Gordon Dickson - The Right to Arm Bears

The two had been circling for some little time, shoulders hunched, heads outthrust, arms half flexed at the elbow, when Perfectly Delightful broke the tense silence with a musical laugh.

“So you think this is funny?” inquired Sweet Thing lightly, but without at all pausing in her movement, or relaxing her attitude.

“Oh this? Not necessarily,” replied Perfectly Delightful merrily—but equally without pausing or relaxing. “It just crossed my mind what a stubby little thing you are, and I imagined how you must look through the Bone Breaker’s eyes.”

“Oh, I don’t think he finds me so stubby,” replied Sweet Thing conversationally. “Maybe you won’t find me so stubby either.” And she laughed merrily in her turn.

They continued to circle, now almost within arm’s reach of each other.

“But, really,” protested Perfectly Delightful. “To be stubby is bad enough, but can you imagine what you’ll look like with an ear torn off, too?”

For the first time, Bill became uncomfortably aware of how much taller and heavier Perfectly Delightful was than Sweet Thing. Up until now, he had been concerned with himself mainly as an anchored spectator of what might happen. Now, suddenly, his imagination galloped ahead a little further and began to consider what should happen if Perfectly Delightful should end up the victor in any combat that should occur.

“But I plan to keep my ears, both of them,” Sweet Thing was saying sweetly. “I expect to have both my ears for many years after today—pardon me, I meant to say, after you have lost your teeth. You know, I’ve often heard my father and other men talking about how funny a woman looks with her teeth knocked out.”

“Oh, you have, have you!” retorted Perfectly Delightful shortly. Evidently, in the contest between the two to see who should lost her temper first, Perfectly Delightful was beginning to crack. “If you get close enough to my teeth to try knocking them out, you’ll wish you hadn’t!”

Meanwhile, in a cold sweat, Bill was struggling for the first time and seriously to see if he could not wriggle his hands loose from the rather thick rope that seemed to be tying them together. He had been tied rather tightly, but he now discovered the thickness of the rope was such in comparison with the size of his wrists that it might be possible for him to slide his right hand free. Evidently, the smallness of the human wrist compared to the Hemnoid one was something that Mula- ay had not taken into account. He managed to get his right hand halfway out through its bonds—but there it stuck.

Agonizedly, he looked back at the center of the dell, where the two were still circling each other and trading insults. The tempers of both were sparkling now and sarcasm had given way to direct, untranslatable Dilbian epithets.

“ Snig !” Perfectly Delightful was hissing at Sweet Thing.

“ Pilf !” Sweet Thing was snarling back at Perfectly Delightful.

Suddenly, far off in the woods, came the sound of possible rescue, falling sweetly upon Bill’s ears. It was the stentorian shout of a male Dilbian. It was more than that. It was the voice of the Hill Bluffer, shouting.

“ Pick-and-Shovel! Pick-and-Shovel—where are you ?”

“Here!” roared back Bill, with all the volume his chest and throat could muster. “Here! This way! I’m over here!”

“I hear you!” floated back the shout of the Bluffer. “Keep yelling, Pick-and-Shovel, and I’ll get there in a moment! Just keep shouting!”

Bill opened his mouth to do so. But before he had the chance to make a sound, his shouting to the Bluffer had become as impossible as it was unnecessary as a source of sound to guide the postman to him.

The period of insults between Sweet Thing and Perfectly Delightful had come to an end. With a sound like that of an old-fashioned Western movie brawl between at least half-a-dozen homesteaders and as many cattlemen, Sweet Thing and Perfectly Delightful had closed in battle in the center of the clearing.

Bill shrank back against his tree. There was little else he could do but make himself as small as possible and watch the action. The action, however, turned out to be wonderful to behold.

Not at first. At first, all Bill saw was a rolling tangle of furry bodies, arms and legs, glinting claws and flashing teeth, rolling this way and that on the ground—and occasionally threatening to roll in his direction. But then the whole tangle rolled over the bank of a little stream running through the clearing and splashed into the water; at which point it immediately separated into two individuals. But the battle was not ended. Sweet Thing and Perfectly Delightful wasted no time climbing out onto the bank and joining in combat again.

Only this time there was a difference. Apparently, the first time around, Sweet Thing had been too worked up to use whatever knowledge she had about fighting. Now, cooled off by her dip in the stream, she proceeded to demonstrate something very like a judo chop to the lower ribs, a forearm smash to Perfectly Delightful’s jaw, a knee in the stomach, and finally a shoulder throw that flipped Perfectly Delightful completely over in the air and brought her down flat with an earth-shaking thud on her back in the grass.

It was at this point that the Hill Bluffer burst out of the surrounding bushes and accidentally ran directly into Sweet Thing.

Sweet Thing, either blinded by rage, or perhaps confusing the Bluffer with some ally of Perfectly Delightful’s, threw her arms around the postman and attempted to execute the same shoulder throw with him. This time though, the results were not so satisfactory. Sweet Thing was trained and willing enough, but in the Hill Bluffer she had taken hold of an opponent even longer-limbed than Bone Breaker himself. She was in somewhat the same position, it occurred to Bill, as a five-foot woman attempting to throw down a man six and a half feet tall. The theory was excellent, but the practice ran into problems involving the weight and length of the intended victim.

Sweet Thing did manage to get one of the Bluffer’s long legs off the ground and toppled him off balance. However, one of the Bluffer’s equally long arms propped him off the ground, keeping him from falling even while she still had him in only a half-thrown position and a second later the postman had—more or less gently—pried her arms loose from their grip upon him, and was holding her by the biceps, out at the length of his own arms and facing away from him.

This should have settled matters, since Sweet Thing was no longer in a position to do any damage with teeth, nails, arms, or legs. But so intense was her fighting fury by this time that she literally ran off the ground into the air in her efforts to get loose, and the Bluffer was forced to trip her, get her down on the ground, and sit on her, pinning her arms so that she could not reach back and grab him.

Bill continued to look on, awed. Sweet Thing, no longer able to make effective use of any of her other natural weapons, had fallen back upon her tongue. She was busy telling the Bluffer what she would do to him the moment he turned her loose. It was a question that also interested Bill. It was all very well for the Bluffer to have Sweet Thing immobilized as she was at the moment. But sooner or later he would have to let her up—and what would happen then?

“…My father… Bone Breaker… limb from limb…” Sweet Thing was informing the lanky postman. Bill did not see how the Upland Dilbian could possibly get out of his present awkward situation with life and limb intact. But he was about to learn that Dilbian emotional responses were somewhat adaptable in these circumstances. The Bluffer waited patiently until Sweet Thing paused for breath, and then said, apparently, exactly the right thing.