Star Wars_ The Han Solo Adventures - Brian Daley [107]
After a minute or so the tiny charge was exhausted and the bottle reverted to an unaggressive container. Han’s attention was attracted by a conversation going on by table Number 131, only a few meters away on the next terrace down. An assistant manager, a blue-furred, four-armed native of Pho Ph’eah, was engaged in a difference of opinion with an attractive young female of Han’s own species.
The manager was waving all four arms in the air. “But the table is reserved, human! Can you not see the red courtesy light that so designates it?”
The human appeared to be several years younger than Han. She had straight black hair that fell just below the nape of her slender neck. Her skin was a rich brown, her eyes nearly black, indicating that she came from a world that received a good deal of solar radiation. She had a long, mobile face that showed, Han thought, a sense of humor. She wore an everyday working outfit—a blue one-piece bodysuit and low boots. She stood, hands gracefully on hips, and stared at the Pho Ph’eahian, unconvinced.
Then she contorted her face in a very close imitation of the manager’s, waving her arms and shrugging her shoulders in precisely the way he had, though she was a couple of arms short. Han found himself laughing aloud. She heard him, caught his eye and gave him a conspiratorial smile. Then she went back to her dispute.
“But it’s been reserved ever since I came in, hasn’t it? And nobody’s claimed it, have they? There’re no other small tables and I’m tired of sitting at the bar; I want to wait for my friends right here. Or should we take our business elsewhere? It doesn’t look like you’re making much money off this table right now, does it?”
She had hit him in a vital spot. Lost revenue was something a good Authority employee simply never permitted. The blue-furred manager looked around worriedly to make sure the party or parties for whom the table was reserved wouldn’t materialize out of thin air and object. With an eloquent four-shouldered gesture of resignation, he flicked off the red courtesy light. The young woman took her place with a look of satisfaction.
“That’s that,” Han sighed to Chewbacca, who had noticed the incident, too. “No collections today; Zlarb’s boss is as slippery as he was.”
The Wookiee grumbled like a drumroll in a deep cave. He added a surly afterword as he rose to check on the Millennium Falcon.
“After you check the ship,” Han called after him, “go hunt around the guild hiring halls and the portmaster’s headquarters. I’ll meet you later at the Landing Zone. See if anybody we know is in port; maybe somebody can tell us something. Chewie, if we don’t come into some cash pretty soon, we’re not even going to be able to get off Bonadan. I’m going to finish my wine, then make a few more stops to look for familiar faces.”
The Wookiee, scratching his shaggy chest, acknowledged with a basso honk. As his copilot ambled off, Han took another sip of his wine and another look around, hoping that a last-minute arrival would give him a chance to pick up the ten thousand somebody owed him. But he saw no one who looked interested in table 131. Penury loomed before him and he felt the near-undeniable craving for money to which he was especially susceptible in times of financial distress.
He whiled away a few more minutes sipping at the wine and admiring the young woman who had preempted table 131. At length she happened to turn and catch his eye again. “Happy landings,” she toasted, and he raised his glass in response to the old spacer’s greeting. She eyed him speculatively. “Long time out?”
He made an indifferent face, not sure why she was interested. “No home port for me, just a ship. It’s simpler.”
She had drained her goblet. “How about a refill?”
Her lively, amused face appealed to him, and it didn’t make much sense to carry on the conversation through