Retief and the PanGalactic Pageant of Pulchritude (5 page)

            After
a five-minute gallop, they were in the grateful shade of the towering fung
trees, vine-draped patriarchs adorned with showy red-and-yellow blossoms the
size of dinnerplates. Retief dismounted and thanked his steed for the lift.
Yong nodded, his breathing hardly accelerated by the brisk run. "What we
gotta do, Retief," he offered, "we got to look out for slangs—some of
'em run twenty foot and bigger around than me. Got jaws can snap up a boar mump
in one bite, and got poison to boot. Nasty customers. Like to hang in the big
fungs and drop on a fellow. Could squash a little guy like you accidental
before he got a whiff and realized he couldn't digest you. Here, better let me
go first." As the Vang thrust past his Terran ally, Retief glanced up at a
scraping sound from the dark foliage above. He caught a glimpse of a sinuous
neck supporting a head with a mouth like a dragline bucket, set with yellow
fangs which dripped black venom. Then the head swooped, trailing an apparently
inexhaustible length of yard-thick neck, uncoiling from the darkness. The heavy
loops fell across Yong's back, staggering the powerful carnivore, then whipped
around him in a crushing embrace while the head hovered, alert for the
opportunity to dart in and inflict the fatal bite. As Yong screeched in pain
and shock, Retief made a sudden movement with his right hand, and was holding a
switch-blade poniard. He held it out to intercept a tarry glob of venom as it
fell from the slang's jaws. Then he took a step forward, arm outstretched to
intercept the attack. The knife sank to the hilt in the pale underside of the
slang's throat. At once, the stricken monster recoiled, threshing with a fury
that snapped off foot-thick boughs and tossed both Yong and Retief into the
underbrush. Yong was first to speak:

            "I
seen that, Retief, neatly done, for a foreigner. How'd you know the only way to
stop a slang is to knife him with his own venom?"

            "We
have a similar, though smaller creature back on Terra with a similar
sensitivity," the Terran explained. "And in any case, I didn't have
time to work out anything more sophisticated." He emerged from the tangle
of vines into which he had been tossed by the slang's death-struggle to see
Yong limp from cover, looking battered but intact.

            "Like
I said," the Vang commented calmly. "It don't pay to mess with a
slang. That was a big one," he added. "Lucky, in a way; a smaller
one'd struck first and broke up the bones after." He paused to rub
awkwardly at his chest with a forepaw.

            "Let
me take a look," Retief suggested. He went over and gently palpated the
big cat's side, eliciting a low moan of pain.

            "We'd
better get you back to the ship and see if our surgeon can tape you up,"
he suggested. "You've got at least three broken ribs there."

            Yong
turned to tug a length of the dead slang out into view. "It ain't et
lately," he commented. "If it would've, there'd be a bulge. So maybe
Gertie's OK. Unless it killed her by mistake, or just for meanness. We'd better
find her as soon as we can."

            "Let's
start here," Retief suggested as he started off along a dimly marked
trail.

            "One
spot is as good as another," Yong said. "These are animal trails.
Like you said, we might as well start here." He went past Retief to lead
the way into the black-green gloom; Retief followed, skirting the boles of
giant buttressed trees, thrusting aside leafy fronds, ripping through clinging
tangles of vine, to emerge on a tunnel-like path which twisted off into the
deep jungle. Yong's camouflage was effective here, Retief noticed; his
pink-and-green hide was invisible at a few feet's distance among the dark green
shadows and glancing streaks of sunlight which penetrated here. The Terran was
hard put to keep pace with his lithely slinking guide. After five minutes'
headlong progress, Yong recoiled suddenly, turning quickly to face Retief.

            "Bad
luck, Terry; it's a tud. Great big frothy sort of creature; it can engulf you
in a trice or two and dissolve you in nothing flat. By the way, I got that
'nothing flat' and 'trice' out of a phrase-book we had to learn at the academy.
What do they mean?"

