Star Wars_ The Adventures of Lando Calrissia - L. Neil Smith [36]
For grow they did, those trees—despite the fact that they were some odd cross between organic life and solid-state electronics. From some unknown spread of seeds, each orchard grew, every tree at the same rate. Remove a crystal from its branch tip—something which had to be done with a laser—and another would replace it within a year’s time. Elsewhere in the Rafa System, Lando knew there were groves of trees no more than a hand’s-width tall, others in which no tree stood less than ten or twelve meters. All bore crystals proportionate to the tree size. Some life-crystals, uselss for commercial purposes, were microscopic. Others were the size of Vuffi Raa’s body.
The thought of Vuffi Raa caused Lando to stop thinking about trees and reflect, instead, on how he’d gotten into this predicament.
Back at the ship, he’d turned in dismay to look at the little robot. Its red-lit eye was out; arrows stuck from nearly every chink and crevice of its body. A light clear fluid ran from many of the wounds, darkening the reddish soil around it.
Mohs strode up to him, no longer bent and stooped. He thrust out a hand, palm up.
“Give me the Key, imposter!”
Lando set his jaw. He didn’t have much to lose, and he was mad—more at himself than anything else. He folded his arms across his chest, planted his feet in the sand, and grunted.
“The Key! It is not yours, it is ours! Give it to me!”
“Don’t be silly, old fellow!”
Quite inexplicably, a look of dismay spread over Mohs’ face. He dropped his hand to his side, turned to the other natives surrounding the pair in a heavily armed and dangerous-looking ring, and shrugged. He turned again to Lando.
“I say once more, you fake, you fraud, you, you …”
“If you do,” said Lando, not understanding what was happening, but willing now to hope, “I’ll just say something insulting. In fact, I think I will, anyway: your mother sang off key.” He nodded for emphasis.
Mohs took a step backward, aghast—whether at the magnitude of the insult or in surprise at the general turn of events, Lando couldn’t tell.
Mohs turned once again to his people—and there’s another problem, Lando thought idly: Mohs was from another planet. How was it that the locals seemed to know him and acknowledge his leadership?
Come to think of it, how had the ambush been set up in the first place?
The savages conferred for a while in their own language. A decision appeared to have been made.
“You will come with us, imposter!” Mohs ordered. He started to walk off on a course paralleling the nearest face of the giant pyramid. Lando stood where he was.
“I will when the Core freezes over! Owch!” This last was due more to surprise than injury. A crossbow bolt had whistled past Lando’s head, skinning an ear already made painful by the cold, striking the hull of the Falcon, and catching him on the rebound in the seat of his insulated pants. A pattern seemed to be emerging: they didn’t want to kill Lando; they couldn’t take the Key away without his consent (although Mohs had tried that back on Four, he reminded himself), but they could threaten and coerce him in other ways.
They seemed to be pretty good at that.
He reached for his discarded blaster, intending to pull out the arrow and create a little mayhem before they shot him down. He hadn’t moved a meter when another flight of arrows virtually buried the weapon, pinned it to the ground by its sling, trigger guard, and other apertures in the stock and fore-end. So much for that idea.
As one, the fifty or so natives swung their weapons back on Lando.
“Okay, okay, I’m coming! Anybody think to call a cab?”
Two hours later, Lando wished it hadn’t been a joke. They’d marched him for mile after endless mile, climbing over random, angular ruins, sloshing through deep-drifted sand, scrabbling through scrubby brush. His feet hurt and his legs ached and, no matter how high he turned his suit controls,