Roadstrum gave it to him: the soft sound of an educated thumb ruffled over the edges of high-denomination bills. The shepherd heard it. It is a dangerous double-bladed sound. It has got a lot of people in trouble. But the hornet-men were confident of their ability to handle anything.
The shepherd gave a grunt that was perhaps assent. He gaped his face in what might have been a grin. And he was suddenly joined by quite a number of his fellows.
“Just what is it you want, strangers?” asked one of the new shepherds, who seemed to rank a little higher than the first one.
“Why, if not hospitality, at least a hospice,” said Roadstrum. “We are space-weary. We would rest. We would eat and drink. And then we would examine the facilities here.”
“There is only Drovers’ Cottage,” said the leading shepherd. “You can rest there now. You can eat with us in the hall this evening. And there are no facilities on Polyphemia.”
“How is the food here?” asked Crewman Trochanter.
“Monotonous, mostly,” said the shepherd. “There is one particular food that sets us up, and we have not had it in months. We get pretty tired of plain mutton.”
Well, the shepherds guided the crewmen to Drovers’ Cottage through rich meadows and pastures populated with herds of sheep.
Sheep? Are you sure they are sheep?
The lodgings were bad. Drovers’ Cottage was not a palace. But heat was not needed, and there were tallow candles provided for when they should be needed. They were fed a little, though the sun was still high in the sky. It may have been mutton, but most curious tasting mutton. Then porridge, perhaps, that may have been weevily. They even were served perry from the runted fruit of the land, and became one-tenth happy on it.
But the sheep worried Roadstrum, and he looked out at them and puzzled about them.
“I’m not a farm boy, but there’s something the matter with those sheep,” he maintained.
“It is my considered opinion that they’re woolly enough and dirty enough to be sheep,” said Captain Puckett. “Is some third thing required? Why, Roadstrum, you must admit that they’re sheepish enough to be sheep. Therefore they are sheep.”
“Crewman Bramble, are they sheep?” Captain Roadstrum asked.
“The only thing about sheep I ever studied was sheep’s liver flukes parasites, or it may have been sheep’s flukes liver parasites. Let me see their parasites and I’ll tell you quickly enough whether they’re sheep. But I never studied sheep as such, and I doubt if anyone else did. There was no such course at Cram College.”
“They walk on two legs when they’re not down eating,” Roadstrum said. “Is that right? Do you think it right they should walk about on two legs, Crewman Clamdigger?”
“I never studied sheep either, Captain. I say, according to the principle of subsidiarity, and no local law countervening, let them walk on two legs if they want to. Is it our business how the sheep of Polyphemia walk?”
“Well, there is something peculiar about them as sheep,” Roadstrum held out stubbornly, “and sooner or later I’ll think what it is. I believe I’ll just go out and have a talk with those fellows.”
Many of the sheep were still eating in the meadow, and they ate awkwardly, as though it were a learned thing for them to eat that way. And others of the sheep were gathered in a low tavern. Roadstrum went into this with some misgivings. He had not heard of sheep as congregating in taverns. “And yet I suppose that they should be classified as social animals,” he said; “why should they not meet in taverns?”
It was a shabby sort of tavern they had there. The bar was of rough unfinished wood that had never known polish, the stools and benches were badly made and wobbly, very poor things. “They look as though they had been made by sheep,” said Roadstrum, “and I suppose they were.”
Roadstrum hardly knew how to begin. He had never talked with sheep before, nor associated with them at all.
“Are you a sheep?” he asked one of them finally.
“Why, yes, I’m a sheep. What else would I be?”
“You look almost as if you were a very shaggy man.”
“Ah well, I wouldn’t say that. I suppose I’m a sheep. I have always been a sheep.”
“Well then, what would you say is the difference between a sheep and a man?”
“A man will eat a sheep. But did you ever hear of a sheep eating a man?”
“Don’t believe I ever did,” said Captain Roadstrum.
