Part 27 (1/2)

Tendra smiled warmly. ”Thank you, Luke. It is most generous of you.”

”Thanks, Luke,” Lando said. ”1 owe you one.”

Luke grinned. ”See you back at the s.h.i.+p,” he said.

”Good evening to you both.” He gave a polite little bow to Tendra, and was on his way.

”Quite a guy,” Tendra said.

”That's an understatement,” Lando said. ”Walk me back to my s.h.i.+p?

Slowly?”

”Very slowly,” she said. ”It's been good to meet you, to see you in the flesh, Lando. I don't want to lose touch.”

”No reason why we should,” he said as they started to walk. ”1 can still call you over the holonet.

”For the moment, anyway,” she said. ”But there's a lot of talk going around about restricting access to the interstellar communications grid. Maybe even banning it alto gether. To keep us lrom getting foreign, non-Corellian ideas, or something.

”That's bound to work real well,” Lando said. ”It's not that easy to keep ideas out. But it would mean we'd have no way to keep in touch, a.s.suming I can't get another visa for a while. I'd a.s.sume the people here can't get leave to travel very easily.” Tendra shook her head. ”It's almost impossible,” she said.

”It doesn't seem fair,” Lando said. ”I just met you, and I don't want to lose touch with you.”

”Ah, well, that's life,” Tendra said, a sad little note of resignation in her voice. ”I suppose you'll just have to move on to the next star system and try your luck there.”

”what do you mean, try my luck?” Lando said.

”Your luck at finding a rich wife, of course,” she said.

”That's what you're here for, isn't it? Object, matrimony?”

”I must admit that I'm starting to rethink the whole idea of marrying for money,” Lando said. ”Things are a lot more complicated than I thought.”

”Well, if it's any help, I'm not as rich as all that, anyway,”

Tendra said. ”It's my father that has all the money.”

”Well, I could be patient, I suppose.”

”It's not even that simple,” Tendra said. ”I'm afraid there's a problem or two I haven't told you about.”

”Uh-oh,” Lando said. He stopped and turned toward her. ”Here it comes.”

”The first one isn't so bad. Women on this world aren't allowed to marry without their father's consent, no matter how old they are. It's a barbaric law, but there it is. If my father doesn't approve of you, I lose my inheritance.”

”And that's not so bad?” Lando asked.

”I think Dad would like you, actually,” she said. ”I could talk him around.” She smiled again. ”If I decided 1 wanted you.”

”Thanks, I think. But what's the bad part?” Lando asked.

”Well, you're shopping for a rich wife. You haven't tried to pretty that up, or treat me like a fool, so I suppose I'd better come clean. I've been shopping for an off-world husband for quite a while now.

Someone who could get me 268 a-Abc-e Alien AT CO-AM 269 off this planet, and away from the Triad and all the rules and regulations. Marrying an off-wonder was just about the only way a woman could get permission to leave. I advertised here and there. That's how I ended up in whatever datalist you were working from.”

Lando nodded. ”I sort of figured that,” he said. But even so, he was glad to hear it from her, straight and clear.

”So what's the problem?”

”The problem is that xenophobia is getting worse around here. They aren't just kicking all the foreigners off the planet. The Triad announced yesterday morning that effective immediately, it is illegal to marry an off-worlder.”

”What?”

”I should have told you at once,” Tendra said, ”but by the time I heard the news, your s.h.i.+p was already in its landing pattern.

Lando did not know what to say, or even where to begin.

It was not that either of them was madly in love with the other.

Not yet. It was too soon for that. And after his adventures with the life-witch, Lando realized that he wanted to be good and sure he knew his intended bride very well before he did anything irrevocable. No, he told himself again, it was not love-not yet. It might be, given half a chance, given time.

And Lando found that he didn't want to try the next star system over and see what rich women were on offer. No.

He had found someone here. Now. Tonight. Someone who might, just might, be right for him. She was rich, yes, and that didn't hurt.

He was even honest enough with himself to wonder what he would be thinking if she just told him she were poor. But rich and poor wasn't all of it, any more than his being from off-planet was all of it for her.

They could talk to each other. They understood each other, in some way that was quite new to Lando. She was someone with whom he would always have to be honest. He knew that, instinctively. That wasn't love, of course-but it was something he had never felt before, and he was not going to let it dry up and blow away just because some fat-headed bureaucrat had decided to invent some new rules.

Suddenly Lando had an idea. ”Listen,” he said. ”I just thought of something. It might be a way around it if they 'do shut down the holocom net. A clumsy way, an awkward way-but a way.”

”what?” she asked.

”It's an old gag I learned back in my smuggling days.”

”Smuggling?” she asked.

”That's another story, for later,' he said. ”But there's a very old communications system, that doesn't use hypers.p.a.ce at all. It uses modulation of low-frequency electromagnetic radiation, in the radio band of the spectrum.

Radionics, they call it. It's constrained by the speed of light, and it's limited in range, too, unless you beam it or use a lot of power.

But no one uses it, so cops and border patrols never bother to listen for it. I have a matched set of senders and receivers tucked away in the hold of the Ijidy Luck.”

”But at light speed, if you were in another star system, it would take years for a message to get to you that wayif you got it at all.”

”So who says I'm going to be in another star system?”

Lando said with a smile. ”I have to go to the trade summit.