“Then why do you work for politicians?” He thrust a determined hand out. “Give me my money, or I'll suddenly and to my innocent amazement discover a pair of stowaways. Just in time for Bohhuah Mutdah's security goons to take them into custody.”
“You wouldn't!”
Lando smiled sweetly. “Try me.”
Breathing heavily, and from more than exertion, Bassi Vobah struggled among the pipes and wires in the cramped, disorganized space beneath her. She fetched up a bundle, threw it at Lando's feet.
“Take it then, you mercenary anarchist!”
“That's me all over,” he agreed charmingly, counting the credits. One hundred seventy-three thousand, four hundred eighty-seven of them.
Well, at least Lob Doluff was an honest criminal. Better than that, by returning everything he'd won to Lando, the Administrator Senior had, in effect, underwritten the gambler's expenses on the mission.
“Thanks, fuzzikins. Try and understand it takes all kinds. I certainly do.”
Bassi Vobah slumped back into the floor space, slammed the improvised lid down on top of herself. Lando took an angry step forward, stamping on the slab, ostensibly to seat it flush with the rest of the floor, but more as if afraid that some vindictive spirit would rise from its grave to haunt him.
Then he chuckled at his own annoyance with the lady cop, dismissed it, and continued along the passageway. A few meters farther, he bent again, tapped the beginning of shave-and-a-haircut on the deck, got the final two notes from Waywa Fybot, straightened, and went on.
Near the ship's main entrance, he used a screwdriver to good effect, stashing the wad of money behind an intercom panel. He let down the boarding ramp and stepped onto the “soil” of Oseon 5792.
Bohhuah Mutdah met him halfway.
The trillionaire's private planetoid, while more than a dozen kilometers in diameter, was less than three in thickness. Like nearly every other human-developed rock in the system, it had been steadily honeycombed over the decades of its occupation with storerooms, living quarters, utility areas, and spaces for every other conceivable use.
Two armed guards in stylish livery - and heavy body armor - met Lando at the foot of the boarding ramp, each stationing himself at one of the gambler's elbows. For what had appeared to be a bustling port facility from a few thousand meters overhead, the place seemed remarkably deserted just then. No one else was about, organic or mechanical, as far as the eye could see.
The guards bracketed Lando for a brisk walk across the ferroconcrete apron, into a corrugated plastic service building, through the door of an industrial-grade elevator, and down into the innards of the asteroid. He needn't have bothered with his helmet. There was enough artificial pull to hold a generous atmosphere.
The helmet's transparent bubble made a not too terribly convenient receptacle and carrying case for the package of lesai.
“Well, fellows,” Lando offered conversationally halfway through the elevator ride, “everybody here enjoying Flamewind? Where is everybody, by the way?”
A stony silence followed, during which the gambler spent a futile several moments attempting to peer through the mirror-reflective visor on the riot helmet of the guard at his left elbow. Instead, he saw the swollen and distorted image of a gambler with a mustache, lamely trying to make conversation.
The elevator halted with knee-bending alacrity, its door whooshed open, the guards escorted Lando into what appeared to be a titanic library. The spherical chamber, half a klick from wall to wall, was lined with every known variety of book produced by any sentient race anywhere in the galaxy: chips, memory rods, cassettes and tapes of various compatibilities, bound and jacketed hard- and soft-cover publications, scrolls, folios, clay, wood, and bamboo tablets, stones, bones, hides stretched wide on wooden poles, clumps of knotted rope, and a good many other artifacts whose identity the young captain could only infer from their presence with those other objects he did recognize.
The only things missing were librarians and browsers. The place seemed utterly devoid of life.
Bohhuah Mutdah, Lando surmised, was addicted to the printed (written, punched-in, hieroglyphed) word as much as to lesai - either that or he had carried pretension to a new extreme. Perhaps it was a tax write-off.
The three, Lando and his personal bookends, were whisked by a length of fluorescent monofilament - one of hundreds drifting handily around the cavernous room - to the center, where an obese giant took his ease.
