Tales From Jabbas Palace (Kevin Anderson) (41 page)

“There is news,” Jabba continued, “that Vader failed to capture Skywalker, that Organa and Calrissian escaped him as well… and that Chewbacca is likewise free. Their combined bounties are… impressive.” Heavy-lidded eyes examined Fett. “Impressive.”

And Chewbacca, at the very least, will be coming for Solo. Fett nodded.

“We might discuss my staying,” he conceded.

“As to the art, an original piece from the hand of the Dark Lord–” Fett could feel himself warming to the subject; the faintest breath of disappointment touched him when Jabba interrupted, with something so close to enthusiasm that Fett found it notable.

“There is further work here, for a brave bounty hunter.” The Hutt’s tongue flicked out to lick his lips and he leaned forward. “A hundred thousand credits for the capture and delivery of a krayt dragon to do battle with my rancor.”

Fett said dryly, “That seems a lot. As much for the delivery of a krayt dragon as for Solo?”

The Hutt waved a negligent hand in dismissal. “We will find a fair price for Solo. For the art. But now—” Fett raised his head slightly.

“A quarter million.”

A hush fell over the watching crowd. Those nearest Fett edged slowly backward.

Jabba leaned forward. His voice emerged from his chest as a rumbling threat. “So… that seems quite a lot. Even for Vader’s art.”

Fett shrugged. And waited.

Jabba’s lips twitched. Fett did not mistake it for anything approaching amusement. “So, a quarter million credits for… the art.” His eyes narrowed to slits.

“And we will enjoy your efforts toward acquisition of a krayt, and we will enjoy your company among us. For some time.”

“A quarter million.” Boba Fett actually bowed slightly. “For some time.”

Very expressive… yes.

Fett shook his head to clear it. Jabba’s throne room faded into nothingness; he hung on the wall himself, deep inside the Sarlacc, the air around him growing dank. A foul taste had begun to develop in his mouth; he sipped at the water tube in his helmet before replying.

“Don’t do that to me again.”

There was a pause. I won’t, the voice said finally, if you keep me amused.

“Who the blazes are you?”

I am the inferno, you are quite accurate. I am the Sarlacc.

I am the distilled essence of-“You’re not the Sarlacc,” Fett said grimly. “Sarlacci aren’t intelligent, they don’t have a brain worthy of the name—” The voice chuckled and said softly, I amSusejo. The Wall Fett hung on shivered. An emotion that could have been delight emanated from the creature. It’s been a long time since I had one like you, all bright and sharp around the edges. You are nearly a work of art, Fett; there is a clarity to you that is-chuckle—quite wonderful.

A purity to your intent.

Fett fought back the useless rage that threatened to overwhelm him; it was something he’d had practice at. “I’m a hunter. I bring those who do evil to justice, and there is little room to be unclear on the subject.”

You remind me of someone—ah. I have it: You remind me of the Jedi.

Keeping his voice expressionless was an accomplishment.

“The Jedi.”

Yes. A Jedi we ate a few thousand years ago. We’ve kept her; would you like to meet her?

“No.” Fett closed his eyes and floated senselessly in the darkness. A Jedi we ate, it had said. “No. Keep your Jedi to yourself.”

Impression of a shrug. As you wish. You’ll look forward to a break in the tedium… soon enough.

Fett opened his eyes and stared ahead into the emptiness, listening to the silence. The screams he had heard at first, those of the men who had fallen into the Great Pit with him, had ceased. He had not heard even one in some time. The fury built in Fett, self-contained, black and bone-deep. Another crack nearby, sounding very like a whip; Fett took a shuddering breath and when he spoke his voice shook slightly. “I don’t understand this. I don’t understand this at all. Why is this being prolonged? Is there a purpose? The Sarlacc can eat me when I’m dead, can’t it? I’ve killed, I’ve killed virtually everything that moves, one time or another, a hundred different species, sentient and dumb; if it breathes I’ve probably killed it or something like it. But I’ve killed clean. I’ve killed without stretching it out. Where’s the grace in a death like this?”

Fett had the impression that his question was being considered.

For you? Why, I suppose there is none. But your life and death belong to me now, not you; and they serve my purpose. Recognize and understand your place in things, Boba Fett, for you are not even a real thing; merely a collection of thoughts that has deluded itself into a belief in its own existence.

