“I believe you, sir,” said Beeker. “But I should remind you that I am not the one you need to persuade in this instance. The relevant parties are Ms. Snieff—and her dog.”
“I don’t know which is worse,” said Phule, plopping himself down on the edge of his desk. “At least she didn’t try to bite anybody … though maybe that’d be better than having her spout slogans at me all afternoon. If she bit me, all I’d need to do is make sure my shots were up-to-date.”
“It is unfortunate that there are no inoculations against fanaticism,” said Beeker. “The woman’s employer is in my opinion one of the very few governmental organizations actually capable of making the world better than it finds it, and yet she seems to have the gift, so to speak, of alienating everyone around her. I suppose it is another example of the tendency of bureaucracies to promote those who most excel at bureaucratic infighting, rather than at the actual business of the organization.”
Phule had picked up the remote for the office’s video display wall and fiddled with it as he listened to Beeker. Now he looked at it, realized he wasn’t about to use it for anything, and put it back down on his desk. “The bottom line is, we need to be able to work here,” he said. “I can’t just tell my people not to go near their camp, Beeker. They were out in the desert to investigate a possible threat to our security. And we never did find out what all those lights were about.”
“Sir, now may be the time to prevail upon Flight Leftenant Qual to interest his government in the matter,” said Beeker. “Point out to them that your mission is being jeopardized by this AEIOU team’s officious meddling. Perhaps you might even persuade one or two Zenobians to stray out into the desert where they would encounter the dog. That might persuade them quickly.”
“And if Barky went after them, what would stop them from shooting him?” said Phule. “Or maybe eating him for lunch. The Zenobians don’t seem to eat mammals—they don’t seem to have very many, in fact—but they might make an exception in this case. Getting an animal killed by the locals—not just any animal, but a beloved environmental dog with his own weekly tri-vee show, and fan clubs of adoring kids on every human-occupied planet—no, Beeks. No thank you. I’ve already survived more than my share of interplanetary incidents. But I don’t think even Ambassador Gottesman could bail me out of that one.”
“It would have a very unfortunate effect on your public image, I am sure, sir,” agreed Beeker. “However, I fear that something of the sort is inevitable unless you take steps to prevent it. I am more than ever convinced that General Blitzkrieg has engineered this AEIOU visit in hopes of discrediting you.”
“Old Blitzkrieg again, eh?” said Phule. “Well, by now, he’s tried everything short of sending assassins. And the Mob has tried that. I’m still here, in case you haven’t noticed, Beeks. Don’t worry. It may take a little while, but I’ll figure out some way to get rid that AEIOU team—and their little dog, too.”
Beeker shook his head mournfully. “Sir, I really wish you had pursued a classical education,” he said. “It would help you avoid many infelicitous remarks.”
But Phule wasn’t listening. Instead, his gaze had gone to the open window facing out onto the parade ground and beyond that, to the open land south of Zenobia Base. “Look, Beeker,” he said. “There are lights moving out in the desert.”
* * *
“YO, RABBITEARS! GET YER MOTHERLESS ASS IN HERE!” bellowed Sergeant Pitbull, glowering out of his office door.
Instinctively, Thumper jumped. “Yes, Sergeant!” he said, scurrying for the office. The half dozen other recruits remaining in the barracks room looked at him with a mixture of mild curiosity and relief that they weren’t the ones Pitbull had decided to harass during their final hours on Mussina’s World. Then they went back to their reading, their card games, or whatever they had chosen to pass their remaining time before leaving Legion boot camp forever.
Even though Thumper had already gotten his assignment for Omega Company, the sound of the drill sergeant’s voice was equivalent to a jolt of high-voltage electricity. Most of the other recruits had already been loaded onto ships headed for their new assignments. But Omega Company was on some isolated planet, a place without regular traffic. As anxious as Thumper was to join his new outfit, he would have to wait for transport to be arranged. And as Pitbull had already made clear, nobody was going to go out of his way to get a single bad-news rookie to a company full of rejects and troublemakers.
“Recruit Thumper reporting, Sergeant!” said Thumper, coming to attention just inside the office door.
