Joshua spread his hands expressively.
"Would I risk one of my own people?" he said. "Maybe two, counting John, here? All for nothing but the fun of making the Terror mad at me?"
"Don't make sense, does it?" rumbled Shaking Knees. "But you Shorties are tricky little characters." His words rang with an honest admiration.
"Now, you people are pretty sly yourselves," said Joshua. They both turned and spat over their left shoulders. "Well, now," went on Joshua, "compliments aside, anybody know where the Terror is?"
"He headed west through the Cold Mountains," put in Two Answers. "He was spotted yesterday a half day's hike north, pointed toward Sour Ford and the Hollows. He probably nighted at Brittle Rock Inn, there."
"Good," said Joshua. "We'll have to find a guide to there for my friend here."
"Guide? Ho!" chortled Shaking Knees. "Wait'll you see what we got for your friend." He shouldered past Two Answers, opened the door and bellowed. "Bluffer! In here!"
There was a moment's wait. And then a Dilbian even leaner and taller than Shaking Knees shouldered his way through the outer doorway into the office, which with this new addition, and in spite of its original size, began to take on the air of being decidedly crowded.
"Here you are, Shorties!" said Shaking Knees, waving an expansive furry hand at the newcomer. "What more could you ask for? Walk all day, climb all night, and start out fresh next morning after breakfast. Right, Hill Bluffer?"
"Right as rooftops in raintime!" sonorously proclaimed the newcomer, rattling the windows about the walls. "Hill Bluffer, that's my name and trade! Anything on two feet walk away from me? Not over solid ground or living rock! When I look at a hill, it knows it's beat; and it lays out flat for my trampling feet!"
"Well, how do you like that, Little Bite? Eh? How?" boomed Shaking Knees.
"Mighty impressive, Knees," replied Joshua. "But I don't know about my friend keeping up if the Hill Bluffer here moves like that."
"Keep up? Hah!" guffawed Shaking Knees. "No, no, Little Bite, don't you recognize the Hill Bluffer? He's the government postman from Humrog to Wildwood Peak. We're going to mail your Shorty friend here to the Terror. Guaranteed delivery. Postage: five pounds of nails."
"Nobody stops the mail." The Hill Bluffer swept the room with a glare that had a professional quality about it. "Nobody monkeys with the mail in transit!"
"Well . . ." said Joshua, thoughtfully. "Five pounds, of course, is out of the question."
"Out of the question?" roared Shaking Knees. "A guaranteed, absolutely safe government mailman—!"
"I can hire five strong porters off the street for that."
"Sure you can. Sure!" jeered Shaking Knees. "But can any of them catch up with the Terror?"
"Can the Bluffer catch up?"
The Hill Bluffer bellowed like a struck bull.
"Well," said Joshua, "a pound and a half. That's fair."
The bargaining continued. John began to get a headache. He wondered how Joshua had kept from going deaf all these months in the embassy, or however long he had been billeted here. Then he noticed the older man was wearing a sound dampening coil behind each ear. It had not of course, thought John a trifle bitterly, occurred to him to suggest the same protection for John.
The price was finally settled at three and a quarter pounds of steel nails, size and type to be at Shaking Knees' discretion, at some future date.
"Well, now," said Joshua, "the next thing is—how's the Bluffer going to carry him?"
"Who? Him?" boomed the Bluffer, focusing down on John. "Why, I'll handle him like he was a week-old pup. Wrap him up real careful in some soft straw, tuck him in the bottom of my mail pouch and—"
"Hey!" cried John.
"I'm afraid," said Joshua, "my friend's right. We're going to have to find some way he can ride more comfortably."
The meeting adjourned to the embassy warehouse adjoining, to see what could be rigged up in the way of a saddle.
* * *
"I won't wear it!" the Hill Bluffer was trumpeting, two hours later. They were all standing in the Humrog main street by this time, in front of the warehouse; and the cause of the Bluffer's upset, a system of straps and pads arranged into a sort of shoulder harness to carry John, lay on the cobblestones before them. A small number of local Dilbian bystanders had gathered; and their freely offered basso comments were not of a sort to bring the Hill Bluffer to a more reasonable frame of mind.
