by Terry Bisson
gleaming, as though it hadn't yet been used.
And under it all was a low hum, a constant buzz of activity. Boba
heard two Nemoidians talking about "the dig" and "the harvester," but they
turned a corner and were gone before he could hear more.
Boba made his way down the halls and around the corners, trying to
remain as inconspicuous as possible. He had learned that it was easy for a
ten year-old to be invisible, as long as he stayed out of the way.
The droids and workers were all intent on their tasks. And none of
them knew or cared who Boba was, except for Prax. All Boba had to do was
avoid him.
The air in the corridor was growing colder. The toxic smell was
stronger. Ahead, Boba saw a large opening to the outside. Droids and
workers streamed in and out, some carrying strange-looking tools, others
riding on square all-terrain vehicles.
He was trying to get a better look when he heard a familiar voice:
"Give us results!"
That harsh, booming sound was familiar. Cydon Prax? Boba wasn't taking
any chances. He ducked into a nearby room and flattened himself against the
wall.
To his surprise, he was facing a window. The view was just like the
ones he had seen earlier. The window overlooked a lake surrounded by woods,
with a clear blue sky overhead.
Again, Boba wondered how such a view could exist on Raxus Prime. And
why was the view exactly the same every time he saw it? How could three
rooms in different places have the same view?
He approached the window and reached out to touch it. It was soft,
like a plastic curtain. As soon as he touched it, the scene changed. Now he
saw bright blue-green water lapping against silvery sands.
He touched the window again.
Snow-covered peaks watching over an icy planet.
Now I get it! Boba thought. It was all a display, a virtual window
showing a virtual scene. A series of illusions installed by the Count.
Boba touched the viewscreen one last time and saw toxic steam belching
from piles of trash and slag, under a reddish, smoke-stained sky. This was
the real world - Raxus Prime. The beautiful views were just fabrications.
In the distance was a tower with huge arms, moving up and down. It
looked like a giant robot. Was it real, or an illusion? Boba couldn't tell.
Here in the Count's lair, it was impossible to tell the truth from a lie.
Suddenly, Boba heard a distinctive set of footsteps in the hallway -
the heavy tread of Prax patrolling. In the blank room, there was nowhere to
hide. Boba held himself close to the wall, next to the doorway. If Prax
peered in, Boba would be fine. If Prax walked inside, he'd be caught.
The footsteps came closer. Then stopped. Right outside the room. Boba
held his breath. The door opened. Prax stuck his head into the room.
The window is wrong, Boba realized. Too late. There was no way to hide
the scene of Raxus Prime.
Prax was no more than a meter away from Boba. If he turned his head,
it would all be over.
For a long second, everything remained still. Then Prax grunted and
pulled his head out of the room.
Boba waited a few minutes, until he was sure Prax was gone again. Then
he slipped back out into the hall and headed toward the other creatures
near the exit.
Boba stood to one side and looked out the giant doorway. Through the
swirling mists he saw the tower he had seen through the "window." The tower
was definitely real. It was the focus of all the activity; a crude dirt
road from the door to the tower's base was crowded with vehicles, droids,
and workers carrying equipment, some coming and others going out.
Boba was fascinated. This must be the Count's "dig."
What was he digging for? The Count had made it sound like something
very powerful... which would make it something a bounty hunter should know
about.
There was one way to find out the truth.
CHAPTER FIVE
Whew! What a stink! The sky was dark, with swirling smoke; the ground
was heaped with the trash, and garbage from thousand planets. The twisted
wreckage of hundreds of crashed ships stretched into the distance. The air
was almost too foul to breathe.
Luckily, Boba had brought his father's battle helmet. He put it over
his head as he started out on the road, toward the tower, The helmet was
surprisingly light, and it made breathing easier; though it had no
independent air supply, its filters removed the worst of Raxus Prime's
poisons.
Self-sufficiency, thought Boba, begins with the right equipment.
The road angled up a ridge of oozing slag. Boba slogged along, his
boots slipping in the soft terrain. At the top, where the road crested the
ridge, he stopped to rest.
From here he could see the tower much better. It was a crane. The arms
were equipped with drills and vats, which dipped deep into the muck of
Raxus Prime. Lights from the top of the tower illuminated a great pit,
where droids and workers toiled in and out of the vapors and the darkness.
All around were ruined walls and arches, like the remains of a great
city that had been buried and forgotten, and was being dug up again.
