"I see," interrupted John. "And why," he asked, very slowly and patiently, "wasn't
I
briefed on the fact that this was all a sort of sociological power politics bit?"
"Because," wept Ty, "we wanted you to react like the Dilbians in a natural, extroverted, un—unthinking way!"
"I see," said John, again. They were still standing beside the pool. He picked her up—she was really quite light and slender—and threw her in. There was a shriek and a satisfying splash. The Dilbians nearby looked around interestedly. John turned and walked off.
"Of course, she didn't know you then," said Joshua, thoughtfully.
John snorted, Dilbian fashion. He walked on. But after half a dozen steps more he slowed down, turned, and went back.
"Here," he said, gruffly, extending his hand as she clung to the bank.
"Thag you," Ty said humbly, with her nose full of water. He hauled her out.
"I hope," said Joshua Guy, "you still don't consider that I—"
"Not at all," said John. He, Ty Lamorc, and the little ambassador, once more freshly cleaned and dressed, were waiting at the small spaceport near Humrog for the shuttle ship to descend from the regular courier spacer and take John and Ty back to Earth to be debriefed by the Contacts Department, there. It was early morning of a sunny mountain day and a light cool breeze was slipping across the concrete apron of the spaceport and plucking at the cuffs of John's trousers. A few curious Dilbian faces could be seen looking out the wide observation window of the spaceport terminal building, whose white roof glittered in the early sunlight about forty yards off.
"I got suspicious," said John, "when Gulark-
ay
gave me that long story about you when he, and Tark-
ay
and Boy Is She Built had me prisoner there in the woods. It was a little too good to be true—too good for Gulark-
ay
, that is."
"Oh, by the way, I ran into him as I was coming out from Humrog, this morning," said Joshua. "He told me he was due shortly for rotation to a post back on Chakaa—the second of the Hemnoid home worlds. If you and Ty dropped by, be sure to look him up and he'd show you around."
"No thanks," said John, grimly.
"My dear boy!" said Joshua, in tones of mild shock. "You mustn't confuse what a person does in his official capacity with his character as a private citizen. Drop in on Chakaa as a tourist or on official business, and I'm sure you'd find Gulark-
ay
a superb host. In fact, take my advice and take him up on the invitation. I assure you, you'll enjoy yourselves immensely." He interrupted himself to glance over at the building. "That Dilbian who's going with you two should be here by now. But pardon me for interrupting you. You say you only suspected—?"
"The story was too good to be true," said John, again. "What cooked it, to my mind however, was Tark-
ay
conveniently setting out his knife and going to sleep so I could escape. He and Gulark-
ay
wanted me to get away. I was no use to him in pieces. He wanted me to stand up in front of the Clan Hollows meeting and admit to everybody I was scared spitless of fighting the Terror."
"Lucky for us you weren't," said Joshua. "Actually, Ty and I never intended matters to go so far."
"We estimated that the emotional value of your simply coming after me would have a good effect on the Dilbian group opinion where humans were concerned," put in Ty. "We wouldn't have blamed you a bit if you had let Joshua take the blame of Gulark-
ay
's story and let the grandfathers send us back without a fight. We didn't expect that kind of courage."
"What do you mean—courage?" said John. "If I hadn't thought of the belt trick, and at that, it was a crazy fool stunt because I'd gotten so used to the Dilbians I'd forgotten how strong they could be. Don't ask me to try it again." He thought of something, suddenly. "The Terror never said anything about being beaten by a weapon, like my belt?" Joshua shook his head.
"He's got his own reason, perhaps," said Ty. "The Dilbian personality—oh, look!"
John and Joshua looked and saw One Man approaching, enormous in the morning light.
"Is
he
the one going with us?" said John. But One Man joined them before Joshua could answer.
"Greetings to you all," rumbled One Man.
"Greetings to you as well," replied Joshua. They smiled at each other, it was rather like a mouse and an orangutan exchanging the time of day.
"Uh—" said John to Ty, "how'd you get that smudge on your nose?"