            "Nothing
much," Retief dismissed the matter absently as he went past Yong to look
at what appeared to be a thick, yellowish blanket with a wet-glistening surface
which bubbled and seethed here and there. Behind it stretched a trail of bare
stems, denuded of foliage. A leaf fell on the heaving surface, and was
instantly engulfed. The mass rippled and edged closer, extending a lumpy
pseudo-pod toward Yong, skirting Retief widely. A dead branch fell on the tud,
splashing fluid matter before it sank from view, smoking. As Yong recoiled with
a yowl, slapping at a fleck which had spattered on his forelimb, Retief
observed other droplets burning their way through foliage or deep into the
boles of trees. A small gob had come to rest on his sleeve, he noted, but after
an initial spasm it appeared quiescent. He flicked it away. There was no visible
damage to the synthetic fibers of the jacket, he noted, nor did the tiny smear
of fluid left on his fingertip appear to be active.

            Yong
had retreated a few yards along the trail. "We'll have to go around,"
he called. "Nothing can go over a hungry tud."

            "Maybe
I can," Retief countered. "I don't think the tud likes Terries for
lunch any more than the slang did."

            "Hold
it!" Yong snapped. "This is different: chemical action, you know, not
metabolic digestion. Step on that and you'll be shorter by a foot."

            Before
Retief could respond, a shrill scream sounded from the deep jungle ahead With a
crashing of underbrush, Gertrude appeared, upside down, enmeshed in the coils
of a squid-like creature, deep red in color. The tigress was fighting
desperately, raking deep-purple furrows in the smooth leathery hide of the
thing that had seized her. Her yellow eyes fell on Retief and she redoubled her
efforts, wresting both hind legs free of the muscular, sinuous tentacles; but
now a great bone-yellow parrot beak was snapping bare inches from her flank.

            "Too
bad," Yong called. "That's a zuzz's got her. They can eat anything.
She's a goner."

            "Hang
on, Gertrude," Retief called encouragingly to the embattled feline. He put
a foot on the pulsating surface of the tud, which spasmed—then seemed to melt
away underfoot as the creature withdrew its substance from contact with the
alien matter. In four strides Retief was across and crashing through dense
brush to come up on the zuzz from the side, where a single lidless foot-wide
eye stared blankly at him. Quick as thought, the pulpy body twisted and the
beak snapped just short of Retief's knee with a report like a hardshot. Retief
scooped up a handful of the tud's gruelly substance and deposited it on the
glistening eye, which dissolved, bubbling, into a blackish-purple pit. The zuzz
went into a frenzied struggle which tossed the tigress clear. Gertrude landed
on her feet and after a few swift licks to smooth her rumpled pelt, stood
calmly awaiting Retief's pat. In its struggles, the zuzz had hurled itself
squarely onto the greedy surface of the tud, which engulfed it eagerly,
spitting out only the horny beak, then contracting to a lumpy sphere which
rolled into deep shadow. Giving Gertrude a final pat, Retief took from the breast
pocket of his blazer (early late morning; informal, middle three grades, for
the use of) the replica fountain pen he had received as
lagniappe
after
the signing of the Terran-Yalcan accord in
'76,
went to the nearest splashed-off gob of the tud's glutinous substance,
and sucked up a sample into the pen's bladder.

            Meanwhile,
Yong had cautiously picked his way around the now quiescent tud to rejoin
Retief.

            "Now
that you've fed it a square meal, it'll lie up all day," the local feline
informed his guest. "You know," he added, eyeing Retief obliquely,
"I guess in your own way, you Terries ain't so soft, after all. When you
dumped that load on old zuzz's eyeball, I wouldn'ta missed that for my next two
step-increases. Come on, we got ground to cover." He edged over beside the
tigress.

            "You
OK, kid?" he inquired solicitously. Gertrude replied with a saucy twitch
of her ears and a jaw-cracking yawn.

            "Sure,
play it cool," Yong muttered as he fell back beside Retief. "You
know," he confided, "some dames got to act like they're too good for
a fellow— but she don't fool me: she's got eyes for me."

            "No
doubt," Retief replied. "But she's shy—not used to all this
excitement."

