existence whenever I choose.
Bubo mentally snorted. But you've always been a bit · . .
unorthodox, my teacher.
Whatever do you mean, little one? came the laughing response of the
monk's brain.
The dramatic flair and aesthetics of the lights, for one. ?the fact
that you still speak in sentences and whole thoughts rather than single
words and images, Bubo responded earnestly.
It is necessary when dealing with the rest of the world. I do not
believe one should learn in a vacuum. And in this pursuit, I am much
better served in my enlightenment by conversing with tangible creatures
like yourself.
So . . . the final question, my teacher, is what should I do?
For all my knowledge, little one, I have absolutely no idea . . .
When word of Jabba's "accident" at the Great Pit of Carkoon reached the
palace, Bubo was somehow not surprised when the monks suddenly appeared
from everywhere. Something in his reptilian brain had suspected they
would move against the current inhabitants of the palace. He knew what
was coming, but unlike Bib Fortuna, whom Bubo could hear mentally
screaming from another part of the palace, Bubo didn't mind.
He was delighted to know that Ree-Yees had been aboard the sail barge
when it had exploded over the Sarlaac. Nevertheless, Bubo had seen
Ree-Yees shamble aboard the craft, muttering something under his breath
about "figuring out what to do" as he went along to witness the
execution of the Rebels, irate beyond rationality for what he had done.
Thinking about that, when the monks finally lifted his brain from his
cranium, Bubo's last tangible act was to emit a croaking laugh from his
body.
What is so funny, little one? came the deep voice of Nailati in his
mind.
He hesitated, knowing most of the monks frowned upon the concept of
revenge as a useless act, especially when one could spend eternity
contemplating the secrets of the universe. He hoped his mentor would
appreciate the joke.
I ate the detonation link, my teacher. The crucial part in Ree-Yees's
plan.
Silence.
Then, You what? Disbelief.
Bubo related the tale of Ree-Yees's final hours in the palace.
"You loathsome two-eyed toad!" Ree-Yees was losing it again.
Bubo sat crouched in yet another ventilation shaft.
In front of Bubo sat the detonation link, the missing piece of the bomb.
Bubo had placed the object just out of reach of the drunken Ree-Yees's
outstretched hand. "I'm going to feed your miserable hide to the
rancor!"
You and what army, you filthy idiot ?
Bubo had drawn the Grannish operative slowly from his quarters, dragging
the bit of electronic machinery quickly out of reach. After toying with
the inebriated Ree-Yees for almost an hour, he had withdrawn to this
secure location.
As the Gran reached in with a long kitchen spoon, Bubo flicked his
tongue out, picking up the little detonation link with his sticky
fluids. Slowly and deliberately, he drew the part into his mouth and
swallowed it with great relish.
In the throne room upstairs, Jabba and his court paused in their revelry
for just a moment as an anguished howling filled the hallways.
Then laughter and music reigned again.
As his own brain was placed in a nutrient-filled jar, Bubo mentally
smiled as he heard the roaring laughter of his B'omarr mentor echoing
off the cavern walls.
Yes, eternity with this marvelous intellect as a companion should be
fun. Out of the Closet: The Assassin's Tale
by Jennifer Roberson
Heat.
And sun.
And dead bodies. Or dying.
Bodies with blood yet in them, with none spilled into Tatooine dust,
onto sun-flayed Mos Eisley brick, nor staining sweat-wet clothing bought
a thousand planets from here. Not so much as a drop glistening upon
flaccid lips, pooling from fragile throats, nor even a delicate tracery
fathered at their nostrils.
For those of them who have such attributes as nostrils, or blood.
They need not be humanoid, none of them, for me to drink their soup.
They need only have the chemistry to manufacture the substance within
the brain beneath the skull, inside the carapace, the gelid, mucoid
mass.
---pain/pleasure---pleasure/pain-- His/hers/its.
Mine also, always.
I take them in the city, in what is Jabba's domain: this one, that one,
another . . . and leave, as I always leave, no proof in the killing of
them. No method, no means, no clues. Merely bodies, unmarked, empty of
life, but worse: empty also of soul, of that which, when a brain is
drained, leaves the body empty of its essence. Of the means to live.
It isn't the essence I want, or blood, nor is it flesh, which is, after
all, no more than cast-off casing. It is soup I want, I need; soup to
save my spirit, to keep alive my casing.
I take them as I choose, with manifest efficiency, commendable in
expediency: this one, that one, another; will you dance with me, and
die?
