Tales From Jabbas Palace (Kevin Anderson) (9 page)

Which—correct me if I’m wrong—strikes me as stupid.”

“Stupid.”

“Ah! Then we’re in agreement. When I was first plotting—I mean considering this expedition, my fellow academics Ra Yasht and Skarten told me I couldn’t go wrong with you by my side. Perhaps you remember them? You helped them research that fascinating monograph on Torture Observed: An Interview with Jabba’s Cook.”

The creature made a retching sound, though whether this was a literary or culinary critique remained unspecified.

“You’re certainly entitled to your own opinion, but that monograph was the making of their reputations at the university. Instant tenure.

Professor P’tan was infuriated—they hadn’t suffered enough yet, by his standards-but the board overruled him. Right then I sent in my own request for leave to do a project so challenging, so sweeping in its scope, that even were Professor P’tan to bully the board into siding with him, the sheer audacity of my work would compel them to renege and end by favoring me. I would delve into one of the greatest and least-known sociopolitical mysteries of the galaxy. I would lift the veil between polite society and the darkest, slimiest, most hideously profitable phenomenon of our time. I would interview Jabba the Hutt! “

Melvosh Bloor’s eyes shone as he recalled the grandeur of his scheme.

“Interview the Hutt?” Thick chuckles, like laughter emerging from a pudding, bubbled up from Melvosh Bloor’s guide.

“Uh… quite. Sit down nicely with him, like civilized beings, and—”

“Nicely? Nicely! With him?”

In the face of such obviously open ridicule, the academic went on the defensive. “I fail to see the humor,” he said stiffly. “I realize that the— the Bloated One as he is so colorfully called, has a certain reputation, but still—” Melvosh Bloor pursed his lips as well as any Kalkal could manage. “When you were originally contacted about this, you said you could arrange it. You represented yourself as one very close to Jabba.”

“Close to Jabba.” The creature’s chuckles burst into full-fledged cackles once more, but he bobbed his head.

“Then you can take me to him? Not merely as far as his, ah, majordomo or secretary or whoever it is weeds out the riffraff, but all the way to Jabba himself?”

“Take? Can take, ha!” Now the creature’s head was nodding so exuberantly his ear-tassels looked ready to fly off any moment. “All the way!” He grabbed his long, flexible feet and rolled back and forth on his flabby bottom..”To Jabba, to Jabba, to Jabba.”

“The way Professor P’tan’s guide took him?”

Melvosh Bloor replied coldly. In this small chamber it was possible to believe oneself safe, possible to forget for a time that one was burrowed deep into the stronghold of the galaxy’s most ruthless crimelord. In such an environment of self-deceit, the academic reverted to his classroom manner, a style that combined frigid disdain for underlings, shameless toadying to superiors, and backstabbing ad-lib, as the opportunity presented itself.

“He got wind of my plans, P’tan did,” Melvosh Bloor went on. “He came barging in while I was petitioning the board for leave and financing. He said that it was ludicrous to entrust a study of such magnitude to a junior faculty member—never mind that it was my ideal He claimed I’d get the data all bollixed, or be taken in by the HutCs, ah, propensities for elasticizing the facts.”

“Lies, lies, lies,” the repulsive little creature opined.

“Like a Gran!”

“Well, I suppose I agree with you there,” Melvosh Bloor allowed, giving his guide a condescending smile. “But I won’t tell Jabba you said that about him if you won’t tell him I agreed with you.”

“Ohhh, I won’t tell Jabba. Hahahahaha.”

“Er, good.” Really, the creature’s unseemly attacks of hilarity were becoming most distressing to the academic’s timid nature.

“Jabba’s ethics aside, Professor P’tan went on to insist that he undertake my proposed study. Which he did. Perhaps the board felt that one miserable thief’was best qualified to interview another.”

“Miserable thief? Jabba the Hutt? Jabba, miserable thief, lies like a Gran?” The guide’s tasseled ears pricked up.

“Do excuse my language. Heat of the moment. Although, um, I believe that last bit lies like a Gran—you said that… didn’t you?”

“Didn’t.” The lipless mouth snapped shut.

“But you did! I admit, I saidJabba lies, but you were the one who–” A glance at that hard little face made Melvosh Bloor realize he was engaged in a losing battle over a minor point. He sighed wearily.

“Very well, have it your way, if you insist: I said Jabba lies like a Gran. Now may I continue?”

A taloned paw executed a parody of a fine lady’s gesture when dismissing an unwanted servant.