            "I
shoulda figured," Yong conceded apologetically. For a few moments they
moved along the well-marked trail in silence. "We'll hit the main trail in
a couple o' them trices," Yong informed Retief. "Then a brisk
half-hour's walk and we'll be at the Big Market, where I betcha I can show you
and the lady here a few sights most foreigners never get to see. But play 'em
close to the chest; there's plenty o' Glorbs hangs around the market and some
of 'em are government finks, on the lookout for the dodges and all, and lately,
there's been a bunch of military personnel. Me, I'm easygoing: I don't like
'em, but I don't bother 'em— long as they don't start on me."

            When
they reached the intersection with the main trail, Retief resumed his seat
astride the big cat, while Gertrude paced alongside, wrinkling her nose at
strange odors. Once, a hard-shelled, many-legged creature the size of a small
dog leapt at her face, toothed claws cocked; she batted it aside casually.
Yong, watching from the corner of his eye, exclaimed in admiration.

            "You
got to be fast to beat a rulp to the punch," he declared. "That Gertrude
is something else," he confided to Retief, who agreed solemnly.

            After
a fast sprint along the wide trail, Yong slowed and turned his head to counsel
Retief:

            "Heads
up, Terry. We hit the main drag in another hundred feet, and there's likely to
be some Glorbs hanging around, looking for trouble." As good as his word,
moments later Yong burst into a clearing from which debouched half a dozen
well-marked trails. Around the mouth of the widest, half a dozen squat gray
Glorbs stood in a tight conversational group. They turned as one, drawing
together as Yong skidded to a halt beside them. A terse conversation in the
local
bech-de-mer
followed, the Glorbs demanding, Yong interpolating
conciliatorily. After a pause, the Vang twisted his head to speak to Retief,
who had dismounted:

            "These
bums claim to be Customs Officers; claim they're looking for smuggled
zitz-weed. Prolly lying. They want to search you and Gertrude."

            "I
won't bother invoking diplomatic immunity," Retief concurred mildly.
"But I doubt if Gertie will sit still for any invasion of privacy."

            Yong
spoke briefly to the Glorbs in the glottal local trade tongue. One of the
Glorbs nodded and stepped forward. Retief raised his arms to be patted down
efficiently. The inspector paused and re-patted Retief's left side, then
roughly unzipped the access-slot and, groping over Retief's hip, encountered
his 1mm needler, which he unceremoniously jerked from its holster with an
exclamation.

            "Naughty,"
Retief commented, and plucked the weapon from the Glorb's grasp. "You said
zitz-weed, remember?" The Terran reminded his host. "In any case, the
side arm is part of the standard coverall, late early morning, fatigue, middle
three grades, for the use of. Just remember your manners, and maybe we won't
need to have an Interplanetary Incident."

            Yong
translated, somewhat garbling the part about the Interplanetary Incident. The
excited Glorb retired, rubbing his manipulatory members, to confer in heated
gabble with his associates.

            "You
handled that knot-head right," Yong told Retief. "Give these hick
cops an ulp and they'll take a yik."

            One
of the Glorbs went briskly to Gertrude, began his frisk, patting down the
tiger's sleek side. She wrinkled her nose and offered a rumbling growl. When
the inspector began exploring her neck, she shook him off impatiently, then
cuffed him aside, sending him skidding into the underbrush. The other Glorbs
rushed forward, and Gertie sent them spinning left and right.

            "I
ain't sure that was such a good idear, kid," Yong commented to Gertie, as
more Glorbs came boiling from the tumbledown barracks off to the right,
unlimbering weapons as they closed in, growling sharp commands to each other.
As the first one reached Gertie, coming up from behind her, she spun and cuffed
him back among his fellows, bowling over half a dozen, who came to their feet
drawing guns. Yong uttered a bellow and, with a prodigious leap, placed himself
in front of the Terran cat, shielding her from gunfire. The Glorbs halted, and
Yong delivered a speech—short, but deadly in tone. As Retief came up beside
him, he said:

            "They
think Gertrude's some kind of off-color Vang. I'm stringing 'em: reminded 'em
about the treaty says any Glorb uses one of them fire-guns on a Vang, they get
Vang coming at 'em from all directions at once. They'll back off." He
edged protectively close to Gertrude, who ambled away unconcernedly.