A Phule and His Money (13 page)

"Cap'n!" Harry dropped to his knees like a felled ox. "Cap'n, let 'em cut my ears off! Let 'em tattoo me paisley from head to toe with a dull needle! Let 'em throw me out the airlock, but Cap'n, please don't let 'em have my hawg!"

"Cuttin' them ears off would be fun," said Joe the Blade, grinning evilly. Asteroid Annie's eyes lit up.

"Yeah, go ahead, cut 'em off," bawled Harry. "Cut 'em both off, and shave me with a ripsaw, and then boil me in Chinese mustard. But don't mess with my hawg!"

"Where's the hovercycle?" repeated Phule. "No more delays, Harry. I'll have the cycle or I'll have your stripes."

"Sure, bust me back to buck private, Cap'n," said Harry, still on his knees. "Bust me all the way back, and throw me in the stockade, and dump the key in a black hole, and feed me on sawdust and battery acid. I won't complain, no sir, not one word, long as you don't let 'em have my hawg."

"Hey, man," said Stonecutter Johnson, stepping up to Phule. "We don't care what you do with his fat ass. It was our bikes he screwed with. Give us the hawg and we don't care what else happens to him."

"Is that so?" said Phule. "Will you stick by that? If I give you the hovercycle, will you drop your grudge against Harry?"

"Let us have the hawg, to do whatever we want with it," said Stonecutter, leering. "After that, it's over. Stonecutter Johnson says so, and what Stonecutter says, no Renegade's gonna go against it. That right, dudes?."

"Nothin' but right," said Asteroid Annie, grinning. Joe the Blade nodded his assent, as well.

"Very well, then," said Phule. "Harry-the bike."

Sobbing incoherently, the supply sergeant pointed to a door in back of the supply office. Phule strode over and opened it, to reveal a shining hovercycle-a machine gorgeous enough to make any rider drool. The Renegades let out a collective gasp at the sight. "It's yours," said Phule. "Take it and go-and I'll hold you to your word. The Space Legion will hold you to your word."

"No need for that," said Stonecutter Johnson. "We got more than we ever expected. Chocolate Harry, the feud is off. You don't got nothing ever to fear from us again."

"Thanks a million," said the supply sergeant bitterly. "I'd rather you'd cut my ears off. Don't stand there and rub it in-take the hawg and go."

"You ain't gotta ask me twice," said Johnson. He gestured to his cohorts, and the three Renegades walked the cycle out of the supply depot, grinning broadly. The door closed behind them.

There was a moment of silence, as they all stared at the door. Then Harry said in a near-whisper, "Great goda'mighty, Cap'n-I think it worked!"

"Of course it worked," said Phule. "As far as they're concerned, they've got their revenge. And they've got what they think is the single thing you valued most in life. Great acting job, by the way."

"Thanks, Cap'n. Once you called me up and told me what was comin' down, I saw it was the only way to play it. And I really did have a qualm or two seein' 'em take away my good of hawg. Even if I couldn't really use it here, that there cycle was my oldest friend. Had a lot of memories connected with it."

Phule clapped him on the back. "Well, I told you I'd replace it, and you know I'll stand by that. You pick the model, and it's yours-soon as those Renegades go back home."

"Sounds good, Cap'n," said Harry, smiling. Then his face turned wistful, and he said, "Maybe there ain't no real hurry, though. There wasn't a whole lot of chance to ride it here, and that ain't good for a hawg. We're gonna get planetside again before long, where I can really crank it up and run-I guess I can wait till then to get a new hawg."

"That makes sense," said Phule. "I'm sorry to see you lose that old one, though. Do you really think they'll destroy it?"

"They ain't that crazy," said C.H. "More likely, they'll take it back home as a trophy-maybe they'll do somethin' to mark it, but no real rider would ever really hurt that bike. I bet they keep it in good shape, break it out and ride it every now and then, to show off how they got their revenge on me."

"And do' you think they did?" asked Phule.

Harry thought for a moment. "Yeah, I guess they did-at least by their lights. And I got somethin' I wanted, too-somethin' I never thought I'd see again."

"What's that?" said Double-X, who'd started taking boards off the windows.

Harry's smile was beatific. "Peace of mind, dude, peace of mind. Ain't nothin' in the galaxy to match it."

From his seat at the head of the table, Phule looked around the conference room. For once, he was addressing a group of civilians: the managers and department heads of the Fat Chance Hotel and Casino. He reminded himself that he couldn't take their obedience for granted, as he would with his Legion subordinates. This time, he'd actually have to convince them he was right.

