Star Wars_ The Adventures of Lando Calrissia - L. Neil Smith [126]
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 blasé Core-may-care, live-and-let-live 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 slim and uniformed or gross and nearly naked.
“So I guess we can’t make a deal, then?” Lando asked rhetorically. The second pistol hadn’t been his only cautious preparation, but he was damned if he could see what good his others would do now.
“I’m afraid not,” Bohhuah Mutdah answered sadly. “And for more than one reason. In the second drawer of the end table, you will find a pair of manacles.” He drew the gun, leveled it at the gambler. “I wish you to put them on. If you do not, then I will slowly roast you with this weapon, rather than kill you outright. The first shot will pierce your lower spine so that you will be helpless to resist the subsequent agony. Get the manacles and put them on, please.”
Lando thought about it, looked at the muzzle of the pistol, looked into Mutdah’s unwavering beady eyes, and got the manacles. They were force shackles, a pair of cuff bands connected by an adjustable miniature tractor beam. First class and very expensive. That figured.
“That’s right,” the trillionaire said encouragingly. “Now put them on.”
Shrugging to himself, the gambler snapped the bands around his wrists. He wasn’t altogether resigned; Mutdah had something in mind. After all, he hadn’t handcuffed Bassi Vobah or her partner.
“Thank you very much, Captain. Now place the shackle beam in this loop of monofilament. Yes. You see, I mentioned that there was more than one reason why I cannot let you go? You recall that?”
An exasperated expression on his face, Lando asked, “Why do jerks like you always have to go into this thespian routine? If you’re going to kill me, do it with the gun instead of boredom, there’s a good fellow.”
A flush spread itself across the vastness of Bohhuah Mutdah’s face. With a gargantuan effort, he forced himself erect, pointed the weapon at Lando.
“The first reason I have explained. My enemies are hounding me and would see my power and fortune redistributed. Parenthetically, I must tell you that I do not care a whit about any of that. The continuation of the Bohhuah Mutdah ‘empire’ is of considerably less than no interest to me at all. I am constitutionally incapable of feeling any concern about it.
“The real reason, Captain, is that I don’t want to let you go.”
The obese trillionaire’s body began to blur, its colors swirling together, its outline dissolving. It was replaced by the somewhat smaller form of an individual swathed in gray from top to toe. Only his insanely hungry eyes showed through the wrappings of