• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Nonetheless, some of this made sense. He could understand how lesai and the richest individual in the known universe might be associated. There wasn’t any particular trick to becoming rich—as long as one devoted his whole life to it to the exclusion of everything else. Lando wasn’t capable of it; to him, money was a means to an end. It became meaningless when it was an end in itself.

But not everybody felt that way. Perhaps Bohhuah Mutdah was a person like that.

“Okay,” he interrupted the avian creature, “so we have a fabulously wealthy lesai addict, and you’re a drug cop. What’s the matter, didn’t he pay his protection money on time?”

Waywa Fybot stood up even straighter than before, his feathers fluffed straight outward as if in shock. “Captain Calrissian, you forget yourself! I, after all, am a—”

“—An agent of a government fully as corrupt as any government that ever existed. Don’t kid me, worm-breath. Vice laws are always written to be selectively enforced, to serve other purposes. What have you people got against this Mutdah character—or is it simply that you don’t like the size of his bank account?”

The bird-creature blinked, began to tremble with rage. It opened its beak to reply, shut it again, opened it again, and subsided into the corner, speechless. Lando grinned at the Administrator Senior and his Peacekeeper, spread a hand that was half a shrug.

Bassi Vobah was nearly as scandalized as her professional colleague.

Lob Doluff, however, chuckled and appeared to relax for the first time since the interview had started. His smile became a grin to match the gambler’s, then became outright laughter. He glanced, guiltily at first, at the feathered VIP, then shook his head and laughed again, this time without qualms.

“By the Core, Captain Calrissian—Lando, if I may—I do admire you! You’re a gambler through and through, not just at the table. Please allow me to make this unpleasantness more comfortable. Have you had anything to eat?”

Lando nodded. “Best food I’ve ever had in jail. I could use some coffeine, though, and maybe a cigar.”

“And by Core, Edge, and Disc, so shall you have them! Bassi, see to it immediately!”

The police officer stared at her boss indignantly, decided he was serious, and stalked out of the room to attend to the chore. Doluff snapped a finger at one of the guard-robots who had retired to the corners of the room behind Lando.

“Bring this gentleman his clothing, this very minute! By the Eternal, if I have to go through with this charade, I’ll bloody well go through with it in my own way!”

Lando had sat quietly through it all. Now he sat up a little straighter as the Administrator Senior settled back, fully relaxed. coffeine and tobacco arrived in due course, delivered by a seething Bassi Vobah. A police-robot brought Lando’s personai property, which the gambler ignored for the time being as more interesting matters occupied his attention.

“Now,” Lob Doluff said, when everyone was settled in again. At his insistence, a strange-looking rack the size and shape of a pair of sawhorses had been brought in by a robot, and Waywa Fybot encouraged—at the Administrator Senior’s insistence—to perch on it. The bird got a dreamy look on its face, its feathers smoothed once again, and it was quiet.

“Now, sir, I will tell you the plain truth—as much as I have been told, in any case—and we will all understand. You’re quite right, of course. Bohhuah Mutdah’s corporate enemies and business rivals are preparing to overthrow his commercial empire. But they fear him greatly, sir, as I would in their place, and, accordingly, are seeking to put him personally and physically out of the way.

“I rather guess they hope he will resist arrest, providing them with an excuse to make things permanent. But that is only a surmise. The point is, Lando, I must ask you to help make all of this possible, and there is no way I can refuse to do so. I have what amounts to direct orders—by Gadfrey, it feels good to tell the truth!