O Pioneer!

XI

For Evesham Giyt the news of Rina’s pregnancy took considerable thinking over. He had dreamed many dreams in his life, but not one of those dreams, ever, had been about fatherhood.

Giyt didn’t find the prospect overwhelming, quite, but it was certainly well and truly whelming. It contained so many consequences and ramifications: The raising of a kid. The changing of its diapers. Teaching it the facts of life. Teaching it how to throw a ball. Carving the bird at the head of the table at Sunday dinners, with the wife at the other end and the kid in between (or might it not be the kids, plural? because once you started on that track, didn’t it get harder and harder to stop?). Babysitters; school; helping with homework; nursing through usual childhood diseases. The list was endless, because this baby business wasn’t one of those things you could just grit your teeth and get through. It entailed a total reconsideration of your whole life, and it was permanent—or at least it was likely to last as long as Giyt himself did. What it came to was a whole and totally demanding new career, and Giyt was a long way from sure how he felt about it. Sometimes he glowered dismally at the wall as he thought of all that time taken up. Sometimes he felt a curious and wholly unexpected thrill of excitement.

He wasn’t even really sure how Rina felt about it. Oh, she was conspicuously happy about being pregnant, sure. She smiled a lot, kissed him a lot, went out of her way to find excuses to mind the neighbor kids for Matya and Lupe a lot. But how did pregnancy feel? He kept stealing glances at Rina when she was looking the other way to see if she showed any signs of—of what? Of morning sickness? Of strange food cravings? Actually, of being different in any detectable way at all. He couldn’t find any such signs. Except for this boundless affectionate cheer—not all that different from her usual state—she was just the same as ever. She kept right on with her studies and her volunteer work at the human hospital and her attempts to coax the bizarre plants in their front yard to produce flowers. She hadn’t changed a thing.

That fact puzzled Giyt quite a lot. He was sure that if he had some organism growing inside of him he would spend a lot of time staring into space and trying to feel the damn thing grow.

But Rina didn’t seem to be doing that. As far as he could tell she simply went on with her life just as before, as though this business of pregnancy were something, well, normal.

When it came time for the next Joint Governance Commission meeting, Giyt greeted it with pleasure. It was tangible work to do, and thus a relaxing change from worrying over the perils of approaching parenthood. Besides, he had some actual business to propose.

As he took his seat, the Petty-Prime Responsible One was already in the chair—well, in his tree—and fussily chirping for order. The Responsible One ran a tight meeting. All in favor of the municipal reports accepted as read, yes; all old business continued for next meeting, yes; then, if there is no new business—

That was when Giyt hastily put his hand up. “I have some new business, honored chairperson,” he said, and launched into his sales talk.

It didn’t go well. The other mayors listened tepidly, or more likely hardly listened at all, to his graphic description of the predators of Ocean. But when he reached the point of formally requesting permission to import a few weapons for the protection of downed chopper crews he had the commission’s instant attention. There was a mumbling from all five of the other seats, too low-pitched for the translator to make sense of, but the Slug had two limbs in the air before he finished speaking. “Is against all rules!” the Slug declared, slobbering at maximum volume. “No one imports weaponry to Peace Planet ever anyhow, for sure!”

Hagbarth’s briefing had prepared Giyt for that. “It is not a case of weapons, Principal Slug. It is merely for protection in case of accident. It is precisely analogous to the harpoons the Delts carry.”

And of course that got the Delt into it. “Not to be compared! Harpoons vital accessory for skimmers, for purpose providing protein to feed hungry persons.”

Giyt had an answer ready for that, too; surprisingly, someone else made it for him. It was the Petty-Prime chairperson who spoke up: “You have of skimmers, General Manager, only three in total. You have of self-launching harpoons more than one hundred eighty.”

“Needed! For spares in case of losses or damages, which are frequent! And, repeating remark already spoken here, are also used for fishing purposes, not merely protection, same as Kalkaboos.”

The Kalkaboo High Champion jumped in: “Kalkaboo practice is primarily using of nets for fishing purposes.”

“Oh, yes,” the Delt sneered. “Poison nets! Also harpoons as well.”