There was something sorrowful about the sheep. They ate and drank dully from a vat that contained foul vegetables, leeks and ramps and strong gross turnips, and rank things that were very earthy but not of old Earth. They were fat, whether men or sheep, and they smelled like sheep.
But there was no real merriment, as there should be in a tavern. They drank a potion that seemed to be potato beer. Roadstrum took a bowl of it out of curiosity. It was mildly alcoholic, and it should have enlivened the tavern.
“Do you ever have music?” Roadstrum asked. “Anything to liven up the place?”
“We sing a little sometimes,” said the sheep he had been talking to. “We do not sing well.”
“Let’s try it,” cried Roadstrum. “Come on, fellows; let me hear one of your rousing songs! I am a stranger with a great curiosity about you. Some of you start with a few bars, and I will lend my own wonderful voice to the melody. Sing, sing!”
“Well, all right,” some of the bolder sheep said.
They sang flatly, but they sang:
“The docker-man a-drawing near,
“he don’t appear at all appall us.
“He whets a knife and sheds a tear.
“We haven’t any tails at all us.”
“We haven’t any tails at all us,” Roadstrum gave them the last line back in hearty chorus. It wasn’t a bad little tune, but the words gave Roadstrum a turn.
“Why, you fellows haven’t tails at all, have you? Not even docked stubs. I thought sheep always had tails unless they were chopped off.”
“Not on Polyphemia,” said the sheep Roadstrum had been talking to. “That must be some other kind of sheep somewhere else.”
“Come on, lads; give us another verse,” Roadstrum cried encouragingly.
“All right,” said the sheep, “if we must.” They sang flatly once more.
“For greeny grass to graze and grout
“we couldn’t eat the stuff or store it.
“They took our gimpy gullet out
“and gave us seven stomachs for it.”
“And gave us seven stomachs for it,” Roadstrum bawled out in melodic response. “Ah, I believe there is a bit of folklore or ovine-lore hidden in that stanza,” he said shrewdly. “You were not naturally ruminants? And you have been made into such? This becomes one of the most curious things I ever ran into. I suspect that you are not sheep at all.”
“We have to be sheep,” the sheep said. “Who else would have us?”
“Well, no need to be sheepish sheep,” Roadstrum encouraged. “Let us have one more stanza and be glad of our respective states. You think it is all possum and red-eyed gravy being a man? Sing, hearties, sing.”
And flatly they sang once more:
“Ah Jennie was a gambol lamb,
“a lamb no more is gambol Jennie.
“Subducted by a Sweedish ram!
“We all got yen for yeaning Yennie.”
“We all got yen for yeaning Yennie,” Roadstrum roared out in raucous chorus. “Why, fellows, you have wonderful songs and you are wonderful singers! No? You don’t think so? I guess you’re right. In no other company in the universe would I be the finest singer present.”
A man came in. A man and not a sheep. A villainous looking man. He passed out little slips of parchment to some of the sheep, and then he left again.
And the sheep seemed even more depressed than they had been.
“Your call?” the sheep-bartender asked Roadstrum’s friend.
“Yes. For tomorrow,” the sheep said sadly.
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“We all have to go. That’s what we’re here for.”
“I know. But I hate to leave Agnes and the children.”
The sheep was very fat and very sorrowful. Roadstrum was very interested in the sheep as being his friend, and was especially curious about the parchments.
“What is it?” he asked the sheep. “What does your slip say?”
“It says my name,” said the sheep, “and it says tomorrow.”
Respecting the sheep’s reserve, Roadstrum did not pursue the matter, but he felt that something was very wrong.
Oh well, the sheep got a little happier as the afternoon progressed. They sang some more, and they did a little better when they weren’t urged to it too strongly.
They passed the cup that impels, and their fat faces began to glow. They even told stories. There is a whimsy to sheep stories that is like nothing else; humble and bashful, and yet with a real cud of humor. And shaggy sheep stories are a special form. But do sheep, in fact, have stories and humor and song?