Boba descended the ridge until he was at the edge of the enormous pit
and looked down. Remote diggers and salvage droids rattled and bumped
through the muck, far below. Well-armed "spider" droids stood watch at the
perimeter of the pit, and Boba saw AAT tanks idling nearby, hovering off
the ground. But none of them seemed interested in him.
A lot of firepower for a hole in the ground, especially on the
galaxy's garbage planet. Boba wondered again what could be so valuable,
buried in the mire and muck of Raxus Prime?
As if in answer to his unspoken question, a gruff voice said, "Getting
close to it, huh?"
Boba jumped. He hadn't seen the Givin driver, who had stepped out of
his drilling vehicle and walked up to stand beside him.
"Guess so," Boba asked. He didn't want to admit that he didn't know
what "it" was.
"About time." The driver bit off a piece of radni root, and offered it
to Boba. "Have a chaw?" Boba realized that in his helmet, he was being
taken for an adult. Another advantage of his father's legacy.
"No, thanks, I don't chew," he said. Then he ventured: "So that's it -
the treasure?"
"Treasure?" The Geonosian laughed and spat into the pit. "Not unless
you call death a treasure. No one's supposed to know, but the Count is
after something called a Force Harvester."
Boba had heard about the Force. The Jedi used it, his father had told
him. But the Count wasn't a Jedi.
"But don't mind me," he said, heading back to his mud-laden craft. "I
just work here."
"Security check!" said a gruff, familiar voice in the near distance.
Boba ducked behind a rock just as Cydon Prax strode into view.
"All systems secure?" Prax asked. "No intruders?"
"Who'd intrude on this planet?" asked the driver, swinging up into his
seat. "Not exactly a resort."
"Keep an eye open," growled Prax. "The Count does not wa
nt anyone
nosing about his digs. Got it?"
"Got it, got it," said the driver.
I'd better get out of here, fast! Boba thought. Prax might recognize
him, even in his helmet, because of his size. He waited until Prax was out
of sight, then started back down the road.
The problem was, the road was too exposed, too narrow. Prax could come
along at any moment. Boba decided to take what he hoped was a shortcut. A
path veered off through the wreckage, but Boba thought he saw it emerge
back by the Count's base.
After getting off the road and rounding a few bends, Boba realized
he'd already gone far. Like most shortcuts, it turned out to be the long
way.
CHAPTER SIX
It was hard going. Up one stinking slag heap, and down another.
Boba tried to keep the big tower straight behind him, and the distant
light of the door ahead, That would be the shortest, fastest route back to
Dooku's underground lair.
The stinking ground sucked at his boots where it was wet, and crumbled
into toxic dust where it was dry.
Raxus Prime was all ruins and debris. Boba passed through forests of
broken machinery and shredded wire. He climbed cliffs of soggy, discarded
fabric and slid down steep mountainsides of muck. Brown steam spewed from
the steep piles, while foul smelling liquids oozed down their sides.
The helmet helped him breathe but it couldn't mask the smell of the
noxious atmosphere. Still, Boba pushed on. He had no choice; he had to beat
Prax back to the Count's lair., Otherwise, the Count might find out he had
broken his rules and gone outside. Even though Boba wasn't sure what he had
discovered. The Force Harvester? What was that?
"Ugh!" Boba slipped on a particularly foul-smelling piece of refuse
and slid to a stop. He was at the edge of a wide pond of bubbling,
greenish-brown liquid. It looked very nasty. A mist rose from the surface
that smelled like rotten rikknit eggs.
Unless Boba turned around, the only way through was by way of the
pond. He walked straight into the liquid - first one step, then another.
The nasty goop sloshed over the tops of his boots, but what did he care?
Boba was not going to let anything get in his way. A bounty hunter was not
delayed by revulsion.
Boba shook the slime off his boots and trudged up another steep ridge
of dripping slag. Even through his helmet, the smell was terrible. But from
the top, he could see that the brightly lighted doorway of the Count's lair
was only a few hundred meters away. He was almost there!
There was only another pond to cross, and this one was long and narrow
- just a few meters across. Boba slid down another slope slick with oozing
slime, to the edge.
The pond was ringed with foul-smelling ferns. It was a brighter green
than the last one, and it looked deeper. A lot deeper.
Boba summoned up his courage and stepped off the edge, into the ferns.
His boots sank into the ground. He took another step and sank up to his
boot tops. Boba tried to pull his left leg free; it sank even deeper.