"Now, that's a real good system for my old lady to tote the youngest pup around," one Dilbian with a grey scar jaggedly across his black nose, was saying.
"Good training for the Bluffer, too," put in another blackfurred monster. "Have pups of his own, one of these days."
"Unless," said the scar-nosed one, judiciously, "this here little feller actually is a pup of the Hill Bluffer's, already."
"You don't mean to actually tell me!" said the other. He squinted at John. "Yep, there's a resemblance all right."
"You want your ear tore off," roared the infuriated Bluffer, pausing in the midst of his hot argument with Shaking Knees and Two Answers. "This here piece of mail's a Shorty!"
John backed off a little from the bellowing group and tried to shut the voices out of his mind, even if shutting them out of his ears was somewhat impractical. He was in that stage of helplessly worn-out exasperation which often results when naturally independent and strong-willed people are pushed around without explanation and without the chance for natural protest.
He turned his back on the shouting group and gazed off through the thin, clear air of the Dilbian mountains that made everything seem three times as close as they actually were, to a snow-laden peak thrusting up above the pinelike trees surrounding Humrog.
"At least try the unmentionable thing on!" Shaking Knees was roaring at the Hill Bluffer a dozen feet away.
Here, thought John, he had been hauled off the ship that was to take him out to his job with a government exploration team; it was work he had always wanted and just finished seven years of college-level study for. Instead he was on a citizen's draft which left him no chance to object. Well, yes, John had to admit to himself, the Draft Law provided he could refuse if he could charge the Drafting Authority—in this case, Joshua—with incompetence or misinformation. John snorted under his breath. Fine chance he had of doing that when he couldn't even find out what was going on. He had just stepped off his spaceship a few hours ago; and Joshua had yet to give him five minutes opportunity to formulate questions.
At the same time, thought John, there was something awfully screwy about the way things were going on. As soon as this business of the saddle had been settled, he was going to haul Joshua aside, if need be by main force, and insist on some answers before he went any further. A citizen had some rights, too . . .
"Arright, arright, arright!" snarled the Hill Bluffer barely six inches behind John's ear. "Buckle me up in the obscenity thing, then!"
John turned to see Joshua pushing the system of straps up on the back of the Hill Bluffer, who was squatting down. Instinctively, he moved to give the little diplomat a hand.
"That's better!" growled Shaking Knees. "Don't blame you too much. But, you listen to me, pup! I happen to be your mother's uncle's first cousin, one generation up on you. And when I speak for a relative of mine of the second generation, he stays spoken for!"
"I'm doing it, ain't I?" flared the Bluffer. He wiggled his shoulder experimentally. "Don't feel too bad at that."
"You'll find it," grunted Joshua, buckling a final strap, "easier to carry than your regular pouch."
"Not the point!" growled the Bluffer. "A postman's got dignity. He just don't wear—" a snicker from the scar-nosed Dilbian cut through his speech. "Listen, you—Split Nose!"
"I'll take care of him." Shaking Knees rolled forward a couple of paces. "What's wrong with you, Split Nose?"
"Just passing by," rumbled Split Nose, hastily backing into the crowd as the Humrog village chief took a hand in the conversat
ion.
"Well, then just pass on, friend. Pass on!" boomed Shaking Knees; and Split Nose trundled hastily off down the street with every indication that his hairy ears were burning.
While this was going on, John, at Joshua's urging had seated himself in the saddle to see how it would bear his weight. The straps creaked, but held comfortably. The Hill Bluffer looked back over his shoulder.
"You're light enough," he said. "How is it? All right up there?"
"Fine," said John.
"Then, so long everybody!" boomed the Hill Bluffer.
He rose to his feet in one easy movement. And before John had time to do more than grab at the straps of the harness to keep from falling off, and catch his breath, they were barrelling off down the main street at the swift pace of the Bluffer's ground-eating stride, on their way to the forest trail, the mountains beyond which rose that distant peak John had just been watching, and the elusive and inimical Streamside Terror.
