Sins of the Father/Part 2

Narasi blew out a breath as the ramp closed on the Second Chance. "Okay, that was—"

"Wait," Tirien cautioned.

She sighed, letting him head to the cockpit and get the ship running. No sooner had she thrown their packs onto their bunks when she heard a familiar, "Mmnnrrawhee!"

"Hey Gizmo," she said, crossing her ankles to drop into a seated position and let the gizka hop across the deck into her lap. Scratching behind his ear nubs, she asked, "Miss me?"

"Mmnnrrawhee!"

"Yeah, I missed you too. But hey, look what I gotcha!" She took a fruit out of her belt, slicing through its rind with her claws to open it before she pulled it in half. "What do you think?"

One palm-sized hemisphere vanished into Gizmo's enormous mouth. He chewed it for a moment, but spat it out and croaked balefully, turning his big eyes up to her in reproach.

"No, huh?" Narasi fished some greens from her belt instead. "Well, I know you like these."

He took the greens with much more relish; after a moment, checking to make sure Tirien wasn't coming, she slipped Gizmo a length of wire too, and he cooed up at her. She carried him into the cockpit, where Tirien had just finished with Columus ground control. Narasi took her co-pilot's seat, running her eyes over the sensor feedback as she deposited Gizmo on her shoulder.

"We really need to update the sensor package, Master," she said.

"I don't imagine it's first priority on the quartermaster's agenda," Tirien replied without looking at her.

Narasi grunted, then said, "Gizmo didn't like the fruit."

"I'm certain you can sense my despondency."

Narasi stuck out her tongue. "You know you love him too."

"You know, I really don't…"

Rolling her eyes as she ran the navicomputer calculations, Narasi got their course plugged in and, when Tirien nodded, pulled back the hyperdrive lever. Stars stretched to a blur, Gizmo hopped down into Narasi's lap and buried his face in her belly, and she petted him as she looked at Tirien. "Now?"

Unlocking his chair, he rotated it to face her. "Go ahead."

"That was weird. And before you tell me I'm being intolerant of other cultures, I don't mean their tech or how they look, I mean—"

"—because they're clones," Tirien finished.

"Yeah."

Narasi was braced for his narrow-eyed look of disappointment, but he surprised her with a thoughtful expression and a nod. "It's like…a buzzing in your mind. Like interference on a sensor, but the sensor is your Force perceptions."

"Yes," she said in relief. "Yes, exactly."

"Clones are like that," he said. "It's not an uncommon practice, and it's essential to Columi society, which is why I wanted you to wait until we were away to discuss it. But it's…wrong isn't the word I want…"

One side of his mouth turned down, and Narasi wondered if "wrong" was the word he wanted, and his diplomatic nature just prevented him from using it. After a moment, though, he said, "…unnatural. No, that's not strong enough; I think antinatural.  It's a defiance of nature, and so it obstructs the natural course of the Force.  That's what you can feel; it's the echo of the template's Force signature."

Gizmo latched onto Narasi's hand; he had yet to break the skin when he did this, so she let him suck on her fingers and gum them with his lips as she asked, "Is it the dark side, do you think?"

"Interesting question. At some level any artificial construction defies nature; a bridge over a river isn't wrong even if beings would naturally drown in its waters trying to cross it."

Narasi heard his love for philosophical meandering at work and tried to reel him in. "Clones, Master."

He gave her a look. "I'm getting there. Patience, Padawan."

She sighed, and he went on, "Life is different, and any means of altering what exists in nature—be it genetic modification or cloning—causes a disturbance in the Force, small or large. The extreme end of the spectrum is Sith alchemy; you've felt for yourself what that's like."

Narasi remembered Kai Latra's Palace of Happiness on Vjun with an instinctive shudder. Gizmo looked up at her, then got better hold on her hand with his mouth; his tongue tickled her palm. She giggled, then refocused to say, "Columus didn't feel like that."

"No, it didn't," Tirien agreed, "which is why your question doesn't have a clear answer. The dark side focuses on destruction and distortion of what should be.  Cloning…I think we can say it exists in the shadows between light and dark.  Certainly it can be used for dark purposes, but calling it inherently wrong may be going too far.  I wonder what Master Kwhuel will say about it…"

Narasi had no desire to go down that sarlacc pit, so she said, "It felt…I dunno, kind of…familiar."

"Have you encountered clones before?" Tirien asked.

"Not that I know of."

"Arkanians? They employ cloning technology.  Ithorians do too, to a lesser extent."

