Authors: Keith Laumer
“That means you, me and Miss Braswell, I take it, since the
rest of the staff is off crater-viewing—”
“Just you and I.” Magnan mopped at his face with a vast
floral-patterned tissue. “This is a highly classified emergency.”
“Oh, goody, I’ll take the rest of the afternoon off and watch
the festivities.” Miss Braswell winked at Retief, extended the tip of her
tongue in salute to the Consul-General’s back, and was gone.
Retief plucked a bottle from his desk drawer and followed
Magnan into the inner office. The senior officer yanked at his stiff collar,
now wilting with perspiration.
“Why
this couldn’t have waited until Minister Barnshingle’s return, I don’t know,”
he said. “He’s already a day overdue. I’ve tried to contact him, to no avail;
this primitive line-of-sight local telescreen system—” he broke off. “Retief,
kindly defer your tippling until after the crisis!”
“Oh, this isn’t tippling, Mr. Magnan. I’m doing a commodity
analysis for my next report. You fobbed the detail of Commercial Attaché on me,
if you recall—”
“As Chargé d’affaires in the absence of the Minister, I
forbid drinking on duty!” Magnan roared.
“Surely you jest, Mr. Magnan; it would mean the end of
diplomacy as we know it—”
“Well, not until after lunch, at least. And I hereby
authorize you to postpone market research until further notice; we’re facing a
possible holocaust in a matter of hours!”
“What’s it all about?”
Magnan plucked a sheet of yellow paper from his desk and
handed it across to Retief. “This came in over the auto-typer forty minutes
ago.”
*
* *
UNIDENTIFIED CONVOY COMPRISING FIFTY
UHLAN
CLASS VESSELS SIGHTED ON COURSE
FOR YALC III
ETA 1500 GST 33 OCT GSC. SIGNED POMFROY, ENSIGN PATROL NAVY 786-G.
“Uhlans,” Retief said. “Those are thousand-man transports.
And oh-nine-hundred on the thirty-third is just about two hours from now.”
“This could be an invasion, Retief! A major breach of the
peace! Can you imagine how it would look in my record if the planet were
invaded under my very nose!”
“Tough on the natives, too,” Retief commented. “What action
have you taken so far?”
“Action? Why, I’ve canceled this afternoon’s social engagements,
checked out-going passenger schedules, and sharpened a number of pencils.”
“Have you tried contacting this Ensign Pomfroy for a little
more detail?”
“There’s no one on duty in the Message Center but a local
Code Clerk; he’s trying to raise him now.” Magnan depressed a button on his
desk. “Oo-Gilitit, have you met with any success?”
“Pomfroy-Tic all same have organ cluster up ventral orifice—”
“Gilitit, I’ve warned you to watch your language!” Magnan
roared. “It’s no habit for a communications man to get into!” He clicked off.
“Confounded locals! It’s hopeless, of course; our equipment was never designed
for pin-pointing moving patrol boats at four A-U’s.”
“How do the Yalcans feel about the situation?”
Magnan blinked. “Why, as to that, I,
ah . . . was just going to call Oo-Rilikuk.” Magnan punched
keys, tuned in a bland yellow and blue face with eyes like gold pinheads and
vertically-hinged jaws busy with an oily drumstick.
“Ah, there, Magnan,” a voice like an unoiled wheel said.
“Just finishing up my lunch. Roast haunch of giant locust. Delicious.” A tongue
like a length of green silken rope flicked a tidbit from a corner of the
lipless mouth.
“Oo-Rilikuk, do you know anything of a large convoy due here
today?”
Rilikuk dabbed at his chin with a gossamer napkin. “I seem to
recall issuing a number of visas to Groaci nationals in recent weeks.”
“Groaci? Fifty shiploads of them?”
“Something like that,” the Yalcan said carelessly. “By the
way, if you haven’t already made arrangements, perhaps you’d care to join my
Bachelor’s Group for the upcoming festivities—”
“You’re not concerned? Perhaps you’re not aware of the
insidious reputation the Groaci enjoy—”
“I don’t mind saying I’ve exercised a trifle of influence to
procure a choice mud pocket; the rich, oleaginous kind, you know. And there’ll
be no shortage of nubile females along—though you’re not organized to
appreciate the latter, it’s true—”
“May I ask the state of the planetary defenses, Rilikuk? I’m
warning you, these Groaci are not to be trusted—”
“Planetary defenses?” Rilikuk issued a chirp of amusement.
