The Right to Arm Bears (6 page)

He had finally come to the conclusion that, considering the Dilbian character, a direct approach was probably the best.

"Yes," he said to the Hill Bluffer now. "I've been trying to figure out why you Dilbians like the Hemnoids better than us Shorties."

The Bluffer did not rise to the bait, as John had half-hoped by immediately denying that the Dilbians played favorites.

"Oh, that," said the Hill Bluffer, as calmly as if they were talking about a law of nature. "Why, it stands to reason, Half-Pint. Take the Beer-Guts Bouncer, now; or that new little one—"

"What new little one?" asked John, sharply, remembering the Hemnoid back in the woods when they had stopped to talk to Tree Weeper.

"What's his name—Tark-
ay
, I guess they call him. The one who's supposed to have been quite a scrapper back on his own home territory. You take someone like him, for example."

"What about him?" asked John.

"Well, now," said the Bluffer, judiciously, "he's nowhere near the proper size of a man, of course. But he's not ridiculous, like you Shorties. Why, two of you wouldn't make a half-grown pup. And if people don't lie, he's strong enough to stand up to a man and holler for his rights—yes and back them up, too, if he had to, win or lose."

"That's important?" said John. "To you Dilbians?"

"Why, of course it's important to any man!" said the Bluffer. "A man might lose. Bound to lose sometime, to someone, of course. But if he stands up for his rights, then there can't be anything worse happen to him but get killed. I mean, he's got standing in the community."

"We Shorties stand up for our rights, too," said John.

"Sure. But—hell!" said the Bluffer. "Besides, what do you mean, you all stand up for your rights? What about the Squeaking Squirt?"

"Well . . ." said John, uncomfortably.

He had, for the moment, forgotten Heiner Schlaff, that blot on the human escutcheon where Dilbia was concerned. Now, here Schlaff was being thrown in his face, as he must have been to Joshua on a number of occasions. For the first time, John felt a twinge of sympathy with the dapper little ambassador. How do you go about explaining that one man's reactions are not typical of a race's?

Attack, thought John.

"Oh, you never knew a man from Dilbia, here, who lost his head or got scared?" he said.

"I never knew one who yelled just because he was picked up!" snorted the Bluffer.

"Who'd pick one up? Who's big enough to?" said John.

That apparently stopped the Bluffer for a moment. He did not immediately answer.

"You just imagine something big enough to pick you up and tell me if there aren't some men just as big as you who'd lose their head if something like that picked them up?"

"They'd be pretty poor if they did," growled the Bluffer. He muttered to himself for a minute. "Anyway," he said, "that's not the point. The point is, it doesn't matter. It's just plain ridiculous, even if a Shorty like you'd
try
to stand up for his rights. Any idiot could see you wouldn't have a chance against a real man."

"Oh, you think so," said John; wondering what in the galaxy was making him pretend that the Bluffer was not a hundred per cent correct. After a second's thought, he concluded it was probably much the same human-type reaction that had sent Rudi Maltetti diving for the javelin in Brisbane, on the occasion with the Hemnoid ambassador.

The Bluffer snorted with laughter.

"Now," he said, when he had got his humor off his chest, "one of those Fatties, there's be some point to an argument. But someone like you, why I couldn't take a shove at someone like you. It'd be like swatting a bird."

He brooded for a second.

"Besides," he said. "Some of you Shorties may not be too bad; but a real man doesn't take kindly to critters that got to go around using all kinds of tools for things. Fighting with tools, taking advantage with tools, getting ahead of somebody else by using tools. But particularly fighting with them—that's just plain, downright yellow; the way we see it!"

"Is that so?" said John. "Well, listen to me for a minute—"

"Hold on. Hold on." The Bluffer held up a pacific lump of a hand. "I can't go fighting with my own mail; besides, didn't I say some of you Shorties weren't too bad? Why, you know how Little Bite got his name, and—"

"Who?" said John. And then his hypno training informed him that Little Bite was the Dilbian nickname for Joshua Guy. But the hypno training was silent on how the name had been selected. "Oh, no, I don't."

"You don't?" ejaculated the Bluffer.

"No," said John, suddenly cautious and wondering what he had blundered into.

