Trilogy (59 page)

Luke raised his hand and pointed at the guards. Before either could draw a weapon, they were both clutching their own throats, choking, gasping. They fell to their knees.

Luke lowered his hand and walked on. The guards, suddenly able to breathe again, slumped to the sanddrifted steps. They didn't follow.

Around the next corner Luke was met by Bib Fortuna. Fortuna began speaking as he approached the young Jedi, but Luke never broke stride, so Bib had to reverse his direction in mid-sentence and hurry along with Skywalker in order to carry on a conversation.

“You must be the one called Skywalker. His Excellency will not see you.”

“I will speak to Jabba, now,” Luke spoke evenly, never slowing. They passed several more guards at the next crossing, who fell in behind them.

“The great Jabba is asleep,” Bib explained. “He has instructed me to tell you there will be no bargains—”

Luke stopped suddenly, and stared at Bib. He locked eyes with the major-domo, raised his hand slightly, took a minutely inward turn. “You will take me to Jabba, now.”

Bib paused, tilted his head a fraction. What were his instructions? Oh, yes, now he remembered. “I will take you to Jabba, now.”

He turned and walked down the twisting corridor that led to the throne chamber. Luke followed him into the gloom.

“You serve your master well,” he whispered in Bib's ear.

“I serve my master well.” Bib nodded with conviction.

“You are sure to be rewarded,” Luke added.

Bib smiled smugly. “I am sure to be rewarded.”

As Luke and Bib entered Jabba's court, the level of tumult dropped precipitously as if Luke's presence had a cooling effect. Everyone felt the change.

The lieutenant and the Jedi Knight approached the throne. Luke saw Leia seated there, now, by Jabba's belly. She was chained at the neck and dressed in the skimpy costume of a dancing girl. He could feel her pain immediately, from across the room—but he said nothing, didn't even look at her, shut her anguish completely out of his mind. For he needed to focus his attention entirely on Jabba.

Leia, for her part, sensed this at once. She closed her mind to Luke, to keep herself from distracting him; yet at the same time she kept it open, ready to receive any sliver of information she might need to act. She felt charged with possibilities.

Threepio peeked out from behind the throne as Bib walked up. For the first time in many days, he scanned his hope program. “Ah! At last Master Luke's come to take me away from all this,” he beamed.

Bib stood proudly before Jabba. “Master, I present Luke Skywalker, Jedi Knight.”

“I told you not to admit him,” the gangster-slug growled in Huttese.

“I must be allowed to speak.” Luke spoke quietly, though his words were heard throughout the hall.

“He must be allowed to speak,” Bib concurred thoughtfully.

Jabba, furious, bashed Bib across the face and sent him reeling to the floor. “You weak-minded fool! He's using an old Jedi mind trick!”

Luke let all the rest of the motley horde that surrounded him melt into the recesses of his consciousness, to let Jabba fill his mind totally. “You will bring Captain Solo and the Wookiee to me.”

Jabba smiled grimly. “Your mind powers will not work on me, boy. I am not affected by your human thought pattern.” Then, as an afterthought: “I was killing your kind when being a Jedi meant something.”

Luke altered his stance somewhat, internally and externally. “Nevertheless, I am taking Captain Solo and his friends. You can either profit from this … 
or be destroyed. It's your choice, but I warn you not to underestimate my powers.” He spoke in his own language, which Jabba well understood.

Jabba laughed the laugh of a lion cautioned by a mouse.

Threepio, who had been observing this interplay intently, leaned forward to whisper to Luke: “Master, you're standing—” A guard abruptly restrained the concerned droid, though, and pulled him back to his place.

Jabba cut short his laugh with a scowl. “There will be no bargain, young Jedi. I shall enjoy watching you die.”

Luke raised his hand. A pistol jumped out of the holster of a nearby guard and landed snugly in the Jedi's palm. Luke pointed the weapon at Jabba.

Jabba spat. “Boscka!”

The floor suddenly dropped away, sending Luke and his guard crashing into the pit below. The trapdoor immediately closed again. All the beasts of the court rushed to the floor-grating and looked down.

“Luke!” yelled Leia. She felt part of her self torn away, pulled down into the pit with him. She started forward, but was held in check by the manacle around her throat. Raucous laughter crowded in from everywhere at once, set her on edge. She poised to flee.

