The streets were crowded now that full night had hit and the blistering temperature had fallen to a comfortable level. Nadon passed through the markets and had no trouble losing the stormtrooper.
Nadon made his way to Kayson’s Weapons Shop. The gruff human who owned the shop had been in business forever, but Nadon had never set foot on the premises. It took less than five minutes to buy a heavy blaster and a holster that could be concealed under Nadon’s cloak, then the Ithorian was back out the door.
He wandered the streets aimlessly for nearly an hour, without any kind of plan. He simply hoped to spot Lieutenant Alima, pull his blaster, and shoot the human. Nadon knew that nothing much would be accomplished by such an action. He would kill the human, but in the end he would forfeit his own life. The precious Bafforr trees in his home would be uprooted by whoever took over his house, and one way or another he would never be able to speak with them again. But at least they would not be tortured by the likes of Alima.
He set the blaster to kill, then searched the streets until he heard the scream of fire sirens in his own neighborhood. For a moment he was struck with horror, fearing that Lieutenant Alima had already come to burn his house, but as he ran up the streets, Nadon saw that some trader’s home was a roaring blaze.
Firelight reflected from the column of smoke, lighting the streets and alleys in a dull red.
From every home, people were running toward the house with foam canisters. Water was so precious on Tatooine that the authorities would probably let the house burn rather than waste the water used in the foam extinguishers, but if the hapless owner of the home was in the vicinity, he might purchase enough canisters—at inflated prices—to rescue his valuables.
From the corner of his eye, on a side street, Nadon glimpsed the dark uniform of an Imperial officer with its billed cap. He turned just in time to recognize Lieutenant Alima walking steadfastly up the hill toward the fire.
Nadon rushed up the street parallel to Alima’s path, then turned down the next alley, running toward Alima. He pulled out his blaster, fumbled with it momentarily. The gun was not made to accommodate an Ithorian’s extraordinarily long, thin fingers, and Nadon could hardly get his finger into the trigger guard. He found that his hearts were racing, thumping wildly in his chest like a pair of Jawas in a struggle.
Nadon huddled against a wall, and checked the side streets in three directions. He could not see anyone. Good. There would be no witnesses.
Alima walked into the open not a meter away, and Nadon shouted his name, pulled the blaster up level to Alima’s face.
Alima turned and looked at the Ithorian calmly, glanced at the blaster.
“Come here, into the alley!” Nadon commanded. His mind was racing, and he could not think what to do. He thought of pulling the trigger, but he wanted to talk first, to tell Alima why he felt he had to do this. Perhaps, Nadon thought, he will even repent. Perhaps he will turn away from the Empire. Nadon’s legs cramped, aching with the desire to run, his species’ preferred response for coping with danger.
Alima laughed. “You can’t kill me with a blaster set to Stun,” he said. Nadon knew he had set the blaster to Kill, but feared that perhaps it had been knocked off the setting by accident. Nadon glanced down in horror at the indicator lights on the blaster, saw the red flashing lights of the Kill setting. Just as Nadon realized his mistake, Alima dodged from Nadon’s line of fire and pulled his own blaster.
A blue bolt tore through the darkness, slamming Nadon between his stomachs, knocking the big Ithorian into the stone wall at his back. For a moment, it seemed that a white sun blazed before his eyes, and then Nadon found himself lying on the ground in a dark alley, and someone was kicking his right eyestalk. Blood oozed from the wound. Nadon reached up with his long arms, trying to cover his eyestalks, and he moaned loudly.
His attacker stopped kicking, apparently more from being winded than from any desire to offer mercy. “You pacifist species are so pathetic in battle,” Alima said, standing over Nadon, panting. “You’re lucky that my blaster was set to Stun!”
Nadon groaned, and Alima waved two blasters in his face. “Find me those droids! You have until sunset tomorrow!” He pointed his blaster between Nadon’s eyes and pulled the trigger again.
Nadon woke with a throbbing ache in his eyestalks. It was nearly dawn, and a pale light washed through Mos Eisley, turning the pourstone buildings to golden domes. Nadon wiped the blood from his face with his cloak, then managed to crawl to his knees. He felt as if he stood in a whirling fog that threatened to sweep him away, and he leaned against the side of the building for support.
