Magnan tugged at Retief's
coat tail. "Heavens!" he yelped, eyeing Furkie disapprovingly.
"And we were talking about class!"
"Not much class,
maybe," Retief conceded, "but not without a certain style."
4
The choleric
voice of His Excellency, the Terran AE and MP, became audible above the
muttering of the frustrated Zanny-duers.
"Retief! I saw that!
You laid violent hands on a number of local citizens! Have you taken leave of
your senses?"
Retief stepped down beside
the Chief of Mission.
"Skip all that, Mr.
Ambassador," he suggested. "Get everyone over to the side of the
counter, fast. Charlie," he addressed a code-clerk, "give me a hand
with the customs counter. We'll have to swing it around to the side."
"What for?"
Charlie inquired, but he pitched in, and a moment later the two counters formed
a twenty-foot L. Retief dispatched his helper to urge the Terrans to climb over
the barrier, while he moved over to shift the Health unit into place to convert
the L into a U. He enlisted Magnan and Hy Felix to assist in herding the
Terrans around and over the counters, then shoved the Baggage section into
place, completing the square, with the Terrans inside, and the clamoring locals
outside. Those of the latter which attempted to climb the modest barrier were
quickly dumped back outside by Retief, over the objections of Ambassador
Shortfall, who had reluctantly joined those inside, after having been tripped
and frisked by a briskly efficient fellow in Security straps and badges.
"What in the world do
you think you're doing, Mr. Retief?" the Chief of Mission demanded,
attempting in vain to distract the latter from the chore of repelling would-be
borders. "You're interfering with the official function of host
officials!" he complained.
"What
are you doing? I demand to
know!"
"I'm forting-up,
sir," Retief told him. "Before they get coordinated and suffocate the
lot of us."
"But this is a peaceful
world! A
friendly
world. The world, in fact, to which I am accredited as
Terra's representative! Am I to report to Sector that you've converted it into
an armed camp?"
"Unarmed," Retief
corrected.
"As well it should
be!" Shortfall snarled. "We're just among our friends we haven't met
yet, just like it says in the Manual! The locals are a bit boisterous in their
enthusiasm of their welcome, perhaps, but there's not a weapon in sight!"
"Have you noted the
shredding-hooks on their ventral surfaces?" Retief inquired. "They
don't need skinning-knives."
"Skinning-knives?"
Shortfall whimpered. "You've gone mad, Retief! Report yourself under
arrest in quarters, at once."
"I've always wondered
how you did that," Retief remarked, fending off a thicker-than-usual
pillar which had gotten its forward half up onto the counter directly behind
the Ambassador, who turned in time to catch a glimpse of the underside of the
creature's torso as it slithered back.
"Great Scott!" he
yelled. "Do you mean those rows of great, curved, ivory-like claws tucked
under there are for—?"
"Exactly, sir,"
Retief confirmed. "Now, if you'll be so kind, sir, as to give the order to
get everybody inside, we can buy a little time."
"To be sure,"
Shortfall agreed. "And by then no doubt the authorities will have arrived
to quell the enthusiasm of the, ah, throng." He broke off to bark a
command at Colonel Underknuckle, who began hastily shooing the laggards within
the improvised barricade.
"Retief," Fred
called over his shoulder as he prodded Herb Lunchwell, the last straggler, back
over the counter. "I say," he went on, "I do believe your
tactical scheme is in error. I was thinking of Major Dade and his command, who
were wiped out by someone called Seminoles in ancient times; it's generally
felt some of the soldiers might have survived had they scattered in the woods;
instead they built a triangular breastwork of pine-logs, so concentrating
themselves as to give the savages an easy target."
"You may be right,
Fred," Retief conceded. "But we don't seem to have any woods
available, and with our people scattered and being cut out and surrounded one
by one, we didn't stand a chance. Now they'll have to come to us, and perhaps
we can discourage them if we concentrate all able-bodied men, plus Miss Furkle,
at whatever point they start over the counter."
"Possibly, Jim,"
the military attache conceded dubiously. "At least, it gives one a
breather. There were three of the beggars attempting to steal my insignae of rank,
simultaneously. Outrageous!" He waved aside the persistent gnats and
returned to his traffic-copping.
Retief muttered 'excuse me',
and stepped around the indignant bird-colonel to seize by its straps a 'pillar'
which was struggling to retain a grip on Nat Sitzfleisch, the Econ officer, as
it withdrew across the barrier. When Retief hauled its forequarters back atop
the counter, it dropped Herb and devoted all its energies to resisting Retief's
efforts and to yelling "Help! I'm being savaged by this foreigner!"
Retief lifted the creature's
front half and threw it back across the barricade, and at once was confronted
by another eager intruder. Behind him, Magnan wailed.
"Gracious, where are
the police?"
"Right here,
chum," a raspy pillar voice responded. Magnan whirled to see a local,
differing from the rest of the throng only in the large brass badge on a brass
chain draped around its upper torso.
"You got some kinda
beef, outlander?" the cop inquired in a tone of Mild Curiosity, a feeble
31-c, Magnan judged.
"I should think,
sir," he yelped over the din, "that would be obvious."
"Well, it ain't,"
the cop replied. "I see this here throng of folks eager to get through the
routines and get going on their holiday junkets, which they're stalled by you
foreigners tryna play fort with official property here, which I got to write
you a citation. Which one is the wise guy?"
