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Eventually the path led them back to the door. Without asking, Valorum led Jinn to an elevator that took them to the Mushroom's roof. Up top, there was a round, open plaza with spectacular views in every direction. This high, there were constant winds across the dome, relieving the strength of the midday sun. They walked out to the building's edge, leaning onto the railing and looking out at the view.
Finis picked up the thread of their conversation as if they had been talking all along.
"Actually, pirates have everything to do with why I have this job." He was still holding the long burr-tail, stroking it absently with his thumb.
"I got into Alderaan Law, like every good little Valorum, and I was bored, bored, bored. Running off second year to train for a star squad was the smartest thing I ever did." He snorted. "My whole family freaked; a thousand straight years of diplomats and Senators, and Finis wants to be a fighter pilot? My father sent me a recorded holo that consisted of one word: 'Why?' You know what that cost?"
Qui-Gon smiled. Echoes were sounding deep within him. At a very young age, Jedi initiates had to ask themselves if they wanted the warrior path -- and if they did, why. Nor did that questioning cease when one was chosen as a padawan. Qui-Gon had had to ask himself that question once again, carefully and profoundly, only months before, when Master Yoda had sent him to his final trials.
"Plus they all said it would get me killed -- actually, that ended the opposition from a couple people," Valorum laughed. "But what happened was, it made me a lot more alive. Not just because if you screw up in a Headhunter you wind up as a new crater on an asteroid somewhere." His tone turned serious. "Before then, I thought: what's the point? But out there I saw the point. Jinn, did you know there's still slavery in the galaxy? And not just slavery...."
Qui-Gon nodded, and echoed. "And not just slavery." His soft, pensive tone made Valorum glance at him sharply, wondering exactly what he'd seen.
"I spent four years flying between the Rims," Finis continued. "Mostly patrol and observation but every once in a while we got to tackle a pirate or two. We'd have little meet-and-greet moments with people in the black market, see if we could pick up a line on the Karrdes or some other big operation. Plus lots of just sitting around and listening."
Qui-Gon smiled. Valorum noticed it was one of the genuine ones, the kind that reached his eyes -- but this one had something more in it. //Well, it is nice up here....//
"Yes," the Jedi said, "I enjoy doing that, if time permits."
"Enjoy? I didn't say enjoy -- I told you, I don't do passive," the young minister joked. "But yeah, that information gathering was the best education I ever got." He ran the furry weed through his hand again. "Just hanging around somewhere and seeing how people live at each level of some society, top to bottom, what it takes for them to get through their day."
Qui-Gon was looking at Valorum rather thoughtfully. "Few people are ever privileged to see that much."
Valorum exhaled. "What amazed me most was how some things are exactly the same everywhere, for everyone."
"Yes," said the Jedi.
Normally that kind of one syllable response struck Valorum as a polite space-filler. But the look on Jinn's face made this particular syllable seem different. He looked ...happy?
//I think maybe he just told me something personal.// Valorum fell silent, running the weed through his fingers, staring out at the cityscape of Coruscant.
The Senate dome was set a short distance from Coruscant's oldest commercial center, an area that had been built and rebuilt hundreds of times as the planet went through its transformation into an unbroken sea of buildings. Architecture of many eras could be seen in those spires, while the great, sleek arc of the Mushroom's cap curved away below them. And the sky was busy with traffic, madly dodging air taxis breaking up the monotony of the straight lines drawn by the regulated vehicles.
Qui-Gon folded his arms into his robes and also looked outward; he had loved the vast, airy views from the high rooftops all his life. Some people complained that Coruscant was not alive, but for him the planet was intensely alive. A trillion beings lived on Coruscant, each one adding a life's sensations to the Force-sense. Up here, high above the surrounding buildings with the wind brushing past his ears, it was like listening to a vast, faraway music.
Finis glanced at the Jedi. The wind tossed his hair and pulled at the loose folds of his cloak, but the man himself was utterly still. Valorum tipped his face up toward the sun and closed his eyes, enjoying the simple warmth on his skin. //Just a couple guys getting through our day...//
When he spoke again, it was softly. "All of a sudden I looked at the Republic as this incredible thing -- quiet-peaceful-boring-normal, no one thinks twice about voting. Hell, most people don't even bother -- 25,000 years, some bumps along the way, but continuity. And it is the most luxurious, precious thing. I mean, if someone wants to devote their whole life to making grass sculptures on Alderaan, they can. They may even get some public funding to help them do it. Grass sculpture!"
