9

PEDALING BRISKLY DOWN the road, Tenth Engineer Harrison reached the first street on either side of which were small detached houses with neat gardens back and front. A plump, amiable looking woman was trimming a hedge halfway along. He pulled up near to her, politely touched his cap.

“Scuse me, ma’am, I’m looking for the biggest man in town.”

She part-turned, gave him no more than a casual glance, pointed her clipping-shears southward. “That would be Jeff Baines. First on the right and second on the left. It’s a small delicatessen.”

“Thank you.”

He moved on, hearing the steady snip-snip resume behind him. First on the right. He curved around a long, low, rubber-balled truck parked by the corner. Second on the left. Three children pointed at him dramatically and yelled shrill warnings that his back wheel was going round. He found the delicatessen, propped a pedal on the curb, gave his machine a reassuring pat before he went inside and had a look at Jeff.

There was plenty to see. Jeff had four chins, a twenty-two inch neck, and a paunch that stuck out half a yard. An ordinary mortal could have got into either leg of his pants without bothering to take off his diving suit. Jeff Baines weighed at least three hundred pounds and undoubtedly was the biggest man in town.

“Wanting something?” inquired Jeff, lugging it up from far down.

“Not exactly.” Harrison eyed the succulent food display and decided that anything unsold by nightfall was not thrown out to the cats. “I’m looking for a certain person.”

“Are you now? Usually I avoid that sort—but every man to his taste.” He plucked a fat lip while he mused a moment, then sug-

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gested, “Try Sid Wilcock over on Dane Avenue. He’s the most certain man I know.”

“I didn’t mean it that way,” said Harrison. “I meant that I’m searching for somebody particular.”

“Then why the blazes didn’t you say so in the first place?” Jeff Baines worked over the new problem, finally offered, “Tod Green ought to fit that specification topnotch. You’ll find him in the shoe-shop at the end of this road. He’s particular enough for anyone. He’s downright finicky.”

“You persist in misunderstanding me,” Harrison told him and then went on to make it plainer. “I’m hunting a local bigwig so that I can invite him to a feed.”

Resting himself on a high stool which he overlapped by a foot all round, Jeff Baines eyed him peculiarly. “There’s something lopsided about this. Indeed, it seems crazy to me.”

“Why?”

“You’re going to use up a considerable slice of your life finding a fellow who wears a wig, especially if you insist that it’s got to be a big one. And then again, where’s the point of dumping an ob on him merely because he uses a bean-blanket?”

“Eh?”

“It’s plain horse-sense to plant an ob where it will cancel another one out, isn’t it?”

“Is it?” Harrison let his mouth hang open while his mind struggled with the strange problem of how to plant an ob.

“So you don’t know? You’re exposing your tonsils and looking dopey because you don’t know?” Jeff Baines massaged a couple of his chins and sighed. He pointed at the other’s middle. “Is that a uniform you’re wearing?”

“Yes.”

“A genuine, pukka, dyed-in-the-wool uniform?”

“Of course.”

“Ah,” said Jeff. “That’s where you’ve fooled me—coming here by yourself, on your ownsome. If there had been a gang of you dressed identically the same I’d have known at once that it was a uniform. That’s what uniform means: all alike. Doesn’t it?”

“I suppose so,” agreed Harrison, who had never given it a thought.

“So you’re from that ship. I ought to have guessed it in the begin-

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ning. I must be slow on the uptake today. But I didn’t expect to see one, just one, messing around on a pedal contraption. It goes to show, doesn’t it?”

“Yes,” said Harrison, glancing warily backward to make sure that no opportunist had swiped his bicycle while he was engaged in conversation. “It goes to show.”

“All right, let’s have it. Why have you come here and what do you want?”

“I’ve been trying to tell you all along. I’ve been sent to—”

“Been sent?” Jeff’s eyes widened a little. “Mean to say you actually let yourself be sent?”

Harrison gaped at him. “Of course. Why not?”

“Oh, I get it now,” said Jeff, his puzzled features suddenly clearing. “You confuse me with the queer way you talk. What you really mean is that you planted an ob on somebody, eh?”

Desperately, Harrison asked, “For heaven’s sake, what’s an ob?”

“He doesn’t know,” commented Jeff Baines, looking prayerfully at the ceiling. “He doesn’t even know that!” For a short while he contemplated the ignoramus with condescending pity before he said, “You hungry by any chance?”

“Going on that way.”

