"As you said," Bbulas murmured, contemptuously coiling one antenna at
Skkiru, "the lots chose well and if you touch me, Skkiru, we shall have
another drawing for beggar and you will be made a metal-worker."
"But I can't work metal!"
"Then that will make it much worse for you than for the other
outcasts," Bbulas said smugly, "because you will be a pariah without a
trade."
"Speaking of pariahs, that reminds me, Skkiru, before I forget, I'd
better give you back your grimpatch--" Larhgan handed the glittering
bauble to him--"and you give me mine. Since we can't be betrothed any
longer, you might want to give yours to some nice beggar girl."
"I don't want to give my grimpatch to some nice beggar girl!" Skkiru
yelled, twirling madly in the air.
"As for me," she sighed, standing soulfully on her head, "I do not
think I shall ever marry. I shall make the religious life my career.
Are there going to be any saints in your mythos, Bbulas?"
"Even if there will be," Bbulas said, "you certainly won't qualify if
you keep putting yourself into a position which not only represents a
trait wholly out of keeping with the new culture, but is most unseemly
with the high priestess's robes."
Larhgan ignored his unfeeling observations. "I shall set myself apart
from mundane affairs," she vowed, "and I shall pretend to be happy,
even though my heart will be breaking."
It was only at that moment that Skkiru realized just how outrageous the
whole thing really was. There must be another solution to the planet's
problem. "Listen--" he began, but just then excited noises filtered
down from overhead. It was too late.
"Earth ship in view!" a squeaky voice called through the intercom.
"Everybody topside and don't forget your shoes."
Except the beggar. Beggars went barefoot. Beggars suffered. Bbulas had
made him beggar purposely, and the lots were a lot of slibwash.
"Hurry up, Skkiru."
* * * * *
Bbulas slid the ornate headdress over his antennae, which, already
gilded and jeweled, at once seemed to become a part of it. He looked
pretty damn silly, Skkiru thought, at the same time conscious of his
own appearance--which was, although picturesque enough to delight
romantic Terrestrial hearts, sufficiently wretched to charm the most
hardened sadist.
"Hurry up, Skkiru," Bbulas said. "They mustn't suspect the existence of
the city underground or we're finished before we've started."
"For my part, I wish we'd never started," Skkiru grumbled. "What was
wrong with our old culture, anyway?"
That was intended as a rhetorical question, but Bbulas answered it
anyway. He always answered questions; it had never seemed to penetrate
his mind that school-days were long since over.
"I've told you a thousand times that our old culture was too much like
the Terrans' own to be of interest to them," he said, with affected
weariness. "After all, most civilized societies are basically similar;
it is only primitive societies that differ sharply, one from the
other--and we have to be different to attract Earthmen. They're pretty
choosy. You've got to give them what they want, and that's what they
want. Now take up your post on the edge of the field, try to look
hungry, and remember this isn't for you or for me, but for Snaddra."
"For Snaddra," Larhgan said, placing her hand over her anterior heart
in a gesture which, though devout on Earth--or so the fictapes seemed
to indicate--was obscene on Snaddra, owing to the fact that certain
essential organs were located in different areas in the Snaddrath than
in the corresponding Terrestrial life-form. Already the Terrestrial
influence was corrupting her, Skkiru thought mournfully. She had been
such a nice girl, too.
"We may never meet on equal terms again, Skkiru," she told him, with a
long, soulful glance that made his hearts sink down to his quivering
toes, "but I promise you there will never be anyone else for me--and
I hope that knowledge will inspire you to complete cooperation with
Bbulas."
"If that doesn't," Bbulas said, "I have other methods of inspiration."
"All right," Skkiru answered sulkily. "I'll go to the edge of the
field, and I'll speak broken Inter-galactic, and I'll forsake my normal
habits and customs, and I'll even _beg_. But I don't have to like doing
it, and I don't intend to like doing it."
All three of Larhgan's eyes fuzzed with emotion. "I'm proud of you,
Skkiru," she said brokenly.
Bbulas sniffed. The three of them floated up to ground level in a
triple silence.
