The Magnificent Wilf Read online

  “Yes,” said Tom. “I wouldn’t have had the least suspicion of him, if it hadn’t, been for my wilf.” He nudged Lucy again. “It noticed the difference in the way I was acting. Didn’t you, wilf?”

  “Yes, I did,” said Lucy.

  “It wanted to know what was disturbing me.”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “It warned me faithfully that this amateur was out to dispose of me.”

  “Er—” said Lucy, “yes, I did.”

  “Its warnings did not register on me properly until you slapped me with that briefing ray just before I went into the gark. In that briefing was the information needed to complete the picture. This amateur arranged for me to be left behind in Bug’raf, just as he hired you through the Assassins’ Guild to try and train me as an Assassin’s Apprentice. And he thoughtfully provided this innocent Pjonik Pjenik as a subject for me to practice on, at less than the regular rates.”

  “Hmm,” Drakvil said thoughtfully, his color returning. “What you say checks with my own knowledge, apprentice. But nothing of it affects my honor.”

  “I will explain.”

  “Go ahead,” said Drakvil, taking a long, sinister-looking gadget from his harness. “I have to reset my gornul anyway. Take a couple more moments if you like.”

  “Thank you,” said Tom. “I suppose you understand that what this amateur hoped and planned was that you would gornul me.”

  “How could he be so sure of that?”

  “Because,” said Tom, taking a deep breath, “he was prepared to violate your honor by forcing you to take on an apprentice that he knew would never pass the test. You see, he knew I had a wilf.”

  Drakvi’s chubby, powerful fingers suddenly stopped moving on the gornul. He looked up and his dark eyes fastened on Tom’s.

  “He knew my wilf would stick by me,” Tom said.

  “Yes, I would,” said Lucy.

  “And that, faithful as it is to its principles and to me—”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “—It would, wilflike, throw itself before my gornul when I attempted to assassinate the subject, thus creating a scandal that would reflect on you as my Master, and cause you to destroy me on the spot.”

  “Y—” began Lucy; and stopped dead, staring at Tom with eyes almost as big as a Pjenik’s.

  Drakvil had beaten his previous paleness of shade. He was now so white he was nearly transparent.

  “You see,” said Tom to him, “he didn’t care about the Pjonik here, whom he had no reason to hire assassinated. He didn’t care about the expense he might be put to in buying a practice Pjenik for me. He didn’t care about the scandal which would blacken your name in the Assassins’ Guild. All he was interested in was using you to get rid of me.”

  Drakvil was now not only nearly transparent, he was swelling like a balloon.

  “Pardon me, little uncle,” said Tom’s Pjenik meekly, “but why didn’t he just hire the noble Assassin to destroy you in the first place?”

  “Well, you see,” said Tom in a kindly voice, “he couldn’t. For the same reason I couldn’t really adopt you. I’m an Ambassador-at-Large from a race that has not yet officially qualified for membership in this sector; but with Ambassador status. I’m still legally protected against unlimited assassinations—although actually, being assassinated even once will permanently immobilize a Human. Most important, my Race hasn’t ever subscribed to the Assassin Conventions. In fact—I’m on my way to Cayahno right now to discuss the Conventions and other things with forty-two of the forty-three other representatives of the leading, dominate Races.”

  Drakvil had finally found his voice. “Where is he?” he wheezed. “Where is he?”

  “The Mordaunti Ambassador who, pretending to be the captain of a ship, marooned my wilf and me and hired you?” answered Tom smoothly. “I imagine he’s on Cayahno by now. Very probably—” Tom glanced at his wristwatch “—he’s already sitting down with the forty-one other representatives—in the Sector Council Building’s Board Room.”

  “Plat form!” said Drakvil, touching a spot on his harness. The platform appeared. “On!” he ordered. Tom jumped onto it and pulled Lucy up after him. Tom’s Pjenik started to scramble aboard also, then stopped, confused.

  “Stay here, inferior,” said the Pjonik Pjenik. “I’ll adopt you.”

