FORTY-SIX

“It’s a weird thing,” Corran said, as the Errant Venture grew larger through the transparisteel lozenge of the Givin ship.

“What’s that?” Anakin asked.

“Being happy to see my father-in-law’s ship.”

“Ah.” Anakin tried to smile, but he couldn’t. He’d been searching for Aunt Mara in the Force. The results were ambiguous—at times he thought he had her, but at other times it didn’t seem like her at all. The feeling that she was dying had scarred his mind, and deep in his gut he feared she was already dead and his occasional sense of contact was merely a residual imprint of her living self.

He turned to go back and wake Tahiri and found her standing only a meter or so away. She gave him a brief smile.

“Uh … hi,” he said.

“Hi,” Tahiri replied. Her eyes refused to settle on his for long, but he could feel her uncertainty matching his own. “Looks like we’re almost there,” she pointed out unnecessarily.

“Yeah.” Why did his fingers feel like hammers and his legs like spongy pillars? This was Tahiri.

“And we can finally get out of these things for good,” Tahiri went on. “I never want to wear a vac suit again as long as I live.”

“Right. Me either.” The suits had made a recurrence of what had happened in the locker on Yag’Dhul Station impossible. What would happen when they were in shirtsleeves again?

It was a nearly terrifying thought.

“You think Mara’s okay?”

Anakin shook his head. “No.”

“She will be. She has to be.”

“Yeah.” A long, awkward silence followed as they drew near the Errant Venture. Corran was busily trying to prove they were who he said they were—despite the fact that they weren’t in the same ship they’d left in—so he could get clearance to enter the docking bay.

“Hey, Anakin?” Tahiri asked.

“Yeah?”

“What’s going on? You’ve hardly said two words to me since we left Yag’Dhul.”

“We were kind of busy, and I … I’m worried about Aunt Mara.”

“Uh-huh. Look, have you changed your mind?”

“About what?”

“About … you know. Are you sorry now? I mean, we were about to die and everything. It’s perfectly understandable, because we’ve been best friends for so long, but maybe now you’re thinking I’m too young, and remembering all the trouble I’ve gotten you into, and, well, maybe we ought to just forget …” Her green eyes did meet his then, with a sort of ionic jolt.

“Tahiri …”

“Right. I get it. No harm done.”

“Tahiri, I haven’t changed my mind. I’m not sorry at all. I don’t know exactly what it all means, and we are young, both of us. But I don’t regret kissing you. And, um … it wasn’t just because I thought we were dying.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, okay then.”

He was trying to decide what to say next without totally messing up the situation, when a staggering pain suddenly jolted through him.

“Aunt Mara!” he gasped. “Aunt Mara!” Another blinding wave of agony made his knees buckle.

* * *

The instant they were docked, Anakin bolted from the ship, pushing past the Jedi students who had come out to greet them, running as fast as he could toward the medical lab. In the turbolift, the worst agony yet ripped through him so powerfully that he was forced to block himself off from it before he fainted.

Outside the medical facility he found Mirax, Booster, Valin, Jysella, and half a dozen other people jittering around. When Anakin burst onto the scene, all eyes turned toward him.

“Aunt Mara!” he gasped. “What’s wrong with Aunt Mara?”

Mirax embraced him. “Mara is fine,” she said. “Where in space have you been? Is Corran with you?”

Anakin brushed off the question. “But the pain …” he began.

“It’s normal,” Mirax replied. “Corran?”

“Corran’s fine,” Anakin said. “He’ll be right here. Mirax, I felt her dying.”

“She was. Now she’s not. Somehow, in the Force, she and Luke … We don’t know how. But the Yuuzhan Vong disease is gone. Completely.”

“Then the pain—”

“Natural. Hideous, overwhelming, but natural. Believe me, I’ve experienced it twice.”

“You mean …?”

A few moments later the door sighed open. Cilghal stood there, looking very, very tired.

“You can come in now,” she said. “A few at a time, please.”

Anakin and Mirax went in first.

Mara still looked sick. Her face was sallow, and sweat sheened her brow. But she was smiling, her jade eyes filled with an unfamiliar sort of happiness. Luke knelt at the bedside, holding her hand.

“Luke, Mara,” Mirax said. “Look who I’ve brought.”

“Anakin!” Luke said. “You’re okay! Are Corran and Tahiri with you?”

“Yeah,” Anakin said absently, his attention fixed on the small bundle in the crook of Mara’s arm. He stepped closer. Small dark eyes glanced vaguely in his direction, passing over him as if he didn’t exist.

“Wow,” he breathed.

“Hello, Anakin,” Mara said weakly. “I knew you’d be here.”

“I thought you were … Can I come closer?”

“Sure.”

Anakin stared down at the newborn. “Are they all that ugly?” he blurted.

“You’ll want to rephrase that,” Mara said, “after what I just went through. Think in the general direction of antonyms.”

“I mean, he’s—”

“His name is Ben,” Luke said.

“He’s beautiful. In the Force, and … But he’s all sort of squinched and wrinkly.”

“Just like you were,” Mara said.

“And you’re really okay?”

“I’ve never, ever been better,” Mara told him. “Everything is perfect.” She looked down at her child. “Perfect.” As weary as it was, her smile had enough wattage to light all of Coruscant.