Star Wars - The Adventures of Lando Calrissian Trilogy

by L. Neil Smith

  “Now, what was it you were saying, little fellow?”

  “Merely... greeted... you... Asked... how... you...feel.”

  “Lousy, but thanks for asking. Anything interesting happen in the night?” He scrounged around for a cigarette, started thinking about which of the ration bars to eat for breakfast.

  “It... is... nighttime... now... outside.... Master...You... slept... through... the... day.”

  “I don't see that it makes all that much difference, down here. Where's Mohs?” Lando had glanced around, up and down the tunnel, and hadn't seen the old man. Perhaps he'd-”

  “What... Master?”

  “We seem to be having some difficulty understanding one another this - er, afternoon. I said, where's Mohs, did he wander off somewhere?”

  “Master... there is something I must tell you.”

  Lando felt a vague alarm. “What's that, old watch-movement?”

  “I believe... from measurements, that you're shrinking.”

  “What?”

  “Everything is shrinking.... The tunnel grows narrower by the kilometer... You have shrunk just enough that my weight upon you causes pain.... The previous rate at which I communicated is too fast.... We are nearing each other's size and time-passage.”

  “Which could mean just as well that you're growing, did you ever thing of that?” Lando examined the tiny robot in his hand. Let's see, he'd estimated Vuffi Raa's previous size at perhaps three millimeters. Yes, no question of it, he was very nearly twice that size now and his miniscule weight was actually perceptible in Lando's hand.

  “Yes.... I considered it.... I think you are shrinking.”

  “Well, I think you're growing. What about Mohs?”

  “Who... Master... Who is Mohs?”

  “Vuffi Raa, don't do this to me! Mohs - the High Singer of the Toka - the old guy who led us here! Mohs!”

  There was a long, long pause. It must have been vastly longer to the speeded-up droid. Finally: “Master... I recall no Mohs.... Are you certain you feel all right?”

  XVII

  AS THE TUNNEL carried them along, they argued.

  “Who was it that we met in the bar, who sang the Songs that pointed the way to Rafa V?”

  “Why, Master, something that Rokur Gepta said must have given you the clue, and you guessed. Very good guessing, Master, highly commendable.”

  “Well, then, dammit, what about that crowd at the port. Who had been leading the singing?”

  “Why, no one, Master, it was simply community chanting, spontaneous on the part of the natives.”

  “Arghhh! Okay, why did we land at the pyramid - never mind, I know: it was the biggest building on the planet. Tell me this: if there wasn't any Mohs, who ambushed us, shot you full of holes, and carried me off to the life-orchard to die?”

  “The natives, of course, Master. But there wasn't any chief or head witch doctor or whatever. The Toka don't have enough social structure for that.”

  “Or to build crossbows? Look, Vuffi Raa, I couldn't have made up that part about eating a lizard, I just couldn't.”

  “What do you expect me to say, Master?”

  “I expect you to say that this is all an elaborate practical joke, and that you're sorry and will be a good little droid from now on.” Lando shook the plastic package. There weren't any cigarettes left. “Life is just full of annoyances these days.”

  Vuffi Raa stood on the floor by Lando's knee. He was five or six centimeters tall, by then, looking very much like one of those tropical spiders that eat birds.

  “I wish I could do that,” he squeaked, no longer coding his messages in pulses. He had to make a conscious effort to slow them down for his still-gigantic master. “What reason would I have to lie, Master?”

  Lando crushed the pack, started to throw it away, then, looking around him at the clean, uncluttered tunnel, thought better of it and put it in his pocket. “I'm not saying you're lying, Vuffi Raa. One of us is wrong, that's all. By the Eternal Core, I can describe the old man to you in the finest detail, from the tattoo on his wrinkled forehead to the dirt on his wrinkled feet!”

  Vuffi Raa said nothing to that. He simply sat there growing - or watching his master shrink. That was something else they hadn't been able to agree about, but they'd tired of arguing about it. They were also tired of asking one another when the journey would be over. Lando extracted the deck of sabacc cards he carried with him, began to shuffle them. Vuffi Raa looked on with interest.

  “Did you know, old pentapod, that these things were once used for telling fortunes?” He shuffled the deck again, cut it, and began laying the cards out on the floor.

