Star Wars: The Adventures of Lando Calrissia (2 page)

Suddenly: “Oh, for Edge’s sake, I simply can’t make up my mind! Can you come back to me, Captain Calrissian?” Lando groaned inwardly. This was how the entire evening had gone so far: the speaker,
Ottdefa
Osuno Whett, for all his dithering, had been the consistent big winner, perhaps owing to his tactics of continuous annoyance of the others. Fully as much a stranger in the Oseon as the young starship captain, at the moment he was operating on considerably less goodwill.

“I’m sorry,
Ottdefa
, you know I can’t. Will you have a card or not?”

Whett assumed an expression of conspicuous concentration that might have been a big success in his university classes.
Ottdefa
was a title, something academic or scientific, Lando gathered, conferred in the Lekua System. It was the equivalent of “Professor.”

Its owner was a spindly wraith, ridiculously tall, gray-headed, with a high-pitched whiny voice and a chronically indecisive
manner. It had taken him twenty minutes to order a drink at the beginning of the game—and even then he’d changed his order just as the drink arrived.

Lando didn’t like him.

“Oh, very well. If you insist, I’ll take a card.”

“Fine,” Lando dealt it. Either the academic had an excellent poker face, or he was too absentminded to notice whether the resulting hand was bad or good. Lando looked to his right. “Constable Phuna?”

The squat, curly-headed tough-guy he addressed was T. Lund Phuna, local representative of law-and-order under the Administrator Senior of the Oseon. It was not, apparently, the happiest of assignments in the field. The uniform tunic hanging soddenly over the back of his chair looked nearly as worn as his companions’ work clothes. He lit cigarette after cigarette with nervous, sweaty fingers, filling the cramped, already stifling room with more pollution. He wiped a perspiration-soaked tissue over his jowls.

“I’ll stand. Nothing for me.”

“Dealer takes a card.”

It was the Idiot, worth zero. Given the circumstances, Lando felt it was altogether appropriate. If only he’d headed for the Dela System as he’d planned, instead of the Oseon. He’d seen richer pickings in refugee camps.

Bets were placed again. Vett Fori took another card, her fourth, as did her assistant, Arun Feb, asking for it around the stub of his cigar.
Ottdefa
Whett stood pat. A Master of Sabres brought the value of Lando’s hand up to a positive ten, as a final round of wagering commenced.

Arun Feb and Vett Fori both folded with a nine and minus-nine respectively. The cop Phuna hung grimly on, his broad features misted with sweat. Lando was about to resign himself, when Whett excitedly cried, “
Sabacc
!” slapping the Mistress of Staves, the Four of Flasks, and the Six of Coins down on the worn felt tabletop.

The
Ottdefa
raked in a meager pot: “Ah … not exactly the Imperial Crown jewels, nor even the fabulous Treasure of Rafa, but—”

“Treasure of Rafa?” echoed Vett Fori.

She might as well ask, thought Lando, she isn’t doing herself any good playing cards.

“I’ve heard of the Rafa System,” the mine supervisor continued,
“everybody has. It’s the closest to our own. But I haven’t heard of any treasure.”

The academic cleared his throat. It was a silly, goose-honk noise. “The Treasure of Rafa—or of the Sharu, as we are now compelled to call it, not for the Rafa System, my dear, but for the ancient race who once flourished there and subsequently vanished without a trace—is a subject of some interest.”

This had been delivered in Whett’s best professional tones. Vett Fori’s weathered face, impassive enough when it came to playing cards, plainly displayed annoyance at being patronized. She picked up her cigar, stuck it between her teeth, and glared across the table.

“Without a trace?” Arun Feb snorted with disbelief. “I’ve
been
there, friend, and those ruins of your—what’d you call ’em?—‘Sharu,’ are the biggest hunks of engineering in the known galaxy. What’s more, they cover every body in the system bigger than my thumbnail. They—”

“Are not themselves the Sharu, my dear fellow, of whom no trace remains,” Whett insisted, his tone divided between pedantry and insulted reaction. “I certainly ought to know, for, until recently, I was a research anthropologist for the new governor of the Rafa System.”

“What’s a bureaucrat want with a tame anthropologist?” Feb asked blandly. He blew a final smoke ring, mashed his cigar out on the edge of the vacuum tray, and took a long drink of water. It dribbled down his chin, soaking the collar of his soiled shirt.

