The only problem with that was she still didn't know whose skin that really was. I don't even know my real name, mused Neelah bitterly. Her name, and everything that went with it: history, friends, enemies; who she might be able to ask for help, and receive; who would cut her throat at a moment's notice, if they knew she was alive and off the surface of the planet Tatooine. She had her suspicions, pieced together from logic rather than actual information. Whoever dumped me off at Jabba's palace-whoever it had been, that was the creature for whom she had to watch out. Or creatures in the plural; it might have been a whole conspiracy, any number of the galaxy's sinister forces leagued against her. They must have had their reasons for wiping her memory clean, all her past erased from inside her skull, disguising her as a simple dancing girl, and sticking her inside the fortressed headquarters of one of the most powerful criminal overlords to be found on any world. Perhaps Jabba the Hutt had known the whole story behind her being in his palace-but that didn't do her any good now. Jabba was dead, and all the secrets that the loathsome slug had kept to himself were gone as well.
Almost the only thing that remained from her past, a scrap of memory that had been left behind by the wipe process, was an image. No voice, no words, no other data, however fragmentary. Whoever had done it to her had been meticulously thorough. Perhaps it would have been better for her, though, if they had eradicated that last little bit as well. The image left in Neelah's obliterated memory was that of a face. Or rather a nonface; a mask. The image of Boba Fett's narrow-visored helmet, concealing the living face beneath its hard, inhuman gaze. . .
She had seen that masked face at Jabba's palace, and it had filled her with fear and anger then. Neelah had sensed that the bounty hunter hadn't been just guarding the Hutt as he'd been hired to do-Jabba had been one of the few creatures in the galaxy wealthy enough to have engaged Boba Fett's services like that-but she had also been sure that Fett had been following his own private agenda as well. He came and went from Jabba's court on mysterious errands, though he'd displayed a sure instinct for always being on hand in a moment of crisis, such as when Princess Leia Organa, disguised as an Ubese bounty hunter demanding the reward for a captured Wookiee, had brandished an activated thermal detonator right in front of Jabba. Boba Fett had snapped his blaster rifle up into firing position in less than a heartbeat, as most of Jabba's other guards had dived for cover.
Nobody had died that time, but it hadn't been for any lack of readiness on Boba Fett's part. Jabba had paid the bounty and the disguised princess had deactivated the explosive device-otherwise there wouldn't even have been ruins left of Jabba's palace. Neelah was sure, though, that Boba Fett would have survived somehow; he always did, no matter how many other creatures died around him.
And-strangely-she also knew that she would have still been alive, no matter what happened. Let the fire fall, thought Neelah; she would have emerged unscathed, carried to safety by. . . Boba Fett. Who else?
That was the meaning, she had little doubt, of the interest Fett had shown in her welfare, back at Jabba's palace. It hadn't taken her long to pick up on it, that every time the bounty hunter had returned from one of his mysterious errands, his helmeted gaze had turned in her direction, making certain that she was still there, alive and unharmed.
Which took some doing in a den of violence like Jabba's palace, where all the thugs and scoundrels took their cues from their master's own tastes in the suffering of other creatures. A Hutt like Jabba didn't count his wealth just in how many credits he kept heaped up in his treasure vaults, but also in how much pain and death he could inflict. . . and savor, like one of the squirming little delicacies that his tiny hands had stuffed into the lipless chasm of his mouth. A good number of Jabba's hirelings had worked for cheap-his favorite salary arrangement-with the understanding that they could indulge their cruel appetites as well.
Poor Oola had been one of the prettiest of the palace's dancing girls, and thus reserved for Jabba's pleasure; that had been symbolized by the fine-linked chain he'd kept her on. Not for me, thought Neelah. She touched her face with one hand, her fingertips tracing the healed scar of the wound she'd received from the pikestaff of one of the Gamorrean palace guards when she'd made her own escape. Even before the honed metal had slashed across her jaw and cheek, she hadn't been of quite the same fragile loveliness as Oola had been. Given Jabba's sadistic tastes, the pleasure he had taken in seeing beauty viciously ripped to bleeding pieces, to be not quite so beautiful was a blessing; during her time in the palace, Neelah had seen prettier females than herself tossed to Jabba's pet rancor, and had heard their brief screams from the depths of the pit while Jabba's sniggering thugs had clustered around the edge, enjoying the sight nearly as much as their master had.
But there had been another reason for Neelah's longer life span within the thick stone walls of Jabba's palace. The first glimmerings of her suspicions had grown into absolute certainty. It was him, thought Neelah. It was Boba Fett. She glanced up again toward the cockpit area of the Hound's Tooth. An invisible connection stretched between herself and the helmeted bounty hunter piloting the ship. The same mysterious connection that had existed between them back in Jabba's palace. Without a word ever having passed between a mere dancing girl and the galaxy's most feared bounty hunter-at least, no word that her ravaged memory could recall-she had known even then that Boba Fett had been keeping watch on her. So that no harm would come to her-that is, none of a fatal kind. Life in the palace had had its numerous and imaginative unpleasantries, most of which had caused Neelah and the other dancing girls to wonder if a quick exit via the rancor pit wouldn't have been preferable. But Neelah had realized at some point that choice wasn't open to her. She'd had a guardian, of a sort; Boba Fett's careful and silent observation hadn't been trained just on his Huttese employer.
What would've happened, Neelah wondered idly, if ]abba had gotten around to throwing me to the rancor? A good question, even if it had been rendered moot by Jabba's death. The answer depended, she supposed, upon the exact nature of her importance to the bounty hunter. Was it great enough that Boba Fett would have interfered with Jabba's pleasures? Enough that, if the need had arisen, Fett would have swung his blaster rifle up and pointed it at Jabba's massive, jowly face, and the deep sepulchral voice from inside the helmet would have ordered the Hutt to let her go?
She wasn't sure, even now; Boba Fett played a complicated game, with the value of the pieces on the board shifting as rapidly as his stratagems. Whatever concern he'd shown for her welfare in Jabba's palace hadn't been based on any great love for her. Fett had already assured her-and I believe it, she thought grimly-that concern for other creatures' lives was a notion foreign to his mind. Even when he was ferrying a piece of hard merchandise, as hostages with prices on their heads were called in the bounty hunter trade, the only consideration that kept breath in their lungs was that live prey was usually worth more than dead ones to those who forked over the credits for their capture.
And what am I worth? That question still haunted her thoughts. As any kind of merchandise. Her worth, her value to Boba Fett; the reasons why he had been so intent upon her surviving her time in Jabba's palace-those were things that she still hadn't been able to figure out. If he had an interest in keeping her alive, then he undoubtedly had his reasons for it-and those reasons might not be any that were to her advantage.