Roadstrum had always believed that he had troubles enough of his own. He seldom borrowed trouble, and never at usurious terms. He knew it as a solid thing that sheep do not gather in taverns and drink beer, not even potato beer; that they do not sing, not even badly; that they do not tell stories. But a stranger can easily make trouble for himself on a strange world by challenging local customs.
“But I am the great Roadstrum,” he said, suddenly and loudly. “I am a great one for winning justice for the lowly, and I do not scare easily. I threw the great Atlas at the wrestle, and who else can say as much? I suffer from the heroic sickness every third day about nightfall, and I am not sure whether this is the third day or not. I say you are men and not sheep. I say: Arise, and be men indeed!”
“It has been tried before,” said Roadstrum’s friend the sheep, “and it didn’t work.”
“You have tried a revolt, and it failed?”
“No, no, another man tried to incite us to revolt, and failed.”
“Tell me about it, sheep.”
“Another man, another traveler talked to us as you have done. ‘Early in the morning you must revolt,’ he said. ‘You must refuse to go where they herd you; you must refuse to be butchered. You must take up stones and clubs in your hands, and beat down the men who would take you to slaughter.’ That’s what the man told us.”
“And that is what I tell you,” said Roadstrum.
“Ah well, it was the shortest revolt on record,” the sheep said. “In the morning, some of us did take up sticks and stones in our hands. And then the whistle blew as it does every morning. Those who had received their notices for that day threw away their sticks and stones and broke rank and went, jostling each other, to their slaughter. You don’t think we’d want them to have to blow that whistle at us the second time, do you? And who ever heard of sheep picking up sticks and stones and going to battle. It just isn’t in our nature to revolt.”
There was the gonging of a great bell that signaled it was time for the animals to go to their cotes. It was just sundown, and the sheep should be snug in the fold by dark. They all said good night, and shuffled out very sheep-like. And so it was sundown, and it was time for Roadstrum and the other hornet men to go dine with the high Polyphemians in their hall.
“Did you find out anything about those fellows, Roadstrum?” Captain Puckett asked him as he joined the others.
“Puckett, they do not look like sheep, and they do not act enough like men. There is something the matter with the whole business.”
“I would not worry about it,” said Puckett. “Remember the hornet-men’s code: Never incite a local populace unless there is something in it for you.”
Well, they were set down at quite a big table with all the big Polyphemians, and the Cacique of Polyphemia was at the head of the table.
“Are you not afraid to come unarmed into our hall, little men?” the big Cacique asked. “Do you trust our hospitality?”
“We trust all hospitality everywhere,” said steady Roadstrum. “We have been on a hundred worlds, and nowhere has the bord been defiled. We trust the hospitality of all men when we break bread with them. We have eaten giants’ bread on Lamos and cotton candy on Kentron World, and we have not met treachery. Treachery, where it comes, does not touch the silent oath of the bord. This is respected on all worlds.”
“Eat hearty, eat hearty!” said the Cacique. “How do you like our food?”
“The double oath of the bord does not require that we lie,” growled Crewman Trochanter. “It is insipid. You must know that yourselves.”
“It is not our best food, but it is the best we have to offer at present. For ourselves more than for you we regret this; nobody loves fine food so much as do we. We expect a finer food shortly, but for topological reasons you will not be able to partake of it. But we will bless you in that hour when again we eat our fine food,”
“I have a complaint, a very serious complaint,” said just Roadstrum.
“Strangers may not lodge complaints till they have been in residence here for ninety days,” the Cacique said, “and no stranger has ever remained with us that long.”
“My complaint won’t hold for ninety days. I accuse you people of eating men.”
“You could not have heard of—but no, their arrival was not logged, any more than yours was. If you are given another life, good Roadstrum, you should learn to post your arrivals more carefully, let people know where you are. But that is another matter. What is it you are speaking of? Get to the point.”
