No Phule Like An Old Phule (11 page)

“Well, if she’s got a rich boyfriend, that explains how she can afford Lorelei,” said Lola. “Which we can’t, unless we hit a jackpot or two. Come on, let’s check out the free lunch in the game rooms. Maybe our boy will be there, and we can finish what we came here to do.”

“Sure, sure,” muttered Ernie. “More likely it’ll be that damn robot again.” He glanced again at Della Fanatico, then followed Lola into the next room.

“All right, Tusk-anini, it’s time for your break,” said Lieutenant Armstrong, who was OD tonight. “Get up and get out of here-l don’t want to see you for half an hour.” Tusk-anini put down his book-Black’s Dictionary of Interspecies Law, Twenty-first Edition-and looked at the clock. Oh-three-hundred hours, the middle of the night, and of his shift in the comm center. He stood and placed the book on the seat of the chair he’d been occupying. “I be back,” he said gruffly, and headed out the door, ducking his head on the way through. He didn’t understand why the Legion insisted on having him get up and leave the comm center, when he could relax even more effectively just by continuing to read. But Armstrong, in particular, was a stickler for regulations, and Tusk-anini had learned that arguing with the lieutenant was a waste of time. It was easier to get up, take a little while to enjoy the clear night air of the desert, and come back when it was time to resume his shift.

Being of a nocturnal species had in fact worked to his advantage in the Legion, once he got a commanding officer who didn’t try to make pegs of different shapes fit into identical holes. Humans seemed to think it was a hardship to stay up all night. Sergeants in particular were in awe of any sophont who actually enjoyed being awake during the wee hours of the morning, at least unless there was a party going on. Captain Jester had almost immediately rearranged Tusk-anini’s schedule so that he could work during his preferred hours. And, since most humans were sound asleep during the night, there was little reason for the Volton to waste his duty hours doing anything more strenuous than catching up with his wide-ranging reading of human literature. As long as he was there, and awake, in case something did happen, that was enough for them. It was just one of the curious facts he had gathered about this strange race.

The comm center was a short distance from an exit onto the parade ground. Phule had required that the modular unit he had purchased for Omega Company’s base on Zenobia should have easy access to the outside from every point, in case of an attack or other emergency. That was smart planning, Tusk-anini thought. In a real emergency it could save not only time but lives.

He came out into the base’s central area and looked up at the Zenobian sky. Out here in the desert it was clear at night, with a panoply of unfamiliar constellations visible above the campsite. Tusk-anini’s home star was below the horizon at this time of night, but he knew that it was located in a small constellation the Zenobians called the Gryff’s Tail. Tusk-anini could see no resemblance between the group of stars and any kind of tail, but never having seen a gryff, he was willing to reserve judgment for the time being.

As he stood looking at the stars, a voice nearby whispered, “Tusk-anini! Come here quickly.” He looked to see Rube, one of the three Gambolts assigned to Omega Company. Catlike aliens with excellent night vision, the Gambolts were also valuable for nocturnal work. Captain Jester liked to have at least one of them on guard duty during the dark hours. Of course, with no hostile forces on this planet, the value of the Gambolts was mostly in helping to train legionnaires of other species to move and work in conditions of low visibility. Still, conditions could change, and the captain liked to be prepared for all possibilities.

“What going on?” said Tusk-anini, keeping his voice low as he moved next to Rube, who crouched along the side of a heavy personnel carrier.

“We don’t know, Tusk,” said another voice-the human legionnaire Slayer. “Weird stuff out in the desert…”

“Why you not reporting it?” asked Tusk-anini. Having just come from Comm Central, he knew that no reports of suspicious activity had come in. Nor had the base’s sophisticated detection systems detected anything suspicious while he had been on duty. He knew that for a fact, because Lieutenant Armstrong was especially meticulous about recording even the faintest blip on his screens.

“We aren’t sure it’s dangerous,” said Rube, whose autotranslator made his speech seem much more idiomatic than the Volton’s. But Tusk-anini had made it a point to learn English directly so as to improve his understanding of humans-which had been his main reason for joining the Legion to begin with.

“Perimeter electronics no detect nothing yet,” said Tusk-anini, peering out in the direction Slayer had gestured in. “What kind of weird stuff you mean? Lights, noises, smells?”

