When Rina was awakened from a restless sleep with the word that Giyt was missing and presumed dead, she didn’t believe a word of it. Wouldn’t believe it, because it was just too unexpected and far too awful for her to accept. And then, when she accessed the Earth-colony news channel, she had no choice but to believe it, because the scenes of destruction from the Pole were too terribly convincing to be denied. In the view from outside, the Earth autofactory dome was split completely open, oozing black smoke into the dark polar sky. In the view from inside, everything was simply wrecked. Rina sat quietly in front of the screen, sometimes remembering to eat a bit of the breakfast she had absently made for herself, sometimes simply sitting motionless, not even thinking. When the news items began to repeat themselves she switched randomly to other files, her lessons, her household reminders, sometimes Giyt’s own files . . . but that was painful; because he wasn’t there. She was a practical woman. She always did her best to be prepared for whatever future needs and problems might arise well in advance, so that she could deal with them when they came. But she had not envisaged any future for herself that did not include Evesham Giyt there to share it.
Lupe was the first to arrive at the house. “Oh, Rina, hon,” she said, her voice as mournful as her face, and stopped there because she had nothing to add. She sat quietly next to Rina, holding her hand. Then it was Matya, with the younger children, the others busy getting themselves off to school. Matya was more businesslike, and full of news. The six-planet meeting was convening early to discuss the accident. The loss of life, at least, had been small—two eeties missing and supposed to have been caught somehow in the blast. And Giyt. The suborbital rocket had made an emergency flight to the Pole, bringing twelve Earth firemen to help control the damage, and was already on its way back for more. The economic consequences for the Earth community were worrisome; until the autofactory could be rebuilt everything would have to come by portal from the home planet. As would everything needed for the rebuilding; the Earth delegation had already sent a message back to Earth to say what had happened and that emergency help was needed.
Rina listened politely to everything Matya had to say—having, of course, already heard it all for herself on her screen—until Lupe finally gave up trying to force food on her and Matya insisted that she go back to sleep. It was easier to pretend to obey than to argue, but Rina knew that sleep was impossible.
Well, not quite impossible.
Rina had taken it as given that she would He wakeful in the bed that still bore traces of Evesham Giyt’s friendly male odor, while horrid thoughts recirculated through her brain. However horrid, they needed to be thought anyway: Should she stay on Tupelo? Go back to Earth? Bear the child that was just beginning to stir inside her? Abort it?
All of those unpleasant thoughts had subsidiary thoughts, just as unpleasant, that followed instantly from the first: wondering about what life would be like as a single parent (or about what childless life would be like if she aborted the one thing she had left of Evesham Giyt). And what should or could she do about Hoak Hagbarth?
They were ponderous thoughts that would keep anyone awake, one way or another. They were all attempts to discern whether she had anything left that was worth the trouble of going on living for. They didn’t do the job, though. Willy-nilly, she drifted off, and the first she knew that she had gone to sleep after all was when Lupe touched her shoulder to wake her. “It’s Mrs. Brownbenttalon,” Lupe whispered. “She just wants to pay her respects.”
Actually the Centaurian female had brought more than sympathy. She hadn’t come alone; with her was a nearly grown female, painfully lugging two large packages wrapped in green fabric. “This shade of green our frequency devoted to sadness,” Mrs. Brownbenttalon explained. “Contents of package food and drink. Hey, everybody know have no time for cookery with death in family. You meet my third daughter. Miss Stubnose? You say hello, Miss; good, now go back home.” She crawled up onto a couch and acknowledged introductions to Lupe and Matya. “Yes, very sad happening,” she agreed. “Have serious pain in abdomen, right here where husband mostly hang, for you, Mrs. Large Male Giyt. You main husband damn good son of a bitch. You know I also lose close family members in cataclysmic event?”
That took Rina by surprise. “You did?”
The matriarch bobbed her long snout mournfully. “Esteemed wife of male littermate Mrs. Threewhiteboots gone missing, perhaps caught in blast, also said secondary husband of same. No trace found. Damn Hagbarth claims must have been trespassing in Earth factory at accident time. Untrue. Mrs. Threewhiteboots never waste personal time in dumb Earth human factory.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
“For what? It not you guilt.” Mrs. Brownbenttalon sighed. “Simply accident, surely. Reason I sorrowing, six babies of littermate’s esteemed wife now orphans, very sad. But,” she added emphatically, “remember I still friend; you need any kind help you ask.”
“Thank you,” Rina said. “I think Lupe’s making tea. Would you like some?”
“Earth tea?” Mrs. Brownbenttalon pondered for a moment. “Sure, why not? Only why is Earth female Lupe waving at you in this fashion?”
The reason Lupe was trying to attract her attention turned out to be something on the kitchen screen, and when Matya turned on the one in the living room, the face that appeared was Hoak Hagbarth’s, being interviewed by Silva Cristl! as he got off the polar rocket at the pad. “. . . total devastation,” he was saying to the interviewer. “No, we don’t know what the hell Giyt did, but somehow he blew up the whole damn factory; God knows how long it’ll take to get it running again. And it’s dangerous up there, so Chief Tschopp has ordered half the fire company to the Pole to prevent any further loss of life. Giyt? Oh, he’s dead all right, missus. He probably got blown up in that blast, I don’t know if we’ll ever find the pieces. But if he didn’t, maybe he staggered out into the snow and then just froze to death.” He shook his head. “The damage is just unbelievable, but you know what is the worst part of it? It’s the way he left his poor widow and their unborn child—”
That was more than Rina could take. “Turn the bastard off,” she said, her voice shaking with anger at the man. But the fury she felt had one good quality. It told her that she did have one definite thing to go on living for.
Her plan was simple. If she couldn’t bring Giyt back, at least she could avenge him. When she was finally alone she considered how to set about it.
What was hard to see was just how to go about doing that. Giyt, damn the dear man, had not left a clear record of what it was that he knew or guessed. There were any number of items in his files that provided clues: the tabulation of chiplet imports paired for some reason with the shipping records of finished products; a log of failed attempts to access the ongoing processing data from the Pole; scraps of files that might have meant something, but without Giyt there to explain their relevance were simply puzzling. There was even a just-arrived packet of data from Earth that was directed to Evesham Giyt himself, but how useful that was going to be was dubious, because of course it was encoded. Perhaps there was something interesting in that, provided it wasn’t just a financial statement from one of Giyt’s half-dozen money dumps.
The trouble was, Giyt wasn’t there to provide the key.
It was high noon, then it was dark, then it was light again. When Rina could not stay awake she slept for a while. Then she got up and made the bed, so that company wouldn’t think her a slob. And there continually was company, usually Lupe or Matya coming by every few hours and staying until she somehow managed to get them to leave again, usually by pretending to be sleepy—and often enough by actually going to sleep. And getting up. And making the bed again. And repeating the process. She picked up things in one place and put them down in another, made herself meals but couldn’t always make herself eat them, switched on the news channel, and for lack of anything more useful to do, watched the unfolding stories: raucous times at the six-planet meeting as the eetie delegates joined in deploring the sloppy precautions the Earth humans had provided at the Pole; warnings that there would be shortages of some consumer items until new shipments could be received from Earth, coupled with appeals to refrain from buying anything not urgently needed during the emergency. She watched only as long as her interest was held—not long—and then she turned the screen off again.