The Complete Phule’s Company Boxed Set

by Robert Asprin

  “Nothing to it, Miss,” said Doc, smiling broadly. “Just doing our job.” He poured himself a glass of cold water from a pitcher on the bar cart and settled down to drink it in a soft chair facing Bascomb’s desk.

  “The offer would also include access to some of the best plastic surgeons and uh, image consultants, in the business—just in case you want to be a little bit harder to spot. And you might also like to know, we’ve managed to recall the photos that PR had sent out, before the stories were distributed—at least most of them. And we managed to tweak the few stories that did run to imply you were off to parts unknown to enjoy your winnings. The long and the short of it is, the captain thinks you’re good at what you do, and he wants you on the Fat Chance team,” said Tullie. “And as it happens, Mr. Phule agrees with his son.”

  “That’s right,” said Victor Phule. “I must admit I’m not quite certain what it is old Ernie does, but he’s clearly very good at it. And Miss Lola is very sharp.”

  “Thank you,” said Lola, looking at Tullie Bascomb. “But you must realize, gentlemen, this is all very sudden. Could my client and I have some time to discuss it in private?”

  “Why, of course,” said Bascomb. “If you’d like, we can arrange for a private dining room so you can discuss it over a meal. On the house, of course.”

  “Thank you very much, but I think we’ll be able to come to an answer with just a little walk around the block,” said Lola. “We can celebrate with a meal if we decide to accept.”

  “Sure,” said Bascomb, nodding. “If you’d like, we can have a couple of security people keep an eye on you—at a distance, of course.”

  “Again, thanks but no thanks,” said Lola. “We won’t stray that far outside the casino. And unless I’m mistaken, the only people who had anything against us are already out of the game—at least, for the time being.”

  “All right, then,” said Bascomb. “I’ll be here when you’re ready to talk.”

  Lola and Ernie said nothing until they were all the way down to the bottom floor in the elevator and out the doors. There, Lola set off at a brisk pace, with Ernie struggling to catch up despite his longer legs. Finally, after they’d turned a corner and put the casino’s front entrance out of sight, he said, “All right, what’s the problem? Are we gonna take the bait or not?”

  “I don’t know what other choice we have,” said Lola. “Unless you want to head off for no place in particular and hope to stay one jump ahead of Mr. V and his boys. They’re really going to be mad at us, now.”

  “Yeah,” said Ernie. “I don’t want to be anywhere they can find me. Unless I’ve got more guns on my side than they do on theirs.”

  “Which is exactly what’s attractive about Phule’s offer,” said Lola. “We’d be stuck on a space station, where the company isn’t necessarily my kind of people, and where we’d pretty much have to give up hustling and play by the books. And that could get dull after a few months. But with the Legion in charge of security, the Fat Chance has got more muscle than some small planets I’ve been on. The syndicate originally hired us to try to snatch Phule because they knew a direct attack wasn’t going to work. Now, it looks as if an indirect attack’s not going anywhere, either. So odds are we’d be safer here than anywhere else we can afford to get to, even if Mr. V and his boys know exactly where we are.”

  Ernie walked silently for a few paces, then stopped, and said, “That all makes sense to me. So what are we waiting for?”

  “For one thing, to make sure it’s what we really want,” said Lola. “Are you ready to take a job, even a really good one with better pay than you’d ever make hustling? Are you ready to stay in one place for the rest of your life, even if it is a first-class resort hotel and casino?”

  Ernie grunted. “You make it sound pretty good,” he said. “But is that the whole deal?”

  “What do you mean?” asked Lola.

  Ernie’s expression was, for once in his life, dead serious. “I mean, are you gonna take the deal? Are you gonna stay here? Because if you’re not, it don’t appeal to me.”

  Lola’s eyes grew wide. “Good Ghu,” she said. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think that meant …”

  “Don’t think,” said Ernie. “Just let me know. Are you gonna take Phule’s offer?”

