"Daala's masters of reinterpretation already have the public half convinced that the only way to save civilization is to muzzle the Jedi. You need to prepare yourself for a fight."

The civilian doctors studying Valin reported just what Cilghal had: high stress levels, no physical abnormalities, no evidence of poisoning or drugs, no way to test his neurological functions-Jacen's scanner-scrambling technique stayed in effect even as Valin remained under heavy sedation. By the next day, Luke and Captain Savar had agreed on a reduced number of observers from each camp, the Horns not to count against the Jedi total. Luke returned to his duties.

The government prepared a case against Valin Horn and cleared dockets to advance Luke's first hearing. Nawara Ven confirmed that the prosecutors were exploiting Valin's actions for all they were worth. The situation was very, very bad for Luke's case.

As Nawara explained it, "The public is still hurting from a war where everybody suffered and n.o.body gained-a war worsened by a Jedi. They're pretty worked up. They want someone someone to take responsibility for Jacen Solo. They want a change they can point to, a change that means problems like Jacen Solo and Valin Horn will never happen again. You can tell them all you want that muzzling the Jedi won't fix things. It's what they want, and they're turning against you." to take responsibility for Jacen Solo. They want a change they can point to, a change that means problems like Jacen Solo and Valin Horn will never happen again. You can tell them all you want that muzzling the Jedi won't fix things. It's what they want, and they're turning against you."

It was true. Jedi on ordinary missions were booed. Ordinary people they dealt with were suddenly unhelpful, stalling investigations, and not just on Coruscant-the news, spreading throughout Alliance s.p.a.ce, caused anti-Jedi sentiment to swell like a pond ripple that never seemed to weaken. Jaina, a.s.signed at her own request to be the Imperial Remnant-Jedi liaison, suffered catcalls and was even thrown filth while in Jag's company. Public speaking engagements for which Jedi had been solicited months earlier were canceled. A years-old academic thesis proposing that interacting with the Force contributed to a tendency toward madness was uncovered and redistributed, and its author, now an obscure philosophy professor on Corellia, was suddenly the darling of interview shows.

Valin slept through it all, fruitlessly studied by doctors and chronicled by the press.

The Unification Summit moved on, relegated to second-tier news coverage. Perhaps the sudden absence of spotlights was a boon; political a.n.a.lysts reported promising responses from the Imperial Remnant and the Confederation.

A week after Valin's rampage, Luke went to bed, lay sleepless for three hours, then rose and dressed again. He walked the Temple halls for the next several hours. The Jedi he pa.s.sed sensed his deep immersion in his thoughts and did not trouble him. Ben watched him during the hour he paced the Great Hall; then, distressed but unable to help, he went to his quarters to spend his own sleepless night.

Two hours before dawn, Luke used the comlink in his quarters to make a series of quick calls.

Not long thereafter, on foot, he approached the Senate Building. In a few hours, partic.i.p.ants in the Unification Summit would collect again, but for now it was a still office building.

He was greeted with courtesy at the main entrance and escorted to the floor where the Chief of State's offices were located. Outside those offices, another set of guards offered equal courtesy but required him to hand over his lightsaber and submit to a brief full-body scan, which he did.

Then, finally, he was conducted into a large inner office, one darkened and unoccupied in this predawn hour. An aide activated the overhead lighting and offered him caf. He declined, and the aide left.

The office showed that this Chief of State had different aesthetic sensibilities than Jacen Solo or Cha Niathal, who had preceded Daala in the position. Jacen had preferred natural woods and landscape tones, though his taste had graduated toward even darker decor in his last months. Niathal, a Mon Calamari, had preferred militaristic themes in blues and greens.

Daala, it seemed, chose to surround herself with the trappings of the old Empire. Her personal office gleamed white, with desks, chairs, and computer equipment that could all have been recently transferred from the bridge of a Star Destroyer.

The door behind him hissed open, and Luke turned to see Daala enter. The Chief of State was once again in admiral's whites. Guards waited in the hall outside, their forbidding expressions, directed at Luke, vanishing as the door closed.

