Reward for Retief (44 page)

            " 'Suggesting,' my left
hind
gabichy"
Eddie started, but Magnan
shush!
ed him
instantly.

            "A lady is present,
I'll remind you!" he snapped.

            "Whereat?" Eddie
wondered aloud, glancing at, over and around Gaby. "You mean this broad
here?" he muttered. Magnan stepped in and delivered a ringing
slap!
to
the unshaven jaw of the bigger man, then turned protectively to Gaby, as Eddie
wandered dazedly off into the underbrush, snaking his abused cranium.

            "Come, my dear,"
Magnan soothed. "We'll just get along to the cottage, if you will be so
good as to lead the way."

            "Right down this here
path, Benny," she cooed. "You was wonderful, Sweetie. Not many
fellers would've socked old Eddie, which he done time for killing old Moose
with his bare hands, like he done that time. Kind of sissy, slapping him,"
she added, "but I guess that's cause yer a gentleman and all."

            "This seems to be an
established path we're on," Magnan observed. "Quite well-worn,
actually. Even a number of stumps where trees have been rudely cleared away. I
thought we were going to a secret hideaway."

            "Sure, onney
everybody's in on the secret," Gaby reassured him casually. "Onney
they're scared, is all. Not like us."

            "Not like us at
all," Magnan agreed reedily. "Scared of what, might one ask?"

            "The Spectre is
all," Gaby told him.

            "I see," Magnan
replied automatically.

            "Knowed
you
wouldn't
be skeert none," Gaby told him.

            —Remarkable what the
ignorant will believe," Magnan ruminated. " 'Spectre,' indeed."

            "Oh, you know all about
old Spectre, eh, Benny?" Gaby cooed and fell back to take his arm as
usual.

            "Never could
understand," she remarked, "why it likes to tear fellers' heads off. Why's
that, Honey?"

            "Why, as to that,"
Magnan heard his voice saying, "that's to ensure he'll hear no more
nonsense from them. 'Tears their heads off,' did you say? And it's to be found
in this direction?"

            "Eager to get there,
hey, Benny?" Gaby deduced happily, edging behind him. Magnan advanced
without enthusiasm, and reached out to pluck a pink and yellow thread from a
thorny shrub. "It appears that Eddie has been here before us," he
commented. "Curious he'd take precisely this route."

            "Only path around
here," Gaby pointed out. "So what? The sucker come back plenty
fast." She forged ahead of Magnan. "Cain't wait to see that there
rose-covered cottage and all," she remarked.

            "But—but what about
this Spectre?" Magnan wanted to know. "And poor Eddie was babbling
about a dragon."

            "You don't pay no mind
to a crud-bum like Dirty Eddie Magoon, do you sweetie?" Gaby scoffed.
"You a big-shot Embassy johnny like you said, and all. Fergit him."

            "Mr. Magoon is quite
beside the point," Magnan stated stiffly. "It was the dragon—and the
Spectre— regarding which I was requiring."

            "Sure, what I meant.
Old Eddie's hung up on this here dragon o' his. Seen it first swimming in a gin
bottle, they say—just a baby. Growed some since. Last time he had one o' his
fits, it was fifty foot high and a hunnert yards long, and breathed out fire
and smoke." She paused to sniff. "Smell anything burning,
Benjy?" she asked.

            He shook his head impatiently.
"You're saying this dragon Mr. Magoon claims to have seen is a figment of his
imagination?" he demanded.

            "Sure, what else would
it be?" Gaby snapped back. "You don't think he'd be talking about
somebody
elses
hangup, do you? Fifty foot high, blowing flames—" As
her indignant voice trailed off, a sharp odor of scorched vegetation was wafted
to Magnan's nostrils, accompanied by a
chuff
!ing
sound as a
twenty-foot tongue of fire and smoke spurted out among the tree-tops, setting
them crackling. Magnan stopped dead. "Gaby," he called, and pointed.
"L-like that?" he inquired.

            "Yep, zackly like
that," she agreed. "Silly, ain't it?"

            "Preposterous,"
Magnan mumbled in automatic agreement, staring through the folliage for a
glimpse of the source of the conflagration. "Rather like the Woomy,"
he commented, gamely resisting a powerful impulse to flee the scene without
further investigation. The Woomy, after all, had been merely a machine.

            Gaby retreated to his side
and clutched his arm. "Benny," she appealed in a strained voice.
"Ifn that dragon o' Ed's is onney a loose-nation like you said, what's
making that far?"

            "Why, as to that,"
Magnan started glibly. "It's merely an exhaust from an engine of some
sort, I shouldn't wonder."

            "Un," Gaby
replied, sounding relieved. "What's a 'injum'?"

            " 'Indian,' you mean, I
suppose, my dear," Magnan corrected automatically. "They were the autochthonous
population of an ancient planet called, naturally enough, India, as I recall.
Or, not actually India, but the early explorers
thought
it was India,
you see, and naturally referred to the inhabitants as 'Indians.' Meanwhile, the
true Indians carried on, calling themselves 'Indians' as well, which occasions
some confusion among young scholars in their astrography classes." As he
spoke, the snorting sounds became louder.

            "What's all that stuff
got to do with this here far?" Gaby inquired in a tone in impatience, at
the same time tugging at him as if to drag him back down-trail, "And that
noise, too," she added. "Benny," she continued, "seems to
me like sometimes you sorta lose the thread, if you know what I mean. But I
guess that's cause you got so much important stuff on yer mind, you can't
hardly get innerested in stuff like this imaginary dragon and all."

