"Oh, but you haven't, you know," chuckled Mula-ay, gazing upward at the fleecy clouds spotting the blue sky above the treetops surrounding their clearing.
"All right!" said Bill. "Why did my superiors send me here—according to you?"
"Why," Mula-ay brought his gaze back from the clouds to Bill's face, "to get you killed by Bone Breaker in a duel, of course!"
Bill stared at him. But Mula-ay did not seem ready to offer any more conversation without prompting.
"Oh, sure!" said Bill at last. "Do you think I'll believe that?"
"Eventually. Eventually, you will . . ." murmured Mula-ay, still watching Bill's face. "Once you let the idea sink in and consider the fact that you are alone here, with no communication off-planet to your superiors. Yes, I know about that. And committed to the duel I mentioned. Don't you think it strangely coincidental that the Resident should be off-planet with a broken leg just when you get here, and that your young female associate should be an involuntary house-guest, so to speak, in Outlaw Valley? Don't you think it strange that you should be placed in the almost identical position of that earlier young human whom the Dilbians call the Half-Pint-Posted, who had a hand-to-hand battle with a native champion in another locality? Come, come now, Pick-and-Shovel; surely your intelligence is too adequate to blink those facts away!"
In fact . . . in spite of himself a distinctly cold feeling was forming somewhere under Bill's breastbone. The facts were overwhelming—and they were the very facts he had been facing as he had sat in front of the communications console earlier this day. It was unbelievable that there could exist an official human conspiracy to get Bill himself killed. But nonetheless the facts were there and . . .
"Why?" said Bill, as if to himself. "What reason could they have? It doesn't make sense!"
"Oh, but it does, Pick-and-Shovel," said Mula-ay. "The situation here between Resident Greentree and myself has become—how shall I put it—stalemated." Mula-ay chuckled again, softly, as he used the very word Anita had used to Bill the night before. "There's no further gain to be gotten from this Muddy Nose Project for you humans. The local farmers won't accept your help, and the outlaws under Bone Breaker are only enjoying the situation—with my modest help."
He beamed at Bill.
"The best thing for your superiors, in fact," he went on, "is to close this ill-planned project before it turns even more sour. But how to do that without losing face, both with the Dilbians and on an interstellar level? It would be like acknowledging we Hemnoids have won a round here at Muddy Nose. The answer, of course is to close the project—but first to find a suitable excuse for doing so. And what would make the most suitable excuse?"
He stopped and beamed once more at Bill.
"All right," said Bill grimly. "I'll ask. What would?"
"Why, for some untrained, unfortunate youngster to join the project, and—through no fault of his own, but through a series of unlucky accidents—make an irretrievable mess of the situation with the local Dilbians. To the extent, in fact, of getting himself involved in a duel and killed by the local champion, Bone Breaker."
Mula-ay stopped and chuckled so heartily that his whole heavy shape shook.
"What a perfect situation that would be!" he said. "For one thing, it would require the humans to close down the project and withdraw its personnel, temporarily—of course, it would never be started up again, nor would they return. For another, there would be no loss of face with the Dilbians; for, even though their foolish young man got himself killed, still he did show the combativeness necessary to tangle with Bone Breaker, and therefore the Shorties' record for personal courage on this world would not be impaired."
Bill stared at him.
"You seem pretty sure I'm bound to lose," he said although the cold feeling was back under his breastbone again. "The Half-Pint-Posted didn't."
Mula-ay chuckled, undisturbed.
"To be perfectly frank, Pick-and-Shovel," he said, "that is one small caper pulled off by you humans that we haven't been able to figure out, yet. But we have no doubt—and you need have no doubt either—that there was something more at work in that victory than simply one of you small creatures outgrappling a Dilbian. In fact, you hardly need the assurance of our belief. I ask you—can you picture a human who could win such a victory, without some unseen, unethical advantage?"
It was true, Bill could not. The cold feeling under his breastbone increased.
"No, no . . ." Mula-ay shook his head. "The very thought of a human winning any physical fair fight between himself and a Dilbian is unthinkable to the point of ridiculousness. But don't worry, little Pick-and-Shovel. I'm going to save you from your cruel and heartless superiors, as well as from Bone Breaker."
Bill stared at him.
"You . . . ?" he began, and then remembered to hide his emotions just in time.
