The Magnificent Wilf Read online

  The first was a stubby humanoid individual wearing a harness draped with what must surely be weapons. There were pistol-like things, tubes, a strange corkscrewlike device with an aperture at its far end, and other objects. He wore nothing else but the harness; and was completely hairless, with leathery brown skin. His face looked something like a bulldog’s.

  The other Alien, beside him, was about three feet tall, wearing a white robe, a sort of magician’s cone-shaped hat and a long white beard, above which showed a bulbous nose and two large, purple, trusting eyes.

  “Greetings!” boomed the harnessed individual, in the local Lefazzi language, bringing the platform to a halt at their table. As it settled to the ground he took a device from his harness and looked through it at Tom.

  “Magnificent!” he said, switching effortlessly into English. “Just as advertised! Point seven two on the ferocity scale. Congratulations, my boy. I am Drakvil, Master Assassin —and you are my apprentice.”

  “Apprentice?” said Tom.

  “Such good fortune is hard to believe, I know. But you are. I just picked you.”

  “Pardon me,” said Tom. “But overwhelming as the honor is..

  “Tut-tut,” said Drakvil. “Say no more.”

  “—I must decline—”

  “WHAT?”

  Drakvil suddenly paled all over his body until he was almost white. Gradually his color came back. He slowly extended a hand and pointed at Lucy.

  “So,” he said, “I think I see. Does that wilf belong with you?”

  “I certainly do!” said Lucy.

  Drakvil’s arm dropped. “Wilf-ridden!” he breathed. “I get an apprentice with one of the finest aptitude ratings ever recorded; and it has a wilf! But don’t worry, my boy—”

  He got down and began to rummage inside the back edge of the platform.

  “—I’ll free you.”

  “Tom!” said Lucy, clutching his arm.

  “Shhh,” hissed Tom. “It’s all right—”

  He was interrupted as the second Alien on the platform suddenly began to cry in a timid, despairing fashion.

  “What’s wrong with you?” asked Tom, turning on it.

  “Oh, sir,” sobbed the smaller Alien. “It would’ve been such an honor for a simple pjenik like me. No real Assassin would lower himself to slay a pjenik under the Pjonik class. Of course, I know your honor’s still only an apprentice and it’s only to be a practice assassination, but—”

  “Wait a minute,” said Tom.

  The pjenik wiped its eyes with its white beard and sniffed.

  “You mean,” said Tom, “I’m supposed to practice assassinating on you?”

  “Of course,” snapped Drakvil, coming up with a metal plate tucked under one arm.

  “—Begin with live targets right away,” he went on. “The only way. I’ve got no patience with Master Assassins that start their apprentices out on simulacra. No meat. No feel to it.”

  He unhooked one of the gadgets from his harness. “Here,” he said, “you can borrow my loset.”

  He shoved it into Tom’s hand.

  “Be careful with it. Meanwhile, I will psychoanalyze you and rid you of this wilfish affliction.”

  “You don’t understand, I’m afraid, Sir Assassin,” said Tom, in smooth, diplomatic tones. “I’m just ashore for a few hours from the Mordaunti ship at the spaceport—”

  Drakvil shook his head. “Tut-tut, delusions as well. Not surprising, I suppose. My lad, the Mordaunti ship took off just five minutes ago; and, as you see, you are still here.”

  “Took off? But it had to have its drive-control chamber realigned!”

  “Come, come,” said Drakvil. “To realign a drive-control chamber takes several days. The ship needs to be completely torn down—that’s one reason we Assassins never use ships. To work, my boy. There’s your pjenik, and you have the loset in hand.”

  He glanced at the metal plate he held. “Meanwhile—let me see. I have some questions here. When you were an immature life-form did you ever secretly like your primary immediate female ancestor?”

  Tom was exchanging glances with Lucy. He whispered in English, “Play along—” and handed the loset back to the staring Master Assassin, bowing.

  “Ordinarily,” he said, “I’d be happy to assassinate this little fellow here—” he put his hand on the shoulder of the pjenik.

  “Oh!” cried the pjenik in a sudden accent of joy. “It touched me! Its honor touched me!” It fell at Tom’s feet and began kissing the toes of Tom’s shoes.

