Trilogy (63 page)

“Trained well, and strong with the Force are you—but not that strong! Twilight is upon me, and soon night must fall. That is the way of things … the way of the Force.”

“But I need your help,” Luke insisted. “I want to complete my training.” The great teacher couldn't leave him now—there was too much, still, to understand. And he'd taken so much from Yoda already, and as yet given back nothing. He had much he wanted to share with the old creature.

“No more training do you require,” Yoda assured him. “Already know you that which you need.”

“Then I am a Jedi?” Luke pressed. No. He knew he was not, quite. Something still lacked.

Yoda wrinkled up his wizened features. “Not yet. One thing remains. Vader … Vader you must confront. Then, only then, a full Jedi you'll be. And confront him you will, sooner or later.”

Luke knew this would be his test, it could not be
otherwise. Every quest had its focus, and Vader was inextricably at the core of Luke's struggle. It was agonizing for him to put the question to words; but after a long silence, he again spoke to the old Jedi. “Master Yoda—is Darth Vader my father?”

Yoda's eyes filled with a weary compassion. This boy was not yet a man complete. A sad smile creased his face, he seemed almost to grow smaller in his bed. “A rest I need. Yes. A rest.”

Luke stared at the dwindling teacher, trying to give the old one strength, just by the force of his love and will. “Yoda, I must know,” he whispered.

“Your father he is,” Yoda said simply.

Luke closed his eyes, his mouth, his heart, to keep away the truth of what he knew was true.

“Told you, did he?” Yoda asked.

Luke nodded, but did not speak. He wanted to keep the moment frozen, to shelter it here, to lock time and space in this room, so it could never escape into the rest of the universe with this terrible knowledge, this unrelenting truth.

A look of concern filled Yoda's face. “Unexpected this is, and unfortunate—”

“Unfortunate that I know the truth?” A bitterness crept into Luke's voice, but he couldn't decide if it was directed at Vader, Yoda, himself, or the universe at large.

Yoda gathered himself up with an effort that seemed to take all his strength. “Unfortunate that you rushed to face him—that incomplete your training was … that not ready for the burden were you. Obi-Wan would have told you long ago, had I let
him … now a great weakness you carry. Fear for you, I do. Fear for you, yes.” A great tension seemed to pass out of him and he closed his eyes.

“Master Yoda, I'm sorry.” Luke trembled to see the potent Jedi so weak.

“I know, but face Vader again you must, and sorry will not help.” He leaned forward, and beckoned Luke close to him. Luke crawled over to sit beside his master. Yoda continued, his voice increasingly frail. “Remember, a Jedi's strength flows from the Force. When you rescued your friends, you had revenge in your heart. Beware of anger, fear, and aggression. The dark side are they. Easily they flow, quick to join you in a fight. Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny.”

He lay back in bed, his breathing became shallow. Luke waited quietly, afraid to move, afraid to distract the old one an iota, lest it jar his attention even a fraction from the business of just keeping the void at bay.

After a few minutes, Yoda looked at the boy once more, and with a maximum effort, smiled gently, the greatness of his spirit the only thing keeping his decrepit body alive. “Luke—of the Emperor beware. Do not underestimate his powers, or suffer your father's fate you will. When gone I am … last of the Jedi will you be. Luke, the Force is strong in your family. Pass on what you … have … learned …” He began to falter, he closed his eyes. “There … is … another … sky …”

He caught his breath, and exhaled, his spirit passing from him like a sunny wind blowing to another sky. His body shivered once; and he disappeared.

Luke sat beside the small, empty bed for over an hour, trying to fathom the depth of this loss. It was unfathomable.

His first feeling was one of boundless grief. For himself, for the universe. How could such a one as Yoda be gone forever? It felt like a black, bottomless hole had filled his heart, where the part that was Yoda had lived.

Luke had known the passing of old mentors before. It was helplessly sad; and inexorably a part of his own growing. Is this what coming of age was, then? Watching beloved friends grow old and die? Gaining a new measure of strength or maturity from their powerful passages?

