Star Wars - Tales From The Mos Eisley Cantina

by Kevin J. Anderson

  Meduza's life from it.

  "Thanks, Rover," he said, plucking a last clinging streamer of

  the slime off his shirt. He bent and patted the ruptured mass.

  "Sorry, boy."

  He looked upward to the blasted castle.

  "Backward," he said regretfully. "Damn!" Then he shrugged. "Oh,

  well. Maybe I'll get it right next time."

  And with that he began the long climb downward to the sea.

  Drawing the Maps of Peace The Moisture Farmer's Tale

  by M. Shayne Bell

  Day 1 A New Calendar

  I thought This is it. I won't get out of this one. I topped a

  dune in my landspeeder-going fast, always fast-and saw eight Sand

  People standing around the vaporator I'd come out to fix. I had

  seconds, then, to decide what to do Plunge ahead over the last

  dunes to save a malfunctioning vaporator whose output I needed, or

  turn around and speed back to the defenses of my house and two

  droids. I gunned the speeder ahead.

  The Sand People scattered and ran, and I watched where they ran

  so I'd know where they might attack from. All for .5 liter of

  water, I thought. I was risking my life for .5 liters of water.

  The vaporator's production was down thirty percent to maybe one

  liter a day, and I had to get its production up to the standard

  1.5 and keep it there, the farm was that close to the edge, so

  close that every vaporator had to work at maximum or I'd lose the

  farm.

  In seconds I was at the vaporator, stopped in a cloud of dust

  and sand my speeder raised. I couldn't see the Sand People, though

  their musky scent lingered around the vaporator in the heat at the

  end of the day. The shadows of the canyon walls were lengthening

  across the dunes on the valley floor.

  It would soon be dark, and I was in a canyon where Sand People

  had come, far from home.

  Human technology scared the Sand People-my speeder certainly

  had-but they wouldn't stay scared for long. I grabbed my blaster

  and jumped out of the speeder to see what damage they had done to

  the vaporator.

  A smashed power indicator. One cracked solar cell. Scratches

  around the door to the water reservoir, as if they had been trying

  to get to the water. The damage was minimal.

  But what to do now? I couldn't guard all of my far-flung

  vaporators. I had ten of them, each placed in a half kilometer of

  sand and rock, not the standard quarter kilometer-I was so close

  to the Dune Sea that a vaporator needed twice the land to pull the

  1.5 liters of water worth harvesting out of the air. If the Sand

  People had figured out that vaporators held water and if they were

  determined to get into them, my farm would be ruined. I could

  replace power displays and solar cells. I couldn't guard

  vaporators kilometers apart from Sand People who wanted water.

  I heard a low grunt over a dune to the north, and I immediately

  crouched down against the vaporator and scanned the horizon. The

  grunt sounded like a wild bantha waking from the heat of day, but

  I knew it wasn't bantha. The Sand People were coming back.

  They were determined to get this water.

  And why shouldn't they, I suddenly wondered? Before I came, the

  water collected inside my vaporator would have been their water,

  distilled out of the air in the morning dew, not pulled out at all

  hours of the day by a machine. They must have been desperate for

  water to have come up to a human machine, to have touched it, to

  have tried to open it. What were they suffering to drive them to

  this?

  I heard more "bantha" grunting south of me, over the dunes,

  then to the east and west, and finally to the north again. I was

  surrounded, and an attack would come in minutes.

  Suddenly I realized what I had to do. "Go ahead and waste your

  profits," Eyvind, who owned the farm closest to mine three valleys

  over, would say, "waste your profits so I can buy your farm cheap

  from your creditors when they force you off the land." But I

  wouldn't listen to Eyvind's voice in my head, and I wouldn't have

  listened to him if he'd been with me then. I spoke to the

  vaporator, and a panel slid back from in front of the controls. I

  punched in the number sequence I'd programmed, and I heard the

  vaporator sealing the pouch of water in the reservoir. When it

  finished, the door in front of the reservoir slid open. I pulled

  out the pouch and set it on the sand west of the vaporator, in

  shade out of the light from the second setting sun. I took out my

  knife and made a tiny slit in the top, where the air was, so the

  Sand People could smell the water and get to it.

  I punched in the command to close the door to the reservoir,

  then told the vaporator to close the door over its controls, ran

  to my speeder, and flew it to the top of a dune southwest of the

  vaporator. I could see no Sand People, but I knew they were

  masters at blending into a terrain and surprising the unwary. I'd

  heard plenty of stories about just how quick - and deadly - they

  could be with their gaffi sticks, the double-bladed axlike weapons

  they made from scavenged metal off the Tatooine wastes. I sat low

  in my speeder and tried to watch for any movement - I did not dare

  fly farther away They were all around me and they would surely

  throw their axes if I tried to run, and I did not fancy being

  beheaded in my own landspeeder. Besides, I hoped they would

  recognize what I had done that I had given them water. I did not

  know, then, if I could hope it would buy my life and their trust

  and thus my farm.

