Star Wars: The Adventures of Lando Calrissia (8 page)

Every now and again, at unpredictable intervals, the Toka
simply collected in small bunches to bay at the moon like wild canines. Rafa IV didn’t
have
a moon, but, Lando thought, it was the principle that counted.

All right, the young gambler reasoned, one place he’d noticed the reliable presence of Toka—even before he’d known who and what they were—was in saloons, usually swamping the floors and polishing spitoons, the kind of occupation reserved in other systems for lower-classification droids. Here, the innkeepers could afford to entertain their prejudices and those of their clientele against the mechanical minority; Toka semislaves were handier and far cheaper.

Lando looked around. He’d selected a table in the approximate center of the room, halfway toward the back, and halfway between the bar that ran down the left side of the place, and the booth-lined wall opposite. Ordinarily, he’d prefer a position where he could see everything that went on and not have to turn his back to the door, perhaps something toward the rear.

Now the important thing was to
be
seen.

The Poly Pyramid was a working-being’s establishment. On the walls, lurid paintings alternated with sporting scenes from a dozen systems. On a less cosmopolitan planet, racy shots of unclad females would predominate, but, in places where one being’s nude was another’s nightmare, sensuality had given way before such items as incompetently taxidermized galactic fauna, which were nailed to the walls or suspended on wires from the ceiling: fur-bearing trout from Paulking XIV, for example, and a jackelope from Douglas III.

As bars go, it was brightly lit and noisy, especially considering the small number of patrons so early in the afternoon. On both sides of the traditional louvered doors the inner, full-length doors were propped open with a pair of giant laser drill-bits, souvenirs of the deep-bore mining of Rafa III, whose vacationing practitioners habituated the place.

In the back, the ubiquitous native was emptying ashtrays over a waste can.

The bartender, a scrawny specimen of indeterminate middle age, approached Lando, wringing his knobbly hands in a dark green apron. What little hair he still possessed was restricted to the back and sides of his otherwise highly reflective pate, and cut short. He had a nose friends might have called substantial, others spectacular. Tattooed permanently beneath it, a mild sneer, punctuated by a small mole on his chin.

“Spacers’ bars’re all downtown about three blocks, Mac,”
he said in a peculiar drawl. “This here’s a hardrock miners’ joint.”

Lando raised an eyebrow.

“Aint sayin’ y’can’t drink here. Just likely y’won’t want to—once the off-shift R and R crew starts t’fillin’ the place up.”

It seemed a long speech for the wiry little man. He stood there, balanced on the balls of his feet, relaxed but ready, looking down at Lando from under half-closed eyelids, a foul-smelling cigar butt dangling from his mouth. A large, dangerous-looking lumpiness was apparent beneath one side of his apron bib.

Lando nodded slightly. “Thanks for the advice; I’m meeting somebody here. Have you a pot of coffeine to hand?” Until he’d sat down, he’d almost forgotten the night’s sleep he’d lost. Now it was catching up to him.

“Some of m’best friends drink it,” the barkeep replied. “One mug comin’ up.”

He began to walk away, then paused and turned back to Lando. “Remember what I said, Mac. Splints an’ bandages’ll cost ya extra.”

Lando nodded again, extracted one of the governor’s cigars from a breast pocket, and settled back. Then, casually, he pulled the Key from an inside pocket. An optometrist’s nightmare, it wouldn’t hold still visually, even locked firmly in his hands. First it seemed to have three branches, then two, depending on your viewpoint. If you didn’t shift the angle you were watching it from, it would oblige by shifting it for you. Lando averted his eyes.

He sat like that for forty-five minutes without any seeming reaction from anyone. Having long since finished his coffeine and tired of the cigar, at last he rose, left a small tip on the table, nodded amiably at the gnarled little bartender, and stepped outside on the boardwalk.

“Master?”

“Don’t call me Master! Let’s find another bar.”

T
HE NEXT PLACE
sported a small bronze plaque beside the door that stated: “F
ACILITIES ARE NOT PROVIDED FOR MECHANOSAPIENTS
.”

It meant “No droids allowed.”

And it wasn’t even true, not in its original rendering. Vuffi Raa had a sort of waiting room to park himself in, nicely furnished, quiet, with recharging receptacles. Only bigotry of the very nicest, highest-class sort was practiced there. Lando left the robot with a couple others of its kind watching a domestic stereo serial.

