Star Wars: The Adventures of Lando Calrissia (9 page)

“Master, I hear trouble coming!”

“Just what we needed.” Lando groaned.

Suddenly, a man with a gun in his hand burst through the door.

“All right, spaceboy,” he growled, pointing his massive weapon at the gambler, “get ready to die!”

“
M
R
. J
ANDLER
!
” T
HE
barkeep shouted, a panicky harmonic apparent in its electronic voice, “I’m terribly sorry, sir, but my employer has permanently restricted you from entering this—”

“Shut up, machine! Now where in blazes was I? Oh, yeah—you there! Yeah, I’m talkin’ to you! It’s just like Bernie down to the Pyramid told me! And not only with a snivelin’, job-stealin’ droid at the table, but a dirty Toka, too! What are you sailor, some kinda pervert?”

The few patrons in the establishment instantly cleared a broad aisle between Lando and the intruder.

“I don’t know,” Lando replied evenly. “It wasn’t my turn to watch. Now just who in the galaxy are
you
?”

The man was good-sized, maybe eighty-five kilos, perhaps a shade under two meters tall. Over the powder-blue jumpsuit that draped his broad frame, he wore a dark blue tunic and neckcloth. He was neat, clean, shaved, and surprisingly sober for a thug, Lando thought. And with surprisingly good taste, as well.

The man walked closer; the muzzle of his pistol didn’t waver.

The robot bartender hurried to Lando’s table, placing himself between the two men. “He’s the former owner of the Spaceman’s Rest, Captain Calrissian, that was before I worked here. When the place changed hands, he tried to get a clause put in the agreement, never to allow—”

“What do you mean ‘tried,’ you miserable junk heap? A contract is a contract! People got a right to make any contract they want!”

Apparently undecided whether to shoot the young gambler or the bartender, Jandler was waving his gun around in a manner
that tied knots in Lando’s stomach. If it came to a choice, Lando hoped he’d choose the bartender as less messy—the bigot did seem to have some aesthetic sensitivities. The robot stood its ground.

“Not when there’s a system-wide ordinance against discrimination, sir, and especially not when you lost the place in a table game to a being who doesn’t believe in discrimination.”

The man swiveled on the machine—Lando thought about jumping him just then, but it remained a thought—and brought the weapon down hard on its plexisteel dome-top with a sickening crunch!

“That for your ordinance!” he hollered, “and
that—
OWCH
!”

“You should never kick a droid, sir,” Vuffi Raa advised sympathetically as the man hopped around on one foot, cursing. Somehow Jandler found the concentration to peer menacingly at the starfish-shaped robot.

“Quite right,” Lando offered, diverting Jandler’s attention even further. “He might have another droid.
Sic ’im, Vuffi Raa
!”

Jandler whirled on Vuffi Raa again. The five-tentacled ’bot stared at his master in bewilderment, but the distraction worked. The stranger took an ugly step toward Vuffi Raa, on his guard against the totally harmless little droid, and the bartender, despite its severely dented cranium, walloped the fellow on the back of the neck with a chair Lando toed over toward it.

Jandler went down like a sack of mynock guano.

A cheer rose from the dozen or so patrons in the room. They began gathering about Lando’s table—somewhat unjustly ignoring the injured and heroic ’tender—lining up to shake the gambler’s hand and pat him on the back.

“I’m gratified,” Lando observed with a highly necessary shout—he hadn’t so much as risen from his chair during the excitement and was taking a far worse beating now from his new admirers—“I’m gratified to see that not all robots are programmed categorically against violence.” More specifically to the crowd he said, “Thanks, it was nothing, honestly, thank you very much.”

“He’s only programmed against
starting
it, sir,” the bartender answered. “I’ll just haul this fellow out in the street now, if you don’t mind. By way of restitution for the disturbance, will you have a drink on the house?”

“I’d rather have it on the table in front of me. And bring one for my friend, here. Mohs?”

Lando jumped up. Mohs was gone.

So was the Key.

Turning quickly, Lando glimpsed the raveled tail of a gray-rag garment whisking through the door-drape at the back of the room. He was through the little crowd and across the room with a speed that startled even the robots.

He grabbed—

And received a collection of knobbly knuckles in the teeth!

