ears.
Korunnai ears.
Based on the limited scavenger damage and the low decomposition, Nick guessed that the ULF band who'd done this might have passed through here no more than two or three days before. And there were certain, mmmm, signs-things done to the bodies-and echoes in the Force that don't seem to fade away, a standing wave of power, that suggests this had been the work of Kar Vastor himself.
The ULF guerrillas had also thoroughly looted this place; there is not a scrap of food to be found, and only useless bits and pieces of technology and equipment. The wreckage of two steamcrawlers lies tumbled downslope. The comm gear is gone as well, of course, which is why I alone am here to watch over Besh and Chalk.
When we found the comm gear gone, Nick's spirits collapsed. He seems to alternate despair with that manic cheerfulness of his, and it's not always easy to guess what will trigger either state. He let himself flop to the bloodstained ground, and gave us up for dead. He returned to his mantra from the pass: 'Bad luck,' he muttered under his breath. 'Just bad luck.' Despair is the herald of the dark side. I touched his shoulder. 'Luck,' I told him softly, 'does not exist. Luck is only a word we use to describe our blindness to the subtle currents of the Force.' His response was bitter. 'Yeah? What subtle current killed Lesh? Is this what your Force had planned foryou? For Besh and Chalk?' 'The jedi say,' I replied, 'that there are questions to which we can never have answers; we can only be answers.' He asked me angrily what that was supposed to mean. I told him: 'I am neither a scientist nor a philosopher. I'm a Jedi. I don't have to explain reality. I just have to deal with it.' 'That's what I'm doing.' 'That's what you're avoiding.' 'You have a Jedi power that can get all of us to Depa and Kar in a day? Or three? They're marching away from us. We can't catch up. That's reality. The only one there is.' 'Is it?' I let a thoughtful gaze rest on Galthra's broad back. 'She moves well through this jungle. I know that akks are not beasts of burden-but one man, alone, she might be able to carry at great speed.' 'Well, yeah. If I didn't have to worry about you guys-' He stopped. His eyes narrowed.
'Not a chance. Not a chance, Windu! Drop it.' 'I'll watch over them until you get back.' 'I said drop it! I'm not leaving you here.' 'It's not up to you.' I stepped close to him. Nick had to bend his neck to look up into my eyes. 'I'm not arguing with you, Nick. And I'm not asking you. This is not a discussion. It's a briefing.' Nick is a stubborn young man, but he's not stupid. It didn't take him long to understand that until he met me, he didn't know what stubborn looked like.
We managed to rig an improvised bareback pad for Galthra; Nick and Chalk and I persuaded Galthra, through the Force, to bear Nick on her back as she had me, and carry him swiftly through the jungle on the trail of the departed Korunnai. The three of us watched them vanish into the living night, then Besh and Chalk arranged themselves as comfortably as possible on the bunker floor, and I injected them with tha-natizine.
We all wait together, in the hope that Nick will win through the jungle, in the hope that he might find and bring back this Kar Vaster-this dangerous lor pelek, this terror of the living and mutilator of the dead-and that this man of no conscience or human feeling might use his power to save two lives.
I wonder what Kar Vaster will think, when he arrives, and finds what I have done to the scene of his victory.
I have spent some hours-between the time Nick left and the time I sat down here to record this entry-giving the dead a decent burial. Nick will no doubt laugh, and make some snide remark about how little I understand, how naive and unready I am for a part in this war. He'll probably ask me if burying these people makes them any less dead. I can only reply to this imagined scorn with a shrug.
I didn't do it for them. I did it for me. I did it because this is the only way I have to express my reverence for the life that was torn from them, enemy or no.
I did it because I don't want to be the kind of man who would leave someone-like that.
Anyone.
I sit here now, knowing that Depa has passed within a few klicks of here; that she stood, perhaps, on this very spot. Within the past forty-eight standard hours. No matter how deeply I reach into the Force-how deeply I reach into the stone beneath and the jungle around-I can feel nothing of her. I have felt nothing of her on this planet.
All I feel is the jungle, and the dark.
I think of Lesh a lot. I keep seeing how he writhed on the ground, twitching in convulsions, teeth clenched and eyes rolling, his whole body twisting with furious life-but the life that twisted him was not Lesh's. It was something that was eating him from the inside out. When I reached into the Force for him, all I felt was the jungle. And the dark.
And then I think of Depa again.
Perhaps I should listen more, and think less.
The eruption seems to be strengthening. The rumbling is loud as a Pelek Baw throughway, and tremors have begun to shake the ston? floor. Mmm. And rain has begun, as it often will: triggered by particu-lates in the smoke plume.
Speaking of smoke- Among the equipment looted by the ULF would have been, no doubt, breath masks; I may miss them more than anything else. I must have a care for my lungs. On this outcrop, I'm in little danger from lava, but the gases that roll downslope from such eruptions can be caustic as well as smothering. Besh and Chalk will be safer than I. Perhaps I should risk a hibernation trance; no predator will reach us through the eruption. Predators need to breathe, too.
And they- That- Wait, that sounded like- Queer. Some Haruun Kal jungle predators mimic their prey's mating calls or cries of distress, to lure or to drive them. I wonder what kind of predator that one was: something that preys on humans, it must be. That cry almost got me. Sounded exactly like a child's scream of terror.
I mean, exactly.
And now this one- Oh.
Oh, no.
That's Basic. Those are screams. There are children out there.
Mace pelted downslope, running half blind through rain and smoke and steam, navigating by ear: heading for the screams.
