O Pioneer! (19 page)

He didn't mind. He didn't even mind the stowing and draining after twenty minutes of blasting holes in the foliage along the banks of the foul-smelling stream, where one of the great cargo submarines from the Pole floated half submerged, waiting to be unloaded. But then, when they got back to the firehouse, the lieutenant was gone and Chief Tschopp was waiting to give him spot oral quizzes on what he had learned in his screen session.

That wasn't what Giyt wanted at that moment. He was wet and sweaty and his arms were tired from holding back the kick of the water cannon. What he wanted most of all was to go home and take a shower. He didn't do well on the quiz, and when Hoak Hagbarth strolled in in the middle of it, Giyt looked to him for a diversion.

It didn't work that way. "For Christ's sake, Giyt," Tschopp exploded. "Pay attention!"

"He don't catch on real fast, does he?" offered Maury Kettner, watching.

"He does not," Tschopp agreed in disgust. "What's the matter, Giyt? You too busy playing those little bedtime games with your lady to study?"

That was going farther than Giyt was prepared to accept, but as he was tensing to reply Hagbarth cut in. "Now, now," he said mildly, "watch how you talk about somebody that's about to become a mother, Wili. Come on. Tell Evesham here you're sorry." Tschopp looked rebellious, but muttered something that might have been an apology. "Now, that's better. Are you through with the mayor? Because I need to talk to him about something."

He didn't wait for an answer, just jerked his head toward the chief's office. As the two of them entered, Giyt asked, "How did you know Rina was pregnant?"

"Oh, hell, Evesham." Hagbarth smiled. "Everybody knows everything around here, didn't you know that? Except about the freaks. They keep a lot of secrets from us." He closed the door on the man who was the office's rightful occupant. "That's what I wanted to talk to you about." He reached into his pocket and pulled out a ring, set with a topaz—obviously fake—the size of a pigeon's egg. "There's a recorder in the stone, Evesham. What I'd like you to do, I'd like you to just wear it next time you see Mrs. B., and maybe get her to talk a little more about what armaments they've got—"

Giyt stared at him. "You want me to spy on her?"

"I wouldn't call it spying, exactly," Hagbarth protested. "Just for archival purposes, you know? And it's not that we want to know anything they shouldn't be willing to tell us anyway—"

"No."

Hagbarth looked at him incredulously. "You don't mean that," he said.

"Actually I do. No. I won't do it."

"Christ, Giyt, where's your patriotism? You could be doing yourself some good, too. You can bet the eeties know everything there is to know about Earth—who knows what kind of spy stuff they had in the drone they sent the portal in? I mean," he added hastily, "if they did do that, like they say. And we've never gotten a ship near any of their planets. Hell, we don't even know where the Kalks and the Petty-Primes come from! And the scout ships the Huntsville people sent to Alpha Centauri and Delta Pavonis never even reported back—I give you one guess why."

Giyt frowned. Put like that, it sounded damning. But he. said firmly, "Mrs. Brownbenttalon's a friend, and I don't do that to my friends. I'm not going to rat her out for you."

Hagbarth looked him over in silence for a moment. Then he sighed. "So we might as well pack it in,"' he said. "I guess your principles do you credit."

But Giyt was quite sure he didn't mean it. What Hagbarth meant, what the tone of his voice said for him, was
I'm going to remember this
.

XVIII

The star Delta Pavonis, which at a distance of some eighteen light-years is one of our Sun's nearest neighbors, has long been known to have planets, some of which were suspected of bearing life. That is why the extrasolar exploration team based at Huntsville, Alabama, directed one of its first probes toward that system. That probe was lost. (So was the one directed toward Alpha Centauri.) It wasn't until the first humans arrived on Tupelo that it was confirmed that planets of both stars did in fact possess civilizations.

The Delts—as the species from the Delta Pavonis planet are called—are structurally similar to humans
_,
although their triangular skull and independently operating eyes give them a rather bizarre appearance. Biochemically, however, they are quite different. Sulfur is a major constituent of their chemical makeup and their diet, which has an unfortunate effect. Sulfur compounds are notoriously among the most malodorous of chemicals.

—
BRITANNICA ONLINE
, "
TUPELO
."