"To be sure," said Mula-ay, rising softly to his feet and cocking his ear toward the noises of the forest behind him. "And here, unless I am mistaken, comes the means of that rescue, now. Reassure yourself, Bone Breaker won't kill you."
"Oh, he won't?" said Bill, speaking as coldly and unconcernedly as he could. For at that moment, he had heard what Mula-ay had just heard. It was the noise of heavy Dilbian feet approaching.
"No, indeed," said Mula-ay, "you will lose your duel and your life, instead, to the most feeble and decrepit Dilbian that the local area provides. Let your superiors try to save face, after that—following your foolish challenge of the best fighter for miles around!"
He half-turned from Bill. At that moment there burst into the clearing two female Dilbians and a scrawny, tottering male so old that his body fur was gone in patches. Of the two females with him, one was short and plump—and disturbingly familiar-looking, and the other was younger, somewhat statuesque of build, and almost tall enough to be a male.
They came to a halt, their eyes roaming the little dell, and fastened all together on Bill.
"There he is!" said the old male with a (for a Dilbian) high-pitched cackle of satisfaction. "Right where we want him!" And he rubbed his hands with glee.
"I leave you in good hands, Pick-and-Shovel," murmured Mula-ay. With a wink and a nod, but no words spoken, in the direction of the three Dilbians who had just arrived, he glided softly off into the surrounding brush and disappeared.
Chapter 11
"All right, Pick-and-Shovel," said the aged Dilbian male, as the three of them reached him and stopped, standing over him, "are you ready to stand trial, hey? Are you ready to submit yourself to the judgment of a Grandfather—"
A snort from the tall, young-looking female interrupted him. He turned angrily on her.
"Don't you go getting smart with me, Perfectly Delightful!" he shouted. "Got grandchildren, haven't I? I got just as good right to be a Grandfather as anyone!"
"Thank goodness," replied Perfectly Delightful, with the Dilbian equivalent of a ladylike sniff, "at least I'm not one of them!"
"Perfectly Delightful," said the older, plumper female sternly, in a voice which Bill suddenly recognized from the episode in Tin Ear's farmyard, "you leave Grandpa Squeaky alone! He's here to do a job, that's all. If you keep bothering him, he'll never be able to do it!"
Grandpa Squeaky burst into sneering laughter.
"That's right, Thing-or-Two!" he cackled. "Tell the young biddy a thing or two! Go ahead! Thinks she's so good-looking she can get away with murder! Well, it may work with the young squirts, but it doesn't work with old Grandpa Squeaky. And judging by the way things have been going, it hasn't worked too well with Bone Breaker either! The last I heard," he added in a jeering tone, "he was still hankering after Sweet Thing!"
"Is that so!" cried Perfectly Delightful, on a rising note, furiously turning upon the aged male, who slipped behind the stout body of Thing-or-Two with prudent alacrity. "Some people," spat out Perfectly Delightful, "will say anything! And some other people will repeat it! But that doesn't change things. It's me Bone Breaker's always liked best."
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She lifted her head and craned her neck, looking down rather complacently at herself. "After all," she went on in a calmer tone, "I am Perfectly Delightful. Everyone's always said so. Is it sensible that a tall, powerful man like Bone Breaker would want some little chunky creature like Sweet Thing? Oh, she can cook all right. I don't deny that. I believe in giving everyone their due. But there's more to life than eating, you know."
"Never mind that now, Perfectly Delightful!" snapped the older female. "We aren't here to talk about Bone Breaker. We're here to settle this Shorty's hash. Bear in mind, both of you, if you please, that it's the ancient and honorable customs of our village that's at stake here. We're not going to keep this Shorty from helping Sweet Thing get Bone Breaker, just to please you, Perfectly Delightful!"
"Hey, never mind that!" broke in Grandpa Squeaky, jittering with what appeared to be eagerness. "Let me at him, hey? I'll judge him! I'll rule on what's to be done with him!"
Grandpa Squeaky approached Bill and bent down until his breath fanned the hair on Bill's forehead. Bill held his breath—for Grandpa Squeaky, it seemed, had a rather bad case of halitosis.
"Hey, you Shorty! Pick-and-Shovel!" demanded Grandpa Squeaky.
