Spacepaw (7 page)

“I wish you would,” said Bill, with deep emotion.

“Oh, stop it! There’s no need to keep getting a chip on your shoulder!” said Anita. “Listen to me now. This started out here as a perfectly ordinary agricultural project, taking advantage of the fact that when the original Human-Hemnoid Non-Interference Treaty on Dilbia was signed, neither the Hemnoids nor we knew that there were any sizable Dilbian communities that weren’t organized and disciplined by the clan structure you find among the Dilbians in the mountains—where ninety percent of the native population lives.”

“I know that,” interrupted Bill. “I spent five days on the way here wearing a hypno-helmet. I can even quote the part about the project aims.
The project name ‘Spacepaw,’ refers to the hope of giving technology a foothold among the Dilbians—literally translated into Dilbian, it comes out meaning ‘helping hand from the stars’—except that since the Dilbians consider themselves to be the ones who have hands—Shorties and the Fatties are referred to as having ‘paws.’
I already know all about that. But I was sent here to teach the natives how to use farm tools, not to organize a—” he fumbled for a word.

“Civil defense force!” supplied Anita.

“Civil defense …” he goggled at her through the increasing darkness.

“Why not? That’s as good a name for it as any!” she whispered, briskly. “Now, will you listen and learn a few things you
don’t
know? I said this
started out
like an ordinary project. The Lowland Dilbians here at Muddy Nose come from fifty or sixty different Upland clans. They don’t have the clan organization, therefore, and they don’t have any Grandfathers of the Clan, to exert a conservative control over the way they think and act. Also, they don’t have the Upland Dilbian’s idea that it’s sissy to use tools or weapons. So it looked like they were just the community to let us demonstrate to the mountain Dilbians that tools and technology in general could raise more crops, build better buildings, and everything else—start them on the road to modem civilization.”

“And, incidentally, make them closer friends of ours than they are of the Hemnoids,” put in Bill skeptically.

“That, too, of course,” said Anita. “At least, if the Dilbians have some knowledge of modem technology, they’ll be better able to understand the psychological difference between us and the Hemnoids. We’re betting that if we can raise their mean technological level, they’ll want to be partners with us. The Hemnoids don’t want them to become technologically sophisticated. They’d rather take the Dilbians into the Hemnoid sphere of influence, now while they’re still safely primitive and they’d have to be technologically dependent.”

“You were going,” pointed out Bill, “to tell me something I didn’t know.”

“I am, if you’ll listen!” whispered Anita fiercely. “When we started to make a success of this project, the Hemnoids moved to counter it. They sent in Mula-
ay
, one of their best agents—”

“Agents?” echoed Bill. He had suspected it, of course, but finding himself undeniably up against a highly trained alien agent sent an abruptly cold shiver snaking its way between his shoulder blades.

“That’s what I said. Agent. And Mula-
ay
didn’t lose any time in taking advantage of the one local condition which could frustrate the project. He moved in with the outlaws, here, and pointed out to them that the more the villagers could produce from their farms, the more surplus the outlaws would be able to take from them. The outlaws only take what the farmers can spare, you know. Dilbian custom is very strict on that, even without Grandfathers—”

“I know,” muttered Bill impatiently. “Why wasn’t I told about the Hemnoid being here and being an agent, though? None of the hypnoed information mentioned it.”

“Lafe was supposed to brief you after you got here—that’s what he told me, anyway,” she said, in so low a voice that he could hardly hear her. “The Hemnoids are too good at intercepting and decoding interstellar transmissions for the information I’m giving you now to be sent out for inclusion in ordinary hypno tapes. The point is that word of what Mula-
ay
told the outlaws got back from the outlaws to the villagers, and the villagers began to ask themselves what was the point of using tools, if making a better living simply meant making a better living for the outlaws. You see, the outlaws go around collecting their so-called tax and the Muddy Nosers can’t stop them.”

“Why not?” asked Bill. “There must be more of them than there are of outlaws—”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you,” whispered Anita. “There
are
more of them than there are of outlaws. But without a clan structure they won’t combine, and the outlaws raid one farm at a time and take whatever the farmer has to spare. The farmer doesn’t even fight for his property—for one thing he’s always outnumbered. For another, most of them rather admire the outlaws.”

