The Way of a Siluan
Chapter 13: Discoveries from the Shipwreck
The seasons pass slowly on the little planet of lakes and forests where Varda made her hermitage. Hokto System Planetary Object 325 (or Hokto as Eo simply called it) takes almost three years by the standard chronometer to make one revolution around its star. And so one year after Eo's fateful crash-landing on Hokto, while Ry Kyver was celebrating her Empire Day as Imperial Minister of Agriculture (and persecutor of the Siluans), and while Devin Strong (now Devin Baxter) was mourning the first anniversary of the death of the Jedi Order, Eo was watching the spring leaves of her arrival turn yellow for fall.
During that year-long spring and summer and early fall, Varda often tested Eo, whether directly or indirectly. In the end, the result was indisputable. Varda was at last grudgingly obliged to agree with the Council of Reassignment (which she disliked in general) and Master Contar (whom she despised in particular): Eo could barely use the Force to lift so much as a handful of straw.
But luckily for Eo, Varda had no intention of using the Force to lay the many handfuls of straw with which they mulched their vegetable garden, or to plant seedlings, or to pull weeds, or to build and turn huge piles of compost, and it was chiefly with such activities as these that Varda kept Eo occupied during that long spring and summer. It was not until the yellow leaves on the trees began to fall and she and Eo were harvesting their last long row of jackbeets, that Varda said, "We still haven't done anything about a starship for you to get to the AgriCorps."
"Yes," Eo said reluctantly, "but the gap in the debris field can't be open yet, can it?"
"When it does open, you will have very little time to get out safely, so we need to start now."
"Yes," Eo said reluctantly, again. "But," she added hopefully, "if I try to go away from here I might get captured by the Separatists!" Although Eo didn't really think her capture was very likely, she hoped this danger would change Varda's mind about insisting that Eo serve a few years with the AgriCorps before finding a Siluan elder to complete her intended training.
Varda saw through Eo's objection and gave her a pointed look. "Should that occur," she said to her thirteen-year-old charge, "you will reflect on what I have been trying to teach you: that the way of a Siluan is peace in the face of adversity and compassion even for one's enemies."
"Yes," Eo said slowly again, since there was nothing else to say.
"I suppose they taught you something about mechanics in the temple?" Varda asked.
"A little only, not enough to fix a starship," Eo said as she struggled to pull out a particularly deep-rooted jackbeet.
"It doesn't have to be complicated," Varda said. "The ship I came in didn't crash. I destroyed the hyperdrive after I landed, and so that should be the only thing wrong with it. So if you can get the droid from Ava Yen's ship to check its components, we might find that the hyperdrive from his ship is sufficient for mine."
"But how will I know?"
"You don't need to know," Varda snapped. "All you need is for the droid to make a disc of the diagnostic scan and then I can read it on the computer of my ship. And if there's still any good fuel cells left, you might bring those back too."
Accordingly, when they had finished digging up the jackbeets and putting them in the root cellar, Eo took the little boat across the lake to the wreck of Ava Yen's starship. She didn't want to go, but a promise is a promise, and she had promised Varda that she would do this if Varda would train her in the way of the Siluans. Now that it was clear that there was no hope for her to be a Jedi Knight, Eo had her heart set on becoming a Siluan. Then she could seek the Light she loved without worrying about how good or bad she was at using the Force.
Yet it may be that Varda and Master Contar both underestimated Eo. The rocky shores on the end of the lake nearest the shipwreck had no distinguishing features to guide Eo, and she hadn't been back since Ava Yen's burial, yet she found her way straight there, knowing beyond knowing how to find the place, not of the wreck but of the one who lay near it, the one to whom she owed her new path. When she had moored the boat and scrambled up the bank and into the forest, she placed one hand over her heart and reached out to touch the stones of Ava Yen's grave with the other.
Eo then turned to the wreck, which stood as a mechanical oddity amid the tangle of the forest. Creeping vines had begun already to bring it under the forest's sway, and a little brown bird made a tap-tap sound as she hopped along the upper hull. There, above the cockpit, sat a boxy astro-mech droid. The bird hopped up onto the droid, pecked its apex with her beak, and pooped down its side.
"You're welcome to stay if you like," Eo told the bird, "but I'll need to get a look at that droid."
The bird hopped aside and sat on a vine, surveying Eo with her head cocked to one side. Eo climbed up and looked the droid over carefully, then started pushing buttons. First one, then another, sometimes two at once, but the droid still sat silent, staring blankly into the dim forest.
"I wish I knew more about droids," Eo said to herself, "but that can't be helped now. There must be some way to turn you on!" She stood back, still perched on top of the starship, and stared at the droid with her arms crossed. The bird went back to tapping on top on the droid's head.
Eo and the bird both jumped when the droid suddenly lit up, beeped wildly and spun its head around faster and faster until its little lights made one continuous blurr. Then it stopped. The little brown bird hopped down from the starship and went to peck at the leaf-litter on the ground.
