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He soon found out.

Ves felt a sudden … disturbance. A soundless roar, a lightless flash, a vibrationless tremor, not moving, yet somehow propagating nevertheless at terrifying speed toward him. The memnis shattered, fragmenting into sharp shards like the psionic equivalent of brittle duralumin, hurtling toward him, accompanied by the silent screams and cries of an entire world dying.

He understood at last what was happening. Caamasi typically shared these grief memories with others of their kind, in an attempt to spread, and so dissipate, the sorrow. What he was feeling right now were the memnii of millions of others of his kind, a wave front of agony, confusion, despair, and disbelief that transcended time and space. His individual sense-memory had been symbolic, an expression of the population’s peace and tranquillity that had been so suddenly and horrifyingly decimated.

Myriad experiences ripped through his mind like emotional shrapnel. There was no resisting it, no hiding from it. He felt every Caamasi on the planet die.

Dimly, a thousand light-years away, he heard Dejah shouting his name, felt his worried partner help him over to the davenport to lie down. But lying down or standing up made no difference; there was no escape or respite. It was all he could do to hang on to his self, to keep his consciousness from being torn to tatters and sucked into the maelstrom.

Finally, after untold eons of horror, it began to subside. Ves came back to himself, to his own focal point in the cosmos, shuddering and sweating, but alive and, by some miracle, still sane.

Deej was sitting beside him, worry creasing her brow. “Are you all right?” When Ves managed to nod weakly, she exhaled in relief. “What happened?”

“A memnis.”

Deej looked at him. Being a Zeltron, she had some experience with empathic resonance, and she had been with Ves long enough to be familiar with the concept of shared memories. “I didn’t know they could be that intense.”

Ves briefly explained what had happened. His partner and friend looked horrified. “After such a shock, you can’t put on the exhibit tonight. We must postpone.”

Ves shook his head. “No. It is more important than ever now that we open as planned. As long as one Caamasi lives and can create, the Emperor has failed.”

Ves lurched to his feet, his head feeling as if a comet had just impacted it. Dejah stood as well, offering her hand in concern, but Ves waved it off. “Offer my apologies to the clientele; tell them that illness prevents me from attending.” He moved over to his workbench and activated the plasmatic flux inducer. An oscillating hum quickly rose to the edge of hearing; a parabolic cone of blue light, a meter tall, materialized. Ves fed torsion into it, adjusted the ellipsis. The flame of plasma twisted and gave a low, electronic moan.

Ves glanced at the wall chrono. “It’s almost time,” he said. “You’d better get ready to let them in.”

Deej hesitated, then nodded in defeat. “All right. I suppose you know what you’re doing.” She exited, closing the door.

Ves concentrated on the torqued spearhead of light. He added neon, krypton, xenon; the plasma flushed red, green, blue. He adjusted tinctures, spun the result through various arcs.

Simplicity—that was the key, of course. The emotional power lay in that. Dejah was right; Ves knew exactly what he was doing.

He was building a cairn.

four

Jax breathed slowly, deeply, as Master Piell had taught him. With each exhalation he pushed his awareness out farther, letting the threads of energy that were his connection with the Force expand.

Many of the Jedi, his tutor had told him, had experienced their unification with the Force in various symbolic ways that they likened to aspects of the real world. For example, Master Piell had always found the metaphor of water best suited his link to it. Jax, on the other hand, felt and “saw” the Force as threads, or strings, stretching and reverberating through space and time, connecting everything. For him, to be aware of another’s aura was to see the