Under the suns, sand. Sand forever, in dunes and in flats, sand on the tops of cliffs and between them in sand valleys, and on the wind and in his boots and between his toes. Bib hated sand. He hated the suns, too, though that felt a little more extravagant. Sand was always right there at hand to be hated. The whole of Tatooine was made of nothing else. Sand could be kicked and spit on. He could only curse at the suns. Which he did, of course, as he did at most things. But hating the suns was a proud and wild thing, an act of almost spiritual aspiration. Hating the suns meant hating his life, despising the fate that had brought him here at all. Under the thumb of Jabba. Fat Jabba, stinking Jabba, slimy Jabba. Jabba who could no longer even move without assistance, but who still lorded it over him and everyone else. Jabba, whom half the galaxy hated and wanted dead, but who seemed indestructible and everlasting.
These were the rhythms and contours of Bib's thoughts as he trudged across the dunes. The double suns were completing their slow arc over the horizon, and they cast the whole world-desert in a rosy light, out of which rose the spires of Jabba's palace, set over the sand like a soldier on watch. Or like a prison guard. Bib had gone wandering out into the Dune Sea because his hatred for the sand had been matched and beaten by his hatred of being in Jabba's presence. The whole palace seemed to reek of him and echo his croaking voice until Bib could no longer abide it. And so he went from hate to hate, and chewed on his hatred as he went.
Something unfamiliar caught Bib's notice as he drew near the squat rotunda. A spider-droid, bearing the preserved and suspended brain of one of the elder monks who lived in the dark recesses beneath the palace, picking its way clumsily through the shifting sands. Bib knew the monks, of course, and had spoken with their initiates from time to time, but the novices did not discard their fleshly frames. Only their masters were deemed worthy to set aside the bodily form, free then (so they believed) to turn their thoughts to the abstract absolute. Every so often, one could see the spider-droids shambling through the palace's subterranean complex with these unbodied mystics stored in their transparent bellies—but never, so far as Bib knew, did they venture out into the dunes. Its jointed limbs were not well-suited to managing the unstable surface of the desert, and it slid and wavered as it walked, but, still, it seemed intent on its goal. Which, he realized after a few moments, appeared to be Bib himself. An uneasy feeling squirmed through the region of his innards, and his hand drifted vaguely toward the heavy blaster hanging on his hip. Of course, the spider-droids had no armaments. But then, the spider-droids never left the palace, either.
The droid stopped advancing and scrabbled its legs to gain steady purchase at the crest of a low dune. Bib made to pass it by, and it shuffled laterally as though to cut him off. A tinny voice rang out from it in flat but recognizable Huttese. A vocoder, if a cheap one.
"Stop. We have words."
Bib turned to face it. His knees flexed almost imperceptibly, shifting his weight to the balls of his feet, ready to run. Or to drop into a firing stance. The ends of his brain-tails twitched in the dry air.
"Say them, then, and let me pass."
The droid shuffled its feet.
"Not here," it said.
"Piss off, then," Bib growled, and strode past it in quickstep.
"Important," the droid said to his back. "About the Hutt. You will want."
Bib stopped, and turned in place. He squinted at the droid. One of his brain-tails wavered
gently in the air.
"What about the Hutt?" Fat Jabba. Stinking Jabba. Jabba who kept him shackled to this dusty rock.
The droid's limbs shifted back and forth as if in agitation.
"Not safe. Not here. Below palace."
It began moving again in its shambly gait toward the rocky slope of the plateau on which Jabba's stronghold rested. After a few painstaking yards, it turned itself to face Bib once again.
"Follow." Though there was an almost plaintive edge to the vocoder's dull intonation. Almost a question. Almost a plea: Follow? Bib gritted his razor teeth. He lowered his head. He trudged after the droid.
It led him to the base of the plateau and then a quarter of the way around its perimeter, in the lengthening shadow of the palace. Stopping suddenly, the droid arranged itself carefully inside a rough circle of scattered rocks. It stood stock still for a moment and then emitted a series of clicks and bursts of crackling static. Bib blinked and rubbed sand from his eyes. A low rumble shook the packed earth beneath his feet, and the surface of the desert gave way before the droid, resolving itself into a narrow ramp leading into darkness. The droid scuttled its way downward.
"Follow," it said.
Bib sighed. Follow. He stepped down beneath the sand.