"Smudge?" said Ty. "Nose?" She effected some feminine sleight of hand which caused a large compact to appear and open in her fingers. She peered into the mirror inside its lid. "Where? I don't see it."
"On the side of your nose there," said John. "It looks," he added, "sort of greasy . . ."
"Greasy!" Ty Lamorc snapped the compact shut indignantly and headed toward the terminal building. "Just a minute—tell the shuttle to wait," she called over her shoulder. The two human men and the single Dilbian one watched her go.
"Attractive girl," murmured Joshua.
"Is she?" inquired One Man.
"By our Shorty standards, very," replied Joshua. "Our young friend here, the Half-Pint—"
"Oh, well," said John, and cleared his throat meaningfully. He looked at One Man. "If I could have a word with you—"
"Excuse me," said Joshua; and discreetly wandered off toward the far fence of the port.
"I wanted to thank you," said John.
"Thank me?" rumbled One Man, in mild basso astonishment.
"For your help."
"Help? Why, Half-Pint," said One Man. "I can't take any credit for helping you. I'm too old to go engaging in help to anyone, and if I did, of course it would be one of my own people. I can't guess what you could be talking about."
"I think you know," said John.
"Not at all. Of course, now that you've given my people a clearer picture of what Shorties are like— Nothing wins like a winner, you know," said One Man, pontifically. "In fact, I'm surprised it took you Shorties so long to realize that. As I said to you once before, who asked you all to come barging into our world, anyway?"
"Well—" said John, uncomfortably.
"And what made you think we all
had
to like you, and welcome you, and want to be like you? Why, if when you were a pup, some new kid had moved into your village; and he was half your size but had a lot of playthings you didn't have, but came up and tapped you on the shoulder and said from now on I'm going to be your leader, and we'll play
my
games, how would you have felt?"
He eyed John shrewdly out of his huge, hairy face.
"I see," said John, after a moment. "Then why
did
you help me?"
"I tell you I don't know what you're talking about," said One Man. "How could I help a Shorty, even if I wanted to?"
"Well, I'll tell you how," said John. "Back home where I come from, we've got a trick with something called a city directory. It's about this thick," John measured several inches between finger and thumb, "and it's about as much a job for one of us Shorties to tear it in half as it is for one of you Dilbians to break that stick of yours. So—"
"Well, now, I can believe it," broke in One Man in a judicious tone. "Directories, sticks of wood, or first class hill-and-alley scrappers; there's a trick, I imagine, to handle almost any one of them. Of course," said One Man, gazing off at the pure snow of the far mountain peaks, "nobody like you or I would stoop to using such tricks, even in a good cause."
There was a moment's dead silence between them.
"I guess," said John at last, "I'll never make a diplomat."
"No," said One Man, still gazing at the mountain peaks. "I don't believe you ever will, Half-Pint." He returned his gaze to John's face. "If you take my advice, you'll stick to your own line of Shorty work."
"I just thought," said John awkwardly, "since you were coming back to earth with us—"
"I?" said One Man. "What an idea, Half-Pint! An old man like me, exposed to all those new-fangled contrivances and being taught to act like a Shorty so I could come back and tell people about it? Why, I'd be just no good at all at something like this."
"Not you?" John stared. "Then who—?"
"I thought you knew," said One Man; and looked past John toward the terminal building. "Look; here he comes now."
John turned and blinked. Coming toward them from the terminal and holding his pace down to accommodate his stride to that of Ty, who was walking alongside him, was none other than the Streamside Terror.
"But—" said John. "I thought he—"
"Appearances," said One Man, "are often deceiving. If you were somebody with brains, among us real people on this world here, and nothing much else but a good set of reflexes, what would
you
do? Particularly if you were ambitious? Unfortunately, our society is a physically-oriented one, where muscles win more attention than wisdom. Streamside is the very boy to visit your Shorty worlds and begin to set up connections. Temperamentally, I can admit to you now, I suppose, you Shorties are a lot more akin to us than those Fatties. But you know how it is," One Man paused and sighed, "close relatives squabble more often than strangers do."
The Terror and Ty were almost to them. There was only time for a private word or two more.
