Spacepaw Page 4

  Bill hesitated only a second, and then climbed into the saddle on the postman’s back. Listening to Sweet Thing, he had come to the conclusion that whatever he did, he could not avoid at least going to the valley and talking to the outlaw chief. In the absence of orders from his superiors he had no choice. But he certainly had no intention of challenging Bone Breaker, no matter what Sweet Thing thought. What he could and would do, would be to spin out negotiations until Greenleaf got back, which would certainly be within four or five days at most.

  “—Of course,” said the Bluffer, unexpectedly breaking the silence as the trees closed about them, “naturally, that’s why the Tricky Teacher hasn’t been having much success getting these Lowlanders to use all these tools and things you Shorties have brought in.”

  Bill, by this time, was beginning to get used to the unexpectedness of Dilbian conversation. It required only a little thought on his part to realize that the Bluffer was continuing the conversation begun inside the Residency after Sweet Thing’s departure.

  “What’s why?” Bill asked, therefore, interested.

  “Why, the fact there’s no point in these farmers learning all sorts of new tricks so they can grow more food,” answered the Bluffer. “The outlaws just take anything extra, anyway. The more extra food they raised, the more extra outlaws they’d just be supporting.”

  “How far is it to the valley?” Bill asked.

  “Just a step or two,” answered the Bluffer economically. However, a step or two by the Bluffer’s standards seemed to be somewhat more of a distance than the term implied to human ears. For better than half an hour, the Bluffer strode rapidly into rougher and rougher country. The Dilbian sun was close to the tops of the hills and peaks ahead of them, when the Bluffer at last made an abrupt turn and plunged downward into what looked like an ordinary ravine, but which suddenly opened up around a corner to reveal, ahead and below them down a narrow ravine, a parklike, green valley, walled in all other directions by near-vertical cliffs of bare stone from fifty to a hundred feet in height. Softly green-carpeted with the local grass, the valley glowed in the late afternoon sun, the black log walls of a cluster of buildings at its far end soaking up the late light.

  That light fell also on a literal wall made of logs about thirty feet high, some fifty yards ahead down the path. This wall was pierced by a heavy wooden door, now ajar but flanked by two Dilbians wearing not only the straplike harness and swords Bill had seen on those at Tin Ear’s farm, but with heavy, square, wooden shields hanging from their left shoulders, as well. Sweet Thing’s words about challenging Bone Breaker came uncomfortably back into Bill’s mind.

  The Hill Bluffer, however, had evidently come here with no sense of caution. As he approached the two at the gate, he bellowed at the two outlaws on watch.

  “All right, out of the way! We’ve got business with Bone Breaker!”

  The guards, however, made no move to step aside. Their nine-foot heights and a combined weight of probably over three-quarters of a ton, continued to bar the entrance. The Bluffer necessarily came to a halt before them.

  “Step aside, I say!” he shouted.

  “Says who?” demanded the taller of the guards.

  “Says me!” roared the Bluffer. “Don’t pretend you don’t know who I am. The official postman’s got right of entry to any town, village, or camp! So clear out of my way and let us through!”

  “You aren’t being a postman now,” retorted the Dilbian who had spoken before. “Right now you’re nothing but a plain, ordinary mountain man, wanting into private property. Did anybody send for you?”

  “Send for us?” the Bluffer’s voice rose to a roar of rage, and Bill could feel the big back and shoulder muscle of the Dilbian bunching ominously under him. “This is the Pick-and-Shovel Shorty who’s here to tangle with Bone Breaker if necessary!”

  “Him? Tangle with Bone Breaker!” the guard who had been talking burst into guffaws. “Hor, hor, hor!” His companion joined in.

  “So you think that’s funny!” snarled the Bluffer. “There were a few of you valley reivers at Tin Ear’s farm earlier today who got made to look pretty silly. And lucky for them, that was all that happened—” The Bluffer’s voice took on an ominous tone. “Remember it was a Shorty just like him that took the Streamside Terror!”

  Startlingly enough to Bill, this reminder seemed to take the wind out of the sails of the two guards’ merriment. Apparently, if Bill found it impossible to believe that a Shorty could outfight a Dilbian, these two did not think so. Their laughter died and they cast uneasy glances over the Bluffer’s shoulder at Bill.