* * * * *
"Alms, for the love of Ipsnadd," Skkiru chanted, as the two Terrans
descended from the ship and plowed their way through the mud to meet a
procession of young Snaddrath dressed in elaborate ceremonial costumes,
and singing a popular ballad--to which less ribald, as well as less
inspiring, words than the originals had been fitted by Bbulas, just
in case, by some extremely remote chance, the Terrans had acquired a
smattering of Snadd somewhere. Since neither party was accustomed to
navigating mud, their progress was almost imperceptible.
"Alms, for the love of Ipsnadd," chanted Skkiru the beggar.
His teeth chattered as he spoke, for the rags he wore had been
custom-weatherbeaten for him by the planet's best tailor--now a pariah,
of course, because Snadd tailors were, naturally, metal-workers--and
the wind and the rain were joyously making their way through the
demolished wires. Never before had Skkiru been on the surface of the
planet, except to pass over, and he had actually touched it only when
taking off and landing. The Snaddrath had no means of land transport,
having previously found it unnecessary--but now both air-cars and
self-levitation were on the prohibited list as being insufficiently
primitive.
The outside was no place for a civilized human being, particularly
in the wet season or--more properly speaking on Snaddra--the wetter
season. Skkiru's feet were soaked with mud; not that the light sandals
worn by the members of the procession appeared to be doing them much
good, either. It gave him a kind of melancholy pleasure to see that the
privileged ones were likewise trying to repress shivers. Though their
costumes were rich, they were also scanty, particularly in the case
of the females, for Earthmen had been reported by tape and tale to be
humanoid.
As the mud clutched his toes, Skkiru remembered an idea he had once
gotten from an old sporting fictape of Terrestrial origin and had
always planned to experiment with, but had never gotten around to--the
weather had always been so weathery, there were so many other more
comfortable sports, Larhgan had wanted him to spend more of his leisure
hours with her, and so on. However, he still had the equipment, which
he'd salvaged from a wrecked air-car, in his apartment--and it was the
matter of a moment to run down, while Bbulas was looking the other way,
and get it.
Bbulas couldn't really object, Skkiru stilled the nagging quiver in
his toe, because what could be more primitive than any form of land
transport? And even though it took time to get the things, they worked
so well that, in spite of the procession's head start, he was at the
Earth ship long before the official greeters had reached it.
* * * * *
The newcomers were indeed humanoid, he saw. Only the peculiarly
pasty color of their skins and their embarrassing lack of antennae
distinguished them visibly from the Snaddrath. They were dressed much
as the Snaddrath had been before they had adopted primitive garb.
In fact, the Terrestrials were quite decent-looking life-forms,
entirely different from the foppish monsters Skkiru had somehow
expected to represent the cultural ruling race. Of course, he had
frequently seen pictures of them, but everyone knew how easily those
could be retouched. Why, it was the Terrestrials themselves, he had
always understood, who had invented the art of retouching--thus proving
beyond a doubt that they had something to hide.
"Look, Raoul," the older of the two Earthmen said in Terran--which
the Snaddrath were not, according to the master plan, supposed to
understand, but which most of them did, for it was the fashionable
third language on most of the outer planets. "A beggar. Haven't seen
one since some other chaps and I were doing a spot of field work on
that little planet in the Arcturus system--what was its name? Glotch,
that's it. Very short study, it turned out to be. Couldn't get more
than a pamphlet out of it, as we were unable to stay long enough to
amass enough material for a really definitive work. The natives tried
to eat us, so we had to leave in somewhat of a hurry."
"Oh, they were cannibals?" the other Earthman asked, so respectfully
that it was easy to deduce he was the subordinate of the two. "How
horrible!"
"No, not at all," the other assured him. "They weren't human--another
species entirely--so you could hardly call it cannibalism. In fact, it
was quite all right from the ethical standpoint, but abstract moral
considerations seemed less important to us than self-preservation
just then. Decided that, in this case, it would be best to let the
missionaries get first crack at them. Soften them up, you know."
"And the missionaries--did they soften them up, Cyril?"
"They softened up the missionaries, I believe." Cyril laughed. "Ah,
well, it's all in the day's work."
