Reward for Retief (13 page)

            "I'd be glad to try
Willy's recommendation," the diplomat assured his host. "The
restaurants in Paris in the 1870's have an excellent reputation."

            "Didst say ...
1870?" Will demanded breathlessly. "Three centuries beyond the veil
of time, I trow. And how didst thou, good Retief, come to know this milieu, of
mine own devising?"

            Retief explained to the
unworldly poet that he had imagined better than he knew, that he had visioned
what was indeed to come to pass, and that even in Retief s time, a thousand
years later than Will's, the restaurants of Paris had a reputation so high that
it was even able to overwhelm the reputation of the Parisians' manners as those
of super New Yorkers, and attract vast numbers of tourists from America and
Japan and elsewhere.

            "Thou dost pull my leg,
I trow," Willy replied, grinning. "Savages, you'd have me believe,
cross the ocean sea from the New World in order to dine in Paris. A most
pleasant conceit, good Retief—and equal to mine own imaginings, forsooth!"

            Magnan leaned close to
Retief to ask, "That Will, whence—I mean where did he come from? He hardly
fits in with the rest of these rude louts."

            "Ask Henry,"
Retief suggested. Magnan did so.

            "Oh, old Willy, well,
he just was here one day," Henry reminisced. "Mighta been around a
while fore I noticed him. Quiet feller; talks funny, like you, Mr. Magnan, only
worse, no offense."

            Magnan turned to Will,
sitting slightly apart in the corner of the booth. "If you don't mind my
asking—" he began but broke off as Henry came abruptly to his feet.

            "Hold hard,
mates!" the big fellow boomed, holding up a callussed hand. "I smell
mischief afoot, as I draw breath!" He peered across the room toward the
entry. "Aye," he commented, more calmly. "Tis the demon-worms,
come again! But my brave lads will drive them off, as always. They've sharp
teeth, these imps, but dull livers! Bother the rogues, we'll dine and be damned
to them!" As he concluded his peroration, the waiter reappeared with two
subordinates beside him, each bearing a silver tray laden with savory aromas.

            "Beef Bourgignon,"
Magnan announced, "but of course, the
consomme au buerre blanc
first."
He beamed approvingly as the Sevres china bowl of soup was placed before him.
Henry had already dipped his spoon in his bowl and smacked his lips loudly.

            "I've but little
patience with slops in the ordinary way," he cried, "but this be no
ordinary broth! Well done, Retief! I declare to all, you've effected an
improvement on my own rude eats! And the beef good Chaucey bears tastes one
half so good as it smells, tis a viand of rare delight!"

            "Chow hounds,"
Bill commented, as he slurped his soup noisily. "They're all alike. Rather
eat then run off the caterpillars."

            "All in good time,
Sergeant," Magnan reproved the lad. "Eat slowly, and savor your food.
You'll not soon get its equal in the Embassy dining room."

            "All that stuff seems
like it's a long way off," Bill commented dreamily, as he took Magnan's
advice and noticed the rich taste of the fine soup.

            "But alas, it is not,"
Magnan said as he glanced toward the entry where men were crowding, obscuring
the view. "I'll wager it's that scamp Smeer," he observed,
"intent on seizing our persons in flagrant violation of diplomatic custom,
the rules of hospitality, and common justice, to say nothing of Interplanetary
Law." Magnan paused to tug at Retief s sleeve. "Hadn't we, that is,
you, better—" he started, but Retief shook his head.

            "Remember what you said
about savoring the food?" he said as he tried his beef.

            Magnan finished off his
mousse
choclat,
leaned back and sighed. After a sip of his Chateau d'Yquem, he
leaned toward Retief, cupped his hand beside his mouth and whispered:

            "Am I actually to
understand that whatever some of these fellows consider the ideal place to have
a good time becomes manifested as though it were actual?"

            "So it appears,"
Retief told him.

            "That's
impossible!" Magnan snapped.

            "Certainly, Mr.
Magnan," Retief agreed readily. "I didn't suggest that it's possible,
only that it's happening."

            "Well," Magnan
ruminated, somewhat mollified, "that
was
a rather fine Chateau
Lafitte-Rothschilde. An 89, or I miss my guess. So I suppose one may as well
accommodate to appearances."

            "I'm curious, Mr.
Magnan," Retief said. "What did the place look like to you when you
came in?"

            "Why, it was a
near-perfect duplicate of Ye Cozy Tea Shoppe back home in Salinas," Magnan
replied, sounding surprised. "Charming place, really. One could pop in on
a blustery winter afternoon and take a dish of Soochong and a really lovely
crumpert, all in an atmosphere of the most refined propriety. But, alas, I was
so happy to see the place, I made the error of impulsively embracing Madam
Lachaise, the maiden lady proprietress, much to her and my own embarrassment,
especially when she repulsed me like a termagent as if I'd been guilty of an
improper advance!"

            "And Blinky thought you
were attacking him," Retief commented. "That's what precipitated the
riot."

            "Then, oddly
enough," Magnan mused on, "the surroundings were different. Nothing
actually changed, it seemed, but in some curious way, rather than the cozy
tea-room on a chilly afternoon, it seemed to be some sort of dreadful,
old-fashioned French bordello, but with bits and pieces of the sort of gin-mill
one sees in unlikely pseudo-historicals about Pacific islands, where all sorts
of unsavory riff-raff turn up and spend their time plotting to raid some
forbidden temple or the like. All very confusing." He subsided, looking
out past the potted geranium on the sill of the dusty window at the white sails
of the pleasure-yachts on the breeze-riffled bay.

