Star Wars_ The Adventures of Lando Calrissia - L. Neil Smith [97]
At all of this he was very good, and his independent wealth allowed him a certain latitude denied the average civil servant. He might not quite be able to tell his superiors to take a flaming jump into the Core, but he had thought about it more than once and made the recommendation to many of their representatives.
Unfortunately, he was unable to indulge himself on this occasion. Pressure—greater pressure than he had known existed—was being placed on him to betray many of the things he stood for. If he complied, it was distinctly possible that no one would ever learn of it. But he, Lob Doluff, would know, and it would remove a great deal of the satisfaction from his life.
At the other end of the proposition, he stood to lose his position, his wealth, his reputation, even his life if he insisted on pushing things to their extreme. In addition, many, many others would suffer. It was ugly, and he hadn’t thought such things could happen in a civilized universe.
Now he knew different.
He turned from his absent contemplation of the snow-flowers of a hundred systems, walked through an invisible air curtain into a semitropical wedge of the dome, strode to a tree stump, and flipped the top upward. Reaching in, he seized a communicator and brought it to his lips.
“This is the Administrator Senior,” he said after asking for the correct extension number. “Have Captain Calrissian brought to my office in an hour.”
His hands were sweating again. He’d never sent a man to certain death before.
• VIII •
IT WAS TWO and a half meters tall, had an orange beak and scaly three-toed feet, was covered with bright yellow feathers, spoke in an annoying high-pitched effeminate voice despite its repulsively obvious masculinity, and answered to the name of Waywa Fybot.
It was also an undercover narcotics agent.
Lando hadn’t learned any of this yet as a pair of robots, spray-painted the same color as Bassi Vobah’s uniform, dragged him from his comfortable cell to confront the Administrator Senior.
“The charge is carrying a deadly weapon, Captain Calrissian, and the customary sentence, upon conviction, is death by exposure.”
Lob Doluff paced back and forth before the floor-to-ceiling window in his office. Outside, the Flamewind filled the sky with racing garishness, but most of it was obscured by the dozens of hanging plants that turned the window into a vertical carpet of shaggy greenery. Other plants were scattered about in pots, in long narrow planters, in aquaria, even drifted in the air on lacy pale wings. A gentle frond brushed Lando’s cheek as a flying plant passed over his head.
Lob Doluff didn’t have a desk. He didn’t need one. Tucked away in an alcove was a datalink with its screen and keyboard; a pair of secretaries awaited his summons in an anteroom. What he had were several comfortable chairs, none of which had been offered to Lando, and the enormous bird-thing that none of the mobile plant life would even approach.
And Bassi Vobah herself, looking prim and starched and heavily armed.
Lando reached downward to thrust his hands in his pants pockets, discovered once again he hadn’t any, and folded his arms across his chest. He looked from Bassi to the Administrator Senior, spent a moment on the weird creature in the corner, then back to the humans.
“I take it, then, that you’re not charging me with murder.”
Bassi Vobah nodded. “That would be irrelevant. In the first place, there’s ample evidence that you killed him in self-defense. In the second place, we have no record of him having entered the Oseon by legal channels and therefore, at least in legal terms, he doesn’t—never did—exist.”
Lando shook his head. “Nice government you have here. Why is carrying a weapon a capital offense, and what have I got to do to get out of it? I take it that I wouldn’t be here if you weren’t going