O Pioneer! (15 page)

This time the work was pure manual labor, not made easier by the way the other firemen joshed him about the Kalkaboo High Champion. Even Lupe gave him a couple of friendly jabs until she saw that he was really unhappy. Then she said, "Well, forget it, Evesham. Kalkaboos are always passing out for some reason or another; the atmosphere's too dense for them here or something. He'll be fine."

It was hot work, but not particularly hard work. It went quickly enough. What eased the labor was Ex-Earth's generosity with handling machines. Once the smaller pieces were crated and the booth walls were flat on the ground, three forklifts trundled up. They lifted the material onto a flatbed trailer, which carted them off for storage. Giyt went back to the firehouse with the last load, while others remained to tidy up the space the fair had occupied.

He had never been in the storage warehouse before. From the outside it looked like a low-roofed shed behind the fire-house. Inside it was dug deep into the ground, and a lot bigger than he had expected. All that space was needed, too, because it was crammed full of equipment: spare parts for the fire engines, extra hoses, even an entire additional pumper truck. One bin contained six additional water cannon, far bigger and more powerful than the ones mounted on the trucks. He gazed at them for a moment, puzzled, then turned to Lupe. "What are these things?"

She glanced at them and shrugged. "They're just extras. We don't use them. They're too powerful for the kind of work we do—I think back on Earth they demolish burning buildings with them. Hoak probably knows, if you want to ask him.''

Giyt did, but not as much as he wanted to ask him about finances. But Hagbarth didn't show up at the firehouse, and when Giyt found a chance to call him the man announced he was really in a hurry. "Finances? Why are you worried about that kind of thing, Giyt? Well, tell you what I'll do, why don't I come over to your place after siesta, that okay?"

"That would be fine."

"Fine. And, oh, by the way. The High Champion's still in a coma."

"Coma?" Giyt was startled. "Nobody said anything about a coma!" But Hagbarth had already cut off.

Giyt slept poorly during the siesta. Long before it was time he slipped out of the bed, leaving Rina gently breathing behind, and placed another call to the mates of the High Champion. "In present condition of beloved High Champion is no change," the female Kalkaboo said, and cut off. The translation programs weren't adequate to let Giyt tell anything useful from her tone.

To take his mind off it, he went back to thinking about the community's finances. The wealth of material in the fire company's warehouse had been a total surprise to him, far more than a thousand Taste of Tupelos could ever hope to pay for.

He decided to dig a little deeper. It turned out that most of the data he wanted was in a secure file, though naturally not secure from Evesham Giyt. He accessed the community's whole balance sheet without difficulty.

What he found made him very thoughtful. Tupelo was a gilt-edged proposition, but basically a charity operation. They were living on handouts from Ex-Earth. Very generous ones. Somebody was investing a great deal of money in a venture that was providing next to no cash returns at all.

But
why
? Tupelo was a whole planet, undoubtedly packed with riches. In the days of Earth's conquerors they had gained more than military victories, they had gained sources of gold, spices, rare woods, treasures of many kinds. Why couldn't Tupelo pay its own way in the same fashion? Charity was all very well, but what if the philanthropists ever got tired of giving?

When Hagbarth arrived, looking mildly resentful at Giyt's imposition on his time, the first question Giyt had for him was: "What happens if Ex-Earth runs out of money?"

Hagbarth gave him a suspicious look, then relaxed. "Don't worry yourself about that. Never happen, Giyt. Ex-Earth is
loaded
."

"It looks that way, all right. But where does the money come from?"

Hagbarth shrugged. "Public-spirited citizens. People concerned about the future of the human race—hell, Giyt, all that should have been in your briefing materials. You didn't get any?" He rolled his eyes. "What can I tell you? Ex-Earth pays the recruiters so much a head for volunteers, so once they've got you to sign up, what do they care? Anyway, the money's there. We have pledges from some of the richest people in America, and some of the biggest corporations, too. And I'm not talking about just one-time donations. They've all made fifty-year pledges, and they'll keep their words."

Giyt nodded. "And what happens when the fifty years run out? There's what left, thirty-five years or so?"

