“Uh—members of Clan Water Gap,” he said. “I’ve been disturbed by a lot of what I’ve learned here. For example, here you have something very important at stake—the right of a Clan Water Gap maiden to adopt Shorties as orphans. But the whole matter has to be settled by what’s really an emergency measure—that is, my tangling with Iron Bender—just because Clan Water Gap hasn’t elected a new Grandfather lately, and the meeting to elect one is a couple of weeks away—”
“And while it’s not for me to say,” interrupted the basso voice of the Hill Bluffer, “not being a Clan Water Gapper myself, and besides being a government postman who’s strictly not concerned in any local affairs—I’d guess that’s what a lot of folks are going to be asking me as I ply my route between here and Wildwood Peak in the next few weeks. ‘How come they didn’t hold a regular trial to settle the matter, down there in Clan Water Gap?’ they’ll be asking. ‘Because they didn’t have a Grandfather,’ I’ll have to say. ‘How come those Water Gappers are running around without a Grandfather?’ they’ll ask—”
“All right, Postman!” interrupted One Punch, in his turn. “I guess we can all figure what people are going to say. The point is, Law-Twister is still making his appeal. Go ahead, Law-Twister.”
“Well… I asked about the Clan holding their meeting to elect a Grandfather right away,” put in Mal. A small breeze came wandering by, and he felt it surprisingly cool on his forehead. Evidently there was a little perspiration up there. “One Punch here said it could be done all right, but it was a question who’d want to suggest it to the Clan. Naturally, he and the other grandpas who are in the running for Grandfather wouldn’t like to do it. Iron Bender would have his own reasons for refusing; and Gentle Maiden here wouldn’t particularly want to hold a meeting right away—”
“And we certainly shouldn’t” said Gentle Maiden. “Why go to all that trouble when here we’ve got Iron Bender perfectly willing and ready to tear—”
“Why indeed?” interrupted Mal in his turn. He was beginning to get a little weary of hearing of Iron Bender’s readiness to remove heads. “Except that perhaps the whole Clan deserves to be in on this—not just Iron Bender and Maiden and myself. What the Clan really ought to do is sit down and decide whether it’s a good idea for the Clan to have someone like Gentle Maiden keeping three Shorties around. Does the Clan really want those Shorties to stay here? And if not, what’s the best way of getting rid of these Shorties? Not that I’m trying to suggest anything to the Clan, but if the Clan should just decide to elect a Grandfather now, and the Grandfather should decide that Shorties don’t qualify as orphans—”
A roar of protest from Gentle Maiden drowned him out; and a thunder of Dilbian voices arose among the seated Clan members as conversation—argument, rather, Mal told himself—became general. He waited for it to die down; but it did not. After a while, he walked over to One Punch, who was standing beside the Hill Bluffer, observing—as were two other elderly figures, obviously Grandpa Tricky and Forty Winks—but not taking part in the confusion of voices.
“One Punch,” said Mal, and the oldster looked down at him cheerfully, “don’t you think maybe you should quiet them down so they could hear the rest of my appeal?”
“Why, Law-Twister,” said One Punch, “there’s no point you going on appealing any longer, when everybody’s already decided to grant what you want. They’re already discussing it. Hear them?”
Since no one within a mile could have helped hearing them, there was little Mal could do but nod his head and wait. About ten minutes later, the volume of sound began to diminish as voice after voice fell silent. Finally, there was a dead silence. Members of the Clan began to reseat themselves on the grass, and from a gathering in the very center of the crowd, Gentle Maiden emerged and snorted at Mal before turning toward the village.
“I’m going to go get Bender!” she announced. “I’ll get those little Shorties up here, too, so they can see Bender take care of this one and know they might just as well settle down.”
She went off at a fast walk down the slope—the equivalent of about eight miles an hour in human terms.
Mal stared at One Punch, stunned.
“You mean,” he asked him, “they decided not to do anything?”
A roar of explaining voices from the Clan members drowned him out and left him too deafened to understand them. When it was quiet once more, he was aware of One Punch looking severely down at him.