            "Pray release,me,
child," Magnan requested soberly, disengaging his arm from her determined clutch.
"I must investigate this. Wait here, please." And he strode away,
directly toward the source of the sound and the flame. Gaby uttered an only
half-stifled shriek.

            "You got no call to go
off a-heroing and leave me here alone!" she wailed. "Sitch a thang as
being
too
durn brave!"

            Without pausing, Magnan
spoke over his shoulder: "You really must take more care with your
diction, Gabrielle," he nagged. "
'Such
a
thing'
not
'sitch a thang.' And do be calm! I shan't be a moment."

            Pushing ahead along the
somewhat overgrown trail, Magnan noted that both the snorting and the volume of
noxious gases was increasing. On an immense whickey tree just ahead, he saw one
of the omnipresent reward posters.

            "A primitive
internal-combustion engine," he advised himself. "Just like the
Woomy: Quite harmless. But it's really quite shocking that anyone would
introduce such equipment to this pristine, unspoilt environment. Breaking
ground for an industrial development, most likely." Just then a falling
tree
ker-rash
!ed
through the foliage and impacted close enough to
send forest Utter flying into his eyes, momentarily blinding him.

            "Here, you
assassin!" he yelled, shaking a fist in the direction of the
louder-than-ever noises. "I could have been crushed! I shall have a word
to say to your supervisor!"

            As if in response to the
threat, the blunt snout of a Mark XX Bolo thrust up above the fallen log,
advanced over the obstacle, thrusting aside lesser trees like dry reeds. Magnan
stood frozen, unable to decide in which direction to flee. Then Gaby screeched
in his ear, grabbed his arm and pulled him to one side.

            "Good lord, girl!"
he yelped. "I told you to wait!" he gabbled as he struggled to retain
his feet. The giant machine canted downward and came on, strewing flying debris
before it, to pass the awe-struck twosome at a distance of less than six feet
and blundered on, heedlessly.

            "Gaby, my child,"
Magnan managed at last, over the din. "You might have been killed! Why
didn't you remain in safety as I suggested?"

            "Figgered you'd get in
trouble, bein' so brave and all," she told him. "Sure enough, here
you were, holding yer ground whilst the dragon come at you! Never seen the
like!"

            "I was, ah, merely
considering my strategy," Magnan explained, staring at the passing
behemoth. " 'The dragon,' you say," he queried. "Do you realize
what that means?"

            "Sure, tole you it was
just ah old dragon," Gaby replied. "We're loose-nation, what else'd
be that big and that noisy?"

            "A Bolo Mark XX model
WV/I, that's what!" Magnan snapped. "Actually what's known as a
Continental Siege Unit, with the addition of an earth-moving blade, supposedly
to convert it for agricultural use. But it still has its armor and firepower
intact. Its presence here is an egregious violation of Chapter Nine,
Sub-section five, paragraph two of the Charter!"

            "Looks dangerous, too,
fer a loose-nation," Gaby shouted in Magnan's ear, while the Bolo threshed
in the dense growth, toppling trees left and right, including the one with the
poster.

            "Guess I shouldn'ta
said that," Gaby reproved herself, "jest make you hotter'n ever to
tackle it barehanded. Nope, Benjy," she added sadly. "I guess maybe
you and me ain't made fer each other like I thought. I couldn't never get use
to havin to stop and fall over ever cliff we come to. I guess I better go
now—do it quick, you know. Bye, Benny. You were one tough hombre." And she
was gone. Magnan dithered, croaked, "Gaby! Come back!" then blundered
on down the trail still visible as a beaten path in the humus, though the deep
tracks of the mighty Bolo had been imprinted across it.

            "The cottage!"
Magnan exclaimed to himself. "Perhaps she'll go there—so I'd best press
on." The big war-machine was moving steadily farther away, off at an angle
into deep woods.

            "Disgraceful!"
Magnan snorted, observing its trail of destruction. "I shall definitely
bring this to the attention of the authorities!" Then, musing on the scene
of the proposed denouement, a question presented itself: what authorities? For
that he had no answer. Dismissing the matter from his thoughts, he hurried on,
searching the wilderness ahead for the first glimpse of the rose-covered
cottage where, he found himself hoping against his will, Gaby would be waiting.
Quite abruptly, the trail widened into a grassy clearing with a tidy garden
plot, the superstructure of a primitive well, complete with wooden bucket, and,
at the far side, a modest but neat house of roughhewn logs, a reward poster
stuck to the side. Magnan stopped short. "Good heavens!" he exclaimed.
"Unpretentious in the extreme, and no roses in sight; still perhaps ..."
His speculation was abruptly interrupted by the appearance of a man from the
cottage; an elderly fellow with a bald head and an unsteady gait, who, aided by
a gnarled cane, made his way along a red-brick path across the lawn to the
garden-path.

            The path of devastation left
by the dozer, Magnan noted, passed close by the side of the clearing. He
stepped out onto the brick path across the close-cropped lawn and hailed the
old man:

            "Here, sir! Are you
responsible for this outrageous destruction?" he yelled, and motioned in
the direction of the dozer's trail. The man halted, looking at Magnan without
obvious approval.

            "Who're you,
feller?" the oldster returned. "And mind my herbaceous borders.
Destruction? You're a fine one to talk to me about destruction!" The old
fellow's appearance seemed familiar, Magnan thought.

            "Would you deny the
destructive effect of a rampaging Bolo?" Magnan demanded. "If it
should turn this way I fear it will pay scant heed to your borders, herbaceous
or otherwise!"