"Ladyfriend of Solo. The smuggler. Boss caught them." He carefully
poked back into its socket the corpse's left eye, which was starting to
droop free, and looked inquiringly in the direction of the
white-chocolate bread pudding that Porcellus was preparing for tonight's
dessert.
"Get that thing out of here!" commanded Porcel-his.
"I cook in here, this place has to stay clean---clean and healthful." He
was not anxious to have the Gamor-rean start thinking about plots.
But Gartogg was right about the girl. When he was summoned to Jabba's
audience chamber at the beginning of the evening's festivities,
Porcellus noted the absence of the tarnished brown-black slab of
carbonite which for months had decorated the alcove, and the presence of
a new "pet" on Jabba's dais.
His heart went out to her in pity. She was very small, slender and
fragile-looking in the iw scant scraps of gold and silk the crimelord
allowed, her heavy, dark-red hair piled thick on her aristocratic head.
"I--I'm sorry," he stammered quietly, kneeling on the dais at her side.
"If there's anything I can get for you from the kitchen . . ."
It was a hopelessly ineffective offer of aid, and he knew it; but she
smiled, and took his hand. "Thank you." She had a voice like smoke and
honey; he could see, not fear, but terrible worry in her brown eyes.
Solo, thought Porcellus despairingly. She's in love with that smuggler
Solo. She was in this position--a prisoner like himself in Jabba's
palace--because of that love.
And so, though his own heart hurt with love for her, he made it his
business to see that Solo got food from the palace kitchen, not
something that was guaranteed in Jabba's dungeons. Many of the
prisoners didn't get food at all, for long periods .of time. But
Porcellus, though his heart was in his throat with terror every time he
did it, bribed the guards with beignets and chocolate ladybabies to take
meat to the Wookiee, and because he knew hibernation sickness left the
body weak and shaky from carbohydrate starvation, smuggled things like
stuffed pasties and breaded eggs to the man his beloved loved.
He felt like a fool--the man was going to be executed anyway and he was
playing around with a rancor-pit offense himself. But it was all he
could do for her, and when, the following night, she took his hand and
whispered, "Thank you. Porcellus, thank you," and looked up into his
eyes, it was, for one second, worth it all.
Jabba's rumbling, horrible laugh sounded from above them. "You watch
out, pretty Leia," the crime-lord said in his slow, almost
incomprehensible Hutt-ese.
The noise in the hall around them was tremendous, as Jabba's court
degenerated into the usual orgy of card games, alcoholism, and
testosterone-imbued lying that characterized evenings at the palace: Max
Rebo and his band were playing, and Jabba's nasty little pet Salacious
Crumb wasengaged in a vamped duet with the singer Sy Snootles.
Jabba hefted the golden dish of fricasseed sandmag-got kidneys which was
the first of Porcellus's culinary offerings for the evening.
After the adventure of the vegetable crepes, Porcellus had gone back to
the Bloated One's favorite standbys, but for days now he had produced
every one with his heart in his mouth.
"I think there's fierfek in his cooking. What you think, Chef?"
"No," whispered Porcellus desperately, and checked to see if he was
standing on the rancor's trap-door.
He was. "No, it isn't true . . ."
"Here." Leia cast a quick look at the cook's ashen face and stood up,
reaching to take the dish from Jabba's hands. "There's no fierfek in
this, is there, Porcellus?"
"Uh . . ."
"Your Highness," warned the golden protocol droid C-3PO hastily, "I
really wouldn't advise . . ."
Jabba generally dispensed With the formality of utensils, but an
ornamental border of cracknels surrounded the fetid yellowish glop
heaped artistically in the center. Using one of them for a spoon, Leia
helped herself to two large mouthfuls.
She turned green and sat down rather quickly.
Jabba roared with obscene laughter. Salacious Crumb, skipping through
the crowd around the bandstand, sprang up over the back of the Gamorrean
stationed nearest Jabba's dais, an ugly boot named Jubnuk, and, when
Jubnuk swatted irritably at him, ran shrieking to his master's side and
hurled the rest of the dish of sandmaggot kidneys at the guard. This
created enough of a diversion for Porcellus to slip hastily out of the
main hall. But throughout the remainder of the night's partying, he
returned again and again to the hall to check on Leia, who was looking
extremely wan as the night progressed.
Sandmaggot kidneys did not agree with everyone.
And all it would need, thought Porcellus despairingly, would be for her
to drop dead.
Jubnuk, who had licked all the spattered sandmaggot kidneys off his
armor and the surrounding walls, showed no ill effects. Porcellus took
what comfort he could from that.
Luke Skywalker, last of the Jedi Knights, entered the palace with the
first light of dawn.
