Retief and the Rascals (13 page)

            "A nonexistent charity, by the way,"
Shish amplified "You see, Jim," Magnan continued, "I happened to
notice something a little odd when I visited the Consular Office the other
day—you'll recall I was a trifle late to Staff Meeting on Tuesday last—and when
I referred the matter to Old Swiney—I mean His Excellency the Terran AE and
MP—he scoffed at me! Imagine! Me, a Counselor of Embassy for GFU Affairs,
dismissed like a nervous recruit! But to return to my thesis: Marv Lacklustre,
the Consular Officer, was inundated with Reports of Discrepancy pouring in from
every quarter! The Minister of Eats and Drinks was quite furious; he'd diverted
a few cases of the jellied blurb-jowl to his hill station, you see, and when
his chef opened them—he found, not succulent tidbits, but rather scads of
Browning 2mm needlers in cosmoleum! Hardly fitting provender to set before the
chiefs of the Reprehensible and the Objectionable clans, under truce, gathered
in a spirit of good fellowship to divide the spoils—distribute the relief
shipments, that is—anyway, that was only the beginning! The Commissioner of
Planetary Pigs, as the locals so colorfully call their cops, was
most
incensed
to find that cartons labeled 'school lunches' contained zip-guns and crack
Tylenol spiked with cyanide, all ready to be insinuated into rival apothecary
shelves! Disgraceful! And you'd hardly credit the abuse I've suffered from the
Motor Pool Chief, carping about his spare parts shipment! Useless components
for energy weapons, he says, though the scamp admitted he'd been able to
cannibalize the stuff for energy slugs to keep his rickety fleet in service for
a few more weeks! Incompetence on a giant scale, Shish!"

            The incensed Groaci turned to Flinsh. "The
rot runs deep, my boy," he muttered. "Imagine Ben Magnan pulling a
fasty of this magnitude on his old kiki-stone fingering buddy and fellow
veteran of the diplomatic wars! It's not to be borne!"

            "So ..." Third Secretary Flinsh
queried breathlessly, "what are you going to do, sir? How will you bring
proud Terra to heel and punish this perfidy?"

            "I don't have the details worked out
yet," Shish confided, "but getting Ben in my hands was my first
priority. Now for phase two."

            "Could I go along, sir?" Flinsh
begged. "Just to observe the master at work, you know. But Ben Magnan's
standing right here, sir."

            "I so decree," Shish replied, nodding
importantly. "Pull yourself together, lad," he commanded. "We
mustn't let Ben or Retief see you looking flustered, implying a chink in the
armor of Groaci infallibility."

            "Sure not, sir," Flinsh agreed and,
aligning his eye-shields, executed an almost flawless foot-salute.

            "See, I didn't fall down that time,
sir!" he chortled. "Like Sish does," he added.

            "Commendable, I'm sure," Shish
grunted. "Now, clear the passage ahead of me and put some snap in
it!"

            "Ah His Excellency desires," Flinsh
mumbled and forged out along the debris-littered passage. Retief and Magnan
followed. It was a leisurely five-minute canter to the Chancery wing, where
Flinsh halted before the strong-room door, which stood open.

            "Gosh!" the youthful Groaci exclaimed.
"Somebody left the door wide open! I bet it was Ben!"

            "Ha!" Magnan exclaimed. "It's
just like the scamp to blame me!

            "A less benign Chief of Security than
myself," Shish addressed the nearby corporal gravely, "would see you
staked out at the sulfur pits for this disregard of primary duty, Sish. Kindly
recite the General Orders for me."

            "Uh, why, 'I will walk my post in a million
different manners', the NCO crowed glibly. " 'Under no circumstances,
that's not any circumstances at
all,
will I fail to take prompt and
effective action upon detecting any apparent breach of security."

            " Sish looked pleased with himself, an
effect achieved by aligning his eye-stalks front-rear, front-rear, front. On
impulse he slammed the heavy door.

            "Fool!" Shish spluttered. "Now
how am I to gain ingress? Eh? Did you consider that, Sish, when you so rudely slammed
the door, practically in my face? Did you, eh?"

            "It says 'not under any
circumstances'," Sish pointed out futilely. "Wait a sec, sir, I'll
find Sarge!" He darted off.