“Very small harpoons, very few in number,” the Kalkaboo protested; and then it got worse. Several of them were talking at once, the translation phone in Giyt’s ear totally unable to cope. Not only Giyt’s phone, either. Nobody’s translator was making any sense of the chorus of gurgling, baying, moaning, chirping, and screeching until the Petty-Prime rattled his doll-sized drumstick on his doll-sized drum. And kept it up until all the others had quieted down and the Petty-Prime declared the subject deferred for future study and the meeting adjourned.

The funny thing was that, through it all, Mrs. Brownbenttalon hadn’t said a word. She simply crouched there, eyes half closed, looking almost as though she were asleep; but from his position on her shoulder her tiny husband was raised up and staring. He never took his eyes off Giyt. And when Giyt said good-bye to them as everyone was leaving, neither he nor his giant wife replied.

When Giyt got home a message from Hoak Hagbarth was waiting for him on the net. “You made a start, at least,” Hagbarth told him consolingly. “Who thought they’d go along right away? It’s a big decision for them. They need time to get over their outmoded prejudices and face up to the real needs of the present day. So we’ll bring it up again next time. Then we’ll just keep on bringing it up until they say yes. And listen, Giyt, you haven’t forgotten about the safety codes for the portal, have you?”

When Giyt hung up he stared glumly at his screen for a moment, considering what use to make of the rest of his day. What he needed to do was to try to catch up on his homework. He had a lot on his plate, and figuring out how Hoak Hagbarth could circumvent the portal’s safety circuits was low on the stack. He had to read all the reports nobody had read at the joint governance meeting. Or he could tackle some of the accumulated petitions that kept silting up in his file. That particular part of the job was even tougher than it looked, because a lot of those requests dealt with questions Giyt still didn’t really know much about, and so he had to educate himself first. For instance, the guy who had been turned down on moving to the polar mines was now demanding to know why at least the mines couldn’t be located just as well on one of the neighbor islands so he wouldn’t have to travel so far. Was that a sensible idea? Giyt had no way of telling. Probably he should begin to look it up . . . and at the same time repair the other gaps in his education, too. The history of Tupelo. The reason it had so many islands and so few continents. Et one damn cetera after another.

But first, and most of all, there was one special subject he could not put off learning more about. So what he began accessing on his screen wasn’t any of the problems of Tupelo and its people. It was medical files, the ones that dealt with the dangers and problems associated with pregnancy. Of which, it turned out, there were a lot more than he was really prepared to face. When he got to the part about teratogenesis and how every once in a while a seemingly normal fetus would fail to develop a head, or turn out to have a partly developed Siamese twin, he shuddered, closed the file, and went looking for Rina to reassure himself.

She was cooking him lunch, and Lupe was in the kitchen with her. When Giyt came in Lupe beamed up at him. “Congratulations, Evesham,” she said as she got up to kiss him chastely on the cheek. “The little monsters’re a hell of a lot of bother, but, you’ll see, they’re worth it.”

“Thanks,” he said, giving Rina an accusing look. It hadn’t occurred to him that she would tell some outsider about their new problem—their situation, he corrected himself.

But neither Lupe nor Rina seemed to think there was anything odd about it, and Lupe had something on her mind. “Listen,” she said, “the reason I came over was to tell you what’s going to be happening at the firehouse. You know when there’s a fire you’ll get a call on your carry-phone; then you drop everything and go.”

“Go to do what? Wasn’t I supposed to be having some training first?”

“Well, that’s the thing I wanted to tell you. The chief just decided we’re going to have a wetdown today. It’s like a practice run, you know? So you’ll just get your first lessons on the job. So when we get the signal don’t get too shaken up. It won’t be a real fire, this time, but we have to show up anyway.”

“I thought Matya didn’t want you doing that.”

“I got an extension, just until the Taste of Tupelo’s over; they’ll need everybody for that . . . Ah, there’s the call now. Let’s go.”

And Rina, composedly ladling something into a container, said: “Stew’s ready, so take some with you. You can eat it on the way.”

When Lupe and Giyt got to the firehouse all five of the gleaming fire trucks were pulled out onto the apron of the garage, motors going, tiremen and women from all over the town clambering aboard. “Here,” said one of them, handing something to Giyt. “Put this on.”

