"While 'Golly' and 'Wow!' are perhaps less elegant effusions than one might logically expect from an a.s.semblage of senior career diplomats," he said sternly, but with a redeeming twinkle in his small, red-rimmed eyes, "I'll overlook the lapse this time on the basis of your obvious shock at receiving such glad tidings after your own abysmal failures to produce any discernible progress."

"Heavens, sir, may we know the name of this messiah?" Magnan chirped. "When do we get to meet him?"

"Curious that you should employ that particular term with reference to Hoobrik," Clawhammer said complacently. "At this moment, the guru is meditating in the mountains, surrounded by his chelas, or disciples, known as Tsuggs in the local patois."

"Did you say... Hoobrik?" Magnan queried uncertainly. "Goodness, what a coincidence that he should have the same name as that ruffian of a bandit chief who had the unmitigated effrontery to send one of his strong-arm men to threaten Your Excellency!"

Clawhammer's pink features deepened to a dull magenta which clashed sharply with his lime-green early-late-mid-afternoon hemi-demi-semi-informal seersucker d.i.c.key-suit. "I fear, Magnan," he said in a tone like a tire iron striking flesh, "that you've absorbed a number of erroneous impressions. His Truculence, Spiritual Leader Hoobrik, dispatched an emissary, it's true, to propose certain accommodations sphere-of-influence-wise; but to proceed from that circ.u.mstance to an inference that I have yielded to undue pressures is an unwarranted speculative leap!"

"Possibly I just misinterpreted his messenger's phraseology, sir," Magnan said with a tight little smile. "It didn't seem to me that 'foreign bloodsuckers' and 'craven paper-pushers' sounded all that friendly."

" 'IPBMs may fry our skins, but words will never hurt us,' eh, sir?" the Econ Officer piped brightly, netting himself a stab of the Amba.s.sadorial eye.

"Still, it's rather strong language," Colonel Saddlesore spoke up to fill the conversational gap. "But I daresay you put the fellow in his place, eh, Mr. Amba.s.sador?"

"Why, as to that, I've been pondering the precisely correct posture to adopt vis-a-vis the Tsuggs, protocol-wise. I confess for a few moments I toyed with the idea of a beefed-up 804-B: Ma.s.sive Dignity, with overtones of Leashed Ire; but cooler counsels soon prevailed."

"How about a 764, sir?" the Econ Officer essayed: "Amused Contempt, with just a hint of Unpleasant Surprises in the Offing?"

"Too subtle," Colonel Saddlesore grunted. "What about the old standby, 26-A?"

"Oh, the old 'Threat to Break Off Talks' ploy, eh, Wilbur? Embellished with a side issue of Tableshape Dispute, I a.s.sume?"

"Gentlemen!" Clawhammer called the conference to heel. "You forget that the date of the elections is rushing toward us! We've no time for traditional maneuvers. The problem is simple: how best to arrive at a meeting of the minds with the guru."

"Why not just call him in and offer to back him in a take-over, provided he plays ball?" the PR Chief proposed bluntly.

"I a.s.sume, Irving," Clawhammer said into the shocked silence, "that what you actually meant to suggest was that we give His Truculence a.s.surances of Corps support in his efforts to promote Oberonian welfare, in the event of his securing the confidence of the electorate, as evinced by victory at the polls, of course."

"Yeah, something like that," Irving muttered, sliding down in his chair.

"Now," Clawhammer said, "the question remains, how best to tender my compliments to His Truculence, isolated as he is in his remote fastness..."

"Why, simple enough, sir," Magnan said. "We just send a messenger along with an invitation to tea. Something impressive in a gold-embossed, I'd suggest."

"I understand this fellow Hoobrik has ten thousand bloodthirsty cutthroats-ah, that is, wisdom-hungry students-at his beck and call," the Econ Officer contributed. "They say anybody who goes up there comes back with his tail cropped."

"Small hazard, since we Terries have no tails," Magnan sniffed.

"I've got a funny feeling they'd figure out something else to crop," Oscar retorted sharply.

"Am I to infer, Magnan, you're volunteering to convey the bid?" Clawhammer inquired blandly.

"Me, sir?" Magnan paled visibly. "Heavens, I'd love to-except that I'm under observation for possible fourth-degree cocoa burns."

"Fourth-degree burns?" Colonel Saddlesore wondered aloud. "I'd like to see that. I've heard of first, second, and third degree, but-"

"The symptoms are invisible to lay inspection," Magnan snapped. "Additionally, my asthma is aggravated by high alt.i.tudes."

"By gad," Colonel Saddlesore whispered to his neighbor, "I'd like a chance to confront these fellows..."

