“I know,” muttered Bill impatiently. “Why wasn’t I told about the Hemnoid being here and being an agent, though? None of the hypnoed information mentioned it.”
“Lafe was supposed to brief you after you got here—that’s what he told me, anyway,” she said, in so low a voice that he could hardly hear her. “The Hemnoids are too good at intercepting and decoding interstellar transmissions for the information I’m giving you now to be sent out for inclusion in ordinary hypno tapes. The point is that word of what Mula-ay told the outlaws got back from the outlaws to the villagers, and the villagers began to ask themselves what was the point of using tools, if making a better living simply meant making a better living for the outlaws. You see, the outlaws go around collecting their so-called tax and the Muddy Nosers can’t stop them.”
“Why not?” asked Bill. “There must be more of them than there are of outlaws—”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you,” whispered Anita. “There are more of them than there are of outlaws. But without a clan structure they won’t combine, and the outlaws raid one farm at a time and take whatever the farmer has to spare. The farmer doesn’t even fight for his property—for one thing he’s always outnumbered. For another, most of them rather admire the outlaws.”
“Admire them!”
“That’s right,” said Anita. “They complain about how the outlaws take things from them, but when they’re telling you about it, you can see they’re halfway proud of having been robbed. It’s been a sort of romantic interlude, a holiday in their lives—”
“Yes,” said Bill, suddenly thoughtful. He remembered Tin Ear’s drunken but happy grin as he had sat at the table, being forced to swallow his own beer.
“The point is,” wound up Anita, “agriculture isn’t going to be improved around Muddy Nose as long as this nest of outlaws continues to exist. We’ve got a stalemate here—outlaws balanced off against the villagers, the Hemnoid influence balanced off against ours. Well, I’ve had some success with bringing the local females around to a human point of view. Lafe told me our superiors think maybe someone—er, mechanically oriented—like you, could have some success with the village males. So—as I say, you go back and try to organize them into a civil defense force—”
“I see,” said Bill. “Just like that, I suppose?”
“You don’t have to sneer at the very notion,” she retorted. In fact, a note of enthusiasm was beginning to kindle in her own voice as she talked—almost as if, Bill thought, she was falling in love with her own idea. “All the village males really need is a leader. You can be that—only, of course, you’ll need to operate from behind the scenes. But why don’t you talk to the village blacksmith to begin with? His name’s Flat Fingers. He’s big enough and strong enough to be a match for Bone Breaker himself, if they went at it without weapons. You get him on your side—”
“All right. Hold on a minute!” interrupted Bill. “I don’t know what this business of raising a civil defense force has to do with the situation, but it’s not the reason I came here. For your information, I was drafted while I was en route to a terraforming project on Deneb Seventeen, and what I was drafted for was to instruct the Muddy Nose villagers in the use of farming tools. In short, those were my orders and no one in authority has changed them. Until someone does—”
“So!”
It was the first time Bill had ever actually heard the word hissed. He stopped his own flow of words out of sheer surprise.
“So—you’re one of those, are you!” Anita’s voice was bitterly accusing. “You don’t really care a thing about your work out between the stars! All you want to do is put in your two years and get your credit so that you can enter a university back home and get a general instead of a restricted professional license when you graduate! You don’t care what happens to the project you work on, or the job it’s trying to do—”
“Now hold on—” began Bill.
“—You don’t care about anything but putting in your time the easiest way possible—”
“If you want to know,” began Bill, “the way I feel about the terraforming of a whole world, with—”
“—and to blazes with anyone else concerned, human or native! Well, it happens I do care about the Dilbians—I care too much to let the Hemnoids stand in the way of their developing into an expanding, technological society and joining us and the Hemnoids not just as poor country cousins, but as an independent, self-sufficient, space-going race—”
“If you’ll listen a minute, I didn’t mean to say—”
“So nobody’s given you any orders, have they” furiously whispered a spot in the by-now pitch-darkness, twelve inches in front of and eight inches below Bill’s nose. “Well, we’ll just fix that! You’re a trainee-assistant, aren’t you?”
“Of course,” he said, when he was able to get the words out.