"Not that I remember."

He shrugged. "Then I don't know."

"You said 'the echo of the template's Force signature'," Narasi noted. "How much is the clone the same as the original?"

"That is a fascinating question, which Jedi far more intelligent than me have debated for millennia," Tirien said. "They're not the same being, but the self is tied to the physical form even though it's greater than mere flesh. And it grows more complicated when you introduce flash-learning protocols and memory implants into the equation."

"You know a lot about cloning," Narasi observed.

Tirien shrugged. "I wrote a paper on it when I was a Padawan. I hadn't visited Columus, but I studied records from the planet in the Archives.  I could supplement the original paper now, I suppose…"

Narasi chuckled. "Only you would want to dig up a homework project from however many years ago and make it better."

Tirien raised an eyebrow. "I didn't write the paper as classwork. I published it in one of the Consular periodicals."

"You…wait, what?" Narasi pulled her hand out of Gizmo's mouth, ignoring his croak as she wiped her fingers on her pant leg. "You've published a real paper?"

"I've published four papers."

"All while you were a Padawan?"

"Oh no; Suwo would never have gone that long without blowing something up," he corrected with a faint smile. "Only the cloning paper was while I was a Padawan. One I wrote that first year of your apprenticeship, while we were chasing Alecto around the galaxy.  The other two I wrote on the Crescentia."

Narasi felt her mouth hanging open. "You've written three papers since we got together?"

"I'm working on a fifth one—a comparative analysis of the influence of external galactic conflict on domestic Alderaanian politics. That work you mentioned has been helpful—A Concise History of Alderaan.  It's more of a survey than anything else, of course, but for major points—"

"Why didn't you tell me about all this?"

"Most of it is political theory; I didn't think it would interest you," he answered with a shrug. When she kept staring, he frowned. "A lot of Jedi Consulars write and publish."

"Still!" Narasi sat forward, depositing Gizmo on her head, where he gummed one of her ears, which were standing up in annoyance. "I'm your Padawan! I can't believe you didn't tell me all this time!"

He raised an eyebrow, giving her a strange look, and Narasi felt a sliver of unease. When she took a moment to meditate and reflect, she realized it was subconscious appreciation of irony. Tirien had failed to tell her something personal, something important to who he was as a Jedi. Gee, Narasi, why does that sound familiar…?

Shame nauseated her, and Narasi waited for Tirien to call her on her hypocrisy; her ears backed, one of them sliding right out of Gizmo's mouth. Tirien held that look that made her feel a centimeter tall for a moment, but then his eyes softened and one side of his mouth tugged up. "I'm sorry, it's just impossible to take you seriously with a gizka sitting on your head."

He chuckled once, and Narasi laughed too, though she wondered if Tirien could hear the edge to it. He was too smart not to have offered her the escape on purpose, but that only made her feel worse.

"It'll be hours before we reach Eiattu," he said, rising from his chair. "I'm going to—"

"—read up on Alderaanian history?" she asked.

He smirked. "Meditate."

"Ah, darnit, that was gonna be my next guess!" She grinned back. "Well, that or 'talk to Master Fane'."

"Care to join me?"

"Sure, just give me a minute."

Once he had disappeared down the corridor, Narasi sat back in her chair, pulling Gizmo into her lap with a sigh. You'll have to tell him someday, she thought. Why not now?

If she was being honest with herself, the idea had been growing on her for a while. She hated it lurking between them, like some hideous Sithspawn they both could see, drooling and snarling in the corner, but which neither of them would mention. But every time she tried to open her mouth and get out the words, she felt her throat tighten like a self-applied Force choke.

You didn't do anything wrong, she told herself, but no matter how many times she said it, she felt a twist of instinctive shame.

Tirien can help—he'd do anything to help me.

But as she thought about it, Narasi realized Tirien wouldn't do anything to help her. Many things, certainly; he would dare any peril for her. But on Pantora, when their positions had been reversed, he had demonstrated what he thought of clinging to the past. And hadn't Narasi made the choice easier for him then? Hadn't she been the one to remove temptation from his path? How in the galaxy could she expect anything different from him?

Rocking her chair forward, Narasi gave Gizmo a pat on the tail. "Let's go, buddy. Time to meditate."

Gizmo croaked, hopped off her lap, and bounced down the corridor. Narasi followed, wondering if meditation would clear her head and make her decision simpler. She resolved to give it honest thought, but she realized that, either way, now wasn't the time.

Someday.