Star Wars - Tales From The Mos Eisley Cantina

by Kevin J. Anderson

  infuriated with someone who is knowledgeable about what you do,

  and appreciates it as I appreciated them. The music got darker as

  the day wore on, smokier and more intimate, and Figrin Da'n

  performed with his eyes closed, moving through the numbers, with

  Doikk Na'ts at his side; and they played with each other, building

  through the numbers together, playing off each other, feeding im

  provisations back upon improvisations, playing, for the first time

  in who knows how long, for an audience that could, and did,

  appreciate what they did. An audience of one.

  They closed up with "Solitary World," an appropriate choice, I

  suppose, with the long intertwined sequences of Fizzz and Kloo,

  ending with one of the most difficult of the Kloo solos, and Doikk

  finished his piece, bowing out in recognition of genius And the

  Bith stood there and played, Fiery Figrin Da'n in the midst of the

  music and I watched him wail away, safe, secure, surrounded by the

  sound, in that place that I would never know.

  Swap Meet The Jawa's Tale

  by Kevin J. Anderson

  The sandcrawler labored up the long slope of golden sand that

  rippled with heat under the twin suns of Tatooine. The immense

  vehicle moved ahead at a moderate but inexorable rate. Its

  clanking tractor treads left parallel furrows on the virgin

  surface of the dune. Within a few hours, gusting sandwhirls would

  erase the tracks and return the Dune Sea to its pristine state.

  The desert resisted all permanent change. Deep in the murky bowels

  of the sandcrawler, in the cluttered engine rooms where throbbing

  power reactors pounded and echoed, Het Nkik labored with his Jawa

  clan members. From the depths of his hood, he sniffed the air, a

  veritable sauce of mingled odors. The engines smelled as if they

  were getting old again, lubricant spoiling, durasteel cogs wearing

  away.

  Humans and many other sentient creatures loathed the way Jawas

  smelled, detecting only a stink that made them turn up their

  noses. But Jawas derived an incredible amount of information from

  such smells the health of their companions, when and what they

  had last eaten, their identity, maturity, status of arousal, ex

  citement, or boredom.

  Het Nkik cluttered his concern. At any other time the Jawas

  would have rushed to avert any potential breakdown-at least until

  they had unloaded their wares on a hapless customer. But today the

  Jawas paid him little heed, too preoccupied with the impending

  swap meet, the annual gathering of all clans. They pushed the

  engine to its maximum capacity as the sandcrawler toiled across

  the Dune Sea to the traditional meeting place of the Jawa people.

  Het Nkik shook his head, his bright yellow eyes glowing in the

  dim shadows of his hood. The other Jawas would know he was annoyed

  and impatient from his scent.

  Het Nkik had odd ideas for a Jawa, and he told them to any who

  would listen. He enjoyed watching his clan brothers scurry around,

  confused at the thoughts he placed in their heads-thoughts that

  perhaps the Jawas could do more than run and hide from persecution

  by the Sand People, by the human moisture farmers, or worst of all

  by the Imperial stormtroopers who had decided that helpless Jawa

  forts made good practice targets for desert assaults. He wondered

  if someone else among all the Jawas had realized that Jawas were

  only weak because they chose to be weak. None of his people wanted

  to listen.

  Het Nkik turned back to the engines, tearing open an access

  panel and adjusting the delicate electronics. He found it amazing

  that the Jawas could use all their skill and imagination in a

  desperate fight to keep this ancient machine running, yet they

  would do nothing to protect themselves or their property if some

  antagonist tried to take it.

  With the sound of a grating alarm signal, the Jawas in the

  engine room squealed with delight. Cinching tight his pungent

  brown robe, Het Nkik scurried after the odiers as they rushed for

  the lift platforms to the bridge observation deck. The old

  elevators groaned, overloaded with jabbering creatures.

  At the pinnacle of the great trapezoidal sandcrawler, fifteen

  Jawa crew members clustered around die long, high transparisteel

  window, standing on inverted spare-parts boxes to see. All during

  Tatooine's long double-day, Jawa lookouts stood atop makeshift

  stools, gazing out upon the baked sands, looking for any scrap of

  metal or signs of Sand People or Imperial storm-troopers or

  hostile smugglers. Upon glimpsing any potential threat, the pilot

  would swerve in a different direction and increase speed, locking

  down blast doors and shuddering with fear, hoping that the

  adversary would not pursue them. Het Nkik had never heard of even

  a krayt dragon striking something as big as a Jawa sandcrawler,

  but that did not stop the Jawas from living in terror.

  Now the other small hooded forms looked down upon the broad

  bowl-shaped valley among the dunes. Het Nkik elbowed his way to

  one of the overturned metal boxes so he could step up and look out

  across the gathering place. Though this was his third season as an

  adult on the scavenger hunts, Het Nkik still found the swap-meet

  site breathtaking.

  He stared across the dazzling sand as the twin suns shone down

  on a swarm of sandcrawlers like a herd of metallic beasts gathered

  in a circle. The vehicles looked similar, though over the decades

  Jawa mechanics had attached modifications, subde differences in

  armor and patchwork.