“And I’m a trainee-assistant. Right? But which one of us was here first?”
“You, of course,” said Bill. “But—”
“Then who’s senior at this post? Me. You go back to the village tonight—”
“You know I can’t get back tonight!” said Bill desperately. “The gates were closed at sundown!”
“Well, they’ll be opened up again, if Bone Breaker says so—ask him!” snapped Anita. “Then go back to the village tonight and stay there and start organizing the villagers to defend themselves against the outlaws! That’s not a suggestion I’m giving you, it’s an order—from me as your superior! Now go do it and good night, Mr. Pickham—I mean, Mr. Billham—I mean—oh, good night!”
There was a feminine snort or rage almost Dilbian in its intensity, and Bill heard the sound of shod human feet stamping off across the turf away from him in the blackness.
Bill stood where he was, stunned. It was part and parcel of the ridiculously unorthodox way in which things had been going ever since he had landed on Dilbia that he should find himself at the orders of a female trainee-assistant who apparently was stark, raving unreasonable on the subject of the local natives. Now what? Should he follow Anita’s orders, organize the Dilbians of Muddy Nose—even if he was able to accomplish that—into a fighting force, and end up being tried under out-space law for unwarranted interference with natives’ affairs on Dilbia? Or should he go back to the village, instruct the locals in the uses of picks and shovels, and end up being tried under out-space law for refusing to obey an order of his immediate superior?
Chapter 7
It was too much to figure out now. Bill gave up. Tomorrow, he would think the whole matter through. Meanwhile, there was the business of getting back to the village tonight—and into a human-style bed at the Residency, which he was far from unwilling to do. Maybe Anita was right about his only having to ask Bone Breaker to let himself and the Bluffer out after hours.
He turned about uncertainly, peering through the night, and to his relief, discovered the lights shining out of the windows of the outlaw buildings like beacons, a little way off. He went toward them, and as he got close, he discovered that he was coming up on the rear of the main building. He swung out around the closer end of it and headed toward the front entrance.
As Bill approached, he saw a number of Dilbian figures standing in front of the entrance steps—among them, standing a little apart, was the obese-looking figure of one who could only be the Hemnoid, Mula-ay, and with him two unusually tall Dilbians, one taller and thinner than the other, who should be Bone Breaker and the Hill Bluffer. Bill went up to them. As he got close, the large moon poked itself farther and farther above the mountain peak, and the silvery illumination in the fortified valley increased—so that by the time he stopped before all three of them, he was able to see their expressions clearly.
“Well, well, here he is,” chuckled Mula-ay richly. “Did you find your little female, Pick-and-Shovel?”
“I spoke to her,” replied Bill shortly. He turned toward the outlaw chief. “She suggested I could ask you whether you wouldn’t let the H
ill Bluffer and myself out of the gate, even if it has been closed for the night. I’d like to get back to the village before morning.”
“She did?” answered Bone Breaker, with that same deceptive mildness of tone. It was impossible for Bill to tell whether the Dilbian was intending to agree or refuse to let Bill and the Bluffer leave. The Hill Bluffer chuckled—for no reason apparent to Bill. Mula-ay chuckled again, also.
“You mean,” Mula-ay said, “you’re going to go off and leave the little creature here, after all?”
Bill felt his ears beginning to grow hot.
“For the moment,” he said, “yes. But I’ll be back, if necessary.”
“There you are!” said the Hill Bluffer happily. “Didn’t I say it? He’ll be back. And I’ll bring him!”
“Anytime, Pick-and-Shovel,” rumbled Bone Breaker mildly. “Just so it’s in the daytime.”
“Of course I’ll come in the daytime,” he said. “I wouldn’t be leaving now, but after talking to—ah—Dirty Teeth, we decided—that is, I decided—to get back to the village tonight.”
“And why not?” trumpeted the Bluffer, in something very like a challenging tone of voice.
“No reason at all,” said Bone Breaker mildly. “Take all the time you want. Come on, the two of you, and I’ll see the gate opened and both of you let out.”