"Long enough not to worry," Hagbarth said, smiling.

"For you and me, maybe. But I do worry. I've got a child coming."

Hagbarth said sympathetically, "Yeah, I see what you mean. Olse and I haven't been that lucky, so maybe I haven't really thought much about that kind of thing. I guess we figured if Ex-Earth pulled the plug we could just go back to Earth and retire."

"But what if we don't want to do that?" Giyt persisted. "If we have a kid that grows up here, what's he going to do back on Earth? Besides, my wife likes it here."

"That doesn't surprise me," Hagbarth said shortly.

His tone made Giyt look at him in surprise, but Hagbarth's face wasn't giving anything away. "Well, what I've been thinking," Giyt said, "it doesn't have to be that way. Couldn't we pay for ourselves?"

"Pay how?"

"Ship stuff back to Earth. Earn money."

"Well, we do the best we can that way, Giyt. You know that. We send back all that souvenir stuff to Earth that we make here—"

"That's not money, Hoak. The amounts involved are pitiful. We should try to earn real money. The other races do, don't they? I mean, they're always sending local stuff home through the terminal. I presume it earns money for them. We could do the same."

Hagbarth was looking wary but no longer suspicious. "What kind of local stuff?"

"Organic materials, for a start. The Petty-Primes ship whole saplings and bushes back, roots and all; I think it's so they can be checked for possible pharmaceuticals or new food crops, that sort of thing. Why don't we? And the Delts do a lot of manufacturing. We could do much more of that, too. Not just gadgets—real goods. We've got metals and stuff from the polar mines. We could build things—some to ship home for credit, a lot for ourselves right here."

Hagbarth pursed his lips. "You've never been to the polar mines yet, have you? Sure, they've got processing stuff up there, but most of it isn't ours. We just have a little corner of the works. What you call boutique factories, you know? Anything big, they don't do much more than forty or fifty copies in a run."

"So we can build some new factories, can't we? So there will be something the Tupelo humans can do to earn money instead of living on handouts?"

Hagbarth looked as though he was tiring of the subject. "Well," he said, "maybe you've got something there and maybe you don't, but I guess it could be looked into. Tell you what: When the Earth commissioners come for the six-race meeting I'll see if I can get them to send some specialists along, check over what the possibilities are here. How would that be?"

"Fine," said Giyt, making a mental note to remind Hagbarth of his promise.

"Then that's settled. I'd better be getting along—and listen, you won't forget about those programs for me, will you? Because—oh, wait a minute."

He paused, listening to a message from his carryphone. Then he looked angrily at Hagbarth. "Shit," he said.

"What's the matter?"

"It's the goddamn Kalkaboo High Champion. He just died."

"Died? But I thought . . . Oh, hell, that's too bad."

"Yeah, well, they'll be boiling him all night—''

"Boiling?"

"It's what they do, Giyt. So the funeral will be at dawn tomorrow, and you'd better be there. See, basically they figure you killed him."

XV

Well, what do you say, folks and folkesses? Did we have one grand time at the Taste of Tupelo yesterday or did we not? The beer was cold, the rides were fun, and weren't those little kids just adorable? Even the eeties. Sure, if you 're the picky kind of person that's always looking for the worm in the mango you can say a few things went kind of wrong. I'm sorry I had to arrest two of our citizens
—
I'm not going to say their names over the air, but you all know who they are
—
but, hey, a night in the cooler straightened them right up, and they'll be home with their loved ones this morning. And it's too bad what happened to the Kalk High Muckamuck, but if the Kalks can't play a friendly game of chance without throwing some kind of a tizzy fit when they lose, whose fault is that? Anyway, I'm sure we all join in offering our sincere sympathy to his spousal units and all the other Kalkaboos for his funeral services this morning.

But what's the use of looking at the dark side? Put it all together, it was a great Taste, and I want to be the first one to rise and move that we pass a real vote of gratitude to Chief Wili Tschopp and his hard-working, fun-loving men and women of the volunteer fire company, even if, heh-heh, I happen to be one of them myself.

—
SILVA CRISTL
'
S EARLY MORNING CHAT

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.