“All right. I could tell you what an ob is. But I’ll do something better—I’ll show you.” Heaving himself off the stool, he waddled to the door at the back. “God alone knows why I should bother to educate a uniform. It’s just that I’m bored. C’mon, follow me.”

Obediently, Harrison went behind the counter, paused to give his bicycle a reassuring nod, trailed the other through a passage and into a yard.

Jeff Baines pointed to a stack of cases. “Canned goods.” He indicated an adjacent store. “Bust them open and pile the stuff in there. Stack the empties outside. Please yourself whether you do it or not. That’s freedom, isn’t it?” He lumbered back into the shop.

Left to himself, Harrison scratched his large ears and thought it over. Somewhere, he felt, there was an obscure sort of confidence trick. A candidate named Harrison was being tempted to qualify for his sucker certificate. But if the play was beneficial to its organizer it might be worth learning because it could then be passed on to other victims. One must speculate in order to accumulate.

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So he dealt with the cases as required. It cost him twenty minutes of hard, slogging work after which he returned to the shop.

“Now,” explained Baines, “you’ve done something for me. That means you’ve planted an ob on me. I don’t thank you for what you have done. There’s no need to. All I have to do is get rid of the ob.”

“Ob?”

“Obligation. Why use a long word when a short one is plenty good enough? An obligation is an ob. I shift it this way: Seth Warburton, next door but one, has got half a dozen of my obs saddled on him. So I get rid of mine to you and relieve him of one of his to me by sending you around for a meal.” He scribbled briefly on a slip of paper. “Give him this.”

Harrison stared at it. In casual scrawl it read, “Feed this bum.”

Slightly dazed, he wandered out, stood by his bicycle and again examined the paper. Bum, it said. He could think of several on the ship who’d explode with wrath at the sight of that. Then his attention drifted to the second shop farther along. It had a window crammed with comestibles and two big words on the sign-strip above: Seth’s Gulper.

Coming to a decision which was encouraged by his insides, he walked into Seth’s holding the paper as if it were a death warrant. Beyond the door there was a long counter, some steam and a clatter of crockery. He chose a seat at a marble-topped table occupied by a gray-eyed brunette.

“Do you mind?” he inquired politely as he lowered himself into the chair.

“Do I mind what?” She examined his ears as if they were curious phenomena. “Babies, dogs, aged relatives or standing around in the rain?”

“Do you mind me sitting here?”

“I can please myself whether or not I endure it. That’s freedom, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” said Harrison, “sure it is.” He fidgeted in his seat, feeling that he’d made a move and promptly lost a pawn. He sought around for something else to say and at that point a thin-featured man in a white coat dumped before him a large plate loaded with fried chicken and three kinds of unfamiliar food.

The sight unnerved him. He couldn’t remember how many years

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it had been since he’d last seen fried chicken or how many months since he’d been offered vegetables in other than powder form.

“Well,” demanded the waiter, mistaking his fascinated reaction, “doesn’t it please you?”

“Yes.” Harrison handed over the slip of paper. “Sure it does. You bet it does.”

Glancing at the note, the other called to somebody semi-visible at one end of the counter. “You’ve wiped out one of Jeff’s.” He strolled away, tearing the slip into small pieces.

“That was a fast pass,” commented the brunette, nodding at the loaded plate. “He dumps a heavy feed-ob on you and you bounce it straight back, leaving all quits. I’ll have to wash dishes to get rid of mine. Or kill one Seth has got on somebody else.”

“I stacked a ton of canned stuff.” Harrison picked up knife and fork, his mouth watering. There were no knives and forks on the ship; they weren’t needed for powders and pills. “Don’t give you much choice here, do they? You take what you get.”

“Not if you’ve got an ob on Seth,” she informed. “When you have, he must work it off the best way he can. You should have put that to him instead of waiting for fate and complaining afterward.”

“But I’m not complaining.”

“It’s your right. That’s freedom, isn’t it?” She mused a bit, went on, “It isn’t often I’m an ob ahead of Seth but when I am I scream for iced pineapple and he comes running. When he s one ahead I do the running.” Her gray eyes narrowed in sudden suspicion. “You’re listening as if all this is new to you. Are you a stranger here?”

He nodded, his mouth full of chicken. A little later he managed, “I’m off that spaceship.”

“Good grief!” She froze considerably. “An Antigand! I wouldn’t have thought it. Why, you look almost human.”

“I’ve long taken pride in that similarity.” He chewed, swallowed, looked inquiringly around. The white-coated man came up. “What’s to drink?” Harrison asked.

“Dith, double-dith, shemak or coffee.”

“Coffee. Big and black.”