The first Porcellus knew of it was when he picked his way on tiptoe
among the sleeping bodies in the audience hall with a cup of vine-coffee
and a freshly made jelly doughnut for Leia--also sleeping on the dais at
the Hutt's side--and saw Bib Fortuna enter, followed by a medium-sized,
slender, and self-effacing young man in black.
"I told you not to admit him," rumbled Jabba, when his majordomo had
wakened him to see the young man before him.
Porcellus stepped hastily back, concealing himself behind the bemused
and hungover crowd of Jabba's retainers, one of whom--a dark-skinned
newcomer in a helmet of gondar tusks--relieved him of the vine-coffee
and the doughnut.
"I must be allowed to speak to your master," said Skywalker in his soft
voice.
Bib Fortuna turned immediately to the crimelord.
"He must be allowed to speak to--"
"You weak-minded fool." Jabba pushed Fortuna aside. "That oldJedi mind
trick will not work on me."
Skywalker inclined his head in a respectful bow.
"You will bring Captain Solo and the Wookiee to me," he said, and
Porcellus felt an immediate urge to run to the dungeon, get the key from
Captain Ortogg, and do just that.
"Look out!" piped up C-3PO, who--if Porcellus remembered correctly--had
been Skywalker's gift to Jabba. "You're standing on--"
"Your mind powers will not work on me," said Jabba, perhaps deliberately
drowning out the droid's warning that Skywalker was, in fact, standing
precisely on the rancor's trapdoor.
"Nevertheless," said Skywalker gently, "I am taking Captain Solo.
You can either profit by this, or be destroyed."
Jabba smiled evilly and his eyes seemed to grow redder as the pupils
narrowed. "I shall enjoy watching you die."
Porcellus had already seen how Skywalker's eyes had met those of the
woman Leia when first he had entered.
&
nbsp; Now she cried "Luke!" as the guards closed in.
Skywalker flung out his hand, and somehow the blaster that had been in
the holster of a guard four meters away was in it. He had time to fire
one shot as they closed around him, Jubnuk the guard reaching to grab.
Then the trapdoor beneath his feet fell open, and both Skywalker and
Jubnuk plunged into the pit below.
"Luke!" screamed Leia again, dragging fruitlessly against the chains,
and the whole court rushed for-ward--pushing Porcellus along with
them--to watch the show in the pit.
It was quick, horrible, the nightmare form of the rancor bursting forth
from its den as the bars were raised. Brownish, slimy, hideous beyond
belief, it lunged first at the Jedi, who managed to wedge himself in a
crack of the rock, then turned and caught Jubnuk as the Gamorrean tried
to force apart the barred judas window in the side of the pit. Porcellus
was standing among the other Gamorreans as the rancor seized Jubnuk
neatly around the waist--Captain Ortogg and his cohorts bellowed with
laughter as the monster gulped Jubnuk down in three bites, the noise of
their mirth almost drowning his agonized screams.
The chef felt faint, feeling those teeth around his own waist, seeing
his own arm disappearing like a final fillip of noodle into that round,
fanged nouth . . . Not me, he thought desperately, not me . .
. Skywalker saw his chance, and took it. He fled under the rancor's
feet, into the smaller den where the beast slept, and from there, as the
thing pursued him, hurled a skull at the mechanism which controlled the
den's sharpened portcullis of bars. Whether he used some Jedi power to
slam the missile home, or whether he simply had the unerring eye of a
trained warrior, Porcellus couldn't be sure. But the bars dropped like
a guillotine, their pointed ends driving like spears through the
rancor's skull.
The beast made a dreadful sound, and fell limp.
In the startled silence of the criminals around him, Porcellus could
hear, from the deeps of the pit, Malakili's frantic wail, "NOOOOO . . .
!!!" Porcellus was safe.
He straightened up, feeling oddly light-headed. For five years Jabba
had threatened to throw him to the rancor . . . and now the rancor was
dead. He felt bad for Malakili, hurting with the echoes of that
terrible cry, but in the first dizzying flush of relief it was hard to
sympathize with his bereft friend. The rancor was dead . . .
Guards were dragging the smuggler Solo, the giant Wookiee behind him,
into the audience hall. Solo was still blind from hibernation sickness,
but noticeably stronger--Porcellus hoped desperately nobody would ask
who'd been feeding him. They were thrust before the dais of the Bloated
One.
"His High Exaltedness has decreed you are to be terminated," said the
translator droid C-3PO, rather shakily. He looked a little the worse
for his few days in Jabba's palace, stained with the Bloated One's slimy
green exudations and fragments of sandmaggot kidney.
