The Phantom Menace (17 page)

Greed was the operative word in dealing with Watto, of course, the key that would open any door the Toydarian kept locked.

They walked from the slave quarters through the city to Watto’s shop, Anakin leading the way, Qui-Gon and Padmé close at his heels, Jar Jar and R2-D2 bringing up
the rear. The city was awake and bustling early, the shopkeepers and merchants shoveling and sweeping away drifts of sand, reassembling stalls and awnings, and righting carts and damaged fences. Eopies and rontos performed the heavy labor where sleds and droids lacked sufficient muscle. Wagons were already hauling fresh supplies and merchandise from warehouses and storage bins, and the receiving bays of the spaceport were back to welcoming ships from off planet.

Qui-Gon let Anakin go on ahead to the shop as they drew near, in order to give the boy a chance to approach Watto on the subject of the Podraces first. With the others in tow, the Jedi Master moved to a food stall across the way, persuaded a vendor to part with a handful of gooey dweezels, and bided his time. When the dweezels were consumed, he moved his group across the plaza to the front of Watto’s shop. Jar Jar, already unsettled anew by all the activity, took up a position on a crate near the shop entry, his back to the wall, his eyes darting this way and that in anticipation of something awful befalling him. R2-D2 moved over beside him, beeping softly, trying to reassure him that everything was okay.

Qui-Gon told Padmé to keep a wary eye on the Gungan. He didn’t want Jar Jar getting into any more trouble. He was starting into the shop when the girl put a hand on his arm.

“Are you sure about this?” she asked, doubt mirrored clearly in her brown eyes. “Trusting our fate to a boy we hardly know?” She wrinkled her smooth brow. “The Queen would not approve.”

Qui-Gon met her gaze squarely. “The Queen does not need to know.”

Her eyes blazed defiantly. “Well, I don’t approve.”

He gave her a questioning look, then turned away wordlessly.

Inside the salvage shop, he found Watto and Anakin engaged in a heated discussion, the Toydarian hovering centimeters from the boy’s face, blue wings a blur of motion, snout curled inward as he gestured sharply and purposely with both hands.

“Patta go bolla!”
he shouted in Huttese, chubby body jerking with the force of his words.

The boy blinked, but held his ground.
“No batta!”

“Peedunkel!”
Watto flitted backward and forward, up and down, everything moving at once.

“Banyo, banyo!”
Anakin shouted.

Qui-Gon moved out of the shadowed entry and into the light where they could see him clearly. Watto turned away from Anakin at once, toothy mouth working, and flew into Qui-Gon’s face in a frenzy of ill-concealed excitement.

“The boy tells me you want to sponsor him in the race tomorrow!” The words exploded out of him. “You can’t afford parts! How can you afford to enter him in the race? Not on Republic credits, I think!”

He broke into raucous laughter, but Qui-Gon did not miss the hint of curiosity that gleamed in his slitted eyes.

“My ship will be the entry fee,” the Jedi advised bluntly.

He reached beneath his poncho and brought out a tiny holoprojector. Clicking on the power source, he projected a hologram of the Queen’s transport into the air in front of Watto. The Toydarian flitted closer, studying the projection carefully.

“Not bad. Not bad.” The wrinkled blue proboscis bobbed. “A Nubian.”

“It’s in good order, except for the parts we need.” Qui-Gon gave him another moment, then flicked off the holoprojector and tucked it back beneath his poncho.

“But what would the boy ride?” Watto demanded irritably. “He smashed up my Pod in the last race. It will take too long to fix it for the Boonta.”

Qui-Gon glanced at Anakin, who was clearly embarrassed. “Aw, it wasn’t my fault, really. Sebulba flashed me with his port vents. I actually saved the Podracer … mostly.”

Watto laughed harshly. “That he did! The boy is good, no doubts there!” He shook his head. “But still …”

“I have acquired a Pod in a game of chance,” Qui-Gon interrupted smoothly, drawing the other’s attention back to him. “The fastest ever built.”

He did not look at Anakin, but he imagined the expression on the boy’s face.

“I hope you didn’t kill anyone I know for it!” Watto snapped. He burst into a new round of laughter before bringing himself under control again. “So, you supply the Podracer and the entry fee; I supply the boy. We split the winnings fifty-fifty, I think.”

“Fifty-fifty?” Qui-Gon brushed the suggestion aside. “If it’s going to be fifty-fifty, I suggest you front the cost of the entry. If we win, you keep all the winnings, minus the cost of the parts I need. If we lose, you keep my ship.”

