The Complete Phule’s Company Boxed Set

by Robert Asprin

  A lot depended on whether or not the Fat Chance had put out a bulletin on the missing robot. Lola was betting that the casino’s instincts would be to keep the theft secret. After all, if the local criminals knew the casino’s owner had left a robot to look after his property, there’d be nothing to deter a serious takeover attempt. As long as they’d believed the most charismatic officer in the Space Legion was there to guard the place, they’d kept their distance. But if it became general knowledge that the Fat Chance was a paper tiger …

  Lola hadn’t immediately grasped the implications of that particular piece of information. Now she was beginning to see that it might, in and of itself, be worth more than the robot. The question was, how was she going to take advantage of her knowledge without sticking her own head into a noose? The obvious approach was to let the Fat Chance know that she knew, and milk it for as much as it was worth. Not just for returning the robot—although that’d be worth a fair amount—but for her silence about the robot and what it represented. And, of course, there were potential customers for the information that the Fat Chance was a hollow shell—although the window of opportunity to make capital on that was narrow.

  The boarding line edged forward, and she snapped back to reality. None of those plans would much matter if they were intercepted before the liner kicked into FTL and they were out of the local authorities’ reach. Then she’d have the luxury of long-range planning. For now, she had to be ready to cut her losses and run for her life at a moment’s notice.

  “Destination?”

  Lola started, realizing that in spite of her determination to be alert, she’d been lost in her thoughts. The woman asking the question was short, with shoulder-length brown hair and a neat Lorelei Station Administration uniform with a name tag reading Gillman. She had her hand held out, presumably for the ticket.

  “Kerr’s Trio,” said Lola, handing over the coded plastic card that served as her ticket, passport, and luggage check all in one. The Kerr Trio was a system of three Earthlike planets in close orbits around a midsized G star, well developed and populous. A high proportion of Lorelei Station’s customers hailed from there, since the journey was comparatively short and inexpensive, as such things go. Lola had chosen the destination for no other reason than its being the first stopover on the first ship headed out. There, she hoped, they could cover their tracks and choose a final destination more to their liking.

  The woman behind the counter slid the card into a reader and glanced at the readout. “Anything to declare?” she asked in a bored voice.

  “No,” said Lola. “A few gifts for my family.” The question, she knew, was routine and perfunctory. A few planets monitored the departure of indigenous artifacts, but on a station like Lorelei, where the entire economic base was gambling and tourism, the only things likely to be leaving were souvenirs. The occasional visitor might get lucky and leave with more money than he’d come with, but it didn’t happen often enough to be any threat to the station’s solvency.

  “OK, you’re in stateroom twenty-three A, on deck three,” said the woman, gesturing vaguely with her left hand. “Turn right at the head of the stairs, and there’ll be a steward there to show you the way. Need any help with the luggage?”

  “We’ve got one big case we could use a hand with,” said Lola, pointing to the trunk Ernie had been wheeling along.

  “Wait over there, and a spacecap will be along to help,” said the woman. “Have a nice voyage. Next?”

  “What the hell are you doing?” whispered Ernie as he took a position next to her. “This guy gets a notion we’re up to anything funny, and we’ll be up to our ass in trouble.”

  “Relax,” she said. “This is the right way to do it, believe me.” She was right, she knew. Now the luggage handlers would remember them as one more pair of passengers with a heavy bag, one more tip, not as some pinchpennies who insisted on wrestling their own bag through tight passageways. A few more minutes, and she could almost relax.

  * * *

  Brandy watched the legionnaires of Omega Company put the final pieces of the modular base camp back into its trailer. The exercise had gone remarkably well, she thought. At least, in a prepared space, with no worries about possible hostile action and no weather to complicate things, the legionnaires had been able to erect the MBC in the planned-on time. Nobody had gotten hurt, nothing was damaged, and the equipment appeared to be as advertised. She was sure there was something important they’d overlooked, but at the moment she couldn’t put her finger on it.

