Tales From Jabba's Palace Page 5

  his bulging muscles.

  He brought the knobbed club smack against Gonar's forehead. His skull

  crushed like a soap bubble. The young red-haired man slumped to the

  floor. His last sound was merely a squeak of surprise.

  Inside its cage the rancor stirred and made a rumbling, hungry noise.

  This had not been as difficult as killing the Tusken Raider out in the

  canyon, Malakili thought, but it seemed more satisfying somehow.

  More of a personal triumph.

  He picked up Gonar's limp body. It seemed to have acquired a dozen more

  joints from the way his arms and legs and spine flopped in all

  directions.

  Just as Malakili was hauling the body onto the cart, he heard thumping

  footsteps and a clank of armor as one of Jabba's plodding,

  not-too-bright Gamorrean guards came around the corner carrying another

  dead body on his shoulder. He blinked his porcine eyes and curled his

  lower lip to push protruding fangs out. The guard shoved his helmet

  down against the horns on his head and squinted at the scene with

  Malakili and the fresh body.

  "What this?" the guard asked, using one of the few Basic phrases it

  knew.

  Malakili stared at him, holding the body of a man he had just murdered.

  The bloodied club still lay on top of the pile. He couldn't possibly

  make up a good explanation. "I'm feeding the rancor. What does it look

  like I'm doing?"

  The Gamorrean stared at the dead body along with the butchered remains

  from the kitchen. He grunted and nodded again. "Need help?"

  "No," Malakili said. "No, I'm doing just fine." He looked meaningfully

  into the dimness of the rancor's cage and at the Gamorrean's burden.

  "You want to unload him, too?"

  "No! Evidence of crime!"

  The Gamorrean waddled off humming to itself, unchallenged by life and

  delighted to be doing his tedious job to the best of his ability.

  That day the rancor enjoyed its' lunch even more than usual.

  The pickup from Lady Valarian was scheduled for just after dawn, before

  Jabba and his minions could rouse themselves from the lethargy brought

  upon them by wild parties all through the night.

  As far as Malakili could tell, no one had mentioned the disappearance of

  Gonar, but other clingers had taken the young man's place as standby

  observers during feeding time and training: each one in awe of the

  beast, each one wanting to share a bit of its power just by being close

  to it.

  Malakili went inside the rancor cage and made sure the locks on the

  heavy outside door had been freshly cut so that the escape would be easy

  once Valarian's ship arrived.

  He looked at his chronometer, double-checking, counting down.

  Less than an hour to go. His heart pounded.

  The rancor was tense and restless in its cage. It knew something was

  up, and it made questioning, snorting noises every time Malakili came

  within view of the outside doors.

  "Just a little while longer, my pet," Malakili said.

  "Then we can both be free of this place."

  Above, he heard only the dull silence and the drowsy sounds as Jabba and

  the others slept, even the scantily clad new human wench whom he kept

  chained to the dais.

  Malakili heard footsteps skittering about like spiders above, those few

  who remained awake to build their own plans against Jabba.

  He heard the rattling of a grate above. Other footsteps. Malakili

  cursed the disturbance.

  He looked at his chronometer again and was alarmed to hear Jabba

  stirring, others talking, the minions awakening. A visitor had

  appeared. Not now!

  Malakili hissed and paced up and down the dank corridors. He couldn't

  have Jabba waking up now.

  Perhaps Jabba could take care of the new business quickly and decide to

  catch another hour or so of sleep.

  He heard Jabba's booming voice. Something that might have been an

  argument. An outcry--and then from above the trapdoor opened, and two

  more bodies tumbled into the rancor pit.

  Malakili moaned, kneading his fists together. "Why now?" He looked at

  his chronometer again. The rescue ship would be coming any moment.

  Several of Gonar's replacements pressed forward next to Malakili to

  watch the new victims die in the pit. He couldn't remember any of their

  names. He couldn't care about them now. He whispered a message he knew

  the rancor could not hear. "Just eat them. Hurry, my pet!"

  He saw a young, thin human male--nothing to worry about there--and one

  of the stupid Gamorrean guards. Malakili cringed when he saw the guard

  still had his wicked vibro-ax, which could hurt the rancor but the guard

  seemed too terrified to remember his weapon.

  The piglike brute turned to flee, but the rancor was upon him in a

  second, grabbing him up and jamming the entire body into its mouth. It

  chomped down, then slurped the still-twitching legs down into its

  throat. The rancor turned to the human male and strode forward.

  Malakili looked at his chronometer. Lady Valarian's ship would be

  approaching even now, drifting silently across the sands, creeping to

  the secret rendezvous.

  "Come on!" he whispered.

