Jupe looked grand in his uniform. He knew it. It was tailored by smart erks, with loving and faithful attention to all the old pictures and the American Senate's new design: trousers, visored cap, jacket with epaulettes, holstered sidearm. The sidearm even worked, although its accuracy was poor and range small. All Americans had uniforms, tailored to them as soon as they were ten. They were for parades on Veterans Day and the Fourth of July; they were for dress-up whenever anybody thought of a good excuse to do it. Jupe's usual costume was no more than a breechclout and a thin coating of oil. But, as he had seen in Nancy-R's mirror, in uniform he did look grand!
Because the carry-bird Flash was near her time, she wasn't in the paddock when he got there. Dumb erks were tumbling over each other in excitement, squealing and gesturing at the sky. That's where she was, aflight, pursuing birds for dessert after her meal, to build up her protein store for her next mating. When at last she settled heavily into the paddock, great thin wings beating majestically, there was black blood on her mouth. But when Jupe stroked her pouch she opened it willingly enough.
"Jupe, man! Hey, Jupe? A ride?"
Jupe turned, one leg already into Flash's soft, warm pouch. It was the smart erk, Ike, loping toward him on his stubby little legs. Ike was uniformed, too—as uniformed as an erk could get—with uniform colors painted on his body and a cap with a visor as shiny as Jupe's own. "Can I come?" he begged. "Have you got room?"
"He's our President, not yours," said Jupe suspiciously.
"No, no!" the erk squealed. "Our President, too, Jupe! Anyway, I want to be in the parade, please, come on, Jupe, please?"
"Oh, well," said Jupe, only it sounded almost as much like "Oh, hell." But the erk got his wish. Jupe liked Ike, as a matter of fact. They had even gone hunting a time or two together, and though Jupe was miles stronger, the erk was miles better at scenting the inklings and freezing still until they came in range. Ike was old for an erk, even a smart erk. He was a good ten years older than even the Mother Sister; he had seen the Original Landers, too.
He was also big for an erk, nearly the size of a collie. Flash grunted in annoyance when she saw that she was going to be expected to carry double, even though one was only an erk. It was only an annoyance. It was not really taxing to her strength. Evolution had designed Flash to carry a whole litter of six or eight juveniles at a time, and in the gentle gravity of World, her muscles were well up to the job.
Quarters were cramped in her pouch, though. She moaned a couple of times as she was jabbed by the hard-soled shoes, the stiff belt, the rigid holster. "Watch it," Jupiter said crossly to the erk, and Ike pulled in his tree-climbing claws apologetically.
Flash grunted and twitched her pouch muscles. Still, when Jupe seized her nipples in a firm grip and tweaked them upward, she launched herself willingly enough into the soggy air.
Like all carry-birds, Flash had been trained along with her rider. Tiny Jupe had squirmed his way into the barely fertile pouch of the young carry-bird when both were very young. They had grown together. Flash followed Jupe's hand with the ease and familiarity of long practice, although there were times when the hand needed to be firm. Flash's hungers were becoming acute, and so when a bird flock passed incautiously near, Jupe had to check her strongly. The rest of the time she flew steadily enough on her own. There was time to relax and chat with the smart erk, Ike, and to gaze out at the countryside below. Mostly to talk. "You haven't seen the index tapes?" Ike demanded, scandalized.
Jupiter helped the erk to peer out over the lip of the pouch. "I haven't had time," he said stiffly, but the erk waggled his jaw reprovingly. In erks, the jaw was about all that could waggle; the head was fixed to the torso, like that of a whale or a bedbug. Ike was indignant.
"You missed the most important thing that ever happened!" he said, and fumbled in his belly pouch for a pocket viewer. The carry-bird squawked glum protest as a corner of it snagged the tender lining of her pouch. Neither Jupe nor the erk paid attention. "Look here," the erk commanded, coding for the reception of the President.
