Star Wars - Tales From The Mos Eisley Cantina
Page 32
-nearly within reach-
In the bloated brilliance of Tatooine's unyielding high noon
there are no such things as shadows. Only the boldness of the day,
the magnified munificence of double suns, and the still brighter
blazing of the glory of my need.
-it has been long, too long-
Mos Eisley is never uncrowded, but those who understand
Tatooine's uncowed character understand also its malignance, its
maleficent intent to bake, to broil, to sear. And so they flee,
those who know, into the sullen succor of sand-scoured, sun-flayed
shelters.
What need have I of shadows when the daylight itself will do,
and the heedless, headlong haste of a man fleeing it?
-three more steps-
Humanoid. I can smell him-taste him, there, just there;
measured in all the ways we measure a tint, a hue, a whisper, a
kiss ... a soupcon, if you will, of minor excrescence, the steam
off body-boiled soup, undetectable to all humanoid races save my
own.
-two more-
He is not a fool, not completely; fools die long before meeting
those such as I, which saves us some little trouble. Better by far
to let life handle the screening process. By the time folk come to
Tatooine, the true fools are already dead. Those who have survived
to come have some small measure of wit, talent, ability, of
significant physical prowess-and a greater portion of Luck.
An intangible, is Luck; an attribute one can neither buy,
steal, nor manufacture. But it is finite, and wholly fickle. Only
you never know it.
Only I know it. I am Dannik Jerriko, and I am the Eater of
Luck.
-one more step-
-YES-
He is good. He is fast. But I am better, and faster.
An image only; I am too lost, too hungry the black-blind glaze
of shock in his eyes, naked and obscene to those who understand;
but he does not understand, he comprehends nothing. He knows
neither who nor what I am, only that I am - and someone who has
clapped hands across his ears and grasped his skull to hold it
face-to-face in an avid embrace.
- hot, sweet soup -
He would fight, given leave, extended invitation. And I give
leave, extend invitation - outright terror curdles the soup -
briefly, oh so briefly, to make him think he is better than I;
that Chance is his confidant and Luck remains his lover. It isn't
fear I want, nor cowardice, but courage. The blatant willingness
to step off the edge with a life at risk, your life, trusting
skill and Luck and Chance to spread the safety net.
He is good, is fast, is willing to step off the edge; and so he
does step leaping, lunging, lurching . . . but no one is better
or faster than I, and I have unraveled the net. Chance and Luck,
thus mated, are dismissed in my presence I am after all Anzati.
It is simply and quickly done with the manifest efficiency of
my kind prehensile proboscii uncoiled from cheek pockets, first
inserted, then insinuated through nostrils into brain. It
paralyzes instantly.
I eat his Luck. I drink his soup. I let the body fall.
They will not know when they find him; they never know at
first. That comes later, after, and only if someone cares enough
to run a scan on him. I knit my own nightmare, make my own mythos.
A quick, clean kill; no fuss, no muss.
But assassins by trade have no friends, and no one to care
enough. This is why I kill the killers.
Exterminator. Terminator. Assassin's assassin.
Soup is soup is soup, but sweeter from the container sitting
longest on the shelf.
- oh - it is sweet -
But sweet - like Luck, like Chance - is finite. Always. And so
the cycle begins, ends, begins again, and ends; but there is
always another beginning.
I am Anzat, of the Anzati. You know me now as Dan-nik Jerriko,
but I have many names.
You knew them all as children, forgot them as adults. Legend is
fiction, myth unreal; it is easier to set aside childish things in
the false illumination of adulthood, because the fears of
childhood are always formed of truths. Some truths are harder than
others. Some folktales far more frightening.
Let there be no fear. Fear is not what I crave, neither what I
desire. It is corrosive to the palate, like vinegar in place of
wine.
Let there be courage, not cowardice; let there be arrogance
aplenty. Self-confidence, not self-doubt; security in one's
skills. And the willingness, the restlessness, the boundless
physicality of the only constant the testing of one's
limitations. Assumption of risk, not reticence. The challenge of
Chance.
Make me no predictions. Write me no prophecy. Permit me to take
what is best of you, what is best in you.
Let me liberate it. In me you will live forever.
It is not that I want to kill beings.
Yes, I know-you have heard the tales. But this is a truth of
the heart, if you can believe I have one Beings embellish.
I am not crazed; I do not skulk; I don't drink blood. I take
pride in appearances, pride in my heritage, pride in my work. It
is serious to me, such work; there is no room at all for error, no
latitude for a bad attitude.
Given a legitimate and efficacious way out, I would stop the
killing . . . but I have tried joydrugs, and they are not
effective; the rush is temporary and counterproductive. Synthetic
derivatives and recreations are utterly useless; in fact, such
half-measures make me ill. Which leaves me only one answer, the
answer for all Anzati the soup in its purest form, freshly exuded
and as freshly extracted. It rots outside of the body.