But this time I do it for the death, for the cast-off casing; for more
than soup this day, this place, this planet, even to save my spirit.
They are beneath me, this dead and dying trio scattered across Mos
Eisley spaceport--here, and there, and there--merely minions and not
assassins, hollow, servile beings of weak and tasteless soup . . .
but their deaths will serve a purpose if not my preferences. I want
them dead of my hands with no mark at all upon them, for my kind leave
no visible sign by which an entity might know.
But one entity will know, this time he will know-because I take pains
that he must.
My employer, my betrayer.
"Anzati," they will whisper. "Anzat, of the Anzati."
--pain/pleasure----pleasure/pain-I take them and others, all of them in
his service, and leave them, derelicta, to be found. Where they are
found, and reported. To Talmont, the Prefect; to Lady Valarian, the
queen who wants to be king; to Jabba himself.
Talmont and Valarian rejoice: those I have killed were Jabba's.
The Hutt himself will be irritated, is irritated--and is turning no
doubt already to laying blame on the nearest of enemies; of impossibly
innumerable enemies, conspiring against him more often and regularly
than a humanoid draws breath.
But no blame on Dannik Jerriko. Not yet. Until I choose.
And I will choose. I must. So he will know.
Jabba.
Know, and be afraid.
By the time the bodies are found, are reported; by the time they are, at
last, scanned for the truth, and the truth made into rumor, and rumor
into romance, I am inside the palace. Ask not how I arrived, nor how I
managed entry; I am what I am, and we are selfish in our secrets.
Comes a body now, though yet living for the moment, approaching from out
of the pallor, the dank and splendid squalor of Jabba's infamous palace.
It is a Weequay, he of pale, leathery flesh, reptilian features, and a
&nb
sp; warrior's single tail of hair bound back from shaven skull. I have met
his like before in prior dealings with Jabba.
A vicious, brutal race; their soup teems with cruel intent. It is thin,
sour soup, too acid in its flavor, but his will do. Now. Here.
This moment.
It will do, indeed.
--pain/pleasure---pleasure/pain-A macabre dance, when one is the victim:
an embrace, wholly inescapable, with alien hands clamped to one's skull
and the eyes fixed and bestial, dilated in the darkness.
And then prehensile proboscii are extruded from fleshy cheek-pockets
beside my nose, to linger coyly, languid and loverlike, at his
nostrils--until, no longer patient, they thrust themselves within.
Unloverlike.
To punch through to the brain beyond, seeking the soup of his life.
It is my dance, and so I lead. To me it is neither macabre nor lacking
in grace, but is instead ineffably beautiful; the means by which I
survive.
He dances, does the Weequay, like all the others dance, attempting to
escape as I give him leave to try, for the dance must be quickened so
the soup is sweeter. But even dancing, he is trapped, wholly unable to
break free. And he knows, is afraid; whimpers and hisses and rattles
within his throat. Makes no further sound with his mouth, in his
throat, but only with --and in--his eyes. Screaming. Knowing.
Dying. And all of it done in silence.
--heat-In Mos Eisley, incandescent, purely immolation. But not so hot
to me as to scald my skin, or bake my bones; the heat is of the soup, of
the essence, of the body, regardless of entity.
He sags. Is done. Is discarded near the kitchens, where he is sure to
be found.
Proboscii quiver as, sated, they coil themselves, unbidden, back into
cheek-pockets. Upon my lips is a trace of sugared sweetness. He has
eaten before the dance, some folly of appetite, a childish desire for
plundered food. But none made by another's hands can surpass the
sweetest flavor of what the brain excretes.
I shoot the cuffs beneath my sleeves, smooth my jacket into neatness.
There will be, in Jabba's palace, a surfeit of soup. "A nzati" they
will whisper. "Anzat, of the Anzati."
It was a personal thing, this story, to begin, innocent of intent beyond
a wholly discriminating appetite. A need for soup it was--without it I
expire--but also a need for his soup, his soup specifically, the soup of
all soups: the essence of a humanoid who knows fear but absolves himself
of it; who faces it, defeats it, does not laugh in its face so much as
prove himself fragile in flesh but strong in spirit. And who, by
overcoming it, manufactures the soup of all soups, sweet and hot and
pure.
Han Solo's soup.
A professional thing, this story, of betrayal and perfidy.
Jabba wanted him caught. The Hutt cared little for soup; if he knew of
it, he never said. Likely, with his sources, his resources, he did
know; but it mattered not in the least. He knew I was inviolable,
because I am I, and best. And for the best, the best.
