The Return of Retief (15 page)

            The
escorting captain saluted, a maneuver involving a curious rippling of his upper
tentacular fringe, and said in barely understandable Terran:

            "This
is the VIP no-waiting area. The big chief don't like waiting around, Terry;
he's right in there." The guide pointed to a plain door. "So you go
right in and get down to business plenty chop-chop."

            With
that, he marched his detail off down the cramped passage. Retief entered the
office of Intimidator Slive. It was a small room, its nacreous walls ornately
decorated with inlays, and with a bull's eye window overlooking close-packed
rooftops. Among the gold curlicues and inlays bright against the dark walls and
floor, the Intimidator, standing beside his VIP ashcan, was inconspicuous, in
spite of his scarlet harness and imposing height.

            This
upper-echelon Ree was all of six-foot-six, Retief estimated, and of
commensurate girth. Like the lower-caste Ree Retief had previously encountered,
his physique was a thick column of solid muscle, but on a larger scale. He
inclined his garishly decorated sense-organ plate toward Retief and said in a
harsh voice:

            "You
may enter, rash Terry, to receive your instructions."

            "I
already entered, and I already have my instructions, Intimidator," Retief
returned firmly.

            Slive
recoiled a fraction of an inch and resumed:

            "Since
I have not yet notified you of the terms of surrender, it is obscure to me how
you could have anticipated my commands relevant thereto."

            "Who's
surrendering?" Retief asked in mock innocence. "If you want to give
up, you'd better begin by getting your advance units out of Tip space."

            "You,
Terry, are insolent!" Slive boomed, coming out from behind his massive
desk.

            "Well,
I try," Retief pointed out.

            "It
was you, through my Groaci colleague Snith, who desired this audience,"
Slive pointed out. "I can conceive of no possible reason therefore other
than to sign Articles of Unconditional Surrender."

            "I
fear Your Excellency has gotten a false impression," Retief answered.
"We haven't even fought a battle yet, only a few experimental skirmishes
to determine whether it will be necessary to unlock the Doom Fleet, which we
naturally hold in reserve for serious occasions."

            "You
don't consider a confrontation with Ree might be a serious occasion?"
Slive demanded in an ominous tone.

            "We've
been letting our military students run exercises," Retief explained.
"Your fleet units make amusing targets."

            He
went past Slive and glanced over the U-shaped desk the Ree war-chief had
vacated. The desk console, he saw, was actually a fully equipped command
center. "Nice toy," he commented. "But the game's over, Slive.
We've decided it's time for you to pick up what's left of your play-pretties
and go home. For the present, we won't follow you and set your primitive
culture back to the Stone Age."

            "This,"
Slive stated in a voice like the first rumble of a minor earthquake, "is
preposterous! You seem completely to have misconstrued the significance of our
self-restrained activities!"

            "That's
unimportant," Retief dismissed the protest. "What's important—to your
continued existence—is that you clear out of the Arm and report that the grab
didn't work. This Arm is taken."

            "Are
you mad, Terran upstart?" Slive grated. "Consider the matter
rationally, if you are indeed capable of logic: we Ree find ourselves running
short of available breeding surfaces in the Western Arm; we require new
worlds—and here they are, ready to pseudopod, in the adjacent Arm! And you
suggest that we should forego the convenience of expanding into what is
manifestly our destined sphere, merely because of the trifling circumstance
that various lesser beings happen to be squatting there? It is unreasonable,
Terry, can you not grasp that single fact?"

            "As
you state the matter, Intimidator," Retief replied thoughtfully, "it
seems clear enough. But perhaps you haven't given sufficient consideration to
the viewpoint of the squatters."

            "What,
you expect me to take into account the whims of those spoilsports? Whatever
for? I fail to see how that would redound to the profit of Great Ree."

            "It
might help prevent a full-scale war," Retief pointed out. "So far,
there've been only a few skirmishes between outlying units, doubtless exceeding
orders."

            "What
do I care for avoiding salutary conflict?" Slive demanded. "It is
clear that you Terries, no less than the perfidious Groaci, are unprepared to
resist the unleashed might of Ree!"

            "My
point," Retief persisted, "is that if you continue to infiltrate the
Arm, you'll eventually become impossible to ignore."

            "We
are both, presumably, beings of the world," Slive said reasonably.
"Let me restate the Ree position once more, and invite your agreement that
it is indeed the very soul of sweet reasonableness. Then you will of course
cease your irritating interference with the orderly unfolding of Ree destiny:

            "You
have something we want, and we naturally intend to take it. In your possession,
the worlds of the Eastern Arm serve no purpose useful to Ree; therefore, we
will put them to good use. What could be more transparently equitable than
that?"

            "You're
still overlooking the Terry position," Retief told the excited
Intimidator. "Consider the case of Fred L. Underslung for example: for
nearly a decade, he's been Charge at Dobe, hanging on by his teeth and sweating
out promotion at Longone. But if you fellows take over Longone, naturally we'll
have broken off diplomatic relations due to the
de facto
state of war,
so there'll be no ambassadorial slot there for Underslung to be appointed to.
Ergo, he's against your invasion."

