Phule's Errand pc-6

by Robert Asprin

  “I’m talking about greebfap,” snarled Phule, stepping forward and grabbing Sodden’s lapel. “People are rioting in the streets, about to bring down the planetary government, all because of greebfap. Greebfap! Greebfap! Sodden, you’re going to tell me what greebfap is before I leave this planet!”

  A mechanical voice from the speaker interposed itself between his question and whatever Sodden might have been about to say. “Sagittarius Arm Special now ready for preboarding,” it said. “Stops at Leibnitz, Hix’s World, New Baltimore, and Glimber. First-class passengers, those who need assistance in boarding, and sophont groups with immature family members, please come to the gate for preboarding.” A wheeled methane enclosure trundled noisily forward, its inhabitants dimly visible through the portholes. In a pocket Velcroed to the outside a set of tickets to Glimber was visible.

  “There’s your ship,” said Sodden, pointing in the general direction of the gate. “Better get on board…”

  “I heard the announcement,” growled Phule. “I still have half an hour before they dog the doors shut. And that’s all the time I need to make you tell me what greebfap is all about.”

  “Willard Phule! Or should I say, Captain Jester! What a surprise to see you!” came a chirpy voice from just behind him. Surprised, Phule turned his head, a look of half recognition already on his face. Almost involuntarily, his grip on Sodden’s shirt loosened.

  “Mrs. Biffwycke-Snerty,” said Phule, recognizing one of his mother’s comrades-in-arms from the charity gala circuit. “What a surprise…”

  “Equally, I’m sure,” said the woman. “I take it you’re here on Legion duty, helping put down those dreadful rioters. It’s such a reassurance to know that the right kind of people are doing their part to keep the galaxy a safe place to travel.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Phule, as noncommittally as he could manage. “I hope you haven’t been inconvenienced…”

  “Fortunately, only slightly,” said Mrs. Biffwycke-Snerty, putting on her most courageous expression. “My hoverlimo was forced to take an alternate route out to the spaceport to avoid the rioters. I saw some of the most appalling neighborhoods-one would think there’d be a better class of groundskeepers on this world, of all worlds. But my business here is finished, thank Ghu. It’ll be such a relief to get home to poor Biffy; the silly boy never knows what to do with himself when I’m away.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Phule again. He’d learned long since that it was the safest thing one could say to women of a certain social class. “Please give Mr. Biffwycke my regards.”

  “Thank you, Wilfred-I mean, Captain” Mrs. Biffwycke-Snerty beamed. “I certainly will, and please give your dear mama mine.” She leaned forward and kissed the air a couple of inches from his cheek, then turned and went her way.

  And of course, when Phule turned to look for Perry Sodden, there was nothing at all to be seen of the detective.

  Chocolate Harry carefully avoided mentioning to any of the bettors in his golf pool that both Lieutenant Armstrong and the “Captain Jester” robot were playing to let General Blitzkrieg win. (Nobody was quite sure what Flight Left-enant Qual was playing for.) Harry expected the members of Omega Company to back their own officers, whether from loyalty or because of apparently favorable odds. And in fact, to date there was almost nobody betting on the genera]-which had allowed Harry to pocket a substantial profit at the end of every single day of the pool.

  Harry had also made every effort to involve the anxious bettors in the action taking place out on the golf course. As much as General Blitzkrieg might have appreciated the idea of an audience raptly following his every stroke on the course, he (and his adjutant, Major Sparrowhawk) would have been quick to seize on any evidence that the legionnaires of Omega Company weren’t hard at work. Luckily, Harry remembered that one of Phule’s early purchases for the company was a set of state-of-the-art spy gear, with miniature video cameras and microphones. That allowed one of the caddies, suitably wired, to relay a running commentary back to an oversize tri-vee player in the Supply shack. Today it was Thumper, caddying for Flight Left-enant Qual, providing the play-by-play.