A great weight of hopelessness settled upon him, just as all the lights in the little cottage flickered out. For several more minutes he sat there, feeling it was the end of everything, that all the lights in the universe had flickered out. The last Jedi, sitting in a swamp, while the entire galaxy plotted the last war.

A chill came over him, though, disturbing the nothingness into which his consciousness had lapsed. He shivered, looked around. The gloom was impenetrable.

He crawled outside and stood up. Here in the swamp, nothing had changed. Vapor congealed, to drip from dangling roots back into the mire, in a cycle it had repeated a million times, would repeat forever. Perhaps
there
was his lesson. If so, it cut his sadness not a whit.

Aimlessly he made his way back to where his ship rested. Artoo rushed up, beeping his excited greeting; but Luke was disconsolate, and could only ignore
the faithful little droid. Artoo whistled a brief condolence, then remained respectfully silent.

Luke sat dejectedly on a log, put his head in his hands, and spoke softly to himself. “I can't do it. I can't go on alone.”

A voice floated down to him on the dim mist. “Yoda and I will be with you always.” It was Ben's voice.

Luke turned around swiftly to see the shimmering image of Obi-Wan Kenobi standing behind him. “Ben!” he whispered. There were so many things he wanted to say, they rushed through his mind all in a whirl, like the churning, puffed cargo of a ship in a maelstrom. But one question rose quickly to the surface above all the others. “Why, Ben? Why didn't you tell me?”

It was not an empty question. “I was going to tell you when you had completed your training,” the vision of Ben answered. “But you found it necessary to rush off unprepared. I warned you about your impatience.” His voice was unchanged, a hint of scolding, a hint of love.

“You told me Darth Vader betrayed and murdered my father.” The bitterness he'd felt earlier, with Yoda, had found its focus now on Ben.

Ben absorbed the vitriol undefensively, then padded it with instruction. “Your father, Anakin, was seduced by the dark side of the Force—He ceased to be Anakin Skywalker, and became Darth Vader. When that happened, he betrayed everything that Anakin Skywalker believed in. The good man who was your father was destroyed. So what I told you was true … from a certain point of view.”

“A certain point of view!” Luke rasped derisively. He felt betrayed—by life more than anything else, though only poor Ben was available to take the brunt of his conflict.

“Luke,” Ben spoke gently, “you're going to find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our point of view.”

Luke turned, unresponsive. He wanted to hold onto his fury, to guard it like a treasure. It was all he had, he would not let it be stolen from him, as everything else had been stolen. But already he felt it slipping, softened by Ben's compassionate touch.

“I don't blame you for being angry,” Ben coaxed. “If I was wrong in what I did, it certainly wouldn't have been for the first time. You see, what happened to your father was my fault …”

Luke looked up with sudden acute interest. He'd never heard this and was rapidly losing his anger to fascination and curiosity—for knowledge was an addictive drug, and the more he had the more he wanted.

As he sat on his stump, increasingly mesmerized, Artoo pedaled over, silent, just to offer a comforting presence.

“When I first encountered your father,” Ben continued, “he was already a great pilot. But what amazed me was how strongly the Force was with him. I took it upon myself to train Anakin in the ways of the Jedi. My mistake was thinking I could be as good a teacher as Yoda. I was not. Such was my foolish pride. The Emperor sensed Anakin's power, and he lured him to the dark side.” He paused sadly and looked directly into Luke's eyes, as
if he were asking for the boy's forgiveness. “My pride had terrible consequences for the galaxy.”

Luke was entranced. That Obi-Wan's hubris could have caused his father's fall was horrible. Horrible because of what his father had needlessly become, horrible because Obi-Wan wasn't perfect, wasn't even a perfect Jedi, horrible because the dark side could strike so close to home, could turn such right so wrong. Darth Vader must yet have a spark of Anakin Skywalker deep inside. “There is still good in him,” he declared.

Ben shook his head remorsefully. “I also thought he could be turned back to the good side. It couldn't be done. He is more machine, now, than man—twisted, and evil.”

Luke sensed the underlying meaning in Kenobi's statement, he heard the words as a command. He shook his head back at the vision. “I can't kill my own father.”

