boucher book oct28.pdf - Index of

194 Anthony Boucher
a small group of people just off the sidewalk and noticed that its core was a third
Bokor. He pulled Martha off the moving path and drew near the group.
Bokor was not being a Stapper this time. He was in ordinary iridescent robes.
“I tell you I know,” he was insisting vigorously. “I am … I be Slanduch from State
of South America, and I can tell you deviltry they be practicing there. Armament
factories twice size of laboratories of Cosmos. They plan to destroy us; I know.”
A Stapper shoved his way past Brent. “Here now!” he growled. “What bees going
on here?”
Bokor hesitated. “Nothing, sir. I was only—”
“Was, huh?”
“Pardon, sir. Beed. I be Slanduch, you see, and—”
One of the men in the crowd interrupted. “He beed telling us what all State needs
to know—plans of State of South America to invade and destroy us.”
“Hm-m-m!” the Stapper ejaculated. “You be right, man. That sounds like something
to know. Go on, you.”
Bokor resumed his rumor mongering, and the Stapper lent it official endorsement
by his listening silence. Brent moved to get a glimpse of the Stapper’s face. His
guess was right. It was another Bokor.
This significant byplay had delayed them enough so that Brent’s three travelers
had reached the apartment before them. When they arrived, Stephen was deep in a
philosophical discussion with the Venusian of the tragic nobility of human nature,
while Kruj and Mimi were experimenting with bond. Their respective civilizations
could not have been markedly alcoholic; Kruj had reached the stage of sweeping and
impassioned gestures, while Mimi beamed at him and giggled occasionally.
All three had discarded the standardized robes of the Stasis and resumed, in this
friendly privacy, the clothes in which they had arrived—Kruj a curiously simplified
and perverted version of the ruffled court costume of the Elizabethan era he had
hoped to reach, Mimi the startling armor of an unfamiliar metal which was her
uniform as Amazon warrior, and Nikobat a bronze-colored loincloth against which
his green skin assumed an odd beauty.
Brent introduced Martha’s guests to their hostess and went on, “Now for a staff
meeting of G.H.Q. We’ve got to lay our plans carefully, because we’re up against
some stiff opposition. There’s one other traveler who—”
“One moment,” said Martha’s voice. “Shouldn’t you introduce me, too?”
“I beg your pardon, madam. I just finished that task of courtesy. And now—”
“I be sorry,” her voice went on. “You still do not understand. You introduced
Martha, yes—but not me.”
Stephen turned to the travelers. “I must apologize for my sister. She haves goed
through queer experiences of late. She traveled with our friend John and meeted
herself in her earlier life. I fear that shock has temporarily—and temporally—
unbalanced her.”
“Can none of you understand so simple thing?” the woman’s voice pleaded.
“I be simply using Martha’s voice as instrument of communication. I can just as
easily—”
“ ’Steeth!” Kruj exclaimed. “ ’Tis eke as easy and mayhap more pleasant to borrow
this traveler’s voice for mine explications.”