  I saw movement one of the Sand People, coming from the north,

  slowly, low over the sand toward the vaporator and the water. When

  he reached the water pouch in the shadow of the vaporator, he

  knelt in the sand and smelled the bag smelled the water inside

  it. He lifted his head slowly and gave out one keening cry that

  echoed through the canyon. Soon I counted eight Sand People-no,

  ten-hurrying toward the water, from all directions, four making a

  wide berth around my speeder.

  Only one of them, a small one-young?-took a drink. Two others

  poured the rest of the water in a thin pouch of animal skin to

  take with them, and they did not Spill any water. When they

  finished, the one who had first smelled the water looked at me.

  Then they all looked at me. They did not speak or make any noise,

  and they did not run. The one who had smelled the water suddenly

  raised his right arm and held up a clenched fist.

  I jumped from the speeder, walked a few steps from it, and

  raised my right arm and clenched my fist in return. We stood like

  that, looking at each other, for some time. I had. never been so

  close to them before. I wondered if they had ever been so close to

  a human. A light breeze from the east down the canyon blew over us

  and cooled us, and abruptly all the Sand People turned and

  disappeared in the dunes.

  They did not destroy my vaporator. They did not try to kill me.

  They left the vaporator alone after I gave them the water, andr />
  they left me alone. They had accepted my gift.

  I pledged, then, to leave them the water from this vaporator. I

  would miss selling the water, I knew that- I needed to sell it-but

  it seemed a small price to pay if by giving them a few liters they

  would then not ruin my vaporators. I could make do with the output

  of the other nine vaporators for a short time-and meanwhile buy

  two of Eyvind's old second-generation vaporators to fix. When they

  came on-line, my output would be back to the minimum I'd need to

  survive.

  All this effort seemed a small price to pay to be able to live

  near the Sand People in peace.

  I counted the days of my farm from that day.

  Day 2 A Farm on the Edge

  Eyvind had told me I was crazy to come out this far. "No one

  has go ne that far," he said. "I can't believe the moisture

  patterns consistently flow up those canyons - you're only a

  handful of kilometers from the Dune Sea!"

  But I had tested the moisture patterns There was water to be

  had there. Not a lot. It would not be a rich farm, like those

  outside Bestine, but one morning when I was camped in what I

  thought of then as a far canyon, I woke on the blanket I'd laid

  out on the sand, and it was damp from the dew. My clothes were

  damp. My hair was damp. I pulled the instruments from my speeder

  and set them up and they all read one thing water. Harvestable

  water. Somehow it blew over the mountains and setded here before

  evaporating in the wastes of the Dune Sea farther west, and it did

  it day after day for the two weeks I spent in that canyon running

  tests. Over the course of a year, I tested that canyon and the

  surrounding canyons twenty-nine more times - I had to have that

  much detailed data to prove that this farm could work so I could

  borrow the startup money. But I'd known from that first day when I

  woke up with damp hair that I could have a farm here.

  I spent months filling out Homestead Act forms and waiting for

  a grant of land, then months filling out loan applications and

  waiting for replies, all the while listening to other farmers tell

  me I was crazy. But I had the undeniable facts of my readings to

  hand anyone who could authorize my homestead or loan me the start-

  up money or even just listen and offer advice, and finally the

  manager at the Zygian branch bank did listen - and he read my

  reports, checked my background to see whether I knew anything

  about moisture farming, which I did, and whether I would keep my

  word, which I would. He loaned me the money.

  He gave me ten thousand days to pay him back.

  Ten thousand days was enough time to make any dream come true,

  I thought.

  I lay on my bed in the dark at the end of a hard day, after

  leaving the Sand People the water I'd pledged them, remembering

  all this, remembering how badly I'd wanted to come out here, how

  hard I'd worked to get my homestead and the loan and then to set

  up my farm. Not once had I thought about who might already be out

  here, depending on this land I called my farm.

  I rolled over and asked the computer to display the holomap I'd

  made of my farm and this region.

  "The files you have requested can only be accessed after a user-

  specified security clearance," it said.

  "Please prepare for retinal scan."

  I stared for a few seconds into a bright, white light that

  suddenly shone out of the monitor. I had to guard my map. I'd made

  the map myself-after a year of surveying and taking photographs

  that I fed into the computer and working from notes and memory-and

  if the wrong people knew I was making maps it could be dangerous.

  I programmed the computer to display the maps only to me and to

  never reference them when working with other files; they were not

  cross-referenced or indexed. When asked if such files existed, it

  would say no to anyone's voice but my own. If asked to access

  them, it would respond and proceed with the security clearance

  only if it heard my voice.