"You are to be taken to the Dune Sea, and cast into the Pit of Carkoon,
the abode of the Sarlacc. In his belly you will find new definitions of
pain and suffering as you are digested over the course of a thousand
years."
"You should have bargained, Jabba," said Skywalker quietly. The guards
shoved him, Solo, and the Wookiee toward the door; Leia, on the dais,
half started up with anguish in her face, but the Hutt dragged her back
by her chain. "That's the last mistake you'll ever make . .
."
Porcellus leaned against the archway in which he stood, knees trembling
with reaction and relief. Whatever else happened, the rancor was dead.
The threat which had hovered over him for all those years .
. .
"And yoU!" Jabba turned suddenly on his dais, his copper-red eyes
seeming to skewer Porcellus where he stood. Drool dripped from his
enormous mouth and he pointed one finger. "You also are to die . . ."
"What?" screamed Porcellus.
"You cannot now deny putting fierfek into my food.
Take him away!" Jabba beckoned to the few guards remaining in the room.
"Take him to the deepest dungeon. When my sail barge returns from
carrying me to watch the deaths of Skywalker and Solo, then I shall have
the leisure to deal with you!"
"But nobody who ate your food died of poison!"
wailed Porcellus, as the guards closed in around him.
"Jubnuk . . . and Oola . . . You can't--"
the dais. "It's extremely difficult to poison a Hutt, of course. But
all Huttese words derive from food imagery, you see. Fierfek simply
means a hex, a death curse . . . and you can't deny that Jubnuk, and
the unfortunate Oola, both succumbed quite soon aier sampling your
meals. It's a natural misunderstanding."
And so it was, but Porcellus derived little comfort from the fact as he
was dragged away screaming to a cell to await his doom. That's
Entertainment: The Tale of Salacious Crumb
by Esther M. Friesner
Melvosh Bloor had no spectacles to adjust, so he contented himself with
polishing the screen of his datapad whenever he felt flustered.
Like all good academics, one of his primary reactions to prolonged
contact with the real world was to fidget. However, as with all things
in his life (so he told himself), it must be fidgeting with a purpose.
Melvosh Bloor did nothing without a purpose.
On the face of things, one would imagine that his purpose in
infiltrating the lair of the notorious crimelordJabba the Hutt was a
simple one: he wanted to die but lacked the strength of will to kill
himself.
This, of course, would be dead wrong. Then again, dead wrong might be a
pretty good prediction for the fate of Melvosh Bloor.
Oh dear, oh dear, the Kalkal thought as he blundered through the
honeycombed underbelly of Jabba's lair.
Where is that fellow? You would think that at the price I paid him--in
advance, sight unseen, solely on the recommendation of my colleagues--he
would at least manage to be at the rendezvous point on time.
His cumbersome boots stepped into something thick and sticky on the
corridor floor. There was very little light in this part of Jabba's
palace but Melvosh Bloor had the excellent vision common to all Kalkals,
day or night. Therefore he could not avoid noticing that part of the
large and gooey mass he had just stepped in had eyes.
"Mercy," said Melvosh Bloor, placing a trembling hand to his lips as the
acidic tide of queasiness surged up his wattled throat. His most recent
meal had not been of the finest, to say the least--in fact, it made the
refectory fare at dear old Beshka University seem attractive by
comparison--so he had no desire to experience it a second time.
(Although Kalkals were famous for their ability to eat anything, even
university food, there were no guarantees that what they once downed
would not make a reappearance if something upset them enough.
The goop with eyes was enoug
h to physic Jabba himself.) "Mercy?
Mercy?" The dripping darkness exploded with a shrill, harsh voice that
mocked Melvosh Bloor's own erudite pronunciation to a tee. Cackling
laughter bounced from the maze of pipes overhead and echoed back from
the ends of gloomy passageways that led off into the who-knows-where.
Melvosh Bloor gasped, huge yellow eyes rotating wildly in his head as he
flattened himself against the nearest wall. "Who's there?" he
whispered, tiny flakes of scale falling from his wide, thin lips as he
spoke.
Silence answered.
Shaking badly, the academic fumbled for the sidearm hisJawa guide had
pressed upon him before they parted ways outside the palace. Far
outside the palace.
Much as he hated the thought of violence and as repulsed as he felt by
any of its symbols, Melvosh Bloor thought himself capable of shooting
another living being if need be (strictly in the interest of preserving
academic freedoms, such as his life). He felt a fleeting spark of
gratitude for the Jawa's stubbornness in insisting he take the weapon.
Perhaps the fact that he would be unable to pay the Jawa the remainder
of his fee until they were both safely back in Mos Eisley had more than
a little to do with the guide's devotion to Melvosh Bloor's personal