  “Huh!” said the talkative one, with a feeble effort at a sneer. “The Streamside Terror. An Uplander!”

  Bill felt the saddle heave beneath him as the Bluffer took a deep breath. But before that breath could emerge in words, the talkative guard abruptly stood aside.

  “Well, who cares?” he growled. “Let’s let ’em go in, Three Fingers. Bone Breaker will take care of them, all right!”

  “High time!” snarled the Bluffer. But without staying to argue anymore, he set himself in motion through the gate, and a second later was striding forward over the lush slope of grass toward the log buildings in the distance, all these things now reddened by the setting sun.

  As they drew closer, Bill saw that there was considerable difference in the size of some of the buildings. In fact, the whole conglomeration looked rather like a skiing chalet, with a number of guest cottages scattered around behind it. The main building, a long one-story structure, stood squarely athwart their path, the big double doors of its principal entrance thrown wide open to reveal a perfectly black, unlighted interior. As the Bluffer approached the building Bill could smell the odor of roasting meat, as well as several other unidentifiable vegetable odors. Evidently it was the hour of the evening meal, which Bill’s hypnoed information told him was served about this time of day among the Dilbians. Once inside, the Bluffer stepped out of line with the open doorway, and stopped abruptly; evidently to let his eyes adjust to the inner dark.

  Bill’s eyes were also adjusting. Gradually, out of the gloom, there took shape a long narrow chamber with bare rafters overhead, and a large stone fireplace filled with crackling logs in spite of the warmth of the closing day, set in the end wall to their right. There was a small, square table with four stools set before the fireplace, just as there were other, long tables flanked by benches stretching away from it down the length of the hall. But what drew Bill’s eyes like a magnet to the table with four stools in front of the fireplace was not the tall Dilbian with coal-black fur sitting on one of the stools, talking, but his partner in conversation, sitting across from him.

  This other was not a Dilbian. Swathed in dark, shimmering cloth, his rotund body was scarcely half a head shorter than that of the Dilbian. Standing, Bill guessed that he could be scarcely less than eight feet tall, a foot or so below the average height of a male Dilbian. His face, like his body, bulged in creases of what appeared to be fat. But Bill knew that they were nothing of the kind. Seated, talking to the black-furred Dilbian was a member of that alien race which was most strongly in competition with the humans for influence with the natives on worlds like Dilbia, and for living space in general between the stars.

  The being to whom the black-furred Dilbian was speaking was a Hemnoid, and his apparent fat was the result of the powerful muscles required by a race which had evolved on a world with half again the gravity of Earth.

  Abruptly and belatedly, the meaning of Sweet Thing’s obscure reference to taking the advice of Fatties became clear to Bill. A cold feeling like a cramp made itself felt at the pit of his stomach.

  It was Bone Breaker, apparently, who had been taking the advice of Fatties—or of this one Fatty in particular. Unexpectedly, Bill found himself facing a Hemnoid in exactly the sort of ticklish interracial situation that the Human-Hemnoid treaty of noninterference in native Dilbian affairs had been signed to prevent. Too late now, he realized t
hat he had intruded on the type of incident that should be dealt with by no human below the rank of a Resident in the Diplomatic Service. Let alone a trainee-assistant in mechanical engineering who was like a fish out of water in being assigned to an agricultural project. And let alone a trainee-assistant who had been unable to contact his superiors by off-planet communications, and who was operating totally without authority and on his own initiative.

  “Turn around!” Bill hissed frantically in the Hill Bluffer’s ear. “I’ve got to get out of here!”

  “Out? What for?” said the Bluffer, surprised. “Anyway, it’s too late now.”

  “Too late—?”

  Bill never finished echoing the Bluffer’s words.

  From just outside the door behind him there came a sound like that of a large, untuned, metal gong being struck. A voice shouted:

  “Sun’s down! Close the gates.”

  There was only a second or two of pause, and then floating back from the far distance of the valley entrance with a clarity that only the lung-power of a Dilbian could provide with such pressure, came the answering cry:

  “The gates are closed!”

