Star Wars_ The Han Solo Adventures - Brian Daley [255]
“Yes,” Lando said finally, wondering if the anthropologist was ever going to deal the next hand, “but you were speaking of treasure?”
Whett blinked. “Why, yes, yes I was.” A shrewd look came into the academic’s eyes. “Have you an interest in treasure, Captain?”
More interest than I’ve got in this game, Lando thought. I wish I’d steered for the Dela System, no matter how much easier it is to land a spaceship on an asteroid than a full-scale planet. Soon as this farce is over, that’s precisely what I’m going to do, win or lose, even if the astrogational calculations take me twenty years.
“Hasn’t everybody?” Lando answered neutrally. He extracted a cigarillo from his uniform pocket and lit it. Treasure, eh? Maybe there was something to be learned here, after all.
“Not quite everybody. Speaking for myself,” the scientist intoned, beginning at last to shuffle the thick seventy-eight-card deck, “my interest is purely scientific. What use have I for worldly wealth? One for you, one for you, one for you, one for you, and one for me. One for you, one for you, one for you …”
“Well, you surely came to the right place, then!” Vett Fori guffawed, picking up her cards. “No worldly wealth to get in your way at all! What are you doing here, anyway? We didn’t hire any anthropologists.”
Lighting another cigarette, Constable Phuna spoke bitterly. “Seeing how the other half lives, that’s what! I saw his entry papers. He’s studying life among the poor people of a rich system—on a fat Imperial grant, speaking of worldly wealth. We’re specimens, and he—”
“Please, please, my dear fellow, do not be offended. I aspire only to increase our understanding of the universe. And who knows, perhaps what I learn here can make things better in the future, not just for you, but for others, as—”
Vett Fori, Arun Feb, and T. Lund Phuna spoke almost simultaneously: “Don’t do us any favors!”
“Do me one,” Lando suggested in the embarrassed silence that followed, “tell me about this treasure business. And kindly deal me a card while you’re about it, will you?”
Bets were placed again and additional cards dealt out. Lando, having actually lost interest in the increasingly slim pickings the game afforded, watched absently as the card-chips in his hand transmuted themselves from one suit and value to another. He paid a good deal more attention to what the anthropologist had to say.
“The Toka are primitive natives of the Rafa System. As Assistant Supervisor Feb has so cogently pointed out, they and the present colonial establishment co-exist among the ruins of the ancient Sharu, enormous buildings which very nearly occupy every square kilometer of the habitable planets. I’ll see that, and raise a hundred credits.”
Arun Feb shook his head, but tossed in a pair of fifty-credit tokens from a dwindling stake. Vett Fori folded, a look of disgust on her face. She placed her still unlighted cigar back on the table’s edge.
Phuna raised another fifty. “Yeah, but the really important thing about the Rafa is the life-crystals they grow there.” He fingered a tiny jewel suspended in its setting from a slim chain around his sweaty neck.
Whett nodded. “Important to you, perhaps, good Constable. It is true, the life-orchards and the crystals harvested there are the chief export product of the colony, but my interest—and what I was paid to be professionally interested in—were the Toka legends, especially those bearing upon the Mindharp.”
Glancing at his cards, Lando saw he had a Mistress of Coins, a Three of Staves, and a Four of Sabres. He dropped the requisite number of tokens into the pot just as the Three turned into a Five of Flasks: twenty-three, but it didn’t really matter; Fives were wild anyway.
“Sabacc!”
He gathered in the largest pot