Star Wars: The Adventures of Lando Calrissia (6 page)

Lando saw that and raised with a grin: “In all truth, sir, I wouldn’t like that very much. I’ve heard that the life-orchards tend to take it out of you.”

The governor nodded, not exactly an easy feat for someone without a discernible neck: “If you had it to begin with, Captain—if you had it to begin with.”

Call:
“I’d also say you’re about to offer me some less-unpleasant alternative. That is, unless you make a custom of trumping up silly charges against every independent skipper who makes your port. And I guess I’d have heard about that long before I got here.”

The governor resembled a frowning tree-stump covered in
feathers. “Don’t anticipate me, Captain, it takes all the fun out of occasions such as this.”

He blinked, then pressed a button on his desk.

Lando replaced the cup on its saucer, leaned back in the large soft chair a servant had been ordered to bring him, and drew deeply on one of the governor’s imported cigars. Yes, indeed, all of life was one big
sabacc
game, and he was coming out ahead, just as he had done the night before.

The servant—one of the Rafa System’s “natives”—offered to pour more tea.
That
had come as a surprise (the native, not the tea). It stood there with a look of worshipful expectancy on its seamed, vacant, elderly gray-hued face. Lando shook his head. One more cup and they could
float
him out of there.

Another puff: “You were saying, my dear governor?”

“I was saying, my boy—by the way, are you finding that dressing gown adequate? Your baggage should be here from the hotel by now. But I’d rather we didn’t interrupt ourselves at this point in the conversation. I was saying that, among the intelligent species of the galaxy, we humans are a most prolific, preternaturally protean people.”

“And alliterative as all get-out, too, apparently.” Lando flicked two centimeters of fine gray ash into the vacuum tray on the governor’s desk.

Mer ignored the jibe, indicated the stooped and withered servant as it quietly shambled through the main office door behind Lando. “Consider, for example, the Toka—known locally as the ‘the Broken People.’ Entirely devoid of intellect, passion, or will. Subhumanoid in intelligence. Every one of them bears what would be the signs of advanced age among our own kind—white hair, sallow, wrinkled faces, a bent, discouraged gait. Yet these are but superficialities of appearance—or are they?—they carry each of these dubious attributes from birth.

“Domestic animals, really, nothing more. Useful as household servants, they’re too unintelligent to be anything but discreet. And in harvesting the life-orchards. But nothing else.”

Lando stirred uncomfortably in his chair, adjusting the front of his borrowed bathrobe to conceal his discomfiture. The fabric was velvoid, a revolting shade of purple, sporting bright green-and-yellow trim. If everyone took to using the fabric—and with such egregious taste—he’d have to reassess his entire wardrobe. He wondered precisely what all the palaver was
leading up to. He’d heard slavery justified a thousand different ways in a thousand different systems, yet it did seem to him that the Toka lacked some spark, some hint of the aggressive intelligence that made people
people
.

“You said ‘for example’: ‘Consider the Toka for example’—don’t you mean ‘by contrast’?”

The governor signaled for yet another cup of tea. “Not at all, my dear boy, not at all. With offworld prisoners as overseers, a few droids for technical tasks, the Toka are content to eat food intended for animals, and will quite willingly work themselves to death if it’s demanded of them.”

Lando allowed himself a small, cynical snort. He’d heard that working in the orchards had some kind of
drainage
effect. Most human prisoners had purely supervisory positions, as the governor had suggested. Ditto for nonhuman sapients that had gotten themselves into trouble. Those unfortunate few “special” prisoners of both classifications, condemned to menial labor, wound up sub-idiots within a year or two. Apparently it didn’t affect the Toka that way.

They were already sub-idiots.

“All that must be highly convenient,” he said, “for the owners of the orchards.”

Mer looked at Lando closely. “The government owns the orchards, my boy, I thought you understood that. The point is, the Toka are quite as human as ourselves.”

Lando’s jaw dropped. He scrutinized the servant as it poured the governor’s tea, oblivious to the highly insulting things being said about it. How could this acquiescent, wizened, hunched, gray-faced nonentity, with its tattered homespun loincloth and thinning white hair, be human?