A human guard touched her shoulder. She looked. It was Lando. Imperceptibly, he shook his head. No. Imperceptibly, her muscles relaxed. This wasn't the right moment, he knew—but it was the right hand. All the cards were here, now—Luke, Han, Leia, Chewbacca … and old Wild Card Lando. He just
didn't want Leia revealing the hand before all the bets were out. The stakes were just too high.

In the pit below, Luke picked himself up off the floor. He found he was now in a large cavelike dungeon, the walls formed of craggy boulders pocked with lightless crevices. The half-chewed bones of countless animals were strewn over the floor, smelling of decayed flesh and twisted fear.

Twenty-five feet above him, in the ceiling, he saw the iron grating through which Jabba's repugnant courtiers peered.

The guard beside him suddenly began to scream uncontrollably, as a door in the side of the cave slowly rumbled open. With infinite calm, Luke surveyed his surroundings as he removed his long robe down to his Jedi tunic, to give him more freedom of movement. He backed quickly to the wall and crouched there, watching.

Out of the side passage emerged the giant Rancor. The size of an elephant, it was somehow reptilian, somehow as unformed as a nightmare. Its huge screeching mouth was asymmetrical in its head, its fangs and claws set all out of proportion. It was clearly a mutant, and wild as all unreason.

The guard picked up the pistol from the dirt where it had fallen and began firing laser bursts at the hideous monster. This only made the beast angrier. It lumbered toward the guard.

The guard kept firing. Ignoring the laser blasts, the beast grabbed the hysterical guard, popped him into its slavering jaws, and swallowed him in a gulp. The audience above cheered, laughed, and threw coins.

The monster then turned and started for Luke. But the Jedi Knight leaped eight meters straight up and grabbed onto the overhead grate. The crowd began to boo. Hand over hand, Luke traversed the grating toward the corner of the cave, struggling to maintain his grip as the audience jeered his efforts. One hand slipped on the oily grid, and he dangled precariously over the baying mutant.

Two jawas ran across the top of the grate. They mashed Luke's fingers with their rifle butts; once again, the crowd roared its approval.

The Rancor pawed at Luke from below, but the Jedi dangled just out of reach. Suddenly Luke released his hold and dropped directly onto the eye of the howling monster; he then tumbled to the floor.

The Rancor screamed in pain and stumbled, swatting its own face to knock away the agony. It ran in circles a few times, then spotted Luke again and came at him. Luke stooped down to pick up the long bone of an earlier victim. He brandished it before him. The gallery above thought this was hilarious and hooted in delight.

The monster grabbed Luke and brought him up to its salivating mouth. At the last moment, though, Luke wedged the bone deep in the Rancor's mouth and jumped to the floor as the beast began to gag. The Rancor bellowed and flailed about, running headlong into a wall. Several rocks were dislodged, starting an avalanche that nearly buried Luke, as he crouched deep in a crevice near the floor. The crowd clapped in unison.

Luke tried to clear his mind. Fear is a great cloud, Ben used to tell him. It makes the cold colder and
the dark darker; but let it rise and it will dissolve. So Luke let it rise past the clamor of the beast above him, and examined ways he might turn the sad creature's rantings on itself.

It was not an evil beast, that much was clear. Had it been purely malicious, its wickedness could easily have been turned on itself—for pure evil, Ben had said, was always self-destructive in the end. But this monster wasn't bad—merely dumb and mistreated. Hungry and in pain, it lashed out at whatever came near. For Luke to have looked on that as evil would only have been a projection of Luke's own darker aspects—it would have been false, and it certainly wouldn't have helped him out of this situation.

No, he was going to have to keep his mind clear—that was all—and just outwit the savage brute, to put it out of its misery.

Most preferable would have been to set it loose in Jabba's court, but that seemed unlikely. He considered, next, giving the creature the means to do itself in—to end its own pain. Unfortunately, the creature was far too angered to comprehend the solace of the void. Luke finally began studying the specific contours of the cave, to try to come up with a specific plan.

The Rancor, meanwhile, had knocked the bone from its mouth and, enraged, was scrabbling through the rubble of fallen rocks, searching for Luke. Luke, though his vision was partially obscured by the pile that still sheltered him, could see now past the monster, to a holding cave beyond—and beyond that, to a utility door. If only he could get to it.