“Faint lights, moving,” said Rube. “Slayer can’t even see them, most of the time.”

“I seen some of ‘em,” said Slayer, who was wearing Legion-issue night-vision goggles. “They’re sorta yellow green, and they move real slow.”

“Any chance Nanoids doing this?” said Tusk-anini, thinking of the microscopic silicon-based beings the captain and Beeker had discovered out in the Zenobian desert.

“It could be,” said Rube. “But don’t the Nanoids show up on the electronics? That’s how they were detected in the first place, I think.”

“Usually they do,” admitted Tusk-anni. “Don’t know much about them, though. Maybe some new form of them. Or maybe some Zenobian life we don’t know yet, flying bugs with taillights, maybe, like the books say on Old Earth.”

“Ah, that’s just a story for kids,” said Slayer. “The guys that write those stupid books must take a lot of drugs to think up all that weird stuff. I bet most of ‘em never been anywhere near Old Earth.”

“There’s another one,” said Rube, pointing toward the desert. Sure enough, there was a faint but plainly visible light there-plain to Tusk-anini’s night-adapted eyes, in any case. It moved slowly left to right, staying a more or less constant distance above the desert floor, then suddenly winked out.

“Well, Tusk, now you seen it. You think we ought to go out and look where it was?” asked Slayer, deferring to Tusk-anini as the most experienced legionnaire present.

“I don’t know,” said Tusk-anini. “Looks undangerous, but who knowing? I go back to Comm Central soon and see if sensors pick up anything. Armstrong is OD tonight-is the one who ought to decide whether to look closer or not.”

“Yeah, I guess so,” said Slayer, clearly relieved that he wasn’t going to be sent out in the desert to investigate-at least not yet.

Tusk-anini thought a moment more, then said, “Whatever Armstrong say, tomorrow I ask Qual if any animal on Zenobia acts like that. He going to know, if anybody do.”

“Good idea,” said Rube, nodding. “You want me to come along when you tell Armstrong?”

“Sure, nobody attacking camp,” said Tusk-anini. “I go back on duty-you come now.” But when the two legionnaires described what they had seen to Lieutenant Armstrong, he emphatically denied that the Comm Center ’s instruments had detected any activity in the desert.

“I’m glad you spotted this,” the lieutenant said. “I’m not sure what to make of it. I’ll twiddle with the instruments and see if there’s any signal on some energy band I haven’t been monitoring. You keep an eye on those lights, Rube, and if you see anything that looks like a threat to the camp, sound the alarm right away. But for now, my gut instinct is to watch it and wait. If anything changes, let me know right away, and I’ll decide whether or not to wake up the captain. Until then, keep a sharp lookout and be ready to respond.”

“Yes, sir,” said Rube, and he returned to guard duty. But whatever the lights were, they turned out to be undetectable on the base’s electronic sensors-and after an hour or so, even the Gambolt reported that they had gone away.

Several parsecs distant, at the Legion’s Hickman Training Center on Mussina’s World, four dozen raw recruits waited anxiously in their bunkhouse. Just as some of them had begun to gripe that the threatened inspection was another ploy to cheat them out of a night’s sleep, the barracks room door burst open.

“TENN-HUT!‘ bellowed Sergeant Pitbull. ”GENERAL BLITZKRIEG WILL NOW INSPECT THE BARRACKS!“ he added, unnecessarily, as General Blitzkrieg blustered into the bunkroom. He was followed by a female human major bearing a clipboard and a bored expression. The recruits, forewarned, were all lined up at the foot of their bunks, wearing their best uniforms and trying (for the most part without success) to conceal their nervousness.

Nothing resembling a senior officer had ever deigned to appear on the post during their brief time as legionnaires. Even the colonel who nominally commanded Hickman Training Center might as well have been on another planet entirely-the recruits weren’t even sure whether their post commandant was male, female, or even human.

On the other hand, there was no doubt at all that General Blitzkrieg was human. Thumper had sniffed him out even before he’d entered the barracks. Thumper had grown up on a planet with a high enough human population that he knew the race well, and was even fond of a fair number of the sophonts from Earth. But he also came from a race with a highly developed sense of smell, and he knew the odor of humans well. Especially human males who ate meat, smoked tobacco, drank distilled alcohol, and sloshed their faces and armpits with aromatic concoctions as part of their morning ablutions. No question at all, General Blitzkrieg was one of those humans. He entered with a scowl that had been known to make strong legionnaires quake in their boots. That, in fact, was its main purpose, and on most of the recruits it worked quite well.

