Out of the Silent Planet - C. S. Lewis [61]
"You no rear at me," he thundered. "No try make me afraid. Me no afraid of you."
"You must forgive my people," said the voice of Oyarsa - and even it was subtly changed - "but they are not roaring at you. They are only laughing."
But Weston did not know the Malacandrian word for laugh: indeed, it was not a word he understood very well in any language. He looked about him with a puzzled expression. Ransom, biting his lips with mortification, almost prayed that one experiment with the beads would satisfy the scientist; but that was because he did not know Weston. The latter saw that the clamour had subsided. He knew that he was following the most orthodox rules for frightening and then conciliating primitive races; and he was not the man to be deterred by one or two failures. The roar that went up from the throats of all spectators as he again began revolving like a slow motion picture of a humming-top, occasionally mopping his brow with his left hand and conscientiously jerking the necklace up and down with his right, completely drowned anything he might be attempting to say; but Ransom saw his lips moving and had little doubt that he was working away at "Pretty, pretty!" Then suddenly the sound of laughter almost redoubled its volume. The stars in their courses were fighting against Weston. Some hazy memory of efforts made long since to entertain an infant niece had begun to penetrate his highly trained mind. He was bobbing up and down from the knees and holding his head on one side;he was almost dancing; and he was by now very hot indeed. For all Ransom knew he was saying "Diddle, diddle, diddle."
It was sheer exhaustion which ended the great physicist's performance - the most successful of its kind ever given on Malacandra - and with it the sonorous raptures of his audience. As silence returned Ransom heard Devine's voice in English:
"For God's sake stop making a buffoon of yourself, Weston," it said. "Can't you see it won't work?"
"It doesn't seem to be working," admitted Weston, "and I'm inclined to think they have even less intelligence than we supposed. Do you think, perhaps, if I tried it just once again - or would you like to try this time?"
"Oh, Hell!" said Devine, and, turning his back on his partner, sat down abruptly on the ground, produced his cigarette case and began to smoke.
"I'll give it to the witch-doctor," said Weston during the moment of silence which Devine's action had produced among the mystified spectators; and before anyone could stop him he took a step forward and attempted to drop the string of beads round the elderly hross's neck. The hross's head was, however, too large for this operation and the necklace merely settled on its forehead like a crown, slightly over one eye. It shifted its head a little, like a dog worried with flies, snorted gently, and resumed its sleep.
Oyarsa's voice now addressed Ransom. "Are your fellow-creatures hurt in their brains, Ransom of Thulcandra?", it said. "Or are they too much afraid to answer my questions?"
"I think, Oyarsa," said Ransom, "that they do not believe you are there. And they believe that all these hnau are - are like very young cubs. The thicker hmân is trying to frighten them and then to please them with gifts."
At the sound of Ransom's voice the two prisoners turned sharply around. Weston was about to speak when Ransom interrupted him hastily in English:
"Listen, Weston. It is not a trick. There really is a creature there in the middle - there where you can see a kind of light, or a kind of something, if you look hard. And it is at least as intelligent as a man - they seem to live an enormous