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.
The Hemnoid ambassador, who had been in the stands that day to witness the competition, came down afterwards to be introduced to some of the athletes; he amused himself by putting the shot two hundred and twenty feet, making a standing broad jump of twenty-eight feet, and otherwise showing up the winners of the recent events. He had then laughed uproariously and suggested a heavy-fat diet such as he followed himself, and also hard physical labor.
If he had time, he said, he would be glad to train a school of athletes who would undoubtedly sweep the next Olympics. Alas, he had to get back to his embassy in Geneva. But let them follow his advice, which would undoubtedly do wonders for them. He had then departed, still chuckling.
While over by the sawdust pit of the pole vault, half the Italian track team were engaged in restraining one of their number, the miler Rudi Maltetti, who had gotten his hands on a javelin and was threatening to cause an interstellar incident.
"So that's the Half-Pint Posted."
John came back to the present with a start, suddenly realizing that the words the woodsman had just spoken were in reference to himself. He turned and stared over the Bluffer's shoulder at the other Dilbian, who was grinning at him in almost Hemnoid fashion. John had, it seemed, already been nicknamed as Joshua had predicted.
"What do you know about him?" the Bluffer was demanding.
"The Cobbly Queen told me," said the other, curling up the right side of his upper lip in the native equivalent of a wink. John recalled that the Cobblies were the Dilbian equivalent of elves, brownies, or what-have-you. He wondered if the woodsman could be serious. John decided the Dilbian wasn't, which still left the problem of how he had recognized John.
"Who're you?" demanded John, taking advantage of the best Dilbian manners, which allowed anybody to horn in on any conversation.
"So it talks does it?" said the woodsman. The Hill Bluffer snorted and threw a displeased glance over his own shoulder. "They calls me Tree Weeper, Half-Pint. Because I chops them down, you see."
"Who told you about me?"
"Ah, that's telling too much," grinned the Tree Weeper. "Call it the Cobbly Queen and you've half of it, anyway. You knows why they call him the Streamside Terror, don't you, Half-Pint? It's because he likes to do his fighting alongside a stream, and pull the other man in the water and get him drowned."
"Oh?" said John. "I mean—sure, I know that."
"Does you now?" said the other. "Well, it ought to be something to watch. Good luck, Half-Pint, then; and you, too, road walker. Me for home and something to eat."
He turned away; and as he did so, John got a sudden glimpse past him in between the trees at the two who waited back in the shadow. The Dilbian he did not identify; but the Hemnoid was a shorter, broader individual than Gulark-ay, one who evidently had his nose broken at one time or another. Then, the Hill Bluffer started up again with a jerk. John lost sight of the watchers.
The Tree Weeper had stepped in among the brush and trees on the far side of the road and was immediately out of sight. A few final sounds marked his going—it was surprising how quietly a Dilbian could move if he wanted to—and then they were out of hearing. The Hill Bluffer swung anew along his route without a word.
John was left sorting over what he had just discovered. He searched his Dilbian `memories' for the proper remark to jolt the Hill Bluffer into conversation.
"Friend of yours?" he inquired.
The Hill Bluffer snorted so hard it jolted John in his saddle.
"Friend!" he exploded. "A backwoods tree-chopper? I'm a public official, Half-Pint. You remember that."
"I just thought—" said John, peaceably. "He seemed to know a lot about me, and what was going on. I mean, about the Streamside Terror and the fact we're after him. But nobody's passed us up—"
"Nobody passes me up," said the Bluffer, bristling apparently automatically.
"Then, how—"
"Somebody leaving just ahead of us must've told him!" growled the Bluffer.
But he fell unaccountably silent after that, so that John could get nothing further out of him. And the silence lasted until, finally, they pulled up in the late afternoon sunlight before the roadside inn at Brittle Rock, where they would stay the night.