O Pioneer!

VIII

Giyt discovered that his wife had been communicating with Earth when she asked him for a favor. “Shammy, hon, I have to go to the store. I’d appreciate it if you’d come along.”

That was a little surprising, because Rina knew that her husband wasn’t fond of shopping, but then she went on, “It’s a nice day for a walk,” she wheedled. “Anyway I need you to help me pick out a birthday present for my sister’s husband.”

Then he was really astonished, since he hadn’t known she had a sister. Rina was curiously defensive about it, too.

“Oh, yes,” she said, “she’s living in Des Moines. So I dropped her a line, just to let her know where I was and what I was doing.”

“You sent a message to Des Moines?”

“Well, sure. Shammy. She’s the only sister I’ve got. Wasn’t that all right?”

Giyt wasn’t quite sure of the answer to that. It had been his belief that they had cut their ties with Earth entirely—that is, not counting his private stashes of mad money, available any time he chose to draw on them. “Anyway,” she went on, “there was an answer from her in the last transmission—wait a minute. I’ll show you.”

She poked at her terminal, and in a moment her sister’s face appeared. The woman on the screen didn’t look a lot like Rina, Giyt thought: older, sterner, sharper-featured. But she was smiling as she said, “Well, Rina, you could have knocked me dead. Imagine you settled down at last! And married to an important man, at that—a mayor, for heaven’s sake!”

Rina stopped it there. “The rest is just personal stuff,” she said, sounding embarrassed. “We had a lot to catch up on because, you know, she didn’t much care for my, uh, lifestyle. So we sort of lost touch for a while. Anyway, her husband’s birthday’s coming up. I’d like to get him something. The trouble is, I don’t know him well enough to know what he’d like, so if you wouldn’t mind . . .”

Giyt didn’t mind. He did have a pretty full afternoon ahead of him—the commission meeting first, and after that there was a scheduled transmission from Earth, but with live people coming in this time so that he would have to go to the terminal to greet them. No problem there, though. Giyt had become very relaxed about the commission meetings, now that he’d actually read up on the reports ahead of time. And even better, he had a tangible announcement for the Kalkaboos.

The store wasn’t crowded. There was a knot of people in the food section, picking over the fresh vegetables and the wrapped cuts of meat, with another handful sorting through the video displays for things to order from Earth. None of that was what Rina was after. “I’d like to get him something from Tupelo if I can,” she said, doubtfully fingering the sleeve of an anorak. “How cold do you suppose it gets in Des Moines?”

“Cold enough,” Giyt told her, looking under the collar of the coat. He was a little surprised to see cold-weather gear in this balmy place, but no doubt it was for anyone unlucky enough to have to work in the polar factories. Then he found the label. “I think that one comes from Earth, though.”

She sighed. “I know, but the ones they make here are all plastic.” As they were. As were most of the locally produced garments, because there were these oil wells at the pole, and there was no need for the oil as fuel. The nuclear plant on Energy Island took care of all the town’s energy needs, so most of the oil not burned at the pole itself got turned into plastic and fabricated in the polar factories into—well, face it, Giyt thought, mostly into junk.

The biggest export item on display was the doll collection. The dolls came in six varieties, one for each race on Tupelo, and they all squeaked out a friendly line of patter from their interior chiplets—“Hi! I’m a Slug! I like wet places and I can sing!” But Rina’s brother-in-law, a forty-year-old insurance broker in Des Moines, Iowa, was not likely to want a doll of any kind. Nor did any of the locally made kitchen appliances seem like a good bet, however smart they were with chiplets of their own. Rina finally settled on a mantel clock. It was a fairly nice-looking thing, and it had two faces side by side, one displaying each hemisphere of the planet—not that there was much difference between them, unless you know what island groups to look for. One face told Tupeloyian time, the other displayed the twenty-four-hour Earth clock. “I guess it could be a kind of conversation piece,” Rina said doubtfully, hefting the thing in her hand. “You bet,” Giyt encouraged. “Anyway, he sure couldn’t get one of those in Des Moines. Let’s get them to ship it.”

Giyt enjoyed walking around the town when he had the time for it. He liked seeing the new buildings going up—Delts installing the electrical connections. Slug crews running the machines that dug trenches for the sewer and water pipes. There was a human bakery cheek by jowl with a Kalkaboo brewery, offering two distinct smells, both interesting. He passed the human ecumenical church, reminding him that, since he was the mayor, after all, probably he and Rina ought to go there once in a while, and a Centaurian home with the little males bossing children around.

But the day was no longer fine. It had clouded over while he was in the store with Rina, and he wasn’t halfway to the Hexagon when he heard thunder. The storm came on fast, and it was a big one, thunder crashes like artillery fire and startling displays of lightning flashing through the clouds. The rain had already begun and he was drenched by the . time he got a cart. He got drenched again when it let him out at the Hexagon. So as the meeting of the Joint Governance Commission started, he was soggy and no longer had the feeling of being entirely comfortable about it.

He was right about that, too. The meeting was a mess. The Petty-Primes’ Responsible One was in the chair, and he appeared to be having a private feud with the Principal Slug. The meeting got off to a late start because the Principal Slug and the Petty-Prime were off in a corner squeaking and slobbering furiously at each other; and then, when finally the Responsible One climbed into his doll-sized chair and declared the meeting in order, Mrs. Brownbenttalon seized the floor to complain about the delay. “Have wasted expensively irreplaceable time of important and very busy persons here most shockingly,” she declared—or so the translation button in Giyt’s ear made her say. “Personally possess great forbearance or would propose immediate motion of censuring!”

