Star Wars_ Fate of the Jedi 01_ Outcast - Aaron Allston [15]
Leia became tight-faced. “Like Seff, only in a different way. Seff was on about Mandos.” Not long before, while traveling aboard the Millennium Falcon, Leia and Han had encountered the Jedi Knight Seff Hellin, who had exhibited a mania as pervasive as that which Valin seemed to be experiencing. Seff had left their company before he could be evaluated.
The similarity of their behavior sounded ominously to Luke like something one may have contracted from the other, or something they could have developed from exposure to a common source.
“His blood pressure is high, at a level consistent with his state of anxiety,” Cilghal went on, “and there are greater-than-normal levels of stress hormones in his blood. Toxicology, virology, and bacteriology reports are in their preliminary stages but have suggested no answer. Basic neurological tests suggest no damage, but we have not been able to employ more advanced scans.”
Luke glanced at her. “Why not?”
“I'll show you.” Cilghal moved to a monitor affixed at head height on the wall beside the viewport. Delicately, because her larger-than-human hands were ill suited to the task, she depressed a number of keys beneath the monitor.
The monitor screen snapped into life, showing a series of five jagged lines, like simple graphical representations of extremely precipitous mountain ranges, one above the other. “This,” Cilghal explained, “is a brain scan, set to display brain wave forms. It can be set to show many different types of data in different types of graphical representation. This is the scan of a normal being—myself, as a matter of fact.
“Now I will show you Valin's first scan.” She clicked another series of buttons.
The image on the screen was wiped away, replaced by bars of jagged peak-and-trough lines so tightly packed, so extreme and savage that Jysella took an involuntary step back from the display. Cilghal continued, “No living member of any species we know could display waveforms like this and survive for very long. A few minutes after we took this, we took another reading. It, and subsequent ones, looked like this.”
The monitor image wiped again. Luke thought for a moment that it had not been replaced, for the screen was almost blank. But there were still measuring bars to the right and left of the display. There were simply no lines between—not one.
Cilghal blinked at the image. “This is the brain scan reading of a dead person. Valin Horn is demonstrably not dead. There is no way a reading of Valin could yield a result like this. But it did.”
“I've seen this before.” Luke stared curiously at the screen, then glanced over at Valin, who was glaring at the viewport. Though unable to see through it, he seemed to be staring at Luke; perhaps he could feel the distinctive presence of the Grand Master. “Years ago.”
Cilghal switched the monitor off. “That's true.” Her voice sounded reflective. “Perhaps you should explain for the others.”
“Jacen could do that. Deliberately, as a Force technique. He did it once during the Killik crisis.”
“Is it a technique you know, Master Skywalker?”
Luke shook his head. “I assume it was something he picked up during his wanderings among all the Force groups he visited.” He turned his attention to the Horns. “But where did Valin learn it?”
Corran shook his head. “He's never mentioned it. And I'd expect him to, just for fun. ‘Look what I can do that my old man can't,’ that sort of thing.” He glanced at his daughter. “Jysella is more of a confidante. She may know.”
Jysella looked from her father to Luke. “Valin and I knew Jacen, of course. But he was a few years older than Valin, and that makes a big difference when you're an adolescent. Jacen was out fighting the war against the Yuuzhan Vong while Valin and I were stuck in the Maw, at Shelter, for the last half of the war. We didn't see him at all during the years