Star Wars: Tales from Mos Eisley Cantina

by Kevin J. Anderson

  He simply, instinctively, had no respect for a being without them.

  “Be ready with your deputy to close the water lines to her compound tomorrow.”

  Balu’s mouth tightened under heavy cheeks, but he nodded.

  “I’m going out. I should be back within the hour.”

  Walking through the marketplace of Mos Eisley always filled Trevagg with a sense close to intoxication. A hunter by upbringing as well as by blood, he had quickly found his current position as a tax official a disappointment. What had been represented to him as an opportunity for acquiring vast quantities of credits had turned out to be little more than a clerical stint.

  Yet he sensed, he knew, that there were credits here to be made.

  In the marketplace of Mos Eisley, the hunter stirred again in his blood.

  Awnings flapped overhead in the baked breeze, the solar coats casting black rectangles of hard shadow, the cheaper cotton and rag staining the faces of those beneath them with red and blue light. The harsh sizzle of bantha burgers and much-used fritter grease swirled from a hundred little stands wherever some enterprising Jawa or Whiphid could find room to set up a solar-power stove. Races from every corner of the galaxy wandered the banded shadows of this makeshift labyrinth. In one place a corpse-faced Durosian was holding up strings of opaline “sand pearls” and sun-stained blue glass for a couple of inquisitive human tourists; in another, a nearly nude Gamorrean belly dancer was performing on a yellow-striped blanket to the appreciative whistles of a couple of Sullustans, who were among the many races to find Gamorreans attractive.

  But more than anything else, it was the air of danger that filled the place, the edginess, the watchfulness, that soaked Trevagg’s cones like drugged wine. After a walk in the marketplace he always came away wondering if he shouldn’t pack in the Imperial service and go back on the hunt.

  But as always, he looked around him a second time, and saw how many of these people were dressed in castoffs or shabby desert gear. He stroked his new jacket of deep green yullrasuede, his close-fitting trousers tailored for his form and no other, and thought again. He might not have made his fortune on this blasted piece of rock, but at least he could make a little.

  And the opportunity would come.

  Had come.

  His pulses quickened at the implications of the vibration he’d sensed two weeks ago, walking through this very market. All he needed to do, he told himself, was be a hunter, and wait. The chance of his lifetime had come, and if he waited, it would come again.

  If things went right.

  Jabba the Hutt’s go-between, an enormously obese Sullustan named Jub Vegnu, was waiting for him by Pylokam’s Health Food booth. Pylokam, an aged and fragile human in trailing dirt-colored rags and a garish orange scarf, had been optimistically peddling fruit juices and steamed balls of vegetable gratings for years now, surrounded on all sides by a dripping banquet of dewback ribs and megasweet fritters—no sugars, no salts, no artificial additives, and no customers. Even Jabba had given up trying to get a percentage of his nonexistent takings.

  Vegnu was leaning on the counter eating a caramelized pkneb—something Pylokam would never have stocked—the juice of it running down what chin he possessed; Trevagg bought a sugar fritter from a nearby stand and joined him. At Pylokam’s they could be assured of being completely uninterrupted.

  “I need to set up a go-between and a loan deal,” grated Trevagg in his harsh, rather monotonous voice. “Immediate takeover in three days, complete secrecy from everyone. Ten percent to Jabba of all subsequent take.”

  They haggled a little about the percentage, and about what the deal was, Trevagg knowing full well that if word got to the Prefect—or indeed, to several other members of the Imperial service that he knew about—he’d be very likely outbid before the widowed Modbrek even decided she had to sell. In time Trevagg got guarantees of secrecy, for what they were worth, but at the cost of another four percentage points. At that rate, he thought bitterly, it would take him a year to make back his investment …

  “Is that it, then?” the Sullustan inquired, licking his stubby fingers of the last traces of caramel and grease.

  Trevagg hesitated, and the go-between—with almost Gotal sensitivity—tilted his head, waiting for what would come next. Seeming to feel, Trevagg thought, how big the coming deal was.

  “Not … quite.”

