Star Wars: Tales from Jabba's Palace

by Kevin J. Anderson

  “A fine greeting!” There was not a trace of humor in the creature’s reply, merely resentment. He folded his flabby arms across his chest and glowered at the unhappy academic.

  “Oh dear, I do apologize most sincerely. You must think I’m an awfully big muckhead.” Melvosh Bloor got to his feet unsteadily, then took a dainty step away from the remains of who-or-whatever’s final rest he had so messily disturbed.

  “An awful … biiiiiig … muckhead,” the creature echoed, each word ripe with disdain. His grasp on Melvosh Bloor’s highly refined accent seemed to grow firmer with each word. In fact, his posture now appeared to mimic Melvosh Bloor’s own slightly stooped and timorous stance. If the academic did not know better, he would almost think this creature was making fun of him. That had not been in the contract.

  Melvosh Bloor holstered his sidearm and, in the name of accomplishing his mission, decided to overlook the insult. “There,” he said. “That’s better. Now we may proceed.”

  “Proceed?” The creature shook his head rapidly in the negative, making his tasseled ears bob and shake wildly.

  “Eh?” Melvosh Bloor’s momentary brush with relief at having encountered his promised in-palace guide winked away like a candleflame in a sandstorm. “Do you mean it’s too dangerous to go on? Or—or has there been a change in the situation since last we communicated?” He lowered his voice and in a hoarse, terrified whisper begged, “Don’t tell me that Professor P’tan has actually turned up alive?”

  “P’tan! P’tan! Hahahahaha!” The little creature convulsed with insane merriment, rolling around on the floor as Melvosh Bloor watched, aghast.

  “Oh my,” he murmured. “Professor P’tan is alive after all. Oh dear, dear me, this ruins everything.”

  The creature stopped its mad tumblings and pricked up one ear. “Everything?” it inquired.

  Melvosh Bloor heaved a tremendous sigh. “Is there somewhere we can talk? Somewhere safe? Somewhere”—another sigh—“I can sit down?”

  For an instant, the unthinkable happened: the creature’s face-splitting grin got even wider than ear to ear, physical possibility or not. Then it leaped forward and seized Melvosh Bloor by the hand, yanking and tugging violently (and painfully) as it urged him to follow it down one of the narrower passageways. Stumbling from weariness and bewilderment, the Kalkal allowed himself to be led away into the maze of corridors.

  At length they stopped before a dully gleaming metal door. “In there?” the academic asked doubtfully. “Is it—? Are you sure we shall be secure in there?”

  “In there.” His guide spoke decisively and gave him a hard shove. “In there!”

  Still possessed by an uncertain, creepy feeling (hadn’t that charming-for-a-Whiphid Lady Valarian assured him that his in-palace contact, Darian Gli, was a Markul? This creature did not look anything like a Markul. But Melvosh Bloor was an Investigative Politico-Sociologist, not an Eidetic Xenologist, so he figured he could be wrong), the academic did as he was told. He laid hands on the massive door and was mildly surprised when it swung back easily on its hinges.

  “How … primitive,” he remarked as he peered into the darkened chamber beyond. The spill from the dim illuminations in the corridor was enough for him to see by. He hesitated on the threshold until his guide gave him another of those forceful shoves, making the Kalkal trip over his own boots and fall on his face. Chittering and squealing with glee, the little creature scampered over Melvosh Bloor’s prone body. There was a scrabbling sound and a faint amber light flared on at the far end of the room.

  Melvosh Bloor picked himself up cautiously. “Shall I—Shall I close the door?”

  “Close the door! Close the door!” his guide commanded imperiously. He was seated on a block of rough-hewn sandstone about the height of a table. The amber light came from a small, crystal-shielded niche in the wall nearby. The only other object to break the cubic monotony of the room was a second slab of rock approximately the dimensions of Melvosh Bloor’s bed back in the university cloister.

