Reward for Retief (10 page)

            Down in the lobby, Retief
went first across the fallen gate. A nearly solid wall of intertwined locals
reared up to oppose him, fangs bared, shredding hooks at the ready. He took a
rusty kitchen-knife from the knobby grip of the nearest and poked it at the
fellow's neck-region until it recoiled; then he seized the thus isolated
creature just below the jaws and squeezed the pressure point until the fanged
mandible opened to its widest gape. With the other hand, he scooped up a loop
of the most conveniently placed local and wedged it into the yawning maw of the
first, which reflexively closed, pinching the other's abdomen painfully, and
eliciting a shrill screech. Thick umber ichor leaked from the wound thus
inflicted, running down across the rumpled fur of its owner to drip reluctantly
into the gutter below.

            "Hey!" the bitten
mobster yelled. "Whatsa idear, Leroy, you can't wait for chow?"

            Retief released him and
stepped back as he threshed and heaved frantically, until at last he threw off
the grip of Leroy, who, jaws snapping, was at once engulfed in the suddenly
writhing mass of rioters. The injured local continued to whip his elongated
torso against the in-pressing mob until he had cleared a space of a few cubic
yards in which he could inspect his hurtie in relative solitude. By then, a
free-for-all was raging around him.

            "Wonder what come over
old Leroy?" the bitten one mourned. "Usely a nice, quiet feller.
Where
is
the son of a gurge?" he added with sudden vehemence.
"I'll teach him to go gnawing on his cell boss!" As he charged the
writhing wall of his fellows, Bill reached him and delivered a hearty kick to
the punctured area, setting off a new flurry of resentful body-threshing,
accompanied by appropriate invective.

            "This feller talks
pretty rough," Bill said admiringly to Retief. "Must of ordered
hisself one o' them black-market O & P tapes, guaranteed to outrage decency
in a hunnert dialects and blaspheme all the gods from Azuz to Zuba." So
saying he promptly assaulted the nearest bystander, only to be thrown promptly
on his back. Retief grabbed him before he rolled off the edge of the narrow
entry-ledge.

            "Geeze," the husky
lad commented, regaining his feet. "I guess you make it look easier 'n it
is, General," he commented, rubbing a bruised shin, while waving away the
ever-present gnats.

            The focus of attention of
the angry crowd was now shifting from their impromptu riot back to the two
embattled Terrans. With the threatening locals snapping and jabbing him from
every direction, Bill took up a position back-to-back with Retief, fending off
teeth and daggers with lightning fast forearm blocks, dodging the more daring
attempts at tail-blows, the accuracy of which was spoiled by the constant
movement of both the aggressors' allies and their intended prey. Then Leroy
reappeared, howling, closely pursued by the comrade who had been bitten by him,
and now quite apparently intending to return the favor. Leroy recoiled at sight
of the embattled Terrans and instantly received a sharp nip near the tip of his
elongated last somite, at which he lashed out in frustration, passing the bite
along to a bystander, who retaliated in land, setting off a chain reaction which
again embroiled the entire crowd in a whipping, snapping free-for-all, ignoring
the Terrans.

            One group, ignoring the
affray, was busy attaching handbills to every available surface. Magnan,
retreating from the thick of the affray, got close enough to see that the
documents being distributed were typical of those badly reproduced on the
equipment in the Office of Information. It showed a blurry photo of Retief
which Magnan recognized as having been surreptitiously snapped by Art
Proudflesh during Staff Meeting. Above the picture was the legend, in bold
block letters,
'reward for retief
Dead
or Alive.'

            "Why, the
scoundrel!" Magnan blurted. "Or, rather, the incompetent ass! The
very idea! All His Excellency intended was to assist a subordinate to safety.
One would think he was a hunted criminal!" He turned away, muttering,
jostled by the bill stickers.

            Smudge, standing aloof
beyond the fringe of the melee, yelled in vain for order. The noise-level
decreased slightly: in the respite thus afforded, Bill blurted:

            "We can't stay here,
General; they'll remember us any second, specially with old Chief over there
yelling 'Get Terry!' and blowing that whistle!" The Marine ducked a wild
blow aimed by a local who employed half his length as a bludgeon, with his
fanged head at the end, a blow which would have crushed the Terran's skull had
it connected. Bill, shaken by the near miss, stepped back for a wide view of
the crowd, saw reinforcements crowding in along the avenue from the
conspicuously marked Police HQ, in the next block to the left.

            "We got to get outa
here, General!" Bill yelled over his shoulder; suiting action to words,
the Marine rushed the heap of entangled battlers directly before him, made it
across the two-by-four to the relative spaciousness of the boulevard, where he
paused for only a moment before setting off at a sprint toward the somewhat
less crowded area to the right.

            "Hold it, Bill,"
Retief called, as a fresh contingent appeared ahead. "They've got us
blocked both ways."

            Bill skidded to a halt as
yet another platoon of locals burst from a side street and swarmed over the
boulevard directly in his path. He turned and dashed back to a cable-sized
sideway and started out across it, holding his arms horizontally for balance,
and shaking his head at the busy gnats, moving at a snail's pace while the
locals rapidly closed the gap between their snapping jaws and the Terran's
unprotected flesh. With a final lunge, he reached the beaver-dam-like structure
at the end of the cable, secured hand-holds in the shedding surface and started
up. His pursuers halted and began to pile up at the base of the fragile wall,
which they were apparently reluctant to scale. As usual the persistent gnats
seemed to avoid the locals, to swarm around the Terran faces.

