Nat’s body lay facedown in the sand below. The rancor roared at it, but it did not move.
“Nat won’t run!” Jabba shouted. “Why won’t he run?”
The rancor seized the body and ate it in three bites. Blood spattered through the grille onto Fortuna’s hands and robes and face, and the hands and robes and faces of everyone around the pit. The rancor looked up at them and belched and roared.
But everyone in Jabba’s throne room was quiet. They all expected Jabba to be angry. “Nat must have come to hate you,” Fortuna told Jabba, in the relative silence. “He knew it would please you to see him run, so he would not run.”
Someone laughed. Sy Snootles started humming a tune. Max Rebo began pounding his keyboard. And Jabba finally laughed. “He ate him—the rancor ate him. It has no aesthetic sense.” Jabba rolled his throne back to its original position, away from the grille, while the music picked up and palace life returned to normal.
Jabba believed what Fortuna had told him. He never suspected what had just happened. Fortuna walked thoughtfully through the milling crowd of galactic toughs of all species, toughs he hoped to make his people a part of, rubbing at the speckles of Nat’s blood on his hands.
When he could, later that night, Fortuna hurried to the monks and Nat’s brain. He went first to the Great Room of the Enlightened, where the brain jars sat on shelves and the brain walkers waited below them. One embodied monk was dusting. “Nat would not stop screaming, so we had to move him to a cell of his own,” the monk said. “He was disturbing the enlightened ones.”
The monk led Fortuna to the cell. The brain jar holding Nat’s brain sat alone on a table. All the lights at the base of the jar glowed bright red in the darkness.
The monk lit two candles in niches near the door and left quietly. Fortuna sat at the table and put his hands on the jar for a time. The brain was a ghastly sight: raw, white in places, suspended in a solution Nat’s blood discolored red. The monks would change the solution daily for three days till there was no more blood and the solution stayed clear.
Fortuna pressed a button at the base of the jar that made it “hear” for the brain. “Nat,” he said, “this was the only way I knew to save you. Believe me.”
He went on to tell him his plans for cloning, but then another idea came to him. “Perhaps we can find a holding body to put your brain in till we clone a body of your own.”
The more he thought of it, the more Fortuna liked that idea: kidnap someone acceptable, discard the brain, and put Nat’s brain in the body for a time. The sensations of a living, breathing body would surely help keep Nat’s brain sane till it could be put into Nat’s own clone.
He would speak to the surgeons about it.
When he left Nat’s cell an hour later, one third of the lights glowed rose, even pink: not bright red.
Fortuna returned to Jabba’s throne room to sleep. He had to sleep there. Jabba’s paranoia required that everyone close to him sleep around him at night—supposedly to protect him from assassins, but in reality so the guards could watch them all and keep them from assassinating Jabba. The routine had grown lax. The guards slept along with everyone else. Fortuna had even stopped lecturing them about it.
But he would get new guards when he was in control.
Fortuna could not sleep. He sensed goings-on in the palace he could not pin down and that he could not attribute to the anxieties of the day—probabilities swirling in the subconscious undercurrent of life around Jabba. But the monks had trained him well. Things would come clear again, he was confident of that. Beings from all parts of the galaxy constantly came and went here, and it sometimes took days to sort out the true purposes of their visits. Meanwhile, the monks would advise him, as they had advised him about Nat. Fortuna had allies no one suspected.
Fortuna lifted his head and looked at Jabba, so close to his own public bed. He could smell Jabba’s alien, musky sweat in the heat of the night, and he wrinkled his nose and began a ritual that often calmed him so he could sleep. Of the day’s annoyances, these, Fortuna counted silently. That Jabba still lives. That was the chief and foremost of every day’s list of annoyances.
But Jabba would die soon.
Fortuna’s preparations were nearly complete: securing the final sets of codes to Jabba’s scattered bank accounts, testing the loyalty of the last few he needed to stand by him during the coup. He had little left to do. But besides his own plot, Fortuna knew of fourteen others against Jabba’s life, plots he would not stop now. It was always wise to make contingency plans, and he had fourteen sets of plotters doing just that for him. He would simply watch them, and guide them where possible. He hoped he would beat the others and actually have the pleasure of murdering Jabba, but it did not much matter to him, as long as it got done at roughly the correct time. However Jabba’s death came about, Fortuna would end up in charge. He would control the bulk of the fortune.
