The evil of the Empire will turn against itself. A man is his work. You cannot break the Law of Life.
Nadon realized what he must do. He could never kill a man, but he could stop Alima. He could sabotage the man’s career, get him demoted even further.
Nadon called out to the Imperial captain: “Sir, last night I informed Lieutenant Alima that a freighter owned by Han Solo would be blasting out of here with two droids as its primary cargo. I suspect that your lieutenant’s negligence in letting Solo escape goes beyond ineptitude, and should be considered criminal in nature.”
Nadon looked at Alima, wondering if he could make such charges stick. Nadon had a perfect memory. He would never get tangled in a snare of his own lies, so long as he chose those lies carefully.
“No!” Alima shouted, giving Nadon a pleading look that betrayed profound horror. The Imperial captain was already fixing Alima with a dark stare. Storm-troopers stepped aside, clearing a path between the two men.
The captain glanced back at Nadon. “Would you swear to this under oath, Citizen?”
“Gladly,” Nadon said, seeing ways that he could make his false testimony stand up in a military tribunal. The two had met alone in Nadon’s house. Surely Alima had listed his meeting with Nadon in his personal logs. Nadon knew that as Ithorians—a race of peaceful cowards—his people were known as easy targets for intimidation. Nadon could claim that Alima had tortured the information from him. Certainly, with the bruises and bloody eyestalks, he could show that he’d been tortured. There was a good chance that Alima would be demoted—perhaps even imprisoned.
The captain glanced back at Alima and said, “You know what Lord Vader would do if he were here.” Before Nadon had time to blink, the captain pulled his blaster and fired into Lieutenant Alima three times. Blood and gobbets of roasted flesh spattered across the courtyard.
Nadon stared in shock, realizing belatedly that the captain had not wished to convene a tribunal. He simply needed a scapegoat.
“I will expect your testimony to be recorded,” the captain said. Momaw Nadon stood blinking, unable to move, and the suns seemed to have gone cold. He wavered, feeling faint. The stormtroopers all began walking away, apparently heading toward a transport so they could leave Tatooine. The Law of Life kept running through Nadon’s mind like a litany. “For every plant destroyed in the harvest, two must be cultivated to replace it.”
Nadon knew that his act would require penance. The blood of a man was on his hands, and such a stain could not easily be removed. But surely the Bafforr would understand. Surely they would forgive him.
At last, before the Imperial medics could arrive, Nadon forced his legs to move. Numbly, he went to the warm corpse, leaned over, and took two golden needles from his belt. He inserted the needles and removed the genetic samples. On Ithor were cloning tanks that would allow him to create duplicates of Alima. For his penance, Nadon would nurture Alima’s twin sons. Perhaps in their day, they too would grow wise and kind, serving as Priests on Ithor, promoting the Law of Life.
Nadon packed the needles in his utility belt, then headed toward his biosphere. There would be so much to do before he left Tatooine—depositions to give the Imperials, plants to be uprooted in preparation for the move, hubba gourd seeds to be sown in the wilds.
A stiff wind kicked up, and stinging sand blew in from the desert. Nadon closed his eyes against it, and allowed himself to become lost for a moment in the memory of his wife’s final embrace as he was banished from Ithor, and in the memory he relished the scent of his young son. “I will be waiting here for you if you ever return,” she had said. And for the first time in ages Momaw Nadon walked free and his steps felt light. He was heading home.
Be Still My Heart:
The Bartender’s Tale
by David Bischoff
On his way to work, Wuher, after-double-noon shift bartender at the Mos Eisley Spaceport Cantina, was accosted. To make matters worse, the accoster was his least favorite of the many things that congregated in this most egregious of congregations of intergalactic scum.
An extensor whipped from the pale shadows of the alley, wrapping around his ankle lightly, yet with enough strength to detain him. Automatically, Wuher reached to the back of his belt for his street-club. A weapon of some kind was always a necessity for those who strode the byways of a haven for cutpurses and cutthroats like Mos Eisley. However, the pathetic voice from the juncture of walls and garbage cans gave him stay.
“Please, sir. I mean you no harm. I humbly request asylum.”
