The Complete Phule’s Company Boxed Set

by Robert Asprin

  “Not unless you want my face to look like the insides of a watermelon,” said Ernie. “Hey, why don’t you just put a dress on me and try to pass me off for a cocktail waitress? Maybe he’ll go for that one …”

  “Yeah, you’re right. I’m stuck with the raw material I’ve got,” said Lola. “Besides, this is Lorelei. He can’t expect all the people he meets—even the rich ones—to be from his own social class. I wonder if he’d believe you as a construction magnate, self-made from the ground up?”

  “Forget it,” said Ernie, impatiently. “You wanted an actor, you should’ve hired somebody off a tri-vee stage. Now, do you have any other improvements on the scam, or are we goin’ to get any real work done today?”

  Lola threw up her hands. “Oh, the hell with it,” she said. “You’re right—we’re not going to get anywhere if I spend all my time trying to get your act perfect. You’ll go over to the casino, talk up Victor Phule, and see if you can figure out what he’s up to—if anything at all. Keep an eye out for his son—he’s the one they’re paying us to snatch—and make sure the Legion guards don’t get too suspicious. I may need you to go back there again, and I can’t do that if they throw you out of the place as an unsavory character.”

  “Yeah, yeah, and I won’t scratch my ass in front of the marks, neither,” said Ernie, sullenly.

  “I’d settle for your using civilized grammar,” said Lola. She shook her head, then relaxed, and said, “All right, then. Try not to lose all your money, you big dumbbell. And call if you’re going to be later than midnight getting back.”

  “Ah, the old guy prob’ly ain’t even up that late,” said Ernie. Then he grinned, and said, “I’ll call, though. Wish me luck!”

  “You’ll need all you can get, you goofball,” said Lola, and gave him a punch on the biceps. Ernie just grinned more broadly, and ambled out the door toward the bus line that would take him to the Fat Chance Casino. Lola watched the door close, then shrugged and went over to her computer. She couldn’t do much about Ernie’s part of the job besides sit and worry, but she could get to work on other parts of the plan. She sat down and began working. Before long, she’d even forgotten that she ought to be worried about Ernie.

  * * *

  Chocolate Harry’s hovercycle coasted down the slight incline into the camp and came to a halt outside the largest tent. There was nobody in sight.

  “Hey, hey!” called the Supply sergeant. “Anybody home? The man you need to see is here to be seen. You want it, I got it—c’mon out and let’s talk turkey.”

  A bleary-eyed face appeared between the flaps of the tent. “Who the hell are you?” it said, staring at Harry’s considerable bulk and his black Legion uniform.

  “Chocolate Harry—Sergeant Chocolate Harry, of Omega Company. The man in charge of supplies—which on this planet, means the main man you need to know. You the dude that’s buyin’ for this outfit?”

  The face came out in front of the tent, accompanied by a beer-bellied body. The man looked around as if to make sure the two were alone, then said in a quiet voice, “Not for the whole outfit, but maybe for myself. I’d be interested in some military-grade guns and ammo—something that can knock over some of the big critters I hear tell they have on this planet.”

  “Knock ’em over?” said Chocolate Harry, rubbing his hands together. “No sweat, buddy—I can sell you the same weapon the locals use. Guaranteed to coldcock anything that walks, runs, swims, or flies. How many you gonna want?”

  “Just enough for me,” said the fellow, lowering his voice even further. “One, with the ammo—enough for a couple weeks’ hunting. Can you do it?”

  “Like I said, no sweat,” said the Supply sergeant. He wondered briefly why a hunting party would come to a distant world without the weapons it needed to do the job. Did they come from one of the worlds where private ownership of arms was banned? “Say, it ain’t any of my business,” he said, “but it’s kinda funny you’d come all this way without any guns.”

  “Oh, hell, we got lots of guns,” said the hunter. “I’d jes’ like to get somethin’ a little bit better than store-bought—for myself, anyway. If the other boys want to get their own, that’s their lookout.”

