She nodded.
"Well, that's a start. But nothing you can remember, I take it?"
Another nod.
"So how did you wind up at Jabba's palace?"
"I don't know that, either." Neelah's fists uncurled, empty and trembling. "I don't know how I got there. All I remember is Oola ... and the other girls. They helped me. They showed me ..." Her voice ebbed softer. "What I was to do ..."
Her memory had been wiped; Dengar recognized the signs. The confusion and welling fear, and the little bits and pieces, scraps of another existence, leaking through. No wipe was ever complete; memory was stored in too many places throughout the humanoid brain. To go after every bit, eradicating them all, would probably be fatal, a reduction beyond basic life-maintenance processes. There were easier, and less expensive, ways of killing a sentient being. So someone, thought Dengar, wanted her alive. Fett?
"What about your name?" Dengar nodded toward her. "
'Neelah'-was that something you remembered?"
"No; Jabba called me that. I don't know why. But I knew ..." Her brow furrowed with concentration. "I knew it wasn't my real name. My true name. Somebody took that from me ... and I couldn't get it back. No matter how hard I tried ..."
What she told Dengar coincided with his own suspicions. Neelah was a slave name-it didn't fit her.
The aristocratic bearing she possessed was too obvious, even in the ill-fitting, scavenged outfit she wore now.
She wouldn't be alive now-the Dune Sea's loping predators would be cracking her bones-if there weren't some tough fighting spirit inside her. Things would have gone differently if Jabba had tried to throw her, instead of the other girl, Oola, to his pet rancor. It would've been Neelah rather than Princess Leia wrapping the chain around Jabba's immense throat and choking the life out of him.
Dengar had more suspicions, which he didn't feel like voicing right at the moment. Fett must've done it. The other bounty hunter must've brought her to Jabba's palace; he'd probably also been the one who'd performed the memory wipe on her. The big question was why. Dengar couldn't believe it had been done on Jabba's orders; the Hutt had enjoyed young and beautiful objects, but he'd also been too tight with his credits to have commissioned the kidnapping of the daughter of one of the galaxy's noble houses. The only reason Leia Organa had wound up on the end of one of Jabba's chains was that she had come into Jabba's lair of her own accord, seeking to rescue the carbonite-encased Han Solo. A captured noblewoman, with a blanked-out memory, wasn't exactly the same kind of a bargain.
So Fett must have been working for someone else while he had ostensibly been in Jabba's employ. That wouldn't have been unusual; Dengar knew from his own experience that bounty hunters nearly always had more than one gig going on at a time, with no particular loyalty to any creature whose payroll they might be on. Or-the other possibility-Boba Fett might have had his own reasons for wiping the memory of this female, whoever she really was, and bringing her to Jabba's palace, disguised as a simple dancing girl.
The puzzle rotated inside Dengar's mind. Maybe Fett had been stashing her away, in some place where she wouldn't be likely to be found. That was one of the sleazier bounty-hunter tricks finding someone with a price on his or her or its head, then keeping the merchandise hidden until the price for it was raised higher. Dengar had never done it, and he hadn't heard of Boba Fett doing it, either. Fett didn't have to; he already commanded astronomical prices for his services.
"Is there anything else you remember?" Dengar rubbed the coarse stubble on his chin as he studied the female.
"Even the littlest thing."
"No-" Neelah shook her head. "There's nothing. It's all gone. Except ..."
"Except what?" "Another name. I mean ... another name besides his." She tilted her head to one side, as though trying to catch the whisper of a distant voice. "I think it's a name that belongs to a man."
"Yeah?" Dengar unfolded his arms and hooked his thumbs into his belt. "What's the name?"
"Nil something. Wait a minute." She rubbed the corner of her brow. "Now I remember ... it was Nil Posondum. Or something like that." Neelah's expression turned hopeful.
"Is that somebody important? Somebody I should know about?"
Dengar shook his head. "Never heard of anybody like that."
"Still ..." Neelah looked a little crestfallen.
"It's something to go on."
"Maybe." He had his doubts about whether it was anything useful. He had even bigger doubts about Neelah herself. Or whatever her real name is, thought Dengar.
Keeping one's contacts primed for information was an essential part of the bounty-hunter trade; he had been in and out of Mos Eisley and other scumholes on a regular basis, listening and asking the right questions, and he hadn't heard anything fitting her description. If anybody was looking for her, they were doing it on the quiet.
That might make getting paid for finding her somewhat difficult.
Or else-another possibility rose in Dengar's thoughts-somebody doesn't want her to be found. Boba Fett might have been working for someone who had wanted this Neelah to be disposed of, maybe in some way that left her still alive. What better way than to strip out her memory and stick her on a backwater planet like Tatooine? Though how long she would've stayed alive in Jabba's palace was debatable, given the Hutt's murderous amusements. Whoever had sent her there couldn't have been too concerned about her survival. Then why not just kill her quick and fast, for whatever reasons they had, rather than leave her where any number of the galaxy's hustling scoundrels, the criminal dregs that had found employment with Jabba, might have spotted her?
His brain felt weighted down with all these questions stacking up on top of each other. Mysteries and skulduggery were what one dealt with in the bounty-hunter trade; all this reminded Dengar of why he had wanted to get out of it. There must be an easier way to make a living.
Or a safer one. Now he had two potential bombs on his hands, either one of which could result in a quick death for him, if he was lucky, or a messy one, if his luck ran true to form. It hadn't been bad enough getting involved with Boba Fett's fortunes; now he had to deal with the enigmatic Neelah as well. She was a loose laser cannon by herself-if she'd had a blaster, Dengar supposed he would've been crisped by now-plus there were those unseen figures from her past, who'd put her here. They might not be too happy about her turning up again. If they were the kind of people who hired Boba Fett to do their dirty work for them, they wouldn't be likely to have too many scruples about eliminating everyone hooked up with her.
None of it looked good. Which had its own upside The more risk, Dengar reminded himself, the more profit.
That, more than anything in the so-called Hunter's Creed, was what governed the actions of bounty hunters, from Boba Fett down to himself. If there was a chance of being partners with Fett, and reaping the rewards from that, he would have to ramp up his courage to a new level.
"All right," said Dengar aloud. He unfolded his arms and pointed to the female on the other side of the hiding place's main chamber. "Let's work out an arrangement, you and me. Stipulation number one Don't try to kill me. If we're going to get anything accomplished around here, that's a basic requirement."
Neelah appeared to think it over, then nodded.
"Okay."
"And if you try, I'm going to make sure it's your corpse that gets thrown out of here. Got me?"
She nodded again, with just a trace of impatience.
"Number two I'm in charge here. I'm running the show-"
Neelah's anger flared. "Wait a minute-"
"Shut up," said Dengar. "It's for your own good. And it's just for the time being. You get back to wherever you came from, you get your real name and everything that comes with it returned to you, then you can do whatever you want. But right now you don't even know who you are, you don't know who might be gunning for you, you don't know anything about what the galaxy's like once you get off this little rock heap's surface. Even if you could find some way out of here without my help, you might poke your nose into some place like Mos Eisley and get your whole head detached from your neck. There's plenty of types who'd do that for you, even without knowing who you might be."