  Lola reached out and took Ernie’s hand. “You know, in spite of all the downsides to it, I think I just might.” She smiled, and Ernie smiled back at her. Together they turned and walked to the Fat Chance Casino.

  * * *

  Qual had guided the three hunters’ all-terrain hovervan across a long stretch of semiarid country to the spot where the Zenobian claimed the most dangerous creatures of his planet could be found. In addition to the four passengers, the van was loaded down with weapons and ammunition, as well as various other supplies, purchased at Chocolate Harry’s backdoor commissary.

  Finally, near midday, Qual pulled the van to a halt in the shade of a stand of Zenobian “trees” that, except for their orange coloration, bore a disturbingly close resemblance to giant stalks of asparagus—at least to the hunters, who had previous experience with asparagus. A native of the planet, like Qual, undoubtedly considered them just ordinary trees.

  “Here is our destination,” said Qual. “There is a water hole just beyond that hill. The beasts we are hunting arouse themselves from slumber in the later afternoon and visit the water hole, then go hunting. Our notion is to set up an asylum near the water. From there the brave hunters can likely snipe at the unwitting beasts for quite some time before the inevitable raging counterattack.”

  “Inevitable?” Euston O’Better scoffed. “These weapons we’re toting may have something to say about that.”

  “They may,” said Qual, opening the van door and getting out. He turned, and added, “Then again, the beasts may not be inclined to listen.”

  A blast of superhot, desert-dry air greeted the hunters as they tumbled out behind their guide. “Whoo-eee!” said Austen Tay-Shun. “Whoever told us this was a desert world sure knew what he was talkin’ about. How do these big critters live in this kind of heat all day?”

  “As I told you, they lie in a shady spot and slumber through the worst of the heat,” said Qual. “Your visual organs will not detect one of them, this time of day. Indeed, if you detect one of them at all, this time of day, it will be through the unlucky accident of stumbling over it where it sleeps. You may have a brief period in which to regret your misfortune before you are devoured.”

  “You’re tryin’ to scare us off, aren’t you?” said L.P. Asho. He slapped the heavy weapon he had just unloaded from the hovervan’s tailgate, and added, “Well, I guess it’d work with some folks. But here’s somethin’ you better remember—those folks ain’t from Tejas!”

  “You’re not in Tejas anymore,” said Qual. “But we expend time to no end. Let us transport our supplies to the vicinity of the water hole.”

  Each of them shouldered a heavy pack—they’d spent the morning loading them, under Qual’s supervision—and headed toward a well-defined path through the asparagus trees. These gave enough shade to reduce the effect of the afternoon sun for a few moments, but soon the party was out in the open again, headed slightly downhill. Below them, the scrubby alien vegetation grew slightly thicker, betraying the presence of a source of water, although the water itself remained invisible from this distance.

  The hunters had worked up a considerable sweat when Qual finally called a halt. “From here we can survey the approaches with elegance,” he said. He pointed to the left. “In that patch of tall grasses we will erect our asylum.”

  The patch of vegetation—which, viewed close-up, had only a faint resemblance to grass—sat atop a low ridge, giving a clear view of everything below. There Qual put the hunters to work, cutting the vegetation from the center of the patch and setting it up in a thicker wall around the perimeter. In the little clearing thus created, the hunters set up poles to hold a canopy to keep off the sun, and spread blankets o
ver the stubble to allow them to sit comfortably. Toward the downhill side of the blind, Qual set up a miniature vid-eye and portable screen to give them a view of what went on by the water hole. Then they settled down to wait for the game animals he had promised.

  The three hunters watched in fascination until they began to realize that almost nothing worth watching was going on down by the water. The only creatures braving the midday sun were too small to be exciting—at least, to humans who have come across several light-years in search of Really Big Game. A xenobiologist might have found the interaction of various Zenobian species—many of which might never have been observed by anyone from off-planet—sufficiently interesting. But it was just under an hour before L.P. Asho set his weapon aside on the blanket next to him, cracked open a beer, and pulled a deck of cards out of the pocket of his shooting jacket. The three humans ordered Qual to alert them if anything worth their time showed up at the water hole, and got down to some serious poker.

