Phule's Paradise Part 23

The reporter and the cameraman exchanged glances. It had been impossible not to notice the lines of fatigue etched into Phule's face, though they had both been careful not to comment on it.

"Oh well." The Legionnaire commander shrugged and forced a smile. "The one thing I can't thank you enough for is your willingness to sit on this story-for a while, anyway. I know how much it must mean to you."

"No, you don't," Sydney muttered, glancing away as he took another sip of his wine.

Jennie shot him a dark glare, then turned back to the conversation.

"It's nice of you to thank us," she said easily, "but really, Willard, reporters aren't totally insensitive, no matter what you've heard-the good ones, anyway. It's easy to see that publicizing what you're doing would endanger your undercover operatives, so it's no big thing for us to hold off for a while."

"Well, Jennie," Phule said carefully, "contrary to popular belief, I'm not totally insensitive, either. What was that you were saying about my not really knowing how much this story means to you, Sydney?"

"What?" The cameraman blinked in surprise at suddenly being the focus of the conversation. "Oh ... nothing."

The Legionnaire commander leaned back in his seat, his arms folded across his chest, as he looked back and forth between his two dinner companions.

"Now, look," he said. "I've been up-front and candid with you two in this whole deal-probably more than I should have been. I don't think it's asking too much for you to return the favor. Now, what is it that I don't know about your involvement with this story?"

Uncomfortable silence hung in the air for a moment. Then the reporter shrugged her shoulders.

"Tell him, Sydney," she said.

The cameraman grimaced before he spoke.

"I guess loose lips really do sink s.h.i.+ps," he said. "All right, Captain. What I was so carelessly referring to is that both our jobs are on the line for this a.s.signment. The news director wasn't particularly convinced that there was a story here, but Jennie kept leaning on him until he agreed to send us, but on the proviso that if we don't come up with something to justify the cost of the trip, we needn't bother coming back, and whatever benefits or severance pay we had coming would be applied against the cost of the wild-goose chase."

"Why, Jennie?" Phule said.

"Oh, he just made me mad," the reporter admitted. "He acted like I was making the whole thing up to get the news service to pay for a pa.s.sion-filled vacation on Lorelei for Sydney and me. I kept trying to convince him it was a legitimate story and ... well, when he got around to making his 'take it or leave it' offer, I couldn't refuse or it would look like he was right all along."

"Interesting," the commander said. "But what I meant was, why didn't you want to tell me about this?"

Jennie shrugged. "I don't know. I guess I didn't want it to seem like you were under any obligation to us. You have a habit of taking responsibility for everything and everybody around you, Willard, and I was afraid it would come across like we were trying to play on your generosity ... or your guilt."

"Well, this a.s.signment has aged me a bit," Phule said, a ghost of a smile flitting across his face. "As somebody told me not too long ago, I figure you're both adults and capable of making your own decisions and living with the consequences. You two made the deal, and I a.s.sume you did it taking into account how much you were willing to risk against what potential losses. That makes it your business, not mine."

The reporter smiled. "Thank you, Willard. I appreciate that."

"Of course," the commander added carefully, "if it turns out that you do end up in the ranks of the unemployed, I hope you won't hesitate to let me help you find a new position. That much I'd be willing to do whether or not the story in question involved me and mine."

"We'll see." Jennie grinned impishly. "We're not dead yet."

"Just one thing, Sydney," Phule said, "if you don't mind my asking. I notice you had your holo-camera gear along, and that's fairly expensive equipment. Is it your own, or does it belong to the news service? Would you have to send it back if things went bad?"

"Oh, it's mine," the cameraman acknowledged. "It's not the newest stuff available, mind you, but I've pieced together an adequate rig over the years. I figured that just in case the time had come for me to finally strike out on my own, I should ... Excuse me, but is this someone you know, Captain? She seems to be coming this way."

The commander followed Sydney's gaze and saw a matronly woman in a loose-fitting, almost bat-wing black dress approaching their table. While she seemed somehow familiar, he couldn't quite place her in his memory. As their eyes met, however, the woman smiled her own recognition.

"Good evening, Captain Jester. May I join you?"

The voice swept away any uncertainty.

"Colonel Battleax?" Phule gulped, rising reflexively to his feet. "What are ... Please ... have a seat."

The colonel graciously accepted the chair he held for her as if it was what she had been expecting all along.

"I ... Excuse me, I don't think you've met," the commander managed, still trying to recover from the shock of Battleax's presence in the middle of an a.s.signment. "This is Jennie Higgens and Sydney Nolan."

"Ah yes, the reporter," Battleax said, smiling sweetly as the two women shook hands. "I believe we met briefly on Haskin's Planet."

"That's right," Jennie acknowledged. "Back during the ... investigation of Willard's handling of the alien invasion."

