"I suppose," growled Bossk, "we'll find out. One way or another."
"Maybe." The others of the team were waiting beside the ground shuttle; Zuckuss nodded toward them. "We better get going." He conquered his reluctance enough to start walking.
Even before the shuttle lifted on its repulsor beams and slid toward the Shell Hutts' spired buildings, Zuckuss had a revelation. He could see his face mask, air tubes dangling, reflected in the dark metal of D'harhan's silent, impotent laser cannon. It doesn't matter, realized Zuckuss suddenly. Whether we have weapons or not. Whatever was going to happen-which of them would die and which of them would live-would happen whether they were ready for it or not.
There was one of them who might be ready. Zuckuss looked toward Boba Fett, sitting in the front of the shuttle. If anybody was going to survive, it would be him.
That thought, even with all its embodied certainty, didn't make Zuckuss feel any better.
Gheeta came floating up, his welcoming smile nearly wide enough to split his wattled face in two. "At last!" The crablike mechanical hands beneath the rivet-studded cylinder spread expansively. "Now you will have a chance to truly partake of our hospitality."
"We're not here to enjoy ourselves." At the head of the team of bounty hunters, Boba Fett stopped and gazed around the grand reception hall of the Shell Hutts. "This is strictly business for us. I would appreciate it if we could get straight to it."
"All in good time, my dear Fett." The tapering end of the cylinder pointed toward the farther reaches of the hall, its high-vaulted roof interlaced with golden traceries and ornamental center bosses. "You are too dismissive of both pleasure and the past-the pleasures of the flesh, that we can enjoy now, and the memories of that past we share."
IG-88 and the shorter figure of Zuckuss came up on either side of Fett, the droid scanning the space with methodical thoroughness, the other bounty hunter glancing around with nervous apprehension. With a slower and more ponderous tread, D'harhan loomed up behind.
"The past is over," said Boba Fett. The Shell Hutt's wobbling face, protruding from the collar of the repulsorborne cylinder, evoked a cold revulsion inside him. "If not for you, then it is for me."
"I wonder about that." Gheeta raised one of the cylinder's mechanical hands, using the point of its claw to scratch a deep fold in his chin. "How much do creatures ever forget? I hope you'll excuse me for waxing philosophical-I know how impatient you become-but sometimes I feel that nothing is forgotten. Everything remains buried, deeply or just beneath the surface, just waiting for its certain resurrection, to be brought out into the light once more."
Boba Fett could decipher the meaning behind the Shell Hutt's words. What he's saying, thought Fett, is that he hasn't forgotten. The reminder about the past and what it contained, back aboard the Slave I, hadn't been enough to indicate how fiercely that humiliation burned in Gheeta's memory. If one looked past all his cloying and ingratiating manners, the show of welcome here on Circumtore, the desire for vengeance could be plainly seen.
And counted on. He's got his plans, thought Boba Fett, and I've got mine.
For a split second, as Fett gazed back into Gheeta's broad, half-lidded eyes, he wondered if there was another meaning to what the Shell Hutt had spoken. Resurrection ... brought out into the light ...
When one played a dangerous game, there was always the possibility that the opponent was one move ahead. Fett knew that in this game, that would mean death. If he found out, mused Fett as he searched Gheeta's massive face for any clue. If he's figured out everything that happened here, in the past. Then the game was already over; there would be no more moves to play, just the sweeping of the broken pieces from the board. Those pieces would include himself and the other bounty hunters that he had brought here with him. And maybe one more...
Whatever happens, decided Boba Pert as he gazed unflinching into the dark centers of Gheeta's eyes. Whatever happens-he's going with me.
"But enough of all that." The floating cylinder that encased Gheeta rotated slightly, so that one of the mechanical hands could gesture toward the center of the reception hall. "As you have so forcefully reminded me, this is-alas!-more a business occasion than a social one. Let us proceed; there are others here who are more than eager to meet with you and your companions."
"After you," said Boba Fett. "They're your species, not mine."
Years ago he had picked up some profitable mer chandise on a backwater world where the dominant form of long-distance transportation had been lighter-than-air freighters-slow and immense, tapered ovoid dirigibles, filled with helium and other buoyant gases. The planet's skies had been filled with the craft, like elongated silvery moons, their crew gondolas and cargo containers slung underneath their curved and shaded bellies. That was what Cir-cumtore's great reception hall reminded Fett of; there were a dozen Shell Hutts besides Gheeta, the riveted cylinders floating on their repulsor beams, turning and bumping into each other with graceless sloth. At the front end of each cylinder protruded another bejowled Huttese face, like a wad of some unpleasant organic substance that had been inserted in the circular metal collar. Some of the Shell Hutt faces appeared younger than Gheeta, their large eyes glittering with avarice, slit nostrils flared by the trace scents on which their constant appetites fastened. The younger ones' encasing cylinders were smaller as well; Boba Fett knew how the Shell Hutts enjoyed throwing lavish parties for themselves, upon the occasion of one's expanding bulk being transferred to a new and larger cylinder.
With their artificial exoskeletons, the cylinders raised by repulsor beams, the size to which Shell Hutts could aspire was no longer restricted by gravity-only by how much they could grab of the galaxy's wealth and stuff into their lipless mouths. Gheeta was only in the middle range when it came to sheer mass; Boba Fett recognized a few of the other Shell Hutts in the great reception hall, elders of the clan that were to Gheeta as an Imperial battle cruiser was to a TIE fighter craft. Those faces protruding from their cylinder's metal collars were so heavily wattled from brow to throat that hooks had been surgically implanted in the blubbery tissue, the sharp metal bits connected to a web of thin, high-tension strands fastened to the top edge of the cylinder. If not for that support, the old Shell Hutts' eyes and nostrils would have been buried beneath avalanches of their own slack flesh.
As Boba Fett and the other bounty hunters approached, the largest of the repulsor-borne cylinders turned majestically, like an interstellar luxury ship being maneuvered into an off-planet berth. A low voice rumbled from the gargantuan Hutt bound by the riveted durasteel plates "I grow weary, Gheeta." The larger Shell Hutt fastened the irritable gaze of its yellowed eyes upon its clan member. "You keep us waiting…and for what? Some of us may still be amused, but I assure you that I am not."
Gheeta bobbed forward, the little crablike hands rising from underneath his cylinder and making fluttery gestures of mollification. "Patience will yet be rewarded, Your Magnitude. Our-ahem-guests have arrived at last. The show will begin in a moment."
" 'Show'?" Bossk scowled. "What show are you talking about? We came here on business."
"Of course, of course-just as your leader Boba Fett keeps reminding me." Gheeta turned his wide, wet-edged smile toward the Trandoshan. "Your patience will be rewarded as well, I assure you. But you've traveled so far-all of you have." The mechanical hands' gesture took in all of the bounty hunters. "And through some of the emptiest and least rewarding stretches of the galaxy. I'd hate for you to go away from here, after our business is concluded, and tell the sentient creatures of all the worlds that the Shell Hutts put out a mean and scanty table for their visitors. We have a reputation for hospitality to maintain, don't we? What would our fellow Hutts, our cousin Jabba for instance, say if he heard that we had not provided for others' famished appetites?"