“Why, I suppose,” sniffed Whett, “to familiarize himself thoroughly with all aspects of his new responsibilities. As you are no doubt aware, there is a native humanoid race in the Rafa; all of their religious practices revolve about the ruins of their legends of the long-lost Sharu. The new governor is a most conscientious fellow, most conscientious indeed.”

“Yes,” Lando said finally, wondering if the anthropologist was ever going to deal the next hand, “but you were speaking of treasure?”

Whett blinked. “Why, yes, yes I was.” A shrewd look came into the academic’s eyes. “Have you an interest in treasure, Captain?”

More interest than I’ve got in this game, Lando thought. I wish I’d steered for the Dela System, no matter how much easier it is to land a spaceship on an asteroid than a full-scale planet. Soon as this farce is over, that’s precisely what I’m going
to do, win or lose, even if the astrogational calculations take me twenty years.

“Hasn’t everybody?” Lando answered neutrally. He extracted a cigarillo from his uniform pocket and lit it. Treasure, eh? Maybe there was something to be learned here, after all.

“Not quite everybody. Speaking for myself,” the scientist intoned, beginning at last to shuffle the thick seventy-eight-card deck, “my interest is purely scientific. What use have I for worldly wealth? One for you, one for you, one for you, one for you, and one for me. One for you, one for you, one for you …”

“Well, you surely came to the right place, then!” Vett Fori guffawed, picking up her cards. “No worldly wealth to get in your way at all! What
are
you doing here, anyway? We didn’t hire any anthropologists.”

Lighting another cigarette, Constable Phuna spoke bitterly. “Seeing how the other half lives, that’s what! I saw his entry papers. He’s studying life among the poor people of a rich system—on a fat Imperial grant, speaking of worldly wealth. We’re
specimens
, and he—”

“Please, please, my dear fellow, do not be offended. I aspire only to increase our understanding of the universe. And who knows, perhaps what I learn here can make things better in the future, not just for you, but for others, as—”

Vett Fori, Arun Feb, and T. Lund Phuna spoke almost simultaneously: “Don’t do us any favors!”

“Do
me
one,” Lando suggested in the embarrassed silence that followed, “tell me about this treasure business. And kindly deal me a card while you’re about it, will you?”

Bets were placed again and additional cards dealt out. Lando, having actually lost interest in the increasingly slim pickings the game afforded, watched absently as the card-chips in his hand transmuted themselves from one suit and value to another. He paid a good deal more attention to what the anthropologist had to say.

“The Toka are primitive natives of the Rafa System. As Assistant Supervisor Feb has so cogently pointed out, they and the present colonial establishment co-exist among the ruins of the ancient Sharu, enormous buildings which very nearly occupy every square kilometer of the habitable planets. I’ll see that, and raise a hundred credits.”

Arun Feb shook his head, but tossed in a pair of fifty-credit tokens from a dwindling stake. Vett Fori folded, a look of disgust
on her face. She placed her still unlighted cigar back on the table’s edge.

Phuna raised another fifty. “Yeah, but the really important thing about the Rafa is the life-crystals they grow there.” He fingered a tiny jewel suspended in its setting from a slim chain around his sweaty neck.

Whett nodded. “Important to you, perhaps, good Constable. It is true, the life-orchards and the crystals harvested there are the chief export product of the colony, but my interest—and what I was paid to be professionally interested
in
—were the Toka legends, especially those bearing upon the Mindharp.”

Glancing at his cards, Lando saw he had a Mistress of Coins, a Three of Staves, and a Four of Sabres. He dropped the requisite number of tokens into the pot just as the Three turned into a Five of Flasks: twenty-three, but it didn’t really matter; Fives were wild anyway.

“
Sabacc
!”

He gathered in the largest pot of the evening thus far. “Mindharp?” the gambler asked. “What in the name of the Core is that?”

Ottdefa
Whett wrinkled his nose, passing the rest of the deck to Lando. “Oh, just a ridiculous native superstition. There is supposed to be a lost magical artifact designed to call the Sharu—with whom the Toka identify in some strange fashion—to call the Sharu back when the Toka need them. Silly, as the Toka could not possibly ever have been contemporary with a civilization millions of years in the past, any more than human beings and dinosaurs—”

“I’ve seen dinosaurs,” Arun Feb interrupted. “On Trammis III.” The gigantic reptiloids of Trammis III were famous the galaxy over, and a chuckle circulated around the table.

