O Pioneer!

XV

The funeral of the High Champion, like all major Kalkaboo events, took place at dawn. So an hour before daybreak Giyt had to visit the Kalkaboo general store in order to buy a firecracker for the ceremonies.

Giyt had never been in the Kalkaboo store before. It was crowded. Nearly everyone else present, naturally enough, was a Kalkaboo. None of them spoke to him, and they looked at him, if at all, only out of the corners of their eyes, but he recognized that they were all on the same errand as himself.

What puzzled him was what size firecracker to buy. The Kalkaboos themselves were buying all sizes, from tiny beads to things the size of a baseball. He looked around for a friendly face but found none. He did, however, see the Petty-Prime Responsible One picking up something about as big as a thumbnail, which emboldened him to reach for another of the same size from the bin.

It was the wrong choice. A feathery hand snaked past him to clasp his own, and the voice of the translator in his ear snapped, “No. Not adequate. Come with.” And a Kalkaboo Giyt did not recognize led him to the back of the store. There was a muttered exchange with a clerk, who retired to the storeroom for a moment and emerged with what looked like a bright blue grapefruit. “Pay now,” Giyt was ordered. “This little other thing is detonator for making bomb bang. Don’t push till it’s time. Now go.”

The object weighed twenty kilograms at least. By the time he got it to the cart, where Rina was waiting, he was panting.

For the ceremonial the Kalkaboos had preempted the square in front of the transporter, the same space that had held the Taste of Tupelo just a day earlier. As Giyt and Rina got out of their cart they found they could smell the late High Champion even before they saw the pot he had cooked in. Actually he smelled rather appetizing, a bit like a lamb stew. Rina had hurried next door for advice and so had been able to explain to her husband that, yes, Hagbarth hadn’t lied. Kalkaboos simmered their dead overnight. Lupe didn’t think you could call it a religious thing, exactly, but it was certainly a pretty much inviolable custom, like the human habit of embalming. What they did with the corpse afterward was unclear, because Rina hadn’t had time to get more details from the de Mirs. As they sniffed the odor of cooking High Champion Giyt and Rina stared at each other with a wild surmise. “You don’t suppose—” Rina began.

“Jesus, I hope not,” said Giyt. But as they got out of their cart, Giyt gingerly holding his penance under one arm and the detonator in the other hand, they saw that there was food, all right, but of a more conventional sort. Most of the crowd was milling around a dozen huge and fully laden banquet tables.

“What do we do, Shammy?” Rina whispered. “We can’t eat Kalkaboo food.”

Giyt shrugged, grateful that at least they were apparently not expected to eat Kalkaboos. Where the crowd of mourners was thickest, Giyt could see the intact body of the late High Champion, removed from its cooking pot and slowly cooling inside a glass-sided sort of coffin. Or fish tank, because it seemed to be filled with water. The High Champion floated submerged inside, eyes closed, arms folded over his chest, the great floppy ears stirring slowly in the water. He was nude. Apart from that, simmering in a stewpot all through the long Tupelovian night didn’t seem to have changed his looks much. Next to the High Champion’s tank were three large covered pots, each with a Kalkaboo standing beside it as though guarding its contents.

The big question on Giyt’s mind was what to do with his huge firework. Nearly every person present, at least a thousand Kalkaboos and a representative or two of each of the other races, had a firecracker of his or her own, though he didn’t see any that approached the mass of his own monster.

He wondered what they were planning to do with the things. It didn’t seem sensible to set them off at random in this crowd, especially his own mammoth one. And the question was becoming urgent, because he could see the sky already graying around the island’s central mountain.

An elderly female Kalkaboo solved the problem for him. She came hurrying through the mob, made an expression of astonishment when she saw the size of what he carried, then beckoned him to follow her to a roped-off enclosure strewn with what looked like egg cups, in varying sizes, made of solid metal. Mourners were putting the larger firecrackers into the cups, and the largest cup of all, a hundred-kilo giant of fire-stained steel, appeared to be reserved for Giyt. When his burden was emplaced, the female hurried him out of the enclosure and bade him stand just outside the rope. He looked around for Rina, but she was lost in the crowd.

