O Pioneer! (14 page)

Giyt nodded.

"I knew I could count on you," Hagbarth said, reaching across the counter to pat Giyt's arm. "We're all patriots here, aren't we? We just have to work at it a little harder than we would back home, that's all."

XIII

The provenance of the extraterrestrial race called "Kalkaboos" is unknown. From other evidence certain facts about it can be deduced. Their native planet's atmosphere appears to have been richer in oxygen than either Earth's or Tupelo's, though the difference is not normally enough to handicap the Kalkaboos in their life on Tupelo, Their planet's sun is almost certainly brighter than Earth's, particularly in the extreme ultraviolet frequencies, but it has never been identified.

The Kalkaboos were the third sentient race to arrive on Tupelo, considerably later than the Centaurians and the Slugs. When the Kalkaboos appeared, they presented a problem for the prior colonists. They had only two options: to resist the new arrivals or to permit them to join. Since resistance would almost certainly involve combat
—
and since both the Centaurians and the Slugs feared that such a conflict might easily escalate to involve themselves
—
they decided the lesser evil was to let the Kalkaboos remain, subject to their adhering to the terms of the Treaty of Perpetual Peace. After a short transition period the Kalkaboos, too, were granted a seat on the planet's Joint Governance Commission.

—
BRITANNICA ONLINE
, "
TUPELO
."

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.

XIV

Little is known of the religious observances practiced by most of the extraterrestrials with whom the human race shares the planet Tupelo. The Delts and the Petty-Primes don't seem to have any. Nor do the Centaurians, although their leader, puzzlingly, is referred to as their Divinely Elected Savior. The Slugs are said to be intensely religious, expressing their fervor in song. Unfortunately, all their hymns are sung in a special "divine" language, which the machine translators are not equipped to handle.

It is the Kalkaboos whose religious rituals are most public and thus best known. The most conspicuous of their customs is the one which requires them to "explode" and thus destroy each day's burden of sins by setting off small charges at the dawn of the next day. This has struck some observers as grotesque, but not nearly as grotesque as some other customs of the Kalkaboos.

—
BRITANNICA ONLINE
, "
TUPELO
."

The good thing about the High Champion's accident was that it happened so fast most of the fairgoers didn't even know what was going on. Chief Tschopp did, though, and descended on Giyt like a thundercloud. "Damn fool," he said. "You should've been watching what you were doing. Now we're going to have the goddamn High Champion sick in bed with a major oxygen-deficiency headache, and I'll be screwed if they don't make some sort of formal complaint before dark, How could you do this to the fire company, Giyt?"

Giyt had no answer, though the accusation was unjust . . . but, well, not entirely unjust, Giyt thought. He should have had the magnets back on before the Delts got there. And he had trouble getting to sleep, weary as he was, when at last the Taste of Tupelo was over and the firemen were allowed to go home and to bed.

When he woke up his first action was to call the High Champion's mates and ask the one who answered how he was doing. "The beloved person is resting," she said without further comment, and cut the connection before Giyt had a chance to apologize.

He sat down at his workstation and stared into space awhile, sipping coffee and brooding over the accident. It wasn't his fault, he told himself again. That raised the question of whose fault it was, but he figured that out quickly enough. The fault belonged to the fire company for secretly running crooked games at the fair. That wasn't honest. More to the point, the fact that the games were fixed probably wasn't a secret to at least some of the eeties. The Delt, for one, had been clearly aware he was being taken. And how did that look for Earth humans as a race? And all for the sake of making a few dishonest cues!

Did the fire company need money that badly? Just for curiosity's sake, he accessed the stats for the Taste of Tupelo in previous years. When he saw what they were, he stared into space a while longer. All bills paid, all receipts recorded, the Taste of Tupelo had never made a net profit of as much as six thousand cues—or, Giyt calculated, just about enough to pay for a new set of tires on a few, but not all, of the company's fire engines.

It wasn't worth it. He was still puzzling over it when Rina called him to breakfast. Of course she picked up on his mood at once. The morning chorus of Kalkaboo firecrackers to announce the dawn—louder than usual, Giyt thought—made conversation difficult. But as soon as it was over, she asked, "Hon, are you worrying about that Kalkaboo?"

He blinked at her. He had almost forgotten the High Champion's mishap. "Oh, sure," he said. "Sort of. But mostly I was thinking about money."

"Money? Really? Is there something real expensive you want to buy?"

"No, that's not it. Not
our
money. The fire company's." But while he was trying to explain his carryphone rang with the fire company signal. It was an all-hands summons. "We'll talk about it later," he said, reluctantly getting ready to go over to the fairground to help break down the concessions.