Star Wars: The Adventures of Lando Calrissia by L. Neil Smith Page B

the life-orchards, he thought grimly to himself.

•  V  •
    “I HAVEN’T THE foggiest notion! Anyway, what possible business is it of yours?”
    Lando stalked moodily along the narrow streetside toward a transit stop. His gaudy shipsuit had at least been restored to him, even his diminutive stingbeam. This last decorative touch, he reasoned bitterly, was yet another educational message from Rokur Gepta and Duttes Mer, underlining ironically what they imagined was his utter helplessness. Well, they’d learn better.
    Trouble was, Lando couldn’t think of how to accomplish that at the moment.
    Vuffi Raa clattered beside him, carrying the rest of his luggage, which had been somewhat battered during the assault on the hotel room.
    “But Master, I mean, Captain—”
    “Call me Lando!”
    “Er, Lando, how am I to help you if you won’t tell me what’s required of us? I know nothing about what’s going on. I spent the entire night in the Confiscated Properties Room at Constabulary headquarters, sandwiched between bales of illicit smoking vegetables and wire baskets overflowing with vibroknives, murder hatchets, and the like.”
    At the thought, the little droid suffered an involuntary mechanical shudder, which originated at its torso seams and rippled along all five tentacles to their slim-fingered extremities.
    Lando’s bags bobbed up and down until the seizure passed.
    “Did you know,” the robot offered in a subdued, conciliatory voice, “that most of the spouse killings in this system are accomplished with cast-titanium skillets?”
    Lando stopped suddenly, stared back at Vuffi Raa in anger. “With a sharp blow to the cranium, or simply bad cooking? Look, my mechanical albatross, there’s nothing personal in this. It’s simply that I haven’t the faintest clue where or how to begin the idiot quest they’ve blackmailed me into, and I stand a far better chance if I
don’t
have to spend my time stumbling over a useless—”
    “Master, I do not wish to oppose your will in this matter. In fact, such would violate my most fundamental programming to the point of incapacitating me. However—”
    “I don’t give a damn
what
happens to your capacitors!”
    “—however, before you sell me again, I am determined to prove to you that I am, indeed, far from useless. Perhaps even slightly indispensable.”
    Lando stopped again in the middle of the boardwalk, looking down with contempt at the little suitcase-laden automaton. He took a deep breath.
    “
That
, my esteemed collection of clockwork cowardice, would be something to see. What precisely have you in mind?”
    Vuffi Raa paused. A lengthy silence followed, and hovercars and repulsor vehicles were suddenly audible swishing by in the narrow, twisted avenue.
    Without warning the droid suddenly spoke once more.
    “So that is the difficulty; I believe I understand at last. The hotel room. The Constabulary. Your cries to me for help. Your preference, as I understand it, is that I should have been somewhat more, er … physically demonstrative. Even, perhaps, at the risk of worsening the charges against you?”
    Lando turned on a booted heel, wordlessly resumed his march down the street. A bus went by, bearing half a dozen gawking tourists being lectured by the driverdroid on what little was known of the Sharu.
    “
Master
!” the droid cried behind him, scurrying to catch up “There was nothing I could do! I am specifically enjoined by my programming never to—”
    “
Stow it
!” Lando snorted, taking some visceral satisfaction in the terse, blue-collar monosyllables. He’d kept his back to Vuffi Raa this time, hadn’t even slackened his pace. The robot, with a sudden burst of speed made awkward by his master’sbags, slipped around Lando and stopped, blocking the young gambler’s further bad-tempered progress.
    “Sir, I am not programmed for violence. I cannot harm a sentient being, organic or mechanical, any more than you could flap your arms and