"Michael Stackpole "I, Jedi"" - читать интересную книгу автора
His head came up and his face brightened, shattering the dull mood that had settled over us. УBrooding over this will waste the day, so I want to return to the exercise. You will choose a partner and each of you will bare a forearm. You will close your eyes and use what you have been taught to block feeling to that forearm. Then each of you will take a small stone and grasp it between the thumb and forefinger of the non-numbed arm. Using your remaining senses-and concentrating on the other person's senses through the Force-you are to bring that stone as close as possible to touching the other person's flesh as you can. Once you sense the touch of the stone through the Force, gently reach up and tap your partner's arm. The goal is to come as close as possible to touching without actually doing so, and to react only when a touch is sensed, but not felt.Ф
I partnered up with Tionne and knelt knee to knee with her. We both drew our sleeves back from our left forearms and presented them, wrists upward, to the other. Fairly easily we located small pebbles with our free hands and held them poised above the other's forearm. Giving her a brave smile, I closed my eyes and shut off the feeling to my left forearm. Then I tried to sense Tionne's presence.
To say that I stretched out with my senses is really an exag-geration. I wanted to produce a field effect, allowing my senses to spread out and encompass Tionne, but I found the effort as difficult and painful as trying to will my flesh to split so my muscles could expand outward. I took in a deep breath and let it out slowly, focusing on it to regain my concentration.
I wondered what to do for a moment, then realized I was really trying to spread myself too thin. First of all, I needed to be able to sense Tionne's arms, not her whole body and pres-ence. Narrowing the task before me made it far more manage-able, and I immediately felt a burst of self-confidence pump more energy into me. Then, following along the same lines of thought, I realized I didn't need to sense to the micron where her hand or arm was, since both were fairly large. I shifted my thinking around to a new paradigm in which I saw the hairs on my arm exuding little Force tendrils that wove themselves into a glowing mesh. When I felt a contact, I made the mesh even more fine beneath it, and added depth to it, so as her pebble approached my skin I watched it penetrating layers of my screen.
A smile blossomed on my face. The difference between con-tact and non-contact was just a layer, a layer defined as a mi-cron, but a layer that was easy to perceive when I was able to focus. As her stone touched my skin and the last layer parted beneath it, I poked a finger up and tapped her elbow. That brought a little gasp from her and I smiled a bit more.
Then I shifted my concentration to my right hand. I pro-jected similar tendrils from my fingers, forming them into a capsule that surrounded my stone. I shaped it using what I could feel of it with my fingers. The resolution at the point of my fleshy contact with it became very fine, but remained indis-tinct where I imagined the point of stone to be. Regardless, I lowered the stone toward her arm, and began to inject color into my sensory capsule. At the point of contact with her skin I made the capsule turn green. As the stone got closer and closer to her flesh, the color shifted to yellow. Then the final layer flashed red and I halted my movement without touching her. Then she tapped me on the elbow.
I jerked back and my sensory capsule vanished for a moment. I reestablished it and redefined the shape of the rock. Again I made an approach and stopped before what I thought was con-tact, but it wasn't until the sixth time that I had managed to define the rock's shape with enough precision that I stopped before I touched her.
We continued the exercise and quick laughs and triumphant cries soon echoed from the pairs. We became almost playful in what we were doing, teasing each other. As it became more of a game, I found it easier to project my screen and push it out further. Part of me wanted to try to use it to read the contours of Tionne's face, to see when she was smiling and to see her brow knitted in concentration but I held back.
My unwillingness to gain a greater sense of Tionne surprised me because I found myself reacting to her as if she were a danger. She certainly was beautiful and decidedly attractive, though her coloration set her outside what I'd previously seen as my Уtype.Ф Her physical beauty was less a danger, it occurred to me, than her very open and friendly way of dealing with everyone. If, at this stage, it was possible to identify someone who would form the heart of the group, I would have picked her. As such, if she knew who I was and my reasons for being at the academy, she would have offered me comfort.
Comfort I would relish.
Comfort that would cost me.
I wasn't worried about being seduced by her-my assumption was that Tionne had no interest in me, and I had no interest in anyone besides my wife. What worried me was accepting the sympathy she would offer. I had, since the time of my father's death, held myself closed to all but a very few good friends. With Mirax I had opened myself even more and while I could be very open with friends, joking with them and accepting their jibes; vulnerability still scared me.
