“I’ll talk to Frank and register your complaint. I’ll also see that you get some sort of compensation for these, ah, most recent lapses. Fair enough?” “I am sure you will ensure fair redress. At the risk of sounding tiresomely redundant, I must point out that such palliative measures should not be required in the first place.”
Bull stood up, his head nearly brushing the ceiling. “We have trusted you and your kind by signing a treaty which allows you to dwell on and take things from our home. We have most certainly gained from this arrangement.” He lifted his glasses to illustrate that point. “It would be in the best interests of both our races for this entente to continue. Still, for such a relationship to endure our trust must not be betrayed.”
“We’re doing just fine here,” Joe insisted. “We’ve just got a few problems to be worked out, that’s all.”
“Those are very nearly the precise words you used last time I came to lodge protest.”
Guys never forgot anything. “Because it’s true.”
The gigantic native stood there gazing at Joe, his expression unreadable. The faces of the Guys were too alien and immobile to offer clues as to their thoughts or mood, but sometimes their posture gave hints. Bull’s body settled into what Joe thought of as their pensive crouch. He could be thinking, or even communing with who knew how many other Guys. After a few moment he stood straighter and scratched the armored bulge of the braincase down below his gleaming black eyes.
Joe relaxed at seeing this. It meant Bull was reminding himself that he didn’t know all there was to be known about humans, and so may have been mistaken in his assumptions. Caution and deliberation were two hallmarks of Guy personality—thank the Great Spirit for that! A hotheaded Guy would be hell on wheels.
“If you tell me this it must be true,” Bull intoned.
Joe made himself smile. “It’s my job to protect the interests of your people, and I’m doing the best I can.” In other words I may be shading the truth a bit, but I’m doing it for your own good.
Bull nodded, a human habit the Guys had adopted early on. “Then I shall depart and cease being an impediment to the performance of your duties. Good day to you.” He headed toward the door, taking the cautious, almost mincing steps the Guys took around fragile human artifacts, moving with the focused care of someone trying to drive a tank down the aisle of a china shop.
This was manners, not a lack of coordination between the two separate entities of which Bull and his kind were made. The highly intelligent, eminently reasonable person who Joe knew as Bull was a cat-sized symbiote residing in that armored braincase. The body carrying him was that of a creature which when feral and unoccupied they called an imarguytnarguyakh or imar for short; a deadly predator which made the terrestrial grizzly bear look like a cuddly puppy in comparison. Bull’s control of his imar body was absolute and perfect. His kind had lived that way for thousands of years.
Joe let out a sigh of relief when Bull closed the door after himself. It wasn’t that the Guys were dangerous; for all their fearsome aspect they had never showed a single sign of violent or warlike tendencies. It was more a matter of them being like some of the tribal elders he’d grown up around back on the Rez. They adhered to a strict code of rules and expectations real people dealing with real situations in the real world could almost never meet. There were times Joe wished they were meaner. It would make his job a lot easier.
He got up and headed for the refreshment center at one side of his office, hoping he had time for a soothing cup of something before Frank Testa turned up. That was usually the way it worked. Not long after the rock left the hard place turned up.
He opened the wooden box he used to store his flat, a dried plant from Tefford II used to make a stimulating and yet centering tea. One of the thousands of alien biologies which were BCT’s stock in trade, it cost twenty times as much as the finest estate-grown teas and coffees from Earth. Frank had introduced him to the stuff, and in doing so given him a taste for a pleasure he really couldn’t afford.
The box was nearly empty. He wistfully eyed the small heap of purple leaves left in one corner, knowing he should just close the box and fix something else. He didn’t really need to drink tlat, and as long as he wasn’t out he wouldn’t need to think about how he really shouldn’t ask Frank for more. The site director was always doing things to make him feel obligated. Helping him would only make his situation more difficult.
Just as he was closing the box Testa came breezing into his office without warning. Time and again he’d asked Mabel to at least give him a “Frank’s here,” but somehow that never happened. Probably because she worked for Frank and not him.
“Hey there, Joe!” Testa boomed cheerfully. “You brewing up some tlat? Stunning.” He reached in his jacket pocket and produced a red and silver packet with the royal blue BCT logo on it. “Here, you must be getting bloody low, the way I keep drinking it up on you.” He tossed the pack toward Joe, who caught it by reflex.
“That’s OK, Frank,” he began. “1 really don’t need any.”
“What’s need got to do with it? Hell, it’s the least the company can do considering the great job you’re doing, Chief.”
Joe stood there holding the pack, his face giving away no more than Bull’s would. Sure he was chief—and only—BAA agent here on Marguy. But he always had the nagging feeling that Frank used the title in subtle mockery of his Native American heritage. The problem was Frank had one of those bluff, always grinning faces and superior attitude that made everything he said sound like a joke at someone’s expense.
Still, part of his job was to get along with the man. That was his place, to be caught between the simple black & white world of the Guys and the cunning, calculating corporate grey zone Frank represented.
“Two tlats coming up,” he said, turning to brew them.
Shortly afterward they were seated in the easy chairs over by the curved perspyl wall which made up one corner of Joe’s office. An office Frank had given him to use, one a hundred times roomier and better appointed than the cramped, stuffy prefab hut the BAA had provided. BCT’s onsite accommodations were in the upper level of a huge special purpose lander, and first class all the way, BAA’s something closer to steerage. The small sleeping compartment off his office was bigger than the entire hut.
Frank had taken off his hat, flopped into a chair and parked his boots on the table, making himself at home. He looked like the Great White Hunter taking a break between safaris—what with his sun-browned skin, sun-bleached hair, fussy white mustache and permanent hunter’s squint. All he lacked was an elephant rifle and native bearers. This was an image he cultivated; he also affected a lot of early 20th century British slang to go with his appearance. Joe knew Testa had actually grown up in Cleveland.
Testa took a slug of tlat, sighed with pleasure, then regarded Joe over the rim of his cup. “I hear my old chum Bull was just here to see you.” “How did you hear that?” Joe asked, not really expecting a straight answer. Testa always seemed to know everything, but treated him like a mushroom. He could see the shit-shovel coming, even in the dark.
The site director’s ever-present grin widened. “Oh, I hear things. You know how it is.”