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“Mara,” Luke said, “my love, while I’ll believe you when you say picking up parasites on a strange beach is relaxing—”

“Nonsense. This sand is as sterile as an isolation lab. It’s perfectly safe to walk barefoot. And you like the feel of it.”

“If you say so. But I forbid any more talk about politics, Jedi, the war, the Yuuzhan Vong, anything like that. We’re out here for you to relax, to forget all of that for a day or so. Just a day.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “You’re the one who thinks the whole universe will collapse unless you’re there to keep it spinning.”

“I’m not pregnant.”

“Say something like that again, and I’ll make you wish you were,” she said, a bit sharply. “And by the way, if we do this again, it’s your turn.”

“We’ll play sabacc for it,” Luke responded, trying to keep a straight face but failing. He kissed her, and she kissed him back, hard.

They continued along the strand, past a rambling stand of crawling slii, all knotted roots and giant gauzy leaves. Waves were beginning to lap on the beach, as they hadn’t earlier, which meant they were on the bow side of the “island.”

It wasn’t an island at all, of course, but a carefully landscaped park atop a floating mass of polymer cells filled with inert gas. A hundred or so of them cruised the artificial western sea of Coruscant, pleasure craft built by rich merchants during the grand, high days of the Old Republic. The Emperor had discouraged such frivolity, and most had been docked for decades and fallen into disrepair. Still, many were in good enough shape to refurbish, and in the youth of the New Republic, a few sharp businessmen had purchased some and made them commercial successes. One such person, not surprisingly, had been Lando Calrissian, a longtime friend of Luke’s. He had offered Luke use of the craft whenever he wished it. It had taken Luke a long time to call in the offer.

He was glad he had done it—Mara seemed to be enjoying it. But she was right, of course. With everything that was happening now, it was hard not to think of it as a waste of time.

But some feelings could not be trusted. Mara was showing now, her belly gloriously rounded around their son, and she was suffering from all of the physical discomforts any woman did in that situation. Nothing in her training as an assassin, smuggler, or Jedi Knight had prepared her for this compromised state, and despite her obvious love for their unborn child, Luke knew physical weakness grated on her. Her comment about Jaina might just as well have been about herself.

And there were other worries, too, and a pocket paradise wasn’t likely to help her forget them, but at least they could take a few deep breaths and pretend they were on some distant, uninhabited world, rather than in the thick of the biggest mess since before the Empire had been defeated.

No, strike that. The Empire had threatened to extinguish liberty and freedom, to bring the dark side of the Force to ascendance. The enemy they faced now threatened extinction in a much more literal and ubiquitous sense.

So Luke walked with his wife as evening fell, pretending not to be thinking of these things, knowing she could feel he was anyway.

“What will we name him?” Mara asked at last. The sun had vanished in a lens on the horizon, and now Coruscant began to shatter the illusion of pristine nature. The distant shores glowed in a solid mass, and the sky remained deep red on the horizon. Only near zenith did it resemble the night sky of most moonless planets, but even there was a baroque embroidery of light as aircars and starships followed their carefully assigned paths, some coming home, some leaving home, some merely arriving at another port.

A million little lights, each with a story, each a spark of significance in the Force that flowed from them, around them, through them.

No illusion, here. All was nature. All was beauty, if you had eyes willing to see it.

“I don’t know.” He sighed. “I don’t even know where to start.”

“It’s just a name,” she said.

“You would think.