  Chapter 5

  The long, drawn-out cry from the valley gate had barely died away, before the Hill Bluffer was in motion, heading toward the short table in front of the fireplace. Bill opened his mouth to protest, then quickly shut it again. Now he saw that the room was crowded with Dilbians of all sizes, and probably of both sexes, both standing about and seated at the various benches. At first this crowd had not noticed the Bluffer and Bill, standing just inside the doorway. But as they began to move toward the small, square table at the head of the room, before the fireplace, they drew all eyes upon them, and silence spread out through the room like ripples from a stone flung into a pond. By the time the Bluffer reached the table where the Hemnoid and the black-furred Dilbian sat, that silence was absolute.

  The Bluffer stopped. He looked down at the seated Hemnoid and the seated Dilbian.

  “Evening, Bone Breaker,” he said to the Dilbian, and transferred his gaze to the Hemnoid. “Evening, Barrel Belly.”

  “Evening to you, Postman,” replied Bone Breaker. His unbelievably deep, bass voice had an echoing, resonant quality that made it seem to ring all around them. The outlaw chief was, Bill saw, almost as outsize for a Dilbian as was the Hill Bluffer. Probably not quite as tall as the Bluffer, judged Bill, as he tried to estimate from the seated figure of the outlaw, but heavier in the body, and certainly wider in the shoulders. A shiver trickled coldly down Bill’s back. There was an air of competence and authority about this one Dilbian that was strangely at odds with the appearance of other members of that same race that Bill had met so far. The eyes looking at him now out of the midnight black of the furry face had a brilliant, penetrating quality. Could someone like this be holding prisoner a human being for such emotional and obvious reasons as Sweet Thing had attributed to him?

  But he had no chance to ponder the question. Because the Hemnoid was, he found, already talking to him, gazing up at him over the Bluffer’s furry shoulder, and speaking in a voice which, while not so deep as those of the Dilbians, had the ponderous, liquid quality of some heavy oil, pouring out of an enormous jug.

  “Mula-ay, at your service,” gurgled the Hemnoid with a darkly sinister sort of cheerfulness. He was speaking Dilbian, and the fact he did so, alerted Bill to answer in the same language—and not fall into the social mistake of speaking out in either human or Hemnoid, of which latter alien tongue he also owned a hypnoed knowledge.

  “Or, ‘Barrel Belly,’ as our friends here call me,” went on Mula-ay. “I’m a journalist, here to do a series of articles on these delightful people. What brings you among them, my young, human friend?’

  “Bill Waltham,” answered Bill cautiously. “I’m here as part of our agricultural project at Muddy Nose.” Mula-ay might indeed be a journalist, but it was almost certain he was also a Hemnoid secret agent—that was the Hemnoid way.

  “Just part of it?” Mula-ay gave a syrupy chuckle as he answered, like a hogshead of molasses being emptied into a deep tank. There was a note of derision in his chuckling. A note that seemed to invite everyone else to join him in laughing over some joke at Bill’s expense. This in itself might mean something—or it might not. A love of cruelty was part of the Hemnoid character, as Bill knew. It was a racial characteristic which the Hemnoid culture praised, rather than condemned. Nonetheless, it was not pleasant to be the butt of Mula-ay’s joke, whatever it was. Feeling suddenly ridiculous, Bill took his feet out of the back straps of the Bluffer’s harness and slid down to stand on the floor.

  Now on his feet and facing both the seated Mula-ay and Bone Breaker, Bill found he could look slightly down into the face of the Hemnoid, although his eyes glanced level with the eyes of Bone Breaker.

  “Have a place at my table, Pick-and-Shovel,” rumbled the outlaw chief. His tone was formal, so that the words came out very like a command. “You too, Postman.”

  Without hesitation, the Bluffer dropped down on one of the unoccupied stools. Bill walked around and hoisted himself up on the other empty seat. He found himself with Bone Breaker close at his right elbow; while at his left elbow, with only a few feet between them, sat the gross form of Mula-ay, his Buddha-like face still creased in a derisive smile. Opposite, Bill’s single ally, the Hill Bluffer, seemed far away and removed from the action.