  There was no need to scan the marketplace visually. Trevagg knew the hint he’d gotten, the buzzing, shivering sense he’d picked up in passing through two weeks ago, was nowhere around. And he didn’t know when it would return, when the person—the creature—that had caused it would next pass through Mos Eisley.

  But it was as well to be ready.

  “I will need a go-between on another deal,” he said slowly.

  “For what?”

  “I can’t say.” He held up his hand against Vegnu’s impatient protest. “Not yet. But I need someone to act for me in a situation where, as an employee of the Imperial government, I would be expected to perform as a part of my duties.”

  “Ah.” Vegnu leaned back against the counter. “But a civilian, performing the same task, would be rewarded?”

  “Well rewarded,” said Trevagg, his pulses stirring again at the thought of just how well rewarded. “And it’s a task well within, say, your capabilities.”

  “How much?”

  “Twenty percent.”

  “Gaah …”

  “Twenty-five,” said Trevagg. “And that five is for secrecy, for absolute secrecy, at the time.”

  “About you?”

  “And about the … nature of the task.”

  The nature of the task, thought Trevagg, threading his way swiftly through the blazing slats of dust and shadow, heading back toward the government offices a few minutes later. That is, after all, the delicate thing about this deal. A simple task, informing the Imperial Moff of the Sector about someone … someone for whom they had been looking for a long time.

  The sense that had come to him here in the market two weeks ago had been like finding a jewel in the dirt; the vibration itself like a sniff of perfume, scented once in other circumstances but never forgotten. The trick would be, of course, to keep his go-between from taking that jewel—that one piece of information, that name—and turning it in himself.

  Trevagg the Gotal knew he would have to be very careful with this one, whose reward could get him the foundations of real wealth.

  Passing through the market two weeks ago, he had picked up the unmistakable vibrations of a Jedi Master.

  “Lady to see you,” reported the operations clerk in the next cubicle as Trevagg reentered the office. After the blast furnace of the noon street the prefecture seemed shadowy and cool as a cave—the solar deflectors on the roof didn’t really start having trouble until two or three hours past noon. Were it not for the shelves jammed with boxes of datadisks, the dust-yellowed hard copy drooping from overstuffed storage boxes stacked along one wall—were it not for the almost palpable atmosphere of defeat, of grimy hopes and petty spites—the offices themselves would be pleasant to enter after a time outside.

  Only so long, thought Trevagg, as he strode toward his office. Only so long mill I have to put up with this place. It was no place for a hunter to be, no place for a true Gotal.

  Just until he could accomplish his final hunt, trap his final quarry. Until he could turn over to the Empire information about this Jedi, whoever he was …

  It hadn’t been a passer-through, that much Trevagg knew. After losing the sense of the Jedi’s vibrations in the marketplace—the thick, strange buzzing in his cones that he had been told long ago was the concentration of the unknown Force, the magic of the Jedi—he had gone at once to the docking bays, ascertained that no vessel had taken off for the past several hours. As collector of imposts he had access to passenger lists, and had made it his business to personally check each traveler.

  And in two weeks of roving every corner of Mos Eisley, he
had never sensed that particular reaction again.

  So it must be someone on the planet, but not in the town. Someone who had come to do marketing, for instance.

  Trevagg was a hunter. He would wait.

  His mind was full of this, rather than whoever this tedious female was and what she wanted of him, when he stepped through the office doorway—and fell in love.

  The vibration of her filled the room, before she even turned at his entrance. It was an intoxicant, a heady compound of milky warmth that he could feel almost through his skin, of trembling vulnerability, of an electrospectrum aura like a new-blown pink teela blossom, and of an innocent and unself-conscious sexuality that almost lifted Trevagg off his feet.

  She turned, putting back the white gauze of her veil, to reveal an alien loveliness that stopped his breath.

  What race, what species she was, he didn’t know. It didn’t matter. Skin blue-gray as desert’s final twilight molded over the proud jut of cheekbones any woman on his home planet of Antar would kill to possess, double, treble rows of them blending softly into the fragile ridges of the chin. More ridges led the eye into the graceful curve of proboscis, a feature Trevagg had always considered striking in such races—like the Kubaz or the Rodians—who possessed them. Eyes wide, green as grass, and fringed with ferny lashes peered timidly from beneath a deep splendor of brow ridge, like the eyes of a rock tabbit too frightened to flee a hunter’s step.

