The Right to Arm Bears (9 page)

It was the look John had noticed back home on earth, in the eyes of human politicians of statesman level.

"This here's the Half-Pint Posted, One Man," said the Hill Bluffer, as the Dilbians around passed forth a bench for him and John to sit on. The Bluffer sat down. John climbed up to sit beside him.

"Welcome, Half-Pint," rumbled One Man. His voice was so deep with its chest tones that it sounded like a great drum sounding somewhere off in the forest. "This is the moment we've all been waiting for."

"You've been waiting for me?" John stared at the big Dilbian.

"To be sure," said One Man. "No Shorty has ever been a guest under this roof before." He bent his head with solemn dignity in John's direction. It was all very pompous and empty-sounding; but John got the sudden clear conviction that One Man's first words had been plainly intended to give a double meaning. What was it? A warning? John flicked his eyes about as much as he could without actually turning his head away to look; but he saw nothing but unusually well-mannered Dilbian faces. Tark-
ay
and Boy Is She Built were still not in evidence.

"It's a pleasure to be here," John was saying, meanwhile, automatically.

"You're my guest under this roof," said One Man. "For now and at any time in the future, if you come back."

Again, there was that impression of a double meaning. John was completely baffled as to what there was in what One Man said, or possibly in the way he said it, that was giving him the hint of some undercover message. Also, why would the giant Dilbian be doing such a thing? He undoubtedly did not know John from Adam, or any other Shorty.

"Has the Bluffer told you about me?" One Man was asking.

"Well, not much—"

It's probably just as well." The enormous head nodded mildly. "The past is the past; and I'm an old man dreaming in my chair, here . . ."

John just bet he was. From what he had seen of Dilbians, they did not accord the sort of respect he was witnessing to any ancient hulk, no matter how venerable.

"They call him One Man, Half-Pint," put in the Bluffer, "because he once held blood feud all alone—being an orphan—with a whole clan. And won!"

"Ah, yes. The old days," rumbled One Man, with a faraway look in his eyes.

"One time," said the Bluffer, "five of them caught him on a trail where there wasn't any chance to get away. He killed them all."

"Luck was with me, of course," said One Man modestly. "Well, well, I don't want to bring up past exploits. It'll be more polite to talk about my guest. Tell me, Half-Pint," the grey eyes suddenly became penetrating, zeroing in on John, "what are you Shorties doing here, anyway?"

John blinked.

"Well," he said, "I'm here looking for—er—Greasy Face, myself."

"Of course." One Man nodded benignly. "But what brought her, and the others?" His eyes went dreamily away from John out over the room. "There must be some plan, you'd think." He looked quizzically back at John. "Nobody asked you all to come here, you know."

"Well, no," said John. He felt definitely at a loss. The Diplomatic Service had people like Joshua Guy trained to explain the reasons for human expansion into space. He summoned up what he could remember of his high school civics; and tried to present this to One Man in Dilbian terms. One Man nodded agreeably; but John had a hunch he was not making many points. What, for example, could population pressure mean to a Dilbian to whom a community of five thousand was a big city? And what could "the automatic spread of civilization" convey, other than the sound of some large and complicated words?

"That's very interesting now, Half-Pint," said One Man, when John had finally run down. "But you know what kind of puzzles me about you Shorties," he leaned forward confidentially, "is why you figure people ought to like you."

"Why, we don't—" began John, and then suddenly realized that humans did. It was one of the outstanding—if not the most outstanding—human characteristics. "I guess we do. All right, what's wrong with that? We're prepared to like other people."

One Man nodded sagely.

"I hadn't thought of that, Half-Pint," he said solemnly. "Of course, that explains it." He looked around at the other Dilbians. "Naturally, they expect people to like them, if they like people. Maybe we should have realized that."

The other Dilbians looked back at him in apparent puzzlement. But evidently they were used to being puzzled by this oversize patriarch because nobody objected. John, on his part, frowned; not sure whether he was being made fun of or not.