“Now, you shouldn’t go around thinking Clan Water Gap’d talk something over and not come to some decision, Twister,” he said. “Of course, they decided how it’s all to go. We’re going to elect a Grandfather, today.”
“Fine,” said Mal, beginning to revive. Then a thought struck him. “Why did Gentle Maiden go after Iron Bender just now, then? I thought—”
“Wait until you hear,” said One Punch. “Clan Water Gap’s come up with a decision to warm that slippery little Shorty heart of yours. You see, everyone decided, since we were going to elect a Grandfather ahead of time, that it all ought to be done in reverse.”
“In reverse?”
“Why, certainly,” said One Punch. “Instead of having a trial, then having the Grandfather give a decision to let you and Iron Bender hassle it out to see whether the Shorties go with you or stay with Gentle Maiden, the Clan decided to work it exactly backward.”
Mal shook his head dizzily.
“I still don’t understand,” he said.
“I’m surprised—a Shorty like you,” said One Punch, reprovingly. “I’d think backward and upside down’d be second nature to a Law-Twister. Why, what’s going to happen is you and Bender’ll have it out first, then the best decision by a grandpa’ll be picked, then the grandpa whose decision’s been picked will be up for election, and the Clan will elect him Grandfather.”
Mal blinked.
“Decision…” he began feebly.
“Now, my decision,” said a voice behind him, and he turned around to see that the Clan’s other two elderly members had come up, “is that Iron Bender ought to win. But if he doesn’t, it’ll be because of some Shorty trick.”
“Playing it safe, eh, Forty Winks?” said the other grandpa who had just joined them. “Well, my decision is that with all his tricks, and tough as we’ve been hearing Shorties are, that the Law-Twister can’t lose. He’ll chew Iron Bender up.”
The two of them turned and looked expectantly at One Punch.
“Hmm,” said One Punch, closing one eye and squinting thoughtfully with the other at Mal. “My decision is that the Law-Twister’s even more clever and sneaky than we think. My decision says Twister’ll come up with something that’ll fix things his way so that they never will tangle. In short, Twister’s going to win the fight before it starts.”
One Punch had turned toward the seated crowd as he said this, and there was another low mutter of appreciation from the seated Clan members.
“That One Punch,” said Grandpa Tricky to Forty Winks, “never did lay back and play it safe. He just swings right in there twice as hard as anyone else, without winking.”
“Well,” said One Punch himself, turning to Mal, “there’s Gentle Maiden and her orphans coming up from the village now with Iron Bender. You all set, Law-Twister?”
Mal was anything but set. It was good to hear that all three grandpas of Clan Water Gap expected him to come out on top; but he would have felt a lot better if it had been Iron Bender who had been expressing that opinion. He looked over the heads of the seated crowd to see Iron Bender coming, just as One Punch had said, with Gentle Maiden and three, small, human figures in tow.
His thoughts spun furiously. This whole business was crazy. It simply could not be that in a few minutes he would be expected to engage in a hand-to-hand battle with an individual more than one and a half times his height and five times his weight, any more than it could be that the wise men of the local Clan could be betting on him to win. One Punch’s prediction, in particular, was so farfetched…
Understanding suddenly exploded in him. At once, it all fitted together: the Dilbian habit of circumventing any outright lie by pretending to be after just the opposite of what an individual was really after; the odd reaction of the three captured humans who had not been concerned about the Human-Hemnoid Treaty of noninterference on Dilbia when they came into Clan Water Gap territory, but were willing to pass up a chance of escape by letting Mal summon armed human help to rescue them, now that they were here. Just suppose—Mal thought to himself feverishly—just suppose everything is just the opposite of what it seems…
There was only one missing part to this whole jigsaw puzzle, one bit to which he did not have the answer. He turned to One Punch.
“Tell me something,” he said, in a low voice. “Suppose Gentle Maiden and Iron Bender had to marry each other. Do you think they’d be very upset?”
