Star Wars_ The New Jedi Order 20_ The Final Prophecy - J. Gregory Keyes [71]
Harrar pursed his lips. “You’re saying that this planet has something like a dhuryam, some intelligence that links all these organisms together and prompts them to perform harmoniously.”
“I can think of no other explanation.”
Yu’shaa, who had remained absolutely silent, suddenly spoke up. “As I prophesied,” he said, “and as the Jeedai said. This is a living planet, one large organism, more than the sum of its parts. Like a worldship that made itself. Don’t you see what this planet can teach us? Harrar, you were just decrying the competition that destroys us. It is that blind fight to ascend that leads us to treat so many of our people as Shamed.”
“Can this be?” Harrar asked Nen Yim. He seemed to be ignoring the Prophet.
“We are seeing it,” Nen Yim replied. “However, I can find no clues as to the mechanism that binds the individual life-forms to one another. There are no chemical exchanges that might explain it. The flora and fauna here are not equipped with communications organs like our villip, or anything even remotely similar.”
“It’s the Force,” Tahiri interrupted. “I can feel the ties, feel a sort of constant chatter among—well, everything.”
Nen Yim focused on the young Jedi. “I have heard that you Jeedai possess telepathy like our villips,” she said. “But the ones I’ve taken ap—examined showed no signs of specialized organs, either.”
“No, of course not,” Tahiri said, her voice suddenly dark. “The Force binds everything together. Some creatures communicate through it. I can feel what Corran is thinking, sometimes. With Anakin it was even stronger, like …” She trailed off. “Never mind. You’ll have to take my word for it.”
“And—using this Force—you can impress your will upon others, yes?” Yu’shaa said.
“Yes, on the weak-minded,” Tahiri replied. “But I get no sense that anything here on Zonama Sekot is being coerced into anything. It’s like every living thing just agrees to do things this way.”
“I cannot see this Force, measure it, or test it,” Nen Yim said. “I cannot credit it with the effect you assert.”
A stone suddenly rose from the ground, floated toward Nen Yim, and fell near her feet.
“You may not know what it is,” Tahiri said, “you might not be able to see it or feel it, but you can see the results.”
Nen Yim conceded that with a small nod. Then a thought struck her with the force of a baton. “Assuming you are correct,” she said, “you are connected to this Force—as no Yuuzhan Vong is. And yet, in part, you are Yuuzhan Vong. What does your Force tell you this place is? To us?”
“I’ve been thinking about that a lot,” the young woman replied. “I’ve never been able to quite put it into words until just now.”
“And?” Harrar asked.
Tahiri took a deep breath. “This is where we are from,” she replied.
That got even Nom Anor’s attention. While the three were absorbed in the conversation, he’d been exploring Nen Yim’s qahsa, and had run across some very interesting things. He’d made his little speech so as not to break character, not because he was interested. But now he stared at the young Jedi just as Harrar and Nen Yim did.
“That’s not possible,” Nen Yim said.
“You asked me what I felt,” the girl said. “That’s it. But didn’t you say that only a few thousand years at most separate the life of this planet from Yuuzhan Vong life?”
“In the case of one plant only,” Nen Yim replied. “And several thousand years ago we were very far from here. Moreover, the Qang qahsa contains abundant data regarding the homeworld, and this is not it.”
“Was the homeworld like this one? Living, like an organism?”
“There are some legends—” Harrar began.
“Whatever the legends may say,” Nen Yim pronounced, “the facts are that the homeworld was an ecosystem of unchecked competition and predation. Would a creature like the vua’sa have evolved on a world were all of nature was in cooperation? No. The vua’sa was a vicious predator that at times multiplied so quickly, it left deserts