The trillionaire was being read to by a frail, elderly male servant in a long white robe. Mutdah himself wore nothing but a pair of purple velvoid shorts that would have made a three-piece suit for Lando with an extra pair of trousers.
“Ah, Captain Calrissian,” hissed the enormous figure floating effortlessly in midair. His flesh billowed as he made a slight gesture. “I am given to understand you have a delivery for me and that you braved the perils of a solar storm to accomplish the swift completion of your appointed rounds, is that correct?”
Lando, angered by the condescension, cleared his throat, nodded in a way that someone foolish might have interpreted as a slight bow. He reached across his spacesuited chest to extract the lesai from his helmet.
“Hold it! Freeze where you stand!”
That from a guy who wouldn't even discuss the weather with a fellow. He and his companion had their blasters drawn, pointed at the gambler's head. The first guard looked to Mutdah. His employer nodded microscopically. The guard took the drugs, helmet and all, examined them one-handed without reholstering his weapon, gave them back to Lando.
The second gunman thrust a palm out. “Okay, let's have it!”
Lando blinked. “What are you talking about?”
A wheezy chuckle emanated from the trillionaire. “Your pistol, Captain. Give him your pistol. You were thoroughly scanned in the elevator.”
With a disgruntled expression, the gambler carefully extracted his stingbeam, handed it to the security man.
“The other one, as well, please, Captain.”
Lando shrugged, grinned at Mutdah, bent over and removed an identical weapon from his boot. Straightening, he gave it to the guard on his right, who was having trouble handling three guns with two hands.
“What happens now?” the gambler asked mildly.
“That will be all, sergeant, thank you,” Bohhuah Mutdah said cheerfully, then, turning to the servant, who had remained impassive, added “You may go as well, Ekisp.”
That left Lando and the trillionaire sitting all alone in thin air in the center of the cavern.
“I thank you sincerely for the trouble you have gone to on my behalf, Captain Calrissian. I ask you to forgive the concern for my continued health which my employees often demonstrate. It is personally gratifying, but sometimes a nuisance. Your property will be return6d when you depart.”
Not knowing what to say, Lando said nothing.
“On that table, beneath the book old Ekisp left behind, you will discover another package. Please open and examine it; assure yourself that it contains what it is supposed to. The package you have brought may then be left in its place. Will you do that now, please?”
Pulling lightly on part of the monofilament mesh surrounding them, Lando drifted to the table, the sort usually found at either end of a sofa, incongruous there in freefall. The book, a heavy double roll of vellum written in an alphabet he didn't recognize, had been tucked beneath an elastic band that stretched across the tabletop from edge to edge.
Beneath band and book, as the trillionaire had said, was indeed a bundle. Lando stripped opaque brown plastic from it, attempting to control his eyebrows when he saw the stack of hundred-thousand-credit certificates it contained. With an experienced thumb, he riffled through the pile, estimated that there were at least two hundred of them. Twenty million credits - the gambler suppressed a whistle.
What price lizard mold?
He placed the package of lesai under the restraining band, replaced the scroll, and pushed himself back from
the table.
“Thank you, sir,” the gambler said. “If that will be all, I'll be getting back to my-”
Mutdah had opened his mouth to reply, but whatever he had been going to say was muffled by a BRAAAMM!
Beneath them, the elevator door bulged and split, impelled by a highly directional charge. Two mutilated bodies - the security men who'd stationed themselves on the wrong side of the door - spun end over end across the great library. Through a cloud of smoke two figures swooped on suit jets, braked to an airborne halt in the center of the chamber, their weapons out and leveled at the trillionaire.
“Bohhuah Mutdah,” Bassi Vobah stated formally, “you are under arrest on the authority of the Administrator Senior of the Oseon System, for trafficking and use of illegal substances!”
Mutdah sighed. The explosion hadn't startled him. Nothing seemed to take the obese trillionaire by surprise. He looked at Bassi, looked at Lando speculatively, then looked at Waywa Fybot, ridiculous in his outsize bird-shaped spacesuit.
Waywa Fybot looked back.