  Considering how new the game was to everyone except Armstrong and the general, it had caught on amazingly. On any given day, every off-duty legionnaire on the post was likely to be crowded into the Supply shack. Of course there was a fully stocked bar right next to the odds board. Just as in his poker games, Harry figured that keeping the customers nicely marinated was good for business. Besides, it was a surefire way to even out the cash flow, even when he had to pay off an unexpected long shot-such as the time Flight Leftenant Qual managed to hook a tee shot smack into the middle of the gravitational anomaly on the second fairway, which kicked it straight down the course even faster than it had arrived, a good hundred-fifty yards past the pin. Of course the ball ended up well out in the brush, and when Thumper finally found his ball, Qual needed four more shots just to get it on the green. But the Zeno-bian handily won that day’s long driving pool, at thirty-to-one odds.

  The one thing Harry hadn’t quite counted on came knocking on the door to Supply one afternoon, just as the golfers had teed up for their seventh hole. For once Blitzkrieg appeared to have figured out what it took to keep his shots in the center of the fairway. For his part, Flight Leftenant Qual was having uncanny luck with his putter, regularly sinking the ball from ten or more meters out. So the match was more competitive than usual, and as a consequence the bets were even heavier than usual. Harry had just begun to anticipate a killing when Double-X came hurrying over to him. “Sarge, we got trouble.”

  “Trouble?” growled Chocolate Harry. “What kind of trouble?” In answer, Double-X nodded toward the entrance to the Supply depot. There, to Harry’s horror, stood Major Sparrowhawk, clipboard in hand and a determined expression on her face. “Shit,” said Harry, in a low but sincere voice. “Guess I better take care of this. Be ready to close things down if I give the signal.”

  “Right on, Sarge,” said Double-X. He glanced nervously first at the woman at the entrance, then at the small but enthusiastic group of bettors crowded around the tri-vee display. After a moment, he turned back, and asked, “Uh, what’s the signal?” But by then, Chocolate Harry had already moved to intercept Major Sparrowhawk.

  Chocolate Harry had long since perfected a number of techniques for covering his tracks. When bluster and misdirection failed, he could usually fall back on misunderstanding and flat denial. And when all else failed, feigned ignorance was almost always good enough to get him through a crisis. From the look on the major’s face, he was likely to need his entire repertoire today. “Hey, Major, good to see you,” he began, in what he hoped was a convincingly hearty tone. “Need some supplies today?”

  “Cut the crap, Sergeant,” said Major Sparrowhawk. “You’re making book on the general’s golf game, which is against all regulations. And if I couldn’t find a few dozen other violations of the Uniform Space Legion Code just by walking around in here for a few minutes, I’m a Centauran tree slug.”

  “Maybe you could,” said Harry. “What’re you gonna do if you do find ‘em? Assign me to Omega Company?”

  “Very funny,” said Sparrowhawk. “If you don’t think I can make unpleasant things happen, try me. A general’s adjutant can give you way more trouble than most field officers. But think about this, Sergeant-if I was just looking for a way to bust you, I wouldn’t be giving you even this much warning. You’d never know what hit you until it was way too late.”

  “Maybe,” said Harry again, somewhat less cockily. Then, his curiosity aroused, he asked, “So what’s the deal, then? You got a proposition for me, Major?”

  Sparrowhawk looked around the Supply shack. Up front, the off-duty bettors were crowded around the screen, waiting to see the foursome hit their tee shots. Double-X was staring at Harry with obvious anxiety. “Too many people in here,” she said, after a moment. “Let’s go somewhere quiet to talk.”

  “OK,” said Har
ry. He looked around. “Your place or mine?”

  “Watch it,” said Sparrowhawk, with an expression that had been known to make senior officers cringe. Then, after a moment, she said, “I know exactly the place. I’ll meet you in the captain’s office in ten minutes.”

  “The-what?” said Chocolate Harry.

  “Captain Jester’s not there,” said Sparrowhawk, waving at the tri-vee screen. “He’s playing golf. So’s my boss, and so is Lieutenant Armstrong. And I happen to know that Lieutenant Rembrandt’s down in Comm Central. So who are you worried about, Sergeant-more than me, that is?”

  “OK,” said Harry, nodding slowly. “Ten minutes.”

  “See you there,” said Major Sparrowhawk. Then she turned on her heels and left the Supply shed, leaving Chocolate Harry scratching his head in bewilderment.

