Gordon Dickson - The Right to Arm Bears

“Why, certainly!” said Bill determinedly and cheerfully, “we Shorties can climb almost anything. Why, back on my own world once, I—”

“Never mind that,” rumbled Bone Breaker. His eyes came back down to focus on Bill’s face. “If you came down it, I suppose you can get back up it, again?”

“Well… yes,” said Bill, a little reluctantly, his fall of a moment before fresh in his mind. “I can climb it, all right.”

“Then you better get going,” said Bone Breaker—not so much angrily as emphatically. “You don’t know how lucky you are it was me who spotted you sneaking around the buildings, back there, instead of it being one of our regular watchmen. It’s just a happy chance for you that I like to take a stroll around myself every evening before I turn in, just to see that everything’s all right. Why, you could’ve spoiled everything!”

“Everything?” echoed Bill frowning.

“Why, certainly,” rumbled Bone Breaker reprovingly. “Why would anybody think you’d be here, except to have that duel with me? And what’s the point of having a duel at this time of night, with no real light to see by and hardly anybody around? No, no, Pick-and-Shovel. You’ve got to get this sort of thing straight in your Shorty head. Something like our duel has to be held in broad daylight. With everybody looking on, too. I want everybody up in the valley, and watching. And as many villagers as can get here, as well.” His voice took on, strange as it seemed, almost a wistful note. “It’s just too bad we can’t send runners out with the word so that anyone in the district could drop by. But, I suppose that’d be overdoing it.”

“Er—yes,” agreed Bill.

“Well, anyway,” said Bone Breaker, his voice becoming suddenly brisk, “you’d better get started. Up that cliff with you and out of sight—and remember! Whatever you do, Pick-and-Shovel, make sure it’s daylight when you come back again. Full daylight!”

“I will,” promised Bill. He turned to the cliff-face without any further hesitation and carefully began to climb. Some ten feet above the ground, he paused to look down. The moon was out from behind its clouds, and by its light he saw the outlaw chief staring up at him. As he watched, Bone Breaker shook his head a little, as if in amazement, and then turned and went off toward the buildings, just as the moon slid once more behind a cloud, and darkness covered the scene.

As soon as the face of the cliff was cloaked in shadow, Bill ceased climbing. Cautiously, feeling his way with hands and feet in the gloom with his heart thudding, Bill climbed back down slowly onto solid ground. When at last he stood firmly upright upon it, he found his face was wet with perspiration. A single misstep on the way down could have set him falling, the way he had done once already. And this time, there would have been no Bone Breaker to catch him.

However, now that he was safely on his feet again, he began to work his way along the base of the cliff until he reached a spot where he was completely hidden by the undergrowth. Here he waited until the moon once more emerged from its cloud, and, looking up, he was able to make out the notch at the top of the cliff from which his rope descended.

It was still a little farther to his right. He continued on and came at last to the rope itself, nearly invisible in the moonlight against the light-colored rock of the cliff-face.

The climb required a number of stops to rest along the way. Whenever he found a spot where he could lean or crouch against the cliff-face to rest those muscles of his arms and legs which had been bearing his weight during the climb, he did so. In spite of this, by the time he could look up and see the bottom of the notch only ten or twelve feet above him, Bill was as exhausted as he could remember being.

He had no idea, as he paused for a final rest upon a ledge of rock outcropping from the vertical face, how long the upward climb had taken. It seemed to have taken hours. However, no alarm had so far been raised that would indicate anyone had caught sight of him. After resting on the rock ledge as long as he dared, without risking the stiffening of his weary muscles, Bill geared up his courage and his remaining energy for the last stretch to the bottom of the notch. Then he began to climb.

It was hard work. With each foot gained upward, he felt the already shallow reserves of his strength ebbing away. Eventually, the bottom of the notch came within view, but still more than an arm’s reach away. Bill locked his feet in the rope and started to let go with his right hand in order to reach upward.

—And his exhaustion-weakened left hand almost let go.

Clutching desperately at the rope with both hands, Bill clung to his position. There seemed to be no strength left in him. For a second, a giddy picture of his grip finally loosening on the rope as he hung here, and his plunge to certain death at the foot of the cliff swam through his mind.

—And then he moved.

He moved upward. He and the rope together lifted a good four feet until the notch was almost level with his eyes. Before he could grasp what had happened, the rope lifted again, carrying him with it. Someone above was hauling it upward, pulling him to the safety of the cliff-top.

Wildly and unexpectedly it came to him that possibly the Bluffer had returned, although he was not due until dawn—or had stayed in position above the cliff, and was now bringing him up to safe and level ground. Bill looked upward, expecting to see the dark, furry mass of the Dilbian postman staring down at him. But it was not the Bluffer he saw.

He stared instead into the moonlit, Buddha-like countenance of Mula- ay . The hands of the Hemnoid had hold of the rope. The great, heavy-gravity muscles of the alien were bringing it easily in, and there was a smile of pure, gentle joy on Mula- ay ’s face. Like a hooked fish, Bill was being drawn helplessly upward into the hands of his enemy.

If the shock and dismay that Bill felt were strong, they were overridden just at that moment by the prospect of getting off the cliff-face and onto the level top of the cliff, no matter with whose help. He clung desperately to the rope and let himself be pulled in, until at last he was hauled over the edge of the notch and collapsed weakly upon the soft ground above the vertical rock-face.

For a moment, he simply lay there, almost too weak to move, his arms and legs trembling from the strain they had just endured. Then, painfully, he let go of the rope and struggled to his feet.

Directly in front of him, and less than six feet away, with his arms now folded across his chest within the voluminous sleeves of his yellow robe, Mula- ay continued to smile contentedly at him in the moonlight.

“Well, well, my young friend,” said Mula- ay , with a heavy, liquid chuckle. “And what are you doing here at this time of night?”

Bill had had a chance to collect his wits. As it had in the moment at the foot of the cliff when he first found himself facing Bone Breaker, his mind was racing swiftly, turning up conclusions rapidly as it went.

“Why, I was just out,” said Bill, panting slightly in spite of his attempts to appear calm, “for a little sport rock-climbing. Suppose you tell me what you’re doing here.”

Mula- ay laughed again.

“Why, of course I could tell an untruth just like you, my young friend,” replied the Hemnoid, “and say I just happened to be out for a moonlight stroll. But people like myself are always truthful—particularly when the truth hurts—and I’ll tell you the truth. I was out here looking for you, and, behold, I have found you.”

“Looking for me?” queried Bill. “What made you think you might find me here? Particularly, what made you think you might find me here at this time of night?”