He opened his eyes to find Jinn looking at him steadily, his face relaxed and receptive. It made Valorum oddly self-conscious, and he stared down at the yellow-green weed in his hand. "But out there on the Rims, even the Inner Rim, there are places where, if you give them grass seed, it's not going to be sculpture, it's not even going to be planted. They're so hungry all the time that if you give 'em a bag of seed, they eat it right there. Water, bacta, food, never mind things like freedom or education..... running water to Rampa's black market can get you killed out there; the Rampa Hydro Monopoly doesn't like to share. Water."
Qui-Gon nodded. He didn't need to say 'yes;' Valorum saw it.
"So I came home, finished school, and got a job."
The Jedi felt a small stirring, like a breath carried on the Force. There it was again, that flicker of something deeply focused in Valorum, as if it were the key to the pattern, the fragment or fiber that made all the disparate parts of the man's character thread together into a design. And then it was gone.
Valorum took a breath. "Tell me something, Jinn, where is all that in the balance of the Force?"
"It simply is," Qui-Gon said. "It has no 'where'." Valorum stared at him, but Qui-Gon shook his head. "There is no other answer, minister. Everything is part of the Force."
Finis sighed. "So that's not Dark Side stuff?"
Qui-Gon looked at him curiously; it was Valorum's first use of the term. What did the man think he was asking?
"Jinn, was what I did Dark Side stuff?" Valorum turned toward him, leaning sideways on the railing. "I manipulated Viceroy Oasam; you could even say I bullied him. He has this trait, his religious beliefs, and I used them against him as surely as if I pulled him around by his nose. Is that using the Dark Side? Does it add to the Dark Side, strengthen it?"
Qui-Gon tipped his head slightly. The issues were huge; they were matters all Jedi pondered, and drew upon their Force-sense to face, all their lives.
Not getting an answer, Valorum was trying another tack.
"Jinn, would you ever do that? I mean, I was getting angry, or at least frustrated, so I taunted him deliberately to push him off center and get more control of the meeting. I figured he'd be more receptive to reason if he was obsessing about how much he'd like to string me up by my *globboi*."
Qui-Gon temporized. "Certainly I would be willing to go from 1 to 2 by way of 23," he said. "Why were you willing to offend him so greatly?"
"For his own good." Valorum looked down at the seed burr, and stroked it absently. "Fanatics are tough, but in this case he has justice on his side. The Inner Worlds really don't want to pick up the check for expansion, but they love selling their stuff to all the new markets."
The Jedi nodded and looked out at the cityscape; he had seen these conditions for himself. He ran a hand back along his scalp; the wind kept blowing his hair into his eyes, and it bothered him a little.
The gesture made Finis smile. It couldn't be because Jinn was worried that his hair was getting messy. He'd just been letting it grow in the months since his padawan braid had been cut off; when it had gotten long enough, he'd simply started parting it down the middle. It gave the young Jedi a slightly unfinished look that fitted with his broken nose and sloping brow.
"It's a mark of how little everyone cares about his problem that he even wound up talking to me. And Oasam was never going to say yes to anything if I asked him nicely."
"He didn't say yes," Qui-Gon pointed out. "He spit a few times and told you to hurry."
"So true," Finis grinned. "He never says yes -- anything that goes wrong is that officious bureaucrat on Coruscant, anything that goes right is his enlightened leadership." He wagged his head. "I love my job."
Valorum did love his job; the sense of it was rolling off him. And yet the question of kindness tugged at Qui-Gon again. Was there something that he could, or should, give Valorum?
Finis rubbed his nose. "So what would you do? I mean, suppose I recommended to the Chancellor's office that some Jedi be sent out to find out what's really griping the man, and fix it -- 'cause I do feel like there's something besides the pirates that's got him so fired up right this minute. What would you do? Would you push him like I did?"
Qui-Gon lifted his chin slightly, a gesture Valorum interpreted as complete certainty. "A Jedi would seek the truth first of all," he said. "Mindfulness comes first, before intervention."
"You'd ask him about that disobedient daughter?"
