Read Online Reward for Retief by Keith Laumer - Free Book Online

Embassy ya got your
Consular Officers, and your Counselor of Embassy, and now this local Council,
and I don't see why the Corps don't come up with some new terminology,
which it won't rely so heavily on homonyms!"
     
                "The personal lives of
our personnel, Herb, are no concern of the Corps," Shortfall
rebuked the portly Second Secretary and Consul. "You will doubtless recall
the landmark Kablitzki decision back in '86 which established that a policy of
openness and official disinterest in such unfortunate matters would disarm in
advance any supposed vulnerability to pressures to which deviant personnel
might otherwise be subject. You were saying ...?"
     
                "We could call 'em
'Advisor of Embassy,' instead of 'Counselor of Embassy,' for openers,"
Herb proposed. "And how about changing 'Consul' to, say, 'Liaison'? I'm
just noodling, mind you. And this here local Council; we could call it the
Cabinet. Then maybe a fella'd know what he's talking about. And I didn't say
nothing about no deviants."
     
                "What I'm saying
about," Shortfall said waspishly, "is the dire necessity for
affirmative action on the part of this Mission, preferably prior to our
demise at the hands of the unruly local element!"
     
                "Too bad the unruly
local element is the de jure government," Ted Whaffle, the
Political Officer, put in glumly.
     
                "And the de facto gubment,
too," Hy Felix reminded him promptly. "So we can't hardly lodge no
official protest with them babies."
     
                "This Mission, Ted,
does, as you suggest, face more than usual difficulties," Shortfall
conceded. "I assume," he went on in a tone of Deep Synthetic Interest
(12-w), "that you will now extend your remarks to include your proposed
solution to the contretemps."
     
                "As to that,"
spoke up young Marvin Lacklustre, the Assistant Consular Officer, "it
appears judging from the complaints lodged even prior to our arrival, with my
office by the local Terran Entrepreneurs, Realtors, and Retailers Institute,
that the local Ministry of Stuff expects to extract license fees, taxes,
insurance, and protection, amounting to some hundred and fifty percent of gross
transactions. It's highway robbery. They seem to imagine that terri has access to unlimited funds, of
which they demand their exhorbitant cut. Shocking! A combination in restraint
of trade of the most arrant stripe!"
     
                "Pity Taft-Hartly's
writ doesn't run here in Tip Space, Marvin," Shortfall murmured
sympathetically. "I suggest you huddle with Herb Lunchwell to devise a
viable strategy to counter this unrealistic policy."
     
                "But, sir," Marvin
protested. "I did\ And still they're intransigent to a
degree!"
     
                "Sorry His Ex cut you
off when you were going good, Marv," his immediate supervisor murmured
consolingly as the lad resumed his seat.
     
                "What I don't
see," the irrepressible Hy Felix interjected, "is how TERM got the
local chapter which there ain't never been no Terries allowed in here."
     
                "As you so cogently
point out, Marvin, it's shocking," Shortfall intoned stonily, ignoring
Felix's jibe. "Still, something must be done, and you're just the fellow
within whose job description such action falls. Such are the burdens of the
diplomat," he pursued his thesis with a resonate delivery suggesting that
massed mediamen were recording each sonorous syllable, "selflessly saving
mankind, and terri , too, on many
a far-flung world!"
     
                A spattering of spontaneous
applause broke out, cut short, but not unkindly, at a gesture from the Great
Man.
     
                "Fellows," he
almost whined, in an overly abrupt return to normal Staff Meeting tones,
"if we could just find out what the devil it is these brigands want, we'd
have