Star Wars_ The Adventures of Lando Calrissia - L. Neil Smith [30]
“It’s quite a mess, all right, old home appliance. But don’t fret, she’s only a machine, after all, and they’ve promised to make full and complete repairs, once we—”
“Only a machine?” The robot’s voice was disbelieving, scandalized, and almost hysterical. “Master, I, too, am ‘Only a machine’! This is horrible, unbearable, cruel, evil. It’s—”
“Oh, come now, Vuffi Raa, don’t exhaust your vocabulary. You’re a sapient machine. The Falcon’s big and smart, but she’s way, way beneath you on the scale of things. Otherwise I shouldn’t have had to rent that confounded, idiotic—”
“Master,” the droid interrupted, more gently this time, “how does it make you feel to see somebody’s furry pet run over by the roadside? Do you dismiss it, say it’s only an animal, beneath you on the scale of things? Or do you feel like … well, the way I feel now?”
Lando shook his head, too tired to argue further. The point, within limits, was certainly well taken. And he hated to think that the little automaton was a more humane being than he himself.
“I’m going forward,” he said abruptly. “There’s no telling what trouble somebody like Mohs can find to get into with all those dials and pretty buttons going unsupervised.”
“Very well, Master. With your permission, I’ll remain here a little while to comfort her as best I can and tidy up this … this butchery.”
“As you will.” Lando paused in the bight of curving corridor, turned back to see the droid collecting washers and sheared rivets from the decking. “Er, uh, sorry I didn’t understand your feeling at first, old cyberaet. It’s just that I …” His voice trickled off.
There was a long silence between the two, then: “That’s all right, Lando. At least you understood after I explained it. That’s more than most organic beings could do, I think.”
The gambler cleared his throat self-consciously. “Yes, well, er, ah … see you forward in a little while, then—and don’t call me Lando.”
In the tubular cockpit forward, Lando took an inexpert look at the indicator lights on various control boards, then thumbed through the Falcon’s dog-eared flight manual to see what they meant.
Mostly, the unfamiliar lights he saw were warnings of open hatch covers where the loading was being carried out. Clunks and thumps and groans below confirmed the telltales. The entire section of instrumentation given over to the ultralight drive had only solid reds and yellows glaring balefully.
Behind Lando, in the high-backed jumpseat where the gambler had placed him firmly, Mohs seemed to have lapsed back into senile passivity. Lando couldn’t blame him: he almost wished he could do the same. It had been a long, hard day for the poor old savage. The Toka sat, eyes wide open, staring down at the decking plates, knobbed hands lying palms up in loinclothed lap.
“Mohs?” Lando asked gently.
The old man started, as if he’d been thoroughly asleep despite the open eyes and hadn’t seen Lando turn around to speak to him. He blinked, rubbed a slow and shaky hand over his stubbly chin.
“Yes, Lord?”
“Mohs, what was it that you and your people were chanting out there by the fence?”
The old man breathed deeply, resettled himself in the heavily padded jumpseat. He’d never placed his scrawny fundament in so luxurious a resting place before. He patted the arms a little, almost in disbelief.
“It was the Song of the Emissary, Lord, in honor of the advent of you and—”
“I see.”
A long, thoughtful few moments followed. The old man’s breathing was almost loud in the control cabin. Lando hadn’t really thought very much about this Emissary business. There hadn’t been time. It was beginning to dawn on him that there might be more to all the chanting and Key-Bearing stuff than Gepta had seen fit to tell him.
“Well, old fellow,” Lando said, not unkindly, “if you’re not too played