  Chocolate Harry wasn’t quite convinced; what if they’d come to a world without a conveniently corrupt Legion Supply sergeant? Would this fellow have settled for the “store-bought”? Or was he trying to obtain the military weapons for some purpose other than hunting? Then he shrugged it off—it really wasn’t his business. If there was money to be had, that was all he cared about. He smiled, and said, “It’ll run you fifteen hundred bucks, though. And you gotta keep quiet about it—this is Legion issue, top secret stuff. Word gets out I sold it to you, both our asses are gonna be in the cooler for a lo-o-ong time.”

  “Price isn’t a problem,” said the fellow. “By the way, Sarge, the name’s L.P. Asho. And you don’t have to worry about me passin’ along any secrets. I do lots of big government contracts, so I know how to zip the lip. I’d hope you’ll do the same for me—I get the idea your boss don’t like us playin’ with guns.”

  “He’s the last dude I’m gonna tell, believe you me, Asho,” said Chocolate Harry. “Now, guns ain’t the only thing I can put in your hands. You folks need any fancy food or drinks? I got real Galactic Bohemian from New Baltimore, in the bottle or in the keg. Or I got genuine scotch whisky from Aldebaran IV—they even got sheep to pee in the water, give it the Old Earth flavor. Or maybe you boys need some pills …”

  “Naah, we brought all that kind of stuff with us,” said L.P. Asho. “Maybe if we run low—good to know there’s a local source for the better things in life. But say—you wouldn’t know where I can find a good poker game, would you? The other boys can’t play worth a damn, and I wouldn’t mind that so much if they didn’t know they can’t play, which means they don’t play—unless it’s for the kind of money I throw the guy who opens a door for me in a fancy restaurant. And that ain’t hardly poker at all, in my DB. A fella likes a little real action, where’s he s’posed to go on this planet?”

  Chocolate Harry rubbed his chin. “Gee, I dunno. Most of the guys in Omega Company don’t have those kind of bucks, either,” he said. “We do have a little game every now and then, if you’re looking for some action. Not a lot of money, y’understand—the Legion doesn’t pay all that much, not even to fellows like me who’ve been pulling our weight for a good long while. But if you and your buddies are interested in something a little livelier, maybe we could get a few of the guys to show up for a five-buck ante …”

  “That’s the kind of stuff I like,” said Asho. “What do y’all play?”

  “Dealer’s choice,” said Harry. “Mostly pretty tame stuff like Anaconda or Hold ’Em. Every now and then something a bit funkier, like Aldebaran, or Texas Chainsaw …”

  “So if a fella came in with a different game he didn’t mind explainin’ the rules, you wouldn’t have a problem with that?”

  “Oh, no, not at all,” said Chocolate Harry, grinning. “Why don’t I see how many of the boys I can scare up. Would tomorrow night be cool?”

  “Very cool,” said L.P. Asho, with a predatory grin. Chocolate Harry grinned right back at him, then revved the hovercycle and roared back toward the Legion base.

  After a few moments, Euston O’Better came out of one of the tents. “What the hell was that noise?” he asked.

  “Legion sergeant invitin’ us to play poker,” said Asho.

  “Poker?” O’Better frowned. “Hey, I came here for the hunting, not cards.”

  “Sonny, this is the best kind of hunting there is,” said Asho. “Sucker hunting—and I think I just found me a big one.” He rubbed his hands together and smiled—a very nasty smile.

  * * *

  First Sergeant Brandy hadn’t seen the AEIOU team arrive, nor had she watched the hunters’ shuttle landing, out in the desert. She’d been too busy with her squad of new legionnaires—none of them raw recruits anymore, but most of t
hem still unseasoned, by her lights. This morning’s training exercise had gone all haywire, and now she had to figure out how to make it work tomorrow morning. It had started out simply enough: she’d broken the squad into two groups, then sent one of them into the desert to prepare an ambush and, after a decent interval, sent the other to try to find them without falling into the ambush. The spirit of competition should have spurred them to do their best, and in the process, both groups should have learned a good bit about the terrain around the camp and how to operate in it.

