The Magnificent Wilf

by Gordon R. Dickson

  “But how do you know?” demanded Lucy.

  “The Flals have told me the whole story,” said Tom. “The present situation came about because—well, it’s a longer story than we have time for right now,” said Tom, urgently.

  “Telepathic molecules—ugh!” said Lucy, wiping her fingertips on the boulder.

  “Oh, they’re all dead by this time,” said Tom. “But the Skikana now know where we are and are on their way to us in full strength.”

  “Why?” said Lucy, looking at her fingertips.

  “Briefly,” said Tom, “because the Skikana want to destroy what’s here. Otherwise, the mistake that was made when this planet was first found and listed in the Sector catalogue would be discovered. The Flals, being naturally shy and retiring, hid from the Sector data-takers at the time the world was first looked at; and so the data-takers took the Skikana’s word for it that they were the most advanced and intelligent life on Mul’rahr, and that the Wockiis were the closest thing to being another intelligent Race on the planet. The Flals have never had a chance to get that corrected. That’s the reason they kidnaped us and brought us here to help them.”

  “Well, I’m certainly in favor of helping them,” said Lucy. She thought about licking her fingertips clean and, with a shudder, decided against it. They’re dead, anyway, she reminded herself. “I can understand why now,” she went on, “but I was certain from the beginning, anyway, that they were in the right; and I didn’t need some sort of para-instinct to tell me that. I just knew.”

  Tom stopped short. They were still a little way from the Flals, and Lucy stopped when he did and stared at him.

  “What’s so surprising about that?” Lucy asked.

  “You’re a genius!” said Tom. “Of course, what you were listening to was one of your para-instincts.”

  “I was?” said Lucy. “This doesn’t make sense. If I have para-instincts, why didn’t I know it?”

  “Oh, all Civilized beings above a certain level of intelligence and awareness have them,” said Tom. “Their Civilization just teaches them to ignore the p-signals.”

  “That doesn’t make sense,” said Lucy.

  “It’s true, though,” said Tom. “For example, it’s been known for years that we Humans pick up all sorts of signals from other people and creatures. But we’ve been in the habit of disregarding these, because we assumed everything important fell within the logical area of thought. Our nose and ears tell us lots of things we ignore. It takes something like the smell of something burning, to make us suddenly afraid there’s a fire in the house. But most of the smaller, more subtle signals, we ignore. However, they go on registering, anyway; and if we’d pay more attention to them we’d pick up all kinds of information. Our conclusion may be wrong—there may be no house-fire; but very often we ignore them and miss an understanding we wouldn’t reach otherwise. Have you ever taken an unreasoning like or dislike to somebody else?”

  “Lots of times,” said Lucy.

  “Well, there you are,” said Tom. “In those cases you were listening to your para-instincts but not realizing why you felt that way. In this case, you came to the right conclusion. But it was just a feeling—you couldn’t produce a logical reason in words to back it up. But then, you didn’t need to.”

  “If this is a para-instinct,” said Lucy, “which number is it?”

  “Oh,” said Tom. “Para-instincts aren’t numbered according to type. They’re simply numbered according to how you discover them. This is the first you discovered. Therefore, it’s your first para-instinct.”

  “Ah,” said Lucy. With an effort she came back to the present emergency. “But couldn’t we help the Flals more by getting in touch with Mr. Valhinda? We could get on our platforms with our Hugwos and go back to the spaceship. The Skikana wouldn’t dare touch us; and from the ship we could get in touch with Mr. Valhinda.”

  “You could,” said Tom. “I wanted you to, but you wouldn’t.”

  “I said I wouldn’t leave without you!” snapped Lucy. “Why can’t you leave? Then I’d go with you.”

  “For me,” said Tom, solemnly, “there’s no choice. The galaxy knows no Assassin could ever be kidnaped unless he permitted it. You can’t kidnap an Assassin. Kill one, yes, if you have sufficient fearless battle-hardened troops and mobile armored vehicles. The only conclusion that would be drawn is that I allowed myself to be kidnaped by the Flals out of cowardice, in an attempt to avoid facing up to Jahbat’s challenge—unless I can get to the bottom of things here and clear myself by showing what I was really trying to do.”

