Vision of the future

'Or whatever,' Mara said with an odd touch of impatience. 'Personally, I'm not convinced it was really him. But that's beside the point. The point was that you decided—stupidly and rather arrogantly, in my opinion—that the best way to stop him would be for you to pretend to join up and let him teach you some of his dark side techniques.'

'But I didn't really go over to the dark side,' Luke protested, trying to remember those dark days.

'I mean, I don't think I did.'

Mara shook her head. 'Debatable; but it almost doesn't matter. One way or the other, you still willingly dabbled in it. And from that point on, it colored everything you did.' One of Master Yoda's pronouncements floated up from his memory. If once you start down the dark path, his old teacher had warned, forever will it dominate your destiny. 'It did, too, didn't it?' he murmured, half to himself, as all the errors and mistakes and, yes, the arrogance of the past nine years rose accusingly before his eyes. 'What was I thinking?'

'You weren't thinking,' Mara said, an odd mixture of impatience and compassion swirling together in her voice and emotions. 'You were reacting, trying to save everyone and do everything. And in the process you came within a split blaster bolt of destroying yourself.'

'So what changed?' he asked. 'What happened?'

Mara's eyes narrowed fractionally. 'You telling me you don't know?' Luke grimaced, wondering that he hadn't seen it earlier. That critical moment off Iphigin, as he and Han had prepared for combat against the pirate gang Han had deduced was on its way. The moment when he'd seen the vision of Emperor Palpatine and Exar Kun laughing at him... 'No, I know,' he conceded. 'I made a decision to stop using the power of the Force so much.' And suddenly, through that mixture of compassion and impatience came a wave of something completely unexpected. An overpowering flood of relief. 'You got it,' Mara said quietly. 'Finally.' Luke shook his head. 'But why?' he demanded. 'The power's obviously there, available for a Jedi to use. Is it just because I touched the dark side that using it is so bad for me?'

'That's probably part of it,' Mara said. 'But even if you'd never done that you'd still have run into trouble. You ever been in a hullplate-shaping plant?'

'Ah—no,' Luke said, blinking at the sudden change of topic.

'How about an ore-crushing facility?' she suggested. 'Lando's had a couple of them at one time or another—you must have visited at least one of them.'

'I've seen the one on Varn, yes,' Luke said, the mention of Lando's name throwing a sudden damper on the cautiously growing feeling of excitement at these new revelations. Mara's relationship with Lando...

'Fine,' Mara said, either missing the change in Luke's emotions or else ignoring it. 'Sometimes small songbirds set up their nests in the upper supports of those buildings. Did you hear any of them singing when you were there?'

Luke smiled tightly. Again, it was so obvious. 'Of course not,' he said. 'It was way too noisy in there to hear anything that quiet.'

Mara smiled back. 'Pretty obvious, isn't it, once you see it. The Force isn't just about power, like most non-Jedi think. It's also about guidance: everything from those impressive future visions to the more subtle realtime warnings I sometimes think of as a danger sense. Trouble is, the more you tap into it for raw power, the less you're able to hear its guidance over the noise of your own activity.'

'Yes,' Luke murmured, so many puzzles suddenly coming clear. He had often wondered how it was he could rebuild Darth Vader's personal fortress while Master Yoda had become winded doing something as relatively simple as lifting an X-wing from the Dagobah swamp. Clearly, Yoda had understood the choices far better than his upstart pupil.

And even in the short time since Luke had decided to try that same choice he'd already seen glimpses of why Yoda had chosen that path. Subtle bits of guidance, sometimes occurring as little more than vague and almost subconscious feelings, had been showing up more and more: protecting him from a quick capture back at the Cavrilhu Pirates' asteroid base, or quietly prompting him to accept Child Of Winds's assistance, which had led directly to this cavern and the pride-motivated aid of the Qom Jha. 'I was on Iphigin a couple of months ago helping Han with some negotiations,' he said. 'The Diamala at the talks told Han that Jedi who used as much power as I did always ended up slipping over to the dark side.'

'They may be right,' Mara agreed. 'Not all Dark Jedi come from botched training, you know. Some of them slip into it all by themselves.'

'Not a very pleasant thought,' Luke said soberly, thinking about his Yavin academy. Of his successes at Jedi instruction there, and his failures. 'Especially given that I started teaching under dark side influence.'

'Yes, I noticed that, too,' Mara agreed. 'Possibly one of the major reasons you didn't do very well with that first batch of students.'

Luke made a face. 'Is that why you didn't stay?'