  But above the brow was what drew Trevagg’s eyes. Half-hidden by the cloaking gauze of the veil, the skull rose into four perfectly shaped, exquisite conelets, their smallness, their smoothness seeming to invite the touch of a male hand, the breath of male lips.

  Of course they couldn’t really be cones, thought Trevagg the next moment. She was no Gotal, but someone of the dull-minded and insentient lesser races … But the imitation was perfect, and it was enough.

  He wanted her.

  He wanted her badly.

  “Sir …” Her voice was halting, but of a beautiful, even key, modulated like a deep-toned flute through the proboscis. Her three-fingered hands, skin tailored over jewellike knobs, seemed to cling to the edges of the veil she had just laid aside, as if for protection. “Sir, you must help me. They said I should come to you …”

  Trevagg found himself saying, “Anything …” Then, quickly correcting himself, for he was, after all, an official of the Empire, he added, “Anything in my power to assist you, miss. What seems to be the trouble?”

  “I have been put ashore.” Distress and fear blossomed from her in trembling waves. “They said there was something wrong with my papers; there was a passage tax.”

  Trevagg knew all about the passage tax. That was something else he’d come up with.

  “I … I had to budget very closely in order to visit my sister on Cona, I … my family is not wealthy. Now I’ve lost my seat on the Tellivar Lady. But if I pay the passage tax I won’t have enough to return to my mother on H’nemthe.” The name of her home world came out like a dainty sneeze, unbelievably entrancing. The vibration of her sorrow was like the taste of blood-honey.

  “My dear …” He hesitated.

  “M’iiyoom Onith,” she supplied. “The m’iiyoom is the white flower that blossoms in the season of trine, the season when all three moons give their light. The nightlily.”

  “And I am Feltipern Trevagg, officer of the Empire. My dear Nightlily, I shall go investigate this matter at once. It grieves me to be unable to offer you better quarters to wait in, but this city is not a savory one. I shall return within moments.”

  Balu was in the outer office, boots on desk, drinking a fizzy whose bulb sweated in the stuffy heat. He cocked a dark eye at the Gotal as Trevagg closed his office door. “Give the child back her seat, Trevagg,” he grunted. “You don’t need the seventy-five credits. You run, you can catch the Tellie before she lifts.”

  Trevagg leaned across the officer and tapped a key on the board. The screen manifested the schedule. Unlike many Gotal, Trevagg had mastered computers quickly, once those in the prefecture had been properly shielded. The Tellivar Lady lifted at 1400, and he knew Captain Fane was punctual.

  But an hour wouldn’t be enough.

  “Trevagg …” The officer’s voice halted him as he reached for the door. Trevagg turned, mostly from a desire to legitimately waste time—he’d have to walk very slowly indeed to actually miss the Tellivar Lady’s lift. “You’re a hunter. You ever hear of the Force?”

  Trevagg went absolutely cold inside. He only said, “No.”

  “It’s supposed to be some kind of magic field …” Balu shook his head. “The old Jedi were supposed to have it.” He lifted a hand to indicate the Imperial communiqué, tacked to the discolored plaster of the wall behind him, offering fifty thousand credits for “any members of the so-called Jedi Knights.” Ten thousand for information leading to the capture of.

  Unless, of course, it was the captor’s or informant’s job to capture or inform. Then they just got their salaries. And a nice letter of commendation from the local Moff.

  “I heard rumors the Jedi have been seen on Tatooine,” said Balu. “I’ve had a watch on Pylokam’s stand—figuring the one place a Jedi might show up. Someone’s got to drink that herb tea. But I wondered if you’d run across anything—strange.”

  “Only what Pylokam serves at that stand of his,” grumbled Trevagg, and made a far more precipitate exit than he’d planned.

