problem. It would be too expensive, for one thing.”
“Don’t worry,” he said, pressing her toes. “I’ll take care of the whole thing.”
“An article in the paper wouldn’t really help much,” she persisted thoughtfully, “and I suppose you must have run at least one already. It would explain to the Fizbians that Terrestrials don’t regard invasion of privacy as a crime, but it wouldn’t tell the Terrestrials that Fizbians do. We’ll have to think of—”
“You’re surely not going to tell me how to run my paper on your first day here, are you?”
He tried to take the sting out of his words by twining his toes around hers, but she felt guilty. She had been presumptuous. Probably there were lots of things she couldn’t understand yet—like why she shouldn’t polish her eyeballs in public. Stet had finally explained to her that, while Terrestrial women did make up in public, they didn’t scour their irises, ever, and would be startled and horrified to see someone else doing so.
“But I was horrified to see them raking their feathers in public!” Tarb had contended.
“Combing their hair, my dear. And why not? This is their planet.”
That was always his answer. I wonder, she speculated, whether he would expect a Terrestrial visitor to Fizbus to fly… because, after all, Fizbus is our planet. But she didn’t dare broach the question.
However, if it was presumptuous of her to make helpful suggestions the first day, it was more than presumptuous of Stet to ask her up to his rooms to see his collection of rare early twentieth-century Terrestrial milk bottles and other antiques. So she just told him courteously that she was tired and wanted to go to roost. And, since the hotel had a whole section fitted up to suit Fizbian requirements, she spent a more comfortable night than she had expected.
She awoke the next day full of enthusiasm and ready to start in on the great work at once. Although she might have been a little too forward the previous night, she knew, as she took a reassuring glance in the mirror, that Stet would forgive her.
In the office, she was, at first, somewhat self-conscious about Drosmig, who hung insecurely from his perch muttering to himself, but she soon forgot him in her preoccupation with duty. The first letter she picked up— although again oddly unlike the ones she’d read in the paper on Fizbus—seemed so simple that she felt she would have no difficulty in answering it all by herself:
Heidelberg
Dear Senbot Drosmig:
I am a professor of Fizbian History at a local university. Since my salary is a small one, owing to the small esteem in which the natives hold culture, I must economize wherever I can in order to make both ends meet. Accordingly, I do my own cooking and shop at the self-service supermarket around the corner, where I have found that prices are lower than in the service groceries and the food no worse.
However, the manager and a number of the customers have objected to my shopping with my feet. They don’t so much mind my taking packages off the shelves with them, but they have been quite vociferous on the subject of my pinching the fruit with my toes. Unripe fruit, however, makes me ill. What shall I do?
Sincerely yours,
Grez B’Groot
Tarb dictated an unhesitating reply:
Dear Professor B’Groot:
Why don’t you explain to the manager of the store that Fizbians have wings and feet rather than arms and hands?
I’m sure his attitude and the attitudes of his customers will change when they learn that your pinching the fruit with your feet is not mere pedagogical eccentricity, but the regular practice on our planet. Point out to him that your feet are covered and, therefore, more sanitary than the bare hands of his other customers.
And always put on clean socks before you go shopping.
Helpfully yours,
Senbot Drosmig
Miss Snow raised pale eyebrows.
“Is something wrong?” Tarb asked anxiously. “Should I have put in that bit about work, study, meditate? It seems inappropriate somehow.”
“Oh, no, not that. It’s just that your letter—well, violates Mr. Zarnon’s precept that, in Rome, one must do as the Romans do.”
“But this isn’t Rome,” Tarb replied, bewildered. “It’s New York.”
“He didn’t make the saying up,” Miss Snow replied testily. “It’s a Terrestrial proverb.”
“Oh,” Tarb said.
She resented this creature’s trying to tell her how to do her job. On the other hand, Tarb was wise enough to realize that Miss Snow, unpleasant though she might be, probably did know Stet well enough to be able to predict his reactions.
So Tarb not only was reluctant to show Stet what she had already done, but hesitated about answering another and even more urgent letter that had just been brought in by special messenger. She tried to compromise by submitting the letters to Drosmig—for, technically speaking, it was he who was her immediate superior—but he merely groaned, “Tell ’em all to drop dead,” from his perch and refused to open his eyes.
In the end, Tarb had to take the letters to Stet’s office. Miss Snow trailed along behind her, uninvited. And, since this was a place of business, Tarb could not claim a privacy violation. Even if it weren’t a place of business, she remembered, she couldn’t—not here on Earth. Advanced spirituality, hah!
Advanced pain in the pinions!
Stet read the first letter and her answer smilingly. “Excellent, Tarb—” her hearts leaped—“for a first try, but I’d like to suggest a few changes, if I may.”
“Well, of course,” she said, pretending not to notice the smirk on Miss Snow’s face.
“Just write this Professor B’Goot that he should do his shopping at a grocery that offers service and practice his economies elsewhere. A professor, of all people, is expected to uphold the dignity of his own race—the idea, sneering at a culture that was thousands of years old when we were still building nests! Terrestrials couldn’t possibly have any respect for him if they saw him prodding kumquats with his toes.”
“It’s no sillier than writing with one’s vestigial wings!” Tarb blazed.
“Well!” Miss Snow exclaimed in Terran. “Well, really!”
Tarb started to stick out her tongue, then remembered. “I didn’t mean to offend you, Miss Snow. I know it’s your custom. But wouldn’t you understand if I typewrote with my feet?”
Miss Snow tittered.
“If you want the honest truth, hon, it would make you look like a feathered monkey.”
“If you want the honest truth about what you look like to me, dearie—it’s a plucked chicken!”
“Tarb, I think you should apologize to Miss Snow!”
“All right!” Tarb stuck out her tongue. Miss Snow promptly thrust out hers in return.
“Ladies, ladies!” Stet cried. “I think there has been a slight confusion of folkways!” He quickly changed the subject. “Is that another letter you have there, Tarb?”
“Yes, but I didn’t try to answer it. I thought you’d better have a look at it first, since Miss Snow didn’t seem to think much of the job I did with the other one.”
“Miss Snow always has the Times’ welfare at heart,” Stet remarked ambiguously, and read:
Chicago
Dear Senbot Drosmig:
I am employed as translator by the extraterrestrial division of Burns and Deerhart, Inc., the well-known interstellar mail-order house. As the company employs no other Fizbians and our offices are situated in a small rural community where no others of our race reside, I find myself rather lonely. Moreover, being a bachelor, with neither chick nor child on Fizbus, I have nothing to look forward to upon my return to the Home Planet some day.
Accordingly, I decided to adopt a child to cheer my declining years. I dispatched an interstellargram to a reliable orphanage on Fizbus, outlining my hopes and requirements in some detail. After they had satisfied themselves as to my income, strength of character, etc., they sent me a fatherless and motherless egg in cold storage, which I was supposed to hatch upon arrival.
However, when the egg came to Earth, it was impounded by Customs. They say it is forbidden to import
