In the beginning was the group. This is the fundamental truth about human nature and politics and...political theory has yet to come to terms with it.
Fred Alford, Group Psychology and Political Theory.
1.
Master Nimbo felt out of his element.
He sat stiffly at the head of the alabaster table, hands fidgeting uncomfortably on cold stone. The ambassadors at his side had spent the better part of the day hurling insults at each other, opening with subtle impertinence in the morning and working themselves up to contemptuous taunts by late afternoon. Nimbo had tried to insist on civility, delivering admonishments whenever he thought a line was crossed, but that only seemed to briefly reset the level of invective. Evening was growing close and he felt tired, his eyelids heavy and his mind wandering away from the proceedings around him.
"This proposal is an affront not only to us but also to our allies…"
The wizened man on Nimbo's left was speaking slowly, pausing to over-enunciate each syllable before he was interrupted in mid-sentence.
"Perhaps if the Plessians had not groveled at the feet of the Vakkarian king, they would now find themselves with the freedom to make their own agreements."
The ambassador at whom this was directed looked stunned before beginning to shake with fury.
"Honored master," although the emissary's voice as he turned to master Nimbo was steady, the medals on his chest jingled lightly as he spoke, "as always the Ulth do not negotiate in good faith. Their sole purpose here is to provoke us! I beg you to make a report of their evil intent to the council."
Nimbo leaned back into his chair. Although he caught the tail end of the exchange, he had drifted off slightly in the past few minutes, his thoughts turning to to the past as the bickering surrounding him receded into the distance. He was thinking of the duel he fought with the Sith lord haunting the galaxy several years ago, a grueling endeavor that had left him with a scar across his face and the "lord" one head shorter. What is it with the Sith, he wondered, always popping up no matter how much one cuts them down, like weeds in a garden. Will there be no end to them?
He forced his mind to focus. Be mindful of the present, he silently admonished himself.
In truth, the situation he was now facing was a bit unnerving, even for an experienced and distinguished Jedi like himself. He had been given to understand that much was riding on the peace talks here, that their importance went far beyond this planet and its age-old feuds. The negotiations themselves were taking place in the nave of an old temple, one of the only places on this planet sacred to both sides, gigantic, poorly lit, a table lined with brightly burning candles at the center and rows of chairs around it stretching in every direction. A thousand eyes were upon him now, all waiting for his reaction with bated breath.
"It would be good for all of our spirits to recess for a half-hour," he said, easing himself out of the uncomfortable chair of stone and making his way towards an exit, past the rows of chairs filled with diplomatic observers - kriffing hell, why did there have to be so many of them? - and finally out the door which creaked spitefully as he pushed it aside.
What was the council thinking, asking him to preside here? He was the only party trusted by both sides, they told him, and it had a ring of plausibility to it, the last crop of Sith causing havoc throughout the galaxy. Many considered him a hero for striking the blow that ended the menace. He became mindful of a trail of pride within his thoughts and gently chided himself. Pride leads to the dark side.
Regardless, his place was in battle, leading a charge against the forces of evil, not here, not among these bickering old men. What would he do with them? He walked aimlessly down the imposing corridors, choosing his directions at random, until at last he stumbled on an empty nook. He seated himself and tried to steady his thoughts.
A plan began forming itself in his mind.
2.
Noval quickly discovered the best seats were in the back aisles, away from the ambassadors who spoke in measured tones and carefully chosen platitudes, among those beneath the notice of the world: clerks, messenger boys, interns. Interns in particular were a gold mine of information.
He was sitting there now, amid the nervous chill which gripped the hall in the wake of Nimbo's departure. The master's forceful exit nearly broke the door of the hall, a fragile, ancient thing of wood with faded carvings of dancing stick-men on the surface. The door might have had some religious or historical significance of its own for he sensed relief all around him when it remained attached to its handle despite the ominous sounds of creaking wood.
He closed his eyes and focused on the conversations that were springing up in the hall. The temple would have felt brooding at any other time, seats arranged in a circle around an enormous dome which let a sprinkle of sunlight into an otherwise shadowy hall. When he first entered the chamber weeks ago, he felt small compared to the vastness of the cupola and the chilly darkness of the interior turned his thoughts to higher things. But now the nave was thronging with people, most slightly shaken by the exchange they witnessed, and the air quickly filled with nervous chatter. It felt no different than any other room.
