Star Wars_ Fate of the Jedi 01_ Outcast - Aaron Allston [72]
From a pocket in her robes, she drew out two objects. One looked like an ordinary sphere of durasteel-gray metal about four centimeters in diameter. The other was a flat plate of the same material; it had a rimmed depression that was clearly intended to accommodate the ball. An insulated cable was attached to the edge of the plate. About a meter long, it ended in an elastic strap with an electrical lead embedded in it.
She set the plate down in front of Luke, put the ball in the depression, and handed him the elastic band. “Please attach that to your hand, placing the lead in your palm.”
Luke began to comply, then thought better of it and put the strap on his flesh hand instead of the prosthetic one.
“This device,” Tila Mong said, “is a simple teaching tool. It is attuned to the precise intensities and frequencies of electromagnetic energy produced by someone correctly practicing the ayna-seff technique.”
“How, by the way, does ayna-seff translate?”
“Dead brain.”
Luke grinned. “You Baran Do have very practical naming conventions.”
“Our artistic senses lean toward the tactile and visual, not verbal. For us, learning Basic is always a ritual of discovery of colorful adjectives and breathtaking arrays of synonyms. Anyway, your first step is to learn to channel energies that will cause the ball to lift off the plate.”
Luke looked at the ball. He allowed himself to sink into a meditative state. He resisted the urge to push at the ball with the Force; he could certainly lift it telekinetically, but that would not benefit his training. Instead, one by one, he cycled through all the Force techniques he had learned, not utilizing them but putting himself in the mental state required by each.
Half a minute later, as he prepared for a technique that caused holocams briefly to go to static, a method by which Jedi could bypass many security setups, the ball sprang up and began spinning, bobbing up and down between ten and twenty centimeters above the plate.
Tila Mong nodded. “Well, that's about eight weeks of apprentice training bypassed.”
“But that's only the first stage. What are the others?”
“You learn to stop the ball from spinning. That means you have found the exact form of energy necessary for the dead brain technique. You learn to maintain the ball at an altitude of about one centimeter. That means you have found the correct amount of energy to exert, an amount that makes it hard for any but the most delicate and most correctly attuned devices to discover that there is any anomaly in your electromagnetic energy output. And you learn to sustain the output without tiring yourself—for days, weeks, or even longer.”
“Is this how Jacen Solo learned the technique from Koro Ziil?”
Immediately, something shut down in Tila Mong's mind.
Luke wasn't sure whether someone who was not a Jedi Master would have noticed it. He wasn't even sure most Masters would have detected it. But something, the equivalent of a durasteel vault door, slid shut within Tila Mong's consciousness.
Her face and manner betrayed no sign of it. She just said, “Yes.”
“How long did it take him?”
“As I recall, about three days.”
Luke smiled. “It's very un-Jedi-like of me, but I want to break his record.”
CALRISSIAN-NUNB MINES, KESSEL
“WHERE'S UNCLE HAN?” CHANCE, SITTING BESIDE ALLANA AT THE gleaming white cafeteria table, rhythmically kicked the underside of the tabletop.
“Not back yet.” Allana paid him no attention. Her gaze was on Tendra and Lando, who sat alone at an adjacent table, whispering urgently to each other.
She glared at them. While Nanna prepared dinner in the adjoining, cavernously empty personnel kitchen, Nien Nunb waited in the communications room for a call from Han and Leia, and Chance was busy being a toddler. The Calrissians, it was clear, were discussing the Solos' fate but not doing anything about it.
Allana spoke in tones so low they couldn't hear her. “They're not dead, you know. I'd have felt it.”
“Where's Aunt Leia?”
“Not back yet.”
Chance's kicks grew more energetic. Allana