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Chapter 25

"—Then you'll be going back to Earth with me for debriefing?" asked Bill, delighted.

"I will be traveling on the same ship, if that is what you mean," replied Anita, very coldly and distinctly.

She turned and marched off toward the courier ship lying lengthwise on the grass in the center of the meadow. It was a sleek, heavily built ninety-footer, capable of interstellar travel on its own; and its size, which was several times that of the usual shuttle boat, had attracted the attention of several Dilbians, who were now examining it curiously.

Bill gazed after the retreating shape of Anita wistfully. How could he talk to her if she would not talk to him? Recovering from the blow on the head he had gotten from Mula-ay, he had admitted to himself that he liked her. Liked her a good deal in fact. In short, the idea of parting company with her was suddenly very painful.

But even as he had come to realize this, his relationship with her had seemed to be getting worse and worse. It had started with that unfortunate question of his, about there being anything she didn't have, when he had just come to and she was sponging his head. He had tried to explain later that he had actually meant it as a compliment. He realized that she was a hothouse type and he was a pretty ordinary sort of individual. In fact, he had just sort of muddled through to a fortunate conclusion of the situation, while she was attacking it properly with all the unusual resources of her unusual mind and training. He wasn't trying to pretend he was anything like her equal, or anything like that.

But the more he had tried to explain, the more displeased Anita had become. It was as if every time he opened his mouth, he dug himself in that much deeper.

"Well, Pick-and-Shovel—" the voice of the Hill Bluffer interrupted his thoughts and Bill started guiltily. He had completely forgotten he had been talking to the postman when Anita had passed by, just now on her way to the ship. She was, he saw, being met in a very familiar way by a tall man who had just stepped out of the hatchway. The tall man was himself vaguely familiar. Bill peered at him somewhat grimly.

"—So I guess I'll be off, back to the mountains," the Bluffer's voice boomed on Bill's ear. "They'll all be wanting to hear up there if you turned out the way I said you would."

"They will?" Bill was startled. Then he remembered how he had speculated on the Hill Bluffer's having some stake of his own in the outcome of the situation in which Bill had been trapped. Bill looked sharply up at the lanky Dilbian.

"Why, sure," said the Hill Bluffer comfortably. "They all remember the Half-Pint-Posted, but there was considerable discussion about whether you Shorties could do it twice in a row."

"Twice in a row?" echoed Bill. "Do what?"

"Come out one up on a Fatty, of course," replied the Bluffer. "You know, like him!"

He nodded over at the far side of the meadow, behind Bill. Bill turned and saw the yellow-robed figure of Mula-ay standing solitary in the shadow of the trees in his yellow robes. The heavy-gravity figure was not likely to slump in this Dilbian gravity, but there was something defeated about its isolation.

"Word is, a flying box like yours is coming in anytime now," said the Bluffer, "—only one run by Fatties—to take him out. That's probably the last we'll see of old Wasn't Drunk around these parts."

"Who?" Bill blinked at the distant figure. He had been sure that it was Mula-ay. In fact, he still was. "But that's Barrel Belly over there, isn't it?"

The Bluffer snorted with contemptuous good humor.

"Not any more. Got his name changed," he said. "You didn't hear—?"

"No," said Bill.

"Why, after your hassle with Bone Breaker was over, it turned out that More Jam had found old Wasn't Drunk passed out cold behind the eating hall, with half a barrel of beer spilled down his front. It was pretty plain for everyone to see that he'd figured the villagers swarming down on the valley would keep the outlaws so busy he could sneak a bellyful. So he'd poured most of a barrel of beer down himself on the sly and passed out." The Bluffer stopped to laugh uproariously. "Result was, he missed all the fun, just by getting drunk at the wrong time!"

"Fun?"

"Why, your duel with Bone Breaker. He missed all that!" said the Hill Bluffer. "So, after More Jam found him and brought everybody to see, they poured some water over him to bring him to, and he sat up to find everyone laughing at him. After all his talk about how tough the Fatties were! Turned out he'd rather drink than fight!"

The Bluffer chortled again, at the memory.