  It still took him a great deal of dawdling on the way to reach Docking Bay 9 too late to stop the liftoff of the Lady.

  Nightlily was dazzled to be taken to luncheon at the Court of the Fountain, the closest thing to a high-class restaurant Mos Eisley boasted. It occupied one of the sprawling stone-and-stucco palaces that dated from Mos Eisley’s long-ago boom days; reflective solar screens had been stretched over the many courtyards where fountains trickled and gurgled among exotic plants and gemlike tiling. It was small, of course, and catered mostly to the tourist trade, but Nightlily was a tourist, and she was enchanted. Jabba the Hutt—because, of course, Jabba owned the place—boasted that there wasn’t an appetite in the galaxy that couldn’t be catered to by his personal chef, Porcellus.

  Porcellus, who only operated the Court of the Fountain during those few hours not spent in preparing the Bloated One’s gargantuan repasts, knew perfectly well that he’d be fed to Jabba’s pet rancor if the Hutt ever grew bored with his menus, so he was an enthusiastic chef, indeed. And, in a way, he took great pride in his work. The filet of baby dewback with caper sauce and fleik-liver pâté was the best Trevagg had ever eaten, and when Nightlily hooned, with modestly downcast eyes, that virgins of her people were only permitted fruits and vegetables, Porcellus outdid himself in the production of four courses of lipana berries and honey, puptons of dried magicots and psibara, a baked felbar with savory cream, and staggeringly good bread pudding for dessert.

  And a great deal of wine, of course.

  “Nothing is too expensive for you, beautiful one,” responded Trevagg, to her hummed protest about the expense. “Or too good. Have another glass, my darling.” He would definitely, he thought, have to have a chef who could cook dewback like this when he collected his reward. “Don’t you understand that fate has brought us together, fate in the form of a stupid ruling by a venal official?” He took her hand in his, loving the satin texture, the smooth eroticism of the way the knots on its back tightened and swelled at his touch. “Don’t you understand what I feel for you? What I felt for you the moment I entered the office, the moment I heard your voice?”

  The moment I sensed in you the ultimate prey, the most beautiful of conquests to be vanquished?

  She turned her face aside, confused. The long silver serpent of her knife-pointed tongue ran nervously out to pick at the remains of the bread pudding in a gesture he found almost unbearably sexual. It had to be muscled to those three sets of cheekbones on the inside—what could he not persuade her to do with that tongue!

  He wasn
’t sure exactly what inner vibrations he should transmit to convince her of his overwhelming desire for her—she obviously didn’t have the civilized sensitivity of a Gotal, maybe couldn’t pick up anything at all and was operating entirely at the face value of his words. Judging by her conversation, she was either barely sentient or truly stupid, and in any case, Trevagg had very little interest in females’ thoughts or desires.

  He cradled the side of her face with his hand, reveling in the daintiness of the cheekbones under his clawed strength. He felt her timidity, and with it, a dawning wonderment, a surge of glowing excitement in her heart.

  “Don’t you understand that I need you?”

  “Are you proposing … marriage?” She stared up at him, awed, dazzled, halfway to surrender.

  Softly he nuzzled the side of her face. Stupid as a brick, he thought. But he’d get this one into his bed before the day was through.

  “Trevagg, leave the girl alone.” Balu spoke in a low voice, so that Nightlily, in the outer office, would not hear. The security officer slouched in the doorway of Trevagg’s cubicle while the Gotal keyed through a credit transfer and ticketing information on the Star-swan, leaving early tomorrow morning. The least he could do, he reflected, was give the girl passage out of here—third class, naturally—to wherever the hell she was going. Besides, once he’d had her he certainly didn’t want her hanging around under the impression that he was actually going to go through with marrying a semisentient alien bimbo, wondrous though she might be between the sheets.

  “Leave her alone?” Trevagg turned around disbelievingly, staring at the human. He kept his voice quiet, still excluding Nightlily, who was just visible through the doorway past Balu’s shoulder, sitting at an empty desk with her head bowed in shy ecstasy and her veils half drawn about her face. “You can be anywhere within four meters of that—that love morsel, and you say leave her alone?”