The Final Prophecy (22 page)

Why couldn’t the Yuuzhan Vong use normal weapons? Concussion missiles, lasers. Why did it always have to be miniature volcanoes and giant bugs?

To her satisfaction, her particular bug-nemesis of the moment lost its grip and fried on the way through her ion trail.

In the meantime, of course, one of the skips had taken the opportunity to latch onto her tail, so now it was volcano time …

“We’ve got close to two hundred grutchins on the hull, sir,” Cel informed him.

“Electrify it,” Wedge said.

“They’ve already tried, sir. It’s not working.”

“Not working—great.” Yes, the Yuuzhan Vong were adapting. Not good.

“Seal off the outer sections and get people in vac suits with blasters in there.”

Of course, that wouldn’t stop them in the engine areas.

The Yuuzhan Vong capital ships had drawn up in a defensive formation and were no longer pushing forward. Wedge had his ships nearly stationary as well, and both sides were keeping their starfighters close, the grutchin carriers aside. For the moment, it was a long-range game. That would probably change soon—the Yuuzhan Vong were waiting to see how well their grutchin stunt had worked. When they knew, they would renew their attack.

That meant his starfighters would be free for a short time.

“Have some starfighters make close runs on our capital ships,” he told control.

“Sir, with all due respect, the grutchins are attached to us. Some of the pilots are bound to miss, and they could easily do as much damage as the bugs.”

“I don’t want them firing. I want them to singe the things off with their exhaust.”

The officer’s eyes widened. “That will take some pretty precise flying.”

“Then pick the squadrons well. And fast, because soon we’ll need them against skips.”

“I have him, Twin Leader,” Jag said. Even as he did so, glowing chunks of yorik coral bloomed out into the void.

Jaina breathed a sigh of relief. That pretty much did it for the fast-skip wave.

“Thanks, Four.” She glanced down at the new battle orders scrolling.

“Uh, guys,” she said. “You aren’t going to believe this, but …”

Nen Yim glanced at Yu’shaa. He’d been working quietly on the task she had given him, entering the genetic sequences of various flora and fauna into her qahsa. Now he seemed to be having trouble.

“What is it?” she asked.

“It ceased granting me admittance,” he said. Somewhere in the distance, something mewled, and another something chattered a response. The sky was clear and the air still.

“Did you try to access data forbidden to you?” Nen Yim asked.

“Not too my knowledge, Master Yim. I was merely attempting to enter the freman signatures you asked me to.”

“Pheromone,” Nen Yim corrected. “It may be my security prohibitions were too broad. Let me see it.”

He handed her the bulbous living memory in compliance.

“No,” she said. “Because it is not keyed to you, after a time it rejects your entry.” She examined a bit further. She could reset his temporary access, but would only be forced to perform the same task again in a few hours.

She could key him to the qahsa, but she hesitated to do so. She had stored the protocol data on Sekotan biology in it. In the wrong hands—

But the Prophet had proved himself useful, and only someone well versed in the shaper’s arts could understand what they found there, much less use it. By the pattern of his
rejected implants, she gathered that before being Shamed, Yu’shaa had been an intendant.

Time was of the essence. With Yu’shaa performing the simple tasks, she was making great progress with the more complex analyses. “Come here,” she said. “I will make you familiar to it.”

That done, she was able to work for a time in peace.

Until Harrar came, standing rather imperiously waiting for her attention. She reluctantly gave it to him. If he knew anything about shaping—and he certainly did—then he already knew she was a heretic. If she was to do her work, there was no hiding it any longer.

“Yes?” she said.

He gave her an uncomfortable little bow of recognition. “I was wondering where your researches were leading you,” he asked. “Whether you’ve come to any new conclusions.”

Always that question. What did he think conclusions were, fruit to be pulled from a tree? “It’s premature to say anything definitive,” she said.

“I understand that,” he replied softly. “But I’m hoping you will keep me apprised of new developments.”

She could tell this approach pained him a bit. Harrar was used to giving orders, not cajoling. After all, short of Shimrra, the priests were the voice of the gods.

