their wares. Yarna's desert-hazed eyes fastened on one--an Ortolan like
Max Rebo. Poor little Max . . . he'd gone on the sail barge, hadn't
he?
Yarna thought foggily, as she jogged across the street toward her
quarry.
Reaching the stall, she unceremoniously dropped Doallyn to the dusty
ground and gasped out her request.
"A cartridge of hydron-three, please!"
The Ortolan whuffled down his trunk at her. "Certainly, madame.
It distresses me to inform you, though, that hydron-three is currently
rather expensive.
There hasn't been a shipment since . . . well, it's been quite a
while."
"I don't care," Yarna snapped, digging beneath her robe for the precious
little sack she'd carried out of Jabba's palace so long ago--was it only
four days? It seemed as though half of eternity had passed. "I can pay
Give me five days' supply."
"Certainly, madame," the Ortolan said. "May I see your currency,
please?"
Yarna's hands shook as she took out two small semiprecious gems and the
stolen credit disks---all she could afford to spare. "Here you are."
The Ortolan shook his head mournfully, his huge dark eyes very sad. "I'm
dreadfully sorry, madame, but I'll need twice that for two days'
supply."
Yarna glared at him so balefully that he shrank back into the dimness of
his stall. "Robber! I don't have time to bargain! Give me two days'
supply then!"
The vendor was firm. "I'm sorry, madame, but I must insist on the price
I named. I'm barely breaking even as it is."
"I have a man dying here! He needs that hydron-three!"
Yarna said, her hearts racing. If she gave the vendor what he demanded,
she would only be able to buy two of her children's freedom.
No mother could possibly make such a choice!
And yet . . . Doallyn had saved her life . . . several times.
"I'll give it to you at cost, madame," the vendor said. "Two more of
those jewels, for three days' supply."
Which still wouldn't leave her with enough to buy all three children
free. But Yarna found that she couldn't turn her back on the hunter.
"All right," she snarled, slapping the requisite amount onto the
counter. "Give me those cartridges!"
With the precious little container in her hand, she bent over Doallyn,
wondering if he'd died while she bargained. That would be a final,
searing irony . . .
But no . . . he still breathed, if slowly. Slipping the cartridge into
his helmet, she triggered it and saw that it was working. Only then did
the Askajian stuff her bag back into its place of concealment.
She managed to drag Doallyn off to the side of the shop, into the shade,
then sank down beside him. For a long, nearly comatose time she simply
existed, not thinking, not feeling . . . simply breathing in and out.
Yarna was jerked out of her half-trance when Doallyn stirred, then sat
up with a groan. His helmeted head turned back and forth, as though he
could not -.believe where he found himself. Finally he turned to face
her, "You . . . carried me here?"
"I had to," Yarna said. "You were unconscious.
Don't you know that reptiles never die until after sundown?"
The hunter shook his head. "That's an old tale."
"Well, it was true enough this time," Yarna pointed out.
Doallyn had evidently checked the hydron-three gauge inside his helmet.
"Full!" he exclaimed.
Gravely, Yarna reached out and dropped the spare cartridges into his
hand. "Here. You'll need these."
"Where . . ." he sputtered. "How . . ."
Briefly, she explained about how she had come to buy the cartridges.
Doallyn slowly released the catches on his helmet and took it off,
holding the cartridge side close to his face so he could inhale the
hydron-three when it was released. "You gave up one of your children .
. . for me?" he asked slowly, as though he could not believe what he'd
heard.
Yarna shrugged wearily. "I couldn't stand there and let you die, could
I?"
With a quick movement, he reached out and grabbed her hand. "I can't
believe you did that . . .
for me."
"You saved my life, remember?"
"Well, now we're even," he said, and, for the first time since she'd
known him, Yarna saw him truly smile. His scarred features brightened;
he looked almost handsome. "Yarna . . . I have a surprise for yOU.''
"What is it?"
Slowly, with great ceremony, he reached into his tunic and took out five
small objects, then held them out to her. "Dragon pearls.
One is worth a fortune.
With these we can buy all your children--and a space-ship to transport
them in."
Yarna stared at the gems, dazzled. "Where did you get them?" she asked
finally.
Doallyn pulled his helmet back on, fastened it. "I'll tell you on the
way," he said. "Let's go find your children."
Money, Yarna discovered, was the key to everything in Mos Eisley.
Before moonrise that same night, she and Doallyn had accomplished their
goal. Yarna had Luka and Leia in one arm, and Nautag in the other.