  Up above, the spectators cheered and cackled wildly. Jabba's

  deep-throated laugh echoed into the pit. The watchers seemed to be

  giving the spectacle more importance than it should have had. Malakili

  wondered who this victim was.

  The young man ran to the other side of the pit, snatching one of the

  discarded bones on the floor just as the rancor grabbed him in its claws

  and lifted him up to the jagged jaws.

  The human thought fast and jammed the long bone like a support strut

  into the rancor's mouth, and the monster dropped him as ii bit down on

  the splintery bone, snapping it.

  Malakili winced, remembering the shards from the combat arachnids that

  had caused so much pain to the soft inner lining Of the rancor's mouth.

  "My poor pet," he said.

  Malakili calmed himself. No matter. Once they escaped, he would have

  all the time in the worlds to take care of his monster, alone and at

  peace on their own world.

  The young man ran in panic like a spooked Jawa, slamming against the

  open grille of the access door trying to get out. Malakili batted him

  back, and the others pushed the young man away.

  "Hurry up and get eaten!" he said, glancing yet again at his

  chronometer. There wasn't much time.

  Inside the den the young human ran straight between the rancor's legs,

  beneath the monster and to the other side.

  Malakili slapped his forehead in dismay. The same silly trick the

  combat arachnids had used, but the rancor had still not figured out how

  to defend against it.

  The rancor turned and lumbered toward the human again, arms

  outstretched. The human ran into a low chamber where the rancor

  frequently slept, ducking under the heavy jagged door that could be

  closed off when others needed to clean the cage.

  Malakili felt his heart pounding, and he hissed in a cold breath.

  Above, the others shouted and cheered even louder than before. Ev
en if

  the rancor ate this human in the next few seconds, the spectators would

  not settle down for some time yet. He let another moan escape his

  throat. Now what was he going to do?

  Lady Valarian would not wait.

  The rancor had the human trapped now, and it hunched low to pass into

  the sleeping den. The human grabbed up a round ivory boulder--no, a

  skullm and hurled it at the controls just as the rancor leaned under the

  jagged door.

  The skull triggered the switch, and the massive durasteel door crashed

  dOWn like a guillotine blade.

  The jagged end slammed into the rancor's head and spine, hammering the

  monster down to the floor and smashing open his skull, splitting his

  hide.

  The rancor snorted and whimpered once in stunned pain, as if calling out

  for Malakili, and then it died.

  Malakili stood like a statue. His jaw dropped open as his ears filled

  with a roaring white noise of disbelief and utter anguish.

  "No!" he wailed.

  The rancor was dead! The pet he had tended and cared for... the

  creature that had rescued him from the Tusken Raiders . . . who had

  allowed him to sit on its knobby foot as Malakili ate his lunch.

  Other guards opened the cage as angry shouting came from above.

  They whisked the young struggling human away, but Malakili was too much

  in shock even to notice.

  Moving like a droid, unable to stop himself, Malakili staggered into the

  cage where he stood in front of the carcass of the dead monster. Most of

  the other hopefuls, the ones who had wanted to take care of the rancor,

  melted away, seeing their chances for advancement erased. Only one man,

  tall and swarthy with dark hair, followed him in.

  Malakili watched the ichor ooze across the slimy flagstone floor.

  The rancor lay still, as if sleeping. Finally, unable to stand it any

  longer, Malakili let loose his tears like a flashflood on Tatooine. He

  wailed in grief, ready to faint, not knowing what he was supposed to do

  now.

  The man next to himmMalakili could not remember his name, no matter how

  hard he tried--put a grimy hand on Malakili's shoulder, patted him and

  tried to comfort him, but he stumbled away through a blur of tears. All

  he could see were his own memories of wonderful days with the rancor.

  He heard Jabba's angry pronouncement echo through the grille, ordering

  that the human captive be taken out to the Great Pit of Carkoon and fed

  to the Sarlacc. Jabba didn't care that the rancor was dead: he was

  merely disappointed that his anticipated great battle with the krayt

  dragon could not now take place.

  The tears continued to flow down Malakili's chubby cheeks, tracing clean

  rivers across his grimy skin. His Adam's apple bobbed up and down,

  trying to strangle further sobs.

  Malakili thought only of how much he hated Jabba, how the crimelord had

  ruined everything. Even before the grief began to fade, Malakili found

  ways to replace it, vowing that he would get even with Jabba the Hutt.

  He would find some way to make the slug-like gangster pay.

  Outside in the blistering heat of afternoon, Lady Valarian's rescue ship

  circled, and waited, and waited, and finally slipped back toward Mos

  Eisley, empty.

  Valarian did not care. She already had the information she wanted.

