Star Wars_ Episode VI_ Return of the Jedi - James Kahn [11]
What could he do? Bargain, maybe. But what did he have to bargain with? Dumb question, he thought—when did I ever have to have something before I could bargain with it?
What, though? Money? Jabba had more than he could ever count. Pleasures? Nothing could give Jabba more pleasure than to defile the princess and kill Solo. No, things were bad—in fact, it didn’t look like they could get much worse.
Then he heard the growl. A low, formidable snarl from out of the dense blackness at the far corner of the cell, the growl of a large and angry beast.
The hair on Solo’s arms stood on end. Quickly he rose, his back to the wall. “Looks like I’ve got company,” he muttered.
The wild creature bellowed out an insane “Groawwwwr!” and raced straight at Solo, grabbing him ferociously around the chest, lifting him several feet into the air, squeezing off his breathing.
Han was totally motionless for several long seconds—he couldn’t believe his ears. “Chewie, is that you!?”
The giant Wookiee barked with joy.
For the second time in an hour, Solo was overcome with happiness; but this was an entirely different matter. “All right, all right, wait a second, you’re crushing me.”
Chewbacca put his friend down. Han reached up and scratched his partner’s chest; Chewie cooed like a pup.
“Okay, what’s going on around here, anyway?” Han was instantly back on track. Here was unbelievably good fortune—here was someone he could make a plan with. And not only someone, but his most loyal friend in the galaxy.
Chewie filled him in at length. “Arh arhaghh shpahrgh rahr aurowwwrahrah grop rahp rah.”
“Lando’s plan? What is he doing here?”
Chewie barked extensively.
Han shook his head. “Is Luke crazy? Why’d you listen to him? That kid can’t even take care of himself, let alone rescue anyone.”
“Rowr ahrgh awf ahraroww rowh rohngr grgrff rf rf.”
“A Jedi Knight? Come on. I’m out of it for a little while and everybody gets delusions …”
Chewbacca growled insistently.
Han nodded dubiously in the blackness. “I’ll believe it when I see it—” he commented, walking stoutly into the wall. “If you’ll excuse the expression.”
The iron main gate of Jabba’s palace scraped open harshly, oiled only with sand and time. Standing outside in the dusty gale, staring into the black cavernous entranceway, was Luke Skywalker.
He was clad in the robe of the Jedi Knight—a cassock, really—but bore neither gun nor lightsaber. He stood loosely, without bravado, taking a measure of the place before entering. He was a man now. Wiser, like a man—older more from loss than from years. Loss of illusions, loss of dependency. Loss of friends, to war. Loss of sleep, to stress. Loss of laughter. Loss of his hand.
But of all his losses, the greatest was that which came from knowledge, and from the deep recognition that he could never un-know what he knew. So many things he wished he’d never learned. He had aged with the weight of this knowledge.
Knowledge brought benefits, of course. He was less impulsive now. Manhood had given him perspective, a framework in which to fit the events of his life—that is, a lattice of spatial and time coordinates spanning his existence, back to earliest memories, ahead to a hundred alternative futures. A lattice of depths, and conundrums, and interstices, through which Luke could peer at any new event in his life, peer at it with perspective. A lattice of shadows and corners, rolling back to the vanishing point on the horizon of Luke’s mind. And all these shadow boxes that lent such perspective to things … well, this lattice gave his life a certain darkness.
Nothing of substance, of course—and in any case, some would have said this shading gave a depth to his personality, where before it had been thin, without dimension—though such a suggestion probably would have come from jaded critics, reflecting a jaded time. Nonetheless, there was a certain darkness, now.
There were other advantages to knowledge: rationality, etiquette, choice. Choice, of them