On the other hand, as majority owner of the Fat Chance, he carried considerable authority here. That had its downside, actually-it could mean that a major loophole in his plans might go undetected because nobody had the nerve to call the boss on it. Well, he'd had that trouble with his Legion command at first, too. The people he was leaving here were good enough that any miscalculations he made should be spotted and corrected before they got out of hand.

"Everyone's here, so let's begin," he said. The murmur died down. "You've all heard the news by now, that my Legion company has been transferred to another assignment. That means that we will no longer be available to guard the casino."

"I've heard it, and I think it's a disaster, plain and simple," said Gunther Rafael, the former owner of the Fat Chance. Phule had kept him on as a figurehead manager, and planned on putting him in charge of day-to-day operations once the company was gone. "Your people have been the only thing keeping the mobsters from walking into the casino and taking it over at gunpoint. Quite frankly, I expect them to try exactly that, the minute your ship leaves the station."

"The mobsters have had their wings clipped," said Phule, looking at Rafael. He hoped he hadn't overestimated the former owner. "I don't think you'll find them anywhere near as bold as that. We won't be leaving you without security, you know."

"You might as well," said Rafael. "Everybody knows it's the Legion that's protecting this place. That's kept us safe. When you go, it'll be like leaving babies to guard a bank vault."

"No it won't," said Phule. "As many of you know, most of the `legionnaires' in the casino are actually uniformed actors. The real Legion guards are out of uniform, undercover. So if a few uniformed personnel leave, it can be explained as normal turnover. As far as the public sees, the Legion will still be here. I'll be away, but that shouldn't affect security."

"It certainly shouldn't," said Doc. He'd been training the actors impersonating legionnaires for the last few months. He was in Legion uniform, with a set of sergeant's stripes-a "promotion" he'd been granted in anticipation of Moustache's leaving with the real Legion. Doc looked every bit the part, standing straight as an arrow at the foot of the table.

"The place was a target before," said Doc, "because the mob thought the new owners would be pushovers. The mob's been pretty quiet since they found out the Legion means business. And after the way the company tore up that obstacle course the other day, I'd guess that just having a few Legion uniforms visible will keep the hoodlums out from underfoot. I doubt we'll have to deal with anything much worse than the occasional rowdy drunk after word of that gets out."

"And we don't need a Legion company to handle that kind of problem," said Lex, who'd taken over managing the casino's entertainment program. "We can take care of that by giving some of our stagehands overtime as bouncers to back up Doc's team."

"You can go a long way in this business by putting up the right front," agreed Tullie Bascom. Phule had lured Tullie out of retirement to run the Fat Chance's gambling operations. "The Legion's rep is all the security we need."

"As far as the other operations, I'm satisfied they're in good hands," said Phule. "The entertainment is the best on the station, thanks to Lex..."

Lex gave his best professional smile. "Well, I have to give a lot of credit to Dee Dee Watkins," he said. "She may have the biggest case of artist's temperament I've seen since I first stepped on a holostage..."

"And that's longer ago than even I want to think about," said Doc in a stage whisper.

"...but she has the goods to back it up, too," said Lex, grinning wryly as everyone laughed. "And with her signed to a long-term contract, we're set for the foreseeable future."

"There's one more element we'll be putting in place shortly after I leave," said Phule. "Just so my prolonged absence doesn't start the mob thinking, we're going to implement a plan I've kept absolutely under wraps until now. I urge you all not to say a word about this outside this room-because it's the heart of the plan. Beeker?"

"Yes, sir," said the butler, who'd sat quietly in a chair behind his employer. He opened a door and in walked...Phule. "Good morning, ladies and gentlemen," the new arrival said in a voice indistinguishable from the original.

"What the devil, have you cloned yourself?" said Tullie Bascomb over the babble of voices.

"Not quite," said Phule. "This is a custom model from Andromatic, set up to our specifications. It has a very limited set of functions, but they should be sufficient for the purpose. Most of the time, it'll sit behind a desk, looking busy. But it can also walk around the casino, even sit down for a drink. It can carry on a conversation, as long as it doesn't have to be too profound-and it's programmed to break it off the minute somebody strays beyond general topics."

"Good lord, Captain, you don't intend to leave this android to run the casino in your absence?" Rafael said.

