"Michael Stackpole "I, Jedi"" - читать интересную книгу автора

Luke looked up at me and his eyes hardened.
Which is when I ran into a Force wall that bounced me back a couple of feet and set me on my heels. I tasted blood on my lips, but knew it was really coming from my nose, which hurt. I didn't think it was broken, but bumping it up against anything solid is seldom a pleasant experience.
I wiped it off on the sleeve of my green tunic, but in the half-light both it and the blood looked black. УNice trick.Ф
A feral grin twisted Luke's mouth. He came forward, word-lessly, moving with a fluidity I'd not seen in him before. He aimed a slash at me that would have bisected me from right shoulder to left hip. I caught a momentary flash of surprise from him because he'd expected me to block it high right, but I let it come through the outer and middle rings of defense. With a quick parry, I slid it wide of my right shoulder, then I stepped forward and slammed my right shoulder into Luke's chin. That stood him up, clicking his teeth sharply together. I drove a weak jab with my left hand into his ribs, then ducked a slash that should have trimmed my hair at roughly the level of my earlobes. Dropping into a crouch, I whipped my left leg out and scythed it through his legs, bashing his ankles together and again dropping him onto his back.
I whirled away and stood, looking down at him. УI would have thought you'd be better than this.Ф
Luke slowly got up and wiped a trickle of blood from his split lip away with his left hand. УNever had much rough and tumble growing up. My friends and I were more involved in racing than fighting.
УThen maybe you should be a Jedi Racer, not a Knight.Ф
УYou don't understand.Ф Luke spat out some bloody saliva.
УThere are things in play here, forces shifting.Ф
УMaybe I could understand, if you'd talk about it.Ф I lowered my blade. УYou're the Jedi Master but that doesn't mean you should shoulder all the responsibility. You know that already: you've been letting Tionne learn and share history. Kam's been handling some of the instruction and you've had me working on the dark man problem-and I think I have Exar Kun's temple pegged from Dorsk 81's survey logs, by the way. Figured I'd check it later this afternoon.Ф
УNo.Ф Luke shook his head adamantly. УYou're not to go there alone. I don't want any of the students going there.Ф '%o you go and I'll back you up.Ф
He hesitated, then shook his head. УCan't, not now.Ф
УWhy not'?Ф
Luke closed his eyes and sighed. УDo you recall how I told you of knowing my friends were in trouble on Bespin?Ф
УYes. You said that was a vision of the future.Ф I narrowed my eyes. УYou said Darth Vader allowed you to sense it to lure you into a trap.Ф
УI have had other visions, other feelings.Ф Pain tightened Luke's expression. УThere is disaster in the offing. It remained a bit more distant when Mara was here, but now I feel it is much closer.Ф
УDo something about it.Ф
УWhat?Ф Luke's question came almost as a plea. УI have this oppressive sense of doom approaching. It touches on everyone and everything. All the things I think about doing don't seem to make it go away.Ф
I swiped at more blood from my nose with my left hand. УSlow down for a moment. Do you know if this doom, this future, is locked in holo, or is it morphable?Ф
УThe future is always morphable, but nothing I think to do will change it.Ф
УTwo things you're overlooking here, Master Skywalker. First, thinking is closer to trying than doing, if you catch my drift. Changing the future has got to require action, not just planning for action. While a Jedi acts in defense and not out of aggression, that doesn't mean aggressively putting a defense into place is bad.Ф
Luke nodded slowly. УAnd the second thing?Ф
УMaybe you're not the one who has to act. Maybe it's me or Kam or all of us together.Ф I sighed. УYou're teaching us how to use the Force, you're opening us up to new powers, and you've established that we are heirs to a Jedi tradition full of responsi-bility. Fact is, though, that you've not given us any responsibility. Defeating this disaster you feel coming, getting rid of Exar Kun or whoever the dark man is might just require all of us finally accepting our responsibilities as Jedi.
УRight now you're accepting every scrap of responsibility here. You're getting buried under the weight of what you see as a string of failures. Mara Jade didn't leave here because you failed her, she left because you succeeded. She learned what she needed to learn-which might not have been what you thought she needed to learn. She left because she didn't want to fail others to whom she felt responsible.Ф
He opened his eyes. УYou think I've been treating all of you like children.Ф
УCloser to the mark than you want to know.Ф
УI haven't meant to, but you are children within the Force.Ф УThat's fine, Master Skywalker, and true; but we're also a disparate group of adults. Kyp was what, our youngest, and he was the age you were when you started your training? He was the age I was when I went into the CorSec Academy. We're pretty well formed at that point, personality-wise. Those who ha~e come here to learn from you have already made a decision to explore a new life. You need to let us do that. You need to challenge us, and challenges aren't just the size of rocks or the range of a vision one can project. Those challenges test our skills. not our characters, and the failures here have been fail-ures of character.Ф
УBut you are not ready for such challenges.Ф
УNot if you're going to make them marrow-blasting chal-lenges, no.Ф I pointed at his right hand. УDid you learn a lot h'om your failure at Bespin'?Ф
Luke's fingers flexed. УYes.Ф
УThen let us fail a bit and learn how to deal with it. As we used to say in CorSec, there are two types of speeder bike riders: those who have fallen off, and those who are going to fall off. Jedi will fail, and if they don't learn how to deal with failure, if they don't have the spine to recover from it, you'll lose them.Ф
Luke's lightsaber died. УI have to think about what you've said.Ф
УDon't just think, Master. act.Ф I thumbed my blade off as well, letting darkness swallow us. УIf you don't act, the disaster you feel could be on a scale from which none of us can possibly recover.Ф
I awoke slowly, feeling as if I'd done my best to drain every drop of liquor from a cantina where the drinks weren't watered, the mugs weren't cleaned, the bottles weren't labeled and the first-aid kit consisted of a blaster with which you could put yourself out of your misery. Actually, I didn't even feel that good. I was pretty sure I'd not been on such a bender because I didn't find any tattoos or scars on me, and the bruises were ones I recognized from my train-ing. The fact that the nearest cantina was a good five parsecs away, as the Falcon flies, coupled with the fact that I didn't have a ship, likewise contraindicated a hangover.