“You’re saying that I’m not real, that nothing’s real?” Fett’s lips twisted in a snarl. “The air stinks too badly for me to believe that.”

You, and I, and everything else—we are merely a process, Boba Fett. A process that has named itself “I.” Surely the Real exists, and we are an expression of it. But are you and I real? No. We are processes that have grown arrogant and broken apart from the Real. In time we shall be rejoined to it. The voice pausedYou want to know why this is taking so long? You’ve barely been down here a day, Boba Fett.

There are sentients who’ve been kept alive for hundreds of years while the Sarlacc digested them. After a long pause it added, with a sense of weariness so profound Fett believed it would have killed him to experience it, Thousands of years, in some cases.

Fett did not know what made him so certain, the weariness; he said, “You… you lie. You’re not the Sarlacc—you’re down here, with me.”

I’m not the Sarlacc? Considering, thinking: Don’t be so sure of that.!

?????? am Susejo of Choi, or I was, and I have been here for a very, very long time. Longer than you can imagine but who knows? Perhaps you will not have to imagine it. Perhaps you will survive. You entertain me, and that which entertains me entertains the Sarlacc.

When I am happy, it is happy. I expect you will be with us for some time.

Let me activate even one weapon system Fett fought the thought down, pushed it back hard, and said aloud, “You are cruel.”

There’s a joke, said the voice, that my Jedi told me. A sentient visits a nearby. farm and sees a barve in the front yardwandering around on five legs— one leg has been amputated. The sentient in question, JoJo, asks the owner why the barve has had a leg amputated.

“Well,” says the owner, “let me tell you something about that barve.

That’s the smartest barve you’ve ever seen in your life, JoJo.

That barve talks, he can fly a speeder, and he’s great with the kids, keeps an eye on ‘em when I;m out in the field-why, just a few weeks ago he rescued my youngest one from drowning.

“And JoJo says, “That’s amazing! But what happened to the amputated leg?” The owner stares at JoJo. “Well, man, you don’t eat a barve like that all at once!”

Susejo laughed silently in the darkness, and the wall behind Fett rippled again.

Boba Fett thought to himself, I wish I had a thermal detonator.

I’d take you with me.

You are eternally the Real, Boba Fett… and there is nothing to desire.

The chrono that glowed in the lower right-hand corner of Boba Fett’s helmet visor told him when dawn came. It had been dark already when he awakened; when dawn arrived, the tunnel off to Fett’s left lightened noticeably. At noon, when the sun was directly overhead, enough light filtered down through the yawning mouth of the Sarlacc that Fett could see his surroundings clearly.

The walls of the small tunnel in which the Sarlacc had stored him were grayish-green; they looked damp, though Fett’s gloves prevented him from being certain.

Small tendrils grew along the edges of the ridging in the walls; along the floor the tendrils were larger, proper tentacles, a mat of several hundred tentacles, four to six centimeters wide, three and four meters long. They lay motionless most of the time; when the tentacles did move they whipped around at such speed that the tentacle tips broke the sound barrier, very like the tip of a whip. It was the source of the cracking noises Fett had been hearing since he’d awakened… and once he knew what it was he shivered. The cracking was a steady background sound, yet the tentacles around him did not move often. It made Fett wonder just how large the Sarlacc’s interior was and how far from the surface he might be—how many of those tentacles he would have to fight his way through to get out again.

Oh, but you’re not going to get out again, Boba Fett. No one ever has, and you won’t be the first. Listen: The Sarlacc ate my left leg first, love. I hadn’t been able to move either my arms or my legs for… months, I suppose, a very long time. They didn’t hurt anymore, though my skin burned, and never has stopped burning the entire time I’ve been in this blasted pit.

She has me hanging up in the main chamber while she digests me. I suppose that’s something; a thing to be grateful for in the grand scheme of things. Mica and I came down together when our speeder got shot down, and Mica got hustled back into one of those little openings along the edge, down into the Sarlacc’s guts. This is a bad way to die, but that’d be worse, that’d be a lot worse. I’m blind in one of my eyes now, but I can still see the sunlight striking down into the main pit, through the other, and I tell you, it keeps me going. Never thought I’d see the day when a brief glimpse of Tatooine’s pale blue sky would be a reason to keep living.

