“Look at the gun even now being aimed at my Grand Cross of the Legion d’Cosme,” Ikk snapped. “I assume you know a Terran power pistol when it’s pointed between your eyes!”
Longspoon’s face sagged. “A Browning Mark XXX,” he gasped.
Hish canted an eye to look at Retief. Retief said nothing.
“Still,” Ikk went on, “you can always write your memoirs—under a pseudonym of course, the name Longspoon having by then acquired a Galaxy-wide taint—”
“I’ll not go!” Longspoon’s Adam’s apple quivered with indignation. “I’ll stay here until this is covered up—or, rather, until I’m able to clarify the situation!”
“Kindly advise the ambassador this his good friend Ikk intends to hang him,” Retief instructed Hish.
“Lies!” Ikk screeched in Terran. “All lies! Archie and I have sucked the Sourball of Eternal Chumship!”
“I’ll not stir an inch!” Longspoon quavered. “My mind is made up!”
“Let’s have a little action, Ikk,” Retief ordered. “I can feel the first twitch coming on.”
“You wouldn’t dare,” Ikk keened faintly. “My loyal troops would tear you wheel from wheel . . .”
“But you won’t be here to see it.” Prodding Hish ahead of him, Retief went up to the desk, leaned on it, put the gun to Ikk’s central inlay. “Now,” he said.
Behind him there was a rustle, a wheeze of effort—
He stepped back, whirled in time to see a chair wielded by the ambassador an instant before it crashed down across his head.
* * *
“Ah,” Ikk purred, like a knife sawing through corn husks. “Our rabble-rouser is now in position to see matters in a new light . . .” He made rattling noises in tribute to the jest. Retief, strapped into the same chair with which Longspoon had crowned him, many loops of stout cord restraining his arms, held his headpiece half turned away from the lamp which had been placed to glare into his oculars. A pair of heavy-armed Voion interrogation specialists stood by, implements ready. Hish was parked in a corner, striving to appear inconspicuous. Longspoon, lapels awry, hooked a finger under the rope knotted about his neck.
“I . . . I don’t understand, Your Omnivoracity,” he quavered. “What’s the nature of the ceremony I’m to take part in?”
“I promised you’d be elevated to a high post,” Ikk snapped. “Silence, or we’ll settle for a small informal ritual right here in your office.” He rolled over to confront Retief. “Who supplied the nuclear weapons with which you slaughtered my innocent, fun-loving, primitively armed freedom fighters? The Terrans, no doubt? A classic double cross.”
“The Terrans supplied nothing but big ideas,” Retief confided, “and you Voion got all those.”
“A claw-snap for their ideas.” Ikk clicked his claws in discharge of the obligation. “You imagine I intended to conduct the planet’s business with a cold Terran nose in all my dealings, carping at every trifling slum-clearance project that happened to involve the disassembly of a few thousand Sub-Voion villagers? Hah! Longspoon very generously supplied sufficient equipment to enable me to launch the Liberation; his usefulness ended the day the black banner of United Voionhood went up over Ixix!” He turned back to Retief. “Now, you will at once supply full information on rebel troop dispositions, armaments, unit designations—”
“Why ask him about troop dispositions, Ikk?” one of the interrogators asked. “Every Quopp on the planet’s headed this way; we won’t have any trouble finding them—”
“It’s traditional,” Ikk snapped. “Now shut up and let me get on with this!”
“I thought we were the interrogators,” the other Voion said sullenly. “You stick to your prime-ministering and let Union Labor do their job—”
“Hmmmph. I hope the Union will enter no objection if my good friend Hish assists with the chore in the capacity of technical adviser?” He canted an ocular at the disguised Groaci. “What techniques would you recommend as being the most fun as well as most effective?”
“Whom, I?” Hish stalled. “Why, wherever did you get an idea like that . . . ?”
“To keep them occupied,” Retief said quickly in Groaci. “To remember which side of the bread substitute has the ikky-wax on it.”
“What’s that?” Ikk waggled his antennae alertly at Retief. “What did you say?”
“Just invoking the Worm in her own language,” Retief clarified.
“What language is that?”
“Worman, of course.”
“Oh yes. Well, don’t do it any more—”
“Ikk!” Hish exclaimed. “A most disturbing thought has just come to me . . .”
“Well, out with it.” Ikk tilted his eyes toward the Groaci.
“Ah—er . . . I hardly know how to phrase it . . .”