"Oh, it won't be running anything," said Phule. "You and your staff will be doing that. All it has to do is show up often enough to convince people that I'm still on the job. If somebody really needs to talk to me-which shouldn't happen all that often-well, that's what communicators are for."

"But, Captain, you have a habit of getting yourself in the news," Lex pointed out. "Your company is bound to attract attention in its new assignment, and then your picture will be on screens all over the galaxy-showing you're obviously several light-years away from here."

"Nobody believes what they see on the news," said Phule. "They've seen too many stories where they used stock footage of some politician-usually, it doesn't matter a bit. Just tell people I'm back and forth all the time, taking care of details on both ends. Andromatic tells me this basic model is very popular with political leaders. It should work for us."

"So, instead of a Phule running the place, we'll have a dummy," said Doc, grinning broadly.

"I can see you've got everything set up," said Rafael, after the laughter had died down. "Well, then, I guess the only thing to do is to iron out the details."

"I hope so," said Phule. "And the sooner the better. Now, you'll be getting back the block of rooms the troops have been using. That's going to be good for the bottom line, of course, but there'll be some reconversion needed..."

The meeting got down to business, with the Andromatic Phule standing behind the original, occasionally nodding as if in agreement with some point being made. After a while, nobody paid it much attention-which was exactly what Phule had hoped for.

Journal #341

Once a timetable had been set for the company's departure from Lorelei, the actual preparations went ahead smoothly. The main complication was keeping the withdrawal a secret from the public particularly from the local criminal elements that might try to seize the opportunity to press their own interest in the lucrative casino.

I myself thought the elaborate efforts to deceive the mob leaders, especially Maxine Pruett, were perhaps more complex than necessary. That was before I found an incentive to take a personal role in the subterfuge...

Lieutenant Rembrandt checked her communicator. Its readout showed Galactic Standard Time as 21:29-half an hour until the shuttle carrying the last of Phule's legionnaires was scheduled to leave. So far, everything had gone as well as anyone could have expected-she was almost tempted to describe it as having been done with military precision, except she knew the military far too well. The company's heavy equipment was already in transit, and would be waiting in orbit when they arrived at Landoor. And almost all the Legion personnel were already on the transport ship.

It was the "almost" that had her worried.

She had a very good idea which members of the company would show up at the last minute. The captain was one of them-no surprise there at all. He was still at the casino, settling the last details of the withdrawal. Nor was she particularly disturbed to see that the captain's butler had not checked in. As a civilian, Beeker was of course not subject to Legion discipline or rules. Most likely, the butler was with his employer-or on an errand for him. Still, he was normally punctuality itself; it would be a real surprise if he missed the shuttle.

On the other hand, the absence of Sushi and Do-Wop was some cause for concern, predictable though it was. Whenever there was trouble, one or the other was likely to be in it up to his ears. This time it looked as if both were involved. They'd never missed a ship, to her knowledge-not yet, at least. But they were an excellent bet to come racing up at the last possible second, with someone or another in hot pursuit. She hoped she wouldn't have to slam the shuttle door in a security officer's face. She'd spent so much time building a positive image for the company, it'd be a shame to leave the station on that sort of note.

But with half an hour to go, she might as well spend the time doing something other than worrying. She pulled out the art history book she'd been reading. She'd never had much interest in the old twentieth-century "moderns"-it seemed curious to call them that, so long after they were all dead and gone-but the author was making a good case that Picasso was, after all, a very talented draughtsman. She turned to where she'd left off and began reading...

Maxine Pruett didn't usually answer the communicator herself. In fact, it was fairly unusual that she even heard its summons. People didn't call her-she called them. If they needed to get in touch, there was an office number, with a secretary during the day and an answering service at night. Only very close personal friends (and there weren't many of them, nowadays) ever called her at home. And when they did, Laverna answered it.

So it took her some time to notice the persistent buzz. She had the sound on the holovision turned up loud, as always, and the comm unit was in another of the suite's eight rooms. Maxie didn't have a nagging fear of missing an important call. That was for other people to worry about. She was perfectly capable of letting the communicator buzz until she felt like picking it up, or turning off the buzzer if she wasn't in the mood. It wasn't her that was going to be in trouble if an important message didn't get through...

But the damned thing had been buzzing for at least five minutes, and Laverna still hadn't answered. Where the hell was Laverna? Finally, Maxine stomped out to her office-really Laverna's office, since Laverna was the one who used it ninety-five percent of the time-and picked up the handset-a basic, voice-only unit. Nobody in her business wanted a videophone in her private home. "Who's there?" she growled.

