Anakin's ears alone.
It was all Anakin could do to keep from throwing off his wings and going for the Blood Carver's long throat. He swal lowed his emotions down into a private cold place and stored them with the other dark things left over from Tatooine. The Blood Carver was on target with his insult, which stiffened Anakin's anger and made it harder to control himself. Both he and his mother, Shmi, had been slaves to the supercilious junk dealer, Watto. When the Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn had won him from Watto, they had had to leave Shmi behind. . something Anakin thought about every day of his life.
'You four next!' the tunnel master hissed, breezing by with its midsection whirled out like ribbons on a child's spinner.
Mace Windu strode down a narrow side hall in the main dor mitory of the Jedi Temple, lost in thought, his arms tucked into his long sleeves, and was nearly bowled over by a trim young Jedi who dashed from a doorway. Mace stepped aside deftly, just in time, but stuck out an elbow and deliberately clipped the younger Jedi, who spun about.
'Pardon me, Master,' Obi-Wan Kenobi apologized, bowing quickly. 'Clumsy of me.'
'No harm,' Mace Windu said. 'Though you should have known I was here.'
'Yes. The elbow. A correction. I'm appreciative.' Obi-Wan was, in fact, embarrassed, but there was no time to explain things.
'In a hurry?'
'A great hurry,' Obi-Wan said.
'The chosen one is not in his quarters?' Mace's tone carried both respect and irony, a combination at which he was particularly adept.
'I know where he's gone, Master Windu. I found his tools, his workbench.'
'Not just building droids we don't need?'
'No, Master,' Obi-Wan said.
'About the boy-' Mace Windu began.
'Master, when there is time.'
'Of course,' Mace said. 'Find him. Then we shall speak. . and I want him there to listen.'
'Of course, Master!' Obi-Wan did not disguise his haste. Few could hide concern or intent from Mace Windu.
Mace smiled. 'He will bring you wisdom!' he called out as Obi-Wan ran down the hall toward the turbolift and the Tem ple's sky transport exit.
Obi-Wan was not in the least irritated by the jibe. He quite agreed.Wisdom, or insanity. It was ridiculous for a Jedi to always be chasing after a troublesome Padawan. But Anakin was no ordinary Padawan. He had been bequeathed to Obi-Wan by Obi-Wan's own beloved Master, Qui-Gon Jinn.
Yoda had put the situation to Obi-Wan with some style a few months back, as they squatted over a glowing charcoal fire and cooked shoo bread and wurr in his small, low- ceilinged quarters. Yoda had been about to leave Coruscant on business that did not concern Obi-Wan. He had ended a long, contemplative silence by saying, 'A very interesting problem you face, and so we all face, Obi-Wan Kenobi.'
Obi-Wan, ever the polite one, had tilted his head as if he were not acquainted with any particular problem.
'The chosen one Qui-Gon gave to us all, not proven, full of fear, and yours to save. And if you do not save him…'
Yoda had said nothing more to Obi-Wan about Anakin thereafter. His words echoed in Obi-Wan's thoughts as he took an express taxi to the outskirts of the Senate District. Travel time-mere minutes, with wrenching twists and turns through hundreds of slower, cheaper lanes and levels of traffic.
Obi-Wan was concerned it would not be nearly fast enough.
The pit spread before Anakin as he stepped out on the apron below the tunnel. The three other contestants in this flight jostled for a view. The Blood Carver was particularly rough with Anakin, who had hoped to save all his energy for the flight.
What's eating him? the boy wondered.
The pit was two kilometers wide and three deep from the top of the last accelerator shield to the dark bottom. This old maintenance tunnel overlooked the second accelerator shield. Squinting up, Anakin saw the bottom of the first shield, a huge concave roof cut through with an orderly pattern of hundreds of holes, like an overturned colander in Shmi's kitchen on Tatooine. Each hole in this colander, however, was ten meters wide. Hundreds of shafts of sunlight dropped from the ports to pierce the gloom, acting like sundials to tell the time in the open world, high above the tunnel. It was well past meridian.
There were over five thousand such garbage pits on Corus cant. The city-planet produced a trillion tons of garbage every hour. Waste that was too dangerous to recycle-fusion shields, worn-out hyperdrive cores, and a thousand other by- products of a rich and highly advanced world-was delivered to the district pit. Here, the waste was sealed into canisters, and the canisters were conveyed along magnetic rails to a huge circular gun carriage below the lowest shield. Every five seconds, a volley of canisters was propelled from the gun by chemical charges. The shields then guided the trajectory of the canisters through their holes, gave them an extra tractor-field boost, and sent them into tightly controlled orbits around Coruscant.
Hour after hour, garbage ships in orbit collected the canisters and transported them to outlying moons for storage. Some of the most dangerous loads were actually shot off into the large, dim yellow sun, where they would vanish like dust motes cast into a volcano.
It was a precise and necessary operation, carried out like clockwork day after day, year after year.
Perhaps a century before, someone had thought of turning the pits into an illegal sport center, where aspiring young toughs from Coruscant's rougher neighborhoods, deep below the glittering upper city, could prove