Daala extended her hand. "Master Skywalker."

Luke rose and shook it. "Chief Daala."

She moved around him to sit at the main desk. "Please, sit."

He did. It was a little odd-he had expected to feel something from her, anger or resentment or a desire for vengeance, but he could detect no strong emotions, no aggression.

"Something to drink?"

He shook his head.

The Chief of State propped her elbows on her desk and rested her chin atop interlaced fingers. "When my staff tells me that the Jedi Grand Master wishes to see me, I take it as a serious matter, even if we are are locked in legal battle. And I a.s.sume, when the message does not indicate a purpose for the meeting, that it is one best expressed face-to-face. So here we are, face-to-face. What can I do for you-or you for us?" locked in legal battle. And I a.s.sume, when the message does not indicate a purpose for the meeting, that it is one best expressed face-to-face. So here we are, face-to-face. What can I do for you-or you for us?"

"I'm actually not one hundred percent sure. Earlier this evening, I had a feeling that we should meet. A presentiment in the Force."

"What did it mean?"

"I'm not certain, but I suspect suspect it means that, somewhere, I now have the argument that will convince you to drop the case. Whether that's true or not, I have to be here. It might actually mean that I need to be in your presence when someone makes an attack on you." it means that, somewhere, I now have the argument that will convince you to drop the case. Whether that's true or not, I have to be here. It might actually mean that I need to be in your presence when someone makes an attack on you."

"Perhaps the Force was telling you that you need to be here to suddenly discover that I'm just an imposter with Daala's face, and that you need to cut me down."

"No."

"Well, then, let's wait and find out."

"Yes."

"You will let me know if you change your mind about caf."

"Yes."

"Or sweetcakes."

Luke sighed. The impulse that had brought him here seemed no closer to revealing itself, and Daala clearly thought he was wasting her time.

"While we're waiting for the Force to announce its presence," she said, "I did want to say something. I want you to understand, this suit is not personal. Even when we were on opposite sides, representing enemy forces, I had every respect for you. In reviewing your records, it became clear to me that you have had a significant and beneficial effect on the galaxy."

Luke raised an eyebrow. "But you still need so very much to make the Jedi a mindlessly obedient branch of the government that you're pursuing the trial."

"It's not about obedience."

"Oh, that's right. It's about not detecting a Jedi turning to evil. Which we should be able to do far more easily than, say, noticing an Imperial leader growing so callous that he'd obliterate an entire innocent world to convince other worlds to obey."

Daala became very still. Her face gave away no emotion, but Luke could feel, just for a moment, the pain she had experienced long ago as her love, respect, and even understanding for Grand Moff Wilhuff Tarkin withered and faded in the wake of the atrocities he had committed in the Emperor's name.

Luke was sorry to make her relive that. But she clearly wanted to exchange blows, and Luke was not unarmed in this match.

She regained her composure a moment later. "It's not about that, either. You're as guilty of not detecting Jacen Solo's turn to evil as others were of not checking the excesses of Imperial officers. But that's not why you're being tried. It's just the argument that will allow us to convict you."

"Why am I being tried, then? Give me the next layer of truth. Or the next layer below that."

"It has to do with fairness, and responsibility, and the rule of law."

"Things the Jedi have always supported."

"Things the Jedi have always subverted, at least under your leadership."

Luke couldn't keep his astonishment from his face or voice. "That's ridiculous."

"Let me give you a hypothetical example. A Coruscant bar in seedy sublevels. Two patrons decide they don't like the looks of a third. They a.s.sault him. A Jedi intervenes, out come blaster pistols and a lightsaber, whoosh, whoosh whoosh, whoosh, severed arms litter the barroom floor. Law enforcement officers are called, the Jedi gives them a terse statement and then flits off to his next adventure."

Luke nodded. "That's a simplistic and overly colorful way of putting it, but, yes, it happens." It had, in fact, happened almost exactly that way to him, with Luke in the role of the patron about to be a.s.saulted, back before he was a Jedi himself, many years before.

