him away, and he leaned against the side of the building for
support.
Stupid. I was stupid, he realized. For one split second, Nadon
had had the opportunity to kill Lieutenant Alima, and he had
failed to do so. Even though Nadon understood intellectually that
the Empire could only be overthrown by violence, his Ithorian
nature had not allowed him to kill.
Nadon closed his eyes, tried to blink away the pain. He glanced
up. A thin smoke hung over the city, and people were already
beginning to scurry for cover from the morning heat.
Nadon got up and wearily headed for home, his ears still
ringing. He shook his head, tried to clear it. He went into his.
house, sat beside a pool and washed the blood from his eyestalk.
During the cool of the night, moisture had condensed at the top of
the dome. Now it sometimes fell like droplets of rain. Above his
head was a large gorsa tree, a stout flowering tree that used
phosphorescent flowers to attract night insects for pollination.
Now that morning had come, the pale orange phosphorescent flowers
were folding in on themselves.
In Mos Eisley it was rumored that Momaw Nadon's house was
filled with carnivorous plants. Nadon encouraged the rumor in
order to keep out water thieves. Besides, the rumors were true,
but those who walked through the biospheres under the High
Priest's pro tection did not have anything to fear.
Nadon went to a side dome where vines and creep ers hung from a
large, red-barked tree that stood beside a pool. Nadon said, "Part
your vines, friend."
The tree's limbs quivered, and the vines parted, exposing the
trunk. In the dim light of morning, four human skeletons were
revealed hanging from the limbs near the trunk of the tree, each
with a thick creeper wrapped around its neck - hapless water
thieves.
Nadon fumbled beneath some thick grass near the tree's trunk,
pulled at a handle until a concealed door jerked upward. A light
flipped on below him, showing the ladder leading down.
Nadon had secreted many a Rebel in the room below, and for a
long moment he considered climbing down himself, hiding. Perhaps
in this concealed chamber, he would be able to disappear from view
for a while. Alima could ignite a thermal detonator in this room,
but there was a chance that Nadon could ride out the firestorm
intact, remain hidden.
He had enough food stored here to last for weeks. And Nadon was
sorely tempted to climb down.
But he couldn't. He couldn't let Alima kill his plants. One
last chance, Nadon thought. When Alima comes this evening, I might
be able to kill him yet.
Nadon got up, strolled through his biosphere, touching the
limbs of trees, stroking the gentle fronds of ferns, tasting the
scent of moisture and undergrowth, the life all around him.
There was no other way, Nadon realized.
He would have to remain and fight, though it cost him all. In
the evening, Alima would come. Nadon knew that Lieutenant Alima
would be true to his word. He would sew Nadon's eyes open and make
him watch as he slew the Bafforr. It would gratify Alima's little
Imperial heart to know how he had tortured an Ithorian, leaving
Nadon alive to bear witness to the Empire's cruelty. Alima would
then incinerate the house.
Momaw Nadon considered what that would mean. All of his plants
would be destroyed, all of his notes. "fears of work would be
wasted. Nadon considered the plants, decided that he would take
some containers outside, saving the specimens that showed the best
hope of improving the ecology of Tatooine.
The Bafforr would die - they could not be uprooted - but the
Bafforr had accepted their fate, and Nadon realized that now he
must accept his.
For years Momaw Nadon had hidden on this rock, seeking
cleansing, trying to overcome the anger that insisted he should
fight back against the Empire. The elders of Ithor had balked when
he suggested that the Empire was a weed that needed to be
destroyed. His elders would have let the Imperials destroy the
Bafforr forests of Cathor Hills, trusting that some shred of de
cency left in Alima would make him stop short of genocide against
an entire species. His elders would have forgiven the Empire.
But in all his years seeking spiritual cleansing, Nadon had
never been convinced that he was wrong. He believed that he had
been right to try to save what he could.
Nadon was not above killing an insect to save a tree.
So, Nadon had to resist the Empire the best he knew how. Even
if that meant he had to watch the Bafforrs be destroyed. Even if
it meant he himself was destroyed. He could not just let the
Empire crash him.
Nadon was exhausted, but could not sleep. He decided to calm
himself by continuing his Harvest Ceremony. He went to his
laboratory on the east wing of the house, opened the fruit of a
large Tatooine hubba gourd, and removed some pale, transparent
seeds. Using tiny robotic manipulators, he carefully opened four
young seeds and removed the zygotes.
