No Phule Like An Old Phule (14 page)

“All righty, you’re a big boy-but don’t ever say I never gave you a chance to get rid of that pest,” said Mother. She cut the connection, and Phule turned to his crew. In moments, the rescue party was loaded on the personnel carrier. At Phule’s command, Slayer took the controls, lifted it off, and started moving forward at top speed.

Phule stood on the forward bench, looking through his stereoculars in an attempt to see what was going on up ahead. He could hear what sounded like distant shouting, though not in any language he recognized. Had the Synthian lost his translator, or was there some other species there? He realized he didn’t know who else was on the original search team-he’d left it to Brandy to choose its members, and hadn’t thought to ask once the crisis had arisen. In a sense, it didn’t really matter who was out there.

They were all valued members of Omega Company. Their comrades in arms would do whatever it took to bring them back safe. Omega Company took care of its own. And anyone who stood in the way… well, too bad for them, Phule thought.

The personnel carrier had quickly, covered the ground between the camp and the trees, and was coming up on the position where Phule had decided to drop off the Gambolts. “Slayer, bring tire vehicle to a halt,” he ordered.

“Dukes, Rube, Garbo—make ready to dismount.”

Slayer expertly cut the vehicle’s speed and dropped it to within a hand’s breadth of the ground. The Gambolts quickly slipped off the tail end-Protected from any possibility of hostile fire, although there had so far been no overt hostilities-and began working their way through the underbrush, quickly fading out of clear visibility. Phule waited until they were well clear, then signaled for the personnel carrier to move forward again. There was still no clear indication what sort of enemy had attacked the original search party. Evidently their comm units were still not working correctly-there’d been no further transmissions since the truncated conversation Phule had had with Spartacus.

It was quiet, Phule realized. Too quiet. The faintly purring engine of the personnel carrier was the only sound; even the shouting that Phule had heard previously had now faded into silence, leaving only an uncomfortable anticipation. Somewhere ahead of him, the Gambolts were noiselessly working their way toward the site of the disturbance…

Suddenly, a loud sound erupted from the underbrush perhaps fifty meters off the left front of the vehicle.

As Phule stood up to stare-realizing even as he did so that he was exposing himself to possible enemy fire-a Gambolt jumped seemingly two meters straight up, yowling. It was Dukes, the largest of the three catlike aliens in Omega Company. As soon as the Gambolt landed on his feet, he let out another yowl and began sprinting for the nearest tree.

“What the hell?” said a voice somewhere behind Phule. Dukes reached the tree and, without losing any of his speed, made a right-angle turn and went at least halfway up the trunk before reaching a convenient branch and stopping, with a harassed air about him. The seat of his black Legion jumpsuit was tom, Phule noticed.

At the foot of the tree, now, Phule made out a squat creature, quivering with rage. When it spoke, everything became clear. He didn’t even need the stereoculars to recognize it, or to make out what it said.

“Woof!” said Barky, the Environmental Dog, taking off at top speed to find another Gambolt to chase up a tree.

“Woof! Woof!”

Journal #681

There are few things more aggravating than a person whose opinions on some important subject are essentially correct, but who insists on subordinating all other matters to that one area of discourse. One might even say that, the more correct the opinion, the more annoying it becomes to see it drive out all other topics of conversation. The only remedy for such people is to avoid their company entirely.

Unfortunately, they are often in a position such that avoiding them becomes difficult…

“I’ve never met such unreasonable people in my life,” said Phule, pacing around his desk. The meeting with Chief Inspector Snieff had not been productive.

“That’s a rather frightening assessment, especially considering that you’ve spent the last five years in the Space Legion…” Beeker left the thought unfinished.

Phule ignored him. “All I ask them to do is to keep their dog away from my people. You wouldn’t think that would be so hard, would you?”

“The dog cannot be blamed for its response, sir,” Beeker noted. “To put it frankly, sir, even a relatively sophisticated person such as I might find the, uh, characteristic odors of some races of nonhuman sophonts rather peculiar, if not downright unpleasant. You notice that it paid particular attention to poor Spartacus, and to the Gambolts. The poor animal, which has a far more sensitive nose than you or I, simply reacts to them as it has been trained.”

