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 communique, 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 pate was the best Trevagg had ever eaten, and when
Nightlity 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 col
lected 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 sil ver 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?"
Balu turned his head to consider her. Trevagg could tell from
the man's temperature and the vibration of his pulses, even at
this distance, that he found her no more sexually stimulating than
he'd have found a Jawa. Disgust flooded him at the sheer, galling
insensitivity of humans.
"Trevagg," said the officer, "most species-most civ
ilizations-ostracize members who bear hybrid children. If you find
her attractive there's probably enough enzyme compatibility for
you to get her with child. You'd be ruining her for life."
Trevagg emitted a sharp, barking laugh. "I can't believe you.
You're within two meters of that, and you're talking to me about
enzyme compatibility? Man, grow some gonads! If she was worried
about that she shouldn't be
traipsing around the galaxy in that
flimsy little head-veil in the first place."
Balu put his hand on Trevagg's arm warningly, and the Gotal
halted in surprise. Balu seldom showed any disposition to care
about anything, but there was a definite threat in his dark eyes.
Patiently, Trevagg promised, "All right. I'm only taking her
out for a walk. She can always say no."
But after three drinks at the Mos Eisley Cantina, he reflected,
as he entered the outer office again and took Nightlily's arm -
not to mention the prospect of marriage that seemed to push every
switch on her board - it wasn't at all likely that she would.
"I can't believe that you would . . . would truly love me
enough to wed," crooned the girl, as they crossed the brazen
burnish of dust and sunlight in the street. "The males of my
species . . . fear that commitment. That giving of all for love."
"The males of your species are fools," growled Trevagg, gazing
deep into her eyes and drinking in the heady perfume of her
sexuality. As far as he was concerned that went for the females
too, but he didn't say so. He glanced back from the shadows of the
buildings opposite, just in time to see a flicker of dusty robes,
the trailing brightness of an orange scarf...
Pylokam the health-food seller. Crossing the street to the
government offices.
The Gotal' s mind seemed to click, all things falling into
place with a hunter's cutting instinct. Balu. Pylokam had seen
thejedi.
His first reaction was sheer annoyance. He'd already told
Nightlily he'd booked passage for her on the Starswan, and she'd
flung her arms around him, asking if he had booked his own
passage, to come to H'nemthe to marry her with due ceremony before
her mother and sisters. He'd gotten out of that one by promising
to embark within a few days-"I am an official of the Empire, you
know. I can't just leave everything all in a moment, though,
believe me, I will be counting the days." But it meant that there
was no putting her off.
There was no reason for Pylokam to come to the impost offices
other than to report to Balu, and he knew Balu, for all his world-
weary slovenliness, was not one to waste time. He'd
investigate-and he'd report.
And that meant Trevagg would have to find someone to
assassinate Balu this afternoon.
Ordinarily, of course, he'd have gotten in touch with Jub
Vegnu, set up a meeting, made an appointment with Jabba the Hutt,
and arranged for payment ...
But of course he knew-everybody knew-that freelance assassins
were ten for a half-credit in Mos Eisley and most of them were
supposed to hang out in the Mos Eisley Cantina. It couldn't be
that difficult to meet one. The encounter would presumably be
short and sweet-that's what assassins were for, to make life easy
for those who had other things to do-leaving him plenty of the
afternoon and all of the evening to conclude an encounter of
another kind with Nightlily in the Mos Eisley Inn.
If entering the government offices from the noon street was
like passing into a (more or less) cool grotto, transition from
the late-afternoon dust and glare into the near-darkness of the
cantina was comparable to being swallowed by a bantha with
indigestion. Trevagg's hunter eyes switched almost instantaneously
from day vision to night as a great drench of vibration hit him
overlapping electrospectrum fields, personal magnetic auras
buzzing like a hive of bees, halos of irritation and annoyance
swollen by the proximity of strangers and exacerbated by every
sort of psycho- and neural relaxant known in the galaxy.
It was like the marketplace, only more sinister, without the
bright spiciness of making a living. The thoughts and emotions
swirling through the gloom were darker, more dangerous, against
the brassy twirling of the little dark-clothed, insectoid band.
"Are you sure it's safe?" hummed Nightlily, clinging once more to
his arm, and Trevagg patted her hand. Her fear reacted on his
hunter's instinct as her anxiety and distress had earlier-prey
signals that read as an invitation to conquest. He felt an almost
overwhelming desire to crush her in his arms.