Then a drumbeat sounded. The crowd became silent, all turned toward the east, and just as the first edge of the sun popped over the mountaintop, the salvos began. Each Kalkaboo with a small firecracker tossed it into the enclosure. They exploded on impact. At first it was only sharp rifle cracks as the smaller ones went off; then one of the Kalkaboos holding a detonator like Giyt’s own pressed it. Then there was a larger blast, then a series of them, and then Giyt sighed and pushed the button for his own giant charge. Orange flame leaped up toward the sky. The concussion almost knocked him over, and the immense explosion nearly deafened him; and then it was over.

All the Kalkaboos around Giyt were looking at him with expressions that might have been respect, or equally well could have been loathing; He glanced uneasily toward their waiting cart, but Rina firmly shook her head; it wasn’t time to leave yet. After a moment the mourners began chattering among themselves, turning toward the tank that held the late High Champion.

The Kalkaboos standing by the pots had the covers off now, and one by one they raised their pots and dumped the contents into the tank. Giyt had a confused impression of something moving about in the fall of water from the pots, and then he saw what it was. Each pot had been filled with a dozen or more eel-like things, each a few centimeters long, and as soon as they were in the tank they went about the business of feeding on the stewed carcass of the recent High Champion.

Someone tapped him on the shoulder. He turned to see the female who was his guide, and she was speaking to him. He had to turn up his earpiece to hear her say, “They eat. We eat. You eat,” demonstrating the translation program’s skill at declining at least the simplest verb forms, as she urged him toward the buffet tables.

Weil, Rina and Giyt didn’t eat there, exactly, although they did nibble. The Kalkaboos were knowledgeable enough to have provided some human-edible cheeseburgers, bought frozen from the human store; not quite knowledgeable enough to have defrosted them. The Giyts gnawed politely around the edges as best they could, but not for long. As soon as Giyt saw a chance they stole away, found their cart, and headed for home, where they dumped the remains of the cheeseburgers into the disposer.

By then Giyt’s ears had stopped ringing, and enough of his hearing had returned to let him put in a little preparatory work at his station before heading for the weekly commission meeting. All the same, he resolved to do his best to avoid running up any more Kalkaboo expiation bills, however unfairly accrued. One of those monster firecrackers had been enough to last him. It was the sort of thing, he thought, that was better employed in blowing up tree stumps, or maybe demolishing small houses.

But all in all, Giyt was fairly well pleased with himself. He had met the obligations of the situation with reasonable credit, and when he arrived at the Hexagon he was prepared to present his very first original proposal to the group.

He was early, but not as early as the Responsible One of the Petty-Primes or the Principal Slug, who were whispering to each other at the Slug podium. Mrs. Brownbenttalon arrived a moment later and greeted Giyt. “Hey, Large Male Giyt, you make good bang, eh?”

“Oh, were you there? I didn’t see you.”

“No,” she agreed good-naturedly, “you much too occupied with hellish big bang. How you like dopey Kalkaboo funeral? After disgusting little snakes eat meat they burn decedent’s bones, you know? And then lucky Kalkaboos each get one disgusting snake to keep for pet.” She paused to listen as her husband muttered in her ear. “Oh, right. Listen. Tonight we do Miss Whitenose First Fuck party. You need to cheering up now, so you and mate come, okay? Now got to chair dumb meeting. Not to take long because we probably got to have dumb Kalkaboo ritual real fast.”

“What ritual?” Giyt asked, staring after her, but she had already scuttled to her post at the Centaurian point of the Hexagon as the Delt General Manager arrived.