Wuher blinked. He rubbed his grimy sleeve over his puffy eyes. He’d drunk too much of his own barbrew last night and overslept. He had a faint growl of hangover nagging him; he was in no mood to deal with riffraff begging for shelter or alms.
“Get off me,” he snarled. “Who the hell are you?” Wuher was a surly sort who preferred to keep his thoughts to himself. He also had a rather aggressive curiosity sometimes, though. This was a trait that his employer, Chalmun the Wookiee, found to be a resource in the chemical experimentation aspects of Wuher’s work, but claimed would ultimately cause him grief.
“I am Ceetoo-Arfour,” squeaked the voice, accompanied by a curious blend of whistles and clicks. “I have escaped from the Jawas, who intend to utilize me for spare parts, despite extreme functional utility if I am left in one piece—to say nothing of the value of my consciousness. Through sheer good luck, the Jawas used a corroded restraining bolt, which fell off, allowing me to escape.”
Wuher moved farther into the shadows, his eyes adjusting farther away from the ambient, anguished brightness that was one of the planet Tatooine’s charming qualities. There, amongst the stacked refuse and plastic and metal containers, squatted one of the oddest things that Wuher had ever laid eyes upon. And Wuher had laid eyes upon far too many of these scuttling tech-rats for his taste.
“You—you’re a blasted droid!” he spat.
The metallic creature released what little tension was left in the extensor and cringed back with the vehemence of Wuher’s accusation.
“Why, yes sir, I am indeed. But I assure you, I am no ordinary droid. My presence on Tatooine is a mistake on a veritable cosmic level.”
The droid’s body was low and rounded, similar to the streamlined contours of R2 units. However, this was where the similarity ended. Bulbs and boxy appendages hung like balconies on the robot’s sides, amidst an array of two whiplike metal extensors and two armatures invested with digits. In the very middle of its sensor-node “face” was an opening with a grill, set with what appeared to be jagged, sharp teeth. The whole affair looked cobbled together, as though the droid had indeed begun its life as an R2 unit, but had been sent onto other paths with the help of a demented mechanical mind owning a half-baked electronic and welding talent.
“Wait a minute. You look like a souped-up Artoo unit, but you sound like one of those pansy protocolers!”
“My components include aspects of both units, as well as several more. However, my specialties include meal preparation, catalytic fuel conversion, enzymatic composition breakdown, chemical diagnostic programming, and bacterial composting acceleration. I am also an excellent blender, toaster oven, and bang-corn air-popper, and can whip up an extraordinary meal from everyday garbage.”
Wuher goggled at the plasteel contraption in disbelief.
“But you’re a droid. I hate droids.”
“I would be of extraordinary use!”
Wuher wondered why he was even giving the droid the time of day. Damned curiosity, that must be it. He needed a blasted brain scrub, that’s what he needed. “Look, machine excrement. I despise your kind, as does my boss, for good reason. Even the lowliest Jawa knows what tribe he’s from, even if he’s stabbing that tribe in the back. You droids—who knows who you are or where you’re from. You look like bombs, and nine times out of ten you blow up in the face of your owners, doubtless just to spite them.” Wuher lifted a foot, planted it squarely on the thing’s head. “Now get
out of my way. I have work to do!” He gave the thing a shove. It rolled back, beeping, into the recesses of its corner as Wuher proceeded on his way.
“Sir! Kind sir! Forgive my offense! Reconsider! I shall be here all day, recharging my batteries. I dare not emerge in sunlight, for the Jawas will find me. Grant me asylum, and you will not be sorry, I swear.”
“Pah! The word of a droid. Useless!” the man snarled in contempt.
With grand, elevated disgust, Wuher hurried away. Just one more proof that he should not be so free about strolling through alleys to save a scant few seconds. He avoided the darker, cooler ones, since they tended to attract crowds. This one, though, was lighter and Wuher had thought it would be a safe shortcut.
The normal byways of Mos Eisley were a dusty cloud through which double suns beat beat beat hot radiation upon ugly buildings and hangars. Occasionally a roaring beast of a spaceship would propel itself into the brightness of the sky, or descend shakily to hunker down in hiding. The place smelled even more strongly of its usual blend of noxious space fuels and heated alien body effluvia, touched with the occasional whiff of exotic spice, or rather more mundane rot or urine. Wuher noticed amidst the urban burblings a larger number of speeders than usual, as well as a discomfiting percentage of stormtroopers.