“As confirmed pacifists, we’ve never felt the need for such an extravagance.
Now, I’ll be leaving the office in a few minutes; suppose I drop by for
you—we’ll go on to my place for dinner, then off to the bog—”
“You’re leaving the Foreign Office at a moment like this?”
Magnan yelped. “They’ll be landing in a matter of minutes!”
“I fear I’ll have no time to devote to tourism this week,
Magnan,” Rilikuk said. “They’ll just have to manage alone. After all, Voom
Festival time comes but once in ninety-four standard years—”
Magnan rang off with a snort. “We’ll receive scant help from
that quarter.” He swiveled to gaze out the unglazed window across the gay tiles
of the plaza, lined with squat, one-story shops of embossed and colored ceramic
brick to the glittering minarets of the mile-distant temple complex.
“If these idlers invested less energy in shard-sorting and
more in foreign affairs, I wouldn’t be faced with this contretemps,” he
grumbled.
“If the CDT would talk Groac into selling them a few thousand
tons of sand, they wouldn’t have to sort shards.”
“There are better uses for CDT bottoms than hauling sand,
Retief, though I notice the local scrap pile is about depleted. Possibly now
they’ll turn to more profitable pursuits than lavishing the artistry of
generations on tenantless shrines.” He indicated the cluster of glass towers
sparkling in the sun. “They might even consent to export a reasonable volume of
glassware in place of the present token amounts.”
“Rarity keeps the price up; and they say they can’t afford to
let much glass off-world. It all goes back in the scrap piles when it’s broken,
for reuse.”
Magnan stared across the plain, where the white plumes of
small geysers puffed into brief life, while the pale smoke rising from the
fumaroles rose straight up in the still air. Far above, a point of blue light
twinkled.
“Odd,” Magnan said, frowning. “I’ve never seen one of the
moons in broad daylight before . . .”
Retief came to the window.
“You still haven’t. Apparently our Groaci friends are ahead
of schedule. That’s an ion drive, and it’s not over twenty miles out.”
Magnan bounded to his feet. “Get your hat, Retief! We’ll
confront these interlopers the moment they set foot on Yalcan soil! The Corps
isn’t letting this sort of thing pass without comment!”
“The Corps is always a fast group with a comment,” Retief
said. “I’ll give it that.”
Outside, the plaza was a-bustle with shopkeepers glittering
in holiday glass jewelry, busily closing up their stalls, erecting intricate decorations
like inverted chandeliers before their shuttered shops, and exchanging shouted
greetings. A long-bodied pink-and-red-faced Yalcan in a white apron leaning in
the open door of a shop waved a jointed forearm.
“Retief-Tic! Do me honor of to drop in for last Voom cup
before I lock up. Your friend, too!”
“Sorry, Oo-Plif; duty calls.”
“I
see you’ve established your usual contacts among the undesirable element,”
Magnan muttered, signaling a boat-shaped taxi edging through the press on fat
pneumatic wheels. “Look at these lackwits! Completely engrossed in their
frivolity, while disaster descends scarcely a mile away.”
Retief eyed the descending ship as it settled in beyond the
glittering glass spires of the temple-city.
“I wonder why they’re landing there instead of at the port.”
“They’ve probably mistaken the shrine for the town,” Magnan
snapped. “One must admit that it makes a far more impressive display than this
collection of mud huts!”
“Not the Groaci; they do their homework carefully before they
start anything.”
The cab pulled up and Magnan barked directions at the driver,
who waved his forearms in the Yalcan equivalent of a shrug.
“Speak
to this fellow, Retief!” Magnan snapped. “Obscure dialects are a hobby of
yours, I believe.”
