CHAPTER 2

Politely but firmly herded forward by the little diplomat, John found himself pushed into the large outer office of the Human Embassy on Dilbia, at Humrog, his head still spinning from Joshua's last words and the odd Dilbian names. Who, he wondered confusedly and in particular, was Boy Is She Built? The obvious conclusion, in terms of a seven foot-plus Dilbian female accoutered in little more than her natural furry pelt, was a little mind-shaking to imagine.

The moment, however, was not the proper one for imaginings, no matter how mind-shaking. Reality was being too overpowering to leave room for anything else. The first thing to strike John as the door closed behind him, was the scale of the room he was entering. The inner office had been a reassuringly human cell tucked away in a corner of gargantuan Dilbian architecture. Desk and chairs had been to John's own fit.

This outer office, for reasons of diplomatic politeness, was furnished in the outsize Dilbian scale. The heavy wall logs allowed for headroom up to fifteen feet below the log rafters. The bottom of the crudely glazed windows were on a level with John's chin. Several tables and straight-backed chairs fitted the rest of the furnishings by being of the same uncomfortable (by human standards) largeness. A quart-sized ink pot, and a hand-whittled pen holder about sixteen inches long on one of the tables, completed the picture.

Not this, though, nor the hypno training, quite served to prepare John adequately for his first close-up encounter with a pair of the Dilbian natives. These two were standing not a dozen feet inside the door as John came through it; and their appearance assaulted his senses in all ways, immediately, and without warning.

To begin with, they smelled. Not overpoweringly, not even unbearably, in fact rather like dogs that have been out in the rain for the first time in several weeks during which they had not had a bath. But, definitely, they smelled.

It did not help, either, for John to notice that the two were faintly wrinkling their large black noses at him, in turn.

And on top of this odor, there was the fact of the bigness of the room; which, after ten seconds, pulled a double switch on the senses; so that, instead of John feeling that he was the same size he had always been and the room was unnaturally big, the first thing he knew he was feeling that it was normal in dimensions and he had shrunk, all of a sudden, to the stature of a six-year old boy.

But last and not least was the center of all this, the two adult male Dilbians themselves, looking indeed like a pair of Kodiak bears who had stood up on their hind legs and gone on a diet. True, their brows were higher and more intelligent than bears. Their noses were shorter, their lower jaws more human-like than ursinoid. But their thick coats of brownish-black hair, their lumbering stance, massive shoulders and forearms and the fact that they wore nothing to speak of beyond a few leather straps and metal ornaments, shouted bear at you, any way you looked at it. If it was up to me, thought John . . .

"Ah, there, Little Bite!" boomed the larger of the two furry monsters in native Dilbian, before he could finish the thought. "This is the new one? Two Answers and I shook a leg right over here to give him the eye. Kind of bright colored up top there, ain't he?"

"Hor, hor, hor!" bellowed the other, thunderously. "Belt me, if I'd want one like him around. Liable to burn the house down! Hor, hor, hor!"

"Some of we humans have hair that color," replied Joshua. "Gentlemen, this is John Tardy. John, this gentleman with the sense of humor is Two Answers. And his quiet friend is Shaking Knees."

"Quiet!" roared the other Dilbian, exploding into gargantuan laughter. "Me, quiet! That's good!" He shook the heavy logs with his merriment.

John blinked. He glanced incredulously from the imperturbable Joshua to these oversize clowns in fur. What kind of goof-up, he wondered, could have put Guy in an ambassadorial post like this. A sharply tailored, fastidious little dandy of a man—and these lolling, shouting, belching, king-sized, frontier-type aliens. It was past belief.

For the first time there crept into John's mind the awful suspicion that the whole thing—Joshua Guy being ambassador in a post like this, the kidnapping of the female sociologist, and his being drafted to do a job that he was in no way experienced or prepared for—all this just part of one monstrous blunder that had its beginnings in the Alien Relations Office, back in Governmental Headquarters on Earth.

"Haven't laughed like that since old Souse Nose fell into the beer vat in the Mud Hollow Inn!" Two Answers was snorting, as he got himself back under control. "All right, Bright Top, what've you got to say for yourself? Think you can take the Streamside Terror with one paw tied behind your back?"

"I beg your pardon?" said John. "I understood I was here to bring back—er—Greasy Face, but—"

"Streamside won't just hand her over. Will he, Knees?" Two Answers jogged his companion with a massive elbow.