"I hope these creatures are not man-eaters," Raoul commented, with
a polite smile at Cyril and an apprehensive glance at the oncoming
procession--_creatures indeed_! Skkiru thought, with a mental sniff.
"We have come such a long and expensive way to study them that it would
be indeed a pity if we also were forced to depart in haste. Especially
since this is my first field trip and I would like to make good at it."
"Oh, you will, my boy, you will." Cyril clapped the younger man on the
shoulder. "I have every confidence in your ability."
Either he was stupid, Skkiru thought, or he was lying, in spite of
Bbulas' asseverations that untruth was unknown to Terrestrials--which
had always seemed highly improbable, anyway. How could any intelligent
life-form possibly stick to the truth all the time? It wasn't human; it
wasn't even humanoid; it wasn't even polite.
"The natives certainly appear to be human enough," Raoul added, with
an appreciative glance at the females, who had been selected for the
processional honor with a view to reported Terrestrial tastes. "Some
slight differences, of course--but, if two eyes are beautiful, three
eyes can be fifty per cent lovelier, and chartreuse has always been my
favorite color."
_If they stand out here in the cold much longer, they are going to turn
bright yellow._ His own skin, Skkiru knew, had faded from its normal
healthy emerald to a sickly celadon.
* * * * *
Cyril frowned and his companion's smile vanished, as if the contortion
of his superior's face had activated a circuit somewhere. _Maybe the
little one's a robot!_ However, it couldn't be--a robot would be better
constructed and less interested in females than Raoul.
"Remember," Cyril said sternly, "we must not establish undue rapport
with the native females. It tends to detract from true objectivity."
"Yes, Cyril," Raoul said meekly.
Cyril assumed a more cheerful aspect "I should like to give this chap
something for old times' sake. What do you suppose is the medium of
exchange here?"
_Money_, Skkiru said to himself, but he didn't dare contribute this
piece of information, helpful though it would be.
"How should I know?" Raoul shrugged.
"Empathize. Get in there, old chap, and start batting."
"Why not give him a bar of chocolate, then?" Raoul suggested grumpily.
"The language of the stomach, like the language of love, is said to be
a universal one."
"Splendid idea! I always knew you had it in you, Raoul!"
Skkiru accepted the candy with suitable--and entirely genuine--murmurs
of gratitude. Chocolate was found only in the most expensive of the
planet's delicacy shops--and now neither delicacy shops nor chocolate
were to be found, so, if Bbulas thought he was going to save the gift
to contribute it later to the Treasury, the "high priest" was off his
rocker.
To make sure there would be no subsequent dispute about possession,
Skkiru ate the candy then and there. Chocolate increased the body's
resistance to weather, and never before had he had to endure so much
weather all at once.
On Earth, he had heard, where people lived exposed to weather, they
often sickened of it and passed on--which helped to solve the problem
of birth control on so vulgarly fecund a planet. Snaddra, alas, needed
no such measures, for its population--like its natural resources--was
dwindling rapidly. Still, Skkiru thought, as he moodily munched on the
chocolate, it would have been better to flicker out on their own than
to descend to a subterfuge like this for nothing more than survival.
* * * * *
Being a beggar, Skkiru discovered, did give him certain small,
momentary advantages over those who had been alloted higher ranks.
For one thing, it was quite in character for him to tread curiously
upon the strangers' heels all the way to the temple--a ramshackle
affair, but then it had been run up in only three days--where the
official reception was to be held. The principal difficulty was that,
because of his equipment, he had a little trouble keeping himself from
overshooting the strangers. And though Bbulas might frown menacingly at
him--and not only for his forwardness--that was in character on both
sides, too.
Nonetheless, Skkiru could not reconcile himself to his beggarhood, no
matter how much he tried to comfort himself by thinking at least he
wasn't a pariah like the unfortunate metal-workers who had to stand
segregated from the rest by a chain of their own devising--a poetic
thought, that was, but well in keeping with his beggarhood. Beggars
were often poets, he believed, and poets almost always beggars. Since
metal-working was the chief industry of Snaddra, this had provided the
planet automatically with a large lowest caste. Bbulas had taken the
easy way out.
