Tales From Jabbas Palace (Kevin Anderson) (21 page)

And this ‘Force’ of the Jedi, well… it must be my force, too. I’m not gonna destroy it, Barada. I just can’t!”

He listened, then he shook his head and sighed.

“Sorry, my friend. I don’t get it. That’s all mumbo-jumbo to me.” He got to his feet. “You do what you have to. But I think you’re crazy.” He moved away.

“Where are you going?” I called after him.

“Back to work, what else? We’re heading for the pit in less than an hour. I just hope you’ll be a passenger, not a prisoner.”

I thought it all over as Jabba’s court roused itself and got to work loading up the sail barge. When they started to file aboard themselves, I decided I had to make my move. I hitched up my courage and approached the Hutt as he glided toward the loading ramp on his repulsor sled, towing that captured woman who’d become his newest pet by her long chain.

“My old friend, you seem troubled,” he rumbled out.

“I am, Jabba,” I told him. “Please don’t do this.”

“This?” he said in astonishment, stopping the sled short. “Do you mean my destroying this scum who tried to cheat me?”

“I do. Skywalker is a Jedi.”

I noticed the woman’s gaze jerking toward me at that. She listened with interest.

“He is no Jedi,” piped up Bib Fortuna who, as usual, hovered close by.

And Salacious Crumb, from a perch onJabba’s tail, echoed, “NoJedi!

NoJedi!” in a shrill, cracked voice.

“This is wrong,” I said, not backing down. “Jabba, you have to let him go. Let them all go.”

“I think Mon is up to something,” Fortuna said, eyeing me suspiciously.

“Jabba, he must be in league with them.”

“I am trying to save your life, Jabba!” I argued.

“Look, you know no one’s more loyal than I am. You know I’ve always warned you about danger. I can tell you all about another plot right now! But it’s not important.

Nothing else is: not Tessek, not Valarian, not even the Empire.

Only this is. It’s bigger than us all, Jabba. It’s the Force!”

“That foolish religion means nothing to us!” Fortuna cried indignantly. “The Mighty Jabba can show no fear of anything, including Jedi Knights!”

“He is right, Ephant,” the Hutt agreed. “AndJabba has spoken.

They must die.”

“Then… I can’t go with you,” I told him with force. “I can’t be part of this.”

“So you defy me?” he bellowed. “I should kill you for that.”

“I know.” I met his eye without flinching.

“I should,” he growled on, “but our old bond stops me. It buys your life, but that is all it buys. I thought of you as my true friend, Ephant Mon. That friendship is ended.”

“You can’t call it over,” I shot back. “I can. Barada is right.

I’ve repaid my debt to you a hundred times over.”

“Repaid?” repeated Jabba, and a tone of regret came into the rumbling voice. I swear it was real, and I swear I’d never heard the like of it before. “Then it was never more than a debt to you. I am sorry for that.”

He turned away from me and glided on toward the sail.barge. The rest of his court followed. The captive woman stayed gazing at me in a bemused way until a jerk of her chain forced her to follow her master.

“It was more than a debt,” I said after him, but in a quiet voice that no one heard. “Goodbye, old friend.”

Jabba and the others disappeared into the barge.

After them came a pack of Gamorrean guards prodding along Skywalker, Han Solo, and the rest.

As the Jedi went up the gangway, a pang of worry for him shot through me. Did he and his friends really have a chance against the Hutt’s cutthroat crew?

He must have sensed my emotion, because he turned right then and flashed a calm, confident little grin at me. It told me I did not have to fear for him.

I watched the last of them enter the barge. I began to think about what I should do now. There’d still be room in Valarian’s operation for me.

But that didn’t seem right anymore.

The sail barge rose on its repulsorlifts in a flurry of dust, turned and sailed away, fading quickly to a dot on the vast horizon of Tatooine’s gray-brown wastes.

Another, greener landscape came into my mind. I knew where I should go now. It had been made clear to me.

I had to go home.

Goatgrass: The Tale of Ree-Yees

by Deborah Wheeler

Slowly the harsh Tatooine day melted into afternoon.

Early dusk softened the contours of Jabba’s palace and touched the drifted sand with a muted orange glow. Feathered lizards darted from their lairs to hunt insects in the cooling shadows. From a rocky outcropping, a meewit screeched once, twice, then fell silent.

