“Not at all,” said Hank. The heavens don’t say certainly thus and so will happen, or everybody born at the same time in the same general area would be identical. Astrology deals in probabilities. For instance, the astral alignment so strongly suggested Earth would make fresh contact with its Lost Colonies now that we pretty well discounted any other possibility, but as to the exact make-up of the crew, there were some details we couldn’t be sure of.”
“Still,” Ensign Benson said, “you’re telling me you people can read the future.”
“The probabilities,” Hank corrected.
“Of course,” Pam Stokes said, an actual real piece of bacon in one hand and her ever-present slide rule in the other, “there are many ways to define the center of the universe.” She bit off a piece of crunchy bacon.
“Oh, sure,” Jim Downey agreed. “And they all work out to be right here.”
Pam frowned, “This doesn’t taste like bacon.”
“Something wrong?”
“No, it’s— Actually, it’s better.” Putting the slide rule down, she picked up a fork and had at the scrambled eggs.
Pointing, Jim said, “What is that little stick, anyway?”
“This slide rule? It’s a sort of calculator, used before the computer came in.”
“Like the abacus?” Jim picked it up, pushed the inner pieces back and forth, watched the little lines and numbers join and separate.
“I guess so,” Pam said, reaching for the toast, pausing in amazement when the toast flexed. “It was my mother’s,” she explained, “and my mother’s mother’s, and my mother’s mother’s mother’s and my mo—”
“Very interesting,” Jim said and put it down.
Ensign Benson, lost in thought, had stopped eating. “If you’re done,” Hank said, “We’ll show you to your house.”
The ensign looked at him. “My house?”
“You and your friends. We thought you’d probably all want to live together at first until you get to know the town, make friends, find employment—”
“Wait, wait a minute.” Ensign Benson was almost afraid to phrase the question. “How long do you expect us to stay?”
“I’m sorry,” Hank said, “You haven’t read your chart, of course. You’ll be here forever.”
Give Councilman Luthguster a crowd, he’ll make you a speech. “Earth can do much better for the people of Figulus.” He declared to the local citizens assembled at his table. “Technology, trade agreements. A chicken in every pot; a, a, a, a horse in every stable. Peace, prosperity—”
“We’ve got all that,” said a citizen.
“And a stable buck,” said another.
Councilman Luthguster paused in mid-flight. “Buck? A stable buck?” Visions of deer, all with symmetrical antlers, leaped into his head.
“That’s our unit of currency,” a citizen explained. “We have the quarter-buck, half-buck, buck, five-buck, sawbuck, all the way up to the C-buck and the grand-buck.”
“And it’s stable,” another said. “Been a long time since there was a drop in the buck.”
“It’s entered the language idiomatically,” said a citizen who happened to be a high school principal. “Pass the buck, for instance, meaning to pay a debt.”
“Buck the tide,” offered another.
“That’s to throw good money after bad.”
“Buck and wing.”
“To buy your way out of a difficult situation.”
The councilman stared, popeyed. “But that’s all wrong!”
A friendly citizen patted his hand. “You’ll learn them,” she assured him. “Won’t take long a strong-willed Leo like you.”
“Oh, no.” The councilman was firm on that. “How happy I am I’ll never have to learn such gibberish.’
His audience just smiled.
“If your stars tell you we’re staying here,” Ensign Benson said, “they’re crazy.”
“Look, friend,” Hank said. “What if the billions and billions of human beings scattered across the Galaxies were to learn that right here, smack in the middle of it all, was a place where they could find out almost everything about the future? What would happen?”
“You could do a great mail order business.”
“They would come here,” Hank said. “In their billions. Our town would be destroyed; our way of life would simply come to an end.”
Reluctantly, Ensign Benson nodded. “It could get difficult.”
“And that’s why the stars say you’ll remain here and never expose us to the rest of the human race.”
“Sorry,” the ensign said. “I understand your feelings, but we have our own job to do. We just can’t stay.”
“But you will,” Hank said apologetically but firmly. “You see, there’s an armed guard at your ship right now, and there will be for the rest of your lives.”
Odd how easily the next month flowed by. Billy Shelby got a paper route and a job delivering for the supermarket. Pam became a substitute math teacher at one of the high schools, where the male students could never figure out what she was talking about but flocked to her class anyway. Captain Standforth, roaming the country side with his stun gun, brought back many strange and — to him — interesting new birds to stuff. Councilman Luthguster took to hanging around down at city hall, and Hester Hanshaw became a sort of unofficial apprentice at the neighborhood smithy.
Socially, the local belief that ‘those who sign together combine together’ made it easy to met folks of similar interests. Herds of hefty Taurians took Hester away for camping trips, Billy joined a charitable organization called Caring Cancers, a Piscean gardening-and-water-polo club enrolled Captain Standforth, Pam linked up with the Friends of the Peace Memorial (an organization devoted to maintaining the patch of flowers and lawn around said memorial) and Councilman Luthguster joined the local branch of Lions Club Intergalactical.
Only Ensign Kybee Benson failed to make the slightest adjustment. Only he sat brooding on the porch of their nice white-clapboard house with the green shutters. Only he resisted the overtures of his sign’s organization (the Scorpio Swinging Singles Club). Only he failed to learn the local idioms, take an interest in the issues raised by the morning and evening newspapers (which gave the following day’s weather, with perfect accuracy), involve himself in the community. Only he refused to accept the reality of the local saying that meant the end of negotiation, parley, haggling. The buck stops here.
“Buck up, Kybee,” Billy said, coming up the stoop.
“What?” Ensign Benson, in his rocking chair on the porch, glared red-eyed at the returning delivery boy. “What is that supposed to mean in this miserable place?”
“Gee, Kybee,” Billy said, backing away a little, “the same as it does back on Earth. It means ‘Be cheerful; look at the sunny side’ ”.
“What sunny side? We’re trapped here, imprisoned in this small town for the rest of our—”
“Garr-rraaaghhh!” Ensign Benson announced, leaped to his feet and chased Billy three times around the block before his wind gave out.
Somehow, the second month was less fun. The area round about Centerville had shown to Captain Standforth its full repertory of birds; the board of aldermen would let Councilman Luthguster neither deliver a speech to them nor (as a noncitizen) run for office against them; the high school boys, having grown used to Pam’s useless beauty and having realized none of them would ever either claim her or understand her, now flocked away from her classes; at the supermarket, Billy was passed over for promotion to assistant produce manager; and a Nero kicked Hester in the rump down at the smithy, causing her to limp.