Frederik Pohl - O Pioneer!

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.

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!