BY CHUCK WENDIG 4 страница

Mon says, “You seem uncertain. ”

“This is all more than a little deranged, ” Leia says. “What are we doing out here? This surely can’t be a real plea. ”

“Maybe it isn’t. It seems earnest enough. And it’s not as if we’re unprotected. ” The chancellor’s eyes drift heavenward—there, beyond the atmosphere, is a fleet of New Republic ships. And ahead of them, on the atoll, their own soldiers—the most elite, the most capable—wait for what may come. “They’ve already combed the island. Relax, Leia. We are safe. ”

“It could be a trap. ”

“You sound paranoid. ”

“As I should, ” Leia says. “Every good thing in this galaxy seems to twist and turn in our grip like a serpent—just as you think you’ve got it by the tail, it whips its head around and takes a bite. ”

“Where’s that idealist I met on Alderaan? ” A rare smile tugs at Mon’s mouth. “We don’t see enough of each other, Leia. I miss you. How’s your husband? ”

“He’s good, ” Leia lies. She adds another lie to the heap, because once you’ve set one down as the foundation, why not build a house and live there? “His mission goes well. He’s a changed man. ”

Mon watches her. Is that suspicion glinting in her eyes, or just more paranoia on Leia’s part? “I gather it must be hard being married through all of this. But I promise that the transition will be over soon enough. And peace, prosperity—and stars help us, a little normalcy—will return soon enough. ” Again her eyes tilt skyward. Leia sees it, too: a ship entering atmosphere. A nondescript mine craft: a Kinro 9747. Even from here Leia can see the plasma scarring and the pockmarks from debris.

From behind them, the voice of Staff Sergeant Hern Kaveen—a bearded Pantoran who works on the protective detail around the chancellor. (Leia has been told she needs a protective detail as well, but she has told them that she will be her own protective detail, thank you very much. )

“He’s here, Chancellor, ” Kaveen says. Behind the mining ship fly two flanking Y-wings—weapons ready, just in case.

“He’s alone? ” Leia asks.

“It’s just one ship, and only one bio-sig aboard. ”

On the atoll, a space has been reserved upon the beach for landing—and the Kinro 9747 hovers over the makeshift pad, its exhaust blowing a hissing wave of sand into the sea before finally settling down.

A passel of New Republic soldiers, their weapons raised, surround the ship. As soon as the landing ramp descends, the soldiers storm inside.

Despite the warm, balmy sea air, Leia suddenly feels cold. She knows what could come next: The ship suddenly detonating, killing those men. Or maybe it would be filled with something worse: a biological agent, a chemical weapon, some starving creature like a cybernetically enhanced rancor monster…at this point, nothing would shock her short of the black, gleaming visage of Vader himself stepping off that ship and into the sand.

But then Kaveen confers with the soldiers on the comm.

He relays their response: “Chancellor: They’ve given the all-clear. ”

Mon nods.

And that’s all it takes.

The soldiers escort the pilot of the mining ship off and onto the beach.

Mas Amedda is an imposing figure. His Chagrian skin is the blue-gray of troubled waters (failing to match the bright aquamarine of the ocean here on Velusia), and his long, horn-tipped tentacles give him the cut of something sharp and poisonous. Which, Leia supposes, is not entirely inaccurate: There stands the man who was once Emperor Sheev Palpatine’s chief administrator and has now become the proxy Emperor, at least in name and in politics.

He watches them from the beach. His gaze remains fixed upon them, in fact, even as the soldiers bind his hands behind him and help him step onto the seaspeeder. The craft pivots in the water and flies toward the old pleasure-liner, twin trails of sea-spray cast in its wake.

“Here we go, ” Leia says.

As they approach, she sees that the imposing figure is less so, now. He looks old. Weathered and worn. The tentacles topping his head seem wilted. His stare is hollow and, dare Leia say it, hopeless.

The seaspeeder slows to a halt below the deck of the pleasure-liner.

Leia and Mon step to the edge, looking down at him.

“May I come up? ” he asks. He offers a lifeless smile.

