O Pioneer!

XIII

When Tupelo’s long, long evening began, the crowds at the fair picked up. Most of the human population put in an appearance for at least a half an hour or so—had little enough choice about it, really, because nearly all of them were relatives or neighbors of a fireman. A scattering of the other races appeared too. Giyt kept feeding balls to a whole Delt family—Papa, Mama, four half-grown young—as they doggedly did their best to knock off a cuckoo clock or a stuffed panda. Even with the magnets working against them they came close—came closer still when Giyt belatedly realized who the male was. “You haven’t recognize?” the Delt asked aggrievedly. “I am he who have been you pilot voyaging to Energy Island, God’s sake; we have good talk about you famous Earth-human liar Kepigay. How can you have forget?”

“Sorry,” Giyt said. He started to reach out to shake hands with the Delt, then thought better of it; he didn’t want any of that fetid Delt aroma coming off on him. Instead he surreptitiously switched off the magnetic field. After that it required only four shots from the female to collect three prizes.

Hastily Giyt turned the field back on. When he looked up one of the Delt’s eyes was on his face, the other on the hand just emerging from under the counter.

“Thus I had thought,” the Delt said amiably. His mate, burdened with her prizes, whispered something warningly in his ear, but the Delt waved her away. “Do not be lacking in intelligence, I not the sort of crude person to make impolite argument with Earth-human friend. You go on where you wish, co-parent. Take self and young to next such deceitful event. I remain a short space of time to ask something of Earth-human friend.”

Giyt braced himself for the question as the Delt leaned forward on the counter, both eyes on Giyt and the slaughterhouse smell intense. There was no point in denying the game was fixed. The Delt was quite capable of leaping over the counter to find the switch for himself.

But that wasn’t what was on the Delt’s mind. “This ‘president’ person you possess on native planet home, who tell all other persons they not privileged to share in possession of certain secret information considered valuable. What this Earth-human president person being president of, exactly?”

It wasn’t hard to explain what a sovereign country was to the Delt—once the Delt was willing to accept the explanation as fact, anyway; his first reaction was unbelieving laughter. But when Giyt finally convinced him that the statement that Earth possessed nearly two hundred quite independent nations wasn’t some sort of ludicrous joke Giyt was trying to play on him, the Delt went away, chuckling to himself.

At least Giyt hadn’t had to defend the fire company’s slippery means of enhancing profits on the coconut shy. He took note of the fact that, in order to know what the American president had said, at least some of the eeties had to listen in on the news broadcasts from Earth. He wondered if Hagbarth knew that, and considered mentioning it to him. But business was picking up, and he put the thought away for later consideration.

The eetie leaders had begun to appear. Giyt caught a glimpse of the Divinely Elected Savior of the Centaurians, Mrs. Brownbenttalon, interestedly sampling the fried potatoes from Rina’s booth across the way. It looked to Giyt as though her entire family was with her. Her principal husband was visible as he perched over her nose, nibbling a french fry and tenderly sticking bits of it in Mrs. Brownbenttalon’s mouth. There was a younger female with her whom Giyt hadn’t seen before, plus a retinue of subadult offspring and a clutch of helper-husbands to keep them in line.

When she spied Giyt she crossed over with her train to greet him. “Hope you stick it well, Mayor Large Male Giyt,” she said cordially. “Now look.” She pointed her snout at the young female. “This is my daughter. Miss Whitenose, very pretty, right?” Giyt agreed that Miss Whitenose was pretty—for a half-grown anteater, at least. “You give Miss Whitenose three balls,” she requested, and the daughter of the house took, them without enthusiasm. Without results, either; Centaurian anatomy was not built for throwing. Though Miss Whitenose elevated the first half of her body as much .as physiology would allow for the purpose, her best toss barely made it to the base of the prize pyramid. Mrs. Brownbenttalon didn’t seem perturbed; probably she had discovered at many a previous firemen’s fair that there was no hope of winning at the coconut shy. “Miss Whitenose almost old enough to be fucked,” her mother said with pride. “Soon we buy her some husbands from Mrs. Ruddyblaze family and have big party, you bet.”

