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The creature repeated the rude noise, louder this time, and with a few extra flourishes.

“Ah,” said Melvosh Bloor dryly. “I see you have.”

“Professor P’tan?” the creature prompted.

Melvosh Bloor was not used to enjoying the company of such a good listener. “You wish me to … go on?” he inquired timidly.

“Go on, go on!” the creature responded with an expansive gesture. Melvosh Bloor found himself liking this quaint being more by the minute.

“My good fellow, your, ah, rather substantive evaluation of Professor P’tan’s character leads me to believe you have encountered him, even though he swore he’d have nothing to do with you. Which—correct me if I’m wrong—strikes me as stupid.”

“Stupid.”

“Ah! Then we’re in agreement. When I was first plotting—I mean considering this expedition, my fellow academics Ra Yasht and Skarten told me I couldn’t go wrong with you by my side. Perhaps you remember them? You helped them research that fascinating monograph on Torture Observed: An Interview with Jabba’s Cook.”

The creature made a retching sound, though whether this was a literary or culinary critique remained unspecified.

“You’re certainly entitled to your own opinion, but that monograph was the making of their reputations at the university. Instant tenure. Professor P’tan was infuriated—they hadn’t suffered enough yet, by his standards—but the board overruled him. Right then I sent in my own request for leave to do a project so challenging, so sweeping in its scope, that even were Professor P’tan to bully the board into siding with him, the sheer audacity of my work would compel them to renege and end by favoring me. I would delve into one of the greatest and least-known sociopolitical mysteries of the galaxy. I would lift the veil between polite society and the darkest, slimiest, most hideously profitable phenomenon of our time. I would interview … Jabba the Hutt!” Melvosh Bloor’s eyes shone as he recalled the grandeur of his scheme.

“Interview the Hutt?” Thick chuckles, like laughter emerging from a pudding, bubbled up from Melvosh Bloor’s guide.

“Uh … quite. Sit down nicely with him, like civilized beings, and—”

“Nicely? Nicely! With him?”

In the face of such obviously open ridicule, the academic went on the defensive. “I fail to see the humor,” he said stiffly. “I realize that the—the Bloated One as he is so colorfully called, has a certain reputation, but still—” Melvosh Bloor pursed his lips as well as any Kalkal could manage. “When you were originally contacted about this, you said you could arrange it. You represented yourself as one very close to Jabba.”

“Close to Jabba?” The creature’s chuckles burst into full-fledged cackles once more, but he bobbed his head.

“Then you can take me to him? Not merely as far as his, ah, majordomo or secretary or whoever it is weeds out the riffraff, but all the way to Jabba himself?”

“Take? Can take, ha!” Now the creature’s head was nodding so exuberantly his ear-tassels looked ready to fly off any moment. “All the way!” He grabbed his long, flexible feet and rolled back and forth on his flabby bottom. “To Jabba, to Jabba, to Jabba!”

“The way Professor P’tan’s guide took him?” Melvosh Bloor replied coldly. In this small chamber it was possible to believe oneself safe, possible to forget for a time that one was burrowed deep into the stronghold of the galaxy’s most ruthless crimelord. In such an environment of self-deceit, the academic reverted to his classroom manner, a style that combined frigid disdain for underlings, shameless toadying to superiors, and backstabbing ad-lib, as the opportunity presented itself.

“He got wind of my plans, P’tan did,” Melvosh Bloor went on. “He came barging in while I was petitioning the board for leave and financing. He said that it was ludicrous to entrust a study of such magnitude to a junior faculty member—never mind that it was my idea! He claimed I’d get the data all bollixed, or be taken in by the Hutt’s, ah, propensities for elasticizing