The governor blinked, managing to look smugly proprietary in spite of it. He opened his mouth to speak …

WHAAAM
!

The air was split by an explosion that rocked the office. There was a blinding flash; a column of blue-black smoke boiled into existence, floor-to-ceiling, at the right of the governor’s desk.

Oh, brother
, Lando thought,
what now?

“E
NOUGH OF THIS
!” The blue-black smoke column shrieked, evaporating into tiny orange sparks that winked and disappeared.

A Sorcerer of Tund, Lando groaned inwardly, how quaint. Members of an allegedly ancient and rather boringly mysterious order from the remote Tund System, they were
all
given to flashy entrances. The rest of the column condensed into a vaguely humanoid figure about Lando’s height and general build. The old boy had probably tossed his flash-bomb into the office, then stepped through the door quite casually into the center of the smoke.

Nobody was quite sure what species the Tund wizards were, or even if they were all members of the same species. Swathed entirely in the deep gray of his order, the newcomer wore heavy robes that brushed the carpet, totally concealing the form beneath. A turbanlike headdress ended in bands of opaque cloth across the face.

Only the eyes were visible. To his surprise, Lando found himself wishing fervently that they were not. Despite the absurdity of the sorcerer’s melodramatic actions, the eyes told a different, more sobering story: twin whirling pools of—what? Insane hunger of some sort, the gambler decided with a shiver. Those ravenous depths regarded him for a moment as if he were an insect about to be crushed, then turned their malevolent power on the governor, Duttes Mer, who blinked and blinked, and blinked.

“You prolong these preliminaries unnecessarily!” a chilling voice hissed through the charcoal-colored wrappings. Lando couldn’t quite determine whether it was a natural utterance or
one produced by a vocal synthesizer. “Tell the creature what it needs to know in order to serve us, then dismiss it!”

The governor’s composure disintegrated completely. He swiveled his enormous bulk in his chair, short stubby arms half-lifted in unconscious and futile defense, his large yellow eyes rolling with abject terror. His walnut-shaded skin had paled to the color of maple. Even his feathery hair seemed to stir and writhe.

“B-But, Your Puisssance, I—”

“Tell the tale, you idiot,” the sorcerer demanded, “and be done!”

Lando spat out a bit of ceiling plaster jolted loose by the intruder’s showy appearance.

With a terrible effort, the frightened governor turned partially toward Lando, never quite daring to take his eyes altogether off the sorcerer.

“C-Captain Land-do Calrissian, p-permit me t-to introduce Rokur Gepta, my … my …”

“
Colleague
,” the sorcerer supplied with an impatient hiss that sent goosebumps up the starship captain’s spine. It didn’t seem to do the governor much good, either. He nodded vaguely, opened his mouth, then slumped in his chair, unable, apparently, to utter another word.

“I see,” the sorcerer hissed, taking a step forward, “that
I
shall have to finish this.”

Another step forward. Lando fought the urge to retreat through the back of his own chair. “Captain Calrissian, our friend the governor, in his slow, bumbling way, has informed you of the failings of the Toka. They are manifold, I shall warrant, and conspicuous. What this oaf has
not
seen fit to mention thus far—and the very heart and soul of the matter before us—is their most interesting and singularly redeeming feature.

“For you see, despite their humble estate, they observe and practice an ancient system of beliefs which, if taken literally not only explains the present unenviable condition of the Toka, but promises more for the properly prepared and sufficiently daring.

“Much, much more.”

The inhuman voice died with a hiss, as if its owner expected some question or remark from the gambler seated before him. Instead, Lando simply looked at the odd figure, forcing himself, despite an inner cringing, to gaze calmly into the lunatic eyes of the sorcerer.

Meanwhile, the governor had managed to recover enough to press a button on his desk, order the Toka servant it summoned to obtain another chair for his “colleague.” But the elderly creature could not be induced by kind words (of which the governor uttered but few) or threats (of which he had many in supply) to come near the threatening gray-swathed figure.