"What is it?" demanded Bill, turning his face away. To his relief, the aged Dilbian stood upright, removing both his face and his breath to a bearable distance.
"Answers to his name, all right," commented Grandpa Squeaky to the two females. "That takes care of the part about who he is."
"Why don't we find a rock and hit him on the head?" queried Perfectly Delightful, in a pleasant tone of voice.
"Go on, I say!" insisted Thing-or-Two to Grandpa Squeaky. Grandpa Squeaky swallowed, and obeyed.
"Here, you, Pick-and-Shovel," he said, "you come in here, helping Dirty Teeth and the Tricky Teacher upset all our honorable old ways of living. We let you get away with that, and you think you can get away with even worse. Now, didn't you take Sweet Thing's side against a fine young buck like Bone Breaker, encouraging a young female to dispute where her husband-to-be wants her to live? Didn't you interfere, hey, in something that wasn't your concern? And besides, didn't you go and challenge our village blacksmith to a weightlifting contest at noon today?"
"Certainly I did!" retorted Bill. "And I was just about to head for his forge—"
"Never mind about that!" interrupted Thing-or-Two. "Go on, Grandpa Squeaky."
"I'll find a rock in a minute, and then we can shut him up," put in Perfectly Delightful brightly. She was searching around among the grassy open area of the dell.
"Sure you did!" said Grandpa Squeaky. "And then you sneaked off to the woods here and hid out, so you wouldn't have to face him—I mean Flat Fingers—thereby injuring the honor of our village."
"Hey!" shouted Bill. "What do you mean, sneaked off? Can't you see my hands are tied behind me here?"
"Nonsense! Go on," said Thing-or-Two. "You can't see his hands from where you're standing, can you? So you've only got his word for it, haven't you? And you aren't going to take the word of a moral wrecker, who thinks our young women can start telling their future husbands how to come and go and where they're supposed to live after they're married? Well, are you?"
"Of course not," said Grandpa Squeaky. He straightened up, squared his shoulders, and addressed Bill once more in a rather more grand manner. "This acting Grandfather—me, that is—finds you guilty as all get out on all counts. Accordingly, he sentences you—this acting Grandfather, who's me—to have your head chopped and your body left at that Residency building for the next Shorty that comes along to take care of."
He dropped his grand manner for a more colloquial one.
"I left the axes back in the woods a-ways. I'll go get them now."
Grandpa Squeaky turned away toward the brush, just as Perfectly Delightful came up with a rock the size of a small cantaloupe.
"Knock him on the head with this," she suggested helpfully, "that way he can't dodge around—"
"No, we don't!" snapped Thing-or-Two. "Grandpa Squeaky's got to chop him, and nobody'll believe it was a fair fight if we've got a dead Shorty with a large bump on his head—"
"Wait!" shouted Bill, desperation adding volume to his voice. "Are you crazy? You can't go killing me, just like that—"
"Why, sure we can, Pick-and-Shovel," interrupted Grandpa Squeaky, staggering back under the double load of a pair of heavy Dilbian axes, massive, with triangular heads made of gray, native iron. "It's not as if you don't have a chance. Seeing I'm just an acting Grandfather, I'm giving you a chance to fight for your life, instead of just chopping you like that. I'll take one ax and you can have the other. Here!"
He dropped one ax in front of Bill, and its handle thudded to the earth six inches from Bill's crossed legs.
"What do you mean?" cried Bill. "I told you, I'm tied up! Can't you see my hands are tied—"
"What do you mean, tied?" demanded Thing-or-Two. Looking at the older Dilbian female, Bill discovered that she had her eyes tightly shut. "I don't see any ropes on his hands. Do you, Perfectly Delightful?"
"Neither do I!" exclaimed Perfectly Delightful, shutting her own eyes. "You know what I think? I think the Shorty's scared. He's just scared—that's why he won't pick up the ax."
"All right, Pick-and-Shovel!" piped Grandpa Squeaky, doing a kind of feeble war dance, tottering around with his own ax. "What's the matter, hey? Scared of me, hey? Come on and face up to me like a man! The witnesses don't see any ropes on your hands—" Hastily, he shut his own eyes. "Neither do I! Grab your ax, if you've got the guts to face me, or I'll start to chop you anyway. This is your last chance, Pick-and-Shovel—"
At that moment, however, he was interrupted by a voice. It burst upon them all like a shout of thunder.
