Frederik Pohl - O Pioneer!

Giyt blinked at him. “Take a fall?”

“Quit. Bare your throat. Tell him he won,” Hagbarth explained. “Are you having-trouble understanding me? That’s what you should have done. But no, you had to make a real fight out of it. Jesus, man! I guess I’m lucky you didn’t just kill him, too, and I don’t think they’ve got a firecracker big enough for that.”

A few months of being a public figure had done one thing for Evesham Giyt. It had taught him all the ways in which private was better. A public person had no hidden humiliations. They were all right out in the open and, in a community as small as Tupelo’s, there seemed to be no person of any age, gender, or species who didn’t know all about Giyt’s. Not that most people were hostile—that is, not counting the Kalkaboos, who unanimously froze him with silent glares of loathing at every chance. But most of the rest of the population, human and eetie, seemed to think the whole situation was just a pretty good joke.

It was a joke Giyt tired of pretty quickly. So although Mrs. Brownbenttalon’s party was within reasonable walking distance, Giyt called a cart to take them there. Walking would mean that passersby could say things to him along the way that Giyt didn’t want to hear. He wondered briefly if they were still welcome at the Centaurians’. Rina, thrilled at the idea of a party, did her best to reassure him. “Don’t sweat it, hon,” she coaxed. “You made a mistake, but nobody warned you, did they?”

Nobody had. “Least of all the one person who should have, Hoak Hagbarth; and one of these days, Giyt thought as they got out of the cart, he ought to talk to the man about that.

Mrs. Brownbenttalon’s home was a lot more lavish than anything else Giyt had seen on Tupelo. As the official residence of the Centaurians’ Divinely Elected Savior it was built on the grand scale. It consisted of four or five smallish but brightly colored one-story structures, connected by breezeways. Like an ancient Roman villa, the whole thing surrounded a pretty garden with a reflecting pool and a stand of bamboo-like trees rustling against each other in the breeze. The whole thing looked more California than Tupelo to Evesham Giyt, and he was surprised to see how many guests were present. Ten or twelve of them were Centaurian matriarchs like Mrs. Brownbenttalon herself: another several dozen were their most favored husbands along with a fair number of young ones; but the mayor equivalents of most—though, conspicuously, not quite all—of the other races were also on hand. The only Tupelovian race wholly absent was the Kalkaboos, and Giyt had a good idea of why.

Miss Whitenose came to greet Rina and Giyt as they got out of their cart. It was her party, and she was enjoying being the center of attraction. “Most excellently nice you come,” she said. “You eat something? Good Centaurian edibles here, all checked by Ex-Earth chemists many long times since, quite okay for your species to process and excrete.” She clicked her front talons together without looking over her shoulder. Immediately two or three males leaped forward bearing the sort of bamboo joints, sealed at both ends, that Giyt had seen at the firemen’s fair. Miss Whitenose took the two largest, held them to her ears for a moment, then expertly opened one end of each and offered them to the Giyts. “Dopey Earth-human meal-handling utensils,” she said to the air, and two more males eagerly proffered tapered ceramic spoons. “You eat this excellent provision,” she ordered.

The joint was warm, and when Giyt sniffed at its contents they smelled faintly Italian—some kind of Parmesan-like cheese, he guessed, though as far as he knew Centaurians kept no dairy animals. He glanced at Rina, who smiled at him, dipped her spoon into the open top of the joint, and tried it out. “Oh, nice,” she said appreciatively. “Give it a try, Shammy. You’ll like it.”

As a matter of fact he did. What was inside the bamboo joint was a sort of pudding, the texture of an avocado but with crunchy little sticklike things in it. It tasted, as much as anything, like a well-prepared risotto, with a few spices he could not identify.

“Delicious,” he said. Miss Whitenose nodded graciously.

“I tell you this already,” she said, and clicked her talons again. Whereupon the hovering males dashed away to a row of cooking pots, returning to their task of helping other males boil up additional segments. Miss. Whitenose didn’t look after them but made a soft, snickering noise. “They new husbands just purchased for me,” she explained proudly. “Work asses off, hope to be picked for great honor of to be first to do me. Now come meet other guests.”

She led the way to where Mrs. Brownbenttalon was holding court, reclining on an elevated cushion and chatting with five or six other beings at once—a pair of other Centaurian matriarchs, plus two half-grown females younger than Miss Whitenose, and several members of other races. Giyt recognized the Principal Slug, the Delt General Manager, and the Petty-Prime Responsible One and his wife—well, one of his wives, anyway; Giyt was not very dear on Petty-Prime mating customs.

To his surprise, the tiny Responsible One climbed up on one of the seats and thrust his paw toward him for a handshake. “Excellent see you. Earth Mayor,” he piped. “Interesting combat this day at meeting.”

Giyt swallowed a spoonful of the pudding. “I can explain—” he began.

“What explain? You bitch damn Kalkaboo up, about time. Make too goddamn much noise every dawning, get sick and tired of it.”

“Have awful bad breath, too,” the Principal Slug said—or slurped; Giyt could hear the slushy, wheezy sound of his voice even above the translation in his ear. And Mrs. Brownbenttalon said, “Kalkaboos pissed off in major way now, you know. Won’t come Miss Whitenose First Fuck party because you here. Who care? Of course,” she added casually, “now they tell everyperson you trying steal everyperson private secrets, take good stuff, send home to Earth-human planet.”

That made Giyt blink. “Are you talking about the proposals I made at the commission meeting? But that’s not what I was suggesting at all. I simply proposed that everybody get together, all six races, and make a systematic survey of what this planet has to offer. I’m sure we’d find resources that could be exploited for everybody’s benefit.”

“Yes, idea is quite preposterous, have understood completely,” Mrs. Brownbenttalon agreed, and the Petty-Prime said, “Preposterous, naturally, but also very sweet. Obviously you are being quite kindly person Earth Mayor Giyt. Too bad so ignorant.”

It was Rina who rescued Giyt from that conversation; they had to circulate, she said, and they circulated. A couple of subadult Centaurian males were beating softly on sacks of something or other that gave off a muffled sound—not a very pleasing sound to Giyt’s ears, but at least Centaurian music wasn’t loud. The Giyts paused by the refreshment tables, studying the contents. Rina ventured to try what appeared to be a canapé—a sort of pale lavender rosebud capped with a dab of what looked like brown sugar—but grimaced at the first bite and looked for a place to put it down. Giyt accepted a bamboo tube of something to drink from an eager male servant; it was more like prune juice than anything else, but mildly alcoholic and not too awful to drink. He was still brooding over the conversation with the others. “But I was only suggesting mutual cooperation,” he muttered in Rina’s ear, and she shook her head.