Frederik Pohl - O Pioneer!

A female voice interrupted his dark thoughts. It turned out to belong to Mariam Vardersehn, his predecessor as mayor of the human colony. “Morning, Giyt,” she said, not sounding particularly friendly. “You want to turn off the magnet so I can try to get that Kewpie doll?”

He looked cautiously around, then did as she asked. All the same, she missed with the first three balls, fared even worse with the next three. That was enough. “The twins aren’t big enough for dolls yet anyway,” she said. “How are you liking being mayor?”

“So far, so good. I guess you don’t miss it, though.”

She gave him a look, then sighed. “Actually,” she said, “it was better than changing diapers in this heat.”

Her tone made Giyt give her a closer look. “You almost sound as though you’d like to have the job back.”

“What does it matter what I’d like?” she asked moodily. “Only, if you ever make up your mind to quit, be sure to let me know.”

So Giyt had something else to think about. As far as he could see, there was no way for Mariam Vardersehn to undo the election that had given him the mayoralty. Unless, of course, he were to resign, but he had no intention of that, if only because he didn’t particularly like the woman. For that matter, in some moods he didn’t even particularly like the job. But the fact that she seemed to want it back made it just that little bit more attractive to him.

Which; Giyt told himself with amusement, was pretty stupid, and when Hoak Hagbarth came by he was smiling at himself.

Hagbarth winked at Giyt, paid for three balls, missed with each of them, and grinned back at him. “You look happy. Business that good?” he asked.

Giyt, who had no way of knowing how business was supposed to be, shrugged. “I thought there’d be more people, after all the publicity we did. Did you see me on the other-race news broadcasts?”

Hagbarth looked startled. “How can you see the other-race broadcasts? They use their own systems.” Then Giyt had to explain that, out of curiosity—he didn’t say for the sake of giving his wife pleasure—he had spent some hard hours figuring out how to convert their standards to the ones the human colonists used. “Hey,” Hagbarth said admiringly, “that’s great. Show me how you did it sometime, will you?”

“Sure.”

“I mean really,” Hagbarth persisted. “You know you’ve got a lot of tricks up your sleeve that you say you’re going to show me, but I’m still waiting.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Sorry don’t cut it, Evesham. You know what we’ve got here, don’t you? Just a handful of human beings among”—he looked around and lowered his voice—“all these freaks. We have to stick together. So any way we can help each other out, we have to do it, right? Or the freaks will win. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

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.”

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.