The first thing John did on being free once more of his saddle was to take a stroll about the area of the inn to stretch the cramps out of his legs. He was more than a little bit unsteady on his feet. Five hours on top of a hitherto unknown mount is not to be recommended even for a natural athlete. John's thighs ached, and his knees had a tendency to give unexpectedly, as if he had spent the afternoon climbing ladders. However, as he walked, more and more of his natural resilience seemed to flow back into him.
Brittle Rock Inn and grounds constituted, literally, a wide spot in the mountain road which John and the Hill Bluffer had been traveling. On one side of the road was a rocky cliff face going back and up at something like an eighty degree angle. On the other side was a sort of flat, gravelly bulge of the kind that would make a scenic highway parking spot in the mountain highways back on Earth. On this bulge was situated the long, low shape of the inn, built of untrimmed logs. Behind the inn was a sort of trash and outhouse area stretching about twenty yards or so to the edge of a rather breathtaking dropoff into a canyon where a mountain river stampeded along, pell-mell, some five hundred feet below. A picturesque spot, for those in the mood for such.
John was not in the mood. As soon as his legs began to feel less like sections of rubber tire casings and more like honest flesh and bone, he walked up along the bulge toward the spot where it narrowed into a road, again. Here, in relative isolation, he called Joshua on his wrist phone.
The ambassador responded at once. He must, thought John, have been wearing a wrist phone himself.
"Hello? Hello!" said Joshua's voice tinnily from the tiny speaker on John's wrist phone. "John?"
"Yes, sir," said John.
"Well, well! How are you?"
"Fine, thanks," said John. "How are you?"
"Excellent. Excellent. But I suppose you had some reason for calling?"
"I'm at Brittle Rock," said John. "We just got here. We're going to stay the night. Can you talk freely?"
"Talk freely? Of course I can talk freely, why shouldn't I?" The wrist phone broke off suddenly on a short barking laugh. "Oh, I see what you mean. No, I was just having a drink before dinner, here. Quite alone. What did you want to say?"
"Why, I thought you might have some instructions for me," said John. "The Hill Bluffer ran off with me back at Humrog before you really had a chance to brief me. I thought you could tell me now."
"Tell you?" said the phone. "But my dear boy! There's nothing to tell. You're to run down the Streamside Terror and bring back Miss Ty Lamorc. What else do you need to know?"
"But—" began John, and stopped. He did not know what he needed to know; he merely felt the need of a large area of necessary knowledge like a general ache or pain. At a loss to put this effectively into words, he was reduced to staring at his wrist phone.
"No sight of the Terror, yet?" inquired the phone, politely filling in the gap in the conversation.
"No."
"Well, it'll probably take several days to catch up with him. Just feel your way as you go. Things will undoubtedly work out. Follow your nose. Play it by ear. Otherwise, just relax and enjoy yourself. Beautiful scenery up there around Brittle Rock, isn't it?"
"Yes," said John numbly.
"Yes, I always thought so, myself. Well I'll ring off, then. Call me any time you think you might need my help. Good-bye."
The voice in the phone broke the connection with a click. John shut off the power source at his end. A little sourly, he headed back toward the inn. It was against all known rules of biology, but he wondered if Joshua might not be part Hemnoid, from one of the sides of his family.
The mountain twilight had been dwindling as he talked; but his eyes had automatically adjusted to the failing light so that it was not until he stepped in through the hide curtain that protected the front entrance to the inn, that he realized how dark outside it had become. The thick, flaring candles around the room, the smells and the noise struck him as he entered, leaving him for a moment half-stunned and blinded.
The ordinary Dilbian inn, his hypno "memories" told him, was divided into a common room, a dormitory, and a kitchen. He had just stepped into the common room of this one; and he found it a square crowded space, jammed with wooden benches and tables like picnic tables at which three or four Dilbians could sit at once. There were about twenty or so Dilbians seated around it, all of them drinking and most of them arguing. The Hill Bluffer, he discovered, was off to one side arguing with a female Dilbian wearing an apron.
"But can't you tell me what to feed it?" the innkeeperess or whatever she was, was demanding, wringing her oversized, pawlike hands.
"Food!" roared the Hill Bluffer.
"But what kind of food? You haven't had the children dragging in one pet after another, like I have. I know. You feed it the wrong thing, and it dies. You're going to have to tell me exactly what—"
"How the unmentionable should I know exactly what?" bellowed the Bluffer, waving his arms furiously in the air and vastly entertaining those other guests of the inn who were nearby. "Give him something. Anything. See if he eats it. Some meat, some beer. Anything!"
"Talking about me?" inquired John.
They all looked down, discovering his presence for the first time. "Where'd he come from?" several of them could be heard inquiring audibly; although John had practically stepped on their toes on the way in.
"It talks!" gasped the inkeeperess.
"Didn't I said he did?" demanded the Bluffer. "Half-Pint, tell her what you want to eat."
John fingered the four-inch tubes of food concentrate clipped to his belt. Joshua had handed them to him in a rather off-hand fashion that very morning; but with no suggestion that he might be shortly using them. Apparently there had been something more than coincidence at work, however. John's hypno training reminded him now that while Dilbian food would nourish him, it might also very well trigger off some galloping allergy. He was not, at the present moment, in the mood for hives, or a case of eczema. The tubes would have to do. With something for bulk.
