The Magnificent Wilf

by Gordon R. Dickson

  “I am the Prar’Rhu—or Proto-rhu of the Rhu root system here on Mul’rahr, as you strangers would doubtless put it,” announced the toadstooloid lips. The eyes swiveled to take in everyone else present.

  “Children, children!” it boomed. “Can’t I even take a little nine-thousand-year nap without all of you getting into a fight with each other? What is it this time?” One of the Flals stepped forward and began to whistle rapidly, staring at the Wockii and the Colonel. The eyed toadstooloid, which had been watching the Flal, swiveled again toward the distant Wockii.

  “For shame!” boomed the enormous lips. The Wockii all immediately fell on their faces. Tom stepped forward to the toadstooloid with the eyes.

  “Excuse me,” he said, “possibly I might be useful in explaining the situation. I am Ambassador-at-Large and Assassin Tom Parent, and here beside me is my Consort, Lucy Parent. We are here with the blessing of the Sector Council, composed of the most advanced races in this Sector of the galaxy. Those insectoid beings you see below the slope there are the Skikana—”

  “I know the Skikana,” boomed the toadstooloid with the lips, “they were wandering tribesmen, when I decided to take my nap. They appear to have developed rapidly since then.”

  Down below the slope, the ranked Skikana moved uneasily.

  “Indeed they have,” said Tom, “in numbers as well as technology—so much so that when the Sector Council ordered a survey of Mul’rahr, only a few hundred years ago, the Skikana presented themselves as the dominant life form on this world, the Wockii as the next sub-dominant, and allowed the Sector survey to make the error of classifying Flals as semi-intelligent at best, with no promise of ever developing a civilization.”

  “Tut-tut!” boomed the lips. “I see that I shall have to take care of some things around here, before resuming my nap.”

  “Resuming your nap may not be necessary,” said Tom. “May I ask you a question—a simple question?”

  “Any question at all,” said the lipped toadstooloid, graciously.

  “It’s just this,” said Tom. “Might I inquire of you what the relation happens to be … of mass to energy?”

  “Not at all. A simple question!” boomed the toadstooloid. “As anyone who has devoted even a few millennia of thought to the question must realize at once, E equals em cee squared. Or, energy equals mass times the constant, squared—in the present and immediate universe only, of course. I assume you were only asking about the relationship as it exists in the present and immediate universe?”

  “I was,” said Tom.

  “Very wise,” boomed the Prar’Rhu. “Because that relationship becomes somewhat more complicated when we consider an infinite series of parallel universes in an enfolded hyperspace. Are you planning to make use of the relationship in any immediate, practical, nuclear sense, may I ask? Because, if so, I could perhaps warn you of certain dangers—”

  “No, I was not,” said Tom. “I asked the question only as a preliminary to introducing you to the fact of a whole galaxy of different, intelligent and educated races, some of them capable of conversing with you on your own Civilized level.”

  “A whole—” The lips stopped, trembling slightly with emotion. “You say, intelligent, educated races capable of conversing …” The Prar’Rhu was clearly unable to continue. Its half-dozen eyes on the taller toadstooloid blinked rapidly.

  “I mean just that,” said Tom sympathetically. “I base my knowledge on a briefing that was given me. Your hundreds of thousands of years of loneliness are over. No longer will you need to take ten-thousand-year naps to escape unbearable and sanity-threatening boredom. No more will you be forced to exist only in the society of your intellectual inferiors. At last you will be able to communicate with minds the equal in capacity and accumulated wisdom with your own—”

  “Never!” screamed the Skikana Colonel, frothing at the jaws. He turned around and shouted down the slope at Jahbat. “Never mind the Prepare to Advance! Never mind the Advance! Sound the Charge! Now!” Jahbat wheeled about to repeat the order.

  “You shall not!” thundered the toadstooloid lips. Barely had the thunder of that voice died away on the surrounding slopes and hills when hundreds of thousands of little purple puffballs began to sprout around the feet of the Skikana soldiery, and an enticing, spicy fragrance filled the air.

  With wild cries, the Skikana soldiers threw aside their harps and weapons and fell upon the purple puffballs, cramming them into their jaws and passing quickly into a foolishly grinning stupor.