Some plots were quite entertaining: the Anzati assassin, for instance, in the pay of both Lady Valarian and Eugene Talmont, the Imperial prefect—an amusing confusion of patrons for that assassin. There was Tessek, a fussy little Quarren Jabba wanted killed, who himself plotted to kill Jabba. A simple plot Fortuna favored was that of a kitchen boy who had planned to poison Jabba because several years earlier Jabba had fed his brother to the rancor after a sauce failed. So many here hated Jabba, and Jabba relished their hatred—one of his many great mistakes, Fortuna thought. Jabba believed his acts of cruelty made beings everywhere fear him, and he thought fear protected him. But fear endured for days and months and years turns to hatred. Hatred spawns plots for revenge. Fortuna planned to run things differently.
He lay back and smiled to himself. Fourteen assassination plots—and beyond that, sixty-eight plots to rob the palace. There was no end to the plotting.
Of the day’s other annoyances, these, he continued. That he had found it necessary to watch Nat’s body be destroyed. That he had had to threaten the monks to get them to remove Nat’s brain. That the delivery of two-headed effrikim worms Jabba favored on hot mornings—and whose endorphins induced hours of drowsiness—had not come in, again, thus making the constant supply of other diversions necessary: dancers, liquor, spice. Annoyances, all of them—a day of annoyances.
But of them all, the greatest—the chief annoyance—was that Jabba still lived.
The rancor roared in the pit and banged against the walls of its cage. No one stirred.
Those were common sounds.
The surgeons assured Fortuna that “brain swapping” was possible but rarely tried—and then only when the galaxy needed an embodied spiritual guide and there hadn’t been time for one to be born and raised up. In those times, the monks would choose a healthy acolyte and one of the enlightened, and surgeons would swap the brains. Fortuna felt confident that he could force the monks to perform the procedure for Nat.
Fortuna talked to Nat’s brain every day, sometimes twice a day, and after two weeks, some lights glowed green and blue. But at least one always glowed bright red: panic was always there in Nat, and it had probably been there too long. The brain was unstable. The monks thought Nat partially insane: he would imagine, for days at a time, that he was blindfolded, his body tied down, and that Fortuna and the monks wouldn’t let him up—that he was still in his body. Fortuna once asked him why, if he were just tied down, he couldn’t feel his body—and all the lights suddenly glowed red.
“Fit him in a brain walker,” he told the monks. “Maybe if he can walk around he will become more sane.”
It took Nat days to learn to make the walker move, and his walker was forever stumbling into walls or Fortuna or the monks. Fortuna was afraid he would break his brain jar open, but the monks assured him the jar would not break easily. Nat tried to follow Fortuna wherever he went, and the monks would have to hold Nat back from following Fortuna up to Jabba.
“Don’t let it come looking for me!” he ordered the monks. He did not want Nat stumbling around, saying things he sh
ouldn’t amongst people who thought the rancor had eaten all of him.
But one day, when the monks were too busy with Spring Equinox ceremonies to watch Nat as closely as Fortuna ordered, Nat did come up to the throne room. His brain walker stumbled down the steps and scraped itself against the stone wall. No one paid it any attention. But it suddenly lurched out toward the center of the room, perilously close to the grille in the floor. Fortuna realized that if two or three of its legs fell through and it couldn’t extricate itself, the guards would have to lift it up. Jabba might decide to send it down to the rancor instead. He had never sent a brain walker to the rancor, and Fortuna did not want Jabba to get the idea now.
Jabba had a new protocol droid, a certain C-3PO—a gift from some human egotist who claimed to be a Jedi Knight. Fortuna quickly motioned the golden droid to his side. “Keep that brain walker away from the grille,” he said. “Guide it around the perimeter of the room and back down to the monks as soon as possible.”
