pit! I offer be his guide.
He listen? Nooooooo. He lunch! Dinner. Breakfast.
More lunch. Snack. Sup--" The academic was taken aback by this
diatribe.
"Mercy on us, P'tan's guide must. have been a fool of the first water.
Whom did he hire? How stupid was he?"
For an answer, the creature flew into gales of wheezy joy. "How stupid
was he? How stupid was he? Fool P'tan went hire"--snorts and
guffaws--"went hire"--gasps for air and fresh howls of mirth--"went hire
Salacious Crumb!" Having communicated this intelligence, the whole
effort proved to be too much for the small creature and he laughed so
hard he fell off his perch onto his head. He then said a nasty word so
arcane that Melvosh Bloor made haste to enter it in his datapad for
later linguistic study before asking: "Who--who is Salacious Crumb? I'm
afraid I don't know--"
"Uh-huh." The creature grunted emphatically, clambering back onto his
sandstone block.
"But . . . what's so foolish about hiring this Salacious Crumb?
Has he no experience with the layout of the palace?"
"Experience? Heel Knows palace like back of my--his right paw.
Ha!"
"In that case . . . not a good contact for approach-ingJabba?
He is one of the Hutt's enemies, perhaps?"
"Hutt's enemy?" A groan of melodramatic proportions shook the small
creature as it covered its face with its paws. "No one closer to
Bloated One! No one. All day, every day, Hutt say 'Crumb, Salacious
Crumb,' he say, 'Salacious Crumb, make me laugh now or I eat you!'"
"Er, I see," said Melvosh Bloor, who didn't. "I'm afraid I don't quite
get the joke, but--"
"Better you don't than Jabba don't. Every day, every day, fresh jokes.
All time, fresh, fresh, fresh! Try tell Bloated One same joke twice!"
The creature's face doubled in on itself in a frightful grimace.
"Are you saying that this Salacious Crumb deliberately led Professor
P'tan to fall into the Sarlacc pit as a --a joke?"
The creature turned a totally innocent gaze to the academic.
"Smatter? You don't get it?"
Melvosh Bloor shook his head.
The creature sighed. "Bloated One too don't. Seen it. He say, 'Next
time, louder and funnier.'" Melvosh Bloor's yellow eyes narrowed
suspiciously.
"You seem to know an awful lot about the doings of Salacious Crumb."
"So?" The creature sprang to its feet, its pelt standing out in spikes
that made it even more unattractive to the eye. "You know lot
aboutJabba. This makes you Hutt?"
Melvosh Bloor shuddered. "I hope not."
The creature snorted. "Come."
For once it was the academic who became the echo.
"Come? Come where? You don't mean come with you to meet--to
meet--Jabba the Hutt?"
"Jabba... the... Hutt!" The creature pronounced the crimelord's name in
a low, rolling, impressive voice reminiscent of Lord Vader himself.
"So--so quickly? So easily?" Melvosh Bloor didn't know whether to
tremble with delight or trepidation, so he settled for a generalized
case of the shakes. "You Can take me to him now?"
"Right now. Timing, timing, timing! Time is ripe!" It made a great
show of sniffing its own armpits, then cheerfully added, "Me too!" It
loped across the floor on all fours and flung open the cell door. "Last
one out, Sarlacc food."
Such an invitation coming hard on the heels of Professor P'tan's
reported fate was impossible to ignore.
Melvosh Bloor thirly sprinted out of the cell in pursuit of his guide.
Once back in the corridor, the creature climbed the academic's body as
if it were a sail barge mast and perched on his shoulder. "You listen,"
it hissed in his ear. "I do talk, get it? Else--" It drew one claw
across its own scrawny throat and uttered: "Sskkkr-rrhtt!"
"You mean you'll conduct the interview? But my questions--" Melvosh
Bloor gestured helplessly with his datapad.
His guide grabbed it from his hands and chewed on one corner
experimentally. "Naaaah. You shut up until throne room. Then you
talk." He chortled. "Oh boy."
Melvosh Bloor snatched back his datapad and secured it from the
creature's covetous fingers. "That is agreeable," he said. "Let's go."
The sights and sounds that greeted the Kalkal in the palace vaults would
have been fodder for a score of monographs on debauchery, suffering, and
substandard hygiene, had he been minded to turn back from his original
goal. From its piggyback perch, his guide greeted every other being
they passedTwi'lek, Gamorrean, Quarren, and the rest--with an easy
camaraderie that was . . . Well, in truth, it was downright rude.
Insults and jibes flew from the ugly little creature's mouth with
astonishing fluency. Melvosh Bloor's fingers almost fell off from the
rapidity with which he had to enter the many terms with which the other
inhabitants of Jabba's palace showered his guide. (All of them filed
under "U" for "Unbelievably Foul.") At last they came to a curtained
portal. A tusked Gamorrean raised his vibro-ax in challenge until
Melvosh Bloor's guide poked his head up over the Kalkal's shoulder and
loosed an ear-splitting cackle.