            "Pleasant enough
corner, here," Magnan observed. "And the food is superb. One wonders
how the management is able to import the rare old vintages to this dismal
backwater world so far off the trade-lanes. Odd I didn't notice a lake when we
drove in."

            "Will is responsible
for the Gaslight Era Parisian milieu," Retief told his supervisor.
"He's drowning out Big's mariners' roost, and between them they've pretty
well suppressed Captain Larson's mead-hall. Your tearoom didn't stand a chance,
I'm afraid. I settled for this corner table, and it seems to stand up pretty
well. I suppose because it doesn't clash too much, and good food and service
have a universal appeal."

            "Fantastic!"
Magnan blurted. "But—" he frowned at Retief, who was watching the
heavily-draped wide double window across the room. Beyond its small panes,
something moved. Then the glass and mullions burst inward with a prolonged
crash!,
and Smeer appeared, a cloud of gnats swarming in behind him. The cop coiled
through the opening, apparently unheeding of the shards of broken glass over
which he crawled, to take up a position with the first few feet of his sinuous
body coiled on a table, from which four drinkers had fled, uttering yells:

            "L-look out! It's the
pillars comin again! Get Henry!"

            "—outa my way, Leroy.
You
get Henry!"

            "—thought we taught
them worms a lesson!"

            "Silence, lesser
creatures!" Smeer commanded, and paused to await conformity with his order.
As the hubbub rose in volume, and a barrage of hurled objects came arching in
toward him, he suddenly drew the remainder of his long form in through the
shattered window and whipped it up and over and down with a force that
splintered the adjacent table and sent two chairs and their occupants spinning.
Glasses shattered, and an overturned bottle discharged its contents unheeded on
the floor, until someone darted in and grabbed it up, directing its flow to his
mouth.

            "Well," Henry
commented. "Looks like I got a job o' work to do here, all over again.
Them pillars don't learn too fast, seems like. Want to have some fun, Retief?

            You, too, Bill. Mr.
Magnan?" He looked dubiously at the latter who was still firmly seated,
gripping the arms of his chair.

            "One in my position can
hardly associate himself with an affair of this land," Magnan stated in a
defensive tone.

            "Oh, I get it,"
Henry replied, "OK if
I
and the boys do something, or you figger
we're gonna just set here and let 'em take over the club?"

            Magnan paused judiciously
before framing his reply: "Inasmuch," he began portentiously,
"as your 'club,' as you term it, is in fact located on a site wrested by
force from its original owners, Enlightened Galactic Opinion can but look with
approbation on the initiative of the latter to retain possession of their real
estate—to fulfill their legitimate aspirations, that is to say."

            "What was that part
after 'however'?" Henry inquired doubtfully.

            "Never mind, Big,"
Retief reassured him, "Mr. Magnan is just reciting some old traditional
CDT spells that are intended to ward off disapproving glances from some source
unspecified."

            "Does it work?"
Henry asked.

            "Nope," Retief
told him. "But it comforts Mr. Magnan to have the rituals to fall back
on."

            "These here
'disapproving glantses' and all," Henry posed his inquiry gingerly.
"They anything like ten-inch Hellbores?"

            "More potent by far,
when intercepted by traditionalists like Mr. Magnan," Retief explained.

            "Well," Henry
ventured hesitantly, "seems old Cap Larson built this here clubhouse in a
swamp on a pile o' dirt him and his boys dug up offn the bottom, and the
'pillars' musta been thunk up by some slob of unknown origins like I told you
about so, I guess we got a like obligation and all to run these here pillars
off."

            "Sheer yivshish,"
Magnan sniffed. "The very mud dug up by this Larson person was the
property of the autochthones!"

            "Mud they can
have," Henry muttered and advanced toward Smeer, who twisted his elongated
form into a position of readiness, two hands gripping machetes deployed in
front of his fang-studded visage. He seemed, however, to be looking past Henry.

            "I say, Mr.
Magnan," he called, "you're not figgering on pitting this here
ruffian which there's a APB out on him, against a official of the law, I
hope."

            "Certainly not,
Captain," Magnan replied, rising to shout after Retief and Bill, who were
flanking Henry. "He's simply going to eject a trouble-maker, in pursuance
of law and order."

            "Oh," Smeer said,
relaxing his defensive stance just as Retief and Bill simultaneously jumped in
and grabbed the machetes, while Henry, dodging a snap of the yellow
spike-studded jaws, took a casual arm lock on Smeer's person just below the
head and wrenched the cop's face upside down, so that he could look him
squarely in the eye.

            "Seems like I seen you
before, Bub," he told the astonished cop. "Looks like you'da had
sense enough to stay outa where you ain't wanted."

            "As for that breach of
decorum," Smeer came back tartly, talking past Bill, "it is you
yourself, Henry, and your cronies, who are at fault, as so great a man as S.
Goldblatt conceded, long ago, at the time he so decisively transferred his
operations elsewhere. And besides," he added, "youse are harboring a
wanted fugitive, this here Retief, which they's a reward out on him."

            "Naw, Chief, you got
the wrong guy," Henry objected. "That Mr. Magnan buys that line o'
crap, not big Henry Laboochy."