Using his genetic samples from the Cydorrian driller trees, he
put the DNA into a gene splicer. Mine genes controlled the
drillers' root growth. Nadon took these genes, spliced them into
the hubba gourd zygotes, then returned the gourd's zygotes to a
nutrient mixture so that they could grow.
The whole painstaking ritual calmed Nadon immensely, even
though he knew that soon most of his work would probably be
destroyed. The task took nearly twelve hours, and when Nadon
looked up from his work, he saw by the shadows on the wall that
nightfall was approaching. Soon, Alima would come.
Time to say good-bye, Nadon whispered. At this time of the day,
his good friend Muftak would be trying to cool himself off at
Chalmun's cantina-a difficult task considering the thickness of
the four-eye's furry white pelt.
Nadon went to the cantina, thinking furiously, wondering how he
might best lure Alima into the dangerous depth of his own personal
biosphere.
The cantina was as busy as usual-bustling with disreputable
aliens. It was a tough place, frequented by cruel beings.
Sure enough, Nadon found Muftak sitting alone at a table,
sipping polaris ale while his partner in crime, the little thief
Kabe, chittered and wandered about in the darkness, begging Wuher
the bartender for juri juice and eyeing the pockets of the
cantina's inhabitants.
Nadon spoke to Muftak of inconsequential things- the price that
Muftak had gained for selling Nadon's name, Muftak's dreams of
home. Always, Nadon tried to accentuate the positive, to leave his
friend uplifted, but Nadon's own thoughts were dark, and when they
drank a toast, Nadon found himself offering comfort that he
himself could not receive.
Suddenly there was a disturbance in the cantina A hideously
scarred human named Evazan and his alien sidekick Ponda Baba were
picking a fight with some wide-eyed local moisture boy. "I have
the death sentence on twelve systems!" the scarred human warned.
Nadon looked at the small group. The moisture boy was unfamiliar,
some farmer from the desert who had come in only moments earlier
with the old mystic Ben Kenobi. Nadon had seen Ben only once
before, when he'd come into town to shop. Nadon had noticed the
pair because the barkeep Wuher had shouted for them to leave their
droids outside. Evazan and Ponda Baba were regulars, had been
hanging around the spaceport for weeks.
Suddenly, Ponda Baba swung a clawed arm, bashing the moisture
farmer across the face, sending the boy crashing against a table.
Ponda Baba then pulled a blaster free just as Wuher shouted from
behind the bar, "No blasters!"
Old Ben Kenobi whipped out an ancient lightsaber. It hummed to
life, flashing blue as he slashed off Ponda Baba's arm, sliced
Evazan's chest Then he flipped off his lightsaber and cautiously
backed away with the young moisture farmer in tow.
Nadon followed Ben Kenobi with his eyes as the music went
silent. The bloodshed nauseated Nadon. Old Ben Kenobi took his
young friend to the back of the cantina, and together they spoke
with the Wookiee smuggler Chewbacca, then retired to a private
cubicle with Chewbacca's partner, Han Solo.
"I think I should be going," Nadon said to Muftak. "Things are
getting hot in here."
"Please," Muftak said heavily. "One last drink for old times.
I'm buying."
This was such an unusual offer that Nadon didn't dare refuse.
They ordered another round, and Nadou sat talking for a few more
moments with Muftak, said his good-byes. A moment later, Ben and
his moisture boy got up from their table at the back of the bar,
and a seed of thought sprouted in Nadon's head. He wondered what
business the old mystic from the Jundland Wastes might have in
town with smugglers, especially bringing a moisture farmer in tow.
Then he remembered the droids that Ben Kenobi had with him, and
Momaw Nadon saw the truth Ben Kenobi was trying to smuggle the
droids off Tatooine.
In that one second, Momaw Nadon's hearts beat wildly and he saw
his salvation. Nadon knew exactly where to look for the droids,
and if he told Alima, then the lieutenant would spare his life.
But as old Ben Kenobi passed him, the mystic glanced calmly
into Nadon's eyes, and somehow, Nadon suspected that Kenobi knew
what he was thinking. Ben and the moisture boy walked past, yet
Ben said nothing to Nadon.
