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Ben snorted. It caused a touch of condensation to form on the inside of his breath mask, but the film quickly evaporated. “And the idea of living in a hole in the ground and pretending to be dead was just irresistible to you.”

Luke gave Ben a now's not the time to mock look.

Chara did not seem offended. “It's not an issue of pleasing ourselves. It's an issue of service. Service to the Baran Do, and to the cause of knowledge.” Having completed the tour of this chamber, he led them back through the blast door and out into the hallway beyond. “And in a sense, you Jedi are responsible for it.”

Luke smiled. “I don't recall sending out a communication asking for arrangements like this.”

“Not you personally. Before your time. I was just a child when it happened. The day the Jedi disappeared from the galaxy.”

“Oh.” Luke sobered. “The purge.”

“Yes.” The next chamber was not behind a blast door; the entryway was merely curtained. Chara brushed the black cloth aside and entered. He fumbled against the wall on one side and then the other before he found the glow rod activator switch. Light sprang up along the ceiling, revealing racks of depressingly identical black robes. “Ah. You'll want some of these, though they'll have to be adjusted for your diminutive height.”

Ben grimaced. “Diminutive.”

Chara switched the light off and led them back into the access tunnel. “Anyway, Master Tokra Hazz was horrified by this. All the Baran Do were, so the story goes, but Tokra Hazz was profoundly affected. Perhaps he felt the deaths of the Jedi through the Force. Tokra Hazz was not so much distraught at the loss of individual life as at the loss of knowledge. Remember, at the time it was believed that all Jedi everywhere had died—that the Jedi Order had completely winked out. Fearing that the new Emperor would extend the same genocidal impulse to other Force-sensitive orders, Tokra Hazz sent many of the Baran Do Masters into hiding and thought about what to do next.”

Ben looked around dubiously. “And what to do was to dig a hole in the ground.”

“Yes.” The next chamber, also behind curtains, proved to be a storehouse of preserved foods, all in bottles or cans. Ben recognized brand names from Dorin manufacturers. Chara continued, “As a repository of knowledge. If the Empire were to come and destroy the sages, a cell would survive, deep in the ground, and would be able to … communicate its learning to others on the surface.”

Luke frowned. “Communicate how?”

“The rails that brought us here are also direct comlink connections with the surface. Not just with the temple, but other places. And should the rails be destroyed, the Hidden One knows a Force technique of mind-to-mind communication.”

“Telepathy.” Luke sounded dubious.

“Yes.”

“Interesting. I've experienced communications through the Force from loved ones light-years away, but they tend to be emotional surges, perhaps a few words, perhaps a vision … Exchanges of anything but emotions and general impressions are impossible to maintain for any useful length of time. That's not the sort of communication through which you can teach all your techniques.”

Chara shrugged. “This technique is known only to the High Masters of the Baran Do.”

Luke looked thoughtful. “I'd love to learn it. I'll have to speak to Koro Ziil.”

“Koro Ziil is dead. You will have to speak to the Hidden One.”

“Yes, yes.”

Ben tried to steer the conversation back to Chara's story. “So the old Master, Tokra Hazz, eventually decided on making this underground shelter.”

Chara nodded. “He used tunneling equipment to dig the tunnel by which we entered. It's very long, some two hundred kilometers, circling and winding. It eventually reached natural caverns that he decided to use as the center point for his complex. The first tunnel took years to dig, and the caverns took more years to modify.”

They reached and passed by a communal sanisteam chamber. The next chamber beyond seemed to be a sort of sauna, not currently in use.

“Why such a long tunnel?” Luke asked.

“A practical