The Right to Arm Bears

by Gordon R. Dickson

  "What—uh," asked Mal, "were they getting into, if I can ask?"

  "Restricted territory! Treaty territory!" snapped Guy, knocking the dottle out of his pipe and beginning to refill it. Mal coughed discreetly as the fumes reached his nose. "In this sector of space we're in open competition with a race of aliens called Hemnoids, for every available, habitable world. Dilbia's a plum. But it's got this intelligent—if primitive—native race on it. Result, we've got a treaty with the Hemnoids restricting all but emergency contact with the Dilbians—by them or us—until the Dilbians themselves become civilized enough to choose either us or the Hemnoids for interstellar partners. Highly illegal, those three tourists just dropping in like that."

  "How about me?" asked Mal.

  "You? You're being sent in under special emergency orders to get them out before the Hemnoids find out they've been there," said Guy. "As long as they're gone when the Hemnoids hear about this, we can duck any treaty violation charge. But you've got to get them into their shuttle boat and back into space by midnight tonight—"

  The dapper little ambassador pointed outside the window of the log building that served as the human embassy on Dilbia at the dawn sunlight on the cobblestoned Humrog Street.

  "Luckily, we've got the local postman in town at the moment," Guy went on. "We can mail you to Clan Water Gap with him—"

  "But," Mal broke in on the flow of words, "you still haven't explained—why me? I'm just a high school senior on a work-study visit to the Pleiades. Or at least, that's where I was headed when they told me my travel orders had been picked up, and I was drafted to come here instead, on emergency duty. There must be lots of people older than I am, who're experienced—"

  "Not the point in this situation," said Guy, puffing clouds of smoke from his pipe toward the log rafters overhead. "Dilbia's a special case. Age and experience don't help here as much as a certain sort of—well—personality. The Dilbian psychological profile and culture is tricky. It needs to be matched by a human with just the proper profile and character, himself. Without those natural advantages the best of age, education, and experience doesn't help in dealing with the Dilbians."

  "But," said Mal, desperately, "there must be some advice you can give me—some instructions. Tell me what I ought to do, for example—"

  "No, no. Just the opposite," said Guy. "We want you to follow your instincts. Do what seems best as the situation arises. You'll make out all right. We've already had a couple of examples of people who did, when they had the same kind of personality pattern you have. The book anthropologists and psychologists are completely baffled by these Dilbians as I say, but you just keep your head and follow your instincts . . ."

  He had continued to talk, to Mal's mind, making less and less sense as he went, until the arrival of the Hill Bluffer had cut the conversation short. Now, here Mal was—with no source of information left, but the Bluffer, himself.

  "This, er, Iron Bender," he said to the Dilbian postman. "You were saying I ought to be able to handle him all right?"

  "Well, if you're any kind of a Shorty at all," said the Bluffer, cheerfully. "There's still lots of people in these mountains, and even down in the lowlands, who don't figure a Shorty can take on a real man and win. But not me. After all, I've been tied up with you Shorties almost from the start. It was me delivered the Half-Pint Posted to the Streamside Terror. Hor! Everybody thought the Terror'd tear the Half-Pint apart. And you can guess who won, being a Shorty yourself."

  "The Half-Pint Posted won?"

  "Hardly worked up a sweat doing it, either," said the Hill Bluffer. "Just like the Pick-and-Shovel Shorty, a couple of years later. Pick-and-Shovel, he took on Bone Breaker, the lowland outlaw chief—of course, Bone Breaker being a lowlander, they two tangled with swords and shields and that sort of modern junk."

  Mal clung to the straps supporting the saddle on which he rode below the Hill Bluffer's massive, swaying shoulders.

  "Hey!" said the Hill Bluffer, after a long moment of silence. "You go to sleep up there, or something?"

  "Asleep?" Mal laughed, a little hollowly. "No. Just thinking. Just wondering where a couple of fighters like this Half-Pint and Pick-and-Shovel could have come from back on our Shorty worlds."

  "Never knew them, did you?" asked the Bluffer. "I've noticed that. Most of you Shorties don't seem to know much about each other."

  "What did they look like?" Mal asked.

  "Well . . . you know," said the Bluffer. "Like Shorties. All you Shorties look alike, anyway. Little squeaky-voiced characters. Like you—only, maybe not so skinny."