            "Ah, Ben," Shish purred. "I was
just about to nip over to your Embassy and invite you to accompany me for the
ceremonies."

            "What ceremonies?" Magnan demanded
bluntly. "His Ex has postponed the award of the Grand Star and Bladder of
the Legion, Second Class, to His Excellency the Foreign Minister, as you well
know."

            "No, no, not that hollow ritual!"
Shish objected. "I refer to the touching welcoming ceremony at the port,
as noble Groac displays her solidarity with haughty Terra in receiving the GFU
shipment! I've laid on a nose-flute troop, and a squad or two of honor guards.
I was just about to inspect the guard. Do come along, Ben!"

            "Oh, so you're trying to horn in on Terra's
hour of glory, eh, Shish?" Magnan replied coldly. "The press will
assume you Groaci are the donors rather than Terra's Goodies for Undesirables
program. Insidious in the extreme, I'd call that. And what's this about an
honor guard? By solemn interplanetary accord, Groac's armed forces, even token
detachments, are rigidly excluded from pretechnical worlds! Now, lead me to
where you've hidden these troops!"

            "Never!" Shish hissed. "Do you
imagine that proud Groac would allow envious Terra thus to thwart her
realization of Manifest Destiny? My troops are
my
little secret, Ben.
They shall remain so until unleashed in the moment of dire need!"

            "It isn't fair," Magnan moaned.
"What's a Counselor for GFU Affairs to do ...?"

            "Never mind, Ben," Retief consoled his
stricken supervisor. "I'll show you their hidey hole."

           
"You!"
Shish hissed. "What
could a mere third secretary and vice-consul know of great affairs? The entire
matter has been handled under Cosmic Discreet Security! The documentation is
secreted in a safe depository where no mere Terran would even think of looking!
It's bluff, Retief! Pure bluff! I defy you!"

            "Here are the details, sir," Retief
said, as he took out the folded parchment he had removed from the Ambassador's
safe and displayed it so that Magnan could read the lines he indicated.

            Magnan looked, read, gasped, " '... a final
Solution to the pernicious nuisance of Terran
de facto
assumption of
domination over Groac, an invidious claim, the truth of which they have had the
audacity to demonstrate publicly on more than one occasion ...' "Magnan
stared at Retief.

            "This, it appears, is it, Jim," he
gulped. "At last the scoundrels have given themselves away! When I expose
this clandestine troop buildup for all the Galaxy to see, the Groaci will be
forced to abandon their far-flung empire and slink back to their native
sandhills, there to ponder the unwisdom of incurring the rebuke of Terra.
Doubtless, Shish"—he shifted targets to the enraged Groaci—"you'll
have the elementary discretion to withdraw from your untenable position here on
Bloor
before
it becomes necessary for me to advise Freddy Underknuckle
to call out the Peace Enforcers ... now cruising on fleet exercise off
Yoon!"

            "Never!" Shish spat. "Have a
care, Ben Magnan, soon-to-be ex-Counselor when it becomes generally known that
you Terries have violated the sacrosanct soil of the Groacian Mission, and
offered insult to myself, the Beloved of Bloor—had you heard I'd received the
honorary tide by acclamation, Ben?"

            "Congratulations, Shish," Magnan
purred. "Now, if you'd just be a good scout and revise your plans for
grabbing credit for GFU's distribution of free eats and stuff, I'm sure we can
clear up all these petty irregularities without recourse to Draconian
measures!"

            "Turning it over to the yellow press, you
mean, Ben, in the person of Hy Felix. The scamp would spill the legumes via
SWIFT to every city desk in the Arm in a matter of minutes!"

            "Milliseconds," Magnan corrected the
Groaci's faulty conception of the efficiency of the Shaped Wave Interference
Front Transmitter. "And Hy won't bother with petty local presses. He'll
dump the entire matter before ACHE, and ITCH as well, for adjudication at the
next open hearing!"