  “No!” cried the Colonel, staggering, torn between his military pride and the enticing odor of the puffballs that had sprouted at his feet. “Get up … Charge! Get up, I say!” He was almost weeping. “Get up and fi …” The scent of the puffballs overcame him. He collapsed on the ground and tore into those within arm’s reach like a starving man.

  “But what’s going to happen to the Skikana soldiers now?” asked Lucy, later, as she and Tom strolled from the edge of the concrete landing pad out toward their spaceship. The Skikana soldiery, including the officers and the Colonel, had escorted them back to the fort, marching as if hypnotized by the orders of the Prar’Rhu. “They’re addicted to the toadstooloid, and—”

  “No more,” said Tom. “When I was in the fort just now to take our official leave of the Colonel, I found the fort kitchens had, of course, whipped up a large meal of toadstooloid, as was customary for the returning troops. However, to a soldier, the Skikana turned their heads away weakly and couldn’t stand the sight of the food. They ate battle rations instead.”

  “Aha!” said Lucy. “The Prar’Rhu put something more in those puffballs than just what was necessary to stop the Skikana from fighting and get us escorted back to the fort.” She peered ahead. In the brilliant sunlight, the shadow at the base of the spaceship was almost too dark to see into; but she thought she saw several Skikana figures there, waiting by the air-lock ramp.

  “Yes. The Colonel realized that,” said Tom. “That’s why he asked to see me alone just now before we left. He offered to make a clean breast of the facts here for Interstellar publication, if I would help explain to the Sector Council that the original addiction wasn’t the fault of the Skikana—which it wasn’t. Actually, it was an accident having to do with the Skikana capacity for food—what’s the matter?”

  “Tom!” Lucy clutched at his arm. “Isn’t that Captain Jahbat and a couple of other Skikana officers waiting for us at the ship?”

  “What? Oh, yes,” said Tom. “I was expecting him.” He called ahead in Skikana: “Good afternoon, Captain!”

  “Good afternoon, Sir Ambassador!” replied Jahbat, briskly, as Tom and Lucy came up into the shadow at the foot of the ship. “I believe that before you leave you and I have some little matter to discuss.”

  Lucy’s heart sank. Abruptly, she remembered the competition model Skikana handgun which had been brought to Tom in the fort, earlier.

  “Ah, yes,” Tom was saying easily. “Do you have it with you?”

  “Right here, sir!” said Jahbat. Another Skikana officer stepped forward with the dish containing the handgun. The handgun’s twin, Lucy saw, was clipped to Jahbat’s harness, waiting.

  “Tom!” she cried urgently in English. “Don’t touch it!”

  “Certainly, my dear,” said Tom in Skikana, smoothly. “It will be a pleasure to encounter the prospect of being hand-gunned and devoured by such an eminent opponent as Captain Jahbat.” In English he added hastily, “Stop worrying, Lucy! He must be an excellent shot, or he wouldn’t have won that medal!”

  Tom took the handgun with his left hand, since Lucy was still holding his right arm.

  “Are you crazy?” snapped Lucy in English. “Do you think I want you killed and devoured? Even by an excellent shot? Tom, come back!”

  But Tom had already pulled himself away from her and was moving off with Jahbat and the Skikana to place themsplves for the duel.

  “Tom!” said Lucy, following. “Stop this! You just as
good as said yourself he was bound to be a better shot than you! What’s the matter? Have you gone completely out of your senses?”

  “Not at all,” called Tom back in English. He had now taken up his position facing Jahbat and was waiting for the signal to fire. “Don’t get between us now, Lucy. It doesn’t matter if he can outdraw me if he misses me, does it? Stay there. I’ll be right back.”

  “But you said—” These words were interrupted as a presiding officer gave the command to fire. Jahbat’s reflexes were too fast for Lucy’s eyes to follow. One moment he was standing there. The next, his handgun was in his grasp and a pale lance of fire was driving toward Tom.

  It passed some inches above Tom’s head. Lucy stared. Tom had not even drawn his own handgun. “Tom! Shoot!” cried Lucy.

  “Certainly not!” he called back in English, annoyedly. “Please, Lucy, be quiet. You’re disrupting the order of the occasion with all this talk.”