"Ah, Mrs. Pruett, I was beginning to wonder if you were there," said a familiar voice.

"Captain Jester," she said, although she knew perfectly well his real name was Phule. Now this was a surprise. "What can I do for you, Captain?" she added. She wasn't inclined to do anything for him, but it was good policy to be minimally polite to somebody who had an armed Legion company on call.

"You can tell me where my butler is," snarled the captain. "Better yet, you can send him back-all in one piece, if you don't mind."

"Your butler?" Maxine's brow furrowed. "I don't know anything about your butler."

"Don't play games with me, Mrs. Pruett," said the captain. "Beeker was near your headquarters when he disappeared, and I have reason to believe he had gone there to see one of your subordinates. Now, are you going to send him back or not?"

"I don't know what you're talking abou...Wait a minute," said Maxine, suddenly making a mental connection.

"Which of my subordinates was he coming to see?"

"I don't know her full name," said Phule stiffly. "Livorno, Laverne-something like that."

Maxine's teeth clenched. "Laverna? Damn! Captain, can I call you right back? I need to check on something."

"I'll be waiting," said Phule, and gave her the comm code. "Don't take too long, though-I can promise you, you don't want me to send my people over to find out what's causing the delay."

"I don't need your promises to know that," Maxine snapped at the captain. "Cool your jets-I'll get right back to you." She slammed down the receiver and went looking for her assistant.

It didn't take long to determine that Laverna wasn't anywhere in the suite. A quick phone call established that she wasn't in the bar downstairs-her usual watering hole. The last person who'd seen her was the guard at the door. That had been in midafternoon-as she was leaving the building with a conservatively dressed middle-aged man. The butler!

"That bitch!" Maxine slammed down the phone. Then she began to figure out what she was going to tell the captain.

"You sure we got time for this?" said Do-Wop.

"All the time in the world," said Sushi, bending over an open panel behind which could be seen complex circuitry. "Quiet, now, I need to concentrate. And make sure nobody's watching."

"Yeah, right," said Do-Wop. He scratched himself and pretended to goof off, gazing back down the little alley next to the casino offices. Night never fell on Lorelei, but it was early evening by Galactic Standard Time, which was the system observed on the space station. There were a few people on the streets-those finishing an early dinner, or casino workers coming off shift-but nobody seemed to pay much attention to a couple of men in maintenance uniforms crouching by an open panel with tools spread around. Just act like we belong there, Sushi had told him, and it was apparently working.

"Nobody payin' attention," he reported. He peered back to see how Sushi was doing. The job involved removing a particular chip and replacing it with a slightly more complex one designed to fit in the same slot. That sounded easy, but sometimes the installation didn't resemble the pictures in the manuals. An easy job could become impossible if you only had limited time. There was a wire from some previous repair that was going to have to be disconnected, moved aside, and reconnected when the job was done. A few minutes longer. Well, that's why they always told you to allow more time than you thought you needed to pull off a job.

And now there was somebody looking at them. "Soosh!" he hissed, and tried to act as if he wasn't nervous. "Casino guard."

"Act calm," said Sushi, snapping the new chip into place, and pocketing the old one. "Now all I gotta do is reconnect the repair wire."

"So hurry up and do it. He's comin'!"

"Oh, in that case..." Sushi took his soldering laser and quickly played it over the base of the chip they'd removed. He stood up and said loudly, "Look at this piece of crap."

"What the hell?" said Do-Wop, and then the security guard was looking over his shoulder.

"They had the wrong value in. No wonder the bastard burned out so soon. Some guy was too lazy to go back to the shop for the right one." Sushi took up the obligatory repairman's critique of his predecessor's shoddy work.

"You guys workin' late," said the guard.

"Yeah, Liverakos told us finish up this last job," said Sushi. Of course he'd found out the casino maintenance chief's name. "They got a new kid on next shift, and he's late already."

"Yeah, I seen him around," said the guard. There were always new kids around. "Guess he won't be here long."

"Unless he's related to somebody," griped Do-Wop.

He and the guard went on about the ills of nepotism and favoritism on the job for a couple of minutes while Sushi quietly knelt down and finished reconnecting the wire.

"OK, we can close her up," he said. "And then I can find out if my wife's gonna kill me for getting home late."

"Lucky guy, you got a wife," said Do-Wop.