  “Piece of cake, hey, Top?” said a deep voice to her right. She looked to see Chocolate Harry standing there, wearing a purple camouflage cap and vest over his regulation black uniform. Still promoting his “robot-proof” line of supplementary equipment.

  “You bet,” she said, nodding. “If it goes anywhere near this well when we have to do it for real, I’ll be thrilled. I ought to find some wood to knock on so I don’t jinx us.”

  “One thing about the cap’n, he gets the best stuff you can buy,” said the supply sergeant appreciatively.

  “Yeah, I remember when we used to have to sleep in tents when we were out in the field,” said Brandy. “Leaky, cold tents, cold ground under you, too. Had to do that again, I’d hand the captain my retirement papers.”

  “You wouldn’t,” said Harry. “Neither would I—not as long as the cap’n’s running the company. If he put us in tents, we’d know it was because tents was the only way to go, and they’d be the best damn tents anybody could buy. I swear, that man’s likely to make me re-up, and I’d have told you you was crazy if you’d told me that a year ago.”

  “Ah, you’d re-up just so you could cheat the troops some more,” said Brandy. “How much are you making from that purple junk you’re selling, anyway? Where’d you get the idea we’re going to fight robots?”

  “It just so happens I got a deal on the robot camo,” said Harry indignantly. “I’m passin’ along the savin’s to the troops. They’d never get the stuff as cheap anywhere else.”

  “Sure, and your mother’s a virgin,” said Brandy, punching him in the shoulder. “We’re about as likely to see combat against robots as we are to invade a candy factory. Nah—we’re more likely to invade a candy factory.”

  “Hey, it could happen,” said Harry, looking sheepish. “The Legion way is, you gotta have the troops ready for anything.”

  “Sure, but some things are a lot more likely than others,” said Brandy. “You’re trying to make the troops think you’ve got inside information, and you don’t know any more than they do. Well, since you knew this equipment was coming, you must have figured out we’re going someplace where the captain can’t just move us into a hotel. But it’s a long way from that to these renegade robots you’re kicking up such a scare about.”

  “Safety first, that’s my motto,” said Harry. “Nobody’s gotta buy the stuff if they don’t want to. But believe you me, when we get to where the robots are shooting at us, you’ll be mighty sorry if you ain’t got something purple to put on.”

  “Right,” said Brandy, scoffing. Then her expression turned serious, and she said, “And if we end up anywhere else, everybody wearing that stuff will stick out like a cactus in a snowbank. I don’t mind you grabbing an extra buck where you can, Harry. And the captain sure doesn’t mind it. But if any of my people get hurt because you sold them something that put them in danger they wouldn’t have been in without it, you’re gonna answer to me. You got that?”

  “Sure, Brandy, sure, I got it,” said Chocolate Harry. “Don’t you worry, won’t nobody get hurt. And if we do have to fight those robots, everybody will be a lot safer.”

  “Fine,” said Brandy. “Just remember. If this camouflage is bullshit, you won’t be the first one that gets hurt. But I can guarantee you’ll be the second.”

  Chocolate Harry put his index finger in the middle of his chest. “Brandy,” he said, “a man that rode with the Outlaws ain’t scared of much the Legion can throw at him.
”

  Brandy stepped forward and grabbed the collar of his uniform and lifted. Big as he was, Harry found his heels coming off the ground. “Maybe you should be scared of what I can throw at you. Or of what I can throw you at,” she growled. She let go of his collar, and Harry fell back onto his heels, staggering a step.

  “Uh, check, Brandy,” he said. But she had already turned around and was stalking away from him. Harry reached into his hip pocket, pulled out a handkerchief to wipe the sweat off his brow. He swiped it across his face, then took a look at it. It was camouflage purple. “Awww, shit!” he said, and stuffed it back in his pocket.

