Star Wars_ I, Jedi - Michael A. Stackpole [176]
It would be so simple. All I would do would be to be with Tavira, to please her and deceive her. She would lead me to my wife. And I would even deny Tavira that which she would want most—my devotion. That would be the goal she had in mind, and I would not surrender that to her. She could have my body, and together, I had no doubts, we would discover and explore vast galaxies of passion, but she would never quite get all that she wanted from me.
All those thoughts coursing through my brain seemed so obvious and so right, but something screamed in horror at the idea of giving in to them. What would be so easy to do, what would bring me closer, faster to Mirax than anything I’d done so far, would somehow also be wrong. I didn’t know why. I didn’t want to believe it. I even wanted to say the transgression there would be insignificant compared to the good that resulted. My alliance with Tavira would be only one-way—I would get from her what I wanted and deny her the prize she most desired. That was what I would do, and any protest could be damned for being weak.
I shivered. “I can’t believe I’m thinking this.”
Elegos tore and knotted off the steriplast bandages on my right hand. “What is that, Captain?”
I shook my head. “Things I’m considering. Things I must do, but things I almost can’t believe I’m thinking. I can’t be thinking them.”
The Caamasi nodded slowly. “If you will permit me, we Caamasi have a saying.”
“Yes?”
He pressed his hands together contemplatively. “If the wind no longer calls to you, it is time to see if you have forgotten your name.”
The simple saying hit me like a hammer, and found echoes in my father’s old adage about not recognizing the man in the mirror. I began to tremble. “You’re right. I no longer know who I am.”
FORTY-ONE
“Then I would suggest it is time you begin to remember.”
I laughed. “Easier said than done.”
He shook his head and began wrapping my left hand. “Not at all. Start from where you are and trace your steps backward until you recognize the last place you knew yourself.” While his advice seemed deceptively naive, something in his voice also suggested it was the only possible solution to my quandary.
I applied myself to the task, but zeroed in on a shortcut. A liaison with Tavira would be the fastest route to rescuing Mirax, but part of me knew it was wrong. I knew the part of me that opposed the plan bitterly would be a stepping stone back to myself, so I grappled with the reason why accepting Tavira’s offer would be wrong.
The answer smashed me in the face and left me aghast I’d avoided seeing it. The choice was wrong because I wouldn’t be sleeping with Tavira for Mirax’s sake, I’d be sleeping with her because I wanted to—I was letting the ends justify the means. I was able to wrap up a selfish desire in all sorts of noble and selfless reasons, but the reality was that Tavira’s attraction to me pleased me. I felt flattered. I’d been married to Mirax for just shy of four years and never had the desire to be with another woman, but that didn’t mean I didn’t want to be thought of as attractive. And Tavira was a desirable woman who could have any of hundreds of men, so for her to choose me, well, that was very special. And for me to have the chance to prove she had chosen correctly, that I was indeed someone very special, that was a meal that could gorge my Hutt-like ego.
It was of the dark side.
Those words echoed through my brain in Master Skywalker’s voice, and my understanding of the dark side expanded exponentially. Exar Kun and Darth Vader and the Emperor had made the dark side seem so dynamic and powerful, that recognizing it and refusing it became easy. Here in the Invid society where people acted more like beasts than they