“Climb—on to my back—” grunted that individual, between strides. “Sit on the dingus, there! It’s the same one I used for the Half-Pint-Posted. Then I can get down to some serious moving!”
Staring down over the furry shoulder, Bill saw something like a crude saddle anchored between the straps crossing the Dilbian’s back. Hanging on tight to the thick neck beside him, he climbed on over the shoulder and, turning around, got himself seated down on the saddle. He grabbed the shoulder straps for added support and anchored his legs in the back straps below.
“All set,” he said, finally, the words jolted out of his mouth into the other’s ear.
“All right,” grunted the other. “Now we leave them eating dust. Watch a real man travel, Pick-and-Shovel!”
The rhythm of the tall native’s stride changed—it was a difference like that between the trot and the gallop of a horse. Bill, clinging to the straps, looked back and saw they were drawing away almost magically from their pursuers. In fact, even as he watched, some of the outlaws began to slow down to a walk and drop out of the chase.
“They’re giving up!” he said in the ear of his mount.
“Sure, they would,” answered that individual. “I knew they’d see it right off—they couldn’t catch me. No one can catch me, Pick-and-Shovel. Never could, never will—Lowlander, Uplander, nobody!”
He slowed to a steady, swinging walk. Bill looked shrewdly at the back of the furry head eight inches in front of his own nose.
“You’re the Hill Bluffer, aren’t you?” he inquired.
“Who else?” snorted the other. Bill got the idea that the Hill Bluffer would have been impressed only if Bill had failed to recognize him. The Dilbian went into a half-chant. “Hill Bluffer, that’s my name and fame! Anything on two feet walk away from me? Not over solid ground or living rock! When I look at a hill, it knows it’s beat, and it lays out flat for my trampling feet!”
“Er—yes,” said Bill.
“You’re lucky to get me,” stated the Hill Bluffer in a more conversational tone, but with no show of false modesty. “Just luck you did. When the other Shorties decided to bring you in here, they looked me up right away. Could I take a leave of absence from carrying the mail between Humrog Village and Wildwood Peak, and come down to the Lowlands here to take care of another Shorty? Well, it wasn’t an easy thing to do, but I just happened to have an experienced substitute handy to take over the mail route. So I came on down. The ten pounds of nails was all right, but it didn’t have much to do with it.”
“It didn’t?” asked Bill.
The Hill Bluffer snorted. It sounded like a small factory explosion and shook Bill upon his saddle perch like a small earthquake.
“Of course not!” said the Hill Bluffer. “That’s good pay, but a man wants more than that. This was a matter of reputation. After having taken care of a Shorty once before, could I let another one get himself into all kinds of trouble down here without me? Of course not!”
“Well… thanks,” said Bill. “I appreciate it.”
“You’ll appreciate it more by the time you’re done,” said the Hill Bluffer cheerfully. “Not that you’d have needed me just for protection against these fat-muscled, weak-livered Lowland folk with their sticks and their knives and their swords and their shields and such-like. Can you beat it? No, it wasn’t protection you needed down here, Pick-and-Shovel. It was experience, and a good clean-thinking tough cat of a mountain man like myself to back it up. Well, here we are at Muddy Nose Village.”
Here, in fact, they were.
Now he looked up and saw, indeed, that they were beginning to travel down the miry main street of some kind of native settlement village. Bill could see how the village had gotten its name.
At first, as they moved between the two rows of log buildings that lined the street, they attracted little attention. But soon they were spotted by the various other Dilbians Bill saw lounging around the fronts of the buildings, and deep bass shouts began to summon other local inhabitants from the interior of the structures. Bill found himself and the Hill Bluffer being bombarded by questions, most of them humorous, and few of them polite, as to his identity and his immediate intentions now that he had arrived at his destination.