Giyt, unsure of how many intimate revelations of Centaurian sexual customs he wanted to hear, observed tactfully, “She seems to like french fries. I guess Centaurians can eat human food?”

“You bet.” It was quite apparent that this was so. Even the smallest of her children were determinedly nibbling away at a french fry apiece. “Centaurians, humans, very similar metabolism; we eat anything you do except meat.”

“No bubbly drinks, too,” Miss Whitenose put in.

“Right, Bubbly drinks make us fart. Hey, I have question for you. Who have idea to bring kill-persons weaponry here, you or ugly Large Male Hagbarth?”

“Well, actually, yes, it was Hagbarth’s suggestion in the first place,” Giyt admitted.

“I think so. Very bad proposal. Took persons by surprise, so maybe got wrong idea, blamed you, mistake. No matter. You don’t do it again, all right? So I have got idea. You come to Miss Whitenose First Fuck party, okay? We show you good Centaurian food—like this,” she added, pointing to one of the smallest of her offspring. The tiny thing had finished its french fry and was now thrusting its nose into what looked like a segment of a bamboo stalk, held for it by one of the helper-husbands. “Bring female mate with you, she welcome. You will have grand enjoyment, don’t worry. Now must take kids on dumb high circular ride.”

As soon as she was gone in the direction of the Ferris wheel the Principal Slug arrived, purchased three balls, extruded a peduncle at its bottom to raise it to counter level, produced a skinny arm from the side of its body to throw the balls, missed by a meter or more three times, and left without a word. It was evidently time for all the mayors to put in their appearances. Even the Responsible One of the Petty-Primes gave the coconut shy a whirl—pretty hopelessly; he just didn’t have the size to knock anything down, although in charity Giyt had turned off the magnetic field. The Responsible One moved on to the Ferris wheel in his turn without comment, just as the High Champion of the Kalkaboos arrived with a party of six.

Once they’d been sold three balls apiece they huddled for a long, low-voiced session of cheeping and screeching that Giyt’s translator couldn’t quite sort out. What it looked like to him was some Earthly gathering of good old boys organizing some sort of friendly competition—well, some sort of competition, anyway; the voices didn’t sound all that friendly—but what they were mostly doing was keeping anyone else from getting to his booth. His attention wandered. He gazed around the fairgrounds, getting a glimpse of a pair of Slugs in the whirl-about ride, their gelatinous bodies plastered around the seats of the car, even their eyestalks retracted. The crowd was really becoming a crowd, he thought, and waved to catch his wife’s eye as she doled out her portions of food across the way.

He didn’t notice that the Kalkaboos had finished their conversation until one of them stepped rapidly up to the counter, fired a ball at the central stack of prizes, and knocked off a tempered-glass piggy bank, “Congratulations,” Giyt said jovially, realizing he had forgotten to turn the magnetic field back on. But while he was picking up the piggy bank for the winner the second one was already there, knocking down a Kewpie doll. The third got another doll, the fourth a key chain in a large plastic box, the fifth a pocketknife. They were getting to the expensive stuff now, Giyt realized, and managed to switch the field back on just as the sixth Kalkaboo, their High Champion, fired his first ball.

He missed. It wasn’t even close.

His retinue cackled jovial condolences at him. Or maybe not so jovial. The High Champion seemed to take his failure hard, and he turned and doggedly fired his second ball—equally far off the mark—and his third.

Breathing hard, he turned to glare at his companions, who were raucously taunting him on his failure to score. And then, without warning, the High Champion moaned and clutched his head and fell to the ground.

That stopped the chorus of friendly bickering. All five of the other Kalkaboos immediately surrounded their fallen High Champion, muttering inaudibly to each other, and then picked him up and carried him away.