"Did you see the way he looked at you?" Muftak asked. "Like a
Tusken Raider staring down a charging bantha. What do you think
that was all about?"
"I have no idea," Nadon said. Yet he looked down at the table,
ashamed even to have thought of sacrificing someone else in an
effort to escape his own pain.
Nadon fell silent for a moment, glanced around the room.
Certainly, if Nadon could figure out what was happening here,
others might also. Yet Ben Kenobi was not a regular in town, and
few in the cantina would have recognized him. No one followed the
old mystic out.
Muftak laid a hairy paw on Nadon's smooth gray-green arm. "You
are afraid, my old friend. Your worries weigh on you. Is there
anything that I can do?"
Blaster fire erupted from a cubicle at the back of the cantina,
and Han Solo stepped out, bolstered his blaster. He puffed out his
chest in false bravado, threw a credit chip to Wuher as he left.
Muftak put a hairy paw to his head and scratched.
"I think I had better be leaving, too," Momaw said. "I don't
want to be here if the Imperials come to investigate."
Momaw hurried out, looked up at the suns dropping toward the
horizon. Time for the torture to begin.
He glanced up in despair, wishing that he were like Han Solo,
wishing that he could kill someone who merited death, then walk
away calmly. But he couldn't. Even in his deepest rage, he could
not harm another. And so, there was nothing left to do but save
what he could.
Momaw Nadon breathed deeply for a mom ent, then hurried home and
began carrying the most valuable of his plant samples and setting
them outside the back door in the hope that they would escape the
fire.
The streets were nearly deserted, except for a few
stormtroopers that watched the house.
When this is done, Nadon promised himself as he worked, I will
go home. I will repudiate the elders and their foolish traditions.
I will bear the limbs of the burned Bafforr trees in my arms, and
I will show the elders my scarred eyes, and then they will see how
monstrous the Empire has become, and they will know that we must
fight.
Nadon chuckled to himself. Somehow, his spiritual eyes had been
sewn open long ago. He'd seen the evil, known he had to fight it.
But when Alima came and made the act physical, then Nadon's scars
would bear witness to his people. The Ithorians were not a stupid
species. They were not as hopelessly pacifistic as Lieutenant
Alima and his Empire believed. Though they might never go to war
themselves, they could still help fund the Rebellion. Perhaps this
one small evil act could turn against Lieutenant Alima in the long
run. The Empire's evil will betray itself, Nadon told himself.
As he considered the possibilities, Nadon felt a strange rush
of hope. Perhaps his suffering would be worth something after all.
Perhaps he could end this seclusion, return to his wife and his
son and the vast forests of Ithor.
And as Nadon considered the possibilities, he realized that his
loneliness and suffering here as an outcast on Tatooine did not
hurt so much. His deepest regret, he found, was not the pain he
had endured, but that his work here - his plant samples - would be
destroyed. On Ithor, the people had a saying "A man is his work."
Never had the saying felt more true. By destroying the results of
Nadon's labor here on Tatooine, Alima would destroy a part of
Nadon.
Nadon stood gazing down at his little plants sitting in the
sunlight outside the door, decided to carry them across the
street, give them a better chance of survival.
The muted explosions of blaster fire punctured the air and
began echoing from buildings. Nadon looked up from his labors.
Down the street, stormtroopers that had been guarding his house
all began running toward the spaceport. Nadon looked up in time to
see Han Solo's old junker, the Millennium Falcon, blasting into
the sly.
So, Nadon realized, old Ben Kenobi's droids made it off
Tatooine. He watched the ship for several moments to make sure
that none of the planetary artillery fired on the Falcon. When he
was certain that the ship had gotten away, he found himself
running behind the stormtroopers toward the docking bays.
Outside the bays, some Imperial captain stood before dozens of
stormtroopers and port authorities, shouting in a franti
c rage
"How could this happen? How could you let all four of them get
away? Someone must be held accountable, and it won't be me!"
There at the back of the crowd, Nadon saw Lieutenant Alima
standing nervously, staring toward the ground. No one was stepping
forward to claim responsibility for Solo's breakout, and the
frantic look in the captain's eye suggested that he needed a
scapegoat.
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 na
ture."
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. Stormtroopers 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.
Star Wars - Tales From The Mos Eisley Cantina Page 17