“I take it, however,” Lando said as he shuffled and dealt the cards, then watched the bets pile up again, “that you have your own theories.” Somehow the talk of treasure seemed to have loosened up the pursestrings a bit, except perhaps for Vett Fori and her assistant. The gambler took a puff of his cigarillo. “Would you mind talking about them?”

The anthropologist looked as if he wouldn’t mind at all, even if requested to discourse standing barefoot on a large cake of ice while his ample gray hair were set on fire.

“Well, sir, the ruins, for all that they are ubiquitous, are impenetrable, closed completely on all sides without a sign of entryway. I daresay that all the collected treasures of a million
years of advanced alien culture await the first adventurer to gain admittance. I don’t mind confessing to you all that I attempted it myself on several occasions. But the ruins are not only impenetrable, they are absolutely obdurate. No known tool or energy yields so much as a smudge upon their surfaces. I’ll see that, and raise five hundred. Constable?”

Grudgingly, the policeman threw in five hundred credits’ worth of tokens. Lando saw the bet with mild amazement and raised it a hundred credits himself.

“
Sabacc
!”

Hmmm. Things were looking up a little. He was now ahead two thousand credits. He dealt the cards a third time, wondering what prospects for a gambler might be met in the Rafa. The idea was tempting: only a handful of straight-line lightyears to navigate across, and, if he recalled correctly, a major spaceport with good technical facilities—which to him meant landing assistance from Ground Control. The
Millennium Falcon
was completely new to him. He’d be playing cards in the Dela System this very moment if he weren’t such an abysmally amateurish astrogator and ship-handler. He’d balked at the long, complicated voyage and reputedly tricky approach to a mountaintop landing field, despite well-founded rumors of rich pickings in an atmosphere friendly to his profession.

But the Rafa …

He won the third hand and a fourth, was now ahead some fifty-five hundred credits. The prospects of action seemed to be encouraging him, and he wasn’t noticing the heat as much anymore.

“Oh, I say, Captain Calrissian …” It was Whett again. As the stakes mounted, the anthropologist seemed the only one whose interest in desultory conversation hadn’t lagged.

“Yes?” Lando answered, shuffling and dealing the cards.

“Well, sir, I … that is, I find myself somewhat embarrassed financially at this moment. You see, I have exceeded the amount of cash I allowed myself for the evening’s entertainment, and I—”

Lando sat back disappointed, drew on his cigarillo. It was too much, he reflected, to have expected to get rich off this emaciated college professor. “I move around too much to extend credit,
Ottdefa
.”

“I appreciate that fully, sir, and wish to … well, how much
would you consider allowing on a Class Two multi-phasic robot, if one may ask?”

“One may indeed ask,” the gambler replied evenly. “Thirty-seven microcredits and a used shuttle pass. I’m not in the hardware business, my dear
Ottdefa
.” There was an idea, however: he could rent a pilot droid to get the ship from here to the Rafa—or wherever else he decided to go. He reconsidered. A Class Two was worth a good deal, perhaps half again the value of his spaceship. In these circumstances …

“All right, then, a kilocred—not a micro more. Take it or leave it.”

The Professor looked displeased, opened his mouth to bargain Lando up, examined the determined expression on the gambler’s face, and nodded. “A kilo, then. I haven’t any use for the thing in any event, it was attempting to help me break into the Sharu ruins, and I—”

“Will you have a card, Supervisor Fori?” Lando interrupted.

“I’m out; this game’s gotten too rich for me, and I’m on shift in fifteen minutes.” Much the same was true for Arun Feb. They sat through the hand, enjoying watching somebody else lose for once.

Osuno Whett, however, bet heavily with his borrowed thousand, perhaps in an attempt to tap the gambler out. He was assisted in this by Constable Phuna. The money on the table grew and grew as Lando met their every raise, increasing the stakes himself. He wanted the game over with, one way or the other.

He’d dealt himself a Two of Sabres and a Four of Coins, taking an additional card after his two opponents had accepted them. Abruptly, the Four became a Three of Flasks, and his extra, which had been a Nine of Staves, transformed itself into the Idiot.

“
Sabacc
!” Lando cried in double triumph. To judge from the money on the table before him, and the lack of it in front of Whett and Phuna, that was the game. “Where can I pick up that droid,
Ottdefa
? I’m going to put it to work immediately as a naviga—”