"Just a little beer," he said.
He could sense the roomful of Dilbians around him warming to him, immediately. Beer-drinking was a man's occupation. This small, alien critter could not be, they seemed to feel, too alien if he enjoyed a good drink.
The innkeeperess went off to fill John's order and John climbed up on one of the benches, put his elbows on the table and found himself more or less in the position of a five-year-old on Earth whose chin barely clears the parental tabletop. The beer arrived in a wooden, foot and a half high mug that smelled as sour as the most decayed of back-lot breweries. There was no handle. John looked about him.
The others were all sitting, Dilbian polite fashion, with one furry leg tucked underneath them, watching him, and waiting. John pulled his right leg up under his left, seized the mug in both hands, tilted its top-heavy weight, and gulped. A bitter, sour, flat-tasting liquid flowed down his throat. He swallowed, hastily, suppressing an urge to sputter, and set the mug back down, wiping his lips appreciatively with the back of his hand.
The room buzzed approval. And returned to its regular business.
John, left alone, swallowed a couple of times, finding the aftertaste not so bad as he had feared. Beer, in the sense of a mildly alcoholic beverage brewed from a fermented cereal, is after all, beer. No matter where you find it; and now that the first shock was over, John's taste buds were discovering similarities between this and other liquids of a like nature that they had encountered aforetime.
John surreptitiously uncrooked his leg, which was beginning to cramp, and turned to the Hill Bluffer to ask whether there had been any word of the Streamside Terror having passed, or news of his captive. But the Dilbian postman had disappeared.
Thoughtfully, John took another, and smaller, drink from his mug absentmindedly noting that this one was not so bad. It occurred to him that the Hill Bluffer might just have stepped out somewhere for a moment. In any case, John himself would be safer to stick where he was than go incautiously running around among the guests, most of whom had already finished eating and settled down to a serious evening of drinking.
But the Hill Bluffer did not return. John found his mug was empty. A few minutes later the inkeeperess replaced it with a full one, whether on the Bluffer's orders or her own initiative, John did not know. John was rather surprised to find he had drunk so much. He was not ordinarily a heavy drinker. But it was hard not to take large gulps from the clumsy and heavy mug; and it was hard to take human-sized swallows when all around him Dilbians were taking a half-pint at a sip, so to speak.
The common room, John decided, was after all, a rough, but friendly place. The Dilbians were good sorts. What had ever given him the idea that wandering around among them might not be safe? It occurred to him abruptly that it might be a clever move to go find the Bluffer. Bring the postman back to the table here. Buy him a beer and under the guise of casual conversation find out how the Dilbians really felt on the human-versus-Hemnoid question. John slipped down from the bench and headed off toward the inner door through which the inkeeperess had just disappeared.
The door, like the one outside, had a hide curtain. Pushing the heavy mass of this aside, John found himself in a long room, halfway down the side of which ran an open stone trough in which charcoal was burning. A rude hood above this ran to a chimney that sucked out most of the smoke and fumes to the quick overhead whip of the constant mountain winds.
Various Dilbians of all ages, mostly female or young, he noted, were moving around the fires in the trough and a long table that paralleled it, running down the room's center. Produce and carcasses hung from the wooden ceiling rafters and kegs were racked up near the back entrance of the kitchen. He recognized the innkeeperess through the steam and smoke, busy filling a double handful of mugs from one of the kegs; but the Bluffer was nowhere in the room. Those who were, ignored him as completely as had the spectators in the common room earlier, before he had spoken up. He waited until the inkeeperess was done and headed toward her. Then he stepped directly into her path.
"Eeeek!" she said, or the Dilbian equivalent, as she recognized him. She stopped dead, spilling some of the beer. "What are you doing in here? Get out!" She looked at him, uncertainly. "That's a good little Shorty," she said, changing the tone of her voice. "Go back to your nice table, now."
"I was looking for the Hill Bluffer—" began John.
"Bluffer's not here. Now, you go back to your table. Is your mug all empty? I'll bring you some more in just a minute."
"Just a second. As long as I've got you," said John, "can you tell me if the Streamside Terror came through here yesterday? He'd have had a Shorty like myself along. Did they stay here for the night?"
"He just stopped in for some meat and beer. I didn't see any Shorty," said the inkeeperess, a hint of impatience creeping into her tone. "In fact, I didn't see him. Wouldn't have cared if I did. I've no time for hill-and-alley brawlers. Fight, fight, that's all they think of! When's the work to get done? Now, shoo! Shoo!"
John shooed, back toward his table. The Hill Bluffer was still among the missing in the common room; but as John was climbing with a certain amount of effort back up onto his bench, he felt himself seized from behind and lifted into the air. Craning his head back to look over his shoulder, he saw he was being carried by a large male Dilbian with a pronounced body odor reminiscent of the woodchopper's, and a large pouch slung from one shoulder. This Dilbian seemed rather more than a little drunk.
Whooping cheerfully, the Dilbian staggered across the room, carrying John and came bang up against another table where two more villainous-looking characters like himself were waiting.