Retief and the Rascals (2 page)

        "I hadn't heard
about the B-9's," Retief commented.

            "Naw, dey keep to duh hills mostly."
Dob grunted. "We don't mess wid 'em an' dey got smarts enough dey don't
mess wid
us."

           
"Great Heavens, Retief!" Magnan
spoke up. "I'd never considered the Goodies For Undesirables program in
that light! Why, we may have done irreparable harm to this livery emergent, ah,
backward, or developing, that is to say inferior society, all in the name of
Benign Dispensation!"

            "Yeah," Slum confirmed. "Dat's
duh trouble wit' you do-gooders, you go aroun do-gooding fer yer own lacks, and
don't give no consideration to what yuh might be doing to hallowed local values
an' all!"

            He paused to grieve silently, while Magnan
fought to restrain his emotion. "Goodness gracious me," he whimpered.
"How can we—and in particular, I, make it up to them?"

            "You could start by belting that
Unthinkable who's lifting your wallet," Retief suggested. Magnan looked
amazed, then jumped, clapped a hand over the pocket where he kept his credit
coder and found himself eyeball-to-eyeball with a stubby seven-foot local. He
yipped and jabbed forked fingers at the pickpocket's bleary eyes, a move that
sent the fellow reeling back, yelling, and striking out randomly at the nearest
bystanders among the clot of the idle curious who had fallen out of the
free-for-all to observe the fate of the foreigners who had been cornered by
Slum Dob, a proven Champion of One Hundred.

            Noting their hero's distress, the mass of
Bloorians advanced in a solid wave of brandished fists and snarling faces.
While Retief battered an opening, Ralph and Herb made a run for it. Magnan was
thrust back against the unmarked door, which collapsed under the avalanche.
Retief felled a persistent Incorrigible as he reached for Ben, and urged Magnan
through the opening. Inside, Magnan had shrunk back against the wall and was
blinking in the dim gloom of the bonded warehouse, while recovering his breath.

            "Good Lord, Jim," he commented between
gasps. "It appears security is more lax than I had dreamed. Why, that door
isn't even on the Schedule! I'd no idea—and now we're trapped down here! The
security doors will be locked tight! Why does it smell so bad in here? There's
nothing in bond right now except the remaining GFU supplies from the last
shipment."

            "Just a moment," Retief cut in.
"I want to take a look over here." He went along the wall to the
corner, where a flimsy construction of plywood partitioned off a cramped space.
Through the gaping joints, dim light revealed brooms and mops.

            "Retief!" Magnan yipped. "It's—that
must be the storage closet used by the custodial personnel. Difficult chaps,
those sweepers! Just last week the Admin Officer called the Boss Boy in to tell
him he was raising their pay. The insolent fellow replied that it wasn't
enough!"

            "You have to remember the locals lose face
if they're detected doing anything useful," Retief reminded his chief.

            "Scant danger!" Magnan snapped.
"That gang of loafers spend their on-duty hours playing Bliff in the back
corridor. They don't even bother anymore to rub the used motor oil on the
phones to make them shine!"

            Retief eased through the open joint into the
broom closet and invited Magnan to follow. Pushing past the mops and buckets,
he eased the closet door open and the two stepped out into the brilliant light
and bustle of the boisterous crowd filling the Embassy lobby.

            "We hardly look presentable, Jim,"
Magnan carped. "We can't attend the gala in this state of disarray!"

            "We'll have to, Ben," Retief
countered. "Come on; no one will notice, after we've pushed our way
through this mob."

            "Heavens!" Magnan squeaked. "I'd
no idea Hy had invited so many uncouth locals to attend the banquet! I doubt we
can serve so many—and they look like big eaters, too!" He clutched
Retief's arm. "Imagine the expression on Freddie Underknuckle's face when
I tell him of the gross flaw in his security!"

            "That's nothing to what Randy O'Rourke is
going to tell his gyrenes when
he
finds out," Retief pointed out.

            Retief led the way, forcing a passage through
the noisy Bloorians of every caste, tribe, clan, union, service club, and
fraternity, all argumentatively determined to be first to reach the banquet
hall.