But, then again, I did kinda feel as if I'd walked that far. Despite my better judgment-which was urging me just to lie down and die-I oozed out of bed and pulled on my running clothes. That helped wake me up, largely because they were still damp, cold and clammy from the short run I'd taken the night before to burn off some of my fruslration with Master Skywalker. Nothing like the feel of wet fabric against the flesh in the morning to remind you that you're alive. Doesn't do much for the quality of life issues some folks find important, but I'd reached that point where I decided being alive was bet-ter than the nearest alternative.
I even managed a smile. УAnd if I die, I don't want to spend the rest of eternity locked in the rocks on this place. Might be good enough for Exar Kun, but not me.Ф
My muscles felt as if they were encased in carbonite, but 1 managed to get them going and actually had worked up to a brisk stumble when I emerged from the Great Temple. There I nlovcd into a real stumble, landing on my hands and knees, because a Z-95 Headhunter rested on the landing pad outside. I panicked for a second, thinking I might, in fact, have stolen it from near the cantina where I did all the drinking, but I calmed myself quickly. Didn't even have to use a Jedi technique to do it, either.
I knew, had I flown in the condition I was in, the only landing I could have managed was a crash. And Mara Jade wou/dn't tike f/tat happening to her Headhunter.
The realization that I was looking at her fighter washed the last of the muzziness from my brain. Kyp had stolen that ship and if it was back, that meant he was, too. I got up and ran over to the craft, stretching out my feelings to see if I could detect his presence. I caught some faint traces of him, but they ema-nated mostly from the controls, which looked as if he'd reached a hand into them and just squeezed. Mara Jade isn 'l going to like t/tat one bit.
I turned around, following a wisp of Kyp's essence to the base of the Great Temple. A path had been cleared through the rusty vines overgrowing much of the temple. The vines nearest the uncovered stairway looked pale and stunted. They had re-coiled from the steps like snakes preparing to strike, and had withered considerably in the process.
I took the steps two at a time. 1 had no idea what I would find at the top or what I would do to confront Kyp if I found him there. I steeled myself for a confrontation, and worked to tap the Force to fortity myself for one. Even as I did that, however, I had the sinking feeling that no amount of preparation would be enough for dealing with what I would find.
As I mounted the final flight of steps, new sensations cas-caded down from the top of the pyramid. I sensed the other students up there, and their emotions ran from shock and out-rage to sorrow and despair. I crested the edge of the Temple and saw the Mon Calamari, Cilghal, cradling Luke's head in her lap. Streen, his eyes wide with fear, stood over her. УIs he alive'? I can't hear him.Ф
The Mon Cal concentrated on Luke, then shook her orange and algae-green head. She reported finding a heartbeat and I could see his chest moving with shallow respiration. УBut I can't find him inside. When I touch him with the Force, all I find is a great empty spot .... У
I reached out with my senses and tried to find what she could not. Pushing hard, I wove some of the external Force with my internal energy and tried to see if I could find a spark of Master Skywalker in his body. I recalled his noting that he had been taught we were luminous beings, not creatures of crude matter, but I found it hard to accept his having abandoned his body. Still, the evidence of that very thing was right there, since I could not feel him at all.
Kirana Ti pulled her robe tightly closed at her throat. УWhat can we do?Ф
Cilghal blinked her eyes. УWe are all alone now.Ф
The despair in her voice found an ally in the fear writhing into my belly. It had never seemed odd to me that Kyp had been able to slam me into a wall because he had always been more powerful than me. Even when I felt the other presence reinforcing him and got hammered by the combination of them, I never imagined that they could be more powerful than Luke Skywalker. I had even rationalized away the dark man's ability to avoid detection as his being talented in that area, just as I was talented in the area of image projection.
Had I even dreamed Luke was in danger I would have worked harder to convince him we had to act. The saliva in my mouth soured. When we start handing out citations for failure, let me get in the front of the line. I'd told Luke we were dealing with a sociopathic murderer, but I'd not convinced him of the grav-ity of that situation. He seemed to be in a position to handle it and all he wanted from me was information that would have given him a direction.
And I let him do just that. I closed my eyes for a moment and wanted to smack my head with the heel of my hand. What had I been thinking? I was the one who had experience with such monsters, not Luke Skywalker. I surrendered responsibility for such things to him when he was no more able to deal with it than he felt we were ready to deal with the fate of the universe. My mistake was the reverse of his, yet mine compounded his.
The pure arrogance and stupidity of those ideas slammed hard into me. Luke Skywalker had dealt with Darth Vader and the Emperor, even the Emperor Reborn. If they weren't mon-sters, monsters didn't exist. Master Skywalker was more than capable of dealing with them, which made his condition now that much more stunning and terrifying.