The airship ride to the training district, near a particularly expansive rise in the eastern ridge, had been routine enough, but still beautiful-and to Anakin, very exciting. All of his odd sensations and premonitions had faded in the glory of bright sun and open air-rare enough on Coruscant, impossible aboard the Star Sea Flower.
'It's different here,' Anakin said. 'Not like Tatooine… but I still feel at home.'
'Yes,' Obi-Wan said ruefully. 'So do I. And that concerns toe. The air is rich with many substances. Perhaps some of them affect humans.'
'It smells great' Anakin said, leaning out the window and staring down into the shadows at the river coursing far below. 'It smells alive.'
'I wonder what Sekot would be saying if we could understand these odors,' Obi-Wan mused, and tugged his Padawan back in before he leaned too far. 'Keep a grip.'
'I know,' Anakin said brightly. He artificially deepened his voice. 'Things are not what they seem.'
'What else do you sense?' Obi-Wan asked, the very question Anakin had hoped to avoid. He made a sour face.
'I don't want to sense anything now. I just want to enjoy the daylight and the air. Charza's ship was wet and cramped, and I've never liked space travel. It always feels cold to me, out there in the middle of nowhere. I prefer being in the middle of living things. Even Coruscant. But this. .' Anakin looked up at Obi-Wan. 'I'm yakking my head off, aren't I?'
Obi-Wan grinned and touched Anakin's shoulder. 'Cheer is a useful emotion at times, if it does not mask carelessness.' Obi-Wan thought of Qui-Gon, and of Mace Windu-he had seen both of them almost ebullient even in difficult situations requiring deep concentration.
A talent he had not yet mastered.
'Are you ever cheerful, Master?' Anakin asked.
'I will have time to be cheerful when you tell me what you sense. I need a baseline against which I can measure my own perceptions.'
Anakin sighed and pulled up a tall stool with four slender legs. His fingers felt the dark green substance of the piece of furniture, and he suddenly dropped it, letting it thump to the floor. 'It's still alive!' he said in wonder, then bent to set it upright again.
'They call their building material lamina,' Obi-Wan said. 'It is not necessary to kill to make their homes and furniture. All the furniture is still alive, and the dwelling itself. Extend your feelings for a moment, and see what is there, rather than what you wish to be there.'
'Right,' Anakin said. But almost immediately, his mind wandered back to the curiosity of the moment. 'How does it stay alive, this. .lamina? What does it eat, how does it-'
'Padawan,' Obi-Wan said, without a hint of sternness, but in a distinct tone that Anakin had long since come to recognize, and instantly react to.
'Yes.' The boy pushed the stool aside and stood still in the middle of the room. His arms remained at his sides, but his fingers splayed out. He became intensely outward-alert.
A few minutes passed. Obi-Wan stood a pace away from Anakin, all of his own feelings neutralized, senses withdrawn, to give the boy greater range.
'It's an immensity, a unity,' Anakin said finally. 'Not a lot of little voices.'
'The life-forms here are all naturally symbiotic,' Obi- Wan agreed. 'Not the usual pattern of competition and predation. It's part of what you felt before-the sense of one fate, one destiny.'
'Maybe, but I was feeling something outside, something about us.'
'They may be intertwined.'
Anakin thought this over with a frown. 'I can feel the newcomers, the colonists, separately,' he said. 'I don't sense Vergere anywhere.'
'She has gone,' Obi-Wan agreed.
'So let's go ask where she went.'
'In good time.' Obi-Wan lifted his eyes. 'Observe your stool.'
Anakin looked down and saw that one foot had fastened to the floor. He bent and touched the connection, then looked up in wonder at Obi-Wan. 'It's feeding!' he said. 'The floor's alive, too!'
'We should be prepared early in the morning for the arrival of our hosts.'
'I'll be ready,' Anakin said, getting to his feet. 'I'll be charged!'
The boy's emotional energy level was still too high for Obi-Wan's comfort. There was an interaction between Anakin and Sekot he could not yet understand, and what puzzled him was that this revealed as much about Anakin as it did about Sekot. . and also revealed that Obi-Wan still knew very little about either.
Chapter 21
It was the first day of client celebration that had been held for some time at Middle Distance, and the air was filled with many-colored balloon ships flying back and forth along their cables, loaded with officials, workers, and the curious. Anakin and Obi-Wan stood by the rail of the gondola of the large airship that carried them down the length of the valley. The oblong gondola featured a small cabin and a long, curved roof made of sheets of lamina and thickly woven tendrils, all still alive.
Gann accompanied them on this trip. About midway down the canyon, he grabbed a handrope and stepped forward around the cabin to the prow to confer with a tall Ferroan woman.
