Mal opened his mouth and shut it again.
“Well?” growled the Bluffer underneath him. “Speak up, Law-Twister.” Suddenly, there was a dangerous feeling of tension in the air. Mal swallowed. How, he thought, would a Dilbian answer a question like that?”
Any way but with a straight answer, came back the reply from the hypnotrained section of his mind.
“Well—er,” said Mal, “how can I tell you how tough I am? I mean, what’s tough by the standards of you real men? As far as we Shorties go, it might be one thing. For you real men, it might be something else completely. It’s too bad I didn’t ever know this Half-Pint Posted, or Pick-and-Shovel, or else I could kind of measure myself by them for you. But I never heard of them until now.”
“But you think they just might be tougher than you, though—the Half-pint and Pick-and-Shovel?” demanded One Punch.
“Oh, sure,” said Mal. “They could both be ten times as tough as I am. And then, again— Well, not for me to say.”
There was a moment’s silence from both the Dilbians, then the Bluffer broke it with a snort of admiration.
“Hor!” he chortled admiringly to One Punch. “I guess you can see now how the Law-Twister here got his name. Slippery? Slippery’s not the word for this Shorty.”
But One Punch shook his head.
“Slippery’s one thing,” he said. “But law-twisting’s another. Here he says he doesn’t even know about the stone of the Mighty Grappler. How’s he going to go about twisting laws if he doesn’t know about the laws in the first place?”
“You could tell me about the stone,” suggested Malcolm.
“Mighty Grappler put it there, Law-Twister,” said the Bluffer. “Set it up to keep peace in Clan Water Gap.”
“Better let me tell him, Postman,” interrupted One Punch. “After all, he ought to get it straight from a born Water Gapper. Look at the stone there, Law-Twister. You see those two ends of iron sticking out of it?”
Mal looked. Sure enough, there were two lengths of rusty metal protruding from opposite sides of the boulder, which was about three feet in width in the middle.
“I see them,” he answered.
“Mighty Grappler was just maybe the biggest and strongest real man who ever lived—”
The Hill Bluffer coughed.
“One Man, now…” he murmured.
“I’m not denying One Man’s something like a couple of big men in one skin, Postman,” said One Punch. “But the stories about the Mighty Grappler are hard to beat. He was a stonemason, Law-Twister; and he founded Clan Water Gap, with himself, his relatives, and his descendants. Now, as long as he was alive, there was no trouble. He was Clan Water Gap’s first Grandfather, and even when he was a hundred and ten nobody wanted to argue with him. But he worried about keeping things orderly after he was gone—”
“Fell off a cliff at a hundred and fourteen,” put in the Bluffer. “Broke his neck. Otherwise, no telling how long he’d have lived.”
“Excuse me, Postman,” said One Punch. “But I’m telling this, not you. The point is, Law-Twister, he was worried like I say about keeping the clan orderly. So he took a stone he was working on one day—the stone there, that no one but him could come near lifting—and hammered an iron rod through it to make a handhold on each side, like you see. Then he picked the stone up, carried it here, and set it down; and he made a law. The rules he’d made earlier for Clan Water Gappers were to stand as laws, themselves—as long as that stone stayed where it was. But if anyone ever came along who could pick it up all by himself and carry it as much as ten steps, then that was a sign it was time the laws should change.”
Mal stared at the boulder. His hypnotraining had informed him that while Dilbians would go to any lengths to twist the truth to their own advantage, the one thing they would not stand for, in themselves or others, was an out-and-out lie. Accordingly, One Punch would probably be telling the truth about this Mighty Grappler ancestor of his. On the other hand, a chunk of granite that size must weigh at least a ton—maybe a ton and a half. Not even an outsize Dilbian could be imagined carrying something like that for ten paces. There were natural flesh-and-blood limits, even for these giant natives—or were there?
“Did anybody ever try lifting it, after that?” Mal asked.
“Hor!” snorted the Bluffer.
“Now, Law-Twister,” said One Punch, almost reproachfully, “any Clan Water Gapper’s got too much sense to make a fool of himself trying to do something only the Mighty Grappler had a chance of doing. That stone’s never been touched from that day to this—and that’s the way it should be.”
“I suppose so,” said Mal.
The Bluffer snorted again, in surprise. One Punch stared.
“You giving up—just like that, Law-Twister?” demanded the Bluffer.
“What? I don’t understand,” said Mal, confused. “We were just talking about the stone—”
“But you said you supposed that’s the way it should be,” said the Bluffer, outraged. “The stone there, and the laws just the way Mighty Grappler laid them down. What kind of a law-twister are you, anyway?”
“But…” Mal was still confused. “What’s the Mighty Grappler and his stone got to do with my getting back these three Shorties that Gentle Maiden says she adopted?”
“Why, that’s one of Mighty Grappler’s laws—one of the ones he made and backed up with that stone!” said One Punch. “It was Mighty Grappler said that any orphans running around loose could be adopted by any single woman of the Clan, who could then name herself a protector to take care of them and her! Now, that’s Clan law.”
“But—” began Mal again. He had not expected to have to start arguing his case this soon. But it seemed there was no choice. “It’s Clan law if you say so; and I don’t have any quarrel with it. But these people Gentle Maiden’s adopted aren’t orphans. They’re Shorties. That’s why she’s going to have to let them go.”
“So that’s the way you twist it,” said One Punch, almost in a tone of satisfaction. “Figured you’d come up with something like that. So, you say they’re not orphans?”
“Of course, that’s what I say!” said Mal.
“Figured as much. Naturally, Gentle says they are.”
“Well, I’ll just have to make her understand—”
“Not her,” interrupted the Bluffer.
“Naturally not her,” said One Punch. “If she says they’re orphans, then it’s her protector you’ve got to straighten things out with. Gentle says ‘orphans,’ so Iron Bender’s going to be saying ‘orphans,’ too. You and Iron Bender got to get together.”
“And none of that sissy lowland stuff with swords and shields,” put in the Hill Bluffer. “Just honest, man-to-man, teeth, claws, and muscle. You don’t have to worry about Iron Bender going in for any of that modern stuff, Law-Twister.”
“Oh?” said Mal, staring.
“Thought I’d tell you right now,” said the Bluffer. “Ease your mind, in case you were wondering.”
“I wasn’t, actually,” said Mal, numbly, still trying to make his mind believe what his ears seemed to be hearing.