“You should not think of that machine as your father.” It was the teacher speaking again. “When I saw what had become of him, I tried to dissuade him, to draw him back from the dark side. We fought … your father fell into a molten pit. When your father clawed his way out of that fiery pool, the change had been burned into him forever—he was Darth Vader, without a trace of Anakin Skywalker. Irredeemably dark. Scarred. Kept alive only by machinery and his own black will …”

Luke looked down at his own mechanical right hand. “I tried to stop him once. I couldn't do it.” He would not challenge his father again. He could not.

“Vader humbled you when first you met him, Luke—but that experience was
part
of your training. It taught you, among other things, the value of patience. Had you not been so impatient to defeat Vader
then
, you could have finished your training here with Yoda. You would have been prepared.”

“But I had to help my friends.”

“And did you help them? It was
they
who had to save
you
. You achieved little by rushing back prematurely, I fear.”

Luke's indignation melted, leaving only sadness in its wake. “I found out Darth Vader was my father,” he whispered.

“To be a Jedi, Luke, you must confront and then go beyond the dark side—the side your father couldn't get past. Impatience is the easiest door—for you, like your father. Only, your father was seduced by what he found on the other side of the door, and you have held firm. You're no longer so reckless now, Luke. You are strong and patient. And you are ready for your final confrontation.”

Luke shook his head again, as the implications of the old Jedi's speech became clear. “I can't do it, Ben.”

Obi-Wan Kenobi's shoulders slumped in defeat. “Then the Emperor has already won. You were our only hope.”

Luke reached for alternatives. “Yoda said I could train another to …”

“The other he spoke of is your twin sister,” the old man offered a dry smile. “She will find it no easier than you to destroy Darth Vader.”

Luke was visibly jolted by this information. He stood up to face this spirit. “Sister? I don't have a sister.”

Once again Obi-Wan put a gentle inflection in his voice, to soothe the turmoil brewing in his young friend's soul. “To protect you both against the Emperor, you were separated when you were born. The Emperor knew, as I did, that one day, with the Force on their side, Skywalker's offspring would be a threat to him. For that reason, your sister has remained safely anonymous.”

Luke resisted this knowledge at first. He neither needed nor wanted a twin. He was unique! He had no missing parts—save the hand whose mechanical replacement he now flexed tightly. Pawn in a castle conspiracy? Cribs mixed, siblings switched and parted and whisked away to different secret lives? Impossible. He knew who he was! He was Luke Skywalker, born to a Jedi-turned-Sithlord, raised on a Tatooine sandfarm by Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru, raised in a life without frills, a hardworking honest pauper—because his mother … his mother … What was it about his mother? What had she said, who was she? What had she told him? He turned his mind inward, to a place and time far from the damp soil of Dagobah, to his mother's chamber, his mother and his … sister. His sister …

“Leia! Leia is my sister,” he exclaimed, nearly falling over the stump.

“Your insight serves you well.” Ben nodded. He quickly became stern, though. “Bury your feelings deep down, Luke. They do you credit, but they could be made to serve the Emperor.”

Luke tried to comprehend what his old teacher was saying. So much information, so fast, so vital … it almost made him swoon.

Ben continued his narrative. “When your father left, he didn't know your mother was pregnant. Your mother and I knew he would find out eventually, but we wanted to keep you both as safe as possible, for as long as possible. So I took you to live with my brother Owen, on Tatooine … and your mother took Leia to live as the daughter of Senator Organa, on Alderaan.”

Luke settled down to hear this tale, as Artoo nestled up beside him, humming in a subaudible register to comfort.

Ben, too, kept his voice even, so that the sounds could give solace when the words did not. “The Organa family was high-born and politically quite powerful in that system. Leia became a princess by virtue of lineage—no one knew she'd been adopted, of course. But it was a title without real power, since Alderaan had long been a democracy. Even so, the family continued to be politically powerful, and Leia, following in her foster father's path, became a senator as well. That's not all she became, of course—she became the leader of her cell in the Alliance against the corrupt Empire. And because she had diplomatic immunity, she was a vital link for getting information to the Rebel cause.