I'm afraid that the man I was would despise the man I am becoming. I have a terrible dread that this transformation is exactly what Depa had in mind when she decided to draw me here.
She said there was nothing more dangerous than a Jedi who'd finally gone sane.
I think she is dangerous.
I'm afraid she wants me to become dangerous, too.
I should-I need to change the-think about something other than- Because I asked Nick about her.
I couldn't help myself. Hope blossomed along with my anger-if the holo was a setup, maybe what she'd said was no more than. atmosphere. Local color. Something.
Despite my determination to hold myself unbiased until I could see her, speak with her, feel her essence in the Force-despite my resolve to ask nothing, and hear nothing-despite all my years of self-discipline and self- control- The heart has power that no discipline can answer.
So I asked him. I told him of Depa's words on the data wafer: how she called herself the darkness in the jungle, and how she said that she had finally gone sane.
How I fear that in fact she has fallen to the dark, and is irretrievably mad.
And Nick- And Nick- 'Crazy?' he said with a laugh. 'You're the one who's crazy. If she was crazy, nobody'd follow her, would they?' But when I asked if he meant she was all right, he responded, 'That depends on what you mean by all right.' 'I need to know if you've seen her act from anger, or fear. I need to know if she uses the Force for her personal gratification: for gain, or for revenge. I need to know how much hold the dark side has on her.' 'You don't have to worry about that,' he told me. 'I've never met someone kinder or more caring than Master Billaba. She's not evil. I don't think she could be.' 'This isn't about good and evil,' I told him. 'This is about the fundamental nature of the Force itself. Jedi are not moralists. That's a common misperception. We are fundamentally pragmatic.
The Jedi is I
altruistic less because to be so is good, than because to be so is safe: to use the Force for personal ends is dangerous. This is the trap that can snare even the most good, kind, caring Jedi: it leads to what we call the dark side. Power to do good eventually becomes just power.
Naked force. An end in itself. It is a form of madness to which Jedi are peculiarly susceptible.' Nick answered this with a shrug. 'Who knows the real reasons why anybody does anything?' This was not a comforting response, and the rest of what he told me was worse.
He says the words on that crystal are just how Depa talks, now. He says she has nightmares-that screams from her tent tear through the camp. He says no one ever sees her eat-that she's wasting away as though something inside is instead eating her. He says she has headaches that painkillers cannot touch, and sometimes cannot leave her tent for days at a time.
That when she walks outside in daylight, she binds her eyes, for she cannot bear the light of the sun.
I am sorry I asked. I am sorry that Nick told me.
I'm sorry that he did not lie.
It is very un-Jedi to fear the truth.
I'll continue the story. Putting experience into words is a gain in perspective. Which I need.
And it's a way to pass the hours of the night, which I also need. Even for a Jedi Master, accustomed to meditation and reflection-trained for it-there is such a thing as spending too much time alone with one's thoughts.
Especially out here.
This outpost settlement was built at the crest of a shoulder sloping down from the ridge. The ridge here isn't a razorback anymore, but rather a sine-wave wall of volcanic mounds. The settlement stands on a green- splashed outcrop; to either side of this jungle-clutched fist of stone are blackened washes where lava occasionally flows down from a major caldera, which is about six hundred meters above where I sit and record this. If you listen closely, you might hear the rumble. This microphone may not be sensitive enough. There-hear that? It's ramping up for another eruption. i*m't'tu. juni 11.1't't These eruptions come regularly enough that the jungle doesn't have time to reclaim the lava's path; heat-scorched trees line the washes, with leaves cooked off on the lava side. Eruptions must not be too serious in these parts. Otherwise, why build an outpost here?
Well- I suppose it could have been for the view.
The bunker itself is slightly elevated above the rest of the compound. From where I sit in the wreckage of the doorway, I can look down over a charred mess of tumbled and broken prefab huts and the shattered perimeter wall. Pale glowvine light shows gray on the steamcrawler track that switchbacks up the side of the shoulder.
Out across the jungle- I can see for kilometers up here: ghost-ripples of canopy spread below, silver and black and veined with glowvines, pocked with winking eyes of scarlet and crimson and some just dull red: open calderae, active and bubbling in this volatile region. It's breathtaking.
Or maybe that's just the smell.
Another of the ironies that have come crowding into my life: all my worry about civilians, and battles, and massacres, and having to fight and maybe kill men and women who may be only civilians, innocent bystanders, and all my arguing with Nick and everything he told me- All for nothing. Needn't have worried. When we got here, there was no one left to fight.
The ULF had been here already.
There were no survivors.
I will not describe the condition of the bodies. Seeing what had been done here was bad enough; I feel no urge to share it, even with the Archives.
I will grant Nick this: the Balawai at this outpost had clearly been no innocent civilians. The Korunnai had left the bodies draped with what must have been the most prized pieces of the jups'jewelery: necklaces of human