He let his mind roam about, soaking up the surface thoughts that seemed to be fluttering in the air. It was almost effortless now, as if the thoughts themselves were gently drifting to him in the breeze and all he had to do was reach out and pull - though he could hardly forget his many failures when Nerra attempted to teach him the technique shortly after emerging from the holocron.
"See their souls and minds," she told him at the time, as he sat still in the foliage on the outskirts of the Jedi camp and sensed the padawans walking about their daily chores, "see their thoughts and dreams and worries, too many to fill the open air. See them for what they are."
The instructions were not terribly helpful. How would he go about "seeing them for what they are?" He did his best with no discernible effect. She seemed unruffled by his failures, simply instructing him to try again each time. "You might not have it in you," she said with a philosophic detachment when he asked for clearer instructions.
So he tried again and again. He reached out with the force and tried to sense the true nature of the students in the camp, whatever it was that lurked at their core, beneath their clothes and words and carefully constructed exteriors. Nothing. He would close his eyes and compress his consciousness to a point and push it out of his mind, into the world around him, until he felt himself indistinguishable from the rocks and the trees and the wind. Nothing again. He would strain his ears and use the force to pull on the empty air, trying to bring fragments of the world into himself; he pulled and tugged on the force in every conceivable way and it did not as much as alter the course of a single mote of dust.
He was beginning to lose hope when, one day, it finally happened: he heard the words of anger and resentment as they rumbled through the mind of a padawan who lost a bout in the fighting ring. It felt as if a jolt of electricity had run through his body before the padawan smothered the emotion away. It was hard to say what, exactly, he was doing differently now - or indeed how he did it at all - but he managed to repeat the feat several more times that day.
"You have brushed the surface thoughts of another," Nerra said, looking at him with evident satisfaction. "It is something that masters have trained years for and never learned." She seemed surprisingly beautiful then, looking at him without her habitual frown.
With some effort he pushed the memories away and turned his attention back to the present, to the conversations in the temple. Zooming from mind to mind, he paused on an ambassador from one of the neutral systems interviewed by a member of the press.
"The agreements discussed in these negotiations are of the utmost importance to peace in the outer rim and will have wide-ranging repercussions for galactic stability. If the Ulth and the Plessians, who have been neighbors for millenia, cannot find a common language, it bodes ill for a galaxy of millions of planets and countless species... "
There was little point in listening further. Noval had not read the ambassador's thoughts but he could sense the man was on autopilot, the words almost delivering themselves out of his mouth.
He pulled his mind away and let it drift again.
"...another sordid chapter in the history of the Plessian people. Will there be no end to the wars they provoke?"
The speaker was an unhealthily pale woman dressed in the Ulth colors, trying to catch the attention of a reporter who was absent-mindedly scanning the hall. She was surrounded by a clique of her fellow countrymen who nodded enthusiastically at each sentence.
"The only solution," she went on, "is to unite the planet under one rule..."
The loudest voices always belonged to the partisans, their burning anger pushing them to the forefront of the mental cacophony. Noval adjusted his mind so that he would not hear the speaker before wading back in.
He idled briefly over a pair of Ithorians who were heatedly rehashing the history of the planet.
"Chupak-a-geelfa-a-pad-a-sead-e-geelfa..."
He pushed deeper into their minds, past mere words, far enough to feel their speech as if it came from his lips.
"The Plessians are the real victims," said the larger and greener of the two. "Most of their territory has been in and out of Ulth occupation over the past century."
"But have you forgotten who it was that started the conflict, all those many years ago?" The other Ithorian seemed to have reached the opposite conclusion. "I'll remind you it was the Plessian prince who kidnapped..."
"You've both gotten it wrong." A thin, mustached human inserted himself into the conversation, his speech rendered fitful and choppy in Ithorian-speak by the automatic translator. "Both sides are victims here. The real villain is the Republic..." He launched into a short speech, arguing that had the Republic not intervened, a century ago, in a particularly violent outbreak of hostilities between the Ulth and Plessians, the conflict would be over by now. "The Republic created this war," the man concluded, with assurance and conviction in his voice seeming to leave no room for doubt.