            "Why involve the Tribunal, or even the
feckless Assembly?" Shish demanded. "Their efforts to correct
historical events are doomed to Failure. That business about deleting all
mention of Native American rape and murder of pioneer women and children under
cover of reporting in for free blankets and beads, for example! Irresponsible,
Ben! The crime was too well recorded in the contemporaneous record to be
expunged now, even by the most diligent efforts of well-intentioned amateurs!
Claiming that the practice of scalping was introduced by Europeans is another
example: scalping-knife marks on Neolithic Amerind skulls indicate otherwise!
As for the silly Assembly's efforts to Curtail Hostilities, why the thing is
preposterous, Ben! A bunch of Do-Gooders can't fly in the face of the primary
force of Organic Evolution itself. 'The Survival of the Fittest' hardly implies
feckless tolerance of the objectionable! Thus, it is inevitable that great
Groac and ambitious Terra shall forever grapple in the darkness, seeking
advantage—and this time, Ben, it's we Groaci who have seized the initiative and
left you Terries with egg on your faces! Do your worst, Ben! My plans are long
and well-laid. Even now..." The irate Groacian bigwig paused and appeared
to be listening, as if for distant sounds. "Even now," he resumed,
after a glance at Magnan's lapel chronometer, "my lads, under General
Hish, are readying themselves for the grand coup! You're too late, Ben! The wheels
of Fate are in motion, and he who would obstruct them is doomed to destruction!
Have done! Give it over! You've done all a Terry bureaucrat could have, and I
shall personally indict an epistle to Sam, attesting to your efforts. How's
that for professional élan?"

            "Gosh, Shish," Magnan whispered.
"It's magnanimous to the point of self-immolation—!"

            " 'Immolation'?" Shish gasped.
"Just how do you mean? I have no thought of being myself consumed in the
holocaust set by an aroused Bloorian populace!"

            "It's just that when they see all those
guns slipping from their grasp and falling into the hands of their sworn
enemies, Magnan clarified, "they're likely to be a trifle upset."

            "But I didn't—you
wouldn't
thus
abort my lovely plan!" Shish screeched. "In my wildest xenophobic
imaginings, I never considered that an old associate would actually commit an
act of such bestiality! Picture the atrocities: Incorrigibles grabbing off
wire-guns slated for Clan Execrable, the Teamstresses' Union glomming onto brass
knuckles clearly addressed to the Seamsters, otherwise known as the Bitches and
the Beasts! It's not to be countenanced, Ben! Call off your fell design and
I'll tell you where the last shipment disappeared to—and you'd best be quick
because I have it from a Usually Reliable Source—"

            "You mean George, the janitor," Magnan
snarled. "Yes, yes, go on."

            "No, no," Shish objected, "George
is a 'Classified Source'! Anyways, I'm tryna tell you!" he whimpered.
"To have discovered that even now the cache has been discovered to the
Reprehensibles, who are attempting to buy of the Deplorables with a promise of
a posthumous allotment of firearms, and—"

            "Enough!" Magnan decreed.
"There's no time to waste! when word gets out that the flink-hide trade is
actually a gun-running scheme, the fat will be in the fire for fair!"

            "Please, Ben!" Shish objected.
"You know how I hate alliterations, especially fricative ones!"

            "Sorry about that," Magnan muttered.
"But what do you say, Shish? Should we join grasping members just this
once, to avert carnage on a vast scale? Groac and Terra, shoulder "to
shoulder, fighting the good fight!"

            Shish extended a tentacle. "Done and done,
Ben Magnan," he cried in as ringing a tone as his feeble voice could
manage.

            A few minutes later, Magnan spoke quietly to
Retief: "I'm amazed at the effrontery of the scamp," he said.
"He virtually admitted that he had planned to muscle in on our distribution
ceremonies, elbow His Ex aside, and claim credit for the Goodies! Thereby
becoming the Power Behind the Throne here on Bloor!"

            "Nice work, Ben," Retief congratulated
his immediate supervisor. "If we can keep the rap pinned firmly on Shish,
the Terran Embassy may very well survive unburnt."

            "Oh, my, yes," Magnan murmured, then,
"What? What do you mean, Jim? Are you implying—?"

            "Nope, I'm proclaiming," Retief
corrected. "If we can get His Ex to lie low while Shish gets his skinny
neck all the way in, we're home safe, and you'll probably come out of the
discreditation and collapse of GFU with a promotion to Career Minister."