"Do you not see anything wrong with the way the situation was resolved?"

"Not really."

"First, there's the maiming of the suspects. Would it have been possible for the Jedi to have defeated them without cutting off their arms?"

Luke nodded. "Possibly. Probably. But once the blasters came out of their holsters, the situation became a lot more dangerous for everybody, patrons and Jedi included."

"Could the Jedi have disarmed them with some use of the Force?"

"That does happen. But we know the Jedi in your example made the correct choice."

"How so?"

"He was not just reacting to what he saw with his eyes and knew from his experience. He was in tune with the Force. The Force alerted him to the true level of danger and he responded appropriately."

"Sad that the Force can never be sworn in to testify about the suggestions it offers to the Jedi."

"True."

"Or to the Sith. The Force talks to the Sith, too, doesn't it?"

Luke blinked. "The dark side of the Force, yes."

"You didn't say your Jedi was only listening to the bright side-"

"Light side."

"Yes, thank you. You just said the Force. But let's stipulate that the good Force is the only one our hypothetical Jedi listens to. It still suggests maiming an awful lot of the time."

"Hardly a life sentence of disfigurement and handicap. Modern prosthetics are indistinguishable from flesh and bone." He held up his own prosthetic hand, waggling its fingers at her, as evidence.

"Though they have to be paid for by someone-often the state, when the amputee is of the lower cla.s.ses-and then maintained, at a cost in credits and technical skill in excess of the upkeep of an ordinary flesh-and-blood arm."

"Granted." Luke suppressed an impatient sigh. "Is that what the suit is about, then? A perception that arms are being cut off at a higher rate than the government recommends?"

"No, it's about the Jedi giving a cursory statement to law enforcement and then leaving. Or dashing off without giving one at all. Or just refusing to answer one crucial question the investigating officer asks. And, in every case, getting away with it."

"I still don't understand, then."

"I'll walk you through it. The officers show up and ask questions, the Jedi gives a fifty-word statement, the officers say, 'Thanks, now we need to go back to the neighborhood station for a full statement,' the Jedi says, 'Sorry, I have places to be,' and he's gone. Did the Jedi respond with appropriate force? You think so, but at the government level we never learn, because a short while later he's on Commenor dealing with an organized crime family, then in the Hapes Cl.u.s.ter ..."

"Usually the Jedi does make a full statement. Does cooperate to whatever degree the local authorities require."

"Usually, yes. I have a report here of a Jedi Knight named Seff h.e.l.lin who a.s.saulted law officers just a few weeks ago. Whatever he needed to rush off to do, he never came back to offer full cooperation to the authorities. Did he?"

Luke suppressed the urge to fidget. He found himself wishing that Nawara Ven were here, though Daala was herself not being backed up by an advocate. "I can see how incomplete reports and investigations would be frustrating to the government. But you have to trust that we made the right choice at the right time. It's what we're trained to do."

The smile she turned on him was as frosty as anything Luke had seen in the snowy outback of Hoth. "I do, do I? We'll get back to that. Grand Master, the hypothetical incident I described shows at a very minor, very frequent level that the Jedi are above the law. above the law."

"Not true. Anyone in the bar situation you described could have intervened with lethal force to save the victim from his beating."

"And then would have been obliged to make a full report, and stay in contact until the investigation was resolved. The Jedi don't respect that law, or any law they find inconvenient. And the choice to sever the arms comes dangerously close to a judicial sentence being enacted at the time of the intervention. Judge, jury, executioner: Jedi."

"I'm sorry you have that impression." Luke frowned. "I'd come here hoping that I could persuade you to drop the case. But now I'm wondering whether I should go through the whole trial just to demonstrate to the public that we do do cooperate with the authorities. That we don't consider ourselves above the law." cooperate with the authorities. That we don't consider ourselves above the law."

Daala nodded, her expression agreeable. "Let's talk about Kyp Durron."

"Master Durron is a fine, responsible Jedi."

"I'm not talking about the Jedi he is now. I'm talking about the teenager who destroyed most of the life in the Carida system all those years ago."