It was surprisingly difficult to understand the real actors in this conflict, to conjecture what calculations they might be making or guess at their short-term plans; there was a plethora of information but most of it was skewed by political agendas and of little use. His mind passed over a pair of human females who had sewn together the Plessian and Ulth flags and were silently waving them to-and-fro, apparently believing that they were making a contribution to galactic peace - over the group of ambassadors, all from planets in the far corner of the galaxy, pleasantly commiserating about man's inhumanity to man - until he finally stumbled onto something of interest.
"You really think the Vakkarian army can be defeated in less than a month? If it ever comes down to it, I wager you'll be in for a rude surprise. There will be more than enough time for Danoor to land reinforcements."
"Nonsense - don't let the fleet counts fool you, most Vakkarian ships are using engine cores a century old. Sarrelon's fleet will overrun them in a matter of days."
This was spoken within earshot and a glance revealed that the speakers were interns with one of the non-aligned kingdoms just outside the sector. Noval did not need his Jedi talents to see that the debate was less about its ostensible subject than about impressing the pretty Twilek who was standing with them. She seemed to be paying close attention, perhaps out of amusement at the insults which peppered their debate. But the argument quickly got technical, discussion turning to engine types and turret counts. The Twilek moved away, indifferent to the turn of conversation, which itself fizzled out once the interns realized they were without an audience.
Noval made a mental note to look up the information he heard about engine cores. He could not help noticing that the same scene played out here in different guises day after day, the males of each species competing to dominate conversation in a bid for female attention. There was something primordial about it, the veneer of civilization giving way as if they were beasts crossing antlers. Something else was clearly in play here as well, something about the Twilek females which seemed to draw an inordinate amount of attention from males of the human species. Noval made another mental note to research this, perhaps once the negotiations were over and time was less pressing.
Everyone here seemed to talk in jargon dumps of information, a medley of planetary names and factions that were unfamiliar to him. He vaguely remembered hearing the Alliance of Vakkar mentioned in one of his classes at the academy but he could not even recall what class that was. Weeks ago, he had felt confused and overwhelmed after spending his first day at these negotiations. For one thing, what had Vakkar, as well as any of the other nations often mentioned here in the same breath, to do with this conflict?
He tried asking some polite questions. The next day he approached two boys about his age who were having an animated debate in one of the isles. Apologizing profusely, he said he could not help overhearing them; and he wondered if they would be willing to explain their reasoning to an outsider like him - specifically, how were planets so far across the galaxy were relevant to a discussion of the situation here? They looked him up and down, clearly taking him for a fool, and proceeded to ignore him outright as they turned back to their conversation.
Discouraged but unwilling to give up, Noval tried this several times more; but the replies he received ranged from mocking jeers to brief answers intended to send him on his way. The people here were not very keen on being helpful.
So he stayed up late into the night, obsessively reading the news and going through a myriad of threads on the holonets. It was hard going at first, facts and noise being so mixed together that he could not tell which was which. But now, after weeks of work, at last he was finally feeling as if the pieces of information were finally coming together.
The galaxy was an intricate web of alliances, each nation enmeshed in a web of reciprocity which committed it to the defense of others. The Alliance of Vakkar was rumored to have signed a secret treaty with the Plessians, obligating it to the defense of Plessian territories in exchange for tribute. But Vakkar was only a mid-sized power itself and had a patron in Danoor, a republic-like conglomerate of planets which dominated politics on the fringes of the outer rim. On the other side, the Ulth had their own string of alliances, starting with the neighboring Princedom of Sarrelon and stretching across the span of the galaxy, and these were not any less powerful. A local planetary dispute such as this one could easily escalate into a conflict involving most of the planets in the outer rim.
"You do know the assassination is only a pretext?"
That pair of interns now attached themselves to a new group, one with several females at that, and though these females were only human the audience breathed new life into their argument. The males in the group did not look too pleased at the addition to their number, but their displeasure was confined to askance glances.
"You hit the mark there, my confused friend. This is about the the economy of Danoor going downhill..."