Han Solo's soup-Mine, when captured. Mine to take, to drink.
Mine to sip, to savor: hot, and sweet, and pure.
Until Jabba stole it from me. Until I was betrayed.
By Fett. By Calrissian. By Jabba the Hutt himself, goading all of
them. Buying all of them.
Buying me, as well. Promising singularity to the best of the' best,
forever and ever, amen: Dannik Jerriko, assassin's assassin.
For this, Jabba will die. And the others as well: three in Mos Eisley;
more yet, like the Weequay, in Jabba's palace.
Han Solo, also. And his woman, royal-bred. And the boy of worthless
pedigree, yet who promises, unaccountably, to be strong in what was
Kenobi's power.
It is a power I have known as long as I have lived, and that longer than
most; we Anzati know many of the secrets of the multiplicity of
universes, of galaxies, of worlds. Such power as the boy's will be, of
Kenobi's, is Vader's power also, and the Emperor's.
But twisted in the latter, by them, none of it now of Kenobi, of those
who wereJedi Knights. Will they twist the boy's as well?
Perhaps. No one alive has withstood the Emperor, or Darth Vader.
Or Jabba the Hutt.
But none of them know me, save Jabba. They only know of me, of my kind,
the lurid tales told. And it is this I will use: ignorance, and rumor.
Let them say what they will. This time, I will use it. Its power is
pervasive.
In the palace, which once was a monastery--pure in its existence until
polluted first by raiders and later by Jabba himself--there are many for
me to peruse, consider, pursue--even to stalk as the stories claim, a
manner heretofore disdained but now apropos--and a plethora of races, of
species, of soup. From myriad nations, a plenitude of planets. But
here nothing matters save the master all of them serve; they are as
nothing to him, to me, and as nothing they shall die.
Except to make a point.
Jabba, be afraid. Even you may die.
And the essence of your soup, one may hope, may pray, shall be as rich
in its substance as is your flesh in corpulence.
I have been what I am: perfectionist in my work. All have died.
All. None left to tell the tale.
But now the tale is necessary, and the telling of it. The Weequay, dead
of unknown means, will cause consternation, but no certainty. There is a
need now for "error"; for what they will take as error. A being left
alive. To describe, in infinite horror, of inescapable terror, what
monster it was who nearly took its life.
Thus it is time for me to depart the closet of rumor we Anzati too often
inhabit.
There are levels of fear as there is a pecking order of entities within
Jabba's palace. To strike at the Hutt I must strike first at the
others, beings whose presence serves much, or very little, but
nonetheless the absence thereof makes itself felt in all the small and
large ways, the mild annoyances or the doubt, the anger, the abrupt
concern for one's safety. I know all of the levels, as I know how to
use them.
First, those in Mos Eisley, already reported as dead; but Jabba will
assume it is of no consequence---or small consequence--until convinced
otherwise.
Next, the Weequay. Jabba will not miss him. But others will.
And once enough of them die, enough of the small people, even the elect
might be led into true fear.
A female, now. The dancing girl with head-tails, the Twi'lek, is
already dead, thrown down as appetizer to Jabba's hungry rancor, but
there are other females.
And so I seek one out.
She is what many entities, Jabba among them, consider beautiful: lush,
plump in flesh, a bounty of breasts, the ponderous movements of a body
in motion.
Hands waving, six breasts swinging, buttocks never still. But she is
stilled, at last, when the revels, ended, devolve into stupor. The
woman, an Askajian rothey who bear multiple young at one whelping leaves
the audience cha
mber to seek her rest through the remains of the night
until the unyielding sun of Tatooine stands high overhead once again.
But rest she will not have. Sleep she will not know.
And it is in the servants' quarter, where one assumes one is safe, that
I pursue the assignation.
As she walks from the audience chamber, the high, proud step fades into
weariness, into scuffing and graceless relief that she may at last seek
her bed. She is dulled by the hour, and careless; that she should take
care never suggests itself to her, for this is Jabba's palace, protected
by all the dregs of the uncounted universes.
And so it is nothing to me to allow her to walk past me, unseeing, and
into the antechamber, unknowing, intent upon release; and so it is as
nothing that I follow, step behind her, whisper an endearment in her
native tongue.
She whirls, multiple breasts wobbling. There is delight at first in her
eyes; was she then expecting someone?.
But it is I, not he, not she, not it; delight shapechanges to fear.