by Renee Ahdieh
—
Lirin Car’n trembles with rage, fear, regret, doubt, anxiety, despair, and whatever the word is for the feeling you get when you drank so much and played so poorly at cards that you lost your father’s Kloo horn, which, indeed, is very much a feeling, and a feeling with a name, but it comes from the Bith, who tend to be the only ones who feel it and, as you don’t speak Bith anyway, its name does not matter. Trust that this feeling is proper and named and true, albeit rare in its ever being felt, yet it is felt, more than it has ever been felt before, by Lirin Car’n, the Bith, right now, in the Mos Eisley cantina.
“And you want me to find this thing for you?” Djas Puhr asks the Bith.
“You’re a bounty hunter, aren’t you? Well? I’m putting a bounty on my father’s horn. I lost it to Myo. Myo doesn’t have it. He believes that while he was in his cups, the thing was stolen from him. His solution to the problem is to scream and growl and look for something to kill. I find that business matters are better handled by businessmen.”
“Indeed. In fact, Myo paid me what he swore was his last credit to hunt whoever it was that dared steal from him in the first place. Of course if he finds them first he’ll kill them and thus moot the deal, but you understand.”
“As far as I am concerned,” Car’n says, “the horn stopped belonging to Myo once Myo ceased to actually have the thing. It is, as they say, in the wind. And I want it back.”
“You’re a businessman, you say. You are in the music business. Without a horn, there is no music, and sans music, you are sans business. How am I to know such a bounty exists?” the Sakiyan asks. As a people, they are nothing if not practical.
“I’m good for it. I’ll make good for it,” Car’n says. “After I can play again. One session, one gig—I’ll pay you two hundred.”
“So the arrangement is: For two hundred, I find a fifty-credit horn—”
“Fifty? How dare you! Do you have any idea who my father was? Do you—do—you don’t—this horn—the legend of this—I—You—” Car’n stammers on like this, but all of his protestations fall on tone-deaf Sakiyan ears. “Your problem, you—you—you—you Sakiyan—is you have no appreciation of art!”
“The Bith see the poetry in the mathematics of music; I see the poetry in the mathematics of money. Either way—we both can appreciate the beauty of numbers. So—two hundred, plus expenses. That is, as they say, music to my ears.”
“Get my horn. I’ll get you your money.”
“And allow dear furious Myo to deal with the interlopers?”
“Exactly,” says Car’n as his trembling subsides. “Wait—interlopers? Plural?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
Djas Puhr rises from the dark little alcove table he thinks of as his regular seat and sets about the day’s work. He already knows what transpired, and how, and why. He knows, or at least can make an intuitive yet accurate guess, as to how this mess with the Kloo horn began. It isn’t terribly difficult, knowing the cohort who frequents his table, but as the only one without a taste for drink, Djas Puhr, bounty hunter, tends to be the one who sees such things first and, if he’s stealthy about it, the one who stands to profit. Most people at Mos Eisley think of the place as a port, or a bar, or a bazaar, even. Lirin Car’n thinks of it as a stage.
Djas Puhr knows that, more than anything else, Mos Eisley is a place of business.
—
The Muftak staggers into the daylight of Tatooine, hating his parents a little bit more for birthing him into a universe where such unreasonable heat could possibly exist. His name isn’t “the Muftak” but rather “Muftak.” And as for his species: Instead of being “a Muftak” as most people assume (hence the addition of a definite article as a prefix), Muftak is a Talz who came from Orto Plutonia—which is really quite far away from Tatooine and, being full of ice and snow and cold things, could serve as a model of the desert planet’s literal polar opposite. How the Muftak—Muftak—how a Talz came to Tatooine is another story for another time, but needless to say, neither Muftak nor any of the other regulars has ever seen another like him. At some point Myo, confused as Myo often becomes, decided Muftak the Talz was in fact just “the Muftak” and it kind of stuck after a while, mostly because Muftak got tired of fighting it.
The Muftak does math in his baking, roasting, broiling head: With certain reductions in surcharges, tariffs, consideration taxes, delivery costs, and gratuities, he thinks he can pull together enough to at least live to see the twin suns setting a few more times. First he must find the Smuggler, and then he must find the Pig-Nosed Man—a human, he thinks—or the Walrus-Faced Man—an Aqualish, he knows, and whom he knows will, if the two of them are separate, know where to find the Pig-Nosed probably-human Man.