Stupid. I was stupid, he realized. For one split second, Nadon had had the opportunity to kill Lieutenant Alima, and he had failed to do so. Even though Nadon understood intellectually that the Empire could only be overthrown by violence, his Ithorian nature had not allowed him to kill.
Nadon closed his eyes, tried to blink away the pain. He glanced up. A thin smoke hung over the city, and people were already beginning to scurry for cover from the morning heat.
Nadon got up and wearily headed for home, his ears still ringing. He shook his head, tried to clear it. He went into his house, sat beside a pool and washed the blood from his eyestalk. During the cool of the night, moisture had condensed at the top of the dome. Now it sometimes fell like droplets of rain. Above his head was a large gorsa tree, a stout flowering tree that used phosphorescent flowers to attract night insects for pollination. Now that morning had come, the pale orange phosphorescent flowers were folding in on themselves.
In Mos Eisley it was rumored that Momaw Nadon’s house was filled with carnivorous plants. Nadon encouraged the rumor in order to keep out water thieves. Besides, the rumors were true, but those who walked through the biospheres under the High Priest’s protection did not have anything to fear.
Nadon went to a side dome where vines and creepers hung from a large, red-barked tree that stood beside a pool. Nadon said, “Part your vines, friend.”
The tree’s limbs quivered, and the vines parted, exposing the trunk. In the dim light of morning, four human skeletons were revealed hanging from the limbs near the trunk of the tree, each with a thick creeper wrapped around its neck—hapless water thieves.
Nadon fumbled beneath some thick grass near the tree’s trunk, pulled at a handle until a concealed door jerked upward. A light flipped on below him, showing the ladder leading down.
Nadon had secreted many a Rebel in the room below, and for a long moment he considered climbing down himself, hiding. Perhaps in this concealed chamber, he would be able to disappear from view for a while. Alima could ignite a thermal detonator in this room, but there was a chance that Nadon could ride out the firestorm intact, remain hidden.
He had enough food stored here to last for weeks. And Nadon was sorely tempted to climb down.
But he couldn’t. He couldn’t let Alima kill his plants. One last chance, Nadon thought. When Alima comes this evening, I might be able to kill him yet.
Nadon got up, strolled through his biosphere, touching the limbs of trees, stroking the gentle fronds of ferns, tasting the scent of moisture and undergrowth, the life all around him.
There was no other way, Nadon realized.
He would have to remain and fight, though it cost him all. In the evening, Alima would come. Nadon knew that Lieutenant Alima would be true to his word. He would sew Nadon’s eyes open and make him watch as he slew the Bafforr. It would gratify Alima’s little Imperial heart to know how he had tortured an Ithorian, leaving Nadon alive to bear witness to the Empire’s cruelty. Alima would then incinerate the house.
Momaw Nadon considered what that would mean. All of his plants would be destroyed, all of his notes. Years of work would be wasted. Nadon considered the plants, decided that he would take some containers outside, saving the specimens that showed the best hope of improving the ecology of Tatooine.
The Bafforr would die—they could not be uprooted—but the Bafforr had
accepted their fate, and Nadon realized that now he must accept his.
For years Momaw Nadon had hidden on this rock, seeking cleansing, trying to overcome the anger that insisted he should fight back against the Empire. The elders of Ithor had balked when he suggested that the Empire was a weed that needed to be destroyed. His elders would have let the Imperials destroy the Bafforr forests of Cathor Hills, trusting that some shred of decency left in Alima would make him stop short of genocide against an entire species. His elders would have forgiven the Empire.
But in all his years seeking spiritual cleansing, Nadon had never been convinced that he was wrong. He believed that he had been right to try to save what he could.
Nadon was not above killing an insect to save a tree.
So, Nadon had to resist the Empire the best he knew how. Even if that meant he had to watch the Bafforrs be destroyed. Even if it meant he himself was destroyed. He could not just let the Empire crush him.
Nadon was exhausted, but could not sleep. He decided to calm himself by continuing his Harvest Ceremony. He went to his laboratory on the east wing of the house, opened the fruit of a large Tatooine hubba gourd, and removed some pale, transparent seeds. Using tiny robotic manipulators, he carefully opened four young seeds and removed the zygotes.
