Star Wars - Lando Calrissian and the Mindharp of Sharu

by L. Neil Smith

  “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.

  • VIII •

  IT 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.

  “That’s right,” the guardsman answered, then added in a more subdued and, Lando thought, somehow civilian tone, “I sure hope your bruises are healing up okay. We were pretty careful. Nothing personal, you understand, sir. A guy has orders to follow.”

  And plenty of morally evasive clichés to fall back on, Lando thought as he peered into the anonymous helmet visor. He gave it up. “Think nothing of it, my dear fellow, I understand completely. I’ll try and do as much for you, someday.”

  The cop chuckled, snapped to attention, clicked booted heels, and brought his heavy handweapon to port arms. Lando suppressed an unmilitary snigger of his own at the display, and climbed aboard the Falcon with Vuffi Raa and Mohs behind him.

  The interior of the Millennium Falcon, Lando thought for the hundredth time, was more like the innards of some great living beast than the inanimate human construction that it was. Starliners and other vessels he was familiar with were as rectilinear and orderly as the hotel where he’d spent an uncomfortable night in Teguta Lusat. But aboard his ship were no separate compartmentalized cabins of any sort, nor any clear demarcation between cargo and living space, simply lots of un-specialized volume, currently being rapidly and compactly filled with cartons and crates of highly valuable life-crystals.

  Lando watched the port’s longshorebots work. It appeared Gepta was more than keeping his part of the bargain—Lando made a note to have the crystals assayed as soon as possible. There was nothing about the sorcerer, or his governmental flunky, that inspired trust, even had Lando been the trusting type.

  Parking Mohs at a convenient bulkhead frame, Lando and Vuffi Raa stopped off beside the ultralightspeed section of the ship’s drive area. There had been some changes made. And not for the better, Lando thought.

  “Oh, Master!” the dismayed Class Two robot wailed. “Just see what they have done to her!” He rushed to the faster-than-light drive panels and stood, wringing his metallic tentacles and making the kind of high-pitched squeal humans call tinnitis and see physicians about.

  All along the wall, access panels had been left rudely hanging open. Frayed wires and broken cables dangled from the overhead. Small bits and pieces of machinery, mechanical detritus such as nuts and washers and scraps of insulation littered the decking. The faint foul stench of soldering and scorched plastic defied the ventilating system’s best efforts.

  “It’s quite a mess, all right, old home appliance. But don’t fret, she’s only a machine, after all, and they’ve promised to make full and complete repairs, once we—”

  “Only a machine?” The robot’s voice was disbelieving, scandalized, and almost hysterical. “Master, I, too, am ‘Only a machine’! This is horrible, unbearable, cruel, evil. It’s—”

  “Oh, come now, Vuffi Raa, don’t exhaust your vocabulary. You’re a sapient machine. The Falcon’s big and smart, but she’s way, way beneath you on the scale of things. Otherwise I shouldn’t have had to rent that confounded, idiotic—”

  “Master,” the droid interrupted, more gently this time, “how does it make you feel to see somebody’s furry pet run over by the roadside? Do you dismiss it, say it’s only an animal, beneath you on the scale of things? Or do you feel like … well, the way I feel now?”

  Lando shook his head, too tired to argue further. The point, within limits, was certainly well taken. And he hated to think that the little automaton was a more humane being than he himself.

  “I’m going forward,” he said abruptly. “There’s no telling what trouble somebody like Mohs can find to get into with all those dials and pretty buttons going unsupervised.”

  “Very well, Master. With your permission, I’ll remain here a little while to comfort her as best I can and tidy up this … this butchery.”

  “As you will.” Lando paused in the bight of curving corridor, turned back to s
ee the droid collecting washers and sheared rivets from the decking. “Er, uh, sorry I didn’t understand your feeling at first, old cyberaet. It’s just that I …” His voice trickled off.

  There was a long silence between the two, then: “That’s all right, Lando. At least you understood after I explained it. That’s more than most organic beings could do, I think.”

  The gambler cleared his throat self-consciously. “Yes, well, er, ah … see you forward in a little while, then—and don’t call me Lando.”

  In the tubular cockpit forward, Lando took an inexpert look at the indicator lights on various control boards, then thumbed through the Falcon’s dog-eared flight manual to see what they meant.

  Mostly, the unfamiliar lights he saw were warnings of open hatch covers where the loading was being carried out. Clunks and thumps and groans below confirmed the telltales. The entire section of instrumentation given over to the ultralight drive had only solid reds and yellows glaring balefully.

  Behind Lando, in the high-backed jumpseat where the gambler had placed him firmly, Mohs seemed to have lapsed back into senile passivity. Lando couldn’t blame him: he almost wished he could do the same. It had been a long, hard day for the poor old savage. The Toka sat, eyes wide open, staring down at the decking plates, knobbed hands lying palms up in loinclothed lap.

  “Mohs?” Lando asked gently.

  The old man started, as if he’d been thoroughly asleep despite the open eyes and hadn’t seen Lando turn around to speak to him. He blinked, rubbed a slow and shaky hand over his stubbly chin.

  “Yes, Lord?”

  “Mohs, what was it that you and your people were chanting out there by the fence?”

  The old man breathed deeply, resettled himself in the heavily padded jumpseat. He’d never placed his scrawny fundament in so luxurious a resting place before. He patted the arms a little, almost in disbelief.