“Artoo, I’m going to meditate for a while,” he told the droid, slipping out of the chair and settling himself cross-legged on the floor. “See if I can get some direction. Don’t let anyone disturb me, all right?”
The droid buzzed an affirmative. Taking a deep breath, Luke closed his eyes and stretched out to the Force. His thoughts-his emotions-his entire being-slipped into the proper pattern.
And suddenly the whole universe exploded in front of him into a brilliant kaleidoscope of color and motion.
He gasped, the vast image wavering momentarily like desert heat-shimmer as he nearly lost control. It was like no vision he’d ever had before. Like nothing he’d ever seen before. A hundred different scenes, a thousand different possibilities-brilliant colors, sharp-edged sounds, joy and contentment and fear and death-all of it swirled together with the fury and randomness of a Tatooine sandstorm. Lines of possibility wove around each other or else crashed together, sometimes merging, sometimes bouncing apart again, always forever changed by the encounter. Familiar faces were there among unfamiliar ones, passing in front of him or else flickering behind other events unfolding at the edges of his sight. He caught a glimpse of Wedge and Rogue Squadron as they swept past in the fury of battle; saw his Jedi students inexplicably fanning out across the New Republic, leaving the Yavin academy all but deserted, saw himself standing on a balcony against the wall of a darkened canyon, gazing down at a sea of th ousands of tiny stars; saw Han and Leia facing a huge mob&mdash
Han? Leia? With an effort, he grabbed on to that last line, trying to stay with it long enough to see more. For a moment he succeeded, the image sharpening into focus: Leia standing in a wide hallway, her lightsaber blazing in her hands, as a mass of bodies pushed through a tall door; Han, standing on an outside balcony with drawn blaster, looking down’ at the crowd. The crowd inside flowed mindlessly forward-a hidden rooftop sniper lined up his blaster rifle&mdash
And then they were gone, vanishing into the swirling mass of sights and sounds. For a moment Luke tried to join the flow himself, the taste of fear mixing with the other sensations of the vision as he tried to catch up and see what was going to happen to them. But they were gone, and with a sense that came from outside himself he knew that he’d seen all of that vision that he was going to. Easing out of the flow, he made his way back to the single fixed point in the storm, the solidness of his own being. He’d learned all he could here, and now it was time to leave. He began to draw back, the vast array of images beginning in turn to recede and darken.
And then, abruptly, one final vision appeared in front of him: Mara, surrounded by craggy rock and floating in water, her eyes closed, her arms and legs limp. As if in death.
Wait! he heard himself shout But it was too late. Mara’s image faded with the rest of the vision&mdash
And with a sudden gasp of air he found himself back in his room, gazing out the window at the hills.
Hills that no longer glowed golden, but were instead outlined by the subtler gloss of starlight.
“Whoa,” he muttered, rubbing his eyes. He would have sworn that vision had only lasted a few minutes.
Beside him, Artoo twittered in obvious relief. “Yes, it took longer than I expected, too,” Luke agreed. “Sorry.”
The droid warbled questioningly. Getting to his feet, wincing at the sudden prickling sensation in muscles left too long in one position, Luke looked at the question scrolling across the computer display. “I don’t know,” he had to concede. “I saw a lot of things. But I didn’t see anything that seemed to have anything to do with our search.”
Which might mean, he realized suddenly, that hunting for clones was no longer what he was supposed to be doing.
But then what was he supposed to do? Go to wherever Han and Leia were and warn them? Go find Mara and warn her?
He took a deep breath, shifting tired muscles. Always in motion is the future, Yoda had told him after that first vision on Dagobah. At the time Luke had wondered about that remark, his vision of Han and Leia in Cloud City had seemed so simple and straightforward. But if Yoda had instead seen something more akin to this last vision, with all its tangles and complications, then it all made sense.
Or had he seen something like that? Could it be that what Luke had experienced here was something entirely different? A special event reserved for special occasions?
It was an intriguing possibility. But for the moment, it was an issue he could put aside. What mattered was that he’d received the guidance he’d sought, and needed to act on it.
All he had to do was figure out exactly what that guidance was.