  “But—” Lucy broke off helplessly. Tom turned and started again toward the small group of Flals and Lucy went along with him. Those small individuals were now looking up at Tom and Lucy inquiringly. Their little pink noses, furry faces and kindly brown eyes were lit up by the golden rays of the rising sun.

  “I’m not completely sure I’m understanding their speech, at that,” said Tom. “I’m using my para-instincts now, too, and playing by ear as I go. These Flals have a high nobility-of-character index. My para-instincts assure me of that. But since their language, and they really do have one, is musico-emotional at base, I can’t understand the fine points of the explanations they’ve been trying to give me. It’s as if they see the universe around them in terms of varying degrees of right or wrong and define those degrees in musical terms to make up their language.”

  “Yes,” said Lucy, looking at them with a softening glance and remembering the single Flal in the banquet hall fighting off all the Skikana officers. “And they’re such brave little Beings, too.”

  “That’s true, they are. And,” said Tom, “because of their natures, able to read the characters of others at a glance. They were able to sense, as a result, right from the start that we and the Hugwos could be trusted. Just as they sensed from the earliest years that the Skikana were cruel and rapacious; and they’ve always known, of course, that the Wockii are brutal and greedy.”

  “But if they want you to help them, but can’t tell you—” Lucy was beginning, when a whistle from the closest Flal interrupted her. Tom turned to the Flal and whistled the first few bars of Mendelssohn’s Wedding March. The Flal turned to Lucy and bowed politely.

  “Why!” said Lucy, delighted. “You can, too, talk to them!”

  “Only after a fashion,” answered Tom. “I was trying to tell him that you’re my wife. But that’s an oversimplification. In this case the concept of ‘wife’ almost undoubtedly missed him completely, in spite of the fact that the Flals, like us, are bisexual. What he probably got were just some of the emotional overtones of our relationship.”

  “But I should think a language could be worked out from that as a base,” said Lucy, thinking for a moment as the linguistic expert she was.

  “No doubt. In time. But time is just what we don’t have—” A silvery Flal horn sounded off among the giant toadstooloids and the trees at the base of the slope on which they stood. A second later, another sounded from the far side of the hill.

  “There come the Wockii and Skikana,” said Tom. “Just as I’d hoped.”

  “You hoped? I thought—”

  “Yes,” said Tom, “but I think I’ve evolved a plan that might solve things here. Only, I particularly need those Skikana battle harps.” He turned to the Flals and made pounding motions in the air with his fist. “Try the drum again,” he said in Wockii.

  The group parted; and just beyond them Lucy saw what seemed to be a drum mounted on a stake driven down into the earth. Two Flals began to beat the drum vigorously.

  It did not sound so loud in the air; but Lucy could feel the vibration of it through the ground at her feet. A sudden new chorus of whistles broke out below, down on the slope. They all turned to see the first line of armed Skikana infantry, marching into view from a further clump of trees and heading toward the foot of the slope. Mixed in among them were heavy Wockii figures carrying their mighty cutlasses in hairy fists. The Flals drew their swords.

/>   A strange sound vibrated all about the scene.

  “Tom! Did you hear that?” cried Lucy. “That noise—almost like a yawn!”

  But Tom’s attention was directed down the hill toward the Skikana battle harpsmen, who were emerging from the trees in front of the troops and driving the supporting spikes of their harps into the earth, so that the harps stood upright ready to play.

  The first Skikana to come into view, halted and stood at attention. Their Colonel emerged next, with Captain Jahbat marching correctly at his left and half a pace to his rear. Together and alone, they marched up the hill toward Tom, Lucy and the Flal leaders. Halfway up the slope the Colonel said something to Jahbat, who stopped and held his position there midway between the forces of the Flal and the Skikana.

  The Colonel came on up the slope by himself and stopped before Tom. “Sir and Madame!” he said stiffly.

  He stood for a second, champing his jaws a little uncertainly as if he was having trouble remembering what he was going to say. Then he went on, “I must ask you to use your influence with these Flals to cause them to surrender themselves. We must dig up this area to discover goods reported stolen from our fort. Please counsel them not to think of resistance, please. Their case is hopeless—what was that?”