“So P’tan came here.” The Kalkal’s wide mouth was exceptionally well suited to a grim expression. “And was never heard from again. We all hoped— assumed he was dead, but the board likes to be sure. That way they have a solid reason for cutting off his wife’s benefits.

That is why they sent me, to determine conclusively whether Professor P’tan still lived. Ridiculous, of course; he had to be dead.

I resolved to turn this trip into the expedition it should have been in the first place—my expedition to interview Jabba the Hutt.

Now you tell me Professor P’tan is still alive.” The academic’s teeth ground together.

“Still alive.” The creature leered. “Sarlacc eat one meal 1oooooong time, hahahahaha!”

“The Sarlacc!” Melvosh Bloor was horrorstruck.

While he was no expert on life beyond the university walls, he had heard enough shivery tales of the Sarlacc and its protracted digestive habits while he was awaiting his Jawa guide in Mos Eisley to more than compensate for that lacuna in his education. “You mean Professor P’tan fell into the—the—?”

“Splat,; his guide provided smugly. “Splat, ow, shrieeeeeeek!”

?????? he added as an afterthought.

“Not so loud, not so loud!” Melvosh Bloor hissed, making desperate hushing motions with his hands.

“Huh! Coward. Think I stupid?” The creature put on an air of the highest dudgeon. “Like fool guide fool P’tan hire? Fools for Sarlacc pit! I offer be his guide.

He listen? Nooooooo. He lunch! Dinner. Breakfast.

More lunch. Snack. Sup—” The academic was taken aback by this diatribe.

“Mercy on us, P’tan’s guide must. have been a fool of the first water.

Whom did he hire? How stupid was he?”

For an answer, the creature flew into gales of wheezy joy. “How stupid was he? How stupid was he? Fool P’tan went hire”—snorts and guffaws—”went hire”—gasps for air and fresh howls of mirth—”went hire Salacious Crumb!” Having communicated this intelligence, the whole effort proved to be too much for the small creature and he laughed so hard he fell off his perch onto his head. He then said a nasty word so arcane that Melvosh Bloor made haste to enter it in his datapad for later linguistic study before asking: “Who—who is Salacious Crumb? I’m afraid I don’t know—”

“Uh-huh.” The creature grunted emphatically, clambering back onto his sandstone block.

“But… what’s so foolish about hiring this Salacious Crumb?

Has he no experience with the layout of the palace?”

“Experience? Heel Knows palace like back of my—his right paw.

Ha!”

“In that case… not a good contact for approach-ingJabba?

He is one of the Hutt’s enemies, perhaps?”

“Hutt’s enemy?” A groan of melodramatic proportions shook the small creature as it covered its face with its paws. “No one closer to Bloated One! No one. All day, every day, Hutt say ‘Crumb, Salacious Crumb,’ he say, ‘Salacious Crumb, make me laugh now or I eat you!’”

“Er, I see,” said Melvosh Bloor, who didn’t. “I’m afraid I don’t quite get the joke, but—”

“Better you don’t than Jabba don’t. Every day, every day, fresh jokes.

All time, fresh, fresh, fresh! Try tell Bloated One same joke twice!” The creature’s face doubled in on itself in a frightful grimace.

“Are you saying that this Salacious Crumb deliberately led Professor P’tan to fall into the Sarlacc pit as a - - a joke?”

The creature turned a totally innocent gaze to the academic.

“Smatter? You don’t get it?”

Melvosh Bloor shook his head.

The creature sighed. “Bloated One too don’t. Seen it. He say, ‘Next time, louder and funnier.’” Melvosh Bloor’s yellow eyes narrowed suspiciously.

“You seem to know an awful lot about the doings of Salacious Crumb.”

“So?” The creature sprang to its feet, its pelt standing out in spikes that made it even more unattractive to the eye. “You know lot aboutJabba. This makes you Hutt?”

Melvosh Bloor shuddered. “I hope not.”

The creature snorted. “Come.”

For once it was the academic who became the echo.

“Come? Come where? You don’t mean come with you to meet—to meet—Jabba the Hutt?”

“Jabba… the… Hutt!” The creature pronounced the crimelord’s name in a low, rolling, impressive voice reminiscent of Lord Vader himself.

“So—so quickly? So easily?” Melvosh Bloor didn’t know whether to tremble with delight or trepidation, so he settled for a generalized case of the shakes. “You Can take me to him now?”

“Right now. Timing, timing, timing! Time is ripe!” It made a great show of sniffing its own armpits, then cheerfully added, “Me too!” It loped across the floor on all fours and flung open the cell door. “Last one out, Sarlacc food.”