Ree-Yees struggled up the stairs from the side entrance, lugging a bucket. He halted at the top, his three eyes darting furtively over the eroded hills and the entrance behind him. As he stood there, his bony chest heaving, something of the twilight stillness seeped into him. It soothed the sting of that last bout with Ephant Mon, the one which began with, “You’re such an incompetent snot-brain, Ree-Yees, I can’t see why Jabba keeps you around,” and ended with Tessek, Jabba’s Quarren lieutenant, pulling the two of them apart.

The sand whispered softly as a hot wind, the last exhalation of the day, blew across it. If Ree-Yees squinted his two side eyes, he could almost see the dunes as mounds of gently waving goatgrass. A pang rippled through his Grannish heart. He was not as drunk as usual, and not nearly as drunk as he wished he was. The arrival of the two new droids had made it difficult to slip away and refill his tankard with Jabba’s best Sullustan gin.

Soon, Ree-Yees promised himself. Soon he’d be done with Ephant Mon and the rest of them. He picked up the bucket and shambled over to Jabba’s frog-dog, which had been put outside for the night. A tongue, long and sticky, dipped into the malodorous stew, then retracted with a snap, bearing blobs of moldy bantha fat, gelatinous chuff, and fragments of Viridian termite jaws on its bulbous tip. As the bubo swallowed, Ree-Yees reached down and dug his fingers into a purple wart on the side of the beast’s shoulder.

It was a particularly large and fleshy growth. With a plop! the flap of skin pulled loose to reveal a miniature panel, two light squares and a reset button. Only Imperial technicians could design and fit such a device, undetected, right on Jabba’s doorstep. A symbol glowed on one square with today’s date, while the other flashed the words, “Shipment complete.”

Ree-Yees secured the skin flap and snuffled in relief.

With this last shipment, the detonator, he would now be able to complete his end of the bargain. In return, the Empire would wipe that triple-blasted murder rap off Ree-Yees’s record and he could go home to Kinyen again-No! Too risky to think about that now! Better to keep playing Jabba’s fool, despised and mocked, until the deed was done.

Better to stay safely drunk, cut off from the visions which hovered, like half-glimpsed memories, at the corners of his eyes… fields of goatgrass glistening in the sun, oh yes… and the rut-scent of females, their velvet flanks, their breasts like tripled jewels-No.

Better to stay drunk. Better to wait.

The frog-dog, having gulped down the last of the slops, turned one eye speculatively on Ree-Yees, as if wondering how he would taste.

Ree-Yees stepped aside just in time to avoid another flick of the prehensile tongue.

Ree-Yees slugged the creature on the side of the head. ”Stupid two-eyed maggot fish! It’s a good thing I don’t need you anymore!”

The bubo cowered, its expression one of reproachful innocence.

Once he’d turned to head back toward the palace, it hissed something extremely rude-sounding and almost intelligible at him.

Muttering under his breath, Ree-Yees shuffled down the hall toward Jabba’s audience chamber. The Gamorrean on guard rumbled forward, force pike raised and red-rimmed eyes glinting. His tusks gleamed wetly in the dim light. Ree-Yees had fleeced him easily at four-cubes last night and the Gamorrean hadn’t even realized he was being cheated.

“Outta my way, pig-slime!”

The Gamorrean poked Ree-Yees’s chest with the tip of his ax.

“Where you go? What you do?”

The slightest touch of the force pike stung, even through Ree-Yees’s leather jerkin “Get that crotting thing away from me!”

“Urghh!”

“So you say, spawn of Nilgarian worm! But there’s gonna be some changes around here real soon. Jabba won’t always—”

“Jabba-Jabba urghh-phth!”

Just then, a tall figure separated itself from the shadowy interior and hurried toward them. It was that interfering Quarren, Tessek.

Tessek’s mouth tentacles rithed in agitation.

“What’sss going on?”

“Jabba-no-Jabba urk-urkl” squealed the guard, waving his force pike wildly.

“A minor misssunderssstanding, sssoon remedied.”

With one hand, Tessek herded Ree-Yees down the tunnel, with the other he gestured to the guard. “Remain here at your possst and sssay nothing of thisss to anyone!”

Ree-Yees stumbled along, propelled by Tessek’s grip. By the time they were out of earshot of the guard, the Quarren had regained control of his speaking apparatus.

“what do you think you’re doing? Do you want Jabba to suspect-You’re drunk again, aren’t you?

Give me that tankard!”

Ree-Yees jerked away. “None of your stinking business—and keep your hands off what’s mine. You aren’t the only one—” With an effort, he managed to shut himself up. Tessek had the right idea, keeping the Gamorrean from running to Jabba. Tessek, with all his schemes, was too wily, too close to guessing what Ree-Yees was really up to. With Doellin’s own luck, he wouldn’t need Tessek much longer, either.

