Frederik Pohl - O Pioneer!

“We’ll talk about it later. Shammy, okay? This is a party. And, look, I think the bride is about to make a choice.”

At the center of the atrium Mrs. Brownbenttalon had moved over on her dais and her daughter had joined her. The two females whispered to each other, glancing and pointing at one or another of the prospective bridegrooms, all of them belly-down on the ground before the dais, their eyes closed and their whole bodies quivering.

There was a ritual to the selection process. Miss Whitenose was juggling a mittful of objects, some ordinary pebbles along with one of those lavender rosebuds. After a considerable amount of whispering with her mother she abruptly tossed one of the pebbles at a male, who turned and crept mournfully away. Another pebble; another disappointed suitor. Then when only one was left, she threw the rosebud hard and clean at the remaining one, who yelped in joy, leaped up onto the dais and burrowed into the curls of her fur.

Giyt glanced wonderingly at Rina, who returned his look; but after a moment of applause from the audience Miss Whitenose gracefully came down from the dais and headed for one of the smaller buildings. Mrs. Brownbenttalon turned to Giyt, cackling. “I know what you think,” she said. “You think she going do it right in front of us, correct? But no, not at all, young couple don’t need bunch people hanging around staring at them when they do all-important first fuck. Take mind off serious business they busy at, you see? But we naturally got cameras in private doing-it room, keep-record in family database so children can someday see actual impregnation which produced selves. You Earth humans do similar ritual, wedding album thing, right? So everybody come along, we observe performing on the TV!”

When the party seemed to be ending the guests lined up to take their leave of Miss Whitenose—no, Giyt realized, she was Mrs. Whitenose now, a full matriarch in the Centaurian community. Giyt absently joined the end of the line, Rina’s hand in his. At least one question had been settled. He had wondered how somebody the size of Mr. Brownbenttalon was able to stick it to somebody the size of Mrs. Brownbenttalon, but the TV screen had given him the answer. It turned out that the biggest part of a Centaurian male was his sexual organ. Like a whale’s, it was invisible in normal life, because he kept it rolled up inside him until needed, but then—

He stole a glance at Rina, and was not surprised to see that she was wearing a faint, contemplative smile. “Jealous?” he murmured.

She blinked and looked up at him, but before she could respond, Giyt became aware that something was tugging at his trouser leg. It was Mr. Brownbenttalon. “You don’t go yet,” he whispered. “Honored wife say please you stick around, we talk on assorted subjects, get to know each other better, okay? Just have patience few ten minutes while junior males and kids clean up.”

So the Giyts dropped out of the line and sat quietly, watching the cleaning-up procedure. One of Mrs. Whitenose’s lesser husbands brought them stalks of the pruney beverage and offered more of the foods. Rina declined hers. “Shammy, hon? Mr. Brownbenttalon invited me to look at their kitchens,” she said. “All right if I snoop around a bit?”

“Snoop away.” Giyt comfortably sipped from his bamboo tube—yes, the liquid definitely was alcoholic—as he watched her chatting with the males and subadult females as they bustled around cleaning up. The whole household was busy. One group of males was burning the debris, another thriftily carrying away the uneaten food, a third sawing sections from the stacked bamboo stalks. Giyt wondered absently if their own child would be as helpful around the house. Then he wondered what it was going to be like to have a child in the house in the first place. He hoped the de Mirs would stay on as neighbors. That way their own child would have playmates right next door, and teenage babysitters handy when they reached that point…

A voice piped in his ear: “Are you being done okay, Large Male Giyt? Plenty food, plenty beverage? You want more, easily got.” Giyt turned to see Mr. Brownbenttalon gazing up at him, his little claws poised to click for service. Giyt forestalled him.

“No, I’m fine.” He thought for a moment, then decided it was a good time to apologize. “Listen, I’m sorry if my being here kept the Kalkaboos away.”

Mr. Brownbenttalon reared back on his hind legs, snout elevated toward Giyt. He was hissing faintly in embarrassment. “Please!” he begged. “Extreme discourtesy to revered wife if have substantive talking in absence of her beloved presence, okay?”

“Well, of course, but I only meant—”

“Please! All right discuss weather, extreme handsomeness of Mrs. Whitenose new husbands, unpleasant odor of Delts, sports events. Things that nature. Not thing of significance.”

Giyt sighed. “Sure,” he said. And when all the things of no significance had been used up, Mr. Brownbenttalon was satisfied. He went away, furiously clicking at the way the lesser males were doing their housekeeping.

Giyt was content to be left alone. He found talking about nothing hard work. Being abandoned in solitude wasn’t all that much better, though. It gave him time to reflect on his numerous blunders, and about what sort of unforeseen unpleasantness was likely to strike next, and most of all about the—not exactly unpleasant, but certainly worrying —fact of Rina’s pregnancy. He wondered if the excitement of the party was really good for her. There was no point in asking Rina about it, of course. She would just laugh at him. Fondly, to be sure, but still—

He heard her call his name and saw her threading her way among the busy male Centaurians toward him. She had a bamboo segment in her hand and a faintly startled, mostly amused expression on her face. One of the younger Centaurian males was tagging patiently after her. “Look at this. Shammy,” she ordered.

He took the piece of bamboo in his hand, turning it over. It seemed to be filled with some green, pith-like plant substance, but—

He yelped and almost dropped the segment. The Centaurian male darted quickly in to catch it and scuttle away. “Did you see?” Rina asked. “That little thing like a lizard in it? The cook just took it out of a cage and put it in there; now he’s going to cap it off with the lizard thing inside. And then, when it’s eaten everything, they boil up everything that’s left in the tube.”

Giyt felt his stomach go queasy. “And that’s what we’ve been eating? Lizard shit?”

“Weil, that’s one way to put it,” she admitted. “Tasted good, though, didn’t it?”

Giyt was spared answering because Mrs. Whitenose appeared. You could not say she was sprightly—that sort of step did not go with the low-slung Centaurian anatomy—but there was something self-satisfied about the way she moved.

“Thank you to wait so long,” she said. Giyt caught a glimpse of two little eyes peeping out of the fur on her back: her new husband, silent, perhaps exhausted from his recent efforts. Mrs. Whitenose added; “My mother asks you come talk a bit now. Present moment is time of feeling-good relaxation. You know saying about parties? Extraordinarily delighted see guests come, even more extraordinarily delighted see them go away again—but listen, not meaning present company, of course.”

Mrs. Brownbenttalon was lying comfortably on a mossy mound of earth, with her main husband now affectionately grooming the fur above her eyes and a lesser husband pouring little glass cups of a beverage for the guests. When Giyt took a sip he almost choked; this wasn’t the juice he’d had before. It was distilled, had to be close to a hundred proof, and not bad.