"But it is still raining," Raoul protested. "Did you expect the rain to stop?" Bbulas asked, his eyes bulging with involuntary surprise. "I mean--" he said, hastily retracting them--"well, it doesn't always stop right away. The gods may not have been feeling sufficiently propitious." "Thought you had only one god, old boy," Cyril observed, after giving his associate a searching glance. "Chap by the name of Whipsnade or some such." "Ipsnadd. He is our chief deity. But we have a whole pantheon. Major gods and minor gods. Heroes and demigods and nature spirits--" "And do not forget the prophets," Larhgan put in helpfully. As former Chief Beauty of the planet (an elective civil-service office), she was not accustomed to being left out of things. "We have many prophets. And saints. I myself am studying to be a--" Bbulas glared at her. Though her antennae quivered sulkily, she stopped and said no more--for the moment, anyway. "Sounds like quite a complex civilization," Cyril commented. "No, no!" Bbulas protested in alarm. "We are a simple primitive people without technological pretensions." "You don't need any," Cyril assured him. "Not when you have fireworks that function in the rain." Inside himself, Skkiru guffawed. "We are a simple people," Bbulas repeated helplessly. "A very simple and very primitive people." "Somehow," Raoul said, "I feel you may have a quality that civilization may have lost." The light in his eyes was recognizable to any even remotely humanoid species as a mystic glow. But Cyril seemed well in command of the situation. "Come now, Raoul," he laughed, clapping his young colleague on the shoulder, "don't fall into the Rousseau trap--noble savage and all that sort of rot!" "But that beggar!" Raoul insisted. "Trite, certainly, but incredible nonetheless! Before, one only read of such things--" A glazed look came into two of Bbulas' eyes, while the third closed despairingly. "What beggar? What beggar? Tell me--I must know ... as if I didn't really," he muttered in Snaddrath. "The only beggar we've seen on this planet so far. That one." * * * * * With a wave of his hand, Cyril indicated the modest form of Skkiru, attempting to conceal himself behind Luccar's portly person. "I realize it was only illusion, but, as my associate says, a remarkably good one. And," Cyril added, "an even more remarkable example of cultural diffusion." "What do you mean? Please, gracious and lovable Terrans, deign to tell me what you mean. What did that insufferable beggar do?" In spite of himself, Skkiru's knees flickered. _Fool_, he told himself, _you knew it was bound to come out sooner or later. Take courage in your own convictions; be convinced by your own courage. All he really can do is yell._ "He did the Indian rope trick for us," Raoul explained. "And very well, too. Very well indeed."