CHAPTER 3
If it had not been for the hypno training John had undergone, sitting with a large, bell-shaped helmet completely covering his head in the cramped little government scoutship, while on overdrive from the Belt Stars to Dilbia, he might instinctively have protested the Hill Bluffer's sudden departure. As it was, his pseudomemories of Dilbian life stood him in unexpectedly good stead. As it was, he had barely opened his mouth to yell, "Hey, wait a minute" when he suddenly `remembered' what consequences this might have and shut his lips firmly on the first syllable. As it was, the startled sound in his throat was enough to make the Hill Bluffer check his stride momentarily.
"Whazzat?" growled the Dilbian postman.
"Nothing," said John, hastily. "Clearing my throat."
"Thought you were going to say something," grunted the Bluffer, and swung back into his regular stride.
What John had suddenly `remembered' was one of the little tricks possible under Dilbian custom. He, himself, had not expected to start out after the Lamorc girl until the next morning at the earliest; and then not without a full session with Joshua Guy in which he would pin that elusive little man down about the whys and wherefores of the situation. As a citizen of the great human race it was his right to be fully briefed before being sent out on such a job.
That is, as a human citizen it was his right. As a piece of Dilbian mail, his rights were somewhat different—generally consisting of the postman's responsibility to deliver him without undue damage in transit to his destination.
Therefore, the little trickiness of the Hill Bluffer. As John had noticed, the postman had lost a great deal of his enthusiasm for the job on discovering the nature of the harness in which he would be carrying John. The Bluffer could not, of course, refuse to carry John without loss of honor, the hypno training informed John. But if a piece of mail should try to dictate the manner in which it was being delivered, then possibly Dilbian honor would stand excused, and the Bluffer could turn back, washing his hands of the whole matter.
So John said nothing.
All the same, he added another black mark to the score he was building up in the back of his mind against Joshua Guy. The Dilbian ambassador should have forseen this. John thought of the wrist phone he was wearing and began to compose a few of the statements he intended to make to that particular gentleman, as soon as he had a moment of privacy in which to make the call.
Meanwhile, the Bluffer went away down the slope of the main street of Humrog, turned right and began to climb the trail to the first ridge above the town. He had not been altogether exaggerating in his claims for himself as someone able to swing his feet. Almost immediately, it seemed to John, they were away from the great log buildings of the approximately five thousand population town of Humrog, and between the green thicknesses of the pinelike trees that covered the mountainous part of the rocky planet.
The Bluffer's long legs pistoned and swung in a steady rhythm, carrying himself and John up a good eight to ten degree slope at not much less than eight to ten miles an hour. John, swaying like a rider on the back of an elephant, concentrated on falling into the pattern of the Bluffer's movements and saving his own breath. The Bluffer, himself, said nothing.
They reached the top of the ridge and dipped down the slope into the first valley crossed by the trail. Long branches whipped past John as he clung to the Bluffer's shoulder straps and they plunged down the switchback trail as if any moment the Dilbian might miss his footing and go tumbling headlong off the trail and down the slope alongside.
Yet in spite of all this, John felt himself beginning to get used to the shifts of the big body under him. He was, in fact, responding with all the skill of an unusually talented athlete already experienced in a number of physical skills. He was meeting in stride the problems posed by being a Dilbian-rider. In fact, he was becoming good at it, as he had always become good at such things—from jai alai to wrestling—ever since he was old enough to toddle beyond the confines of his crib.
Realizing this did not make him happy. It is a sort of inverse but universal law of nature that makes poets want to be soldiers of fortune, and soldiers of fortune secretly yearn to write poetry. John, a naturally born physical success, had always dreamed of the day his life could be exclusively devoted to peering through microscopes and writing scholarly reports. Fate, he reflected not without bitterness, was operating against him as usual.
"What?" demanded the Hill Bluffer.
