Then he felt the voices of the seeds. They are afraid. The heat is baking them. Their shells are crisping.
Most of the heat rose in rippling sheets of air, but as the fuel blazed and embers settled out, the seeds were being roasted like sugar hulls in a campfire.
Perversely, Anakin shivered as if with cold.
Obi-Wan put an arm around his shoulders. Anakin saw that his master's face was beaded with sweat. He, too, could feel the seeds in the fire.
'Something wrong?' Vagno asked, his face glinting and flowing in the yellow light from fire, as if he were part of the blaze, a stray ember given human shape. He walked around them critically.
'We're fine,' Obi-Wan said.
But Anakin did not feel fine. He wanted to curl up and hide, or run, but he knew the seeds no longer had legs, no way of escaping, even if they wanted to.
'I've never lost a client. No fear, no fear,' Vagno said.
The seeds were afraid but did not move under their burden of embers and flame. Theirs was courage, and also an awareness of fate or destiny.
The seeds were not nearly as intelligent as a human-they did not really think for themselves-but inside of each was the potential for awareness and intelligence. The fire was bringing that awareness to the fore.
This will happen to you.
Anakin gasped. He was not dreaming.
This is your destiny, your fate.
Obi-Wan had said nothing. Anakin knew where the voice was coming from, whom it belonged to, but could not believe what he knew.
There will be heat and death and resurrection. A seed will quicken. Will it burn or shine'? Will it think and create or be ruled by fear and destroy?
And then the voice fell silent.
Obi-Wan's arm tightened around Anakin, as if he would protect the boy. 'The wave is not what we expected,' he said.
Anakin stared into the flames, his inmost self suddenly calm. The seeds were changing. They were no longer afraid.
'They'll pop like bombs! Stand back!' Vagno pushed Obi- Wan and Anakin back just as the first explosion sent a cloud of embers high into the air. Sparks showered around them, crisping little holes in their robes. For a moment, Anakin looked like a devil, his hair sending out tendrils of smoke. Obi-Wan extinguished the little fires with quick, light slaps of his hand.
One, two, three. . suddenly, there were many explosions, too many to keep track of. But Anakin knew that all the seeds had survived, and all had been quickened by the flames.
'It's going to be a fabulous ship!' he enthused, slapping his knees. 'It's going to be the greatest ship ever made!'
'Not yet,' Vagno said, grimacing critically. 'They have to be gathered, annealed, and shaped-we'll teach them ways of the outer worlds! Come. Let the ashes be stirred.' He herded Anakin and Obi-Wan back with his hands until they stood beside an empty carapod. 'And stand back! Some of the seeds explode twice.'
Chapter 39
Obi-Wan felt woozy, a little ill. He had never experienced such a strange twist in his awareness of the living Force. That the twist was centered on Anakin was evident, but something about where they were-about the planet itself-gave the effect a peculiar focus and intensity.
He could almost convince himself that had Mace Windu or Yoda or any other Jedi Master been on Zonama Sekot, the twist-the shape of this strange wave of destiny-would have surprised them, as well.
And perhaps these unprecedented circumstances explained his repeated sensing of the presence of Qui- Gon.
Obi-Wan had seen his Master impaled on the glowing, singing lightsaber of Darth Maul. The Force had not been gentle or supportive then. Qui-Gon's body had not vanished; it had shown the truth of death, of the severing of all connections with the flesh.
And that was as it should be. The Force had a shape, and death was an inevitable part of that shape. Perhaps Obi-Wan was not yet mature enough to let go of all sentiment and all love for his Master, to say good-bye to him forever.
Vagno and his crew stirred the ashes from the perimeter of the pit. The dependent hoop of limbs and tools dropped lower with the subsidence of the flames, and thick, blackened paddles dropped to help them mix the embers. Smoke and ash swirled high into the darkness, and flecks of red ember blinked like feral eyes.
Elsewhere under the broad canopy, in the factory valley, new fires burst forth. Obi-Wan could see, kilometers away, hidden by low hills in the terrain, that the canopy itself glowed brilliant with much larger forges than theirs. New seeds were being forged, far too many to satisfy just a few clients from offworld. The valley was filled with such forges, dozens, even hundreds of them.
The big ones are being made now, even as we watch, Obi- Wan thought.
Vagno put on heavier boots and fireproof waders and jumped into the pit. He flung up clouds of hot ash and laughed as he poked forth something large, maybe twenty times bigger than a seed. He exchanged his tool for a