“No, ” Mon says. “You will speak to us from where you stand. ”

He wastes no time. “I offer myself to you as prisoner. I, Grand Vizier Mas Amedda, head of the Imperial Ruling Council, turn myself in to Chancellor Mon Mothma and Princess Leia Organa of the New Republic. Take me away. ”

It’s Leia’s turn to say it:

“No. ”

Tectonic shock crosses his face. “Wh…what? ”

“We do not accept your ‘surrender. ’ ”

He turns suddenly toward the soldiers, panicked. “Will you kill me? Here and now? It’s not in you. It’s not like you. This…this isn’t—”

Mon calls down: “Calm yourself, Mas. We do not execute our prisoners—or those trying to be our prisoners. ”

“We simply don’t accept you as a prisoner, ” Leia adds.

“B-but, ” he stammers, “I am the head of the Galactic Empire. I am its pinnacle. No target is greater than me. I am a prize! ”

“You’re a figurehead, ” Mon says.

“I know things! Names. Details. I can help you. I…I came all this way, I fled the throneworld. ” His voice booms, but the desperation in it is keenly felt. “I will not be denied my surrender. It is against the Galactic Accord of Systems established in the fiftieth year of—”

“The Empire has long ignored the accord. It is considered obliterated thanks to your efforts. And the names and details you know are, I suspect, far less impressive these days than you’d have us believe, Mas. ”

Leia smiles. “But there is a deal to be struck here if you’re willing to make it, Grand Vizier. ”

“Anything. Anything at all. ”

“Sign a treaty of surrender. ”

He laughs at first, and then the laugh dies in his mouth. “You…you’re serious. You want me to surrender…the entire Galactic Empire? ”

“That’s right. ”

“I don’t…” But again he swallows the sound.

Leia suspects what he was going to say, and she helps him finish his statement: “You don’t have the power, do you? ”

“I…”

“So, get it back. And then bring a treaty to our door. ”

“That, ” the chancellor says, “is the only deal we will make, and the only deal that earns you a life beyond this existence. Anything less than that will be met with a charge of war crimes and a brutal trial to follow—if your own people don’t jettison you from an air lock first. ”

“How do I accomplish this? ”

Mon shrugs. “You’re an administrator. So administrate. ” Then, with a curt nod, the soldiers turn him back around, facing the island. The seaspeeder’s engines thrum to life, and it returns to the atoll. All the way, Mas Amedda protests and pleads until his voice is swallowed by the sound of the sea. In the distance, they watch as they shove him off the speeder and onto the sand. They cut his bonds. He’s left standing, gaping, shocked.

“It was our only play, ” Mon says.

“I know. For a big fish, he’s surprisingly little. Still, I worry we just made a terrible mistake. It could’ve been a coup. We could’ve spun it as a victory for the New Republic. ”

“Mm. True. But you don’t strike me as the type to want to spin anything. Unless war has changed you? ”

Leia sighs. “It has not. I’d rather play the long game and secure a real victory, not a ceremonial one. ”

“Good. Now let’s get back to Chandrila. The war goes on. ”

They expect a fight, but the TIE following after the Halo turns back before breaking atmosphere and returns to the surface of Vorlag. Considering how those things are usually like burrs stuck to your back, Norra half wonders if there’s something they don’t know—maybe they’re flying into a trap, or out into some random asteroid field that the TIE would never survive. (And even then, wouldn’t it continue to follow? )

But the Imperial fighter turns and goes, lobbing off a few lazy shots before peeling away and disappearing.

Temmin sits at the controls and says, “That was weird. ”

“It was. ” Though she starts to round on a theory. “Maybe the Empire is hurting that bad. Maybe they can’t stand to lose even a single TIE. Or maybe they just don’t care anymore. ”

“You mean…maybe we’re winning? ” Temmin asks.

“Maybe we are, Tem. Maybe we are. ”

The burst of confidence and comfort in her heart doesn’t last long—outside the cockpit, in the belly of the Halo, loud voices rise in a clamor.

Uh-oh.

“Stay here and start setting hyperspace coordinates, ” she tells her son, then gets up and heads into the gunship’s belly. The Halo isn’t big—the cockpit is cramped, the main hold can barely contain them all at once. Behind that is the head and the two-person brig, and then two bunkrooms. All the way aft is the engineering room (and it’s not a room so much as it is a crawl space you have to shimmy up into in order to get anything done). This is a ship for quick trips, not long-haul flying. There isn’t much privacy to be found. Arguments in this ship go big. They refuse to be contained.