It was a genuine fireman’s hat, like the one he’d owned when he was five years old. Although the shape was the same, this one was bigger and heavier. Also there was an inset square of fabric on the front for Giyt to pin his chrome badge, as soon as they finished making him one. As he clung to the outside of Pumper 3, careening through the streets of the town, the driver—it was that Colly Detslider man from the Energy Island—stole a look over his shoulder and frowned at Giyt. He shouted something Giyt couldn’t make out, but Lupe, clinging to the other side of the truck, apparently did. She pulled a slicker from a locker in the side of the truck and passed it to Giyt. “Don’t try to put it on now,” she bawled, “but you’ll need it later—why do you think it’s called a wetdown?”

Giyt found himself grinning. This was something like! For the first time, he understood why people volunteered for the fire company. Pedestrians were waving to them as they passed, sirens wheeping, all the other traffic scattering out of their way. It wasn’t just humans doing the waving. A flock of Petty-Prime young ones, kits no bigger than mice, chased after the procession on their little roller-skate-sized carts, cheeping and cavorting in excitement, until they reached the electronic limits of their freedom and had to turn back. Even a Slug raised itself out of its moist can to wave a pseudopod. Then they were out of the town, climbing a trail between a human cornfield and rows of Delt fruit-bearing shrubs. They were heading up the flank of the central mountains, where Giyt had never been before. Off to one side of the road was a pretty little waterfall, to the other a deep gorge. And then the trucks crossed an irrigation ditch, pulled up in a semicircle, and stopped.

They were at the edge of a small coffee finca, with nothing but uncleared native vegetation beyond. These weren’t the big trees Giyt had seen below the Slug dam; they were a mass of tangled shrubs, few of them more than waist high, a dozen different species. “Go!” Chief Tschopp shouted. Everyone piled out, uncoiling hoses, hooking pumpers to the giant tanker trucks, revving up the engines. A minute later Giyt found himself part of a three-man team holding the bucking nozzle of a hose that was tearing holes through the patch of native Tupelo crabbushes uphill. He was getting drenched because he’d left the slicker on the truck, but he was impressed with the force of the stream; the sturdy bushes were simply smashed out of the way. Then, a moment later, the fixed water cannon on each truck began to fire, throwing high-velocity streams to the far edge of the patch, and even the few trees on the site were simply exploding as the water struck.

It took the fire company hardly a minute to get fully deployed, and then it was over. Chief Tschopp bawled, “That’s it! Everybody secure!”

But it wasn’t really the end of the exercise, because then everybody began laying out hoses to drain, winding them back onto their reels at one end as the trapped water flowed out of the other, and they were moving faster than ever. It was only when everything was back in its place that the chief, standing precariously atop one of the tankers, announced: “Fair. Fourteen minutes twenty-two seconds to arrival on scene, fifty-eight seconds to deployment, eight minutes eleven seconds to retrieval. We’ve done better. Officers? Any comments?”

Lieutenant Silva Cristl raised her hand. “I have one. Giyt, you have to control your hose better. You got me pretty damn wet.”

She was, at that. As a lieutenant of fire police Cristl was exempt from the more physical work of a wetdown, but she was soaked anyway. “Sorry,” Giyt offered, resolutely not grinning at her.

The chief gave him a suspicious look. “So watch it next time,” he ordered. “And get your damn slicker on. Now let’s parade.”

So Giyt, soaked and uncomfortable under the hastily donned slicker, learned that they weren’t quite through for the day, after all. He clung to the pumper’s rail as they retraced their path toward the town, now more sedately.

Back in the town they didn’t head for the firehouse; they made a ceremonial tour, stopping to wheep their sirens in brief greeting before the firehouses of each of the other species. Giyt was interested to see that each of the other races evidently expected them. All the doors were open. All the fire-fighting equipment of the other companies was on display—green metal tractors for the Kalkaboos, a fleet of smaller, faster trucks for the Delts, an extension ladder for the Centaurians. From his position high on the truck he could see nothing of the equipment of the Petty-Primes, though the doors of their dollhouse-sized firehouse were open. Only the Slugs were missing. Their own firehouse, if they needed one at all in their dank surroundings, was no doubt down in their community. But in each of the others at least three or four members of their own fire companies were standing by, listening to the few words—squeals, gargles, grunts—that came out of the PA system as Chief Tschopp spoke to them through the translator microphone, inviting them all to the upcoming fair.

