Frederik Pohl - O Pioneer!

It was the kind of meaningless event that Giyt would have done his best to avoid. He didn’t want to hurt the Responsible One’s feelings, though. The little creature had been kind. Besides, exchanging a few meaningless courtesies took very little conscious thought. Giyt went right on thinking about the polar factories as he patiently plodded along the line. For a moment he considered taking the Responsible One aside—or Mrs. Brownbenttalon or one of the other mayors—and asking if they had heard anything, well, peculiar about human goings-on in the polar complex. But it might be an embarrassing question for them. Anyway, what could they know?

As he left the line he saw Hoak Hagbarth and his wife just entering it, between a Centaurian female and a pair of Delts.

That gave Giyt a new thought. The trouble with the Pole, with all its mines and autofactories, was that it was nearly nine thousand kilometers away. He thought of Hagbarth’s amiable offer, made back in those long-ago days when Hagbarth was still being amiable, to fly him up there on the suborbital rocket for a sightseeing trip. He wondered if he could find anything useful if he went there in person. Then he wondered if that offer was still open. Probably not. Besides, it would mean leaving Rina alone to face whatever nastinesses the Hagbarths might think up next.

He nodded his farewells to the eeties he knew and went home, his mind still turning over all the questions and worries that did not seem to find any solution. And when he sat down at his screen he found that at last he had been given a break.

Something had turned up in the program he had left to run. When all the numbers had been crunched, it turned out that the number of the things code-named copts was precisely the difference between the number of chiplets reported on hand at the beginning of the month and the number reported as used in the manufacture of all the items the factory produced that month.

There was no doubt about it. Far more chiplets were being imported than ever went back into the dolls and gadgets the Earth human polar factory ever shipped out, and the numbers were not small.

Someone was stealing. And that someone could only be Hoak Hagbarth.

Giyt sat back, considering what to do next.

If this had been one of the great corporations he had occasionally worked for on Earth, his job would have ended right at that point. All that would have been left for him to do was to turn the information over to the head of security. Chiplets were smaller than sequins, but they cost money. Big money; some formerly trusted employee would soon be facing a spell in jail.

The trouble was that it didn’t add up.

True, the fiscal systems for the human colony had been pretty badly designed and worse run. That was why Giyt had had to fix them, and ultimately why he became mayor. But what was Hagbarth going to do with a couple thousand stolen chiplets?

He could re-export them to Earth and sell them there, sure. They would be worth quite a lot. But that meant having confederates in the Ex-Earth organization on Earth. And anyway the sloppiness in the fiscal systems that let him cover up that theft could just as easily have been subverted in some simpler way—say, to divert credit balances to a dummy account like Giyt’s own.

Rina came in, yawning, to bid him good night, and then got a good look at him. She came alert. “Shammy, what is it?”

“Minute,” he said, double-checking, just to make sure. The machines were surpassingly good at arithmetic, but you never knew.

He did know. There were no mistakes. “Look at this,” he commanded, and when. Rina had taken in what was being displayed on the screen she looked less triumphant than puzzled.

“Why, Shammy? Why would he go to all that trouble when he could just steal the money the same way you—well, you know what I mean.”

“I do. I thought the same thing myself, but there it is. What I don’t know is what to do about it.”

“Why,” she said, stooping to kiss him good night, “sure you do, hon. You’re the mayor. Mayors are supposed to up hold the law. So do it.”

Do it.

She was right. Apart from any personal satisfaction he might get out of it, Hoak Hagbarth was a criminal and he ought to be brought to justice.

But brought to justice how?

That was a harder question. He could report the matter to Ex-Earth. But who would he be reporting to? Almost certainly Hagbarth had confederates back there on Earth, probably in Ex-Earth itself, and wasn’t it likely they would be the ones to receive the report? Perhaps he could spread the word to the American law-enforcement agencies. But what would they care about something that happened on Tupelo?

So he had some very valuable information, but who could he tell it to?

Just as he was puzzling over this, another message appeared on his screen. The Earth delegates were arriving. There would be six of them, the notice informed him, and when he checked the names he saw that only one of them was an American. That, of course, was because this time it was the old United Nations, not Ex-Earth, who had supplied these ambassadors.

But that one American was Dr. Emilia Patroosh, the woman who had gone with him to Energy Island; and so Giyt had his answer to at least one question.

He got to the portal just as its golden glow collapsed. Besides the obligatory eetie mayors, twenty or thirty Earth humans were waiting to greet them. Most of them, he saw with some surprise, seemed to come from the fire company, both Hagbarths among them. Olse glanced at Giyt as he arrived and gave him a small, reproving shake of the head.

But she didn’t speak, because both the Hagbarths had more important things on their minds. As soon as the transmission was complete, Hagbarth leaped down from his post in the control loop and advanced on the six Earth delegates, all smiles, hand outstretched to reach any other hand it could reach. He wasn’t the only one. A dozen of the other Earth humans, Olse included, were moving purposefully to greet the newcomers.

The plenipotentiaries were an oddly assorted lot for Tupelo. One was a tall, mournful-looking woman with purple-black skin and a bright bandanna over her head—a Maasai from Kenya, according to what the roster had said. There was an elderly Swiss man and an even older Korean one; one Egyptian, one New Zealander . . . and Dr. Patroosh.

She was the one who counted. Giyt tried to push his way toward her . . .

And got nowhere. A large hand gripped his arm and a voice from behind said, “Want to do something useful for a change, Giyt? Give us a hand with the goddamn baggage.”

It was Wili Tschopp, looking unfriendly. Giyt tried to pull his arm free, without success, as Tschopp was tugging him toward the stack of bags and cases. “Let go,” Giyt said. “I want to talk to Dr. Patroosh.”

“But she don’t want to talk to you, Giyt,” Tschopp said reasonably. “Look, she’s gone already.”

And she just about was; Hagbarth was deferentially helping her into one of the waiting carts and getting in beside her. Most of the other ambassadors were boarding carts as well, except for the tall Maasai woman, searching through the baggage for something of her own, pausing to look at them curiously. “What’s the trouble?” she asked, her voice surprisingly deep.

“Nothing,” Tschopp said while Giyt simultaneously said:

“I’m the mayor here. I’ve got something important to say to Dr. Patroosh.”

“Oh,” said the woman, peering down at his face. “Yes, I’ve heard of you.”

“Then help me—”

But she was shaking her head. “I do not think I can,” she said. “We’re here to represent our whole planet, Mr. Giyt; we can’t get involved in local disputes like this recall question. Dr, Patroosh shouldn’t talk to you at all, and neither should I.”