Reward for Retief (15 page)

            It's just I got this little
ole gal back on Oort station, got two er three nippers, reckon I orta get back
to see 'em if I can."

            "Naturally, Mr.
Segundo," Magnan hastened to assure the confinee. "Just let's get on
with it; I fear we'll be apprehended ere we can effect your release!"

            "Hang loose, old
buddy," Looie urged. "I jest remembered I got to say goodbye to
Dottie and Frou-frou and old Hungry Annie and all, and my ole buddy Hump, too.
Gimme a minute. Be right back."

            "Well!" Magnan
sniffed. "He doesn't seem very appreciative of one's efforts on his
behalf." He went close to the shedding wall to peek through one of the
many chinks in the ragged barrier.

            "Their captors seem
remarkably lackadaisical about restraining them," he commented, picking at
a loose slat which fell away to open a six-inch wide gap. "Why," he
went on wonderingly, "one could easily tear away that whole plank ..."

            "Better not,"
Retief cautioned. "Since the boys inside haven't already done so, there's probably
a reason."

            "What possible reason
could prompt a free-born Terry spaceman to languish voluntarily in durance
vile?" Magnan addressed his appeal to the circumambient air.

            Retief glanced through the
newly-made opening, saw grass and shade-trees and a bank of imported flowering
bumbum vine, all colored like a hand-tinted postcard. A whiff of a delicate
floral perfume wafted through. One of the ubiquitous reward posters had been
plastered on a tree-trunk.

            "A curious sort of
concentration camp," Magnan commented, looking over Retief s shoulder.
"Just look at that burbling brook, and the wildflowers as countless as the
stars that shine and twinkle in the Milky Way!"

            "Wordsworth?"
Retief inquired. "Or Shelley?"

            "They're tossing their
heads in sprightly dance, too," Magnan added.

            "Who, the
prisoners?" Bill inquired.

            "No, don't be silly:
the daffodills!" "All this and Dottie, too," Retief said.
"Maybe Looie has a point."

            "Damn right!"
Looie's voice spoke up close at hand. Magnan looked up to see a beardless face,
with blackened eyes and ochre bruises peering down at him from the top of the
wall for a moment before the wall bulged outward under his weight and
collapsed. Segundo, who was a short, muscular fellow neatly dressed in a loud
sportshirt and overlong Bermuda shorts, got to his feet, muttering. "Damn
wall, made me look like a fool! Hi, ole buddies," he addressed the
diplomats. "Be right back." With that, he stepped back across the
ruins of the fallen fence and disappeared into a grove of purple-fruit trees.

            "Well, I never!"
Magnan informed Galactic Public Opinion. "The scamp didn't so much as
acknowledge our efforts on his behalf!"

            "We didn't actually
make any, sir," Retief reminded him. The sound of the collapse had at last
attracted the attention of the lone sentinel, who came undulating across the
mud toward the two diplomats.

            "Say, you fellows are
out of your bailiwick, eh?" it called cheerfully. "Old Smeer won't
like that too good."

            "Chief Smeer isn't
obliged to like it," Magnan retorted tartly. "As fully accredited
diplomatic members of the Terran Embassy staff, bearing the Exequatur of your
own government, we enjoy the prerogative of visiting this installation to
ensure that all is being conducted in accordance with solemn interplanetary
accord."

            "Naw, nothing like
that, pal," the pillar objected. "What we're worried about, we find a
creature don't thrive too good outside of its natural envirament and all."

            "I assure you, my good
fellow," Magnan stated loftily, "that we Terrans can thrive in
virtually any environment, simply provided we have access to fresh air, clean
water, and a modicum of nourishing victuals."

            "Well, yeah, I guess
that's right," the guard agreed dubiously. "But what I read, you
fellows are just like you was Sardonic: you need a few extras, too, to really
live it to the hilt; onny we can't figure out just what extras you need.
Nookie, maybe, or slamph-balm. Now, you take old Looie, always tryna bust out:
all he got to do is sign out at the main gate, and we got transport laid on to
take him anyplace he wants, except outa his right envirament, o' course."

            "Possibly it is
precisely therein that the key to your problem lies," Magnan theorized.
"The point being, my ma—good fellow—that is—that Looie wants to do
whatever Looie wants to do, not choose from predetermined alternatives of
another's devising."

            "That don't make no
sense," the pillar returned shortly. "Prang-nuts is prang-nuts,
right?" he pursued the point. "Whether you find 'em inna woods, or
they're dispensed by a autofeeder."

            "It's not the
same," Magnan insisted stubbornly. "Mr. Segundo—and the other illegal
retainees as well, are free born citizens of the Terran Autonomy, not subject
to arbitrary confinement by your local constabulary, or anyone else."

            "So who's confining
'em?" the pillar persisted. "I tole ya the gate's open."

            "Really?" Magnan
demanded in a tone of Utter Scepticism (3-W). "In that case, why do they
not depart at once?"

            "What I was
saying," the guard returned doggedly. "What ye'r doing, buddy, ye're
jumping to conclusions and all, wrong ones, too." With that, he coiled up
in a loose heap and blanked off his multi-faceted compound eyes from behind, an
effect like having a blind pulled down in one's face.

            "Well, we'll just ask,"
Magnan stated, and turned to pick his way across the fallen section of wall.

            "I better do a recce o'
this here wall," Bill volunteered, and set off at a trot.

            "There's no one in
sight," Magnan announced superfluously. "Odd," he commented.
"The infernal gnats seem to be absent. I wonder why everyone's hiding.
Probably frightened by the sound of the collapsing wall."

            "Nope," Looie
contradicted. "Nothing like that. They jest got better things to do than
rubberneck at what's going on over here." He followed Magnan, shooting a
sharp glance at Retief as he passed. "Hey," he commented. "I
seen yer pitcher. What's yer racket, pal?"

            "Precisely what
is
going
on here, Mr. Segundo?" Magnan demanded as he halted abruptly.
"Nothing which will redound to the benefit of Terran-Sardonic relations, I
fear. And I had the impression," he added severely, "that I saw a
naked young person dart into the underbrush over there."

            "Prolly old
Nudine," Looie hazarded. "Likes to shake up the new boys which they
don't know the ropes yet."

            "Mr. Retief and
I," Magnan announced grandly, "are definitely not 'new boys.' And on
second thought, I was probably mistaken: just a flash of white, most likely a
white bathing costume."

            "Nudie didn't wear no
costume when she bathes off, nor no other time, neither," Looie dismissed
the idea. "Come on, I'll innerdooce youse."

            "I hardly think
..." Magnan began hesitantly. "That is, to burst in unannounced on a
young lady who is about her
toilette ..."

           
"Now, the
terlet's over the other side," Looie reassured the nervous diplomat.

            "I didn't mean ..."
Magnan started.

            "Let it pass, Mr.
Magnan," Retief suggested. "Whatever the local customs are, it's not
up to us to try to reform them."

            "Yes, that's all very
well, when we're speaking of the abominable habits various unenlightened
peoples have with regard to nasal-orifice-picking, or infant exposure, but that
was a bare derriere I saw flitting through the begonias."

            "Maybe we'd
better
have
a closer look," Retief agreed. He parted the flowering shrub and was
looking into a wide-set pair of cornflower blue eyes. It was a young Terran
female, wearing a golden sun-tan and a shy smile.

            "Hi," she said,
stepping back out of Retief s path. "You're new here." Her voice was
mild and melodious. Magnan, close behind Retief, uttered a shocked gasp.
"Heavens!" he exclaimed. "We seem to have blundered into a
nudist camp! Our pardons, Miss!"

            "Forget it," the
girl dismissed the matter. "You come over here to the pond to bathe off,
or what?" By this time she was knee-deep in a pellucid pool, casually
rubbing a bar of soap up and down her curvaceous hip. "Through in a
sec," she said over her shoulder. "Come on in; plenty of room."

            "Retief!" Magnan
muttered in a catatonic voice to the bigger man. "We'd best be off at
once! What if His Excellency should learn we'd been ogling some forest dryad at
her ablutions?"

            "We're not ogling,
sir," Retief corrected his supervisor gently. "Just admiring the
scenery."

            The girl gave him a smile.
"You're nice," she told him. "What's the matter with your father
there?"

            "I am not—" Magnan
started. "That is,
he's
not—"

            "Hand me that towel,
will you, Pop?" the young lady requested. As she waded out to stand before
Magnan, unselfconscious as September Morn, he groped the towel from the
convenient bush, and handed it over, trying to look over, or possibly through
the naked woman. She patted her face dry, then draped the towel carelessly over
her shoulder.

            "What's the matter,
Pop?" she inquired solicitously. "You have a bad experience with some
hard-hearted dame once, or what?"

            "It's just ..."
Magnan choked and tottered away, muttering, inconspicuously tearing a reward
poster from a tree as he passed. Retief helped her up the slight slope. She
thanked him prettily and asked:

            "How about some lunch?
I'm in the mood for a chicken sandwich, or maybe a blurb-beast salad. And a
nice cold pale ale." She extended an arm into the shrubbery and did
something. At once a brisk voice spoke from the foliage: "Yes?" it
said, and paused.

            "Two Number Ones over
the pond," she said to the bush.

            "Coming up,
Nudine," came the reply.

            "My name's not really
Nudine," she told Retief and settled herself comfortably on the cool, lush
grass. "That's just a dopey nickname old Buzzy came up with. I'm really
Jacinthe."

            "Nice name,"
Retief commented. He sat down with his back to a sycamore-like tree. "Just
call me Retief."

            "What's your last
name?" she asked.

            "That's it,"
Retief told her. "First name's Jame, or Jim as it's usually
pronounced."

            "Hey," Nudine
exclaimed, her eyes on Retief. "You're the feller on the new signs."
He nodded.

            "Well, Jimmy, what
brings
you
here to Danazu?" she queried.

            "I thought it was
Xanadu," Retief commented.

            "Oh, just lost,
huh?" she decided; then a small, inconspicuous fellow dressed all in black
emerged from the underbrush pushing a laden tea-cart. He put the tray, bearing
frosty mugs of ale and a stack of fat sandwiches, on the grass between them and
ducked out of sight.

            "Thanks, Buzzy,"
Nudine/Jacinthe said belatedly. "He used to be a Heller before old Worm
got him," she confided in Retief. "Worm straightened him out good and
give him something useful to do." She dropped the subject and took a pull
at her ale. Retief picked up a sandwich. Before he could take a bite, there was
a thrashing in the underbrush. Nudine looked up, surprised.