Canto Bight [Star Wars]

by Saladin Ahmed

  BY MIDDAY KEDPIN SHOKLOP STOOD staring, eye wide, at a beautifully orchestrated splay of coral-and-sand-colored buildings studded with gleaming black glass and shining white tile. Jewel-hued landspeeders and speeder bikes of makes and models Kedpin had only ever seen in holovids hovered in front of the complex, and Kedpin saw famous faces among the impossibly well-dressed beings mingling near the main entrance: Krin Kallibin, the celebrated fathier jockey! And—

  “Oh my! Is that…is that Orisha Okum!? She must be the most famous card player in the galaxy!” Kedpin tugged excitedly on the sleeve of a passerby, who huffed irritably and kept walking.

  “The Canto Casino Hotel! I made it!” Kedpin shouted, ignoring the well-dressed beings who frowned at him. Sometimes you have to be your own booster rocket: Kedpin recited the Salesbeing’s Saying to himself silently.

  The hotel grounds were dotted with gardens that held not only Alderaanian chinar trees, but also beautifully radiant plants that his data card told him were Dagobean brightmoss bushes and tall, luxuriant Kashyyyk orchidferns. Their combined scent was subtle and overpowering all at once. Kedpin’s nose-slits quivered on the crest of a sneeze, but no sneeze came. It was as if his sense of smell were being pleasantly teased. Nothing in the holovids could have possibly prepared him for this.

  Kedpin made his way toward the main entrance, marveling at the variety of species around him. Tall creatures with elongated faces, tiny hovering beings, hulking things on plinths. He had only just stepped inside the palatial double doors when a green-faced, scaly little being even shorter than himself and dressed in black and white approached him as if he were a lord.

  “Welcome, my good sir, to the Canto Casino Hotel. My name is Altovan and I exist only to serve. What can I do, sir, to make your experience here one of a lifetime?”

  Kedpin had never in his life had a living being address him with such deference. Droids, sure, but that was about it. For a moment he just stood there.

  “I…oh! My name is Kedpin Shoklop, and I’ve won a two-week all-expenses-paid trip. I’m the VaporTech Vaporator Salesbeing of the Year!”

  The little alien’s face scales shimmered happily and he beamed with pleasure at Kedpin’s accomplishment. “Why, that’s wonderful, sir! Warmest congratulations on your accomplishment and welcome to Canto Bight. Please just give me a moment, and I will check on your arrangements, Master…Shoklop, was it?”

  “That’s me—but you don’t need to call me Master!”

  The green-faced alien smiled as if Kedpin had told a joke, then bowed his head, and led Kedpin to a computer terminal. His scaly little fingers danced over the keys as he spoke to Kedpin. “Your room is ready for you, sir. It looks like the Hero’s Suite has been reserved on your behalf! An excellent choice. If you’d just be so kind as to point out your luggage, I’ll happily have it sent to your room.”

  Kedpin felt his hearts sink. “My luggage!” He’d completely forgotten about the business at the Great Arch. “I gave it to someone who said they’d bring it to the hotel, but…well, I think they might have been lying. My…my luggage hasn’t shown up here, has it? Under my name? Kedpin Shoklop?”

  The little alien spread his hands apologetically. “I’m afraid not, sir.”

  Kedpin moaned. What was he going to do? “I can’t believe I gave my luggage to a stranger. I’m an idiot!”

  The alien made a soothing noise. “No, no, sir. You are the trusting sort. There’s nothing wrong with that, sir. The galaxy could use a few more kindhearted, trusting beings.”

  Kedpin’s breath caught. The opulent lobby was full of guests and casino-goers from a dozen different species coming and going, but Kedpin felt as if he were alone with the little green alien. He smiled. Aside from his mothers, this was the nicest anyone had ever been to him in his life. “Well, thanks. But I still need my personal vaporators. And humidifiers and…” He felt himself growing tense again.

  The alien cut him off gently. “Well, with those matters at least, sir, we can perhaps help. While we know of course that no things are quite as satisfactory as one’s own things, we can easily have an array of personal vaporators, humidifiers, and dermal moisturization packages sent to your room.”

  It felt like the first real good news Kedpin had been given since arriving in Canto Bight. “You…you can?”

  “Of course, sir!” the little alien said, clasping his hands. “Why, we wouldn’t deserve our—if you will forgive me—unparalleled reputation if we didn’t attend to trifles such as this efficiently.”

