Star Wars_ The Adventures of Lando Calrissia - L. Neil Smith [136]
Lando smiled grimly. “I was about to ask you the same thing, Klyn Shanga.”
“Klyn Shanga?” said a small voice from across the room. “Is that what you’re called? Master, I believe I can clear up some of this confusion, now.”
“Vuffi Raa!” Lando shouted joyfully. The pilot stiffened.
“You don’t know me, creature, but I know you! Remember the Renatasia System?”
The robot uncurled himself, stepped slowly and gracefully toward the two men, and lowered his torso to the floor, letting his tentacles relax. It was one of the few times Lando had ever seen the robot rest. It was one of the few times he had ever needed to.
“Yes, Klyn Shanga, I remember it very well. And with more shame and regret than I can ever express. Master, the Renatasia is a prehistoric colony. No one knows how long ago human beings settled there. Long before the Republic, certainly. Long before any historian is willing to admit there was spaceflight. But it exists, and was totally isolated from the rest of civilization, not aware of it, any more than we were aware of them.”
“You will recall,” the droid explained, “that my former master, the fellow you won me from in the Rafa, was an anthropologist and government spy. Well, I was with him for many years, a condition of mutual discomfort and dissatisfaction, I assure you.
“An independent trader, much like yourself, Master, had stumbled across the Renatasia, and my master was designated to check out his findings, reported because there is a standing reward for such discoveries.
“Forgive me, Freeman Shanga—oh, it’s Colonel, is it?—well, forgive me, sir, but the Renatasia was a backward place in the technological sense. My master surmised that, sometime after the original colonization, it had been cut off from whatever system the settlers had come from, and, over the next dozen generations, had slid back into barbarism—perhaps even further. As it turned out, they had climbed back high enough to have commercial interplanetary travel within their own system, but had not discovered faster-than-light modalities.
“It was this which was their undoing. The government had classified them as socially retarded and suitable for forcible redevelopment—a variety of wholesale ‘therapy’ that is a thin euphemism for ruthless exploitation. The Renatasia System, unable to defend itself, was to be used. To be used up, if desirable.
“But first it had to be surveyed, analyzed, inspected for hidden strengths.
“My master believed that the best deception was the truth—suitably edited. He ordered me to cover my metallic surface with a latoprene coating of an organic appearance, had me make suitable clothing to fit over my admittedly rather unconventional shape, and accompanied me to the surface of Renatasia III in an open, highly conspicuous landing. We announced ourselves to the local government—the system was divided at the time into separate nation-states that often fought vicious wars with one another—as representatives, envoys, from a galaxy-wide civilization.
“Renatasia, after a suitable interval, was going to be invited to join.
“There were parades, Master, and celebrations. We traveled widely in the system, the honored guests of a people who hoped that this fresh contact with a higher civilization would put an end to war and poverty among them. We went to banquets, we made speeches. And always, always, I was the Chief Delegate. My master played the role of secretary and assistant.
“We were there for seven hundred standard days, during which we helped them organize a single system-wide government, organized their defense force under a unitary command, then greatly reduced its size. We gave them new technology—trivialities that would aid them not at all when our true purposes were revealed.
“The Imperial Fleet arrived on the seven hundred first day.
“In the beginning, the rejoicing was only redoubled—until the fleet began collecting slave levies, demanding taxes,