Luke, his composure no longer entirely intact, shifted uncomfortably. "He was under the influence of the dark side of the Force at that time, affected by the mental sendings of a long-dead Sith Lord. And in the years since, he has proven himself to be courageous, a defender of life-"

"Yes, he has. I'm not questioning that. But I want to take you back a little over thirty years to shortly after he killed everyone who hadn't yet managed to evacuate Carida in the two hours he generously gave the population. Of course, the solar system he destroyed was an Imperial system, your enemy at the time, which does mitigate his crime in your eyes. Is that why you protected him, shielded him from legal ramifications, trained him?"

"No."

"Why did you?"

"Because I could look into his heart and see that he had cast the shadow of Exar Kun out, that he was no longer an agent of the dark side, that he had repented."

"He said he was sorry, and he meant it, and that was sufficient justice for the millions who died on Carida."

"You're oversimplifying. I knew knew that he was on the right path again." that he was on the right path again."

"Because you have the power to see that. Because that's what Jedi are trained to do."

"Yes."

Daala sighed. "And because they're trained to do that, to see into people's hearts, sort truth from lies, see into the future where the criminal has reformed and turned to a life of picking flowers, they can decide who should be thanked and who should be cut down, who should be forgiven and who should be left for the ordinary officers of the law to convict. They protect the common citizen but do not answer to him. They do not pay for their mistakes. They obey government orders when those orders conform to their moral code and not when they don't. And that's wrong And that's wrong. Any other group exhibiting that degree of arrogance, that unconcern for the rule of law, would be cla.s.sified as a criminal organization. That, ultimately, is what this case is about."

She was wrong. And yet she was chiefly wrong from the Jedi perspective. Remove the Force from the equation, and she suddenly became right. That was jarring to Luke. It was so hard for him now to remember what it was like not to have the Force always contributing to his decision making.

It was then that he detected it: the evil that the Force had brought him here to see. He did not see it as a person or an object, but as a process, a trend-one that he was a part of.

Understanding things as much as he could through Daala's perspective, through the perspective of the common citizen, the one truth he could discern was that if the galaxy thought that the Jedi were above the law, abuses were sure to spring up from that notion as toxic weeds growing rapidly from a pile of manure.

Young Jedi, seeing the ease with which their Masters slid out from underneath common but inconvenient civic responsibilities, would would come to think that such behavior was their right. A few, on the fringes of the border between the light side and the dark side, come to think that such behavior was their right. A few, on the fringes of the border between the light side and the dark side, would would discern that Kyp Durron had escaped any visible consequence of his actions at Carida ... discern that Kyp Durron had escaped any visible consequence of his actions at Carida ... would would accept Luke's a.s.sertion that Darth Vader had been redeemed, had died a Jedi instead of a Sith despite his many murders, and would not understand the true meaning of the story. accept Luke's a.s.sertion that Darth Vader had been redeemed, had died a Jedi instead of a Sith despite his many murders, and would not understand the true meaning of the story.

The answer settled across Luke like a leaden shroud. To prevent this evil from growing, he had to lose this case, to be punished. That was what the Force had brought him here to understand.

He met Daala's gaze again. "Will you be prosecuting Master Durron next?"

"I will not. But I could authorize extradition for him to the Imperial Remnant to face their charge of planetary genocide. Head of State Jagged Fel has rather reluctantly presented me with a proposal from the Moff Council on that very subject. But such a thing could be avoided, of course, if we had already set another decisive example." will not. But I could authorize extradition for him to the Imperial Remnant to face their charge of planetary genocide. Head of State Jagged Fel has rather reluctantly presented me with a proposal from the Moff Council on that very subject. But such a thing could be avoided, of course, if we had already set another decisive example."

Luke gave her a slow nod. "I came here hoping that, face-to-face, without advocates whispering in our ears, we could negotiate a deal. Now, having heard what you have to say, I am certain we can."

"Tell me."

NINTH HALL OF JUSTICE, CORUSCANT.