I try not to look down. My left leg’s gone beneath the knee. I didn’t even notice it going, tell you the truth. One day I looked down and there it was, on the floor of the pit, down in the acid, being dissolved down into nothing.

That annoying Susejo leaves me alone at times. I don’t know what he does when he’s not talking to me; maybe he’s off draining Mica the way he’s draining me. I don’t know exactly what Susejo’s doing to us… but well, some days I’m not even certain sure who I am anymore.

There’s been a lot of us down here; I guess Susejo keeps the ones he and the Sarlacc enjoy, for a while anyway. It’s a sort of immortality, I suppose, but love, I could have tolerated actually dying a lot better. I always thought that’ how I’d go, you know; fleeing a blaster wedding at the age of ninety-three, something with a little style.

(I’m not even sure if you’re the girl I remember.

Some days you have black hair and skin and you’re studying to be a minister, of all things, and other days it’s blond hair and green eyes and you pilot a starship and darn if I can remember which of you!

?????? actually fell in love with, or if it was both of you and you were different people…

(I did love you. I remember that.) A lot of memories floating around in here with me.

The Sarlacc is a soup, and the ingredients are all the people she’s taken, over the centuries, over the millennia.

Susejo’s never admitted it, but I suspect that’s all that he is; the oldest of the soup’s ingredients. Kess, Susejo said.

I’ll answer to that, I replied. Why not? One name being as’ good as another.

Your name is Kess, he said firmly. You’re a Corellian gambler… the Sarlacc’s been eating you a little faster than I’d like, and I’m sorry about that. You’re good company, but the Sarlacc’s been hungry recently, and I can’t control her entirely. Tell me another story?

I thought about it, and I remembered the story you told me, little one, not long after we met, back in the old days, that one of you that wanted to be a minister, back when you thought there was nothing in me worth saving—too obsessed with the dice and all, you kept saying, too busy looking for the main chance. A man, I told Susejo, being chased by a logra, comes to the edge of a cliff. He sees there is nowhere to flee, but beholds then a root, protruding from the edge of the cliff.

He grabs the root and scrambles over the edge of the cliff, hanging high above the ground. He looks down, and beholds then another logra, pacing below him. He hangs there, unable to go down, unable to climb back up; and along come a pair of tiny banda, one black and one white, and they begin nibbling at the root. The root begins to come apart… and suddenly the man sees a berry growing at the edge of the cliff, and he plucks it and pops it in his mouth.

How sweet it tasted. Silence.

Finally Susejo said, I’m not sure I like that story.

I hung there on the wall, and with my good eye watched the dust motes dance in the sunlight; and I thought to myself how beautiful it was.

You’d be proud of me, love, whichever one you were.

Sometime later Susejo said, “The Sarlacc is hungry.

I think I’ll have her eat your arm now.”

Fett felt the horror that the Corellian gambler, dead these many centuries, fought against as his limbs decayed, as the Sarlacc ate him from the outsides in. Fett floated in a long dreamtime moment, tied to the gambler’s last moments of real awareness down in the slime on the floor of the pit, blind, deaf, limbs dissolved, rib cage cracked apart with the tentacles massaging his organs, dreaming of a woman who loved him-Boba Fett had been born to anger, and rage was his life. He struggled up out of the vision, fought it wildly, carried himself up out of the nightmare on the back of a wave of fury and abruptly was back, there in his body with the pain of the burning acid all around him, suffused with a clear, lucid, thinking hatred, an emotion so dark and deep and pure the Dark Lord himself might never have felt its equal.

He could hear his own heartbeat thudding in his ears and he said, “I’m going to kill you very slowly,” and he had never meant anything more in his life.

He hung in the darkness with his hatred.

Sometime later Susejo said, “I suppose I’ll let the Sarlacc start on your leg.”

Blaster rifle, wrist lasers, rocket dart launcher; grappling hook, flame projector, concussion grenade launcher. Unfortunately almost all of them required the use of his hands, and his arms and legs were spreadeagled against the wall, held flat by an interwoven mesh of several hundred tentacles. Straining did no good; the tentacles merely gripped more tightly, and Fett barely moved.

The tentacles probed against him, seeking a way through his Mandalorian combat armor. A pair of large tentacles had taken hold of Fett’s right leg, and they tugged at it, pulling back and forth at the knee joint.