Star Wars: The Adventures of Lando Calrissia (21 page)

Luckily, Lando didn’t have a snappy come-back ready anyway.

The door slid open with a clank. He stepped out and stood stiffly, shivering in the early morning breeze. He had his first look at the compound, and, having looked around, decided he didn’t want to make a habit of it. Boxed into the corner between two plastic Sharu buildings hundreds of meters tall and unscalable, the yard was fenced on the other two sides. Bare earth, a handful of small one-story cell blocks, and an administration building. Home sweet home for the rest of his life.

Like hell, Lando swore to himself. He would be free. He had debts to settle.

The command was given. He turned left smartly, walked behind half a dozen other prisoners to the bus, an old one, driven by another convict. Its skirts were stained and tattered. It would be a rough ride this morning. It—

The ground began to shake
.

Across the compound, the earth billowed up like waves on the ocean, heaved at the cellblocks, smashing them to bits, ripped the administration building apart, toppled the hoverbus. The man inside it screamed.

Several convicts ran to help the trapped driver. They were shouted at by the guards. One of the uniformed men opened fire, sending a prisoner up in flames that were mirrored by those which suddenly burst from a leaking fuel line in a building on the far side of the yard.

Lando stood where he was, then decided to fall down, since the quake threatened to do it to him anyway, and there was less chance of getting shot. Suddenly, a figure in the town-cop uniform, mirrored helmet visor and all, staggered up to the warden or whatever he was. Lando could hear him over the rumble, roar, and screaming.

“That man is to be turned over for further interrogation!” The armored finger pointed at Lando. The warden and the cop leaned on each other to stay erect.

“I have no authorization! He’s mine! Can’t this wait?”

“The governor wants him immediately!” There was sudden menace in the big policeman’s voice. “Something about a load of cops he tried to maroon on Rafa XI four months ago.”

“Then by all means take him. I—” That was all the fat man
had to say. He swayed and fell. The cop ducked back, came for Lando.

“Let’s go!”

Grabbing Lando by the pajamaed scruff, the cop bore him along toward a waiting cruiser that had been left aground beside the cell block. “Get in!”

They roared away through the gate, which hung open on one hinge. It wouldn’t have mattered: the force-fence was down, even its auxiliary power system apparently destroyed in the quake. The car rocked and swayed, turned right, and sped down the road.

“Say, old flatfoot, this isn’t the way to Teguta Lusat!” Lando shouted. He cringed as they rounded a corner and dashed toward the country.

“What’s it to you? Shut up and mind your own business!”

“Would this make it my business?”

The cop looked down to see what was pressing at his side. It was his own blaster. He raised a visored head to the young gambler.

“Very good. I guess you didn’t need rescuing that badly, after all. Want to go back and have all the glory to yourself?”

“What are you talking about?” Lando demanded. “Stop this car and take that helmet off. I want to see who I’m talking to!”

The cruiser slowed as per specification. They halted in the middle of the road and waited out an aftershock. Lando leveled the blaster at the policeman’s face. “Okay, take it off.”

The gloved hands rose, took the helmet and lifted. In place of a head sticking up through the collar, there was—a
snake
! A chromium-plated snake.

“Can I get out of this uniform, Master? It’s very uncomfortable.”

“Vuffi Raa! You little—but what’s going on here? Why are you rescuing me?”

Shucking the rest of the guardsman’s uniform—he’d been walking on two tentacles, using two for arms, and the fifth as an ersatz head—Vuffi Raa assumed a more normal position behind the driver tiller.

“Master, I was programmed to betray you from the beginning, and not to tell you about it. But you’re my
Master
, Lando, and, as soon as that program had run out, so did I. And here I am. We’ve got to get off this planet, out of the system, and fast.”

“I know.”

“You know? How?”

“The dreams, the chanting I heard last night. It’s Old High Trammic—the language of the Toka. I was on Trammis III a couple of years ago. I still can’t understand the language very well, but my subconscious apparently made something of it. I woke up this morning knowing the truth about the Mindharp, and I know we’ve got to get out of this place
now
.”

“Why is that, Master?”

“Don’t call me Master. Because, once somebody starts the music up, this system’s never going to be the same again.”