"I just can't make up my mind about you Shorties," said One Man, with a sigh. It was like a mountain sighing. "Well, well, I'm not being much of a host, making my guest here dig around for the reasons behind things; when I ought to be thinking only of entertaining him. Let's see now, what would be instructive and pleasant . . ." He lifted a big finger suddenly. "I've got it. Its been a long time since I broke my stick for anyone. Will one of you, there, hand it down to me?"

A young Dilbian at one side got up, lifted down the staff from the pegs above One Man's head; and gave it to One Man, who took the six-foot, three-inch-thick young post in both hands. He held it crosswise before him with his hands about three feet apart and his wrists flat on the table before him.

"A little trick of mine," he said confidentially to John. "You might get a kick out of it." He closed his fists firmly about the pole. Then, without moving his arms in any way or lifting his wrists from the table, he twisted both fists to the outside.

The thick hardwood curved up in the center like a strung bow—and snapped.

One Man leaned forward and handed the pieces to John. They were heavy and awkward enough so that John preferred to tuck them under one arm.

"Souvenir for you," said One Man, quietly.

John nodded his thanks, a little numbly. What he had just witnessed was impossible. Even for a Dilbian. Even for a Dilbian like One Man. The lack of leverage forced by the requirement of keeping wrists flat with the table, made it impossible.

"No man except me ever was able to do that," said One Man, closing his eyes dreamily. "Good luck with the Terror, Half-Pint."

John still sat where he was, staring at the broken ends of the wood pieces under his arm, until the Bluffer tapped him on the shoulder and led him off through the room, through another hide curtain and into a long room furnished with two rows of springy branches from the conifer-type trees of the forest outside the inn. The mounds made effective natural springs and mattresses for sleepers. A number of male Dilbians were already slumbering along the room. The Bluffer led John to a mound of branches in the far corner.

"You can turn in here, Half-Pint," he said. "Nobody'll bother you here." He pointed toward the entrance. "I'll be out there, if you want to find me."

The mound of branches suddenly looked very good to John. He was bone-weary. He laid the pieces of broken staff that One Man had given him, down beside the mound and sat down on it to take off his shoes.

Five minutes later, he was asleep.

At some indeterminate time after that, he awoke suddenly and with all senses alert. For a long moment he merely lay tense and waiting, ears straining, as if for the warning of an instant attack.

But no attack came. After a moment, he sat up cautiously and looked around him.

In the light of the single thick candle burning by the entrance he saw that the dormitory was now full of sleepers. The Dilbians all slumbered with a silence that was amazing, considering their size and their boisterousness during waking hours. Beside John the Hill Bluffer was now asleep on a neighboring mound, lying on his side with one great hairy arm outflung, palm up. But it was hardly possible to tell that the postman was breathing.

John sat looking around the dormitory, trying to imagine what had wakened him. But there was nothing to see. He was isolated and undisturbed. Even his shoes, and One Man's broken staff lay just where John had laid them, beside the mound of branches.

Yet, John's tenseness continued.

The more he thought of it now, the more convinced he was that One Man had been trying to convey some message or other to him under the mask of casual conversation. The giant Dilbian was without a doubt vastly more intelligent than those around him. Also he seemed to occupy a unique position.

John swore softly to himself.

He had just remembered something that had been niggling at the back of his mind ever since he had walked into the Sour Ford Inn and seen the seated shape of its proprietor. One of the reasons One Man had attracted John's attention was that he had looked familiar. And he had looked familiar because John had seen him before—or at least his image.

One Man had been the oversize Dilbian in the cube of the three-dimensional on Joshua Guy's desk in Humrog.

That did it.

Now what was he supposed to think, wondered John bleakly. One Man—friend or foe? If the giant Dilbian was a close friend of Joshua's—and if he was not a close friend of Joshua's, what was the three-dimensional of him doing on Joshua's desk?