  Jahbat had not stirred. With the typical unshakable pride and courage of the Skikana, he was standing waiting.

  “Sir!” he called to Tom. “I believe you have a return shot coming.”

  “That is quite correct, Captain,” Lucy heard Tom reply through her whirling confusion. “However, I do not believe I will take it at this moment.”

  It was an almost physiological impossibility for a Skikana to show fear. However, it seemed to Lucy that Captain Jahbat paled somewhat. Evidently there were limits even to Skikana courage, and waiting eternally for a possible return shot, which he would simply have to stand still and receive without fighting back, was testing even the brave Captain’s nerve.

  “No, sir?” Jahbat answered now. “May I ask when you do intend to?”

  “I’m not sure,” replied Tom, idly. “Possibly the next time I come back to Mul’rahr. Possibly not even in our respective lifetimes. In fact, the more I think of it and busy as I am, the more I think I’ll probably never be able to get around to it. I apologize for that.”

  “Not at all,” said Jahbat with extreme courtesy, bowing. He raised his handgun and saluted Tom. The other officers did likewise. “It has been an honor to know you, Sir Ambassador and Assassin.”

  “Well, that’s finished,” said Tom, coming back to Lucy. “Let’s get aboard so the ship can take off.”

  He patted a pocket attached to his weapons harness as he walked up the ramp. Lucy walked in ominous silence at his side.

  “Ah, there you are, sir,” he said to the ship’s first officer, waiting at the air-lock. “My compliments to the ship’s Captain, and will he take off as soon as possible?”

  “You men can go to your own quarters,” he said to the Hugwos who had followed them aboard. “The Consort Lucy and I will be settling down for the return trip.” He watched them file out of the Imperial Lounge and shut the door behind them.

  “Loyal beings,” he remarked to Lucy. “But it’s simply not good policy to let anyone but you see where I hide the written admission by the Colonel of the facts behind the situation here.”

  “I suppose not,” said Lucy between her teeth.

  “You realize how well we’ve come out of all this?” he asked, turning back to Lucy. “Not only do I have the Colonel’s signed admission, but I was able to get an—unofficial, of course—option from the leading Flal to buy the Flal futures. They’ll probably more than reimburse our race for the worthlessness of the Wockii futures. And you remember how the Prar’Rhu promised us his eternal friendship, which can’t help but be valuable to our Race in the future—since that Being is a biochemical synthesist with skill beyond imagination—” He broke off, staring at her.

  “Lucy, what’s wrong?”

  “You!” cried Lucy, fighting down the temptation to kick him or hit him with something. “What do you mean, getting in a duel, when I called and pleaded with you not to do it? What do you mean trying to get yourself killed? What if Jahbat hadn’t missed?”

  “But he had to!” protested Tom. He backed off a couple of steps just to be on the safe side. Lucy followed like a panther about to spring. “Lucy, you don’t understand. The Skikana are proud of their honor being without stain. ‘—Never merciful in victory, never resentful in defeat …’ Remember what Jahbat told us in the beginning? The chance to challenge had been offered. I couldn’t leave the planet without dueling him. But good Skikana manners forbade that he should try to kill me after I had defeated them, here on Mul’rahr. It might have looked like sour grapes. He had very deliberately to avoid trying to kill me in the duel. That’s why I refused to shoot back. It would have been no better than murder.”

  Lucy stopped approaching him. Tom also stopped, feeling a little safer.

  “To say nothing of the fact,” he added, hastily, “that I have now stymied all future challenges to a duel. I can say that I can fight no one until my present duel with Jahbat is completed.”

  “But that makes it even worse!” Lucy burst out. “You knew there was no danger, and you let me stand out there and worry. And you told the Colonel earlier I wasn’t trustworthy! Oh, I could kill you myself! I could—”

  “Wait!” yelped Tom, as she started to advance on him again. “Wait! You know I trust you—”

  “You don’t.”

  “Didn’t you read what I wrote on your credentials just before the Skikana attacked?” said Tom. “How could I trust you any more than that? I left it all up to you if anything happened to me.”

