Star Wars - Tales From The Mos Eisley Cantina

by Kevin J. Anderson

  able to come up with the original impost, so it didn't really

  matter. What mattered was that now, through proper go-betweens of

  course, he'd be able to offer her a few thousand credits for her

  dwelling compound-which she'd be glad to accept, after going

  without water or food for a couple of days -and rent it out by the

  room. Provided, of course, he could arrange it with his go-

  betweens before the Prefect heard about it and outbid him.

  The Modbrek female's distress irritated him. Coming from

  another of his own species-another Gotal- it might have evoked

  pity, though Trevagg had been less ready than many of his

  compatriots to yield to emanations of wretchedness and fear. But

  Modbreks were in Trevagg's opinion only semisentient, wispy ephem

  eral beings, hairless as slugs save for the grotesque masses of

  blue mane that streamed from their undeveloped heads, with huge

  eyes, and tiny noses and mouths in pointy pale faces. This female

  and her daughters, sending forth waves of anxiety, reacted on him

  as a kind of screechy music.

  "Madam," he said at last, sighing, "I'm not your father. And

  I'm not a charity worker. And if you knew you couldn't pay your

  water imposts-which I assume you did know, since you've been in

  arrears for two months and neither you nor your daughters have

  troubled to find decent-paying work-you should have gone to your

  family or some charity organization before this."

  He nudged a toggle on the control board of his desk. A human

  deputy in a rumpled uniform came in and showed the three females

  out. Trevagg could sense the man's pity for them, and also, much

  to Trevagg's disgust, the fact that the human found the insubstan

  tial creatures physically attractive, even sexually interesting.

  Of course, Trevagg had always had difficulty understanding how

  humans found each other sexually interesting. Wan, flabby,

  squishy, they lacked both the Gotal ability to transmit a range of

  emotional waves, and the contrast between strength and weakness so

  necessary to pleasure. How could anyone . . . ?

  He shrugged, and turned back to his desk to tap through a call.

  Behind him he heard a step on the threshold, felt the heat of a

  body-no closer than the threshold, and human range-and recognized

  the electromagnetic aura as that of Predne Balu, Assistant

  Security Officer of Mos Eisley. Felt too like a smoky darkness the

  man's weariness, the bitter tang of his disgust.

  "You couldn't have let her have another month?" Balu's raspy

  voice sounded tired. The heat of the Tatooine suns seemed to have

  long ago baked out of Balu the savagery, the enthusiasms so

  necessary to a hunter. Trevagg despised him.

  "She's had two. Water's expensive to import."

  A message flickered across the black screen of the receiver

  pvlokam 1130. Trevagg moved a finger and the pixels wiped

  themselves away as if they had never been. He turned in his chair,

  to face Balu a heavy man, slope-shouldered in his wrinkled dark

  blue uniform, hair black, eyes black, but the pitiful stubble of

  what humans called beard was thickly shot with gray. A head like a

  melon. Trevagg never could look at humans without feeling contempt

  and a little amusement. He knew they had other types of sensory

  organs than head cones, but even after many years on the space

  lanes- as bounty hunter, Imperial bodyguard, and officer of ship

  security-Trevagg had never gotten over how silly, how ineffectual,

  beings looked who didn't have cones. On Antar Four, though

  everyone knew in their heart of hearts that the size of one's

  cones didn't affect their ability to pick up sensory vibration,

  Gotals whose cones were undeveloped frequently resorted to

  falsies.

  He simply, instinctively, had no respect for a being without

  them.

  "Be ready with your deputy to close the water lines to her

  compound tomorrow."

  Balu's mouth tightened under heavy cheeks, but he nodded.

  "I'm going out. I should be back within the hour."

  Walking through the marketplace of Mos Eisley always filled

  Trevagg with a sense close to intoxication. A hunter by upbringing

  as well as by blood, he had quickly found his current position as

  a tax official a disappointment. What had been represented to him

  as an opportunity for acquiring vast quantities of credits had

  turned out to be little more than a clerical stint.

  Yet he sensed, he knew, that there were credits here to be

  made.

  In the marketplace of Mos Eisley, the hunter stirred again in

  his blood.

  Awnings flapped overhead in the baked breeze, the solar coats

  casting black rectangles of hard shadow, the cheaper cotton and

  rag staining the faces of those beneath them with red and blue

  light. The harsh sizzle of bantha burgers and much-used fritter

  grease swirled from a hundred little stands wherever some

  enterprising Jawa or Whiphid could find room to set up a solar-

  power stove. Races from every corner of the galaxy wandered the

  banded shadows of this makeshift labyrinth. In one place a corpse-

  faced Durosian was holding up strings of opaline "sand pearls" and

  sun-stained blue glass for a couple of inquisitive human tourists;

  in another, a nearly nude Gamorrean belly dancer was performing on

  a yellow-striped blanket to the appreciative whistles of a couple

  of Sullustans, who were among the many races to find Gamorreans

  attractive.

