Retief and the Rascals Read Online Free PDF

"You boys'll hafta excuse me." He rose ponderously. "I
gotta go—to see to duh maintenance o' law and order, I mean, before word gets
out duh conference is falling apart. Got some unsavory elements here in
Bloortown might wanna take a'vantage and all. Also, I got a distribution o'
good honest graft to supervise. Ta."
     
                "The wretch!" Magnan spat when Wim was
well out of earshot. "After accepting a no-strings grant of twenty-five
million guck—the highlight of His Ex's Embassy to Bloor—he callously refers to
it as 'graft'!"
     
            "But he did say
'honest' graft," Retief pointed out.
     
                "Of course!" Magnan rejected the
rationalization. "All was carried out in strict agreement with GFU policy
as well as Sector Regs!"
     
                "You can't really blame an unsophisticated
ward politician for getting confused," Retief suggested. "It's
exactly the way he's been operating since the first time he delivered the vote
from a two-block sector of Bloor City in return for control of the choice paper
routes."
     
                "There are of course parallels between
interplanetary do-gooding and crooked politics," Magnan conceded.
"But after all, the basic Laws of Nature are 'Dog eat smaller dog', and
"What's in it for me?'"
     
                One of the larger local ward-heelers, timing his
move carefully, shoved his chair back suddenly. He had been miming
preoccupation with bending spoons into circles with which to play quoits,
employing a silver candlestick as target. Magnan tripped over the abruptly
intrusive furniture and uttered a sharp, "Ow! That hurt, you damned clumsy
boor! Or, excuse me, sir, did I disturb your vandalism—oops!—I mean your jolly
game?" Then recovering his élan: "Pray proceed and I'll get out of
your way.
     
                "Damn right," the hulking lout
muttered. "Yer spoiling my aim. Cull and I got duh punchbowl bet on dis
round!" He elbowed Magnan sharply, not quite breaking a rib, as the
X-rays later attested, and wrapped a long soup-spoon around his ankle-like
wrist.
     
                "Not bad," he conceded, admiring the
shiny bracelet.
     
                "Guess I'll just incorporate duh bauble
inna my already preddy gaudy, I gotta admit, lifestyle. Par me, Cull, I gotta
go and be sure old Wim cuts me in fer a full share. Hang loose, and don't let
no lousy scruples louse up yer career."
     
                "Did you near what he said?" Magnan
inquired of Retief. "'No lousy scruples', he said, and do you know, Jim, I
think perhaps that's exactly what's been retarding my career development! Could
it be ...? 'Out of the mouths of babes,' you know." After a moment's
thought he resumed:
     
                "I might cite the present fiasco as an
example; rather than treacherously encourage Hy, quite sub rosa, of
course, to broadcast His Ex's folly in not only recognizing the local mob
leader as de facto government here on Bloor, but in going to press for de
jure recognition, and thus to pressure Sector to recognize the regime as
qualified under GFU, thus to initiate the shipment of solid gold bedsteads on a
scale unheard of since the post-Persian Gulf era! I abetted His Ex's
extravagant idiocy, by keeping mum, thereby sharing his culpability! I stand
astonished at my own nobility. I could have scored points at Sector, and even
at the Department itself, had I exposed the folly and offered in its place a
carefully tailored program of spot-subornation to eliminate the scourge
fattening itself on the inoffensive Bloorian electorate!"
     
                "Certainly you could have," Retief
agreed. "But you'd have been unable to live with yourself if you'd
advanced your career at the expense of saving the Terran taxpayer a few zillion
guck and preserving the lives of twenty million Bloorian peasants."
     
                "True," Magnan murmured. "One can
hardly