            "Hmmm,
perhaps there's something in what you say, Terry," Slive conceded
thoughtfully. "Almost, I begin to grasp the basis for your intransigence.
It's an utterly novel concept, of course, to imagine that an alien might have
some reason on
his
side, but this does, I confess, come close to having
a certain distorted logic However," he continued, "I foresee that if
we were to yield to such yivshish, in the end it might interfere with our
securing possession of your property."

            "Speaking
of property," Retief put in, "what about all the development the
pioneers have accomplished on these outlying worlds? Mines on Hardtack and
McGillicudy's World, roads and towns on Drygulch and a dozen others, farms and
bridges and lumber mills, chemical plants, port facilities, golf courses and
resorts, billboards, and all the rest."

            "No
need to fret; I assure you, that we Ree, no wastrels, will put all such
amenities to good use," Slive reassured Retief. "Indeed, their
existence makes the planets in question considerably more desirable than would
be raw, undeveloped real estate. You see, you naively undermine your own
position. But enough of these trivialities. You, Terry, will at once sign the
Articles, or suffer the consequences! I assume your simple species enjoys at
least a vestigial instinct for personal preservation."

            With
that, the seventy-eight-inch-tall, two-foot-in-diameter cylinder of muscle
advanced truculently to confront Retief.

            "I've
got a better idea," Retief said as the oversized Ree crowded him as if to
nudge him toward the waiting window.

            Retief
slid aside from the thrust and, locking the massive alien's lower body with his
knee, palmed the columnar being backward, toppling him to the floor, where he
coiled reflexively into a stubby U-shape, and became quiescent.

            Retief
paused to remove the two-inch-wide blue tump-leather belt that was part of his
CDT dress, service, undeveloped worlds, for use on, and strapped it around
Slive's featureless torso six inches above his foot.

            A
full minute passed before Slive revived, struggled for purchase with his frilly
'foot' and re-erected himself.

            "Pay
no attention, Terry," Slive commanded, taking no notice of the belt.
"I but slipped on the floor, overzealously waxed by a menial, no doubt.
But you were about to offer further concessions."

            "Not
quite," Retief corrected. "My idea is that if you'll pull back into
your own territory, youTl save yourselves a lot of unnecessary bother."

            "I
don't mind a spot of bother," Slive pointed out. "Life here at Field
HQ is a trifle dull, you know."

            "It's
livelier at the front," Retief said. "You could save a few zillion
troops if you back off now."

            "Whatever
for? We have a gracious plenty of them. In fact, they're really why I'm here,
in a way. You see," Slive went on, sounding gossipy now, "we Ree are
mostly neuter. Only one egg in a thousand hatches a female and they start right
in laying a million eggs a day, but there's only one male Ree. He's a horny old
devil we call the Ultimate. About seven hundred years ago, standard, we had a
virus epidemic that altered male genes, hormone-wise. A lot of the male
population died in the epidemic. The rest were sterile—except for one male, the
Ultimate. Apparently, instead of cancelling out his hormones, the virus threw
all his genes into a perpetual-replacement mode. He can't die—he just goes from
one longevity cycle to the next.

            "So
he's become the lone progenitor, and he's been busy ever since, trying to get
around to
all
of those poor, lonely females, longing for the joys of
motherhood.

            "Once
fertilized, they go on laying a million eggs a day, only now the eggs are
fertile. We used to ship infertile eggs out into the Eastern Arm, under the
trade name glimp eggs; seems there's a ready market for 'em, and we needed a
little hard currency for paying spies and all. But we couldn't hardly ship out
infant Ree the same way, the Ultimate decided. After all, they're all his own
kids."

            Slive
paused to dab at his moist ocular patches. So," he went on, "you can
see it didn't take long to fill up all our available spawning surfaces. That's
why we need this Arm. These new-hatched Ree are little more than throwbacks to
an early stage of Ree evolution, good for nothing but cannon-fodder. An
occasional exceptional individual, such as myself, better endowed
intellectually, is made an officer, to keep them headed in the right direction,
with rank in accordance with IQ. We've been forced to make do with some
certifiable morons. I daresay without my own dynamic leadership, the invasion
would never have been launched. Most of our officer corps is wholly dependent
on my direction."

            "I
met one of your certifiable officers," Retief said. "The idea didn't
work out, it seems."

            "Nope,
too dumb. But we still got the spawning problem to contend with."

            "Has
anyone suggested to the Ultimate that he might slow down?" Retief asked.

            "Are
you kidding?" Slive demanded rhetorically. "It's the only fun he has
and it's the basis for his exalted position besides. He'd be crazy to
stop."

            "Still,"
Retief pointed out, "there are limits to everything. The end had to come
sometime, and the time is here. Just go home and report that you tried but
failed."

            "I
don't see," Slive countered, "in what way I would explain away
failure to annex available territory."

            "Maybe
that depends on your definition of 'available'." Retief suggested.

            "Whatever
is
this
for?" Slive inquired, suddenly noticing the strap Retief
had put around his lower quarters.