Гарднер Дозуа - The Good Old Stuff

“It’s a dirty trick!” said Grimp, rapidly scanning as much as he could see of the list.

“Let’s us have more respect for the Village Guardian, Grimp!” the policeman said warningly.

“Uh-huh,” muttered Grimp. “Sure ...” If Runny would just move his big thumb out of the way. But what a list! Trailer; rhinocerine pony (beast, heavy draft, imported); patent medicines; household utensils; fortune-telling; pets; herbs; miracle-healing-The policeman looked down, saw what Grimp was doing and raised the paper out of his line of vision. “That’s an official document,” he said, warding Grimp off with one hand and tucking the paper away with the other. “Let’s us not get our dirty hands on it .”

Grimp was thinking fast. Grandma Wannattel did have framed licenses for some of the items he’d read hanging around inside the trailer, but certainly not thirty-four of them.

“Remember that big skinless werret I caught last season?” he asked.

The policeman gave him a quick glance, looked away again and wiped his eyes thoughtfully. The season on werrets would open the following week and he was as ardent a fisherman as anyone in the village—and last summer Grimp’s monster werret had broken a twelve-year record in the valley.

“Some people,” Grimp said idly, staring down the valley road to the point where it turned into the woods, “would sneak after a person for days who’s caught a big werret, hoping he’d be dumb enough to go back to that pool.”

The policeman flushed and dabbed the handkerchief gingerly at his nose.

“Some people would even sit in a haystack and use spyglasses, even when the hay made them sneeze like crazy,” continued Grimp quietly.

The policeman’s flush deepened. He sneezed.

“But a person isn’t that dumb,” said Grimp. “Not when he knows there’s anDvay two werrets there six inches bigger than the one he caught.”

“Six inches?” the policeman repeated a bit incredulously—eagerly.

“Easy,” nodded Grimp. “I had a look at them again last week.”

It was the policeman’s turn to think. Grimp idly hauled out his slingshot, fished a pebble out of his small-pebble pocket and knocked the head off a flower twenty feet away. He yawned negligently.

“You’re pretty good with that slingshot,” the policeman remarked. “You must be just about as good as the culprit that used a slingshot to ring the fire-alarm signal on the defense unit bell from the top of the school house last week.”

“That’d take a pretty good shot,” Grimp admitted.

“And who then,” continued the policeman, “dropped pepper in his trail, so the pank-hound near coughed off his head when we started to track him. The Guardian,” he added significantly, “would like to have a clue about that culprit, all right.”

“Sure, sure,” said Grimp, bored. The policeman, the Guardian, and probably even the pank-hound, knew exactly who the culprit was; but they wouldn’t be able to prove it in twenty thousand years. Runny just had to realize first that threats weren’t going t o get him anywhere near a record werret.

Apparently, he had; he was settling back for another bout of thinking.

Grimp, interested in what he would produce next, decided just to leave him to it ....

Then Grimp jumped up suddenly from the rock.

“There they are!” he yelled, waving the slingshot.

A half-mile down the road, Grandma Wannattel’s big, silvery trailer had come swaying out of the woods behind the rhinocerine pony and turned up toward the farm. The pony saw Grimp, lifted its head, which was as long as a tall man, and bawled a thunderous greeting. Grandma Wannattel stood up on the driver’s seat and waved a green silk handkerchief.

Grimp started sprinting down the road.

The werrets should do the trick—but he’d better get Grandma informed, just the same, about recent developments here, before she ran into Runny.

Grandma Wannattel flicked the pony’s horny rear with the reins just before they reached the policeman, who was waiting at the side of the road with the Guardian’s check-list unfolded in his hand.

The pony broke into a lumbering trot, and the trailer swept past Runny and up around the bend of the road, where it stopped well within the boundaries of the farm. They climbed down and Grandma quickly unhitched the pony. It waddled, grunting, off the road and down into the long, marshy meadow above the hollow. It stood still there, cooling its feet.

Grimp felt a little better. Getting the trailer off community property gave Grandma a technical advantage. Grimp’s people had a favorable opinion of her, and they were a sturdy lot who enjoyed telling off the Guardian any time he didn’t actually have a l aw to back up his orders.

But on the way to the farm, she had confessed to Grimp that, just as he’d feared, she didn’t have anything like thirty-four licenses. And now the policeman was coming up around the bend of the road after them, blowing his nose and frowning.

“Just let me handle him alone,” Grandma told Grip out of the corner of her mouth.

He nodded and strolled off into the meadow to pass the time with the pony. She’d had a lot of experience in handling policemen.

“Well, well, young man,” he heard her greeting his cousin behind him.

“That looks like a bad cold you’ve got.”

The policeman sneezed.

“Wish it were a cold,” he said resignedly. “It’s hay-fever. Can’t do a thing with it. Now I’ve got a list here—”

“Hay-fever?” said Grandma. “Step up into the trailer a moment. We’ll fix that.”

“About this list—” began Runny, and stopped. “You think you got something that would fix it?” he asked skeptically. “I’ve been to I don’t know how many doctors and they didn’t help any.”

“Doctors!” said Grandma. Grimp heard her heels click up the metal steps that led into the back of the trailer. “Come right in, won’t take a moment.”‘ “Well—” said Runny doubtfully, but he followed her inside.

Grimp winked at the pony. The first round went to Grandma.

“Hello, pony,” he said.

His worries couldn’t reduce his appreciation of Grandma’s fabulous draft-animal. Partly, of course, it was just that it was such an enormous beast. The long, round barrel of its body rested on short legs with wide, flat feet which were settled deep in the meadow’s mud by now. At one end was a spiky tail, and at the other a very big, wedge-shaped head, with a blunt, badly chipped horn set between nose and eyes. From nose to tail and all around, it was covered with thick, rectangular, horny plates, a mottled green-brown in color.

Grimp patted its rocky side affectionately. He loved the pony most for being the ugliest thing that had ever showed up on Noorhut. According to Grandma, she had bought it from a bankrupt circus which had imported it from a planet called Treebel; and Treebel was supposed to be a world full of hot swamps, inexhaustibly explosive volcanoes and sulphurous stenches.

One might have thought that after wandering around melting lava and under rainfalls of glowing ashes for most of its life, the pony would have considered Noorhut pretty tame. But though there wasn’t much room for expression around the solid slab of bone supporting the horn, which was the front of its face, Grimp thought it looked thoroughly contented with its feet sunk out of sight in Noorhut’s cool mud.

“You’re a big fat pig!” he told it fondly.

The pony slobbered out a long, purple tongue and carefully parted his hair.

“Cut it out!” said Grimp. “Ugh!”

The pony snorted, pleased, curled its tongue about a huge clump of weeds, pulled them up and flipped them into its mouth, roots, mud and all.

It began to chew.