Frederik Pohl - O Pioneer!

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 .

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.”