"Well, I don't think we ever met. Not to talk, anyway." Sydney interrupted, extending his own hand. "I was behind the camera that day."

"Of course," the colonel said. "I never did get a chance to thank you both for the coverage you provided. It made our job so much easier to have half the galaxy looking over our shoulder."

"Umm ... what brings you to Lorelei, Colonel?" Phule interjected, trying desperately to change the subject before things got b.l.o.o.d.y.

"Actually, you do, Captain." Battleax smiled, showing a few extra teeth. "You and your merry band of cutthroats. I think, however, our discussion of that should wait for another time-sometime, shall we say, more private? I wouldn't want to bore your guests with Legion chitchat."

"We ... uh ... were just leaving, weren't we, Sydney?" Jennie said, rising abruptly to her feet.

"That's right," the cameraman echoed, following her example. "Thanks for the dinner, Captain. Nice seeing you again, Colonel."

"That was really unnecessary, Colonel," Phule murmured as the two left. "Jennie and Sydney are okay."

"Forgive me if I don't share your love of the media, Captain," Battleax growled, her pasted-on smile slipping away, "but my own experiences with members of the fifth estate have been less than pleasant."

"So, to return to my original question," the commander said, "what are you doing on Lorelei? Forgive me, but I hadn't expected to see you-or anyone else from Headquarters, for that matter."

"I was on Brookston when I caught the media coverage of your arrival here," the colonel explained, "and realized why Blitzkrieg was so eager for me to take my vacation. Since I was having trouble figuring out what to do with my off time, anyway, I thought I'd drop by to see how things were going."

Phule made a few mental calculations and realized that to make the trip from Brookston to Lorelei by commercial transport, Battleax would have had to start her journey almost immediately upon seeing the newscast. Despite his surprise at her appearance, he was nonetheless touched by her obvious concern for himself and his troops.

"It was good of you to come," he said, "but we pretty much have things under control. I can probably get you a complimentary room, though, for the balance of your vacation. I have an 'in' with the management here, and Lorelei really is a spectacular place."

He smiled warmly, but Battleax didn't return it.

"Uh-huh," she said. "Now, tell me the rest of it, Captain. All of it. What exactly is going on here?"

Phule hesitated for a moment, then heaved a heavy sigh.

"You've heard, huh? Well, let's just say that it's been a far cry from the easy duty in paradise that the general billed this a.s.signment as."

"Could you be a bit more specific, Captain?" Battleax said, helping herself to some of the remaining wine. "Remember, I just got here."

"Well ... how much do you know so far?"

"Not a thing," the colonel said.

"But then how did you know ..."

"That things were rough?" Battleax finished. "Give me credit for a little intelligence at least, Captain Jester. It really wasn't all that hard to figure out. First, there's the fact that Blitzkrieg wouldn't give you a drink of water in a desert unless there was poison in it. That coupled with the timing of the a.s.signment-waiting until he could deal with you without going through me-made the whole thing suspect from the beginning."

She paused to take another sip of wine.

"Second ... frankly, Captain, you look like h.e.l.l. While I know you have a tendency to push yourself, you usually take better care of yourself than this-or, at least, that butler of yours does. It looks like you haven't slept in a week, and I'd be willing to bet it's because things are bad enough that you feel you have to oversee things personally, to a point where it takes priority over your own well-being. An admirable stance, perhaps, but still an indication that something's desperately wrong with this a.s.signment. And finally ..." The colonel fixed the commander with a steely gaze. "I've made a point of keeping up on the Legionnaires under your command, Captain. I review their records and your reports on a regular basis. Even in the short time I've been here, I've noticed that there are several unfamiliar faces wearing s.p.a.ce Legion uniforms and I've recognized a few of your degenerates working as hotel staff. Realizing they all view you as their ringleader and wouldn't say boo to a goose unless they cleared it with you, I thought it best to come straight to the source for my information." She leaned back in her chair. "Now it's your turn, Captain. I want to know the truth behind what's happening on this a.s.signment before I hear it from the media, for a change."

Phule made a face and shook his head ruefully. "It's a long story, Colonel."

Battleax waved for a waiter and signaled for another bottle of wine.

"I've got time," she said, settling into her chair.

Again, I am handicapped in my account by a lack of specific knowledge of the details surrounding an event or conversation which took place in my absence.

I do, however, feel I can state with some certainty that some form of the following exchange took place roughly in the time frame I am recording it here. I base this conclusion on the simple fact that Maxine Pruet is said to be a decisive leader, and it is doubtful she would leave delayed long before implementing a decision once it had been made.

"s.h.i.+t!" Laverna declared, tossing down her pencil onto the nest of work sheets and notes in front of her. Like many of her profession, she preferred the old, manual form of doodling and numeric experimentation when trying to work out a problem.

