Retief and the Rascals (28 page)
I don't follow your reasoning, Ben," Pokey
snarled. "Still, I'll try if I can figure out how to slow this thing
down."
The group on the ground watched as the tiny ship-to-shore
boat circled the port at high speed, then slowed and swooped in for a
creditable belly-landing.
"Oh, dear," Magnan sighed. "I
do
hope he hasn't broached his hull-integrity with that in-violation
touchdown."
"I'll go see," Retief volunteered. He
drove the line-cart back over to the still-hot
Goliath-
class
,
which
seemed much bigger at rest than it had darting among the space leviathans still
maneuvering above.
Retief rapped out an emergency-open code on the
hull, and a circular hatch rotated, spun, dropped a ramp, and fell away. He
climbed the access ramp and stepped inside. Magnan was trailing hesitantly.
There was a rank odor of unwashed space'n and denatured alcohol. The passage
was littered with issue gear, good scraps, and snippets of wire and tubing from
what appeared to be hasty emergency repairs. A burly space'n in soiled whites
with J. BLATSKI on the pocket emerged from behind a data-bank, and said:
"Who're you, sir? No unauthorized personnel
authorized back here inna utility deck." He looked dubiously at Magnan.
"That's all right," Retief told him
easily, returning a sloppy salute. "I wasn't planning on bringing anyone
unauthorized."
"Oh, OK, just hadda say it," Blatski
explained. "Doin' my job. Say, what's going on around here, anyways?
Looks like a war we stepped into, but the word
is, it's just some kinda celebration. If it was me, I'd choose a clear lane and
give the whole crew liberty."
"Good thinking, Chief," Retief agreed.
"Let's start by pacifying Captain Muldoon. Where is he?"
"Him?" the husky CPO scoffed.
"Ain't nobody gonna pacify Typhoon Muldoon when he's on a bender!
Listen!" he cupped an ear dramatically. Retief heard distant yells and
sounds as of things breaking.
"Anyways," the space'n went on,
"I don't guess it's my job to say where he's at." He planted himself
in the entryway as if to block it. His massive arms hung at his sides, and his
vague expression had tightened into a scowl. "I ast you who you was,"
he reminded the civilian intruder. "I figgered maybe you was some kinda
local big shot, reason I open up fer ya."
"You did just right," Retief assured
the man, and socked him in the gut hard enough to bend him double, retching.
"Jeez," the victim groaned. "I
never seen that one coming. And me a ex-fleet champeen."
"How about this one?" Retief inquired
genially, and right-hooked the big fellow back into the space from which he had
emerged. Retief stepped over him and went toward the sounds of carnage.
As Retief reached the compartment where the riot
was in progress, Powerful Pete was dusting his hands and looking around. A
burly rock-miner from Dobe, to judge from the dust that exploded from the seams
of his aged overalls when he impacted, was in the act of tackling the lanky
chieftain. Pete glanced down in annoyance and kneed the attackers already
well-battered face.
"I tole you, Bennie, I tole you and I tole
you, don't do that flon tackle on nobody ain't asleep on his feet! Don't work
good,
and
it smarts you some when you get the knee in the mush. Go clean
yerself up, now, and come back here and do right!" Pete glanced
apologetically at Retief. "Old Ben means good," he explained.
"He just ain't real bright, is all. You got to excuse a fella can't learn
nothin'."
"Such are the burdens of leadership,
Pete," Retief reminded the discouraged boss-pirate.
"Sometimes," Pete confided, brushing a
tooth fragment and a dust spot from his pants leg, "I get kinda
discouraged. You try to teach yer Tellers a few pointers, but they just ain't
listenin'!" He ducked slightly to allow a booted leg to pass over his
head, then half-turned to grasp the proffered member and upend a mountainous
tube-scraper whose lumpy skull struck the stone floor with a dull
thud!
He
subsided, snoring.
"Like poor old Maffy here," Pete
continued. "Tried to cure him o' that, but he's still determined to get
his two guck worth outa the mail-order ai-itchy-gugg course he sprung
for."