Instead he cradled the back of her exquisite coned head in one
hand, said, "With me, you're safe, my blossom. With me you'll
always be safe."
They took one of the small booths to the left of the raised
entry vestibule, Nightlily gazing around her, fearfully marveling.
In addition to being a virgin, she had confessed to Trevagg over
lunch, she had never been away from her home planet before, had
never seen anything like this. As well she hadn't, thought the
Gotal, amused at the way she relaxed under the influence of Wuher
the barkeep's drinks computer. In another booth a completely
illegal card game was in progress between a ghoulish Givin, a
giant one-eyed Abyssin, and a big fluffy white thing of a species
even Trevagg had never seen; in another a shaggy, ferocious-
looking Wolfman sipped his drink alone. While Nightlily sighed,
and giggled over her second drink, and asked him, "Are you truly
sure, beloved? Mating is such a solemn thing, such an awe-
inspiring thing..." Trevagg was searching the crowd with his eyes
and, more importantly, with his cones, seeking out the vibrations
of danger and blood, the vibrations of another hunter, as he had
once been.
"It is as nothing," Trevagg said. "No sacrifice is too great
for what I feel for you." The fact that she couldn't even detect
him in a lie-that she didn't have that much sensitivity to the
vibrations of his mind- only redoubled his contempt for her. So
desirable-so innocent-so stupid . . . No wonder they don't let
virgins travel off her planet. She'd told him that, too. They'd
never make it home.
Not as virgins, anyway.
Meantime, his hunter senses roved the dark forms, seeking
another hunter.
The two tall human females drinking by the bar were a maybe
They sparkled with danger, a flamelike brightness that some
assassins had. But the color of their aura wasn't quite right. The
Rodian at another card table, with his small earlike antennae
swiveling nervously in the noise of the room-yes. Definitely a
killer, though Trevagg wasn't certain he could take on Predne
Balu. The Wolfman, yes; he looked big enough, tough enough, to
take on the human and win. The brown-haired human talking quietly
with an enormous Wookiee at another bo oth-maybe. The edge was
there, but not the darkness. The thin man smoking a hookah at the
bar-absolutely. His aura was dark, terrible, but there was a
coldness about him that made Trevagg wonder if he could be
approached at all. That was one, he thought, who killed for a huge
sum . . . or for his own pleasure. Nothing between.
For the rest, they were locals the foul Dr. Evazan and his
disgusting Aqualish friend were well known to Trevagg, dangerous
but not for hir
e; the horned and sinister-looking Devaronian
swaying his fingers dreamily to the music of the band was much
less dangerous than he appeared. The old spacer in most of a
flight suit Trevagg recognized as a smuggler who worked for the
monastery, probably involved in something illegal -like most of
the religious brothers of that organization-but he would stop far
short of murder.
And then he felt it. The rushing, buzzing sensation in his
cones, the strange humming confusion, almost like the presence of
a high-energy machine . . .
And the Jedi came into the cantina.
He was a nondescript old human, his beard gone white as the
hair of humans did with age, his robes shabby with wear and desert
dust. He was trailed by a human youth-a back-desert moisture
farmer, by the look of his clothes and the way he stared around
him, as Nightlily had, awed by what he thought was the Big
City-and by a couple of much-battered droids whose power cells
made Trevagg's cones prickle. Wuher the barkeep swung immediately
around. "Hey, we don't serve their kind here!"
"What?" said the boy, and the taller of the droids, a dented C-
3PO, looked as disconcerted as it was possible for a droid to
look.
"Your droids. They'll have to wait outside. We don't want them
here."
Trevagg, sitting only a few feet away, heartily concurred. It
was difficult enough to think in here, to determine what he should
do, with Nightlily so soft and vulnerable and giggly on one side,
and the dark vibrations of the assassins on the other.
"Listen, why don't you wait out by the speeder," the boy said
quietly-an unnecessary courtesy, in Trevagg's opinion. A C-3PO
only looked human, and an R2-D2 didn't even do that. "We don't
want any trouble."
The old man, meanwhile, had gone to the bar, and was deep in
murmured conversation with the elderly monastic spacer in the
flight suit; Trevagg stretched his hearing to pick up their words,
but over the music of the band it was not easy.
Even less easy was it to hear something besides Nightlily's
soft voice, slightly flown with unaccustomed substances, asking
yet again, humbly, how he could truly love her so much.
"Of course I do, of course," said Trevagg, watching the old
Jedi move into conversation with die towering Wookiee. He looked
Star Wars - Tales From The Mos Eisley Cantina Page 21