  “Oh, little father!” said the Pjenik, falling down before him. Drakvil touched the platform. The room winked out around them and they winked in again in a long, hall-like chamber, with a semicircle of seats around an oval table, filled with a rainbow diversity of different Beings. The Mordaunti Ambassador was standing in the open space before these seats, addressing the rest of the representatives.

  “—Our responsibility to the former Jaktal members and those races formerly under their dominion—” he was saying, in some odd language; the words of which, however, a central translingualspeaker was now beaming into Tom and Lucy’s ears in flawless English. He broke off abruptly as he saw the platform with its occupants.

  “Now!” boomed Drakvil. Tom caught the Assassin’s hand as he was closing it on his gornul.

  “Just a minute,” said Tom. “He’s mine.”

  “Yours?” Drakvil turned on Tom.

  “Though only an Apprentice, I believe I have rights under the Guild,” said Tom.

  “Yes,” Drakvil admitted thickly.

  “Then I believe I have the right of first offense from this being, and so may challenge him to a duel before you yourself take action?”

  Drakvil glowered.

  “I’m going to have to do some work on that briefing machine,” he muttered. But he let go of the gornul. “Go ahead, then. I’ll watch.”

  The Mordaunti had buckled slightly at the knees on seeing Drakvil. On hearing this he straightened up again and his hands spread inward toward his own weapon harness. He smiled at Tom.

  “Though only an Apprentice,” said Tom casually in an aside to Drakvil, but audibly enough so that his voice echoed through the chamber, “would you say I might prevail in a duel with this being?”

  Drakvil snorted.

  “Only!” he said. “Only an Apprentice! You’ve been briefed, haven’t you? Naturally only another Guild member could hope to stand a chance with you, Apprentice or not.” The Mordaunti’s knees began to give again. He tried to smile but his satanic grimace was a little loose at the corners.

  “I just wondered,” said Tom. “I wouldn’t want the impression to get about the galaxy that I was trying to hide from the honorable Mordaunti Ambassador.”

  He got down off the platform and strolled thoughtfully, chin in hand, around the table; and sat down in a vacant chair he had spotted in the lowest tier of seats. Lucy was close behind him. The chair was a little large for him, being built to hold Jaktals, but he seated himself in it.

  “Let me see,” he said, “I will have to arrange for my wilf to be restrained, so that it cannot prevent—”

  “Hold!” cried the Mordaunti Ambassador.

  Tom looked up, surprised.

  “No one could be more eager for a duel with a Being from Earth than I,” said the Mordaunti. His knees were quite straight again. “But there is a higher duty: the obligations that fall upon one who is a Member of this Council.”

  “What?” said Tom. “I don’t understand. You have to fight me.”

  “Alas,” said the Mordaunti. “Forgive me.”

  “Forgive you? I insist you fight me. I insist—”

  “Sadly, I must refuse. Sir, you have inadvertently seated yourself in the Jaktal chair, as a Member of this meeting. An Unconfirmed Member, of course, but still bound by the Council Membership rules.”

  “What?” cried Tom, looking about him. “What’d I do? You mean, just by sitting down here for a moment, I—”

  “You invested yourself with a higher order of diplomatic responsibilities—even though you cannot yet be considered a legal Member of the council,” said the Mordaunti. “ ‘Sector Interior Representatives and Counc
il Members may not duel with each other.’ That is a basic law of inter-Racial and interstellar politics. Otherwise, our meetings would become disasters.”

  “But I just sat down for a minute!”

  “I’m sorry. The rule is strict.”

  “Damn it!” said Tom.

  “We all sympathize.”

  “Why am I so absent-minded?”

  “We all understand, Tm sure. It could happen to any newcomer. Unfortunately, ignorance of the rule is no excuse.”

  “My courage,” said Tom, “will be called into question. The courage of the whole Human race will probably be called into question.”

  “Not at all,” said the Mordaunti, smoothly. “I, myself, will be honored to introduce a resolution of confidence in your courage and that of every member of your Race.”

  “I oppose!” roared a large, tusked, walrus-like alien halfway down the table. Or rather, this particular Alien roared and the translingualspeaker changed his words into the various languages spoken by all there, including English for Tom and Lucy. “Today’s subjects for discussion have already been accepted. Introducing a new item at this time is unconscionable!”

