Reward for Retief (7 page)

            "You err, sir,"
Magnan countered icily. "We are diplomats, and having disavowed the use of
force, are of course unarmed."

            "Oh, yeah? Then I guess
my name ain't Smudge, which I'm Chief of Metropolitan Police."

            "Curious," Magnan
observed. "This morning at the post, we met one Chief Smeer who claimed
chiefship of the same organization. However, not having the honor of your
acquaintance, sir, or Chief," he amplified, "I can hardly be in a
position to confirm your personal appelation."

            "Oh, well, OK, 'Deppity
Chief Smudge'," the local amended.

            "Oh, he's Smudge, all
right," Bill spoke up. "I seen the sucker before when we done the
familiarization course."

            "In that connection,
sir," Smudge spoke up briskly. "You're unner arrest; or what I'm
tryna say, this Retief is unner arrest." He turned his gaze—an eye like a
badly fried egg—toward Retief. "You gonna come quiet, or what?"

            "I must protest, Mr.
Smudge!" Magnan yelped. "Mr. Retief enjoys diplomatic immunity!
Especially right here in the Embassy lobby!"

            "Whatta I care what he
enjoys? Myself I like a quiet dinner with a pal," Smudge rebuked Magnan.
"All I know is I got orders to pick him up. So let's not get ourselfs no
Interfering With a Officer in the Preformance of His Duty rap and all,
OK?" He reached for Retief, who somehow wasn't quite there anymore, having
stepped aside.

            "That won't be
convenient, chief," Retief told the exasperated cop. "You can go now,
and don't forget your subordinates."

            The cop uttered a yelp and
charged, only to rebound from Retief s fist; he made another try, and somehow
his face impacted Retief's knee. Behind him, the overstressed gate fell with a
crash!
and the entire mob was through and advancing at full charge, but at an
abrupt
Blap!
from the direction of the little group of Terrans the main
body changed direction and went pouring back out through the entry over the
ruined gate and off along the ledge; from the two-by-fours crisscrossing the
abyss, an indifferent populace hardly glanced up at them passing in full cry.
Only Smudge and another laggard remained behind, still intent on reaching the
Terrans.

            "OK, that's
another
felony
rap, pal," Chief Smudge squeaked. "Killing my boys in the line o'
duty!"

            "Whom are you
addressing, sir?" Magnan demanded. "You appear to direct that
ridiculous charge at me and my subordinate with a fine impartiality!"

            "Gee, thanks,"
Smudge replied. "I been working on the old impartiality in my spare time;
glad it shows."

            "Actually, as you see,
Chief," Magnan persisted, "I, myself am and have been unarmed."

            "Right!" Smudge
agreed promptly. "That'd leave this Retief here as the felon, unless ya
wanna count old Bill, which he's a nice-looking kid.
He
never slaughtered
no cops."

            "I hardly think—"
Magnan started, but was cut off by Smudge.

            "Yeah, I noticed,"
the chief concurred. "So I'll just put the cuffs on this crinimal here,
and get going; you're cutting inta my alky break." He turned briskly to
Retief, but instead encountered the hard hand of the Marine guard.

            "Don't go off
half-cocked, Bub," Bill advised the local. "I done the shooting,
which I aimed over their heads and din't kill no cops which that's a arrow I
could correct. So you can leave Mr. Retief out of it. Fact is, he told me not
to shoot, but when I seen fifty o' your hookbellies coming at us, I loosed one
off And I still got the weapon ..." He patted the holstered power gun.
"So don't tempt me."

            The chief abruptly became
interested in adjusting his harness, which had been wrenched somewhat awry by
the sergeant's grip.

            "Nobly spoken,
Sergeant," Magnan commended the lad. "Now just hold the chief here
whilst Mr. Retief and I repair to our offices to set in motion the wheels of
process to restore a modicum of order to this developing chaos," Magnan
ordered crisply, and set off toward the elevator bank, casting a haughty look
on the discomfited Smudge as he passed.

            "Hey, don't go casting
no haughty looks on me!" the cop objected. "And tell this here
gorilla to aim that thing at his foot!"

            "That cut it,"
Bill commented, and grabbing the offensive fellow by one of his multiple arms,
he swung him around and released him into the path of his own advancing
minions, who carelessly knocked him down
en passant.

           
"You seen
that!" Smudge squeaked, when he had regained half a dozen of his feet.
"The Terry rent-a-cop laid hands on me; Hunk and Dopey seen it too; right,
Dopey?"

            "I din't see nothing
except you stepped on my favorite foot," Dopey replied resentfully, miming
dire distress as he limped away.

            "That leaves you and
me, Constable Hunk," Smudge told his lone remaining subordinate.
"Now, you gonna put the cuffs on this here killer, or what?"

            "I don't see no dead
bodies laying around, Chief," Hunk demurred. "Who'd the sucker kill,
anyways?"

            "It hardly behooves
you, Detective Hunk," Smudge objected, "to raise these fine technical
distinctions at this here juncture."

            "What juncture?"
the promotee demanded, looking around confusedly. "I don't see no
juncture."

