water?"
"I think it has flotation devices," Giyt said.
"Sure it has, if they work. But can you imagine what it would be like to be waiting for rescue out there? With the damn shark things doing their best to climb aboard for dinner? They're big, Giyt, They'd probably swamp the thing, trying to get at the passengers—and lots of women and children take that flight, Giyt. And there'd be the damn monsters, tipping the chopper over and everybody screaming and—"
"Yes, yes. I get the picture."
"So What we need," Hagbarth said, getting to the point, "is some kind of protection. A couple of guns for the pilot to carry. To shoot the animals so they can stay alive out there waiting for help."
He paused, inviting a response from Giyt. "I guess that makes sense," Giyt said cautiously.
"Only the trouble is, the eeties have this damn rule against importing weapons. So what I think you should do, at the next meeting of Joint Governance, you could make a motion to let us import one or two guns for the pilots to carry. For defense against the sharks. Do you think you could do that?"
Giyt considered the question for a moment. It didn't sound entirely unreasonable. It didn't sound entirely kosher, either. He said cautiously, "I guess I could try."
"Good, Evesham! I knew we could count on you. And listen, try not to be too specific about the number of weapons, all right?"
If there was one thing Evesham Giyt had learned in his time on Tupelo, it was that he had a lot to learn. So whenever he found a moment—which is to say when he wasn't asleep or doing his household chores or fending off the demands of his constituents—whenever there was a crumb of unbudgeted time at Giyt's disposal he used it to work on Tupelo's immense database.
His best time for that sort of homework was first thing in the morning, when an Earth-conditioned human being would have slept his full eight hours and still had the remainder of the long Tupelo dark before the sun rose and the workday began. Those were the hours Giyt spent filling the voids in his knowledge—some of the voids, anyway. Prohibition against importing weapons? Oh, yes, there was one. As far as Giyt could tell there had never been any exceptions allowed, though he supposed it could do no harm to ask. Electric power? Yes, the Delt pilot had spoken truth: When the Delts discovered the planet they earned their way into the communality by building the fusion plant. Utilities in general? There were surprises there for Giyt, who had not given much thought to how the various races divided up the chores of building and maintaining the community's infrastructure. It turned out that Petty-Primes handled waste disposal, at least until everything solid had been mulched and diluted and the resulting sludge poured into the sewage lines, which were Slug. Power was Delt, of course. Building and maintaining the little carts everyone used to get around was a Centaurian task. Kalkaboos controlled the weather satellites and the polar rocket.
And the Earth humans?
Giyt was somewhat taken aback to discover that the only communal task reserved for Earth humans was clearing land and preparing it for agriculture. Every species had its own farm plots, of course. Humans had cattle and goats, some of the other races maintained fish farms, while the Delts and the Kalkaboos alone occasionally fished in Ocean. The Kalkaboos also practiced a sort of vermiculture, maintaining flocks of wormlike creatures that lived and grew underground and returned to the surface only to spawn—and to be captured for food. But the drudgery of digging out places for the fish farms or chopping down the trees to make new farmland—that was for human beings. Dr. Patroosh hadn't been out of line when she complained. It was true. The other races treated Earth as a kind of Third World planet.
The whole question of infrastructure was unfamiliar to Giyt. Just as you got electricity by turning on the switch, the way you got food, for
"I think it has flotation devices," Giyt said.
"Sure it has, if they work. But can you imagine what it would be like to be waiting for rescue out there? With the damn shark things doing their best to climb aboard for dinner? They're big, Giyt, They'd probably swamp the thing, trying to get at the passengers—and lots of women and children take that flight, Giyt. And there'd be the damn monsters, tipping the chopper over and everybody screaming and—"
"Yes, yes. I get the picture."
"So What we need," Hagbarth said, getting to the point, "is some kind of protection. A couple of guns for the pilot to carry. To shoot the animals so they can stay alive out there waiting for help."
He paused, inviting a response from Giyt. "I guess that makes sense," Giyt said cautiously.
"Only the trouble is, the eeties have this damn rule against importing weapons. So what I think you should do, at the next meeting of Joint Governance, you could make a motion to let us import one or two guns for the pilots to carry. For defense against the sharks. Do you think you could do that?"
Giyt considered the question for a moment. It didn't sound entirely unreasonable. It didn't sound entirely kosher, either. He said cautiously, "I guess I could try."
"Good, Evesham! I knew we could count on you. And listen, try not to be too specific about the number of weapons, all right?"
If there was one thing Evesham Giyt had learned in his time on Tupelo, it was that he had a lot to learn. So whenever he found a moment—which is to say when he wasn't asleep or doing his household chores or fending off the demands of his constituents—whenever there was a crumb of unbudgeted time at Giyt's disposal he used it to work on Tupelo's immense database.
His best time for that sort of homework was first thing in the morning, when an Earth-conditioned human being would have slept his full eight hours and still had the remainder of the long Tupelo dark before the sun rose and the workday began. Those were the hours Giyt spent filling the voids in his knowledge—some of the voids, anyway. Prohibition against importing weapons? Oh, yes, there was one. As far as Giyt could tell there had never been any exceptions allowed, though he supposed it could do no harm to ask. Electric power? Yes, the Delt pilot had spoken truth: When the Delts discovered the planet they earned their way into the communality by building the fusion plant. Utilities in general? There were surprises there for Giyt, who had not given much thought to how the various races divided up the chores of building and maintaining the community's infrastructure. It turned out that Petty-Primes handled waste disposal, at least until everything solid had been mulched and diluted and the resulting sludge poured into the sewage lines, which were Slug. Power was Delt, of course. Building and maintaining the little carts everyone used to get around was a Centaurian task. Kalkaboos controlled the weather satellites and the polar rocket.
And the Earth humans?
Giyt was somewhat taken aback to discover that the only communal task reserved for Earth humans was clearing land and preparing it for agriculture. Every species had its own farm plots, of course. Humans had cattle and goats, some of the other races maintained fish farms, while the Delts and the Kalkaboos alone occasionally fished in Ocean. The Kalkaboos also practiced a sort of vermiculture, maintaining flocks of wormlike creatures that lived and grew underground and returned to the surface only to spawn—and to be captured for food. But the drudgery of digging out places for the fish farms or chopping down the trees to make new farmland—that was for human beings. Dr. Patroosh hadn't been out of line when she complained. It was true. The other races treated Earth as a kind of Third World planet.
The whole question of infrastructure was unfamiliar to Giyt. Just as you got electricity by turning on the switch, the way you got food, for
Similar Books