Nobody likes the Pig-Nosed Man. Except, it would seem, the Walrus-Faced Man. Sooner or later, they’ll all end up at the bar. At Mos Eisley, sooner or later everyone ends up at the bar.
So the Muftak trudges to the bar.
—
Myo, a fight-happy Abyssin with one eye, white muttonchops, and a giant chip on his shoulder, rages at the Scrapper. The Scrapper, secure behind half a meter of what has to at least be Myo-proof shielding, yawns.
“Yell and scream all you like, pal, but business is business. Someone came in and sold me the horn. I put the horn in the window. Someone came in and bought the horn. Kloo horns are good for business, everybody knows that.”
“But it was mine,” Myo yells.
“No,” says the Scrapper. “It was mine.”
Myo thinks. As this is not his strong suit, it takes awhile.
“Who…” He works out the question in his mind, and the Scrapper could swear he hears gears grinding. “…who bought it?”
The Scrapper says, “How dare you, sir. The privacy of our clientele and their business is second only to our discretion,” but as he says it, the Scrapper curls his first two fingers up and in, two times, pap-pap—the intergalactic symbol for “twenty.”
Myo slides the money under the razor-thin slit beneath the shielding that separates them. Where he got it is a story for another time and, besides, it isn’t his anymore.
“A Sakiyan. Real shiny. Walked in, brought it up like he was looking for it. Didn’t even haggle price—three hundred.”
“The hell you sold that thing for three hundred,” Myo says. Nobody’s so dumb as to believe a Kloo horn would sell for that much in a scrapper shop like this—not even Myo.
“It was in that neighborhood. Three hundred, two fifty, a hundo, somewhere in there.”
Myo narrows his eye.
“And who sold it to you in the first place?”
“Once again, sir, I insist you respect the confidentiality of our customers and blah blah blah,” the Scrapper says, again doing the little curl of his two fingers meaning feed me.
Another twenty goes under the partition.
“Some little…bat weasel? I don’t know. Like an Ugnaught with a gland issue or somethin’. I thought he was a really hairy kid at first.”
“She,” snarls Myo. “Kabe.”
Myo mentally adds forty to the price he’ll extract from the little Chadra-Fan who sleeps in the tunnels below them—which, again, as thinking is not his strong suit, takes awhile, which only makes Myo more mad, which, as it happens, is Myo’s strong suit.
—
A Kloo horn would make a not-ridiculous cane, thinks Djas Puhr, strolling through the spaceport toward the dark(er), cool(er) climes of the cantina. At least a proper cane would have some use, some practical value, instead of this absurd stick that made squeaky sounds that equated to “music.” Still, he admits to himself, when the bar was full of music, spirits were raised; and when spirits were raised so, too, were glasses. Full glasses meant drunk patrons, and drunk patrons meant opportunity.
Distracted by these thoughts, Djas Puhr does not realize, as he passes inside the saloon’s threshold, that the Smuggler and the Wookiee, eyes on the door, have drawn on him.
; He let his guard down for half a heartbeat. Half a heartbeat. Yet that was all it took for the Smuggler to draw on him.
Han Solo is the fastest draw Djas Puhr has ever seen.
“You wouldn’t shoot a man holding a Kloo horn, would you?” asks Djas Puhr.
“That depends,” says the Smuggler. “You wouldn’t shoot a man wanted by the Hutt, would you?”
“Depends on the Hutt, Han,” says Djas Puhr. “Depends on how badly he wants the man.”
“You’re all heart,” Han says. Djas Puhr cannot help but notice Han has yet to lower his blaster.
“ ‘Heart’ suggests the warmth and kindness one reserves for friends, yet men like us cannot afford to have friends. I consider you a mutually beneficial associate by profession—if I consider you at all.”
The Wookiee barks.
“No offense.”
Solo answers for Chewbacca. “None taken. I hear talk I might be a marked man. Marked men mean business. That’s who we are right now, Puhr—a bounty hunter and a bounty. A businessman and a piece of unfinished business. Unless you convince me otherwise.”
