It had been one of the strangest meetings in Obi-Wan's experience. Strange, unsatisfying, and unrevealing. They knew little more than when they had arrived. Obi-Wan tried to remember the meeting in detail. He had not even bothered trying to persuade the humbly dressed man to tell them more about himself, about Vergere, because he was not sure the figure they saw could tell them more.

The man and his daughters were not real. Yet the illusion had been powerful and almost completely convincing. In Obi- Wan's experience, no single being-not even a Jedi Master-could delude two Jedi at once. Hide, yes-that had certainly been done by Qui-Gon and others. Yet the Council had long suspected that the Sith knew how to disguise themselves and pass undetected by Jedi. Obi-Wan was positive, however, that this was no Sith conspiracy. Even with time to ponder the experience, what they had actually witnessed was not at all clear to him.

"Maybe now we know why they call him Magister," Anakin said in a low voice as they boarded the transport. "Maybe nobody really gets to meet him, and that's how he protects himself."

Obi-Wan again held his finger to his lips. Persuading the pilot not to listen was insufficient. The transport itself, as part of Sekot, was now suspect, and Obi-Wan doubted he could effectively use Jedi persuasion and deception on the living tissue, the biosphere, of an entire world.

The transport lifted away from the promontory and flew them north and east again, back to Middle Distance.

We've met our match, Obi-Wan thought grimly. Perhaps that is what happened to Vergere, and she is hidden. . completely hidden from us.

Then he faced his Padawan across the space between the seats. He moved his lips without sound:

The planet's recent past is closed to us. Observe the path of the transport-the weather is calm, the way is unobstructed, yet we fly a zigzag course. We may be avoiding other evidence of the battle-if there was a battle. We cannot avoid passing over the one scar-it was too large to miss.

Anakin agreed. Someone is hiding something. But why give us a chance to see the gouge?

The Magister may assume we saw it from orbit. He just doesn't want to make things too obvious. "No," Obi-Wan whispered, his eyes half-closed. He believes he has nothing to fear from Jedi. But he may be ashamed, perhaps, of a past weakness. A near-defeat. I am speculating now.

And how! Anakin said with a slight chop of one hand. He faced forward. At least we're going to be allowed to make the ship.

Obi-Wan found no comfort at all in that. The weak lie to survive. What would make an entire planet feel weak. . out here, isolated, on the edge of nowhere1?

Anakin shook his head. It was outside the range of his experience. The boy sighed. I'll bet it all has to do with Vergere and why she came here in the first place.

The mood at Middle Distance was much subdued, a contrast to the festival that had begun the ceremony of choosing. People went about their business on the terraces as if this were a time like any other. From their apartment parapet, Obi-Wan watched the late-night lanterns flicker across the canyon and listened to the distant voices while his three seed-partners clung to him like a long-lost parent.

Anakin slept very little that night. His bed was crowded and busy with twelve molting seed-partners. The seeds were not used to being separated from a client after the choosing, and had suffered some distress, though nothing, Sheekla Farrs told them, they would not soon forget. They crawled about on his thin covers, mewling plaintively, and occasionally fell to the floor with soft plops, then cried to be picked up.

The seeds were splitting along one side, showing firm white flesh covered by a thick and downy fuzz. The spikes on each had twisted into three thick stiff feet on one side, and along the seam of the sloughing shell, the spikes were curling up and withering away.

***

In the morning, now that he and Obi-Wan had passed inspection by the Magister, or so Gann thought, they were given the keys to Middle Distance. Gann delivered client robes to them, red and black, conspicuous amid all the green, and they were allowed access to the valley's small library, housed above the rim in the trunk of a huge and ancient bora.

Not that there would be much time to visit the library, or travel much of anywhere else around Middle Distance. The design phase was about to begin. Sheekla Farrs told them that her husband, Shappa, would guide them in this.

Later, the seeds would be combined and sent off to those mysterious Sekotan manufactories called Jentari, of which they were being told very little. Only one ship would be made by the Jentari, Gann informed them, but he thought it was likely to be a special ship, indeed, coming from fifteen seeds. "The normal complement is three or four," he said with subtle disapproval. He was a man of strong convictions, a believer in traditions.

Anakin put up with the mewling, the shedding of spikes, the restless wandering of his uneasy companions, knowing that he was closer to his goal of flying the fastest ship in the galaxy.

Even if it had meant getting no sleep at all.

Obi-Wan emerged from his room, trailing his three seed- partners, looking just as rumpled and distracted as the boy felt. The master greeted his Padawan with a grunt as a special breakfast was served on the veranda outside.

They sat in comfortable lamina chairs and drank a sweet juice neither of them could identify, and soon, Obi-Wan sniffed the air and said, "We smell different."

"They're preparing us for the next step," Anakin said. "If we're going to guide the seed-partners, we have to smell right." Obi-Wan was not happy at having his internal chemistry altered, but Anakin's reaction concerned him more. "I wish there were less mystery here," he said.

Anakin grinned. Obi-Wan knew the boy was restraining himself from saying, "You would!" Instead, Anakin said, "I bet the smell is temporary."

The seed-partners now found them irresistible and tried to stay even closer, if that was possible. Some of them had shed their old shells completely and emerged as pale, oblate balls with two thick, wide-spaced front legs, two black dots for eyes in between, and two smaller legs at the rear. All the legs were equipped with three-hook graspers that could give quite a pinch.

By the early afternoon, when Gann and Sheekla Farrs came for them, the situation was almost unmanageable. The seed- partners scrambled madly about the quarters and hung from the walls and ceiling and raced back to hook and hug Anakin or Obi-Wan, making tiny little shrieks of distress when another seed-partner blocked the way, which was often.

Farrs smiled at the commotion like a mother entering a nursery. Gann looked on the situation with some concern, for he was planning the next step of the process and wondering how to transport so many seed-partners in the ritually accepted fashion.