  With the fire lashing its red flames into the air at one side of them, throwing ruddy gleams among the sooty shadows of the bare rafters above them and the outsize figures surrounding him, there came on Bill suddenly a feeling of having somehow stumbled into a nether world, peopled by dark giants and strange monsters. A momentary feeling of helplessness washed through him. All around him, the situation seemed too big for him—physically, emotionally, and even professionally. He broke out rashly and directly to Bone Breaker, speaking across a corner of the table.

  “1 understand you’ve got a Shorty here—a Shorty named Dirty Teeth!”

  For a long second, the outlaw merely looked at him.

  “Why, yes,” answered Bone Breaker. Then, with strange mildness, “She did wander in here the other day and 1 believe she’s still around. Seems I remember she told me yesterday she didn’t plan to leave for a while—whether I liked it or not.”

  He continued to gaze at Bill, as Bill sat, momentarily shaken both by his own lack of caution and by Bone Breaker’s astonishing answer. Now, while Bill was still trying to collect his scattered wits, Bone Breaker spoke again.

  “But let’s not get into that now, Pick-and-Shovel,” said the outlaw chief, still in that tone of surprising mildness. “It’s just time for the food and drink. Sit back and make yourself comfortable. We’ll have dinner first. Then we can talk.”

  Mula-ay, Bill saw, was still grinning at him, evidently hugely enjoying Bill’s confusion and discomfiture.

  “Well … thanks,” said Bill to Bone Breaker.

  A couple of Dilbian females were just at this moment coming to the table with huge platters of what appeared to be either boiled or roasted meat, enormous irregular chunks of brown material that seemed to be some kind of bread, and large wooden drinking containers.

  “What’s the matter, Pick-and-Shovel?” Bone Breaker inquired mildly, as the wooden vessels were being poured full of a dark brown liquid, which Bill’s nose told him was probably some form of native beer. “Nothing wrong with the food and drink, is there? Dig in.”

  “Quite right,” Mula-ay echoed the Dilbian with an oily chuckle, cramming his own large mouth full of bread and meat and lifting the wooden tankard to wash the mouthful down. “Best food for miles around.”

  “Not quite, Barrel Belly,” replied Bone Breaker, turning his deceptive mildness this time upon the Hemnoid. “I thought I told you. Sweet Thing is the best cook in these parts.”

  “Oh yes—yes,” agreed the Hemnoid hastily, swallowing with a gulp, and beaming hugely at the outlaw, “of course. How coul
d it have slipped my mind? Good as this is, it isn’t a patch on what Sweet Thing could cook. Why, sure!”

  Bone Breaker, Bill thought, must possess an iron fist within the velvet glove of this apparent mildness of his, judging by the reaction of the Hemnoid. Now the black-furred outlaw’s eyes were coming back to Bill. Bill hastily picked up a chunk of meat and began gnawing on it. Oh well, he thought, nothing ventured, nothing gained.

  Conversation in general had ceased, not merely at their own head table, but about the hall, as the Dilbians present settled down to the serious business of eating. Their industry in performing that task was awesome enough from a human’s point of view. Bill had never thought of himself as a particularly light eater—in fact, at Survival School, he had been accused of just the opposite. But compared to these Dilbians, and to the Hemnoid at his left elbow, his performance as a trencherman was so insignificant as to seem ridiculous.

  To begin with, somewhere between six and eight pounds of boiled meat had been dumped upon his wooden plate, along with what looked like about the equivalent of two loaves of bread. The wooden flagon alongside his plate looked as if it could hold at least a quart or two of liquid, and it had been generously filled.

  After a first attempt at trying to keep up with the oversized appetites and capacities of those around him, Bill gave up. He scattered the food around on his plate as much as possible to make it look as if he had eaten, and resigned himself to pretending to be busy with the drinking flagon, which, as it became more and more empty, got easier to handle.

  He had just, somewhat to his own surprise, managed at last to drain the final mouthful of liquid from this oversized utensil and set it back down on the table, when to his dismay he saw Bone Breaker turn and lift a pawlike hand. One of the serving Dilbians came over and refilled the flagon.