Spitting blood, Lando seized the wrist attached to the knuckles, bit down hard in the meaty edge of the palm. Mohs let out a yelp and brained his erstwhile Lord left-handed with the Key. Releasing the old man’s arm, a dazed, surprised, and angry Lando went for the throat with both hands, catching Mohs’ knee, instead, right between the legs.

Lando groaned and sank down to his knees, fighting the urge to vomit.

This, however, put him in a position of advantage. As the elderly native—Lando couldn’t make himself stop thinking of the savage in this manner—came in for another shot with the Sharu Key, Lando grabbed the nearest naked, dirty ankle that came to hand. Mohs went down on his back, with Lando on top, the old man biting and scratching.

By this time, Vuffi Raa had made it to his master’s side, where he hopped up and down, shouting advice that Lando couldn’t hear and probably wouldn’t have followed. It was scarcely a fair fight. As much as he would have liked to, Lando couldn’t punch the “helpless” old fellow into submission. He simply attempted to hold on and ride the furious storm to its conclusion.

They rolled across the storeroom, crashing into crates and cartons, and at one point fetching up against the lower extremities of the bartender, who had joined Vuffi Raa in supervising and kibitzing. For a brief crystalline moment, Lando looked up.

“You’re being a lot of help,” he said to the bartender.

The mixerbot remained motionless. “Beating up old men is a little out of my line, Captain. Besides, you look like you could use the practice.”

Abruptly, Lando was sucked back into the fight. Mohs bashed him on the head again, but a bit more weakly. Lando
grabbed the Key, then managed to lever himself into a sitting position astride the Toka Singer, grab a forelock of shaggy white mane, and bounce the elderly head once, gently but firmly, on the floor.

Mohs struggled for another moment, then relapsed into passivity.

“Naughty, naughty, Mohs,” Lando said, gasping for breath as he looked down at the ancient. “No fair doing Holy Things without the duly constituted Key Bearer’s help.”

Mohs concealed his face in his long, emaciated hands. “Thou mayest kill me now, Lord. I have sinned greatly.”

With considerable effort, Lando cranked himself back into a standing position, reached a hand down to the native, and helped him up.

“By the Emptiness, that’s the first sign of spirit I’ve seen from any of you people.”

He sat down, panting, on a stack of plastic cartons in the dingy rear hall. “But, from now on, just keep in mind who’s the sacred emissary here, will you?” He held up the Key. “I’m in charge of this eyeball-bender for the duration. Keep that in mind, and we’ll get along fine. Vuffi Raa?”

The robot trundled up beside him, his tentacles a tangle of nervous excitement. “Yes, Master? Sorry I couldn’t help you back there, but—”

“I know, I know. In your estimation, how long will it take for Gepta’s crew to sabotage the
Falcon
the way they said they were going to?”

The droid considered: “Not more than an hour, Master. It’s merely a matter of unshipping the toroidal dis—”

“Spare me the technical details.” Lando turned to the old man, who seemed to be recovering more quickly than he was. “Mohs, we’re headed for the spaceport to begin our little excursion. Are you ready to come along and behave?”

The old man nodded humbly, bowing. “Yes, Lord, I am.”

“Then let’s get moving—and don’t call me Lord.”

Mohs stole a glance at Vuffi Raa, nodded again. “Yes, Master.”

“Mohs,” Lando scrutinized the wrinkled figure carefully, “are you trying to be funny?”

“What is ‘funny,’ Lord?”

Lando sighed, beginning to be resigned to permanent exasperation. “Something about this whole confounded setup. Here I neatly avoid a messy conflict with that character out in the
bar, and then you go and try to set yourself up in the Key Bearer business. And I don’t see why Gepta and his pocket-piece governor need me to do their dirty work in the first place. They had the Key, why not just … Come on, Vuffi Raa, we’re getting out of here. I need a chance to think. We’ll doss down aboard the
Falcon
tonight and get a fresh start in the morning.”

He paused, then added, “And I want you to help me rig up a few booby traps in case anybody else wants to try grabbing the Key.”

“Master, I’m not sure my programming will allow that!”

The bartender stood, impassive, then turned and went back into the bar. “Good luck, sir. I think you’re going to need it.”

Keeping a suspicious eye glued to Mohs, Lando said to Vuffi Raa, “Very well, then, whether we can overcome your cybernetic scruples or not, we’re
still
spending the night aboard the
Falcon
. Get out front and find us some transport—a bus, a vegetable gravlifter, anything.” He shrugged uncomfortably, trying to unwind a painfully twisted muscle in his shoulder. “Do you think they might have any taxis on this misbegotten mudball?”

