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monofilaments shifted and flowed under her touch until they cradled the palps of her fingers. It was rather like standing on the shore at the seaside and feeling the outflow of each wave pulling the sand gradually out from under her feet. A brief topographic map of her fingerprints appeared on the packet’s surface. Another part of the packet cleared to a small mirror surface, with the ideogram for “eye” marked neatly above it. Master Leem blinked at her own reflection, then blinked again as the packet flashed briefly with light.
*Gill Pattern:
Not Applicable
Fingerprint Identification:
Negative
Retinal Scan:
Negative

    Current Bearer cannot be identified as the intended recipient of this Bureau of Diplomatic Liaison Incendiary Packet.
    CONTENTS WILL PLASMATE ON PACKET RUPTURE!
    Maks and her Padawan exchanged looks. “Better not drop it,” the boy said, deadpan. Maks rolled her eyes—another remarkably expressive gesture among the three-eyed Gran—and padded back into the Temple, looking for Master Yoda.
    She found him in the Room of a Thousand Fountains. He was perched on a boulder of black limestone that jutted out of a small pond. Approaching him from behind, she was shocked by how small he looked, sitting there, dumpy and awkward in his shapeless robe. Like a sad swamp toad, she thought. When she was younger, she would have suppressed the thought at once, shocked at herself. With age she had learned to watch her thoughts come and go with detachment, and some amusement, too. What an odd, quirky, unruly thing a mind was, after all! Even a Jedi mind. And really, with that great round green head and those drooping ears, a sad swamp toad was exactly right.
    Then he turned around and smiled at her, and even beneath Yoda’s weariness and his worry she felt the deep springs of joy within him, a thousand fountains of it, inexhaustible, as if he were a crack in the mantle of the world, and the living Force itself bubbled through him.
    The shaggy brows over Master Leem’s three warm brown eyes relaxed, and her teeth stopped grinding. She picked her way down to the edge of the pond, gently brushing aside long fronds of fern. The sound of water was all around, rushing over pebbled streambeds, bubbling up through the rock, or dripping into small clear pools: and always from the far side of the enormous chamber, the distant roar of the waterfall. “I thought I would find you here, Master.”
    â€œLike the outdoor gardens better, do I.”
    â€œI know. But they aren’t nearly so close to the Jedi Council Chamber as this room up here.”
    He smiled tiredly. “Truth, speak you.” His ears, which had pricked up at the sight of her, drooped again. “Meetings and more meetings. Sad talk and serious, war, war, and always war.” He waved his three-fingered hand around the Room of a Thousand Fountains. “A place of great beauty, this is. And yet…we made it. Tired I am of all this…
making.
Where is the time for
being,
Maks Leem?”
    â€œSomewhere that isn’t Coruscant,” she answered frankly.
    The old Master nodded forcefully. “Truer than you know, speak you. Sometimes I think the Temple we should move far away from Coruscant.”
    Master Leem’s mouth dropped open. She had only been joking, but Yoda seemed completely serious. “Only on a planet such as Coruscant, with no forests left, no mountains unleveled, no streams left to run their own course, could the Force have become so clouded.”
    Maks blinked all three eyes. “Where would you move the Temple?”
    Yoda shrugged. “Somewhere wet. Somewhere wild. Not so much
making.
Not so many machines.” He straightened and snuffed in a deep breath. “Good! Decided it is! We will move the Temple at once. You shall be in charge. Find a new home and report to me tomorrow!”
    Master Leem’s teeth began to grind at double speed. “You must be joking! We