Reward for Retief (54 page)

            "You mean this damned
Spookworld, I assume, Ben," His Ex interjected. "Yes, yes, I know all
that—"

            "Not quite all, sir, if
Your Excellency will forgive me.

            "Get on with it,
Ben," his leader urged, casting a glance at those waiting their turn.
"I've still got to hear Retief s excuse, as well as the rest of this
riff-raff you've dragged in here to my most private inner sanctum. Hate to be
late to dinner," he added, without noticeable pleasure at the prospects
for a peaceful afternoon.

            "Well, anyway,
sir," Magnan stammered on, "he— Sid, I mean, or, more properly,
Counselor Overbore discovered some of the world's unusual properties, and
conceived the plan of introducing certain elements into the local paradigm
which would redound to his personal benefit—or, rather, one might say, it might
not be incorrect to suggest that perhaps there are those who might, in light of
the circumstances, tend to misinterpret, or, to put it another way—"

            "Please do, Mr.
Magnan," Shortfall boomed. "I'm sure I don't know what the devil
you're talking about. Get on with it, man! I've already told you. I'm having
Chateaubriand
avec Sauce Bearnaise
and Borovian Chocolate pie tonight, and I for one—
"

            "Please sir,"
Magnan begged. "Your blurb-flops can wait. This is a matter of vital
concern to the success of this Mission! You see—"

            "I do
not
see,
Ben," Shortfall barked; waving away the ever-present cloud of persistent
gnats from his face.

            "Well, after Mr.
Overbore hatched his scheme," Magnan resumed, hardly less excitedly,
"he needed a local intermediary, and he discovered that there were rumors
among the locals of a super-pillar—"

            "Rumors, Ben?"
Shortfall exploded. "As for 'super-pillars,' I throw up my hands at such
an epithet, mingling as it does racial prejudice of the grossest sort with
superstitious dread of the unknown!"

            "So," Magnan
plunged ahead with a determination which was reminiscent of that of Admiral
Farragut at Mobile, "he investigated on the sly, under cover of doing a
wildlife survey, and he found this Standard-speaking local—"

            "Nonsense, Ben,"
Shortfall interjected. "They all speak Standard of a sort."

            "Not back then, they
didn't, Your Excellency, sir," Magnan contradicted, exceeding Farragut's
audacity.

            "So, he found a pillar
which had been taught by some marooned space'n, no doubt, to parrot a few
earthly phrases," the AE and MP dismissed the matter.

            "Hardly, sir, the
creature actually communicated with him telepathically! Together, they worked
out an arrangement whereby the peaceful, indeed inconspicuous local population,
until then spending their time sleeping and moulting, were organized into
disciplined mobs whose assignment it was to stir up the local Terry community,
consisting as it did of the crews, and descendants thereof of a number of
off-course vessels which had crashed here over the years. The latter found, to
their great astonishment, that strange forces were at work here on Sardon—
"

            "Has no business here
in the first place," His Excellency cut in. "Damned nuisance, these
distressed spacemen. This TERRI organization is their idea of regularizing
their state, I suppose."

            "Probably, sir,
something like that," Magnan whimpered. "But the point is, as I was
saying—"

            "Will you kindly come
to this alleged point of yours, Ben Magnan!" the Chief of Mission yelled.

            "The point, sir,"
Magnan intoned as impressively as one can intone while being humiliated in the
presence of one's Maiden in Distress, who is tugging at one's arm and
whispering urgently in one's ear.

            "—tell the bag of wind
to go blow himself out to sea, Benny!" Magnan shook off the tempting
proposal, and resumed more or less where he had left off, "that Sid
Overbore, in conclusion with an illegally educated local mobster, has
transformed a once-peaceful world into a hotbed of intrigue, terrorism, and
anarchy, and one in which the Terran Mission itself is menaced with
disaster!"

            "Heavy," Shortfall
commented. At that moment, the door burst open and Bill, neatly shaved and
uniformed, burst in, dragging by one upper arm the resisting bulk of Chief
Smeer.

            "Why," Shortfall
cried, jumping to his feet with such haste as to knock over his hip-o-matic
swivel, which threshed against the carpet, gribble-hide, hand-loomed, Chief of
Mission, for the use of, like a stricken thing.

            "Why, it's Foreign
minister Blott," Shortfall continued his 7990a (Astonished Delight at an
Unexpected Pleasure and Honor).

            "Looky who I found
tryna do a soft-shoe through the side-door," Bill announced proudly.
"Hi, General, and Mister Magnan." He went on, "Big, you and Gabe
here, lemme innerdooce His Excellency, the Terry Ambassador, Elmer
Shortfall."

            Shortfall was still on his
feet, staring in amazement at the young Marine.

            "Sergeant!" he
barked. "What is the meaning of this outrage? Kindly release the Foreign
Minister at once. Mr. Blott," he pressed on gamely, "pray accept my
abject apologies for this unseemly occurence. I assure Your Excellency that it
is not Terran policy to manhandle local dignitaries paying a call on the Terran
legate!"

            "Skip all that,
Elmer," Smeer returned casually, gently massaging the member Bill had
released. "What I wanna know, are you sticking with the deal Sid and me
negotiated, or what?"

            "Why, Mr.
Minister," Shortfall responded eagerly, "I'm sure that any
accommodation worked out with the planetary government by my Counselor during
my brief indisposition following my rather informal reception at the port will
be quite acceptable to Sector, and of course to me personally."