Skkiru swallowed the last of the chocolate and regarded the "high
priest" with a simple-minded mendicant's grin. However, there were
volcanic passions within him that surged up from his toes when, as the
wind and rain whipped through his scanty coverings, he remembered the
snug underskirts Bbulas was wearing beneath his warm gown. They were
metal, but they were solid. All the garments visible or potentially
visible were of woven metal, because, although there was cloth on the
planet, it was not politic for the Earthmen to discover how heavily the
Snaddrath depended upon imports.
As the Earthmen reached the temple, Larhgan now appeared to join Bbulas
at the head of the long flight of stairs that led to it. Although
Skkiru had seen her in her priestly apparel before, it had not made
the emotional impression upon him then that it did now, when, standing
there, clad in beauty, dignity and warm clothes, she bade the newcomers
welcome in several thousand words not too well chosen for her by
Bbulas--who fancied himself a speech-writer as well as a speech-maker,
for there was no end to the man's conceit.
The difference between her magnificent garments and his own miserable
rags had their full impact upon Skkiru at this moment. He saw the gulf
that had been dug between them and, for the first time in his short
life, he felt the tormenting pangs of caste distinction. She looked so
lovely and so remote.
"... and so you are most welcome to Snaddra, men of Earth," she was
saying in her melodious voice. "Our resources may be small but our
hearts are large, and what little we have, we offer with humility and
with love. We hope that you will enjoy as long and as happy a stay here
as you did on Nemeth...."
Cyril looked at Raoul, who, however, seemed too absorbed in
contemplating Larhgan's apparently universal charms to pay much
attention to the expression on his companion's face.
"... and that you will carry our affection back to all the peoples of
the Galaxy."
* * * * *
She had finished. And now Cyril cleared his throat. "Dear friends, we
were honored by your gracious invitation to visit this fair planet, and
we are honored now by the cordial reception you have given to us."
The crowd yoomped politely. After a slight start, Cyril went on,
apparently deciding that applause was all that had been intended.
"We feel quite sure that we are going to derive both pleasure and
profit from our stay here, and we promise to make our intensive
analysis of your culture as painless as possible. We wish only to study
your society, not to tamper with it in any way."
_Ha, ha_, Skkiru said to himself. _Ha, ha, ha!_
"But why is it," Raoul whispered in Terran as he glanced around out of
the corners of his eyes, "that only the beggar wears mudshoes?"
"Shhh," Cyril hissed back. "We'll find out later, when we've
established rapport. Don't be so impatient!"
Bbulas gave a sickly smile. Skkiru could almost find it in his hearts
to feel sorry for the man.
"We have prepared our best hut for you, noble sirs," Bbulas said with
great self-control, "and, by happy chance, this very evening a small
but unusually interesting ceremony will be held outside the temple. We
hope you will be able to attend. It is to be a rain dance."
"Rain dance!" Raoul pulled his macintosh together more tightly at the
throat. "But why do you want rain? My faith, not only does it rain now,
but the planet seems to be a veritable sea of mud. Not, of course," he
added hurriedly as Cyril's reproachful eye caught his, "that it is not
attractive mud. Finest mud I have ever seen. Such texture, such color,
such aroma!"
Cyril nodded three times and gave an appreciative sniff.
"But," Raoul went on, "one can have too much of even such a good thing
as mud...."
The smile did not leave Bbulas' smooth face. "Yes, of course, honorable
Terrestrials. That is why we are holding this ceremony. It is not a
dance to bring on rain. It is a dance to _stop_ rain."
He was pretty quick on the uptake, Skkiru had to concede. However,
that was not enough. The man had no genuine organizational ability.
In the time he'd had in which to plan and carry out a scheme for
the improvement of Snaddra, surely he could have done better than
this high-school theocracy. For one thing, he could have apportioned
the various roles so that each person would be making a definite
contribution to the society, instead of creating some positions plums,
like the priesthood, and others prunes, like the beggarship.
What kind of life was that for an active, ambitious young man, standing
around begging? And, moreover, from whom was Skkiru going to beg?
Only the Earthmen, for the Snaddrath, no matter how much they threw
themselves into the spirit of their roles, could not be so carried
away that they would give handouts to a young man whom they had been
accustomed to see basking in the bosom of luxury.