  “Oh, thank you, your nobleship—your kindnessness, little uncle.”

  Drakvil had gone completely white again. Now he began to return to his normal color and boomed with laughter.

  “All right, you young rascal!” he said. “Caught me fairly that time. Takes some nerve to risk distracting a Master Assassin long enough to touch a piece of his property and adopt it. Well, you got away with it. Now, all that talk about the Mordaunti spaceship. Eyewash, right? That wilf of yours doesn’t completely control you, after all! You deliberately got off here to put yourself in a position where I could see you and take you on as an apprentice, didn’t you?”

  “Er, yes,” said Tom.

  “Yes?” cried Lucy.

  “Flay along, we’re stranded here without that ship . . muttered Tom between his teeth, still in English, smiling brightly at Drakvil.

  “Well, come along then,” said Drakvil, remounting the platform. “Bring your newly adopted nephew-slave along with you. Does the wilf have to come, too?”

  “Just try to go without me!” said Lucy.

  “Blasted faithful wilfs!” muttered Drakvil, as Tom stepped up on the platform and helped Lucy up behind him. “Sap the backbone out of a Being. Wouldn’t have one myself for… hang on, here we go, across the galaxy to Pjo.”

  “Pjo?” echoed Tom. But already the city around them had vanished. The platform was now sitting in the midst of a featureless waste of sand, with what looked like a temple far off from the horizon.

  “Well,” Tom said, blinking a little in the light from a brilliant white dot that was evidently the local sun, “that’s some transportation.”

  “The only way to go,” said Drakvil with satisfaction. “Why travel by slow phase-shifting when this is available? Of course, there’s always that statistical chance of coming out in the center of some sun or other. But death is an Assassin’s constant companion, anyway. Let’s get down to business.”

  He pointed to the distant, templelike building. “Scene of your first assignment. First I’d better brief you.” He reached down and touched something on the platform at his feet. A golden light flickered suddenly around Tom, who went down like a pjenik shot by a loset, in a crumpled heap.

  “Tom!” cried Lucy, frantically kneeling by him. He sat up groggily and shook his head.

  “Who? What? Where—oh, hello, wilf.”

  “Wilf!” shouted Lucy, “Tom, don’t you know me?”

  “Of course, I know you, wilf—I mean, honey. Help me up.”

  Lucy helped him to his feet. Tom shook his head a few more times.

  “Bit of a shock, acquiring all that information at once. I’m all right, wi—Lucy. Oh, is that my harness?”

  He reached out and took the cluster of weapons Drakvil was holding up to him. He put it on, checking its gadgets. “Let’s see,” he said. “Spengs. Losets. Oh, and a gornul. Latest model, I see.”

  “Naturally,” said Drakvil. “The workman is worthy of his tools.”

  “Thanks.” Tom looked off at the building. “Subject in there?”

  “Tom!” said Lucy. “What’re you going to do?”

  Tom ignored her and went on talking to Drakvil. “Large establishment, I take it?”

  “A Spranjik of the gark class,” said Drakvil.

  “Probably has a gnruth of jilks for guard?”

  “Two gnruths, all porbornik-jilks.”

  “That’s enough of this!” snarled Lucy. “Tom! You answer me!
What’re you going to do? What are gnruths?”

  “Bodyguard units of fifty jilks apiece,” said Tom, absently, staling at the building.

  “Tom, you aren’t thinking of trying to assassinate someone who’s got a hundred bodyguards?”

  “You’ll notice,” said Drakvil to Tom, “the establishment is laid out for alnrits, both inside and out.”

  Tom laughed scornfully. “Alnrits!”

  “Tom! Damn it, what’re alnrits? Will you pay some attention to me?”

  “They’re disintegrators,” said Tom, without looking around. “Don’t bother me now, wilf.”

  Lucy shouted. “I am not—NOT a wilf!”

  “Well, I’m off,” said Tom. He reached down to do something to the platform and disappeared.

  “Bring him back!” said Lucy, fiercely to Drakvil.

  But Tom reappeared again almost immediately, shoving one of the larger gadgets back into its holster on the weapons harness.

  “Well, that was easy enough,” he said. Lucy glared at him.

