Tales From Jabba's Palace

by Kevin J. Anderson

  I try not to look down. My left leg's gone beneath the knee. I didn't

  even notice it going, tell you the truth. One day I looked down and

  there it was, on the floor of the pit, down in the acid, being dissolved

  down into nothing.

  That annoying Susejo leaves me alone at times. I don't know what he

  does when he's not talking to me; maybe he's off draining Mica the way

  he's draining me. I don't know exactly what Susejo's doing to us · . .

  but well, some days I'm not even certain sure who I am anymore.

  There's been a lot of us down here; I guess Susejo keeps the ones he and

  the Sarlacc enjoy, for a while anyway. It's a sort of immortality, I

  suppose, but love, I could have tolerated actually dying a lot better. I

  always thought that' how I'd go, you know; fleeing a blaster wedding at

  the age of ninety-three, something with a little style.

  (I'm not even sure if you're the girl I remember.

  Some days you have black hair and skin and you're studying to be a

  minister, of all things, and other days it's blond hair and green eyes

  and you pilot a starship and darn if I can remember which of you !

  actually fell in love with, or if it was both of you and you were

  different people . . .

  (I did love you. I remember that.) A lot of memories floating around in

  here with me.

  The Sarlacc is a soup, and the ingredients are all the people she's

  taken, over the centuries, over the millennia.

  Susejo's never admitted it, but I suspect that's all that he is; the

  oldest of the soup's ingredients. Kess, Susejo said.

  I'll answer to that, I replied. Why not? One name being as' good as

  another.

  Your name is Kess, he said firmly. You're a Corellian gambler...

  the Sarlacc's been eating you a little faster than I'd like, and I'm

  sorry about that. You're good company, but the Sarlacc's been hungry

  recently, and I can't control her entirely. Tell me another story ?

  I thought about it, and I remembered the story you told me, little one,

  not long after we met, back in the old days, that one of you that wanted

  to be a minister, back when you thought there was nothing in me worth

  saving--too obsessed with the dice and all, you kept saying, too busy

  looking for the main chance. A man, I told Susejo, being chased by a

  logra, comes to the edge of a cliff. He sees there is nowhere to flee,

  but beholds then a root, protruding from the edge of the cliff.

  He grabs the root and scrambles over the edge of the cliff, hanging high

  above the ground. He looks down, and beholds then another logra, pacing

  below him. He hangs there, unable to go down, unable to climb back up;

  and along come a pair of tiny banda, one black and one white, and they

  begin nibbling at the root. The root begins to come apart .

  . . and suddenly the man sees a berry growing at the edge of the cliff,

  and he plucks it and pops it in his mouth.

  How sweet it tasted. Silence.

  Finally Susejo said, I'm not sure I like that story.

  I hung there on the wall, and with my good eye watched the dust motes

  dance in the sunlight; and I thought to myself how beautiful it was.

  You'd be proud of me, love, whichever one you were.

  Sometime later Susejo said, "The Sarlacc is hungry.

  I think I'll have her eat your arm now."

  Fett felt the horror that the Corellian gambler, dead these many

  centuries, fought against as his limbs decayed, as the Sarlacc ate him

  from the outsides in. Fett floated in a long dreamtime moment, tied to

  the gambler's last moments of real awareness down in the slime on the

  floor of the pit, blind, deaf, limbs dissolved, rib cage cracked apart

  with the tentacles massaging his organs, dreaming of a woman who loved

  him-Boba Fett had been born to anger, and rage was his life. He

  struggled up out of the vision, fought it wildly, carried himself up out

  of the nightmare on the back of a wave of fury and abruptly was back,

  there in his body with the pain of the burning acid all around him,

  suffused with a clear, lucid, thinking hatred, an emotion so dark and

  deep and pure the Dark Lord himself might never have felt its equal.

  He could hear his own heartbeat thudding in his ears and he said, "I'm

  going to kill you very slowly," and he had never meant anything more in

  his life.

  He hung in the darkness with his hatred.

  Sometime later Susejo said, "I suppose I'll let the Sarlacc start on

  your leg."

  Blaster rifle, wrist lasers, rocket dart launcher; grappling hook, flame

  projector, concussion grenade launcher. Unfortunately almost all of

  them required the use of his hands, and his arms and legs were

  spreadeagled against the wall, held flat by an interwoven mesh of

  several hundred tentacles. Straining did no good; the tentacles merely

  gripped more tightly, and Fett barely moved.

  The tentacles probed against him, seeking a way through his Mandalorian

  combat armor. A pair of large tentacles had taken hold of Fett's right

  leg, and they tugged at it, pulling back and forth at the knee joint.