Ikk rolled toward him. “I’ve yet to decide just how to deal with you, Hish; I suggest you endear yourself to me immediately by explaining what these hems and haws signify!”
“I was thinking . . . that is, I hadn’t thought . . . I mean, have you happened to think . . .”
Ikk motioned his torturers over. “I warn you, Hish—you’ll tell me what this is all about at once, or I’ll give my Union men a crack at some overtime!”
As Hish engaged the Voion in conversation, Retief twisted his arm inside the fitted armor sheath, slipped his hand free of the gauntlet; the confining rope fell away. He reached to the pouch still slung at his side, lifted the flap, took out a small jar of thick amber fluid.
“Awwwwkk!” Ambassador Longspoon pointed at him, eyes goggling. “Help! It’s liquid smashite! He’ll blow us all to atoms—”
Ikk and his troops spun on their wheels; one Voion scrabbled at a holster, brought up a gun as the jar arched through the air, smashed at his feet; a golden puddle spread across the rug in an aroma of pure Terran clover honey. There was a moment’s stunned silence.
“Sh—shoot him!” Ikk managed. The Voion with the gun dropped the weapon, dived for the fragrant syrup; an instant later, both interrogators were jackknifed over the honey, quivering in ecstasy, their drinking organs buried in nectar a thousand times stronger than the most potent Hellrose. Ikk alone still resisted, his antennae vibrating like struck gongs. He groped, brought up a gun, wavered, dithered, then with a thin cry dropped it and dived for the irresistible honey.
Retief shook the ropes from his arms, undid the straps and stood.
“Well done, General,” he said. “I think that concludes this unfortunate incident in Quopp history. Now you and I had better have that little private chat you mentioned earlier . . .”
Thirteen
It was almost dawn. Ambassador Longspoon, freshly shaved and arrayed in a crisp breakfast hour informal dickey in puce and ocher stripes, stared glumly across the width of his platinum desk at Retief, now back in mufti. Beside him, Colonel Underknuckle rattled a sheet of paper, cleared his throat, beetled his eyebrows.
“The report indicates that after the accused was seen with the bomb—just before being reported absent without leave—a cursory inspection of his quarters revealed, among other curiosities, the following: a dozen pairs of hand-tooled polyon undergarments with the monogram `L,’ absent for some weeks from the wardrobe of Your Excellency; three cases of aged Pepsi from the ambassadorial private stock; a voluminous secret correspondence with unnamed subversive elements; a number of reels of high-denomination credit reported missing from the Budget and Fiscal Office; and a collection of racy photos of unfertilized ova.”
“Gracious,” Magnan murmured. “Did you find all those things yourself, Fred?”
“Of course not,” the military attaché snapped. “The Planetary Police turned them up.”
“What’s this?” Longspoon frowned. “Considering subsequent events, I hardly think we can enter their findings as evidence. Let’s confine ourselves to the matter of the bomb, and the irregularities at the port—and of course, the AWOL.”
“Hmmmph! Seems a pity to waste perfectly good evidence . . .”
“Mr. Ambassador,” Magnan piped. “I’m sure it’s all just an unfortunate misunderstanding. Perhaps Retief wasn’t at the port at all . . .”
“Well?” Longspoon waited, eyes boring into Retief.
“I was there,” Retief said mildly.
“But—but, maybe it wasn’t really a bomb he had,” Magnan offered.
“It was a bomb, all right,” Retief conceded.
“Well, in that case,” Longspoon began—
“Ah—gentlemen, if I may put in a word . . . ?” General Hish, minus his Voion trappings and dapper in a dun-colored hip-cloak and jeweled eye-shields, hitched his chair forward. “The bomb . . . ah . . . it was, er, that is to say, I, ah . . .”
“Yes, yes, get on with it, General,” Longspoon snapped. “I’ve a number of other questions to ask you as soon as this distasteful business is cleared up.”
“It was my bomb,” Hish whispered.
“Your bomb?” Underknuckle and Longspoon said in chorus.
“I, ah, had been led astray by evil companions,” Hish said, arranging his mandibles at angles indicative of deprecation. “That is, I had supplied the infernal machine to a group whom I understood intended to employ it to er, ah, carry out patriotic measures directed against reactionary elements. Little did I suspect that it was the Terran Embassy which was thus so ungenerously characterized. At the last moment, learning of the full intent of these insidious schemers, I, um, advised Mr. Retief of its whereabouts—”