O Pioneer! Read Online Free Page B

Hagbarth, with a spade beard, named—Tschopp? Wili Tschopp? Something like that. "Got your order from the hypermarket, missus," the man said, looking Rina over in a way that Giyt was surprised to find he didn't like. And then he turned to Giyt. "You weren't at the terminal today when the new people came in," he accused.
    "Was I supposed to be?"
    "Of course you're supposed to be. You're the mayor, aren't you? So who's going to welcome them and all if you're not there?" He shook his head reprovingly, then returned his attention to Rina. "Where do you want me to put your towels and stuff, honey?"
    Giyt answered for her. "Just leave them. We'll put them away ourselves." He hadn't meant for his tone to be quite so sharp. After the man got back in his cart and drove away, Rina looked at him curiously. "Are you feeling nervous or something, Shammy?"
    "About what?"
    "About this Joint Governance Commission thing, maybe."
    "Of course not. What is there to be nervous about?"
    She nodded, then said, "Listen, maybe we should stretch our legs before dinner's ready. I'd kind of like to watch the sun set over Crystal Lake," and he couldn't come up with a reason why not.
    As they strolled, Rina looked up at him. "You don't really have anything to be nervous about, Shammy dear," she told him.
    "That's good, because I'm not nervous," he said.
    "Of course not, hon," she agreed, and began telling him the funny thing the eldest neighbor boy, eight-year-old Juan, had said about his mothers. At the shore of the lake they hesitated, then turned right, away from the town, heading toward the farm plots. Rina did all the talking. She had plenty to tell him, because Rina was blossoming in their new home; she had made several dozen instant friends, not only human but all over the community; had been offered a job she liked as receptionist in the beauty shop; was a volunteer Gray Lady at the human hospital when she was needed (which wasn't often, because the human community was a healthy lot and most of the hospital's beds stayed empty); was glad to take the neighbor kids to the beach when their mothers were busy. There was a time when Giyt would have found her steady stream of gossip irritating, because, really, what did he care if the General Manager of the Delt colony had made a fool of himself by getting excessively high on hallucinogens at the Delt High Mass? Or that Lupe and Matya had weathered a serious strain in their marriage just a year ago, when Lupe thought for a time that Matya was getting a bit too involved with one of her co-workers at the Public Works office, who not only was clearly sexually attracted to Matya but was unforgivably a man ? Now, though, he didn't mind Rina's chatter at all. He didn't really listen to it all, either, but he went so far as to pretend he did, for no other reason than that these things gave her pleasure.
    It occurred to Giyt, as they strolled past one of the human farm plots (harvester machines neatly slicing ripe tomatoes and yellow peppers off their vines and trundling them to the storage building in town), that their relationship had changed since they arrived on Tupelo. He caught another glimpse of what that change had been when they reached the Petty-Prime allotment next along the shore. (Properly those particular eeties were called Petty-Primates by the human colonists—never mind what they called themselves—because they were little and they were definitely primates, more or less, but Giyt had already learned to drop the extra syllable.) One of the little pink-skinned, monkey-like creatures stopped his work of grafting a new branch on a juice tree and chattered a greeting to them. They had no translator with them so Giyt had no idea what the thing was saying, but he automatically bowed to the creature in response . . . until Rina, by his side, chattered a few syllables back and he realized the greeting hadn't been meant for him but for her. "Hell," he said, wondering, "when did you learn to speak their