  “Tom, you didn’t—”

  “Not yet,” said Tom, cheerfully. “I just went in for a reconnoiter. On accelerated time.”

  “Report what you did, Apprentice,” Drakvil said.

  “Well, I approached the gate and spenged one of the jilks on outer guard there. When the rest turned to see what had happened, I slipped inside. As I expected, I found myself in a mobius maze of corridors. I calculated my way through, spenged the three jilks I found at the inner entrance and took cover when the alarm sounded and a platoon came up at the double with porbornik guns at the ready.”

  “Did they suspect an Assassin was inside the gark?” asked Drakvil.

  “No sir,” answered Tom. “I overheard them guessing that it was a dispossessed simulacrum—a rogue one. I ducked down a side street of the jilk quarters and found my way blocked by a full-armed tank. Well, of course a monstrosity like that could never be knocked out by a mere speng. I knew that.”

  “What did you do?” Lucy was staring at him.

  “Oh, I just stood still in the center of the street, the way any ordinary dispossessed, mindless, rogue simulacrum might. And when it was close enough, I gave the tank a pong from my class two loset.”

  Drakvil beamed. “Very good. And then?”

  “I took over the tank and drove it through the inner defenses as if I was the tank crew coming back off duty. Inside I abandoned the tank and slipped into the ruler’s personal family section of the gark. I set up a resolving point inside so that the platform could be brought in and came back to get the three of you.”

  The pjenik squeaked with pleasure. “Me, too? Oh, little uncle!”

  “Yes,” said Tom, giving Lucy a strange, meaningful glance that baffled her completely, “particularly you too.”

  “You wanted me to see you in action. Very good. The mark of a good Apprentice Assassin,” said Drakvil. He reached down and touched the platform. They were all suddenly in a curtained alcove, dim-lit from above.

  “Now what?” demanded Drakvil.

  “You can watch through the curtain,” said Tom. “Now I’m going to disguise myself and take on the nartled appearance of an illegal gossip-seller.”

  He reached down and touched the platform.

  Lucy stifled an instinctive exclamation.

  “It’s still me,” creaked the clawed and warty creature now standing before them. “Watch through the curtain.”

  Chapter 11

  Tom slipped off the platform, parted the curtains and slid through into the corridor without. Lucy hurried to the parting, closely followed by Drakvil and the pjenik, and peered through. They saw a lofty ceiling hall with a guard of armed jilks, their eye-stalks stiffly at attention. A jilk officer was pilking thoughtfully up and down beside them—his knees level with the base of his antennae.

  Tom, in his gossip-seller’s guise, sidled up to the officer, who growled something in a language Lucy could not understand.

  “Blasted translingualspeaker!” muttered Drakvil, fiddling with something on his harness. “Ought to adjust automatically for everyone’s ears—there!”

  “—juicy items,” Lucy now heard Tom’s whining as if in perfectly understandable English, “rare tidbits from strange worlds—”

  The officer backed away distastefully and snapped, “Filthy creature! Keep your nartled claws to yourself.”

  “But Commander! I must go inside the door. A certain female of the ranking family—Your Freshness understands—”

  “Your pass!” snapped the officer, extending a three-clawed hand.

  “But she gave me no pass,” Tom whimpered. “She simply said to come to this entrance—” He sidled closer. “Your Freshness would not want me to compromise the good name of one of the inner gark by mentioning it in public? But if I could talk to you aside—”

  “Stand back,” said the officer. “Very well.” He let Tom lead him away from the guard. To Lucy’s horror they approached the alcove, stopping just outside the curtain.

  “Now,” said the officer in a low, eager voice. Lucy was startled to see his eye-stalks wavering drunkenly. He panted. “I know you’re lying. The female Orbash is the only one who could have called you, and she is elsewhere. So tell me! What have you got to sell?”

  Tom whispered, “I knew Your Freshness was an addict the moment I saw the angle of your eyestalks! It’ll cost you.”

  “I am not an addict,” panted the officer. “I like a little gossip like the next being, but I can take it or leave it alone. But price is no object. Quick, what’ve you got for sale?”

