"Padawan, you may not stand up at Skywalker's wedding."

"What?!"

"I don't believe you suffer from any sort of deafness, Sionnach. You heard what I said and you know what I meant by it."

"But --"

"You have some objection?"

"Yes, I --"

"You suppose anything you have to say here --"

"Master, I gave my word!" Surprise, distress and incomprehension warred across the girl's features.

"Indeed?" Joma clenched her fists, inside the sleeves of her robe, to avoid gritting her teeth. Outwardly, she merely raised an eyebrow.

"And aside from what it would mean to me, it would mean so much to them." Surprise was winning now.

"They know, or at the very least Skywalker knows, that nothing of any personal importance should ever take precedence over a direct order from a padawan's master." Joma's fingernails dug uncomfortably into her palms.

Incomprehension. "But Master, I don't understand --"

"It's not important that you understand, Padawan. It's important that you obey. Do you understand that?"

Distress. Sionnach's golden eyes were dangerously full of tears. Her voice was tight as she whispered, "Yes, Master."

"Good. And do you trust me?"

Sion sniffed and turned away. "Of course, Master."

"I'm glad. Because I didn't mean it."

Incomprehension pulled ahead again. Sion looked over her shoulder. "What?"

"I meant every word of that except the part about your not being allowed to stand up at the wedding." Joma bit her tongue between her back teeth. It did hurt her to see her apprentice so upset, to make her apprentice so upset; but it was a lesson that had to be taught, and it couldn't be done without messing a bit with her mind.

But that apprentice hadn't yet caught up with the conversation. "What?"

"You want to stand up at Skywalker's wedding?"

Incomprehension won the whole match. Sionnach evidently decided to humor her master, despite her belief that the latter was talking nonsense. "You know I do."

"Then I think you should."

Sionnach knit her brow and thought for a moment before she spoke again. "Master, may I sit down? I think you should, too."

Joma breathed a sigh of relief that none of this had exploded in her face. So many padawans, particularly those with caring and thoughtful masters, lived their young lives not really understanding the potential of the sacrifice they were making in choosing the life of a Jedi. They reached knighthood and were unpleasantly surprised by the notion that interests other than theirs were to be their primary concern. A padawan's adherence to the word of his or her master was to be even greater. It was absolute. But many, many padawans lost sight of this, in their occupation with adolescence and the persistent idea of entitlement. Padawans, for their own safety, needed to know almost instinctively that "Because I'm your master and I said so" was all the reasoning necessary to grant or refuse them any favor or privilege. The Council would never fault a padawan for obeying an order from his master, even if he had to disobey the Council itself to do so. Of course, a padawan could bring a grievance before the Council, if he thought his master was abusing the responsibility of mastery -- ordering him to behave illegally or immorally, for instance, or to endanger his own or anyone else's safety without good cause -- and the Council would not assign padawans to any knight or master believed to be unfit for the task; but the burden of proof was on the apprentice.

This was not such a case, however. Joma felt that it would be wrong to let Sion hit sixteen still believing that she would never be denied anything, or even anything reasonable; it was important that the girl understand that if Joma chose to forbid her from standing in the wedding, she simply would not stand. Sion's own immediate interests were not to be her primary concern, and neither, frankly, were they her master's.

But Joma knew her plan could easily have backfired. Thankfully, however, Sion had turned from tears and anger toward concern for her master. That, in itself, Joma reflected, was a demonstration that the Jedi upbringing had been effective. "Sion," Joma said as she sat down, "I want you to stand up in Anakin's wedding. But I wanted you to believe that I wasn't going to permit it."

Sionnach was plainly several steps beyond confusion. "But why?"

"You are many things, Padawan, of which the most important is a Jedi. Specifically, you are my apprentice. In any circumstance, you must be prepared to sublimate every other interest to that fact. Is that clear?"

"Yes, Master."

"And now that we've established that, the goal wasn't actually to keep you from standing up at the wedding. But I know you know I was deadly serious in that I could, at any time, have forbidden it."

"Yes, Master."

"For as long as you are a Jedi, and especially as long as you are my or anyone else's apprentice, there are very real chances that your interests may conflict with your duties. You must be careful not to make promises you don't know you'll be able to keep."

Sion nodded, a thoughtful expression wrinkling her brow. "So are you trying to say, Master, that --"

"I'm not trying to say anything other than what I have said." The chime rang. "You can come to me, of course, for any guidance," Joma said as she got up to answer the door, "but I'm through volunteering instruction for the day." She smiled warmly and hit the panel.