  Kedpin almost couldn’t believe it. “But…Well, I haven’t traveled much, you see, but I’ve stayed at VaporTech Travel Housing several times for business and they never do that.”

  The alien smiled at him. “Sir, if you’ll again forgive me a moment of pride, and meaning no insult: This is not VaporTech Travel Housing. This is the Canto Casino Hotel! And speaking of which, where are my manners? This is the midmeal hour—would you care for a bite or two before you retire to your room?”

  “That sounds great!” Kedpin said. He hadn’t eaten since his very early morningmeal on the Cantonican Dream.

  Midmeal at the Canto Casino Hotel was unlike anything Kedpin had ever experienced. The holovids didn’t do it justice. How could they? Kedpin hadn’t seen this many different dishes in his long lifetime, and here they were all together in one meal. Delectables for every palate in the galaxy. He walked through room after room filled with jellies, meats, eating-papers, plants, insects, chew-blubbers, cakes, marrow-bags, pies, carni chips with glaze sauce, hydrosoy sprays, cheeses, kamtro grassticks, and a thousand other foods. In each room Kedpin had only to point to a thing, and it would be brought to his table. The yeast-worm jelly was the most delicious thing Kedpin had ever tasted. It was so good it nearly made him cry.

  By the time he was done, he was so full he felt barely able to walk to his hotel room. The room itself was bright and beautiful. The walls were tastefully draped with glimmering tapestries, and the floor was covered in plush rugs that tickled Kedpin’s feet as he walked. The huge, perfectly soft sleeping pod fit Kedpin’s body as if it were made for him. Within moments of crawling into it he fell into a deep, restful sleep, dreaming of all the new things he’d seen and smelled and tasted.

  An hour or so later, Kedpin was woken by a gentle rippling noise at his door. It took him a few moments to realize it was a sort of signal, alerting him to press the intercom button on his sleeping pod. Kedpin rolled over and pressed the flashing blue diamond.

  “Master Shoklop, this is Altovan, your hospitality liaison. I am terribly sorry to disturb you, sir, but in your itinerary module you did indicate an interest in visiting Zord’s Spa and Bathhouse. Are you still interested in a session?”

  With some effort, Kedpin sat up in the squishy sleeping pod. “Oh, yes, please! Very much so!”

  “Excellent, sir!” Altovan’s voice over the intercom was so full of cheer, Kedpin could almost see the little alien’s green scales shimmering. “I’ll have an attendant escort you. They will be by your room in precisely thirty minutes.”

  An olive-skinned human in understated livery—again, Kedpin marveled, not a droid—arrived soon after and guided him on the walk from the Canto Casino Hotel to Zord’s Spa and Bathhouse. The man left Kedpin standing in front of the facility’s huge façade of sculpted stone. “The hotel is just a short way back the way we came, Master Shoklop. But I’ve programmed the route into your data card as well, just in case. If you require anything else at all, please don’t hesitate to have a Zord’s employee contact the hotel’s front desk.”

  As he entered Zord’s, scents of soap and seawater steam filled Kedpin’s nose-slits. He stared in awe at the sandstone and marble façades and watched beings of all sizes and shapes come and go, each clutching a small white towel. Armed with information from his datapad, Kedpin asked after the services of the renowned masseur Lexo Sooger, whom Kedpin had researched during the voyage, but was told that Zord’s most famous employee had left for the day
.

  The massage itself was nothing short of astonishing. On a few occasions over his more-than-a-century working for VaporTech, Kedpin had displayed what the company termed a “productivity-impacting proclivity for panic.” On these occasions VaporTech had required that Kedpin, at his own expense, retain a company-sponsored tension macerator droid. The experience was never pleasant.

  But Zord’s Spa and Bathhouse was completely different. Kedpin was ushered into an elegantly cobblestoned room and invited to lie on a towel that was draped across the smooth little stones. A vault door was sealed shut behind him. Then a tiny blue masseur roughly the size of one of Kedpin’s feet briskly introduced himself as Gven, climbed onto Kedpin’s back, and began kneading his flesh with a strength beyond his tiny stature. The sensation was so painfully pleasant that it took Kedpin a few minutes to realize that the gravity in the room was slowly being reduced to zero.