            "It was awkward," Magnan was telling
Retief breathlessly, "just to entice the members of so many of the local
factions to foregather peacefully here tonight, suppressing for a while their
innate instinct to attack everyone in sight!"

            "With these boys," Retief replied,
ducking under a roundhouse swing as he delivered a stiff right to the attacking
Nasty's broad torso, "it's hard to tell peace from war."

            "True," Magnan murmured judiciously.
"Still, it appears that so far the paramedics have been able to evacuate
the wounded at a rate which slightly exceeds the rate of mayhem. So we've no
actual accumulation of casualties with which to deal."

            "Jim," Magnan raised his voice to make
himself heard over the hubbub, enlivened by a number of brisk fist- and
knife-fights among the members of traditionally hostile guest-groups,
"regarding the broom-closet, how did you know—or suspect—"

            "Yesterday I saw three sweepers go into the
broom closet and nobody came out," Retief explained.

            "Oh, so it was after all quite
obvious," Magnan sighed. "Pity Sergeant Randy O'Rourke didn't
notice."

            "It's not so strange," Retief pointed
out. "After all, His Ex has failed to notice that the mob-leader to whom
he's about to award the Legion Third Class is a dope-smuggling child
molester."

        "Retief! Remember
it's Child Molester Pride Week!"

            "I guess I had it confused with Rapist
Pride Month," Retief confessed, as they forged ahead toward the receiving
line.

            "Now, Retief," Counselor Magnan
cautioned as he trailed his tall, powerfully built assistant to the ornate
double door where Marv Lacklustre waited, shaking hands and murmuring to each
arrival. "We mustn't take it upon ourselves," Magnan cautioned,
"to be adversely critical of His Excellency's choice as recipient of the
Longspoon Award. It's quite true that Minister of Internal Chaos Bam Slang
had
acquired a somewhat unsavory popular reputation as a thieving, murderous
leader of a dacoit mob, prior to our arrival, but since the CDT has recognized
that he in fact embodies his people's legitimate aspirations for
self-determination, we must acknowledge that he and his band of patriots were
in fact, merely requisitioning supplies, albeit in an informal manner, to carry
on the good fight against colonialism."

            "Sure, Ben," Retief reminded his
senior. "He had to loll all the women and children so as to 'emphasize the
determination of the people to achieve democracy'; I read Hy's press handout.
But why did he have to burn down the schools and hospitals we'd built and sell
the relief supplies we sent in after the flood, then buy a solid gold bed? I
admit I'm a little hazy on that part."

            "As to that," Magnan evaded, "we
should, of course, have provided the gold bed directly. And we have only the
unsupported reports of the putative victims' to suggest that atrocities did in
fact take place." That, and all the corpses, Retief agreed.

            "Tush," Magnan chided. "You must
learn to curb your tendency toward
ad hoc
cynicism. Remember: Bam Slang
is the Fred Hiesenwhacker of Bloor, or, more precisely, of the Bloorish
people."

            "That's too mild an encominum," Retief
suggested. "Hiesenwhacker only burned down the Legislature, with all the
legislators and insurance company bagmen inside. Bam has wiped out the entire
governmental apparatus."

            "Still, the parallel is undeniable,"
Magnan insisted, "once one squarely faces the fact that any and all
governmental meddling with the individual is innately criminal." Magnan
fell silent as they entered the banquet hall, already crowded with Corps
dignitaries and local bigshots, all wearing their gaudiest garb, including shrunken
human—well, almost—heads dangling from the belts of the most august local
chieftains. Brightly colored banners flanked the GFU logo adorning the center
of the far wall, above the ranks of linen-, silver-, and crystal-decked tables.
Some of the less sophisticated or hungrier local politicos had already seated
themselves and were digging heartily into the tureens of gourmet viands
simmering on the hotplates between places.

            "Some of them are even using the spoons and
forks!" Magnan pointed out, with the pride of an animal-trainer.

