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“May?” Corran studied the Yuuzhan Vong’s face for signs of mockery. The near-human visage suddenly seemed more alien than ever.

“Understand,” Harrar said, “all life ends. Killing is in itself no wrongdoing. Even here, in this forest, plants are eaten by animals, animals devour one another, the dead form the food for the plants. My earlier concern for the saplings you cut was that the planet might take it as an attack, since we are from outside, not because I felt it was wrong on some intrinsic level for you to cut them. In the end, every living thing dies. Planets die. But life itself should go on. Your technology threatens that—ours does not. A world like Coruscant proves that a world could exist without forests or true seas. And if the living sentients in its belly were replaced by the machines-that-mock-life you call droids, there could be completion. Machines could spread without benefit of life. They could replace it. That, my people cannot—would never—allow. We would fight until all of us were dead to prevent it, even the Shamed who now rise against us.”

“But—”

Harrar raised a hand. “Please. Allow me to finish answering your question. When we destroy life—even an entire planet, as with Ithor—we replace it with new life.”

“Yuuzhan Vong bioformed life.”

“Yes, of course.”

“So you think that makes it okay?” Corran asked.

“Yes,” the priest answered.

Corran shrugged. “So if that’s your view, where is the contradiction?”

“Because in my heart,” Harrar said, pronouncing each word carefully and distinctly, “I feel the destruction of Ithor was wrong.”

Corran regarded the priest for a long moment, wishing the Force could help him decide if he was lying or not. Of course, before he’d learned to know the Force, natural suspicion and CorSec training had served pretty well. To those ears, Harrar sounded sincere.

“What do you want from me?” Corran asked, finally.

Harrar steepled his fingers together. “I’ve spoken of the contradiction in my people. I want to understand the contradiction in yours.”

“Oh. That’s simple—we’re not really one people. There are thousands of ‘peoples’ in this galaxy, and often we don’t have a whole lot in common. If there’s one thing you can say about ‘us,’ it’s that we’re a diverse lot. There are some cultures that probably would have made Ithor like Coruscant or a wasteland like Bonadan. There are beings in this galaxy who don’t value life at all, and others who worship it to the exclusion of all else. Most of us fall somewhere in between. Believe it or not, technology and ‘life’ really can coexist.”

“That is what I’m struggling with. You believe that. My people do not. Whatever Zonama Sekot represents, whatever promise it holds for my people, I do not know that it can ever bring peace between you and me. I do not think the Yuuzhan Vong could ever make peace with machines, especially thinking ones—or the people who use them.”

“That’s an interesting thing to tell me,” Corran said. “You mean that you and I may have to fight after all?”

“Not you and I—not unless it is by your choice. But our peoples …” Harrar shook his head. “I see no end to the war here.”

“Well, we’ve only just arrived,” Corran said. “Maybe there’s something neither of us is seeing.”

“Perhaps.”

They sat in silence for a moment, Corran slipping into reverie of the battle for Ithor and the terrible thing that the Yuuzhan Vong had done to the garden of the galaxy.

What if Harrar was right? What if there was no way to make peace with the Yuuzhan Vong?

He sighed, rose, and looked around the edge of the cave until he saw what he was looking for—a slope that kept going up.

“Where are you going?” Harrar asked.

“I want to check out what’s up above our happy-home-to-be,” Corran said. “Don’t want any nasty monsters or giant bugs coming down to eat us in the night.”

“You’ve more experience with wild planets than I.”

“Doesn’t seem too wild to me, this planet,” Corran said, not entirely certain what he meant.

“Well. Natural planets then. Nonbioformed worlds.”

“I