Something odd was afoot, that was certain.
Oh, well. It just meant that maybe he’d be busier at the cantina today. Another shuck, another buck, as Chalmun so eloquently stated.
Still, as the human bartender bustled through the busy streets, sun hood up, squinting, he was bothered by that droid who had accosted him. Wuher was well aware that droids were essentially harmless. To hate them was like hating your latrine or stove or moisture vaporator if they’d somehow been overlaid with innocuous consciousness. True, droids tended to be essentially faithless, with no ethical or racial structure. So were a lot of biological aliens that Wuher had met. The truth, the bartender knew, was that droids were an easy target.
Wuher had been abandoned on Mos Eisley in early youth, a human amidst peoples who disliked humans. He’d been kicked about and spat upon all his squalid, hard life. His boss hated droids essentially because they didn’t drink and thus took up necessary room in the cantina that might be occupied by paying customers. Wuher hated everyone, but droids were the only creatures he could actually kick with impunity.
He was a bulky, middle-aged man, Wuher, with a constant late-afternoon-shadow beard, dark bags under his eyes, and a surly attitude from the top of his greasy head to the depths of his low stony voice. His eyes were hard and dark, and it was impossible to see anything but quotidian amoral stoicism in them. However, a small fire flickered in his heart, a dream that he kept alive with hard work through years of drudgery. At night, shuffling back to his grimy hovel, often as not a little tipsy from his own spirits, Wuher would gaze up at the night stars in the blessed cool and it would seem possible to actually reach up and touch them, possible to live out his fantasy.
Perhaps then, when that dream was achieved, he would no longer have to kick helpless, imploring droids to bolster his own pathetic self-esteem. Perhaps then he could give something to lesser creatures than he.
The lumpy mushroom shape of the cantina billowed before him. Wuher stumped around to the rear entrance. He took out his ID card, unlocked a door, and walked carefully down dark steps. He turned on lights. It was not dank down here in the cellar. There were no dank basements on a world like Tatooine. However, a dry, earthy smell was the foundation for all the other scents that fought for attention here, smells that hung upon the rows of laboratory equipment, barrels and tanks and vats that rose from tables and the floor like ridges of metal, plastic, and glass mold.
Chalmun imported a minimum of drinking materials, the cheap bastard. The rest of what the Mos Eisley Cantina served was either made in the city, or down here.
Wuher had little time. His shift topside started soon. Nonetheless an urgent sense drove him to a small alcove in the rear section, a portion of the large basement where the other employees seldom ventured. He turned on a small light there, revealing a machine consisting of coils, tubings, dials, and glass beakers. In the largest of these beakers, a small amount of dark green fluid had collected. Wuher examined the dials detailing gravity and chemical composition. A kind of acrid effluvia hung over the enclosure, like moldy socks. Sweet music to Wuher’s nostrils! And the dials and digital readouts—why, they displayed almost exactly the ratios of contents that Wuher had calculated was necessary. A shiver of excitement passed over him. This could be the stuff. His elixir! His perfect liqueur, suited expressly to the biochemical taste buds of no less a personage than Jabba the Hutt, for all intents and purposes lord and slave master of the criminal element of Tatooine.
Wuher contained his trembles, took a deep breath, and found a sterile dropper tube. He lifted the stopper of the beaker, inserted the tube, and sucked up a minuscule amount. Carefully, he withdrew the jade treasure.
Ah! If this distillation was the right stuff, the drink that Jabba the Hutt deemed to be the perfect liqueur, then what else could Jabba do but name him his own personal bartender, distiller, brewer, winemaster? Thus elevated in position, the lowly Wuher might gain reputation and monies that would allow him to ship off this anal juncture of a desert snotworld to some bright, pristine bar on a paradisal planet.