  "Skinny?" Mal had spent the last year of high school valiantly lifting weights and had finally built up his five-foot-eleven frame from a hundred and forty-eight to a hundred and seventy pounds. Not that this made him any mass of muscle—particularly compared to nearly a half-ton of Dilbian. Only, he had been rather proud of the fact that he had left skinniness behind him. Now, what he was hearing was incredible! What kind of supermen had the computer found on these two previous occasions—humans who could outwrestle a Dilbian or best one of the huge native aliens with sword and shield?

  On second thought, it just wasn't possible there could be two such men, even if they had been supermen, by human standards. There had to have been some kind of a gimmick in each case that had let the humans win. Maybe, a concealed weapon of some kind—a tiny tranquilizer gun, or some such . . .

  But Ambassador Guy had been adamant about refusing to send Mal out with any such equipment.

  "Absolutely against the Treaty. Absolutely!" the little ambassador had said.

  Mal snorted to himself. If anyone, Dilbian or human, was under the impression that he was going to get into any kind of physical fight with any Dilbian—even the oldest, weakest, most midget Dilbian on the planet—they had better think again. How he had come to be selected for this job, anyway . . .

  "Well, here we are—Clan Water Gap Territory!" announced the Hill Bluffer, cheerfully, slowing his pace.

  Mal straightened up in the saddle and looked around him. They had finally left the narrow mountain trail that had kept his heart in his mouth most of the trip. Now they had emerged into a green, bowl-shaped valley, with a cluster of log huts at its lowest point and the silver thread of a narrow river spilling into it from the valley's far end, to wind down into a lake by the huts.

  But he had little time to examine the further scene in detail. Just before them, and obviously waiting in a little grassy hollow by an egg-shaped granite boulder, were four large Dilbians and one small one.

  Correction—Mal squinted against the afternoon sun. Waiting by the stone were two large and one small male Dilbians, all with the graying fur of age, and one unusually tall and black-furred Dilbian female. The Hill Bluffer snorted appreciatively at the female as he carried Mal up to confront the four.

  "Grown even a bit more yet, since I last saw you, Gentle Maiden," said the native postman, agreeably. "Done a pretty good job of it, too. Here, meet the Law-Twister Shorty."

  "I don't want to meet him!" snapped Gentle Maiden. "And you can turn around and take him right back where you got him. He's not welcome in Clan Water Gap Territory; and I've got the Clan Grandfather here to tell him so!"

  Mal's hopes suddenly took an upturn.

  "Oh?" he said. "Not welcome? That's too bad. I guess there's nothing left but to go back. Bluffer—"

  "Hold on, Law-Twister," growled the Bluffer. "Don't let Gentle here fool you." He glared at the three male Dilbians. "What Grandfather? I see three grandpas—Grandpa Tricky, Grandpa Forty Winks and—" he fastened his gaze on the smallest of the elderly males, "old One Punch, here. But none of them are Grandfathers, last I heard."

  "What of it?" demanded Gentle Maiden. "Next Clan meeting, the Clan's going to choose a Grandfather. One of these grandpas is going to be the one chosen. So with all three of them here, I've got the next official Grandfather of Clan Water Gap here, too—even if he doesn't know it himself, yet!"

  "Hor!" The B
luffer exploded into snorts of laughter. "Pretty sneaky, Gentle, but it won't work! A Grandfather's no good until he's named a Grandfather. Why, if you could do things that way, we'd have little kids being put up to give Grandfather rulings. And if it came to that, where'd the point be in having a man live long enough to get wise and trusted enough to be named a Grandfather?"

  He shook his head.

  "No, no," he said. "You've got no real Grandfather here, and so there's nobody can tell an honest Shorty like the Law-Twister to turn about and light out from Clan Territory."

  "Told y'so, Gentle," said the shortest grandpa in a rusty voice. "Said it wouldn't work."

  "You!" cried Gentle Maiden, wheeling on him. "A fine grandpa you are, One Punch—let alone the fact you're my own real, personal grandpa! You don't have to be a Grandfather! You could just tell this Shorty and this long-legged postman on your own—tell them to get out while they were still in one piece! You would have, once!"