“Close the door and sit down, Legionnaire,” said the sergeant. He spoke in a voice Thumper had never heard him use. For one thing, it would barely have been audible beyond the confines of the office. For another, it didn’t carry any of the menacing inflections he was used to hearing from Pitbull—in fact, he’d called him “Legionnaire” instead of some insulting nickname. And to top it all off, Thumper had never been invited to sit in the sergeant’s presence before now. Wondering just what might be wrong, Thumper took the offered seat.
“I wanted to talk to you, so’s you don’t get the wrong idea,” said Sergeant Pitbull. He had a strange expression on his face that Thumper couldn’t quite recognize. “You know, and I know, that somebody set you up to take a big fall when General Blitzkrieg came to inspect the company. And if you think about it, you probably know why it happened.”
“Some of the other recruits were mad at me for running the obstacle course too fast,” said Thumper, nodding. “And for trying my best at other things, when they were happy just getting by.”
“That’s right,” said Pitbull, nodding. “I knew you were smarter than the average sophont. You were showin’ ’em up, so they decided they had to make you look so bad you couldn’t ever recover from it. Except they forgot one thing. Or maybe they never even knew it.”
“Forgot something?” Thumper was confused, now. “What was it you think they forgot?”
“General Blitzkrieg has a ripner up his ass about Omega Company,” said the sergeant. “He thinks they’re total screwups. What’s more, he thinks their CO, Captain Jester, is the biggest screwup of all. So when he thinks he’s got another troublemaker on his hands, where does he send him? Straight to Omega, natch.”
“Yes, Sergeant, I gathered as much,” said Thumper. “I don’t know if there’s anything I can do to wipe this incident off my record …”
“Wipe it off your record?” Pitbull guffawed. “Why’d you want to do that?” He leaned forward and lowered his voice even more. “You want to know the dead-cert truth? General Blitzkrieg has been the biggest dorknose in the Legion since before I was a recruit, and that’s damn near thirty years, now. I damn near hurt myself beyond repair trying to keep from laughing when he got that bucket of slop poured all over him.”
“Excuse me?” said Thumper.
“You heard me right,” said Pitbull. “The funniest thing is, whoever set you up there was doing you the biggest favor he could have done. I know people in Omega, and from all they tell me, it’s the best damn outfit in the Legion for a heads-up guy to be in right now. You play your cards right, and Omega just might be the best thing that ever happened to you.”
“Excuse me?” Thumper said again, still not quite convinced that what he was hearing made sense.
“GREAT GHU, YOU GOT THOSE BIG-ASS EARS AND YOU STILL CAN’T HEAR DIDDLYSHIT WITH ’EM?” roared Pitbull. Thumper almost reflexively flinched at the volume. Pitbull smiled and lowered his voice again. “You know those clowns outside are tryin’ to listen in on us,” he said, with an actual grin. “Gotta give ’em somethin’ to think about.”
“Er—yes, Sergeant,” said Thumper, still confused.
Pitbull leaned forward, and said, in an even lower voice, “The thing I wanted to tell you is, you’re damn near the best recruit I’ve had in ten years. You need to loosen up some, but I figure Omega will do that for you. And you need to pay more attention to getting along with your
buddies—no matter how good you are as an individual, it’s how you play with the team that’s gonna make or break you in the Legion. You hear me?”
“Yes, Sergeant,” Thumper said again, wondering if he sounded as dull to the sergeant as he did to himself.
“Good,” said Pitbull, pushing his chair back from the desk. “The other thing you need to know is that we found you transport to Zenobia, which is where Omega Company is based. There’s a bunch of rich civilians taking some kind of damn junket to Zenobia, and somebody convinced ’em to take on a passenger, which turns out to be you. So you’ll be traveling in style, which ain’t so bad after all. Don’t let nobody know it—it’s supposed to be punishment.”
“Yes, Sergeant!” said Thumper, considerably more enthusiastically now. “When do I have to be ready to depart?”