  “Another yawn,” said Lucy.

  “Nonsensei” snapped the Colonel, sharply. Recovering himself, he made a courtly bow of apology in Lucy’s direction and got his voice under control. “—As I was saying, resistance would be useless. Their position on this slope is hopeless.”

  “Permit me,” said Tom, “to disagree with you, sir. My Consort and myself are inclined to back the Flals in their stance on this. Flals, as your Skikana have cause to know, are not unworthy fighters in spite of their small size. All the galaxy knows the reputation of the Hugwo lance-gunners. And, last but not least, I am myself an Assassin.”

  “True,” said the Colonel, champing his jaws convulsively once more. “However, I must inform you that your recent actions in allowing yourself to be kidnaped by these Flals, here, have cast some grave doubts in our minds on your status as a true Assassin.”

  “How dare you!” said Lucy.

  The Colonel’s head wobbled a little as he turned to look at her.

  “May I add,” he said, “that no such suspicion, however, exists in our minds about the Consort Lucy—”

  “I am not amused!” said Lucy, raising her head proudly.

  “You have insulted my Consort!” said Tom, grimly.

  “But I—but there was no intention—” stammered the Colonel, his eye-stalks wavering.

  “Perhaps not,” went on Tom in a steely voice. “The Consort Lucy was her usual agreeable sell, when the two of us were at the fort with you—”

  “Yes. Yes, indeed.”

  “However,” went on Tom, relentlessly, “you have discovered that there is more to her than her politeness. The Consort Lucy comes of fighting stock—to wit, she is a born Thorsdatter.”

  “I had no idea—” the Colonel began but Tom cut him off short.

  “Too late now for apologies, Colonel,” he said, “the damage has been done. Back to the immediate matter here: your presence in this place and your wish to dig up this area. No doubt I am mistaken in my conjecture that the supply of unharvested toadstooloid you know of is rapidly approaching the vanishing point?”

  The Colonel staggered visibly, but pulled himself erect once more.

  “There’s plenty of toadstooloid!” he snapped.

  “Plenty,” said Tom in steely tones, “for the native Flal and Wockii populations. After all, the ecology would balance that way. But not enough for these and a rapidly increasing populace of Skikana soldiery, when each Skikana is capable of eating his own weight or more of food at a sitting. And moreover, once the effect of the toadstooloid upon the Skikana eaters becomes known—”

  “Stop!” shouted the Colonel. “Assassin or not, I warn you. There are some secrets not meant to be uncovered.”

  “The secret,” went on Tom, unflinchingly, “has already been uncovered. It began when one or more of the Sector stock market Sharks learned of the true situation here; and realized the Wockii futures here were worthless. This would inevitably call for an investigation by the Sector Stock Board, itself; and that forced you into a situation where you had to seek out the true dominant intelligence of Mul’rahr and destroy it. Deny that if you can!”

  Chapter 15

  “There’s nothing to deny!” snapped the Colonel, his antennae going rigid. “We Skikana are the dominant intelligence of Mul’rahr! The Flals are not intelligent! And no normal civilized race would consider the crime of genocide, even if—”

  “The Flals are fully intelligent,” said Tom, relentlessly. “You found out the Wockii had lied to you about that shortly after the original Sector survey was here to look over Mul’rahr; and it was shortly after that you discovered you Skikana had an appetite for the toadstooloid—which before this you had dismissed as merely food for animals.”

  “Lies!” roared the Colonel. “If that were true, we’d have made an agreement with the Flals at once, rather than risk prosecution as a Race knowingly permitting the subjugation of a potentially civilized other Race. Why didn’t we?”

  “For the same reason,” said Tom, “that you Skikana could contemplate what would otherwise have been abhorrent even to you. You were not normal any longer. You—”

  “Stop!” champed the Colonel.

  “No,” said Tom, “it’s too late to hide the truth. Agarica Mul’rahrensis Gigantica, or the local eatable giant toadstooloid on which you, like the Wockii and the Flals, have been feeding, is not dissimilar to the Agaricus miiscarius, or ‘fly agaric,’ one of the poisonous mushrooms of our Human world.”