Inside, three Toka swampers were distributing dirty water evenly all over the floor. That they and their employers probably thought they were washing only demonstrated that pretensions and sanitation don’t necessarily go together.

It was not quite dark, so the real drinking crowd hadn’t arrived there yet, either. It didn’t matter; Lando wasn’t interested in them.

Nearly an hour went by this time, Lando sipping a hot stimulant and toying discreetly with the Key. The thing was as evasive to the tactile senses as it was visually, he discovered, closing his eyes and examining it by touch. “Perverse” might be a better word, and even more nauseating, somehow. He opened his eyes with something resembling relief.

On several occasions, he could have sworn that one or another of the natives was staring at him intently when he wasn’t looking in their direction.

Which was also precisely what he’d expected. He began to allow himself a feeble hope.

Another hour, and two more saloons, brought him back to the Spaceman’s Rest, the first such establishment he’d visited
in Teguta Lusat, the day before. It seemed like a thousand years ago. The double-moustached alien proprietor was nowhere to be seen so early in the evening, but the droid behind the bar seemed to have had his memory banks attended to. He recognized Lando with a cordial mechanical nod.

By then, the gambler was thoroughly coffeined out. He leaned against the bar, ordered a real drink, then took it back to a table and sat, unobtrusively displaying the weird, eye-straining Key as before, for everyone to see.

One thing
was
different about the place: its multispecies clientele and robot bartender encouraged Lando not to leave Vuffi Raa outside in the street. After all, the little fellow was an item of valuable property (to somebody, someday, Lando hoped), and probably wouldn’t like being stolen, either.

That small mechanical worthy presently bellied—figuratively speaking—up to the bar, cutting up electronic touches while the ’tender polished glasses. Lando had always wondered what robots talked about among themselves, but never enough to eavesdrop.

Despite the tolerant atmosphere of the Spaceman’s Rest, the usual Toka flunky was there, an elderly wretch distributing synthetic plastic sawdust on the floor from a bucket. Lando grew hopeful as the shavings around his table deepened to two or three times the thickness of those covering the rest of the barroom floor.

The Toka kept circling, reluctant yet fascinated, rather like an insect around a bright light. He stared at the Key, tossed a worried glance toward the bar, then turned back to the Key again, drawn irresistibly. If he was concerned about the bartender’s reaction, he needn’t have bothered; the droid didn’t even seem to notice, wrapped up as he was in his work and in conversation with Vuffi Raa. Maybe native productivity wasn’t his department.

On an odd impulse to see what would happen, Lando tucked the Key back into his pocket.

Abruptly, the Toka dropped his pail with a crash and bolted out through the back of the room, leaving a fabric door-drape swinging behind him and a few gaping mouths among the sparse scattering of customers. Ordinarily nothing would induce the lethargic and prematurely senile natives to do
anything
in a hurry.

Lando held his breath: could his lucky break have come so soon?

He signaled the ’tender for another drink. Vuffi Raa obliged by bringing it over to the gambler.

“I still think we’d make better progress in the library, Master.” He set the glass on the dark polished wood of the tabletop. Lando was having a
talmog
that evening, one part spiced ethanol to one part Lyme’s rose juice, popular in a unique sunless, centerless system many hundreds of light-years away. It burned. Lando hated the things, which made them another drink he could nurse and re-ice all night if he had to.

“Listen, little friend, let me do the detecting. For your information, I think I’ve got a bite already.”

“A bite, Master?” The robot reached a free tentacle to the floor, scooped up a pinch of sawdust, and held it closely to his large red eye. “I would have thought the place to be cleaner kept than that. Perhaps the Board of Sanitation—”

“Vuffi Raa, how would you like to be reprocessed into sardine cans?”

For the second time that afternoon, there was mirth in the robot’s eye. “
Master—
”

“Don’t call me—” Lando stopped. The sawdust-spreader who had observed the gambler so closely was holding back the hanging for a veritable grandfather-of-grandfathers among the grandfatherly natives—a wizened, shriveled super-ancient nearly doubled over with the burden of his long life.

The bartender had stopped his glass cleaning, stood silent as he watched the geriatric native hobble toward the gambler. The old man’s straight white hair hung in matted tangles to his shoulders.