The door slid aside to reveal Qui-Gon Jinn, examining the palm of his left hand. "Hello," he said, startled, when he heard the door open.

"Qui!" Sionnach jumped to her feet and ran into her godfather's arms.

"Sha," he murmured -- that child never failed to calm him, Joma thought -- as he squeezed her in his arms. "I'll be in to see you in just a moment, love," he said as he set her away again, "but I need to speak to your master for a bit, all right? Joma, will you come outside with me for a moment?"

Both women were surprised by Jinn's manner, but Sionnach did as he asked and went back to the couch, picking up a datapad on the way. Joma stepped through the door and let it close behind her. "What's going on?" she started to ask -- but he shushed her and bodily moved her over to a window alcove where they could both sit, and where it was thus much more comfortable for the two of them, given their disparity in height, to speak quietly. "Something's up, Jinn," she muttered. "Out with it."

"There is a lot of suspicious behavior in the senate," he said.

"They're politicians. Of course their behavior is suspicious."

"No," the master said, waving away her retort. "It begins to seem to us that several, if not many, of the senators have been cloned."

Joma hadn't been what she would call speechless since -- well, she had probably never been rendered speechless. But now, a suggestion like this one was the last thing she would have expected to hear. "What?!" she whispered.

Qui-Gon Jinn nodded. "Bail Organa of Alderaan has been thinking something was wrong for some time, and arrived at this conclusion about two cycles ago. We -- Obi-Wan and Anakin and I -- have been observing ever since, and it doesn't look good."

"But -- who's doing it? Their own people?" Surely not. It was inconceivable that any constituency would elect a clone to the senate, or clone a sitting representative.

Qui-Gon Jinn shrugged and showed his empty hands. "We don't know," he said. "That doesn't seem likely, but we don't have any other ideas either. Whoever's growing them, though, they're good. Quite difficult to spot. Likely all first- generation. And the learned memories are very nearly complete."

"Then what's the basis of your suspicion?"

"Temperament, mostly," Jinn admitted, "although we have three definite cases of missing knowledge - - senators who should have known things and didn't. We won't know for sure until we can get a tissue sample, but obviously we can't go scraping skin from the entire assembly." He paused for a moment and seemed to be gauging Joma's reaction. When he spoke again, his voice was barely audible. "The Council has refused to authorize an investigation," he said.

"Not surprising. They say it's not our affair?"

"They'd be right, but Organa has explicitly asked for our assistance. So I'm telling you this as an individual, to do with the information as you will."

"What are you hoping to accomplish?"

"If it turns out to be true, I'm after minimizing the violence that will result when people become aware of this. No matter who's behind it, most people will be furious -- I'd like to get the original senators back in office, and protect the clones from the mobs."

Joma gave a mirthless chuckle. "You would. All right, Qui-Gon, I'm in. Keep me posted on what Organa has to say, and I'll keep my eyes open and see if I can't pull some hairs to look at under a lens. You'd like me to spread this about a bit, I assume?"

"If you think it's wise. Do as you will."

Joma nodded once. "Right, then. We -- right." Having lost her train of thought, she rose. "If you'll excuse me, I have a class to teach soon, so I need to run, but I think Sion is free for the day, if you wanted to visit." Joma smiled and moved away down the corridor, stopping to glance back over her shoulder at Qui-Gon Jinn. He raised an eyebrow at her, and she felt her face wrinkle in frustration at her inability to nail down what she was thinking. With a shrug, Joma resumed walking toward her class. It wasn't until she was nearly there that she remembered what had been predicted the last time she and Qui-Gon had discussed something out of the ordinary.

---

Qui-Gon remained sitting in the alcove, letting abstract thoughts drift through his mind, after Joma had gone. After a moment, he realized that his attention was in demand elsewhere. Looking up, he saw Sionnach standing beside him with an expression of curious concern he'd never seen on anyone but her father. On Dorim, it had been an indication that the man was through joking and wanted the straight story. Qui-Gon did not suspect it would be any different from Sion, particularly once the girl spoke. "Is that true?"

"Is what true?"

"What you said to my master, about --" she looked around quickly, then raised her eyebrows as she whispered: "clones?"

Qui-Gon stood swiftly and grabbed Sionnach by the arm. "Inside. Now," he said through clenched teeth as he steered her back across the corridor and into her apartment. Neither spoke until the door had slid shut behind them. "What were you doing, eavesdropping like that?" he demanded immediately, before his next thought could strike him. "You were -- you were listening, weren't you? You couldn't just hear us?"