"I hope he isn't feeling a little touchy," said John. "With me, I mean. After our fight, and so forth."
"You mean they didn't tell you?" said One Man. "Why that was one of the Terror's conditions before he agreed to go. You see, evidently you Shorties have high hopes of setting up Dilbian-Humans teams—" John looked at One Man in surprise. He had never heard a Dilbian refer to either his own people, or any others by the human names for them "—and after initial contact work has been done, the Terror wants to pioneer that field, as well."
John frowned.
"I don't understand," he said.
"Why, the Terror's condition was that he be trained in your field and you be drafted to work with him, of course," said One Man. Staring up at the big face in astonishment, John was overwhelmed to see it contort suddenly in what, he realized after a second, was a pretty fair Dilbian imitation of the human expression known as a wink.
"You see," said One Man. "After the little episode in the water at Glen Hollow, he thinks you're pretty well capable. With you he feels
safe
."
Spiraling down toward the large, blue world below, in the shuttle boat from the spaceship which had delivered him here to Dilbia. Bill Waltham reflected dismally upon his situation. Most of the five-day trip he had spent wearing a hypno-helmet. But in spite of the fact that his head was now a-throb with a small encyclopedia of information about the world below and its oversize inhabitants—their language, customs, and psychology—he felt that he knew less than nothing about this job into which he had been drafted.
The shuttle boat would land him near the Lowland village of Muddy Nose. There, presumably, he would be met on disembarking by Lafe Greentree, the human Agricultural Resident here, and by Greentree's other trainee-assistant—an Earth girl named Anita Lyme who had, incredible as it seemed, volunteered for her pre-college field training here, just as Bill had originally volunteered himself for the Deneb-Seventeen terraforming project. These two would introduce Bill to his native associate—an Upland Dilbian named the Hill Bluffer. The Hill Bluffer would in turn introduce him to the local Lowland farmers who had their homes in Muddy Nose, and Bill could get down to the apparently vital job for which he had been drafted here. He could hear himself now . . .
" . . . This is a spade. You hold it by this end. You stick the other end in the earth. Yes, deep in the earth. Then you tilt it, like this. Then you lift it up with the dirt still on it and put the dirt aside. Fine. You are now digging a hole in the ground . . ."
He checked the current of his thoughts sharply. There was no point, he told himself grimly, in being bitter about it. He was here now, and he would have to make the best of it. But in spite of himself, his mind's eye persisted in dwelling on the succession of days stretching ahead through two years of unutterable dullness and boredom. He thought again of the great symphony of engineering and development that was a terraforming project—changing the surface and weather of a whole world to make it humanly habitable; and he compared that with this small, drab job to which he was now headed. There seemed no comparison between the two occupations—no comparison at all.
But once more he took a close rein on his thoughts and emotions. Some day he would be a part of a terraforming project. Meanwhile, it would be well to remember that he would be given an efficiency rating for his work on Dilbia, just as if it was the job he had originally intended to do. That efficiency rating could not be high if he started out hating everything about the huge, bearlike natives and everything connected with them. At least, he thought, the Dilbians had a sense of humor—judging by the names they gave each other.
This last thought was not as cheering as it might have been, however. It reminded Bill of something the reassignment officer had said at the space terminal on Arcturus Three, where his original travel orders had been lifted and new ones issued. The officer had been a tall, lath-thin, long-nosed man, who had taken Bill's being drafted away from the Deneb-Seventeen Project much more calmly than had Bill.
" . . . Oh, and of course," the reassignment office had said cheerfully, "you'll find you've been given a Dilbian name yourself, by the time you get there. . . ."
Bill scowled, remembering. His only experience previously with a nickname had not been a happy one. On the swimming team at pre-engineering school, he had failed to rejoice in the given name of "Ape"—not so much because of anything apelike about either his open and rather ordinary face under its cap of black hair, or his flat-muscled, square-boned body. The name had arisen because he was the only member of the team with anything resembling hair on his chest. Bill made a mental note to keep his shirt on when Dilbians were about, during the next two years—just in case. Of course he reflected now, they had hair all over their own bodies . . .