Star Wars_ Tales From the Mos Eisley Cantina - Kevin J. Anderson [79]
Balu turned his head to consider her. Trevagg could tell from the man’s temperature and the vibration of his pulses, even at this distance, that he found her no more sexually stimulating than he’d have found a Jawa. Disgust flooded him at the sheer, galling insensitivity of humans.
“Trevagg,” said the officer, “most species—most civilizations—ostracize members who bear hybrid children. If you find her attractive there’s probably enough enzyme compatibility for you to get her with child. You’d be ruining her for life.”
Trevagg emitted a sharp, barking laugh. “I can’t believe you. You’re within two meters of that, and you’re talking to me about enzyme compatibility? Man, grow some gonads! If she was worried about that she shouldn’t be traipsing around the galaxy in that flimsy-little head-veil in the first place.”
Balu put his hand on Trevagg’s arm warningly, and the Gotal halted in surprise. Balu seldom showed any disposition to care about anything, but there was a definite threat in his dark eyes.
Patiently, Trevagg promised, “All right. I’m only taking her out for a walk. She can always say no.”
But after three drinks at the Mos Eisley Cantina, he reflected, as he entered the outer office again and took Nightlily’s arm—not to mention the prospect of marriage that seemed to push every switch on her board—it wasn’t at all likely that she would.
“I can’t believe that you would … would truly love me enough to wed,” crooned the girl, as they crossed the brazen burnish of dust and sunlight in the street. “The males of my species … fear that commitment. That giving of all for love.”
“The males of your species are fools,” growled Trevagg, gazing deep into her eyes and drinking in the heady perfume of her sexuality. As far as he was concerned that went for the females too, but he didn’t say so. He glanced back from the shadows of the buildings opposite, just in time to see a flicker of dusty robes, the trailing brightness of an orange scarf …
Pylokam the health-food seller. Crossing the street to the government offices.
The Gotal’s mind seemed to click, all things falling into place with a hunter’s cutting instinct. Balu. Pylokam had seen the Jedi.
His first reaction was sheer annoyance. He’d already told Nightlily he’d booked passage for her on the Star-swan, and she’d flung her arms around him, asking if he had booked his own passage, to come to H’nemthe to marry her with due ceremony before her mother and sisters. He’d gotten out of that one by promising to embark within a few days—“I am an official of the Empire, you know. I can’t just leave everything all in a moment, though, believe me, I will be counting the days.” But it meant that there was no putting her off.
There was no reason for Pylokam to come to the impost offices other than to report to Balu, and he knew Balu, for all his world-weary slovenliness, was not one to waste time. He’d investigate—and he’d report.
And that meant Trevagg would have to find someone to assassinate Balu this afternoon.
Ordinarily, of course, he’d have gotten in touch with Jub Vegnu, set up a meeting, made an appointment with Jabba the Hutt, and arranged for payment …
But of course he knew—everybody knew—that freelance assassins were ten for a half-credit in Mos Eisley and most of them were supposed to hang out in the Mos Eisley Cantina. It couldn’t be that difficult to meet one. The encounter would presumably be short and sweet—that’s what assassins were for, to make life easy for those who had other things to do—leaving him plenty of the afternoon and all of the evening to conclude an encounter of another kind with Nightlily in the Mos Eisley Inn.
If entering the government offices from the noon street was like passing into a (more or less) cool grotto, transition from the late-afternoon dust and glare into the near-darkness of the cantina was comparable to being swallowed