Qui-Gon smiled. "No. But if there were one, perhaps I would wait until she came to me with her difficulty. Or until some other circumstance showed me where the truth lay."
"The dread word 'wait.'" Valorum sighed.
"Patience is," Qui-Gon paused, "crucial. Always." He turned to face Valorum directly. "This means even in the midst of a hurry, completely in the moment, patience must be possible. Even in combat, do you understand?"
"No," Valorum folded his arms. "No, I sure don't. I thought Jedi were supposed to be the most efficient fighters in the galaxy. The story is that any fight with a Jedi lasts a matter of seconds, and then forget it. So where's the patience?"
Qui-Gon looked at him thoughtfully. "Suppose your opponent disengages. It may take the form of only a momentary hesitation. What do you do?"
"Blast 'em," Valorum joked instantly. He waved his hands, "Okay. But my answer really is, probably blast 'em.
"Perhaps your opponent has realized that winning is impossible, and is now considering alternatives that will permit survival."
"That's awfully chancy. Maybe you're being faked out. Blast 'em."
"Perhaps your feelings tell you that your opponent is suddenly full of doubt, and that desire to live is mastering his rage."
Valorum made a face. "Our friend the Force. My feelings can't tell me that. So now we're completely off in the hypothetical, at least as far as I'm concerned. But you're saying, suppose you know for sure there's a shot at peace instead of victory?"
"Yes, exactly." Qui-Gon's eyes were soft. "Wouldn't you accept it?"
Valorum's eyes lost their jokiness and mirrored Qui-Gon's gentle thoughtfulness; it was the first time the two men had really understood each other.
//What do you do when you might not have to kill someone? What do you need, and what do you give up, in order to avoid it?//
Even so, he shook his head. "Jinn, there's a real chance I'd go with victory. That way, all the choices are in my control."
The Jedi turned away, facing outward toward the view again. //Not the answer he wanted,// Finis thought.
"Look-- I'm assuming negotiation already failed. So not taking your win just because the other guy figures out he's losing," he pursed his lips, "nah, I probably wouldn't do it. Suppose diplomacy fails again, and a whole war breaks out because you didn't take your victory over the one person when it was in your grasp. Then many people die, instead of just one."
The Jedi nodded gravely. "That is one of the risks." He frowned in concentration. "Those risks can be felt pressing on the moment when the choice must be made. But it is wrong to sacrifice the present to them."
The answer seemed real enough, but Jinn had withdrawn again. Valorum turned back into the railing also, watching the air taxi shadows ripple over buildings. He felt vaguely disappointed.
"Summing up. Don't hate, do wait." Valorum puffed out his cheeks. "A Jedi primer. Tomorrow we learn levitating rocks."
Qui-Gon was a bit nettled; Valorum was reverting to jokes. "It is not that easy. We are not that easy, no matter what you may have read or wish to be true."
Now Valorum was nettled. He swung to face Jinn, who also turned inward. "You said that before. You were wrong then, and you're still wrong."
The Jedi's face was completely neutral, yet Valorum was sure he saw disbelief.
He shrugged. "Look, Jinn, I don't think I want you to be easy any more than I want anything else to be easy. Easy is good, easy saves time. As long as it's real. But I want the real, Jinn. Not a mask."
//Kindness.// He saw where it lay. Qui-Gon's face became thoughtful. "A curious stricture, coming from you, don't you think?"
"Damn, there's those Jedi teeth again," Valorum said easily.
Qui-Gon fixed a hard look on him. "Answer me," he said.
It gave Valorum a quick clench of the gut. There was some kind of power in those gray eyes, sheer force of personality. //Or is it?//
"Damn you, are you influencing me?" he said angrily.
"No," said the Jedi. The gray eyes got even harder, and the voice harsher. "But answer me."
"*Chuuba,*" Valorum breathed. //You are a scary bastard, Qui-Gon Jinn.// Yet it was the first time the Jedi had shown real interest in what he might say.
"You Jedi don't do self-doubt, do you?"
The Jedi frowned. "Every self-aware, sentient being I know of has the capacity for self-doubt."
"But do you act on it? Depend on it? Do you build it into your strategies?"
Qui-Gon waited for him to go on.
