able to come up with the original impost, so it didn't really
matter. What mattered was that now, through proper go-betweens of
course, he'd be able to offer her a few thousand credits for her
dwelling compound-which she'd be glad to accept, after going
without water or food for a couple of days -and rent it out by the
room. Provided, of course, he could arrange it with his go-
betweens before the Prefect heard about it and outbid him.
The Modbrek female's distress irritated him. Coming from
another of his own species-another Gotal- it might have evoked
pity, though Trevagg had been less ready than many of his
compatriots to yield to emanations of wretchedness and fear. But
Modbreks were in Trevagg's opinion only semisentient, wispy ephem
eral beings, hairless as slugs save for the grotesque masses of
blue mane that streamed from their undeveloped heads, with huge
eyes, and tiny noses and mouths in pointy pale faces. This female
and her daughters, sending forth waves of anxiety, reacted on him
as a kind of screechy music.
"Madam," he said at last, sighing, "I'm not your father. And
I'm not a charity worker. And if you knew you couldn't pay your
water imposts-which I assume you did know, since you've been in
arrears for two months and neither you nor your daughters have
troubled to find decent-paying work-you should have gone to your
family or some charity organization before this."
He nudged a toggle on the control board of his desk. A human
deputy in a rumpled uniform came in and showed the three females
out. Trevagg could sense the man's pity for them, and also, much
to Trevagg's disgust, the fact that the human found the insubstan
tial creatures physically attractive, even sexually interesting.
Of course, Trevagg had always had difficulty understanding how
humans found each other sexually interesting. Wan, flabby,
squishy, they lacked both the Gotal ability to transmit a range of
emotional waves, and the contrast between strength and weakness so
necessary to pleasure. How could anyone . . . ?
He shrugged, and turned back to his desk to tap through a call.
Behind him he heard a step on the threshold, felt the heat of a
body-no closer than the threshold, and human range-and recognized
the electromagnetic aura as that of Predne Balu, Assistant
Security Officer of Mos Eisley. Felt too like a smoky darkness the
man's weariness, the bitter tang of his disgust.
"You couldn't have let her have another month?" Balu's raspy
voice sounded tired. The heat of the Tatooine suns seemed to have
long ago baked out of Balu the savagery, the enthusiasms so
necessary to a hunter. Trevagg despised him.
"She's had two. Water's expensive to import."
A message flickered across the black screen of the receiver
pvlokam 1130. Trevagg moved a finger and the pixels wiped
themselves away as if they had never been. He turned in his chair,
to face Balu a heavy man, slope-shouldered in his wrinkled dark
blue uniform, hair black, eyes black, but the pitiful stubble of
what humans called beard was thickly shot with gray. A head like a
melon. Trevagg never could look at humans without feeling contempt
and a little amusement. He knew they had other types of sensory
organs than head cones, but even after many years on the space
lanes- as bounty hunter, Imperial bodyguard, and officer of ship
security-Trevagg had never gotten over how silly, how ineffectual,
beings looked who didn't have cones. On Antar Four, though
everyone knew in their heart of hearts that the size of one's
cones didn't affect their ability to pick up sensory vibration,
Gotals whose cones were undeveloped frequently resorted to
falsies.
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 Hull's go-between, an enormously obese Sullustan
named Jub Vegnu, was waiting for him by Pylokarn's Health Food
booth. Pylokam, an aged and fragile human in trailing dirt-colored
rags and a garish orange scarf, had been oplimislically 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 Mod-brek 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 ajedi 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 overstaffed 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 will 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 die 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
Star Wars - Tales From The Mos Eisley Cantina Page 20