He had, however, no chance to answer, for the Hill Bluffer strode swiftly on, grandly ignoring the tumult around them, like an aristocrat taking a stroll among peasants whom it would be beneath his dignity to notice. Bill tried to imitate the postman’s indifference. The Bluffer came at last to the far end of the village street, and to a rather wider, more modern-looking log structure there, which sat back a little ways from the other buildings of the village. Bill, finding his wits sharpened by events since he had landed on this world, noticed that the door to this final building was cut in the generous proportions necessary to admit a Dilbian, even a Dilbian as tall as the Hill Bluffer. But, by contrast, the windows in the building were cut down low enough so that a human being would be able to look out of them.
“All right. Here we are,” he said, halting. “Light down, Pick-and-Shovel, and get whatever Shorty-type gear you’ll need. Then you can get the story straight from Sweet Thing herself, and we’ll be off to Outlaw Valley to see about getting Bone Breaker to turn loose Dirty Teeth.”
Bill slid down the broad, furry back, relieved to have his feet on a solid surface once more. He found himself standing in a pleasantly sunlit sort of reception room with some Dilbian-sized benches around the walls and a good deal of empty space between them. He looked toward a half-open door, which evidently led deeper into the building.
“What?” he answered, as the Hill Bluffer’s last words registered on him. “Wait a minute. I don’t think I better go anyplace right away. I’ll be expected to stay here until I talk to the Resident and his—I mean—the other Shorty who’s staying here.”
“Are you deaf, Pick-and-Shovel?” boomed the Hill Bluffer, exasperated.
Surprised, Bill turned to face him.
“Didn’t you hear what I was just saying to you?” demanded the Bluffer. “You can’t just sit down here and wait for either Dirty Teeth or the Tricky Teacher. Don’t you Shorties ever know anything about each other? You can sit here all you want, but neither one of them’s going to show up.”
Bill stared at the tall Dilbian. His scrambling mind finally evoked the hypnoed information that Tricky Teacher was the Dilbian name of the Resident, Lafe Greentree, and that Dirty Teeth was the name the natives had pinned on Greentree’s female trainee-assistant—apparently because she had been observed brushing her teeth one day and the Dilbians had jumped to the obvious conclusion that anyone who cleaned their teeth like that as a regular practice must have strong need to do so. But even with this additional knowledge, the Bluffer’s last words made no sense.
“Why not?” Bill was reduced to asking, finally.
“Why, because the Tricky Teacher broke his leg a couple of days ago, and a box like the one that always drops out of the sky to bring you Shorties and haul you away took him off to get it fixed!” said the Bluffer, exasperatedly. “That left Dirty Teeth in charge, and of course she had to go out to Outlaw Valley and get mixed up in this hassle between Sweet Thing and Bone Breaker—just like a female. And of course, once he got her in the valley, Bone Breaker just kept her there to make Sweet Thing come to her senses. Well, you Shorties can’t let an outlaw like Bone Breaker hang on to one of your females like that and think the farmers around here are going to pay any attention to you when you try to teach them tricks with those picks and shovels and plows and things you brought them!”
He broke off and stared down at Bill from his lean ten feet of height.
“—So, what you’ve got to do is get going right now out to Outlaw Valley and get Dirty Teeth back. With the Tricky Teacher gone, there’s no one else to do it,” the Bluffer said. “And we better get moving soon as you’ve talked to Sweet Thing if we want to get in today. Those outlaws bar the gates to their valley at sundown, and anyone trying to get
in or out gets himself chopped. Well, what’s holding you?” roared the Bluffer as Bill still stood there. “You’re not going to let a Lowlander outlaw hang on to one of your females like that and do nothing about it? You’re going after her, aren’t you?”
Chapter 3
“No,” said Bill automatically.
It was an instinctive reply. Out of the welter of odd names and odder statements that the Hill Bluffer had just been throwing at him, the only thing that stood out clearly was that Bill was being asked to do something besides instruct Dilbians in how to use agricultural implements. Apparently Lafe Greentree had broken his leg and had been taken off-planet for medical treatment, leaving Anita Lyme in charge. And evidently she had interfered, where she should not, in native affairs, and been made a prisoner.
The Hill Bluffer roared, jerking Bill’s attention back to the tall Dilbian.