"You call that lucky?" said Sushi, and the guard laughed. They wrestled the panel back in place while the guard kibitzed, and Do-Wop tightened the fasteners. Sushi started packing the tools.

"OK, see you boys around," said the guard, wandering back down the alleyway.

"See you," said Sushi. It probably wouldn't be too soon, though. Unless something suddenly went very wrong, they'd be in deep space less than an hour from now. They finished packing up their tools, cleaned up the small amount of debris the "repair" had generated, and walked casually out of the alley.

Across the street, the security guard was standing, looking completely uninterested in them. They walked away quickly.

Maxine was still trying to decide on her story when the communicator buzzed again. She strode over and picked it up. "Yeah?"

It was the guard downstairs. "Boss, that Legion captain's here, with a bunch of soldiers, and they're loaded for bear. The customers are buggin'. How you want me to play it?"

Maxine's reply was instantaneous. "Stall 'em-and keep your own guns out of sight. I'll be straight down." She disconnected, and headed for the door. Halfway there, she stopped and checked her gun; it was ready and loaded. For a moment, she considered leaving it behind-it would be next to useless against the legionnaires' weaponry, and more likely to get her into trouble than to get her out of it-but long years of habit overrode the prudent impulse. She returned it to its concealed holster and stomped out the door.

Down in the lobby, Phule was there with half a dozen legionnaires. From behind the nearby row of quantum slot machines, tourists stared at Phule and his men (although they kept pumping in coins). A few nervous gamblers waited at the window, cashing their chips while they still had the chance. And several bulky gentlemen-plainclothes casino security-occupied seats in the lobby area, studiously ignoring the armed invasion.

Phule turned when he saw her and said, "About time, Mrs. Pruett. I have a confirmed report that my butler was in this building. Where are you keeping him?"

"Keeping him? Are you crazy?" Maxine said, taken aback. "What the hell do I want your butler for?"

"I don't know, but I want him back," said Phule. "And I'm not going to wait very long."

"Look, I don't know where he is and I don't care. Feel free to search the place," said Maxine. She was confident that anything she didn't want him to see was well hidden; the place had been built on the assumption that search parties might occasionally come through. A few had, over the years, though none had penetrated beyond the nominally secret areas where teams of casino employees conducted surveillance and security operations, all perfectly legal and innocuous. Maxine's real secrets were much better hidden.

"You don't care?" said Phule. "Not even if he's run off with your assistant?"

Maxine stared him down. "What if he has? She's of legal age, after all."

"If she knows half as much about your business as he knows about mine, we're both in trouble," the captain hissed. Then he looked around and said, "Is there someplace we can talk? Someplace secure? There are too many people here for my nerves."

"Too many for my nerves, too," she said, seizing the moment. "Most of 'em are your troops, if you want to know the truth. Get 'em the hell out of here, so my customers can go back to playing instead of gawking at all that hardware, and I'm sure we can find a place to talk."

"We can arrange that," said Phule. He turned to his troops. "I'll be talking to Mrs. Pruett. You take up positions outside-with your eyes open. I'll be half an hour-if I need more time, I'll call you." He tapped his wrist communicator. "If you don't hear from me by then, you call me. If I don't answer, you know what to do. Understood? Do whatever you need to do."

"Yes, sir!" said the squad leader, a huge man with sergeant's stripes. He signalled the troops and they began to file out the door.

Maxine nodded. "This way," she said, and Phule followed her to her office. He took the chair she offered, and they sat facing each other across a large desk. "Now," said Maxine, "what makes you think I know anything about your butler?"

"You as much as said so," said Phule. "'She's of legal age'-you know they're together, or you wouldn't have been talking that way. We'll both save time if we cooperate on this. I want my butler back, you want your assistant...maybe for different reasons, but we both want the same thing. We both gain by working together on this."

Maxine didn't blink. "Working together how?"

"Ah, I knew you'd get down to business when you saw the advantages," said Phule. "Here's the way I see it. We can't equal your intelligence sources on-station-we aren't bad, mind you, just not your equal. Yet. We do pick up items you wouldn't, and as far as our off-station sources-well, you're not in that league."

"You'd be surprised," said the mob boss. "But let's say it's so-you're saying we share whatever tips we get? What's to stop somebody from keeping secrets?"

"Really, Mrs. Pruett," said Phule. "We aren't going to pass along sensitive information, and neither are you. But we have to trust each other to pass along anything relevant to our mutual business. Just as we have to trust whoever finds the fugitives to return them in good condition-my butler is of no use to me dead."