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“Did you know, old pentapod, that these things were once used for telling fortunes?” He shuffled the deck again, cut it, and began laying the cards out on the floor.

“Highly irrational and unscientific, Master.”

“Don’t call me Master. I know what you mean, though—except that sometimes they can help you solve a problem, simply by getting you to look at it in a way you hadn’t thought to before.”

“I’ve heard that said, Master, but so can a sudden blow to the head, if you’re looking for random stimuli.”

That’s right, Lando thought, what I really need now is a fresh machine to banter with. The first card to fall was the Commander of Staves, one which Lando had often associated with himself. It was the apparently chance appearance of the right card—as happened so often—that made him wonder if his “scientific” analysis was all there was to the things.

“That’s me,” he explained to the robot, “a messenger on a fool’s errand. Let’s see what stands in the way.” He dealt a second card, laid it across the first. “Great Gadfry!” he exclaimed.

“What is it, Master?”

“Not what, who. It’s Himself—the Evil One. I’d guess that to be Rokur Gepta. Hold on, now, it’s changing.”

As sabacc card-chips are prone to do now and again, the second card transformed itself into the Legate of Coins—but the image was upside-down.

“Duttes Mer!” laughed Lando. “A being corrupt and evil if ever there was one! Well, that makes sense, even though it tells us nothing new. Let’s see what else.”

The third card he placed above the others. The Five of Sabres, Lando explained, represented his own conscious motivations, in this case, the desire to relieve the weak and unwary of the burden of their excess cash. He chuckled, dealt a card below the others, indicating his deeper, possibly subconscious motives. He groaned.

“The Legate of Staves. Don’t tell me I’m a do-gooder at heart!”

“Master, this is simply a random distribution of images, don’t take it seriously.”

Lando looked at the little robot cautiously. “I think I’ve just been insulted. Well, the next card should tell us something. It represents the past, things coming to an end.”

It was the Six of Sabres. Lando placed it to the left.

“Oh-ho! This usually denotes a journey, but its position indicates the journey is nearly at an end. What do you think of that?”

“I think, Master, that journeys can end in many ways, not all of them pleasant or productive.”

“That’s what I keep you around for, to bring me down whenever I feel too good, to remind me that every silver lining has a cloud. Say, you know, you’re getting bigger—eight, maybe nine centimeters. And your voice is changing, too.”

The little robot didn’t reply, but simply watched Lando lay the next card down to the right of the center pair.

“Flame and famine! You spoiled the run, Vuffi Raa—it’s the Destroyed Starship!”

“Does that mean harm will come to the Falcon, Master?”

“Don’t call me Master. I thought you didn’t believe in any of this.”

“I don’t. But what does it mean?”

“Cataclysmic changes in the near future, death and destruction. It may be the worst card in the whole deck. Maybe. One thing I’ve learned from all this: there’s always a worse card. This next will tell us what will happen to us and how we’ll react to it.”

“We, Master?”

“There you go again—great: the Satellite. It means a lot of fairly nasty things, things that you find under rocks. Mostly it means deception, deceit, betrayal.” He looked closely at the robot again. “Are you getting ready to double-cross me, my mechanical minion?”

“There, Master, is the greatest danger in such mystical pursuits. You trusted me before you started playing with those card-chips, didn’t you?”

“I still do, Vuffi Raa. The next card, up above the Satellite, here, is supposed to tell us where we’ll find ourselves next. Hmmm. I wonder what that means?”

The Wheel sat shimmering on the card-chip, an image denoting luck, both good and bad, the beginning and the ending of things, random chance, final outcome