That did it.
Now what was he supposed to think, wondered John bleakly. One Man—friend or foe? If the giant Dilbian was a close friend of Joshua’s—and if he was not a close friend of Joshua’s, what was the three-dimensional of him doing on Joshua’s desk?
John shoved a hand distractedly through his ruffled mass of red hair. As a boy he had eagerly read not only The Three Musketeers, and Twenty Years After, but everything dealing with Dumas’ famous musketeers. Then he had envied D’Artagnan and his three sworded friends for dashing about risking their lives by engaging in high intrigue. Now, fifteen years later and spang in the middle of a similar adventure, he realized they all must have been nuts, to say the least. Like the hired hand in the joke who could plow four hundred acres with ease but had a hard time sorting potatoes, it wasn’t the risks in adventure that got you down. It was the decisions.
And this business about the broken staff. Why give the pieces to John? A souvenir, One Man had said; and possibly this was true from the Dilbian point of view, but it was hardly the kind of present for a Shorty headed for a battle a l’outrance with a Terror.
John reached down and hefted up the two pieces for another look. It was still impossible, he thought once more, as he examined the broken ends. Physical strength along just wasn’t enough.
He checked suddenly and bent to examine the break more closely. There seemed to be a faint stain covering most of the interior area of each broken end. It radiated out around a faint line that went from the edge into the center. In the dim light he bent close over the line, but could make nothing out. He rubbed the tip of his finger over it; it was a faint groove. He put the two ends back together and the grooves matched.
It occurred to John that it would not be too impossible to drill a tiny hole in the center of even a fairly large staff. Then if some corrosive liquid was poured down this hole at intervals over a period of time, it could well result in a definite weakness in the wood at that point. In fact, with experimentation, it might be possible to control the degree of weakness, so that only someone with unusual strength to begin with…
Hmm, thought John. He began to consider One Man in a new light.
Now, if I had brains as well as brawn, thought John, in a physically oriented society—and if I was alone in the world, so that these two things were all that I had to go on, what would I do?
Play down the brains and play up the brawn, of course, he answered himself. I might even build myself into a living legend with supernormal attributes, if I was clever; and so give myself protection in my old age when my strength would begin to dwindle.
Query: If I was this sort of individual, would I enter into any associations or alliances with any other individuals or groups?
Answer: No, I wouldn’t dare. Too close an association with anyone else would destroy the illusion of supernormality which was my best protection.
Ergo, thought John, One Man could not be on Joshua’s side. Or on the Terror’s. In which case, it was just barely possible to persuade him to be on John’s.
John put on his shoes and got quietly to his feet. It would not be a bad idea, he thought, to hunt up One Man right now and see if they could not have a further, and more private, chat about things.
He went softly down the long length of the dormitory and out through the hide curtain into the common room.
There were few Dilbians left at the tables; and One Man’s chair was empty. He had not taken one of the branch-mounds in the dormitory; so either he had separate quarters elsewhere, or perhaps he did not sleep here at the inn. John stood a moment, irresolutely. The few Dilbians in the room were ignoring him, by reason of that particular blindness to someone his size that he had encountered before. They simply were not expecting to see anyone built that close to the ground. In a literal sense, they were all looking over his head.
It occurred to John that One Man might still be around, but have stepped outside, or retired to one of the smaller houses or whatever they were behind the inn. Quietly—after his experience at Brittle Rock Inn he had no wish to call attention to himself—he crossed the room, pushed the heavy hide curtain aside and slipped out.
Outside, he paused to accustom his eyes to the night, moving a little way off from the inn to get away from the door and window light. Slowly, the starlit scene took shape around him, solidifying out of obscurity. The wide face of the river ran silver-dark in the faint light, and the distant woods loomed like the tidal wave of some black sea. The clearing where the Inn and the outbuildings behind it stood, lay pooled in silence.
He turned and found his way cautiously around the main building to its back. Unlike the Brittle Rock establishment, the backyard area here, sloping gradually to the river, was clear of rubbish; and the outbuildings themselves were neatly in good repair. Between them, when the way was close, the shadows were deeper and John had almost to feel his way.
It occurred to him then—and he wondered why he had not thought of it before—that a good share of these were probably private living quarters, not only for One Man, but for the rest of his staff, as well as any female visitors. Females seemed to have little to do with Dilbian inns, except in a service capacity. Now, as he groped among the close dark shapes of these buildings he found himself wondering how he could check on whoever might be in them, without raising some kind of alarm.
Just then he caught sight of a thin blade of yellow light between two hide curtains of a building around the corner from one he had just passed. He turned and went toward the light; but as he passed by a little patch of deeper shadow a hand reached out and took him by the arms.
“Do you want to get killed?” hissed a voice.
And of course, it spoke Basic. For both the hand and voice were human.
CHAPTER 11
The grip on John’s arm drew him away, deeper into the shadow and around behind a building that blocked him off from the window light. They came on a door of this building and John felt himself led through its hide curtain. In the utter blackness of the interior, the hand left his arm. John stopped, instinctively; completely lost in the leather-smelling obscurity. Then there was a scratch, a sputter, and a candle burst into light only a few feet from him, blinding him.
John blinked helplessly for several seconds against the sudden illumination. Gradually he became able to see again, and when he did, he found himself looking down—for the first time in two days—into the face of one of the prettiest young women he had seen in a long time.
She was perhaps a foot shorter than he was, but at first glance looked taller by reason of her slimness and the tailored coveralls she wore. To John’s Dilbian-accustomed eyes, she looked tiny, not to say fragile. Her chestnut hair swept in two wide wings back on each side of her head. Her eyes were green-blue above marked cheekbones that gave her a sculptured look. Her nose was thin, her lips firm rather than full, and her small chin had a determined shape.
John blinked again.
“Who—?” he managed, after a minute.
“I’m Ty Lamorc,” she said. “Keep your voice down!”
“Ty Lamorc?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure?” stammered John. “I mean, you—”
“Who were you expecting to run into away out here in the center of—oh, I know!” she glared at him. “It’s that Greasy Face name the Dilbians gave me. You were expecting some sort of witch.”
“Certainly not,” said John.
“Well, for your information, they just happened to see me putting on makeup one day.”
“Oh.”