In the main hold, Jas is crouched down next to Sinjir, whose arm is swollen up like a bloodsucking bloatworm—he winces, his brow damp, as she dabs at it with some sort of goopy, tacky unguent found in a half-empty medkit up front. Bones stands nearby, beaked droid head swiveling from person to person to watch the exchange. Above her stands Jom Barell, angrily berating her and punctuating every word with an air-stab of his thick, callused finger.

“You don’t just…change the plan without giving us some kind of signal. We could’ve been killed, Emari. We could’ve—”

The bounty hunter stands up fast, like she’s ready to strike. But instead, all she does is smile and pat his cheek like he’s a child and she’s his mother. “I didn’t change the plan, Barell. That was the plan all along. ”

His face is dumbstruck. Jom looks to Norra and wordlessly asks an obvious question: What is she talking about?

But Norra doesn’t know. So she asks. “Jas, what do you mean? ”

“I mean, ” Jas says, opening up bins and pulling out drawers as if she’s looking for something. “That I always planned it that way. ”

“You didn’t tell us that, did you? ” Jom grabs her and wheels her around, but Emari breaks his hold fast and shoves him back, hard. “Hey! ”

“Don’t, ” she warns.

“You planned to double-cross us all along, didn’t you? ” Jom asks.

She shakes her head. “Triple-cross. I swear, Barell, you are as daft as that tatty carpet of yark fur you wear on your face. ”

“Why? ” Norra asks. “Why would you do that? ”

Jas bares her teeth. “Did you see the bounty poster? We’re all on it. My face included. I’m a bounty hunter with a bounty on her head. I have been compromised. There exists no way that Slussen and Gedde were going to just let me waltz in there and scurry around his dung pile of a palace like some little don’t-pay-attention-to-me spider. I had a play and I went with it. I sold you out. Then, when they were distracted with you, I snuck my way into Gedde’s room and waited for him. I paid one of the stable slaves to put keys around the hroth-beasts’ necks. Then I waited. ” A twinkle shines in her eye. “Besides, ” she says, patting her pockets. They jingle. “That means I got paid twice, which is never a bad thing, right? I really do have bills. ”

“You should’ve told us, ” Norra seethes.

“You don’t get it, do you? This is what I do, but it’s not what you do. ” Jas Emari’s finger draws an invisible perimeter in the air, containing both Norra and Jom. “You’re a pair of bright-eyed rebel saps in the bag for the good of the galaxy. You’re not bounty hunters. You’re not one of the bad guys. I am. I can fake it. I can lie and cheat and swindle and smile the whole time. That’s not who you are. I can’t trust you not to blow it. ”

Sinjir woozily lifts his blister-red arm. “Uh. Hello? I was told I might get a bacta shot? Anybody? No? ”

“Did he know? ” Jom snarls, pointing at the ex-Imperial. Then, accusing Sinjir directly: “Did you? ”

“I did not, ” Sinjir answers, a bit testily.

“I did. ”

They all turn. There stands Temmin, beaming.

“What? ” he asks, showing his palms defensively. Norra sees a glimmer of his father in the boy’s eyes, just then: a playful, puckish gleam. “Jas trusted me and said it was the right thing to do. She said I had to be ready. ”

Norra gapes. Her son lied to her. (Again, she reminds herself. ) She does her level best to tamp down the sudden flux of anger rising inside, but she feels suddenly, woefully out of control. Like things are slipping out of her hands and spiraling away. Her son. This team. This mission.

So when Jom points to her and says, “Control your boy, ” he is the unwitting recipient of her fury, lashing out like a crackling vibro-whip.

“I’m the leader of this team, ” she says, her words hissing through clenched teeth. “Not you. I’ll handle him how I choose. ”

“Maybe you shouldn’t be leader, ” he says with a half shrug that somehow manages to be aggressive.

“Well, she is our leader, ” Jas says, shoving past him. “You don’t like it, go find another starship to hitch your grav-raft to. I’m sure SpecForces would be glad to have you back, stinking up their air with your ego. Now get out of my way, Barell. I need to get that bacta shot and some gauze for Mister Calamari-Arm over there. ”

At that, Sinjir pouts. “That hurts my feelings. More than a little. ”

Norra wheels on her son and pokes him in the chest. “You, ” she says under her breath. “You and I will have a conversation about this. ”

“Uh-oh, ” he says.