  * * *

  “Come on in and take a look at this,” said Sushi. “It’ll answer a lot of questions.”

  Phule, Beeker, Rev, and the two lieutenants stepped into the crowded workshop. Most of the space was filled with equipment that, even if its purpose wasn’t immediately obvious, was at least made up of recognizable components. But in the middle of a bench toward along the back wall sat a piece of equipment that instantly drew attention to itself.

  In fact, Armstrong immediately blurted out, “What in the world is that thing?”

  It was a good question. To begin with, nobody could have mistaken it for anything of human manufacture. Its most familiar feature was what appeared to be a display screen similar to that of an Alliance computer, but its shape and proportions—a long oval in “portrait” orientation—were clearly different from those of human devices. The material of the case enclosing it was of a rough, mottled texture—more like natural rock than the smooth exteriors human designers favored. And what appeared to be its controls were neither knobs, buttons, nor sliders, but stubby bars that projected at different lengths from the top of the unit.

  “Well, Lieutenant, this is something we should have gotten a long time ago,” said Sushi. “I’m surprised nobody in Intelligence has been after us to get them some of these.”

  “Maybe so, sonny, but I’m still downright stumped,” said Rev. “How about lettin’ us in on the secret?”

  “I do believe it’s some Zenobian equivalent of a tri-vee set,” said Beeker, peering at the device. “To tell the truth, I’m rather disappointed—I thought better of the little saurians. But I suppose it was too much to hope that a technically competent race would have the good taste to forgo creating its own version of the mass media, once it had the capability.”

  “Beeker’s got it,” said Sushi. “And if it’ll make you feel any better, it looks like Flight Leftenant Qual has about as low an opinion of the Zenobian’s mass entertainment as you do of ours. He gave me this machine—their name for it translates as viewbox—last night, when I asked him about one of their popular shows. This set was supposed to be for the officers’ quarters of their little base here. But he’s the only officer, and the enlisted Zenobians have their own viewbox. Qual said he has more amusing ways to destroy brain cells than watching the stuff they show. So he didn’t see any problem in letting me borrow it for a while. Of course, it took most of today to adapt it to our power sources and add a translator to the output, but it’s mostly working, now.”

  “I follow you so far,” said Lieutenant Armstrong. “But what do you want it for? Are you going to watch whatever silly thing the Zenobians do instead of gravball?”

  “That’s not such a bad idea,” said Sushi. “I’ll add it to the list. But first I wanted to find something I heard the Zenobians talking about earlier today. I think Rev will be interested in this … Excuse me a moment while I try to get this crazy machine working again.” He turned around and began fiddling with the controls of the viewbox.

  The speaker emitted several whistles, pops, honks, and crackles, and the screen on the front of the unit began to display apparently random splotches of color. Sushi peered at it, fiddling with one of the controls, and eventually the image resolved into the recognizable close-up image of a grinning Zenobian, swaying back and forth. “Take my eggs—please!” came the mechanical voice through the speaker, followed by the sound of an audience laughing and applauding.

  “What’s that all about?” asked Rembrandt.

  “No idea,” said Sushi. “Remember, I’ve only been watching this for a couple of hours. It’s all new to me, too.” He pushed another control, and the picture changed.

  This time the view was of an outdoor scene, with two Zenobians riding at a breakneck pace on the backs of a pair of large reptilian creatures. They came to a third native, who stood by the side of the path they were following, at a point where it divided. The dismounted native pointed down one fork, and said, excitedly, “The miscreants followed yonder trail!” At this, the two mounted Zenobians directed the beasts they were riding down the indicated path.

  “That seems familiar,” said Armstrong, peering at the screen.

  “Depressingly so, in fact,” said Beeker, looking down his nose at the images.