“Then we must go now, Master. Duttes Mer is using the Harp. That’s what the earthquake’s all about.”

U
NLIKE A FICTIONAL
villain, Duttes Mer hadn’t gloated or divulged his plans to the beaten Lando Calrissian. He’d simply had him disposed of, as quickly and neatly as possible.

Where he’d made his mistake—his first one, anyway—was in his attitude toward menials. Toka servants were virtually invisible to him—drinks and cigars simply appeared near his elbow, and that, he thought, was as it should be. He was the governor, after all. Droids were even more invisible.

So Vuffi Raa had stood in plain sight in the governor’s office as he made a transspace call to Rokur Gepta.

“Ahhh, it is you, my esteemed sorcerer. I have some news.”

“What is it, Mer? It had better be good!”

“Are you enjoying your stay in orbit around a dried-up desert planet?”

“My ship is far more comfortable than that heap of bricks you call a city. Get on with it, Governor, you’re beginning to anger me!”

The governor reached for the pickup on his communicator,
pulled it out on a retracting cable, and pointed it at the top of his desk. “See anything you recognize, Gepta?”

In the screen, the sorcerer’s eyes were filled, by turn, with wonder, greed, and rage. “The Mindharp! How did you—”

The governor chuckled. “It only matters that I
did
, Gepta, and that you’re millions of kilometers from here. You see, that story you told Calrissian—that the Harp is the ‘Ultimate Instrument of Music’—may have been good enough for him, but the story you told
me
about its being a master control over all the Toka never washed. Such a thing would be commercially useful, but this,” he indicated the Harp, “is much, much more than that.”

“What do you mean, Mer?”

“I am capable of hiring investigators, too, my dear former partner, and I took the wisest course: hiring
yours
. Recall that I have the power to commute sentences, order pardons. I know the truth: that the Mindharp of Sharu is an instrument capable of controlling every mind within the system—possibly beyond it. And the instrument is
miner
!”

“Don’t try it, Mer, you don’t know what you’re doing!” Panic was evident in the sorcerer’s voice.

“On the contrary, my dear—”

“
NO
! You don’t understand! The Mindharp will—”

The governor smiled benignly. “It will give me absolute power, even over you. I suggest that, if you don’t want to feel that power, you turn your ship out of orbit and leave my system. That may buy you a few years, at least.”

“Mer, I’ll warn you once more: you don’t have the knowledge to safely—”

Click
.

When the opportunity arose—which wasn’t until the middle of the night—Vuffi Raa crept from the governor’s offices, stole a uniform from the guard laundries, jump-wired a police cruiser in the maintenance yard, and went off to rescue Lando.

“Well, I appreciate it, Vuffi Raa, old criminal, but I trust you’ll understand the residue of skepticism that remains within me.”

They were whisking back into town at a moderate, legal, and inconspicuous velocity. They had felt several more tremors, but nothing like that first quake.

“I understand,” Vuffi Raa acknowledged, “and I suppose telling you I was programmed to betray you is much the same
as a human being’s saying he couldn’t help himself. Well, I came to rescue you by way of restitution.”

Lando thought about that. “Very well, and just to show you my good faith, you might as well know that Rokur Gepta and Duttes Mer are
both
wrong about the Mindharp.”

Vuffi Raa brought the car to a screeching halt as they neared the outskirts of Teguta Lusat. “What?”

“That’s correct. And we’ve got to get out to the port, steal something that will get us out of the system, but fast.”

“Master, I agree about getting out. You don’t want your mind controlled, especially by a being like the governor—believe me, I know. But if they’re wrong …”

“It will be worse, Vuffi Raa. My only regret is leaving the
Falcon
on Rafa V.”

“Master, four months have passed. Mer had the
Falcon
brought back. It’s cargo of life-crystals hasn’t even been unloaded, because until we reappeared in Teguta Lusat, Gupta and Mer didn’t know if they might have to bargain more with you.”

“What? Why didn’t you tell me? He didn’t think to have her drives repaired, did he?”

After a long pause, the droid replied, “No, Master,
I
did that, the first thing on the way to Rafa V.”