"Everybody knows that," said the Bluffer.

There was no help for it.

"I don't," said John.

Slowly, the Bluffer turned his head to look back over his shoulder. The eye that met John's was alight with sudden puzzlement and suspicion.

"You're pretty strange, even for a Shorty," said the postman slowly. "What're you trying to pull? Everybody knows how Little Bite got his name. And you're a Shorty yourself and you
don't?
"

He stopped dead in the trail and stood, still staring back at John.

"What're you trying to pull?" he said again.

"Let me down," said John.

"What?" said the Bluffer. "What's that you say?"

"I said," repeated John evenly through his teeth, even though his heart was rising into his throat, "let me down. I've had it."

"Had what?" said the Bluffer; and this time there was more puzzlement than suspicion in his voice.

"I've sat up here," said John, letting his voice climb on a note of anger—not much, but noticeably. "I've sat up here, hung up in this harness and had you insult us Shorties by saying we're all like the Squeaking Squirt. I've had you call me yellow. But I'll be roasted over a slow fire if I have to sit up here and have you imply I'm pulling something just because Little Bite didn't have time to tell me how he got his name. Just let me down on solid ground and by my paternal grandfather—"

"Hey-hey-hey—
hey
!" cried the Bluffer. "I told you I couldn't go fighting with my mail. What're you getting so hot about?"

"I don't have to take this!" shouted John.

"Well, don't!" shouted the Bluffer. "I didn't mean anything against you, personally. You asked me, didn't you? The smaller they are, the touchier they are! I was surprised you didn't know how Little Bite got his name, was all. I was just going to tell you."

"Well, then, why didn't you tell me?" said John in a calmer tone.

"I will—I will!" said the Bluffer, grumpily, taking up the trail again. John relaxed in his saddle and surreptitiously wiped his brow. His hypno training and the Bluffer together had let him know that the Dilbian mail was sacrosanct, but whether that meant from assault by the postman himself, he had not been completely sure, even then. But evidently, even that was true.

"Actually," the Bluffer was saying in a calmer tone, "nearly everybody down at Humrog and through the mountains thinks all right of Little Bite. He's a guest at Humrog, now; and nobody'd dare touch him. But this was back in the first days after he came here—"

A chuckle erupted momentarily into the Bluffer's story.

"—Old Hammertoes, down at Humrog. That old coot's always getting hot about something. Well, he was talking about the good old days, one day. He was drinking some, too . . ."

John, after the night before at the inn, found himself with a rather graphic mental image of what "drinking a little" might amount to in the case mentioned.

"He was about half loaded, and got himself all riled up over the thought that we had foreigners like Shorties and Fatties all over the place, nowadays. The old world was going to pot, he said; there ought to be a law. He was about half-drunk and he headed uptown."

John's graphic mental image staggered out into the cobblestone street of Humrog as he remembered it.

"He was all set to put Little Bite—only everybody called him just the Shorty, in those days—back in his shell and kick him clear back into the sky where he came from. Well, he went up and knocked on Little Bite's door. Little Bite opens it; and Hammertoes leans down and shouts in his face:

" `All right, Shorty! I'm packing you off to your own hole, now!'

"And he made a grab at Little Bite through the door. But Little Bite had this sort of chain on the door so it wouldn't open up all the way; and Hammertoes couldn't get much more than one arm inside. So there he is, half-drunk, hollering `Come here, you Shorty! You can't get away. I'll get you; and when I get hold of you—' "

John winced. His mental image was becoming so graphic as to be almost painful.

"Then Little Bite, who's picked up something sharp, takes good aim at that big hand of Hammertoes, and cuts Hammertoes a couple times across the knuckles, practically to the bone. Old Hammertoes yells bloody murder and yanks his hand back." The Bluffer began to laugh. "Little Bite slams the door."

The Bluffer was laughing so hard he could not go on. He slowed down and stopped, leaning against the cliff side with one hand while he whooped at the memory. His whole body shook. John held on to his saddle with both hands. It was very disconcerting to be bucked around by the equivalent of a horse that was telling him a funny story at the same time.

"Any—anyway," gasped the Bluffer, getting himself partially back under control, "Old Hammertoes comes back up to the bar, there, dripping blood and sucking on his knuckles.