Noval sighed inwardly. The information he got by eavesdropping was only partially reliable. He was certain that no one had planned the present crisis. The assassination of the Ulth heir-presumptive which sparked it had caught everyone by surprise; in the aftermath, the Ulth royals had talked themselves into believing that everything was masterminded by the Plessians, the lack of any direct evidence not bothering them in the slightest. To recite this was to state the obvious; which is why the interns were instead arguing for counter-intuitive theories which allowed them to exhibit their knowledge and cleverness.
All the same, the conspiracy theories being offered by the interns were not ungrounded in fact. Power among nations was not constant, it waxed and waned as some star systems prospered and others declined, and any major shift in power eventually led to a "realignment" - a word on everyone's lips these days - when the galaxy erupted in flames before the web of treaties adapted itself to a new equilibrium. It was not outlandish to imagine that the present crisis was manufactured for such a purpose.
In short, the outer rim was powderkeg and his master held the fuse. It was his responsibility to see that it did not ignite.
Noval wished he could feel more optimistic.
3.
It was perhaps his finest performance. He gave a rousing call to unity, a paean to the virtues of peaceful co-existence. He talked about their comrades-at-arms who had died in past wars between their nations, a mountain of corpses, too many to even imagine, and all for nothing - unless they make it mean something in the here and now, unless they agree to a lasting peace, then all the previous sacrifices would lead up to this, they would have meaning, the corpses having piled up for a future where war is only something you read about in a book.
He looked at their faces and saw it was not enough.
It was not that they were unmoved. Nimbo could not help but detect a note of sadness that entered their stances, hints of longing in their eyes. Few of them would meet his gaze. And yet, despite it all, they still looked like children accepting a rebuke from their teacher, biding their time until the harsh words were over all the while knowing they would never mend their ways.
He groaned inwardly. Well, then. It was time for plan B.
4.
The Plessian ambassador looked to be astonished as he emerged from the master's quarters.
"Peace in our time," he murmured. "It is possible…." His voice trailed off.
He turned and looked intently at Noval before shifting his gaze to the padawan who stood guard alongside him.
"It is possible after all!"
Noval did not know what to say. Fortunately, no response was required: the ambassador turned abruptly and nearly sprinted in the direction of his quarters.
So he did it after all, Noval thought with satisfaction. How wrong he had been to doubt his master! Nimbo had saved the galaxy before and would do so again.
He was wrong about so many things. The Jedi order had existed for thousands of years and would exist for thousands more. He was lucky to be a part of it, to be a part of the tradition that represented everything that was good about the galaxy. He breathed out, overcome with relief; it felt almost as if he had just returned home after a painful spell apart.
For no apparent reason, his neighbor snickered.
Noval turned to look at him. His name was Wrasho and he was an odd boy, a little too cheerful and prone to sarcastic remarks. Among all of Nimbo's pupils, he was the friendliest and most welcoming to Noval when he joined the group months ago. He had a passion for everything connected to the order that was nearly bursting out of him and were it not for his unrestrained and often inappropriate humor, very much unbecoming in someone who would one day be a Jedi knight, he would have been able to have his choice of master. As it stood, only Nimbo had been willing to take him on, no doubt because Wrasho was naturally good with the saber and Nimbo had been willing to overlook much on that score.
It was unclear how Nimbo circumvented the rules which allowed him only a single padawan. The rules were very clear on that score, and with good reason: students should not have to compete for the master's attention and every padawan was supposed to be the undivided recipient of a lifetime of wisdom. His master, nevertheless, had an army of pupils trailing him from mission to mission. Noval had heard rumors that only the oldest among them, a girl named Krava who had been apprenticed with Nimbo for over a decade, was officially designated as his padawan. That his master was allowed to get away with this was likely a sign of the respect he commanded within the order.
"D'you know what that was about?" Wrasho waved in the direction of the ambassador.
"Do you?"
"Yup. Nimbs mind-tricked him. Not just once, but again and again, for several hours. That's why he looked so spaced now just now."
"He did the Ulth ambassador earlier," Wrasho continued. "Our master has had a very busy day."
A mind trick? Noval's elated state drained away, his earlier doubts instantly flooding his mind with anxiety. He felt few moral qualms about manipulating minds, but what would happen once the ambassadors reported back to their governments? At first glance, his master's actions did not seem to be well thought-out. Would the ambassadors persuade their superiors or would each side immediately suspect foul play by the other?