“It must have been raised in a humans-only environment,” said Phule. “But still-my legionnaires aren’t polluting the planet. I took special pains to get the most up-to-date ecological protection features built into the base. We recycle everything, Beeker. Nothing goes to waste in Zenobia Base. Our environmental policies are far greener than the Legion’s regulations for units in the field, and we stick to them, too.”

“I believe you, sir,” said Beeker. “But I should remind you that I am not the one you need to persuade in this instance. The relevant parties are Ms. Snieff-and her dog.”

“I don’t know which is worse,” said Phule, plopping himself down on the edge of his desk. “At least she didn’t try to bite anybody… though maybe that’d be better than having her spout slogans at me all afternoon. If she bit me, all I’d need to do is make sure my shots were up-to-date.”

“It is unfortunate that there are no inoculations against fanaticism,” said Beeker.

“The woman’s employer is in my opinion one of the very few governmental organizations actually capable of making the world better than it finds it, and yet she seems to have the gift, so to speak, of alienating everyone around her. I suppose it is another example of the tendency of bureaucracies to promote those who most excel at bureaucratic infighting, rather than at the actual business of the organization.”

Phule had picked up the remote for the office’s video display wall and fiddled with it as he listened to Beeker. Now he looked at it, realized he wasn’t about to use it for anything, and put it back down on his desk. “The bottom line is, we need to be able to work here,” he said. “I can’t just tell my people not to go near their camp, Beeker. They were out in the desert to investigate a possible threat to our security. And we never did find out what all those lights were about.”

“Sir, now may be the time to prevail upon Flight Leftenant Qual to interest his government in the matter,” said Beeker. “Point out to them that your mission is being jeopardized by this AEIOU team’s officious meddling. Perhaps you might even persuade one or two Zenobians to stray out into the desert where they would encounter the dog. That might persuade them quickly.”

“And if Barky went after them, what would stop them from shooting him?” said Phule. “Or maybe eating him for lunch. The Zenobians don’t seem to eat mammals-they don’t seem to have very many, in fact-but they might make an exception in this case. Getting an animal killed by the locals-not just any animal, but a beloved environmental dog with his own weekly tri-vee show, and fan clubs of adoring kids on every human-occupied planet-no, Beeks. No thank you. I’ve already survived more than my share of interplanetary incidents. But I don’t think even Ambassador Gottesman could bail me out of that one.”

“It would have a very unfortunate effect on your public image, I am sure, sir,” agreed Beeker.

“However, I fear that something of the sort is inevitable unless you take steps to prevent it. I am more than ever convinced that General Blitzkrieg has engineered this AEIOU visit in hopes of discrediting you.”

“Old Blitzkrieg again, eh?” said Phule. “Well, by now, he’s tried everything short of sending assassins. And the Mob has tried that. I’m still here, in case you haven’t noticed, Beeks. Don’t worry. It may take a little while, but I’ll figure out some way to get rid that AEIOU team-and their little dog, too.” Beeker shook his head mournfully. “Sir, I really wish you had pursued a classical education,” he said. “It would help you avoid many infelicitous remarks.” But Phule wasn’t listening. Instead, his gaze had gone to the open window facing out onto the parade ground and beyond that, to the open land south of Zenobia Base. “Look, Beeker,” he said. “There are lights moving out in the desert.”

“YO, RABBITEARS! GET YER MOTHERLESS ASS IN HERE!” bellowed Sergeant Pitbull, glowering out of his office door.

Instinctively, Thumper jumped. “Yes, Sergeant!” he said, scurrying for the office. The half dozen other recruits remaining in the barracks room looked at him with a mixture of mild curiosity and relief that they weren’t the ones Pitbull had decided to harass during their final hours on Mussina’s World. Then they went back to their reading, their card games, or whatever they had chosen to pass their remaining time before leaving Legion boot camp forever.

Even though Thumper had already gotten his assignment for Omega Company, the sound of the drill sergeant’s voice was equivalent to a jolt of high-voltage electricity. Most of the other recruits had already been loaded onto ships headed for their new assignments. But Omega Company was on some isolated planet, a place without regular traffic. As anxious as Thumper was to join his new outfit, he would have to wait for transport to be arranged. And as Pitbull had already made clear, nobody was going to go out of his way to get a single bad-news rookie to a company full of rejects and troublemakers.

“Recruit Thumper reporting, Sergeant!” said Thumper, coming to attention just inside the office door.