“I wouldn’t spit on this particular Hutt were he burning alive before me and paying for mercy by the pound, let alone the fortune he’s offering for your hide. Far be it from me to turn my back on an opportunity, but certain lines even I will not cross.” As if to underscore the banality of his intent, he pulls an awkward toot sound from the horn. Han almost laughs, for Djas Puhr has almost made a joke, but he didn’t, so he doesn’t.
Han considers him. No one knows too much about Djas Puhr. Hunter. Tracker. And they say he clawed his way out of Jabba’s slave pits and never looked back. Now, Han Solo doesn’t like Jabba, and the feeling at the moment surely is mutual, but even he recoils at the thought of how much hate the Sakiyan must feel toward his former enslaver. Han does a quick equation in his head. Who would Djas Puhr want dead more? Who would Djas Puhr want dead first?
Han puts the blaster back in its holster.
“Sorry,” he says. Han Solo doesn’t really mean it, and Djas Puhr doesn’t really care.
“Word is, you were boarded.”
Chewbacca growls. A confirmation.
“It was the safe move,” Djas Puhr says. “Live to smuggle another day and make repaying the Hutt a tomorrow problem.”
Han shrugs. What else could I have done?
“I am saddened, though, as, if my memory serves me, among whatever else you were hauling under your floorboards, you were transferring a certain item on my behalf.”
Han nods to the Wookiee. Reaching into his satchel, the Wookiee pulls out the marbled egg of a gwayo bird. He tosses it to Djas Puhr, who catches it with his free hand, then admires the thing.
“Boarded or not, I still know how to take care of my friends,” Han says, underlining the word with his tone. Djas Puhr acknowledges it, and/or Han, with a nod.
Solo could have dumped the egg along with the rest of his haul, whatever contraband it was, but chose otherwise. It is a small thing, a tiny kindness, a little law broken here, an import–export regulation flaunted there, and in the face of strict legal penalty, if not actual death. Some chance to take on a mutually beneficial associate by profession, thinks Djas Puhr.
“A taste of home,” he says by way of offering a toast, and takes a bite of the egg. “And watch your backs. The Hutt has gone high enough on your bounties that every boy with a blaster and an itch to make his bones will be aiming to make them with yours.”
Han nods, a gesture so small, so subtle, it exists on the verge of being visible. Both know what has transpired between them, though.
What a terrible business decision, thinks Djas Puhr, finishing the egg at his usual seat, in his usual alcove, ensconced in the darkness of the bar. For either of them.
—
Myo shakes Kabe by the neck back and forth and back and forth, inchoate, a font of blackened, sour emotions, all articulated in a guttural rendering of snarls and roars.
Kabe makes the noises one produces while being throttled by a homicidal Abyssin.
“You stole from me!” Myo screams into Kabe’s face, and the Chadra-Fan feels her fur blast back and gather the moisture from Myo’s breath.
Kabe squeaks in violent desperation, motioning to Myo’s clenched fist around her neck. I can’t tell you anything if you keep crushing my windpipe, Kabe tries to squeak, but instead she squeaks only “Squeak.”
“Speak!” yells Myo, and Kabe motions more frantically to Myo’s contact with her throat. Myo realizes what he’s doing, and how it may impede upon Kabe answering his question, and lets her go. Kabe falls to the dark, cool stone of the tunnel floor.
Friend, Kabe squeaks, friend, I never—never—never would I ever steal from a friend. I do not see how one could survive a place such as this without friends. My friend the Muftak, however—
And in a hot flash, Myo remembers the whiff of the Muftak from the night previous and, with both of his massive fists, pounds the wall over Kabe’s head. Bits of rock dust fall on her fur. She covers her head in case anything bigger comes down. It doesn’t.
When Myo exhausts himself he says, “I’ll kill him,” heaving with heavy, angry breath.
Then something happens in his head. Kabe could swear she actually saw it happen.
“Hurmmph,” hurmmphs Myo.
Kabe keeps watching.
“Oh,” says Myo. Myo then thinks for a moment—which, being Myo, maybe stretches beyond what either of us might reasonably consider a moment. “Oh—no.” He trails off. “The drink. Hard to remember sometimes. I think…” Oh boy, thinks Kabe. “…maybe I owed him some money?”
Myo sinks against the wall opposite.