“Now hurry on back,” Tessek said smoothly. “Some new bounty hunter has come for the reward on the Wookiee and you won’t want to miss the fun.”

Snuffling, Ree-Yees hurried off to the audience chamber.

That night, Jabba ordered a hidden watch set on the audience hall and an alarm for his prized wall possession, the carbonite-frozen Corellian smuggler. What a bother, Ree-Yees thought, but something had aroused Jabba’s suspicions even more than usual. At last Ree-Yees was able to slip away, refill his gin tankard, and make his way along the darkened corridor to the kitchen.

Ree-Yees paused beneath the ancient wooden beams of the doorway and peered in, but saw no sign that anyone was present.

Phlegmin, that odious little wart of a scullion, had been more than happy to take his winnings in exchange for setting aside the marked shipments of goatgrass, never dreaming what lay hidden within them. He probably thought Ree-Yees was indulging in nostalgic gluttony. It was just the sort of thing Phlegmin himself would do when he wasn’t complaining how badly treated he was or bragging how famous he’d be once he got off this dustball planet.

Ree-Yees guessed that Phlegmin did more than divert a few crates of vegetables; once he’d spied the kitchen boy adding something to the tank of Jabba’s favorite live appetizers. Ree-Yees watched him even more closely when the box of goatgrass containing the bomb casing had gone missing. Luckily, no alarm followed, only a particularly successful casserole, which seemed to temporarily allay Jabba’s suspicions of the chef.

“Phlegmin?” Ree-Yees called. “Old mucus-face?”

The faint scuffle of footsteps answered him, then a mu the two-eyes then, he’d find the shipment on his own. He hurried into the receiving area. Here the walls were lined with boxes of pickled meats, crates of dried fruits and beetles, casks of wine, jars of preserved tortoise dung, honeyed oil, caviar, and radioactive potassium salts–all the delicacies the Hutt’s appetite required. He began looking around, lifting the lids of packing crates, peering down aisles of stacked cartons and around giant barrels.

Ree-Yees called out once more, but once again there was no response.

Suddenly he spotted a box of about the right size, lying on its side behind a vat of fermented sandmaggot eggs, On second glance, he saw that it was splintered open, its silvery green contents spilled across the stone floor. Phlegmin was sprawled on the floor beside the box. In his years at Jabba’s palace, Ree-Yees had seen enough dead bodies to know one instantly, even if it were human. No mere sleep could produce such a graceless tangle.

Porcellus the cook was hunched over the body, wringing his hands.

His head jerked up, his eyes bulged, and his hair—what there was of it— stood out in all directions.

“I had nothing to do with it!” he yelped.

Ignoring the hysterical screams of the cook, Ree-Yees threw himself down beside the box and raked his fingers through the silky goatgrass. He picked up the shattered box and shook it upside down, but it was no use.

The vital detonation link, the last component, was not there.

Ree-Yees bleated in terror. Whoever killed that pathetic excuse for a scullion must have taken the detonation link—knew what it was-But wait!

He couldn’t know the target was Jabba’s sail barge—or who had the rest of the bomb All was not lost, if he could act quickly.

Once the body was discovered, Jabba would launch an investigation, no matter that this Phlegmin had been an insignificant and easily replaceable midge-brain. No one was allowed to die within the palace except those the Hutt himself ordered killed. But of late there had been strange goings-on in the back passageways—”Urghh!” came a bellow from the doorway, even less articulate than usual for a Gamorrean.

“I didn’t do it!” the cook screamed again.

Ree-Yees was so badly startled he would have fallen if he were not already on his knees. All three of his eyes froze on the stocky figure in the doorway—Gartogg.

Doellin’s triple teats! What a stroke of luck! This particular Gamorrean was so stupid he couldn’t even learn to play Snot, let alone realize when he was being cheated.

“Urggh-snuffle-snort?”

Ree-Yees scrambled to his feet and shoved the cook aside. “You’re just in time! I found himmlike this—down the hall—near the tunnel to Ephant Mon’s quarters! I brought him here to—to—to perform resus—suspiration!”

“Hunh?”

“You know—emergency culinary resuspiration! The smell of food so—so—so ripe it can bring the dead back to life! An ancient art, one I learned from my great-uncle, Swee-beeps. We call it–er–garbage inhalation of the last resort. But alas”—Ree-Yees’s eyestalks drooped mournfully—”I was too late.” He sighed loudly.