Gordon Dickson - The Right to Arm Bears

John was all but out of reach, stretched at arms-length by his grip on the belt. But now and again, the blind blows of the Terror’s flailing hand brushed him. Only brushed him—awkwardly, and slowly, slowed by the water—but each impact tossed John about like a chip in a river current. He felt like a man rolling down a cliff side and being beaten all over by baseball bats at the same time.

His head rang. The water roared in his ear. He gulped for air and got half a mouthful of foam and water. His shoulder numbed to one blow and his ribs gave to another. His senses began to leave him; he thought—through what last bit of semiconsciousness that remained as the fog closed about his mind—that it was no longer a matter of proving his courage in facing the Terror. His very life now lay in the grip of his hands on the twisted belt. It was, in the end, kill or be killed. For it was very clear that if he did not manage to strangle the Terror before he, himself, was drowned or killed, the Terror would most surely do for him.

Choking and gasping, he swam back to blurred consciousness. His mouth and nose were bitter with the taste of water and he was no longer holding the belt. The edge of the bank loomed like a raft to the survivor of a sunken ship, before him. Instinctively, no longer thinking of the Terror, or anything but light and air, he scrabbled like a half-drowned animal at the muddy edge of earth. His arms were leaden and weak, too weak to lift him ashore. He felt hands helping him. He helped to pull himself onto slippery grass. The hands urged him a little farther. His knees felt ground beneath him.

He coughed water. He retched. The hands urged him a little farther; and finally, at last completely out on solid land, he collapsed.

He came around after a minute or two to find his head in someone’s lap. He blinked upwards and a watery blur of color slowly resolved itself into the face of Ty Lamorc, taut and white above him. Tears were rolling down her cheeks.

“What—?” he croaked. He tried again. “What’re you doing here?”

“Oh, shut up!” she said, crying harder than ever.

She began wiping his face with a piece of cloth nearly as wet as he was.

“No,” he said. “I mean—what’re you doing here?” He tried to sit up.

“Lie down,” she said.

“No. I’m all right.” He struggled up into a sitting position. He was still in Glen Hollow, he saw, groggily. And the place was aswarm with Dilbians. A short way down the bank a knot of them were clustered around something.

“What—?” he said, looking in that direction.

“Yep, it’s the Terror, Half-Pint,” said a familiar voice above him. He looked up to see the enormously looming figure of the Hill Bluffer. “He’s still out and here you’re kicking your heels and sitting up already. That makes it your fight. I’ll go tell them.” And he strode off toward the other group, where John could hear him announcing the winner in a loud and self-justified voice.

John blinked and looked over at Ty.

“What happened?” he asked her.

“They had to pull him out. You made it to shore on your own.” She produced a disposable tissue from somewhere—John had almost forgotten such things existed during the last three days—wiped her eyes and blew her nose vigorously. “You were wonderful.”

“Wonderful!” said John, still too groggy for subtlety. “I was out of my head to even think of it. Next time I’ll try tangling with a commuter rocket, instead!” He felt his ribs, gently. “I better get back to the embassy in Humrog and have a picture taken of this side.”

“Oh! Are your ribs—”

“Maybe just bruised. Wow!” said John, coming on an especially tender spot.

“Oh!” Ty choked up again. “You might have been killed. And it’s all my fault!”

“All your fault—” began John. The dapper, small figure of Joshua Guy loomed suddenly over him.

“How are you, my boy?” inquired Joshua. “Congratulation, by the way. Oh, you must let me explain—”

“Not now,” said John. He clutched at the small man’s wrist. “Help me up. Now,” he said, turning to face Ty, who had also risen. “What do you mean, it was all your fault?”

“Well, it was!” she wailed, miserably, twisting the tissue to shreds. “It was my off-official recommendation. The Contacts Department sent me out here to survey the situation and recommend means for beating the Hemnoids to the establishment of primary relations with the Dilbians.”

“What’s that got to do with me?”

“Well, I—I recommended they send out a man who conformed as nearly as possible to the Dilbian psychological profile and we worked out a Dilbian emotional situation so as to convince them we weren’t the absolute little toylike creatures they thought we were—but people just like themselves. We needed to prove to them we’re as good men as they are, aside from our technology, which they thought was sissy.”

“Me?” said John. “Dilbian emotional profile?”

“But you are, you know. Extroverted, l-lusty—. They’ve got a very unusual culture here, they really have. They’re really much more similar to us humans when we were in the pioneering stages of culture than they are to the Hemnoids. We had to prove it to them that we could be the kind of people they could treat with on a level. The truth is, they’ve got chips on their shoulders because we and the Hemnoids are more advanced. But they can’t admit to themselves they’re more primitive than we are because their culture—anyway,” wound up Ty, seeing John was getting red in the face, “it would have been fine except for Boy Is She Built trying to throw you over that cliff. She was only supposed to take your wrist phone. And that altered the emotional constants of the sociological equations involved. And Gulark- ay almost got it all twisted to go his own way, and—”

“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.”