The Rancor knocked away a boulder and spotted
Luke recoiling in the crevice. Voraciously, it reached in to pluck the boy out. Luke grabbed a large rock and smashed it down on the creature's finger as hard as he could. As the Rancor jumped, howling in pain once more, Luke ran for the holding cave.

He reached the doorway and ran in. Before him, a heavy barred gate blocked the way. Beyond this gate, the Rancor's two keepers sat eating dinner. They looked up as Luke entered, then stood and walked toward the gate.

Luke turned around to see the monster coming angrily after him. He turned back to the gate and tried to open it. The keepers poked at him with their two-pronged spears, jabbed at him through the bars, laughing and chewing their food, as the Rancor drew closer to the young Jedi.

Luke backed against the side wall, as the Rancor reached in to the room for him. Suddenly he saw the restraining-door control panel halfway up the opposite wall. The Rancor began to enter the holding room, closing for the kill, when all at once Luke picked up a skull off the floor and hurled it at the panel.

The panel exploded in a shower of sparks, and the giant iron overhead restraining door came crashing down on the Rancor's head, crushing it like an axe smashing through a ripe watermelon.

Those in the audience above gasped as one, then were silent. They were all truly stunned at this bizarre turn of events. They all looked to Jabba, who was apoplectic with rage. Never had he felt such fury. Leia tried to hide her delight, but was unable to
keep from smiling, and this increased Jabba's anger even further. Harshly he snapped at his guards: “Get him out of there. Bring me Solo and the Wookiee. They will all suffer for this outrage.”

In the pit below, Luke stood calmly as several of Jabba's henchmen ran in, clapped him in bonds, and ushered him out.

The Rancor keeper wept openly and threw himself down on the body of his dead pet. Life would be a lonely proposition for him from that day.

H
an and Chewie were led before the steaming Jabba. Han still squinted and stumbled every few feet. Threepio stood behind the Hutt, unbearably apprehensive. Jabba kept Leia on a short tether, stroking her hair to try to calm himself. A constant murmuring filled the room, as the rabble speculated on what was going to happen to whom.

With a flurry, several guards—including Lando Calrissian—dragged Luke in across the room. To give them passage, the courtiers parted like an unruly sea. When Luke, too, was standing before the throne, he nudged Solo with a smile. “Good to see you again, old buddy.”

Solo's face lit up. There seemed to be no end to the number of friends he kept bumping into. “Luke! Are you in this mess now, too?”

“Wouldn't miss it,” Skywalker smiled. For just a moment, he almost felt like a boy again.

“Well, how we doing?” Han raised his eyebrows.

“Same as always,” said Luke.

“Oh-oh,” Solo replied under his breath. He felt one hundred percent relaxed. Just like old times—but a second later, a bleak thought chilled him.

“Where's Leia? Is she …”

Her eyes had been fixed on him from the moment he'd entered the room, though—guarding his spirit with her own. When he spoke of her now, she responded instantly, calling from her place on Jabba's throne. “I'm all right, but I don't know how much longer I can hold off your slobbering friend, here.” She was intentionally cavalier, to put Solo at ease. Besides, the sight of all of her friends there at once made her feel nearly invincible. Han, Luke, Chewie, Lando—even Threepio was skulking around somewhere, trying to be forgotten. Leia almost laughed out loud, almost punched Jabba in the nose. She could barely restrain herself. She wanted to hug them all.

Suddenly Jabba shouted; the entire room was immediately silent. “Talkdroid!”

Timidly, Threepio stepped forward and with an embarrassed, self-effacing head gesture, addressed the captives. “His High Exaltedness, the great Jabba the Hutt, has decreed that you are to be terminated immediately.”

Solo said loudly, “That's good, I hate long waits …”

“Your extreme offense against His Majesty,” Threepio went on, “demands the most torturous form of death …”

“No sense in doing things halfway,” Solo cracked. Jabba could be so pompous, sometimes,
and now with old Goldenrod, there, making his pronouncements …

No matter what else, Threepio simply
hated
being interrupted. He collected himself, nonetheless, and continued. “You will be taken to the Dune Sea, where you will be thrown into the Great Pit of Carkoon …”