  11

  Journal #822-

  A visit to Hix’s World appears, at first glance, to be a step into the deepest past. Yet nowhere else are you likely to find a society so completely dependent on an intimately interconnected, highly technological, spacegoing galactic community-and oblivious to that very dependence. Hix’s World appears to have been founded on the premise that one can eat one’s cake and still have it to admire. That, at least, is the only way I can interpret the notion of a bucolic existence that somehow manages to avoid such bucolic inconveniences as labor, famine, pestilence, and general misery.

  Perhaps the most remarkable feature of Hix’s World is the belief of many of its citizens that their way of life embodies the deepest spiritual values of modern civilization. From the point of view of a thoroughgoing pragmatist such as myself, such a belief appears as paradoxical as the inhabitants’ belief that they have freed themselves from dependence on the technological infrastructure of the Alliance as a whole.

  As far as I can tell, this belief is an utter delusion.

  The customs inspectors at Hix’s World gave Phule’s luggage an unusually thorough going-over. Having spent part of the voyage reading up on the planet’s culture and customs, he was neither surprised nor unprepared. After replacing a couple of toiletry items with “Hix’s-safe” equivalents at the shipboard store, he received the inspectors’ thumbs-up and went on his way after only forty minutes. His immediate destination was a boardinghouse that catered to off-world clients, a likely place for Beeker and Nightingale to be staying-and a good place to stay, himself.

  He arrived at La Retraite Rustique to find the sitting room full of tourists dressed in casual but expensive outfits, waiting to be called for the evening meal. The well-dressed young woman behind the desk shot an exasperated look in his direction, wrinkling her nose at his Legion jumpsuit. “May I assist you?” she asked, in a tone of voice that made it clear she hoped she couldn’t.

  “Quite likely,” said Phule, setting down his bag. “First of all, I’m interested in a room.”

  “Impossible,” said the woman, throwing up her hands. “We have been fully booked since the beginning of Waarmth.” Hix’s World had adopted its own eccentric calendar, featuring supposedly natural names for the time units equivalent to months.

  “Ah, good for you,” said Phule, smiling broadly. “I’m glad to know that such a fine establishment is so popular- but I’m sure you can find an open room for one of the old regulars.” Phule himself had never been there, but his mother had taken vacations on Hix’s World several times while he was growing up-which was how he knew of the place.

  “Regular or irregular, it is simply impossible,” said the woman, with an air of finality. “There’s not even a closet to be had. The entire district is full for the Floribunda Fete.”

  Phule kept a broad smile on his face as his hand went into his pocket and returned with a small rectangular object which he placed on the counter just in front of the woman. She dropped her gaze to inspect it; when she looked up, with a gasp, her eyes were open wide. “A Dilithium Express card!” she whispered.

  “Yes,” said Phule. “Do you think that’s good for a closet?”

  “I think we can arrange something,” she said. “At your service, Mr.-uh…” She tried to make out the name on the card.

  “Captain Jester will do,” said Phule. “Now-about that room…”

  “Madame will be delighted to have you here, Captain!” she said. The young woman clapped her hands, and a man appeared from a door behind the desk. His tastefully rustic attire did not in the least disguise the fact that he was the bellman. “Andrew! Show the Captain to the Olympic Suite!”

  The Olympic Suite was several degrees more elegant than any closet Phule had ever seen. Phule tipped Andrew, closed the door behind the bellman, and poured himself a cold glass of mineral water from the suite’s refreshment center. He sat down at the suite’s communications center, which was tastefully hidden inside a faux-Victorian rolltop desk. He’d learned from his mistakes on Cut ‘N’ Shoot and Rot’n‘art. No more dashing about on a wild gryff chase, or worse yet depending on locals whose entire stake in the success of his search consisted of a generous paycheck- an overly generous one, considering the lack of results on Rot’n’art. This time, he was going to use his own very ample resources to track down Beeker and Nightingale.