Watto was clearly caught by surprise. He thought the matter through, hand rubbing at his snout, wings beating the air with a buzzing sound. The offer was too good, and he was suspicious. Out of the corner of his eye, Qui-Gon saw Anakin glance over at him nervously.

“Either way, you win,” Qui-Gon pointed out softly.

Watto pounded his fist into his open palm. “Deal!” He turned to the boy, chuckling. “Your friend makes a
foolish bargain, boy! Better teach him what you know about how to deal for goods!”

He was still laughing as Qui-Gon left the shop.

The Jedi Master collected Padmé, Jar Jar, and R2-D2, and left word for Anakin to join them as soon as Watto would free him up to work on the Podracer. Since Watto was more interested in the upcoming race than in managing the shop, he dismissed the boy at once with instructions to make certain the racer he would be driving was a worthy contender and not some piece of space junk that would cause everyone to laugh at the Toydarian for his foolish decision to enter it in the first place.

As a result, Anakin was home almost before Qui-Gon and the others, eagerly leading them to where his project was concealed in the slave quarter bone yards. The Podracer was shaped like a narrow half cylinder with a rudder-skid attached to its flat bottom, a cockpit carved into its curved top, and steering arms attached at its sides. Sleek Radon-Ulzer fighter engines with scoop-air stabilizers towed the Pod at the end of Steelton cables. The effect was something like seeing a doop bug attached to a pair of banthas.

Working together, the company activated the antigrav lifts and guided the Pod and its enormous engines into the courtyard in back of Anakin’s home. With Padmé, Jar Jar, and R2-D2 lending assistance and encouragement, the boy immediately went to work prepping the Pod for the upcoming race.

While Anakin and his helpers were thus engaged, Qui-Gon mounted the back porch of the Skywalker home, glanced around to make certain he was alone, and switched on the comlink to contact Obi-Wan. His protégé
answered immediately, anxious for a report, and Qui-Gon filled him in on what was happening.

“If all goes well, we will have our hyperdrive generator by tomorrow afternoon and be on our way,” he concluded.

Obi-Wan’s silence was telling. “What if this plan fails, Master? We could be stuck here for a long time.”

Qui-Gon Jinn looked out over the squalor of the slave quarters and the roofs of the buildings of Mos Espa beyond, the suns a bright glare overhead. “A ship without a power supply will not get us anywhere. We have no choice.”

He switched off the comlink and tucked it away. “And there is something about this boy,” he whispered to himself, leaving the thought unfinished.

Shmi Skywalker appeared through the back door and moved over to join him. Together they stood watching the activity in the courtyard below.

“You should be proud of your son,” Qui-Gon said after a moment. “He gives without any thought of reward.”

Shmi nodded, a smile flitting over her worn face. “He knows nothing of greed. Only of dreams. He has …”

“Special powers.”

The woman glanced at him warily. “Yes.”

“He can see things before they happen,” the Jedi Master continued. “That’s why he appears to have such quick reflexes. It is a Jedi trait.”

Her eyes were fixed on him, and he did not miss the glimmer of hope that shone there. “He deserves better than a slave’s life,” she said quietly.

Qui-Gon kept his gaze directed out at the courtyard. “The Force is unusually strong with him, that much is clear. Who was his father?”

There was a long pause, long enough for the Jedi
Master to realize he had asked a question she was not prepared to answer. He gave her time and space to deal with the matter, not pressing her, not making it seem as if it were necessary she answer at all.

“There is no father,” she said finally. She shook her head slowly. “I carried him, I gave birth to him. I raised him. I can’t tell you any more than that.”

She touched his arm, drawing his eyes to meet hers. “Can you help him?”

Qui-Gon was silent for a long time, thinking. He felt an attachment to Anakin Skywalker he could not explain. In the back of his mind, he sensed he was meant to do something for this boy, that it was necessary he try. But all Jedi were identified within the first six months of birth and given over to their training. It was true for him, for Obi-Wan, for everyone he knew or had heard about. There were no exceptions.

Can you help him?
He did not know how that was possible.

“I don’t know,” he told her, keeping his voice gentle, but firm. “I didn’t come here to free slaves. Had he been born in the Republic, we would have identified him early, and he might have become a Jedi. He has the way. I’m not sure what I can do for him.”