“Shemak is better,” advised the brunette as the waiter went to get it. “But why should I tell you?”

The coffee came in a pint-sized mug. Putting it down, the waiter

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said, “It’s your choice seeing that Seth is working one off. What’ll you have for after—apple pie, yimpik delice, grated tarfelsoufers or canimelon in syrup?”

“Iced pineapple.”

“Ugh!” The other blinked at him, gave the brunette an accusing stare, brought it and dumped it on the table.

Harrison pushed it across. “Take the plunge and enjoy yourself.”

“It’s yours.”

“Couldn’t eat it if I tried.” He dug up another load of chicken, stirred his coffee, began to feel at perfect peace with this world. “Got as much as I can manage right here.” He made an inviting motion with his fork. “Go on, be greedy and to heck with the waistline.”

“No.” Firmly she pushed the pineapple back at him. “If I ate my way through that I’d be saddled with an ob.”

“So what?”

“I don’t let strangers dump obs on me.”

“Quite right, too. Very proper of you,” approved Harrison. “Strangers often have strange notions.”

“You’ve been around,” she remarked. “Though I don’t know what’s strange about the notions.”

“Cynic!” The pineapple got another pass in her direction. “If you feel that I’ll be burdening you with an ob that you’ll have to pay off you can do it in seemly manner here and now. All I want is some information.”

“What is it?”

“Just tell me where I can put my finger on the ripest cheese in this locality.”

“That’s easy. Go round to Alec Peters’ place, middle of Tenth Street.” With that she helped herself to the dish.

“Thanks. I was beginning to think that everyone was dumb or afflicted with the funnies.”

He carried on with his own meal, finished it, lay back expansively. Unaccustomed nourishment persuaded his brain to work a bit more dexterously and after a minute an expression of chronic doubt clouded his face and he inquired, “Does this Peters run a cheese warehouse?”

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“Of course.” Emitting a sigh of pleasure, she pushed the empty dish aside.

He groaned low down, then informed, “I’m chasing the mayor.”

“What is that?”

“Number one. The big boss. The sheriff, pohanko, or whatever you call him.”

“I’m still no wiser,” she said, genuinely puzzled.

“The man who runs this town. The leading citizen.”

“Make it a little clearer,” she suggested, trying hard to help him. “Who or what should this citizen be leading?”

“You and Seth and everyone else.” He waved a hand to encompass the entire burg.

Frowning, she asked, “Leading us where?”

“Wherever you’re going.”

She gave up, beaten, and signed the white-coated waiter to come to her assistance.

“Matt, are we going any place?”

“How should I know?”

“Well, ask Seth then.”

He went away, came back with, “Seth says he’s going home at six o’clock and what’s it to you?”

“Anyone leading him there?” she inquired.

“Don’t be daft,” Matt advised. “He knows his own way and he’s cold sober.”

Harrison chipped in. “Look, I don’t see why there should be so much difficulty about all this. Just tell me where I can find an official, any official—the police chief, the city treasurer, the mortuary keeper or even a mere justice of the peace.”

“What’s an official?” asked Matt, openly baffled.

“What’s a justice of the peace?” added the brunette.

His mind side-slipped and did a couple of spins. It took him quite a time to reassemble his thoughts and try another tack.

“Let us suppose,” he said to Matt, “that this joint catches fire. What would you do?”

“Fan it to keep it going,” retorted Matt, fed up and making no effort to conceal the fact. He returned to the counter with the air of one not inclined to waste words on a congenital halfwit.

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“He’d put it out,” informed the brunette. “What else would you expect him to do?”

“Suppose that he couldn’t?”

“He’d call in others to help him.”

“And would they?”

“Of course.” She surveyed him with a touch of pity. “They’d jump at the chance. They’d be planting a nice, big crop of strong obs, wouldn’t they?”

“Yes, I guess so.” He began to feel completely stalled but made a last desperate shot at the problem. “What if the fire were much too big and fast for passers-by to tackle?”

“Seth would summon the fire squad.”

Defeat receded, triumph replaced it.

“Ah, so there is a fire squad? That’s what I meant by something official. That’s what I’ve been after all along. Quick, tell me where I can find its headquarters.”

“Bottom end of Twelfth Avenue. You can’t miss it.”

“Thanks!” He got up in a hurry. “See you again sometime.” Going out fast, he grabbed his bicycle, shoved off from the curb.

The fire depot proved to be a big place containing four telescopic ladders, a spray tower and two multiple pumps, all motorized on the usual array of fat rubber balls. Inside, Harrison came face to face with a small man wearing immense plus fours.