Another step, and it was up to his knees. Boba was more than halfway
across, but he was stuck. The ooze felt like hands, pulling him down deeper
and deeper.
Boba tried to take a step back, but he couldn't. Instead, he slipped
farther into the greenish muck. Now it was up to his waist.
He tried again to pull his legs free, but thrashing around only sank
him deeper into the stinking, glue like mud.
He quickly sank in up to his neck.
The mist was rising into his mask, and he could hardly breathe. He
could feel a burning sensation in his knees and feet. It felt as if he were
being dissolved by the acid gunk.
I am being digested!
Only the helmet allowed him to breathe, to survive. It seemed to have
stopped the sinking and the digesting for some reason. But for how long?
His chin sank into the muck. In a moment his mouth and nose would be
covered, too. The mask was clearly being rejected by the horrible mass...
but how long would that last?
Boba searched frantically for a means of escape. He saw a coil of wire
sticking out of a slag heap on the other side of the pond, but it was too
far away. A stick lay closer, on the bank below the wire, but still out of
reach. The reeds were all around, but they were too thin and frail to hold
his weight.
Then Boba remembered: self-sufficiency. It meant using whatever was
available.
He managed to get one arm out of the muck and grabbed the longest reed
he could find, pulling it up by the roots. It felt slimy, even through his
gloves. He used it like a long flexible hook to snag the wire, inching it
across the mud until it was within the reach of his hand.
Yes! The wire felt plenty strong. Boba wrapped it around his hand and
began to pull.
It was almost too late. His eyes were burning and he could hardly
breathe. His arms were weak. He gathered all his strength and pulled...
The wire was coming loose from the slag pile. It dislodged a tiny
clod, starting a small landslide down the slippery slope of slag and
garbage. Then it jerked tight again. It had snagged on something.
Boba pulled again, but more carefully this time. The wire was barely
caught on the edge of an old piece of machinery. If it slipped off, he was
a goner.
This was his last chance. Hardly daring to breathe, he pulled himself
toward the shore of the pond. One leg was free... then the other...
Boba grabbed a handful of reeds and pulled himself out of the stinking
liquid, onto the slimy shore. "Whew!" Plain old slime had never felt so
good before.
He was free.
Boba blended in with the crowd of droids, warriors, and workers
streaming in the wide, brightly lighted doorway. No one noticed him, and
Prax was nowhere to be seen.
Even the filth that covered him didn't give him away. Many of the
others were filthy as well, from the dig.
Boba took off his helmet and wiped it clean. It had saved his life,
that was for sure. He now realized why it was so important to his father...
and why it would be important to him.
Boba joined the "dig" workers in the shower that steamed the worst of
the slime off his clothes and his boots, and then dried them instantly. Now
all he had to do was make it back to his room and no one would know he had
been outside.
He stepped out of the shower, his clothes already dry - and grimaced
in pain as a rough, strong hand gripped his shoulder.
"Come!" The voice was unmistakable. Boba opened his mouth to explain
that he hadn't meant to break the rules, that it was all a mistake. But
what was the point?
Cydon Prax wasn't listening as he dragged Boba down the corridor,
toward the Count's inner sanctuary.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The Count wrinkled his finely arched nose.
"We shall have to clean you up," he said dismissively.
Boba tried to keep from shaking. He knew it was best never to show
fear. He gripped his father's helmet in his hands.<
br />
"Your father didn't teach you very well," said the Count. "You have
been sticking your nose where it does not belong."
"I didn't see anything," Boba said. He could feel the Count's power
turning steadily into wrath.
"Oh, really?" The Count was scornful; He stood behind his desk, in
front of the "window" that showed a blue lake under a blue sky: Anything
but the real filth of Raxus Prime.
"Really," said Boba. "I just stepped outside the door. I didn't go
far."
"Perhaps I should take on your training, after all," said the Count:
Boba felt a moment's hope. But the hope was dashed by the Count's next
words: "If I did, the first thing I would teach you is how to lie. You are
not very good at it."
"I am sorry I broke your rules," said Boba. And especially sorry that
I got caught.
"Sorry?" said the Count with a smooth, cold grin. "You have broken my
rules. And that is not all..."
Not all? Wasn't that enough?
"I've decided that you know too much at a time when information is a
valuable commodity." He turned to Cydon Prax, who stood by the doorway.