"But," said Bill, "how did his name—"

"Oh, that!" interrupted the Bluffer. "That's the funniest part of all. When he sat up with all that water streaming off him and everybody started kidding him about getting drunk and missing the duel, he lost his head and tried to say it wasn't so. Why, if he'd only kept his mouth shut, or admitted it and laughed at himself—but he had to go and claim he wasn't drunk. `But I'm not drunk!' That's the very first words he used. Only when they asked him how come he was out cold, he didn't have any good answer. Tried to come up with some weak story about maybe tripping and hitting his head on the side of the building. Well, you know that's a lie, Pick-and-Shovel. No one's going to trip and hit his head on a log wall hard enough to knock himself out. So, naturally, he got his name changed."

"Naturally," echoed Bill automatically. He was aware enough of Dilbian attitudes now to realize that Wasn't Drunk was as much a liability of a name as Barrel Belly had been an advantage to Mula-ay. What it boiled down to was that the Hemnoid had become a figure of fun to the Dilbians and his usefulness to the Hemnoid purpose on Dilbia was at an end. No wonder he was being withdrawn. Bill could even find it in himself to feel a little sorry for Mula-ay, now that he had come to understand how the Dilbian mind worked.

Remembering the vagaries of Dilbian thought, he woke abruptly now to the fact that the Hill Bluffer, in the oblique Dilbian way, was trying to tell him something.

"But you were saying," said Bill hastily, "that the people up in the mountains were interested in how I worked things out down here? Why would they be interested?"

"Oh, lots of reasons, Pick-and-Shovel," said the Bluffer carelessly. "Some of them might've been wondering, of course, just how things might work out, with you helping these Muddy Nosers to grow all kinds of stuff. Of course, Lowland folk like this don't count for much in the minds of mountain people, but they're still real people down here, just the same, and a lot of Upland folk were kind of interested to see who the Muddy Nosers'd end up going along with—you or the Fatty. Just in case they ran into the same sort of situation themselves, some day."

"I see," said Bill. It was pretty much as he expected, he thought, interpreting what the postman was saying in the light of his newfound Dilbian knowledge. The Hill Bluffer had been more than a hired companion for Bill. He had been an unofficial—almost everything practical was unofficial among the Dilbians—observer for the Uplanders, with the duty of reporting back on the feasibility of accepting Shorty, rather than Hemnoid, help in agricultural and other matters. And the Bluffer was now delicately informing Bill of that fact.

"How do you suppose they'll feel at the way things turned out?" Bill asked the postman.

"Well," said the Bluffer judiciously, "I think there might be some people, maybe quite some people, who'll be kind of pleased things worked out the way they did. Guess I'm one of them myself." Abruptly, the tall Dilbian changed the subject. "By the way, I passed the word to Bone Breaker the way you told me. I said to him you'd like to see him before you leave."

"You did?" Bill looked hastily off in the direction of the village. He had seen no sign of the former outlaw chief, and had assumed that Bone Breaker had not got the message, or had refused to come—though that was unlikely. "He said he wouldn't come?"

"Oh no. He's coming," said the Bluffer. "He started out with me when I left Muddy Nose."

"Started out?" Bill, staring about, could still not see any sign of Bone Breaker. "What happened—"

"Oh, well, I sort of outwalked him, you know," said the Hill Bluffer comfortably. "He's slowed down a mite. Not that he ever could have kept up with me before either, if I'd been minded to leave him behind. There's no man living who could do that."

"I believe you," said Bill honestly. And he did.

"There he is now," said the Bluffer, nodding over Bill's head at the courier ship. "Must have circled around to look at that flying box of yours."

Bill turned. Sure enough, there was Bone Breaker, towering amidst the other Dilbians examining the ship. As Bill watched, the former outlaw chief turned and ambled in Bill's direction.

"Well," said the Bluffer's voice, "guess I'll be throwing my feet. See you again, maybe, sometime, Pick-and-Shovel."

Bill turned back to the postman.

"I hope so," said Bill.