The Gamorrean snorted in reply and waved them through.
As Melvosh Bloor stepped into Jabba the Hutt's throne room he felt an
overwhelming sense of awe that was almost as heart-shaking as the dread
that had possessed him when he went in to take his doctoral oral
examination. Jabba the Hutt in person was indescribably more imposing
than the mountains of research the academic had accumulated to prepare
himself for this moment. He felt the weight of his guide drop from his
back and saw the creature scamper across the vast chamber to the Hutt's
very throne. Such boldness should by rights result in immediate
consumption (so the Kalkal's research led him to believe) but was not.
Instead, the crimelord actually permitted the creature to scale his
monstrous body and whisper something for Jabba's ears alone. The
academic's heart leaped at this irrefutable evidence of his guide's
favored status with the Bloated One. He could almost taste his tenure
now.
"Er . . . Exalted One?" The academic faltered as he approached the
throne. Jabba regarded him impassively, which he took as a good sign.
He dared to move closer yet. "I am Melvosh Bloor of Beshka University
and I--"
"University?" the Hutt thundered.
"Y-yes. I have come here to--to honor and immortalize you by publishing
an in-depth study of the thoughts and motivations that guide you in the
establishment and maintenance of your crimin--ex-trasocial empire."
"Mmm." The sound of rumination rumbled through the Hutt's enormous
body. "In other words you expect me to tell you all my secrets freely,
so that you can then put them on display where any of my rivals may
study them?" He leaned forward, his mouth uncomfortably close to
Melvosh Bloor's head. The academic tried to back away, but something
sharp was there, in the small of his back, to make retreat a suicidal
alternative. He thought
he detected the grunting of a Gamorrean guard.
Jabba's body shook. His mouth fell open. Melvosh Bloor froze, positive
that his life was about to end in one gulp. And then, the unthinkable:
booming mirth engulfed the throne room. Jabba was laughing, a sound
duly taken up by the Hutt's lackeys and retainers.
At length the shaking and the laughter stopped.
Jabba drew a deep breath. "Me tell that my secrets and I'm to consider
it an honor? Now that's funny," he said.
"What I say, Master?" Melvosh Bloor saw his guide come dancing in
between him and the Hutt's looming bulk. "This guy a riot!"
"A . . . riot?" the Kalkal echoed, stunned.
"Indeed. I am surprised," Jabba admitted. "Usually academics are too
dry to be funny, or even digestible.
I know: I never forget a taste."
Melvosh Bloor's skin went cold. "Taste?" he peeped. "You mean
you--you--? Professor P'tan--?"
"That's the name." IfJabba had possessed the ability to snap his
fingers at a memory recaptured, he would have done so. "You are the
second academic to disturb my court, thanks to the insolence of my
miserable servant, Salacious Crumb." One of the Hutt's truncated arms
gestured at the madly prancing creature.
"At least you were worth it."
All that Melvosh Bloor could say was, "Sa-Sa-Sa-Sala-cious Crumb?"
as he goggled in shock at his erstwhile trusted and beloved guide.
"But I thought-I was sure--you said you were Darian Gli!"
"You said," the lizard-monkey gloated.
"Darian Gli?" Jabba was momentarily at a loss. "Ah yes, the Markul who
brought in those two pests who upset my cook." He smacked his lips
nostalgically.
"Delicious."
"You said, you said, not me!" Salacious Crumb taunted him. The
Kowakian lizard-monkey was in his glory. "Hoooo! Stupid?" He waved at
the shivering academic so that none of Jabba's courtiers could mistake
the insult's target.
None did. In fact, someone from the back of the crowd shouted out, "How
stupid is he?"
"How stupid? How stupid?" Malice beamed from the Kowakian's beady
eyes. "He say Jabba lies like a Gran! " Jabba's roar of outrage
swallowed the Kalkal's weakly uttered protests of innocence even ifJabba
did not swallow the Kalkal . . . yet. While Melvosh Bloor sputtered
"But I--but he--but we--" the Hutt bellowed for his Gamorrean guards.
Somewhere in Jabba's outpouring of indignation, Melvosh Bloor distinctly
heard the word "Sarlacc."
Desperation can work astounding transformations.
Stung to the quick at being played for a fool by someone without a
doctorate, insulted past bearing, trapped, bereft of hope, the normally
placid academic exploded. Salacious Crumb uttered a squawk as one of
Melvosh Bloor's hands shot out to seize his neck while the other drew
the borrowed sidearm and jammed the barrel halfway up the Kowakian's
nose.
"He came into my presence armed?" Jabba boomed as his bodyguards
hastened to throw themselves into a living wall between their master and
danger.