Lando didn’t say anything. If he’d realized the extent of the droid’s housekeeping back then, they might have taken off and skipped the last four months inside the Sharu ruins. “Well,” he said irritably, “let’s get out to the port!”

“Yes, Master.”

Aboard the decommissioned cruiser
Wennis
, leaving orbit from Rafa V, a decision had been made. Rokur Gepta lay in a special acceleration couch, being strapped up for the voyage ahead of him. The vessel in the lifeboat bay was not a lifeboat, but an elderly Imperial fighter, refitted as a scout. It could make the trip to Rafa IV in a third the time of its parent vessel.

If the occupant could stand the G-forces involved.

The safety precautions were primarily for the benefit of the crew, Gepta reflected. He didn’t need them, but it was dangerous for them to know that. As the last strap and bit of tape was in place and the port clamped down, he relaxed, waited for the tick, and didn’t stir a hair when thrust that might have seriously injured a mere human being passed harmlessly through his body.

He’d be in Teguta Lusat within an hour.

* * *

Duttes Mer looked down at the Mindharp on his desk, afraid to try again, but desperate to master the weird thing before Gepta could return and take it from him. He had no illusions. If he couldn’t control
that
mind, along with millions of others, he was doomed. He placed his short, square hand on the central shaft of the Harp again, suppressed a wave of fear, and tried to concentrate.

“
Master
!”

Vuffi Raa clung to the steering tiller as the road tried to shake them off its back like a wet dog. Lando grabbed the ends of a seat belt, tried to fasten them together as the police car pitched and swayed.

“This is no good!” he shouted, finally giving up the effort. “Look, let’s make a run for it!”

The spaceport gates were only a few hundred meters away, and they were traveling twice that distance weaving back and forth across the road. Lando slammed the door open, rolled out, got to his feet, and ran toward the gate. Vuffi Raa, right behind him, took no time at all to catch up.

A guard, well away from his swaying guardpost, was standing in the gateway. He aimed a blaster at Lando.

“Halt! Looters will be shot!”

“I’m not a looter,” Lando hollered as he approached the guard. Both were pretty busily occupied just staying on their feet. “I’m the captain of that ship over there, the
Millennium Falcon
, and I’ve got to get her off before she breaks up with everything else on this planet!”

The blaster came up to Lando’s eye level. “That ship’s under the governor’s seal. You can’t—”

Lando stepped closer. The guard fired, but, swaying as he was, succeeded only in burning a shrub across the road. By that time, Lando was close enough to seize the weapon, push it upward, punch the other man in the solar plexus with his fist.

Flexible armor is for bullets and energy beams. It’s no protection at all against an unarmed man. The guard folded. Lando took his gun away, added it to the weapon he’d taken at the labor camp.

“Let’s go!”

They ran toward the
Falcon
, and, as they approached it, the
boarding ramp swung downward slowly, as if in welcome. Cautiously, Lando and Vuffi Raa walked up the inclined plane.

At the top, still aged and wrinkled, but sporting a stylish haircut and expensive business suit, stood Mohs, High Singer of the Toka. Where his ruined eyes had been now glittered a pair of faceted multicolored optics like those of a giant psychedelic spider.

Duttes Mer glared resentfully at the alien object on his desk. Twice, now, following the mental procedure conveyed to him by Gepta’s captive sociologists, he had tried to gain control of the Mindharp, and thus—

He slammed his hand down on the desk, making the object jump. He didn’t want to try again; all it seemed to do was cause quakes that threatened to tear his administration building apart. Why that should be, he didn’t know, but he knew one thing: Rokur Gepta was coming.

The spaceport radar people had confirmed it, just before the communications lines had gone dead. A small, extremely fast craft was no more than twenty minutes from landfall. Mer suspected that Gepta didn’t need the port facilities; there was a wide flat space atop the administration building. It would do nicely for—

He hit the annunciator button. “Give me the Captain of the Guard!”

At first there was no answer. Then a terrified secretary told him, “Sir, the guard contingent has left the building because of the tremors. I was about to go, myself. I—”

“If you leave, I’ll have you shot. Summon those four men who went to Rafa XI. They’re under house arrest here in the building. Tell them to get up on the roof and—never mind, I’ll tell them myself!”