" `Why, what happened?' says everybody else at the bar.

" `Nothing,' says Hammertoes.

" `Something must've happened. Look at your hand,' says everybody.

" `I tell you, nothing happened!' yells Hammertoes. `He wouldn't let me in there where I could grab a hold on him. So I come away. And as for my hand—that's got nothing to do with it. He didn't hurt my hand, hardly at all. All he done was to give it a little bite!' "

The Bluffer went off into another fit of laughter that necessitated stopping and leaning against the cliff. But this time, John found himself laughing too. The story
was
funny—or it seemed funny to John, at least. They laughed together; and when they had both run down, rested a moment in a silence that was almost companionable.

"You know," said the Bluffer, after a moment's silence. "You aren't too bad, for a Shorty."

"You're all right, yourself—for a man," said John.

The Bluffer fell silent again. But he did not move on. After a moment, he sat down on a nearby boulder.

"Climb down," he said, over his shoulder. "I got something to talk to you about; and I can do it better if I'm looking at you while I'm at it."

John frowned, hesitated; but climbed down. He walked around in front of the Dilbian and found that, with the Bluffer seated, and himself standing, they were as close to eye to eye as they would normally ever expect to be.

"What is it?" asked John.

"You know," said the Bluffer with an effort, "you're not bad for a Shorty as I say and—"

However, having got this far, he was stuck. It was rather hard for a human like John to read embarrassment on a Dilbian face; but if such a thing was possible, John thought he spotted that emotion on the Hill Bluffer now. He avoided the postman's eyes and simply waited. Looking off past the big head, he saw, far beyond the sharp mountain peaks, a few white puffs of clouds, looking peaceful and innocent.

"What I mean is," said the Bluffer finally, after an apparent inner struggle. "The Streamside Terror's had his drinking mug spilt."

For a moment, John did not understand. And then he did, his hypno training coming once more to the rescue. To have one's drinking mug silt, in Dilbian terms, was to endure a deadly affront to personal honor. In short, someone had given the Streamside Terror reason for starting a blood feud. John had a sinking feeling as to whom it might be.

"By me?" said John. "But he's never seen me."

"No. By Little Bite," said the Bluffer. "But you're sort of hauled into it. It's real peculiar."

"I'll bet," said John, thinking about the small ambassador back at Humrog.

"You see," said the Bluffer, "Little Bite's a guest at Humrog nowadays."

"I know. You told me," said John.

"Let me finish. Now, since he's a guest, his fights are Humrog's fights. But Little Bite shamed the Terror, when he told old Shaking Knees the Terror shouldn't have Boy Is She Built. Because that meant the Terror was being called not worthy. Well, now what's the Terror going to do? He can't get mad at Shaking Knees for not letting him have Boy Is She Built. A man's got a right to look out for his daughter. He could get mad at Little Bite; but nobody in his right mind—even somebody like Streamside—is going to start a blood feud with a town of five thousand.

"I mean, Clan Hollows could back him up, and that's more of a match; but Clan Hollows would be crazy if they did—when most of the stuff they sell gets sold in and to Humrog. No, what'd happen is that the grandfathers of Clan Hollows'd declare it a personal matter and Streamside'd have a choice of hiding out in Clan Hollows territory for the rest of his life, or being up by the heels before the year was out."

"I see," said John. And he did. He was thinking deeply. Up until this point he had simply refused to accept the notion that Joshua could be deliberately at fault in sending him out on this mission. Mistakenly so, that was imaginable. But to plan to draft a man and send him out to cover up what had evidently been a diplomatic error on the little man's part—it was staggering. Men of sufficient stature to be appointed ambassadors, particularly to posts like this, did just not descend to such unethical tactics to hide their dirty linen. The job Joshua had given John to do was absolutely illegal; and John was under absolutely no compulsion to go through with it.

He opened his mouth to say so, to tell the Bluffer that they should return immediately to Humrog—and closed it again, slowly, without having uttered a word. He had suddenly remembered how cleverly Joshua had him trapped. The Bluffer would certainly not just turn around on John's say-so and head back for the town. He had contracted to deliver a piece of mail to the Streamside Terror; and his Dilbian honor was at stake.