“That would be too bad, little lady. But,” said Tark-ay almost apologetically, “you ought to understand that I would still have to stop you. It would be my duty. And you should also understand that in the regrettable instance of the Terror and I coming to blows, I would have no doubt of emerging the winner.”
“You! I can just see you beating up the Terror!” said Boy Is She Built and laughed nastily. “He’s twice as big as you are.”
“Not twice. Somewhat taller, it’s true. But our weights aren’t so far apart as most of your people might think. And besides, it would make no real difference—even if Streamside was, in truth, twice my size.”
“Why not, smarty?” said Boy Is She Built.
“Because of the high skills and arts of unarmed combat, developed on my world, in which I am an expert. Now, suppose Streamside should rush at me with intent to do me harm.”
“He’d swarm all over you.”
“Not at all.” Tark-ay got to his feet in one quick motion. “He comes rushing at me. I meet him, so—!” Suddenly the short Hemnoid twisted, half bent over, and lashed out with a foot. “Then, before he can recover, I am all over him!” Tark-ay straightened up and bounded forward. His open hands made slashing cutting motions in the air.
“You aren’t going to stop the Terror by slapping him,” said Boy Is She Built. “Oh yes, I can just see you slapping my Terror!”
“Slapping?” said Tark-ay. There was a fair-sized length of log near the fire. Tark-ay picked it up and leaned it against a close tree. His open hand cut at it, and the log broke loudly into two sections. “You will be happier, little lady,” said Tark-ay sitting down once more by the fire, “if your Terror never has anything to do with me in an unfriendly way.”
He bent to put one of the broken log-pieces on the fire. And John, watching, saw a peculiar glitter in the eyes of Boy Is She Built, as she gazed at the Hemnoid. One furry hand of the young Dilbian female reached for a large rock nearby, hesitated, and then returned to her lap. It occurred to John that Tark-ay might be an expert in the high skills and arts of unarmed combat developed on his world; but he was pretty much of a numbskull when it came to female psychology. Boy Is She Built had been going to a good deal of trouble to dispose of John because she thought of him as a threat to Streamside. And now Tark-ay had just incautiously revealed that he was also a threat, not only to the Terror’s honor, but to his very life and limb.
Of course, a loyal female should perhaps have laughed the matter off, scorning to doubt her husband-to-be. But Boy Is She Built, while loyal enough to suit almost anybody, appeared to have a strong practical streak in her nature as well.
John licked his lips, which were very dry.
“I could use a drink of water,” he said out loud.
Boy Is She Built looked up the slope at him.
“Hmph!” said Boy Is She Built. She did not stir.
“Are we barbarians?” cried Tark-ay, bouncing to his feet. He went to a canteen hanging from a nearby tree, brought it to John, unscrewed the top, peeled off a sterile cup, filled it and held it to John’s lips while he drank.
“How about loosening these ropes?” asked John, after he had gulped a couple of cups of the water.
“I’m sorry. Very sorry,” said Tark-ay and returned to the fireside.
They all sat in silence, for some little while during which the sky turned pink and the local sun shoved his upper rim into sight behind the surrounding trees. Tark-ay got to his feet and began to bounce up and down, clapping his hands over his head. John stared. So did Boy Is She Built.
“What’s wrong?” cried Boy Is She Built.
“Nothing, little lady,” replied Tark-ay, “merely my exercises which I do periodically during the morning hours.”
“Well, I thought you’d eaten something!” said Boy Is She Built. She relaxed again. “Or sat on a splinter. Or something.”
Tark-ay abandoned his initial exercise. He began one in which he leaped up from the ground, clicked his heels, clasped his hands, and winked. As soon as he hit the ground, he bounced up and went through the whole process all over again.
“That’s the most ridiculous thing I ever saw,” said Boy Is She Built. “What do you do something like that for?”
“It is part of my training, little lady,” gasped Tark-ay. “A true master of the skills and arts does it once each time before he says anything. It builds character.”
“Well, I think it’s utterly ridiculous,” said Boy Is She Built. She lay down and curled up on her side. “Call me when the Beer-Guts Bouncer gets here. I’m going to take a little nap.”
She closed her eyes. Tark-ay continued bouncing. He ran through several more exercises before he ran down. Then, wiping his forehead, he waddled over and sat down by John.
“She is a trial, that little lady,” he said, nodding at Boy Is She Built.
“Oh?” said John, wondering if this was leading up to something.
“Yes. Irrepressible youth. The eternal juvenile young female whose world is completely oriented to her own parochial ego. Anything that does not fit her own image of the universe is dismissed as unworthy of consideration.”
“Is that so?” said John.
“Only too truly so. You come from a civilized race the way I do. You understand me. She is driving me crazy.”
“How?”
“She’s just so—impossible. She knows nothing. And she thinks she knows everything. I was trying to explain a chance remark I made the other day about psychological pressure. Now, you know as well as I do she knows nothing about psychology.”
“I wouldn’t think so,” said John.
“How could she? On this barbaric world? I started to explain what psychology was, to explain my remark. Well, first she got angry and said she knew as much about it as I did.”
John was getting interested in spite of the ropes and the situation.
“What did you say to that?” he asked.
“I pointed out that this couldn’t be true, since there were no colleges upon her world where she could have learned it.”
“That stopped her?”
“No,” said Tark-ay sadly. “She said, there was, too. She had studied all about psychology at the college at Blunder Bush.”
“Blunder Bush?”
“There’s no such place,” said Tark-ay, “of course. I told her this, and she claimed that I just didn’t know about it. That it was highly secret. It must have been plain to her that I was seeing through all this, so she went on, piling her fictions higher. Her whole family were college graduates, she told me. She had been offered a teaching position herself. She wound up telling me that the Streamside Terror was actually an instructor at his college; and all his running around and fighting was just so people wouldn’t suspect his true abilities. Well, well—”
Tark-ay sighed heavily, got up, and went back to the fire.
John frowned. He had been expecting the Hemnoid to get even more confidential, and had even hoped he could find some lever in the conversation which he might turn to his own advantage in getting out of this fix. But Tark-ay had broken things off too abruptly.
John could have sworn Tark-ay had settled down beside him with intentions for an extended conversation. What had made the short Hemnoid change his mind?
Then John heard the distant crackling of footfalls among the dry leaves under the trees a little distance off. They were approaching behind John, and he found he was too tightly trussed to turn around. At the fire, Tark-ay busied himself breaking up small pieces of wood and adding them to the blaze. He did not look up.