Retief and the Rascals (4 page)

            "Retief, what a gross remark!" Magnan
chided. "You know as well as I it's traditional to single out the most
notorious local troublemakers to hail as Enlightened Liberators of the People
and jump them up until they begin to believe it themselves—or at least moderate
their most antisocial tendencies so as to assuage Enlightened Galactic Opinion!
Supplying the commodes was merely symbolic of our determination to provide the
basic necessities."

            "Certainly," Retief acknowledged.
"But perhaps, just this once, a touch of the non-traditional would be in
order, to pacify these gangsters before they've murdered the entire electorate.
And maybe thunderjugs
will
remind them not to crap on the carpets."

            "A radical notion, Jim," Magnan
carped. "After all, we've His Excellency's very own guidance in the
matter. Tomorrow the Platinum halo,
with
bladder, will be handed to Wim
Dit, elevating him to the pantheon of the Arm's great Liberators, thus changing
forever the role of Bloor in interplanetary affairs! Their fleets will be
converted to pleasure boats to accommodate the hordes of holiday-makers
flocking here to the newest tourist attraction in six lights! The annual
revenues from landing tax alone will exceed the sums extorted by Wim's
protection rackets over the past decade! Can we allow all this to be lost
merely because of a trifling misunderstanding?"

            "What's to misunderstand?" Wim
demanded. "Duh mug hit me, and stabbed me, too." He displayed a
purple-stained fingertip in proof of the latter charge. "I guess I got a
right to some reparations, eh? How about a private pleasure-planetoid like duh
one I see about onna tube, you CDT boys built fer dat Yub duh Unspeakable over
Hangdog Tree, he shun't invade no more like inoffensive smaller powers an'
all?"

            "Forget it," Swinepearl suggested
crisply. "After all, Your Ferocity," His Ex continued from his
throne, "you haven't yet run up a record of murder and pillage to qualify
for the same league with Yub! You'll be lucky if I let you have a
six-hundred-bed funhouse, including six hundred prime broads (local, of
course)!"

            "Nix," Wim dismissed the offer.
"I get tired o' duh same o' hoors. Let's have some new hookers, fresh in
from Terra. I'll see about staging a few raids to like beef up duh old
rep."

            "Heavens!" Magnan murmured to Retief
as the two resumed their chairs at the festive board. "One less
sophisticated than ourselves might almost receive the impression His Excellency
was encouraging pillage and rapine."

            "Hey, Ben," Hy Felix called in the
near-silence which followed the exchange. "How's this sound?

            Terry A.E. and M.P. Offers Reward to Local
Hoodlum to Encourage Increase in,' uh—"

        "Pillage and
Rapine," Wim suggested.

            "That's it!" Hy exulted. "There's
a lead that'll stir up the City Room back at Sector!"

            "Don't you dare, Hyman!" Magnan
barked. "You know very well it was merely an unfortunate turn of phrase!
Why, His Ferocity would never dream of taking it literally!"

            "Say, Ben," Wim interrupted, giving
Magnan a rib-cracking nudge with his elbow. "Did I get that right? Old
Swinepearl is offering me six hunnert Terry hoors if I step up duh old pillage
and rapine, right?

            "Hardly! Magnan rejected the idea
indignantly. "He only meant—I mean, he meant Corps funds can hardly be
expended to rid the Galaxy of a plague too minor to have captured the attention
of Enlightened Galactic Opinion! It's merely a matter of proper PR. You've done
enough! Be reasonable, Wim! Magnan's voice faded with his realization of the
futility of his efforts. "One can hardly expect the public to condone the
award of Class One perks to a mere neophyte in the world of planetary
rape!" he argued, reasonably enough. "It would mean upgrading the
entire schedule of Goodies, at fantastic cost to the electorate!
Actually," he continued more confidently to Wim Dit, "you people
barely qualify as Undesirable under the charter of GFU! Indeed, I note that
among the epithets you people have applied to each other, 'Undesirables', while
appropriate, is notable by its absence! Let well enough alone! GFU will provide
a modest funhouse with banquet synthesizer at the least, and possibly an
Imperial model comfort station, just like His Excellency's!"