She couldn't believe how they'd grown, and she was even more amazed that
they still recognized her. Simply holding her babies in her arms again
made the Askajian speechless with joy.
They paused on the street corner across from the Hutt lord's town house.
"Well, you have them," Doallyn said. "Now what?"
Yarna stared at him, nonplussed. She had concentrated so hard on
reaching this moment that she had no idea what she'd do next. She
thought for a moment, and the answer came. "Get off Tatooine," she
announced firmly. "I never want to see this planet again."
Doallyn nodded his helmeted head. "Very sensible.
My sentiments exactly. After we buy that spaceship, would you .
. . that is, do you think you might like to see Geran? It's a nice
world. You'd like it, I think."
Yarna considered the question, then a slow smile crossed her face.
"I think that Geran would be a very nice place to go," she said "Good!"
Doallyn said, warmth ringing his voice even through the mechanical
filter. "Next stop, the spaceport. I've always wanted my own personal
ship."
Yarna nodded, and shifted Nautag, who was squirming restlessly and
trying to pull her hair. "The space-port, then."
Doallyn stretched out his arms toward Nautag.
"Here. Let me carry him. You have your hands full."
Yarna nodded, and handed the child over to the hunter. Together, they
walked away, and the light of Tatooine's little moon shone down gently
upon the five of them.
Epilogue: Whatever Became Of . . . ?
A After visiting Geran, Yarna and Doallyn decided to live aboard their
new spaceship and become free traders, specializing in textiles and
gemstones. Whenever they needed extra credits, Yarna moonlighted as a
dancer. She performed the Dance of the Seventy Violet Veils at the
wedding of Han Solo and Leia Or-gana, where she was spotted by a
designer of exotic lingerie and recruited as a model for his line of
extravagant jeweled brassieres.
Doallyn managed her new career, taking time out to capture specimens of
renowned fierceness for zoos on the worlds they visited.
The cublings showed great aptitude for music and became a swinging jizz
trio in the tradition of Max Rebo and his band.
Shortly after leaving Tatooine, Sy Snootles dissolved her partnership
with Max Rebo and went solo, releasing two music collections, both of
which sold abysmally.
Her career in shambles, unable to find work as a solo act, she joined
another jizz-wailer band and is still touring under a variety of
pseudonyms.
Max Rebo fell in with the Rebellion shortly after Sy Snootles ended
their partnership. He spent the next few years entertaining Rebel
forces across the galaxy.
("The Rebellion has the best food," he is reported to have said on his
entrance paperwork.) Following the death of the Emperor, Max returned to
civilian life and currently owns a successful string of restaurants on
eight different planets.
Droopy McCool vanished into the Dune Sea and has not been seen since
Jabba the Hutt's death. Some old-timers claim to hear Kitonak pipe
music late at night from the farthest, most desolate corners of the deep
desert, and some think it may be Droopy and his kind playing their music
as they wait for the coming of the Cosmic Egg.
In the confusion that reigned following the disaster on the sail barge,
Malakili the rancor keeper released Porcellus the chef from his cell,
and the two of them managed to loot sufficient funds from the treasury
to open the Crystal Moon restaurant, agreed by all to be the finest in
Mos Eisley. The two still operate it in partnership, and its fame has
spread through most of the Outer Rim.
Gartogg the Gamorrean guard spent the rest of his life wishing he could
have ridden on the sail barge's last voyage. However, when Ortugg never
came back to have him ground up for Jabba food, he tagged along with a
small group leaving the palace for Mos Eisley. He still carried his new
friends over his shoulders and found that as they journeyed through the
desert, the kitchen boy and the monk dried out into firm, lightweight
mummies with perpetual smiles. In Mos Eisley he found gainful
employment'as an enforcer for a smuggling operation and faithfully took
his grinning friends everywhere he went.
Ephant Mon chose to return to his home planet of Vinsioth. The touch of
the young Jedi Knight had reawakened the spiritual side of him and he
began a religious contemplation of nature, finally founding a new sect
that worshiped the Force.
He did, however, still keep just a bit of his snout immersed in the old
life, running a "harmless" little scam now and again to finance his sect
and build it a very fine temple, indeed.
When J'Quille the Whiphid tried to return to his homeworld of Toola for
a little R and R, though, he was informed that the Lady Valarian,
inconsolable over his "rejection," had placed a bounty on his head if he
ever left Tatooine. Condemned to a life of sweltering misery, J'Quille
returned to Jabba's palace and joined the B'omarr monks. Exchanging his
body for a jar seemed his only chance at surviving Tatooine's
insufferable heat.