  “I assent!” boomed the translingualspeaker as a series of squeaks came from a member so tiny that Tom and Lucy had to strain their eyes to locate it; until a sort of magnifying process suddenly went into effect, and they saw that it was something like a jaunty little seahorse from one of Earth’s oceans, floating in mid-air above the seat of its chair. “All of me assents!”

  A babble of squeaks, growls, roars, clickings—and a number of other sounds— overwhelmed the translingualphone, which this time made no attempt to translate for the benefit of Tom and Lucy. Then suddenly there was silence.

  In that silence a member that looked like a Douglas fir—in fact like an elegant Christmas tree that had not yet been decorated—grew another five feet to add to the ten-foot height it was already displaying in its chair, and slowly but steadily began to wave various of its branches.

  The silence continued as it went on waving. After a while, Lucy put her lips close to Tom’s ear.

  “Do you know what’s going on?” she whispered.

  “I gather, from the information of my briefing,” Tom whispered back in her ear, “that the tree-Member is making some kind of speech. But either it’s in a language I wasn’t given by the briefing; or for some reason it’s completely untranslatable into speech—or the translingualphone would be passing on to us the message it’s giving. I can’t even imagine why it can’t be translated. But the others are all paying attention to it—or him— or her, whichever. But I’m pretty sure we’re expected to be quiet until the speech is over, along with everybody else.”

  Indeed, no one else was speaking, no one was moving. Even Drakvil was silent and motionless. Finally, after some while, the branches stopped waving and the tree—or whatever it was—reduced its height back to its original dimensions. Around the table, it could be seen that some of the humanoids had tears in their eyes.

  “I thoroughly agree,” said the one Oprinkian at the table, standing up. He spoke in English, looking directly at Tom and Lucy. Presumably the translingualspeaker was interpreting what he said to the otters at the table. He turned and bowed to the tree-like member, who bowed majestically back, and the Oprinkian turned back to face Tom and Lucy again.

  “Like our Member from Wavry,” he said, “I honor the gallantry of our Accidental Member from the newly enlightened planet Earth. I agree also, that it would be unthinkable to interrupt today’s schedule of topics to discuss the matter. As sponsor for the Race to which our Accidental Member belongs, I will be happy to act as host to him and his companion in Ambassadorship overnight; and I second, as suggested, the suggestion by the Member from Wavry that the unprecedented matter of this Accidental Membership be the first item for discussion at tomorrow’s meeting.”

  There was a babble of Alien voices, and then chairs were floating backward, and the meeting was clearly breaking up. The Oprinkian left his own chair and came down to Tom and Lucy where they stood with Drakvil.

  “Well, Tom and Lucy,” he said, obligingly, “are you agreeable to accepting my hospitality until the next meeting?”

  Tom and Lucy happily voiced their agreement. The Oprinkian turned to Drakvil.

  “I will not venture to invite you, Master Assassin,” he said, “knowing the rules of your order forbid you to trust the shelter of anyone’s roof but that of a fellow Assassin. I take it then that the three of us will be parting from you?”

  “Quite right!” said Drakvil. He frowned at Tom. “Behave yourself, Apprentice!”

  He stepped back onto his platform and he and it vanished.

  “Tell me, really,” said Lucy that night, as they were preparing to retire on an Oprinkian bed that was like a golden cloud twelve feet around, “did that briefing really make you so dangerous? In just a second, like that?”

  Tom climbed into the bed. Lucy was still in front of a four-way, three-dimensional image-mirror, tying the ribbons at the top of the filmy blue nightgown she had ordered from the room’s robo-designer. Tom bounced experimentally on the bed. It bounced beautifully.

  “Now there’s a bed!” he said. “No, of course it didn’t. I know all I need to know, but it’d take years of exercise and practice to make my muscles respond as they would need to for a direct confrontation in something like a duel. Drakvil, of course, wasn’t going to admit I wasn’t able, though. His honor as an Assassin was at stake. That’s why I think he was secretly pleased I didn’t have to duel the Mordaunti, after all—are you going to finish fiddling with that and come to bed?”

  “In a minute,” said Lucy. “I want you to tell me something first.”