  Melvosh Bloor hurried to comply, then took a seat on the sandstone slab. He covered his face with his hands and let the full weight of misery bow his shoulders even more. “I suppose I’m to blame for not having done sufficient research before undertaking this mission,” he said. “As, no doubt, Professor P’tan will be the first to tell me once we return to the university. Insufferable old gorm-worm. Oh, I can just hear him now, spouting off the same way he always does when he speaks to the junior faculty.” Melvosh Bloor struck a stiff pose and, in a voice blubbery with pomposity, intoned, “ ‘Melvosh Bloor, do you call that teaching? You merely drum facts into your poor pupils’ rocky heads and give them passing grades if they spew the same swill right back in your lap! Small wonder, when it’s the same swill you swallowed whole from your professors.’ ” The Kalkal snorted. “Then he has to go brag about how he doesn’t rely on secondhand knowledge when he teaches; he goes out and does research in the field. If I hear him say ‘Publish or perish’ one more time, I shall—”

  “Research in the field?” the creature broke in, cocking its head. Then it made a rude noise with one or more parts of its rubbery body.

  “My sentiments exactly,” Melvosh Bloor agreed. “Oh, I do wish we had more honest folk like you at the university. Have you ever had any academic experience, Darian Gli?”

  The creature repeated the rude noise, louder this time, and with a few extra flourishes.

  “Ah,” said Melvosh Bloor dryly. “I see you have.”

  “Professor P’tan?” the creature prompted.

  Melvosh Bloor was not used to enjoying the company of such a good listener. “You wish me to … go on?” he inquired timidly.

  “Go on, go on!” the creature responded with an expansive gesture. Melvosh Bloor found himself liking this quaint being more by the minute.

  “My good fellow, your, ah, rather substantive evaluation of Professor P’tan’s character leads me to believe you have encountered him, even though he swore he’d have nothing to do with you. Which—correct me if I’m wrong—strikes me as stupid.”

  “Stupid.”

  “Ah! Then we’re in agreement. When I was first plotting—I mean considering this expedition, my fellow academics Ra Yasht and Skarten told me I couldn’t go wrong with you by my side. Perhaps you remember them? You helped them research that fascinating monograph on Torture Observed: An Interview with Jabba’s Cook.”

  The creature made a retching sound, though whether this was a literary or culinary critique remained unspecified.

  “You’re certainly entitled to your own opinion, but that monograph was the making of their reputations at the university. Instant tenure. Professor P’tan was infuriated—they hadn’t suffered enough yet, by his standards—but the board overruled him. Right then I sent in my own request for leave to do a project so challenging, so sweeping in its scope, that even were Professor P’tan to bully the board into siding with him, the sheer audacity of my work would compel them to renege and end by favoring me. I would delve into one of the greatest and least-known sociopolitical mysteries of the galaxy. I would lift the veil between polite society and the darkest, slimiest, most hideously profitable phenomenon of our time. I would interview … Jabba the Hutt!” Melvosh Bloor’s eyes shone as he recalled the grandeur of his scheme.

  “Interview the Hutt?” Thick chuckles, like laughter emerging from a pudding, bubbled up from Melvosh Bloor’s guide.

  “Uh … quite. Sit down nicely with him, like civilized beings, and—”

  “Nicely? Nicely! With him?”

  In the face of such obviously open ridicule, the academic went on the defensive. “I fail to see the humor,” he said stiffly. “I realize that the—the Bloated One as he is so colorfully called, has a certain reputation, but still—” Melvosh Bloor pursed his lips as well as any Kalkal could manage. “When you were originally contacted about this, you said you could arrange it. You represented yourself as one very close to Jabba.”

&nb
sp; “Close to Jabba?” The creature’s chuckles burst into full-fledged cackles once more, but he bobbed his head.

  “Then you can take me to him? Not merely as far as his, ah, majordomo or secretary or whoever it is weeds out the riffraff, but all the way to Jabba himself?”

  “Take? Can take, ha!” Now the creature’s head was nodding so exuberantly his ear-tassels looked ready to fly off any moment. “All the way!” He grabbed his long, flexible feet and rolled back and forth on his flabby bottom. “To Jabba, to Jabba, to Jabba!”

  “The way Professor P’tan’s guide took him?” Melvosh Bloor replied coldly. In this small chamber it was possible to believe oneself safe, possible to forget for a time that one was burrowed deep into the stronghold of the galaxy’s most ruthless crimelord. In such an environment of self-deceit, the academic reverted to his classroom manner, a style that combined frigid disdain for underlings, shameless toadying to superiors, and backstabbing ad-lib, as the opportunity presented itself.