  The armor had held, and would hold; that much did not worry Fett. The

  digestive acid the Sarlacc used did worry him; it had already made its

  way through to his skin. Most of his body burned, chest and back and

  arms and legs. So far the acid had not made it through his helmet, and

  had not made it past the blast armor that covered his genitals; thank

  Providence for small favors.

  He had access to the contents of his helmet. The comlink built into it

  was silent; he had scanned through all frequencies, and all he got was

  static, which might mean that there was nobody within range of the

  helmet's comlink, about ninety klicks, or might mean that the bulk of

  the Sarlacc was blocking the signal, and finally might mean that the

  comlink itself was broken.

  The Sarlacc wrenched violently at Fett's left knee.

  His armor held and Fett was yanked down the wall, the tentacles holding

  his upper body losing their grip slightly. He ended up hanging at an

  angle as the tentacles wrapped themselves about him again . . .

  and there was a pressure against the sole of his right foot.

  He'd been dragged down far enough that his right foot was now in contact

  with the ground.

  What good that did him--if any--Fett did not know. He flexed the foot

  to see if he could get a purchase; perhaps.

  He relaxed and considered.

  The sensors and computer built into his combat suit had continued to

  work, even after Fett had lost consciousness.

  The computer responded to verbal commands; Fett had it play back the

  entire sequence of events that had landed him in the Great Pit of

  Carkoon, using the heads-up tac display in his helmet for video. The

  first time through the playback he had to switch it off after realizing

  that Solo had--accidentally!--activated his jet pack. The holocam angle

  was terrible, but there was no question about it; that illegitimate Solo

  had sent him flying into the pit by chance.

  It took him several minutes before he was able to try and watch it

  again.

  He lift
ed up from the sail barge, dropping down onto the skiff, with the

  Jedi and Solo and Chewbacca.

  And . . . yes. Right there; the butt of Solo's spear had slammed into

  the emergency access panel, activating the jets.

  The on-board computer couldn't access the jet pack; they were not linked

  together. Fett couldn't run diagnostics on the pack, had no idea

  whether the thing was working or not. The emergency access panel was

  behind him, to his right; if he'd been able to get his left hand free,

  he might have been able to reach it-If I could get my left hand free,

  thought Fett dryly, I could do a lot of things.

  Using radar and sonar, Fett had mapped out a rough picture of the

  Sarlacc's interior. Leading away from the main chamber were several

  dozen small tunnels, heading almost straight down into the earth. He

  was about ten meters away from the main chamber; and about forty meters

  beneath the ground. Even if the jet could take him out again, if he

  could move to activate it, even then he'd be stuck in the middle of

  nowhere, in the midst of a great desert-The tentacles holding Fett's

  left leg tightened painfully, just above the knee.

  Fett's lips twisted in a snarl. "I swear by the soul I don't have, I am

  going to kill you."

  Kill who? Susejo laughed. The one who's talking to you ?

  Or the one who's eating you ?

  "Either. Both."

  Ah. You have a very poor attitude, Boba Fett: I almost made it out,

  early on my second day in the pit.

  I lay on my back on the bottom of the pit, in the acid, through the long

  night. The Sarlacc and I "talked" for a while; it's very young and not

  very bright, and I feel sorry for it. It's rare for a Sarlacci spore to

  survive a landing in a desert environment; they're best suited to wet

  environments, though they can survive almost anywhere. ! saw pictures

  once of a Sarlacc that had managed to survive on the surface of an

  airless moon; it was quite small, its aperture less than a meter in

  diameter, but the system it had ended up in was young, and heavy in

  cometary material.

  Comets are principally made up of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and

  nitrogen; this poor little Sarlacc was making do, out there in the

  vacuum. It had the most amazing root system; it was far more plant than

  animal.

  This Sarlacc doesn't have it that bad, tucked away out here in the

  desert. It's not really aware that it exists; it has a neural system,

  but it's not very well deveLoped, and not likely to become so in the

  desert.

  Sarlacci do interesting things with messenger RNA: over the course of

  millennia, they can attain a sort of group consciousness, built out of

  the remains of people they've digested. I talked to such a Sarlacc,

  once a few decades ago. It was a thoroughly asocial creature that

  wondered, quite wistfully, whether a Jedi would taste better or worse

  than the other sentients it had eaten. I remember being amused by it,

  for I knew that I was not such a fool as to come within reach of its

  outer tentacles.

  I walked right over this baby Sarlacc. It lay buried just beneath the

  sand, tentacles hidden in the drifts. It got me by the ankle and

  dragged me down into the pit, through a sand plug nearly a meter thick.

