FORTY-THREE

Luke.

Luke awoke to his name and found Mara’s hand on his arm. Her eyes were clear, and her lips were quivering as if she were trying to speak.

“Mara,” he murmured. “Mara.” He had more to say, but he couldn’t get it out. I love you. Don’t die.

Her head inclined, very slightly. He took her hand and felt the pulse there, stronger than it had been in days, but irregular.

Now. We have to do it now.

“Do what? Mara, I don’t understand.”

Now. Her eyes closed again, and her pulse dropped away.

“No! Mara!”

When Darth Vader had suddenly realized that he had a daughter as well as a son, Luke had felt a desperation that was the palest reflection of this. He’d hurled himself at the black-armored figure that was his father, battering him with his lightsaber until he cut Vader’s arm off. In doing so Luke had taken a decisive step toward the dark side.

Now, though his body did not move, he hurled himself at Mara’s disease with the same blind, desperate fury, battering against it with the Force, trying to shatter the slippery, mutable compounds of which it was made. The electrifying strength of anguish drove him on, and the fact that he was trying to do the impossible meant nothing. He clenched his fists until the veins stood out on his arms, attacking something he couldn’t see.

That wasn’t there to see.

No. Luke, no. Not this way.

Luke fell away, trembling. “How then?” he shouted, maybe at Mara, maybe at the universe itself.

“Luke!” Cilghal was standing in the doorway. “I felt—”

“She wants me to do something, Cilghal,” Luke snarled. “She diverted some of her energy to wake me, and a little more to stop me from … What does she know, Cilghal?”

“I don’t know, Luke,” Cilghal said. “But you’ve been telling your students attack is not the answer. Trust yourself—you’re right. You need to calm yourself.”

A retort got hung just inside of his throat. How could Cilghal possibly understand?

But she was right, of course. It was easy to remain calm when nothing upsetting was happening.

“I know,” he admitted, his breathing evening out. “But I know I have to do something. Now, or she’ll die.”

“Let me try,” Cilghal said. “Maybe I can understand what she wants.”

“No. It has to be me. I know that.”

He calmed himself further, sloughing off his darkening emotions, cleansing himself with deep, slow breaths. Only when he felt truly centered did he reach out toward Mara again, probing her gently through the Force rather than attacking her disease.

Attack is not the answer.

But she was so far gone. There was nothing to defend, except …

And suddenly, he thought he understood. One part of Mara was well—better than well, free of all disease. That’s where he needed to be, not waging warfare, but strengthening, defending from the one fortress that still stood.

He reached out again, this time as lightly as one of Mara’s caresses, into the place where their child rested, and there he found his wife, wrapped around the baby like a dura-steel wall.

“Let me in, Mara,” he said aloud. “You have to let me in.” He laid his hand on her arm, squeezing gently. “Let me in.”

Skywalker?

“It’s me. I think I understand, now. I’ll do what I can. But you have to let me in.”

The wall wavered, but held. Had he guessed wrong? Had she herself already forgotten, her memory erased by the pain?

“I love you, Mara. Please.”

He trembled, still touching her arm. He couldn’t force her. He wouldn’t if he could. Come on, Luke.

The gate opened, and he felt another pulse, another life. He reached for his son.

The child stirred, as if recognizing his father’s touch. He reached back, and Luke felt little tickling thoughts, like waking laughter and amazement. It was a voice both familiar and infinitely strange. It was a voice becoming real.

“I love you. I love you both,” he breathed. “Take my strength.”

He and Mara joined like fingers twining, and like a tiny third hand, the unborn child linked with them as well. A human child. His child. Mara’s child.

The mutual grip grew stronger, but it wasn’t the desperate strength of combat or the raging power of a storm. It was a calm, enduring, and at the same time fallible, mortal embrace—the embrace of family long separated.

They mingled, each with the other, until Luke felt his identity blur, and he began to dream.

He saw a young boy with hair of pale red-gold, tracing lines in the sand. He saw an older boy, kneeling by a river course, rubbing a smooth, round stone between his fingers and smiling. The same boy, perhaps ten years old, wrestling with a young Wookiee.

He saw himself, holding the boy, watching glowing lines of traffic move through the sky of some strange world—like Coruscant, but not Coruscant.

He did not see Mara, though he looked, and that brought a new note of discord to his thoughts.

Always in motion is the future, Yoda had once told him. Still, he reached farther, searching for Mara, farther along that uncertain, shifting path. The boy grew older; he was at the helm of a starship of strange design …

All futures exist in the Force, a familiar, impossible voice suddenly said. You do not choose the future so much as it chooses you. Do not look for answers there.

“Ben?” Luke croaked, stunned. It couldn’t be Ben, of course. That time was long gone, and his old Master was truly one with the Force, unreachable, and yet …

But it didn’t matter whether it was Ben, the Force, or a part of Luke himself that had just spoken. It only mattered that he had glimpsed what might be, and only the tiniest part of that, but it was only what might be. He couldn’t let it concern him—now was not the time for searching or speculation, for both were active manifestations of doubt, and he could afford no doubt right now. Doubt was more deadly than the Yuuzhan Vong disease. It was the only real limitation a Jedi had.

He let the images slide away, and felt again only the moment, three hearts beating, three minds becoming one.

Hi there, Luke. Glad to have you back, Mara seemed to say. And then they were expanding, extending outward in every direction, like a galaxy being born. Like anything being born. Like life itself.