Gordon Dickson - The Right to Arm Bears

“But there aren’t any Grandfathers around here,” Bill said. “At least there aren’t any in the village, or in the outlaw camp, here.”

“That’s just it!” said Anita urgently. “Nearly all of the Dilbians live up in the mountains, where there are Grandfathers, and the Grandfathers do control everything. It’s only down here in the Lowlands, where old tribal customs have started to relax their hold in the face of the different necessities of an agricultural community that there aren’t any Grandfathers to deal with.”

“But you said—” fumbled Bill, “that you had to get a Grandfather to accept your new idea before you could get the other Dilbians to accept it. If there aren’t any Grandfathers around here—”

“There aren’t any Grandfathers here,” said Anita. “But there are tiamuna -equivalent individuals. Male Dilbians, who under the proper conditions up in the mountains, or at the proper age, would be Grandfathers.”

“You mean,” said Bill, his befuddled wits finally breaking through into a glimmer of the light of understanding, “someone like More Jam—or Bone Breaker?”

“Not More Jam, of course!” she said. “Bone Breaker is right, enough. But in the village, the closest thing they have to a tiamuna -equivalent is Flat Fingers. That’s why I told you to get him on your side.”

“But More Jam—” began Bill.

“More Jam, nonsense!” Anita said energetically. “I know all the villagers have a soft spot for him, and he carries some weight as the local innkeeper, to say nothing of his former glory as Lowland champion wrestler—Dilbians are very loyal. But him and that enormous stomach of his that he pretends can’t stand anything but the daintiest of food—he’s a standing joke for miles around. Remember, a leader can never be a figure of fun—”

“Are you sure?” asked Bill doubtfully.

But she was going on without listening to him. Bill’s head was whirling. Just as he had seemed to hear a note of something incorrect in what Mula- ay had said the day before about Bill’s not being likely to feel an empathy with someone like Bone Breaker, now he had just heard the same note again, accompanying Anita’s statement about More Jam.

“…I would no more consider you a subject of sana on the basis of our casual acquaintance here, than you would be likely to empathize with—say—Bone Breaker, or any of the Dilbians …”

“… More Jam, nonsense!… He’s a standing joke for miles around. Remember a leader can never be a figure of fun— ”

There was something wrong, thought Bill sourly, about both statements. If he could only connect that wrongness with his strange situation here on Dilbia, he had a feeling he might be on the track of handling that situation. Clearly there were some human machinations at work or else he would not be here at all. Clearly Anita knew nothing about them. Also, clearly, the Hemnoids in the person of Mula- ay were attempting to exploit the situation. But what none of these individuals and groups seemed to have stopped to consider was that possibly the Dilbians concerned might be grinding some axes of their own in the tangle where all this was going on.

The Dilbians—even the Hill Bluffer, in some obscure way Bill’s mind could not at the moment pin down—seemed to have a stake in Bill’s situation, of which Hemnoids and humans alike—even Anita, with her anthropological knowledge—seemed to be ignorant.

Without being able to prove all this in any way, Bill still felt it—as he had felt the incorrectness of Dilbian-understanding, first in Mula- ay and now in Anita. He felt it in his bones. Anita was still talking. Bill’s attention jerked abruptly back to her.

“…so forget about More Jam and concentrate on the two important figures of Bone Breaker and Flat Fingers,” she was saying. “They’re the ones that have to be moved, and I’m trying, just as much as you are, to move them. That’s why I’ve been working with the Dilbian women—in the village as well as here in the valley—the way I have. I suppose you don’t understand that, even yet?”

“Ah—no,” confessed Bill uncomfortably.

“Then let me tell you,” said Anita. “It’s because the one person that a tiamuna can listen to in the way of advice, without losing face, is his wife! That’s because he can talk things over with her privately, and then announce the results in public as if they were his own idea, and she’s not going to contradict him. And, of course, because of his physical and social superiority over the other male Dilbians, none of them are going to suggest it isn’t his own idea, either.”

“Oh,” said Bill.

“So you see,” Anita wound up, “I know what I’m doing. You don’t—and that’s why you ought to listen to me when I tell you what to do. And one of the things you shouldn’t have done was come into this valley at night, to find me and talk to me. Maybe there is something strange about the way you’ve been left alone to face things. But Lafe didn’t have anything to do with it—you can believe me!”

Bill said nothing. Anita, evidently willing to carry the point by default, paused a minute and then went on to other subjects.

“So what you do,” she said, “is get back to the village as quickly as you can and stay there ! Bone Breaker won’t come into the village after you—that’d be going too far, even for the Muddy Nosers. And even if Bone Breaker brought all his fighting men with him, there’d still be more villagers than they could handle. So as long as you stay in the village, you’re safe. Now do it, and cultivate Flat Fingers as I told you. Now I’ve got to be getting back to No Rest and the others, before they think the Cobblies have eaten me up! You aren’t going to waste any time getting out of the valley now, are you?” A thought seemed to strike her suddenly. “By the way, how did you get in here?”

“Rope,” answered Bill absently, still caught up in his new understanding, “down one of the cliffs.”

“Well, you get back to that rope and get up it as fast as you can!” said Anita. “Can I trust you to do that?”

“—What?” said Bill, coming abruptly back out of the thoughts that had been occupying him. “Oh, of course. Certainly.”

“Well, that’s good,” said Anita. Her voice softened, unexpectedly. She put her hand on his arm, and he was abruptly conscious of the light touch of it there. “ Please be careful, now.”

She took her hand away with that, turned about, and disappeared into the shadow. For a moment he stood staring into the darkness where she had been, strangely still feeling the touch of her hand even through the thickness of the shirt on his arm. It seemed to him that a little warmth seemed to linger where she had touched him.

Then he shook himself back to awareness. Of course, he was going to head back out of the valley as quickly as he could—but there was still something yet for him to do.

He turned and searched for the large building-shape of the mess hall. He found it and went toward it, keeping in the shadows. Five minutes later he glided up close to the front steps and paused. Here and there a gleam of light still showed between the hide curtains that covered the windows on the inside. But there were no guards standing on either side of the steps leading to the big doors—which were now closed. And the outlaw signal gong hung unguarded.

Bill came up to it and touched it. It was nothing more than a strip of bar iron, hung by a rope from one of the projecting rafter ends that supported the eaves above him. But he suddenly realized that he had made a serious mistake in boasting to the villagers that he would bring this back. For it was at least five feet long and two inches thick. It would be both too awkward and too heavy for him to carry while climbing back up the cliff by means of the rope.