  “Highly irrational and unscientific, Master.”

  “Don't call me Master. I know what you mean, though - except that sometimes they can help you solve a problem, simply by getting you to look at it in a way you hadn't thought to before.”

  “I've heard that said, Master, but so can a sudden blow to the head, if you're looking for random stimuli.”

  That's right, Lando thought, what I really need now is a fresh machine to banter with. The first card to fall was the Commander of Staves, one which Lando had often associated with himself. It was the apparently chance appearance of the right card - as happened so often - that made him wonder if his “scientific” analysis was all there was to the things! “That's me,” he explained to the robot, “a messenger on a fool's errand. Let's see what stands in the way.” He dealt a second card, laid it across the first. “Great Gadfry!” he exclaimed.

  “What is it, Master?”

  “Not what, who. It's Himself - the Evil One. I'd guess that to be Rokur Gepta. Hold on, now, it's changing.”

  As sabacc card-chips are prone to do now and again, the second card transformed itself into the Legate of Coins - but the image was upside-down.

  “Duttes Mer!” laughed Lando. “A being corrupt and evil if ever there was one! Well, that makes sense, even though it tells us nothing new. Let's see what else.”

  The third card he placed above the others. The Five of Sabres, Lando explained, represented his own conscious motivations, in this case, the desire to relieve the weak and unwary of the burden of their excess cash. He chuckled, dealt a card below the others, indicating his deeper, possibly subconscious motives. He groaned.

  “The Legate of Staves. Don't tell me I'm a do-gooder at heart!”

  “Master, this is simply a random distribution of images, don't take it seriously.”

  Lando looked at the little robot cautiously. “I think I've just been insulted. Well, the next card should tell us something. It represents the past, things coming to an end.”

  It was the Six of Sabres. Lando placed it to the left.

  “Oh-ho! This usually denotes a journey, but its position indicates the journey is nearly at an end. What do you think of that?”

  “I think, Master, that journeys can end in many ways, not all of them pleasant or productive.”

  “That's what I keep you around for, to bring me down whenever I feel too good, to remind me that every silver lining has a cloud. Say, you know, you're getting bigger, eight, maybe nine centimeters. And your voice is changing, too.”

  The little robot didn't reply, but simply watched Lando lay the next card down to the right of the center pair.

  “Flame and famine! You spoiled the run, Vuffi Raa - it's the Destroyed Starship!”

  “Does that mean harm will come to the Falcon, Master?”

  “Don't call me Master. I thought you didn't believe in any of this.”

  “I don't. But what does it mean?”

  “Cataclysmic changes in the near future, death and destruction. It may be the worst card in the whole deck. Maybe. One thing I've learned from all this: There is ways a worse card. This next will tell us what will happen to us and how we'll react to it.”

  “We, Master?”

  “There you go again - great: the Satellite. It means a lot of fairly nasty things, things that you find under rocks. Mos
tly it means deception, deceit, betrayal.” He looked closely at the robot again. “Are you getting ready to double-cross me, my mechanical minion?”

  “There, Master, is the greatest danger in such mystical pursuits. You trusted me before you started playing with those card-chips, didn't you?”

  “I still do, Vuffi Raa. The next card, up above the Satellite, here, is supposed to tell us where we'll find ourselves next. Hmmm. I wonder what that means?”

  The Wheel sat shimmering on the card-chip, an image denoting luck, both good and bad, the beginning and the ending of things, random chance, final outcome - it gave Lando no information whatsoever. The third card in that part of the array, placed in line above the Satellite and the Wheel, represented future obstacles. Lando cringed when he saw what had appeared.

  “Gepta again! Well, I suppose that's only logical. Want to see the final outcome, old clockwork? Well, you're going to, anyway. Here we go. Well, that's not too bad, after all. It's the Universe. It means we'll have a shot at everything we want to do. Join the human race and see the world. Something like that.”

  “Master.”

  “Yes, Vuffi Raa, what is it?”

  “Master, that Six of Sabres: that's a journey over with?”

  “That's what I said although it can mean other things, in other-”

  “Master, our journey's over with.”