  "Well, once, maybe," said the short Dilbian, rustily and sadly. Now that Mal had a closer look at him, he saw that this particular oldster—the one the Hill Bluffer had called One Punch—bore more than a few signs of having led an active life. A number of old scars seamed his fur; one ear was only half there and the other badly tattered. Also, his left leg was crooked as if it had been broken and badly set at one time.

  "I don't see why you can't still do it—for your granddaughter's sake!" said Gentle Maiden sharply. Mal winced. Gentle Maiden might be good looking by Dilbian standards—the Hill Bluffer's comments a moment ago seemed to indicate that—but whatever else she was, she was plainly not very gentle, at least, in any ordinary sense of the word.

  "Why, Granddaughter," creaked One Punch mildly, "like I've told you and everyone else, now that I'm older I've seen the foolishness of all those little touches of temper I used to have when I was young. They never really proved anything—except how much wiser those big men were who used to kind of avoid tangling with me. That's what comes with age, Granddaughter. Wisdom. You never hear nowdays of One Man getting into hassles, now that he's put a few years on him—or of More Jam, down there in the lowlands, talking about defending his wrestling championship anymore."

  "Hold on! Wait a minute, One Punch," rumbled the Hill Bluffer. "You know and I know that even if One Man and More Jam do go around saying they're old and feeble nowdays, no one in his right mind is going to take either one of them at their word and risk finding out if it is true."

  "Think so if you like, Postman," said One Punch, shaking his head mournfully. "Believe that if you want to. But when you're my age, you'll know it's just wisdom, plain, pure wisdom, makes men like them and me so peaceful. Besides, Gentle," he went on, turning again to his granddaughter, "you've got a fine young champion in Iron Bender—"

  "Iron Bender!" exploded Gentle Maiden. "That lump! That obstinate, leatherheaded strap-cutter! That—"

  "Come to think of it, Gentle," interrupted the Hill Bluffer, "how come Iron Bender isn't here? I'd have thought you'd have brought him along instead of these imitation Grandfathers—"

  "There, now," sighed One Punch, staring off at the mountains beyond the other side of the valley. "That bit about imitations— That's the sort of remark I might've taken a bit of offense at, back in the days before I developed wisdom. But does it trouble me nowdays?"

  "No offense meant, One Punch," said the Bluffer. "You know I didn't mean that."

  "None taken. You see, Granddaughter?" said One Punch. "The postman here never meant a bit of offense; and in the old days I wouldn't have seen it until it was too late."

  "Oh, you make me sick!" blazed Gentle Maiden. "You all make me sick. Iron Bender makes me sick, saying he won't have anything against this Law-Twister Shorty until the Law-Twister tries twisting the Clan law that says those three poor little orphans belong to me now!" She glared at the Bluffer and Mal. "Iron Bender said the Shorty can come find him, any time he really wanted to, down at the harness shop!"

  "He'll be right down," promised the Bluffer.

  "Hey—" began Mal. But nobody was paying any attention to him.

  "Now, Granddaughter," One Punch was saying, reprovingly. "The Bender didn't exactly ask you to name him your protector, you know."

  "What difference does that make?" snapped Gentle Maiden. "I had to pick the toughest man in the Clan to protect me—that's just common sense; even if he is stubborn as an I-don't-know-what and thick-headed as a log wall! I know my rights. He's got to defend me; and there—" she wheeled and pointed to the large boulder lying on the grass, "—there's the stone of Mighty Grappler, and here's all three of you, one of who's got to be a Grandfather by next Clan meeting—and you mean to tell me none of you'll even say a word to help me turn this postman and this Shorty around and get them out of here?"

  The three elderly Dilbian males looked back at her without speaking.

  "All right!" roared Gentle Maiden, stamping about to turn her back on all of them. "You'll be sorry! All of you!"

  With that, she marched off down the slope of the valley toward the village of log houses.

  "Well," said the individual whom the Hill Bluffer had called Grandpa Tricky, "guess that's that, until she thinks up something more. I might as well be ambling back down to the house, myself. How about you, Forty Winks?"

  "Guess I might as well, too," said Forty Winks.

  They went off after Gentle Maiden, leaving Mal—still on the Hill Bluffer's back—staring down at One Punch, from just behind the Bluffer's reddish-furred right ear.