"WHAT ARE YOU DOING WITH MY SHORTY?"
For a second the three Dilbians facing Bill stiffened in mid-movement. Then they spun about to face in the direction from which the voice had come, and, in turning, moved enough apart so that Bill could see between them.
Breaking into the clearing through the brush at its edge was another Dilbian, a female, shorter than either Perfectly Delightful or Thing-or-Two. For a moment, he had no idea who this was, though the voice that had just shouted at them rang on his ear with accents of familiarity. He was suddenly aware, however, that he seemed to have found a friend, if not a rescuer, and that was all that was important at the moment.
Then Thing-or-Two unconsciously, if conveniently, came to his aid.
"Sweet Thing!" the other Dilbian female exploded, on an indrawn, snarling note.
"You just bet it's me!" snarled Sweet Thing in return, advancing into the clearing. She stopped some fifteen feet from the other three. She did not put her hands on her hips, but Bill got the strong impression that if this had been a Dilbian gesture, she certainly would have done so. "And here you are with my Shorty!" Her eyes scorched them all, but ended upon Grandpa Squeaky. "You!"
"Hey, now," protested Grandpa Squeaky, with a perceptible quaver in his voice. A quaver of tremulous old age which contrasted markedly with his energy of a moment before.
"What were you doing to Pick-and-Shovel?"
"None of your business!" snapped Thing-or-Two.
"Pick-and-Shovel!" called Sweet Thing. "What were they doing to you here?"
"They seemed to be putting me on trial—or something," shouted Bill back. He found himself wondering how he could have originally have wondered, on first seeing Sweet Thing, what made her attractive to the outlaw. Right now she was looking decidedly beautiful to him. In fact, the only individual who could have looked much more beautiful would have been Lafe Greentree, himself, with a cast on his broken leg if necessary, but with a handgun in his fist. "This Grandfather here—"
He tried to point at Grandpa Squeaky with his head, but both the pointing and the finishing of the sentence were unnecessary.
"Grandfather!" cried Sweet Thing, scorching Grandpa Squeaky with her eyes again. "You, a Grandfather!" She laugh
ed scornfully. "A fine, squeaking Grandfather you'd make, with your nose in a beer cup all day long! You, a Grandfather! Wait'll I tell my father! I'll just tell More Jam that you've been pretending to be a Grandfather—"
"No!" cried Squeaky Grandpa, agonized. "Sweet Thing, you wouldn't do that to an old man? You wouldn't tell your father about a little harmless joke like this? You wouldn't—"
"You better get out of here fast, then," said Sweet Thing ominously.
"I'm going—I'm going—" Squeaky Grandpa lost no time in putting his words into action. He was across the clearing and into the brush, in a sort of tottering rush before he had finished repeating himself the second time. Sweet Thing's eye swung to the other two females. These, however, did not show the satisfactory sort of response that Grandpa Squeaky had exhibited.
"For your information, Sweet Thing," said Thing-or-Two grimly, "you can tell your father about this every day and twice on Sunday, and much it'll mean to me!"
"How much will it mean to you, though," said Sweet Thing, in a surprisingly gentle voice, "when my father tells the whole village how you've been making fun of them by putting up poor old Grandpa Squeaky to act like he's the sort they might pick for a Grandfather? Don't you think that might bother you just the least little bit?"
"Why—" Thing-or-Two broke off sharply. She hesitated. "Why, they'd never believe such a thing. Never in a lifetime!"
Nonetheless, Bill noted, a good deal of the fire had gone out of her tone of voice.
"They won't believe it?" echoed Sweet Thing in a voice filled with innocent wonder. "Not even when More Jam tells them he saw it with his own two eyes?"
"Saw it?" Thing-or-Two darted a sudden, nervous glance around her at the silent brush enclosing the dell. Her voice stiffened. "More Jam wouldn't lie to the whole village. He wouldn't do such a thing!"
"Not if I just refused to cook for him until he did?" queried Sweet Thing, in the same innocent and wondering tone. "Of course, Thing-or-Two, you're a lot older than I am and you know best. But I should think that if I really told my father I wouldn't do any more cooking for him, that he wouldn't hesitate about telling everybody what he really saw with his own two eyes here in this clearing."
The Right to Arm Bears Page 21