Kabe exhales. Today, she lives.
“Still shouldn’t have stolen from me,” he says. Then, looking up to Kabe, “We should probably find Djas Puhr before he finds you two and kills you.” With that, Myo lumbers off toward daylight. Kabe follows, not so certain she’ll survive the day after all.
—
Somehow, impossible though it may seem, there lives a creature with even worse luck than all the aforementioned combined: a Rodian who considers himself not only a small-time loan shark in the ascendant but also a bounty hunter of great talents and prospects. If he has ever managed to collect a loan or a bounty as of yet—in fact, as if he had ever hunted anything successfully, for that matter—no one quite could tell the tale to you with absolute certainty. What anyone knows about this particular Rodian is—he is an idiot with a gun. A place like the Mos Eisley spaceport bloats with the number of idiots with guns prowling its corridors, so this somehow renders him even more unremarkable unless, for whatever reason, he points it at you, in which case, Hoo, brother. Good luck.
His name, Greedo, fits him with an ironic appropriateness suggesting that nurture and nature traipse together, conspiring against us all in a fait accompli, hand in unlovable hand. Greedo’s hands are particularly unlovable, with their long, tendril fingers and weird little suckers on the tips. And at this particular moment in our story, he pokes one sad, dangly, puckered protuberance into the chest of Lirin Car’n, the Bith horn player minus one horn, the musician who loves music but hates musicians, the poor sucker who cannot pay off the loan he owes to, of all beings, Greedo.
Lirin Car’n has a secret: He planned on selling the legendary Kloo horn of his father Lirin D’avi that morning anyway. Lirin Car’n hates playing in a band. He hates his bandmates. He hates his bandleader. He hates the endless, restless lifestyle of a professional itinerant where the only constant is discomfort. Never could he ever have imagined anything in the galaxy that could rob the joy of music from him, but it turns out living the life of a musician did the trick. At least that’s what he tells himself. That the horn could be converted into money he could use to repay what he owes the shifty Rodian loan shark was only happenstance.
Behind Greedo stands the Pig-Nosed Man and the Walrus-Faced Man, who everyone, save Greedo, knows to avoid. They project a sense
of actual menace that the always-this-side-of-desperate Greedo lacks no matter how hard he tries.
“Payday, Bith,” Greedo purr-gargles in his native tongue.
“I don’t have it. Next week?” asks Lirin Car’n, as if none of this would be remarkable, or create any need for raised tones and physical violence. As far as Lirin Car’n can figure, there is no way around it. Greedo wants a thing he simply does not have. All Lirin Car’n could do would be to, somehow, figure out how to acquire the money he owes that doesn’t involve pawning his father’s instrument, which he no longer possesses.
Greedo pokes him harder, managing to push Lirin Car’n into the wall. “And why should I provide you clemency? Why should I show you mercy? A debt is a debt. The terms were that I would be paid in full by you today!” he yells.
“I cannot, Greedo. For I literally have no—” He turns his pockets inside out to show the Rodian. “—money at all. I was robbed last night, you see, and—”
Greedo yawlps in frustration. He gets closer.
“I shall only raise your interest rate to thirty-five percent and choose to let you live,” he hisses. “You are very lucky.”
“I do not feel very lucky,” Lirin Car’n says.
“Well, you are, because today is the day Greedo levels up, and I don’t have the time to chase broke little hustlers like you up and down the spaceport.” The Pig-Nosed Man and the Walrus-Faced Man share a smug chuckle, the sound of two bullies about to remove the pocket change from an unknowing, and smaller, child.
Lirin Car’n can’t help but laugh at the idea of a hopeless case like Greedo belonging to the same class of violent criminal as these two, and yet, by association, Lirin Car’n can only assume this is the reputation the Rodian wishes to cultivate. This is the kind of thing to which Greedo aspires; these two chuckling, violent morons radiate Greedo’s dream vibe.
Greedo tugs at his blaster, but it catches in its holster, and needing a second hand to extract the thing. The maneuver, so incompetent in its perfect Greedoian absurdity, strikes Lirin Car’n as laughable, and thus he laughs again, rather than doing what any sensible creature would do when an idiot attempts to draw a weapon on them only for the thing to get stuck, which is: run. The laughter only makes things worse.