"Right. So long," replied the Hill Bluffer. He turned and went—his abrupt farewell being quite in accordance with Dilbian lack of ceremony over both meetings and partings. Bill stared after the tall, striding figure for a moment. Being human, himself, he would have liked to have made a little more out of the process of saying good-bye, particularly since he had come to have a strong feeling of friendship for the Bluffer. But the other was already dwindling in the distance and a moment later he disappeared among the trees not far from where the solitary figure of Mula-ay was standing.

"Well, Pick-and-Shovel!" said a different, deep, bass voice, and looking around, Bill saw that Bone Breaker was indeed upon him. "I heard you were asking around about me since you got back on your feet. So I told the wife I'd step over and see what you had on your mind before you took off."

"The wife?" echoed Bill. "Sweet Thing?"

"Who else?" replied Bone Breaker, patting his stomach gently in a manner vaguely resembling More Jam's favorite gesture. "Yes, I'm an innkeeper now, Pick-and-Shovel, and I guess the old gang in the valley's just about broken up. Most of them came to the village with me, and the rest lit out for parts unknown. But what were you asking for me, about?"

"Just a little idle curiosity about something," said Bill, approaching the subject obliquely in the best Dilbian manner. "So you gave up outlawing after all and settled down, did you?"

"What else could I do?" sighed Bone Breaker sadly, "after the way you licked me in a fair fight the way you did, Pick-and-Shovel? Not that I miss the old days too much, though. There's been some compensations."

"There have?" asked Bill.

"Why, sure there have," said Bone Breaker. "There's that little wife of mine, for one—what a prize she is, Pick-and-Shovel." Bone Breaker lowered the volume of his kettledrum bass voice confidentially, "Not only is she the best cook around, but she can lick any other two females, hands-down. She may not be the best-looking female in the region—"

"She isn't?" said Bill, considerably surprised. It was true Perfectly Delightful had called Sweet Thing stubby and little, but Bill had put this down more to jealousy than fact. His human eyes of course were no judge of Dilbian beauty, but he had taken it for granted that Bone Breaker, being the locality's most eligible bachelor, would naturally take an interest only in the better-looking of the available females.

"I wouldn't admit this to any other man," said Bone Breaker, still confidentially, "but you're a Shorty, so of course you don't count—my little wife isn't exactly the world's best-looking. No. But what's the good of getting someone with a figure like Perfectly Delightful's, for instance, if you've got to take the rest of her along with it? No, Sweet Thing's the wife for me, on all counts—to say nothing of getting a daddy-in-law like More Jam, thrown in. That old boy's smart, Pick-and-Shovel—"

Bone Breaker's nose twitched in the Dilbian equivalent of a wink.

"—As I guess you know," he went on. "Between him and me, I suppose we can get most of the people in Muddy Nose to agree to just about anything we want. So, you can see I'm pretty well off, in spite of the fact my outlawing days are over. I guess that was what you wanted to know, come to think of it, wasn't it, Pick-and-Shovel?"

"Why, I guess that was part of it, anyway," said Bill slowly.

He and Bone Breaker were eyeing each other like fencers. What Bone Breaker had said was, indeed, only part of what Bill wanted to get the ex-outlaw chief to say. In total, the admission Bill wanted was necessary ammunition for a certain private and entirely non-Dilbian hassle toward which he was eagerly pointing.

He was going to make someone pay for what had been done to him. To do that, he needed Bone Breaker to admit certain things. Bone Breaker knew that Bill knew that these things were true. But the big Dilbian was not necessarily going to admit them, just for that reason.

That was not the Dilbian way, Bill had learned. Even though, in a sense, Bone Breaker owed Bill the admission and that was why he was here. The necessary words would be forthcoming only if Bill was clever enough to trap Bone Breaker into a position between them and an outright lie.

"Yes, I guess that was part of it," Bill went on, cautiously. "I did wonder how you were making out. After all, it's a pretty free and easy life, being an outlaw—going out and taking whatever you wanted when you wanted it. It must be pretty dull after that, just being an innkeeper."

"Well now, it is, at times," said Bone Breaker easily. "I won't try to deny it."

"Of course," said Bill thoughtfully. "More Jam managed to settle down to it, all right, in his time."

"That's true," said Bone Breaker, nodding. "I imagine he had a pretty high old life for a while there, when he was younger."