"Soddy, Baster," Salacious Crumb replied as best he could. "I thod you
eed hib zoon as he--"
"Blast you, Salacious Crumb, that's a Klatooine handblaster he's got
there! You know they give me gas!"
"I mean you no harm," Melvosh Bloor gritted at the Hutt. "I just want
to blow the head off this loathsome little cretin, then you can eat me.
At least I'll die happy." To his captive he snarled, "Cheat me out of
tenure, will you?"
"Hey hey hey! You wad denure? Baster, Baster, gib hib wad he want,
adzer questions, led hib ged denure, led Zalacious Crub keeb head--"
"He said I like a Gran," Jabba replied.
"Uh... thad wuz be," Salacious Crumb confessed.
"You"
"Wuz goblibent, goblibent! Gan't dake a choke?"
Jabba settled deeper into his own fat to consider this. "A compliment?"
he mused. "From a Kowakian . . . mmmperhaps." He reared back on his
throne and gave a string of commands.
Melvosh Bloor could hardly believe the complete about-face in his
fortunes. Whereas moments earlier he had been on the brink of
extinction, ready to take the duplicitous Salacious Crumb with him into
oblivion, he now found himself comfortably seated before Jabba's throne,
on a heap of cushions which Salacious Crumb himself took special pains
The Hutt proved to be a surprisingly forthcoming interviewee.
Before long, Melvosh Bloor's datapad memory was stretched to the limit,
which was just as well: he had run out of questions.
"I can't thank you enough, sir," he said, hugging the precious datapad
to his bosom as he stood up in the midst of the cushions. "I must say,
your reputation does not do you justice. Your kindness, your tolerance,
your indulgence--" He gave Jabba his most ingratiating smile--one which,
in the past, had almost fooled the late Professor P'tan, and that was
saying something.
"If there is ever anything I can do for you--"
"There is," Jabba replied. His eyes closed to slits.
"Make me laugh."
Taken aback, the academic could only reply, "Uhhhh . . . what?"
"You heard me. I weary of Salacious Crumb's antics.
This is the second time he has attempted to use academics to amuse me. I
don't like to hear the same joke twice. Make me laugh--"
"So he said. Um, well, sir, you see, humor does not generally fall
within my area of study--"
"---or I will devour you where you stand."
"however, I did take a course on the analysis of comedy and I would be
happy to send you my notes on the subject."
"Make . . . me . . . laugh."
Melvosh Bloor sucked in his lower lip--no mean feat--and tried to
maintain his composure. Make the Hutt laugh? He cast his eyes about
the throne room, desperately seeking some clue, some inspiration that
would save his skin. His roving glance lit upon the.
repugnant figure of Salacious Crumb. The Kowakian lizard-monkey grinned
and made obnoxious faces at' him. How dare he", Melvosh Bloor thought,
the color rising to his cheeks. I should have blown his head off when I
had the chance. If that obscene little pimple can make the Hutt laugh,
then surely I, with my university education, my knowledge, my vastly
superior breeding ought to be able to do the same.
And then it came to him, a joke he had heard from Professor P'tan
himself at a faculty meeting. Melvosh Bloor recalled that all the
junior faculty had laughed loud and long, so it must be a good one.
The academic cleared his throat, smiled amiably, and began: "Stop me if
you've heard this one before.
How many Sarlaccs does it take to do in a Jedi?"
Jabba stared at him. Too late, Melvosh Bloor remembered that junior
faculty will laugh at any joke a senior professor tells.
"I've heard it," saidJabba. He twitched his tail over a control device
he alone commanded and the floor beneath Melvosh Bloor's feet vanished.
The academic plunged into the pit beneath, cushions and all.
The datapad went flying from his
upflung hands to land with a clatter at
Salacious Crumb's feet. There was a horrendous, bone-chilling cacophony
as Jabba's favorite pet, the rancor, made the acquaintance of its newest
playmate. "And I've heard that one before too," the Hutt concluded.
He turned a stern look on his court jester. "Well, Salacious Crumb,"
Jabba remarked, "that was louder, but I don't think it was funnier."
"Eh! Academics." The Kowakian shrugged. "Publish or perish, publish
or perish," he parroted. He stressed each word with a whack of Melvosh
Bloor's datapad against the floor.
"Publish or . . . ?" A slow, skin-prickling sound began to work its
way out of the Hutt's bulk until it broke from the Bloated One's maw in
a geyser of approving laughter. "Now that's funnier!" Jabba decreed.
Salacious Crumb screwed up his face into a look of all-encompassing
contempt for his master's idea of a punch line. He tossed the datapad
into the rancor pit.
The rancor, who had no need to fidget and absolutely no sense of humor,
tossed it back.
But of course the rancor already had tenure. A Time to Mourn. a Time to