Meanwhile, Bib Fortuna found that he did have friends, even as a
disembodied brain, next to Tessek and Bubo and several other new
"initiates" following Jabba's fall. Nat spoke to him and eased him
through the shock of losing his body, helped him learn to guide a brain
walker up and down the corridors, and he and Nat eventually looked like
any other pair of disembodied brains held tight against the underbelly
of a mechanical spider, taking a stroll together. Passing monks still
in their bodies would bow to them as they would to any of the truly
enlightened.
But Fortuna still tried to learn what had happened to all the schemes he
had put in place. The computers would not respond to the voice that
came from his brain jar's speakers, but he found that he could make his
two mechanical forelegs grasp an eating implement, using its handle to
enter his private access codes, slowly, punching in one number at a
time.
Not all of the codes had been erased, not the secret ones. If an
embodied monk approached, Fortuna would drop the teaspoon and amble
about the corridor till the monk had passed, then sweep the walker's
legs about the stone floor, listening for the teaspoon so he could find
it and pick it up and start again. Of the day's annoyances, these, he
often thought. That I had to drop the teaspoon eighteen times. He
checked his accounts and found that many secret ones, the ones under
different names, were intact and growing in interest. He possessed a
fortune. He sent replies to his former associates--and sentence by
sentence, word by word, they learned what had happened. One said he
would come to rescue him.
Eventually the monks would let him and Nat walk outside the palace
during the Tatooine evenings, and one day rescue would come, and they
would leave Tessek and Bubo and all the others behind. He and Nat would
find the cloners, obtain new bodies: young and strong and perfect.
Fortuna hoped, if the monks knew what he and Nat planned, as seemed
likely, that they would find it in their hearts to let them go.
Deprived permanently of Jabba's soup in the explosion of the sail barge,
Dannik Jerriko responded by going on a killing rampage throughout the
palace. An Anzat who had always prided himself on self-control and
elegance, he now was stripped of both by his outrage at losing Jabba.
Never before hadJerriko. failed to drink an entity's soup. His
reputation forever tarnished, he became a wanted entity himself, and his
name now tops the list of such bounty hunters as have worked for Jabba
and others.
The predator is now the prey.
And, of course, both Boba Fett and Mara Jade kept themselves very, very
busy . . . but those are other stories entirely.
About the Authors
novels Darksaber and the Jedi Academy Trilogy, cowritten the Young Adult
series YOUNG JEDI KNIGHTS with his wife, Rebecca Moesta, cowritten the
comic series for Dark Horse comics, as well as non-STAR WARS science
fiction novels Climbing Olympus and Blindfold, and collaborations with
Doug Beason, I'll Wind and Virtual Destruction. He maintains a monthly
spreadsheet working on.
M. SHAYNE BELL's novel, Nicoji (Baen Books, 1991), is currently being
translated into Spanish. His second novel, Inuit, was published by
Harcourt Brace in 1995.
He edited the anthology Washed by a Wave of Wind: Science Fiction from
the Corridor (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1993), for which he
received an AML award for editorial excellence. His short fiction has
appeared in many science fiction magazines and anthologies, including
Tales from the Mos Eisley Cantina and Tales of the Bounty Hunters
(forthcoming). He grew up on a ranch in Idaho, spent two years as a
missionary in Silo Paulo, Brazil, and has spent we
eks hiking around the
Utah desert finding the abandoned cities of the Anasazi. In 1995 he
plans to climb Kilimanjaro in Africa.
JOHN GREGORY BETANCOURT is the author of quite a few novels, including a
collaborative fantasy with editor Kevin J. Anderson, Born of Elven
Blood. Lately he has been having fun returning to favorite childhood
places, working on Batman, Spider-Man, Riverworld, and STAR TREK books
and short stories for a wide variety of publishing companies. His own
work can be found in such novels as The Blind Archer, Johnny Zed, and
Rememory. John also runs a publishing company called the Wildside Press
with his wife, Kim.
They were nominated for a special World Fantasy Award in 1993 for their
publishing activities.
MARK BUDZ, newly transplanted to Watsonville, California, is putting
down roots near the artichoke fields along the beautiful Monterey Bay.
In his spare time, he works as the managing editor and advertising
director of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Bulletin.
His short fiction has appeared in F&SF, Amazing, Pulphouse, Writers of
the Future Vol. VIII, Quick Chills II, Rat Tales, and Science Fiction
Review.
A. C. CRISPIN is the author of four STAR TREK novels, including the
recent best-selling Sarek. She is the creator, author, and coauthor of
Tales From Jabba's Palace Page 46