“Admire them!”

“That’s right,” said Anita. “They complain about how the outlaws take things from them, but when they’re telling you about it, you can see they’re halfway proud of having been robbed. It’s been a sort of romantic interlude, a holiday in their lives—”

“Yes,” said Bill, suddenly thoughtful. He remembered Tin Ear’s drunken but happy grin as he had sat at the table, being forced to swallow his own beer.

“The point is,” wound up Anita, “agriculture isn’t going to be improved around Muddy Nose as long as this nest of outlaws continues to exist. We’ve got a stalemate here— outlaws balanced off against villagers, the Hemnoid influence balanced off against ours. Well, I’ve had some success with bringing the local females around to a human point of view. Lafe told me our superiors think maybe someone—er, mechanically oriented—like you, could have some success with the village males. So—as I say, you go back and try to organize them into a civil defense force—”

“I see,” said Bill. “Just like that, I suppose?”

“You don’t have to sneer at the very notion,” she retorted. In fact, a note of enthusiasm was beginning to kindle in her own voice as she talked—almost as if, Bill thought, she was falling in love with her own idea. “All the village males really need is a leader. You can be that—only, of course, you’ll need to operate from behind the scenes. But why don’t you talk to the village blacksmith to begin with? His name’s Flat Fingers. He’s big enough and strong enough to be a match for Bone Breaker himself, if they went at it without weapons. You get him on your side—”

“All right. Hold on a minute!” interrupted Bill. “I don’t know what this business of raising a civil defense force has to do with the situation, but it’s not the reason I came here. For your information, I was drafted while I was en route to a terraforming project on Deneb Seventeen, and what I was drafted for was to instruct the Muddy Nose villagers in the use of farming tools. In short, those were my orders and no one in authority has changed them. Until someone does—”

“So!”

It was the first time Bill had ever actually heard the word hissed. He stopped his own flow of words out of sheer surprise.

“So—you’re one of those, are you!” Anita’s voice was bitterly accusing. “You don’t really care a thing about your work out between the stars! All you want to do is put in your two years and get your credit so that you can enter a university back home and get a general instead of a restricted professional license when you graduate! You don’t care what happens to the project you work on, or the job it’s trying to do—”

“Now hold on—” began Bill.

“—You don’t care about anything but putting in your time the easiest way possible—”

“If you want to know,” began Bill, “the way I feel about the terraforming of a whole world, with—”

“—and to blazes with anyone else concerned, human or native! Well, it happens I
do
care about the Dilbians—I care too much to let the Hemnoids stand in the way of their developing into an expanding, technological society and joining us and the Hemnoids not just as poor country cousins, but as an independent, self-sufficient, space-going race—”

“If you’ll listen a minute, I didn’t mean to say:—”

“So nobody’s given you any orders, have they?” furiously whispered a spot in the by-now pitch-darkness, twelve inches in front of and eight inches below Bill’s nose. “Well, we’ll just fix that! You’re a trainee-assistant, aren’t you?”

“Of course,” he said, when he was able to get the words out.

“And I’m a trainee-assistant. Right? But which one of us was here first?”

“You, of course,” said Bill. “But—”

“Then who’s senior at this post?
Me.
You go back to the village tonight—”

“You know I can’t get back tonight!” said Bill desperately. “The gates were closed at sundown!”

“Well, they’ll be opened up again, if Bone Breaker says so—ask him!” snapped Anita. “Then go back to the village tonight and stay there and start organizing the villagers to defend themselves against the outlaws! That’s not a suggestion I’m giving you, it’s an
order
—from
me
as your superior! Now go do it, and good night, Mr. Pickham—I mean, Mr. Billham—I mean—oh,
good night!”

There was a feminine snort of rage almost Dilbian in its intensity, and Bill heard the sound of shod human feet stamping off across the turf away from him in the blackness.