* * * * *
Unfortunately, the fees that he'd received in the past had not enabled
him both to live well and to save, and now that his fortunes had been
so drastically reduced, he seemed in a fair way of starving to death.
It gave him a gentle, moody pleasure to envisage his own funeral,
although, at the same time, he realized that Bbulas would probably have
to arrange some sort of pension for him; he could not expect Skkiru's
patriotism to extend to abnormal limits. A man might be willing to die
for his planet in many ways--but wantonly starving to death as the
result of a primitive affectation was hardly one of them.
All the same, Skkiru reflected as he watched the visitors being led off
to the native hut prepared for them, how ignominious it would be for
one of the brightest young architects on the planet to have to subsist
miserably on the dole just because the world had gone aboveground. The
capital had risen to the surface and the other cities would soon follow
suit. Meanwhile, a careful system of tabus had been designed to keep
the Earthmen from discovering the existence of those other cities.
He could, of course, emigrate to another part of the planet, to one of
them, and stave off his doom for a while--but that would not be playing
the game. Besides, in such a case, he wouldn't be able to see Larhgan.
As if all this weren't bad enough, he had been done an injury which
struck directly at his professional pride. He hadn't even been allowed
to help in planning the huts. Bbulas and some workmen had done all that
themselves with the aid of some antique blueprints that had been put
out centuries before by a Terrestrial magazine and had been acquired
from a rare tape-and-book dealer on Gambrell, for, Skkiru thought, far
too high a price. He could have designed them himself just as badly and
much more cheaply.
It wasn't that Skkiru didn't understand well enough that Snaddra had
been forced into making such a drastic change in its way of life.
What resources it once possessed had been depleted and--aside from
minerals--they had never been very extensive to begin with. All
life-forms on the planet were on the point of extinction, save fish and
rice--the only vegetable that would grow on Snaddra, and originally a
Terran import at that. So food and fiber had to be brought from the
other planets, at fabulous expense, for Snaddra was not on any of
the direct trade routes and was too unattractive to lure the tourist
business.
Something definitely had to be done, if it were not to decay
altogether. And that was where the Planetary Dilettante came in.
* * * * *
The traditional office of Planetary Dilettante was a civil-service
job, awarded by competitive examination whenever it fell vacant to
the person who scored highest in intelligence, character and general
gloonatz. However, the tests were inadequate when it came to measuring
sense of proportion, adaptiveness and charm--and there, Skkiru felt,
was where the essential flaw lay. After all, no really effective test
would have let a person like Bbulas come out on top.
The winner was sent to Gambrell, the nearest planet with a Terran
League University, to be given a thorough Terran-type education. No
individual on Snaddra could afford such schooling, no matter how
great his personal fortune, because the transportation costs were so
immense that only a government could afford them. That was the reason
why only one person in each generation could be chosen to go abroad at
the planet's expense and acquire enough finish to cover the rest of the
population.
The Dilettante's official function had always been, in theory, to serve
the planet when an emergency came--and this, old Luccar, the former
President, had decided, when he and the Parliament had awakened to the
fact that Snaddra was falling into ruin, was an emergency. So he had,
after considerable soul-searching, called upon Bbulas to plan a method
of saving Snaddra--and Bbulas, happy to be in the limelight at last,
had come up with this program.
It was not one Skkiru himself would have chosen. It was not one, he
felt, that any reasonable person would have chosen. Nevertheless, the
Bbulas Plan had been adopted by a majority vote of the Snaddrath,
largely because no one had come up with a feasible alternative and,
as a patriotic citizen, Skkiru would abide by it. He would accept the
status of beggar; it was his duty to do so. Moreover, as in the case of
the planet, there was no choice.
But all was not necessarily lost, he told himself. Had he not, in his
anthropological viewings--though Bbulas might have been the only one
privileged to go on ethnological field trips to other planets, he was
not the only one who could use a library--seen accounts of societies
where beggarhood could be a rewarding and even responsible station in
life? There was no reason why, within the framework of the primitive
society Bbulas had created to allure Terran anthropologists, Skkiru
should not make something of himself and show that a beggar was worthy
of the high priestess's hand--which would be entirely in the Terran
primitive tradition of romance.