  And, indeed, so it appeared to be. The floor slowed as they came upon the towering doorway of a chamber large enough to park a fleet of spaceships in. A long, long distance away, something resembling a giant altar was raised, all the lights in the cavernous room focused upon it.

  Even from several hundred meters off, Lando could tell it was the Mindharp of Sharu. It hurt his eyes to look at it.

  XVIII

  IT WASN'T AS easy as all that.

  There were other things inside the hall besides the podium or altar where the Mindharp stood, and a giant replica of the Key Lando had carried until the wall of the pyramid had taken it.

  “What do you make of that, Vuffi Raa?”

  The robot, standing now as high as Lando's knee, peered into the same odd well-lighted gloom that had filled the tunnel behind them. The light was a brownish amber and seemed to emanate from the floor. The room, a vast auditorium of a place, was lined with something between sculpture and paintings pageant that seemed, to the gambler, to recapitulate his dreams of the night before.

  Here, at the entrance, shaggy forms, barely erect, shambled along the walls in a frozen march, growing straighter, taller, beginning to carry things in their hands, to lose their furry coverings, to wear clothing.

  Lando and Vuffi Raa followed the right wall, which curved gently into the vast circularity that was the chamber of the Mindharp. By the time the figures on the wall were playing with internal combustion engines and rocketry, the pair had only walked a few dozen meters. Uncounted thousands of centuries of history lay ahead of them.

  The robot hadn't spoken. Lando looked down at him. His eye was glowing peculiarly - or perhaps the peculiarity was in the lighting of the chamber.

  “Vuffi Raa, did you hear me?”

  “Why yes, Lando,” the droid said, seeming to be waking from a sort of walking dream. “What do I make of this? The same that you do - that this is somehow the center of Sharu culture. What they left behind of it, anyway. That the Harp is somehow even more important than we thought it was.”

  Lando hadn't been thinking that at all. He'd been thinking that the chamber was a place of worship, that the figures on the wall were human – Toka - that the bas-relief murals would convey to them the story of how they arose on some far-off planet and came to the Rafa System. That somewhere along the wall the story would be told of how they met the Sharu and discovered their masters.

  He didn't want to wait. “I'm going on across the room, enough of this historical nonsense. Coming with me?”

  Vuffi Raa turned, followed Lando without a word.

  It was a long, long trip. The Sharu had discovered the same secret that many human cultures had: that if you make the floors of a public building slick enough, keep them polished and slippery, they'll force the people who have to walk there into little mincing steps that magnify the distances and humble the spirit - just as high ceilings tend to do. Lando wasn't having any. He took a few running steps and slid along the floor.

  “Wheee! This is fun! Come on, old tinhorn, try it!”

  “Master!” said the robot in a scandalized voice. “Have you no respect?”

  Lando stopped, gave the robot a sober look. “Not a grain of it - not when it's being imposed on me by the architecture.”

  He took another running start, slid several meters this time. The robot had to hurry to catch up. By the time he had, he was very nearly his original height.

  “Lando,” he said, “speaking of architecture, there's something very odd about this place.”

  Lando had to stop to catch his breath. He sat down on the floor. “That would be consistent with everything else around here. What is it this time?”

  “Well, from the entrance, the room looked circular, with a high domed ceiling, and perhaps a thousand meters across the floor to the altar.”

  Lando looked around. “Still seems that way to me.”

  “And to my vision, too. But, checking with radar and a number of extra senses, the room is ovoid-shaped like an egg with a big end and a small end. The big end was the entrance. The roof keeps getting closer to the floor.”

  Lando had another flash of his dreams. Something Vuffi Raa said earlier had triggered the first, something about the idea that it wasn't he, the robot who was growing, but Lando who was shrinking. Yet if that were true - the tunnel had seemed to stay the same size the duration of the two-day trip - then the moving passageway had to have been shrinking. Lando had appeared to Vuffi Raa to be a hundred and ten or twenty meters tall in the beginning. Now he was back to being a little shy of two. The corridors had to have been shrinking accordingly.

  At that rate, when they reached the Mindharp, Vuffi Raa would tower over Lando, and they'd both have to travel on hands and knees to reach the artifact.

  “HALT!” said a voice.

  “What?” Vuffi Raa and Lando cried simultaneously.