            "Modest is fer loosers," Wim Dit
grunted. "You boys'll hafta excuse me." He rose ponderously. "I
gotta go—to see to duh maintenance o' law and order, I mean, before word gets
out duh conference is falling apart. Got some unsavory elements here in
Bloortown might wanna take a'vantage and all. Also, I got a distribution o'
good honest graft to supervise. Ta."

            "The wretch!" Magnan spat when Wim was
well out of earshot. "After accepting a no-strings grant of twenty-five
million guck—the highlight of His Ex's Embassy to Bloor—he callously refers to
it as 'graft'!"

        "But he
did
say
'honest' graft," Retief pointed out.

            "Of course!" Magnan rejected the
rationalization. "All was carried out in strict agreement with GFU policy
as well as Sector Regs!"

            "You can't really blame an unsophisticated
ward politician for getting confused," Retief suggested. "It's
exactly the way he's been operating since the first time he delivered the vote
from a two-block sector of Bloor City in return for control of the choice paper
routes."

            "There are of course parallels between
interplanetary do-gooding and crooked politics," Magnan conceded.
"But after all, the basic Laws of Nature are 'Dog eat smaller dog', and
"What's in it for me?'"

            One of the larger local ward-heelers, timing his
move carefully, shoved his chair back suddenly. He had been miming
preoccupation with bending spoons into circles with which to play quoits,
employing a silver candlestick as target. Magnan tripped over the abruptly
intrusive furniture and uttered a sharp, "Ow! That hurt, you damned clumsy
boor! Or, excuse me, sir, did I disturb your vandalism—oops!—I mean your jolly
game?" Then recovering his élan: "Pray proceed and I'll get out of
your way.

            "Damn right," the hulking lout
muttered. "Yer spoiling my aim. Cull and I got duh punchbowl bet on dis
round!" He elbowed Magnan sharply, not
quite
breaking a rib, as the
X-rays later attested, and wrapped a long soup-spoon around his ankle-like
wrist.

            "Not bad," he conceded, admiring the
shiny bracelet.

            "Guess I'll just incorporate duh bauble
inna my already preddy gaudy, I gotta admit, lifestyle. Par me, Cull, I gotta
go and be sure old Wim cuts me in fer a full share. Hang loose, and don't let
no lousy scruples louse up yer career."

            "Did you near what he said?" Magnan
inquired of Retief. "'No lousy scruples', he said, and do you know, Jim, I
think perhaps that's exactly what's been retarding my career development! Could
it be ...? 'Out of the mouths of babes,' you know." After a moment's
thought he resumed:

            "I might cite the present fiasco as an
example; rather than treacherously encourage Hy, quite
sub rosa,
of
course, to broadcast His Ex's folly in not only recognizing the local mob
leader as
de facto
government here on Bloor, but in going to press for
de
jure
recognition, and thus to pressure Sector to recognize the regime as
qualified under GFU, thus to initiate the shipment of solid gold bedsteads on a
scale unheard of since the post-Persian Gulf era! I abetted His Ex's
extravagant idiocy, by keeping mum, thereby sharing his culpability! I stand
astonished at my own nobility. I could have scored points at Sector, and even
at the Department itself, had I exposed the folly and offered in its place a
carefully tailored program of spot-subornation to eliminate the scourge
fattening itself on the inoffensive Bloorian electorate!"

            "Certainly you could have," Retief
agreed. "But you'd have been unable to live with yourself if you'd
advanced your career at the expense of saving the Terran taxpayer a few zillion
guck and preserving the lives of twenty million Bloorian peasants."

            "True," Magnan murmured. "One can
hardly break with tradition so grossly, without suffering grave internal
distress, which might almost—almost, I say—impel one to take umbrage at the
grosser incivilities offered one." He paused to thrust out a foot to hook
the oversized brogan of the second-string politico who had tripped him,
precipitating that worthy face first into one of the few remaining platinum serving-bowls.