  Originally the sandcrawlers had been huge ore haulers brought

  to Tatooine by hopeful human miners who had expected to make a

  fortune exploiting the baked wastelands; but the mineral content

  of Tatooine's desert was as bleak and unappealing as the landscape

  itself. The miners had abandoned their ore haulers, and the

  rodentlike Jawa scavengers had seized them and put them to use,

  wandering the Dune Sea and the Jundland Wastes in search of

  salvageable debris. After more than a century, the sandcrawler

  hulls had been oxidized to a dull brown and pitted by the abrasive

  desert winds.

  Their sandcrawler had arrived late, as Het Nkik had feared. Two

  days ago the pilot had taken them deep into a box-ended offshoot

  of Beggar's Canyon where the metal detectors had found a slight

  trace of something that might have been the framework of a crashed

  fighter's hull. But instead they had found only a few girders

  rusted away to flakes of powder. The oxidized debris was

  worthless, but before the Jawas could leave the narrow canyon, an

  early-season sandwhirl had whipped up, trapping them in a blinding

  cyclone of sand and wind. Strapped to the w alls of their living

  cubicles, the Jawas had waited for the storm to blow over, and

  then used the powerful engines to plow through the drifted sand.

  Though they had arrived at the swap meet late, there still

  seemed to be a bustling business. Far below, other Jawas scurried

  a
bout like insects setting up the bazaar. Het Nkik hoped he could

  still find something worthwhile to trade.

  Standing on their metal stools, the pilot and the chief lookout

  called across to each other, discussing the final sandcrawler

  count. Het Nkik calculated quickly with his darting yellow eyes

  and saw that they were not the last to arrive. One of the other

  vehicles was missing. Some of the Jawas around him speculated on

  what misfortune might have overtaken their brethren, while others

  consoled themselves by pointing out that even if the goods had

  already been picked over, they would have a new batch to inspect

  when the final vehicle arrived.

  As the pilot guided the sandcrawler over the lip of the dunes

  in a switchback path down into the flat meeting area, the Jawas

  scurried back to their living cubicles to prep their own wares.

  His body wiry beneath the heavy robes, Het Nkik had no difficulty

  scrambling down fifteen decks to reach the stuffy cubicles.

  Het Nkik slept in an empty upright shipping pod, rectangular

  and scarred with corrosion, barely large enough to step inside and

  turn around. During sleeping cycles he buckled himself to the wall

  and relaxed against the belt restraints where he could stare at

  his prized possessions stashed in pockets, magnetic drawers, and

  field jars. Now he grabbed the accumulated credit chips and barter

  notes he had earned during their great scavenger hunt and darted

  toward the main egress doors.

  Faced with the magnitude of the great bazaar, the Jawas worked

  together as an efficient team. They had set up their merchandise

  dozens of times during their half-year trek, stopping at every

  moisture former's residence, every smuggler's den, even Jabba the

  Hutt's palace. Jawas didn't care where they sold their wares.

  Down in the bowels of the sandcrawler, Het Nkik scurried among

  the merchandise, tweaking the barely functional droids and servo

  apparatus. Jawas had an instinctive feel for machinery and

  electronics, knowing how to get a piece of equipment functioning

  just well enough to sell it. Let the buyer beware.

  The deserts of Tatooine were a veritable graveyard of junk. The

  harsh planet had been the site of many galactic battles over the

  centuries, and the dry climate preserved all manner of debris from

  crashed ships and lost expeditions.

  Het Nkik loved to fix and recondition broken things energized

  by his ability to bring wrecked machines back to life. He

  remembered when he and his clan mate and best friend Jek Nkik had

  stumbled upon a crashed fighter. The small fighter had blown up,

  leaving only fragments-nothing even a Jawa could salvage. But

  digging deeper, they had found the burned and tangled components

  of a droid-an E522-model assassin droid that had seemed hopelessly

  damaged, but he and Jek Nkik vowed to fix it, secretly scrounging

  spare parts from the storehouse in the Jawa fortress.

  Their clan leader Wimateeka had suspected the two young boys

  were up to something and watched them closely, but that only made

  them more determined to succeed. Het Nkik and his friend had spent

  months in a secret hideaway deep in the badlands, piecing together

  tiny components and servomotors, adding new instruction sets.

  Finally the assassin droid stood emasculated of murderous

  programming, purged of all hunter-seeker weapons and all

  initiative to cause violence. The E522 functioned perfectly, but

  as little more than an extremely powerful messenger droid.

  Het and Jek Nkik had proudly displayed their triumph to

  Wimateeka, who scolded the boys for such folly; no one would want

  to buy a reprogrammed assassin droid, he said. But Het Nkik could

  tell from the not-quite-controlled rush of scent that Wimateeka

  also admired the young Jawas' brashness. Never again had Het Nkik

  believed common wisdom about what Jawas could not do.

