“Well, I’ll be –” said Taine. “So you can really talk to him.”
“I told you that I could,” stormed Beasly. “I told you that I could talk to Towser, too, but you thought that I was crazy.”
“Telepathy!” said Taine. And it was worse than ever now. Not only had the ratlike things known all the rest of it, but they’d known of Beasly, too.
“What was that you said, Hiram?”
“Never mind,” said Taine. “Tell that friend of yours to tell them I am glad to meet them and what can I do for them?”
He stood uncomfortably and stared at the three and he saw that their vests had many pockets and that the pockets were all crammed, probably with their equivalent of tobacco and handkerchiefs and pocket knives and such.
“They say,” said Beasly, “that they want to dicker.”
“Dicker?”
“Sure, Hiram. You know, trade.”
Beasly chuckled thinly. “Imagine them laying themselves open to a Yankee trader. That’s what Henry says you are. He says you can skin a man on the slickest –”
“Leave Henry out of this,” snapped Taine. “Let’s leave Henry out of something.”
He sat down on the ground and the three sat down to face him.
“Ask them what they have in mind to trade.”
“Ideas,” Beasly said.
“Ideas! That’s a crazy thing –”
And then he saw it wasn’t.
Of all the commodities that might be exchanged by an alien people, ideas would be the most valuable and the easiest to handle. They’d take no cargo room and they’d upset no economies – not immediately, that is – and they’d make a bigger contribution to the welfare of the cultures than trade in actual goods.
“Ask them,” said Taine, “what they’ll take for the idea back of those saddles they are riding.”
“They say, what have you to offer?”
And that was the stumper. That was the one that would be hard to answer.
Automobiles and trucks, the internal gas engine – well, probably not. Because they already had the saddles. Earth was out-of-date in transportation from the viewpoint of these people.
Housing architecture – no, that was hardly an idea and, anyhow, there was that other house, so they knew of houses.
Cloth? No, they had cloth.
Paint, he thought. Maybe paint was it.
“See if they are interested in paint,” Taine told Beasly.
“They say, what is it? Please explain yourself.”
“O.K., then. Let’s see. It’s a protective device to be spread over almost any surface. Easily packaged and easily applied. Protects against weather and corrosion. It’s decorative, too. Comes in all sorts of colors. And it’s cheap to make.”
“They shrug in their mind,” said Beasly. “They’re just slightly interested. But they will listen more. Go ahead and tell them.”
And that was more like it, thought Taine.
That was the kind of language that he could understand.
He settled himself more firmly on the ground and bent forward slightly, flicking his eyes across the three dead-pan, ebony faces, trying to make out what they might be thinking.
There was no making out. Those were three of the deadest pans he had ever seen.
It was all familiar. It made him feel at home. He was in his element.
And in the three across from him, he felt somehow subconsciously, he had the best dickering opposition he had ever met. And that made him feel good too.
“Tell them,” he said, “that I’m not quite sure. I may have spoken up too hastily. Paint, after all, is a mighty valuable idea.”
“They say, just as a favor to them, not that they’re really interested, would you tell them a little more.”
Got them hooked, Taine told himself. If he could only play it right –
He settled down to dickering in earnest.
Hours later Henry Horton showed up. He was accompanied by a very urbane gentleman, who was faultlessly turned out and who carried beneath his arm an impressive attaché case.
Henry and the man stopped on the steps in sheer astonishment.
Taine was squatted on the ground with a length of board and he was daubing paint on it while the aliens watched. From the daubs here and there upon their anatomies, it was plain to see the aliens had been doing some daubing of their own. Spread all over the ground were other lengths of half-painted boards and a couple of dozen old cans of paint.
Taine looked up and saw Henry and the man.
“I was hoping,” he said, “that someone would show up.”
“Hiram,” said Henry, with more importance than usual, “may I present Mr. Lancaster. He is a special representative of the United Nations.”
“I’m glad to meet you, sir,” said Taine. “I wonder if you would –”
“Mr. Lancaster,” Henry explained grandly, “was having some slight difficulty getting through the lines outside, so I volunteered my services. I’ve already explained to him our joint interest in this matter.”
“It was very kind of Mr. Horton,” Lancaster said. “There was this stupid sergeant –”
“It’s all in knowing,” Henry said, “how to handle people.”
The remark, Taine noticed, was not appreciated by the man from the U.N.
“May I inquire, Mr. Taine,” asked Lancaster, “exactly what you’re doing?”
“I’m dickering,” said Taine.
“Dickering. What a quaint way of expressing –”
“An old Yankee word,” said Henry quickly, “with certain connotations of its own. When you trade with someone you are exchanging goods, but if you’re dickering with him you’re out to get his hide.”
“Interesting,” said Lancaster. “And I suppose you’re out to skin these gentlemen in the sky-blue vests –”
“Hiram,” said Henry, proudly, “is the sharpest dickerer in these parts. He runs an antique business and he has to dicker hard –”
“And may I ask,” said Lancaster, ignoring Henry finally, “what you might be doing with these cans of paint? Are these gentlemen potential customers for paint or –”
Taine threw down the board and rose angrily to his feet.
“If you’d both shut up!” he shouted. “I’ve been trying to say something ever since you got here and I can’t get in a word. And I tell you, it’s important –”
“Hiram!” Henry exclaimed in horror.
“It’s quite all right,” said the U.N. man. “We have been jabbering. And now, Mr. Taine?”
“I’m backed into a corner,” Taine told him, “and I need some help. I’ve sold these fellows on the idea of paint, but I don’t know a thing about it – the principle back of it or how it’s made or what goes into it or –”
“But, Mr. Taine, if you’re selling them the paint, what difference does it make –”
“I’m not selling them the paint,” yelled Taine. “Can’t you understand that? They don’t want the paint. They want the idea of paint, the principle of paint. It’s something that they never thought of and they’re interested. I offered them the paint idea for the idea of their saddles and I’ve almost got it –”
“Saddles? You mean those things over there, hanging in the air?”
“That is right. Beasly, would you ask one of our friends to demonstrate a saddle?”
“You bet I will,” said Beasly.
“What,” demanded Henry, “has Beasly got to do with this?”
“Beasly is an interpreter. I guess you’d call him a telepath. You remember how he always claimed he could talk with Towser?”
“Beasly was always claiming things.”