  But more than anything else, it was the air of danger that

  filled the place, the edginess, the watchfulness, that soaked

  Trevagg's cones like drugged wine. After a walk in the marketplace

  he always came away wondering if he shouldn't pack in the Imperial

  service and go back on the hunt.

  But as always, he looked around him a second time, and saw how

  many of these people were dressed in castoffs or shabby desert

  gear. He stroked his new jacket of deep green yullrasuede, his

  close-fitting trousers tailored for his form and no other, and

  thought again. He might not have made his fortune on this blasted

  piece of rock, but at least he could make a little.

  And the opportunity would come.

  Had come.

  His pulses quickened at the implications of the vibration he'd

  sensed two weeks ago, walking through this very market. All he

  needed to do, he told himself, was be a hunter, and wait. The

  chance of his lifetime had come, and if he waited, it would come

  again.

  If things went right.

  Jabba the Hull's go-between, an enormously obese Sullustan

  named Jub Vegnu, was waiting for him by Pylokarn's Health Food

  booth. Pylokam, an aged and fragile human in trailing dirt-colored

  rags and a garish orange scarf, had been oplimislically peddling

  fruit juices and steamed balls of vegetable gratings for years

  now, surrounded on all sides by a dripping banquet of dewback ribs

  and megasweet fritters-no sugars, no salts, no artificial

  additives, and no customers. Even Jabba had given up trying to get

  a percentage
of his nonexistent takings.

  Vegnu was leaning on the counter eating a caramelized

  pkneb-something Pylokam would never have stocked-the juice of it

  running down what chin he possessed; Trevagg bought a sugar

  fritter from a nearby stand and joined him. At Pylokam's they

  could be assured of being completely uninterrupted.

  "I need to set up a go-between and a loan deal," grated Trevagg

  in his harsh, rather monotonous voice. "Immediate takeover in

  three days, complete secrecy from everyone. Ten percent to Jabba

  of all subsequent take."

  They haggled a little about the percentage, and about what the

  deal was, Trevagg knowing full well that if word got to the

  Prefect-or indeed, to several other members of the Imperial

  service that he knew about- he'd be very likely outbid before the

  widowed Mod-brek even decided she had to sell. In time Trevagg got

  guarantees of secrecy, for what they were worth, but at the cost

  of another four percentage points. At that rate, he thought

  bitterly, it would take him a year to make back his investment . .

  .

  "Is that it, then?" the Sullustan inquired, licking his stubby

  fingers of the last traces of caramel and grease.

  Trevagg hesitated, and the go-between-with almost Gotal

  sensitivity-tilted his head, waiting for what would come next.

  Seeming to feel, Trevagg thought, how big the coming deal was.

  "Not . . . quite."

  There was no need to scan the marketplace visually. Trevagg

  knew the hint he'd gotten, the buzzing, shivering sense he'd

  picked up in passing through two weeks ago, was nowhere around.

  And he didn't know when it would return, when the person-the

  creature-that had caused it would next pass through Mos Eisley.

  But it was as well to be ready.

  "I will need a go-between on another deal," he said slowly.

  "For what?"

  "I can't say." He held up his hand against Vegnu's impatient

  protest. "Not yet. But I need someone to act for me in a situation

  where, as an employee of the Imperial government, I would be

  expected to perform as a part of my duties."

  "Ah." Vegnu leaned back against the counter. "But a civilian,

  performing the same task, would be rewarded?"

  "Well rewarded," said Trevagg, his pulses stirring again at the

  thought of just how well rewarded. "And it's a task well within,

  say, your capabilities."

  "How much?"

  "Twenty percent."

  "Gaah ..."

  "Twenty-five," said Trevagg. "And that five is for secrecy, for

  absolute secrecy, at the time."

  "About you?"

  "And about the . . . nature of the task."

  The nature of the task, thought Trevagg, threading his way

  swiftly through the blazing slats of dust and shadow, heading back

  toward the government offices a few minutes later. That is, after

  all, the delicate thing about this deal. A simple task, informing

  the Imperial Moff of the Sector about someone . . . someone for

  whom they had been looking for a long time.

  The sense that had come to him here in the market two weeks ago

  had been like finding a jewel in the dirt; the vibration itself

  like a sniff of perfume, scented once in other circumstances but

  never forgotten. The trick would be, of course, to keep his go-

  between from taking that jewel-that one piece of information, that

  name-and turning it in himself.

  Trevagg the Gotal knew he would have to be very careful with

  this one, whose reward could get him the foundations of real

  wealth.

  Passing through the market two weeks ago, he had picked up the

  unmistakable vibrations of ajedi Master.

  "Lady to see you," reported the operations clerk in the next

  cubicle as Trevagg reentered the office. After the blast furnace

  of the noon street the prefecture seemed shadowy and cool as a

  cave-the solar deflectors on the roof didn't really start having

  trouble until two or three hours past noon. Were it not for the

  shelves jammed with boxes of datadisks, the dust-yellowed hard

  copy drooping from overstaffed storage boxes stacked along one

  wall-were it not for the almost palpable atmosphere of defeat, of

  grimy hopes and petty spites-the offices themselves would be

  pleasant to enter after a time outside.

