by K. W. Jeter
must have been just recently extruded by the assembler,
the neural silk was still white and unmarked by the web's
centuries of accumulated filth. "I'm here for business,
not conversation."
The little voice box scurried along the tunnel's
fibrous ceiling, a pair of tiny claws reeling in its con
necting line as it kept pace with Fett. "Ah , that is
truly indeed the bounty hunter of my long acquaintance,
so bold and vivid he is in my remembering! How sadly long
I have been without the pleasure of your succinct and
charming wit."
Fett made no reply as he clambered through the
tunnel, its interwoven tissues yielding beneath the
weight of his boots. Wherever his thick gloves grabbed
hold, ripples of firing synapses sparked in fading
concentric circles, as though from a stone dropped in an
ocean filled with phosphorescent plankton. A few light
nodes, the smaller brethren of Signaler on the web's
exterior, glowed before him and dropped back into
darkness after he had passed by. Fett supposed that when
Kud'ar Mub'at had no visitor, the web remained unlit. The
assembler required no light to move around inside an
artifact constructed of its own spun-out cortex.
"There you are in your entirety!" The same voice,
like sheet metal being torn in half, sounded from in
front of Boba Fett as he ducked beneath a ridge of
hardened silk. "I knew you'd return, crowned with the
eminence of success." The words were louder, coming from
Kud'ar Mub'at's own mouth rather than the little voice-
box node. "And of undeniable punctuality you are as well,
indeed."
Boba Fett stepped into the web's central chamber, a
space large enough for him to stand upright in. It was
more than a matter of simile that it seemed to Fett as
though he had walked into the center of the assembler's
brain. That was the reality of Kud'ar Mub'at's nest and
body, an interconnected unity, one and the same thing. It
lives inside its armor, thought Fett, as I live inside
mine.
"I returned here when I said I would." Fett turned
his masked gaze upon the assembler. "It was a simple
enough job."
"Ah, for one of your exceedingly multifarious
talents, yes, I imagine it was." Kud'ar Mub'at's compound
eyes focused on his visitor. One of its jointed, spike-
haired forelegs inscribed a graceful acknowledging
gesture in the chamber's thick air. "No complications, I
take it?"
"The usual." He folded his arms across the front of
his battle-gear. "There were a couple of other bounty
hunters who were hoping to nab him before I did."
"Ooh." The eyes, like dark black cabochons, glittered
with anticipation. "And you took care of them?"
"I didn't have to." Fett knew how much the assembler
enjoyed war stories, the more violence-filled the better.
He didn't feel like indulging the arachnoid creature's
taste. "They were just the usual feckless types that the
Bounty Hunters Guild sends out. It's easier to walk
around a pile of nerf dung than step right into it."
"How very droll! You amuse me greatly!" Kud'ar Mub'at
reached up to the chamber's ceiling with several of its
hind legs, lifting itself up from where it had been
resting its pale abdomen. "It is a savory bonus of our
relationship that I am privileged to hear your
scintillating repartee." The bed node wheezed as it
reinflated its cushiony pneumatic bladders. Kud'ar Mub'at
worked his way across the chamber's ceiling, finally
dangling its mandibled face directly in front of the
bounty hunter. "Have we not more than a mere business
relationship, my dear Fett? Please say yes. Say that we
are friends, you and I."
"Friends," said Boba Fett coldly, "are a liability in
my trade." He drew the visor of his helmet back from the
assembler's glittering eyes and V-shaped smile. "I'm not
here to amuse you. Pay me the bounty you're holding in
escrow, I'll hand the merchandise over to you, and I'll
go."
"Until the next time." Kud'ar Mub'at turned its head,
regarding him with another set of gemlike eyes. "Which
cannot be anytime too soon, for my preference."
Maybe it's this part of the job, Boba Fett thought to
himself, that's the worst. Tracking someone down,
pursuing him the width of the galaxy, capturing,
transporting, killing anyone who had to be killed in
order to get the job done-those things were all cold
pleasures, to be savored as tests and confirmations of
his own skills. Dealing with any of the clients, whether
it was a matter of direct negotiation such as with the
Empire's Lord Vader or a sleaze mountain such as Jabba
the Hutt, or a third-party negotiation with a middle
entity such as Kud'ar Mub'at, was more repellent than
satisfying. It always turned out to be the same thing,
every time. They never want to pay up, brooded Fett. They
always want the merchandise; they just never want to pan
with their credits in exchange. With Hutts, it was always
an emotional issue, at least at the start. Their megalo-
maniacal rages at any perceived sign of disloyalty led
them to post huge, eye-popping bounties; later, when they
had simmered down a bit, the Hutts' natural cold-blooded
greed kicked in and they tried to take the prices down.