"It's a nuisance," Retief agreed, as
he sidestepped a haymaker thrown by a living testimonial to the relationship of
man and gorilla. Pete back-kneed the fellow and said, "Excuse me, Retief.
Don't mean to meddle none."
"It's quite all right, Pete," Retief
assured the earnest ex-naval officer, over the din of battle. "What's it
all about?" he inquired, glancing at the melée, which seemed to include
not only local Insupportables and their sworn enemies, the Reprehensibles, but
also stragglers from Promo's detachment, plus some refugees from the Indestructibles,
a few of Colonel Switchback's irregulars, and a smattering of CDF personnel.
"Well," Pete drawled, "one o' my
boys was talking into some rating offa Buck Promo's tub, and along comes a
local name of Jum Derk, said he was in charge o' pacifying the area, an' he
laid a han' on Dirty Bimbo, that's my guy, and along come some guys looking fer
some Sarge Thrash, and some way one of 'em accidentally tripped or like that,
and right away them two locals jump him, and that's when I and my boys taken a
hand. Trouble is, I don't remember who's on what side. Take this here loser,
fer example." Pete indicated a three-hundred-pound half-bull/half-man
diving from the affray directly toward him. He snap-kicked the snarling face,
and Retief stepped back to allow the hurtling body to pass between them.
"He shoulda knowed better'n that,"
Pete commented sadly. "Another learnin'-impaired case. Say, Retief, you
wanta excuse me a second?" With that, Pete waded in, caught a spidery
little bronze-belt by his wide metal buckle and threw him aside, affording
access to a pair of muscular bluish gnomes locked in mortal combat. Pete
plucked them apart, held them at arm's length, and spoke sternly:
"Cheesy, and you, too, Peanut, you boys are
both s'pose to be pulling for the CDF. I got a good mind to ship the both of ye
back to Goblinrock in arns, that's what I got a good mind to!"
"Not that, Chief, Cheesy wailed, grabbing
in vain for Peanut's groping arm. "Gimme one more chanst, and old Peanut
too, and we'll show ya we're true-blue! Honest, we was just funnin'!"
"Funning, was ye, with work to be
did?" Pete yelled, and threw the combative pair back into the riot. He
sighed. "I dunno, Retief. Sometimes I feel like-"
"I know, Pete," Retief commiserated
with the distraught pirate chief. "But you just get this little party
quieted down, Pete. I've got an idea." He fended off one more attempted
murder and turned back to tell Ben Magnan he was going to report to Inspector
Snail.
"You propose to confront the Chief
Inspector in that state of disarray?" Magnan gasped. "Hell suspect
you've been personally involved in some sort of violence! It won't do, Jim! You
know very well a Terran Foreign Service officer is supposed to be above such
behavior! Still, if you're determined ..." He dusted at Retief's lapel.
"I think it's best," Retief told his
chief. "Otherwise he'll get excited and start giving orders."
"But whatever do you hope to
accomplish?" Magnan persisted. "It's well-known that Pokey Snail is
not amenable to reason!"
"That's what I'm counting on," Retief
replied. "Any reasonable person would understand at once that we're in the
middle of a couple of wars here. But old Pokey is primed to listen to any
explanation that would let him off the hook. He doesn't like the idea of trying
to report a war in his jurisdiction in a way that wouldn't make him look
good."
"True," Magnan conceded worriedly.
"But I still can't—"
"I'll be back in half an hour," Retief
said. "With my shield or on it."
"Don't do anything
rash,"
Magnan admonished.
"Right now," Retief reassured the
anxious Magnan, "I can't think of anything that would qualify as rash,
under the circumstances.
Magnan shied as the flaming wreckage of a
two-man side-boat slammed into the hull nearby, causing a damage-control
bulkhead to slam shut.
Retief waited until the centroid of violence
above had passed on a few yards, then went to the nearest hatch.