  Once aloft, with the tiny, now silent masseur climbing all over him and doing things to his flesh that no one had ever done, Kedpin’s mind began to wander. How many times in his life had he been able to do this, Kedpin wondered—to just lie there and think? About something other than vaporator models or client lists or productivity models? At first it was exhilarating. But then it began to terrify him even as it thrilled him. The oddest memories and feelings floated up. Embarrassment from Kedpin’s first failed sale, a century past. Resentments against his co-workers that Kedpin thought he had buried decades ago. Shame about good customers with whom he’d been less than honest. Guilt. But eventually even these melted away beneath Gven’s pseudopods.

  When Kedpin emerged from Zord’s the sun was low in the sky, smudging the horizon with hearts-racing oranges and purples that Kedpin’s eye had never beheld. The air had cooled enough to be more tolerable, and the sand that had been irritating his nose-slits seemed to have settled. Gentle music and pleasant spices wafted from the cheery cantina next door. He decided to walk back to the Canto Casino Hotel.

  Kedpin felt wonderful. His body felt better than it had in years, thanks to his visit to Zord’s. But it was more than that. Kedpin felt wonderful inside, in a way that felt new to him. He was living his holovids! He had flown through hyperspace on a private cruiser, eaten yeast-worm jelly at the Canto Casino Hotel, had a zero-g massage at Zord’s Spa and Bathhouse. And soon he would fulfill his decades-long dream of seeing a real live fathier race. He felt not only as if his fortunes on Canto Bight had turned a corner, but as if his very life had. Everything he had done to get here had been worth it.

  Kedpin’s data card told him he was just two blocks from the hotel when he was approached by two lanky orange humanoids. Kedpin could not tell them apart except that one wore blue and one wore red. Kedpin thought they looked like they had bad news.

  “Pardon us, sir, but are you—” one began.

  “—Master Kedpin Shoklop?” the other finished.

  “I…I am,” Kedpin said.

  The alien in red said, “We’re terribly sorry, sir, but there’s—”

  The alien in blue stepped in. “—been a problem with your hotel room.”

  ANGLANG LEHET WATCHED HIS MARK emerge from one of the old stone archways that fronted Zord’s Spa and Bathhouse. Then he took a deep breath and silently counted to twenty.

  Zord’s, housed in one of the most beautiful Old City–style buildings left on this side of Canto Bight, was a true institution. It wasn’t just hype for the tourists: Zord’s attendants could make a being of any species feel cleaner and more relaxed than that being had ever felt in its life. Once, many years ago, one of Anglang’s Syndicate bosses had insisted Anglang accept a heating wax soak at Zord’s as a bonus when he’d taken out a particularly hard target. Anglang had hated the idea, but if one wanted to live long one didn’t refuse gifts from one’s boss in the Syndicate. Truth be told, those hundred minutes in Zord’s wax vat had been some of the most pleasant in Anglang’s life. For decades afterward, when he found himself cold and cranky on some hit job or other, the memory of his heating wax soak at Zord’s Spa and Bathhouse would come to Anglang unbidden.

  Anglang reached twenty and shook himself out of his memories. He’d given Shoklop enough distance; time to follow now. Anglang tailed the little man for two blocks, finalizing his approach tactic, when he saw two thin orange beings approach his mark. They were identical as far as Anglang could tell, except that one of them wore red and one wore blue.

  Anglang had been away from Cantonica’s underworld for years. He didn’t know these punks. But he knew their type. And the con they were running was an old and low-rent one, rare on Cantonica: scan someone’s data card remotely, pretend to be hotel staff transporting their “guest” somewhere based on some nonsense story, drive the mark out to the desert, and rob him blind. Not the sort of thing they would ever try on the beautiful and important people of Canto Bight. The sort of brutal hustle that only the occasional middling idiot ended up on the receiving end of.

  Anglang watched the exchange for a moment, then stood and strode into action, his black cape swirling as he moved. This was his mark! He couldn’t let these amateurs screw this up. It could take him days to find another chump so perfect for his purposes, and he didn’t have that kind of time. He would have to turn this around and make it work somehow.

  In the seven strides it took him to reach Shoklop, Anglang improvised a plan to do just that. He had already started cooking up both a story about being a Cantonica Tourist Bureau official and a series of events to gain Shoklop’s trust. But this might actually work better.