“Looking for someone?” asked the small man.

“Yes, the fire chief.”

“Who’s he?”

By now prepared for this sort of thing, Harrison spoke as one would to a child. “See here, Mister, this is a fire-fighting outfit. Somebody bosses it. Somebody organizes the whole affair, fills forms, presses buttons, shouts orders, recommends promotions, kicks the shiftless, grabs all the credit, transfers all the blame and generally lords it around. He’s the most important man in the bunch and everybody knows it.” His forefinger tapped imperatively on the other’s chest. “And he is the fellow I’m going to talk to if it’s the last thing I do.”

“Nobody is more important than anyone else. How can he be? I think you’re crazy.”

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“You’re welcome to think what you please but I am telling you that—”

A shrill bell clamored, cutting off his sentence. Twenty men appeared as if by magic, boarded a ladder and a multiple pump, roared into the street.

Squat, basin-shaped helmets formed the only article of attire that the crew had in common. Apart from these, they plumbed the depths of sartorial iniquity. The man with the plus fours, having gained the pump in one bold leap, was whirled out standing between a fat fire-fighter wearing a rainbow-hued cummerbund and a thin one sporting a canary yellow kilt. A latecomer decorated with ear-rings resembling little bells hotly pursued the pump, snatched at its tailboard, missed, sourly watched the outfit disappear from sight. He mooched back, swinging his helmet from one hand.

“Just my lousy luck,” he griped at the gaping Harrison. “The sweetest, loveliest call of the year. A big brewery. The sooner they get there the bigger the obs they’ll plant on it.” Licking his lips at the thought, he sat on a coil of canvas hose. “Oh, well, maybe it’s for the good of my health.”

“Tell me something,” Harrison probed. “How do you make a living?”

“There’s a dopey question. You can see for yourself. I’m on the fire squad.”

“I know. What I mean is, who pays you?”

“Pays me?”

“Gives you money for all this.”

“You talk mighty peculiar. What is money?”

Harrison rubbed his cranium to assist the circulation of blood through the brain. What is money? Yeouw! He tried another angle.

“If your wife needs a new coat, how does she get it?”

“Goes to a store that’s carrying fire-obs, of course. She knocks off one or two for them.”

“But what if no clothing store has had a fire?”

“You’re pretty ignorant, brother. Where in this world do you come from?” His ear-bells swung as he studied the other a moment. “A1most all stores have fire-obs. If they’ve any sense they allocate so many per month by way of insurance. They look ahead, just in case, see? They plant obs on us in advance so that when we rush to the

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rescue we’ve got to wipe out a dollop of theirs before we can plant any new ones of our own. That stops us overdoing it and making hogs of ourselves. Sort of cuts down the stores’ liabilities. It makes sense, doesn’t it?”

“Maybe, but—”

“I get it now,” interrupted the other, narrowing his eyes. “You’re from that spaceship. You’re a lousy Antigand.”

“I’m a Terran,” informed Harrison with suitable dignity. “What’s more, all the folk who originally settled this planet were Terrans.”

“Are you trying to teach me history?” He gave a harsh laugh. “You’re wrong. There was a five percent strain of Martian.”

“Even the Martians are descended from Terran stock,” Harrison riposted.

“So what? That was a devil of a long time ago. Things change, in case you haven’t heard. We’ve no Terrans or Martians on this world—except for your crowd which has barged in unasked. We’re all Gands here. And you nosey-pokes are Antigands.”

“We aren’t anti-anything that I know of. Where did you get that idea?”

“Myob!” said the other, suddenly determined to refuse further argument. He tossed his helmet to one side, spat on the floor.

“Eh?”

“You heard me. Go trundle your scooter.”

Harrison gave up and did just that. Gloomily he cycled back to the ship.

His Excellency pinned him with an authoritative optic. “So you’re back at last, Mister. How many are coming and at what time?”

“None, sir,” said Harrison, feeling kind of feeble.

“None?” August eyebrows lifted querulously. “Do you mean that they have refused my invitation?”

“No, sir.”

“Come out with it, Mister,” urged the Ambassador. “Don’t stand there gawping as if your push-and-puff contraption has just given birth to a roller-skate. You say they have not refused my invitation— but nobody is coming. What am I supposed to make of that?”

“I didn’t ask anyone.”