"I was listening," Sion assured him. "I can do that. I'm Adept." She grinned.

Qui-Gon raised an eyebrow. There were a lot of things Adepts could do that regular Jedi couldn't, but they didn't often do them. Their greater sensitivity to the Force meant they could do some high-energy tasks with much less effort than other people; conversely, though, they often had to concentrate a great deal to avoid overwhelming a lower-energy task. This had been the Council's concern over Joma, when she was young; its basis was valid, although their solution had been misguided. Most Jedi kept their fields of perception purposefully limited to just above the level of a non- Force-sensitive person, and did it as a matter of course, only relaxing those limitations when a specific situation called for it; Adepts had greater difficulty doing so consistently. As a result, an Adept trying to restrict her hearing to normal Jedi levels might well see something she shouldn't, outside most others' field of vision -- or she might be dazzled by light that seemed brighter to her than anyone else. An Adept trying to keep her sight sense in line might be swamped with perception of others' emotions. Just the concentration required was impressive, so a distracted Adept was vulnerable to sensory overload. Migraines and mood swings, as Joma had pointed out once -- the hallmark of an Adept.

So Sionnach had evidently been risking the headache to listen to Qui-Gon and Joma's conversation. "It didn't occur to you that the reason I wasn't speaking to your master in this living room might be because the discussion was meant to be private?"

"Of course it did." Sionnach sat down on the arm of the couch. "But I thought you might be talking about Ani's trials. Once I heard what you were talking about, I tried to stop listening, but I couldn't seem to turn away." Her smile faded. "I know the difference between secrets and gossip, Qui. I hope you aren't angry at me because you think I'm not deserving of your confidence."

"No, not at all," Qui-Gon said, puzzled. "What would make you think --"

"Nothing," Sion said, waving the question away. "So. Is it true?"

"Sionnach --"

"Come on, Qui. I'm almost sixteen. My master's going to tell me everything you just told her when she comes home anyway; all I want is for you to tell me a little bit more." She smiled again, brilliantly, as she had when she was a child and knew he could scarcely deny her a thing.

"There's no more to tell. All we can do is hope we're wrong." Qui-Gon paused for a moment and looked at Sionnach. She didn't seem at all concerned about the prospect of a senate full of clones. "How much do you know about clones, Sionnach?"

"Not a lot," the girl admitted. "I know they can be grown in vats, instead of implanted and then born or hatched or whatever."

"And what else?" Sionnach thought for a moment and shrugged. Qui-Gon sighed. "Sha, that's an elementary bit of the mechanics of cloning. That's nothing to do with this. The social issues are much more important. A lot of people hate clones."

A frown wrinkled her brow. "Why?"

"Why. Why do people dislike droids? Why do people dislike Twi'leks?"

"But clones aren't a different race. I mean, it's not right to dislike a different race either, but clones aren't even that. They're just like us, aren't they?"

"Well, that might be what people don't like about them. They're just like us, literally, of course. But whatever the reason, you'll find that across the galaxy, clones are treated quite poorly -- not unlike slaves, in some places. And they don't fight back, because they're not allowed to be bothered by it. Their minds are selections of their originators' memories, learned when they're activated."

Sion thought even harder. Qui-Gon could almost see the logic falling into place behind her eyes. "So ... people don't trust clones, because their thoughts are controlled? But --"

"Now, a natural-born clone is a different thing than a hydroponic clone. It's the second sort people really have trouble with."

"Okay, okay," Sionnach said, shifting to sit more comfortably as she tried to think and speak at the same time. "But people don't have any trouble trusting droids, and their thoughts are controlled, too, aren't they?"

"Ah. People rely on droids. A droid is a machine. You can't trust it to make sound decisions of its own accord, but you can rely on it to do what it's been programmed to do or die trying. A clone doesn't have even that, nine times out of ten. It doesn't have the life experience to make sound decisions, and they're volatile creatures. Short- lived, unpredictable. That's because," he went on, seeing that she didn't understand, "grown in vats as they are, they don't have the time to develop as completely as humans do. Sometimes they're fine, but more often than not there's something wrong. Occasionally it's skeletal unsoundness, or something wrong with one or more internal organs, but mostly it's the brain, because that's so intricate. The more complex a thing, the more ways it can go wrong. Have you met mad people? Spice addicts, or old people who are losing their minds?" Sionnach nodded, wide-eyed. "It can be like that. Erratic behavior. Gaps in their memory, even though it was intact when it was implanted. And the quicker they grow them, the wilder they are. All in all, it's a very dangerous practice, hydroponic cloning."