  “IT IS NOT PERMITTED TO CROSS THE HALL.”

  “What happens if we do?” inquired Lando.

  The voice paused, seemed confused. “WELL, I'M NOT SURE I KNOW. NO ONE EVER ASKED ME. BUT IT IS NOT PERMITTED.”

  Lando opened his mouth,

  ”Just who in the Hall are you, anyway?” Vuffi Raa said.

  Lando looked at the robot sharply. He hated having his good lines stolen. It was exactly what he'd been planning to say, himself.

  “WHY, I AM THE HALL, OF COURSE. YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO LOOK AT THE EXHIBIT AS YOU APPROACH THE SACRED OBJECT.”

  “And it's your job,” Lando suggested, “to make sure we do? Well, let's get a few things straight here, Hall: I've been tugged along by everything that's happened so far. I'm not going to let an empty room tell me what to do. Now answer me truthfully: does anything bad or dangerous happen to someone if they don't skulk along the wall like vermin?”

  “NO, I DON’T SUPPOSE IT DOES.”

  “Then I guess we'll go on. You don't happen to have a cigarette, do you?”

  “I'M AFRAID I DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU MEAN.”

  “I thought you were going to say that. Come on, Vuffi Raa.”

  They continued across the broad expanse of the Hall, Lando sliding occasionally just to demonstrate his spirit. Vuffi Raa's legs twinkled in the weird lighting. Lando had a thought: “Hey, Hall?”

  “YES, HAVE YOU DECIDED TO GO BACK TO THE WALL?”

  “No. I was just wondering: how much do you know about this place?”

  “ABOUT MYSELF?”

  “No, about the pyramid and the moving tunnel we were in before we got here.”

  The Hall considered. “A GREAT DEAL. WHAT, SPECIFICALLY WOULD YOU LIKE TO KNOW?”

 
“Well, just to begin, what size am I?”

  A very long pause this time. “IN WHAT UNITS OF MEASUREMENT?”

  “Skip it, then. What I really want to know is: was I gigantic a few kilometers back, or was my friend, here, very tiny?”

  “DOES IT MATTER?”

  “Of course it matters. Would I ask, otherwise?”

  “Organic entities seem to take considerable delight in doing things to no good purpose,” Vuffi Raa offered. “But in this case, Hall, I'd be interested in knowing, too.”

  “Right,” Lando said under his breath, “so the two of us can compare notes on the frailties of humankind. Play your cards right, Vuffi Raa - cozy up to this Hall and they may make you a telephone booth or something.”

  “VERY WELL. THE CHANGES IN THE DIMENSION WERE WROUGHT ON THE ORGANIC LIFE-FORMS HERE. IT IS A NECESSARY PART OF THE PROCESS WHICH CULMINATES, PROPERLY, IN TRAVELING AROUND THE CIRCUMFERENCE OF THE HALL AS YOU ARE INTEN--”

  “Skip the commercial, Hall,” said Lando, “and get on with the explanation.”

  “VERY WELL. THIS INSTRUMENTALITY IS CAPABLE OF ALTERING THE PROPORTIONS OF INANIMATE MATTER AS WELL, BUT IT MUST BE IN THE PROXIMITY OF ORGANIC LIFE. OTHERWISE, IT IS ABSORBED BY THE MAINTENANCE SYSTEMS.”

  Vuffi Raa described his journey through the blue and red maze. “Can you tell me what all that was about?”

  “CERTAINLY. YOU WERE MISTAKEN BY THE WALL FOR A SMALL HOUSEKEEPING DEVICE AND ROUTED THERE FOR REPROGRAMMING AND REPAIR. HAVE YO BEEN REPAIRED?”

  “Not that I know of.” Lando laughed. “Any secret urges to sweep up or take out the garbage?”

  “Lando, this is serious. I want to know what happened!”

  “Touchy! Okay, I concede, I grew, I shrank - but I've got you on another one: Mohs. The Hall said organic lifeforms, plural.”

  “QUITE CORRECT, SIR, YOUR INTESTINAL FLORA, OTHER SYMBIOTIC ORGANISMS, ALL WERE GREATLY ALTERED IN SIZE, THEN BROUGHT BACK TO NORMAL MAGNITUDE AS PART OF-”