  He walked over to the beings in a way that was meant get their attention, and it worked. The group all looked up—way up—as Anglang approached. “Gentlemen,” he said in his deepest, most threatening voice as he towered over the twins, cutting off their spiel. “I think you two need to leave this nice man alone.”

  “Huh? Who’re you?” the one in blue asked, startled enough to drop his affected obsequious tone.

  Anglang fixed his stare on the twin in blue. Anglang had killed beings. Many beings. Not a few of them with his bare hands. When he wanted to, he could wear this fact in his eyes. And when he did that, not many could meet his gaze.

  “I’m someone you don’t want to anger,” Anglang said, giving a taste of his death stare to the twin in red as well.

  They were basic street punks, still children, really. But they weren’t stupid. They saw what was in Anglang’s eyes, and they mumbled a few words and walked away as quickly as they could without running.

  “I must confess, I am very confused right now,” Shoklop squeaked out. “Did you just chase away my hotel guides? And what’s the problem with my hotel room? Nothing serious, I hope!” The little man breathed deeply, as if trying to hold on to some tranquil thought.

  Anglang managed to keep from screaming out loud at the fool’s naïveté. “There is no problem with your hotel room. Those two were criminals. They were about to convince you that they worked for the hotel, then take you out somewhere and rob you.”

  The little man’s breath grew rapid and shallow. “R-rob me? But this is Canto Bight! City of glitz and glamour!”

  Anglang barked a half laugh, but smothered it when he realized the fool was serious. “Well, even a city as elegant as ours has its criminal element, I’m afraid. Pleased to meet you, by the way. I am called Anglang Lehet. I work for the Canto Bight Tourism Commission.” Anglang bowed slightly, and Kedpin Shoklop bowed back. It was a thin cover, but it would be enough. Anglang almost never bothered with fake names and long stories—they were a lot of work to maintain, and rarely worth it.

  The little man was holding a handkerchief he’d produced from…somewhere, and blowing his hideous little nose-slits. The sound made both Anglang’s stomachs curdle.

  “Well, thank the stars you showed up to stop them, sir! I’ve already had my luggage stolen or lost or, oh, I don’t know, and I was thrown into a pile of synthmud by a living boulder,” Shoklop blurted. Then he slowed just a bit. “Robbers, you
say? Well, I suppose there are always those who refuse to work hard and follow the rules.”

  Anglang grunted. He could almost smell Shoklop’s sad sense of reassurance at his commanding “official” presence. A sniveling little creature of order and law. Pathetic. But perfect for Anglang’s purposes.

  “Sounds like you’ve had a hard first day in Canto Bight, Master…”

  The little man smiled. “Shoklop! Kedpin Shoklop! But you can call me Ked—all my friends do!”

  “Well, Master Shoklop, I’m off duty. Let me buy you a drink to welcome you to our city more properly.” Anglang tried as hard as he could to sound pleasant.

  The little idiot’s face lit up like a laser array. He actually clapped his fleshy little hands together in joy. “That sounds wonderful! A real official native host! It seems my luck is turning yet again!”

  Anglang sighed quietly and tried to keep his contempt from reaching his face.

  Twenty minutes later they were ensconced at a floating table at Klang’s Place, drinking crystalmead. It was a cheap bar, the kind Anglang’s sort of people gathered at. The sort that was nearly gone from Cantonica. The antigrav on the seats was rickety, but the table at least didn’t spill their drinks.

  Dropping the tiny, ingestible detonator into Shoklop’s drink was simplicity itself. The little alien had a massive eye, but he wasn’t particularly observant. Anglang talked to distract Shoklop, but it hardly even seemed necessary.

  “So, Master Shoklop, you were saying you won this trip to Canto Bight?”

  That big eye beamed and Shoklop pointed to himself with a pink, stubby finger. “That’s right! You, sir, are looking at the VaporTech Vaporator Salesbeing of the Year!”

  “Well, that certainly sounds like a big deal,” Anglang said, almost managing to sound like he meant it.

  “You bet it is!” Shoklop said with an enthusiasm that almost frightened Anglang. “Every year, in a big announcement broadcast over the entire company network, one salesbeing is chosen as VaporTech’s Vaporator Salesbeing of the Year and awarded a two-standard-week all-expenses-paid vacation. I’ve been working there long enough to remember when the vacation was to Coruscant. But for the past several decades, it’s been to Canto Bight.”