Yoda by Sean Stewart Read Free Book Online

can’t possibly do such a thing now, in the middle of a war! Who could we find to—” She stopped, and the three eyes that had been so very wide went narrow. “You’re teasing me.”
    The old gnome snickered.
    She had half a mind to pitch the Troxan packet at Yoda’s smirking face but, remembering all the scary legal warnings on the side, she held her hand. “I promised I would give this to you.”
    Yoda scrunched up his nose in distaste. He gathered the hem of his robe up above his wizened knees and slid off the rock with a splash. It was an indoor garden near the top of a mighty artificial spire, after all, and the water in the pond was only shin-deep. He stumped to the shore and took the packet. Wrinkles climbed up his forehead and his ears twirled in surprise as the Incendiary Packet took its fingerprint scan.

    Fingerprint Identification: Positive

    The reflective mirror appeared on the packet’s surface. Yoda stuck his tongue out at it and made a face.

    Retinal Scan: Inconclusive
    Please present intended recipient’s face or equivalent bodily communication interface to the reflective surface.

    â€œMachines,” Yoda grumbled, but he stared glumly into the packet.

    Retinal Scan: Positive
    Current bearer has been identified as the intended recipient of this Bureau of Diplomatic Liaison Incendiary Packet. Destruct device disabled.

    A microperforation appeared around the edges of the packet and then the pouch peeled back, revealing the charred and battered handle of a Jedi lightsaber. Yoda’s stubby green fingers curled lightly around it, and he sighed.
    â€œMaster?”
    â€œJang Li-Li,” he said. “All that is left of her, this is.”
    Water dripped and whispered all around them in the garden.
    â€œThinking of the dead, have I been.”
    â€œThe list grows longer every day,” Master Leem said bitterly. She was thinking of the last time she had seen Jang Li-Li. They had shared dinner duty not long before she left, and the two of them had gone down to the gardens to pick vegetables for the evening meal. She remembered sitting on an upturned bucket, Jang making a droll face at her and asking if Maks thought using the Force to shell Antarian peas was an abuse of power. Laugh lines around her almond eyes.
    Yoda’s face, dark in reflection, looked up at him from out of the pond. “Some believe it possible to enter completely into the Force after death.”
    â€œSurely we all do, Master.”
    â€œAh—but perhaps one can remain unique and individual. Can remain oneself.”
    â€œYou are thinking of Jang Li-Li,” the Gran said with a sad smile. “I would love to believe she is safe and free and laughing still, somewhere in the Force. I would love to, but I cannot. Every people longs for the hope of something after death. These hands and eyes have been knit into a shape by the universe, will hold it for a few score years, then lose it again. That must be enough. To enter more completely into the Force: one would dissolve, like honey mixed into hot stimcaf.”
    Yoda shrugged, looking down at poor Jang Li-Li’s lightsaber handle. “Perhaps you are right. But I wonder…” He picked a pebble from a crack in the rock on which he was sitting. “If I drop this pebble into the pond, what will happen?”
    â€œIt will sink.”
    â€œAnd after?”
    â€œWell,” Master Leem said, feeling out of her depth. “There will be ripples, I suppose, spreading out.”
    Yoda’s ears perked up. “Yes! The pebble strikes the water, and a wave carries out until…?”
    â€œIt reaches the shore.”
    â€œJust so. But is the water in the wave where the pebble drops the same as the water in the wave that touches the shore?”
    â€œNo…”
    â€œAnd yet the wave is the same wave?”
    â€œYou think we can become…
waves
in the Force, holding our shape?”
    Yoda