The Right to Arm Bears by Gordon R. Dickson Page A

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