"Not that boy!" Shaking Knees shook his head, slowly. "Little Bite, I ought never have let you talk me out of a son-in-law like that. Tough. Rough. Tricky. My little girl'd do all right with a buck like that."

"I merely," said Joshua, "suggested you make them wait a bit, if you remember. Boy Is She Built is still rather young."

"And, boy is she built!" said her father, fondly. "Yep, I know it made sense the way you put it then." He shook his head a little. "You sure got the knack for coming up on the right side of the argument with a man. Still, now I look back on it, it's hard to see how that little girl of mine could do better." He peered suddenly at Joshua. "You sure you ain't got something hidden between your claws on this?"

Joshua spread his hands expressively.

"Would I risk one of my own people?" he said. "Maybe two, counting John, here? All for nothing but the fun of making the Terror mad at me?"

"Don't make sense, does it?" rumbled Shaking Knees. "But you Shorties are tricky little characters." His words rang with an honest admiration.

"Now, you people are pretty sly yourselves," said Joshua. They both turned and spat over their left shoulders. "Well, now," went on Joshua, "compliments aside, anybody know where the Terror is?"

"He headed west through the Cold Mountains," put in Two Answers. "He was spotted yesterday a half day's hike north, pointed toward Sour Ford and the Hollows. He probably nighted at Brittle Rock Inn, there."

"Good," said Joshua. "We'll have to find a guide to there for my friend here."

"Guide? Ho!" chortled Shaking Knees. "Wait'll you see what we got for your friend." He shouldered past Two Answers, opened the door and bellowed. "Bluffer! In here!"

There was a moment's wait. And then a Dilbian even leaner and taller than Shaking Knees shouldered his way through the outer doorway into the office, which with this new addition, and in spite of its original size, began to take on the air of being decidedly crowded.

"Here you are, Shorties!" said Shaking Knees, waving an expansive furry hand at the newcomer. "What more could you ask for? Walk all day, climb all night, and start out fresh next morning after breakfast. Right, Hill Bluffer?"

"Right as rooftops in raintime!" sonorously proclaimed the newcomer, rattling the windows about the walls. "Hill Bluffer, that's my name and trade! Anything on two feet walk away from me? Not over solid ground or living rock! When I look at a hill, it knows it's beat; and it lays out flat for my trampling feet!"

"Well, how do you like that, Little Bite? Eh? How?" boomed Shaking Knees.

"Mighty impressive, Knees," replied Joshua. "But I don't know about my friend keeping up if the Hill Bluffer here moves like that."

"Keep up? Hah!" guffawed Shaking Knees. "No, no, Little Bite, don't you recognize the Hill Bluffer? He's the government postman from Humrog to Wildwood Peak. We're going to mail your Shorty friend here to the Terror. Guaranteed delivery. Postage: five pounds of nails."

"Nobody stops the mail." The Hill Bluffer swept the room with a glare that had a professional quality about it. "Nobody monkeys with the mail in transit!"

"Well . . ." said Joshua, thoughtfully. "Five pounds, of course, is out of the question."

"Out of the question?" roared Shaking Knees. "A guaranteed, absolutely safe government mailman—!"

"I can hire five strong porters off the street for that."

"Sure you can. Sure!" jeered Shaking Knees. "But can any of them catch up with the Terror?"

"Can the Bluffer catch up?"

The Hill Bluffer bellowed like a struck bull.

"Well," said Joshua, "a pound and a half. That's fair."

The bargaining continued. John began to get a headache. He wondered how Joshua had kept from going deaf all these months in the embassy, or however long he had been billeted here. Then he noticed the older man was wearing a sound dampening coil behind each ear. It had not of course, thought John a trifle bitterly, occurred to him to suggest the same protection for John.

The price was finally settled at three and a quarter pounds of steel nails, size and type to be at Shaking Knees' discretion, at some future date.

"Well, now," said Joshua, "the next thing is—how's the Bluffer going to carry him?"

"Who? Him?" boomed the Bluffer, focusing down on John. "Why, I'll handle him like he was a week-old pup. Wrap him up real careful in some soft straw, tuck him in the bottom of my mail pouch and—"

"Hey!" cried John.

"I'm afraid," said Joshua, "my friend's right. We're going to have to find some way he can ride more comfortably."

The meeting adjourned to the embassy warehouse adjoining, to see what could be rigged up in the way of a saddle.

