It was time for Giyt to carry out his mayoral duties. He advanced on the newcomers, hand outstretched. “Welcome to Tupelo,” he said. “I’m your mayor, Evesham Giyt, and this gentleman over here”—waving toward Hagbarth, hurrying in their general direction—“is your Ex-Earth representative, Hoak Hagbarth. Hoak will arrange for your housing, and all your other needs, so if you’ll excuse me—”
Hagbarth gave him a scorching look. “Stay here, Giyt,” he ordered. “Keep these people company while I take care of Emissary Patroosh.”
“How?” Giyt asked, but Hagbarth was already most obsequiously greeting the woman on the box.
So Giyt found himself doing the tour-guide thing for the new arrivals, while out of the corner of his eye he saw all the nonhumans getting out of their carts and swarming over the cargo. Mr. Brownbenttalon had leaped off his mate’s back and was running the fabric of some new garments through his tiny paws; four or five of the Petty-Primes were concentrating on the luggage belonging to the immigrants. One of them sniffed at a bunch of grapes suspiciously, then bit one of them in half, stared at the interior and then spit the thing out. The woman Giyt was talking to cried out, “My basket of fruit!” They all abandoned Giyt to protect their belongings as Wili Tschopp came up behind him.
“When they’ve got their stuff,” he said, “you can take them to Olse’s house. She’s sorting out places for them to live.”
“I never had to do that before,” Giyt remarked suspiciously.
“No, of course not. Usually Hoak does it for you, but this time he’s got the energy lady to take care of. And listen”—smirking again, in the way Giyt had learned to hate—“you be sure to give my regards to that really good-looking lady of yours.”
By the time Hoak Hagbarth had shepherded his VIP guest’s luggage past the inspection—with much argument and raising of voices over the scientific instruments she’d brought with her—he escorted her to the waiting cart, pausing to introduce her to Giyt. “Dr. Emilia Patroosh, Mayor Evesham Giyt. Listen, Giyt, you’ll have to take the new people to my place so Olse can—”
“I know,” Giyt said, politely shaking the hand of the energy expert.
“Fine.” Hagbarth started to get into the cart with his VIP visitor, then paused. “Hey, listen. I’ve got an idea. You were wondering about the power situation? Why don’t you go along with Dr. Patroosh to take a look at Energy Island tomorrow? I’ll have a chopper ready for you in the morning. Take your wife; it’ll give the two of you a chance to see the sharks.”
“Sharks?” But Hagbarth only shook his head, grinning, as the cart sped away.
IX
The geological and paleontological history of the planet Tupelo is not well understood, due to the paucity of land areas available for digging. No fossils have ever been discovered. However, it is generally believed that sometime in the relatively recent past, perhaps circa 2 to 4 million years BP, the planet underwent an extinction event similar to the ones which on Earth ended the Cretaceous and other ages. The causative event—whether a bolide impact, an episode of very large-scale vulcanism, or something unique to Tupelo—is not known. However, the result is clear. Whatever large land animals existed on Tupelo disappeared at that time. Life in the ocean, however, is quite another matter.
It was a sparkly dawn day, with dew beaded on the “grass,” the sun still hidden behind the great mountains to the east, the air cool but comfortable. Altogether it was just the right kind of day for a chopper trip to Energy Island . . . except that there was no chopper. Hoak Hagbarth apologized profusely to the VIP woman from Earth. The gyrocopter, unfortunately, was in the shop. So if Dr. Patroosh didn’t mind, they would have to take a Delt skimmer to the island. Either Dr. Patroosh really didn’t mind or she was being a good sport about it. “Let’s just do it, all right?” she said.
When they reached the lakeshore the Delt skimmer turned out to be a much larger ground-effect vehicle than the one that had taken Giyt to see the polar rocket land. Giyt’s first look at it made his eyes pop. Startlingly, the thing was gleaming in metallic gold and ten or twelve meters long. It came complete with a Delt pilot sitting on the rail impatiently tapping his long fingers on his knee. When Rina politely thanked him for agreeing to transport them, the Delt turned one wandering eye on her, the other wavering between Giyt and Dr. Patroosh, and gargled something that the translator turned into, “Imposition no greater than expected, happening at all times without considerateness. Board now. Sit. Strap in for bumps.”
There weren’t any bumps, though, at least not at first. The skimmer lifted on its air cushion and slid out onto the surface of the lake, heading swiftly for the hills at the far side. Giyt was glad for the moving air, which diluted that Delt aroma from the driver. Rina didn’t seem to mind the smell. She was squeezing Giyt’s hand in excitement, staring around at everything—back at the low buildings of the town; at the approaching hills; at the barely visible rim of the old Slug dam that long ago had created Crystal Lake for their own first colonists; at the fittings of the Delt skimmer. Those were pure nonhuman technology, all right: corrugated seats that pressed cruelly into human buttocks, double view screens for the pilot—one for each eye?—and an instrument panel that kept whispering and beeping constantly. Even the safety straps were woven of some kind of glass-like fiber, and where they rubbed against the bare skin of Giyt’s throat they scratched.
Then they were across the lake, the skimmer gliding easily onto the shore and entering the rude roadway through the woods Giyt had seen on his previous trip. There was plenty to stare at there.
Ground-effect vehicles worked splendidly on flat surfaces. but they did poorly on grades. In order to ease the slope on the far side of the dam the skimmer roadway was a series of switchbacks, and yes, now there were plenty of the bumps the pilot had warned against. There was no real road there at all, just a bulldozed track littered with knocked-down logs. Every time the skimmer crossed one the jolt relayed itself to the bruisable bottoms of the human passengers.
But it was a small price to pay. These were not the woods Giyt had seen on the slopes of the mountain. There were flickers of color darting about among the trees—barely glimpsed before the skimmer had left them behind; birds? insects? The trees themselves were not of any variety Giyt had ever seen before. Some were almost branchless until they expanded into an umbrella of fronds at the top, almost turning the roadway into a tunnel as they met overhead. Some hardly looked like trees at all; they resembled the stumps of even huger trees, four or five meters thick, no more than half a dozen meters tall. When Rina exclaimed over them, the VIP woman looked up from the palmtop she had been intently studying and said, kindly enough, “That’s how they grow. It’s what you get when you don’t have any large animals to knock them down; there are trees like that where my grandparents come from, on the Indian Ocean islands of Earth.”
“That’s right,” Rina said sociably. “There aren’t any large animals at all on Tupelo, are there?”
“Not on land,” the woman said. “But if you want to see large animals, wait till we’re crossing the strait.”
Then they reached the bottom of the slope. The skimmer left the roadway to slide onto the surface of the river below the dam. A pair of huge steel whales were moored at the side of the stream. Though Giyt had never seen one before, he recognized them. They were the submersible cargo vessels that carried goods to and from the polar complex. The skimmer pilot, who had ignored his passengers as he concentrated on making the turns in the road, jerked a long thumb back upriver. “Place where Slugs live, under dam. They like wet.” He thought for a moment, then added, “Slugs not so bad, though. Not like damn Petty-Primes, get all crazy when somebody comes near damn tiny young. Just the other day my ex-brother have much abuse from Responsible One—you know, you saw whole thing, right?”