O Pioneer!

XXIII

Evesham Giyt wasn’t in the habit of taking no for an answer; especially when the no came from someone other than the person he wanted to ask. Although it was the middle of the night, as soon as he got home he tried calling Dr. Patroosh. She didn’t answer, neither on her personal access code nor the one for the house she had been assigned. When the fourth or fifth call wasn’t answered he put his clothes back on, called for a cart, and had himself driven over to the house. It was as dark as all the others around it, both human and eetie, and no one responded to his knock.

Frowning, Giyt went home again. There had to be a way to reach the Earth delegate, but what was it? With Rina softly snuffling—you couldn’t call it snoring—in the next room, he sat down at the screen again.

There wasn’t much for him there, either. When Giyt tried to access the polar manufacturing program again, he once again got the manual control legend.

That was highly improbable. It was also what he had more or less expected. Something was definitely fishy at the polar factories, and try as he would he could not find a way into the mystery.

The answers were either on Earth or at the Pole itself. Going to Earth wasn’t an option, if only because his departure would be a victory for Hoak Hagbarth. Should he go to the Pole, then? When he checked the schedules he found the suborbital rocket was on the island, due to return to the Pole the next day. He could bully his way onto it as mayor, he thought.

But he wanted to know what was happening on Earth, too.

It didn’t take Evesham Giyt long to find an answer to that. He set about creating a super-scout, the most complicated of his career, to sniff through the entire net until it found just what Hagbarth and his gang were up to.

It took time. It would take more time than that to produce any data that would be any use to him; he encoded it to go to Earth in the next transmission, but then, even after it had found out what he wanted to know—if it did—it would have to wait for another transmission to report back to him.

At least it was a tangible step. When weariness finally drove Giyt to bed he felt he had accomplished something.

Dawn was lightening in the east when the din of Kalkaboo fireworks woke him. They seemed louder than usual; some of them must be expiating particularly nasty sins, Giyt thought, maybe to impress the delegates from their home planets. By the time he was dressing after his shower the noise had stopped, the sun was well and truly up, and Rina stuck her head in their bedroom to remind him that there was a note on his screen. The Centaurians were arriving.

Giyt had more or less got used to the arrival of these foreign dignitaries without quite knowing what was going to happen at any of them. Each was different. This time, although it was hardly more than dawn, what looked like every Centaurian on Tupelo was there before him. in the first rank he recognized Mrs. Brownbenttalon and her newly elevated daughter, Mrs. Whitenose. There might have been others he knew, but he couldn’t pick them out in the mass of several hundred of the great females, with their smaller males and young romping around among them. When they saw Giyt they made way for him to join the other mayors in the front row, but he detoured as he caught sight of Hoak Hagbarth lurking by the portal.

“Hagbarth!” he called. “Wait a minute.”

The Ex-Earth man had already hastily turned to take his place at the control switch, but he was blocked by a dozen Centaurian females crowding toward the portal. “Listen,” Giyt panted, catching up to him. “I really need to talk to Dr. Patroosh.”

“But she doesn’t want to talk to you, Giyt.”

“I’ll believe that when I hear it from herself. Mind telling me where she is?”

“I do mind, and, listen, Giyt, even if I didn’t, don’t you think the lady would like to be left alone? Considering what time those poor people finally got to bed? Considering they got a full day’s work ahead of them? Now would you please let me get this bunch in?”

There was no arguing with that. The Delt in the control group was already screeching furiously at Hagbarth to join them. Disgruntled, Giyt took his place in the rank of mayors. He hardly noticed when the chime sounded, the portal began to glow, the door opened, and the four Centaurian VIP females, their husbands peering excitedly out of their fur, emerged. He was considering his next action. Perhaps Patroosh was staying at the Hagbarth house; he could go there and demand entrance—preferably before Hagbarth himself got there.