"I won't wear it!" the Hill Bluffer was trumpeting, two hours later. They were all standing in the Humrog main street by this time, in front of the warehouse; and the cause of the Bluffer's upset, a system of straps and pads arranged into a sort of shoulder harness to carry John, lay on the cobblestones before them. A small number of local Dilbian bystanders had gathered; and their freely offered basso comments were not of a sort to bring the Hill Bluffer to a more reasonable frame of mind.

"Now, that's a real good system for my old lady to tote the youngest pup around," one Dilbian with a grey scar jaggedly across his black nose, was saying.

"Good training for the Bluffer, too," put in another blackfurred monster. "Have pups of his own, one of these days."

"Unless," said the scar-nosed one, judiciously, "this here little feller actually is a pup of the Hill Bluffer's, already."

"You don't mean to actually tell me!" said the other. He squinted at John. "Yep, there's a resemblance all right."

"You want your ear tore off," roared the infuriated Bluffer, pausing in the midst of his hot argument with Shaking Knees and Two Answers. "This here piece of mail's a Shorty!"

John backed off a little from the bellowing group and tried to shut the voices out of his mind, even if shutting them out of his ears was somewhat impractical. He was in that stage of helplessly worn-out exasperation which often results when naturally independent and strong-willed people are pushed around without explanation and without the chance for natural protest.

He turned his back on the shouting group and gazed off through the thin, clear air of the Dilbian mountains that made everything seem three times as close as they actually were, to a snow-laden peak thrusting up above the pinelike trees surrounding Humrog.

"At least try the unmentionable thing on!" Shaking Knees was roaring at the Hill Bluffer a dozen feet away.

Here, thought John, he had been hauled off the ship that was to take him out to his job with a government exploration team; it was work he had always wanted and just finished seven years of college-level study for. Instead he was on a citizen's draft which left him no chance to object. Well, yes, John had to admit to himself, the Draft Law provided he could refuse if he could charge the Drafting Authority—in this case, Joshua—with incompetence or misinformation. John snorted under his breath. Fine chance he had of doing that when he couldn't even find out what was going on. He had just stepped off his spaceship a few hours ago; and Joshua had yet to give him five minutes opportunity to formulate questions.

At the same time, thought John, there was something awfully screwy about the way things were going on. As soon as this business of the saddle had been settled, he was going to haul Joshua aside, if need be by main force, and insist on some answers before he went any further. A citizen had some rights, too . . .

"Arright, arright, arright!" snarled the Hill Bluffer barely six inches behind John's ear. "Buckle me up in the obscenity thing, then!"

John turned to see Joshua pushing the system of straps up on the back of the Hill Bluffer, who was squatting down. Instinctively, he moved to give the little diplomat a hand.

"That's better!" growled Shaking Knees. "Don't blame you too much. But, you listen to me, pup! I happen to be your mother's uncle's first cousin, one generation up on you. And when I speak for a relative of mine of the second generation, he stays spoken for!"

"I'm doing it, ain't I?" flared the Bluffer. He wiggled his shoulder experimentally. "Don't feel too bad at that."

"You'll find it," grunted Joshua, buckling a final strap, "easier to carry than your regular pouch."

"Not the point!" growled the Bluffer. "A postman's got dignity. He just don't wear—" a snicker from the scar-nosed Dilbian cut through his speech. "Listen, you—Split Nose!"

"I'll take care of him." Shaking Knees rolled forward a couple of paces. "What's wrong with you, Split Nose?"

"Just passing by," rumbled Split Nose, hastily backing into the crowd as the Humrog village chief took a hand in the conversation.

"Well, then just pass on, friend. Pass on!" boomed Shaking Knees; and Split Nose trundled hastily off down the street with every indication that his hairy ears were burning.

While this was going on, John, at Joshua's urging had seated himself in the saddle to see how it would bear his weight. The straps creaked, but held comfortably. The Hill Bluffer looked back over his shoulder.

"You're light enough," he said. "How is it? All right up there?"

"Fine," said John.

"Then, so long everybody!" boomed the Hill Bluffer.

He rose to his feet in one easy movement. And before John had time to do more than grab at the straps of the harness to keep from falling off, and catch his breath, they were barrelling off down the main street at the swift pace of the Bluffer's ground-eating stride, on their way to the forest trail, the mountains beyond which rose that distant peak John had just been watching, and the elusive and inimical Streamside Terror.