  He and Jek Nkik had surprised themselves by selling the

  repaired assassin droid to the tusk-faced Lady Valarian, Jabba the

  Hutt's chief rival on Tatooine-a very risky trade that brought

  them even more scolding from Wimateeka. Lady Valarian was a tough

  customer; and the one time she had felt cheated, the only remains

  of the hapless Jawa traders were a few tattered brown cloaks found

  in the Great Pit of Carkoon where the voracious Sarlacc waited to

  devour anything that came within reach. Het Nkik had no idea what

  had happened to their reprogrammed assassin droid, but since Lady

  Valarian had not come after them, he presumed the huge Whiphid

  smuggler queen must have been satisfied.

  Two years ago, Het and Jek Nkik had been separated upon

  reaching their age of adulthood, sent out to do scavenger duty

  away from the Jawa fortress. In a few years, sandcrawler crews

  would swap clan groupings and arrange marriages; but for the time

  being Het Nkik saw his friend only during the annual swap meets.

  Now he had credit chips in his barter pouch, he had merchandise to

  trade-and he looked forward to seeing Jek Nkik.

  The sandcrawler ground to a halt in the demarcated area set

  aside for their clan subunit. When the cargo doors opened, Jawa

  teams scurried to haul out the repaired droids, scraps of polished

  hull-metal plates, appliances, and primitive weapons they had

  found among the sands. The Jawas' motto was not to look for uses

  in a salvaged piece of garbage, but rather to imagine someone else

  who might find a use for it.

  Jawas bustled about setting up tables, awnings, credit display

  readers. Others gave a last burnish to the exoskeletons of

  clanking mechanical servants. A few tried to look nondescript,

  hiding emergency repair kits inside their cloaks in the event that

  their wares unexpectedly stopped functioning before a sale could

  be confirmed.

  Power droids lumbered down a ramp, little more than boxlike

  batteries walking on two accordioned legs. Harvester droids and

  vaporator components were set up and displayed; Jawa salesmen took

  their positions proclaiming the quality of their wares. A few

  lucky ones rushed off to be the first to snoop among the items for

  sale or trade by other clans.

  Around the perimeter of the rendezvous flat, Jawa sentries

  stood with image enhancers and macrobinoculars, searching for any

  sign of approaching threat. At the slightest suspicious sign, the

  Jawa clans would pack up their wares in a flash to vanish into the

  endless dune wilderness.

  Het Nkik looked around but could not locate Jek's sandcrawler.

  After finishing setup procedures, he took his turn to look at

  the other wares. In the bustling melee, he smelled the stinging

  sweet scents of hundreds of Jawas keyed up with excitement. He

  felt the baking suns' heat on his brown cloak, he heard the

  cacophony of squeaking voices, the rumble of sandcrawler engines.

  Electronic motors ratcheted and choked, missing beats until Jawa

  mechanics effected quick fixes in hopes that none of the potential

  customers would notice. He wandered among the huckster tables,
his

  excitement soured by the fact that Jek's sandcrawler was not

  there.

  Het Nkik saw his clan leader, old Wimateeka, discussing

  something in hushed tones with the clan leader from an outlying

  Jawa fortress near the human settlement of Bestine. Het Nkik could

  smell the concern, the fear, the indecision. Wimateeka was so

  alarmed he didn't even try to mask his odors.

  Het Nkik sensed bad news. Wimateeka was whispering, for fear of

  sending the rest of the Jawas in a panicked flight. With a feeling

  of dread, Het Nkik drove back his impulse to run back to the

  security of the sandcrawler and pushed forward to interrupt Wi

  mateeka. "What is it, clan leader?" he asked. "Do you have news of

  the last sandcrawler?"

  Wimateeka looked at him in surprise, and the other clan leader

  chittered in annoyance. Normal protocol among Jawas held that

  younger members did not approach their clan leaders directly, but

  went through a labyrinth of family connections, passing a message

  up through higher and higher relations until finally it reached

  its target; answers came back down through a similarly circuitous

  route. But Het Nkik had a reputation for sidestepping the rules.

  "Clan leader Eet Ptaa was telling me of a Tusken attack on his

  clan's fortress," Wimateeka said. "The Sand People broke in and

  attacked before the Jawas managed to flee. Our brethren will never

  return to their ancestral home. They lost all possessions except

  what they could throw into the sandcrawler."

  Het Nkik was appalled. "If the Jawas were inside their

  fortress, did they not fight? Why did they just flee?"

  "Jawas do not fight," Wimateeka said. "We are too weak."

  "Because they don't try," Het Nkik said, feeling his temper

  rise. His body scent carried his anger to both clan leaders.

  "We would have been slaughtered!" Eet Ptaa insisted.

  "Jawas are too small," Wimateeka said. "Sand People are too

  warlike." The old clan leader turned to the other, dismissing Het

  Nkik. "This young one has a reputation for speaking without

  thinking. We can only hope his wisdom will grow with age."

  Het Nkik swallowed his outrage and pushed for an answer to the

  question that concerned him most. "What about my clan brother Jek

  Nkik? Where is the last sandcrawler?"