Reward for Retief (2 page)

            "You're going to stay
on this tub, alone?" Gus queried, miming a degree of amazement that would
explain, nay, excuse his gaffe, as he sat in the extra chair. " 'Cept for
me, I mean, and I'll be holed up in the cold storage vault, with a hand-blaster
and a supply of refills."

            "Alone?" Magnan
echoed. "Hardly, Gus. I'm sure Mr. Retief will wish to be at my side. A
blaster?" he went on. "Whatever for?"

            "For them damn
caterpillars down there," Gus stated firmly. "I heard about how they
got ways to drive a feller off his jets and then eat him after. Not Mrs.
Gunderson's boy Gus; no sirree!" He rose. "So long, gents," he
muttered. "What beats me," he added over his shoulder, "is how
they know all this stuff about Spookworld which nobody ain't been there in two
hunnert years. Well, good luck and all, but ..." Gus' voice trailed off as
he departed.

            "Remember,
Retief," Magnan said in a voice with a distinct tendency to tremor,
"stay close, and ignore Gus's silly rumors."

            "As you wish,
sir," Retief said. "Of course, that will involve your coming down to
the surface, since I'm the only licensed atmosphere pilot aboard, and I have to
accompany the landing dinghy."

            "That's the most
ridiculous thing I ever heard of!" Magnan declared. He then added,
"Not counting iceberg census on Icebox Nine, of course, or the Goodies for
Undesirables Program in general. In fact," he pressed on, warming to his
topic, "galactic diplomacy itself—"

            Retief's hand covered his
chief's mouth at that point. Magnan sputtered and mimed resistance until
released. Retief wiped the spit off his palm on a worn table napkin.

            "Thank you, Jim,"
Magnan managed at last. "I don't know what got into me."

           
pray be reassured, ben,
a silent voice said faintly, like a
shout heard at a distance. Magnan stared at Retief in amazement.

            "Did you hear
that?" he whimpered. "Now I'm hearing voices!"

           
just the one,
the Voice corrected.

            "One is infernally-well
enough!" Magnan yipped, clapping his hands over his ears.

            "Easy, sir,"
Retief urged. "Just play it cool. I'm sure there's an explanation."

            "Then you heard,
too!" Magnan almost sobbed in relief. "What about you, Gus?" He
turned a sharp look on the waiter, who had hurried back.

            "Not me, Mr.
Magnan!" Gus objected. "I don't even know no big words like that
'reassured'; me, I got my ammo to see to. Ta, gents, and watch yer step down
there."

2

           
After the usual
last-minute delays while various staff members went off to ascertain that
something vital to the Mission had not been overlooked, then the ritual of
rank-determined seat-selection in the cramped shuttle, the bumpy ride down
through a turbulent, layered atmosphere, debarkation on the wind-swept ramp,
and a grit-in-the-eyes ride to the terminal where tiny gnatlike insects
swarmed, the diplomats alighted from the converted golf cart and found
themselves herded to a primitive baggage-claim carousel, all the while closely
surrounded by a surprisingly large number of larva-like locals, none of whom
seemed to be aware of the courtesies due the Terran Mission. The tiny
insectoids swarmed everywhere. With an effort, Magnan refrained from batting at
them.

            "Pity regs don't permit
one to swat the pesky things," he muttered, fanning fruitlessly at the
nuisance. "But at least they don't seem to bite."

            "They couldn't handle
our alien protoplasm," Retief pointed out.

            "Let's be duly grateful
for small mercies," Magnan mumbled, waving the midges away from his face.

3

           
"It's
amazing," Magnan stated, sounding Amazed (21-b). "This structure is,
except for its shabbiness, a near-perfect duplicate of the Old Terminal at
Marsport, the one they restored, you'll recall. Except, of course, that there's
no one in sight except these rather reprehensible-looking locals. Still, at
least I don't see any zombies," Magnan added in a whisper to Retief, as
they dumped their hand-baggage on the conveyer belt in the huge and curiously
fragile-looking terminal building. "Heavens!" he went on, "for a
time, when the shuttle was bouncing about, I feared we'd never again put foot
on Terra Firma, so to speak. Still, we're here now—and to think we were
concerned about the place being unpopulated." He fanned listlessly at the
swarming nits, and cast a disapproving glance on the caterpillar-like creature,
clad only in a complicated harness of crudely decorated straps, which was
grappling with his three-suiter. Other, similar beings swarmed the area, some,
their official straps adorned with bangles and quill-paint waited behind the
counters marked, in Standard: '
customs',
'immigration'
, and '
health'
.
These latter shuffled papers busily, but without apparent purpose.

            "They've adopted
civilized ways to the extent of taking care to discommode visitors to the
fullest, with technicalities," Magnan muttered, "but it appears the
actual nature of the routine is lost on them. They think it's a religious
ritual, I do believe. Look at that fellow, arranging my toilet articles in some
arcane pattern! Adulterating the pure faith with heathen superstition! Unspeakable!"

            "Hey, pal," the
porter interrupted Magnan's indignant remark, in a voice like air escaping from
a leaky bladder, "there's another Terry custom us boys picked up." He
was holding out four callussed, olive-green palms, making his meaning clear.

            "No fair," Magnan
muttered, reluctantly placing a base-metal demi-cred chip in each. "Back
home, they only have two, and usually only stick out one! Uncouth, I call
it!"

            "Still, they're quick
studies," Retief pointed out, greasing four palms of his own.

