Reward for Retief (11 page)

            The space Retief could see
beyond the turnstile was wide, low-ceilinged, illuminated by daylight filtering
through chinks in the windowless wall opposite the stair. There were tables and
chairs, and along one side, a crude counter, on which Retief saw a number of
misshapen bottles similar to the one Bill had been waving. The place was
crowded with crudely-garbed Terrans with the look of seasoned spacemen, all
intent on their drinking and arguing.

            "It seems we've found
where the local Terry Colony hangs out," Retief told Bill, who nodded and
set off determinedly to push through the heedless crowd.

            "Too right,
Matey," someone called cheerfully from near at hand. A bleary face in need
of a shave appeared around the corner where the entry hall debouched into the
room proper, followed by a small, skinny body clothed in rags with brass
buttons.

            "Call me Blinky,
Mate," the newcomer suggested, and proffered one of the lumpy bottles,
this one a deep green, with a crooked neck. Retief accepted, and took a taste,
then braced himself and took a long pull.

            "That's right,
Mate," Blinky approved. "Man can't sip a good pale ale; don't taste
right. Come on, meet the boys."

            Retief tossed the barrier
aside and followed his scrawny guide into the room. There were windows along
one side, covered by slatted shutters. Behind the crude bar, a big, paunchy
fellow with 'Spike' lettered on his pocket was polishing a ruby-red goblet
clearly of Yalcan manufacture.

            "Name yer pizen,"
he muttered around a well-gnawed cigar-stub.

            "Bacchus black,"
Retief replied. Spike nodded and turned to extract a dusty green bottle from a
shelf below the back bar. In the tarnished mirror against which bottles were
stacked, Retief was surprised to see a reflection not of a sagging
stick-and-grass architecture, but a gas-lit interior with red plush settees and
a crowd of top-hatted dandies and bustled ladies in fantastic
chapeaux
sitting
at tiny tables or standing crowded against yet another mirror across the broad
room.

            "Curious effect,"
Retief commented, and tasted his wine, which was rich and dry, of a deep
jewel-red.

            "What's yer
loose-nation, stranger?" the mixologist inquired indifferently. Retief
described the scene in the mirror.

            "Oh, that's just old
Will," the barman explained. "Got a lot of funny idears. He's what
you call a pote."

            Before Retief could respond,
a deep, hoarse voice shouted across the room:

            "What six varlets done
messed with my set-up here on the door?" Retief turned to see a red-faced
seven-footer dressed in the costume of a trideo pirate. "Taken me a halfa
hour to wrassle that timber up there!" the newcomer continued. "Now I
got to do it again! Hey, you!" he interrupted himself, thrusting through
the crowd toward Bill, who stood, bottle in hand, awaiting whatever came next.

            "I ain't seen
you!"
the giant accused. "You're new! Likely you know something about
this!" He dropped the bottle and grabbed Bill by the front of his blue
uniform-blouse and lifted the six-footer clear of the floor, whereupon Bill
doubled a fist and delivered a hearty jab to the big fellow's jaw. He hardly
noticed.

            "Oh, frisky, eh?"
the giant said.

            "Hey," Bill
interjected in a shaken voice as the big fellow drew back a ham-sized fist,
"lemme down, Big Henry; you know me. Blinky gave us an introduction no
more'n ten minutes ago."

            "Yeah, I guess I seen
you," Henry acknowledged regretfully; then his choleric eye fell on
Retief. "But you I
ain't
seen, fer sure!" He dropped Bill, who
staggered but retained his balance.

            "Hey, Big Henry,"
he called to the giant's back, "that there's my pal, Mr. Retief. He's a OK
guy. So ..." His voice trailed as Henry halted, confronting Retief, who,
at six-three, was an inch shorter than the official greeter.

            "What
you
want
here, Sonny?" Henry demanded. "Don't you know no strangers ain't
allowed in The Cloud-Cuckoo Club, excusin' they're friends o' mine?" His
speech delivered, Big Henry reached as if to grab Retief s shirtfront, but
Retief casually knocked the oaklike arm aside and chucked the bouncer gently
under his unshaven chin.

            "You did that real
well," he commented. "Better let it go at that."

            Quick as a snake, Henry
grabbed Retief s wrist and was instantly thrown on his back.

            "I don't like to be man-handled
by strangers," Retief explained.

            "Who's 'strange'?"
Henry demanded indignantly. He climbed back to his fall height and looked
around belligerently at the awe-struck crowd. "Wheresa bum says this here
feller—"

            "Retief," his
new-found lifelong pal supplied.

            "Who says Retief, here,
and me ain't old buddies? Which I'm prouda welcome him and his side-kick to the
club."

            No one volunteered, and
Henry, flanked by Retief and Bill, retired to a table in a relatively quiet
corner where a woven-grass screen intersected the bamboo wall, a spot
embellished by a flowering green plant in a five-gallon putty-bucket. Henry
leaned to sniff one of the showy white-with-yellow-streaks blossoms, then
turned to the small, wiry waiter, clad in rusty black, with a small-checked
vest, who had followed them.

            "Three brews,
Chauncey," Henry commanded. "My private stock," he added, then
fixed his small, piggy eyes on Retief.

            "You hear about some
kinda official Johnnies done settled in, up Embassy row?" he demanded stonily,
as the waiter returned with three dusty flagons and three heavy pewter mugs.