  She was still looking into the mirror; and Tom knew she could see him clearly reflected there.

  “What?”

  “I want to know exactly what a wilf is. And you tell me the truth.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yes, oh.”

  “Well,” said Tom, slowly, “they do look something like women. At least an alien might think they did. But they’re really a totally different race—monosexual. It’s just that they go around becoming deeply attached to beings of other races. Once they make friends, their faithfulness is proverbial, not merely in this Sector, but throughout the galaxy.”

  “But why?”

  “Why?”

  “Why,” said Lucy, “do they become attached? What do they want to make friends for? What’s in it for them?” She looked narrowly at Tom. “They look so much like us and they go around attaching themselves. I want to know why!”

  “Oh,” said Tom, “I see. Well, it’s not what you might think at all.”

  “It isn’t?”

  “No,” said Tom. “Different Race, and all that. It’s just that wilfs have this very strong moral sense. They have extremely high principles and their greatest joy is in converting some other being to these same principles. Naturally, there’s not much opportunity for them to improve other wilfs, these being as good as they can get already. So they try to get close to Beings of other races, in a strictly intellectual way. That’s ah.”

  “Oh,” said Lucy, “that’s all right, then.”

  She put out the lights and bounced into bed.

  “I’ve got plenty of low principles,” she said. “You like me that way, don’t you? You’d better say yes.”

  “Yes,” said Tom.

  Chapter 12

  “Can you explain something for us?” Tom asked. He and Lucy were having breakfast with the Oprinkian Council Member, whose name was Mr. Valhinda. To be correct, Tom and Lucy were having breakfast, and Mr. Valhinda was simply keeping them company, since Oprinkians dealt with nourishment in a slightly different fashion.

  “Yes?” said Mr. Valhinda.

  “We didn’t hear a translation of the—er—tree-like Member who spoke so eloquently at the end of yesterday’s meeting,” said Tom. “Could you give us an idea briefly of what he said?”
>
  Mr. Valhinda smiled.

  “Actually,” he said, “the honorable Member from Wavry did not actually say anything. You do not have the word in your language for what he did—perhaps the closest one you have is ‘dance.’ And what he dances are not words but information—therefore the T.L.-Speaker could not translate it understandably to you. If you should ever become a Council Member for your Race, you will learn to comprehend what he does in this respect.”

  “You were all deeply moved,” said Lucy.

  “It is the remarkable majesty and grace with which he addresses us,” said Mr. Valhinda. “His ‘dancing’ expresses itself in emotional shades and terms. We are always deeply moved by these.”

  “But what did he tell you?” Lucy said.

  “Briefly,” said Mr. Valhinda, “he spoke about your gallantry and courage in taking the Jaktal’s seat and predicted that, primitive as you were—you will forgive me for saying that, I am sure, Tom and Lucy—great things might be expected of your Race. In fact, he suggested that the Council take under advisement the idea of putting you in a position to possibly demonstrate the full extent of your qualities.”

  “That was nice of him,” said Lucy. “But what about this business of Tom being an Accidental Council Member?”

  “Oh,” said Mr. Valhinda, with a wave of his black-furred hand, “that can be taken care of as a matter of routine. Time-consuming, but merely routine. You understand, what is concerned there is not your Accidental seating in the Jaktal chair, but the implications of what that might mean for the future of your Race, and for the Sector. Our immediate concern is whether or not to allow an Ambassador-at-Large from a primitive, and only conditionally accepted, Race—who has already managed to become an Apprentice Galactic Assassin, as well as ‘accidentally’ seating himself at the Council table of the Sector’s Senior Representative Members—to travel around freely in our Sector. And if so allowed, how to be governed and directed in his and her movements.”

  “Oh,” said Tom. Lucy looked serious.

  “Yes,” said Mr. Valhinda. “The Member from Xxxytl—somewhat resembling a small marine being called, I believe, a ‘seahorse’ on your native world— suggested there might be a possibility of using you under Council direction, in situations that would reveal your capacity in several areas—one of them being the critical one of diplomacy. Relationships between interstellar races are always touchy;, and Beings who can deal with problems that arise in connection with this are highly appreciated.”