  He synchronized his Port-a-Brain with the hotel’s web hookup, and began an automatic scan for Beeker’s machine, a virtual twin of his own. If Beeker’s computer had been connected to the planetary network anytime in the last two weeks, Phule’s machine would be able to detect it. Better yet, if the machine was currently in use, he should be able to locate it instantly. If that happened, he intended to charter a private jumpcraft to the exact location-with any luck, in plenty of time to catch his errant butler. Of course, if Beeker had turned on his computer, he should have seen Phule’s email. Had he not turned it on? Or had he seen the message and decided, for some reason, not to answer it?

  Much to his relief, the Port-a-Brain was still functional; the special security systems hadn’t taken over. So Beeker must be in range. He started his custom search engine, and, while it ran, went to look out the suite’s picture windows, which overlooked a stretch of countryside that could have been somewhere in Provence, several centuries earlier. In fact, it was a careful reproduction of a stretch of ancient Provencal countryside, brought about by the most unintru-sive and organic methods available, of course. If an occasional bush was the wrong species or color, that was a small price to pay for a program of minimalist terraforming.

  As he cast his gaze over the pleasant contours of the rolling hills, covered with Old Earthlike greenery, Phule could hear the Port-a-Brain gently whirring in the background. It was a very soothing sound, telling him that one of the most powerful artificial brains in the known galaxy was working to solve his problem. In the middle distance he saw something moving; just what, he couldn’t quite determine. Probably some creature imported from human worlds; the settlers hadn’t so much expelled the indigenous flora and fauna from the terraformed sections as gently persuaded them to take their business elsewhere. Even so, a few species had stubbornly resisted the program-part of the charm of the place, Hix’s World old-timers would tell you.

  Then, all of a sudden, his eyes went into sharp focus and he forgot entirely about the whirring of the Port-a-Brain. There, crossing the faux-Provencal landscape, was none other than Nightingale!

  The owner of La Retraite Rustique sat in her office, looking over architects’ renderings of the new addtion she planned for her hotel. She hated trying to extrapolate from the drawings to the actual structures they purported to represent. “Damn lying pictures,” she muttered. “Why can’t they show you what it’s really going to look like?” The answer was obvious, of course-if the drawings looked like the finished product, the customer was a lot less likely to pay for the work.

  There was a knock on the door. “Come in,” she growled, not really annoyed at the interruption as much as generally disgruntled. She’d once owned the most fashionable and lucrative resort hotel and casino on Lorelei. Now she was trying to start o
ver on a new world-and finding it a lot more work than she had any appetite for.

  Robert, the concierge, entered. “Good news, Madame,” he said. “We’ve just rented the Olympic Suite, at double the regular rate. Some Space Legion officer with a Dilithium Express card…”

  “Space Legion officer? Dilithium Express?” Maxine Pruett sat bolt upright in her seat. “It can’t be… what’s this man’s name?”

  “Captain Jester,” said the concierge. “Of course, all Legion names are pseudonyms…”

  “Pseudonym, hell-I know Jester,” said Maxine. “For your information, his real name’s Willard Phule. The little son of a bitch nearly ran me out of business on Lorelei-or did you miss that particular episode?” Maxine had plenty of reason to remember it, since it had broken the mob’s control of the casino business on Lorelei. Combined with the defection of Laverna, her most trusted assistant, it had also toppled her from her perch at the top of the Lorelei syndicate-which was ultimately why she’d moved her operation to Hix’s World.

  “I must confess I hadn’t remembered the man’s name,” said Robert, warily. “Would you like me to rind some pretext to deny him the room? It should be simple enough-I can always claim that some high official of the planet needs the space.”

  Maxine frowned and lit a cigarette. “No, that would just move him someplace else. Let’s keep him here where I can keep track of him. What I want to know, though, is what’s he doing here? He has to know it’s my place-why else would he be here?”

  “He apparently claimed a family connection,” said Robert. “That’s not impossible-but not very likely, either. I’ll tell the waitresses and bartenders to see if they can find out the real reason from him.”

  “Tell ‘em there’s a bonus if they get what I want,” said Maxine, pounding a fist into her other palm. “He’s got to be here to interfere with my plans for the casino. How the hell did he find out? Bastard!”