“No!” exploded the Hill Bluffer incredulously. Bill with some relief—he had been ready to start running again—realized that the other was not expressing fury so much as he was expressing outrage. “No, he says! Here, a female Shorty’s got herself captured, and you say you won’t go after her! Why, if I’d known you weren’t anything like the Half-Pint-Posted, I’d never had let myself in for this job! I’d never even have considered it!”
“Half-Pint-Posted?” echoed Bill, as the Dilbian paused for breath.
“Of course!” snorted the Bluffer. “He was just a Shorty too, but did he hesitate to take on the Streamside Terror? I ask you?”
“I don’t know,” answered Bill, half-deafened by the other’s voice in this enclosed space. “Who’s the Streamside Terror?”
“Why, just the toughest Upland hill-and-alley brawler between Humrog Village and Wildwood Peak!” said the Bluffer. “Just the roughest—why, the Terror’d chew this Bone Breaker outlaw up for breakfast—” The Bluffer’s voice abruptly lowered, and became judicious, “not that Bone Breaker’s an easy match, of course. It’s just that he’s used to fighting with that blade and shield of his in the sissy Lowland fashion. Barehanded, I’ll bet the Terror could take him any day. And the Half-Pint-Posted took the Terror.”
Bill’s mind staggered under the impact of this additional, improbable information.
“You mean this Shorty—a human like me,” said Bill, “fought this Streamside Terror you talk about, without weapons?”
“Didn’t I say so?” demanded the Bluffer. “Bare-handed and man-to-man. Not only that, but beside a mountain creek—the Terror’s favorite spot. And Half-Pint licked him.”
“How do you know—” Bill was beginning, when the Bluffer interrupted him.
“How do I know?” shouted the Bluffer in fresh outrage. “Didn’t I carry Half-Pint on my back until we caught up with the Terror? Didn’t I stand by him and watch while they tangled? Are you questioning my word, Pick-and-Shovel—the word of the official postman between Humrog Village and Wildwood Peak?”
“No—no, of course not,” said Bill, still bewildered. “It’s just that I hadn’t heard—about it before now.” As he spoke, his mind was racing. There must be more to it than the Bluffer was telling. Probably there was some kind of gimmick that had kept the match from being the simple massacre of a human being that by rights it would have had to have been.
Also—a new thought struck him—if Greenleaf was actually gone and his assistant was honestly in trouble, then he did indeed have a responsibility to do whatever was necessary to get her out of it. At least, to begin with, he could go and talk to this Dilbian who had taken her, and who evidently was an individual of importance among the outlaws—if not their chief. If nothing else, he could stall until the Resident returned. An ordinary broken leg should not keep the man away from his job much more than the three or four days of the round trip required to take him to a hospital ship and bring him back here.
Bill scrambled about in his mind for words to explain his first refusal to go to Outlaw Valley to help Dirty Teeth. He was neither a quick nor easy liar and excuses did not come readily to him. Luckily, at that moment he remembered that underneath the wild improbabilities of the situation here on Dilbia, there still existed the prosaic organization of any off-world project. Project Spacepaw might be the most fouled-up human endeavor ever to take place beyond Earth’s orbit around the Sun, but behind it there had to exist the ordinary official machinery of equipment and regulation.
“Now, listen to me!” he said to the Hill Bluffer. “I’m as good a Shorty as this Half-Pint-Posted or any other one of us you’ve met; and I’m not going to let one of my own people be held against her will if I can help it. But you’ve got to remember I’m not the head Shorty here. Before I go dashing off to Outlaw Valley, I’ve got to see if the Tricky Teacher left me any message telling me what to do. If he did, I’ve got to do what he said. If he didn’t, then I can do things my own way. You’re just going to have to wait until I see if he left that message.”