            "We were gonna leave
Sector out of this," Smeer corrected. "Just a quiet, little deal
between beings-of-the-Galaxy, OK?"

            "As to that, Mr.
Minister," Elmer responded, "I can hardly negotiate a treaty
establishing the basis of Terran-Sardonic relations for the next few millenia
entirely on my own!"

            "Say, Mr. Magnan,"
Bill spoke up in the momentary silence. "Ain't nobody gonna tell His Ex
this heel is a renegade cop, and not no Foreign Minister, which there ain't one
hereabouts?" Magnan shushed the lad.

            "You don't get it,
Elmer," Smeer announced. "This here got nothing to do with no treaty.
Just the old handshake. Right?" The cheeky local bustled forward and
offered His Excellency a callussed member, which the latter took in gingerly
fashion and dropped at once, wiping his hand furtively on his issue striped
pants.

            "By all means, my dear
Blott!" he agreed enthusiastically. "Those lintheads back at Sector
prolly never heard o' good old Sardon anyway!"

            "Is that for the
record, sir?" Euphonia Furkle inquired, materializing at His Ex's elbow in
a fashion quite unexplicable for a woman of her bulk.

            "The record?"
Shortfall yelled. "I've told you a thousand times, Miss Furkle, don't
creep up on me like that! And forget the record, just for the moment, of
course. I'm feeling my man, Furkie," he added in a confidential tone.
"Let's keep this all quite informal for the moment," he cried in the
tone of one proposing a late party.

            "OK by me, Elmer,"
Smeer spoke up. "I guess maybe we got one or two little points here that
kind of strain Terry ethics a little, not to say nothing about the old
SAP."

            "What old sap?"
Shortfall challenged. "I trust you're not referring to me in that unseemly
fashion!"

            "The Strong Anthropic
Principle, you know, Elmer," Smeer cajoled. "We agreed to relax it a
little here and there to accommodate the local SSP and all, and that about
wraps it up. OK if I put this here Retief unner arrest now?"

            "What for?"
Shortfall barked, more surprised than indignant. "What's the fellow been
up to now?"

            "Notta thing,
sir," Magnan spoke up. "Like myself, Mr. Retief has been the victim
of as baroque a chain of circumstances as have been recorded in Corps
history."

            "Oh, yes, there's the
matter of Corps history," Shortfall acceeded. "One dislikes to
contemplate the footnote accorded to early Terry-Sardon relations will record.
Riots, mayhem, the kidnapping of the Foreign Minister, to say nothing of
rampant racism, isolationism, you should pardon the expression, war-mongering,
inciting to riot and so on."

            "I never done some o'
that stuff, Elmer," Smeer Blott objected. "The war, now: that was old
Boss's idea, and then the rest o' them wild Terries which the woods are full of
'em got big ideas, so nacherly I hadda protect my turf! Just hand over this
Retief here, and we'll call it square."

            "That's more generous
of you, I'm sure, Mr. Minister," Shortfall gushed. "Of course, there
are one or two trifling technicalities with which to deal."

            "Under the rug, eh,
Elmer?" Smeer proposed confidentially. "Like the part about the
private girlie ranch for you and the double-sized
San Souci
onna beach
at someplace Sid called
Beauticia,
and the string o' ponies, and the '31
Isotta Sedanca de ville replica, and the stock o' aged Lovenbroy red and black,
and the rest o' the stuff Sid put in to keep you happy."

            "Keep
me
happy?"
the Ambassador yelled. "Preposterous! A thirty-one, you say, with full
quadriphibian gear, concours condition, tump-leather throughout? Thoughtful
fellow, Sid. By the way, where is he?"

            "Right here,"
Overbore spoke up from his position flat on the carpet where Small's weight had
been keeping him still and silent. "Get this Neanderthal off me, Your Ex,
and I'll tell you about the best part."

            His Excellency hastened
forward to assist his Number Two to his feet, helped brush the leaf-mold and
spidoid-webs from his travel-stained garments and helped him to a chair.

            " 'The best part,' you
say, Siddy," the Number One prompted. "And pray tell, just what
concessions did you make in the course of your doubdess brilliant
negotiation?"

            "Well, I had to agree
to overlook a few minor irregularities, of course," Sid informed his
solicitous chief. "Naturally, I accepted the status quo,
power-struggle-wise, but there's the question of old Worm still to be resolved,
but I assured His Ex, the Foreign Minister, that Terra was a sophisticated
enough Galactic power to take a reasonable stand on
thatX*

           
"On what,
precisely, Sid?" his chief pled. "Do give me the substance of your
quid pro quo, Sid, I'm all aquiver to get on the SWIFT gear and inform Sector
of my brilliant coup."

            "Back to that,
eh?" Smeer spoke up with a new note of arrogance in his squeaky voice.

            "The point is, of
course, negotiable," Elmer hastened to reassure the Sardonic dignitary.
"The girlie-ranch," he recalled, musingly. "I get to select—that
is, I trust these homeless waifs are being well-cared for in the
meantime?" The Great Man sat meditating for a moment then slapped the
solid iridium desk with a sharp report.

            "If
I'm
to get
all these goodies," he said in a tone of Dawning Realization (2031-e),
"what in heck is Sid setting up for
himself?"

           
"Nothing
much, sir," Overbore hastened to reassure his Chief; "only a modest
residence right here on Sardon, so as to maintain surveillance of compliance
with the terms of the treaty, of course."