In the end, after an embarrassing impasse, Mer himself was forced to rise from his oversized office swiveler, bring the chair in from the next room, and place it for the robed magician. To Lando’s amusement, the fat executive had nearly as much difficulty as the Toka forcing himself to come near Rokur Gepta.

Lando himself attempted to relax, settled back, and regarded his cigar, which had long since expired from inattention. Again, seemingly from nowhere, the Toka servant materialized to light it, then, still cowering under the baleful gaze of the sorcerer, vanished once again with a shuffle of bare feet on plush carpet.

“Promises precisely
what
?” Lando asked after a long time, somehow managing to sound casual. Half a hundred wild speculations formed in his mind as he said it, but he repressed them savagely, waiting Gepta out.

“Among other things,” the sorcerer whispered, “the Ultimate Instrument of Music.”

Great
, thought Lando, his fantasies collapsing. It could have been diamonds, platinum, or flamegems; it could have been immortality or Absolute Power; it could have been a good five-microcredit cigar. The guy wants zithers and trombones.

“The Mindharp of Sharu”—Gepta explained as he seated himself, “has been an article of the simple faith among the Toka for centuries uncounted.

“As you are not doubt aware, the current human population of Rafa—not to mention numerous representatives of many other associated species—dates from the early days of the late, unlamented Republic. What is not generally appreciated by historians is that, in the chaotic, erratically recorded era preceding, a respectable amount of exploration and settlement was also carried out, albeit haphazardly. Thus, when Republican colonists arrived in the Rafa for the first time, they discovered it already occupied by human life.

“The Toka.”

“I must explain that, for some decades, I have employed
others—anthropologists, ethnologists, and the like, many of them incarcerees of the penal colony here and thus anxious to reduce the burden of their sentences—to observe, record, and analyze the ritual behavior of the Toka, believing that, in the the long run, such an effort might produce some particle of interest or profit. I have made many such investments of time and wealth throughout civilized space.

“The Toka, savages that they be, have little or nothing in the way of social organization. Infrequently, however, and at unpredictable intervals, they gather together in small bands for the purpose of ritual chanting, to all appearances the passing-on of a purely verbal heritage.

“Their legends acknowledge that they came, originally, from elsewhere in the galaxy—would-be pioneers and explorers, employing a technology which they subsequently somehow discarded or lost. They, too, found the Rafa already occupied. Their tradition speaks of the Sharu, a superhumaniod race perhaps billions of years advanced in evolution, too terrible to look upon directly or contemplate at any length.

“The Sharu were, of course, responsible for the monumental construction which characterizes this system, a style of architecture betraying a bent of mind so alien that, for the most part, even the purpose of the structures cannot be guessed. It is unclear whether mere contact with the Sharu ‘broke’ the Broken People, or whether it was the Sham’s later hasty departure.

“For depart they did.

“Legends maintain that their flight was in the face of something even more terrible than they, something they feared greatly, although whether another species, some disease, or some unimaginable something else, we cannot so much as conjecture. They left their massive buildings, they left, apparently, the life-orchards whose original function is as obscure as everything else regarding the Sharu, and they left the Toka, crushed and enfeebled by some aspect of their experience with the Sharu.”

Lando reflected on Gepta’s words while he let himself be offered another cigar.

It seemed to him that the question of what broke the Broken People was of considerably less pragmatic interest than whatever put such a scare into their superhuman masters. He hated to think of something like that still hanging around the galaxy.
A starship captain’s life (he knew better from vicarious experience than from any of his own) carried him through many a long, lonely parsec in the darkness. And many a ship has disappeared without so much as a trail of neutrinos to mark its passing.

The Toka servant, skirting Gepta, lit Lando’s cigar.

The latter said, finally, “What’s all this got to do with me?”

From within the voluminous folds of his ash-colored robes, Gepta extracted an object about the size of a human hand, constructed of some lightweight, bright untarnished golden metal.

It was Lando’s turn to blink.

Viewed from one perspective, the device seemed to be a large, three-tined fork—until the gambler looked again. Two tines or four? Or maybe three again? The thing just wouldn’t settle down in his field of vision, giving him, instead, the beginnings of a headache when he stared at it too closely or for more than a few seconds.