Star Wars_ Tales From the Mos Eisley Cantina - Kevin J. Anderson [93]
Swap Meet:
The Jawa’s Tale
by Kevin J. Anderson
The sandcrawler labored up the long slope of golden sand that rippled with heat under the twin suns of Tatooine. The immense vehicle moved ahead at a moderate but inexorable rate. Its clanking tractor treads left parallel furrows on the virgin surface of the dune. Within a few hours, gusting sandwhirls would erase the tracks and return the Dune Sea to its pristine state. The desert resisted all permanent change.
Deep in the murky bowels of the sandcrawler, in the cluttered engine rooms where throbbing power reactors pounded and echoed, Het Nkik labored with his Jawa clan members. From the depths of his hood, he sniffed the air, a veritable sauce of mingled odors. The engines smelled as if they were getting old again, lubricant spoiling, durasteel cogs wearing away.
Humans and many other sentient creatures loathed the way Jawas smelled, detecting only a stink that made them turn up their noses. But Jawas derived an incredible amount of information from such smells: the health of their companions, when and what they had last eaten, their identity, maturity, status of arousal, excitement, or boredom.
Het Nkik chittered his concern. At any other time the Jawas would have rushed to avert any potential breakdown—at least until they had unloaded their wares on a hapless customer. But today the Jawas paid him little heed, too preoccupied with the impending swap meet, the annual gathering of all clans. They pushed the engine to its maximum capacity as the sandcrawler toiled across the Dune Sea to the traditional meeting place of the Jawa people.
Het Nkik shook his head, his bright yellow eyes glowing in the dim shadows of his hood. The other Jawas would know he was annoyed and impatient from his scent.
Het Nkik had odd ideas for a Jawa, and he told them to any who would listen. He enjoyed watching his clan brothers scurry around, confused at the thoughts he placed in their heads—thoughts that perhaps the Jawas could do more than run and hide from persecution by the Sand People, by the human moisture farmers, or worst of all by the Imperial stormtroopers who had decided that helpless Jawa forts made good practice targets for desert assaults. He wondered if someone else among all the Jawas had realized that Jawas were only weak because they chose to be weak. None of his people wanted to listen.
Het Nkik turned back to the engines, tearing open an access panel and adjusting the delicate electronics. He found it amazing that the Jawas could use all their skill and imagination in a desperate fight to keep this ancient machine running, yet they would do nothing to protect themselves or their property if some antagonist tried to take it.
With the sound of a grating alarm signal, the Jawas in the engine room squealed with delight. Cinching tight his pungent brown robe, Het Nkik scurried after the others as they rushed for the lift platforms to the bridge observation deck. The old elevators groaned, overloaded with jabbering creatures.
At the pinnacle of the great trapezoidal sandcrawler, fifteen Jawa crew members clustered around the long, high transparisteel window, standing on inverted spare-parts boxes to see. All during Tatooine’s long double-day, Jawa lookouts stood atop makeshift stools, gazing out upon the baked sands, looking for any scrap of metal or signs of Sand People or Imperial stormtroopers or hostile smugglers. Upon glimpsing any potential threat, the pilot would swerve in a different direction and increase speed, locking down blast doors and shuddering with fear, hoping that the adversary would not pursue them. Het Nkik had never heard of even a krayt dragon striking something as big as a Jawa sandcrawler, but that did not stop the Jawas from living