“You have to get on the shuttle to Wayne’s World, oh-six-hundred tomorrow morning.” Pitbull stood up, took a deep breath, and suddenly his voice took on its normal bellow. “YOU MISS IT, I’LL KICK YOUR STINKING ASS FIVE DIFFERENT WAYS, AND THEN I’LL REALLY GO TO WORK. NOW GET THE HELL OUT OF MY SIGHT, RABBITEARS!”
“Yes, Sergeant,” said Thumper, one last time, and he scuttled out the door. It was a real job to keep from grinning as he came into view of his fellow recruits, but somehow he managed it.
* * *
“If that goddamn dog wasn’t an interplanetary mascot for a clean green ’vironment, knowed and beloved throughout the galaxy, I’d’ve shot his raggedy ass four, maybe five times, right then and there,” said Double-X. He was sitting in the Desert Lounge, Zenobia Base’s bar for legionnaires, with a group of his buddies, sharing a cold beer and the story of his encounters in the wilds outside the camp that day.
“Su-u-ure, I can just see the story on the tri-vee news, Space Legionnaire Kills Beloved Environmental Mascot,” said Street, scoffing. “With your picture—nah, they wouldn’t put somethin’ that ugly on. They’d put on Barky, the Environmental Dog instead. Even shot full of holes, he be a little bit cute.”
“Cute?” Double-X slapped his hand against his forehead. “He gets his choppers in your leg, you tell me about cute then. That’s the bitin’est dog you ever seen—you or anybody else.”
“Well, I thought I’d seen everything in the Legion,” said Slayer. “But when I drove up and saw Spartacus halfway up a tree, I about busted open laughing. If the captain hadn’t been there, I bet I would have. I didn’t know Sythians could climb trees.”
“More like, he flew up there on his glide-board,” said Street. “You’re right, though—if I’d seen that, I’d have bust open laughing, too.”
“I don’t think is funny,” said Tusk-anini. “Barky try to hurt legionnaires. Captain must stop Barky.”
“You Voltons must not have any pets,” said Super-Gnat, sitting on a bench next to her huge partner. She grinned, then went on, “The thing is, Barky is kind o’ cute. I mean, kids all over the Galaxy have his holo in their rooms, and they send money to save the trees because of Barky. When I was a kid, I used to think it was really blurgin’ how he could sniff out pollutants …”
“When you was a kid?” said Do-Wop. “Man, that’s one long-lived dog … OW!” he yelled, as Super-Gnat punched him.
“Barky’s genetically engineered,” said Sushi, laughing at his partner. “They didn’t want to have to replace him every few years, so while they were giving him the genes to let him sniff out methane and fluorocarbons and so on, they made him long-lived, too. If I remember right, he’d be going on eighty years old even if he’d never started space-traveling.”
“Eighty or eight, don’t give him no right to bite folks,” said Double-X, slapping a fist into his open hand. “I was the captain, I’d be tellin’ those AEIOU suckers to lift their ship before the sun sets on ’em.”
“I bet he would like to do that,” said Sushi, swirling the ice cubes in his rum and Neocoke. “Problem is, the captain can’t just order another government agency off the planet except under martial law, which doesn’t apply here. If he could get the Zenobians to ask them to leave, that’d be another story. But so far, the Zenobians don’t seem interested in them one way or another.”
“Hey, maybe I can get Barky to chase Leftenant Qual up a tree,” suggested Do-Wop, pointing toward the ceiling to illustrate the idea. “That’d get ’em interested, all right.”
“You ever get a good look at Qual’s teeth?” asked Super-Gnat. “He’s got about twice as many as any dog you ever saw, and mostly twice as big—plus, he runs even faster than a Gambolt. If Barky has enough sense to find the meat in a hamburger—and at least, his bio says he does—he’ll steer clear of that fight for all he’s worth.”
“Bio? The farkin’ dog’s got a bio?” said Double-X.
“Hey, watch your mouth,” said Super-Gnat. “Barky, the Environmental Dog, was my favorite icon when I was a kid. I cried for a week when we moved to a new town and my mom forgot to bring along my Barky doll. You talk bad about Barky, I’ll whap you.” She flexed her right arm to show him she meant business.