The outlaw chief headed off toward the end of the valley where the wall and the gates were. The Hill Bluffer absently started after him, and Bill was forced to run in an undignified fashion after the Dilbian postman and jerked at the belt of his harness in order to alert the Bluffer to the fact that Bill could not keep up with his strides.
“Oh?—sorry, Pick-and-Shovel,” chuckled the Bluffer, as if his attention had wandered. He paused to scoop up Bill in his two big paws and plump him down in the saddle on his back. “You kind of slipped my mind for the moment… are you all set, up there?”
Bill replied in the affirmative and the Hill Bluffer once more started off after the Bone Breaker.
For the first time, Bill began to realize what kind of favor the Bone Breaker was doing by letting him out after hours. Opening the gate was far from a simple procedure. First the guards had to find torches of resinous wood and light them. Then with the help of Bone Breaker and the Hill Bluffer they removed two heavy cross-beams from the inner side of the gates. Finally, with a great deal of heaving, puffing, and shoving, the gates were forced to rumble open, squeaking and roaring as they each traversed on a sort of millstone arrangement, with one round wooden wheel rotating upon the flat surface of another. At last, however, the gates stood open.
“Well, good night and good traveling, Bluffer. You too, Pick-and-Shovel,” said Bone Breaker.
Bill and the Bluffer returned the good night, and the Bluffer headed out into the patch of outer darkness beyond the gates and the reach of the flickering torches. As that darkness swallowed them up, Bill could hear the gates once more rumbling shut on the millwheel-like arrangement behind them, and over this rode a powerful shout, which could only have come from the lungs of Bone Breaker.
“Remember, Pick-and-Shovel!” he heard. “In the daylight!”
“What’s the matter, Pick-and-Shovel,” growled the Bluffer underneath Bill. “Aren’t you going to promise him?”
“Oh—” said Bill, startled. He raised up in his stirrups, turned his head, and shouted back as loudly as he could. “I promise—by daylight, Bone Breaker!”
The Bluffer chuckled. Behind them, Bill could see the outlaw chief nodding in satisfaction. Bill turned his head back toward the front, and sank down into his saddle, adjusting himself to the sway and plunge of the big body of the Hill Bluffer, striding beneath him. The lanky Dilbian postman said nothing except to chuckle once or twice to himself. Since Bill was too tired to inquire what the joke was, neither one of them said anything further, until they were once more treading the main street of Muddy Nose Village and the Residency loomed before them in the moonlight.
“All right, light down here,” said the Bluffer, stopping abruptly before the Residency’s front door. Bill complied.
“Are you staying here—” Bill began, but the Bluffer was ahead of him.
“I’m off down to the Village Inn, myself,” the Dilbian replied. “If you want me, that’s where you’ll find me—from now until dawn, that is,” grumbled the Hill Bluffer.
“Well—ah—I’ll probably have lots of things to keep me busy early in the morning here—”
“You can say that, all right!” interrupted the Bluffer. “They say this blacksmith called Flat Fingers, here in the village, is a pretty good workman, but it’s my guess you’re going to have to stand over him all the time he’s at it. Well, I’ll stand there right beside you. We’ll mosey up to his forge tomorrow morning and see what kind of promises we can get out of him.”
“Flat Fingers?” echoed Bill, puzzled. “Blacksmith? What would I be wanting a blacksmith for?”
The Bluffer chuckled slyly.
“Why, to make you one of those sissy Lowlander fighting tools they call a sword—and a shield, of course! You didn’t think they had things like that just lying around so you could go pick one up when you needed it? You Shorties take too much for granted.”
“Sword?” echoed Bill, by this time thoroughly confused. “Shield?”
“I don’t blame you,” said the Hill Bluffer, but chuckling again. “It’d gall me to the very bone, too, to have to fight with gadgets like that. But there’s no choice.” He paused, peering down at Bill in a way that was almost sly. “After all, you were the one who challenged Bone Breaker, so he’s got choice of place and style—and you can bet he isn’t going to tangle without his blade and buckler. Trust a Lowlander for that.”
Bill stood, frozen, staring upward at the big furry shape of the Dilbian, looming over him.
“I challenged the Bone Breaker to a fight with swords?” he managed to get out, finally.
