hy dost thou beat me? I have
always obeyed thee and never have I failed thee. Have I ever
been known to fail thee?_"

_And Balaam answered: "No." And at that moment his eyes were
opened and he saw the angel before him._

--STUDIES IN SCRIPTURE

by Ceggawynn of Eboricum

With the careful precision of controlled anger, Dodeth
Pell rippled a stomp along his right side.
_Clop_clopclop_clop_-clopclop-_clop_clop-clop_clop_clopclop....
Each of his twelve right feet came down in turn while he glared across the
business bench at Wygor Bedis. He started the ripple again, while he
waited for Wygor's answer. The ripple was a good deal more effective than
just tapping one's fingers, and equally as satisfying.

Wygor Bedis twitched his mouth and allowed his eyelids to slide up
over his eyeballs in a slow blink before answering. Dodeth had simply
asked, "Why wasn't this reported to me before?" But Wygor couldn't
find the answer as simply as that. Not that he didn't have a good
answer; it was just that he wanted to couch it in exactly the right
terms. Dodeth had a way with raking sarcasm that made a person tend
to cringe.

Dodeth was perfectly well aware of that. He hadn't been in the
Executive Office of Predator Council all these years for nothing; he
knew how to handle people--when to praise them, when to flatter them,
when to rebuke them, and when to drag them unmercifully over the
shell-bed.

He waited, his right legs marching out their steady rhythm.

"Well," said Wygor at last, "it was just that I couldn't see any point
in bothering you with it at that point. I mean, _one_ specimen--"

"Of an entirely new species!" snapped Dodeth in a sudden interruption.
His legs stopped their rhythmic tramp. His voice rose from its usual
eight-thousand-cycle rumble to a shrill squeak. "Fry it, Wygor, if you
weren't such a good field man, I'd have sacked you long ago! Your
trouble is that you have a penchant for bringing me problems that you
ought to be able to solve by yourself and then flipping right over on
your back and holding off on some information that ought to be brought
to my attention immediately!"

There wasn't much Wygor could say to that, so he didn't try. He simply
waited for the raking to come, and, sure enough, it came.

Dodeth's voice lowered itself to a soft purr. "The next time you have
to do anything as complicated a