Then the tankers detached to refill at the lakeshore and the pumpers rolled back to their own firehouse; the chief reminded everybody that they would soon be receiving assignments for their duties at the upcoming fair, and it was over.

In the cart they shared to take them home, Lupe was all smiles. “So how did you like the wetdown, Evesham?” she asked, confident of the answer.

“Actually,” he admitted, “I did. One thing, though. I noticed we seemed to have a lot more equipment than the other guys. Do we really need all that firepower?”

“Oh, hell, Evesham, you just wait and see. When we start getting brush fires in the dry season we’ll be pumping the tankers dry every time we go out.”

“Oh,” he said, thinking. Dry season. He would have to do a little digging about Tupelo’s seasons, too. He turned and peered up at the mountain, where a large cloud was hanging over the peak. He commented, “Looks like we’re going to get rain today, though.”

Lupe looked at him peculiarly. “Not from that, Evesham,” she said. “That cloud’s just orographic uplift. I guess the trade winds are starting early this time.”

So there was another key term for Giyt to try to learn something about. But every time he thought he’d have a few moments to put in on a literature search, something stopped him. He had another report to read. Or he had to show up at the gateway to welcome the next arriving batch of colonists. Or Rina disappeared into the sanitary room for longer than usual, and he couldn’t think of anything but the chance of miscarriage, hemorrhage, some damn pregnancy-related thing . . . until she at last came tranquilly out, smiling fondly at her husband’s unnecessary concern.

After dinner that night Rina said, “Hon, let’s let the dishes wait. I’ve got a better idea.”

It was a clear invitation; but when they had finished doing what the invitation had intended, Rina propped herself up on one elbow to look at him quizzically. “Is something wrong?” he asked.

“That’s what I was going to ask you. Shammy dear.”

’’Didn’t you—”

“Sure I did, hon, but, I don’t know, you seemed a little—well, I guess the word is restrained.”

He made a joke of it. “Maybe it’s time to get the whips and chains out.”

“I could if you wanted me to,” she said, startling him, but smiling to show she didn’t mean it. “But I don’t think that’s the problem here, sport. I think you’ve got the baby on your mind.”

“Well—”

“Sure you do, Shammy. Listen. You really don’t have to treat me as though I were made out of spun glass. It’ll be six or seven months, anyway, before we have to start being careful.”

“I was just thinking,” he began apologetically.

“I know what you were thinking, but you’d be surprised how hard it is to get rid of a baby.” She gave him a considering look, then added, “I don’t know if I ever told you, but I was pregnant once before.”

“You had a baby?” He was suddenly wondering if there was some part of Rina left behind on Earth.

“Not quite. What I had was an abortion. I was fourteen. And my father found out about it.” She was silent for a moment, then said, “I did kind of like the idea of having a baby of my own, but I didn’t see how I could manage it. Dad sure wasn’t going to raise a bastard for me in his house, and what else could I do? I didn’t like the idea of being a welfare mother, didn’t have any skills to earn a living. So I stuck it out for a while after the abortion, and then I ran away.”

It seemed to Giyt that his wife was telling him this story for a reason. The way she was looking at him she seemed to want some reaction from him, but what that reaction should be, he could not guess. Awkwardly he took her free hand and placed it against his cheek.

Apparently it was the right response. She gave him a sudden grin. “You always thought I was pretty dim to give money to every panhandler who came by, didn’t you, Shammy?”

“Dim? No, nothing like that!” he protested. “You’re just a generous person.”

“Not just generous. I owe the street people. They took me in, fed me, showed me places where I could sleep, away from the cops and the weather. If they had anything to eat, so did I. They didn’t expect anything back, either. They even put up with the way I was, and I was a lot to put up with—a dumb, weepy teenager. I was a mess, Shammy, and they treated me as though I were a human being. But I didn’t want to go on sponging off them.”

She leaned over and kissed him. “You know something I’ve always appreciated about you, Shammy? You never once asked me why I became a whore.”

“None of my business,” he said gruffly, surprised to find himself touched.

“No,” she agreed, “it wasn’t, but I guess maybe it is now . . . Daddy. Anyway, that’s how. Fifteen years old, how else could I make a living? And here I am.” She hesitated, “But, Shammy, there’s one thing I would like you to know. I screwed a lot of guys at one time or another. Mostly it was business, but sometimes not. But I never loved anyone else before you.”