"I'd guess so," said Bill. "And that's what got me wondering—about More Jam, now that I stop to think of it. There must have come some sort of time when he made a decision. Somewhere along the way, he must have said to himself something like—`Well, it's been fun and all that, but sooner or later I'll be getting along in years; and it'd be nice to quit while I was ahead.'—Do you suppose he might have thought something like that?"

"Well, of course I don't know," said Bone Breaker, "but I'd guess he might well have, Pick-and-Shovel."

"I mean," said Bill, "he might have thought what it would be like if he just kept on going until he started to slow down and some young buck came along and took him some day in a regular, fair, man-to-man tussle out in the daylight where everybody could see. Then, all of a sudden, the fun and reputation would be gone and he wouldn't have anything to show for it."

"I guess he might," said Bone Breaker.

"He might even have thought," said Bill, "how smart it would be to settle down and get married to Sweet Thing's mother and become an innkeeper ahead of time. Only, of course it must have been a problem for him, because he couldn't quit just like that, without an excuse. People would have figured he'd lost his nerve. Luckily, about that time, his stomach must have started going delicate on him, and that solved the problem for him. He didn't have any choice but to marry Sweet Thing's mother to make sure he had her to cook for him—and of course that meant he had to take up innkeeping and give up wrestling, and all. Of course, I don't know it happened that way. It just seems to me it might have."

"Well, that's pretty surprising, Pick-and-Shovel," rumbled Bone Breaker, "as a matter of fact, that's just what did happen with More Jam."

"You don't say?" said Bill. "Now, that's interesting—my hitting the nail on the head just like that. But, of course, much of it isn't hard to figure out, because almost any man with a terrific reputation as a fighter would have trouble quitting. Wouldn't you say that?"

"Yes," said Bone Breaker, staring off across Bill's head at the distant courier ship, "I guess I'd have to say that. A man can't just give up being Lowland champion wrestler without some kind of good reason."

"Or," said Bill, "being outlaw chief."

"Well, that too," admitted Bone Breaker.

"Yes," said Bill thoughtfully, "I guess you might have had your problems too along that line if luck hadn't turned out the way it did. You had Sweet Thing on your side, and she knows a thing or two—"

"She," said Bone Breaker, "surely does."

"To say nothing of her old daddy, who's as tricky as they come; and who probably wouldn't have objected at all getting a real tough cat for a son-in-law to help him with the innkeeping business."

"Well, now that it's all over," said Bone Breaker, "I have to admit More Jam's pretty much been on my side all along."

"But there wasn't much they could do directly to help you," said Bill. "So it was sort of handy—my coming along. You couldn't very well quit outlawing without being licked in a fair fight. And you couldn't very well let yourself get licked by any other real man, especially from around these parts, and still keep your reputation after you retired. But of course, if a Shorty like me won a fight with you, and I flew out of here a few days later, that'd still leave you top dog—locally, at least. Of course, you didn't have to quit outlawing just because a Shorty beat you. It wasn't as if I was a real man."

"No, but it was a sign to me—you winning like that," said Bone Breaker sadly. "I was getting slow and weak, Pick-and-Shovel, and it was only a matter of time until somebody else took me. I could tell that."

"Oh, you don't look all that old and weak yet," said Bill.

"Nice of you to say so, Pick-and-Shovel," said the Bone Breaker. "Oh, I might stand up to any other real man around here for a few years yet. But I sure can't stand up to a fire-eating Shorty like you."

"Well, it's particularly nice to hear you say that," pounced Bill. Bone Breaker's gaze centered on him remained calm and innocent. "Because this mixed-up memory of mine's been giving me all sorts of trouble about that fight."

"Memory?" queried Bone Breaker, with rumbling softness.

"That's right." Bill shook his head. "You remember you must have hit me quite a clip in that storehouse, even if I did get out of it on my feet, first. I was laid up for a few days afterward. And that knock on the head seems to have got my memory all mixed up. Would you believe it, I find myself thinking that I touched your leg, lying on the floor, before all those logs came tumbling down, and covered you up."