            "Hey!" Magnan's
recipient growled. "What are you, some kinda cheapie? Six bits, after I
maybe sprained a moobie-bone?" He threw the coins aside contemptuously.
"Oh, I musta dropped that, pal," he exclaimed, as if in ignorance of
his opening remarks, ducking to retrieve the cash. "That's OK," he
continued, "you can gimme a guck, and I'll forgit how you threw the
coppers at me."

            "I saw that!"
Magnan gasped. More baggage-smashers were gathering.

            "Better stay clear, Mr.
Magnan," Retief suggested.

            "Here, you!"
Magnan barked at his assigned porter, who had completed his devotions and was
sampling his client's facial creams with a blunt forefinger.

            "Needs salt," the
impudent fellow commented, as he tossed the near-empty jar in atop Magnan's
newly-tailored extra-super-top-formal dickey-suit.

            "Look what he
did!" Magnan moaned, leaping to rescue the pristine cellulon garment from
the oozing yellowish medicament. "You ought to be horse-whipped!"
Magnan declared, facing the upraised visage of the unabashed local.

            "Why?" the lout
demanded. "I ain't no editor."

            " 'Editor'?"
Magnan echoed. "Whatever connection does redaction have to the
brutalization of my effects?"

            "Don't ast, Ben,"
suggested Hy Felix, the dour Press Attache. "You oughta see what some o'
them boys done to some o' my most artistic prose."

            "That's not the
same!" Magnan insisted. "Personal effects and lit'ry effects are
quite different entities! But in any case, the cheeky fellow surely deserves
chastisement of the most explicit sort! Perhaps you should sock him on the
nasal orifice, Retief," he concluded, and offered his place to his junior.

            "Oh, going to do mayhem
to the person of an official of a friendly power in the performance o' his
duties and all, hey?" the 'pillar' challenged loudly, attracting more
locals to press in against the periphery of the crowd now surrounding the
personnel of the beleaguered Terran Mission.

            "Well," Magnan
said, eyeing Retief expectantly, as the latter made no move. "What are
you—I mean for what are you ..." His tone changed from snappish to
apprehensive as his voice trailed off.

           
"Mister
Retief!"
he spoke up with renewed vigor, speaking now to be overheard.
"Must
I
warn you again to respect local customs? Why, if this pious gentlebeing wishes
to sample my expensive and hard-to-find-on-a-frontier-world skin-food, can we
deny him that portion of his ritual?"

            "That's more like it,
chum," the pushy fellow commented, tossing aside an empty container
labeled
Spanish Mane.

           
"He'll find
it difficult to devour his next stolen fruit," Magnan confided to Retief,
"with hair growing luxuriantly from his esophagus. Serve the rascal right,
too."

            The local quickly recovered
the pilatory container, sniffed it suspiciously, swallowed nervously, then
squinted at the fine print on the inconspicuous label on the back of the jar.

            " 'Goose-poop
oil'!" he yelled and thrust the offending pot at a gape-jawed fellow union
member. "This here two-laiged foreigner done pizent me!" He paused to
run a finger down his throat, apparently to determine whether his esophogeal
tissues had yet sprouted a pelt, but gagged instead.

            "That's it, Meyer,
bring it up!" his side-kick encouraged, while the ring of profit- or
revenge-seeking locals closed ever tighter about the Terrans. Ten feet from
Magnan and Retief, His Excellency the Terran Ambassador Extraordinary and
Minister Plenipotentiary, Clyde Shortfall, was clutching at the arm of his
Military Attache, Colonel Fred Underknuckle. "Do something, Fred!" he
whimpered. "These savages are on the point of rending me—us, that is, limb
from limb! Now, what about that unsavory chap over there behind whatshisname,
large chap, Retief, I believe he's called? One can't help wondering what the
fellow—the local, that is, not whatsis—is about to do with that length of metal
bar-stock he's hefting."

            "Prolly just locking
the gate, sir," Fred reassured his superior sagely. "That's what it
is, you know, a locking-bar."

            "But, for Heaven's
sake, man!" the AE and MP objected, "that would mean we're penned in
here in Immigration for the night, which I understand is seventeen hours long,
without so much as a folding chair for me to rest on—with no adequate provision
for the basic necessities for my staff, that is! As you know, Fred, I never
rest until I've seen my people cared for," he added for any celestial
scorekeepers who might be listening in. "Demmed outrage," he
muttered. "Why don't you stop him, Fred?"

            "Well, Mr. A.,"
Underknuckle responded hesitantly, "if Yer Ex is sure you wanta start
something—"

            "Who in the world said
anything about 'starting' anything, Colonel?" Shortfall yelped. "Just
don't stand there like a spineless oaf and allow us to be held in durance
overnight, when a word—"

            "Doubt if words'll help
now, Chief," Fred countered ruefully as he watched the local tentatively
prod Retief with the bar, then jab energetically when the six-foot-three Terran
failed to budge. Instead, Retief turned casually, plucked the four-foot length
of one-inch steel from the 'pillar's' grasp, bent it double, and carefully
arranged it as an ornament on the extended neck of the former owner.

            "Here, you!" the
porter barked in his coarsely accented Standard, "this here's gubment
property, and you went and mint it!" He tried to pull it off his neck, but
Retief grasped both ends of the bar in one hand and squeezed them together,
locking it in place.

            "Why, Retief,
whatever—?" Magnan began as he turned in time to see the disgruntled
fellow point and begin yelling: