Reward for Retief (47 page)

            "Relax, Captain,"
the bigger man urged in an unexcited tone. "I didn't kick you; you walked
into the table."

            "Guess I know when I
been assaulted!" Sol gasped, gamely continuing to throw his futile lefts
and rights. "Snuck up on me in the dark, you with all yer fancy talk about
ethics and such!" He fell back, breathing heavily.

            The big man turned to
Retief, offered his hand. "I'm William of Righolm," he said.
"Have we met before, sir?"

            "I think not, Your
Highness," Retief responded, gripping William's hand firmly. "But I
know of you, of course. Prince Sobhain sends his greetings. He's well."

            "I left him in charge
of an objectionable but sturdy lout," William confided. "After
suggesting a few useful tricks which I hope he used well."

            "He did," Retief
reassured the nobleman. "In fact, he'd been making life hell for his
'keepers.' I urged him to take it easy."

            "Headstrong lad,"
William replied, not without satisfaction. "Useful trait, considering the
role in great affairs that awaits him."

            " 'Role in great
affairs'?" Magnan repeated with a rising inflection. "I found him a
distinctly scruffy and undisciplined sort of ragamuffin."

            "Mr. Magnan would be
the first to accord His Highness all that protocol demands," Retief put
in, "if he knew that he was a prince imperial, and heir presumptive to an
ancient throne."

            "What's that,
Jim?" Magnan blurted. "Why I thought that 'Prince Sobhain' talk was
just a joke, in poor taste at that! Why didn't you tell me? Now I fear I've
unwittingly committed
lese majeste
of the grossest sort. His Highness
will never forgive me."

            "On the contrary,
sir," Prince William said. "In fact—if you're a Mr. Magnan, he found
you most amusing. Cheered him up no end."

            "Well, as to
that," Magnan improvised, "I fancy my sense of humor, though subtle,
is one of my finest and least appreciated qualities. Pray express my
satisfaction to His Highness—but how do you know what the boy thinks?"

            "He told me, sir,"
the courtly tutor informed the dumbfounded Magnan, who gobbled, "B-but
how? When? If you've been imprisoned here—"

            "He wasn't,"
Retief tipped off his supervisor. "He posted himself here to guard the
nexus-point, if I'm not mistaken."

            "One has one's
duty," Prince William pointed out quietly. "The captain had
vengefully loosed his charming pet to rove freely; I felt it necessary to
confine it."

            "Here?" Magnan
demanded, looking about the small room with an Air of Incredulity (41-v).
"I see no puppy-dog nor pussycat. Here, kitty, kitty ..."

            "Haply, sir," the
grim-faced prince told Magnan, "the captain's pet is, as I said, confined;
nor is the creature a lap dog."

            "The place is hardly big
enough to share with a pet sheep, like Little Mary's," Magnan sniffed.
"And I see no cage for a hamster! Now, just what do you have to say to
that, sir?"

            "Nothing, mister,"
Sol told Magnan. "It's no skin off my sitzfleisch. Willy here had no call
to go tryna trap my critter."

            "Your creature,
Captain," the prince stated firmly, "was in process of devastating
the countryside."

            "Old Wiggly don't mean
no harm," Sol commented indifferently. "It's just he got to have some
self-expression and all; felt a little frustrated, locked into
my
paradigm."

            "What's this?"
Magnan demanded, approaching what appeared to be a plain closet door. Before
Prince William could reach him, he had opened it to reveal the polished surface
of a mirror. Pausing only to adjust the lie of a lapel, he turned away.

            "Curious place for a
looking-glass—" he remarked, then, as something in the reflective surface
caught the corner of his eye, he spun quickly to face it.

            "Uh, Retief," he
said quietly, then screamed. An immense yellow eye was glaring balefully at him
through his reflection. A callussed eyelid came down like a wrinkled roller
shade, then snapped up again.

            "It—it blinked!"
Magnan shrieked. Then just as Retief pulled him aside, the narrow yellow-green
tongue flicked out—
through
the reflective surface—and the space Magnan
had occupied an instant before. Retief slammed the door.

            "What—how?" Magnan
yelped. "That—
thing
tried to eat me!"

            "Better you should
stand clear o' the portal," the elderly space-captain remarked. "It
might be giving out. He got his tongue through that time. Can't tell when he
might get his alignment right and bust through!"

            "Why on Earth,"
Magnan demanded, "do you keep such a menace in your closet?"

            "Ain't
on
Earth,"
Sol reminded him. "Ain't been there in years. Fact is, I built the closet
around the portal here after the Voice told me to, and the house around the
closet. Thought it best to stay close, ya know. Couldn't let the critter run
loose, once I seen what he was doing."

            "Most idealistic on
your part, boss," Magnan approved.

            "Ideals,
schmideals," Sol replied carelessly. "I had my own plan about how
things outa be. Old Worm was tryna mess it up."

            "Perhaps," Magnan
mused, "that accounts for the curiously mixed nature of the place: a
halcyon idyl on the one hand; a thief-infested wilderness on the other."

