Gordon Dickson - The Right to Arm Bears

Pausing, he turned and looked back up the cliff down which he had come. By the moonlight, he was able to make out the notch at the top of the cliff where he had started his climb down into the valley. It stood out clearly, now that the moon was risen, and he marked it in his mind—for he would have to find his rope again in order to get back out of the valley.

Having located himself, Bill turned about and peered through the open dimness of the valley floor, still in shadow from the rising moon. Some five hundred yards away, and barely discernible, chunks of heavier darkness, with here and there a little crack of yellow light showing about their walls where light from within escaped through the gaps of a high curtain, he made out the buildings of the outlaw settlement.

He went toward them.

As he got closer, it was easy for him to distinguish the large eating hall from the others. It was still occupied, for not only was light showing here and there through its curtains, but the sounds of cheerful, if argumentative, Dilbian male voices came clearly to his ear. Giving the building a wide berth, Bill circled to his left and began, one by one, to examine the smaller buildings as he encountered them.

Peering through a crack in one set of curtains where yellow light showed, Bill discovered what appeared to be nothing less than a regiment of young Dilbians evidently engaged in something between a pillow fight and a general game of Red Rover, for which purpose they had divided into two teams, one at each end of the building—from which they raced at intervals to the other end, roaring at the top of their lungs and batting out furiously at any other runner who came within reach.

Fascinated—for Bill had not seen any of the younger generation of Dilbia’s natives until this moment—he stood staring through a gap in the curtain until the sound of a door opening at the far end of the room and the appearance of an adult Dilbian not only brought the game to a close but reminded him that he was an intruder here. He turned back to his searching.

He had investigated all of the buildings but two, when distantly—but unmistakably—the sounds of a human voice fell on his ear. Turning about, he followed it to one of the buildings not yet investigated, found a window, and peered in through an opening—actually a tear—in the hide curtain.

He had found Anita. But, unfortunately, she was not alone. She was seated in a circle with at least a dozen powerful and competent-looking Dilbian females, working on what looked like a large net.

Dominating the group was a heavy-bodied, older female who looked like a small, distaff edition of More Jam. The group had all the cozy appearance of a ladies’ sewing circle back on Earth. Bill could hardly stick his head in the door and ask Anita to step outside and talk to him. On the other hand, every minute he stood about out in the open in Outlaw Valley increased the chance of some local inhabitant stumbling over him.

And the rapidly rising moon would be shining full on the valley floor very shortly.

As he continued to watch through the tear in the curtain, undecided as to what he should do, Bill’s hypnoed information came to mind with the advice that this was a net of the sort used by Dilbians to capture the wild, musk-oxlike herbivores that roamed the Dilbian forest. Anita apparently had been entertaining the others with some kind of a story. For, as Bill put his eye to the rent in the curtain, all the rest burst into laughter hardly less rough and boisterous than Bill had heard from their male counterparts at the eating hall.

“—Of course,” said Anita when the laughter died down, apparently referring back to the story she had just been telling, “I wouldn’t want Bone Breaker to lose his temper, and string me up by the heels.”

“He’d better not try,” said the fat matriarch meaningfully, looking around the circle. “Not while we’re around. Eh, girls?”

There was a chorus of assent, grim-voiced enough to send a shiver down the back of Bill, watching at the window.

“ My father—Bone Breaker’s great-grandfather—” went on the speaker, looking triumphantly around the circle, “was a Grandfather of the Hunters Clan near Wildwood Peak,” went on Bone Breaker’s great-aunt. “And his father, before him was a Grandfather.”

“What about Bone Breaker’s own grandfather?” queried the smallest of the female Dilbians, sitting almost directly opposite Anita, who was at the left of Bone Breaker’s great-aunt in the circle. “Was he a Grandfather too?”

“He was not, Noggle Head,” replied Bone Breaker’s great-aunt majestically. “He was a tanner. But a very excellent tanner, one of the toughest men who ever walked on two legs and a good deal sneakier than most, if I say so myself who was his blood sister.”

“Indeed, No Rest,” spoke up another comfortably upholstered female a quarter of the way around the circle from Anita, “we all know how you lean over backward, if anything, where your relatives are concerned.”

Mutters of agreement, which Bill could not be sure were either real or feigned, arose from the rest of the group.

“But to get back to little Dirty Teeth here,” said No Rest, turning to Anita. “The last thing we’d want to do is be without you and these interesting little tales you tell us about you Shorty females.” The circle muttered agreement. “Some of the funniest things I’ve ever heard, and so— educational .”

The last word was uttered with a particular emphasis that brought a hum of approval from the other females.

“Oh, well,” said Anita modestly, her hands, like the hands of the females about her, busy at tying knots in the net as she spoke, “of course, as you know, under our Shorty agreement with the Fatties, I’m not supposed to mention anything that they wouldn’t mention. But I don’t see any harm in telling you these little stories—which, for all you know, I’m just making up out of thin air as I go.”

“Oh, yes,” said Word-and-a-Half, with a wink and a nod at the others. “Making them up! Of course you are!”

“Well,” said Anita, “there was this time my grandmother wanted a certain piece of furniture—” Anita broke off. “A sort of a chair—we call it an overstuffed chair. It’s like a grandfather’s chair, like a bench with a backrest to it. Only besides that, it’s padded so soft, not only on the seat but on the backrest where you lean back against it.”

A buzz of interest and astonishment convulsed the group.

“A grandfather chair! And soft?” said Word-and-a-Half in a pleased, but shocked tone of voice. “How did she dare—!”

“Oh, we Shorty females have gotten all sorts of things,” said Anita thoughtfully. “And, after all, why shouldn’t a female have a grandfather chair? Doesn’t she get tired, too?”

“Of course she does!” said No Rest sternly.

“Doesn’t a female get old and wise, just like a grandfather?” said Anita.

“Absolutely!” trumpeted No Rest. The circle burst into a mutter of agreement.

“Go on, Dirty Teeth,” urged No Rest, quieting the circle with a glance.

“Well, as I say,” said Dirty Teeth, carefully watching the knot she was making as she spoke, “my grandmother wanted this chair, but she knew there wasn’t much use in asking her man to make it for her. She knew he’d just give some reason for not making it. So what do you suppose she did?”

“Hit him on the head?” suggested Noggle Head hopefully.

“Of course not,” said Anita. There was a chorus of sneers and sniffs from the rest. Noggle Head shrank back into silence. “She realized immediately this was an occasion that called for being sneaky. So one day when her husband was sitting dozing just after lunch, he heard chopping sounds out back. Well, the only ax around the house was his; so he got up and went out to see what was going on. And he saw my grandmother chopping up some lengths of wood.