Bill stood where he was, stunned. It was part and parcel of the ridiculously unorthodox way in which things had been going ever since he had landed on Dilbia that he should find himself at the orders of a female trainee-assistant who apparently was stark, raving unreasonable on the subject of the local natives. Now what? Should he follow Anita’s orders, organize the Dilbians of Muddy Nose—even if he was able to accomplish that—into a fighting force, and end up being tried under out-space law for unwarranted interference with natives’ affairs on Dilbia? Or should he go back to the village, instruct the locals in the uses of picks and shovels, and end up being tried under out-space law for refusing to obey an order of his immediate superior?

Chapter 7

It was too much to figure out now. Bill gave up. Tomorrow, he would think the whole matter through. Meanwhile, there was the business of getting back to the village tonight—and into a human-style bed at the Residency, which he was far from unwilling to do. Maybe Anita was right about his only having to ask Bone Breaker to let himself and the Bluffer out after hours.

He turned about uncertainly, peering through the night, and to his relief, discovered the lights shining out of the windows of the outlaw buildings like beacons, a little way off. He went toward them, and as he got close, he discovered that he was coming up on the rear of the main building. He swung out around the closer end of it and headed toward the front entrance.

As Bill approached, he saw a number of Dilbian figures standing in front of the entrance steps—among them, standing a little apart, was the obese-looking figure of one who could only be the Hemnoid, Mula-
ay
, and with him two unusually tall Dilbians, one taller and thinner than the other, who should be Bone Breaker and the Hill Bluffer. Bill went up to them. As he got close, the large moon poked itself farther and farther above the mountain peak, and the silvery illumination in the fortified valley increased—so that by the time he stopped before all three of them, he was able to see their expressions clearly.

“Well, well, here he is,” chuckled Mula-
ay
richly. “Did you find your little female, Pick-and-Shovel?”

“I spoke to her,” replied Bill shortly. He turned toward the outlaw chief. “She suggested I could ask you whether you wouldn’t let the Hill Bluffer and myself out of the gate, even if it has been dosed for the night. I’d like to get back to the village before morning.”

“She did?” answered Bone Breaker, with that same deceptive mildness of tone. It was impossible for Bill to tell whether the Dilbian was intending to agree or refuse to let Bill and the Bluffer leave. The Hill Bluffer chuckled—for no reason apparent to Bill. Mula-
ay
chuckled again, also.

“You mean,” Mula-
ay
said, “you’re going to go off and leave the little creature here, after all?”

Bill felt his ears beginning to grow hot.

“For the moment,” he said, “yes. But I’ll be back, if necessary.”

“There you are!” said the Hill Bluffer happily. “Didn’t I say it? He’ll be back. And I’ll bring him!”

“Anytime, Pick-and-Shovel,” rumbled Bone Breaker mildly. “Just so it’s in the daytime.”

“Of course I’ll come in the daytime,” he said. “I wouldn’t be leaving now, but after talking to—ah—Dirty Teeth, we decided—that is, I decided—to get back to the village tonight.”

“And why not?” trumpeted the Bluffer, in something very like a challenging tone of voice.

“No reason at all,” said Bone Breaker mildly. “Take all the time you want. Come on, the two of you, arid I’ll see the gate opened and both of you let out.”

The outlaw chief headed off toward the end of the valley where the wall and the gates were. The Hill Bluffer absently started after him, and Bill was forced to run in an undignified fashion after the Dilbian postman and jerked at the belt of his harness in order to alert the Bluffer to the fact that Bill could not keep up with his strides.

“Oh?—sorry, Pick-and-Shovel,” chuckled the Bluffer, as if his attention had wandered. He paused to scoop up Bill in his two big paws and plump him down in the saddle on his back. “You kind of slipped my mind for the moment … are you all set, up there?”

Bill replied in the affirmative and the Hill Bluffer once more started off after the Bone Breaker.

For the first time, Bill began to realize what kind of favor the Bone Breaker was doing by letting him out after hours. Opening the gate was far from a simple procedure. First the guards had to find torches of resinous wood and light them. Then with the help of Bone Breaker and the Hill Bluffer they removed two heavy cross-beams from the inner side of the gates. Finally, with a great deal of heaving, puffing, and shoving, the gates were forced to rumble open, squeaking and roaring as they each traversed on a sort of millstone arrangement, with one round wooden wheel rotating upon the flat surface of another. At last, however, the gates stood open.