In part it came with the jobs I'd had. In CorSec the last thing you want to let a criminal see is that he can get to you and can hurt you emotionally. To combat that you tend to deaden your feelings and deal with the people you meet professionally as Уthem.Ф They are not part of your family or your organization. They are not as real and therefore what the), think and say can't get to you. It is a dehumanization of people that allows for detachment; a detachment you need if you are going to survive while dealing with grand tragedies and cruelties.
Even in Rogue Squadron I fell prey to this distancing. When friends died, it hurt a lot, so I held myself back from becoming engaged with the new pilots. I didn't really even realize I was doing that until Wedge called me on it one day. He sort of smiled and told me he'd caught himself doing the same thing, but that by overcoming that natural tendency, he found he could reach out to pilots, help make them better, so he wouldn't lose them.
The sense of Tionne as a danger set itself up as another wall around my heart. I suspected it would interfere with my acces-sing and feeling the Force much as my inflated self-conception had previously. The fear of vulnerability was really just another aspect of my core personality. To reach my full potential as a Jedi I knew I would have to work around it or blast past it, but I didn't feel ready to decide on how I wanted to do that yet.
The sound of Luke's voice brought me out of my introspec-tion. УWithout opening your eyes or shifting away from your partner, I want you to place your pebble in the palm of your partner's hand. I want you then to reach out, to find that peb-ble, and use the Force to make it move. This is a big step. Up to now you have used the Force in a passive sense, to enhance your perceptions. Now you will apply the Force more directly and use its energy to make the stone move. If you can lift it clear of your partner's palm, so much the better.Ф
I felt Tionne's stone land in my hand. УThis will be fantastic, Keiran. Stories of Jedi levitating all sorts of things abound.Ф
УI'm certain.Ф I dropped my stone in her hand and immedi-ately lost all sense of it. This boded ill for me. I reached down and just touched it with a finger, hoping to kindle echoes of my tactile sense of it. Nothing.
УYou touched it with your finger, Keiran.Ф
УI know. Sorry.Ф
I drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. I gathered my thoughts and reconstructed my sensory screen. I projected it out and down toward her palm and mapped her hand. I could feel her flesh and how the Force flowed through her. Between us I could feel a resonance and I could even detect a dead spot in the middle of it. The stone, it had to be the stone. I smiled and bent my will to shifting the stone. Nothing.
It did not help at all that at this moment her stone danced in my palm as if a groundquake was shaking the planet. Her sharp giggle-half shriek, half laugh-let me know that she'd sensed the rock's movement. I felt pure joy wash out from her and couldn't help but smile, even though my rock lay as still as the Great Temple's foundation stones.
I tried to push and make it move again, but got nothing.
I opened my eyes and looked up at Master Skywalker. УI think nothing's happening.Ф
I shrugged. УI'm not even moving the dust on this rock.Ф УYou don't believe, which is why you fail.Ф Luke opened his arms to take in the other students. As I looked around I saw that the short hops Tionne's stone had taken were insignificant compared to what others had accomplished. Worst of all, Gantoris had a halo of pebbles whirling at different speeds around his head. УYou see, size matters not, numbers matter not. If you believe, you open the way for the Force to come through you.Ф
I shook my head. УI believe, but apparently not well enough.Ф
Gantoris' eyes opened and he stared at me past Streen's head. УYou believe in failure, Keiran, which is why you fail. It is a never-ending cycle.Ф
Luke gestured toward Gantoris and the stones he'd had orbiting his head flew up into the air. They wove themselves through an intricate pattern almost too fast for the eye to fol-low. It would have been all but impossible to watch, but Luke struck one stone off another, creating sparks at this point and that. Then, like a swarm of piranha-beetles on the hunt, the stones flew off and vanished into the rainforest.