“There have been a few developments,” she allowed, “though they are at the level of data rather than conclusion.”

“Go on, please. Anything new must be worth hearing.”

“But the telling costs me time, when I might be reaching those conclusions you desire.”

Harrar’s expression flattened. “
Jeedai
Horn tells me it may be a long while before anyone finds us. I shouldn’t think the hurry is so great you can’t spare a few words concerning your progress. After all, I did arrange this trip.”

“Yes, I’ve been meaning to ask you something about that,” Nen Yim said.

“Perhaps if I answer your questions, you can answer mine,” the priest said.

Nen Yim leaned away from her work, forcing her tendrils to relax into a neutral posture.

“When we first met, you said that you could not arrange my escape yourself, for fear of being noticed.”

“That is true. An escape engineered by me would have failed.”

“Yet here you are; you came along. Won’t that be noticed?”

Harrar seemed suddenly to relax, as if he had expected another question, a more difficult one.

“I am believed to be on the Outer Rim, meditating over our conquest where it began. A subordinate of mine took my ship there. I should not be missed. You arranged to make your abduction appear as a kidnapping as well, yes? We have both covered our trails.”

“I give my deception only a small chance for success,” Nen Yim replied. “When I return to Yuuzhan Vong space, I fully expect I will be executed.”

“And yet you plan to return.”

“Of course. Our people must know what has been discovered here.”

“What Ekh’m Val discovered has been quite effectively repressed,” Harrar pointed out. “What makes you think your discoveries will fare any better?”

“I will find a way,” Nen Yim assured him.

Harrar crossed his arms and looked at her with approval. “You mean what you say. You see no personal gain in this at all. I believe you may be one of the most admirable people I have ever known.”

“Please do not mock me.”

“I do not mock you,” he said, his voice suddenly a bit angry. “I am trying to express respect. If you reject it, the respect remains all the same. Each caste seeks to elevate itself over another, each domain competes with the others, individuals
betray and murder one another in a blind, groping desire for elevation. In the galactic deeps, it nearly tore us apart. I hoped when we had a real enemy to face, we could turn that aggression outward, and so we did, but now it comes to haunt us again. It has become more than a habit; it has become how we live.”

“Are we not taught that competition breeds for strength?” Nen Yim asked.

“Of course,” Harrar answered. “But only to a point, if there is not also cooperation.”

Nen Yim twisted her tendrils into an ironic mode. “And there is the lesson of Zonama Sekot,” she said. “The lesson you and I both seem to agree our people must learn.”

Harrar relaxed again.

“Take a seat,” Nen Yim said. “I will explain what I see here as best I can.”

Harrar settled into his usual cross-legged position and waited.

“The diversity of species here is quite low,” she began. “Much lower than one would expect in a natural ecosystem.”

“What could cause such a thing?” Harrar asked.

“Mass extinction, for one. Some catastrophe or series of catastrophes that served to wipe out many of the species.”

“That’s an interesting fact, but—”

“No, it’s more than an interesting fact,” she averred. “The ecosystem
functions
as if it were fully diverse. Species have filled roles they were not designed for.”

“I’m not sure I entirely understand.”

“After any mass extinction, many ecological niches are opened, and species take advantage of these empty niches, adapting through natural selection to fill them and benefit from them. Eventually, after millennia, a ravaged ecosystem becomes healthy again, and as diverse as the one that was impacted.”

“Isn’t that what you said is occurring here?” Harrar asked.

“No. Not at all. For one thing, the extinctions here are very recent. There hasn’t been enough time for the sort of adaptation I speak of to take place. For another, species here are not adapting to fill ecological niches—they remain adapted to their own niches, the ones they evolved to fill, and yet they also perform the environmental tasks of extinct species—for no benefit to themselves.”

She waited a moment to let him absorb that, enjoying the sudden breeze and the smell it brought, a sort of dusty golden scent.

“Perhaps an example will help,” she began again, “There is, for instance, a plant with a kind of tubular blossom. The only possible way for it to reproduce is for an arthropod or other small creature to enter the tube of one plant, and then enter that of another, carrying with it the sticky secretions of the first. The plant entices this insect with an edible fluid, nourishing to the insect—and, I suspect from certain clues, important to that insect’s life cycle.”

