“Funny, I’ve been here nearly a week and nobody seemed worried,” said Phule, even more puzzled. “What I’d like to know… wait a minute. Did anybody see a woman in a Legion uniform?”
The employees looked at one another, then one of the waiters said, “Somebody in a black outfit ran through the kitchen and out the back door, right before the boss freaked out. I guess it could have been a woman.”
“Aha,” said Phule, putting two and two together. “Do you have any idea where the boss might have gone?”
“She didn’t give her forwarding address to the kitchen help,” said the man in the chef’s hat. “But if she’s in enough trouble to light out that fast, Hix’s World’s too small a place to hide. I’d bet she’s on the way to Old Earth.”
“Why Old Earth?” said Phule.
“There’s a regular flight there three days a week,” said Aster Igget, apparently realizing how little she’d done to earn the hundred-dollar bill Phule was still dangling. “A lot of our guests go there after Hix’s. Joyday, Floraday, Restday-that’s today, at six p.m. It’s the quickest way off-planet… and you can pick up a ship to anywhere from Old Earth. That’s where I’d go if I were on the run.”
“Something tells me that’s where I’m headed, too,” said Phule. He handed the hundred to Aster Igget and dug out two more for the other employees who’d offered information. Then he headed for his room to check what the Port-a-brain had to tell him.
Sure enough, it showed Beeker’s computer exiting Hix’s World on the way to Old Earth. He sighed and began packing for the next flight out.
14
Journal #842-
The mere fact of Old Earth’s continued existence is something of a miracle-even if one does not entirely accept its claim of being the aboriginal cradle of the human species (a point on which the evidence remains murky). In any case, there are few worlds in which the incredible variety of humanity is on such constant display. Both folly and vice are represented in multiple forms, some perhaps even new.
In the short distance between the spaceport dock and the ground transportation ramp, I was accosted by n& fewer than seven individuals offering to relieve me of my cash or credit in furtherance of some scheme or another, none remotely legal. I respectfully declined their offers, confident of finding an abundance of such opportunities should I wish at some future time to avail myself of them.
Phule sat and fiddled with his Port-a-Brain. He’d called up the data on Old Earth, the next stop in his search for Beeker and Laverna. It felt as if the search had been stretching out for months, now-although he knew it couldn’t be that long. Travel by starship was always disorienting, of course, and strange things could happen to time when you ducked through the shortcuts between distant stars. It was widely rumored that a space traveler sometimes arrived at his destination after several hyperspace jumps, placed a call to the home office back on the planet he’d started from, and found himself answering his own call…
Phule had never heard of a documented case of someone arriving back home before he left, although old space hands were always ready to tell tales to groundlings. Phule didn’t like to think about it. All he really wanted was to find his missing butler and get him to hand over the Port-a-Brain. He knew there was a chance he might lose the butler’s trail, and the security chip would throw him into hibernation.
Phule leaned back and sighed, then punched a fist softly into his cupped hand. Time to face reality. Old Earth was going to be his last stop. He’d put all the time and money and energy at his command into the job.
A confident grin came to his face. He wasn’t going to give up the game without putting on a good show. He had more resources on this world than anywhere else he’d been so far-in fact, Old Earth was one of the centers of the family munitions business. Normally, he tried not to take undue advantage of his family connections. But this wasn’t a normal situation-not after he’d searched three planets without so much as a sight of his butler. First thing off the ship, he’d call the local offices of Phule-Pruf Munitions and see what they could do to shorten his search. Unless there’d been unusual friction between the branch office and the community, a request for help from a well-established local business ought to carry some weight with the authorities. What else? He’d need to find somebody with the local knowledge to expedite his search-looking back, he had to admit that the various “native guides” he’d picked up on the other worlds he’d visited hadn’t been a whole lot of help. Here, at least, there was a family member in charge of the local branch office of Phule-Pruf Munitions. He hadn’t seen his uncle in years, but Phule knew without asking that the fellow had to be more reliable than Buck Short or Perry Sodden…
He realized with a start that there had only been one really reliable person in his entire life-good old Beeker, who despite his ill-concealed disapproval of Phule’s behavior on many occasions, had always been there with sound advice and an unfailing fund of practical know-how in the most surprisingly diverse areas. The real irony was that Phule was trying to find his one reliable servant-and falling on his face because he didn’t have anyone reliable to help him in the search! If only he could call on Beeker to help him find Beeker…
In fact, there was a way-or at least in theory there was a way. Unfortunately, it depended entirely on Beeker’s being willing to give up the mad pursuit and come back to his employer. Right here on the Port-a-Brain was a direct link to Beeker’s corresponding machine, which Phule could punch up to send a near-instant message to his absent employee from halfway across the galaxy.
It had one significant shortcoming: There was no way to force Beeker to pay attention to messages he didn’t want to read. In fact, Phule thought, even Beeker might be reluctant to take time on his vacation to read a message from his boss. So until Beeker decided he wanted to hear from his employer, paging him was going to be about as effective as attaching a paper note to a bird’s wings and asking it to deliver it to someone on another planet.
Phule sighed. He’d promised himself he wasn’t going to get sidetracked by pessimism. Not that it was all that easy-especially times like now, when it seemed like the only sane attitude to have…
“What’s wrong with hi- er, it?” asked Gears, looking at the Andromatic robot simulacrum of Phule. In the absence of Sushi, the company’s closest thing to a computer expert, Lieutenants Rembrandt and Armstrong had decided that Gears might be their best bet for a diagnosis of the robot’s problem. At least, Gears was good with other kinds of machines…
“Hit on the forehead with a golf ball,” said Armstrong. “There’s no visible damage, but then it started acting strangely.”
“And in this outfit, how’d you notice?” said Gears, with enough of a straight face that Armstrong nearly answered him. “Seriously, though, what’s it acting like? Maybe that’ll give me some kind of clue. Although it’d be nice to have a schematic of this baby’s brain.”
“If the captain ever had a schematic, it’s probably back at the casino offices on Lorelei,” said Rembrandt. “But to answer your question, the best way to describe the problem is, the robot’s trying to do everything by the book, the way General Blitzkrieg wants the company run. It’s acting just like that Major Botchup they sent to run the company the last time the captain was away.”
“Whoa, that’s scary,” said Gears. His face turned serious, and he said, “I hate to tell you this, Lieutenant, but I’m afraid this robot’s broke.”