Using his genetic samples from the Cydorrian driller trees, he put the DNA into a gene splicer. Nine genes controlled the drillers’ root growth. Nadon took these genes, spliced them into the hubba gourd zygotes, then returned the gourd’s zygotes to a nutrient mixture so that they could grow.
The whole painstaking ritual calmed Nadon immensely, even though he knew that soon most of his work would probably be destroyed. The task took nearly twelve hours, and when Nadon looked up from his work, he saw by the shadows on the wall that nightfall was approaching. Soon, Alima would come.
Time to say good-bye, Nadon whispered. At this time of the day, his good friend Muftak would be trying to cool himself off at Chalmun’s cantina—a difficult task considering the thickness of the four-eye’s furry white pelt.
Nadon went to the cantina, thinking furiously, wondering how he might best lure Alima into the dangerous depth of his own personal biosphere.
The cantina was as busy as usual—bustling with disreputable aliens. It was a tough place, frequented by cruel beings.
Sure enough, Nadon found Muftak sitting alone at a table, sipping polaris ale while his partner in crime, the little thief Kabe, chittered and wandered about in the darkness, begging Wuher the bartender for juri juice and eyeing the pockets of the cantina’s inhabitants.
Nadon spoke to Muftak of inconsequential things—the price that Muftak had gained for selling Nadon’s name, Muftak’s dreams of home. Always, Nadon tried to accentuate the positive, to leave his friend uplifted, but Nadon’s own thoughts were dark, and when they drank a toast, Nadon found himself offering comfort that he himself could not receive.
Suddenly there was a disturbance in the cantina: A hideously scarred human named Evazan and his alien sidekick Ponda Baba were picking a fight with some wide-eyed local moisture boy. “I have the death sentence on twelve systems!” the scarred human warned. Nadon looked at the small group. The moisture boy was unfamiliar, some farmer from the desert who had come in only moments earlier with the old mystic Ben Kenobi. Nadon had seen Ben only once before, when he’d come into town to shop. Nadon had noticed the pair because the barkeep Wuher had shouted for them to leave their droids outside. Evazan and Ponda Baba were regulars, had been hanging around the spaceport for weeks.
Suddenly, Ponda Baba swung a clawed arm, bashing the moisture farmer across the face, sending the boy crashing against a table. Ponda Baba then pulled a blaster free just as Wuher shouted from behind the bar, “No blasters!”
Old Ben Kenobi whipped out an ancient lightsaber. It hummed to life, flashing blue as he slashed off Ponda Baba’s arm, sliced Evazan’s chest. Then he flipped off his lightsaber and cautiously backed away with the young moisture farmer in tow.
Nadon followed Ben Kenobi with his eyes as the music went silent. The bloodshed nauseated Nadon. Old Ben Kenobi took his young friend to the back of the cantina, and together they spoke with the Wookiee smuggler Chewbacca, then retired to a private cubicle with Chewbacca’s partner, Han Solo.
“I think I should be going,” Nadon said to Muftak. “Things are getting hot in here.”
“Please,” Muftak said heavily. “One last drink for old times. I’m buying.”
This was such an unusual offer that Nadon didn’t dare refuse. They ordered another round, and Nadon sat talking for a few more moments with Muftak, said his good-byes. A moment later, Ben and his moisture boy got up from their table at the back of the bar, and a seed of thought sprouted in Nadon’s head. He wondered what business the old mystic from the Jundland Wastes might have in town with smugglers, especially bringing a moisture farmer in tow.
Then he remembered the droids that Ben Kenobi had with him, and Momaw Nadon saw the truth: Ben Kenobi was trying to smuggle the droids off Tatooine.
In that one second, Momaw Nadon’s hearts beat wildly and he saw his salvation. Nadon knew exactly where to look for the droids, and if he told Alima, then the lieutenant would spare his life.
But as old Ben Kenobi passed him, the mystic glanced calmly into Nadon’s eyes, and somehow, Nadon suspected that Kenobi knew what he was thinking. Ben and the moisture boy walked past, yet Ben said nothing to Nadon.
