Star Wars_ The Adventures of Lando Calrissia - L. Neil Smith [9]
The colony was an anthill built on soil scrapings in the cracks between ancient, artificial mountains. Whatever effort had been invested decorating the place (and it didn’t amount to much), it remained drab by comparison with the polychrome towers surrounding it. Streets were narrow, angling oddly. Human-scale homes, offices, and storefronts merely fringed the feet of titanic nonhuman walls.
Lando walked into the least scruffy-looking bar. The usual crowd was there.
“Looking for a cargo, Captain?”
The mechanical innkeeper of the Spaceman’s Rest polished a glass. Bottles and other containers from a hundred cultures gleamed softly in the subdued lighting. A smattering of patrons—not very many: it was the dinner hour and Four was mostly a family planet—filled the unpretentious establishment with an equally subdued burble of unintelligibility.
Lando shook his head.
“Too bad, Captain, what else can I do for you?”
“Anything that burns,” Lando said, childishly pleased to be recognizable as a spaceman. He was puzzled, however, over the robot’s commercial pessimism. This was a healthy, thriving colony, with enormous and growing export statistics. “Retsa, if you’ve got it.”
In one dark corner, what might have been the same under-clothed old man leaned on the same old pushbroom.
“Coming up, Captain.” Deft maneuvering with glassware followed.
Lando turned his back, put elbows on the bar, inquired over his shoulder: “Where could a fellow find some action around here?” He’d put it in a colonial accent—when in hick city, act hickier than the hicks. Civilized polish scares money away. “I just got in from the Oseon; my evening’s free.”
“How free?” The machine’s optic regarded Lando appraisingly. “There’s Rosie’s Joint, down the street. Has a real nice revue. Just turn left at the big red neon—”
Lando shook his head. “Later, maybe. Perhaps a game—sabacc? Folks back home used to say I was pretty good.”
Cynicism in its voice, if not upon its unyielding features, the automaton put on a show of thinking deeply. “Well, sir, I don’t know …”
Lando offered twice the going price for retsa.
“I might know of a game—my memory stacks just aren’t what they used to be, though, and …”
Lando placed another bill in the bar-top. “Will this cover having them recharged?”
The bill seemed to evaporate.
“Don’t go away, Captain. Make yourself comfortable. I’ll be right back.”
The ’tender vanished almost as impressively as had Lando’s money.
• II •
THE FLEDGLING STARSHIP owner/operator had scarcely picked up his drink, selected a dark, heavy, quasiwood table, and seated himself, carefully adjusting the creases in his trousers, when another figure appeared, a tall, cadaverous, nearly human individual wearing something loose, with polka dots.
They clashed badly with his mottled orange complexion.
“Allow me to introduce myself, sir: I am the proprietor of this establishment.” The creature stroked its moustaches—two separate levels filling the inhumanly broad space between nose and upper lip—took a chair to the gambler’s left, and lit a long green cigarette. The young gambler noticed with amusement that the fellow hadn’t really introduced himself at all.
“I understand,” said the alien, “that you have expressed an interest in the scientific theories regarding the phenomenon of probability.”
Lando had wondered how the subject would be broached.
He settled back with a grin, assuming the facade, once again, of an overconfident colonial, put his feet up on the chair opposite, and winked knowingly.
“Purely scientific, friend. I’m a spacer by profession, an astrogator, so my interest’s only natural. I’m especially intrigued by permutations and combinations of the number seventy-eight, taken two at a time. Fives are wild.”
“Ah … sabacc.” The