Chapter 16

As he continued to watch through the tear in the curtain, undecided as to what he should do, Bill's hypnoed information came to mind with the advice that this was a net of the sort used by Dilbians to capture the wild, musk-oxlike herbivores that roamed the Dilbian forest. Anita apparently had been entertaining the others with some kind of a story. For, as Bill put his eye to the rent in the curtain, all the rest burst into laughter hardly less rough and boisterous than Bill had heard from their male counterparts at the eating hall.

"—Of course," said Anita when the laughter died down, apparently referring back to the story she had just been telling, "I wouldn't want Bone Breaker to lose his temper, and string me up by the heels."

"He'd better not try," said the fat matriarch meaningfully, looking around the circle. "Not while we're around. Eh, girls?"

There was a chorus of assent, grim-voiced enough to send a shiver down the back of Bill, watching at the window.

"My father—Bone Breaker's great-grandfather—" went on the speaker, looking triumphantly around the circle, "was a Grandfather of the Hunters Clan near Wildwood Peak," went on Bone Breaker's great-aunt. "And his father, before him was a Grandfather."

"What about Bone Breaker's own grandfather?" queried the smallest of the female Dilbians, sitting almost directly opposite Anita, who was at the left of Bone Breaker's great-aunt in the circle. "Was he a Grandfather too?"

"He was not, Noggle Head," replied Bone Breaker's great-aunt majestically. "He was a tanner. But a very excellent tanner, one of the toughest men who ever walked on two legs and a good deal sneakier than most, if I say so myself who was his blood sister."

"Indeed, No Rest," spoke up another comfortably upholstered female a quarter of the way around the circle from Anita, "we all know how you lean over backward, if anything, where your relatives are concerned."

Mutters of agreement, which Bill could not be sure were either real or feigned, arose from the rest of the group.

"But to get back to little Dirty Teeth here," said No Rest, turning to Anita. "The last thing we'd want to do is be without you and these interesting little tales you tell us about you Shorty females." The circle muttered agreement. "Some of the funniest things I've ever heard, and so—educational."

The last word was uttered with a particular emphasis that brought a hum of approval from the other females.

"Oh, well," said Anita modestly, her hands, like the hands of the females about her, busy at tying knots in the net as she spoke, "of course, as you know, under our Shorty agreement with the Fatties, I'm not supposed to mention anything that they wouldn't mention. But I don't see any harm in telling you these little stories—which, for all you know, I'm just making up out of thin air as I go."

"Oh, yes," said Word-and-a-Half, with a wink and a nod at the others. "Making them up! Of course you are!"

"Well," said Anita, "there was this time my grandmother wanted a certain piece of furniture—" Anita broke off. "A sort of a chair—we call it an overstuffed chair. It's like a grandfather's chair, like a bench with a backrest to it. Only besides that, it's padded so soft, not only on the seat but on the backrest where you lean back against it."

A buzz of interest and astonishment convulsed the group.

"A grandfather chair! And soft?" said Word-and-a-Half in a pleased, but shocked tone of voice. "How did she dare—!"

"Oh, we Shorty females have gotten all sorts of things," said Anita thoughtfully. "And, after all, why shouldn't a female have a grandfather chair? Doesn't she get tired, too?"

"Of course she does!" said No Rest sternly.

"Doesn't a female get old and wise, just like a grandfather?" said Anita.

"Absolutely!" trumpeted No Rest. The circle burst into a mutter of agreement.

"Go on, Dirty Teeth," urged No Rest, quieting the circle with a glance.

"Well, as I say," said Dirty Teeth, carefully watching the knot she was making as she spoke, "my grandmother wanted this chair, but she knew there wasn't much use in asking her man to make it for her. She knew he'd just give some reason for not making it. So what do you suppose she did?"

"Hit him on the head?" suggested Noggle Head hopefully.

"Of course not," said Anita. There was a chorus of sneers and sniffs from the rest. Noggle Head shrank back into silence. "She realized immediately this was an occasion that called for being sneaky. So one day when her husband was sitting dozing just after lunch, he heard chopping sounds out back. Well, the only ax around the house was his; so he got up and went out to see what was going on. And he saw my grandmother chopping up some lengths of wood.