  “He got wind of my plans, P’tan did,” Melvosh Bloor went on. “He came barging in while I was petitioning the board for leave and financing. He said that it was ludicrous to entrust a study of such magnitude to a junior faculty member—never mind that it was my idea! He claimed I’d get the data all bollixed, or be taken in by the Hutt’s, ah, propensities for elasticizing the facts.”

  “Lies, lies, lies,” the repulsive little creature opined. “Like a Gran!”

  “Well, I suppose I agree with you there,” Melvosh Bloor allowed, giving his guide a condescending smile. “But I won’t tell Jabba you said that about him if you won’t tell him I agreed with you.”

  “Ohhh, I won’t tell Jabba. Hahahahaha.”

  “Er, good.” Really, the creature’s unseemly attacks of hilarity were becoming most distressing to the academic’s timid nature. “Jabba’s ethics aside, Professor P’tan went on to insist that he undertake my proposed study. Which he did. Perhaps the board felt that one miserable thief was best qualified to interview another.”

  “Miserable thief? Jabba the Hutt? Jabba, miserable thief, lies like a Gran?” The guide’s tasseled ears pricked up.

  “Do excuse my language. Heat of the moment. Although, um, I believe that last bit—lies like a Gran—you said that … didn’t you?”

  “Didn’t.” The lipless mouth snapped shut.

  “But you did! I admit, I said Jabba lies, but you were the one who—” A glance at that hard little face made Melvosh Bloor realize he was engaged in a losing battle over a minor point. He sighed wearily. “Very well, have it your way, if you insist: I said Jabba lies like a Gran. Now may I continue?”

  A taloned paw executed a parody of a fine lady’s gesture when dismissing an unwanted servant.

  “So P’tan came here.” The Kalkal’s wide mouth was exceptionally well suited to a grim expression. “And was never heard from again. We all hoped—assumed he was dead, but the board likes to be sure. That way they have a solid reason for cutting off his wife’s benefits. That is why they sent me, to determine conclusively whether Professor P’tan still lived. Ridiculous, of course; he had to be dead. I resolved to turn this trip into the expedition it should have been in the first place—my expedition to interview Jabba the Hutt. Now you tell me Professor P’tan is still alive.” The academic’s teeth ground together.

  “Still alive.” The creature leered. “Sarlacc eat one meal loooooong time, hahahahaha!”

  “The Sarlacc!” Melvosh Bloor was horrorstruck. While he was no expert on life beyond the university walls, he had heard enough shivery tales of the Sarlacc and its protracted digestive habits while he was awaiting his Jawa guide in Mos Eisley to more than compensate for that lacuna in his education. “You mean Professor P’tan fell into the—the—?”

  “Splat,” his guide provided smugly. “Splat, ow, shrieeeeeeek!” he added as an afterthought.

  “Not so loud, not so loud!” Melvosh Bloor hissed, making desperate hushing motions with his hands.

  “Huh! Coward. Think I stupid?” The creature put on an air of the highest dudgeon. “Like fool guide fool P’tan hire? Fools for Sarlacc pit! I offer be his guide. He listen? Nooooooo. He lunch! Dinner. Breakfast. More lunch. Snack. Sup—”

  The academic was taken aback by this diatribe. “Mercy on us, P’tan’s guide must have been a fool of the first water. Whom did he hire? How stupid was he?”

  For an answer, the creature flew into gales of wheezy joy. “How stupid was he? How stupid was he? Fool P’tan went hire”—snorts and guffaws—”went hire”—gasps for air and fresh howls of mirth—“went hire Salacious Crumb!” Having communicated this intelligence, the whole effort proved to be too much for the small creature and he laughed so hard he fell off his perch onto his head. He then said a nasty word so arcane that Melvosh Bloor made haste to enter it in his datapad for later linguistic study before asking:

  “Who—who is Salacious Crumb? I’m afraid I don’t know—”

  “Uh-huh.” The creature grunted emphatically, clambering back onto his sandstone block.

  “But … what’s so foolish about hiring this Salacious Crumb? Has he no experience with the layout of the palace?”

  “Experience? Hee! Knows palace like back of my—his right paw. Ha!”

  “In that case … not a good contact for approaching Jabba? He is one of the Hutt’s enemies, perhaps?”