That was, evidently, as full a quorum as they were going to get. There was no one at the Kalkaboo podium, only a glass fishbowl that, Giyt saw incredulously, contained one of the eel-like things, torpidly swimming as befit a creature with a very full belly. Mrs. Brownbenttalon clicked one of her claws against the lectern and said, “Okay, meeting called to order. You all got all reports, read when you feel like, nothing special, so move to accept, okay? Good. Now, since there no other business—”

Giyt hadn’t expected her to move so fast, but he was ready. “Madam Divinely Elected Savior Brownbenttalon,” he called, “I do have some other business.”

That stopped her for a moment. She peered silently at him over the fur on her long nose, beady little eyes blinking. “Mayor Large Male Giyt, have not available time at present time for necessary time for unknown other business.”

“I’ll just be a moment,’’ he reassured her, and went right on. “What I want to talk about is a proposal for a joint six-peoples effort to make better use of the resources of Tu—of our planet. We could start with the possibility of finding useful new pharmaceuticals to return to our home planets. I am sure most of you have already surveyed the, ah, biota of this island and the ones nearby, and no doubt you’ve long since found many valuable substances. Unfortunately, my own planet has not been so enterprising, and we have a lot to do to catch up. But, unless I am mistaken—and I’ve discussed this with Mr. Hoak Hagbarth—none of you have actually conducted a similar investigation of the biota of the other island chains on this planet. Yet they may have things of great value. I understand that, because of the great distances, there has been little or no contact between the different island arcs since the time of the planet’s K-T incident, and so their biota may be quite different from our own here.” He glanced at his notes, taken from his time with the data file earlier. When he looked up they were all staring at him. “It is a matter of relict populations and mutations,” he explained. “The relict populations may be quite similar to our own;—though there might be considerable differences because of differences in climate—but the mutations, which are quite random, will surely have produced many new species and varieties, perhaps even quite new genera.” He paused, gazing at Mrs. Brownbenttalon uncertainly. “Am I going too fast for you?”

She made a noise that might have been a snicker. “Actually too slow, Mayor Large Male Giyt. Making great demands on patience of new Kalkaboo High Champion, who waiting for meeting end. Look, he entering now for ritual combat.”

It was the first Giyt had heard of the ritual combat. He didn’t know what she was talking about, but as the new High Champion came grimly in, followed by a dozen sullen-looking dignitaries of his community, it was all quickly explained. “Earth Human Mayor Giyt,” the Kalkaboo announced, “you have caused the death of our beloved former High Champion, and as successor of same I must wipe out unendurable stain on Kalkaboo honor. Prepare self for combat!”

And he sprang at Giyt over the audience seats, floppy ears flopping, scrawny arms outstretched to claw at him.

Giyt had never thought of himself as a warrior, didn’t like fighting at all, and had done very little of it in his life. Nevertheless, in high school he and every other student had had to take the compulsory martial-arts courses just to give them a fighting chance of making it home after class.

In any case, the Kalkaboos were not a large race; Giyt was twice the size of the new High Champion-elect. He ducked those grasping arms, bent, caught the eetie around the waist—his scrawny body was much hotter than Giyt’s—and threw him two meters across the room.

The Kalkaboo yelped in astonishment, tried to get up, yelped again, and lay there, clutching one shoulder and glaring up at Giyt. “Are Earth humans insane?” he whimpered. “What you did that for?”

“Jesus, Giyt,” Hagbarth complained, “what did you do that for?”

Giyt protested, “He jumped me. Anyway, it was a fair fight.”

“Asshole! It wasn’t any kind of fight at all. It was just one of those damn Kalkaboo customs, for God’s sake. All you were supposed to do was take a fall and let him claim victory—you know, to avenge what you did to the guy before him, so he could confirm his claim to the job—and then everything would’ve been fine.”

Giyt blinked at him. “Take a fall?”

“Quit. Bare your throat. Tell him he won,” Hagbarth explained. “Are you having-trouble understanding me? That’s what you should have done. But no, you had to make a real fight out of it. Jesus, man! I guess I’m lucky you didn’t just kill him, too, and I don’t think they’ve got a firecracker big enough for that.”