“All right, all right,” said Double-X, trying to smooth things over. He probably outweighed Super-Gnat by fifty kilos, but everybody in the company knew that what the little legionnaire started, she finished—with Tusk-anini ready to step in if he thought she wasn’t getting a fair shake. He rubbed his chin, and mused, “I guess all those big media stars got bios, so why not Barky?”
“Barky’s bio says he’s the most intelligent dog ever, too,” said Super-Gnat, somewhat placated. “I read the whole thing when I was a kid. And watched his show every week. It was really triff, watching him chase the polluters.”
“Yeah, except now he seems to think that we’re polluters,” said Sushi. “I don’t know how he got that idea—the camp’s about as green as you can get—I think we recycle everything we can, certainly anything likely to be useful if we ever had to fight somebody. Of course, the AEIOU probably doesn’t take that point into consideration.”
“War not healthy for ecologies,” said Tusk-anini. “Best reason to prevent war, I thinking.”
“Maybe that dog do be smarter than he looks,” said Street, nodding. “Course, I knowed he was right smart all along when he went bitin’ on Double-X.”
That set off another round of good-natured insults and arguments that went on until closing time. The legionnaires went to bed without figuring out what to do about Barky, or how to deal with the AEIOU mission to Zenobia, although they talked enough about those problems to solve them half a dozen times.
It probably would not have made them any happier to know that their superior officers were having no better luck.
* * *
Victor Phule popped a token into the slot of the machine facing him and pulled the lever. There was something gratifying about the activity; just enough mechanical resistance, a sound of gears engaging and wheels spinning—even though he’d been told that the sounds were actually synthesized effects, and the gears and wheels were simulations that had nothing to do with the choice of which symbols the machine would display. Instead, an elaborately sealed Heisenberg circuit determined the winning (or more often, losing) combination. Whoever had designed the machines had done her job well, Phule grudgingly admitted. It felt as if you could actually use the handle to control which symbols appeared, even when your brain knew the facts to be otherwise.
The “wheels” spun to a halt, and Victor Phule inspected the three symbols in front of him: a bell, a cherry, and a lemon. No payout, this time. Phule picked up his Slate-o-mat and entered the result. On the whole, he was forty-seven thousand dollars in the red at this point. Considering that the bank of machines he was playing took nothing less than five-thousand-dollar tokens, that was a pittance. One decent payout, and he’d be ahead of the game. One significant jackpot, and he’d rake in more for one play than any but the top casino executives made in a year. And if he hit the big one … He chuckled. It was only a matter of time.
He was mildly surprised that no
body else seemed interested in these particular machines. Yes, the price of a play was high, but the payouts were proportionately richer than anything else in the Fat Chance Casino. Even thirty-five to one, the odds for playing a single number at the roulette table, was a paltry reward compared to the million-to-one superjackpot the casino had posted for these machines. Well, if no one else played, no one else had a chance to win, did they? Determinedly, Victor Phule fished in his pocket and took out another token.
He was about to feed it into the machine when someone close behind him said, “Having any luck today?”
He turned to see a woman’s face—youngish, dark-haired, and rather pretty, though not on the vidstar level. Almost inevitably, she knew who he was and how much money he had; Victor Phule was not without ego, but he had no reason to believe he was the type of man who would appeal to many women if his wealth were suddenly to disappear. On the other hand, he had an excellent notion of just how attractive that wealth was to almost everyone else he met. After all, the galaxy has room for only a limited number of multibillionaires—which meant that the vast majority of those around him at any given time had far less money than he, and had at least some interest in altering what they perceived as an unnatural imbalance. From Victor Phule’s point of view, of course, that imbalance was very much the natural state of affairs, and he saw no reason to give anyone a chance to change it to his disadvantage.
So his first response to the question was to verify, out of the corner of his eye, that his bodyguard was nearby, paying due attention to the situation. Sure enough, Eddie Grossman was only a step or two away, pretending to play the slots while looking in his direction. The guard lifted a forefinger to his left ear, signaling that he had already scanned the woman for weapons and found nothing to set off his alarms. Good—that eliminated one source of worry, although there were of course plenty of ways to damage or kill someone without carrying a detectable weapon.
The Complete Phule’s Company Boxed Set Page 122