“Uh-oh is right. ”

She’s hoping for now the fight is done, but it’s far from over. Even as Jas excuses herself to search the bunkroom for another medkit (“Preferably one with a bacta shot”), Barell follows after, still barking mad.

“Wait right here, ” Norra tells her son, then goes to break up the fight once and for all.

“I knew I should never have trusted you, ” he says, standing in the doorway as Jas roots around in one of the underbunks. “Bringing some bounty hunter on board? Antilles must’ve had his head knocked around real good while caught in the Empire’s clutches—”

Jas laughs, finally finding a capped bacta shot. “You’ve got it spun around, Barell. This team needs someone like me. They don’t need some thick-skulled law-bound brute who has all the imagination of an overturned mine cart. We need moral flexibility. ”

“I’m flexible. I’ve got imagination. ” He storms into the room, fists at his side. “I’m not just one of your marks. I can handle myself. ”

Whap. Jas slaps him hard with an open palm.

“Can you? Really? ”

He reels for a moment, rubbing his face. His jaw crackles and pops as he moves it left and right. That moment is over fast.

“Why you little—” He growls and steps into a fighting stance. Two fists up in front of his face, legs placed apart. Jas begins to pace the half circle in front of him, her limbs down and loose. He bats at her, but she blocks it. She kicks out with a leg and he turns inward, taking the hit on the outside of his knee. The two of them move around each other like a pair of wild-eyed creatures shoved together in the same cage.

Norra shouts: “Quit it. Both of you. You’re not a couple of mating murra, locking horns—”

The SpecForces officer slaps at Jas with a wide paw, but she bows her back, handily letting it catch open air. The bounty hunter moves fast, hooking her leg around his and wheeling herself onto his back. Her arms tuck under his pits and her fingers lace behind his neck.

Jom roars. He tilts back, his boot jabbing out and connecting with the door controls—and the bunkroom portal slams shut.

When Norra tries to open it, she finds it locked.

Inside, the clamor rises. Something falls, bang. A rattle. Grunting.

Suddenly the space outside the door is crowded. Temmin to her left, Sinjir to her right. The droid, Bones, humming some mad song behind.

“Can either of you get this door open? ” she asks. She tries the button again but the door won’t budge.

“Man, they’re really fighting, ” Temmin says.

Sinjir tilts his ear toward the door. His eyes narrow. “Well. They were fighting. ”

“Still sounds like they…” But the boy’s eyes go big as moons. “Oh. ”

Even Bones whistles—a warbling, discordant note.

Which means that Norra is officially the last one to figure out what’s going on. They’re not in there fighting at all, are they? Beyond the door, something bangs, then rattles, then falls. Jom growls. Jas laughs.

Kissing sounds.

Those are kissing sounds.

“I choose to ignore all of this for now, ” Norra says, taking a deep breath. “Tem, go plot for hyperspace and get us back to Chandrila. And take…him with you. ” By “him, ” she means Bones. The boy and the droid wander off, leaving Norra and Sinjir standing in front of the door.

“I never got my bacta shot, ” Sinjir says.

“I think you’re going to have to wait. ”

“If I wait much longer I fear the arm might pop like a bladder-bug. It really hurts. ” He pouts. “It’s really gross. ”

Norra sighs. “Fine. Come on. Let’s go see if there’s another medkit in the second bunkroom. ”

In a singsongy voice, he answers: “Thank you, Mom. ”

“Don’t call me that. ”

“You’re no fun. ”

“That is becoming abundantly clear, Sinjir. ”

—

The Halo drops out of hyperspace.

There, looming into view, is Chandrila—a small, blue-green planet, now the home of the nascent New Republic. Nearly idyllic, Norra thinks, with its calm seas and rolling hills. The weather is mild. The seasons are present, but never dramatic. The people are peaceful—if a bit haughty and pedantic and over-invested in every political maneuver and measure that proceeds through the Galactic Senate.

This would be a good place to call home, she thinks, then looks over at her son. “Are you good? ” she asks.

He cocks an eyebrow. “I’m golden. ”

She doesn’t think he’s lying, but her skill at reading people fails to match that of Sinjir, who can cut you into your constituent parts with a half-second glance.

“I need you to trust me, ” she tells him.