" `What're you doing with an ax?' shouted my grandfather. `Women aren't supposed to use axes! That's my ax!'

" `I know,' answered my grandmother meekly, putting the ax down, `but I didn't want to bother you. There was this thing I wanted to build. So I just thought I'd try building it myself—'

" `You build it!' roared my grandfather. `You don't know how to use an ax! How would you know how to build anything?'

" `Well, I went and asked how to do it,' my grandmother answered quietly. `I didn't want to bother you, so I went down the road here to our next neighbor, and asked her husband—'

"At that my grandfather let out a bellow of rage.

" `Him? You asked him? That lard-head couldn't build anything more complicated than tying one stick to another!' he shouted. `How did he tell you how to build it? Just tell me—how did he say you ought to do it?'

" `Well . . . ' began my grandmother; and she went on to describe the thing she wanted to build, with its backrest and its padding and all that. But before she was halfway through, my grandfather had grabbed the ax out of her hand and was busy telling her how wrong her neighbor's husband had been in his direction, and he'd started to build the chair himself to prove it."

Anita paused, and sighed and looked up and around at her audience.

"Well, that was it," she said. "Inside of a week my grandmother had the padded chair with the backrest just the way she wanted it."

There was first a titter, then a roar of laughter that gradually built up until some of the females dropped the net, and showed signs of literally rolling about on the floor in an excess of enjoyment.

"I thought you'd like hearing about that," said Anita meekly, working away at the net when they were all silent once more. "—But I ought to tell you that that was only the beginning."

"The beginning?" echoed Noggle Head in awe from across the circle. "You mean afterward he figured out what she'd done to him and—"

"Not likely!" sniffed No Rest. "A man figure out how he'd been made a fool of? He wouldn't want to figure it out. Even if he came close to figuring it out, he'd back away from it for fear he would find out something he wouldn't like!" She turned to Anita. "Wasn't that the way it was, Dirty Teeth?"

"You're right as usual, No Rest," said Anita. "What I meant was, it was just the beginning of what my grandmother had set out to do. You see, this one chair was just the beginning. She wanted a whole house full of furniture like that."

Gasps and grunts of sincere astonishment arose from her audience. Even No Rest seemed a little shaken.

"A whole houseful, Dirty Teeth?" said the outlaw matriarch. "Wasn't that maybe going a little bit too far?"

"My grandmother didn't think so," replied Anita seriously. "After all, a man gets anything he wants, doesn't he? All a woman has is her house and her children, isn't that right? And the children grow up and leave fast enough, don't they?"

"How true," said No Rest, shaking her head sadly. "Yes, every word of it's true. Go on, Dirty Teeth, how did your grandmother get her whole house full of furniture?"

"You'll never guess," said Anita.

"She hit him on the head—" Noggle Head was beginning hopefully, when she was sneered into silence almost automatically by the rest of the audience.

"No," said Anita. "What my grandmother did was to take off one day and go down and visit her neighbor—the same one whose husband she had asked about building the piece of furniture she wanted—because she had really asked him, you see."

"Ah," said No Rest meaningfully, nodding her head as if she had known it all the time.

"And," went on Anita, "she quite naturally invited her neighbor up to her house for a bite to eat and to look at her new chair that her husband had built. Well, the neighbor came up and admired the chair very much, and went home again. And what do you think happened before a week was out?"

"That neighbor had her husband make her a chair just like it!" said Word-and-a-Half emphatically. "She told him about the chair, and he went up and saw it and got all fired up, and he came back down and built one just like it!"

"That's exactly right," said Anita quietly but approvingly. "And of course the neighbor invited my grandmother down to see her chair. So my grandmother went down and admired it very much."

"So they both had chairs," said Noggle Head. "That was the end, then?"

"No," said Anita. "That was still just the beginning. Because the next day my grandfather came in and saw that the chair he'd built my grandmother wasn't out in the center of the room where it used to be; it was tucked back in a corner where it was dark and pretty well hidden. Well, of course he asked why it was put someplace else. And my grandmother told him about the neighbor's chair. Which made him furious!"

