Star Wars_ The Adventures of Lando Calrissia - L. Neil Smith [51]
The trouble with all that was that the building was several kilometers in any dimension you chose to measure.
The walls, then, were sophisticated viewing devices, conveying the illusion that the building was much smaller—human-scaled, in fact—than it really was.
He called out: “Vuffi Raa! Where are you? Mohs? Answer me!”
There wasn’t even a decent echo. He—
What was that? Embedded in the wall he’d come through, stuck like a fly in amber, was the Key. He reached for it—and barked his fingers badly. The wall could have been made of solid glass, and the Key was at least a meter beyond his reach. It had been his way—and Vuffi Raa’s, apparently, and Mohs’—inside the pyramid.
He looked around the featureless chamber he occupied. From wall to wall, a smooth reflective floor stretched, devoid of furniture or fixtures. It was rather like being in a large, deserted warehouse. Through the walls, the sky was a slightly more brilliant blue than it had really been.
The desert was a trifle darker: red and blue make purple. The transparency had another odd effect, it made everything outside seem very far away, subtly shrunken by perspective and refraction. Perhaps the walls were curved minutely. The Falcon almost looked like a model, a child’s toy.
Perhaps he’d better find another way out.
There had better be another way out.
Grown considerably more desperate, Vuffi Raa stopped to rest.
He was internally powered; a microfusion pile that was practically inexhaustible burned within him at all times, requiring only a minimal amount of mass to keep itself (and Vuffi Raa) going.
But the little droid was tired.
In a lifetime vastly longer than his current master would have found comfortable to contemplate, the robot could not recall ever feeling lonelier or more isolated. There, in that endless series of empty chambers, it was like being a piece in a huge meaningless game, shuffled from one spot to the next by vast, uncaring, uncommunicative fingers.
The little droid was afraid.
He’d come a considerable distance. Six featureless rectilinear rooms, after the one he’d first appeared in, with its almost transparent circular tank in the middle. Then another tankroom. The four empties, the last of which had forced him into a sharp left-hand turn. The next room had had a circularity, although there had been a narrow space to get by it. Then another empty room, another left-hand turn, three more flat blue chambers and another tank.
The pattern had repeated itself, again and again, the robot growing more disconsolate with every fruitless turn and passage. This didn’t even seem like the same planet—the same reality—let alone the same building he’d somehow accidentally entered.
He wandered onward.
Thirteen hours, forty-five minutes, twenty-eight seconds had passed.
Another right-hand turn (the first since the initial one), two more lefts, and another right. Two more lefts. And always the same stark, empty, blue-tinted rooms, the occasional empty circular columns in their centers, more left turns, fewer rights. How long could this go on?
Nineteen hours, eleven minutes, four seconds.
Lost in thought, Mohs didn’t notice that he couldn’t see. It didn’t matter much to him, he didn’t have anyplace to go at the moment. There wasn’t any hurry. He’d only been here for a minute or two, and before another minute or two went by, the Bearer and the Emissary would come and get him.
Or not.
It wasn’t very important, really. He’d just realized, thinking about his loincloth once again, that if he took the long, rectangular strip of cloth, pulled it around end to end, but twisted it a half turn before joining the ends together, he’d get