Obi-Wan gently interrupted this reverie. "We wish to purchase a ship," he said. "We have the money, and we are ready to engage in the tests and the training."
Gann dramatically drew up his thin black eyebrows. "Ritual first. Answers and tests much later."
The Ferroan turned at some vagary of the wind, a brief whistling sound through the canopies high above. "The view from here is not the best," he said. "Come with me. I need to introduce you to Sekot."
Obi-Wan and Anakin followed Gann to a gap between two of the huge trunks that enclosed and supported the platform. He opened a small gate thickly woven from reedlike stalks and gestured for them to pass through. Walking between the trunks, master and apprentice stepped out onto an exterior platform bathed in sunlight and overlooking a scene even more spectacular than that which Charza Kwinn had shown them aboard the Star Sea Flower.
Gann folded his arms and smiled proudly. Morning mists were rising from a wandering river valley, its depths still lost in shadow fully two kilometers below the platform. Along the upper walls of the valley, tier upon tier of dwellings and platforms covered the bare rock faces, held in place by great brown and green vines. The vines hung from great-rooted boras straddling knife-sharp ridges, topped with more brilliant purple and green canopies. Several airships navigated the calm morning currents between the ridges. These were made up of clusters of rigid tube-shaped bone-white balloons strapped side by side and stabilized by more outrigger balloons. The airships followed lengths of ca ble strung across the valley, supported at hundred-meter intervals by trunks thrust up from the sides. Even now, an airship was threading its way through the circular crown of foliage at the top of a support.
"The planet is named Zonama," Gann said. "The living world that covers it is named Sekot. This is a small part of Sekot, as are the boras around and behind us, and, we believe, as are we who live here. To be worthy to fly a piece of Sekot, one of our ships, you must tune yourself to our way. You must acknowledge the Magister and his role in our life and history, and you must acknowledge union with Sekot. It's not an easy course-and there are real dangers. The power of Sekot is awesome. Do you accept?"
Obi-Wan's expression did not change. Anakin looked up at Gann with a questioning squint.
"We accept," Obi-Wan said.
"Follow me, please, and I will show you where you will stay."
Chapter 20
Why don't you just go and ask about Vergere?" Anakin said to Obi-Wan as they settled into their rooms for a night in the clients' quarters of Middle Distance.
"I get the impression we must be patient," Obi-Wan answered as he opened a pair of shutters and looked down over the valley. "We must learn more about this Magister, whoever he is."
The airship ride to the training district, near a particularly expansive rise in the eastern ridge, had been routine enough, but still beautiful-and to Anakin, very exciting. All of his odd sensations and premonitions had faded in the glory of bright sun and open air-rare enough on Coruscant, impossible aboard the Star Sea Flower.
"It's different here," Anakin said. "Not like Tatooine… but I still feel at home."
"Yes," Obi-Wan said ruefully. "So do I. And that concerns toe. The air is rich with many substances. Perhaps some of them affect humans."
"It smells great" Anakin said, leaning out the window and staring down into the shadows at the river coursing far below. "It smells alive."
"I wonder what Sekot would be saying if we could understand these odors," Obi-Wan mused, and tugged his Padawan back in before he leaned too far. "Keep a grip."
"I know," Anakin said brightly. He artificially deepened his voice. "Things are not what they seem."
"What else do you sense?" Obi-Wan asked, the very question Anakin had hoped to avoid. He made a sour face.
"I don't want to sense anything now. I just want to enjoy the daylight and the air. Charza's ship was wet and cramped, and I've never liked space travel. It always feels cold to me, out there in the middle of nowhere. I prefer being in the middle of living things. Even Coruscant. But this. ." Anakin looked up at Obi-Wan. "I'm yakking my head off, aren't I?"
Obi-Wan grinned and touched Anakin's shoulder. "Cheer is a useful emotion at times, if it does not mask carelessness." Obi-Wan thought of Qui-Gon, and of Mace Windu-he had seen both of them almost ebullient even in difficult situations requiring deep concentration.
A talent he had not yet mastered.
"Are you ever cheerful, Master?" Anakin asked.
"I will have time to be cheerful when you tell me what you sense. I need a baseline against which I can measure my own perceptions."
Anakin sighed and pulled up a tall stool with four slender legs. His fingers felt the dark green substance of the piece of furniture, and he suddenly dropped it, letting it thump to the floor. "It's still alive!" he said in wonder, then bent to set it upright again.
"They call their building material lamina," Obi-Wan said. "It is not necessary to kill to make their homes and furniture. All the furniture is still alive, and the dwelling itself. Extend your feelings for a moment, and see what is there, rather than what you wish to be there."
"Right," Anakin said. But almost immediately, his mind wandered back to the curiosity of the moment. "How does it stay alive, this. .lamina? What does it eat, how does it-"
"Padawan," Obi-Wan said, without a hint of sternness, but in a distinct tone that Anakin had long since come to recognize, and instantly react to.
"Yes." The boy pushed the stool aside and stood still in the middle of the room. His arms remained at his sides, but his fingers splayed out. He became intensely outward-alert.
A few minutes passed. Obi-Wan stood a pace away from Anakin, all of his own feelings neutralized, senses withdrawn, to give the boy greater range.
"It's an immensity, a unity," Anakin said finally. "Not a lot of little voices."
"The life-forms here are all naturally symbiotic," Obi- Wan agreed. "Not the usual pattern of competition and predation. It's part of what you felt before-the sense of one fate, one destiny."
"Maybe, but I was feeling something outside, something about us."
"They may be intertwined."