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BLAAASSSST!

The fire hose caught him unprepared. It clashed him against the wall, the icy water sluicing over him, blinding him, forcing itself into his mouth and nose. He fell to his knees, his head battered against the wall. He ducked it, trying to breathe, trying to stay alive against the killing force of—

“But, you protest, it wasn’t like that at all?”

Gepta paced back and forth in front of Lando, relishing the gambler’s agony. Despite the sweat on every centimeter of his skin, Lando was freezing, simply from the memory.

But Gepta was right: it hadn’t been like that at all.

“It—it only lasted a few moments,” Lando stuttered. Perhaps it was a surrender of some kind; he hated to give the madman any satisfaction at all. But he had to understand what was happening here.

“I wasn’t nearly that frightened. I’d already worked out a way to escape. And it only lasted a few seconds—not the hours I just …” He tapered off, unable to continue because of his shaking. Shaking merely at the remembrance of something that hadn’t bothered him all that much when it was actually happening.

“You’re a brave man, Captain Calrissian. You don’t like to think of it that way. What do you call it, ‘creative cowardice’? You regard yourself a pragmatist, one not given to heroics.”

The sorcerer had paused, stood now nearly motionless before the gambler. In the background, the Flamewind whorled around the demented sky, casting many-colored shadows. Lando shook his head to get the sweat out of his eyes, tried his bonds. As he’d expected, they were there to stay.

“And yet,” Gepta continued, “what is bravery but the capacity to reject our fears, ignore and suppress them, then go on to do whatever it is we are afraid to do. What you are experiencing now, dear Captain, is the fear you refused to experience the first time. Now you have no choice!”

* * *

Surprise attack!

Wrestling the Falcon with one hand, Lando desperately tried to fire the cockpit guns with the other as the weird ragtaggle fighter-squadron bore down on him. It was a nightmare: they were too well shielded for his inconsequential guns to trouble, yet he couldn’t operate the quad-guns without leaving the bridge.

Vuffi Raa, insane and helpless, couldn’t assist him.

He fired again. He might as well have been shooting streams of pink lemonade as the pale, ineffectual fire that was all he could manage. The enemy fleet bore down on him, bore down, bore down …

Lando finished throwing up, coughed, choked, cleared his throat.

“Obviously,” Gepta hissed cheerfully, “you survived the peril that you just reexperienced. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be here now—it’s only logical. It is a logic which enables us to live with our unpleasant memories, is it not? An integrative, healing contextualization which we all require to survive.”

“Sure,” the gambler gasped. “Sure, you rotten—anything you say!”

“Ahh! Resistance at last! As I was saying, however, the art of torture-by-chagrin lies in denying the mind that integration, that perspective. As you relive the minor horrors of your life, you don’t recall that you survived, eventually triumphed. You see, even at moments of extreme peril, there are defenses, distractions, digressions which dilute the passions. What is more, my method does not allow its subject to experience anything but the fear. You can think of nothing else. The experience goes on and on, in circles, until the ego and the will are utterly crushed.

“Resistance,” the lecturer trudged on relentlessly, “only adds the brissance, the, how shall I express it, the snap! which makes the quashing of the human personality possible. Get angry by all means, Captain. Insult me. Not only will it speed the process—without rendering your eventual agony any shorter in duration, I assure you—but I relish it, as you shall see to your dismay!”

Lando’s breath was sour, the taste in his mouth bitter, but he managed a reply. “I’m betting that you’re bluffing, Gepta. I’m betting that you’re lying about that part. It would be like you. I think I’ll continue hating your guts for a