Star Wars_ Tales From the Mos Eisley Cantina - Kevin J. Anderson [63]
The Bafforr would die—they could not be uprooted—but the Bafforr had accepted their fate, and Nadon realized that now he must accept his.
For years Momaw Nadon had hidden on this rock, seeking cleansing, trying to overcome the anger that insisted he should fight back against the Empire. The elders of Ithor had balked when he suggested that the Empire was a weed that needed to be destroyed. His elders would have let the Imperials destroy the Bafforr forests of Cathor Hills, trusting that some shred of decency left in Alima would make him stop short of genocide against an entire species. His elders would have forgiven the Empire.
But in all his years seeking spiritual cleansing, Nadon had never been convinced that he was wrong. He believed that he had been right to try to save what he could.
Nadon was not above killing an insect to save a tree.
So, Nadon had to resist the Empire the best he knew how. Even if that meant he had to watch the Bafforrs be destroyed. Even if it meant he himself was destroyed. He could not just let the Empire crush him.
Nadon was exhausted, but could not sleep. He decided to calm himself by continuing his Harvest Ceremony. He went to his laboratory on the east wing of the house, opened the fruit of a large Tatooine hubba gourd, and removed some pale, transparent seeds. Using tiny robotic manipulators, he carefully opened four young seeds and removed the zygotes.
Using his genetic samples from the Cydorrian driller trees, he put the DNA into a gene splicer. Nine genes controlled the drillers’ root growth. Nadon took these genes, spliced them into the hubba gourd zygotes, then returned the gourd’s zygotes to a nutrient mixture so that they could grow.
The whole painstaking ritual calmed Nadon immensely, even though he knew that soon most of his work would probably be destroyed. The task took nearly twelve hours, and when Nadon looked up from his work, he saw by the shadows on the wall that nightfall was approaching. Soon, Alima would come.
Time to say good-bye, Nadon whispered. At this time of the day, his good friend Muftak would be trying to cool himself off at Chalmun’s cantina—a difficult task considering the thickness of the four-eye’s furry white pelt.
Nadon went to the cantina, thinking furiously, wondering how he might best lure Alima into the dangerous depth of his own personal biosphere.
The cantina was as busy as usual—bustling with disreputable aliens. It was a tough place, frequented by cruel beings.
Sure enough, Nadon found Muftak sitting alone at a table, sipping polaris ale while his partner in crime, the little thief Kabe, chittered and wandered about in the darkness, begging Wuher the bartender for juri juice and eyeing the pockets of the cantina’s inhabitants.
Nadon spoke to Muftak of inconsequential things—the price that Muftak had gained for selling Nadon’s name, Muftak’s dreams of home. Always, Nadon tried to accentuate the positive, to leave his friend uplifted, but Nadon’s own thoughts were dark, and when they drank a toast, Nadon found himself offering comfort that he himself could not receive.
Suddenly there was a disturbance in the cantina: A hideously scarred human named Evazan and his alien sidekick Ponda Baba were picking a fight with some wide-eyed local moisture boy. “I have the death sentence on twelve systems!” the scarred human warned. Nadon looked at the small group. The moisture boy was unfamiliar, some farmer from the desert who had come in only moments earlier with the old mystic Ben Kenobi. Nadon had seen Ben only once before, when he’d come into town to shop. Nadon had noticed the pair because the barkeep Wuher had shouted for them to leave their droids outside. Evazan and Ponda Baba were regulars, had been hanging around the spaceport for weeks.
Suddenly, Ponda Baba swung a clawed arm, bashing the moisture farmer across the face, sending the boy crashing against a table. Ponda Baba then pulled a