Free Time Travelers Strictly Cash by Spider Robinson Page A

Place?
    It was Tall Tales Night at Callahan’s, the night on which the teller of the most outrageous shaggy-dog story gets his night’s tab refunded. “Animals” had been selected as the night’s generic topic, and we had suffered through hours of stinkers about pet rocks and talking dogs and The Horse That Was Painted Green and the Fastest Dog in the World and the Gay Rooster and a dozen others you probably know already.
    In fact, most of the Tale-Tellers had been disqualified when someone shouted the punchline before they got to it-often after only a sentence or two. The fireplace was filled to overflowing with broken glasses, and it was down to a tight contest between Dcc Webster and me. I thought I had him on the run, too.
    A relative newcomer named B.D; Wyatt had just literally crapped out, by trying to fob off that old dumb gag about the South Sea island where “there lives a bird whose digestive system is so incredibly rank that, if its excrement should contact your skin, re-exposure of the contaminated skin to air is invariably fatal.” Named for its characteristic squawk, it is of course the famous Foo Bird, and the punchline-as I’m certain you know already—is, “If the Foo shits, wear it.”
    Unfortunately for B.D. (“Bird Doo”?), we already knew it too. But it gave me an idea.
    “You know,” I drawled, signalling Callahan for a fresh Bushmill’s, “like all of us, I’ve heard that story before. So many times, in fact, that I decided there might be a grain of truth in it-hidden, of course, by a large grain of salt. So my friend Thor Lowerdahl and I decided to check it out. We investigated hundreds of south sea islands without success, until one day our raft, the Liki Tiki, foundered on an uncharted atoll. No sooner did we stagger ashore than we heard a distant raucous cry: ‘Foo! Foo!’
    “Instantly, of course, we dove back into the surf, and didn’t stick our heads up until we were far offshore. We treaded water for awhile, hoping for a glimpse of the fabubus bird, to no avail. Suddenly a seal passed us underwater, trailing a cloud of sticky brown substance. Some of it got on Thor’s leg, and with a snort of disgust, he wiped it off. He expired at once. Realizing the truth in an instant, I became so terrified that I swam back to the States.”
    I paused expectantly, and Fast Eddie (sensing his cue) obliged me with a straight line.
    “What truth, Jake?”
    “That atoll,” I replied blithely,. “was far more dangerous than anyone suspected-as any seal can plainly foo.”
    A general howl arose. Long-Drink chanced (by statistical inevitability) to have his glass to his mouth at the time; he bit a piece off clean and spat it into the fireplace. I kept my face straight, of course, but inwardly I exulted. This time I had Doc Webster beat for sure, and with an impromptu pun at that. I ordered another.
    But when the tumult died down, the Dcc met my eyes with a look of such mild, placid innocence that my confidence faltered.
    “Fortunate indeed, Jacob,” he rumbled, patting his ample belly, “that you should have rendered so unbearable a pun. It reminds me of a book about a bear I read the other day by Richard Adams-Shardik, it’s called. Any of you read it?”
    There were a few nods. The Dcc smiled and sipped scotch.
    “For those of you who missed it,” he went on, “it’s about a primitive empire that forms around an enormous, semimythical bear. Well, it happens I know something about that empire that Adams forgot to mention, and now’s as good a time as any to pass it along. You see, the only way to become a knight in Shardik’s empire was to apply fér a personal interview with the bear. This had its drawbacks. If he liked your audition, you were knighted on the spot-but if you failed, Lord Shardik was quite likely to club your head off your shoulders with one mighty paw. Even so, there were many applicants-for the peasantry were poor farmers, and if a candidate failed for knighthood