"Skkiru!" Bbulas was screaming, as he spun, now that the Terrans were
out of ear- and eye-shot "Skkiru, you idiot, listen to me! What are
those ridiculous things you are wearing on your silly feet?"
Skkiru protruded all of his eyes in innocent surprise. "Just some
old pontoons I took from a wrecked air-car once. I have a habit of
collecting junk and I thought--"
Bbulas twirled madly in the air. "You are not supposed to think. Leave
all the thinking to me!"
"Yes, Bbulas," Skkiru said meekly.
* * * * *
He would have put up an argument, but he had bigger plans in mind and
he didn't want them impeded in any way.
"But they seem like an excellent idea," Luccar suggested. "Primitive
and yet convenient."
Bbulas slowed down and gulped. After all, in spite of the fact that
he was now only chief yam-stealer--being prevented from practicing
his profession simply because there were no yams on the planet and no
one was quite certain what they were--Luccar had once been elected
President by a large popular majority. And a large popular majority is
decidedly a force to be reckoned with anywhere in the Galaxy.
"Any deviations arouse comment," Bbulas explained tightly.
"But if we all--"
"There would not be enough pontoons to go around, even if we stripped
all the air-cars."
"I see," Luccar said thoughtfully. "We couldn't make--?"
"No time!" Bbulas snapped. "All right, Skkiru--get those things off
your feet!"
"Will do," Skkiru agreed. It would be decidedly unwise to put up an
argument now. So he'd get his feet muddy; it was all part of the higher
good.
Later, as soon as the rain-dance rehearsals were under way, he slipped
away. No part had been assigned to him anyhow, except that of
onlooker, and he thought he could manage that without practice. He went
down to the library, where, since all the attendants were aboveground,
he could browse in the stacks to his hearts' content, without having
to fill out numerous forms and be shoved about like a plagiarist or
something.
If the Earthmen were interested in really primitive institutions, he
thought, they should have a look at the city library. The filing system
was really medieval. However, the library would, of course, be tabu for
them, along with the rest of the city, which was not supposed to exist.
As far as the Terrans were to know, the group of lumpy stone huts
(they should, properly speaking, have been wood, but wood was too rare
and expensive) was the capital of Snaddra. It would be the capital
of Snaddra for the Snaddrath, too, except during the hours of rest,
when they would be permitted to retire unobtrusively to their cozy
well-drained quarters beneath the mud. Life was going to be hard from
now on--unless the Bbulas Plan moved faster than Bbulas himself had
anticipated. And that would never happen without implementation from
without. From without Bbulas, that was.
Skkiru got to work on the tex-tapes and soon decided upon his area of
operations. Bbulas had concentrated so much effort on the ethos of the
planet that he had devoted insufficient detail to the mythos. That,
therefore, was the field in which Skkiru felt he must concentrate. And
concentrate he did.
* * * * *
The rain dance, which had been elaborately staged by the planet's
finest choreographers, came to a smashing climax, after which there was
a handsome display of fireworks.
"But it is still raining," Raoul protested.
"Did you expect the rain to stop?" Bbulas asked, his eyes bulging
with involuntary surprise. "I mean--" he said, hastily retracting
them--"well, it doesn't always stop right away. The gods may not have
been feeling sufficiently propitious."
"Thought you had only one god, old boy," Cyril observed, after giving
his associate a searching glance. "Chap by the name of Whipsnade or
some such."
"Ipsnadd. He is our chief deity. But we have a whole pantheon. Major
gods and minor gods. Heroes and demigods and nature spirits--"
"And do not forget the prophets," Larhgan put in helpfully. As former
Chief Beauty of the planet (an elective civil-service office), she was
not accustomed to being left out of things. "We have many prophets. And
saints. I myself am studying to be a--"
Bbulas glared at her. Though her antennae quivered sulkily, she stopped
and said no more--for the moment, anyway.
"Sounds like quite a complex civilization," Cyril commented.
"No, no!" Bbulas protested in alarm. "We are a simple primitive people
without technological pretensions."
"You don't need any," Cyril assured him. "Not when you have fireworks
that function in the rain."