  “Hutt’s enemy?” A groan of melodramatic proportions shook the small creature as it covered its face with its paws. “No one closer to Bloated One! No one! All day, every day, Hutt say ‘Crumb, Salacious Crumb,’ he say, ‘Salacious Crumb, make me laugh now or I eat you!’ ”

  “Er, I see,” said Melvosh Bloor, who didn’t. “I’m afraid I don’t quite get the joke, but—”

  “Better you don’t than Jabba don’t. Every day, every day, fresh jokes. All time, fresh, fresh, fresh! Try tell Bloated One same joke twice!” The creature’s face doubled in on itself in a frightful grimace.

  “Are you saying that this Salacious Crumb deliberately led Professor P’tan to fall into the Sarlacc pit as a—a joke?”

  The creature turned a totally innocent gaze to the academic. “ ’Smatter? You don’t get it?”

  Melvosh Bloor shook his head.

  The creature sighed. “Bloated One too don’t. Seen it. He say, ‘Next time, louder and funnier.’ ”

  Melvosh Bloor’s yellow eyes narrowed suspiciously. “You seem to know an awful lot about the doings of Salacious Crumb.”

  “So?” The creature sprang to its feet, its pelt standing out in spikes that made it even more unattractive to the eye. “You know lot about Jabba. This makes you Hutt?”

  Melvosh Bloor shuddered. “I hope not.”

  The creature snorted. “Come.”

  For once it was the academic who became the echo. “Come? Come where? You don’t mean come with you to meet—to meet—Jabba the Hutt?”

  “Jabba … the … Hutt!” The creature pronounced the crimelord’s name in a low, rolling, impressive voice reminiscent of Lord Vader himself.

  “So—so quickly? So easily?” Melvosh Bloor didn’t know whether to tremble with delight or trepidation, so he settled for a generalized case of the shakes. “You can take me to him now?”

  “Right now. Timing, timing, timing! Time is ripe!” It made a great show of sniffing its own armpits, then cheerfully added, “Me too!” It loped across the floor on all fours and flung open the cell door. “Last one out, Sarlacc food.”

  Such an invitation coming hard on the heels of Professor P’tan’s reported fate was impossible to ignore. Melvosh Bloor fairly sprinted out of the cell in pursuit of his guide. Once back in the corridor, the creature climbed the academic’s body as if it were a sail barge mast and perched on his shoulder. “You listen,” it hissed in his ear. “I do talk, get it? Else—” It drew one claw across its own scrawny throat and uttered: “Sskkkrrrhtt!”

  “You mean you’ll conduct the interview? But my questions—” Melvosh Bloor gestur
ed helplessly with his datapad.

  His guide grabbed it from his hands and chewed on one corner experimentally. “Naaaah. You shut up until throne room. Then you talk.” He chortled. “Oh boy.”

  Melvosh Bloor snatched back his datapad and secured it from the creature’s covetous fingers. “That is agreeable,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  The sights and sounds that greeted the Kalkal in the palace vaults would have been fodder for a score of monographs on debauchery, suffering, and substandard hygiene, had he been minded to turn back from his original goal. From its piggyback perch, his guide greeted every other being they passed—Twi’lek, Gamorrean, Quarren, and the rest—with an easy camaraderie that was … Well, in truth, it was downright rude. Insults and jibes flew from the ugly little creature’s mouth with astonishing fluency. Melvosh Bloor’s fingers almost fell off from the rapidity with which he had to enter the many terms with which the other inhabitants of Jabba’s palace showered his guide. (All of them filed under “U” for “Unbelievably Foul.”)

  At last they came to a curtained portal. A tusked Gamorrean raised his vibro-ax in challenge until Melvosh Bloor’s guide poked his head up over the Kalkal’s shoulder and loosed an ear-splitting cackle. The Gamorrean snorted in reply and waved them through.

  As Melvosh Bloor stepped into Jabba the Hutt’s throne room he felt an overwhelming sense of awe that was almost as heart-shaking as the dread that had possessed him when he went in to take his doctoral oral examination. Jabba the Hutt in person was indescribably more imposing than the mountains of research the academic had accumulated to prepare himself for this moment. He felt the weight of his guide drop from his back and saw the creature scamper across the vast chamber to the Hutt’s very throne. Such boldness should by rights result in immediate consumption (so the Kalkal’s research led him to believe) but was not. Instead, the crimelord actually permitted the creature to scale his monstrous body and whisper something for Jabba’s ears alone. The academic’s heart leaped at this irrefutable evidence of his guide’s favored status with the Bloated One. He could almost taste his tenure now.