“Well, why didn’t you say so?” demanded the Hill Bluffer, obviously relieved. “You don’t have to explain things twice to an official postman, where something like a message is concerned. If the Tricky Teacher left you a piece of mail to read before you started out, that comes before anything. Though what he should’ve done was give it to me to deliver to you. It wouldn’t have cost him anything extra, and that way he’d be sure you got it right off. Of course,” said the Hill Bluffer, suddenly interrupting himself, “come to think of it, he couldn’t. Because I just got here yesterday and he was already gone; and probably he didn’t want to trust it to any of these Lowlanders. Why, one of them’s just as liable to lose it down a well, or go off and leave it lying someplace—”
He checked himself again.
“Anyway, you go read your message, Pick-and-Shovel,” he said, “and I’ll go dig up Sweet Thing and bring her back here.”
He headed toward the door.
“Just a minute,” Bill called after him. “Who’s Sweet Thing, anyway?”
“Thought you knew,” replied the Bluffer, surprised, opening the door. “More Jam’s daughter, of course—More Jam’s the innkeeper here in town. Passable enough female, I suppose, but like any Lowland woman, talk your head off, even if she hadn’t been listening to those crazy notions of Dirty Teeth. Well, see you in a few minutes—”
Out he went. Bill spun around and headed back through the halfway open door into the living quarters of the Residency.
He knew what he was looking for first, whether Greenleaf or Anita Lyme had actually left him a message or not. Somewhere in this building there would be the official daily log of the project—and the odds were strongest he would find it in the room holding the off-plant communications equipment and project records.
It took him four or five minutes of opening doors before he discovered the room for which he searched. It was a square, white-walled room with office equipment and the two banks of consoles which severally operated the Residency computing equipment and the off-planet communications equipment. On one of the room’s two desks, he saw the heavy, black-bound book which would be the project log. He sat down hastily at the desk and flipped it open, searching for the latest entries.
He found them within seconds, but they proved to be unusually uninformative, merely listing equipment loaned to the farmers and the times and subjects of conferences between either Greenleaf or Anita Lyme and the local natives. There was none of the diary-like chattiness that isolated project members usually added to the log entries in situations like this on Dilbia, and which might have told Bill a great deal more than he now knew about Greenleaf and the girl. Three days ago, there was a brief entry in Greenleaf’s upright, hard-stroked hand:
… fell from ladder climbing to replace blown-away roofing shakes on Residency roof above north wall. Broke leg. Have called for medical assistance.
The next entry, the following day, was in a sloping, more feminine hand.
0800 hours, local time. Resident Greenleaf evacuated by shuttle from nearby courier ship, for transportatio
n to closest available hospital ship, for treatment of broken leg.
1030 hours. Leaving for conference with Bone Breaker at Outlaw Valley.
Anita Lyme, Trainee Assistant
That was the last entry in the log, two days ago. There was no message for Bill from either Greenleaf or Anita, though it was highly irregular of the girl to go off without leaving one. Unless, that is, she had honestly expected to be back the same day.
Bill closed the log, got to his feet, and stepped over to the communications equipment. It was a standard console, arranged to put whoever used the equipment in touch with a relay station orbiting the planet, which would in turn re-broadcast the message at multilight velocity to its interstellar destination. Bill had been checked out on its use, as he had been checked out on most general equipment in use on off-world projects. He flipped the power switch and pressed the microphone button.
Nothing happened. The power light on the console did not go on. The microphone did not give out the signal hum that announced it as being in operating condition.
The set was dead.
For a second, Bill stared at it. Then, quickly, he ran over the console, flipping check switches and trying to locate the malfunction. But nothing responded. His hands flew to the toggle-nuts holding the face of the panel in place. Somewhere in the building there would be test equipment and with it, given time, even he ought to be able to trace down what was keeping the set from operating.
“PICK-AND-SHOVEL!”
It was the voice of the Hill Bluffer, roaring for him from the reception room. A second later, it was reinforced by a lighter toned, female Dilbian voice, also calling him. Grimly, Bill dropped his hands and turned away from the console. Fixing the communications equipment would have to wait.
He went rapidly out of the room and down the hall toward the front of the building. A moment later, he stepped into the reception room and found the Bluffer there with his female companion, who was the first to break off shouting for Bill as he came through the door.
The Right to Arm Bears (dilbia) Page 15