  Taster's Choice: The Tale of Jabba's Chef by Barbara Hambly It started

  the day Jabba the Hutt acquired his two new droids.

  Not that the arrival of new slaves in the isolated desert palace of the

  Bloated One made a great deal of difference to Porcellus, the

  crimelord's harassed chef; his only question, when informed of the new

  additions by Malakili, keeper of the Hutt's rancor, was, "What do they

  eat?"

  "They're droids," said Malakili. He was perched on the end of the long

  and massive kitchen worktable at the time, picking through two cubic

  meters of dewback offal and eating a beignet. Minor religions had been

  built around Porcellus's beignets in Mos Eis-ley--scarcely the oddest

  objects of veneration in that port, it should be added.

  Porcellus had a huge pot of them going on one of his four stoves, and

  the heat in the long, low-vaulted kitchen was tremendous.

  "Good," said Porcellus. It wasn't that he objected to real people

  coming around his kitchen to cadge snacks. It was just that most of the

  people in the court of the Tatooine crimelord who did come around his

  kitchen made him extremely nervous.

  "Quite polite, too," added Malakili. "High-class social programming."

  "That'll be a switch." Porcellus gently tonged the last beignets from

  the boiling oil at their exact moment of apotheosis, set them on the

  paper toweling on the counter, dusted them reverently with powdered

  sugar, and activated the portable electric fence around them. He smiled

  across at his friend. "Present company excepted."

  "Oh, the guards and stuff ain't so bad." Malakili paused as Phlegmin

  the kitchen boy came in carrying a box of the fragile Belsavian bowvine

  fruit which had just been delivered. The pimple-faced youth sniffled,

  wiped his nose on his fingers, and started to take the fruit from their

  box, looking sullen and offended when Porcellus motioned him sharply to

  wash his hands. "Well, maybe some of 'em," the rancor keeper conceded.

  He hopped down from the table, and crossed to where the chef was

  examining the fruit for subcutaneous bruises with the delicate fingers

  of an artist. Phlegmin tried in passing to steal a beignet--the

  electric fence hurled him several feet against the nearest wall. He

  retreated, sucking his burned hand.

  "A word in your ear, friend," Malakili whispered.

  Porcellus turned from his work, the familiar sensation of cold panic

  clutching at his chest. "Eh?"

  Back in the days when he had been chef to Yndis Mylore, governor of

  Bryexx and Moff of the Varvenna Sector and that Imperial nobleman's most

  prized possession-and how not, when he was a triple Golden Spoon and

  winner Of the Tselgormet Prize for gourmandise five years

  running?--Porcellus had not been a particularly nervous man. Concerned

  about the perfection of his art, yes, for what great maestro is not?

  Worried, from time to time, about the firmness of a meringue served when

  the Emperor was Governor Mylore's guest, of course, or the precise

  combination of textures in a sauce to be presented at an ambassadorial

  banquet . . .

  But not prey to chill terror at every unexpected word.

  Five years as a slave in the palace of Jabba the Hutt had had its

  effect.

  "Jabba, he had indigestion again last night."

  "Indigestion?" Later Porcellus realized his immediate reaction should

  have been uncontrolled horror; it was actually, at first hearing, only a

  laugh of utter disbelief.

  "You mean there's actually a substance he can't digest?"

  Malakili lowered his voice still further. "He says he thinks it's

  fierfek. As far as I can make out, that's the Hutt word," he went on

  softly, "for poison."

  Then the uncontrolled horror took over. Porcellus felt himself go whi
te

  and his hands and feet turned cold despite the oven heat of the kitchen.

  The rancor keeper put a big hand on his friend's shoulder. "I like you,

  Porcellus," he said. "You've been a good friend to me, letting me take

  a couple scraps for my baby . . ." He jerked a thumb at the mass of

  steaming meat and meat by-products that occupied a good two-thirds of

  the table. "I don't want to have to throw you in there with him. So I

  thought I'd drop you the word before Bib Fortuna gets down here to talk

  to you about it." Malakili gathered up the corners of the oilcloth upon

  which the offal was heaped, and lugged it out the door in a trail of

  dribbled juice.

  Porcellus said, "Thanks," though his mouth was too dry to produce actual

  sound.

  "His Excellency is most displeased."

  "Entirely without reason, Your Worship. It is wholly the result of a

  regrettable misunderstanding." Porcel-his bent almost double in a deep

  bow and hoped Bib Fortuna, Jabba the Hutt's vile Twi'lek majordomo,

  wouldn't notice the ransacked boxes and canisters which covered every

  horizontal surface in the kitchen, the result of a frenzied search for

  anything that might have caused the Bloated One's unprecedented

  discomfort.