Sure enough, Hagbarth didn't forget. It didn't take him long .to show it. He appeared on Giyt's doorstep with a record pad in his hand. He looked both surly and impatient. "Jesus, Giyt," he said, "did you forget the mayor has to sign off on new housing? I've got these places going up to put our people in for the six-planet summit, and I can't let them be occupied until you do your job."

Giyt knew that. What he didn't know was why Hagbarth had come over in person when he could perfectly well have used the net. He signed in silence and handed the plate back to Hagbarth. "Thanks," Hagbarth said, but he didn't leave. He eyed Giyt without speaking for a moment, then said, "I don't guess you've changed your mind."

"About wearing your spy ring? No."

"All right," Hagbarth said, apparently doing his best to sound reasonable. "Then how about this? How about showing me how to listen in on Mrs. B.'s private transmissions? You could do that the way you did with the Petty-Primes, right?"

"I could. I won't, though."

"Come on, Giyt! I'm not asking you to do it for me personally! It's for all of us. The Centaurians and all the other freaks will be sending reports back to their home planets. Who knows what they're really up to? If we could just get a look at what they're saying to the people back home—"

Giyt shook his head firmly. "No."

"Christ, Giyt!" Hagbarth's tone was both anger and disgust. "Maybe I've misjudged you. You sure don't live up to your stats."

Giyt felt a warning tingle. "When were you looking at my stats?"

"I've been looking at a lot of things, Giyt. It's a funny thing, though. There's not much documentation for you."

And how did you know that? Giyt asked, but not out loud. Anyway, he was pretty sure he knew the answer. From his base on Tupelo, Hagbarth didn't have the facilities to make enough of a search in Earth records to be inconvenient. There was only one other possibility. Someone on Earth had done it for him. Giyt shrugged warily. "There's been some sloppy record-keeping, I guess."

"Sure," Hagbarth said, heavily sarcastic. "Or maybe somebody not so sloppy messing with the records? Somebody who's pretty good at tinkering with the net? It doesn't matter, though. There wasn't much on you, but there was a pretty complete data file on your wife. The lady's had a really unusual career, hasn't she?"

Evesham Giyt did not have much experience of anger; he had arranged his life so that there weren't many occasions for it. Now he felt it, and felt it more strongly than he ever had. He kept his voice controlled. "What are you trying to tell me, Hagbarth?"

"I'm telling you that I'd like the two of you to be a little more cooperative, that's all." Hagbarth's expression was now smug; the son of a bitch was beginning to enjoy himself.

Giyt chose his words with care. "The thing is, Hagbarth, we just don't like cooperating with scum. Do you understand me? The answer is still no."

The smugness disappeared from Hagbarth's face; they locked eyes. Hagbarth was the first to break away.

"Ah, Giyt," he sighed, "What's the use? Just remember, I tried to warn you."

As Rina had reminded him, Evesham Giyt had never had many friends in his days on Earth. But there was another side to that coin. He hadn't had any enemies either, or at least he hadn't had any who knew where to find him. While here on Tupelo he definitely had acquired at least one certifiable enemy, and one, moreover, who was prepared to work at it.

Giyt got confirmation of that when Rina came storming back from the neighbors', her face dark with unexpected anger. "Have you been watching that bitch Cristl's show on the net? Well, you better take a look. Go back to about twenty minutes ago." And when he had backtracked to the beginning of the woman's call-in show there she was, Silva Cristl, wearing her fire lieutenant's uniform with the jacket unbuttoned enough to show her cleavage, smiling into the camera. Her caller's face was pic-in-pic below her, and Giyt recognized him at once: Maury Kettner, the man who had wanted to move his family to the Pole and had been turned down.

Only, according to what the two of them were saying on the screen, he hadn't been: "We'll certainly miss you around the firehouse, Maury."

"I'll miss you guys, too," Kettner said, flushed with the importance of being on the net, "so I just wanted to say good-bye for a while to all my friends. And to say thanks to Mr. Hagbarth, while I'm at it. He really came through for me, so I and the family are on our way to the Pole. No thanks to the mayor, you know. I must've asked him a dozen times, and he just wouldn't do a thing."

"I know what you mean." Cristl was grinning, too. "I hope he's a better fireman than he is a mayor."

"Well, you'd lose that one," said Kettner, chuckling as he was replaced by the next caller. The little picture showed a middle-aged woman, faintly familiar; Giyt thought maybe she was one of the ones he'd seen on Energy Island. She had criticisms of her own:

"Listen, I heard what Maury was saying about the mayor, and he's damn right. You know what this Giyt did to the boss Kalkaboo, don't you? How's that going to look when all the big shots come here for their meeting? I have to say, I really miss Mariam Vardersehn."