Such an invitation coming hard on the heels of Professor P’tan’s reported fate was impossible to ignore.

Melvosh Bloor thirly sprinted out of the cell in pursuit of his guide.

Once back in the corridor, the creature climbed the academic’s body as if it were a sail barge mast and perched on his shoulder. “You listen,” it hissed in his ear. “I do talk, get it? Else—” It drew one claw across its own scrawny throat and uttered: “Sskkkr-rrhtt!”

“You mean you’ll conduct the interview? But my questions—” Melvosh Bloor gestured helplessly with his datapad.

His guide grabbed it from his hands and chewed on one corner experimentally. “Naaaah. You shut up until throne room. Then you talk.” He chortled. “Oh boy.”

Melvosh Bloor snatched back his datapad and secured it from the creature’s covetous fingers. “That is agreeable,” he said. “Let’s go.”

The sights and sounds that greeted the Kalkal in the palace vaults would have been fodder for a score of monographs on debauchery, suffering, and substandard hygiene, had he been minded to turn back from his original goal. From its piggyback perch, his guide greeted every other being they passedTwi’lek, Gamorrean, Quarren, and the rest—with an easy camaraderie that was… Well, in truth, it was downright rude.

Insults and jibes flew from the ugly little creature’s mouth with astonishing fluency. Melvosh Bloor’s fingers almost fell off from the rapidity with which he had to enter the many terms with which the other inhabitants of Jabba’s palace showered his guide. (All of them filed under “U” for “Unbelievably Foul.”) At last they came to a curtained portal. A tusked Gamorrean raised his vibro-ax in challenge until Melvosh Bloor’s guide poked his head up over the Kalkal’s shoulder and loosed an ear-splitting cackle.

The Gamorrean snorted in reply and waved them through.

As Melvosh Bloor stepped into Jabba the Hutt’s throne room he felt an overwhelming sense of awe that was almost as heart-shaking as the dread that had possessed him when he went in to take his doctoral oral examination. Jabba the Hutt in person was indescribably more imposing than the mountains of research the academic had accumulated to prepare himself for this moment. He felt the weight of his guide drop from his back and saw the creature scamper across the vast chamber to the Hutt’s very throne. Such boldness should by rights result in immediate consumption (so the Kalkal’s research led him to believe) but was not.

Instead, the crimelord actually permitted the creature to scale his monstrous body and whisper something for Jabba’s ears alone. The academic’s heart leaped at this irrefutable evidence of his guide’s favored status with the Bloated One. He could almost taste his tenure now.

“Er… Exalted One?” The academic faltered as he approached the throne. Jabba regarded him impassively, which he took as a good sign.

He dared to move closer yet. “I am Melvosh Bloor of Beshka University and I—”

“University?” the Hutt thundered.

“Y-yes. I have come here to—to honor and immortalize you by publishing an in-depth study of the thoughts and motivations that guide you in the establishment and maintenance of your crimin—ex-trasocial empire.”

“Mmm.” The sound of rumination rumbled through the Hutt’s enormous body. “In other words you expect me to tell you all my secrets freely, so that you can then put them on display where any of my rivals may study them?” He leaned forward, his mouth uncomfortably close to Melvosh Bloor’s head. The academic tried to back away, but something sharp was there, in the small of his back, to make retreat a suicidal alternative. He thought he detected the grunting of a Gamorrean guard.

Jabba’s body shook. His mouth fell open. Melvosh Bloor froze, positive that his life was about to end in one gulp. And then, the unthinkable: booming mirth engulfed the throne room. Jabba was laughing, a sound duly taken up by the Hutt’s lackeys and retainers.

At length the shaking and the laughter stopped.

Jabba drew a deep breath. “Me tell that my secrets and I’m to consider it an honor? Now that’s funny,” he said.

“What I say, Master?” Melvosh Bloor saw his guide come dancing in between him and the Hutt’s looming bulk. “This guy a riot!”

“A… riot?” the Kalkal echoed, stunned.

“Indeed. I am surprised,” Jabba admitted. “Usually academics are too dry to be funny, or even digestible.

I know: I never forget a taste.”

Melvosh Bloor’s skin went cold. “Taste?” he peeped. “You mean you—you—? Professor P’tan—?”

“That’s the name.” IfJabba had possessed the ability to snap his fingers at a memory recaptured, he would have done so. “You are the second academic to disturb my court, thanks to the insolence of my miserable servant, Salacious Crumb.” One of the Hutt’s truncated arms gestured at the madly prancing creature.