“Upset? Well, no,” said One Punch, thoughtfully. “Come to think of it, now you mention it, Law-Twister—those two are just about made for each other. Particularly seeing there’s no one else made big enough or tough enough for either one of them, if you look around. In fact, if it wasn’t for how they go around saying they can’t stand each other, you might think they really liked each other quite a bit. Why do you ask?”
“I was just wondering,” said Mal, grimly. “Let me ask you another question. Do you think a Shorty like me could carry the stone of Mighty Grappler ten paces?”
One Punch gazed at him.
“Well, you know,” he said, “when it comes right down to it, I wouldn’t put anything past a Shorty like you.”
“Thanks,” said Mal. “I’ll return the compliment. Believe me, from now on, I’ll never put anything past a real person like you, or Gentle Maiden, or Iron Bender, or anyone else. And I’ll tell the other Shorties that when I get back among them!”
“Why thank you, Law-Twister,” said One Punch. “That’s mighty kind of you—but, come to think of it, maybe you better turn around now. Because Iron Bender’s here.”
Mal turned—just in time to see the towering figure of the village harnessmaker striding toward him, accompanied by a rising murmur of excitement from the crowd.
“All right, let’s get this over with!” boomed Iron Bender, opening and closing his massive hands hungrily. “Just take me a few minutes, and then—”
“Stop!” shouted Mal, holding up his hand.
Iron Bender stopped, still some twenty feet from Mal. The crowd fell silent, abruptly.
“I’m sorry!” said Mal, addressing them all. “I tried every way I could to keep it from coming to this. But I see now there’s no other way to do it. Now, I’m nowhere near as sure as your three grandpas that I could handle Iron Bender, here, with one hand tied behind my back. Iron Bender might well handle me, with no trouble. I mean, he just might be the one real man who can tangle with a Shorty like me, and win. But, what if I’m wrong?”
Mal paused, both to see how they were reacting and to get his nerve up for his next statement. If I was trying something like this any place else, he thought, they’d cart me off to a psychiatrist. But the Dilbians in front of him were all quiet and attentive, listening. Even Iron Bender and Gentle Maiden were showing no indications of wanting to interrupt.
“As I say,” went on Mal, a little hoarsely as a result of working to make his voice carry to the whole assemblage, “what if I’m wrong? What if this terrific hassling ability that all we Shorties have gets the best of me when I tangle with Iron Bender? Not that Iron Bender would want me to hold back any, I know that—”
Iron Bender snorted affirmatively and worked his massive hands in the air.
“—But,” said Mal, “think what the results would be. Think of Clan Water Gap without a harnessmaker. Think of Gentle Maiden here without the one real man she can’t push around. I’ve thought about those things, and it seems to me there’s just one way out. The Clan laws have to be changed so that a Shorty like me doesn’t have to tangle with a Clan Gapper over this problem.”
He turned to the stone of Mighty Grappler.
“So—” he wound up, his voice cracking a little on the word in spite of himself, “I’m just going to have to carry this stone ten steps so the laws can be changed.”
He stepped up to the stone. There was a dead silence all around him. He could feel the sweat popping out on his face. What if the conclusions he had come to were all wrong? But he could not afford to think that now. He had to go through with the business, now that he’d spoken.
He curled his hands around the two ends of the iron rod from underneath and squatted down with his knees on either side of the rock. This was going to be different from ordinary weight lifting, where the weight was distributed on the outer two ends of the lifting bar. Here, the weight was between his fists.
He took a deep breath and lifted. For a moment, it seemed that the dead weight of the stone refused to move. Then it gave. It came up and into him until the near face of the rock thudded against his chest; the whole stone now held well off the ground.
So far, so good, for the first step. Now, for the second…
He willed strength into his leg muscles.
Up… he thought to himself… up… He could hear his teeth gritting against each other in his head. Up…
Slowly, grimly, his legs straightened. His body lifted, bringing the stone with it, until he stood, swaying, the weight of it against his chest, and his arms just beginning to tremble with the strain.
Now, quickly—before arms and legs gave out—he had to take the ten steps.