Wuher brought the tube toward his mouth. A dangle of fluid sparkled diamonds in the amber light. He let a touch drop to his tongue. A flash and sizzle. A sliver of gas slithered off. The pain was immediate, but he bore it. He allowed the flavoids to creep upon his palate like death marchers with cleated boots. He winced and cringed and endured. Rotwort. Skusk. Mummergy. Bitter and fiercely aromatic with a kicker alcohol afterburst.
Damn it, though. Not quite right. His bioalchemist instincts, having studied carefully Jabba’s other favorite drinks, had synthesized a theoretical perfect amalgam, a liqueur that would delight the huge wormthing.
This was not quite it. A certain element was lacking. A certain gagging whisper of illusive yet ineffably attractive decadence.
Damn.
The bartender went to get his apron, and to trudge wearily up the stairs to where his smoky den of work awaited.
“Water!” demanded the green alien in its annoying language. “Bottled distilled water, bartender, and make no mistake! I’ve got the credits for the real stuff. This nose can tell if it’s anything more or less!” The alien touched its absurd proboscis with one of its green digital members.
Wuher’s nose twitched. Was it him, or was the stench in this pangalactic hole worse than ever? “Well, buddy. It’s your call, but you look as if you could use something a little stronger.”
The alien’s jewellike eyes glittered with fury and its ears seemed to flap indignantly. “How dare you call me by a familiar name, you piece of human trash. Believe me, I am a valiant drinker of all manner of manly, powerful drinks. However, I make it a rule to accept such only from real bartenders.”
A mangled face pushed itself across the underlit bar and into the conversation. “Actually, this guy makes some damn fine drinks for a lousy dung-eating native. Take it from me—Dr. Evazan. I’ve had many drinks in all twelve systems in which I’ve obtained a death sentence and these drinks here pass muster!”
Wuher nodded surly thanks. However, the arrogant alien would have none of it. This guy was a Rodian, Wuher knew—and a bounty hunter from the boastful affront of him. A particularly egregious combination.
“Nonsense,” said the Rodian, tiny satellite addenda atop his head turning back and forth as though searching for some television channel. Disdain dripped from his tone. “Humans don’t have what it takes to be a proper bartender. The two terms are mutually exclusive!”
This was the song that Wuher heard all too often. From the very first day that he’d graduated from his chemistry kit to a taste for interesting drinks and had parlayed that knack into a successful application to a sleazy but effective bartender c
orrespondence school, he’d been dumped upon for wanting to take on the duties of serving drinks to an array of peoples from different planets, biomes, ecologies, what have you. Bartenders in these sorts of places, frequented by different and unique biochemistries, were more xenoalchemists than simple pourers of drinks. You had to pay attention to what you were doing. Wouldn’t do at all to serve up a nice glass of the variation on sulfuric acid that Devaronians enjoyed to, say, a Gotal. Likewise, a simple beer could make a Jawa shrivel up like a slug. It really wasn’t that humans couldn’t handle the challenge, it was generally that most of them didn’t care to bother. Indeed, there were a few in old xenophobic Republic days who used the opportunities to slowly poison enemies.
“Hey, greenie,” snarled Wuher defensively. “You go to Chalmun’s office. My certification is right on his wall.”
“I shall! And I shall make every effort to have you fired from this post. Your kind doesn’t belong here.” The Rodian leaned over the bar with its wide orby eyes and stared directly into Wuher’s: his species very confrontational mode for expressing supreme contempt. Wuher’s nostrils were immediately assaulted by a stronger dose of the odor he’d noticed before. He cringed backward.
“Pah. Coward!” The Rodian spat on him. “And be it known to you, ‘bartender,’ that I, Greedo, am highly valued in my employ by none other than Jabba the Hutt. I shall also make my complaint to him, after I take care of the business I have come to this lice-ridden cantina to deal with. Now. My bottle of pure water, please. And snap to it before I have to come and get it myself.”
The odor was so strong that Wuher was momentarily stunned. Even as he reached down, pulled up a bottle of water, clicked off the top, he was in a fog.
That smell … Something about that smell …
Pheromones, surely. But unique pheromones, unlike any other that Wuher had sniffed. The bartender had a big nose, with highly trained and sensitive olfactory capabilities. This was one of the reasons he was such a good bioalchemist. Something about this Greedo—
Tales from the Mos Eisley Cantina Page 16