"Why?" asked Noggle Head, blundering in where her older and wiser sisters hesitated to play the role of interlocutor.

"Why," said Anita sweetly, "you see my grandmother was such a modest, kindly, unassuming sort of a Shorty female that she wouldn't for any reason try to hold her head higher than her neighbor. So that when she told my grandfather about the chair her neighbor's husband had built for her neighbor, somehow the way she told it made the chair the neighbor had built seem a lot bigger and grander and softer and higher polished than the one my grandfather had built for my grandmother—almost as if the neighbor's husband had built a better chair than my grandfather had, just to spite my grandfather. So, as I say, my grandfather became furious and what do you suppose he did then?"

"Hit her on the head?" queried Noggle Head, but faintly and with a note of hope that was almost dead, in her voice.

"You think too much of hitting on the head, my girl!" snapped No Rest, in a tone of stern authority. "Only the most helpless sort of a woman tries to handle a husband that way. Little good ever comes of it. Most women don't hit their husbands hard enough, anyway, and it doesn't do anything but make the husbands mad!"

Noggle Head shrank up over her work again, once more properly crushed. No Rest turned back to Anita.

"Well, Dirty Teeth," said Bone Breaker's great-aunt, "go on. Tell us what happened next!"

"Nothing much," said Anita mildly. "Although, by the time it was ended, my grandmother had the best houseful of furniture you have ever seen. But the point is—she continued to put her good sneaky talents to work the rest of her married life with my grandfather. And by the time of his death, he had become one of the richest and best known male Shorties around."

The group considered this conclusion for a long moment in satisfied silence. Then No Rest sighed and placed her seal of approval upon the anecdote.

"There's always a woman behind a man who amounts to anything," she observed sagely.

Outside the window at which he was listening, Bill suddenly jerked his attention away from the aperture in the hide curtains, and strove suddenly with his light-dazzled eyes to pierce the night darkness surrounding him. There was no more time to waste. He had to get Anita outside and away from her net-weaving social circle before the rising moon exposed him to capture. He turned and peered in at the window again. Dilbians, he remembered, because of a difference from humans in jaw structure and lip muscles, could not whistle. Bill took a breath and whistled the first two lines of "When Johnny Comes Marching Home."

The results were far greater than anything he had expected. Anita's hands froze suddenly in their movement of making a tie in the net, and her face suddenly went pale in the lamplight. But the effect upon Anita was nothing compared to the effect that the sound of Bill's whistle had on the rest of the Dilbian social circle.

All the Dilbian females in the room checked in mid-motion and apparently stopped breathing. They sat like a tableau, listening. For a long moment the silence seemed to ring in Bill's ears. Then Noggle Head began to shiver violently.

"W-what k-kind of a critter's that . . . ?" she whimpered.

"Hush!" ordered No Rest in a harsh whisper, but one so full of terror that Bill himself chilled at the sound of it. "No critter—no bird—no wind in the trees ever made that sound!"

Noggle Head's shivers grew until she trembled uncontrollably. Others of the Dilbian females were beginning to cower and shake.

"A Cobbly!" hissed No Rest—and outside the building, Bill stiffened. For a Cobbly was a supernatural creature out of Dilbian legend—a sort of malicious but very powerful elf. "A Cobbly," repeated No Rest now. "And it's come for one us women, here!"

The eyes of all the Dilbian females turned slowly and grimly upon Noggle Head.

"You—and your talk about hitting husbands over the head!" whispered No Rest savagely. "You know what Cobblies do to undutiful females! Now one of them's heard you!"

Noggle Head was shivering so hard she was making the floor creak beneath her.

"What'll we do?" whispered one of the other females.

"There's just one chance!" ordered No Rest, still in a whisper. "Maybe we can still frighten the Cobbly off. I'll give the word, girls, and we'll all scream for help. We'll have men with torches running out of all the buildings before you can wink. I'll count one, two, three—and then we'll all yell. All right? Ready now; and take a deep breath!"