  Lucy glared at him. “And you were going to let me eat some!”

  “It’s harmless to humans,” he said to her hastily, and turned back to the Colonel.

  “Mul’rahrensis,” he said, “produces a derivative of the alkaloid muscarine; which, however, acts not so much as a poison, but as a narcotic, a tranquilizer and a euphoric on this world. Taken in small amounts of toadstooloid a Flal—or even wockii—is capable of consuming at one time, the toadstooloid is merely a mild and harmlessly intoxicating food, containing all the necessary valuable vitamins required by the native Races, here on Mul’rahr—”

  “Stop!” said the Colonel weakly, his voice cracking in a very un-Skikanalike way.

  “But,” continued Tom, “taken in the enormous quantities in which the smallest Skikana soldier will consume at a sitting, the toadstooloid becomes a powerful, habit-forming drug. A drug that the addict will go to any lengths to obtain; and which no intelligent, civilized being would allow another intelligent being to consume—”

  “Very well,” said the Colonel. He had pulled himself together, and there was now a regretful note in his voice. “You wouldn’t let me stop you. We have honored you, Sir Ambassador-Assassin, and honored the Consort Lucy. But now you’ve sealed your own fate.” He turned and bowed to Lucy.

  “I regret, Consort Lucy,” he said, “that you need to be included with the rest. No Human, Hugwo, or Flal must leave this spot alive.” He looked back sadly at Tom. “Didn’t you realize that soldiers like my troops would stop at nothing once our secret was out? Death means nothing to us, compared to being cut off from our toadstooloid supply. With it, we Skikana expect to move to unforeseen heights. One day we will rule the galaxy. In the face of that certainty, the existence of you, the Flals, the Hugwos—yes, and even the Wockiis—means nothing. You are doomed once I give the word for the# battle harps to sound the attack.”

  “I think the toadstooloid has given you a false picture of the situation,” said Tom. “Sound the harps, then, and find out.”

  The Colonel stared at him.

  “Sir!” he said. “You wish me to sound the battle harps for the attack upon you?”

  “Yes,” said Tom.

  “Yes!” echoed Lucy, almost in the sam
e breath bravely, but was unable to avoid darting a momentary questioning glance at Tom.

  Tom intercepted it.

  “It’s all right, Lucy,” said Tom. “I know what I’m doing. Go ahead!” he said to the Colonel. “What are you waiting for? Sound the harps. I defy you!”

  “Defy me?” In a sudden, typical, towering Skikana rage, the Colonel spun about and shouted down the hill to Captain Jahbat. “Sound the Harps! Prepare to advance!”

  Below on the slope, they all saw the Captain salute and turn. His voice floated faintly back to them as he shouted down further to the battle harpsmen of the Skikana.

  “Sound the Prepare to Advance!” they heard him call. “Shortly We Shall Eat You, Now!”

  The battle harps broke suddenly into their air-rending, ground-shaking melody. The Colonel spun back and shouted thinly above their unbelievable harmonies.

  “You’ve asked for it!” he cried. “No quarter! No prisoners and no—”

  His voice caught in his prothorax. The ground had suddenly heaved up alongside him and the cap of a toadstooloid six feet across poked itself above ground. Abruptly it split apart into two enormous lips; and the aperture between them inhaled with a gust that almost sucked them all off their feet.

  “What’s going on up here?” boomed forth a voice from the lips in accentless Wockii; and with such volume that it overrode even the harp music. Downslope, the amazed and aghast harpsmen fell into jangling discordances and from there into silence. In the quiet that followed, a smaller toadstooloid poked itself above ground, grew upwards suddenly to about ten feet in height of stalk, and bent its cap toward the Colonel. The surface of cap drew back to reveal half a dozen large eyes. “Who are you?”

  “Colonel, commanding … Eighth Skikana …” mumbled that officer, obviously badly shaken, but trying valiantly to pull himself up in military fashion. The toadstooloid with the eyes swiveled toward Tom and Lucy, twisted toward the Hugwos, turned toward the Flals—and at last looked down toward the distant ranks of the Wockii and the Skikana.