Jude Watson: Jedi Quest 4: The Master of Disguise

She pulled out a laser pointer and frowned at it, then used it to make a correction in a file. "Well?"

Obi-Wan stepped inside. "Am I interrupting?"

"Of course you are. Cleaning day. I have to organize once a month.

Retire old files, organize, send others to deep storage. Not a good day. It always puts me in a bad mood."

"Ah," Obi-Wan said, "well…"

"Which doesn't mean I'm not available," she said crisply. "Just that you won't get the benefit of my usual good humor."

"Ah," Obi-Wan said again. He had never enjoyed the benefit of Jocasta Nu's good humor. Perhaps he'd been at the other end of her private amusement at his failure to keep up with Senate subcommittee agendas. That was the only time he could remember her smiling at him. It hadn't been a very nice smile.

Jocasta Nu shook her head. "Oh, for star's sake, Master Kenobi, stop repeating yourself. What do you need?"

"Some time ago I asked you to research someone called Granta Omega.

You assembled a file — " "I remember."

"Which I need to review."

She sighed. "Today, I suppose?"

"I'm afraid so."

Jocasta Nu crossed the room and began to access a holofile directory.

She hummed a tuneless melody while she tapped one finger on the counter.

"Here we go. I can do a fresh search as well, if you like."

"That would be helpful."

She flipped through the file. "Though as I remember, this subject's problem was decentralization."

"What do you mean?" Obi-Wan asked.

"Scattered." Her slender fingers wiggled. "Spread out. Diluted."

"I understand what the word means, I just don't — "

"Sorry. One of my own classification terms. Some subjects are solid.

You can look them up, research, find out what you need. Some are diffuse.

They are spread out so far they almost disappear." She hummed under her breath. "This Omega was like that. Enormously wealthy, but no particular home. Many companies within companies within companies… many acquaintances, no friends. His business interests are galaxy-wide." She sent the holofile spinning through the air toward Obi-Wan. "You have a file full of information that tells you nothing."

Just like his physical appearance, Obi-Wan thought, stopping the file with a raised hand. The man hid behind a blank wall he created himself.

He looked through the file again. Omega specialized in ferreting out rare minerals and buying the whole source, then raising the price. He was enormously wealthy yet kept his wealth diversified and hidden in any number of secret accounts. There was no information that either Obi-Wan or Jocasta Nu had been able to find on his beginnings. They did not know his home planet. He just suddenly appeared, a wealthy man.

Obi-Wan looked through the list of his known homes. There were fifteen of them spread over the galaxy. Tracking him down would be extremely difficult and time-consuming.

He closed the file and sent it back to Jocasta Nu. "I doubt you'll find anything, but if you could do a new search.."

She nodded. "I'll get back to you."

Just then Yoda appeared in the doorway. "Find you here, I am not surprised. It is still Omega you seek?"

Obi-Wan walked out to join him in the hallway. "It seems he is almost impossible to find."

"Impossible, nothing is. Difficult, many things are. To you the question must be, why search?"

"I have a feeling," Obi-Wan said. "Maybe it is up to me to prevent something before it happens. I don't want to wait for disaster to overtake me."

Yoda nodded, his gray-blue eyes revealing nothing. "But an immediate threat Omega is not."

"The immediate threat is not always apparent."

"Argue with you I will not," Yoda said. "Your decision, this is. But think I do that you need a better reason to spend time on this. Heard I have that your Padawan needs you. Events on Haariden marked him, they have."

"Yes," Obi-Wan said. "He feels responsible for Darra's injury. She'll be fine, but she lost her lightsaber. He feels terrible about that. And I was not happy with his actions during the battle."

"Lightsaber skills, important they are," Yoda said. "How to use as well as how not to use. When to move as well as when not to move. Restraint, your young Padawan needs, as well as direction."

"I've spoken to him," Obi-Wan said. "He listens. Yet I've come to see that Anakin really learns by doing. With every mission, he grows."

"Yet sometimes one Knight is not enough to teach a Padawan," Yoda said. He paused. Obi-Wan knew he had more to say. They moved down the hall, Yoda's gimer stick tapping as he walked.

Yoda spoke as they reached the lift tube. "Hear I have that Soara Antana will remain at the Temple until Darra is better."

"Yes, she will not leave her."

"Not much she has to do, I think," Yoda said. "Distraction, she needs.

"The lift tube opened and he stepped in. He nodded at Obi-Wan as the doors slid closed.

Obi-Wan smiled. He saw what Yoda was suggesting. "I think I know a way to keep her busy," he said to the closed doors.

Anakin sat in the map room. He had activated dozens of holographic worlds at once. They swirled around him in their varied systems while dozens of voices told him facts about their climate, geography, species, and culture. The voices blended into an indistinguishable babble.

It was an exercise he had invented to calm his mind. He drew the Force around him to help him concentrate. Then he tried to find the thread of one voice and follow it. As soon as he had, he would add another. He thought of the voices as layers in his mind, and he tried to keep track of what each voice was telling him, all at the same time. It was difficult and took tremendous concentration. But all the voices together filled up the space in his head and drowned out his own voice, his own feelings. So he would not have to think, only concentrate.

Concentration is different from thinking, his Master had told him.

When you are concentrating hard enough, you shouldn't be thinking at all.

It was here in the map room that he had first understood what Obi-Wan had meant.

He was concentrating so intently on separating the voices that he didn't hear Obi-Wan come in. His Master could move without making the smallest sound, but Anakin wanted to reach the point where he always knew when Obi-Wan entered the room. He wasn't there yet.

Obi-Wan sat down beside him and waited for him to turn.

"A mission?" Anakin asked hopefully.

"No, we are at the Temple for a while," Obi-Wan said. "I haven't told you something I discovered on Haariden, something I told the Council about.

That patrol was paid to attack us by Granta Omega."

Anakin felt the nerves inside his body tighten. He realized he had been waiting for this. He had wanted to pursue Omega after their experience on Ragoon-6.

"Why didn't you tell me before?"

"You had enough to think about."

Anakin knew that his Master meant his concern for Darra. He had haunted the med clinic until he knew she would fully recover.

"Are we going after him?" Anakin asked.

"Jocasta Nu is helping me do some research," Obi-Wan said. Anakin realized this wasn't quite an answer. "In the meantime," Obi-Wan continued, "I have something for you to do."

"I am ready, Master."

"I have arranged a private lightsaber tutorial for you with Soara Antana."

Anakin felt his heart fall. Shame filled him. "Because of what happened on Haariden."

"Yes," Obi-Wan said. "There is no blame, Padawan. Yet there are things you need to learn. Things that I have not been able to teach you."

"There is nothing you can't teach me, Master," Anakin argued. But the real reason for Anakin's disquiet was a secret fear that Obi-Wan planned to leave him behind while he went after Granta Omega. Obi-Wan would do the real work while he remained behind like a schoolboy, taking lessons.