“I do. ” He narrows his eyes. “This is about the Jas thing, isn’t it? Mom, it’s like she told you—”

“Life is a series of moments—” Norra suddenly stops talking, then pinches the bridge of her nose and sighs loudly. “Gods, I’m about to give you one of those talks, aren’t I? I hated when my mother gave me these talks and usually I went out and did the opposite of what she told me to do, and that’s what you’re going to do because you’re my son. So stupid. ”

“Fine. ” He rolls his eyes. “It’s not stupid. Go on. Give it to me. I promise I won’t, like, barf into my hands or anything. ”

Norra hesitates. “It’s just…I just want you to be good. To be good with yourself and to know where you belong. Not where you think other people want you to belong, but where you really belong. In here. ” She puts her hand on his chest and he makes a goofy face because this is really very mawkish and sentimental and they both know it. “You sticking with Jas—you’re not a bounty hunter. You don’t have to be like her. You can be a soldier but—” Again she bites her tongue and growls past it. “You know what? You don’t have to be a soldier, either. I just want you to be you and not worry about what the rest of the galaxy thinks you should be. ”

“I think the galaxy wants me to be a crazy-rich droid manufacturer living in a palace out on the Outer Rim. ”

There again, his father’s playful twinkle flickering in his eye.

“Then go be that, ” she says, laughing.

He cups his hand to his ear. “Or maybe the galaxy is saying to become a lounge singer in a backwater space station cantina. I can belt ’em out. ”

“Now, I don’t know about that. ”

“Oh! Oh wait! I think I’m going to be a Jedi. ”

“Now I know your brain is busted. ” She gestures toward the viewscreen. “Take us down to Hanna City. Gently, this time? Or Wedge will have your head and maybe mine. ”

—

The arm looks, well, better. But not much. The angry redness has cooled down to a somewhat aggravated pink. The blisters have faded, but have been replaced with craters of dry, puckered skin. Sinjir’s arm looks like old meat left to hang too long on a butcher’s hook.

At least it has all its feeling back. He wiggles his fingers. The skin feels uncomfortably tight. Blessedly, Norra found some painkillers.

“Hello, hand, ” he tells his hand.

“Hello, Sinjir, ” he makes his hand tell him back.

From around the corner of the main hold comes the sound of a door hissing open. And who should waltz out but Jom Barell.

“Your hair is a bit of a mess, ” Sinjir says.

“Hm? ” Jom’s gaze rolls up, where his hair is sticking out. “Oh. ”

“Here. Let me help you. ” Sinjir stands, and fast as a spark is standing right in front of Jom. He gently begins to move the man’s hair back in place.

“Well, isn’t this romantic. ”

“Ah. Yes. Speaking of romance—I’m really glad you brought it up, Jomby—did you have a nice fight with our resident bounty hunter? ”

“She knows how to, ah, fight. ”

“Oh, I’m sure she does. ” As Sinjir continues to adjust the man’s hair one strand at a time—and by now Jom is starting to look more than a little uncomfortable—he lets a vicious foxlike grin stretch across his face. “Curious bit of trivia: As you know, when I served at the pleasure of the Empire, I served as a loyalty officer, and sometimes extracting loyalty from my fellows took a bit of doing. I learned that the human body has four hundred thirty-four trigger points of pain. I know it lacks humility to say, but I actually discovered another three all by myself, although amending an Imperial training manual is like trying to move a boulder with a spoon, you know? All this is a very long road to a very simple destination: I am excellent at causing pain. ”

Jom pulls his head away from Sinjir’s grooming efforts. “Are you threatening me, Rath Velus? It sure sounds that way. ”

“I am, and for good reason. I want you to know that if you hurt Jas Emari in any way—emotionally, physically, I mean, even if you accidentally step on her foot—then I will personally make sure to find all four hundred thirty-four, oh, sorry, I mean four hundred thirty-seven trigger points on your body. Are we clear? ”

A strange calm settles over Jom—which Sinjir finds rather unexpected. He suspected that his little speech would goad the man into fighting. Barell seems hotheaded, after all. But that’s not what’s happening here, is it? Instead, Jom crosses his arms and nods.

“Your loyalty to her is commendable, ” the commando says. “I’ll take your, uhh, words of wisdom under advisement. Though if I’m being honest, I suspect if anybody will get hurt in this arrangement, it’ll be me. ”

“Likely. ”

“And that wouldn’t bother you at all? ”

Sinjir gives a half shrug.