  * * *

  Phule was working up a good sweat on the rowing machine, getting into a rhythm that was comfortable without being too easy, putting his back into the effort. He’d been neglecting his workouts for too long, and it felt good to get into the routine again. When his communicator buzzed, he muttered a single annoyed monosyllable, then put down the oars and lifted his left wrist to mouth level. “What’s up, Mother?”

  “Good news, sweetie,” came the saucy voice. “Sushi says he’s identified the man who robbed that restaurant.”

  “Great news, for sure,” said Phule. Then, after a pause, “Uh, it’s not one of us, is it?”

  “Well, it’s not me, and I’m pretty sure it’s not you,” said Mother. “Who else did you have in mind, lover boy?”

  “What I’d really love is for it to be a civilian,” said Phule. “But it looks as if I’m going to have to talk to Sushi to get a straight answer. Put me through to him, will you?”

  “Why, I can’t believe you’d insult me that way,” said Mother, doing a passable imitation of wounded innocence. “I give you straight answers all the time, when you ask the right questions. It’s not my fault when you ask a wrong one. But have it your way, sugar pie.” Her voice cut off and Phule heard an electronic signal: Sushi’s communicator signal ringing.

  “Hey, Captain, I’ve spotted our man,” said Sushi, after a moment.

  “Good news,” said Phule. “I was beginning to worry we’d have to hand the case over to the local cops and leave the planet without solving it. Is it a civilian you’ve identified?” After Mother’s semiserious reprimand, he’d unconsciously phrased his question in a more precise form.

  “Yeah,” said Sushi. “Definitely not Legion.”

  “Well, that’s a relief,” said Phule. “Have you told the police yet?”

  “Nope. I didn’t know whether you’d rather let them make the pinch or do it ourselves. Your call, Captain. If you just want to tell the cops, I can handle it and let you get back to work.”

  Phule shook his head. Then, remembering that Sushi couldn’t see him, he said, “I told the Landoor police they couldn’t arrest one of our men without my permission. I’ll extend their civilians the same courtesy. We’ll offer any assistance they’d like and let them decide. Why don’t you zip me the data, and I’ll pass it on to Landoor authorities.”

  “You got it, Captain,” said Sushi, and he broke off the connection. Phule looked down at the oars he’d let drop and thought for a moment about picking them back up and rowing some more. But he’d broken his rhythm, and he might as well finish this business. He stood up, stretched his arms, and headed for the showers.

  Journal #525

  The Landooran police were at first reluctant to accept at face value my employer’s information that the robber had been identified. Despite his general display of cooperativeness, they retained a degree of suspicion about the motives of the commander of an occupying force. Having intended to reveal the suspect’s identity and then gracefully bow out of the police investigation, my employer found himself instead working to show the police how to interpret the evidence and then lending them assistance for the actual arrest. While he could little afford to spare the time or personnel at this critical juncture, the alternative seemed worse to him.

  Now the question became how to assist without seeming to take control of the entire operation. It began to become apparent to my employer, as perhaps it should have some time earlier, that the civil authorities on Landoor were not necessarily the most efficient in the Galaxy at their assigned roles.

  * * *

  “Tell me again how you know this guy’s the one,” said Patrolman Dunstable. He was a big, beefy veteran cop, and he looked at Phule and Sushi with the weary air of having heard every possible story at least twice and not having believed a word. At the moment, they were sitting in a police hovervan disguised as an antigrav installer’s truck outside the suspect’s apartment building, waiting for him to come home from his job. Another team waited inside the building’s lobby.

  “Well, you gave us copies of the surveillance vids of the restaurant robbery,” said Sushi.

  “Right,” said the cop patronizingly. “And if you looked at ’em, you know they’re worth just about nothin’. Those things are so out of focus and jerky that you wouldn’t recognize your own wife half the time.”

  “Right,” said Phule. “But in the Legion, we’ve got some pretty good equipment for enhancing that kind of raw material. And Sushi’s our best computer man—”

  “Sure, and you think that’s gonna nail the perp,” said Dunstable, shaking his head as if Phule had told him he thought the robbery had been committed by little green elves. “I’ll tell you, the better computer enhancement gets, the less I trust it. The operator can make it look like anything he wants by the time he’s done, and ain’t nobody in the world can tell you how he got from where he started to where he ended up.”