She nodded in resignation, but her face revealed, beneath the mask of her acceptance, a glimmer of hope.

As Anakin tightened the wiring on the thruster relays to the left engine, a group of his friends appeared. The older boys were Kitster and Seek, the younger girl was Amee, and the Rodian was Wald. Anakin broke off his efforts to complete the wiring long enough to introduce them to Padmé, Jar Jar, and R2-D2.

“Wow, a real astromech droid!” Kitster exclaimed, whistling softly. “How’d you get so lucky?”

Anakin shrugged. “That isn’t the half of it,” he declared, puffing up a bit. “I’m entered in the Boonta tomorrow.”

Kitster made a face and pushed back his mop of dark hair. “What? With this?”

“That piece of junk has never even been off the ground,” Wald said, nudging Amee. “This is such a joke, Annie.”

“You’ve been working on that thing for years,” Amee observed, her small, delicate features twisting in disapproval. She shook her blond head. “It’s never going to run.”

Anakin started to say something in defense of himself, then decided against it. Better to let them think whatever they wanted for now. He would show them.

“Come on, let’s go play ball,” Seek suggested, already turning away, a hint of boredom in his voice. “Keep it up, Annie, and you’re gonna be bug squash.”

Seek, Wald, and Amee hurried off, laughing back at him. But Kitster was his best friend and knew better than to doubt Anakin when he said he was going to do something. So Kitster stayed behind, ignoring the others. “What do they know?” he said quietly.

Anakin gave him a grin of appreciation. Then he noticed Jar Jar fiddling with the left engine’s energy binder plate, the power source that locked the engines together and kept them in sync, and the grin disappeared.

“Hey! Jar Jar!” he shouted in warning. “Stay away from those energy binders!”

The Gungan, bent close to the protruding plate, looked up guiltily. “Who, me?”

Anakin put his hands on his hips. “If your hand gets caught in the beam, it will go numb for hours.”

Jar Jar screwed up his face, then put his hands behind his back and stuck his billed face back down by the plate. Almost instantly an electric current arced from the plate to his mouth, causing him to yelp and jump back in shocked surprise. Both hands clamped over his mouth as he stood staring at the boy in disbelief.

“1st numm! 1st numm!” Jar Jar mumbled, his long tongue hanging loosely. “My tongue is fat. Dats my bigo oucho.” Anakin shook his head and went back to work on the wiring.

Kitster moved close to him, watching silently, his dark face intense. “You don’t even know if this thing will run, Annie,” he observed with a frown.

Anakin didn’t look up. “It will.”

Qui-Gon Jinn appeared at his shoulder. “I think it’s about time we found out.” He handed the boy a small, bulky cylinder. “Use this power pack. I picked it up earlier in the day. Watto has less need for it than you.” One corner of his mouth twitched in a mix of embarrassment and amusement.

Anakin knew the value of a power pack. How the Jedi had managed to secure one from under Watto’s nose, he had no idea and no interest in finding out. “Yes, sir!” he beamed.

He jumped into the cockpit, fitted the power pack into its sleeve in the control panel, and set the activator to the ON position. Then he pulled on his old, dented racing helmet and gloves. As he did so, Jar Jar, who had been fiddling around at the back of one of the engines, managed to get his hand caught in the afterburner. The Gungan began leaping up and down in terror, his mouth still numb from the shock he had received from the
energy binders, his bill flapping to no discernible purpose. Padmé caught sight of him at the last minute—his arms windmilling frantically—and yanked him free an instant before the engines ignited.

Flame exploded from the afterburners, and a huge roar rose from the Radon-Ulzers, building steadily in pitch until Anakin eased off on the thrusters, then settling back into a throaty rumble. Cheers rose from the spectators, and Anakin waved his hand in response.

On the porch of their home, Shmi Skywalker watched wordlessly, her eyes distant and sad.

Twilight brought a blaze of gold and crimson in the wake of Tatooine’s departing suns, a splash of color that filled the horizon in a long, graceful sweep. Night climbed after, darkening the sky, bringing out the stars like scattered shards of crystal. In the deepening black, the land was silent and watchful.

A gleam of bright metal caught the last of the fading suns’ rays, and a small transport sped out of the Dune Sea toward Mos Espa. Shovel-nosed and knife-edged, its wings swept back and its vertical stabilizers crimped inward top to bottom, it hugged the landscape as it climbed promontories and descended valleys, searching. Dark and immutable, it had the look of a predator, of a hunter at work.