Inside himself, Skkiru guffawed.
"We are a simple people," Bbulas repeated helplessly. "A very simple
and very primitive people."
"Somehow," Raoul said, "I feel you may have a quality that civilization
may have lost." The light in his eyes was recognizable to any even
remotely humanoid species as a mystic glow.
But Cyril seemed well in command of the situation. "Come now, Raoul,"
he laughed, clapping his young colleague on the shoulder, "don't fall
into the Rousseau trap--noble savage and all that sort of rot!"
"But that beggar!" Raoul insisted. "Trite, certainly, but incredible
nonetheless! Before, one only read of such things--"
A glazed look came into two of Bbulas' eyes, while the third closed
despairingly. "What beggar? What beggar? Tell me--I must know ... as if
I didn't really," he muttered in Snaddrath.
"The only beggar we've seen on this planet so far. That one."
* * * * *
With a wave of his hand, Cyril indicated the modest form of Skkiru,
attempting to conceal himself behind Luccar's portly person.
"I realize it was only illusion, but, as my associate says, a
remarkably good one. And," Cyril added, "an even more remarkable
example of cultural diffusion."
"What do you mean? Please, gracious and lovable Terrans, deign to tell
me what you mean. What did that insufferable beggar do?"
In spite of himself, Skkiru's knees flickered. _Fool_, he told himself,
_you knew it was bound to come out sooner or later. Take courage in
your own convictions; be convinced by your own courage. All he really
can do is yell._
"He did the Indian rope trick for us," Raoul explained. "And very well,
too. Very well indeed."
"The--Indian rope trick!" Bbulas spluttered. "Why, the--" And then he
recollected his religious vocation, as well as his supposed ignorance.
"Would you be so kind as to tell me what the Indian rope trick is, good
sirs?"
"Well, he did it with a chain, actually."
"We have no ropes on this planet," Larhgan contributed. "We are
backward."
"And a small boy went up and disappeared," Raoul finished.
Suddenly forgetting the stiff-upper-lip training for which the planet
had gone to such great expense, Bbulas spun around and around in a
fit of bad temper, to Skkiru's great glee. Fortunately, the Dilettante
retained enough self-control to keep his feet on the ground--perhaps
remembering that to fail to do so would compound Skkiru's crime.
"Dervishism!" Raoul exclaimed, his eyes incandescent with interest. He
pulled out his notebook. After biting his lip thoughtfully, Cyril did
the same.
"Just like Skkiru!" Bbulas gasped as he spun slowly to a stop. "He is a
disruptive cultural mechanism. Leading children astray!"
"But not at all," Raoul pointed out politely. "The boy came back
unharmed and in the best of spirits."
"So far as we could see," Cyril amended. "Of course there may have been
psychic damage."
"Which boy was it?" Bbulas demanded.
* * * * *
Cyril pointed to the urchin in question--a rather well-known juvenile
delinquent, though the Terrestrials, of course, couldn't know that.
"He is a member of my own clan," Bbulas said. "He will be thrashed
soundly."
"But why punish him?" Raoul asked. "What harm has he done?"
"Shhh," Cyril warned him. "You may be touching on a tabu. What's the
matter with you, anyway? One would think you had forgotten every lesson
you ever learned."
"Oh, I am truly sorry!" Raoul's face became a pleasing shade of pink,
which made him look much more human. Maybe it was the wrong color, but
at least it was a color. "Please to accept my apologies, reverend sir."
"It's quite all right." Bbulas reverted to graciousness. "The boy
should not have associated with a beggar--especially that one. If he
did not hold his post by time-hallowed tradition, we would--dispose of
him. He has always been a trouble-maker."
"But I do not understand," Raoul persisted. Skkiru could not understand
why Cyril did not stop him again. "The beggar did the trick very
effectively. I know it was all illusion, but I should like to know just
how he created such an illusion, and, moreover, how the Indian rope
trick got all the way to--"
"It was all done by magic," Bbulas said firmly. "Magic outside the
temple is not encouraged, because it is black magic, and so it is
wrong. The magic of the priests is white magic, and so it is right. Put
that down in your little book."