Star Wars_ Millennium Falcon - James Luceno [90]
Perhaps the answer would have to wait until he found the ship.
Closing on The Kindest Cut, as Zenn Bien's salon was called, they passed half a dozen café-emporiums stocked with balo mushrooms, ryll spice, and a host of other mind-altering organics outlawed on other worlds. The sidewalks were crowded with tourists dressed as vibrantly as the indigenous humanoids, and many of them were sporting earbeads that allowed them to hear in the Balosars' natural subsonic range.
The planet's polluted namesake world in the Core had by the end of the Republic era become a haven for criminals and death stick addicts, but the new iteration was unspoiled and arguably the most tolerant and crime-free planet in its sector of the galaxy. Some of that was due to the soporific substances that drew visitors from across the galaxy. But the planet's youth culture was equally responsible. Many of the young who came were artists, whose dreams of success often wound up taking a backseat to languor. Why strive to create when New Balosar's pleasant climate, toothsome inexpensive cuisine, plethora of sensual entertainments, and continuous pulse of subsonic music were more than just about anyone could ask for from life?
“There's a story on Nar Shaddaa about a Hutt crime lord who wanted to open a death stick processing plant on New Balosar,” Poste said as they walked. “The Hutt figured that the Balosars' immunity to toxins would make them ideal workers. What happened, though, was that the Balosars kept consuming all the balo mushrooms he delivered without turning a single batch into death stick extract.”
If the planet was a veritable melting pot for sentients, then The Kindest Cut was a kind of saucepan for the galaxy's most diminutive species. Scarcely through the door Jadak spied several Chadra-Fan, a pair of Ugnaughts, three Squibs, and an entire warren-clan of Sullustans. In chairs of varying sizes, hirsute beings of larger stature were having their coats combed, their fur oiled, their claws filed and lacquered, beards and mustaches waxed, manes cut and styled. In one chair sat the first Wookiee whom Jadak had seen in, well, sixty-two years. New Balosar's most industrious enterprise, The Kindest Cut was tonsorial beautification on a grand scale, with fuzz and fleece as thick in the air as spring pollen on Taanab.
Jadak asked to see Zenn Bien, and he and Poste sat down to wait. A Bimm served them steaming cups of herbal tea, and a Jawa set a basket of cookies on the table they shared. The salon's Sullustan owner wasn't long in arriving. Judging by the droop in her dewflaps, Jadak put her age at seventy-five standard years. But she was otherwise spry, clear-eyed, and pink-skinned, with a tattooed forehead and lustrous plaits that spilled from the back of a stylish bonnet.
“You must be the ones Rej Taunt told me to expect,” she said in staccato Basic.
Jadak supplied the same aliases they had given the crime boss on Carcel.
“He told you that I never actually owned the Second Chance?”
“He told us.”
“He said you're seeking the ship for nostalgic reasons.”
Jadak nodded. “That's a good way to put it. My uncle owned it before Taunt.”
Her round ears twitched, and she sighed. She took a seat opposite Poste, her feet dangling in the air. “Perhaps I should tell you the full story first.”
“I hope it has a good ending,” Poste said.
She glanced at him. “Let's just say that it ends.”
Zenn Bien, whose name meant “tranquil breeze,” didn't realize until she left Sullust that beings had not been created entirely equal. As a member of a bipedal near-human species, she was afforded a bit more respect than insectoids and saurians, but as a member of a diminutive near-human species she was both literally and figuratively looked down on by countless varieties of humanoids, from Falleen to Bith to Duros and Gotals. Despite the fact that each species was blessed with unique talents and abilities, size seemed to matter most. And yet the discrimination she experienced was never enough