Mutdah nodded to the avian. Fybot changed the direction of his blaster, pulled the trigger, and neatly blew off Bassi Vobah's head.
XV
BASSI VOBAH'S BODY slowly tilted backward, its legs projecting rigidly. One arm caught briefly at a filament that turned the corpse as it moved. It drifted away to join those of the guards in the book-lined void.
Bohhuah Mutdah turned his mildly amused attention back to the feathered law enforcer. “Your report, Officer Fybot, if you please.”
The creature gave him a salute. “The order for your arrest, sir, originated in the highest possible echelons. The very highest possible echelons. In addition, shortly before I was dispatched to this system, I was given purely verbal instructions, sir, that you were not intended to survive the process. As insurance, pressure was applied to the local governor through his family, his business interests, and by virtue of his... er... his...”
The trillionaire's raisin eyes twinkled pleasantly. He lifted a negligent hand, sending waves of obscene motion through his bloated flesh. “Pray go on, my friend, you may speak frankly. The truth does not offend a rational being.”
“Very good, sir: through his habituation to lesai.”
“Somehow Lob Doluff knew or guessed about my secret orders and sent her-” Fybot pointed in the approximate direction of the drifting body, now several dozen meters away and dwindling rapidly, “-to see that they were not carried out.”
The bird-being had been speaking more and more rapidly, an hysterical edge growing in his already high-pitched voice.
Now he paused, caught his breath before continuing. “Captain Calrissian was induced, under threat of prosecution on a capital charge, to provide us transportation and to assist in your entrapment. No one, however, not the Administrator Senior, not his police chief, not Calrissian, and I most fervently hope not my superiors, seems to have been aware of our...er, arrangement, sir.”
Mutdah smiled. “An excellent report, Officer Fybot. Most succinctly delivered. All in all, I am highly pleased at the outcome. But tell me: you are very nearly twenty hours later arriving than either of us anticipated at the outset. I appreciate the difficulties of negotiating the Flamewind, but... twenty hours, Fybot? Really!”
The alien blinked, finally thought to reholster his blaster. He fastened down the flap. “In transit to this place, sir, many queer events transpired. I myself suffered deep hallucinations, although my Imperial conditioning is supposed to have rendered me resistant to most... Well, that's as may be, sir. In any case, we were attacked, by a collection of odd military spacecraft. We took refuge. Some repairs were required.”
Here, the alien hesitated, visibly nervous about the next part of his report. Lando thought he knew why, and doubled both his fists in anticipation.
“Sir, believing on account of our pursuers that Calrissian had become a liability, I took the initiative in attempting to dispose of him by sabotaging his vacuum suit. I also thought perhaps this would disrupt the plans of Bassi Vobah when it came time for your arrest. I was reasonably confident that I could get the Millennium Falcon here myself. Calrissian has a pilot droid that-”
“Yes, yes,” Bohhuah Mutdah answered, for the first time betraying a touch of impatience. Lando relaxed, started breathing again. He'd hoped his little five-legged ace-in-the-hole wouldn't come up in casual conversation.
“But tell me more about these raiders,” Mutdah continued. “Who were they? What did they want?”
“Sir, they made no demands, they simply - I have no idea, sir.”
“Captain? Surely you must-”
Lando shrugged. “I've been trying to figure it out myself for days. There might be some connection with a pirate ship I fought off between Dilonexa and the Oseon. Then again, it might just be another sore loser.”
Mutdah contemplated Lando's reply for a rather longer time than Lando could see any reason for, muttered, “Possibly...” more to himself than anyone else, then “... and possibly not.”
Finally he shook his massive head and turned very slightly to face Lando again. “I might explain that Officer Fybot has never been particularly happy in his line of work. He was, I ascertained when my intelligence sources informed me of this scheme, conscripted to pay tribute owed by treaty by his system to the central galactic government.
“A gentle being, our Waywa; at heart he nurtures no ambition greater than to become a gourmet chef. I suspect that you and I would find his culinary efforts quite resistible. Nonetheless, he possesses no small talent, in the view of his fellow avians, and fondly wishes to resume his education where he was forced to abandon it upon being drafted into service.
