The humans, however, were a different matter. The stresses there were not healing themselves. They were getting worse.
XX
The last species to reach Tupelo before the arrival of the Huntsville probe were the Petty-Primates. Once again, the identity of the solar system they come from has never been established, although it seems clear that, in regard to the conditions that affect life, their planet was quite like Tupelo, and thus no doubt a good deal like Earth itself.
Physically, the Petty-Primes are tiny. More than any other terrestrial creature they resemble tailless, hairless monkeys. Yet with a brain less than a tenth the size of a human’s, they have demonstrated enough intelligence to develop a highly sophisticated technological culture. That is surprising in itself, but the Petty-Primes have another quality that is still more unlikely.
That is their life span. Earthly ethologists have drawn a sort of curve, plotting mass against longevity for mammalian species, and it demonstrates that the smaller the creature, in general, the shorter its life expectancy. Not the Petty-Primes. They are completely off the curve. Their childhood extends for nearly thirty years, so that by the time a Petty-Prime is sexually mature it has gone through decades of learning and experience. The length of their lives as adults is equally astonishing. When the first humans reached Tupelo some of the original Petty-Prime colonists were still alive and well, though, since then most have either died or returned to their home planet.
The more Evesham Giyt thought about it, ;the more he was convinced that this world would be a better place if Hoak Hagbarth weren’t in it, either back on Earth or, preferably, dead.
That was a conclusion that startled him. Giyt had never before in his life wished for any other person’s death. It wasn’t that he planned to do anything about it. He had no intention of getting into a shoot-out with Hagbarth, even if either of them had had weapons to shoot each other out with. But to punch the man stupid, yes, that was a tempting possibility. Bash him bloody and then kick his ugly face in—yes, definitely that scenario had real attractions for Giyt . . . Or would have had, if Rina hadn’t begged him to let the matter pass; “All he did was tell the truth, Shammy,” she said, dry-eyed and somber. “The whole thing is my fault.”
“Nothing about this is your fault!”
She gave him the pursed-lips look that meant, You’re entirely wrong and I’m certainly right, but I don’t choose to debate it any further. All she said was, “Please, Shammy. I’m asking you to let it go. For me.”
Well, he couldn’t let it go. But he couldn’t go against the wishes of the mother of his unborn child, either. And while he was considering just what he could do, Rina cleared her throat. “You know. Shammy,” she said, “if we had to go back—well, what I mean is, if we wanted to go back—it wouldn’t be all that bad, would it?”
It took a moment for Giyt to understand what she was saying. Then he was firm. “Not a chance. We’re not going to bring up our son in—”
“Or daughter,” she said. “I haven’t checked.”
“Whichever. Anyway, we’re not going to raise our family in some damn slide-room in Bal Harbor.”
She looked at him, considering. “It wouldn’t have to be in Bal Harbor, Shammy. I’ve been thinking. My sister and her husband have a three-roomer. I’m sure they’d be glad to have us, just till we got settled.”
“No!” he said. “No way!” He looked at her accusingly. “I thought you liked living here in this house!”
“Actually, I love living here, Shammy, and I love our house. I never had a home of my own before, just places where I worked. I slept there after my clients had gone away, but they weren’t homes. All the same, we have to face the simple facts.”
Giyt put his arm around her, touched. The simplest fact of all, of course, was that back on Earth there were his stashes of mad money, plenty to buy any kind of house Rina wished, and if there wasn’t enough there it would be easy enough to make more in the same way. . . assuming he was willing to go back to stealing for a living. And assuming he was prepared to do it on grimy, worn-out Earth.
He shook his head. “We’re not leaving,” he said. “I give you my word, Rina. We’re going to bring up our kid right here on Tupelo.”
So Giyt had made his wife a promise.
Evesham Giyt didn’t have a lot of experience in keeping promises. He hadn’t had to. He hadn’t been in the habit of making promises to anyone. But this promise he was determined to keep. He was not going to allow Hoak Hagbarth to kick them off the planet of Tupelo for any reason at all.
But then, when Giyt had begun to search the files for those regulations that Hagbarth could invoke when he chose, it began to look as though there was a real problem there. There was in fact an Ex-Earth statute that said any colonist could be deported for what was called “aggravated antisocial behavior.” The language was opaquely legal, but when Giyt read it over, he saw that it could have been that sort of charge that had terminated Shura Kenk’s residence. Could have, at least, if she was actually guilty, whatever the de Mirs chose to believe. What was less clear was whether the regulation could be used against Rina. Could it, for instance, be made retroactive to cover acts committed light-years away and long in the past?
After the third or fourth re-reading Giyt still couldn’t tell, and when he showed it to Rina, neither could she. “See, hon,” she said, “you’re really smart about some things, and I’m not so dumb, either, but that’s lawyer talk. People like us aren’t supposed to understand it. You need somebody to tell you what it means. You need a lawyer.”
“I don’t know if there are any lawyers here on Tupelo,” he said, studying her. Rina seemed subdued, naturally enough, but as far as Giyt could tell she hadn’t been crying. But then Rina wasn’t ever a crier.
“Neither do I, but the way to look for one . . .” she began, and then stopped as a message override flashed on his screen. They both looked at it. It was for Giyt, and what it said was that the first official party of delegates for the six-planet conference was about to arrive, and his presence was required to greet them.
Giyt groaned. Rina shook her head. “You’d better go,” she said, “What I was about to say was that the way to find out if anybody here is a lawyer is to check the personnel files. You go change your clothes. I’ll do it for you.”
“But they’re all classified,” he protested. “You’d have to bypass the blocks, dig into the protected files—”
“Sure,” she said cheerfully. “I can handle that, remember? The trouble with you, hon, is you think you have to do everything yourself. You have to leave some things to your partner.”
Pulling on his clean pants, Giyt pondered that thought. He had never had a partner before. And, as a matter of fact, it didn’t take Rina long to get through Hagbarth’s pretty primitive security blocks. While he was brushing his hair she came in and leaned on the doorway, watching him. “There isn’t anybody who calls himself a lawyer,” she reported, “but I did a deeper search and I found two people who had a little legal experience, anyway. One worked as a paralegal, and the other dropped out of law school in her first year.”
“Good work,” he said, to cheer her up.
“Well, maybe so,” she conceded, “but I don’t think it helps us much. The paralegal’s Olse Hagbarth. And the other one is Silva Cristl.”