He didn’t linger any longer than protocol absolutely demanded, but as he was heading for a cart a tiny Centaurian male scuttled through the crowd, calling, his name. “Large Male Giyt! This is I here, principal husband of Mrs. Brownbenttalon, you recall me? Be waiting briefly, please!”

“I’m in kind of a hurry—”

“Yes, surely. Deeply regret interrupting, but esteemed wife ask me to inform you. You wish find Earth female Patroosh, she say, having overhear you talk with Large Male Hagbarth person, correct? She say good idea go see New Zealand Large Male. Thank you. Now must return instantly for completing of welcoming high-ranking co-species persons.”

It took a lot of knocking and ringing to get anyone to answer the New Zealander’s door, and when the man showed up, half dressed, he looked seriously annoyed.. Even more so when Giyt announced that he wanted to see Dr. Patroosh. “Who the hell are you?” he demanded. “The mayor? Oh, right, the bloke that wanted to bring weapons into Tupelo. What the hell did you want weapons for?”

“It wasn’t my idea. Can we talk about it some other time? I just need to see Dr. Patroosh.”

The New Zealander looked suddenly suspicious. “What’ve you been hearing about her and me?”

“Nothing. I just need to talk to her.”

The New Zealander studied him for a moment, then shrugged. “Well, why don’t you come on in? I think she’s probably out of bed by now.”

So she was, but she was still wearing a wrapper over a frilly nightgown. It suited her, with her hair down; in fact, she looked quite pretty, and Giyt could see why doubling up was not a hardship for the New Zealander.

She did not, however, seem pleased to see Giyt. “Yes?” she said frostily. And she remained frosty while Giyt told her his shadowy suspicions about Hoak Hagbarth.

The New Zealander was listening intently. When Giyt finished he said, “What’ve I always told you, Emelia? It was a mistake to let Tupelo be an all-American project.”

Patroosh gave him a tolerant look. “But that’s only temporary, Jemmy. America’s where Ex-Earth has been getting all its funding, so naturally America has a special interest. But they say they’re definitely going to open it up to the rest of the world real soon now.”

The New Zealander gave her a skeptical look. “I think we ought to listen to what this man has to say.”

“Ah, Jemmy,” she said crossly, “don’t you think we’ve got enough on our plate? We’ve got to bring up the question of exchanging ambassadors again, and that’s going to be a long, hard fight.”

“But it’s important,” Giyt put in.

She shook her head. “Listen, Giyt,” she began, and then hesitated. “Well,” she said at last, “I guess you ought to know. Hagbarth’s pretty down on you. Says he misjudged you. Doesn’t think you’re the right kind of person for the colony. And he has some stories about your wife—”

Giyt’s expression hardened. “I know what he says about my wife.”

“I don’t really care what he says about your wife. But it makes a problem. If the Ex-Earth rep and the mayor are feuding, it complicates things here.”

“But if the Ex-Earth rep is committing a crime—”

“Depends on what kind of crime it is, Giyt,” she said kindly. “The UN can’t do anything about embezzlement out here, can it?”

“I don’t know that’s what it is,” he said obstinately. “It could be anything. It could be something that damages relations with the other planets.”

“Yes, it could,” she agreed, “but we don’t know that, do we? As far as I can see, we don’t know anything at all.” She meditated for a moment, then sighed. “Giyt, I’ll tell you what I’ll do. When I’m back on Earth I’ll ask Interpol a few discreet questions. If they know anything, I’ll try to follow up.”

Giyt, torn between knowing he ought to thank her, wanting more action: “When will that be?”

“A while. The ambassador-exchange thing is going to take time. Maybe a couple of weeks, even. But that’s the best I can do. If you wanted me to do anything here, you’d have to have more evidence. Now will you please leave us alone so I can get dressed?”

More evidence? All right, Giyt thought, I’ll give her more evidence. And when he got back to his home he asked Rina, “Do you think you’d be all right by yourself if I went to the Pole for a day or two?”