"Better wear your armor, Wilbur," his confidant replied. "From all reports, they weigh in at three hundred pounds, and wear six-foot cutla.s.ses, with which they lay about them freely when aroused. And they say the sight of a Terry arouses them worse than anything."

"...but, as I was about to say, my duties require that I hole up in my office for the foreseeable future," the Colonel finished.

"Cutla.s.ses, you say?" the Econ Officer p.r.i.c.ked up his ears. "Hmm. Might be a market here for a few zillion up-to-date hand weapons-for police use only, of course."

"Capital notion, Depew." The Political Officer nodded approvingly. "Nothing like a little firepower to bring out the natural peace-loving tendencies of the people."

"Now, gentlemen-let us avoid giving voice to any illiberal doctrines," Clawhammer said sharply. "Our only motive, let us remember, is to bring the liberated populace to terms with the political realities-in this case, the obvious need for a man on horseback-or should I say a Tsugg on Vorchback?" The Terran envoy smiled indulgently at his whimsy.

"I have a question, Mr. Amba.s.sador," Retief said. "Since we're here to supervise free elections, why don't we let the Oberonians work out their own political realities?"

Clawhammer looked blank.

"Just-ah-how do you mean?" the Political Officer prompted uneasily.

"Why don't we let them nominate whoever they want, and vote for any candidate they like?" Retief explained.

"I suggest you forget these radical notions, young fellow," Clawhammer said sternly. "These free elections will be conducted in the way that free elections have always been conducted. And now that I've considered the matter, it occurs to me it might be valuable experience for you to pay the proposed call on His Truculence. It might serve to polish your grasp of protocol a trifle."

"But, sir," Magnan spoke up. "I need Mr. Retief to help me do the Consolidated Report of Delinquent Reports Report-"

"You'll have to manage alone, I fear, Magnan. And now, back to the ramparts of democracy, gentlemen! As for you Retief..." The Amba.s.sador fixed the latter with a poniard-sharp eye: "I suggest you comport yourself with a becoming modesty among the Tsuggs. I should dislike to have a report of any unfortunate incident."

"I'll do my best to see that no such report reaches you, sir," Retief said cheerfully.

3.

The green morning sun of Oberon shone down warmly as Retief, mounted on a wiry Struke, a slightly smaller and more docile cousin of the fierce Vorch tamed by the Tsuggs, rode forth from the city gates. Pink and yellow borms warbled in the treetops; the elusive sprinch darted from gra.s.s tuft to gra.s.s tuft. The rhythmic whistling of doody-bugs crying to their young supplied a somnolent backdrop to the idyll.

Retief pa.s.sed through a region of small, tidy farms, where st.u.r.dy Doob peasants gaped from the furrows. The forest closed in as the path wound upward into the foothills. In midafternoon he tethered the Struke and lunched beside a waterfall on pate sandwiches and sparkling Bacchus Black from a cold-flask. He was just finishing off his mousse eclair when a two-foot-long steel arrow whistled past his ear to bury itself six inches in the dense blue wood of a nunu tree behind him.

Retief rose casually, yawned, stretched, took out a vanilla dope stick and puffed it alight, at the same time scanning the underbrush. There was a quick movement behind a clump of foon bushes; a second bolt leaped past him, almost grazing his shoulder, to rattle away in the brush. Appearing to notice nothing, Retief took a leisurely step toward the nunu tree, slipped suddenly behind it. With a swift motion, he grasped a small, limber branch growing out at waist height on his side of the two-foot bole, bent it down and pegged the tip to the s.h.a.ggy, porous bark, using the match-sized dope stick to pin it in place. Then he moved quickly off, keeping the tree between himself and the unseen archer, to the concealment of a dense patch of shrubbery.

A minute pa.s.sed; a twig popped. A bulky, tattooed Tsugg appeared, a vast, dumpy figure clad in dirty silks, holding a short, thick, recurved bow clamped in one boulderlike fist, a quarrel nocked, the string drawn. The dacoit tiptoed forward, jumped suddenly around the tree. Finding his quarry fled, he turned, stood with his back to the tree peering into the undergrowth.

At that moment, the bent branch, released by the burning of the dope stick, sprang outward, ramming the astounded bowman in the seat of his baggy green velveteen trousers.

The arrow smacked into the dirt at his feet as he jumped, then stood rigid.

"Don't strike, sir!" he urged in a plaintive tenor. " 'Twas the older lads put me up to it..."

Retief strolled forth from shelter, nodded easily to the Tsugg, plucked the bow from his nerveless grip.

"Nice workmanship," he said, inspecting the weapon. "Groaci trade goods?"