  Only so long, thought Trevagg, as he strode toward his office.

  Only so long will I have to put up with this place. It was no

  place for a hunter to be, no place for a true Gotal.

  Just until he could accomplish his final hunt, trap his final

  quarry. Until he could turn over to the Empire information about

  this Jedi, whoever he was . . .

  It hadn't been a passer-through, that much Trevagg knew. After

  losing the sense of the Jedi's vibrations in the marketplace-the

  thick, strange buzzing in his cones that he had been told long ago

  was the concentration of the unknown Force, the magic of the Jedi-

  he had gone at once to the docking bays, ascertained that no

  vessel had taken off for the past several hours. As collector of

  imposts he had access to passenger lists, and had made it his

  business to personally check each traveler.

  And in two weeks of roving every corner of Mos Eisley, he had

  never sensed that particular reaction again.

  So it must be someone on die planet, but not in the town.

  Someone who had come to do marketing, for instance.

  Trevagg was a hunter. He would wait.

  His mind was full of this, rather than whoever this tedious

  female was and what she wanted of him, when he stepped through the

  office doorway-and fell in love.

  The vibration of her filled the room, before she even turned at

  his entrance. It was an intoxicant, a heady compound of milky

  warmth that he could feel almost through his skin, of trembling

  vulnerability, of an electrospectrum aura like a new-blown pink

  teela blossom, and of an innocent and unself-conscious sexuality

  that almost lifted Trevagg off his feet.

  She turned, putting back the white gauze of her veil, to reveal

  an alien loveliness that stopped his breath.

  What race, what species she was, he didn't know. It didn't

  matter. Skin blue-gray as desert's final twilight molded over the

  proud jut of cheekbones any woman on his home planet of Antar

  would kill to possess, double, treble rows of them blending softly

  into the fragile ridges of the chin. More ridges led the eye into

  the graceful curve of proboscis, a feature Trevagg had always

  considered striking in such races-like the Kubaz or the

  Rodians-who possessed them. Eyes wide, green as grass, and fringed

  with ferny lashes peered timidly from beneath a deep splendor of

  brow ridge, like the eyes of a rock tabbit too frightened to flee

  a hunter's step.

  But above the brow was what drew Trevagg's eyes. Half-hidden by

  the cloaking gauze of the veil, the skull rose into four perfectly

  shaped, exquisite conelets, their smallness, their smoothness

  seeming to invite the touch of a male hand, the breath of male

  lips.

  Of course they couldn'
t really be cones, thought Trevagg the

  next moment. She was no Gotal, but someone of the dull-minded and

  insentient lesser races . . . But the imitation was perfect, and

  it was enough.

  He wanted her.

  He wanted her badly.

  "Sir..." Her voice was halting, but of a beautiful, even key,

  modulated like a deep-toned flute through the proboscis. Her three-

  fingered hands, skin tailored over jewellike knobs, seemed to

  cling to the edges of the veil she had just laid aside, as if for

  protection. "Sir, you must help me. They said I should come to you

  ..."

  Trevagg found himself saying, "Anything..." Then, quickly

  correcting himself, for he was, after all, an official of the

  Empire, he added, "Anything in my power to assist you, miss. What

  seems to be the trouble?"

  "I have been put ashore." Distress and fear blossomed from her

  in trembling waves. "They said there was something wrong, with my

  papers; there was a passage tax."

  Trevagg knew all about the passage tax. That was something else

  he'd come up with.

  "I ... I had to budget very closely in order to visit my sister

  on Cona, I ... my family is not wealthy. Now I've lost my seat on

  the Tellivar Lady. But if I pay the passage tax I won't have

  enough to return to my mother on H'nemthe." The name of her home

  world came out like a dainty sneeze, unbelievably entrancing. The

  vibration of her sorrow was like the taste of blood-honey.

  "My dear . . ." He hesitated.

  "M'iiyoom Onith," she supplied. "The m'iiyoom is the white

  flower that blossoms in the season of trine, the season when all

  three moons give their light. The nightlily."

  "And I am Feltipern Trevagg, officer of the Empire. My dear

  Nightlily, I shall go investigate this matter at once. It grieves

  me to be unable to offer you better quarters to wait in, but this

  city is not a savory one. I shall return within moments."

  Balu was in the outer office, boots on desk, drinking a fizzy

  whose bulb sweated in the stuffy heat. He cocked a dark eye at the

  Gotal as Trevagg closed his office door. "Give the child back her

  seat, Trevagg," he grunted. "You don't need the seventy-five

  credits. You run, you can catch the Tellie before she lifts."

  Trevagg leaned across the officer and tapped a key on the

  board. The screen manifested the schedule. Unlike many Gotal,

  Trevagg had mastered computers quickly, once those in the