  “What do you mean you wrote—?” Lucy ripped open her belt-purse, snatched out her credential papers and unfolded them. “If you’ve done something else—”

  Her voice faded. She was staring at Tom’s handwriting. “To all Assassins’ Guild Officers . . .” she read aloud, “the individual presenting this is not a wilf, but my Consort Lucy, on whom falls the duty of completing a mission in which I have just been slain. I charge all Guild officials and members with the obligation to which I am entitled, to assist her in completing that mission in both our names, stating that I have the utmost trust and faith in her capabilities to do so. Thomas Parent, Apprentice and Guild Member ...”

  “You see,” said Tom, “all the time I did—”

  Lucy flung herself upon him. Prepared for attack rather than affection, Tom lost his balance and went over backwards onto the deep rug that covered the deck in the Imperial Lounge. Lucy fell on top of him.

  “It’s very undignified,” he managed to mutter, a few moments later, “for an Ambassador, to say nothing of an Assassin, to be on his back on the floor—”

  “Oh, shut up!” said Lucy, kissing him.

  Chapter 16

  “What?” said Tom.

  “Tom!” said Lucy, exasperatedly. “You heard him perfectly. You’d just finished telling Mr. Valhinda that not only was the situation on Mul’rahr straightened out; but the matter of the worthless Wockii Futures mistakenly bought by our Earth investors had been taken care of; and he said ‘I’m afraid not.’ You heard him perfectly.”

  “I didn’t say ‘What, question mark,’ ” said Tom. “I said ‘What, exclamation point.’ ”

  “Well, it certainly sounded like ‘What, question mark.’ ” said Lucy.

  “Exclamation point!”

  “Question mark!”

  Mr. Valhinda coughed politely.

  Tom and Lucy looked at him and then at each other.

  “Well,” said Lucy, “maybe it was an exclamation point, after all—that just sounded to me like a question mark.”

  “Come to think of it,” Tom said, “I might have pronounced it just a bit like a question mark.”

  He and Lucy reached out toward each other and solemnly hooked little fingers together for a moment.

  “Now, on other topics,” said Mr. Valhinda; and Tom and Lucy gave him all their attention. The three of them were seated in a Conversation Room of Mr. Valhinda’s Council Representative’s quarters. It was a pleasant room with a thick rug of deep green; and remarkably Earth-like (reconstructed just for this talk with them, wondered Lucy?) with overst
uffed, comfortable furniture, in shades of various other earth colors to match the carpet. Along one side of the room a rank of tall windows flanked them, admitting the light from a cheerfully pink sun that was a duplicate of the star over Mr. Valhinda’s home planet.

  Mr. Valhinda went on, “I believe you might as well know the facts now as later.”

  “What are the facts?” said Lucy, crisply, before Tom could say anything more.

  “The facts are,” said Mr. Valhinda, “first, our Council and the advanced races of this Sector welcomed the fellowship of the Prar’Ruhr joyously into our fellowship—though it must be admitted that such an experienced and capable mind undoubtedly will go far beyond us; and wind up finding intellectual companionship with the truly great minds closer to the center of our galaxy. For this, we are all grateful to you two for discovering such a supermind in our little, outlying galactic Sector. In saying this, of course, I speak for everyone on the Council. However, your success on Mul’rahr has, I’m afraid, merely further tangled and confused the issue as far as the home world of your Race is concerned. You remember I spoke to you about the red tape and the delay involved in dealing with matters?”

  “I remember,” said Tom, grimly.

  “Well, just as I said then,” went on Mr. Valhinda, “down in the bureaucratic center of galactic paperwork, your latest achievement with the denizens of Mul’rahr has been noted down, assigned an order in which it will be dealt with, and it will be chasing the numbers of your temporary control of the Jaktal Empire, which is in turn chasing the numbers of the stock dealings of the investor Sharks here on Cayahno; our best estimate now is that it will be closer to eight hundred of your years—”

  “Eight hundred—” said Lucy.

  “I’m afraid so,” said Mr. Valhinda. “—Eight hundred years before the whole matter is ironed out, as the three items are all considered in relation to each other, and an understanding reached by those who must see that the regulations of the galaxy are respected by all Races allowed into galactic civilization.”