“Close the door and sit down, Legionnaire,” said the sergeant. He spoke in a voice Thumper had never heard him use. For one thing, it would barely have been audible beyond the confines of the office. For another, it didn’t carry any of the menacing inflections he was used to hearing from Pitbull-in fact, he’d called him “Legionnaire” instead of some insulting nickname. And to top it all off, Thumper had never been invited to sit in the sergeant’s presence before now. Wondering just what might be wrong, Thumper took the offered seat.

“I wanted to talk to you, so’s you don’t get the wrong idea,” said Sergeant Pitbull. He had a strange expression on his face that Thumper couldn’t quite recognize. “You know, and I know, that somebody set you up to take a big fall when General Blitzkrieg came to inspect the company. And if you think about it, you probably know why it happened.”

“Some of the other recruits were mad at me for running the obstacle course too fast,” said Thumper, nodding. “And for trying my best at other things, when they were happy just getting by.”

“That’s right,” said Pitbull, nodding. “I knew you were smarter than the average sophont. You were showin‘ ’em up, so they decided they had to make you look so bad you couldn’t ever recover from it. Except they forgot one thing. Or maybe they never even knew it.”

“Forgot something?” Thumper was confused, now. “What was it you think they forgot?”

“General Blitzkrieg has a ripper up his ass about Omega Company,” said the sergeant. “He thinks they’re total screwups. What’s more, he thinks their CO, Captain Jester, is the biggest screwup of all. So when he thinks he’s got another troublemaker on his hands, where does he send him? Straight to Omega, natch.”

“Yes, Sergeant, I gathered as much,” said Thumper.

“I don’t know if there’s anything I can do to wipe this incident off my record…”

“Wipe it off your record?” Pitbull guffawed. “Why’d you want to do that?” He leaned forward and lowered his voice even more. “You want to know the dead-certain truth? General Blitzkrieg has been the biggest dorknose in the Legion since before I was a recruit, and that’s damn near thirty years, now. I damn near hurt myself beyond repair trying to keep from laughing when he got that bucket of slop poured all over him.”

“Excuse me?” said Thumper.

“You heard me right,” said Pitbull. “The funniest thing is, whoever set you up there was doing you the biggest favor he could have done. I know people in Omega, and from all they tell me, it’s the best damn outfit in the Legion for a heads-up guy to be in right now. You play your cards right, and Omega just might be the best thing that ever happened to you.”

“Excuse me?” Thumper said again, still not quite convinced that what he was hearing made sense.

“GREAT GHU, YOU GOT THOSE BIG-ASS EARS AND YOU STILL CAN’T HEAR DIDDLYSHIT WITH ‘EM?” roared Pitbull. Thumper almost reflexively flinched at the volume. Pitbull smiled and lowered his voice again. “You know those clowns outside are tryin’ to listen in on us,” he said, with an actual grin. “Gotta give‘ em somethin’ to think about.”

“Er-yes, Sergeant,” said Thumper, still confused.

Pitbull leaned forward, and said, in an even lower voice, “The thing I wanted to tell you is, you’re damn near the best recruit I’ve had in ten years. You need to loosen up some, but I figure Omega will do that for you. And you need to pay more attention to getting along with your buddies-no matter how good you are as an individual, it’s how you play with the team that’s gonna make or break you in the Legion. You hear me?”

“Yes, Sergeant,” Thumper said again, wondering if he sounded as dull to the sergeant as he did to himself.

“Good,” said Pitbull, pushing his chair back from the desk. “The other thing you need to know is that we found you transport to Zenobia, which is where Omega Company is based. There’s a bunch of rich civilians taking some kind of damn junket to Zenobia, and somebody convinced ‘em to take on a passenger, which turns out to be you. So you’ll be traveling in style, which ain’t so bad after all. Don’t let nobody know it-it’s supposed to be punishment.”

“Yes, Sergeant!” said Thumper, considerably more enthusiastically now. “When do I have to be ready to depart?”

“You have to get on the shuttle to Wayne ’s World, oh six-hundred tomorrow morning.” Pitbull stood up, took a deep breath, and suddenly his voice took-on its normal bellow. “YOU MISS IT, I’LL KICK YOUR STINKING ASS FIVE DIFFERENT WAYS, AND THEN I’LL REALLY GO TO WORK. NOW GET THE HELL OUT OF MY SIGHT, RABBITEARS!”