The robot knew a rhetorical question when he heard one.

Lando watched him go, rubbed at his bruised shoulder, stood up and stretched.

“Stay a moment, Lord.” It was the old Toka. “It is not meet that thy servant mount the same conveyance as thyself.”

Lando snorted. “What do you propose as an alternative?”

Mohs shook his snowy head. “Worry not, Lord, neither trouble thyself over the minor travails of thy servant, but go thou, instead, thine own way, even as thy servant shall go his.”

“Catchily put. Does that mean you’ll meet us at the spaceport?”

The old man looked puzzled. “Is that not what I just said?”

“Somewhere in there, I suppose; it got lost in the transubstantiation. Very well, old disciple, have it your own way.” Blast, there was a snag in his tailored uniform trousers. They simply weren’t intended for brawling. “We’ll leave a light burning in the starboard viewport.”

He left by the front door to join Vuffi Raa. Mohs presumably exited through the back. A hoverbus swooshed along almost immediately. Lando and the robot were whisked the ten kilometers to the landing field in as many minutes.

They were not unanticipated.

“What in the name of the Core is that?” Lando asked the equally astonished droid.

Outside the chain-link gate that filled a gap between the force-field pole-pieces around the port, a considerable and highly unusual crowd had gathered. Absently, Lando paid the driver droid, turned to stare at the hundreds of stooped gray figures standing in their loincloths in the moonless dark, chanting to the cold unanswering stars.

As the gambler and his companion approached them, the primitives stepped back
en masse
, forming a broad, open corridor. To one side, a spaceport security officer was visible through the transparency of his guard booth, gesticulating at the visicom.

Lando and Vuffi Raa, the former growing more reluctant by the minute to surround himself in an unpredictable mob—especially after his recent wrestling match with one of the natives—made slow, involuntarily stately progress as the crowd folded itself back before them, the rhythmic chanting never missing a beat.

At the end of the living aisle, they encountered Mohs.

I
T HAD BEEN
a couple of very long sleepless days. Lando didn’t even want to think about how an ancient savage on foot had beaten a fusion-powered hovercraft across ten kilometers of twisted, ruin-strewn thoroughfare to the spaceport.

Let the robot figure it out, he told himself groggily, that’s what Class Two droids are for.

Mohs, High Singer of the Toka, had, of course, been leading the high-pitched, disharmonious chant. Now the old man signaled the others to provide a more subdued background music as he addressed the gambler:

“Hail, Lord Key-Bearer”—he turned to Vuffi Raa—“and Emissary. It is, indeed, as it has been told. Long have we awaited thee. Vouchsafe now unto thy servants what it is that shall next come to pass.”

“We shall climb aboard yon
Millennium Falcon
” Lando pointed to the crablike vessel sitting on the asphalt a hundred meters away, and yawned. “Tuck ourselves into our little beddy-byes, and get some—
yipe
!”

He stopped short. Across the tarmac, half a dozen repulsor-trucks, overhead lights blazing like novas, surrounded the small starship. Along with what appeared to be at least two squads of heavily armed constabulary.

“Good grief,” the gambler said to the robot. “Your ethical virtue will remain unscathed tonight, at least.
Everybody
seems to have beaten us to the spaceport. So much for the wonders of public transportation. What do you suppose we’ve done now?”

“ ‘We,’ Master?”

“Very funny, my loyal and trusty droid. Your support underwhelms me.”

Approaching the lowered boarding ramp, Lando, the robot, and the Toka Singer—who had detached himself from his departing congregation—were met by armored, dark-visored cops, blasters drawn and at the ready.

“Okay, officer, I’ll pay the two credits.” Lando was tired and angry. He didn’t even want to know how they’d gotten in past the locking-up he’d done the previous night. But he kept his tone goodnatured. With those fellows, it paid to.

“Good evening, Captain,” came an equally good-humored reply from beneath a helmet with two decorative bars across its highly reflective forehead. “We’re here to guard your cargo while it’s being loaded.”

“Really?” Lando marveled. He was always suspicious of favors from policemen. The trooper pointed an armored finger toward the trucks, from which a steady stream of packages ran up automated conveyors into the
Falcon
’s open cargo hatches.