Inheritance
8.
"No, Anakin, you are not piloting the air speeder." For stars' sake, I've seen how you fly – and beyond that, how many dozens of times have I been subjected to your recitation of the grand epic of your Podrace Victory? And what sane being, after hearing that chilling tale, would ever let you set foot in a cockpit again?
He clambers sullenly over the running board and into the passenger compartment, casting me a wounded look over one shoulder. He settles in the broad seat with a passable imitation of demure acceptance, but I am not deceived. The taxi driver pulls away from the docking pad with a gentle lurch, and we swoop into a restricted air-lane heading directly for the municipal spaceport. Our pilot tactfully raises the privacy shields, enclosing us in a sound and wind-free bubble of shimmering blue.
"I know how to fly one of these things," my Padawan insists. "So why don't you trust me to do it?"
I am already weary of this tired rhetorical trope. Anakin reduces every matter of simple discipline to a question of trust. It confounded me at first; but upon due consideration, I think it may be another indelible scar of slavery: for every restriction placed upon a slave is, in the last analysis, a testament to distrust, a caution against escape or rebellion. That anyone should willingly submit to a rule of life, to a code of conduct, to obedience motivated not by fear but by love of the higher good – this he finds utterly absurd, a notion so foreign to his untrammeled spirit that it strikes him as a personal insult.
Where do I even begin to correct that profoundly skewed perspective?
"Not me; and not just you. The entire legislative body of this planet has declared all persons of your tender years ineligible to pilot air cars, until attaining the age of sixteen standard and passing a rigorous competency examination. You are the victim of a sweeping generalization."
This rational argument would likely have been likelier to turn an angry stampeding bantha from its path than to deflect the boy from his established point of view. "But we're Jedi," he protests. "How come the stupid laws have to apply to us? Don't any of the other Padawans drive air cars around the city?"
"Not this city, Anakin. We follow local law and custom as far as possible. The planetary security could arrest you for piloting without a license."
"You would come bail me out," he asserts, blithely. "Like you did the other day." He folds his arms across his very small chest in the most vexing posture of smug self-assurance I have ever witnessed. Qui-Gon Jinn would have had his hide for such a languid display of disrespect. I should know.
…Qui-Gon.
There is no death. There is the Force.
"Master, are you okay? Why are you looking at me like that?" Anakin demands, the pout transforming into an even more unwelcome curiosity.
I'm not looking at you like anything, my very young apprentice. I'm saved from making any awkward reply by a sudden disturbance in the traffic ahead; our air car takes an evasive turn too narrowly, sending us into a sharp swerve. Centrifugal force sends Anakin sliding across the bench, practically into my lap. The pilot shakes his fist at another vehicle's driver; thank the Force our privacy shields block out his imaginative deployment of obscenities. Anakin needs no help expanding his idiomatic vocabulary.
"Wizard!" the boy yelps as we bump and jolt our way back into the assigned free-fly lane. "We almost got crisped right there! This is intense!"
I am being tested. There is really no other plausible explanation. I firmly scoot the bundle of gangly limbs and disorderly tunics back onto his own side of the bench, and peer over the speeder's side. The spaceport is mercifully near- one or two more districts, a twenty minute flight in this appalling mid-day traffic, but near enough to provide assurance that present torment will be of short duration.
"You know how you said the legal flying age is sixteen?" Anakin's nimble mind returns to the topic of unresolved dispute like an akk to its vomit. "Master Muln said that you and he –"
"Master Muln is not a reliable source of historical narrative, Padawan," I inform him. Severely. After last night's sparring session, I wager Garen will not so readily disseminate any further ill-chosen tidbits of information to the younger generation. Not unless he wants to be a piece of history himself.
"What's so funny, master?"
Never you mind, my young friend. "Nothing. I was reflecting on what a fine pilot Master Muln is." His skill is far superior to my own; after all, he has spent over a decade perfecting it. Perhaps he should have spent that time perfecting his defensive saber form instead… but who am I to criticize my colleague, one who even now sports a number of bruises directly proportionate to his unchecked garrulity? Garen is a good comrade, and I will draw a discreet veil over his shortcomings. I covered for him all those years ago, too, taking the blame for that whole unfortunate incident even though the idea was his to begin with.
"I bet he got to start before he was sixteen," Anakin sniffs. "Maybe I could join the Pilot Program, too."
"It's been discontinued, at least officially. Besides, last time you were in a spacecraft's cockpit, you blasted a capital ship to smithereens."
The boy lights up, reveling in the memory. "You say that like it's a bad thing," he accuses me.
"Anakin. Do you aspire to leave a trail of unprecedented wreckage in your wake, or is that merely an unfortunate side effect?"
His mouth twists to one side, and his eyes squint at me with a mettlesome blue light. "You do a lotta collateral damage, too, master," he points out, fair brows drawn together into a fierce scowl. "I've been watching. Or do you call that aggressive negotiations?"
Block, feint, and counterattack. I am not engaging in a semantic battle with a child – of the Chosen or the common garden variety. "I call it the consequences of impertinence," I decide, airily. "You may call it what you like."
I will grant this much: Anakin Skywalker is a very bright boy. And so he wisely changes the topic. "So where are we going? I mean, Outer Gola – what kind of a place is that? And why are we going there?"
The Gola system boasts three inhabitable worlds – Inner, Prime, and Outer. All three have been colonized by the unscrupulous descendants of original settlers. That is to say, the progeny of Gola's earliest pioneers, a motley assortment of exiled criminals and outcasts who chose a difficult existence on a barely civilized planet over incarceration in a standard Galactic penal institution. And who can blame them, really? Outer Gola is an ice-crusted wasteland, a world occupied by measureless tundra except in its narrow equatorial regions, where hardy beings can scrape together a pathetic existence as miners or manufacturing laborers for off-world industrial interests.
This cesspit currently plays generous host to a small group of refugees called the Feorians, a people thought to be utterly extinct until five years ago.
"I've not told you the story of the Feorians?"
No." Anakin looks at me suspiciously, doubtlessly anticipating a dull academic lecture ahead.
"It was one of Master Qui-Gon's most infamous stunts. We paid dearly for his defiance of the Council on that occasion."
This, naturally, piques his interest. "What happened?" he prompts me, beaming with eager attention.
I am going to regret this. But it's too late now, and better that he hear the tale accurately, from me, rather than in one of its fanciful retellings. "They were slaves," I begin, simply enough. "And…" - Oh dear. I am going to regret this, aren't I? - "…we freed them."
Note: For any readers wishing, like Anakin, to hear a full recounting of Master Jinn's past dealings with the Feorians, the tale is told in full by its principal participants in Exodus.