  The sand plug came down right after me, right on top of me. I lay on

  the bottom of the pit, held in place by surprisingly strong tentacles,

  with sand all around me, looking up into the night sky. The Sarlacc's

  digestive acid is weak, and the sand that came down with me has blotted

  up much of it. Nonetheless my clothing is already dissolving; if I do

  get out of here I'll be a sight, a naked sixty-year-old Jedi with a rash

  trying to make it back to her survey ship.

  Even diluted, the acid burns.

  I do not blame the Sarlacc; it is behaving as its nature dictates.

  It's not very bright and it is very young--only five meters wide, and

  perhaps that deep as well.

  Hard to say quite how deep underground I am, looking up into the night

  sky through what used to be the sand plug.

  I may only be the second or third sentient it's ever eaten. One of them

  is hanging, totally cocooned, on a wall in the chamber here with me; a

  Choi named Susejo who was mostly digested already when I fell into the

  pit. I can feel his thoughts; he's mildly telepathic.

  He's very young, for a Choi, barely out of childhood, and very angry--he

  has not taken being eaten very well, and I feel rather sorry for him,

  too.

  When morning came, the light filtered down around me, and I saw my

  chance; my only chance. My lightsaber had come down with me. I hadn't

  been able to tell, there in the darkness; it no longer hung from my

  belt, and I hadn't known whether I'd lost it up on the surface, or down

  here in the pit. It lay on its side in the acid a few feet away from

  me, and I turned my head to look at it.

  It leaped across the pit and into my hand. I lit it and bent my hand

  back at the wrist, bringing the blade down as close to the tentacles

  holding my arm as I could get it, straining; the Sarlacc made a sound, a

  high-pitched squeal, and the tentacles holding that arm pulled free. I

  wrenched the arm free and sliced away at the other tendrils still

  holding me, cutting for just a few seconds until I was free, rolled off

  my back into a crouch, and then-Five meters is a long way up, even for a

  youngJedi. I raised the Force and leaped.

  The tentacle caught my ankle in mid-leap. The Sarlacc broke my leg and

  two of my ribs pulling me back down. I lost the lightsaber again on the

  way down and by the time I had the presence of mind to look for it, it

  was gone for good. I don't know what the Sarlacc did with it, but I

  never saw it again.

  For the rest of the day the Sarlacc remained restless, tentacles waving

  aimlessly, twitching ceaselessly. It held me so tightly that the blood

  flow to my extremities was impaired. It was very upset by the whole

  thing.

  I tried to tell it that I was sorry, that I would not have hurt her had

  I been able to avoid it.

  That got a rise out of the Choi, hanging on the wall facing me--If you

  must chatter, it snapped, at least do it for the benefit of the one who

  can listen to you.

  A slow death has a few things to recommend it; time to get your thoughts

  in order, at any rate. I blocked the pain radiating from my body, and

  frankly, after a few days I was bored, too.

  Susejo, I said, why don't we pass the time by telling each other

  stories?

  Sweat trickled down Fett's form, pooled beneath his armor, mixed with

  the burning acid that covered him.

  An impossible kaleidoscope of lights danced in front of him, and for a

  moment he thought he might vomit into his helmet; that old Jedi woman

  had been real. Her thoughts still echoed away within him, mixed in with

  the thoughts of the Corellian gambler, and the quick bright flashes of a

  dozen other minds, the thoughts and hopes and desires of men and women

  dead years and centuries and millennia. They'd all died, every one of

 
them, sunk down into the acid and let go of life.

  I miss the Jedi, Susejo said. She was very kind to me. Susejo

  obviously had some level of contact with the Sarlacc; the Sarlacc had

  shivered, earlier, when Susejo felt happiness. Fett made a conscious

  decision, and let loose the anger that was never very far beneath the

  surface.

  He snarled, "Then you shouldn't have eaten her, you miserable wretch."

  The hatred in his voice and in his thoughts brought a response from

  Susejo, a flare of startled anger. The tentacles holding Fett tightened

  convulsively and Susejo snapped, I didn't, the Sarlacc ate her.

  Fett wished that the wall behind him were not quite so soft. "And you

  couldn't have stopped it, you couldn't have tried to help her, or anyone

  else, in four thousand years? You're an ingrate, you pathetic excuse

  for a sentient being. You got taken down here as a child and everything

  that you know and everything that you are you owe to the people you let

  get eaten" --and the Sarlacc's tentacles spasmed around Fett, digging

  into him, hauling him back into the wall behind him--"and your feelings

  are hurt because I've told you so? You could have helped that Jedi,

  she'd have come back for you. Instead you spent the next four thousand

  years playing at philosophy, abusing the people who taught you to be

  what you are, never even dreaming that you had options, and why?" he

  screamed at Susejo, building up to it, blasting him with the rage and