Star Wars_ The New Jedi Order_ Dark Tide 01_ Onslaught - Michael A. Stackpole [43]
“No, but—”
“You know, I was taught a long time ago that whenever someone uses the word but it means he’s stopped listening. It also means those he’s speaking with tend to stop listening. I know what I’m telling you isn’t easy to hear. There’s probably a reason for that, don’t you think?”
Anakin squirmed in his chair a bit. “I ’spose.”
“And why do you think that is?”
“I don’t know. Maybe . . .” He fell silent as he thought. “I guess part of it is that you’re making it sound like I’m not a good Jedi Knight, that I’m doing things wrong. It means I’m a failure.” And that maybe Chewie would be alive if I’d not failed.
“You may not realize that my early training consisted of much more than learning to harness the Force.” Mara clasped her hands together and pressed them flat against her belly. “Running, climbing, fighting, learning to move silently, swimming, zero-g fighting and movement; everything could have been made easier by using the Force. I didn’t allow that, though. Why not? What value was there in my learning to rely upon myself?”
“You learn your limits.”
“Yes, and?”
Anakin closed his eyes and thought hard. The answer to her question blossomed full-blown in his mind and dropped his jaw with its simplicity. “You also learn what others are capable of, others who don’t have the Force.”
“Right, which means you can gauge how much you need to help them.” Mara nodded at him, and Anakin smiled proudly. “Too many Jedi Knights become wrapped up in the fact that they can use the Force, and they employ it as if it were the solution to every single problem there is. This is why Kyp and his followers are so stiff and cold. They come into situations without having an appreciation of what the people can do. They come in and impose a solution. It might be quick, it might work very well, but is it the best solution?”
She eased herself up out of her chair and turned to face the dying sun. “Do you remember the Taanab exercise: the problem about the flood that you were asked to attack as part of your training?”
Anakin nodded. “Sure, I got high marks on that simulation. I looked over the data we were given and realized that it was possible to trigger a rock slide that would dump metric tons of rocks in position to shore up a levee. It stopped the flooding from wiping out a village. I just used the Force to loosen some rocks and start the slide, and everyone was saved.”
Mara’s eyes had closed, and her face was expressionless. She opened her arms to the sun as if seeking to pull as much of its warmth into her as she could. “So, tell me, Anakin, in that example, why was the Taanabian village in jeopardy of being flooded?”
He frowned. “Well, you know, it was built in a low place.”
“Had it ever been flooded before?”
“I don’t know.”
“You didn’t check the history?” She glanced over at him. “I know the local history was part of the files.”
Anakin shrugged. “I guess I didn’t think it was important, because the flood was the main problem.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. The main problem was people building homes in a floodplain. They were doing that because off-world land speculators had bought up their ancestral lands in the hopes of luring Alderaanians there to establish a colony. Greed was forcing those people to build in undesirable places. You might have been able to stop the flood this time, but what about the next, or the one after that?”
“I didn’t think—”
“No, you didn’t.” Mara turned toward him and folded her arms across her chest. “And your solution, dumping the rocks, worked, but it left the people in that village without any commitment to your solution. You saved them, and they would have been grateful—at least until the next time a disaster loomed, and then they’d wonder why you weren’t there to save them again.”
Anakin stood.