  Except the first group had gotten lost right away, in spite of its maps and instruments. That wouldn’t have been all that bad, if they’d just chosen a more or less suitable site, set up some kind of position, and waited to ambush the second team when it came to find them. No such chance. Instead, Roadkill had gotten into a discussion with Brick about which way they were originally supposed to go, and most of the rest of the squad had taken sides with one or the other. Meanwhile, the other squad, which admittedly had the somewhat tougher job of finding the first, got itself lost even more thoroughly than the first. When Brandy had finally gotten annoyed and sent out a search party, she’d found the second team trudging through the desert—in an almost perfect circle around the first party.

  In fact, the only thing both squads had done according to orders was to maintain comm silence so as not to alert the “opponents” of their position. And, since nobody had kept an eye on the emergency comm frequency, both groups were utterly unaware that Brandy had been trying to recall them for several hours before she’d given up and sent out the search party. Which, to her utter annoyance, had promptly gotten itself lost. It had taken most of the afternoon to finally get everybody found and back on base—luckily with no injuries worse than sunburn. And all this while the captain was entertaining the AEIOU team, which was snooping around the base looking for reasons to find Omega Company guilty of environmental offenses (with Barky ready to attack suspected polluters), and while trying to keep the AEIOU team from noticing the party of bigwig big-game hunters that had landed just south of camp and apparently insisted on instant VIP treatment. All this was enough to turn Brandy’s mind, yet again, toward the prospect of an early retirement … and maybe, this time, Captain Jester wouldn’t manage to sweet-talk her out of it.

  So Brandy wasn’t really paying attention when an unfamiliar sophont in a Legion uniform came up to her, dropped a duffel bag, came to attention, and saluted. “Legionnaire Thumper reporting for duty, Sergeant!” it said.

  Brandy looked up from the Training Progress Report she’d been in the process of deciding how to fill out. The new arrival was about a meter and a half tall, dressed in regulation Legion black (although a good bit less stylish than the standard Omega Mob version of the uniform), and had long ears, big eyes, and a ridiculously cute wiggly pink nose. She stared for a moment, then blurted out, “Where the hell did you come from?”

  The legionnaire looked puzzled. “Uh, do you mean originally, Sergeant, or just now?” Its voice was high and squeaky, though not unpleasant. And it didn’t use a translator.

  Brandy shook her head. “Radicate that,” she said. She thought back a second and retrieved the new legionnaire’s name from memory. “Thumper, what I mean is, what are you doing here? Nobody told us there were any new troops coming.”

  “Sergeant, as far as I know I’m the only new member sent to this company,” said Thumper. “I came with the hunting party that just landed. I understand they owed someone important a favor …”

  “Huh,” said Brandy. “And that meant giving you a ride. What makes you important enough to get a trip on a civilian space yacht?”

  “Uh, I think it’s because I got in trouble with a general,” said Thumper. He went on to tell a complex, but predictable story of showing up his buddies in basic training and being made the scapegoat for a practical joke on General Blitzkrieg. At the end, he said, “But I think maybe somebody thinks I’m all right, after all—my drill instructor said Omega Company is really one of the best in the Legion.”

  “The best, Legionnaire,” said Brandy, proudly. She set her paperwork aside and stood up. “You are now a member of the best company in the Space Legion, and you better not forget it. But why don’t you pick up that bag and follow me? I know where there’s a vacant bunk. Then we can start showing you how things work in Omega. We do things a little differently around here …” She stalked off toward an entrance to the modular base, with the new recruit close behind her. Hope sprang eternal. Maybe this one would be able to go out in the desert without getting lost …

  * * *

  Sushi toyed with his drink, then said, “Have you ever seen written Chinese?”

  “Can’t say that I have, son,” said Rev. “Thought that was some kind of food, to tell you the truth.”

  Sushi managed not to roll his eyes. “The Chinese were an Old Earth people who spoke like seven or eight different languages,” he said. “Mandarin, Cantonese, a bunch of others you don’t need to know the names of …”

  “Why not?” said Do-Wop, with an evil grin. “I bet you don’t even know ’em all.”

  Sushi shot Do-Wop a withering glance. “Will you give a guy a break when he’s trying to explain something? I think you’ve been hanging out with Mahatma.”

