"Planet Of Twilight (Barbara Hambley)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hambly Barbara)

They're the best, the most centered in the Force. You need it. I'm
speaking as your teacher now, Leia."
Surprise wiped the defensiveness from her eyes, but she looked quickly
away. When she looked back it was with a quick grin, to cover her uneasiness.
"To hear is to obey, Master." Turning his seriousness aside.
But in the meeting of their eyes he saw in hers, Please understand.
Although he knew she didn't understand herself the false note in her
voice or the intention, momentarily seen and as quickly buried, to let the
turmoil in the Grand Council, the massive investigation of Loronar
Corporation's abuses in the Gantho system, the Galactic Court trial of Tervig
Bandie-slavers, the education of her children-anything and everything-divert
her from the Jedi training she knew in her heart that she needed.
He didn't press her. "You kiss the kids for me." He drew her close for a
quick, warm kiss on the cheek, awkward around the helmet, tubes, and wires.
"Tell the guys at the Academy I'll be back."
"I wish you could take at least Artoo with you."
He climbed a few rungs of the ladder up the airfoil. "So do I. But even
if I took him apart and tucked the pieces into every corner and under the seat
of this thing, there wouldn't be room."
She drew back, and watched as he climbed the rest of that long ladder,
settled himself into the B-wing's cockpit. "I'll subspace you from Hweg Shul
when I need to be picked up," he said, his voice tinny through the helmet
conam as he fastened himself in. "Probably before that, if I can find a
transmitter strong enough that'll take the code."
"I'll be waiting." She reached out with her mind, through the glowing
inner net of the Force, and touched his spirit like the warm clasp of a hand.
Felt his thanks for that final reassurance.
Then she and the droids retreated, and at her signal the security guard,
the shuttle's pilot, and Marcopius joined her at the bay doors.
Ezrakh had already faded into the corridor's shadows. The great leaves of
dull gray metal slid open to let them out. Her last sight of the bay showed
her Luke's B-wing turning with weightless grace to face the black, star-
spattered rectangle of the magnetic portal and the steady-burning violet eye
of the distant world where Callista had taken her refuge.
The doors slid shut.
'Keep up with your lightsaber practice.
Why had she felt that guilty flinch when he'd said that? You need it.
Why did she feel in her chest that slight sensation of panic, like a
woman deathly sick who fears to ask the doctor what she has.
She knew she needed it.
The comm light was flashing in her stateroom when she reached it, but
when she pressed the toggle and said, "Organa Solo," there was only the faint
hum of an open channel. She frowned, annoyed and a little worried, and kicked
the heavy train of her robe aside as she settled into the chair before the
station.
"If you have no further requirements, Your Excellency," said Threepio,
"Artoo and I will take this opportunity to repower."
She looked up quickly-she found she had been staring reflectively at the
blinking comm light-and said, "Oh, okay. Fine. Thank you."
She punched through an alternate comm number, and again, got only tone.