  “Give me a little more credit than that,” said Sushi. “We aren’t just clearing up the picture; all that does is show us the person’s appearance, which a good disguise or plastic surgery is going to change anyway. With this equipment, I can pick out subtle patterns of movement and posture that are unique to the person, things even a trained actor can’t disguise.”

  “There’s another point, too,” said Phule. “Sushi has certain contacts that—well, maybe I’d better not say too much about them. But they gave us a much wider sample of suspects than you’d come up with. As our chaplain told you, there are plenty of Landoorans that fit the description of the robber. But the man we’re after today doesn’t just fit the description, he has the right walk and everything else.”

  “He’d better have the right fingerprints and DNA profile, too,” said the cop. “Arrestin’ a citizen for something we can’t prove can get us in a lot of trouble.”

  “Gee, you didn’t seem to worry about that when you thought the robber was a legionnaire,” said Sushi.

  The cop glared at Sushi, but before he could say anything, Phule hissed, “Here he comes!”

  They turned to look out the windshield along the street. Sure enough, here came a black-garbed figure, whose dark pompadour and long sideburns were visible even at a distance, rounding the corner just behind a young woman pushing a baby carriage. Dunstable pressed a communicator button to alert the indoor team, then turned to Phule and said, “That looks like the perp, all right. But like you said, there’s dozens of guys look like that. How do we know this is the one who robbed Takamine’s joint?”

  “This has got to be him,” said Sushi. “He’s the only member of the Church of the King who lives in this part of town. It’d be way too much of a coincidence for another one to show up here right when he’s due home from work.”

  “You been a cop as long as I have, you seen lots of coincidences,” said Dunstable.

  “Yeah, and I bet you arrest ’em anyway,” said Sushi. Then he said in a lower voice, as the suspect came closer, “Are you sure he can’t see us?”

  “Not unless he’s got X-ray eyes,” said the cop. “OK, he turns up the walk, we get out and cut off his escape, just in case he spots the inside team and spooks.”

  The suspect came closer, strolling unconcernedly behind the baby carriage, and his features became clearer. Phule found himself thinking that, now that he had a reason to distinguish between dozens of
King look-alikes, how easy it was to spot differences. This one, for example, was obviously of Asian ancestry, a fact the alteration of his features could not conceal. Phule was beginning to understand how computer image analysis could single out this one man from a crowd of faces that, to the casual eye, looked exactly the same.

  Of course, once they caught him, they’d still have to convince a local jury that the evidence was as damning as Sushi claimed it was. If the suspect’s lawyer got his trial delayed until the company was off Landoor and Sushi’s expert testimony unavailable, he might win an acquittal. Even if Sushi did take the stand, he might get an acquittal. Phule wasn’t sure he himself understood all the wrinkles in the case, and it had been his idea.

  The suspect cut ahead of the stroller and turned toward the building, and Dunstable grinned wickedly. “OK, let’s get this creep,” he said and threw open the hovervan’s door, ready to close the trap behind their quarry.

  Unfortunately, exactly at that moment, the young woman with the baby carriage gave out a monumental sneeze. The suspect turned around just in time to see Dunstable leap out onto the sidewalk with Phule and Sushi behind him. A glance toward the building showed him several uniformed policemen emerging from the doors. At that, the suspect dropped his lunchbox and began to sprint across the flower beds. That was enough to convince Phule. “Stun him, Sushi,” he shouted, and dropped to one knee to allow a clear shot.

  But Officer Dunstable didn’t know about the stun ray, and neither did the woman with the baby carriage. Or perhaps the fleeing suspect deliberately used them as shields. In any case, both were in the direct line of fire. Sushi raised his stun gun, then shook his head. With others in the line of fire, he wasn’t going to risk it.