“All right. Fine. Lemme ask, though: What’s your deal with her? I was led to believe you and she would not be…romantically compatible? ”

“This isn’t about that. I value her tremendously. I feel connected to her. I think she’s a ‘friend, ’ or the closest thing to. ” He says that word friend like it’s a foreign word in an alien tongue whose full contextual meaning he has not yet grasped.

“For a time I thought maybe you had your eye on me. ” Jom is just goading him, but he decides to play along.

“I did. It’s the facial hair. But I’m spoken for now. ”

Jom smirks. “Really? ”

“Really. ”

“Good for you, mate. ”

Sinjir puts one more stray hair on the commando’s head back in place. “Have fun with Jas. And remember the number: four hundred thirty-seven. ” The Halo starts to shudder—the walls are shielded, but still the sudden warmth bleeding off them is telling even as the ship bucks along clouds like a stone skipped across a pond. “Sounds like we’re down. Better secure the prisoner, Jomby. ”

—

Landing Platform OB-99. In one direction are the rolling hills and sweeping meadows of Chandrila: the soft balmgrass and spiky orcanthus are already turning from red to green with the coming of spring, and the sun and clouds cast shifting, shimmering shadows over the land. In the other direction is the Silver Sea, its placid waters as calm and gray as slate. Out over the water, bands of dark clouds roll, spitting rain and pulsing lightning. Another symptom of the seasons shifting from winter into spring.

Standing off to the side and leaning against a stack of crates is Wedge Antilles. Temmin is first off the ramp, and he runs over to Antilles—the two of them clasp hands and embrace.

“Hey, Snap, ” Wedge says—a nickname he’s given Temmin because of the boy’s finger-snapping habit.

Bones trots after, his skeletal arms going wide. “I TOO WILL SHARE AN EMBRACE WITH MASTER ANTILLES TO SIMULATE JOY. ” Wedge leans away from the “hug” as the droid wraps his many-jointed arms around the captain, looking less like a human sharing camaraderie and more like an insect trying to eat the face of its mate. “OKAY, ” the droid says, apparently satisfied. It lets go and begins dancing around the landing platform in dramatic swoops, plié s, and pirouettes.

“Sorry, ” Temmin says, shrugging. “He’s trying to learn how to be more…human? And less…”

“Singing, dancing murder-bot? ” Wedge asks.

“Yeah. ” Bones has been Temmin’s bodyguard and friend now for a while—and once he rebuilt his pal from spare parts (thankfully rescuing the data-brain from the New Republic soldiers who secured the Akivan palace), he was surprised when the droid declared a desire to fit in better with the crew. (Apparently it was something Sinjir said to the droid about how he creeped them all out. ) Temmin fears that the droid’s attempts have only made him more creepy, but uh, yay for effort? “Oh, man, Wedge, you should’ve seen me out there. I was piloting the Halo, right? And we were swooping along the edge of Slussen Canker’s mountaintop fortress and—”

“All right, Snap, ” Wedge says, laughing. “Ease off the throttle a minute. I need to talk to your mom. You can tell me more from the seat of my X-wing tomorrow morning. Deal? ”

“Whoa, yeah, yes. Deal. ” Wedge has been giving Temmin time in the X-wing. He said Temmin has a natural gift for piloting a fighter, like his mother (though Norra wasn’t exactly happy about her son following in her steps as a pilot). Wedge lets the boy run training exercises out over the Silver Sea. Last time he said to the kid, “I’m cooking up a little something called Phantom Squadron. Maybe by the time you’re spaceworthy, you’d be interested in joining up. ” Temmin hasn’t told his mother about that yet.

He’s not even sure that’s what he wants, either. Sometimes Temmin’s mind drifts and fantasies play out—okay, no, he doesn’t really want to be a lounge singer in some crummy cantina, but the bounty hunter life sounds pretty great. Go where you want, track down the bad guys, get paid to do it. But being a pilot gives him a thrill like no other: Cutting clouds with the scissor-foils of Wedge’s old X-wing is the scariest and most amazing thing. And then again, he still misses his black-market dealings on Akiva—the danger of the deal, the joy of the sale, the buzz from peddling illicit weapons, parts, and droids to thugs and criminals who might kill you for looking at them wrong. Temmin doesn’t know what he wants to be.