Retief gave the driver instructions in the local patois and
leaned back against the floppy cushions. Magnan perched on the edge of the seat
and nipped at a hangnail. The car cleared the square, racketed down a side
street streaming with locals headed for the bog, gunned out across the
hard-baked mud-flat, swerving violently around the bubbling devil’s cauldrons
of hot mud that dotted the way. A small geyser erupted with a whoosh!,
spattering the open vehicle with hot droplets. A whiff of rotten-egg smoke blew
past. Off to the left, the sunlight glinted from the wide surface of the swamp,
thickly scattered with exotic lily-like flowers. Here and there, tree-ferns
grew in graceful clumps from the shallow water. Along the shore, bright-colored
tents had been erected, and local celebrants clustered in groups among them,
weaving to and fro and waving their multiple arms.
“It’s disgraceful,” Magnan sniffed. “They’re already
staggering and their infernal festival’s hardly begun!”
“It’s a native dance,” Retief said. “Very cultural.”
“What’s the occasion for this idiotic celebration? It seems
to have completely paralyzed whatever elementary sense of responsibility these
flibbertigibbets possess.”
“It’s related in some way to the conjunction of the four
moons,” Retief said. “But there’s more to it than that. It seems to have an
important religious significance; the dances are symbolic of death and rebirth,
or something of the sort.”
“Hmmph! I see the dancers are now falling flat on their
faces! Religious ecstasy, no doubt!”
As they swept past the reeling locals, the driver made
cabalistic signs in the air, grabbed the steering bar just in time to swerve
past a steam-jet that snorted from a cleft boulder. Ahead, a cloud of dust was
rolling out from the landing spot where the Groaci ship had settled in, a scant
hundred yards from an outlying shrine, a sparkling fifty-foot tower of red,
yellow, and green glass.
“They’re coming perilously close to violating the native holy
place,” Magnan observed as the taxi pulled up beside the ship. “There may be
mob violence at any moment.”
A pair of locals, emerging from one of the many fanciful
glass arches adorning the entrances to the shrine complex, cast no more than a
casual glance at the vessel as a port opened in its side and a spindle-legged
Groaci in golfing knickers and loud socks appeared.
Magnan climbed hurriedly from the cab. “I want you to note my
handling of this, Retief,” he said behind his hand, “a firm word now may avert
an incident.”
“I’d better say a firm word to the driver, or we’ll be walking
back.”
“Look, Mac-Tic, I got a reserved slot in a hot pocket of mud
waiting for me,” the driver called as he wheeled the car around. “Five minutes,
OK?”
Retief handed the cabbie a ten credit token and followed
Magnan across the scorched ground to the landing ladder. The Groaci descended,
all five eye-stalks canted in different directions. One fixed on Magnan.
“Minister Barnshingle,” he said in his faint Groaci voice
before Magnan could speak. “I am Fiss, Tour Director for Groac Planetary Tours,
Incorporated. I assume you’ve come to assist in clearing my little flock
through the Customs and Immigration formalities. Now—”
“Tour Director, did you say, Mr. Fiss?” Magnan cut in. “Fifty
shiploads of tourists?”
“Quite correct. I can assure you that passports and visas are
all in order, and immunization records are up-to-date. Since we Groaci have no
diplomatic mission to Yalc, it is most kind of the CDT to extend its good
offices—”
“Just
a minute, Mr. Fiss. How long are your tourists planning to stay on Yalc? Just
during Voom Festival, I assume?”
“I believe our visas
read . . . ah . . . indefinite, Mr. Minister . . .”
“I’m Magnan, Chargé in the absence of the Minister,” Magnan
said.
Fiss waved his eyes. “The Minister is not here?”
“No, he’s off mountain climbing. Very keen on sports. Now,
ah, may I ask where your other forty-nine vessels might be?”
“Just where is the Minister to be found?” Fiss inquired.
“I really can’t say,” Magnan sniffed. “We’ve had no word for
two days. Now, about your other ships—”
“There are, I believe, forty-nine cities here on this
charming little world,” Fiss said smoothly. “One transport is calling at each.”
“Curious way to conduct a tour—” Magnan broke off as a cargo
port rumbled open and a heavy six-wheeled vehicle churned out. Rows of
multi-eyed Groaci heads peered over open sides, on which the words GROAC
PLANETARY TOURS, INC. had been hastily lettered. A second vehicle followed the
first, and then a third and fourth. Magnan gaped as the emerging carriers took
up positions in an orderly double file.