"That
one,"
Magnan supplied quickly, pointing at Retief, just as the latter threw back yet
another enthusiastic invader. "I
told
him—that is I
would
have
told him if I'd had the chance—not to do it."
"Oh, you were in on it,
too," the cop muttered, before mumbling into his note-taking device, which
at once said
urch!
and disgorged a ticket in triplicate, the yellow copy
of which the cop handed over without apparent rancor.
Hy Felix pushed through,
scenting a story.
"What we got to do, Ben
..." he pontificated. "We got to like suck up to the friendlies,
which we're outnumbered ten to one."
"B-but how can you tell
which are which?" Magnan wailed. "They never seem to change the scowl
on their faces," he went on, "so one can hardly know if they're being
affable or insufferable!"
"They'll catch on to
the system in a few months," Hy guessed. "Look at the Grobies out on
Smurch Nineteen: they got faces like a slab o' rock, but they worked out the
system with the cheek-tendrils, so they could do a Phony Sincere Smile to Allay
Apprehensions of Inferior Species (679-A through W) with the best of 'em. Too
bad they developed a 41 (Fearsome Grimace Designed to Avert Attack) that you
couldn't tell from their 679, and used it on the next boatload o' Bogan
tourists come along, which the Grobies went extinct all of a sudden. Take this
fellow, now," he indicated the cop. "I'll show you how to sweeten him
up." He scuttled around to what he judged was the policeman's front side.
"Hi, there,
officer," he began heartily. Then in an aside to Magnan, "They like
it when you call 'em 'officer,' on account of they're enlisted personnel and
nacherly it makes 'em feel good when the civilians think they're officers and
gentlemen and all—"
"That's enough out of
you, fellow!" the cop told Hy, and handed over a citation. "I know
you fast-talking types; think you can pull the blaff-shag over a fellow's
oculars with a little sweet-talk. Well, yer dealing with Chief Smeer of the
Zanny-du National Secret Police— that's 'ZNSP', for anybody wants to try to
pronounce it—which I'm taking the lot of youse in."
"Chief!" Shortfall
cut in sharply. "I must remind you that my staff and I enjoy diplomatic
immunity!"
"Whatta I care what yer
personal tastes is?" Chief Smeer inquired indifferently, with a yawn which
exposed rows of curved yellow fangs. "Me, I like a good girlie show."
"Most unusual dentition
for a harmless herbivore," young Marvin Lacklustre commented. "Like
it said in the Post Report they were," he added.
"To perdition with the
Post Report, Marvin!" His Ex yelled. "That's not all it left out! I
shall personally lay the matter before the Deputy Undersecretary upon my
return!"
"You ain't hardly here,
yet, pal," the chief reminded him. "So yakking about yer 'return' is
a little previous, which you might not make it."
"Do you imply,
Chief," Shortfall yelled, "that some doubt exists as to our return
home, in due course?"
"I can't say about
that, Cap'n," Smeer told him. "Depends on what kinda impression you
make on our Diety and Chief of State, the great Worm."
"Did you say
'worm'?" Hy jeered. "You take orders from a worm?"
"You got something
against beings which they're lucky to be kinda long and narrow and ambulate
close to the ground-like?" the chief demanded in a tone like a
trimming-knife paring away fat.
"Gracious, no!"
Clyde Shortfall arrived in time to reject the suggestion. "Why, when I was
out on Furthuron, I grew to love both Hither and Nether Furthuronians,
affectionately known as Creepies and Crawlies, respectively."
"It was the other way
around, Mr. Ambassador," Hy Felix corrected, a provocation which his chief
ignored for the present, though in response to his lifted eyebrow, Miss Furkle,
in a lull in her onslaught, confirmed the remark had been duly recorded in the
record, signalling this intelligence by forming an
O
with her thumb and
forefinger, and making a flicking motion toward her chief.
"Looky there!" the
porter with the improvised neck-torc rasped. "They're giving the signal
for the massacres," a pronouncement which netted a renewed surge of
fist-shaking and "Terry-go-home's" from the throng.
"Holy Moses, Ben,"
Hy Felix blurted. "Didja hear that? Now they're talking mass murder. Oh,
boy," he muttered as he groped among the slung camera-bags he considered
essential to the image of a newshawk. "Where's my mini-swift?" he
inquired in a tone of One Aggrieved by Treachery in the Ranks (1241-m).
"Ben, do you suppose one of these light-tentacled baggage-smashers has
purloined my sender, which it's Agency property?"
"There it is, right
next to your first-aid kit, Hy," Magnan told him. Hy grabbed the prodigal
unit and began transmitting in his best classic Ed Murrow style:
"This
is
Zanny-du! Disaster is about to overtake the Terran Mission, dispatched here to
cement relations with the putative inhabitants of this mystery world, never
officially explored since reported two centuries ago by the redoubtable Captain
Goldblatt, which we're surrounded by a blood-thirsty throng." Hy paused to
glance at his Chief for approval of his tactful choice of collective nouns,
then hurried on. "Not to say 'merry mob,' which His Ex, Ambassador Shortfall
is taking this like a trouper. Faced with the imminent demise of his entire
staff, hisself, and Terran policy at this end of the Galaxy, the veteran
diplomatic pro would appear to the uninitiated to be as totally unconcerned as
if he didn't have a clue to what's going on. Folks, is that some kinda cool, or
what?" Hy concluded his dispatch and turned in time to fend off a grab by
an acquisitive Customs being intent on lifting his telephoto equipment.