            "The rumor is
true," Retief told him.

            "They gonna try and
interfere with the Club, you think?" There was an anxious tone in Big
Henry's voice now.

            "They'll probably try
to regulate the booze production," Retief suggested, "and maybe tax
you boys a little."

            "Taxes?" Henry
spat the word like a doody-bug in his soup. "I like to see the slob
collects any graft offen Big Henry Laboochy!"

            "Taxes aren't actually
graft, Henry," Retief corrected his host. "Just ordinary
stealing."

            "Ain't no mug gonna
steal nothing off Big Henry Laboochy neither!" Henry declared with
vehemence. He took a long pull at the tankard.

            Bill touched Retief's
sleeve. "Mr. Retief," he said hesitantly. "What kinda place is
this?" He looked around with a puzzled expression at the crowded room with
its watery light. "Looks like a old 'movie,' I guess they useta call 'em,
I seen once."

            "What old movie?"
Retief asked him.

            "Name of the
Vikins,
or somethin like that," Bill replied uncertainly. "All about
these guys useta row around in little boats with gargoyles or like that carved
on the front end. Had little swords and iron hats with a cow's horns on 'em.
Useta raid the churches and all. Then they went home and sat around and bragged
and got juiced and started fights with each other. Don't sound too bad. But
lookit them two bozos over there ..." He nodded toward a table where two
beefy, redfaced men with immense walrus mustaches had put down their glasses
and were glaring at each other across the table. A frail-looking young woman
with a pale face and large eyes sat between them, looking distressed. Bill
looked at Henry.

            "Well, how about it,
Big?" he said challengingly, "you gonna let them two start a
fistfight right here in the club? Girl might get hurt, them two heavies start
in."

            "Oh, Edgar," Henry
called. One of the belligerent men responded by turning briefly to look
inquiringly at the bouncer cum host.

            "Yah?" he
muttered. "Just a minute, if you don't mind, Hank, I got to teach this
here feller a few things about Realism. Beat it, Minnie," he added,
addressing the girl.

            "Poor Edgar takes the
epithet Intransigents' literally," the other fellow supplied, looking
smugly at the back of Edgar's head. The girl, clad in a tight-fitting bodice
and a voluminous skirt of unpressed pinkish cloth rose quickly and walked away.

            "You guys finish it
outside," Henry ordered. "And leave Minette outa it."

            Henry returned his attention
to his beer-mug, and the two art critics returned to their low-voiced quarrel.

            "Mr. Retief," Bill
said softly, sounding troubled. He pointed to the far side of the big room.
"Look at them two fellas: getting ready to fight it out with their
butcher-knives, and their buddies are egging them on."

            Retief followed the young
fellow's gaze, saw a pair of lean, mustached men in westkits and with ruffled
shirt-fronts intent over a card-game.

            "You're exaggerating,
Bill," Retief told the lad. "They're playing cut-throat, but they're not
cutting any actual throats."

            Big Henry, who had been
growling as he listened, rose suddenly and yelled, "Willy! Get it over
here right now!

            The nearby crowd parted to
allow a wraith-thin fellow whose face seemed all forehead to hurry up, clearly
distressed.

            "What wouldst, friend
Henry?" he gasped. "Art displeased? Softly, pray. Thy wish is my
command."

            "OK, Will, take it
easy," Henry soothed the nervous fellow. "Everything's jake, or will
be soon's you lay off horsing around." Henry turned to Retief. "Old
Willy likes to 'peer into the future,' like he says. Got a lot of funny ideas;
his loose-nations are so clear they kinda spill over, know what I mean?"

            "No," Bill put in,
"I sure don't know what you mean. What's this here Willy's ideas got to do
with a couple light-heavies starting a riot?"

            Henry looked sadly at the
young Marine. "You got a lot to learn about the Club, kid," he
observed regretfully.

            "I'm with Bill,"
Retief put in. "What's it all about, Big?"

            "Well, it's kinda hard
to explain to a feller ain't use to it," the big fellow told Retief.
"But, what the hell, when I first come, I didn't catch on neither, for a
while.

            See, this here is a place
where some kinda force lines or like that are in what ya call resonance with
the alpha rhythm and all, get it? So it like reinforces the old imagery,
OK?"

            "That's an
explanation?" Bill inquired in the tone of One who Still Doesn't Get It.

            "Well, every guy's got
a few ideas about where he'd like to go on shore leave," Henry pointed out
patiently. "Some guys can see it in their head better'n others; it's what
they call mind over matters and all. Will here likes to pick up on stuff that's
coming up sometime later, and he brings it right into focus, so sometimes it
almost drowns out I and the boys' loose-nations. See?"

            "I don't get you,"
Bill complained. "Sounds like you're tryna tell us around here you imagine
stuff and it's real."

            "Sure," Big
replied, nodding in reinforcement of his verbalization. "I already said
about the loose-nations and all. So here we are."

            At that moment there was a
sudden stir near the entry, where the bandy-legged little fellow who had
greeted Retief stood ready with a baseball-bat sized club to greet the next
arrival. He swung and missed as a smallish, slightly-built man incongruously
clad in a seersucker dicky-suit only slightly disheveled by contact with the
mob at his heels, dashed through, shied at the near miss and uttered a yelp of
protest.