"I try to build multiple scenarios into everything I do. I think of it as situational self-doubt." Valorum scratched his neck. "Actually, that's just a smart-ass phrase, but I don't know how else to say it.
He spread his hands. "You know how everyone is always pretending to be sure of what they're saying, and most of the time they're not. People wind up committed to whatever mask they could sell the best -- they wind up meaning what they were able to say, instead of the other way around. So I try to reverse it.
"In my negotiations, everybody gets to doubt not only what everyone else says, but what they say themselves. I want not only a back door, but a window, a chimney, a tunnel, and a wormhole out of every situation. So I make faces. I use irony, sarcasm, hyperbole, you name it -- my masks are so obviously insincere that everyone is free to take them seriously, if you know what I mean. Yet no one gets trapped that way, not me, not the folks I'm negotiating with. Only at the last minute, when we go from 'say' to 'do,' do the meanings crystallize."
Qui-Gon offered no reaction, but Valorum could almost feel him absorbing what was said.
"For example: Oasam never said yes. So there's that much more room for something to actually happen -- including 'yes,' meaning he goes to Quill and works with the other Rim worlds. But it also leaves room for Oasam to push Dlaly, and Dlaly to have a sudden spasm of religious fervor or a realization of which side her bread's really buttered on, or both. It even leaves room for Dlaly to have a once-in-a-lifetime attack of altruism in a weak moment. One result, still lots of ways to get there -- lots of faces on it, pick a mask and say you looked like that all along. Whatever the route, the Republic helps out Seep and the Rim worlds. Get it?"
Valorum's eyebrows were up and he was leaning forward, eager for an immediate response. Seconds ticked by, and his face grew tired of wearing the expression, with no response from the Jedi.
//Well, maybe he gets it and despises it,// Finis thought. //It must be the dead opposite of everything a Jedi stands for -- honesty, dependability, straight shooting.... //
Qui-Gon was now frowning hard, and still he said nothing.
It heartened Finis. A furrowed brow meant something serious was going on in the Jedi's head. //What exactly, who knows, but something.//
His normal insouciance returned. "Well, ya know, Jinn, you get the class in Inscrutable, we get the Deviousness class. Never the twain shall meet."
The Jedi focused on him acutely. His eyes seemed to be devoid of expression, a gray so clear you could believe they were transparent.
"Perhaps they meet," was all Jinn said.
It puzzled Finis. He almost felt like picking a fight, though he couldn't think why. //Besides, he'd just throw me off the building -- the short sweet flight of Finis Valorum.//
He deliberately turned away, leaned on the railing again, and focused on the long, soft burr. It was beautiful how the seeds were layered in neatly on the spikelets, while the long hairs would allow the burr to catch a ride with any animal that came along. //Even a clueless junior minister.//
The Jedi was still standing a couple feet away from him, his arms wrapped into the sleeves of his robe, apparently still thinking hard. //Was it that disturbing? What am I, the Dark Side on the hoof?//
//Another scintillating conversation with my Jedi chum.// Finis took a long, deliberate breath. //Let it go. It's out of your control -- Jinn is out of your control.//
"You know, I love these guys, these weeds -- they're so tough." Valorum started pinching single seeds off the burr, releasing them on the wind. "They have a real decent chance of sprouting. One little crack where the smallest bit of organic material gathers, a few dribbles of rain, and bang! they're up. Just the flakes that come off our skin are enough to nurture these guys."
He grinned at Qui-Gon and held out the burr. "Free a few?"
Qui-Gon was surprised: his feelings said not to decline.
Somewhere in a data bank in the building below him, there was a law, ordinance, or regulation that forbade willfully releasing a wild life form into Coruscant's carefully maintained cityscape. He'd never done so before in his life, and he felt no desire to do it now. But the Force-impulse inside him was unmistakable, and it said 'do this.' So he did.
Valorum noticed that for all the size of Jinn's fingers, their touch was delicate and specific. He neither bent nor crushed the small, bearded seeds as he set them afloat on the wind.
One of the seeds caught a retreating thermal. Finis watched it get sucked out and down towards a crevice where it might have a chance to grow. He wished it luck. He turned toward the Jedi, smiling.
"Life tries hard, Jinn."
Qui-Gon smiled in a way that lightened his eyes. "It has to."
Part 1 Part 2