Star Wars_ The Adventures of Lando Calrissia - L. Neil Smith [18]
Lando himself attempted to relax, settled back, and regarded his cigar, which had long since expired from inattention. Again, seemingly from nowhere, the Toka servant materialized to light it, then, still cowering under the baleful gaze of the sorcerer, vanished once again with a shuffle of bare feet on plush carpet.
“Promises precisely what?” Lando asked after a long time, somehow managing to sound casual. Half a hundred wild speculations formed in his mind as he said it, but he repressed them savagely, waiting Gepta out.
“Among other things,” the sorcerer whispered, “the Ultimate Instrument of Music.”
Great, thought Lando, his fantasies collapsing. It could have been diamonds, platinum, or flamegems; it could have been immortality or Absolute Power; it could have been a good five-microcredit cigar. The guy wants zithers and trombones.
“The Mindharp of Sharu”—Gepta explained as he seated himself, “has been an article of the simple faith among the Toka for centuries uncounted.
“As you are not doubt aware, the current human population of Rafa—not to mention numerous representatives of many other associated species—dates from the early days of the late, unlamented Republic. What is not generally appreciated by historians is that, in the chaotic, erratically recorded era preceding, a respectable amount of exploration and settlement was also carried out, albeit haphazardly. Thus, when Republican colonists arrived in the Rafa for the first time, they discovered it already occupied by human life.
“The Toka.”
“I must explain that, for some decades, I have employed others—anthropologists, ethnologists, and the like, many of them incarcerees of the penal colony here and thus anxious to reduce the burden of their sentences—to observe, record, and analyze the ritual behavior of the Toka, believing that, in the the long run, such an effort might produce some particle of interest or profit. I have made many such investments of time and wealth throughout civilized space.
“The Toka, savages that they be, have little or nothing in the way of social organization. Infrequently, however, and at unpredictable intervals, they gather together in small bands for the purpose of ritual chanting, to all appearances the passing-on of a purely verbal heritage.
“Their legends acknowledge that they came, originally, from elsewhere in the galaxy—would-be pioneers and explorers, employing a technology which they subsequently somehow discarded or lost. They, too, found the Rafa already occupied. Their tradition speaks of the Sharu, a superhumaniod race perhaps billions of years advanced in evolution, too terrible to look upon directly or contemplate at any length.
“The Sharu were, of course, responsible for the monumental construction which characterizes this system, a style of architecture betraying a bent of mind so alien that, for the most part, even the purpose of the structures cannot be guessed. It is unclear whether mere contact with the Sharu ‘broke’ the Broken People, or whether it was the Sham’s later hasty departure.
“For depart they did.
“Legends maintain that their flight was in the face of something even more terrible than they, something they feared greatly, although whether another species, some disease, or some unimaginable something else, we cannot so much as conjecture. They left their massive buildings, they left, apparently, the life-orchards whose original function is as obscure as everything else regarding the Sharu, and they left the Toka, crushed and enfeebled by some aspect of their experience with the Sharu.”
Lando reflected on Gepta’s words while he let himself be offered another cigar.
It seemed to him that the question of what broke the Broken People was of considerably less pragmatic interest than whatever put such a scare into their superhuman masters. He hated to think of something like that still hanging around the galaxy. A starship captain’s life