He swayed forward, stuck out a leg quickly, and caught himself. For a second he hung poised, then he brought the other leg forward. The effort almost overbalanced him, but he stayed upright. Now the right foot again… then the left… the right… the left…
In the fierceness of his effort, everything else was blotted out. He was alone with the stone he had to carry, with the straining pull of his muscles, the brightness of the sun in his eyes, and the savage tearing of the rod ends on his fingers, that threatened to rip themselves out of his grip.
Eight steps… nine steps… and… ten!
He tried to let the stone down easily, but it thudded out of his grasp. As he stood half-bent over it, it stuck upright in its new resting place in the grass, then half-rolled away from him, for a moment exposing its bottom surface completely, so that he could see clearly into the hole there. Then it rocked back upright and stood still.
Painfully, stiffly, Mal straightened his back.
“Well,” he panted, to the silent, staring Dilbians of Clan Water Gap, “I guess that takes care of that…”
* * *
Less than forty minutes later he was herding the three anthropologists back into their shuttle boat.
“But I don’t understand,” protested Harvey, hesitating in the entry port of the shuttle boat. “I want to know how you got us free without having to fight that big Dilbian—the one with the name that means Iron Bender?”
“I moved their law stone,” said Mal, grimly. “That meant I could change the rules of the Clan.”
“But they went on and elected One Punch as Clan Grandfather, anyway,” said Harvey.
“Naturally,” said Mal. “He’d given the most accurate judgment in advance—he’d foretold I’d win without laying a hand on Iron Bender. And I had. Once I moved the stone, I simply added a law to the ones Mighty Grappler had set up. I said no Clan Water Gapper was allowed to adopt orphan Shorties. So, if that was against the law, Gentle Maiden couldn’t keep you. She had to let you go and then there was no reason for Iron Bender to want to tangle with me.”
“But why did Iron Bender and Gentle decide to get married?”
“Why, she couldn’t go back to being just a single maiden again, after naming someone her protector,” Mal said. “Dilbians are very strict about things like that. Public opinion forced them to get married—which they wanted to do anyhow, but neither of them had wanted to be the one to ask the other to marry.”
Harvey blinked.
“You mean,” he said disbelievingly, “it was all part of a plot by Gentle Maiden, Iron Bender, and One Punch to use us for their own advantage? To get One Punch elected Grandfather, and the other two forced to marry?”
“Now, you’re beginning to understand,” said Mal, grimly. He started to turn away.
“Wait,” said Harvey. “Look, there’s information here that you ought to be sharing with us for the sake of science—”
“Science?” Mal gave him a hard look. “That’s right, it was science, wasn’t it? Just pure science, that made you and your friends decide on the spur of the moment to come down here. Wasn’t it?”
Harvey’s brows drew together.
“What’s that question supposed to mean?” he said.
“Just inquiring,” said Mal. “Didn’t it ever occur to you that the Dilbians are just as bright as you are? And that they’d have a pretty clear idea why three Shorties would show up out of thin air and start asking questions?”
“Why should that seem suspicious to them?” Ora Page stuck her face out of the entry port over Harvey’s shoulder.
“Because the Dilbians take everything with a grain of salt anyway—on principle,” said Mal. “Because they’re experts at figuring out what someone else is really up to, since that’s just the way they operate, themselves. When a Dilbian wants to go after something, his first move is to pretend to head in the opposite direction.”
“They told you that in your hypnotraining?” Ora asked.
Mal shook his head.
“No,” he said. “I wasn’t told anything.” He looked harshly at the two of them and at the face of Rice, which now appeared behind Harvey’s other shoulder. “Nobody told me a thing about the Dilbians except that there are a few rare humans who understand them instinctively and can work with them, only the book-psychiatrists and the book-anthropologists can’t figure out why. Nobody suggested to me that our human authorities might deliberately be trying to arrange a situation where three book-anthropologists would be on hand to observe me—as one of these rare humans—learning how to think and work like a Dilbian, on my own. No, nobody told me anything like that. It’s just a Dilbian sort of suspicion I’ve worked out on my own.”
The Right to Arm Bears (dilbia) Page 39