But as much as Thumper thought he knew about humans, he had learned very little about human psychology, and so the little Lepoid had no clue that the general might want to scare him. I’ve done my job right, so he can’t find fault with me, thought Thumper. He stood at perfect attention, his uniform immaculate, his bunk made with exacting care to every detail. In fact, Thumper’s bunk was even more perfectly made than the sample illustration of a correctly made bunk in the Legion Drill Instructor’s Manual. His trunk was equally a paragon of exactness. Whatever else the general might find wrong with this recruit company-and Sergeant Pitbull had made it clear that he didn’t expect much to be right-there wasn’t going to be anything for him to criticize about Thumper.

Sergeant Pitbull had his mouth open, ready to issue another order, when someone hissed, “Now!” and all hell broke loose. As Thumper tried to turn his head to see who had spoken, the lights went out, and he heard the sound of several pairs of running feet. There was an incoherent roar from the front of the room, about where General Blitzkrieg stood, then someone rushed up to Thumper and put something into his hand. “Hold this!” they whispered, and before he could say a word, he found himself holding something.

Even as he realized it was some kind of bucket, and that the outside of the bucket was dripping something wet on his uniform pants, the lights came back on.

Even then Thumper didn’t quite realize what kind of trouble he was in. Granted, the sight of General Blitzkrieg splattered head to toe with some sort of brownish sludge, foul-smelling brownish sludge, Thumper immediately realized-was the first thing that drew his attention. The next thing was the row of wet footprints and drips leading away from the general-toward where Thumper stood.

Only then did he recognize that the same foul smell that emanated from the general was also coming from the bucket he was holding. And, most curious of all, the sludge, covered footprints stopped right at his feet.

“WHAT THE FARKING HELL IS GOING ON HERE?” roared Sergeant Pitbull, instead of whatever else he had been about to roar when the lights went out. Then he saw the general, and his eyes grew to the size of dinner plates. “Oh, golly,” he said, in a voice the recruits had to strain to hear-the first time in Thumper’s memory that one of Pitbull’s statements hadn’t threatened to shatter his highly sensitive eardrums.

By now, every sophont in the room had managed to grasp that something dreadfully wrong had happened that fact was probably within the intellectual grasp of the pea-sized AI that regulated the water level in the toilets.

Likewise, even the dullest-witted recruit’s eyes had managed to trace the damning chain of evidence that led from the general’s ruined dress uniform to the odoriferous bucket in Thumper’s hands. In fact, it slowly dawned on Thumper that every eye in the barracks was staring directly at him.

“I didn’t do it,” he managed to sputter as Sergeant Pitbull advanced toward him, mayhem in his eyes.

But by then it was way too late.

Journal #675

Who among us does not take pleasure in the discomfort of our enemies? Such is common wisdom, noted by many observers.

It is less frequently observed that, by choosing one’s enemies with a degree of care, one can significantly increase the number of occasions on which to enjoy the pleasure of seeing them discommoded. In fact, it is likely that infelicitous choice of rivals is the cause of more frustration than almost any other miscalculation. This is as true in business as in those more personal areas of human enterprise.

The subtleties of the matter are clearly illustrated by the fact that my employer; despite his lack of any salient qualities that might warn off a calculating opponent, had over and over turned unpromising situations to his own advantage and frustrated the hopes of those arrayed against him. In fact, so improbable were his victories, that the defeated party was often inclined to step right up to make another attempt at besting him. But almost inevitably, the outcome of the first encounter was only repeated in the return engagement.

That didn’t stop his world be enemies from coming back for more…

It was 5:00 P.M. Galactic Standard Tune on Lorelei. But it might as well have been 5:00 A.M. or high noon, for all the difference it made in the casinos that were the economic lifeblood of the resort satellite.

The casinos were open twenty-four hours, and there was no time of day or night when the brightly lit gaming tables or banks of quantum slot machines were without a full quorum of bettors. Even the exotic potted plants lining the hallways of the Fat Chance Casino got twenty-four-hour attention from the throng of gardeners and housekeepers who filed unobtrusively but efficiently through every public space of the hotel and casino-watering, trimming, cleaning up.