have floated out into the middle of the senate's sky, and the Senators inside have stood, have leapt to their feet, in a frenzied argument. I did not catch the beginning, so I don't know what their initial objections might have been.
They've clearly moved on to another subject, because the new Chancellor, Mon Mothma of Chandrila, speaks up, her voice amplified with a slight static buzz: "That is enough, Senators. I sympathize with your concerns, but I fear we lost the point moments ago."
"My apologies, Chancellor," one of the Senators, a man with a gravel-rough voice, says. I can just make out the sway of his heavy furtrimmed robes. "I do think I have made my points, so I will relinquish the floor for now."
"Thank you, Senator," Chancellor Mothma's voice says.
His pod sails off out of sight towards its spot, and the second pod follows. The senator-dolls, and their aides, turn their faces to whisper with each other. After several minutes of that, and a secrethushed conference at the Chancellor's podium, the Vice Chancellor announces what I have been waiting to hear: "The Senator from Naboo will now take the floor!"
The woman standing at the front of the pod as it floats out into its place in the center of the rotunda is Senator Pooja Naberrie. She has her honey-brown hair caught and done up in an elaborate style, with a glinting pirate silver headdress, and she is wearing a bruised-purple dress with tiny lake pearls scattered about the skirts. I have seen her close enough to know she doesn't look much at all like the old holoportraits of her infamous aunt. She takes after her father, though—since he left the family behind when she was only a year old, before she would remember him, for a position as an architect and another wife on one of the Ceilian Moons—she does not take much pride in that fact.
But the rest of the Senators look at her and still see Senator Amidala instead. Senator Amidala's luscious, elaborate dark hair. Senator Amidala's purple dress.
"Senators," she says, in a coldly flat little voice. She sounds like the little girl her aunt was when she was first presented in this rotunda, instead of the grown woman I know her to be. She looks about the chamber, and her pale moth-blurred face, her gaze, goes past me. She wouldn't have seen me even if she could. I am too far beneath her notice.
"It is an honor for me to see the Senate restored to its rightful place as the head of a democratic government," she says. "I shall endeavor, as I did under the Empire, to serve the best interests of my people, following Senator Amidala's example."
That takes me aback—she referenced Senator Amidala, as I expected she would, but she did not make mention of their personal connection. She never shied away from doing so when the Imperial Senate met here, partly out of a defiance she is too well-bred to admit to. She pauses, and I don't attempt to think over her reasons.
"The majority of my people are pleased, and relieved, to see our world become a part of this new Republic. But, alas, this feeling is not unanimous—and while the dissenters may be a minority, they have been a troublesome one of late. I fear that if the recent tensions escalate any further, they may flare into civil war. I cannot allow this to happen."
She pauses again, to give them time to think it over, her face clenched into a glare. Then she continues: "I have realized that I have no choice but to ask this Senate for military aid. Hopefully, their mere presence will be enough to diffuse the situation. Chancellor Mothma, you knew Senator Amidala. You know what it would have cost her to make this request, and what it costs me. But I hope you will make the best decision."
Another pod floats out to meet hers. The pod from Kuat. Their new senator, Loisa Darsk, steps into her place in front. This is not going to go well.
"I mean no disrespect, Senator Naberrie," she says, her voice echoing over to me. "But this sounds more like a local planetary matter, and as you know, our resources are still limited. Your own government should be able to handle it themselves."
Queen Amalina, fifteen years old and newly elected, had asked Senator Naberrie (had, I did not doubt, pleaded with her in a voice no one else should hear) to have the senate handle it. "If that were possible, we would have," Senator Naberrie says. "Now that the Imperial garrisons are closed, we have no military forces of our own."
"Shame, shame, Senator," Senator Darsk says, with a condescending shake of her head. "I would have thought you would know better than that by now."
Another pod comes out to join them, and before Senator Naberrie can give her reply, the Vice Chancellor is demanding order. But I am distracted by the whisperedsoft footsteps in the hall behind me as someone comes over to join me. "I'm impressed. He just sent that Kuati woman back into her place like a freshly whipped schoolboy."
"That's one way of keeping order," I say. I know who I will see before I turn away from the scene in the rotunda. I haven't seen, or spoken with, Agrippa for years, since the morning I left to return to Naboo, several rushed, dream-faded days after I left my post with the senatorial delegation. I heard from the one aide I was still speaking with, nearly a year later, that he had moved to a district on the other side of the planet, but I hadn't decided if I wanted to contact him while I was here. It seems that choice has been made for me.
"I didn't expect to see you here," he says.
I shrug before I decide to say: "I don't expect to stay too long. This place is in my past now—and I've realized it needs to stay there."
Agrippa doesn't ask what I mean. He already knows. I look back down into the senate. Senator Naberrie is arguing, her voice strained into feedback-whine, with the one remaining Senator, and: "How do you think this will turn out?" I say.
"The Chancellor will approve her request," Agrippa says, leaning against the wall. "Oh, they'll fight over every tiny detail, but when that's over, they will send a pair of ambassadors to begin negotiations. It will be almost like the old times."
"To be sure," I say, absently playing with the one plain silver ring I wear, which had been my grandfather's marriage band. I only had it altered a little—he was a small man.
I remember, for the first time in years, that the senate of the previous republic sent pairs of Jedi as ambassadors whenever the general peace and order were threatened. They did not give aid to social revolutions; they stopped them. This new senate would do the same—except the Jedi Order, only recently moved back into the restored temple, does not have enough fully trained members. I do not know who they will send instead.
Agrippa looks well. He wears a long black frockcoat and copper nail polish, with peach and bloodyred and night-blue ribbons braided into his hair. He hardly looks older than when I first met him, when he was Senator Cassia Mallow's companion, her paid boy. I know I look like the senior aide I have been for nearly three years. When I looked into the large antique glass mirror in my rented room this morning after I brushed out my hair, my inkblack dress lying over the back of the chair behind me, I saw a ghost blur with burning-hard eyes. I wondered if that is how I looked when I told Lady Jain I was resigning my position.
"I understand that you won't want to stay on-world too long," Agrippa says. "But if you have time, I hope you can join me for dinner. I know of a very good place."
He does not have to tell me it will be kilometers away from the Senate District. "That would be fine," I say. "I should be able to manage that."
There is a sudden rainstorm burst of applause from the senate. Senator Naberrie watches the rest of her colleagues show their approval. I didn't catch what she said to inspire it, but that is of no matter. This new version of the Republic has begun, in the same way its two predecessors did, to go about its work.