  “Bend down, listen—” said Tom. The jilk officer doubled himself up. Tom threw a sudden hook to the officer’s thorax. The officer, struck by Tom’s fist just over his central nervous system, collapsed immediately, paralyzed for a good ten hours. He had fallen without a sound, and Tom shoved him through the curtain at Lucy’s feet, while turning his appearance into a duplicate of the officer’s. He marched across to the guard, which happily had been lined up facing in the opposite direction. Lucy, Drakvil and the pjenik watched.

  “Attention!” Tom snapped from behind the armed jilks. “Right face! Forward march.” The soldiers marched off down the corridor.

  “Magnificent discipline these porbornik-jilks have,” remarked Drakvil, watching them out of sight as Tom, marching behind them, came level with the alcove and slipped back into it. “However, it sometimes works to their disadvantage.”

  “I assumed as much,” said Tom regaining his natural appearance, much to Lucy’s relief. “Now, shall we enter the gark-ruler’s inner sanctum?”

  He led the rest of them to the undefended door and opened it. They stepped through a series of filmy hanging curtains to find themselves in a pleasant, sunlit room where a fountain played. A pjenik in purple robes turned to look at them. Tom’s adopted nephew-slave immediately prostrated himself before his duplicate.

  “Rise, inferior,” said the one in the purple robe. He helped Tom’s pjenik to arise, and the two stood nose to nose, their white beards almost touching, their gentle eyes fastened in friendly fashion on each other. “To what do I owe the honor of this visit?”

  “Rejoice, thrice-noble, sir,” said Tom’s pjenik. “You are about to be assassinated.”

  “Hardly a cause for rejoicing, inferior,” the other protested mildly.

  “It isn’t, noble sir?”

  “Not for a Pjonik pjenik, inferior. Possibly you’re confusing my position with your own.”

  Tom’s pjenik immediately prostrated himself again. “No, I didn’t mean that.”

  He helped Tom’s pjenik up once more. “I just mean we who are born to the purple don’t consider being murdered quite such an honor as you lower classes.”

  “Really?”

  “In fact,” said the Pjonik pjenik, turning to Tom, Lucy and Drakvil, “may I ask why I am being assassinated?”

  “Why?” exploded Drakvil. “You ask why?”

  “A natural question, isn’t
it?” asked Tom innocently.

  “Why, I never heard of such a thing!” fumed Drakvil. “A subject asking why. What galactic nerve! If I hadn’t promised you to my assistant here and an Assassin’s word wasn’t as good as his bond—” His fingers played angrily with the hilt of a wickedly curved knife attached to his harness.

  “I suppose you don’t know why, either, young apprentice?” said the Pjenik sadly to Tom. “Well, I suppose I’ll die not knowing. Farewell, inferior.” The large eyes of Tom’s Pjenik began to fill with sympathetic tears.

  “Go ahead,” fussed Drakvil. “I can’t. You must.”

  “No,” said Tom.

  “No?” said Drakvil, Lucy and the Pjonik Pjenik all at once.

  “No,” said Tom, calmly. “I cannot, because of my wilf.”

  “I knew it!” bellowed Drakvil, turning chalk-white and staying that color. “That wilf! I knew it!” He turned to Lucy, who quickly got on the other side of Tom.

  Tom faced him and said, “Once I would have gornuled this subject on the spot, without a moment’s hesitation. In fact, with keen enjoyment. But my wilf has had its effect on me. This is—er—a far, far better thing I do than I have ever done before. The quality of mercy is not strained and no man is an island unto himself. If I should gornul this subject, I should be diminished, even as an island diminishes part of the main. Therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls, because it’s already tolled for me.”

  “Mad!” said Drakvil. “Stark staring, raving mad. Poor, poor boy.” His color came back. His tone became more gentle. “Before I gornul you myself, Apprentice, and put you out of your misery—tell me. Why did you go this far before refusing to act?”

  “It was the least I could do for the Master to whom I’d been apprenticed,” said Tom. “I suspected your honor had been impugned. I had to actually get face to face with the subject and you at the same time to make sure. Now I know beyond any doubt.”

  “Honor?” said Drakvil, suddenly stiffening. “The honor of a Master Assassin impugned? Who would dare?”

  “Who indeed,” said Tom, nudging Lucy, “but an amateur Assassin?”

  “Amateur?” Drakvil went chalk-white once more.