“So you didn’t ask?” Turning, he said to Grayder, Shelton and the others, “He didn’t ask!” His attention came back to Harrison. “You

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forgot all about it, I presume? Intoxicated by liberty and the power of man over machine, you flashed around the town at nothing less than eighteen miles per hour, creating consternation among the citizenry, tossing their traffic laws into the ash-can, putting children and elderly persons in peril of their lives, not even troubling to ring your bell or—”

“I don’t have a bell, sir,” stated Harrison, inwardly resenting this list of enormities. “I have a whistle operated by the rotation of the rear wheel.”

“There!” said the Ambassador like one abandoning all hope. He sat down and smacked his forehead several times. “I am reliably informed that somebody is going to get a bubble-pipe.” He pointed at Harrison. “And now I learn that he possesses a whistle.”

“I designed it myself, sir,” Harrison said helpfully.

“I’m sure you did. I can imagine it. I would expect it of you.” The Ambassador took a fresh grip on himself. “See here, Mister, I would like you to tell me something in strict confidence, just between the two of us.” Leaning forward, he put the question in a whisper that ricochetted seven times around the room. “Why didn’t you ask anyone?”

“I couldn’t find out who to ask, sir. I did my level best but nobody seemed to know what I was talking about. Or they pretended they didn’t.”

“Humph!” The Ambassador glanced out of the nearest port, consulted his watch. “The light is fading already. Night will be upon us pretty soon. It’s too late for further action.” An annoyed grunt. “Another day gone to pot. Two days here and we’re still fiddling around.” Then he added with grim resignation, “All right, Mister. We’re wasting time anyway so we might as well hear your story in full. Tell us what happened in complete detail. That way, we may be able to dig some sense out of it.”

Harrison told it, finishing, “It seemed to me, sir, that I could carry on for weeks trying to argue it out with people whose brains are oriented east-west while mine points north-south. One can talk with them from now to doomsday, become really friendly and enjoy the conversation—without either side fully understanding what the other is saying.”

“So it appears,” said the Ambassador dryly. He turned to Grayder.

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“You’ve been around a lot and seen many new worlds in your time. What do you make of all this twaddle, if anything?”

“It’s a problem in semantics,” diagnosed Grayder, who had been compelled by circumstances to study that subject. “One comes across it on many worlds that have been long out of touch, though usually it hasn’t developed far enough to become tough and unsolvable. For instance, the first fellow we met on Basileus said, cordially and in what he imagined to be perfect Terran, “Joy you unboot now!’

“Yes? And what did that mean?”

“Come inside, put on your slippers and be happy. In other words, welcome. It wasn’t difficult to understand, Your Excellency, especially when one expects that sort of thing.” Grayder cast a thoughtful glance at Harrison and continued, “Here, the problem seems to have developed to a greater extreme. The language remains fluent and retains enough surface similarities to conceal underlying changes, but basic meanings have been altered, concepts discarded and new ones substituted, thought-forms re-angled and, of course, there is the inevitable impact of locally created slang.”

“Such as “Myob,”“ offered the Ambassador. “Now there is a queer word without recognizable Earth-root. I don’t like the sarcastic way they use it. They make it sound downright insulting. Obviously it has some kind of connection with these obs they keep throwing around. It means “my obligation’ or something like that, but the real significance eludes me.”

“There is no connection, sir,” put in Harrison. He hesitated, saw that they were waiting for him to go on. “On my way back I met the lady who had directed me to Baines’ place. She asked whether I’d found him and I told her I had. We chatted a short while. I asked her what “Myob’ meant. She said it was initial-slang.” He stopped and fidgeted uneasily.

“Keep going,” urged the Ambassador. “After some of the sulphurous comments I’ve heard emerging from the Blieder-room ventilation-shaft, I can stomach anything. What does it mean?”

“M-y-o-b,” informed Harrison, slightly embarrassed. “Mind-your-own-business.”

“Ah!” The other gained color. “So that is what they’ve been telling me all along?”

“I’m afraid so, sir.”

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“Evidently they’ve a lot to learn.” His neck swelled with undiplomatic fury, he smacked a fat hand upon the table and declaimed loudly, “And they’re going to learn it!”

“Yes, sir,” agreed Harrison, becoming more uneasy and anxious to get out. “May I go now and tend to my bicycle?”

“Yes, you may,” said the Ambassador in the same noisy tones. He performed a couple of meaningless gestures, turned a florid face on Captain Grayder. “Bicycle! Does anyone on this vessel own a slingshot?”

“I doubt it, Your Excellency, but I will make inquiries, if you wish.”

“Don’t be an imbecile,” ordered the Ambassador. “We have our full quota of hollow-heads already.”

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Chapter 8 | TOC | Chapter 10