  "What," asked Mal, "has the stone of what's-his-name got to do with it?"

  "The stone of Mighty Grappler?" asked One Punch. "You mean you don't know about that stone, over there?"

  "Law-Twister here's just a Shorty," said the Bluffer, apologetically. "You know how Shorties are—tough, but pretty ignorant."

  "Some say they're tough," said One Punch, squinting up at Mal, speculatively.

  "Now, wait a minute, One Punch!" the Hill Bluffer's bass voice dropped ominously an additional half-octave. "Maybe there's something we ought to get straight right now! This isn't just any plain private citizen you're talking to, it's the official postman speaking. And I say the Shorties're tough. I say I was there when the Half-Pint Posted took the Streamside Terror; and also when Pick-and-Shovel wiped up Bone Breaker in a sword-and-shield duel. Now, no disrespect, but if you're questioning the official word of a government mail carrier—"

  "Now, Bluffer," said One Punch, "I never doubted you personally for a minute. It's just everybody knows the Terror and Bone Breaker weren't either of them pushovers. But you know I'm not the biggest man around, by a long shot; and now and then during my time I can remember laying out some pretty good-sized scrappers, myself—when my temper got away from me, that is. So I know from personal experience not every man's as tough as the next—and why shouldn't that work for Shorties as well as real men? Maybe those two you carried before were tough; but how can anybody tell about this Shorty? No offense, up there, Law-Twister, by the way. Just using a bit of my wisdom and asking."

  Mal opened his mouth and shut it again.

  "Well?" growled the Bluffer underneath him. "Speak up, Law-Twister." Suddenly, there was a dangerous feeling of tension in the air. Mal swallowed. How, he thought, would a Dilbian answer a question like that?"

  Any way but with a straight answer, came back the reply from the hypnotrained section of his mind.

  "Well—er," said Mal, "how can I tell you how tough I am? I mean, what's tough by the standards of you real men? As far as we Shorties go, it might be one thing. For you real men, it might be something else completely. It's too bad I didn't ever know this Half-Pint Posted, or Pick-and-Shovel, or else I could kind of measure myself by them for you. But I never heard of them until now."

  "But you think they just might be tougher than you, though—the Half-pint and Pick-and-Shovel?" demanded One Punch.

  "Oh, sure," said Mal. "They could both be ten times as tough as I am. And then, again—
Well, not for me to say."

  There was a moment's silence from both the Dilbians, then the Bluffer broke it with a snort of admiration.

  "Hor!" he chortled admiringly to One Punch. "I guess you can see now how the Law-Twister here got his name. Slippery? Slippery's not the word for this Shorty."

  But One Punch shook his head.

  "Slippery's one thing," he said. "But law-twisting's another. Here he says he doesn't even know about the stone of the Mighty Grappler. How's he going to go about twisting laws if he doesn't know about the laws in the first place?"

  "You could tell me about the stone," suggested Malcolm.

  "Mighty Grappler put it there, Law-Twister," said the Bluffer. "Set it up to keep peace in Clan Water Gap."

  "Better let me tell him, Postman," interrupted One Punch. "After all, he ought to get it straight from a born Water Gapper. Look at the stone there, Law-Twister. You see those two ends of iron sticking out of it?"

  Mal looked. Sure enough, there were two lengths of rusty metal protruding from opposite sides of the boulder, which was about three feet in width in the middle.

  "I see them," he answered.

  "Mighty Grappler was just maybe the biggest and strongest real man who ever lived—"

  The Hill Bluffer coughed.

  "One Man, now . . ." he murmured.

  "I'm not denying One Man's something like a couple of big men in one skin, Postman," said One Punch. "But the stories about the Mighty Grappler are hard to beat. He was a stonemason, Law-Twister; and he founded Clan Water Gap, with himself, his relatives, and his descendants. Now, as long as he was alive, there was no trouble. He was Clan Water Gap's first Grandfather, and even when he was a hundred and ten nobody wanted to argue with him. But he worried about keeping things orderly after he was gone—"

  "Fell off a cliff at a hundred and fourteen," put in the Bluffer. "Broke his neck. Otherwise, no telling how long he'd have lived."