"But then why do people do it?"

"Well, for things they don't want to do themselves. Weapons and machine testing, for instance. And chemicals for drugs. They want to know how a thing is going to affect a man before they give it to him, so they keep clones to test them on in case the thing is lethal." Sionnach physically recoiled. Qui- Gon continued; he felt a bit ruthless, opening the girl's eyes to the galaxy this way, and he hated that, but after all, she had asked. "In general, clones are used where droids would be too expensive and sentients too unwilling."

"Clones aren't considered sentient?"

Qui-Gon made a face. That wasn't precisely what he'd meant to say, but it wasn't entirely inaccurate either. "Not ... entirely," he finally said. "Now, there are also people who grow clones for the express purpose of harvesting them for parts when they themselves get sick or frail. I can tell you find that as disgusting as I do, but they get around it by not giving the clones a memory at all."

"Still!"

"I know. And another place where clones are useful -- you'll like this -- is in extremely high-security industries. Their life spans are so short, you see. Dead men tell no tales."

Sionnach smiled. "But the people have to trust the clones with top-secret information, and then trust them to die expediently."

"Essentially, yes. So. Clearly, you can see why the idea that there might be clones in the senate has caused us some concern. They cannot be allowed to serve; we don't know how stable they are, and besides, their constituents would certainly never allow it. But if we find one, the people will riot -- we want to sort the whole thing out as quietly as possible. And, as you heard," he said with a wink, "the Council won't make any official move -- so we're operating independently. You and your master will involve whomever she chooses. Obi- Wan and Anakin and I are running underground with this."

"So everyone will report to you?"

"Only informally, just so we can all keep organized. Now. Is that enough more for me to have told you?" Qui-Gon tapped Sion's nose. "I'd much rather talk about something else now."

"We can talk about Ani's trials," Sionnach said, grinning and looking keenly at Qui-Gon. "You must know by now what they're going to be."

Qui-Gon struggled not to smile. "I'm sure they'll be appropriately taxing," he said.

"In two cycles it's a year since you recommended him," Sion persisted. "When does he get to find out what they are?"

"Oh, he won't find out what he's facing until he's facing it, of course," Qui-Gon said with exaggerated mildness.

"But when do the rest of us find out?"

Qui-Gon knew his godchild was growing frustrated, but he couldn't answer her questions any more truthfully. He grinned. "Perhaps a Council member can be persuaded to describe Anakin's trials to you before identifying them to him," he said. "But of course, by then, you'll be occupied more with Anakin's wedding."

To Qui-Gon's surprise, at the change of subject Sionnach did not brighten; instead, she became suddenly thoughtful, and when she spoke, she spoke slowly. "I know. I've decided -- I've decided not to swear to protect their children," she said.

Qui-Gon felt as stunned as Joma had looked when he'd told her there were clones in the senate. "What -- why?"

"Something my master said," the girl began, twisting a corner of her sleeve between her fingers. "She said as long as I was her apprentice, I should be careful not to make promises I don't know I'll be able to keep."

Qui-Gon felt a pin-prick of something like anger; it began in his chest and crept around his heart, making him squirm. "Will she prevent you from keeping it?"

"Not intentionally, of course, but think about it, Qui -- she has a point. My oath to her -- and hers to me -- is -- is --" She looked intently at nothing, as people always do when they're trying to think of a word.

Qui-Gon supplied it. "Insuperable?"

"Yes. And so is the oath to protect children. But then what if they conflict?" It was an astute point. Qui-Gon reached across and took Sion's hand. "It would be a disservice to those children to swear myself their protector. I'm sure that's why my parents only asked you. Obi was still a padawan, so he couldn't swear that oath."

"What will you do?"

"Oh, I'll still stand for them. And I'll promise to do everything I can -- but I can't swear to get between their children and danger, like Obi will. Do you think Ani will understand?"

"I think he'll be delighted to have you at his side, no matter in what capacity," Qui-Gon assured her. "And if he asks, and you give him this explanation you've just given me, he won't be able to help but be honored."

Sionnach beamed and wrapped her arms happily around Qui-Gon's neck. He hugged her just as tightly as always, then kissed her forehead and tapped her nose and reminded her he had other people to see. As he walked through the corridor thinking of whom to visit next and musing on his conversation with Sion, Qui-Gon's pin-prick of whatever it was -- not anger, any longer -- settled next to his heart; he wanted to scratch at it, but the only way to do so would have been to reach through his scar into his chest cavity, so he gritted his teeth and let it be.

---

Comments always welcome!