The Hill Bluffer released his inner glee in a sudden roar of laughter that shattered the sleeping silence of the darkened village.
“Thought you’d missed out on the chance, didn’t you?” he sputtered, finally calming down. “I could have told you different as soon as we left the valley, but I thought I’d let you chew on your hard luck for a while first. Didn’t I tell you you were lucky to have me? The minute I heard Bone Breaker say Dirty Teeth was staying there because she wanted to, I saw what was up. She’d got some female notion about not wanting you to tangle with Bone Breaker. That was it, right? So later on after you’d gone out to talk to her, I got Bone Breaker alone in a corner and put in a few good words.”
“Good words…?” echoed Bill, an uneasy suspicion beginning to form in his mind.
“You can bet I did,” said the Bluffer. “I said it was a real shame you and he weren’t going to be able to tangle after all—especially as you’d said you’d find it interesting, and I was sure he felt the same way. I pointed out that after all we didn’t have to have a real spelled-out challenge, just as long as folks thought there’d been one. I said he could tell his folks you’d said to me that it was a lucky thing Dirty Teeth didn’t need rescuing, because you could have taken him with one paw tied behind your back.”
Bill gulped.
“And he could say,” went on the Bluffer gleefully, “that the minute he’d heard this from me he told me that he’d never believed the story about the Half-Pint-Posted and the Streamside Terror—that he didn’t believe any Shorty could last two seconds with a man like him—and he didn’t mind if I passed the word along to you. And I did, and you challenged him, naturally, right away, swords or anything he wanted.”
“Swords…” said Bill dazedly.
“I know how you feel,” said the Bluffer with sudden sympathy. “Kind of sickening, isn’t it, when a man’s still got the teeth and nails he was born with? Anyway, we can get you one made, and the duel’s on. Everybody knows about it by now. That’s why Bone Breaker and I arranged for him to holler after you through
the gate to come back in the daylight, and I nudged you to holler back you would, meaning you’d be around to tangle as soon as it was convenient, in daylight and in front of witnesses. But I agree with you about those swords. It’s sure a measly way to fight.”
The Hill Bluffer sighed heavily.
“Of course, maybe I shouldn’t worry about it,” he said brightening. “Maybe you Shorties like fighting with tools. You seem to use them for just about everything else. Well, grab yourself a good night’s sleep—and I’ll see you at dawn!”
Chapter 8
Bill awoke from a confused dream of rolling thunder, as in a heavy thunderstorm, in which Kodiak bears had risen up on their hind legs, put on armor, and begun a sort of medieval tournament which he was being compelled to join. Then he became more fully awake and realized that the thunder was the roaring of a Dilbian voice, shouting Bill’s own Dilbian name of Pick-and-Shovel, and that the nightmare was no dream but merely the dream-twisted facts of his previous day on Dilbia.
He opened his eyes to the sight of one of the Residency’s spare bedrooms. Scrambling out of bed, he pulled on his pants and stumbled down the hall in his bare feet to open a door and step into the reception room at the front of the Residency. Standing in the middle of the room and still shouting for him was a Dilbian. But it was not the Hill Bluffer, as Bill had automatically assumed it would be. Instead, it was the strangest-looking member of Dilbia’s native race that Bill had so far encountered.
He was the widest being on two legs that Bill had ever seen, in the flesh or in any reproduction of any alien race humans had discovered. Bill had so far adjusted to the size of the Dilbians in his one day among them that he had felt prepared for anything the race might present him with. But the individual he looked at now was beyond belief.
He was a Dilbian who made Mula-ay look skinny. This, in spite of the fact that he must have been a good head taller than the Hemnoid. What he must weigh was beyond the power of Bill’s imagination to guess. Certainly, at least double the poundage of the ordinary Dilbian male. So furry and round was he, that he had a jovial, if monstrous teddy-bear look to him; but this impression was immediately diluted by the fact that, hearing Bill come through the door, the fat Dilbian whirled to face him, literally on tiptoe, like a ballet dancer, as if his enormous weight was nothing at all.
The Right to Arm Bears (dilbia) Page 18