“Did you see the way he looked at you?” Muftak asked. “Like a Tusken Raider staring down a charging bantha. What do you think that was all about?”
“I have no idea,” Nadon said. Yet he looked down at the table, ashamed even to have thought of sacrificing someone else in an effort to escape his own pain.
Nadon fell silent for a moment, glanced around the room. Certainly, if Nadon could figure out what was happening here, others might also. Yet Ben Kenobi was not a regular in town, and few in the cantina would have recognized him. No one followed the old mystic out.
Muftak laid a hairy paw on Nadon’s smooth gray-green arm. “You are afraid, my old friend. Your worries weigh on you. Is there anything that I can do?”
Blaster fire erupted from a cubicle at the back of the cantina, and Han Solo stepped out, holstered his blaster. He puffed out his chest in false bravado, threw a credit chip to Wuher as he left.
Muftak put a hairy paw to his head and scratched.
“I think I had better be leaving, too,” Momaw said. “I don’t want to be here if the Imperials come to investigate.”
Momaw hurried out, looked up at the suns dropping toward the horizon. Time for the torture to begin.
He glanced up in despair, wishing that he were like Han Solo, wishing that he could kill someone who merited death, then walk away calmly. But he couldn’t. Even in his deepest rage, he could not harm another. And so, there was nothing left to do but save what he could.
Momaw Nadon breathed deeply for a moment, then hurried home and began carrying the most valuable of his plant samples and setting them outside the back door in the hope that they would escape the fire.
The streets were nearly deserted, except for a few stormtroopers that watched the house.
When this is done, Nadon promised himself as he worked, I will go home. I will repudiate the elders and their foolish traditions. I will bear the limbs of the burned Bafforr trees in my arms, and I will show the elders my scarred eyes, and then they will see how monstrous the Empire has become, and they will know that we must fight.
Nadon chuckled to himself. Somehow, his spiritual eyes had been sewn open long ago. He’d seen the evil, known he had to fight it. But when Alima came and made the act physical, then Nadon’s scars would bear witness to his people. The Ithorians were not a stupid species. They were not as hopelessly pacifistic as Lieutenant Alima and his Empire believed. Though they might never go to war themselves, they could still help fund the Rebellion. Perhaps this one small evil act could turn against Lieutenant Alima in the
long run. The Empire’s evil will betray itself, Nadon told himself.
As he considered the possibilities, Nadon felt a strange rush of hope. Perhaps his suffering would be worth something after all. Perhaps he could end this seclusion, return to his wife and his son and the vast forests of Ithor.
And as Nadon considered the possibilities, he realized that his loneliness and suffering here as an outcast on Tatooine did not hurt so much. His deepest regret, he found, was not the pain he had endured, but that his work here—his plant samples—would be destroyed. On Ithor, the people had a saying: “A man is his work.” Never had the saying felt more true. By destroying the results of Nadon’s labor here on Tatooine, Alima would destroy a part of Nadon.
Nadon stood gazing down at his little plants sitting in the sunlight outside the door, decided to carry them across the street, give them a better chance of survival.
The muted explosions of blaster fire punctured the air and began echoing from buildings. Nadon looked up from his labors. Down the street, stormtroopers that had been guarding his house all began running toward the spaceport. Nadon looked up in time to see Han Solo’s old junker, the Millennium Falcon, blasting into the sky.
So, Nadon realized, old Ben Kenobi’s droids made it off Tatooine. He watched the ship for several moments to make sure that none of the planetary artillery fired on the Falcon. When he was certain that the ship had gotten away, he found himself running behind the stormtroopers toward the docking bays.
Outside the bays, some Imperial captain stood before dozens of stormtroopers and port authorities, shouting in a frantic rage: “How could this happen? How could you let all four of them get away? Someone must be held accountable, and it won’t be me!”
There at the back of the crowd, Nadon saw Lieutenant Alima standing nervously, staring toward the ground. No one was stepping forward to claim responsibility for Solo’s breakout, and the frantic look in the captain’s eye suggested that he needed a scapegoat.
Star Wars: Tales from Mos Eisley Cantina Page 15