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“Can I get out of this uniform, Master? It’s very uncomfortable.”

“Vuffi Raa! You little—but what’s going on here? Why are you rescuing me?”

Shucking the rest of the guardsman’s uniform—he’d been walking on two tentacles, using two for arms, and the fifth as an ersatz head—Vuffi Raa assumed a more normal position behind the driver tiller.

“Master, I was programmed to betray you from the beginning, and not to tell you about it. But you’re my Master, Lando, and, as soon as that program had run out, so did I. And here I am. We’ve got to get off this planet, out of the system, and fast.”

“I know.”

“You know? How?”

“The dreams, the chanting I heard last night. It’s Old High Trammic—the language of the Toka. I was on Trammis III a couple of years ago. I still can’t understand the language very well, but my subconscious apparently made something of it. I woke up this morning knowing the truth about the Mindharp, and I know we’ve got to get out of this place now.”

“Why is that, Master?”

“Don’t call me Master. Because, once somebody starts the music up, this system’s never going to be the same again.”

“Then we must go now, Master. Duttes Mer is using the Harp. That’s what the earthquake’s all about.”

• XX •

UNLIKE A FICTIONAL villain, Duttes Mer hadn’t gloated or divulged his plans to the beaten Lando Calrissian. He’d simply had him disposed of, as quickly and neatly as possible.

Where he’d made his mistake—his first one, anyway—was in his attitude toward menials. Toka servants were virtually invisible to him—drinks and cigars simply appeared near his elbow, and that, he thought, was as it should be. He was the governor, after all. Droids were even more invisible.

So Vuffi Raa had stood in plain sight in the governor’s office as he made a transspace call to Rokur Gepta.

“Ahhh, it is you, my esteemed sorcerer. I have some news.”

“What is it, Mer? It had better be good!”

“Are you enjoying your stay in orbit around a dried-up desert planet?”

“My ship is far more comfortable than that heap of bricks you call a city. Get on with it, Governor, you’re beginning to anger me!”

The governor reached for the pickup on his communicator, pulled it out on a retracting cable, and pointed it at the top of his desk. “See anything you recognize, Gepta?”

In the screen, the sorcerer’s eyes were filled, by turn, with wonder, greed, and rage. “The Mindharp! How did you—”

The governor chuckled. “It only matters that I did, Gepta, and that you’re millions of kilometers from here. You see, that story you told Calrissian—that the Harp is the ‘Ultimate Instrument of Music’—may have been good enough for him, but the story you told me about its being a master control over all the Toka never washed. Such a thing would be commercially useful, but this,” he indicated the Harp, “is much, much more than that.”

“What do you mean, Mer?”

“I am capable of hiring investigators, too, my dear former partner, and I took the wisest course: hiring yours. Recall that I have the power to commute sentences, order pardons. I know the truth: that the Mindharp of Sharu is an instrument capable of controlling every mind within the system—possibly beyond it. And the instrument is miner!”

“Don’t try it, Mer, you don’t know what you’re doing!” Panic was evident in the sorcerer’s voice.

“On the contrary, my dear—”

“NO! You don’t understand! The Mindharp will—”

The governor smiled benignly. “It will give me absolute power, even over you. I suggest that, if you don’t want to feel that power, you turn your ship out of orbit and leave my system. That may buy you a few years, at least.”

“Mer, I’ll warn you once more: you don’t have the knowledge to safely—”

Click.

When the opportunity arose—which wasn’t until the middle of the night—Vuffi Raa crept from the governor’s offices, stole a uniform from the guard laundries, jump-wired a police cruiser in the maintenance yard, and went off to rescue Lando.

“Well, I appreciate it, Vuffi Raa, old criminal, but I trust you’ll understand the residue of skepticism