Which means there must be a body.
It is a mother lode, Mos Eisley, a powerful concentration of
entities of all gender, gathering on private business that nov is
also mine. Between jobs, it is vacation, holiday, opportunity to
hunt for myself. To track and find the vessel most capable of
satisfying my palate. Gall me gourmet, if you will; I see no
reason not to please myself between those assignments that, in
their completions, in the method of their completions, serve to
please my employers.
I have time. I have wealth. I am in fact quite rich, though I
say nothing of it; credits are a wholly vulgar topic. If you
cannot afford to hire me, you do not even know I exist.
Only one employer, my first, complained about my prices. He was
a hollow man of small imagination . . . I drank his soup for it,
but he left me unsatisfied; the entities who hire me are usually
cowards themselves, incapable of anything beyond the desire for
power and financial reward, and their soup is dilute. But it
served, that death; no one ever again complained.
Loyalty, like Luck, cannot be purchased, only bar-rowed for a
precontracted space of time in which I serve myself even as I
serve others in furthering the ambitions-or settling the petty
squabbles-of myriad entities. It is altog
ether a wholly
satisfactory arrangement My employers have the pleasure of
knowing a certain "annoyance" will no longer annoy, I drink the
soup of the fallen foe, and my employers pay me for it.
But what the entities do not realize is how transitory my
bondage It is only the soup to which I am loyal, and the purposes
of extraction.
Other Anzati bind themselves to small lives, lives wholly
focused on hunting. But there is more, so much more; one need only
have the imagination to see what lies out there, and to find a way
to take it.
Let them bind themselves. Let them live their small lives,
drinking soup from unworthy vessels. Let me take the best instead.
A heady brew, such soup, far more intoxicating-and therefore
longer-lasting-than the temporary measures that other Anzati rely
on.
And meanwhile I am paid to do what I must do.
Yes. Oh, yes. The best of all the worlds.
It is always the spaceports, always the bars. I suppose one
might equally suggest the brothels serve much the same purpose,
but in those places an entirely different sort of business is
conducted, transitory in nature and without much risk taken save
in choice of partner and, perhaps, of mechanics. In bars they
drink, they gamble, they deal. They come here first when a run is
completed, seeking such vice and spice and entertainments as might
be purchased in the cantina; and they come here looking for work.
Space pirates, blockade runners, hired assassins, bounty hunters,
even a handful of those involved in the Rebel Alliance. The Empire
has driven the latter out of such places as they might prefer,
altering good-hearted, once-innocent entities into souls as
desperate as others, but with a vision pure and argent as the
double suns of Tatooine, wholly unadulterated by the harsh
realities of the times.
When one believes firmly enough, when conviction is absolute,
one is undaunted by odds. Their soup is very sweet.
Sand chokes. It is an entity of itself, at once coy and
pervasive. It dulls boots, befilths fabric, insinuates itself into
the creases of the flesh. It drives even Anzati to seek relief,
and thus I go indoors, out of the heat of the double suns; and I
pause there-remembering one day many years before, and a
corpulent, unforgiving Hutt -eyes closed to adjust more quickly to
wan, ocherous light, thick and rancid as bantha butter.
It is too much to hope the cantina owner might install more
lights, or improve his Queblux Power Train, identifiable by its
lamentable lack of efficiency and a low, almost inaudible whine.
Such repairs would be at odds with Chalmun's nature, which is
dictated by dis-trusl; deals are done at dusk, not under the
fixed, un-miligated glare of Tatoo I and Tatoo II, conflagrations
of eyes in the countenance of a galaxy that is, much as the
Emperor's face, shrouded within a cowled hood.
Ah, but there is more here, inside, than relief from sand, from
heat. There is the scent, the promise of satiation.
-soup-
11 is thick, so thick-at first I am overwhelmed; this is better
than I remembered so many layers and tastes, the hues, the tints,
the whispers . . . here I may drink for endless days, replete with
satisfaction.
Ahh.
So many entities, so many flavors, so much Luck to eat. Chance
is corporeal here, variety infinite. It is a symphony of soup
running hot and fast and wet, like blood ever on the boil beneath
the fragile tissue of flesh.
I am not droid, the detector says; I am welcome in Chalmun's
cantina. And I laugh in the privacy of my mind, because Chalmun,
contented by his bias, doesn't know there are things in the world
more detestable than droids, which are on the whole inoffensive,
unassuming, and more than a little convenient. But leave a man his
bigotry; if they were all like the Rebel Alliance, so intransigent
in honor, the soup would be weak as gruel.
-soup-
In cheek pockets, proboscii quiver. For an instant, only an
instant, they extrude a millimeter, overcome by the heady aroma
detectable only to Anzati; the others, despite races and genders,
are in all ways unaware. But nothing is earned without
anticipation; it is a fillip wholly invigorating, and worth the
self-denial.