“At once, Master Fortuna,” C-3PO said.
But C-3PO soon tapped Fortuna on the shoulder. “The enlightened one wishes to speak with you,” he said. “He absolutely refused to return to the monks until he had. I can’t imagine what could be so important that he—”
“That’s enough,” Fortuna said. “I will speak with it. Leave us.”
The droid arched its back and walked stiffly away.
“What is it?” Fortuna asked Nat.
“I have found a body—a holding body. You said I could have a body—”
“Yes, yes. Whose is it?”
“I don’t remember its name, but it looks like a strong body, and I need a strong body—”
“Where is it, then? Is it in this room?”
Fortuna did not like carrying on this conversation in Jabba’s throne room. He did not want anyone to overhear. Two or three were already looking at them. “Tell me now,” Fortuna demanded. “Then you must return to the monks.”
“The body in the carbonite—it’s doing no one any good. Give me the body in the carbonite!”
Fortuna had to smile. “Han Solo?” he said. The idea was delicious to him. Fortuna had many reasons to hate Corellians—Bidlo Kwerve, his rival for the post of majordomo, had been a Corellian. Using Han’s body in this way would be a fine revenge on Corellians in general. He looked at the body of Han Solo, frozen in carbonite, hibernating perfectly. Han’s head looked roughly the same size as Nat’s had been.
“Of course,” he told Nat. “You shall have that body. Soon.” He did not have to add: when I am in control here. Such an experiment would probably have amused Jabba, but Fortuna could not have explained Nat’s—or his own—part in it.
Business took Fortuna into Mos Eisley. He was glad to get away from the palace for the afternoon, but it would be a busy time—arranging for new purveyors to ship the still awaited effrikim to the palace; checking the progress of the reconstruction of Jabba’s town house after the fire. Perhaps the most interesting of his duties, however, would be meeting with the human, Luke Skywalker, who claimed to be a Jedi Knight and who had sent droids to Jabba as gifts. The human wanted to bargain for Han Solo, and Fortuna invited him to the town house to hear his offer. This sudden burst of interest in the frozen Corellian amused Fortuna. Perhaps there were ways to make Solo turn a profit yet.
“It would be to your master’s advantage to simply let Han go,” Skywalker said.
Fortuna laughed. He had expected arrogance from someone claiming to be a Jedi Knight, and he was not disappointed.
“Han Solo cost Jabba dearly, young Jedi,” Fortuna said. “How would simply letting him go work to my master’s advantage? Besides, I’m certain the Empire would not want Solo wandering about again.”
“The government will change,” was all Skywalker said in reply.
And suddenly the mists clouding Fortuna’s intuition cleared. He identified an astonishing plot afoot in the palace. The Rebellion wanted Han Solo. This human sitting in front of him was a representative of the Rebellion—and others were already in the palace: a guard, the droids, at least those—all part of a grand plot to free Han Solo, for reasons he could not imagine. What would the Rebellion want with a smuggler? Much of the plot was just probability—key figures were not in place yet, Fortuna could sense that. But his interest was piqued. This would be an interesting scenario to watch. Fortuna said nothing of all this to Skywalker. He brought the conversation back to money.
“Solo cost Jabba dearly, as I said. He would expect payment for the shipment of spice Solo dumped if he ever let him go.”
“I will pay whatever Han cost Jabba, plus interest, if that is the only deal we can make,” Skywalker said. “But you do not want money. You want to help your people, though your plans will hurt them more than ever. Free Han, and after you overthrow Jabba—join the Rebellion. The New Republic will put Ryloth under its protection. Ryloth will not be destroyed, as it will be under the Empire, and you will accomplish your goals.”
Fortuna could not speak for a moment. The intuitive powers of this young human were strong indeed. Luke’s conviction and honesty touched Fortuna’s heart. For a brief moment, Fortuna saw a bright future in which people would not have to plot and scheme and connive as he had done all his life. But the moment passed. Fortuna felt the heavy weight of the Empire and its ways settle back down around his mind. The Empire would not be overthrown. He could not entrust the fate of the Twi’lek people to the idealistic dreams of the pitiable Rebellion. Fortuna believed his own plans were, after all, the best.