  “Hey, you know me, Soosh,” said Do-Wop. “Ever eager for knowledge …”

  “Yeah, because you’ve got none of it to spare,” answered Sushi.

  “All right, fellas, you’re strayin’ from the point,” said Rev, raising his palm to stop them. “What were you sayin’, Sushi?”

  “Anyhow, they spoke all these languages, and speaking one didn’t give you more than a guess at understanding the others. But they were all written the same way. The written symbols represented the meaning of the words, not their sound, so a Mandarin speaker could pretty much read a document written by a Cantonese speaker, even if he couldn’t understand the spoken language. It’s sort of the opposite of the old-time European languages, where a reader could get a rough idea how a message in another language would sound, even if he didn’t know what it means.”

  “Weird,” said Do-Wop. “Why’d they do a stupid thing like that, Soosh?”

  “Actually, it’s not that stupid if you have a big empire with several different spoken languages,” said Sushi, shrugging. “That gives you two choices—either make everybody learn one common spoken language, the way the Romans did, or have one common written language, the Chinese way.”

  “You left one out,” said Do-Wop. “Autotranslators. You don’t even need to have the same kind of ears for them to work …”

  “Sure, except the ancient Romans and Chinese didn’t have autotranslators,” said Sushi.

  “You’re jivin’ me, Soosh,” said Do-Wop. “The Romans had everything, man. They were like Italians, only with a better army and space force …”

  Sushi rolled his eyes. “I hate to tell you this, but the Romans didn’t have a space force, either …”

  “What?” Do-Wop’s mouth fell open. “Fangul’, Soosh, you can’t tell me that shit with a straight face …”

  Rev raised his hands. “Gen’lemen, gen’lemen,” he said, in a calming tone of voice. “We’re strayin’ off the point again. Sushi, you were tellin’ us about how the Zenobians write, weren’t you? I’d surely like to hear more about that.”

  “All right, here’s the deal,” said Sushi. “From what Qual said, it seems as if the Zenobians learn to read before they learn to speak. They’re descended from predators—well, in a sense, they still are predators. So the young ones depend on their vision more than most other sophonts. Well, maybe the Gambolts would be similar … I don’t know much about their language, either, except the translator works for them?”

  “All right,” said Rev. “So the Zenobians learn to read first. I reckon that would mean the written language ought to be pretty easy to understand, then.”

  “You’d think so,” said Sushi, nodding. He took another pull on his be
er. “But that brings me back to Chinese. I’ve heard people say that Chinese is actually very easy to read—that all you have to do is look at the writing as pictures, and when you see what the pictures are, you know what the writing says.”

  “Why, that’s perfect,” said Rev. “So we ought to be able to read Zenobian even without a translator.”

  “Yeah, sounds great, doesn’t it?” said Sushi. “Except it doesn’t work quite that way. The pictures are too sketchy—four lines sort of in a box might be a house, or a dog …”

  “Sounds like they couldn’t draw very good,” said Do-Wop. “Hell, even I can draw a house and a dog so they look different, and I ain’t no Michael Angelo.”

  “Michael Angelo? Who’s that?” said Rev.

  “Italian artist, best there was,” said Do-Wop. “He laid on his back for twenty-five years, painting fiascos on the ceiling of some big church …”

  Whatever else Do-Wop might have had to say about Michelangelo, he was prevented by Sushi spraying a fine mist of beer out of his mouth as he fell out of his seat, laughing uncontrollably.

  Chapter Ten

  Journal #703

  Taking the visiting AEIOU inspectors on a tour of the Legion base was an operation that required a great deal of delicacy. My employer took every effort to ensure that the visitors were shown everything that might show the company in the greenest possible light, and as little as possible that might reflect discredit upon its environmental practices. After letting Lieutenant Rembrandt steer the inspectors through the less sensitive areas of the compound, the captain himself joined them to show off the more highly technological departments. This was where, in his opinion, his influx of his own funds had had the greatest effect in improving the company’s performance. He didn’t necessarily reckon on the inspectors’ believing otherwise.

  * * *

  “And this is our comm center” said Phule, showing the AEIOU inspection team through the doorway. “All official communications, and most unofficial ones, come through here.”