Accordingly proboscii withdraw, if resentfully, coiling back
into the pockets beside my nostrils. I brush a film of sand from
my sleeves, tug the jacket into place, and walk down the four
steps into the belly of the bar.
Soup here is plentiful.
Patience will be rewarded.
He is at first disbelieving. A sour, sullen, mud-faced man,
doughy-pale despite double suns, somewhat lumpy and misshapen as
if he were unfinished, or perhaps unmade later in the small
hostilities of his life. A long blob of a swollen nose downturned
above a loose-lipped mouth. His clothing is unkempt, his hair lank
and stringy. He does not remember me.
Courtesy is nonexistent; in Mos Eisley, in Chalmun's cantina
from Chalmun's bartender, none is expected. "You want what?"
"Water," I repeat.
Dark eyes narrow minutely. "You know where you are?"
"Oh," I say, smiling, "indeed."
He jerks a spatulate thumb beyond his shoulder. "I got a
computer back there that mixes sixteen hundred varieties of
spirits."
"Oh, indeed, so I would imagine. But I want the one it can't
mix."
He scowls. "Ain't cheap, is it? This is Tatooine. Got the
credits for it?"
His soup is slow, and weak, its scent barely discernible. He is
servant, not the served, not one who acknowledges edges or assumes
risks beyond setting a glass before a patron; he would offer
little pleasure, and less satisfaction.
But there are those who would. And all of them are here.
I withdraw from a pocket a single flat coin. It glints in wan
light clean, ruddy gold. It is not precisely a credit chip, but
it will nonetheless buy my water. On Tatooine, they know it. In
Mos Eisley they know to fear it.
The bartender moistens his lips. Eyes slide aside, busying
themselves with glaring at a tiny Chadra-Fan coming up to ask for
libation. "Jabba's marker ain't any good here," he mutters, and
reaches beneath the bar into his hidden reserve to bring forth an
ice-rimed crystal container of costly chilled water.
I leave the coin on the bar. It tells him many things, and will
tell others also; Jabba pays well, and those who work for him-or
work for others who work for him- recognize the tangible evidence
of the Hutt's favor.
It has been a long time. There have been countless other
employers in all sectors of the galaxy, but Jabba is ...
memorable. Perhaps it is time I sought a second assignment; there
are always failed assassins the Hutt wants killed. He does not
suffer incompetence.
I consider for a momenl whal it would be like to drink his soup
. . . bul
Jabba is well guarded, and even an Anzat might find it
difficult to locate within the massy corpulence ihe proper
orifices into which lo insert proboscii.
I shut my hand upon the glass and feel the bite of ice. On
Tatooine, such is luxury. It is not soup, in no way, but worth
anticipation. Even as the bartender lurns away lo bellow rudely at
two droid-accompanied humans slopped by ihe deleclor, I sip
slowly, savoring the water.
Spirits muddle the mind, slow the body, nourish nothing bul
weakness. Anzati avoid such things, even as we avoid joydrugs and
synthetics. What is natural is best, even to the soup. There is
strenglh in what is pure.
There is weakness in vice-and I, after all, should know. In the
freedom of my lifestyle there is also captivity. There are no
bars, no mesh, no energy fields, no conlainment capsules. There is
instead an imprisonment more insidious than such things, and as
distaste-ful lo an Anzat as soup drunk from a coward.
I drank tainted soup from a tainted man, and assimi-lated his
vice the daily need for a proscribed bul oft-smuggled offworld
substance known as nic-i-tain, its vector named t'bac.
I am Dannik Jerikko. Anzat, of the Anzati, and Eater of Luck.
But I never said I was perfect.
It blows up quickly enough-a Tatooine sandstorm from the heart
of the Dune Sea-as bar confrontations do. I pay it no attention
beyond air-scenting for promise; it is there, but muted. I take my
time preparing my pipe-there is comfort in ritual, satisfaction in
preliminaries-set the mouthpiece between my teeth, then draw in
t'bac smoke deeply. It is a despicable habit, but one that even I
have been unable to break.
Behind me, music wails. Chalmun has hired a band since my last
visit. It is appropriate music for a cantina dim as desert dusk.
Through the malodorous fug of smoke and sweat, the whining melody
waxes and wanes, insidious as dune dust.
-soup-
I turn, exhaling evenly; in cheek pockets, proboscii twitch.
-soup-
A flare, abrupt and unshielded, wholly raw and unrefined. It
takes me but an instant to mark it, to mark the entity human, and
young. Fear, defiance, apprehension; a trace of brittle
courage-ah, but he is too young, too inexperienced. Despite the
stubborn jut of his jaw, the flash of defiance in blue eyes, he
has not lived long enough to know what he risked. He is as yet