John shoved a hand distractedly through his ruffled mass of red hair. As a boy he had eagerly read not only
The Three Musketeers
, and
Twenty Years After
, but everything dealing with Dumas' famous musketeers. Then he had envied D'Artagnan and his three sworded friends for dashing about risking their lives by engaging in high intrigue. Now, fifteen years later and spang in the middle of a similar adventure, he realized they all must have been nuts, to say the least. Like the hired hand in the joke who could plow four hundred acres with ease but had a hard time sorting potatoes, it wasn't the risks in adventure that got you down. It was the decisions.

And this business about the broken staff. Why give the pieces to John? A souvenir, One Man had said; and possibly this was true from the Dilbian point of view, but it was hardly the kind of present for a Shorty headed for a battle
a l'outrance
with a Terror.

John reached down and hefted up the two pieces for another look. It was still impossible, he thought once more, as he examined the broken ends. Physical strength along just wasn't enough.

He checked suddenly and bent to examine the break more closely. There seemed to be a faint stain covering most of the interior area of each broken end. It radiated out around a faint line that went from the edge into the center. In the dim light he bent close over the line, but could make nothing out. He rubbed the tip of his finger over it; it was a faint groove. He put the two ends back together and the grooves matched.

It occurred to John that it would not be too impossible to drill a tiny hole in the center of even a fairly large staff. Then if some corrosive liquid was poured down this hole at intervals over a period of time, it could well result in a definite weakness in the wood at that point. In fact, with experimentation, it might be possible to control the degree of weakness, so that only someone with unusual strength to begin with . . .

Hmm, thought John. He began to consider One Man in a new light.

Now, if I had brains as well as brawn, thought John, in a physically oriented society—and if I was alone in the world, so that these two things were all that I had to go on, what would I do?

Play down the brains and play up the brawn, of course, he answered himself. I might even build myself into a living legend with supernormal attributes, if I was clever; and so give myself protection in my old age when my strength would begin to dwindle.

Query: If I was this sort of individual, would I enter into any associations or alliances with any other individuals or groups?

Answer: No, I wouldn't dare. Too close an association with anyone else would destroy the illusion of supernormality which was my best protection.

Ergo
, thought John, One Man could not be on Joshua's side. Or on the Terror's. In which case, it was just barely possible to persuade him to be on John's.

John put on his shoes and got quietly to his feet. It would not be a bad idea, he thought, to hunt up One Man right now and see if they could not have a further, and more private, chat about things.

He went softly down the long length of the dormitory and out through the hide curtain into the common room.

There were few Dilbians left at the tables; and One Man's chair was empty. He had not taken one of the branch-mounds in the dormitory; so either he had separate quarters elsewhere, or perhaps he did not sleep here at the inn. John stood a moment, irresolutely. The few Dilbians in the room were ignoring him, by reason of that particular blindness to someone his size that he had encountered before. They simply were not expecting to see anyone built that close to the ground. In a literal sense, they were all looking over his head.

It occurred to John that One Man might still be around, but have stepped outside, or retired to one of the smaller houses or whatever they were behind the inn. Quietly—after his experience at Brittle Rock Inn he had no wish to call attention to himself—he crossed the room, pushed the heavy hide curtain aside and slipped out.

Outside, he paused to accustom his eyes to the night, moving a little way off from the inn to get away from the door and window light. Slowly, the starlit scene took shape around him, solidifying out of obscurity. The wide face of the river ran silver-dark in the faint light, and the distant woods loomed like the tidal wave of some black sea. The clearing where the Inn and the outbuildings behind it stood, lay pooled in silence.

He turned and found his way cautiously around the main building to its back. Unlike the Brittle Rock establishment, the backyard area here, sloping gradually to the river, was clear of rubbish; and the outbuildings themselves were neatly in good repair. Between them, when the way was close, the shadows were deeper and John had almost to feel his way.

It occurred to him then—and he wondered why he had not thought of it before—that a good share of these were probably private living quarters, not only for One Man, but for the rest of his staff, as well as any female visitors. Females seemed to have little to do with Dilbian inns, except in a service capacity. Now, as he groped among the close dark shapes of these buildings he found himself wondering how he could check on whoever might be in them, without raising some kind of alarm.