"Thank you," Eo said to the bird. "That was lucky."
The droid beeped.
"Can you run a diagnostic scan of the ship?" Eo asked the droid.
The droid's head began to spin again, and then stopped. It beeped elaborately and then went silent.
Eo looked hard at the droid, as if trying to see right inside its mechanical mind. "Can you run a diagnostic scan of the ship?" she repeated, more slowly this time. The droid gave a similar but non-identical response. Eo could hear the bird chirping to itself somewhere.
"Translate," Eo enunciated. "Can you please translate that for me?"
The droid repeated its routine, but then broke into a tinny mechanical voice: "For navigational assistance, say 'navigation.' For data access, say 'data.' For communication options, say 'communication.'"
"Com-mu-ni-ca-tion," Eo enunciated carefully.
"To lock in voice response, say 'voice.' For analog mode, say 'analog.'"
"VOICE."
"I am CX24, advanced navigational assistant. How can I help you?"
"Can you run a diagnostic scan of the ship?"
"Yes." There was an awkward pause as they stared at each other blankly.
"Please do so," Eo said at last.
"Scan will be ready in fifteen minutes," the droid said, then whirred and beeped, which Eo took to mean she could jump down to the ground and take a look inside the ship for herself.
Inside the ship was almost dark, though the cockpit was a bit brighter; despite being cracked, the forward viewshield let in the orange sunset light that shone through the forest. Eo checked and tested various options on the control panel, but whether due to lack of knowledge on her part or lack of function of the control panel, she could get no response, not even to turn on the lights. She was about to step outside again when she noticed something beside the pilot's seat: a beige cloth bag with a wide shoulder strap crumpled on top. She picked it up carefully and was about to look inside when CX24 beeped and whirred wildly again. Slinging the bag over her shoulder, Eo went outside and climbed up to face the droid again.
"Scan complete," the droid said in its vaguely feminine mechanical voice. "For verbal report, say 'verbal.' For data file, say 'data.'"
"Data," Eo said clearly. CX24 whirred and then ejected a flat object about the size of Eo's middle finger. She took it gently and put it in the cloth bag.
"Thank you," she said carefully.
"That does not compute," the droid said harshly. "For advanced options, say 'advanced options'..."
Eo sighed. This droid was quite the test of one's patience. She pressed the button on top of the droid's head, and CX24 whirred, beeped and went still again.
Eo guided the little boat back across the shining lake under a pink sunset sky.
"Did you get the scan?" Varda asked as Eo trudged into the hut where they lived. Varda was stirring something in a big pot, and the hut was full of steam.
"I think so. The droid was a little batty, but she gave me a disc of the scan, supposedly. Do you think the computer on your ship can read it?"
"You will find out," Varda said, "tomorrow. It's almost time for dinner, but your work tomorrow will be to try. The computer hasn't been turned on since I got here, but you should be able to get it to work."
Eo digested this for a moment, then changed the subject. "I found something else on the ship too, Ava Yen's maybe?" she said, and took the cloth bag off from around her shoulders and handed it to Varda.
Varda wiped her hands on her sari and took the bag. Reaching inside, she pulled out a thick tablet with a solar panel on one side and a screen and some controls on the other.
"What's that?" Eo asked. It looked too clunky to be a datapad.
"It's a solar-powered digital file reader," Varda said, and turned it on. It took awhile to boot up, but once it did, Varda scrolled partway through its list of files. "Hmm...mostly agricultural yield data," she said, and handed it back to Eo.
Eo took the device and kept scrolling. Surely there was more, she felt, then came to the last file. The Sayings of Ava Shio it was titled. Eo gasped and opened it.
142. In life let us say, "Yet shall the Light be unbroken." In death let us also say, "Yet shall the Light be unbroken."
143. If you really want, you can love all. If you really want, you can become all Light.
144. Beware of fear, and anger, and hate, for these lead to the Dark Side. So we are taught, but remember also: behind all stands the Ego.
There was more, but Eo stopped reading and handed to digital file reader back to Varda. "Look!" she said, "they sound like Jedi sayings, but I never heard these ones before."
Varda's eyes went wide as she scrolled through the file. "It's good that you found this," she said. "It's an except from a larger collection of works called The Way of a Siluan. You must commit these sayings to memory; all the Siluans memorize them as part of their training."
"Does it have an audio option?" Eo asked. "Maybe we can listen to it while we're working."
"Play with it; you might find audio in there. But I don't recommend listening to it while you work. This is an important point, actually. The garden is to the Siluan what the lightsabre is to the Jedi: not a tool or a task only, but a way to be attentive to the Force. So you need to be still inside and pay attention."
"Yes, I'll make sure," Eo said, and taking the file reader from Varda, she held it close to her heart. She looked up into Varda's brown face and was about to ask a question when Varda, who wasn't looking at her, began to speak.
"I remember those sayings," she said wistfully. "Someone was reading them aloud on the last evening that I spent with the Siluans at their monastery on Yemer. I was very happy there," she said, "before the War."