УThere is only one cycle that is without end, Gantoris. That cycle is life and life is what creates the Force. Success comes with feeling, understanding and controlling the Force.Ф He smiled. УThe pace may be different, but the progression is the same for all of you. Setbacks are expected. Success and failure will always be part of your training.Ф
УNot for me.Ф Gantoris shook his head adamantly. УI do not choose to fail.Ф
Gantoris' declaration sent a chill down my spine. I'd heard that tone many times before, though the words had been differ-ent. УYou'll never take me alive, CorSec,Ф was how it always came out, and disaster almost always followed it. Here, at the Jedi academy, where we were learning to manipulate the en-ergy that bound the universe together, I didn't even want to think about what sort of tragedy Gantoris' comment could spawn.
That evening, after dinner, I found myself thinking about what Luke had said. The idea that I had to first feel the Force before I could employ it made me reevaluate what I had learned so far. Luke had also said that prior to what we tried earlier we had only been using the Force passively, to enhance our senses. This made me wonder if I had been tapping the reservoir of Force energy that my body pro-duced. It occurred to me that each living creature generated enough of the Force to keep them aware of and in touch with the world, but to push beyond that required an expanded flow of energy.
It required tapping into the Force itself. Luke said that I had to believe, but that meant letting go of doubts. This brought me back to the realization that my doubts were part and parcel of who I was, and unless or until I could push beyond them, I would be blocked from access to the Force. I felt as if I had to sacrifice myself to be able to feel the Force and use it, and yet I did not want to do that.
Still, my little chamber reeked of sacrifice. The names sunk in the stone made it crystal clear. Porkins and Biggs had died at Yavin, sacrificing all they were and could ever be. Wedge's life had been sacrificed to the Rebellion; his dreams deferred, his access to a life others would consider normal denied. And if I included Luke in the group, he was left with a mission to re-create an order of peacekeepers that his father had destroyed, to be able to rebuild a galaxy his father had helped take apart.
Suddenly my room became cloying and close. Here three men had vowed to put an end to the Empire or to die. Knowing less about their probable futures than I did about mine, having lived less of a life than I have lived, they made their choice; and a similar choice was asked of me. And my choice was easier, since all I needed to let go of were my preconceptions and prejudices, not my flesh and blood and brains and life.
I have to stop thinking and feel. I have to let go. I sighed aloud. Maybe Iella was right, maybe Conlscant's sun will go nova before I can do that.
I fled my room and quickly found myself in the turbolift to the rooftop. Our moon was slipping behind the gas giant and had turned its face away from it, so we were entering Truenight, not just Twilight night. I expected it to be cold and got a good chill blast of air when the lift door opened. I reveled in the way the breeze sucked warmth from me and hoped my thoughts could be as cold as my flesh.
I knew my fear of change was silly. Intellectually I could see my transition as that of an insect moving from one life stage to another. The creature was the same, had the same genetic code, but moved into a phase that gave it greater abilities. In my case the greater abilities would bring with them greater responsibilities. I didn't think I was afraid of them, but in the questioning mood I was in, I wasn't sure of anything about myself.
I began a slow circuit around the Temple's squared-off top and saw a figure sitting on the northeast corner. I tried to reach my senses out to see who it was, but they never got very far. He turned to face me, letting the wind tease his fluffy beard, then turned back to look out over the forest and at the black blanket of sky in which billions of stars nested.
I approached him, but hung back several paces to give him space. УI didn't think anyone else would be up here, Streen.Ф
The old man shrugged. УI am so used to being alone that I can only stand so much in the way of company.Ф
'Tll leave you, then.Ф
УNo, no need.Ф Though shadows hid his face as he turned toward me again, I felt an intensity radiating out from his invisi-ble eves. УYou hold yourself in tightly enough that your pres-ence is not painful.Ф
УThanks, I think.Ф
· 'Forgive me. My personal relation skills are not what they should be.Ф He smiled as the undulating cry of hunting stintarils seemed to mock him. УFor years my only companions were Bespin rawwks-large black scavengers with leathery wings. They have a rudimentary intelligence. Never taught one a useful trick, but they would come when I had food to feed them.Ф
I smiled and sat down on the cold stone. УI've had friends I couldn't say as much about.Ф
УGas prospecting on Bespin was lonely work, but I didn't mind.Ф The old man tapped his head with a finger. УKept hear-ing voices in my head, feeling people's moods. Only by getting away could I shut them out. Now Master Luke's training is helping me do that consciously. Don't miss it. Puts mystery back into life.Ф
I shot him a bemused smile. УMystery?Ф
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