“Oh?” said John. “I mean—sure, I know that.”
“Does you now?” said the other. “Well, it ought to be something to watch. Good luck, Half-Pint, then; and you, too, road walker. Me for home and something to eat.”
He turned away; and as he did so, John got a sudden glimpse past him in between the trees at the two who waited back in the shadow. The Dilbian he did not identify; but the Hemnoid was a shorter, broader individual than Gulark-ay, one who evidently had his nose broken at one time or another. Then, the Hill Bluffer started up again with a jerk. John lost sight of the watchers.
The Tree Weeper had stepped in among the brush and trees on the far side of the road and was immediately out of sight. A few final sounds marked his going—it was surprising how quietly a Dilbian could move if he wanted to—and then they were out of hearing. The Hill Bluffer swung anew along his route without a word.
John was left sorting over what he had just discovered. He searched his Dilbian ‘memories’ for the proper remark to jolt the Hill Bluffer into conversation.
“Friend of yours?” he inquired.
The Hill Bluffer snorted so hard it jolted John in his saddle.
“Friend!” he exploded. “A backwoods tree-chopper? I’m a public official, Half-Pint. You remember that.”
“I just thought—” said John, peaceably. “He seemed to know a lot about me, and what was going on. I mean, about the Streamside Terror and the fact we’re after him. But nobody’s passed us up—”
“Nobody passes me up,” said the Bluffer, bristling apparently automatically.
“Then, how—”
“Somebody leaving just ahead of us must’ve told him!” growled the Bluffer.
But he fell unaccountably silent after that, so that John could get nothing further out of him. And the silence lasted until, finally, they pulled up in the late afternoon sunlight before the roadside inn at Brittle Rock, where they would stay the night.
CHAPTER 4
The first thing John did on being free once more of his saddle was to take a stroll about the area of the inn to stretch the cramps out of his legs. He was more than a little bit unsteady on his feet. Five hours on top of a hitherto unknown mount is not to be recommended even for a natural athlete. John’s thighs ached, and his knees had a tendency to give unexpectedly, as if he had spent the afternoon climbing ladders. However, as he walked, more and more of his natural resilience seemed to flow back into him.
Brittle Rock Inn and grounds constituted, literally, a wide spot in the mountain road which John and the Hill Bluffer had been traveling. On one side of the road was a rocky cliff face going back and up at something like an eighty degree angle. On the other side was a sort of flat, gravelly bulge of the kind that would make a scenic highway parking spot in the mountain highways back on Earth. On this bulge was situated the long, low shape of the inn, built of untrimmed logs. Behind the inn was a sort of trash and outhouse area stretching about twenty yards or so to the edge of a rather breathtaking dropoff into a canyon where a mountain river stampeded along, pell-mell, some five hundred feet below. A picturesque spot, for those in the mood for such.
John was not in the mood. As soon as his legs began to feel less like sections of rubber tire casings and more like honest flesh and bone, he walked up along the bulge toward the spot where it narrowed into a road, again. Here, in relative isolation, he called Joshua on his wrist phone.
The ambassador responded at once. He must, thought John, have been wearing a wrist phone himself.
“Hello? Hello!” said Joshua’s voice tinnily from the tiny speaker on John’s wrist phone. “John?”
“Yes, sir,” said John.
“Well, well! How are you?”
“Fine, thanks,” said John. “How are you?”
“Excellent. Excellent. But I suppose you had some reason for calling?”
“I’m at Brittle Rock,” said John. “We just got here. We’re going to stay the night. Can you talk freely?”
“Talk freely? Of course I can talk freely, why shouldn’t I?” The wrist phone broke off suddenly on a short barking laugh. “Oh, I see what you mean. No, I was just having a drink before dinner, here. Quite alone. What did you want to say?”
“Why, I thought you might have some instructions for me,” said John. “The Hill Bluffer ran off with me back at Humrog before you really had a chance to brief me. I thought you could tell me now.”
“Tell you?” said the phone. “But my dear boy! There’s nothing to tell. You’re to run down the Streamside Terror and bring back Miss Ty Lamorc. What else do you need to know?”
“But—” began John, and stopped. He did not know what he needed to know; he merely felt the need of a large area of necessary knowledge like a general ache or pain. At a loss to put this effectively into words, he was reduced to staring at his wrist phone.
“No sight of the Terror, yet?” inquired the phone, politely filling in the gap in the conversation.
“No.”
“Well, it’ll probably take several days to catch up with him. Just feel your way as you go. Things will undoubtedly work out. Follow your nose. Play it by ear. Otherwise, just relax and enjoy yourself. Beautiful scenery up there around Brittle Rock, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” said John numbly.
“Yes, I always thought so, myself. Well I’ll ring off, then. Call me any time you think you might need my help. Good-bye.”
The voice in the phone broke the connection with a click. John shut off the power source at his end. A little sourly, he headed back toward the inn. It was against all known rules of biology, but he wondered if Joshua might not be part Hemnoid, from one of the sides of his family.
The mountain twilight had been dwindling as he talked; but his eyes had automatically adjusted to the failing light so that it was not until he stepped in through the hide curtain that protected the front entrance to the inn, that he realized how dark outside it had become. The thick, flaring candles around the room, the smells and the noise struck him as he entered, leaving him for a moment half-stunned and blinded.
The ordinary Dilbian inn, his hypno “memories” told him, was divided into a common room, a dormitory, and a kitchen. He had just stepped into the common room of this one; and he found it a square crowded space, jammed with wooden benches and tables like picnic tables at which three or four Dilbians could sit at once. There were about twenty or so Dilbians seated around it, all of them drinking and most of them arguing. The Hill Bluffer, he discovered, was off to one side arguing with a female Dilbian wearing an apron.
“But can’t you tell me what to feed it?” the innkeeperess or whatever she was, was demanding, wringing her oversized, pawlike hands.
“Food!” roared the Hill Bluffer.
“But what kind of food? You haven’t had the children dragging in one pet after another, like I have. I know. You feed it the wrong thing, and it dies. You’re going to have to tell me exactly what—”
“How the unmentionable should I know exactly what?” bellowed the Bluffer, waving his arms furiously in the air and vastly entertaining those other guests of the inn who were nearby. “Give him something. Anything. See if he eats it. Some meat, some beer. Anything!”
“Talking about me?” inquired John.
They all looked down, discovering his presence for the first time. “Where’d he come from?” several of them could be heard inquiring audibly; although John had practically stepped on their toes on the way in.
“It talks!” gasped the inkeeperess.
“Didn’t I say he did?” demanded the Bluffer. “Half-Pint, tell her what you want to eat.”