  "Retinal scan complete," the computer said. "Hello, Ariq

  Joanson. I will display the requested files."

  Part of the wall I kept blank and white just for this

  projection suddenly became the canyons of my farm seen from the

  air my house, marked in blue; the vaporators, smaller dots of

  green, widely separated; the canyons and mountains and dunes all

  in natural colors. A red dot far up Bildor's Canyon northeast of

  my farm marked a Jawa fortress. White dots marked the houses of

  the farms closest to mine-and none of those dots were very close.

  "You'll be three canyons and kilometers away from me-and I've been

  the farthest one out for two years!" Eyvind had warned. Over all

  the canyons and mountains and dunes I'd had the computer draw in

  black lines for the boundaries of the farms. The land lay spread

  out over my wall in the darkness, and the dots for houses and

  vaporators gleamed like jewels behind their black lines. Except

  for the red jawa dot, all of them represented human houses or ma

  chines. I'd never thought of putting in dots for the nomadic Sand

  People-or of drawing boundaries for them and thejawas.

  "Computer," I said. "Draw in a boundary line from the northeast

  border of my farm in Bildor's Canyon, along the ridges on both

  sides of the canyon to a distance of one kilometer above the Jawa

  fortress."

  "Drawn as requested," the computer responded, and it was. The

  lines appeared.

  "Label the space inside those new lines 'Jawa Preserve.' "

  "Labeled as requested."

  The words appeared, but I didn't like them. "Relabel the Jawa

  Preserve, the 'Jawa-" What? Land? Reservation? Protectorate? "Just

  label it 'Jawa,' " I said.

  "Labeled as requested."

  The word "Preserve" disappeared from the map, and the word

  "Jawa" centered below the red dot.

  "Now draw borders west from the northwest boundary of my farm

  to the Dune Sea and west from the northernmost boundary of the

  Jawa land also to the Dune Sea."

  "Drawn as requested."

  "Label that 'Sand People.' "

  The words appeared over the land. "Have the Jawas and Sand

  People acquired rights to this land?" the computer asked.

  "No," I said. "I'm only daydreaming."

  "Do you wish these changes saved?"

  I considered that. "No," I said finally. "It is a fiction.

  Erase the changes and shut down."

  It did so.

  I lay back on my bed. What I had told the computer to draw was

  worse than a fiction. I had asked two successive Imperial

  Governors to commission a mapping project of this region, with the

  same response "We just don't have the money." Translate that "We

  have too many people here who don't want accurate maps made of

  what lies beyond the known settlements and farms, and if you want

  to live to bring your next water harvest to Mos Eisley, quit

  asking for such things."

  So I'd quit asking for them. But it wasn't criminals who needed

  to hide places of illegal activity who t
hreatened my life or

  livelihood, yet. It was Sand People violence and Jawa dishonesty

  and manipulation-all caused in part, I was coming to realize, by

  constant encroachments into what had no doubt been traditional

  Jawa and Sand People territories. Maps would be the first step to

  a secure peace for the farmers and Jawas and Sand People-if you

  could get them all to draw in negotiated boundaries on those maps

  and honor them. Without such agreements, farmers faced the

  equivalent of blundering around in the dark-setting up farms in

  areas where maybe no one should go, living in places that

  could-and did-get decent people killed. I wanted the killing to

  stop.

  But for that, we needed a map. The government would not draw

  it.

  So I drew it.

  And I decided, that night, to take my map to the Jawas near my

  farm and talk to them about how to take it to the Sand People. If

  we agreed among ourselves on how to live together in these

  mountains and canyons, maybe someday the government would make our

  agreements official.

  I looked at the monitor for another inevitable retina scan.

  "Computer," I said, "redisplay the map I just requested and redraw

  the boundaries I had you erase. Copy this file to the portable

  holo-display unit."

  Day 3 In the Jawa Fortress

  I knew these Jawas. I had been to the gates of their fortress

  many times, especially during the year I spent measuring the

  moisture in the canyons of my farm They would come out to trade

  water for trash I'd found in the desert and for information. about

  the Empire and its cities and the systems that made them work and

  the alien races and how to deal with them. I tried to be good to

  the Jawas, and fair. If they got the better of me in a few deals,

  I'd come out ahead in a few others, and the tally remained about

  even. Some of the Jawas even became my friends-the old ones, the

  ones I could learn from who had the patience to teach me their

  language, the uses of native plants, geographic lore, j Their

  thick-walled fortress blended into the walls of] the canyon, but I

  knew how to fly straight to its closed and hidden gates. I stepped

  out of my speeder and held up the holo-display unit. "Oh, Jawas!"

  I called out. "I come to you with information and to barter." The

  gates opened at once-the word "barter" would always open their