The members of the so-called Bounty Hunters Guild would
accept a fraction of an original bounty, sometimes as low
as ten percent. That was one of the reasons that Boba
Fett despised them he had never taken a credit less than
the agreed-upon sum, and had no intention of starting.
"I have other business to take care of," said Boba
Fett. That was true. The galaxy was wide, with lots of
dark nooks and crannies, remote worlds and even entire
planetary systems that could serve as hiding places. And
there were always those entities with reasons to hide,
either to save their epidermis from Emperor Palpatine's
coruscating wrath or to clutch in their sweating hands
the meager piles of credits they had managed to pry out
of Jabba's coffers. Even with as much "business" as Boba
Fett handled, there were still plenty of scraps left for
the Guild to dole out to its members, the small stuff
that he couldn't be bothered with. But the longer that
Kud'ar Mub'at needlessly detained him here, cackling and
wheezing at him inside the tangled corridors of its own
expanded brain, the greater the chance that some hustling
Guild member would be able to snatch some prize bounty
away from him. That notion would have infuriated Fett, if
any such word of passion could have been applied to the
coldly unfeeling logic that dictated his actions. As it
was, he let his masked gaze rest upon Kud'ar Mub'at's
insectile face like the sharp point of a bladed weapon.
"Pay me, and I won't detain you from your own . . .
business."
Everyone in the galaxy knew what Kud'ar Mub'at's
business was. There was no other entity among the stars
quite like the notorious assembler. If there were other
members of its species on some distant planet, covered
with skeins and nets of their extruded neural silk, that
world hadn't been discovered yet. Perhaps Kud'ar Mub'at
was the only existing assembler; Fett had heard rumors,
dating back to a time before he'd become the galaxy's
most-feared bounty hunter, of Kud'ar Mub'at's
predecessor, another assembler of whom Kud'ar Mub'at
itself had been a node, a semi-independent creature like
the ones that scuttled around this web, dragging their
neurofiber tethers behind them. That parent assembler had
made the mistake of letting one of its offspring become a
little too developed and independent, and had paid the
price death and ingestion by the web's new owner, the
usurper Kud'ar Mub'at. The assembler is dead, thought
Boba Fett with distaste, long live the assembler. Even
Hutts, with their monstrous appetites and vicious family
rivalries, drew the line at actually eating one of their
own clan that they might have beaten out for control of
some typically shady enterprise.
With the web, drifting through interstellar space,
and its contents had come the assembler's business. Some
entity had to act as the universe's go-between and
intermediary, especially among all the worlds' criminal
elements and those who did business with criminals. If
there had ever been a time when there had been honor
among thieves, it was long over in this galaxy. Boba Fett
had never cheated any of his clients, though he had been
forced to kill quite a few. If everybody had held to his
standards of business morality, there wouldn't have been
any need for an operator like Kud'ar Mub'at. As it was,
the assembler took a justifiable percentage for the
services he provided, the setting up of deals between
murderously inclined entities, the holding in escrow of
bounty payments, the transfer of captives to those who
had put up the credits for them. The Bounty Hunters Guild
worked almost all their jobs through Kud'ar Mub'at; Boba
Fett used the assembler when that was the client's
preference and the percentage was raked off from the
other side and not his own.
"But my highly esteemed Fett-" As Kud'ar Mub'at
dangled from the web's ceiling, it rubbed its tiniest and
most agile forelimbs together. "It is not entirely a
matter of such highly enjoyable socialization that causes
me to desire the extending of your visit to my abode. You
speak of your own business, which you are naturally in
such a haste to attend to. Very well; let us speak of
business together. You know me-" The assembler's compound
eyes twinkled. "I'm as delightedly happy to talk about
that as any other subject. And right now your business
and mine once again coincide. Is that not a pleasing hap
penstance?"
Boba Fett studied the assembler's narrow face,
looking for any clue that would reveal the creature's
true intentions, always hidden beneath its oily chatter.
" What business are you talking about?" Usually, any news
of a bounty being posted was caught directly by the Slave
I's programmed comm scanners. "A private job?"
"Ah, you are so astute." The assembler's forelimbs
made little scraping noises, like thin and cheap plastoid
shells. "Little wonder that you are such a success in
your chosen field of endeavor. Yes, my dear Fett, a very
private job indeed."
That interested Fett. Of all the things that Kud'ar
Mub'at could have said, that caught his attention more
than any other. Private jobs were the cream of the bounty-
hunter trade. There were times when clients, for reasons
of their own, wanted some fugitive entity caught and
delivered with a maximum of discretion. Posting a bounty
galaxy-wide effectively eliminated any chance of
maintaining secrecy; for the client to get what it
wanted, arrangements would have to be made with one
particular bounty hunter. More often than not, that would
be Boba Fett himself; over the decades he'd built up a
reputation for confidentiality as well as effectiveness.