            The Terran flag, Retief noted, while prominently
displayed in the decorative scheme, was always placed well below that of Bloor.

            "Do you think," he inquired of Magnan,
"that putting the flag in a subordinate position will actually convince
the locals that they're as powerful as Terra?"

            "Of course not." Magnan sniffed.
"But it will encourage them to speak up forthrightly in defense of their
traditional freedoms in the negotiations, or at least so Ambassador Swinepearl
has determined."

            "The locals aren't snotty enough for
him?" Retief asked. "I thought he was quite impressed by the way they
invaded his last tea-and-croquet party with armored cars and machetes and stole
all the balls and dumped the tea in the fountain."

            "Oh, yes, he was of course delighted at
their show of high-spiritedness," Magnan assured Retief. "The
Information Service was, too. 'All Bloor Rejoices!' the headlines proclaimed.
'Diplomatic Breakthrough' was the mildest encomium I heard! So valuable in building
the Image! I shouldn't wonder if Hy Felix nets a promotion from the affair! The
Agency is more responsive to individual initiative than the Corps, the more
especially as regards those of us privileged to serve with the Goodies for
Undesirables Program."

            Young Marvin Lacklustre had been dragooned for
the task of running the receiving line: after consulting his seating chart, he
directed Magnan to a place near the Ambassador's thronelike seat, and shunted
Retief to a spot opposite a gorilloid Bloor Ward-boss, who was busy saucering
and blowing a plate of
consommé au beurre blanc.

           
The local glanced up as Retief took his
chair, and grunted. "Bloody good soup, pal, onney it ain't even got no
barf-bug heads in," he commented.

        "Pity," Retief
commiserated "I guess George forgot."

            "Hah!" the Bloorish politico grunted.
"Duh dough dey pay dem chef guys, dey shunt oughta fergit stuff. If dis
George was on
my
staff," he added with a suggestive glint in his
piggy eye, "I'd bend duh sucker plendy. Look at dis stuff!" He
displayed a spoon brimming with the delicately seasoned fluid. "Nothin'!
Just soup, is all!" He swallowed the offending provender with an audible
gulp!
"Tas'e OK, I gotta give it dat," he acknowledged. "Hey,
throw the punk over dis way, pal!" he called to the Terran seated
opposite.

            The dignified First Secretary of Embassy of
Terra thus addressed obligingly passed the wicker basket of hard rolls, one of
which Bam seized and attempted to saw in half with a butter knife. He tossed
the utensil aside and tried to bite the roll.

            "Jeez!" he exclaimed. "A guy
could bust a tooth on dat!" He dropped the superb bun on the floor, and
leaned forward confidentially. "Ain't dey got no Wonder Bread
aroun'?" he whispered. "A guy could put a liddle peaner budder and
jelly on, and, man! That's chow!"

            "No Wonder Bread," Retief reported.
"We vowed to give it up for the Memorial Millennium, along with the peaner
budder."

            "What's dat millinery—what you said?"
Bam demanded, swallowing more soup, which he had discovered he could get down
more quickly if he picked up the bowl and poured it directly down his throat.

            "In honor of the thousandth anniversary of
Terran-Bloorish relations," Retief explained.

            "Yeah, that's when youse Terries first come
snooping aroun' good old Bloor inderfering wit duh, like, legitimate
aspirations of us Detestables, right, which we was onney tryna get duh like B-9
peasants and all shaped up to get out duh vote and all," Bam mourned.

            "According to the record," Retief told
him, "the Survey Team landed in the middle of a massacre in which
thousands of the local citizens had already been slaughtered by the State
Police, and the carnage continued until put down by the armed recon cars the
Team had along."

            "Oh, yeah, duh boys was busy cleaning up on
the Bad Guys, you know, duh bums hadda crazy idear
they
ought to be
running the massacree. Otherwise, see, duh bad guys woulda been massacreeing
duh good guys and all."

            "And just how did the bad guys differ from
the good guys?" Retief queried. His informant frowned, men brightened.
"Dat's easy, pal," he confided. "Duh good guys was on
our
side,
an duh bad guys—"