“Lord,” the ancient Toka wheezed almost inaudibly, bowing until his forehead touched the tabletop. “It is as it was told. Thou art the Bearer and the Emissary. That which thou concealest is indeed the Fabled Key lost long ago.”

The other Toka was suddenly nowhere to be seen. Somehow the spell was broken. The barkeep gave a metal-jointed shrug, resumed his work.

“I, er …”

Now that Lando had made his contact, he realized he didn’t quite know what to do with it. The ancient glanced at Vuffi Raa. Lando gave the little droid a scowl, which failed to rid him of the machine at what could be a delicate point in the proceedings. Vuffi Raa remained standing by the table, all attention focused on the old Toka.

“Lord,” the worthy repeated. “I am Mohs, High Singer of
the Toka. Knowest thou what thou holdest on thy person?” The elderly character straightened—as much as he was ever going to again in this life—and Lando noticed a tattoo on his forehead, a crude line drawing of the Key itself.

“An unaccountably odd artifact,” he answered, unconsciously patting the irregular lumpiness of it in his inside jacket pocket. “Some kind of three-dimensional practical joke. But, please—sit down. Would you like something to drink?”

The ancient glanced around, a furtive expression tucked deeply into the wrinkles in his face. The tattoo puckered on his forehead.

“Such is not permitted, Lord. I—”

“Master,” the droid interrupted again.

“Shut up, Vuffi Raa! Well, old fellow,” he said turning to Mohs, “wilt—
will
you at least tell me something more about the Key?” He took it out, held it in his hand.

Mohs had to wheeze a little while before he could get the words out. “Thou wishest to test thy servant, then? So mote it be, Lord. Thy wish is my command.”

The Toka launched into a long, whining gargle in a language that was vaguely familiar to Lando. Perhaps it was an obscure dialect from some system he’d visited.

The effect on the dozen or so other patrons wasn’t exactly salutory: they watched and listened, but Lando couldn’t persuade himself to believe the expressions on their faces were friendly. He found himself wishing he’d sat a little nearer the door.

The Toka’s monolog went on and on, one of Mohs’ bony hands indicating the Key occasionally, the rest of the time his weathered face turned upward toward the ceiling. Finally, the chanting ceased.

“Have I recited rightly, Lord?”

Lando scratched his smoothly shaven chin. “Sure. Perfectly. And—just as another test, mind you—let’s have an abbreviated version in the vernacular.” He indicated the rest of the room. “Might win a few converts among the heathen. Think you’re up to it?”

“Lord?”

The old man reached out shakily toward the Key, apparently thought better of it, withdrew the gnarled hand with obvious reluctance, then began. “This is the Key of the Overpeople, Lord Bearer, the Opener of Mysteries. It is the Illuminator of
Darkness, the Shower of the Way. It is the Means to the End. It is—”

“Hold it, Mohs, just tell me what it does.”

“Why, Lord, as thou knowest perfectly well …”

Mohs tapered off. Was that a hint of sudden skepticism in the ancient High Singer’s eye? He began again, in a very slightly different tone of voice.

“It releaseth the Mindharp of the Sharu, which in turn—”

“Bull’s Eye! Look, Mohs. As official Bearer of the Key, I have personally selected you to lead—in a purely ceremonial sense, of course—to lead a pilgrimage. We’re going to use the Key. What do you think of that?”

The thought that everything was happening too easily began to seep into the back of Lando’s mind, but he repressed it savagely. He was stuck with his task and welcomed any lead that would get it over with.

“Why, whatever else would we do, Lord? It must be as it has been told, else it would not have been told to begin with.”

“I’m sure there’s a hole in your logic somewhere, but I’m too tired right now to go poking for it. How soon can you start, then?”

The old man raised his snowy eyebrows, and the crude representation of the Key on his forehead squashed itself from top to bottom like an accordion.

“This very instant, Lord, if that be thy desire. Nothing supercedeth Their holy plan.”

He cast a pious eye toward the ceiling fixtures again.

“Good,” the gambler answered, once the native’s gaze returned from its rafter rapture, “but I think we’ll—”

“Master!” The little droid’s tone was urgent.

“What is it, Vuffi Raa?”