It went on like that. The pelt General Manager complained that the Slugs had damaged some of the electrical connections in digging sewers for the new houses; the Principal Slug announced the Delts were unreasonable, almost as bad as the Petty-Primes; the Petty-Prime in the chair declared the Principal Slug out of order. They were all at one another’s throats—even the Centaurian, Mrs. Brownbenttalon, whom Giyt had regarded as the most sensible of his colleagues on the commission. He could not imagine why. Even the audience, surprisingly numerous this day, seemed restive, chattering among themselves. He caught a glimpse of Olse Hagbarth sitting with her arms folded over her chest, looking amused and unsurprised; she winked at him, as though at a shared joke. But Giyt didn’t know what the joke was. So he sat there, listening in wonder, until the Kalkaboo High Champion got his chance to say that the proposals of the other races for reducing their wasteful use of power were totally unacceptable. Then Giyt managed to get in his announcement that the Earth humans had an expert coming to study the whole question of the power plant, the Petty-Prime declared the meeting adjourned, and everyone flocked for the door.

By the time Giyt got to the exit the rain had slackened off to a steady drizzle and most of the waiting carts were already taken. Olse Hagbarth was waiting for another in the shelter of the doorway and she grinned at him. “Real catfight today, wasn’t it?”

“What was it all about?” he asked.

“Oh, didn’t you know? It’s the six-planet meeting coming up. They’re all antsy because they want to look good for the VIPs from home—ah, here’s my cart,” she finished as one last vehicle rolled up to the curb.

She was heading for it before Giyt could react. He hastened after her. “Look, Olse,” he said, “I need to get to the terminal.”

“Of course you do,” she said sunnily, one hand on the cart door. “Have a nice time.”

“Well—what I mean is, any chance you could give me a lift?”

She looked surprised. “I wish I could help you out, Evesham, but I’m going the other way. Anyway, it isn’t that far to walk, is it? And, look, it’s hardly raining at all anymore.”

Actually the rain had almost stopped by the time Giyt got to the Sommermen terminal and so he was only mildly soaked this time.

What surprised Giyt was to see how many people, and nonpeople, had gathered at the terminal, most of them sitting warm and dry in the cars that had brought them. (Which explained how so few cars had been available at the Hexagon.) He caught sight of Hagbarth and Wili Tschopp standing by Hagbarth’s portal control, but before he could go there, squeals from one of the carts attracted his attention. He turned to see the Divinely Elected Savior of the Centaurians, Mrs. Brownbenttalon, poking her long nose out toward him. The translator in his ear piped, “Apologetics, Mayor Large Male Giyt. Should have to offered the sharing of transportation from Hexagon. Trust you scurried well through raindrops.”

“Thanks. Actually I was glad for the exercise,” he lied.

It seemed to Giyt that Mrs. Brownbenttalon was giving him a skeptical look—as much as a curly-haired anteater could manage a look of that kind—but Wili Tschopp was shouting at them to stand back. The golden glow was beginning to surround the terminal. Almost at once it began to flash blue and white.

The transmission from Earth was arriving. No, had arrived; the portal lights went out as the sharp puff of displaced air startled Giyt. He blinked, and when he opened his eyes again, fifteen or twenty large crates were stacked in the bay. A woman was sitting on the edge of one of them, tapping her feet and frowning impatiently, and behind her were three other rather worried-looking adults and a small child, all of them holding suitcases, purses, and each other’s hands.

It was time for Giyt to carry out his mayoral duties. He advanced on the newcomers, hand outstretched. “Welcome to Tupelo,” he said. “I’m your mayor, Evesham Giyt, and this gentleman over here”—waving toward Hagbarth, hurrying in their general direction—“is your Ex-Earth representative, Hoak Hagbarth. Hoak will arrange for your housing, and all your other needs, so if you’ll excuse me—”

Hagbarth gave him a scorching look. “Stay here, Giyt,” he ordered. “Keep these people company while I take care of Emissary Patroosh.”

“How?” Giyt asked, but Hagbarth was already most obsequiously greeting the woman on the box.

So Giyt found himself doing the tour-guide thing for the new arrivals, while out of the corner of his eye he saw all the nonhumans getting out of their carts and swarming over the cargo. Mr. Brownbenttalon had leaped off his mate’s back and was running the fabric of some new garments through his tiny paws; four or five of the Petty-Primes were concentrating on the luggage belonging to the immigrants. One of them sniffed at a bunch of grapes suspiciously, then bit one of them in half, stared at the interior and then spit the thing out. The woman Giyt was talking to cried out, “My basket of fruit!” They all abandoned Giyt to protect their belongings as Wili Tschopp came up behind him.

“When they’ve got their stuff,” he said, “you can take them to Olse’s house. She’s sorting out places for them to live.”

“I never had to do that before,” Giyt remarked suspiciously.

“No, of course not. Usually Hoak does it for you, but this time he’s got the energy lady to take care of. And listen”—smirking again, in the way Giyt had learned to hate—“you be sure to give my regards to that really good-looking lady of yours.”

By the time Hoak Hagbarth had shepherded his VIP guest’s luggage past the inspection—with much argument and raising of voices over the scientific instruments she’d brought with her—he escorted her to the waiting cart, pausing to introduce her to Giyt. “Dr. Emilia Patroosh, Mayor Evesham Giyt. Listen, Giyt, you’ll have to take the new people to my place so Olse can—”

“I know,” Giyt said, politely shaking the hand of the energy expert.

“Fine.” Hagbarth started to get into the cart with his VIP visitor, then paused. “Hey, listen. I’ve got an idea. You were wondering about the power situation? Why don’t you go along with Dr. Patroosh to take a look at Energy Island tomorrow? I’ll have a chopper ready for you in the morning. Take your wife; it’ll give the two of you a chance to see the sharks.”

“Sharks?” But Hagbarth only shook his head, grinning, as the cart sped away.