"I know you don't want to hear this, Max, but my best recommendation is to throw in the towel and eat our losses on this one."

"How so?" her employer prompted from the sofa.

Laverna tapped the table repeatedly with her finger, organizing her thoughts for several moments before she spoke.

"The time factor is the killer," she said at last. "We might be able to put together something that would hurt Rafael financially, but not in time to keep him from paying off the note to you."

"Nothing at all?"

"Well, we could try to burn the place down to keep him from turning a profit at the tables, but then you'd have to rebuild from scratch once you took over ... and figure out how to offset the bad publicity from the fire. Besides, he's probably got insurance for 'interruption of business,' so even that might not stop him."

"In any case, I don't think we want to go that far," Maxine said with a faint smile. "No, I tend to agree with you, Laverna. In fact, I arrived at much the same conclusion yesterday."

"You did?" Her advisor made no effort to hide the surprise in her voice. "Then how come you've been having me-"

"There might have been an option I overlooked," Max said. "That, and I guess I've been stalling having to say it out loud. This isn't the first time I've been outmaneuvered, but it doesn't make me any happier about running up the white flag." She rose and wandered over to the window. "I think what irritates me the most," she said, looking down at the inevitable stream of pa.s.sing tourists, "is that I can't figure out just how he managed to do it."

"That's simple enough," Laverna said as she gathered up her work sheets. "The man used his money better than you used yours."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, it's clear that he's been spreading bribe money around the staff pretty good-or, at least, better than we have. There's no way he could have pulled this off without a lot of inside information."

"You think so? That's interesting. I a.s.sumed that Huey Martin provided him with all the information he needed."

"Uh-uh. He got more information somewhere than what Huey had to sell. There have got to be other folks in this complex serving as his eyes and ears-and I don't mean the security guards."

"Speaking of that," Maxine said, "has there been any word as to the whereabouts of that bartender? The one who so effectively removed Mr. Stilman from the picture?"

"Not yet," Laverna said. "I'll tell you, it's like the man vanished into thin air. He hasn't left Lorelei on any s.h.i.+p either as pa.s.senger or as a crew member. We got that much from the watchers at the s.p.a.ceport. The thing is, though, he hasn't shown up at any hotel on or off the Strip, either."

"That's strange," Maxine said thoughtfully. "If nothing else, it should be hard to hide that hover cycle of his."

"You'd think so," her aide said. "The only thing I can figure is that he's holed up with someone-someone who's better at hiding things than we are at finding them."

"Like young Mr. Phule, for example?"

Laverna eyed her employer for a moment.

"Excuse my asking, Max, but is he going to take the blame for everything that goes wrong for us from now on?"

"I'm not getting paranoid or obsessive-not yet, anyway." Maxine smiled. "Think about it for a moment, Laverna. It makes sense. We have a network of spotters all through this s.p.a.ce station. We should be able to locate anyone in a relatively short time, yet this one gentleman who is rather memorable in appearance eludes our efforts. Now, where is our current blind spot-or, at least, where is our web the thinnest?"

"Right here at the Fat Chance," Laverna admitted.

"Correct," Max said. "Now, add to that our suspicions that the attack on Mr. Stilman was not entirely coincidental-that there is some link between our fugitive and the forces under Mr. Phule's command."

"I thought he told you that he didn't have anything to do with it."

"He may have lied," Max said, "though I somehow doubt it. What he specifically said, though, was that he didn't know anything about it. It's my guess that one of has subordinates indulged in a little independent action, just as Mr. Stilman arranged the attack on his own. Anyway, with those two pieces-our lack of information on the internal workings of the Fat Chance and the possible connection between our missing bartender and someone in the security force-I don't think it's unreasonable to conclude that he might be hiding right here, in this complex."

Laverna thought about it.

"It's possible," she said. "It still bothers me, though, that they used free-lance help instead of going after Stilman themselves. That doesn't make sense."

"It may have been to keep their own hands clean if anything went wrong," Max said. "Besides, young Mr. Phule hasn't been averse to hiring outside specialists before. Look at the computer auditors he sneaked in on us."

"That's true," her aide said. "You know, that's something else that's been bothering me."

"What's that?"

"Well, for some things, like the computer jockeys, they've been going outside, but for the crew that was working the stage at the showroom, they used their own people. I would have thought that they'd hire some specialists for that, too." She shook her head. "Oh well, I guess it's just that he had some show business people in the Legion, but n.o.body who really knew computers."

"Just a moment, Laverna." Max was suddenly alert. "Say that again."

"What? You mean about there not being any computer experts in the s.p.a.ce Legion?"

"No, before that. You said he must have some show business people in his force."

"That's right. So?"