"No, no, earlier," Jupiter pleaded, and the erk compliantly coded back farther still. Jupiter gasped in excitement as he saw the Presidential yacht burst out of the spaceway, right where planned. The yacht offered no resistance. The shuttle's hooks caught it neatly—blur, click, as the erk switched forward to the landing—then he saw Big Polly, the Governor of all American World, ride triumphantly out to greet them. The erk was peering over Jupiter's shoulder. "He's really little, though, isn't he?" Ike asked, and Jupiter stiffened.
"Little? He's quite normal" he said in his stern, military voice—no erk was going to criticize a Real-American in his presence! But it was true that Big Polly towered over her President.
That didn't matter. What mattered was that the President was on World at last. Now things could begin! Even now, the news index said, the President and the two sallow sisters who were with him were in a meeting with the Senators already on hand. More Senators, more Congres-sones, more military officers and leaders like Jupiter himself were trooping into Space City every minute—"So hurry," pleaded Ike. "We don't want to miss the parade."
"Flash is flying as fast as she can," Jupe said sternly, but surreptitiously he gave her guidance nipple another little tweak. She groaned protest again, but did manage to put on a little more speed. As much as was possible, Jupiter knew. He resigned himself to staring out of the pouch beside the erk, daydreaming; and a great slow grin spread over his face and stayed there.
From below, Jupiter and Ike would have looked very strange to, say, Castor or Delilah. The two little heads were a bizarre contrast—Jupiter's dark and stem, but human, under his visored cap; the erk's less human than a star-nosed mole's. Erks were mammals, more or less. At least, they were warm-blooded and generally rather soft-skinned. But more than anything else they looked like insects the size of terriers; and their faces were not like anything earthly at all. Flash was bizarre enough, too, with her stubby body that carried the pouch they rode in under her eight-meter dragonfly wings. Any earthly stranger would have gaped or fled in terror. But there was no stranger below them to see. Field erks glanced up from the farmland, and a few of the dumb ones tumbled over themselves to wave—until nipped and threatened by the smart erk foremen. Jupe kept the carry-bird low to avoid bird flocks, just high enough to clear trees and buildings. They could hear sounds from the ground clearly, especially when a smart erk or occasional human called to cheer them on: "Give honor to your Living God President!" "Free America forever!"
Flash grunted interest, and Jupe saw that they were approaching Space City. Other carry-birds were converging at low altitudes, and more worrying to Flash, aircraft were sailing in from farther places. It seemed that every Yank in the World wanted to be in Space City. There were seventy or eighty nests within a thousand kilometers of the center, and nearly every one of them had sent its own male or senior sister to greet their President. Under the spires of Space City, bright and new—though, really, it had been in just that place, looking just like that, for nearly three thousand years—the ranks of the parade of welcome were beginning to form.
"We're in time, we're in time," the erk screeched, and Jupiter's heart leaped.
What Jupe had expected when he landed he didn't know. Falling to his knees before his President, before a crowd of a million cheering erks? Instant battle-stations to repel a Chicom attack? Something dramatic and martial, surely!
What he got was a quick order from his nest's Senator Martha-W: "Get in the hall, there, Jupe! Clear it out! We need a room to greet the President in!" So what Jupe did for an hour after he landed was kick and cajole giggling dumb erks out of the long-unused auditorium at the base of Space City's tallest spire. The President was somewhere around—so people said. Resting, maybe. Waiting for the parade to form up and the hall to be ready. The hall was a human-built auditorium, added to Space City in the days when every adult man and woman on World could assemble there at once. Dumb erks liked to den in it because it was so peculiar. Getting them out was like herding mice. The dumb erks let themselves be driven, but the minute the Yanks' backs were turned they slipped back in, squealing happily at the fun. It wasn't until a team of hard-bitten old smart erks arrived with electric shock prods that the dumb ones gave in and, still giggling, retreated out onto the broad yellow-green lawn.