No Phule Like An Old Phule by Robert & Heck Asprin Read Free Book Online

planets. For the most part, a Legion captain is expected to avoid attracting the notice of anyone other than his immediate superiors. As far as any actual decision-making, that is best left to those qualified, which in practice usually means the sergeants nominally under his command.
    In this matter as in many others, my employer had made himself the exception, as much by sheer luck as by any great personal initiative. Having been the first human- to make contact with the Zenobians, he found himself invited to lead the first military expedition to the home world of that unusual race. And, more or less by default, once on Zenobia, he became the senior representative of the Alliance government. As a result, he was responsible for the negotiation of all kinds of business between off worlders and the natives.
    As the astute reader will already have grasped, this had both its advantages-notably the possibility of putting himself in the position of prime beneficiary of any unusually lucrative business-and its disadvantages. After a number of months on the planet, my employer had just begun to realize just what some of the latter might be.

    “That is impossible, Captain,” said Chief Potentary Korg. Phule couldn’t read the Zenobian leader’s face, but there wasn’t much doubt about what his words meant. The translator’s confidence-level readout was sitting on 93% +/-5%.
    Between the languages of two races of sophonts that had evolved on separate planets with no interspecies contact until the last couple of years, electronic translation didn’t get any more confident than that. At least, the machine seemed to think so…

    “The Legion doesn’t like to use that word,” said Phule, with a smile he hoped the Zenobian would read the same way a human would. A display of teeth wasn’t necessarily a friendly gesture, especially when dealing with a race of carnivorous dinosaur-like aliens, but so far he hadn’t had any adverse reactions to the expression.
    “The Legion’s lexical preferences are not my affair,” said Korg. He showed his own teeth-which Phule knew was probably equivalent to a human smile. At least, when Flight Leftenant Qual showed his teeth, it was a smile. So at least the Zenobian didn’t seem to be personally offended by the request. It looked more as if his refusal was a policy matter that Phule could turn around by offering a few incentives.
    Phule had dealt with that kind of problem before. “Of course, we wouldn’t expect to bring a party of off-world hunters onto your planet without some compensation…” he began.
    “Compensation?” Korg blinked. “It is not a matter that can be orthagonalized by compensation, Captain. This is the sacred ancestral swampland of the Zenobian race that you propose I allow your off-world hunters to invade.”
    Phule held up his hands. “Chief Korg, I hope you don’t think I’d come to you with such an unseemly proposal. In fact, we offworlders are only here at your invitation. It would be very bad form for us to try to tell you to open up any particular areas of your beautiful planet for off-world visitors. But you were willing to open an area that your people weren’t using for our Legion camp: Why not another area for off-world people to hunt in-for appropriate compensation, of course?”
    Korg stood up and went to the window, staring out at the huge asparagus-like trees that lined the street outside. After a moment he turned to face the video pickup, and said, “I will take this under consideration. There may be areas we can allow your hunters to visit-as long as they remain within the bounds specified, and destroy only those species we permit. And at the same time I shall determine what compensation ought to be appropriate, if your hunters are prosperous enough to come visit Zenobia simply to hunt, I would expect that they can sustain a significant disbursement for the privilege.”
    “That sounds like something we can agree on,” said Phule. “Could