Fritz Leiber - The Science Fiction Anthology

He was too young to be wholly gentled by the flowers and the council of elders. So the Choker showed him a wristlock. And when the Choker tossed him on his ear in the erydnium ore, he said words that were not beautiful. Maybe there’s something to the people of this asteroid.

Anyway, everything is great now. We wander wherever we please, as long as we return to the pit to sleep. When nobody is looking, we sneak into the royal palace courtyard and put on a wrestling show for the girls.

And the nights! Ah, the nights!

Don’t turn entirely green with envy, Hankus. At least leave your nose the familiar red.

Jed

SPACEGRAM

To: Jed Michaels, Ryttuk, Eros

FINE WORK. RETURN IMMEDIATELY. WILL MEET YOU AT MARS. MAYBE YOU CAN PERSUADE SOME OF THE GIRLS TO ACCOMPANY YOU THAT FAR. AM SENDING THE WRESTLERS TO SATURN.

HANK

ROCKET MAIL (First Class)

To: H. E. Horrocks,

Cosmopolis, Earth

Dear Hank:

Go to Mars, the man says. I can’t go anywhere. The elders caught us giving a rassle when Aliana was away and we’re in again.

These flower roots taste terrible.

Jed

SPACEGRAM

To: Jed Michaels,

Ryttuk, Eros

YOU BLUNDERING BABOON, YOU’RE FIRED.

HORROCKS

ROCKET MAIL

(Free, Royal Frank)

Royal Palace, Eros

To: H. E. Horrocks,

Cosmopolis, Earth

Dear melon brain:

I gather from your last message that you wish to discharge me. I accept the offer, fat boy. In fact, under royal Eros precedent, which I made up three minutes ago, we will even pay for your message. However, the words “you blundering baboon” do not seem a necessary part of that message, and their cost will be taken out of the first bit of business that the royal house of Eros decides to honor your puny little corporation with.

If any.

Times are changed, Hankus. I’m a big shot now.

A few hours after we got back in the pit, Aliana came back and sneaked down to see us. She said she thought it was about time to end this council of elders’ nonsense and she asked our help.

I told her plan to the wrestlers in words of one syllable or less. They all agreed except the Faceless Wonder.

“I don’t see why I should have nothing to do with no book,” he said. It seems he had had a book once and chewed up the first three chapters before he found put it wasn’t something to eat.

I signaled to the boys. Zbich clamped a headlock on him. The Choker got a hammerlock. The Gorilla Man took him in a scissors. Gorgeous Gordon got a toehold and Barefoot Charley stood by to jump on his stomach.

“Do you understand now?” I asked politely.

“Sure, Jed, sure,” said the Faceless Wonder. “Why didn’t ya explain it to me in the first place?”

So the next morning, we yelled for books. And for the following days, whenever anybody was around, we were busy sniffing flowers and reading. Between times, I tried to explain to the wrestlers why there weren’t more pictures in the books.

A week later, we sprang the trap. I told the stablehand who brought us our fodder that I had taken in so much culture that I was breathing beauty. Zbich, gagging a little, asked for a second helping of flower roots. Gorgeous Gordon requested a needle and thread; he said he had fallen behind in his needlepoint.

A report of the conversation got to the council of elders and it brought them to the lip of the pit, looking like something the glue factory had refused to accept. Aliana was with them.

I bowed from the waist and made a speech. I thanked the elders for showing me the error of my ways. I said that, after staying in the lovely erydnium pit, I was enraptured with flowers, crazy about culture and practically engaged in five dimension calculus. I asked that I and the boys could have the priceless boon of walking freely around Eros, swapping beautiful thoughts with the local yokels.

The elders went into a deep state of flutter. Most of them were for accepting our proposition out of hand—which was bad. Our old pal with the beard saved us.

“But I saw these men romping,” he shrilled. He lowered his voice to a high alto. “Positively romping!”

“Perhaps these men could prove their sincerity,” Aliana said, winking at me. “Perhaps one of them would consent to illustrate what he has learned here by giving a public talk on some scientific subject.”

“I should be glad,” I answered, “to hack off a lecture for the good folk of Eros. Suppose I give it on anatomy.”

And so it was decided.

Exactly as we had planned.

There was an amphitheater which the inhabitants of Eros had been using for ballets, string quartets and lectures by such of the longhairs as got stuffed so full of long words that they couldn’t keep them to themselves. I had ringposts and ropes set up on the platform, saying I needed them to illustrate my talk. I got into the ring with Gorgeous Gordon and Zbich, who were dressed in trunks and bathrobes.

The wit and beauty of Eros was assembled there, the beauty being represented by the girls, and the wit—such as it was—by the council of elders. The rest of the seats were filled with other forms, some of them tolerably easy to look at.

I had picked out the subject of anatomy in the belief that none of the inhabitants of Eros knew anything about it.

The men didn’t notice and the women had nothing at all to look at, anyway.

I went into my act.

“Kind hosts, friends and unfortunate incidents,” I said. “My topic is the science of anatomy. Now, the science of anatomy is copacetic to the point of mopery. The cerebellum is distended and the duodenum goes into a state of e pluribus unum. Incalculably, thrombosis registers and the ectoplasm becomes elliptic. Or, in the vernacular, the eight ball in the side pocket.”

The crowd sat stunned. Here and there, a flower sniffer looked down at his own rack of bones to check my statement.

“Let me illustrate,” I said. I drew the bathrobes off the wrestlers.

The boys’ muscles rippled as they strutted around the ring. From the women spectators came a long, deep sigh. From that moment, we had half the audience with us—the female half.

“In anatomy,” I said, shaking my finger to emphasize the point, “the wingback shifts outward for a lateral. In the words of the great philosopher Hypocritus, the coil should always be kept clean between the barrel and the tap and all excess collar should be removed with a spatula.”

Nobody was listening to me; they were looking at the wrestlers, which, of course, was what I’d figured on. Most of the men were comparing the grunters’ muscles to their own, and here and there a few were dropping their flowers onto the floor.

I signaled and in a second the boys were an omelet of flying legs. The crowd gasped, then leaned forward intently. The shrieking began when Gordon got a headlock on Zbich. It grew when Zbich flipped Gorgeous with a flying mare. By the time Gordon got in a billygoat butt, the amphitheater sounded like feeding time at the zoo.

But there was another sound, too. Old Whiskers was tottering down the aisle, shrieking, “This is romping! Mere romping!”

I signaled and the boys stopped.

“We need a third man to illustrate the next point,” I said. “Perhaps the gentleman in the aisle will volunteer.”

Two wrestlers grabbed Old Whiskers and tossed him into the ring. Making fast double talk, I took off his shirt and he stood there, stripped to the waist, blinking in the sun and looking like a dehydrated squab.

The crowd noted the contrast between his scrawniness and the muscles of the wrestlers. A roar of laughter swept it.

“Perhaps,” I said, “the gentleman would like to romp.”

Zbich made a grab for him and he scuttled out of the ring, falling over the lower rope. A woman in the first row slugged him with a gardenia.