"There'll be another election one of these days," Cristl said consolingly.

"Yeah, and the dumb voters just might put Giyt right back in."

"Well," said Lieutenant Cristl, pursing her lips in a knowledgeable expression, "I don't know if you have to worry much about that, sweetie. There's a lot that hasn't come out yet, take my word for it, and not just about Giyt himself, either. Now let's go to the next caller."

That was enough for Giyt. He clicked it off while Rina protested, "They're being so unfair!"

"It's not a fair world," Giyt said absently, thinking about something he didn't want to say out loud in Rina's presence. And of course, Rina's next remark was right on that subject. "What do you suppose Cristl was talking about—stuff that hasn't come out yet?"

Giyt didn't answer her for a moment. He was wondering just what Hagbarth might have found out—and even more, how Hagbarth had known where to look. He said, "I suppose we'll find out sooner or later."

It wasn't later. In fact it was a good deal sooner than Giyt had expected. Rina had hardly returned next door to practice parenting on the de Mir kids when she came flying back. Both Matya and Lupe were with her, carrying the smaller children; Matya looked indignant, Rina wore anger and unhappiness, and Lupe seemed to have been crying. "Shammy," Rina said, "I don't know how to tell you this, but somebody's been telling around that I used to be a whore."

Giyt froze. He hardly heard Lupe sobbing, "I told you, Matya! You shouldn't have said anything!"

Arid Matya, half defensive, half repentant: "I thought she ought to know what those bastards at the firehouse were saying about her. They're all Hagbarth's buddies, I hated Lupe going there."

"They're not all like that," Lupe protested.

"No, but the ones in charge are. Evesham? I'm sorry as hell about this, but really you did have to know. Hagbarth's got all these regulations that he pulls out when he wants to. He might even be able to get you kicked off Tupelo, like Shura Kenk."

"She's the one who used to live here in your house," Lupe supplied.

"I remember," Giyt said. "But I thought she just got tired of living on Tupelo and went home."

"Went home! Hagbarth had her thrown out. They said she'd molested one of the Grayhorn kids—the twelve-year-old, a born liar if I ever saw one. But they believed what he said. So they sent a special rocket up to the pole and flew her back in the middle of her shift to face the charges."

"She didn't do it, of course," Lupe put in. "She said so, and we believed her. She said Hagbarth was just ticked off at her for something that happened at the factory."

"But the mayor deported her. Well, it wasn't just the mayor. It was Hagbarth, of course. And he could do that to you, too."

Rina looked questioningly at Giyt. "Maybe that's not such a bad thing, Shammy? Maybe we ought to go back home anyway."

"Oh, please no, Rina!" Lupe begged. "Everybody knows what a turd Hagbarth is. It'll all blow over. We don't want you to leave!"

"Do you really want a whore living next door to your children?"

"We want
you
, Rina!"

And Matya chimed in: "What does it matter what you did a long time ago? I mean, do I care? Back home, I used to work for the IRS."

The good thing about being on Hoak Hagbarth's enemies list was that it sure did cut down on the number of people who came to ask Giyt for favors. The bad part—

Well, there were more bad parts than Giyt could count, Never mind the crazy, silly problem with the Kalkaboos; never mind the possibility that Hagbarth might kick them right back to Earth. What troubled him most was what all this was doing to Rina. She had just barely got used to her status as the pregnant wife of a well-respected man when she had to shift gears and get used to his new status as a semi-pariah and, worst of all, to her own. It wasn't just the embarrassment. It was a situation that Giyt was certain couldn't be good for the baby. For that he intended never, ever to forgive Hoak Hagbarth.

Then there were the second-order derivatives of that bit of nastiness. One big question, for instance: How had Hagbarth found out about Rina's past? There was nothing about that in the open records even back on Earth. Giyt had made sure that was so long ago, as a minor and unmentioned courtesy to a friend. Had someone back home done some serious digging? And if so, were they likely to do the same sort of digging in Giyt's own records? They would certainly have a tough time, because he had erected some pretty solid blocks over everything that related to his own history. But would the blocks withstand a really serious attack by a really high-powered investigation?