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HELPFULLY YOURS
By EVELYN E. SMITH
Illustrated by EMSH
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science FictionFebruary 1955. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that theU.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
[Sidenote: _"Come down to Earth--and stay there!" is a humiliating orderfor somebody with wings!_]
Tarb Morfatch had read all the information on Terrestrial customs thatwas available in the _Times_ morgue before she'd left Fizbus. And allthrough the journey she'd studied her _Brief Introduction to TerrestrialManners and Mores_ avidly. Perhaps it was a bit overinspirational inspots, but it had facts in it, too.
So she knew that, since the natives were non-alate, she was not to takewing on Earth. She had, however, forgotten to correlate the knowledge oftheir winglessness with her own vertical habits. As a result, on leavingthe tender that had ferried her down from the Moon, she looked upinstead of right and narrowly escaped death at the jaws of a raginggroundcar that swerved out onto the field.
She recognized it as a taxi from one of the pictures in the handbook.It was a pity, she thought sadly as she was knocked off her feet, thatall those lessons she had so carefully learned were to go to waste.
But it was only the wind of the car's passage that had thrown her down.As she struggled to get up, hampered by her awkward native skirts, thedoor of the taxi flew open. A tall young man--a Fizbian--burst out, thesoft yellowish-green down on his handsome face bristling with frightuntil each feather stood out separately.
"Miss Morfatch! Are you all right?"
"Just--just a little shaky," she murmured, brushing dirt from her rosyleg feathers. _Too young to be Drosmig; too good-looking to be anyoneimportant, she thought glumly. Must be the office boy._
To her surprise, he didn't help her up. Probably it would violate somenative taboo if he did, she deduced. The handbook hadn't mentionedanything that seemed to apply, but, after all, a little book like thatcouldn't cover everything.
* * * * *
She could see the young man was embarrassed--his emerald crest waswaving to and fro.
"I'm Stet Zarnon," he introduced himself awkwardly.
The Managing Editor! The handsome young employer of her girlish dreams!But perhaps he had a wife on Fizbus--no, the Grand Editor made a pointof hiring people without families to use as a pretext for expensivevacations on the Home Planet.
As she opened her mouth to say something brilliantly witty, to show shewas no ordinary female but a creature of spirit and fire andintelligence, a sudden cacophony of shrill cries and explosions arose,accompanied by bursts of light. Her feathers stood erect and she clungto her employer with both feathered legs.
"If these are the friendly diplomatic relations Earth and Fizbus aresupposed to be enjoying," she said, "I'm not enjoying them one bit!"
"They're only taking pictures of you with native equipment," heexplained, pulling away from her. What was the matter with him? "You'rethe first Fizbian woman ever to come to Terra, you know."
She certainly did know--and, what was more, she had made the semi-finalsfor Miss Fizbus only the year before. Perhaps he had some Terrestrialmalady he didn't want her to catch. Or could it be that in the fouryears he had spent in voluntary exile on this planet, he had come toprefer the native females? Now it was her turn to shrink from him.
He was conversing rapidly in Terran with the chattering natives whomilled about them. Although Tarb had been an honors student in Terranback at school, she found herself unable to understand more than anoccasional word of what they said. Then she remembered that they werenot at the world capital, Ottawa, but another community, New York.Undoubtedly they were all speaking some provincial dialect peculiar tothe locality.
And nobody at all booed in appreciation, although, she told herselfsternly, she really couldn't have expected them to. Standards of beautywere different in different solar systems. At least they were picking upas souvenirs some of the feathers she'd shed in her tumble, which showedthey took an interest.
Stet turned back to her. "These are fellow-members of the press."
She was able to catch enough of what he said next in Terran tounderstand that she was being formally introduced to the aboriginaljournalists. Although you could never call the natives attractive, withtheir squat figures and curiously atrophied vestigial wings--_arms_, shereminded herself--they were very Fizboid in appearance and, with theirwinglessness cloaked, could have creditably passed for singed Fizbians.
Moreover, they seemed friendly; at any rate, the sounds they utteredwere welcoming. She began to make the three ritual _entrechats_, butStat stopped her. "Just smile at them; that'll be enough."
It didn't seem like enough, but he was the boss.
* * * * *
"Thank the stars we're through with that," he sighed, as they finallywere able to escape their confreres and get into the taxi. "I suppose,"he added, wriggling inside the clumsy Terrestrial jacket which, cut tofit over his wings, did nothing either to improve his figure or to makehim look like a native, "it was as much of an ordeal for you as for me."
"Well, I am a little bewildered by it all," Tarb admitted, settlingherself as comfortably as possible on the seat cushions.
"No, don't do that!" he cried. "Here people don't crouch on seats. Theysit," he explained in a kindlier tone. "Like this."
"You mean I have to bend myself in that clumsy way?"
He nodded. "In public, at least."
"But it's so hard on the wings. I'm losing feathers foot over claw."
"Yes, but you could...." He stopped. "Well, anyhow, remember we have tocomply with local customs. You see, the Terrestrials have those thingscalled arms instead of legs. That is, they have legs, but they use themonly for walking."
She sighed. "I'd read about the arms, but I had no idea the nativeswould be so--so primitive as to actually use them."
"Considering they had no wings, it was very clever of them to make useof the vestigial appendages," he said hotly. "If you take their physicallimitations into account, they've done a marvelous job with their littleplanet. They can't fly; they have very little sense of balance; theirvision is exceedingly poor--yet, in spite of all that, they haveachieved a quite remarkable degree of civilization." He gestured towardthe horizontal building arrangements visible through the window. "Why,you could almost call those streets. As a matter of fact, the nativesdo."
At the moment, she could take an interest in Terrestrial civilizationonly as it affected her personally. "But I'll be able to relax in theoffice, won't I?"
"To a certain extent," he replied cautiously. "You see, we have to use agood deal of native help because--well, our facilities are limited...."
"Oh," she said.
Then she remembered that she was on Terra at least partly to demonstratethe pluck of Fizbian femininity. Back on Fizbus, most of the _Times_executives had been dead set against having a woman sent out asDrosmig's assistant. But Grupe, the Grand Editor, had overruled them."Time we broke with tradition," he had said. He'd felt she could do thejob, and, by the stars, she would justify his faith in her!
"Sounds like rather a lark," she said hollowly.
Stet brightened. "That's the girl!" His eyes, she noticed, were emeraldshading into turquoise, like his crest. "I certainly hope you'll like ithere. Very wise of Grupe to send a woman instead of a man, after all.Women," he went on quickly, "are so much better at working up the humaninterest angle. And Drosmig is out of commission most of
the time, soit's you who'll actually be in charge of 'Helpfully Yours.'"
She herself in charge of the column that had achieved interstellar famein three short years! Basically, it had been designed to give guidance,advice and, if necessary, comfort to those Fizbians who found themselvesliving on Terra, for the Fizbus _Times_ had stood for public servicefrom time immemorial. As Grupe had put it, "We don't run this paper forourselves, Tarb, but for our readers. And the same applies to ourTerrestrial edition."
With the growing development of trade and cultural relations between thetwo planets, the Fizbians on Earth were an ever-increasing number. Butthey were not the only readers of