"You think it is that they may be secretly hostile?" Cyril smiled. "I think they may be secretly something, but hardly hostile." _Aha_, Skkiru thought. _Bbulas, my splendidly scaled friend, I will have something interesting to tell you._ * * * * * "You idiot!" Bbulas snarled later that night, as most of the Snaddrath met informally in the council chamber belowground, the new caste distinctions being, if not forgotten, at least in abeyance--for everyone except Bbulas. "You imbecile!" He whirled, unable to repress his Snadd emotions after a long behaviorally Terran day. "I have half a mind to get rid of you by calling down divine judgment." "How would you do that?" Skkiru demanded, emboldened by the little cry of dismay, accompanied by a semi-somersault, which Larhgan gave. In spite of everything, she still loved him; she would never belong to Bbulas, though he might plan until he was ochre in the face. "Same way you did the rope trick. Only you wouldn't come back, my boy. Nice little cultural trait for the ethnologists to put in their peace pipes and smoke. Never saw such people for asking awkward questions." Bbulas sighed and straightened his antennae with his fingers, since their ornaments made them too heavy to allow reflective verticalization. "Reminds me of final exams back on Gambrell." "Anthropologists _always_ ask awkward questions--everybody knows that," Larhgan put in. "It's their function. And I don't think you should speak that way to Skkiru, Bbulas. Like all of us, he's only trying to do his best. No man--or woman--can do more." She smiled at Skkiru and his hearts whirled madly inside him. Only a dolt, he thought, would give way to despair; there was no need for this intolerable situation to endure for a lifetime. If only he could solve the problem more quickly than Bbulas expected or--Skkiru began to understand--wanted, Larhgan could be his again. "With everybody trying to run this planet," Bbulas snarled, taking off his headdress, "no wonder things are going wrong." Luccar intervened. Although it was obvious that he had been enjoying to a certain extent the happy anonymity of functionless yam-stealer, old elective responsibilities could not but hang heavy over a public servant of such unimpeachable integrity. "After all," the old man said, "secretly we're still a democracy, and secretly I am still President, and secretly I'm beginning to wonder if perhaps we weren't a little rash in--" "Look here, all of you," Bbulas interrupted querulously. "I'm not doing this for my own amusement." * * * * * _But that's just what you are doing_, Skkiru thought, _even though you wouldn't admit it to yourself, nor would you think of it as amusement._