  Sushi changed the controls again, and the image shifted to what looked like a large indoor arena, where an excited crowd of Zenobians stood on ramps surrounding a smaller group of the natives, wearing contrasting costumes of bright primary colors and running at top speed from one end of the central area to the other, knocking each other down and biting the opponent’s tails in what looked like nothing short of an all-out riot. An off-camera commentator shouted, “Garp has the nodule; he hurls it to Wafs; that worthy cradles it cleverly, avoiding the snap of Brotch! The Guardians are at a turning point!” It was easy to guess that some sort of team sport was in progress, but none of the watching humans could make out what was supposedly being passed around, let alone the object of the “game.” Perhaps the translator was at fault, or perhaps the game had hidden subtleties.

  After a few more moments of incomprehensible mayhem and even less coherent commentary, Sushi again changed the controls and brought in another “channel”—that apparently being the closest equivalent in human communications to the different settings of the viewbox. “Ah, here’s what I was looking for,” he said, and stepped back to let the others see.

  This image was radically different from any the watchers had seen so far. In fact, to everyone’s consternation, it showed not a Zenobian, but what appeared to be a human—although greatly distorted, as if scanned through a defective input device. The colors were washed out into shades of black, white, and shimmering gray. The jerky movement was accompanied by a shrill, relentlessly thumping sound track. But even the grainy, unrealistic image was clear enough that, after a moment’s glance, every eye in the room turned to look at one person. And that person stared in openmouthed disbelief at what was on the viewbox screen in front of him.

  “Wait jes’ one cotton-pickin’ minute, Sushi,” said Rev, at last. “Are you tellin’ me that these-here Zenobians are showin’ the King on their viewboxes?”

  “I’m not telling you—I’m showing you,” said Sushi. “But if I had to guess, I’d say we’re probably seeing an Old Earth broadcast that made its way across the intervening space to here, back when the Zenobians were just beginning to explore the electromagnetic spectrum—however long ago that was. We’ll have to check the light-distance between there and here to find out when they could have first seen it. But I think we’ve got the answer to the question you asked me to research, Rev. Now, at least, we know who ’L’Viz is.”

  Sushi put on his most sympathetic expression and turned to Rev. “You see, there’s no mystery at all. It’s all perfectly rational and scientific—just old signals that the Zenobians somehow received and interpreted in their own way. Sorry, Rev. I guess this is a disappointment.” He felt sorry for the poor company chaplain, who’d pinned so many hopes on the Zen
obians’ apparent veneration of ’L’Viz.

  But Rev seemed not to notice. He was still staring at the viewbox. Finally, he turned. “No mystery, Sushi?” he asked, a smile now playing on his lips. “No mystery? Why, I guess I gotta disagree with you on that, son. These here broadcasts left Old Earth countless years ago—back in the age of the King himself, as any fool can see. And somehow they traveled night and day, runnin’ all the way, just like a mystery train, tryin’ to get right here to Zenobia—just as the little folks who call this world their home was ready to receive ’em. You want to call that perfectly rational and scientific? Well maybe you believe that. But I say, the King done jes’ what he set out to do.”

  Rev turned and bowed to the officers, who all stood there openmouthed. “Now, gentlemen, if you’ll excuse me—I gotta spread word to the faithful!” And he turned on his heel and left the room.

  Beeker and Phule made coughing sounds to cover up what might have been laughter. But Sushi spread his hands, and said, “Well, there’s one more proof—it all depends on how you look at the data.”

  * * *

  There were a good dozen beer containers tossed into a corner of the shelter, and a large pile of dollars in front of Euston O’Better, when Qual caught their attention with a penetrating hiss. “Creatures approach,” he whispered.

  “Whoa,” said L.P. Asho, turning to look at the view screen. Sure enough, there was activity visible in the hollow below their hunting blind. A herd of small hopping animals with kangaroo-like forefeet was swarming around the water—it was hard to tell their exact size without some standard for comparison, but they seemed no more than a meter or so in height. Intermixed with them were a few larger creatures—horned quadrupeds, perhaps twice as tall at the shoulder, and three times longer than their height, if you counted a substantial-looking tail.

  “What are those damn things?” asked O’Better, crowding forward to examine the screen.