“Have I stated your case correctly, Waywa?”
The bird-being reached up, gave his helmet a quarter turn, detached it from its shoulder ring and tucked it under an arm. He wrinkled up the few mobile portions of his face in a grimace Lando had learned to recognize as representing happiness.
“Oh yes, quite correctly, sir!”
The trillionaire addressed Lando again. “In return for his cooperation, I have personally assured Waywa that he will no longer be required to suffer involuntary servitude at the behest of the government. I fully intend to make good upon that promise, keep my part of the bargain.”
Abruptly, Mutdah raised a tiny pistol from where he'd concealed it in the deep folds of his corpulent body, drilled Waywa Fybot cleanly through the abdomen. The beam of energy pierced both suit and bird. A surprised expression froze on Fybot's face as his inert form wafted away slowly from the center of the room.
That made four corpses in the library. Things are getting pretty messy around here, the gambler thought.
“The anatomy,” Bohhuah Mutdah said incongruously, “is somewhat differently arranged than one might anticipate. That was, believe it or not, a clean shot through the creature's heart.”
His fat hand, which supposedly hadn't been used for years, adroitly tucked the pistol into the waistband of its owner's shorts, then hovered there, ready to draw and use the gun again in a fraction of a second.
Lando had noticed that the fat man's reflexes were incredible. Now he noticed something else: a glow of cruel satisfaction that suffused the trillionaire's decadent face. The man liked killing.
He looked at Lando appraisingly. “The question now, my dear Captain Calrissian, is what I ought to do with you. As you are aware, I have eliminated - have caused to be eliminated - two duly sworn officers of the law. They will doubtless be missed. I have illicitly purchased a substantial amount of a highly illegal substance. I have suborned an agent of the government. In short, nothing I couldn't easily pay to have taken care of.”
The obese figure pointed toward the table once again.
“There is a box of excellent cigars in the top drawer of the end table. Would you kindly remove two of them, light them with the lighter you will also discover there, give one of them to me, and enjoy the other yourself.” The fat hand stayed
near the gun.
Lando followed the instructions - with the exception of lighting the cigars. He handed one to Mutdah, offered to light it for him.
“Oh, come now, Captain. I suppose you are afraid of being poisoned or something silly like that. Here: If you don't mind, I'll puff on both cigars while you apply the flame - no, don't let the flame touch them. That's right, just hold it there until the ends begin to glow. That's the way to enjoy a fine cigar. Please choose either one you wish.”
Lando was a gambler, a professional manipulator of cards. He knew how to “force” a draw, determine which card another person took while appearing to encourage a free choice. Mutdah wasn't doing it to him.
He took a cigar. It was very, very good.
“Well,” he said after a couple of satisfying draws. He'd missed the cigars he'd accidentally crushed aboard the Falcon, and the crude cigarettes he'd rolled from their tobacco had been no substitute. “I don't suppose you can just let me go my own way. Believe me, I don't care what substances you find enjoyable, and these two-” he waved a hand broadly to indicate the room in which the remains of Vobah and Fybot were floating somewhere “-were no friends of mine.”
Bohhuah Mutdah slowly exhaled smoke. “I'd be a great deal more inclined to take that seriously, my boy, if I hadn't seen the expression on your face when they were killed. I suspect that you pretend to be a blasted Core-may-care, live-and-let-five sort of rogue, Captain. But you are a moralist at heart, and I would always have to be looking over my shoulder for you.” He waggled his massive, bloated shoulders. “As you can see, I would find that quite a burdensome task.”
Lando's chest began to tighten. He hadn't any illusions about what was about to happen, not since he'd seen Waywa Fybot burned down, but here it was, unmistakably. Soon five corpses would drift on the air currents in the chamber, and the next few seconds would determine whether it was shiny and uniformed or gross and nearly naked.
Star Wars - The Adventures of Lando Calrissian 02 - Lando Calrissian and the Flamewind of Oseon Page 12