            "Oops," he said casually. "Don't
count that one, Jim." As the local thug wiped cheese dip from his eyes,
the Terrans departed.

            Leaving the festive banquet hall, the two
diplomats stepped out into the Easiest Way, and turned toward the better-lit
sections across the open sewer known as the Glue Danube, partly for its
consistency and partly for its aroma of rendered animal carcasses.

            As they approached the bonded warehouse, a lone
figure, tall and long-armed, separated itself from a stone pier and stepped out
into their path.

            "Retief!" Magnan gasped. "That
fellow—I have a feeling ...!"

            "Just carry on, Ben," Retief advised.
As they came closer they could see that the fellow facing them had the
slime-greenish pigmentation associated with the high-ranking Bloorian
Unspeakable tribe. The big fellow was standing loosely, his arms slightly
spread, blocking the way.

        "Goodness, not
again!" Magnan choked.

            At ten feet, Retief stopped and spoke casually
to Magnan. "Do you want this one, Mr. Magnan, or may I have him?"

            "Why, you go right ahead," Magnan
blurted. "One doesn't like to hog
all
the fun."

            The tall Unspeakable fixed his gaze on Magnan
and opened his mouth as if about to speak, but Retief took a quick step and
snap-kicked him just below the left kneecap; the injured leg buckled, and the
mugger fell forward with a yell. His jaw accidentally intersected Retief's
knuckles with a discouraging sound between
crunch!
and
splat!
His
face impacted the oily cobbles and his left leg kicked once before he became
utterly still.

        "Gracious!"
Magnan yelped. "You've killed him!"

            " 'Fraid not," Retief countered, and
gave the fellow a light kick in the ribs.

            At once the downed Bloorian's hand shot out, the
foot-long knife in its grasp missing Retief's ankle by half an inch. Magnan
stamped hard on the big-knuckled grasping member and exclaimed, "Why, the
sneaky rogue! He'd have waited until we passed, then jumped up and assaulted us
from behind! He stamped on the knife hand again and caught up the weapon.

            "Nix, pal," a gravelly voice issued
from the cobble-dented mouth. The fellow wiped a hand across his face and sat
up. He then extended the snot-and-blood-smeared hand to Magnan.

        "Gimme a hand up,
chum," he ordered.

           
"Au contraire,
" Magnan told the
dazed local sternly. "If you attempt to rise, I shall be forced to fell
you yet again." Suddenly changing targets, he blurted, Retief! Where's the
car? I distinctly told Ralphie to wait close by!"

            "I heard," Retief told him. "I
suppose by now the limousine is in the nearest chop-shop."

            "What about Ralph?"

            "Oh, Mr. Magnan!" Ralph's voice came
from the gutter ahead. "Sir," he went on, "I was just sitting
quietly looking at my komix, when some ruffian reached in and dragged me right
out through the window! Then they took the car, and ... and—"

            "Never mind, Ralphie," Magnan
encouraged the battered, barely recognizable rag-clad figure who tottered
toward him from the shadows. "We can requisition a new limo. And I shall
get off a sharp Note to His Ferocity, protesting the incident."

            "Yeah, that's cool," Ralphie conceded.
"But what about my front teeth, and the back ones, too, some of em?"

            "I'm sure Sector will authorize the best
quality implants available," Magnan soothed the battered chauffeur.

            "How about me?" the fallen Bloorian
demanded "I guess youse loosened up a few o' my favorite molars, too,
which he clobbered me when I wasn't expecting—"

            "Calmly, my man," Magnan urged, taking
out his pocket recorder. "What was that name again?"

            "Yer want my mob moniker, my borned name,
my legal designation, my class tag, my CD handle, or what?" Magnan's new
client demanded. "Just put me down as Dock Noun; dat's my secret
sobriquet, on'y don't tell nobody."

            " 'Anybody'," Magnan corrected
sharply. "Very well, Mr. Noun, I shan't. As for your implants, I suppose I
could squeeze them in under GFU."

            "Put me down fer a set o' dem new
prosthetic limbs I heard about in
Trivia Today,
May issue, too,"
Dock added to his shopping list.