"Did I say something?" asked John, starting guiltily back to the realities of his situation.
"You said something," replied the Hill Bluffer darkly. "I don't know what, exactly. Sounded like something in that Shorty talk of yours."
"Oh," said John.
"That's what I figured it was," said the Bluffer. "I mean, if it had been something in real words, I would have understood it. I figure any talking you'd be doing to me would be in regular speech. A man wouldn't want anyone making cracks behind his back in some kind of talk he couldn't understand."
"Oh, no. No," said John, hastily. "I was just sort of daydreaming—about things back on the Shorty world where I come from."
The Hill Bluffer absorbed this information in silence for a moment or two, during which he reached the bottom of one small valley and started up its far side.
"You mean," he said, after a moment, "you been asleep back there?"
"Uh—well—sort of dozing . . ."
The Bluffer snorted like a small laboratory explosion and put on speed. He did not utter a word for the next two hours. Not, in fact, until someone beside John appeared on the verbal horizon to offer an excuse for conversation.
* * *
This new individual turned out to be another Dilbian, very much on the shaggy side, who appeared suddenly out of the woods on to the path ahead of them as they were crossing the low-slung curve of one of the interminable valleys. The stranger was carrying over one shoulder one of the local wild herbivores, a type of musk ox, large by human rather than Dilbian standards. In his other hand swung an ax with a seven foot handle.
The head of the ax was a thick, grey triangle of native iron, one leading side forming the edge of the blade, and the point at the far end being drawn back into a hook. A wicked-looking tool and weapon which John's hypno training now reminded him was carried and used on all occasions of civil and police matters.
But never used in brawls or combats. The Dilbians considered reliance on any weapon to be rather unmanly.
The Dilbian who had just appeared, waited agreeably in the path for them to catch up. John's nose, which was getting rather used to the Hill Bluffer by this time, discovered the newcomer's odor to be several notches more powerful than that of the Dilbians he had met so far. This Dilbian also had a couple of teeth missing and was plentifully matted about the shoulder and chest with blood from the dead animal he was carrying. He grinned in gap-toothed interest at John; but spoke to the Bluffer, as the Bluffer stopped before him.
"Bluffer," he said.
"Hello, woodsman," said the Bluffer.
> "Hello, postman." The tap-toothed grin widened. "Anything for me in the mail?"
"You!" The Bluffer's snort rang through the woods.
"Not so funny!" growled the other. "My second cousin got a piece of mail, once. His clan was gathering at Two Falls; he was a Two Faller through his mother's blood aunt . . ." the woodsman went on heatedly in an apparent attempt to prove his cousin's genealogical claim to have received the piece of mail in question.
Meanwhile, John's attention had been attracted by something else back in the trees from which the woodsman had just emerged. He was trying to get a clearer view of it without betraying himself by turning to look directly at it. It was hard to make out there in the deep shadow behind the branches of the trees, but there seemed to be two other individuals standing back out of sight and listening.
Neither one was a human being. One seemed to be a Dilbian, a small, rather fat-looking Dilbian. And the other, John was just about prepared to swear, was a Buddha-like Hemnoid. It was infuriating that just as he was about to get a clear glimpse of this second individual, a breeze or movement of the air would sway a branch in the way of his vision. If it were a Hemnoid . . .
John's hypno training, possibly by reason of the general snafu that seemed to effect anything having to do with John and Dilbia in general, had omitted to inform him about the Hemnoids. Accordingly, all he knew about this race, which were neck-and-necking it with the humans in a general race to the stars, was what he had picked up in the ordinary way through newspapers and chance encounters.
The Hemnoids looked exactly like jolly fat men half again the size of a human. Only what looked like fat was mostly muscle resulting from a heavier-than-earth gravity on their home world. And they were not—repeat, not—jolly, in the human sense of the word. They had a sense of humor, all right; but it was of the variety that goes with pulling wings off flies. John's only personal encounter with a Hemnoid before this had been at the Interplanetary Olympiad in Brisbane, Australia, the year John had won the decathlon competition.