He rapped out a GUTS priority tattoo on the
duralloy panel, and after a few seconds it opened to reveal a sergeant with a
squad of armed Marines awaiting his next move. Retief ushered Magnan in ahead
of him.
"Oh, hi, Mr. Retief," the sergeant
said around Magnan.
"What's up? Looks like that war we're
s'pose to be preventing is already started without us."
"Not yet, Bill," Retief replied.
"They're just choosing up sides. I need to talk to Pokey. Where can I find
him?"
"Cohen, you take the squad" Bill ordered
the rangy corporal standing beside him. "Come on, Mr. Retief," he
added. "I'll show you the way. This here tub has got more dead ends than a
platoon o' Chinese Marines."
"Retief," Magnan stage-whispered,
"you must never,
never
refer to Mr. Snail as 'Pokey' in the hearing
of enlisted personnel!"
After following a meandering route from the
stern to officers' country amidships, Bill indicated a bleached teak door.
"He's in there," he told Retief, "if you really want to talk to
him. But he's not in his normal jovial mood, I'll tell ya," he added.
"You prolly noticed some o' these clowns are pulling live-ammo practice,
practically in port, too. Pokey's pissed about that."
Retief thanked the
sergeant and tapped at the door.
"You, too, Bill," Magnan rasped.
"Never let him hear you call him 'Pokey'!"
A snarl came from within. Taking this as an
invitation to enter, Retief did so, Magnan at his heels.
The paunchy Chief Inspector was sitting sunk
deep in an Imperial-model Hip-u-matic chair behind a desk like a mahogany
tennis-court. He looked up at Retief as if astonished. "Who the devil are
you?"
he demanded not in a tone which suggested that it mattered.
"Retief, FSO-3, sir," was the reply.
Pokey frowned, an effect like a near-space view of the Sierra Nevada.
"Didn't you hear me say I was busy?" he growled.
"Nope, I must have missed that one,
Pokey," Retief replied in a tone devoid of awe. He swung a chair around
and sat in it.
"Ben Magnan's idea to come here?"
Pokey barked, fixing a cold eye on the latter.
Retief nodded. "Not precisely," he
said. "That is, he didn't actually forbid me to come."
"Well, I ..."
Magnan faltered.
"Humph!" was the chief inspector's
response. "What's going on here?" he muttered. "Looks like a
full-scale shooting war."
"We call it Gorm
Festival, sir," Retief said casually.
"It can be quite disturbing to anyone not
familiar with local customs," Magnan added comfortably.
Pokey slapped the blotter before him with enough
force to cause his genuine plastic and solid gold pen-set to fall over. When
the ill-tempered inspector had retrieved the last of the writing utensils from
the carpet, he gave Magnan a withering look. "Are you suggesting," he
demanded "that I am not well-informed on the
mores
of the worlds
falling within my jurisdiction? Why, only this morning I was rereading the
section of the Post Report relevant to Gorm Festival! A joyous occasion,
indeed! But I fear some of the celebrants are overenthusiastic! Colonel
Wishbone, my armaments man, has informed me that, as I suspected, a number of
actual hits have been scored directly on the hull of
Incorruptible!
Most
careless! Is no one supervising the festivities?"
"Certainly, Pokey," Retief informed
the increasingly wrathful FSO-1.
"But," Magnan put in, "as it
happens, Pokey, the cap once had a bad experience with a Terry battle-wagon, so
he's slipping in a few aimed shots."
"What's the idea calling me 'Pokey'?"
the inspector yelled. "That's the kind of insolence with up which I will
not put!"
"Sorry, sir," Magnan whimpered.
"It's just an affectionate nickname, used by those who're privileged to
serve with you."
"I don't need affection, Ben!" Pokey
barked. "What I need is discipline!" Pokey rose to pace the width of
the spacious office and return to confront Retief. "Now, you—Mr. Retief,
isn't it? I expect you to put an end to this nonsense instantly! Do whatever's
necessary, but stop it. Sector wouldn't understand!"