"Who's the client?" It wasn't essential for Boba Fett
to know, though it sometimes made the job easier. If it
was all being arranged through Kud'ar Mub'at, the
client's desire for secrecy might be absolute, without
even the hunter knowing who was putting up the bounty.
"Is it one of the Hutts?"
"Not this time." Kud'ar Mub'at displayed his
approximation of a smile again. "You and I have done so
much business for Jabba and his brethren lately. After I
turn over our little friend Posondum to them, I would not
be greatly surprised if they decided to tighten their
purse strings for a while. No, no; don't say a word-" The
forelimbs waved about. "You don't need to remind me that
I can hardly deliver anything to anybody until you've
been paid. Balancesheet!" The assembler's screech rang
down the length of the web. "Get in here! Immediately!"
Kud'ar Mub'at's accountant node carefully picked its
way along the fibers and entered the central chamber. Of
all of the subassemblies, this was the one that Boba Fett
had always found most to his liking-and not just because
it was the one that actually handed over the bounties
that its parent would be holding in escrow. The crablike
Balancesheet, as Kud'ar Mub'at had named its extruded
creation, had a laconic, no-nonsense approach to its
duties that Fett found similar to his own. He would be
sorry- or as much so as he ever was-when Kud'ar Mub'at
would determine that the little accountant node had
developed as much intelligence as could be allowed.
Balancesheet, like other nodes before it, would be eaten
by its parent before there was any danger of independence
and mutiny of the kind that had made Kud'ar Mub'at master
of the assembler web.
"Boba Fett, current account; balance due . . ." The
accountant node maneuvered its pliable shell close to his
shoulder, extending its eyestalks parallel to the
chamber's floor as it made an ID scan of the bounty
hunter's distinctive helmet. "Just a moment, please."
"Take your time," said Fett. "Accuracy is a virtue."
Balancesheet said nothing, but a brief flicker in its
gaze acknowledged that it and Boba Fett were kindred
entities, in spirit if not species.
"Previous balance zero." Balancesheet had finished
its show of calculation. "Due upon delivery of one
humanoid, designation Nil Posondum, client being the
Huttese business front Trans-Zone Development and
Exploitation Consortium, the sum of twelve thousand five
hundred credits." The accountant node swiveled its
eyestalks toward its par
ent. "Our fee has already been
paid by the Hutts. The entire bounty being held is now
payable to Boba Fett."
"But of course," crooned Kud'ar Mub'at softly. "Who
would deny it?"
The eyestalks turned back toward Fett. "And the
individual Nil Posondum is in a living and desirable
condition, certain nonessential injuries excepted, as per
standard bounty-hunting practice?"
Boba Fett raised his wrist-mounted comm unit to the
front of his helmet. A tiny red spark indicated that the
link to Slave I's cockpit controls was unbroken. "Open
inspection port Gamma Eight." That port allowed visual
access to the cages in his ship's cargo hold. "Perimeter
defenses on standby."
A moment later Balancesheet looked over at its
parent. "Designated merchandise appears to be in good
condition." The announcement was more for Boba Fett's
hearing than the assembler's; the sensory data from the
remote optical node had traveled down the neural network
linking Kud'ar Mub'at with the accountant and all the
other subassemblies in the web. "Initiating transfer."
That was the kind of thing that would get the little
accountant eaten; it hadn't waited for Kud'ar Mub'at's
order. Boba Fett supposed that the next time he came to
the web, a newly extruded node would be maintaining
Kud'ar Mub'at's intricate finances.
"I most sincerely hope that you enjoy the well-earned
possession of those credits." Kud'ar Mub'at watched as
Fett tucked the amount-sealed credit packet into one of
his gear's carrying pouches. Balancesheet had made the
payment and picked its way over to another section of the
chamber. "I often wonder-" The assembler extended its
smiling face toward him. "Just what is it that you do
with all the credits you get paid? Granted, you have
considerable expenditures, to keep going such a level of
operation. The equipment, the intelligence sources, all
of those things. But you make so much more than that; I
know you do." A few of Kud'ar Mub'at's eyes peered more
closely at him. "But what do you spend it on?"
One of Boba Fett's rare flashes of anger rose inside
him. "That's none of your business." Slave I had signaled
that the captive had been removed from the cargo hold and
into one of the web's dismal sub-chambers; all ports had
been resealed. The temptation to stalk out of this place,
to get back into his ship and tear himself into the cold,
