Inheritance
28.
Now this is a distraction.
And I was totally right about the Feorians' old junky hover-tram. See? I fixed it without even a decent toolkit, just the micro-drivers I carry everywhere in my belt pouch, mostly 'cause they're small enough to fit, and some ol' scrap circuits I found in Yonso's house. Sometimes they get donations of old chiszzky comm equipment and stuff, but nobody here knows what to do with busted transceivers so they just make jewelry and weird stuff like that with it. I salvaged some of it and I rerouted the repulsor lapse regulator and look! It runs like a podracer now, practically.
I mean, it's prob'ly not Galactic safety standard and all… but it goes fast. And that's all that matters, really.
Yonso and the other guys think it's pretty wizard. I don't think they've ever been podracing or anything like that, and they don't have any real good vehicles here at all. We've gone like a bazillion klicks all the way across the tundra plain, and guess what? There actually are hills and stuff here on Gola. If you get north far enough, the land sorts changes and there's these sharp cliff things made of ice and rock, kinda like the dune sea at home on Tatooine except all frozen. There's no plants at all up here, and not even any dirt, really. It's just rocks and slick ice, like maybe it never melts. And its hoocha cold, with the wind and all. We're gonna have to turn back in a minute, maybe, 'cause I can't even feel my fingers or anything.
Yonso and Lorra and all the guys are really cheering loud and whooping and singing funny songs. This is like a holiday and guess what? They've never even heard of Boonta Eve! I mean, even the kids in the Temple knew what Boonta was even though they never get to celebrate it and even if they were kinda snotty about it like it wasn't proper and all. They knew about it. These Feorians didn't even know. I guess they have some folk holidays and stuff, but Yonso says that they have to cast off the shackles of tradition, which I guess means he thinks those are stupid or something. I guess he just thinks everything about being Feorian is stupid. He'll prob'ly learn about Boonta when he goes to universe-city, anyway.
You can see all the stars here, not like Coruscant. Back at the Temple you can hardly see any stars, cause the buildings and traffic and all drown out the sky with light. Back home you could see 'em all, though. But guess what? The constellations are different on most every planet you go to. So it's kinda like every world has its own stars, not all the same. Except out in space they are the same, really. It's weird. Master says it's a good metaphor for the disparity of subjective experience and the unification of knowledge in the Force. All I know is that I'm gonna be the first person to visit every single star system. But I better get moving. I mean, I've already been a Jedi for like half a year now and we only got to go to a few places. That's not fast enough. Master Obi-Wan's sorta holding me back.
"It's too cold!" Lorrah complains, and he's right.
"We're gonna turn around!" I yell. You gotta yell cause the cab's not really enclosed or anything and the adjustments I made to the drive regulator are kinda loud, actually. This thing's pretty hard to turn around, but I think I did it right. We're mostly going in the right direction, too… I think.
So now we're headed back toward the Feorian village and Master will be pretty pleased 'cause I distracted these guys like all night long or something. It takes a while to go this far and get back. I really hope there's a chubazzi big breakfast cooking, too, 'cause I'm practically starving. Being super distracting is really hard work.
Whoa! Where did all those come from? There weren't any animals when we came up this way, but now there's like a bazillion of them, all spread across the plain as far as you can see. And they look just like banthas! "Banthas!" I shout. They have banthas here, and its like as far from Tatooine as you can get. Isn't that rugged?
"What's a bantha?" Lorra hollers.
"Those! Those are banthas, you chuba booki!" I mean, here they are right in the middle of his own home world and he doesn't know what they are.
"But those are Tadons," he argues.
What a chuba. So maybe they have a different word for these guys, but so what! And these ice banthas have tusks like even bigger than the sand ones, and their fur is all white and now that we're closer I can see they kinda have this long nose thing hanging down too. And whoa! Even one of them could prob'ly knock this tram right over, so we better be kinda careful and…
Uh oh.
Yonso or maybe one of his friends is yelling something about a stampede and all of a sudden the ice banthas are all running, making the ground rumble and stuff, and a big 'ol cloud of white dust sorta rises off the ice and rolls around. You can't see anything in this, but that's okay 'cause I can pretty much still tell where they all are without seeing them, you know, and then it really is like podracing, I mean I'm dodging and swerving and stuff so we don't run into a bantha and it's like I'm at the controls of my really good racer, the one I built myself that Master Qui-Gon bet on and all.
I really love flying.
The only problem is, this really isn't a podracer and it's kinda heavy and now all the bantha things are panicking and running in every direction at once. I think this is what Master meant when he said playing tag in an asteroid field. That's what he said it was like trying to keep me outta trouble, and I didn't get what he meant. But I think I sorta get it now, and you know what? He's really full of poodoo.
'Cause I am way smarter than these banthas. It's like they want to get hit, and I think…. Maybe… uh oh.
Boshuda.
This is not good….
Something musta hit us – and the train is slewing around all crazy- I can't stop it, even with the Force, but I'm trying real hard - and the Feorians are all shrieking and there's ice and wind and spinning around and flying and -