            "Them pirates done
that," Sol supplied. "Messed up my parks and gardens and all and Old
Worm helped 'em do it. Jest for fun. Rascal likes trouble 'mongst us Terries,
it turned out. His idea of getting even. I raised him from a caterpillar that
long." He indicated two inches with his thumb and forefinger.
"Course, after I started hearing the Voice, it come along and helped me
out at first, there, when I had the busted leg and all. Nice feller, back
then."

           
i am still a nice fellow
,
the almost forgotten
Voice spoke up suddenly,
it is your
own character flaws which have led to the present unfortunate contretemps.

           
"Likes to
use them big words," Sol muttered. "Just to bug me. Knows I talk
plain."

            "Jim," Magnan
managed in a stricken voice. "Does this mean that the voice which we took
for a superior and friendly intellect actually emanates from that dreadful
monster? Did you notice the deciduous teeth, some loose in their sockets, with
a reserve row ready to take their place? Horrid!"

            "So it appears,
Ben," Retief confirmed quietly.

            "But—what about
Junior?" Magnan yelped. "He was decidedly cheeky to the Voice—so he
must be an even more formidable monster!"

           
not really,
Junior corrected.
i'm for-(what he said) but i'm no monster. getting older, I guess,
but still a fine figure of a man. the nerve o' that worm, calling me 'junior'!

           
Magnan stared at
Sol. "Was that—you?" he gasped. "I can scarce credit the concept
of apparent omniscience in the first instance, quite aside from conceiving the
phenomenon as emanating from a mere tramp captain!"

           
watch your language, mister magnan
, Junior cautioned.
who you calling 'mere? i'm a licensed
deep-space skipper, and there's nothing 'mere' about me; and I don't plan to
take a lot of spacewash from bureaucrats!

           
"Mind your
tone, my man," Magnan cautioned."There are, or is, I should say, a
number of matters which you've not yet explained satisfactorily; matters, I
might add, which promise to make yours one of the most colorful trials in Corps
history."

            "Now you're talking
trials?" Sol scoffed. "Maybe you're forgetting, Mister, you're on
my
turf."

            "Your 'turf,' as you
call it," Magnan reminded the now irate spaceman, "is in fact the
sovereign world registered as CNGC-4, or in your local vernacular, 'Zanny-du'."

            "I found it before you
did," Sol muttered. "Guess I got a few rights. Found the whole
system," he added, "six planets; left the other five in the public
domain. Some thanks I get."

            "I for one, have little
for which to be thankful, sir," Magnan intoned, "in the experiences
which have befallen me here on this cryptic planet—all as a result of
your
meddling,
I believe, with the natural order of things!"

            "All I done was fix
things up a little," Sol protested. "It was them mutineers and then
Prince Willy, here, messed things up. Plus that Overbore fella. And Old Worm o'
course."

            "From the single
horrifying glance I obtained," Magnan stated, "it appears your Worm
is merely an overgrown specimen of the autochthonous Zanadoers."

            "There you go with the
twelve-buck words again," Sol complained. "What's a 'auto-thon' or
what you said?"

            "An autochthone,"
Magnan announced didactically, "is a mentational species indigenous to its
environment."

            " 'Indigent'," Sol
muttered. "That's 'broke,' ain't it? Bankrupt? Hell, Worm ain't got no
bank to rupt."

            "Your're confusing
'indigenous' with 'indigent'," Magnan corrected tartly.

            "Whatsamatter?"
Sol inquired of the cosmic All, "ain't they got enough words, they gotta
use the same one twice? How about 'guglimp,' or 'intransbigural.' Heck, I can
make up words don't sound like no other word, as fast as I can talk."

            "Lexicogeny,"
Magnan commented in a lofty tone, "is not a matter of on-the-spot
improvisation. The vocabulary in common use is a product of millenia of
linguistic evolution, with roots traceable to the Neolithic."

            "You made that
lexicogeny up," Sol responded. "I bet."

            "Why, actually,"
Magnan responded with only a trace of Righteous Indignation (112-a), "
'lexicogeny'
is,
as it happens, a neologism; but a legitimate one,
firmly based on classical roots."

            "Calling something 'a
legitimate neologism' don't clarify matters none," Sol told Magnan
crisply. "Talk plain, mister. Try it sometime. You might be surprised how
it helps."

            " 'Talking plain,' as
you so crudely put it," Magnan rebutted, "is the prerogative of the
layman. Subtle nuances can hardly be expressed for the record in blunt
Standard."

            "What record?" Sol
demanded suspiciously. "You guys taking notes, or what?"

            Before Magnan could frame an
indignant reply, the closet door burst open and Dirty Eddie staggered through
and fell heavily. He seemed unaware of his surroundings as he rolled over, sat
up and shook his head. Magnan stepped forward to close the door.

            "Dern near got me that
time," the newcomer announced blurrily. Then he looked around, his eyes
holding on Sol. "How'd
you
get here, Boss?" he muttered.
"Thought you was over to the Domes and all." He twisted to look over
his shoulder at the closet door. "Prolly got
them
two," he
added indifferently.

            "Mister Segundo!"
Sol barked. "I tole you and I tole you to stay clear o' here. What 'two'
you talking about?"