as Official Dilettante for the good of all and now—”
“Sure, glad to have a chance to rig this whole setup so you could break up things between Larhgan and me. You’ve had your eye on her for some time.”
Skkiru coiled his antennae at Bbulas, hoping the insult would provoke him into an unbecoming whirl, but the Dilettante remained calm. One of the chief outward signs of Terran-type training was self-control and Bbulas had been thoroughly terranized.
I hate Terrestrials, Skkiru said to himself. I hate Terra. The quiver of anxiety had risen up his leg and was coiling and uncoiling in his stomach. He hoped it wouldn’t reach his antennae—if he were to break down and psonk in front of Larhgan, it would be the final humiliation.
“Skkiru!” the girl exclaimed, rotating gently, for she, like her fiance—her erstwhile fiance, that was, for the new regime had caused all such ties to be severed—and every other literate person on the planet, had received her education at the local university. Although sound, the school was admittedly provincial in outlook and very poor in the emotional department. “One would almost think that the lots had some sort of divine intelligence behind them, because you certainly are behaving in a beggarly manner!”
“And I have already explained to you, Skkiru,” Bbulas said, with a patience much more infuriating than the girl’s anger, “that I had no idea of who was to become my high priestess. The lots chose Larhgan. It is, as the Earthmen say, kismet.”
*
He adjusted the fall of his glittering robe before the great polished four-dimensional reflector that formed one wall of the chamber.
Kismet, Skkiru muttered to himself, and a little sleight of hand. But he didn’t dare offer this conclusion aloud; the libel laws of Snaddra were very severe. So he had to fall back on a weak, “And I suppose it is kismet that makes us all have to go live out on the ground during the day, like—like savages.”
“It is necessary,” Bbulas replied without turning.
“Pooh,” Skkiru said. “Pooh, pooh, POOH!”
Larhgan’s dainty earflaps closed. “Skkiru! Such language!”
“As you said,” Bbulas murmured, contemptuously coiling one antenna at Skkiru, “the lots chose well and if you touch me, Skkiru, we shall have another drawing for beggar and you will be made a metal-worker.”
“But I can’t work metal!”
“Then that will make it much worse for you than for the other outcasts,” Bbulas said smugly, “because you will be a pariah without a trade.”
“Speaking of pariahs, that reminds me, Skkiru, before I forget, I’d better give you back your grimpatch—” Larhgan handed the glittering bauble to him—“and you give me mine. Since we can’t be betrothed any longer, you might want to give yours to some nice beggar girl.”
“I don’t want to give my grimpatch to some nice beggar girl!” Skkiru yelled, twirling madly in the air.
“As for me,” she sighed, standing soulfully on her head, “I do not think I shall ever marry. I shall make the religious life my career. Are there going to be any saints in your mythos, Bbulas?”
“Even if there will be,” Bbulas said, “you certainly won’t qualify if you keep putting yourself into a position which not only represents a trait wholly out of keeping with the new culture, but is most unseemly with the high priestess’s robes.”
Larhgan ignored his unfeeling observations. “I shall set myself apart from mundane affairs,” she vowed, “and I shall pretend to be happy, even though my heart will be breaking.”
It was only at that moment that Skkiru realized just how outrageous the whole thing really was. There must be another solution to the planet’s problem. “Listen—” he began, but just then excited noises filtered down from overhead. It was too late.
“Earth ship in view!” a squeaky voice called through the intercom. “Everybody topside and don’t forget your shoes.”
Except the beggar. Beggars went barefoot. Beggars suffered. Bbulas had made him beggar purposely, and the lots were a lot of slibwash.
“Hurry up, Skkiru.”
*
Bbulas slid the ornate headdress over his antennae, which, already gilded and jeweled, at once seemed to become a part of it. He looked pretty damn silly, Skkiru thought, at the same time conscious of his own appearance—which was, although picturesque enough to delight romantic Terrestrial hearts, sufficiently wretched to charm the most hardened sadist.
“Hurry up, Skkiru,” Bbulas said. “They mustn’t suspect the existence of the city underground or we’re finished before we’ve started.”
“For my part, I wish we’d never started,” Skkiru grumbled. “What was wrong with our old culture, anyway?”
That was intended as a rhetorical question, but Bbulas answered it anyway. He always answered questions; it had never seemed to penetrate his mind that school-days were long since over.
“I’ve told you a thousand times that our old culture was too much like the Terrans’ own to be of interest to them,” he said, with affected weariness. “After all, most civilized societies are basically similar; it is only primitive societies that differ sharply, one from the other—and we have to be different to attract Earthmen. They’re pretty choosy. You’ve got to give them what they want, and that’s what they want. Now take up your post on the edge of the field, try to look hungry, and remember this isn’t for you or for me, but for Snaddra.”
“For Snaddra,” Larhgan said, placing her hand over her anterior heart in a gesture which, though devout on Earth—or so the fictapes seemed to indicate—was obscene on Snaddra, owing to the fact that certain essential organs were located in different areas in the Snaddrath than in the corresponding Terrestrial life-form. Already the Terrestrial influence was corrupting her, Skkiru thought mournfully. She had been such a nice girl, too.
“We may never meet on equal terms again, Skkiru,” she told him, with a long, soulful glance that made his hearts sink down to his quivering toes, “but I promise you there will never be anyone else for me—and I hope that knowledge will inspire you to complete cooperation with Bbulas.”
“If that doesn’t,” Bbulas said, “I have other methods of inspiration.”
“All right,” Skkiru answered sulkily. “I’ll go to the edge of the field, and I’ll speak broken Inter-galactic, and I’ll forsake my normal habits and customs, and I’ll even beg. But I don’t have to like doing it, and I don’t intend to like doing it.”
All three of Larhgan’s eyes fuzzed with emotion. “I’m proud of you, Skkiru,” she said brokenly.
Bbulas sniffed. The three of them floated up to ground level in a triple silence.
*
“Alms, for the love of Ipsnadd,” Skkiru chanted, as the two Terrans descended from the ship and plowed their way through the mud to meet a procession of young Snaddrath dressed in elaborate ceremonial costumes, and singing a popular ballad—to which less ribald, as well as