“Your words move me,” he told Skywalker, finally, and he could not resist saying something about his coming overthrow of Jabba. “Some of what you foretold will take place within days. Your friend is best left frozen till then. He will be utterly safe in the carbonite during the troubles that come. But you are wrong about money. I will need great quantities of it to fulfill my dreams. Jabba will not accept your offer of payment with interest for Solo, though I will convey it to him. Rest assured, however, that when the day comes, I will accept.”
Skywalker quickly stood and bowed as if the meeting were over, though Fortuna had not had time to offer him a glass of spiced water or finish his other duties as host. This brusqueness was unexpected, and Fortuna wondered if the human was in a hurry to leave because he realized Fortuna knew the truth about him and his plot. That plot would change now, Fortuna was certain of it. He did not stand or return Skywalker’s bow.
“I will yet have Solo,” Skywalker said, and Fortuna detected no arrogance in what he said, no boasting. His words were a simple statement of what he believed fact.
“You will indeed have your friend after you bring your money to me. You will know when to come,” Fortuna said. Skywalker turned and walked away.
Fortuna did not tell the bright-eyed young human exactly how he meant to keep his word. He would sell him what Han Solo would have been reduced to by then: his brain. That was what the guards would deliver to this “Jedi” after they had his money. Such a deal would gain the attention of the Empire and improve Fortuna’s standing in it.
Jabba rejected the Jedi’s offer and ordered Fortuna not to admit Skywalker—just as Fortuna had predicted. In the time that followed, Fortuna watched those the Rebellion had planted in the palace. The droids, the guard served with excellence. Then even more representatives of the Rebellion were planted, so to speak—taken, even, to Jabba’s bosom: a human woman, Leia Organa, one-time princess and Imperial senator—now a dancing slave, after she foolishly unmasked herself and saved Fortuna the trouble of bringing Han Solo out of the carbonite; and the Wookiee, Chewbacca, whom she brought to complete her failed disguise and who was promptly imprisoned, now with his old friend Solo. This plot did not look to be going very well—with key players in it seemingly happy in their employ, others imprisoned or made slaves. Fortuna believed he was right not to put any stock in the Rebellion, if this was the best it could do to rescue someone. He put more stock in the cook’s plan to poison Jabba.
But the former princess had managed to do one good thing, as far as Fortuna was concerned: she had brought a thermal detonator into the palace, and Fortuna now had it—after stealing it from a Whiphid guard who had stolen it from the princess during the commotion after her unmasking. No one ever asked what became of it. It alone made a marvelous contingency plan.
Then one morning, Fortuna woke suddenly, before all the others. Something was not right in the palace: someone was in it who should not be, and he was walking toward the throne room. Fortuna sat up and arranged his robes, and his intuition told him who was coming: Luke Skywalker. Fortuna moved quietly and quickly across the throne room and met Skywalker at the top of the steps.
“What are you doing here?” he asked. “You know Jabba has not accepted your offer, and he will not speak to you. You must wait for me.”
“You will take me to Jabba now,” Skywalker said. No explanation. Typical arrogance.
“I will take you to Jabba now,” he answered Skywalker.
For a brief moment, Fortuna paused to consider whether the Jedi’s tricks could have influenced his mind, but he quickly lost that thought. Surely it could not be so.
Fortuna started back down the stairs and looked at Jabba. Waking him in the morning was a task not lightly undertaken, but he would do it. The incompetent guards were at last stirring and looking in his direction. The human followed Fortuna down the steps and mumbled some nonsense at his back about serving his master well and being rewarded. Fortuna could not repress a smile. He spoke in Jabba’s ear: “Luke Skywalker, the Jedi, has come to speak to you.”
Jabba was angry at once, and Fortuna braced himself. “I told you not to admit him,” Jabba grumbled.
“I must be allowed to speak,” Skywalker said. He tried to use his anything-but-subtle mind-manipulation trick on everyone in the room.
Star Wars: Tales from Jabba's Palace Page 22
