Star Wars_ The Adventures of Lando Calrissia - L. Neil Smith [52]
He pondered the question, picked at it, unraveled it like the homespun fabric his single garment had been made from. It wasn’t easy going, but the more he thought, the simpler things seemed to become.
Presently, they became very simple, indeed.
Mohs laughed.
Lando heard somebody laugh.
He turned, and there was Mohs—where he had not been a moment before—squatting on his heels, one arm across his naked lap, the other braced between chin and knee. Forgotten on the floor before him lay three or so meters of gray, aged loincloth, laid out in a circle, and twisted into a giant, floppy Möbius cylinder. The old man’s back was toward Lando.
“Mohs!” Lando cried. “Where did you disappear to?”
The old man chuckled without turning. “Apparently the same place that you did, Captain. What time is it?”
And odd question from a naked savage, thought Lando. He glanced at his watch. “I’d say it’s been perhaps twenty minutes since you vanished through the wall. What have you been doing all this time, just sitting?”
“What would you suggest I do, Captain?” The old man rose, pivoted on a heel to face Lando. “I thought it better than getting lost. You can’t see your hand in front of your face in here.”
“Good heavens, man! What’s happened to your eyes!”
The old man blinked, lids wiped down over eyeballs that might as well have been opaque white glass.
“My eyes? There’s nothing wrong with my eyes, Captain.” The ancient Singer smiled. “What’s wrong with yours, can’t you see the darkness?”
Vuffi Raa wasn’t lost, he simply didn’t know where he was.
Since he’d first popped through the pyramid wall, he’d wandered through this strange, blue-lit maze for what seemed like days, taking pathways that offered no alternative. The only choice he’d had was to stay where he was or go where he could, and he’d always preferred action to inaction.
He’d taken four right turns (each carrying him through two of the oddly shaped rooms), and six left turns, not necessarily in that order. Before very long, he’d wind up exactly where he’d begun, no closer to any meaningful destination, no wiser concerning what this rat-run was intended and constructed for, and no likelier to find his friends.
Just a machine, Lando had said once. Vuffi Raa wondered if his master knew how lonely a machine could get. Vuffi Raa hadn’t known, not until the last few hours. Twenty-seven of them, to be precise, plus thirty-six minutes, eleven seconds. He was three rooms past one of those with the small circular subchambers. That meant he ought to be entering a fourth, which would force him to take a left turn. After that, one more left, four more rooms, and he’d be back to where he’d started from.
And a lot more discouraged, in the bargain.
He found the soft spot in the wall, slithered through. Sure enough, none of the walls within this place—including the one he’d just passed through—would let him pass except the left-hand one. He took it, the light dimmed a little as it always did in rooms with circular tanks, and he walked automatically the length of the room, past the tank, and to the end wall.
And banged right into it. It wouldn’t let him pass.
Well, here was something new. Oddly enough, it failed to hearten him, or even relieve the tedium that had become his only companion. Had he been a mammal, he’d have stood there, scratched his head, folded his arms in exasperation, and sworn.
He stood there, raised a tentacle to his chromium carapace, scratched at it absently while folding two more tentacles in disgust.
“Glitch!” he said, and meant it.
Exploring the unprecedented chamber, he traveled along the left wall, squeezed back through the narrow opening past the circular tank. The short wall through which