“That makes sense,” Harrar said.

“Yes, except that I can find no insect that feeds on the fluid. Yet I have seen them pollinated, by another insect whose primary role in the ecosystem is feeding on carrion. Its life cycle, from egg to nymph to adult revolves entirely around carrion. Yet they make time to enter these flower tubes with enough frequency to pollinate them, at no benefit to themselves.”

“Perhaps you have not yet discovered the benefit.”

“If this were the only example of such behavior, I might agree with you. However, I find more than half the animals I have examined play roles in this life-web that are plainly unrelated to their life cycles and physical design. More interesting yet, I have discovered that each species practices some form of reproduction control. When a particular sort
of moss becomes scarce due to its consumption by a kind of beetle, the beetles begin disposing of their eggs without fertilizing them. In other words, the ecosystem of this planet is homeostatic—it seeks to remain in absolute balance. It manages to do so even after enormous extinction events.”

“That sounds reasonable.”

“For a worldship, yes, because each life-form is engineered to play a certain role and the system is guided by intelligence—by a rikyam at one level, and by shapers at the next. Mutations are eliminated, as is undesirable behavior. But in the natural ecosystems I’ve studied from data collected in this galaxy, that’s not how things normally work. Each individual organism fights to maximize the number and survivability of its
own
offspring. Mutations come along that have advantages and are perpetuated. Such systems are in a constant state of flux; they are not—cooperative. The evidence is that this world was once like that—like a wild planet—but it is no longer.”

Harrar pursed his lips. “You’re saying that this planet has something like a dhuryam, some intelligence that links all these organisms together and prompts them to perform harmoniously.”

“I can think of no other explanation.”

Yu’shaa, who had remained absolutely silent, suddenly spoke up. “As I prophesied,” he said, “and as the
Jeedai
said. This is a living planet, one large organism, more than the sum of its parts. Like a worldship that made itself. Don’t you see what this planet can teach us? Harrar, you were just decrying the competition that destroys us. It is that blind fight to ascend that leads us to treat so many of our people as Shamed.”

“Can this be?” Harrar asked Nen Yim. He seemed to be ignoring the Prophet.

“We are seeing it,” Nen Yim replied. “However, I can find no clues as to the mechanism that binds the individual
life-forms to one another. There are no chemical exchanges that might explain it. The flora and fauna here are not equipped with communications organs like our villip, or anything even remotely similar.”

“It’s the Force,” Tahiri interrupted. “I can feel the ties, feel a sort of constant chatter among—well, everything.”

Nen Yim focused on the young Jedi. “I have heard that you
Jeedai
possess telepathy like our villips,” she said. “But the ones I’ve taken ap—examined showed no signs of specialized organs, either.”

“No, of course not,” Tahiri said, her voice suddenly dark. “The Force binds everything together. Some creatures communicate through it. I can feel what Corran is thinking, sometimes. With Anakin it was even stronger, like …” She trailed off. “Never mind. You’ll have to take my word for it.”

“And—using this Force—you can impress your will upon others, yes?” Yu’shaa said.

“Yes, on the weak-minded,” Tahiri replied. “But I get no sense that anything here on Zonama Sekot is being coerced into anything. It’s like every living thing just
agrees
to do things this way.”

“I cannot see this Force, measure it, or test it,” Nen Yim said. “I cannot credit it with the effect you assert.”

A stone suddenly rose from the ground, floated toward Nen Yim, and fell near her feet.

“You may not know what it is,” Tahiri said, “you might not be able to see it or feel it, but you can see the results.”

Nen Yim conceded that with a small nod. Then a thought struck her with the force of a baton. “Assuming you are correct,” she said, “
you
are connected to this Force—as no Yuuzhan Vong is. And yet, in part, you
are
Yuuzhan Vong. What does your Force tell you this place is? To us?”

“I’ve been thinking about that a lot,” the young woman
replied. “I’ve never been able to quite put it into words until just now.”