3

           
In the
conference room on the third floor of the Chancery, twelve senior Embassy
Officers sat at the long table, listening to the shouting from the street, and
awaiting the arrival of the Chief of Mission. Beyond the high, draped windows,
the view was of deteriorated facades elaborately woven of twigs, vines and
plastic gribble-grub bags, and linked by cables along which local pedestrians
crept in their deliberate way; when two met, one simply swung to the underside
of the narrow cable. The rickety structures were interspersed with tall,
palmlike whicky trees overgrown with glowering goobloom vines, all silhouetted
against a twilight sky of palest lavender in which hung the oversized crescent
moon, nicknamed Loony by an irreverent code-clerk. The cries of the mob
gathered in the gloaming had fallen into a chant:

            "Give us Retief!"

            "What's that they're
yelling?" Major Tremblechin of the Military Attache's office inquired
rhetorically, cupping his hand to his ear. "Retief? That's that rather
insubordinate chap who made all the fass at the port, isn't it? What in the
worlds would they want with
him?"

           
"Perhaps to
assist in one of their colorful tar-and-feather, or, rather
resin-and-leaf-litter ceremonies I read about," Art Proudflesh, the
Cultural Attache suggested indifferently. "Still, I doubt hell cooperate.
The crude fellow has no appreciation of cultural phenomena at all."

            The door banged open and the
AE & MP entered, slammed an elaborately strapped and bulging briefcase down
before his throne-like chair at the head of the table, and barked:

            "Gentlemen! In the name
of interspecies amity I have endured insult, injury, ritual defilement and
gross discourtesy with a Smile, Saintly (107-B), thereby impressing on these
rascally locals the loving kindness and empathic understanding of noble Terra
..."

            As he paused to permit his
audience fully to savor Terran loving kindness and empathy, Hy Felix, the
Information Agency man spoke up predictably:

            "—and convinced 'em
we're chicken."

            "We, Hy, are hardly, as
you so crudely put it, 'chicken'," Shortfall reproved the impudent fellow,
"indeed uncommon toughness of moral fiber is required to endure patiently,
nay, cheerfully while one's inferiors arrogantly assume every prerogative of
mastery, brush aside one's most cherished traditions, and impose the most
demeaning of conditions as the price of accepting Terran largesse!"

            "Makes ya wonder why we
don't put these crumbums in their place and get the heck out of here," Hy
mused aloud.

            "It induces no such
speculations in me, Hy," Shortfall snapped. "I am here to implement
Terran policy, a policy which has traditionally been based on the hallowed
principle of reverse inferiority."

            "Anyways," Hy
grumped, "I never said we're chicken. I said you make 'em
think
we're
chicken."

            "Patience, Hy,"
the Ambassador reminded his PR man, "is a virtue one has to home in
diplomacy. We shall reap the rewards of virtue in due course. In the
meantime—" he paused to exchange his residual 107 for a well-practised 921
(This Is It), about an m, Hy reckoned. Before he could speak, Colonel
Underknuckle, the Military Attache, rose and cleared his throat portentously.

            "Let's get tough with
these infernal caterpillars
now!"
he proposed crisply. "We got
plenty small arms and ammo in the lockup; from these windows we can blanket the
plaza ..."

            Shortfall cut off the
intemperate officer: "Imagine if you will, the headlines:

            " 'Terry Embassy Attack
on Convival Holiday Markers!' 'Vascular Fluids Flow in Street!' 'Invasion Under
Cover of Diplomatic Immunity.' It would set Terran-Sardonic relations back to
the Stone Age, early last week!"

            "Yeah," Hy agreed
gloatingly, "I'll get a release off right now." He turned to the
Military Attache. "What'll I say, Fred? 'Enemy Forces Routed by
Bureaucrats' sound about right?"

            "Ahh," the colonel
temporized. "Aside from the predictable outcry from the media, so vividly
described by His Excellency, there would appear to be no flaw in the scheme
from the military point of view."

            "Colonel!"
Shortfall almost choked on the word. "Am I to understand that you support
the notion of firing on these high-spirited civilians?"

            "I don't know from
their spirits, Mr. Ambassador," Underknuckle replied gamely, "but
they're out there yelling for a Terran diplomat, which I don't think they plan
to hang no medal on him, and it looks like they decided to rush the Marines on
the gate, so—well, you better start composing suitable letters of condolence to
the next of kin—not that you'd get to mail 'em before they knock down the door
here, and whack off our heads." He paused to unholster and check over his
ceremonial sidearm. Holding it aimed carelessly in the direction of the door,
he added: "I guess I can nail a couple of the blood-thirsty devils before
they get me, or you, that is, Boss."

            "No one, Chet, is going
to 'get' anyone!" Shortfall spat, then jumped as yet another chunk of
rubble impacted on the table before him, leaving a nasty gash in the urethane
finish. "We are, after all, gendemen," His Ex resumed firmly, "a
diplomatic mission, not a commando; let us consider calmly—" he broke off
with a yelp as a detonation rang the building like a cracked bell.

            "Colonel!" he
moaned. "Do you actually think they'd ah, 'whack off our heads,' is, I
believe, the unfortunate expression you employed ...?"

            "Might stake us out and
pour sweet-tar on us and let fire-weevils clean the meat off our bones,"
the colonel suggested. "I read up on this place in a Usually Deplorable
Source," he added.

            "That confounded
Isolationist rag again, I suppose," Shortfall mourned. "See here,
Chester," he continued. "I am not entertaining proposals for a theme
for a blackout at the Benefit tonight! I am attempting dispassionately to
assess the nature of any hazard with which we may be faced!"

            "Sure, I know all that
stuff, Yer Ex," the colonel reassured his chief. "But how am I spose
to know what these infernal savages are gonna do next?"