Reward for Retief (52 page)

            "Don't tell me what I
know, young feller," Sol grumbled.

            "Well," Magnan
faltered, "I was just ..."

            "Sure you was,
honey," Gaby agreed. "I guess we orter go now, since this
gentleman
don't want us."

            "I heard the way you
said, 'gentleman'," Sol accused. "So get lost already! Scram! Dangle!
Twenty-three skidoo!"

           
it is time to resolve this matter,
the Voice spoke up,
startling Magnan as usual.

            "Don't
do
that!"
he ordered. "Just when I was getting my thoughts in order,
you
pop
up in that disconcerting fashion! Of course, the matter must be resolved, the
question is; precisely
what
matter?"

            "Trespassers on
my
claim,"
Sol supplied promptly.

            "Getting back on the
job at the Cuckoo," Small suggested. "Place is prolly looted and
burned by now."

            "Sending all these
dreadful people away," Gaby offered, giving Magnan the Look. "So we
can get back to
us,
Benny."

           
clearing all these aliens off zanny-do,
the Voice thundered, overwhelming
lesser utterances.

            "The matter requiring
immediate effective action," Magnan stated loudly, "is the
regularization of affairs here on U-748-A, to include the formalization of the
de
facto
domination of the world by the indigenes known as the Zanny-doers,
and recognition of the role of the Terran Mission in bringing this planet into
the greater Galactic community. In addition," he went on, after a pause
for breath, "to establish a rule of law and order here, to bring
enlightenment to the native population, and to suppress the activities of the
lawless element, as represented by Mr. Ed ... (ward?) Magoon here."

            As he paused again, dirty
Eddie came up to him and said, almost quietly, "It ain't 'Egbert,' if
that's what yer thinking about. 'Eddie' will do, good." Then he added,
louder, "And whataya talking, 'lawless'? You said yerself we got no laws
here, so what's to break?"

            "It is to precisely
that parlous situation that I refer, Mr. Magoon," Magnan quickly reassured
the indignant hoodlum. "Now, what we have to do first, is decide just
whose paradigm shall be paramount, and take steps to suppress all others.
Actually," he added, to Retief, "I'm sure we've quite enough now to
place before His Excellency the Terran AE and MP." Magnan looked
triumphantly at the others. "So let's be off, Jim."

            "Not quite yet, Ben, I
suggest," Retief countered.

            "Why ever not?"
Magnan yelped. "Retief, it's not like you to drag your figurative feet at
a moment like this! We must waste no time in placing this entire matter before
the Ambassador!"

            "I think, sir,"
Retief demurred, "we need one more item."

            "And what, pray, might
that be?" Magnan demanded. "Surely, the need to rectify this
situation takes primacy over all other considerations!"

           
"My
first, and
indeed only priority, sir," Prince William spoke up, "is to restore
my liege lord, Prince Sobhain cuchelaine ap Cool, to his people with all
dispatch." He patted the boy reassuringly on the shoulder.

            "It's
my
planet!"
Sol reiterated hotly. "And you wanta turn it over to Worm to louse up for
everybody. Damn animal!"

           
ignoring the prejudicial nature of the sentiments just expressed,
the
Voice cut in with a hint of indignation,
I
merely
cite paragraph three, section a
-l,
of
the preamble to the grotian accord, as homologated on wendy, ale third,
twenty-six-fifteen.

           
"Groints!"
Small exclaimed. "He's got us, right, Retief?"

            "Not quite, Big,"
Retief replied quietly. "Actually the citation refers to natural
life-forms only, genetically engineered forms being specifically excluded from
the exercise of sovereign powers."

            "Heavens!" Magnan
gasped. "Do you mean that Worm is some sort of unnatural monster, and not
just a sort of overgrown pillar?"

            "Or not a pillar at
all?" Eddie suggested. "Guess that leaves I and my boys in
charge."

            "Hardly, Mr.
Voice," Magnan huffed. "Under no circumstances can one assent to the
cession, by default, of a .999 Terroid world to a mere disembodied voice!"

           
nor yet to a band of terran freebooters,
the Voice pointed out.

            "Right!" Eddie
agreed enthusiastically. "That Embassy crowd has got to go!"

            "It was hardly the
Terran Mission to which the Voice alluded," Magnan rebuked the saucy
fellow.

            "He's tryna pull yer
laig, Mr. Magnan," Small told Magnan. "What I say is, we got to
respect the Captain's prior claim and all, and allow fer Prince Willy's ideas,
as modified by us regler fellers: the concensus, you might say—"

           
the invalid precept of mob rule is hardly germaine,
the Voice put in.
I
perceive that I must now invoke eminent
domain, with all which that implies. I shall inform you of my decision
presently.

           
"Absurd!"
Magnan gulped. "Why this matter would tax the sagacity of a dozen
Underground Deepthink Teams! Surely you'd not propose we attempt to adjudicate
it quite on your own! And in the presence of totally unauthorized personnel,
too." His glance went disdainfully from Small to Eddie before coming
tenderly to rest on Gaby, dabbing at her eyes again—or still? Magnan wondered.

           
if I may be permitted a further word,
the Voice cut across
the babble,
I
submit that
jurisdiction rests not with the venal petty officials of the cdt, nor the
lawless trash who've made my peaceful world a hell these several years now, but
indeed with myself—

           
"Yeah?"
Small and Eddie challenged in unison. "So what you got in mind?"
Small demanded, while Eddie blurted, "I hope you ain't figuring to ace I
and my boys, which I guess we got a few rights!"

           
very few
,
Voice agreed,
all was orderly here until you came. or almost so. one must concede
that the advent of young vice-consul overbore was coincident with the inception
of a series of bizarre events from the repercussions of which poor, suffering
goldblatts other world, or should I say sardon, is still reeling, figuratively.
an expression having no reference to the planet's axial rotation, nor its
annual circuit of the star.

           
"You're
simply complicating the issue!" Magnan carped.

           
that
,
Voice informed him, is
a contradiction in terms. since I am able to
communicate with your simple mind only at a conceptual level, I submit that it
is yourself, benmagnan, who obfuscates.

           
"Rhetoric
aside," Magnan whispered, "let's stick to facts: one, Captain
Goldblatt was here first; the first Terran, that is; he met a local, who, or
which, used him in a most unprincipled manner. And what do you mean 'young
Vice-Consul Overbore?' Mr. Overbore is a senior Career Minister, and Number Two
man in the Terran Embassy to Sardon!"

           
even sidneyoverbore was young once
,
Voice reminded
Magnan. All heads present nodded in agreement.

            "You mean this Elmer
feller was here before, when he was just a green hand," Small offered.

            "He sure was!" Sol
supplied. "Do I remember the young squirt! Come in the Place one night,
full of ideas, he was. Started right in bossing; that's why we called him
'Boss.' Planted some kinda high-tech gadgets, too. Set up what he called
de
facto
gubment. Had this Enforcer, and this here Emergency Crew—bunch o'
young squirts. We never paid the sucker much mind, but them gadgets o' his
bollixed up the paradigm—said he was just tryna measure the Vug flux and all.
Full o' fancy talk, too, about the purity o' science and the sacred mission and
stuff, but turned out he was on the make worser'n old Eddie here."

            "Wait a
minuter
Eddie
protested, at the same moment that a man clad in a bramble-torn late
mid-afternoon top informal dickey-suit stumbled into view along the path.

            "I protest!" he
barked, holding up a formerly manicured hand imperiously.

            "Good Lord!"
Magnan gasped. "Why, Mr. Overbore, sir! Pray take a seat; you look quite
all in!"

            "No seats here,
Magnan!" the Counselor barked, looking around curiously. His gaze lingered
on the collapsed bladder that had been one avator of the fearsome Worm.

            "Damn scoundrel!"
the Counselor muttered. "I suspected something of the sort all along, of
course! That Sol imposter and his fairy-tales of over-educated caterpillars!
Now, you fellows," he focused his remarks on Magnan and Retief, "time
to get busy here. Retief!" he seemed belatedly to recognize his former
colleague. "What are
you
doing here? Thought you'd been kidnapped
and done away with some time ago. In fact, I heard a reward had been offered
for your safe return, my boy; you see how tenderly solicitous the Corps is of
even the humblest of its own!"

            "I flunked humility at
the Institute," Retief pointed out.

            "I saw several of those
posters, sir," Magnan yelped. "They said 'dead or alive'."

            "Poor Art,"
Overbore mourned. "He
did
have a tendency to get carried away. But
enough of this yivshish, we've work to do!"

            "You tryna weasel outa
that nice pile o' guck you promised me if I laid the bandit Retief by the
heels?" Smeer demanded via the Captain, who recoiled, stepped to the rear,
and held a vociferous conversation with himself.

            "Lucky we know about
old Cap's set-up with that lousy cop," Small remarked. "Otherwise a
feller'd think he'd went off his gourd and all."

            "Ben," Counselor
Overbore's voice cut through the small-talk like a machete, "candidly, I'm
surprised to find a diplomat of your seniority in the company of such riff-raff—"
Before he could complete the rebuke, Small's arm, carelessly outflung,
accidentally struck the senior bureaucrat across the mouth. Small turned
looking solicitous.

            "Geese, yer
Worship," he exclaimed, miming Dismay at an Untoward Turn of Events, (945-d)
overlain with a classic 17-b (Astonishment at the Totally Unexpected). Overbore
spluttered, spat a tooth fragment and made gobbling sounds, among which the
word 'assassin' was audible. Magnan leaped forward to soothe the ruffled
dignity of his Chief.

            "Gosh, sir," he
improvised unimaginatively. "I'm sure Mr. Small didn't meant—"

            "What the oaf
meant,
Magnan," Overbore grated, "dwindles to insignificance in the
light of what he
did\"
The Counselor paused to take dental census
with the tip of his tongue.

            "That implant set me
back plenty, Ben," he announced, the while glaring balefully at Small.

            "Now don't you go
worrying, Mister Big Shot," Small advised. "The way I figure it, you
got plenty in that coded account on Qumballoon to buy you a whole new jaw-bone."

            "What's that?"
Overbore barked. "Do you imply that I've feathered my nest in defiance of
Corps regulation, local law, basic morality and common decency?"