"I was unable to speak as I wished while I was still part of old Kud'ar Mub'at. My rhetorical skills have greatly increased since then."
"Why don't we dispense with them and get down to the reason we came here."
"But of course." Balancesheet turned its jagged smile toward the helmeted bounty hunter. "And surely that reason is that you're looking for answers. But I don't think you've found any so far, have you?"
"Not the ones we wanted."
"Or any at all, I imagine." The narrow triangular head gave a small shake. "I could have told you that your search would be pointless. Because, believe me, I've al-ready tried. That's why I'm here in this sector, with this ship that's become such a home to me. I had heard about your previous inquiries into the possibilities presented by the nature of arachnoid assembler physiology, Boba Fett; I didn't think you would be interested in the subject un-less there might be a use for that knowledge someday. And so I found out a few things on my own. Enough to go rummaging through the scraps of Kud'ar Mub'at's old web—my previous home, in its way—and through the memories of my predecessor. Of course, I didn't need to go through as elaborate a procedure as you and your partner were forced to; but then, I am of the same species as the late Kud'ar Mub'at. I was able to merely integrate the various pieces of the web, and even that withered husk that its spirit and mind once resided in, into an ex-trusion of my own cerebro-nervous system, and I could access all of its residual memories without even bringing Kud'ar Mub'at back to momentary consciousness."
"I wish we had been able to do that." Dengar shook his head, too. "I could have done without that last encounter."
"Alas," said Balancesheet, "while my journey through the late assembler's memories might have been more pleasant than yours, it was to little more avail. There were many mysteries, various matters of unfinished busi-ness, that it would have been most advantageous for me to have cleared up—including the arrangements that Kud'ar Mub'at had made with Nil Posondum and Ree Duptom. Anyone who was behind both the fabricating of evidence against Prince Xizor and this mysterious ab-duction of an unidentified but seemingly important hu-man female—that unknown party was obviously after something big in his plans. And as we both know, Boba Fett, those kinds of schemes can often have a great deal of credits tied up with them. Sometimes to carry them out... and sometimes to keep silent about them."
Boba Fett's shielded gaze held the small assembler without moving. "And which one of those are you inter-ested in, Balancesheet?"
"I don't really have a choice—since, as I said, I did not find the answers to those questions in what I could re-cover of Kud'ar Mub'at's personal memories. If I'm to get any share of profits out of this situation, I have to join forces with you, and assist you with your quest for those answers."
"Opening fire on us with your laser cannons didn't seem like much assistance."
"Oh, that." Balancesheet made a dismissive gesture with one upraised claw tip. I told you before. I didn't know that it was you, putting the web back together and—I had to assume—reviving the dead Kud'ar Mub'at inside it. You have to consider my position, after all. I have taken over my predecessor's business; I've estab-lished myself with a select list of clients that had previ-ously been associated with Kud'ar Mub'at. At the same time, I was aware that Kud'ar Mub'at could be at least partially restored to life. Quite frankly, I don't need the competition from it, especially considering the hostility I could expect him to bear toward me. And of course, many of my clients might consider it advantageous to have the two of us operating simultaneously, so that we would be forced to undercut each other's prices. No—" Balancesheet shook his head emphatically. "I really couldn't allow anyone to set about bringing old Kud'ar Mub'at back from the dead. It had been mere sentimen-tality on my part, and perhaps a notion of generating a profit from them in the future, not to have already de-stroyed its carcass and the remainders of his web. I've al-ready made a mental note to finish that process once our little conference is finished."
"All right," said Boba Fett. "I'm going to give you a break this time. Basically, because I need to do some business with you. But if you try firing a laser cannon at me again, you're going to find yourself looking down the barrel of one. And there won't be any pieces for some-body else to glue back together."
"I'll keep that in mind." The small assembler spread both of its raised forelimbs apart. "Now let's get down to that business you were talking about. You want to find out who it was at the beginning of the chain that led through Nil Posondum and Kud'ar Mub'at to Ree Dup-tom; you want to know who it was that thought it so im-portant to plant fabricated evidence against Prince Xizor, and do the kidnap and memory-wipe job on Neelah here. That seems reasonable enough. So, for a piece of the ac-tion, I'm willing to help you out on that quest."
"How?" Neelah broke into the exchange between the assembler and the bounty hunter. After all, she had told herself, it's me they're talking about. "You already said you hadn't found out any more than we did!"
"Calm yourself," said Balancesheet. "It's true: you didn't find anything here, and neither did I. But all of you have made a faulty assumption from that fact. You sim-ply believe there's nowhere else to look, and that's not the case."
"So where else is there?" Boba Fett's voice sounded neither impressed nor amused. "Everybody in the chain leading to Neelah is dead now."
"Yes, but certain evidence they left behind still ex-ists." One of Balancesheet's tiny claw tips pointed straight toward Boba Fett. "You've stated that you found the fabricated evidence against Prince Xizor inside a cargo droid that had been transformed to a spy device. Where is that droid now?"
"That's your idea of a lead?" Boba Fett shook his head in disgust. "That droid—if it still exists at all—is completely unavailable to us. Once I pulled the data records out of the droid's memory unit and stored them on my ship's computer, I didn't do anything more with the droid itself. When I took over Bossk's ship Hound's Tooth, the one that brought us here, I transferred that in-formation over to its computer. But the original cargo droid was still left aboard Slave I—and that ship is in the hands of the Rebel Alliance now. A Rebel patrol found and confiscated it, where I had abandoned it in orbit above Tatooine." Fett recited the events in his customary emotionless tone, though Neelah knew how great the at-tachment was between him and his own ship. "Whatever contacts I've still got inside the Alliance, they're preoccu-pied right now with other things, like what's shaping up to happen out near Endor. They're not likely to go root-ing around through their storage units for some anti-quated cargo droid found onboard an empty ship. Why should they? They wouldn't know that it might have any value, except as scrap."
"So you have a record of the fabricated evidence against Prince Xizor—an incomplete copy, as it were—but not the fabricated evidence itself. That is a pity." Balance-sheet smiled. "Because if you had the actual evidence, the original that was inside the modified cargo droid, then you might be able to examine and analyze it further, for clues that you didn't have time to find before."
"As I said," growled Boba Fett. "The cargo droid is gone. Lost. It might as well not exist, for all the good it does us."
"Perhaps so. But that doesn't mean that the original of the fabricated evidence, from which you took the information you possess, is lost." The jagged smile on the assembler's triangular face grew wider. "In fact, I know where it is. And it's not in the hands of the Rebel Alliance."
For the first time, Neelah saw something take Boba Fett by surprise. The bounty hunter stepped back as if from a blow, then he peered closer and harder at Balancesheet.