Star Wars_ The Adventures of Lando Calrissia - L. Neil Smith [19]
The Toka servant, skirting Gepta, lit Lando’s cigar.
The latter said, finally, “What’s all this got to do with me?”
From within the voluminous folds of his ash-colored robes, Gepta extracted an object about the size of a human hand, constructed of some lightweight, bright untarnished golden metal.
It was Lando’s turn to blink.
Viewed from one perspective, the device seemed to be a large, three-tined fork—until the gambler looked again. Two tines or four? Or maybe three again? The thing just wouldn’t settle down in his field of vision, giving him, instead, the beginnings of a headache when he stared at it too closely or for more than a few seconds.
Gepta placed the object carefully on Duttes Mer’s crystalline desk, where it seemed to writhe and pulse without actually moving. The governor gazed dowr at it with an uninterpretable expression on his face—somewhere between dismay and greed.
“We have reason to believe,” Rokur Gepta hissed, “that this object is a Key—perhaps it is a miniature of the Mindharp itself, although that is only surmise. It was … shall we say, obtained in an altogether different system, from a small, shabby museum. But it came originally from the Rafa System and is a Sharu artifact. Of that there is not the slightest doubt.”
Somehow, without being told, Lando knew that there were volumes of adventure, betrayal, and deceit behind the sketchy explanation Gepta had just given. He had no doubt it was a story best left untold.
“A key,” he repeated. “What the blazes does it unlock, if one may ask?”
“One may ask,” the sorcerer replied in a threatening whisper, “but with a great deal more deference and respect in the future than is your customary practice!”
“A thousand pardons!” Lando tried to keep the sarcasm he felt out of his voice, with only partial success. “Pray what does it unlock, noble magician?”
Gepta paused as if trying to gauge Lando’s sincerity, then shrugged it off as of no practical consequence. “There is evidence to indicate it provides access to the Mindharp of Sharu. The Mindharp is the focus of a thousand Toka rituals. The fools believe it produced music so sweetly compelling—isn’t that just precious!—that it was capable of swaying the most unfeeling of hearts, even across vast distances of space.”
The Rafa was a multiplanet system, but, given the millions of miles of hard vacuum between planets, Lando reserved judgment. He’d seen legends come to nothing before.
Gepta mentioned that some versions of the legends had the Mindharp as the principal means of communication between the mighty Sharu and their human “pets.” What the Mindharp looked like and precisely where it might be found, these questions remained unanswered.
It was up to Lando to answer them.
Or else.
For his part, Lando wondered what the value of such an instrument might be to a system governor or a Sorcerer of Tund. And he wondered again about the terrible unnamed agency which had caused the presumably powerful Sharu to flee their home system like so many panicky mice.
“Okay,” he answered finally, “what’s in it for me if I find the Mindharp for you?”
The sorcerer turned slightly in his chair, gave Lando the full benefit of his terrifying gaze. “How about your continued liberty?”
For the first time since fetching the sorcerer a chair, Duttes Mer found the wherewithal to speak for himself. “There is also your ship to consider.”
“And your life!” Gepta finished in a tone that made Lando’s tailbone quiver uneasily.
He ignored it, pretending a nonchalance he didn’t feel: “Well,” he said, “two out of three isn’t bad. I was planning to sell the ship. It’s of no use to—”
“That you shall not do, foolish mortal!” Gepta seemed suddenly to swell in size and power. “This entire system is covered with Sharu ruins. We have no idea, as yet, in which of them the Mindharp lies awaiting us. You may very well