“I will. You are slaughtering some of them in that building now.”
“Oh, you mean the sheep? For a moment I thought that you meant—”
“They are men, and you know it.”
“I know it, and you know it. But the sheep don’t know it, and the documentation does not know it. We are logged as a pastoral planet, given over almost entirely to the raising of sheep. Will you argue with the Gazeteer itself? I can show you the pedigrees of all these creatures, and they are sheep pedigrees. They are good eating, but there is better. Do you know what it is?”
“I do not. But this I will not eat,” said mighty Roadstrum, and he overturned the great bowl of spicy goulash. “Sheep this is not.”
“You could have waited till we had finished,” grumbled Crewman Clamdigger. “The stuff is good. And you said yourself that the sheep did not act quite like men.”
“We are insulted,” said the Cacique. “You have defiled the bord. On all worlds one eats what one is given, and one praises it.”
“All praise to this flesh!” howled Roadstrum. “Flesh of our own flesh! We eat not our own kindred! On your feet, men! It’s a rumble! Awk!”
And not a single brave man came to his feet. They were manacled in their chairs where they sat. Trapped chairs! They had fallen into the most childish trap of them all. They shook the hall with their fury, but their bonds were strong and so was the hall. And all the great Polyphemians were laughing.
“We told you that there was a finer food,” the Cacique of Polyphemia chortled, “and that there were reasons why you could not partake of it. But we will partake, and we will begin to do so tomorrow. We have it so seldom. Tame servile sheep is tame food indeed. You were right to call it insipid, but it is the best we have for our daily fare. But there is a better, Roadstrum, a better.”
“What, you toothy androphage, what could be more vile, or better in your view?” the furious enchained Roadstrum demanded.
“Yourselves, woolly Roadstrum, rampant ram! It is everything that tame sheep is not. It is the finest of fine foods for our own fine selves. We will have to arrange to have it oftener. Ah, rage, Roadstrum, and all your fine men! Rage and grow fat in your rage. In our own way we love you, and we’ll waste not a gout of you.”
So Roadstrum and Puckett and all their furious men from the hornet crews were dragged, amid sky-splitting noise by all concerned, into a dungeon to be fatted for the kill.
Margaret, o
f course, was not with them. She had made her own arrangements with the high Polyphemians. There were the two great Captains, Deep John the Vagabond, and either seventeen or eighteen crewmen. There is a point of issue here.
Twenty of them had been dragged in, counted, and certified. But a little while later there were twenty-one of them. The big Polyphemians told the counter that he had made a mistake, and that he would go in the pot for it. The counter maintained that he had not made a mistake, that he had counted correctly, and there had been only twenty. The counter was correct in this, but he went into the pot nevertheless.
How the twenty-first man happened to be there, why he was not there at first and where he came from, and how he differed from the rest of them are things of great moment.
A Polyphemian pokey is much like a pokey anywhere. Deep John asserted that this was so, and he had been in more pokies than all of them together. And yet there was something special about this one, and it had to do with their special purpose of being there. They were fed lavishly. And they were mocked. “Rage, and grow fat in your rage,” the Cacique had told them. Well, they did rage, and they ate, and they raged again. There was little else to do.
It was rank fare, but there was an abundance of it. Crewman Starkhead would not eat at all. Crewman Burpy ate to excess. The rest of them attempted to practice moderation, but they were hooked into eating more and more. With the rank leeks and ramps were also habit-forming mushrooms of an intoxicating sort, compelling them to eat more and yet more, and to rage and rave. Their moderation became more and more immoderate, and they came somewhat to like the low food. Worried and restricted men will eat to ease their worry, and they grew fat in spite of themselves. Except Crewman Starkhead.
Margaret the houri visited them, but not often. She had been consorting with the high Polyphemians, and Roadstrum accused her of being faithless.
“But of course I am faithless, great Roadstrum,” she said. “It is our nature to be.”
Space Chantey Page 10