            Retief came up behind the
press and began prying a confused rookie away from his grip on the cableway.
The surprised fellow struggled to retain his grasp on the cable, but Retief
inexorably broke one grip at a time until the frantic creature's full six-foot
length was dangling by a single knobby fist.

            "Tell you what,
pal," the terrified cop proposed, his thin voice rendered even shriller by
fear. "You give me a hand up and leave off stamping on my knuckles, and
I'll leave you go this time, OK? I'm constable Bub," he added hopefully,
as if giving his name sealed the compact.

            "You've been watching
too much classic telley, Bub," Retief counselled the fellow. "Real
life isn't like that. But don't worry, you won't be lonely; I'll send some of
your colleagues along very soon, to keep you company."

            "That ain't the
point," the cop complained. "It's the company I
will
have down
there in them lightless depths and all that worries me."

            "Tell me about
it," Retief suggested. When the cop hesitated, Retief raised his foot into
position to stamp on the overstrained fist which alone supported the obstinate
constable.

            "Wait!" the latter
yelped. "It's like a state secret, as well as common tradition here on
Sardon: the Underworld down there is inhabited by demons and aliens and goblins
and outworlders, and ogres and foreigners and trolls and Terries: tear a fellow
into small pieces and put ketchup on 'em and eat 'em rawr, is what they do.
Don't let on I tole you, OK, pal? Now gimme that hand up."

            Retief bent and grasped the
wiry wrist attached to the hand at his feet and at once Bub whipped his nether
end up and over in a bone-crushing blow which however, missed its mark, as
Retief, unsurprised, stepped aside so that Bub's fourteenth somite impacted the
cable with a force which nearly bisected him. In frantic reflex, Bub recoiled,
releasing his hand-hold, to dangle, draped over the cable, doubled over with
his head adjacent to his terminal pair of feet. He gazed mournfully up at
Retief, who was now engaged in beating back another cop, this one less
determined than Bub, relinquishing his grips in an effort to reverse himself so
as to snap his yellow jaws at his assailant. Retief unceremoniously dumped him
from the cable. He fell with a long drawn-out but abruptly terminated screech.

            "Guess you won't want
to give me another chance," Bub guessed correctly.

            Retief went over the next
half-dozen cops and reached the tattered wall with a final lunge which
dislodged the most eager of Bill's pursuers, who had reared up half his length
to snap chartreuse fangs six inches from the Marine's foot. Bill looked down,
saw Retief behind him.

            "Hi, General," he
called over his shoulder, "glad to see you. I thought the mob had you cut
off."

            "They did," Retief
conceded, "so I went around them."

            "Musta jostled a few of
'em by accident," Bill commented. "Heard a few ceremonial terminal
yells, like it says about in the Post Report."

            "Could have,"
Retief acknowledged.

            Below Retief, one of the
mob-members was slamming his upper torso against the shaky, doorless structure
to which both Terrans clung. Suddenly, there was a ripping sound and Bill
shifted position abruptly, grabbing for a secure hold as he pitched forward,
his head and torso disappearing inside the abruptly opened gap in the
loose-woven fabric of the structure. Retief caught a glimpse of movement inside
the rent just before Bill, with a yell, seemed to leap forward to disappear
inside. Retief hauled himself up, looked inside, saw flickering hand-lights in
the otherwise unrelieved pitch darkness.

            "Hey, Mr. Retief!"
Bill shouted. "They got me! And they ain't caterpillars! They're—"
his voice cut off in mid-word. Retief heard threshing sounds, the
smack!
of
a fist impacting on flesh, a brief scuffling, then silence, except for the howl
of the frustrated mob outside, and a background of faint rustlings and
creakings from the rickety building. He climbed in through the narrow aperture,
found himself standing on a resilient and uneven floor which creaked underfoot.
There did not seem to be any gnats here.

            Retief froze, breathing
silently. The yells of the frustrated cops outside were diminishing in volume
as Smeer's commands gradually began to restore a degree of order. Inside the
still, haystack-smelling space, nothing stirred. Retief called quietly to Bill,
but received no reply. He lit a micro-flash and played its brilliant
needle-beam around the room, on a shedding woven-grass partition, a high
ceiling of decaying rattan and rushes. A black opening in a far corner suggested
where Bill's captors had taken him. Looking in, Retief saw woven walls which
had sagged until they nearly touched. He heard a faint yell, far ahead. He
stepped in, proceeded quickly along the narrow passage, came to a
dubious-looking down-ramp where the main corridor curved off to the right. He
paused to listen, heard a faint murmur from the side. He went cautiously, using
the light sparingly, and after a hard left turn, saw ahead a dim glow as of
filtered daylight. Another ten feet brought him to a broad landing made of
unexpectedly solid planks at the head of a long flight of equally firm steps.
The light, such as it was, came from below. There was no sound from the
stairwell. Retief descended, step-by-step; suddenly the light below brightened,
and he heard the creak of a heavy door on unoiled hinges. Then a voice,
unmistakably Bill's, yelled, "Whoopee!"

            Shadows moved near the foot
of the stairs, where, Retief now saw, a heavy timber blocked ingress. He went
quickly but silently down to the barrier, squinting against the brightness.
Someone loomed up in view just beyond the six-by-twelve blockade. It was Bill,
his hair disheveled, a hand-blown flask in one fist.

            "Mr. Retief!" the
non-com boomed jovially. "I mean, General, sir. Come on in, if I can get
this dang timber outa way. Run into some good fellers down here! Got some
pretty good home-brew, one drag and I'm already pretty well juiced." He
paused to take a grip on the unplaned timber and lift—to no avail. It remained
firmly in place.

            "Hold on, General,
sir," he muttered. "I'll get Big Henry."