Retief and the Rascals (5 page)
"But there's nothing wrong with your
limbs!" Magnan gasped. "In fact, they seem unusually sturdy!"
"Up till when I got savaged but now,"
Noun corrected. "Got dis baa hand. You accident'ly step on it, pal.
Anyways, I make duh nex' rumble wid five arms working, I'm a sensation. Maybe
six, OK?"
"Ridiculous!" Magnan dismissed the
plea. "The CDT, and even GFU, is hardly in the business of bestowing
supernumary limbs on intransigent locals who have yet to produce His Ex's
throne-car!"
"You want it back?" Noun inquired in a
tone of surprise. "Ain't going to do his Ex a whole lotta good—withouten
duh wheels and all. Boys dropped the power core unit, too, I guess."
"Reassemble it at once and bring it
here!" Magnan commanded.
Noun nodded. "And the old implants?"
he queried. "Get 'em in next week, right, before the big shindig?"
"What 'shindig' is it to which you
refer?" Magnan demanded icily. "The GFU banquet was tonight.
"Naw, its duh Old Boys Get-together,"
Dock corrected impatiently. "Alla boys out on parole'll be there, and we
always have rock-goat stew; tougher'n a tump-hide tarp. Kinda a virility symbol,
see, if a guy can chew it. Right now," he mourned, "I cun't chew
prime blurb-beast." He gnashed his gums to demonstrate his masticatory
deficiency.
Magnan jotted. "Flint-steel
satisfactory?" he asked the surly fellow.
"Sure," was the reply. "On'y
sharp, you know what I mean?" After a moment's pause he added:
"Might's well have the old power-chop attachment too, like I seen about
inna mag I found inna privy."
As Magnan chatted with the local, a crowd had
been gathering in the street ahead. It parted, and the battered husk
of
the
Embassy limousine appeared, advancing slowly, pushed by half a dozen of the
blue-hided variant of the local Bloorian type.
"Heavens!" Magnan exclaimed.
"They've reassembled it all wrong, Jim! Look, the steering wheel is on the
left front, without even a tire! And the jump-seats are on the roof! His Ex
will be furious! You know he likes to have Marvin and Herb in the jump seats,
directly in front of him, so he has someone handy to flay while stuck in
traffic! And there's no glass in the windows. They've put the rear fenders and
the deck-lid there instead. I daresay there are other discrepancies as well,
under the hood, if the hood wasn't wired to the rear. And why are they pushing
it?"
"Duh boys found out it don't run so good
wid duh power cell out," Noun supplied.
"Well, put it back!" Magnan suggested
tartly, as the battered Monojog was pushed to the curb.
Dock shook his lumpy head. "Nix, chum. We
swap it off to duh Reprehensible bunch fer a portable john dey foun'
someplace."
"So
that's
what happened to His Ex's
Johnny-on-the-Spot!" Magnan crowed. "It's an outrage! I demand you
return the facility to Embassy Stores at once!"
"Well, make up yer min', pal," Dock
urged. "Dat's six items I'm s'pose to do at oncet! Ain't possible, Bub.
Gimme a break!"
"There are moments, Jim," Magnan
addressed his junior, "when I doubt Bloor is sincerely desirable of an
amicable relationship with Terra."
"Depen's," Dock supplied. "If
you'd stick to handing out free stuff to duh citizens and all, which I and my
boys can collect and sell back to you—at reasonable prices, too—dat's
cool—"
"So that's it!" Magnan exclaimed.
"Just the other day Colonel Underknuckle and I were wondering why it is
that the shrapnel the rebels and the counter-rebels have been firing into the
Embassy compound had Terran foundry-marks."
"Sure," Noun agreed. "We don't
waste nothin'. Now, fer ensample, giving perfally good booze and eats to
illiterate peasants that woik alla time, and can't even read none, and
tractors, too,
that's
wasteful! Keep 'em cold and hungry and you get the
hope-vote. Also, they're too miserable to brood and get together and plot
insurrection."
"Yours, I see," Magnan said, "is
a pragmatic approach to the problems besetting Bloor."
