Star Wars_ The Adventures of Lando Calrissia - L. Neil Smith [22]
“You’ve got it, exactly as I just told it to you. So far, old lube-guzzler, you’ve proved your usefulness as a suitcase caddy and an audio recorder. Any more talents you haven’t revealed?”
He shifted on the transit-stop bench so that his back was to the little robot. He wasn’t so much annoyed with Vuffi Raa for being useless, as for the fact that the automaton had forced him to confront some of his own failings.
“I beg your pardon, Master, all of my internally lubricated subassemblies are permanently sealed and require no further—”
Lando turned back suddenly. “All right, cut out that robotic literalness. You’re a smarter machine than that, and we both know it. What I mean is, do you have any ideas? I’m fresh out, myself.”
Something resembling a humorous twinkle lived in Vuffi Raa’s single red optic for a fleeting moment. “Yes, Master, I have. If I had something ancient and historic, and valuable to look for, I know precisely where I’d look for information. I’d—”
Lando frowned, brightened, and leaped up off the bench. “By the Eternal, of course! Why didn’t you say so before? Why didn’t I think of it? It’s certainly worth a try! You may have some use, after all.” Lando paced hurriedly down the block just a few yards, turned into the nearest bar, then poked a head back out through the swinging doors.
“Wait for me out here!” he shouted, pointing to a sign in the window of the drinking establishment:
NO SHOES, NO SHIRT, NO EXTEE HELMET FILTERS
NO SERVICE
NO DROIDS ALLOWED
“But Master!” the little robot protested to the empty swinging doors, “I was referring to the public library!”
Having shaken his unwelcomely helpful companion, Lando gratefully entered the cool quiet of the Poly Pyramid, one of Teguta Lusat’s many inebriation emporia. There was nothing special about the place appearancewise or otherwise; he’d merely availed himself of the first, nearest ethanol joint on the boardwalk.
He sat down at a table.
What he’d really needed all along, he’d known the minute he left the governor’s office, was some kind of Toka gathering of the clans. Unfortunately, life rarely provides what one really needs. To judge from what Gepta had told him, the only people who truly knew what was what where the Sharu were concerned were much too primitive to hold conventions—or much of anything else. They had no villages, no tribes, not even any real nuclear families.
Every now and again, at unpredictable intervals, the Toka simply collected in small bunches to bay at the moon like wild canines. Rafa IV didn’t have a moon, but, Lando thought, it was the principle that counted.
All right, the young gambler reasoned, one place he’d noticed the reliable presence of Toka—even before he’d known who and what they were—was in saloons, usually swamping the floors and polishing spitoons, the kind of occupation reserved in other systems for lower-classification droids. Here, the innkeepers could afford to entertain their prejudices and those of their clientele against the mechanical minority; Toka semislaves were handier and far cheaper.
Lando looked around. He’d selected a table in the approximate center of the room, halfway toward the back, and halfway between the bar that ran down the left side of the place, and the booth-lined wall opposite. Ordinarily, he’d prefer a position where he could see everything that went on and not have to turn his back to the door, perhaps something toward the rear.
Now the important thing was to be seen.
The Poly Pyramid was a working-being’s establishment. On the walls, lurid paintings alternated with sporting scenes from a dozen systems. On a less cosmopolitan planet, racy shots of unclad females would predominate, but, in places where one being’s nude was another’s nightmare, sensuality had given way before such items as incompetently taxidermized galactic fauna, which were nailed to the walls or suspended on wires from the ceiling: fur-bearing trout from Paulking XIV,