"My!" Bone Breaker shook his head slowly. "I really did clip you one, then, didn't I, Pick-and-Shovel? Now, what would I be doing lying down on the floor, waiting for some logs to roll down on me?"

"Well, I guess you'll laugh," said Bill. "But it just seems to stick in my head that you were not only lying there, but that you pulled those logs down on yourself, and it was that that made folks think I'd won. But anyone knows you wouldn't do that. After all, you were fighting for your old free way of life. The last thing you wanted was to get married and settle down to innkeeping. So I tell myself I shouldn't think that way. Should I?"

Bill shot the last two words hard at the big Dilbian. Bone Breaker breathed quietly for a second, his eyes half-closed, his expression thoughtful.

"Well, I'll tell you, Pick-and-Shovel," he said at last. "As long as it's just you, and you being a Shorty, I don't guess I mind your thinking that, if you want to. After all, your thinking it happened like that doesn't do me any harm as long as you're getting in that flying box there and going away. So, you go ahead and think that, if you like and I won't mind."

Bill let out a deep breath in defeat. Bone Breaker had managed to weasel out of it.

"But I'll tell you something," went on Bone Breaker, unexpectedly. "I'll tell you how I like to think of our fight."

"How's that?" asked Bill, suspiciously.

"Why, I like to think of how I was tiptoeing along in the darkness there—and suddenly you came at me like a wild tree-cat," said Bone Breaker. "Before I was half-ready, you were on me. Next thing I knew you'd knocked my sword spinning out of my fist and split my shield. Then you picked up a log and hit me. And then you hit me with another log and the whole pile came tumbling down as you threw me through the wall of the storehouse, jumped outside and threw me back in through another part of the wall, just as the rest of the logs came tumbling down and covered me."

He stopped speaking. Bill stared at him for a long moment before he could find his voice.

"Threw you through the wall, twice?" echoed Bill, his voice cracking. "How could I? There weren't any holes made in the storehouse walls!"

"There weren't!" said Bone Breaker, on a note of surprise, rearing back. "Why, now, that's true, Pick-and-Shovel! I must be wrong about that part. I'll have to remember to leave that part out when I tell about our fight. I certainly am obliged to you, Pick-and-Shovel, for pointing that out to me. I guess my memory must have gotten a little mixed-up—just like yours did."

"Er—yes," said Bill.

Suddenly, a great light burst upon Bill. Anything a Dilbian said had to be interpreted—and he had been looking for Bone Breaker to admit the truth about the duel in a different way. This, then, was the admission—in the shape of a story about Bill's prowess too wonderful to believe. So he had picked up this nine-hundred-pound hulk before him and thrown it through a wall of logs, not once, but twice, had he?

"But, after all," Bone Breaker was going on, easily, "there's no reason for us to go picking on each other's memories. Why don't I just remember the fight the way I remember it, and you remember it your way, and we'll let it go at that?"

Bill grinned. He could not help it. It was a violation of the rules of Dilbian verbal fencing, which called for a straight face at all times, but he hoped that his human face would be alien enough to Bone Breaker so that the Dilbian would not interpret the expression.

Whether this was the case or not, Bone Breaker did not seem to notice the grin.

"All right," said Bill. Bone Breaker nodded in satisfaction.

"Well, I guess I'll be rolling home for dinner, then," he said. "You know, Pick-and-Shovel, you're not bad for a Shorty. Something real manly about you. Pleased to have met you. So long!"

He turned and left—as abruptly as had the Hill Bluffer. Watching him go, Bill saw him stop to speak to another male Dilbian who had been examining the courier ship, but who now hurried to intercept the ex-outlaw chief.

There was something undeniably respectful about the way the other Dilbian approached the big, black-furred figure. Whatever other changes had occurred in Bone Breaker's life as a result of his losing the fight to Bill and taking up innkeeping, it was plain to see that he had not lost anything of his local stature and authority in the process.

But just at that moment, out of the corner of his eye, Bill caught sight of the tall, lean man who had been talking to Anita by the open hatch of the ship, picking up what was evidently a suitcase and turning as if to head off through the woods.

"Hey!" shouted Bill, starting to run toward him. "No, you don't! Hold up, there! I've got some talking to do to you!"

 

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