"Ya got it,
chum." Dock wagged his head in agreement. "Like now. I bet you boys
got a couple valuable watches and PCs an' duh like a fella could get a nice
price fer at Sparky's."
"Are you suggesting," Magnan demanded
in tones of outrage, "that you intend to rob us?"
"Naw, nuttin' like that," Noun
disavowed the charge. "Yer gonna han' it over, inna in'er'st o Bloor-Terry
relations and all, like His is always bloviatin' about."
"Well, in that case ..." Magnan
muttered, unbuckling his brand-new thousand-guck personal communicator
cum
time-
and place-piece, with tape library, a gift from his Aunt Haicy on the occasion
of his last visit to Terra.
He offered it hesitantly; it was grabbed by
Dock's mittlike hand. He bit it and said, "Ouch! Must be somma that new
eka-bronze." He looked intently at Magnan. "Oughta melt down fer a
hunnert guck, easy."
" 'Melt'!" Magnan gasped. "My
dear Mr. Noun, or is it Dock? The circuitry is worth—"
"Not to no chop-shop that don't care what
time it is," Noun sneered. "And Sparky already knows where he's at,
and he don't like Terry music, especially that new shake-and-howl dat's all the
go nowadays. Nor no telephone, neither. Sparky wants to talk to somebody, he
sends some boys out to fetch 'em." He pocketed the loot sullenly, and
looked at Retief. "You don' plan to contribute, pal?" he inquired.
"How about a trifling rupture of the
spleen?" Retief suggested, planting a boot at the site of that organ. Dock
staggered back, thrust two fingers into his already bruised mouth, and uttered
a shrill whistle.
"Oh, dear," Magnan gulped. "Jim,
look!" He pointed along the street, where mobs were approaching from both
left and right.
"Thanks," Retief said to Noun.
"Saves the trouble of looking for them."
"Hey," Noun wailed.
"You fergot the goods, pal!"
Retief seized the eight-foot bruiser by his
scruffy dark-green hair and slammed his head against the adjacent wall hard
enough to raise dust from the mortar joints.
"Jim." Magnan caught at his arm.
"Don't you think a trifle of placation at this juncture—" His plea
was cut off as two squat, orange-tinted locals hurled themselves at Retief, who
kicked one under the chin. The other he threw on top of Dock. At once the two
locals grappled and went down in a snarling tangle of muscular limbs.
Retief took Magnan's arm. "Shall we be
going, Ben?" he suggested. The two Terrans flattened themselves against
the brick wall as a torrent of locals of both green and orange persuasion
flowed past, intent on aiding one or the other or, in some cases, both of the
local factions.
"Not only the
Unspeakables," Magnan gasped out to Retief, "but the Unthinkables as
well, and I think I caught a glimpse of some Unimaginables, crouched low and
biting at the kneecaps of both groups!" I see a bunch of Execrables
assembling up ahead, Retief commented.
"We'd best go the other way!" Magnan
wailed, digging in his heels.
"You prefer the Abominables?" Retief
inquired, urging his chief forward. Just then, the lead squad of the Execrables
arrived and dived for their prey, high, low, and at belt-level. Retief stamped
on the low man, ducked under the high one, and met the belt-buckle attacker
with a knee in the mouth. Magnan shrank back against the warehouse door and
kicked the low fellow in the jaw as he skidded past, face-first.
"Jim!" Magnan yelped. "I think
that top one is getting ready to—" Just then Retief seized the ankles of
the diving Execrable and swung him in a wide arc to impact on the brick wall.
Retief dropped him and turned to deal in similar fashion with the next
attacker. Down below, Magnan crouched against the wall, and, as a brutish
Execrable impacted beside him, jabbed the new arrival sharply in one crossed
eye with a sharp stick he had found ready to hand. The unfortunate fellow
started to get to his feet, but was felled by his back-up man, just arriving.
Retief fended off two more of the aggressive locals and came to Magnan's side.
"Ben, I'm a little mixed up. I understood
the Execrables were the traditional allies of the Unthinkables, but now they're
attacking each other—and anyone else they can get a hand on."
"To be sure," Magnan replied, raising
his voice over the roar of the spreading riot. "The situation here on
Bloor, alignment-of-factionwise, can be, to the uninitiated, a trifle
confusing, due to the overlapping and interlocking allegiances due to clan, tribe,
party, and Tsang-orientation."
"I think I'm getting initiated pretty fast,
Ben," Retief told his companion. "But it's still confusing."
"Now, that fellow"—Magnan indicated a
burly lout who had come to rest upside-down beside him—" shows the epidermal
pigmentation of a classic Unspeakable, but you'll note he also bears the tribal
tattoo of the Raunchies, the honorary lobe-perforation of Clan Atrocious, and
the
pro tem,
paint-pattern of the Democratic Socialists. Thus, his
allegiances require him both to support and to attack all Unimaginables, as
well as to pursue a policy of unswerving neutrality anent the Reprehensible
moiety and to remain aloof as regards Com-caps and Liberals. What a pity dear
old Ambassador Smartfinger didn't realize the complexity of the local social
structure when first he offered largess to a starving beggar who just happened
to be the Chief Interrogator of the Disgustings, sworn enemies of the
Despicables, thus gaining Terra the implacable hostility of all factions, the
sole issue on which
de facto
agreement exists."
"The Survey Team wasn't able to do a full
assessment, I understand," Retief yelled in Magnan's ear, "because
they'd inadvertently violated the Shrine of the Disgustings, which happened
also to be the taboo Bad Place of most of the other factions."
"A gaffe which netted Team-Leader Gangplank
a nasty entry in the 'Handling of Emergencies' column of his ER," Ben
explained. "And I suppose His Ex hardly improved relations when he
referred to the starving Despicables as 'kin' of His Ferocity, simply because
they're closely related, through hereditary feud partners. An understandable
error, but a fatal one. Now, it appears, we're personally about to precipitate
the
next
rupture in Terran-Bloorish relations. Jim, get us out of
this!"
The narrow metal-clad door which the Terrans had
previously broached was half-open beside them. Retief thrust Magnan through
into the stygian darkness with its dense aroma of half-cured hides. Magnan
struck a permatch and stared in dismay at the Dales of furs stacked in rows,
almost to the sagging ceiling joists.
"Good Lord!" he gasped. "Retief!
Look at all the bales! Someone's been poaching on a grand scale, in direct
defiance of the Most Favored Species Agreement! His Ex will be furious. And I,
as well, noted pet-lover that I am!"
Retief was fingering a pink-and-green dappled
pelt in the nearest bale. "Looks like prime frinkle-furs, he noted.
"Not the best pets, Ben. More like a dangerous pest. And over there I see
Glavian hell-hound hides; they'll be no loss."
"Jim! How can you be so heartless?"
Magnan protested. "Useless and even pestiferous as these animals can be to
us, they're still Nature's living creatures, and under our protection!"
"Too late now," Retief pointed out.
"Nothing short of a Groatian twaffle-master could help these
fellows."
"Good thinking, Retief!" Magnan
caroled. "I've a holiday coming up, and I'll just dodge over to Grote and
talk dear D'ong into coming along to attend to the chore!"
"Whoever's gone to the trouble of skinning
these hides out and partly tanning them might take a dim view of that,"
Retief pointed out, "to say very little of the confusion that would be
occasioned when a few thousand frinkles and hell-hounds suddenly burst out of
confinement and start roaming the streets."
"Trifles, Jim!" Magnan enthused.
"We'll have the fellows from Wildlife Control on hand to scoop them up,
and in an hour they'll be on their way home, as happy as clams, eating each
other and fighting with their own kind for mating rights!"
"Sounds halcyon indeed," Retief
agreed. "So maybe we'd better figure how to escape from this locked
dungeon in time to catch the Two-Planet to Grote."
" 'Locked'?" Magnan yelped.
"Whatever do you mean?"
"This is the basement of the bonded
warehouse, Ben," Retief reminded his chief. "The exits are locked
tight. Supposed to be full of foof blossoms for the Tinkerbell trade!"
