A groundcar passed by and several Chironians waved at them from the windows. “It can’t be quite like that,” Jay said. “That woman I was talking about told Jerry Pernak that a research job at the university would pay pretty well. That must have meant something.”
“Well, it sure doesn’t pay any money.” Colman turned his head toward Hanlon. “What do you say, Bret?”
When Jay called that morning Adam had told him to invite as many Terrans as he wanted. Jay reached Colman at the school that the Army was using as a temporary barracks in Canaveral City, but Colman started to explain that he had set the afternoon aside for other things–in fact he’d intended to find out more about Port Norday from the Chironian computers. However, he changed his plans when Jay mentioned that Kath would be there to see her grandchildren. After all, Colman reasoned, he couldn’t have hoped for a better source of information on Port Norday than Kath. As Hanlon was off duty, Colman had invited him along too.
“I hope you’re not expecting an answer,” Hanlon said. “It makes about as much sense to me as Greek …. “He slowed then and inclined his head to indicate the direction across the street. “Now, there’s the fella you should be asking,” he suggested.
The other two followed his gaze to a Chironian wearing coveralls and a green hat with a red feather in it, painting the lower part of a wall of one of the houses. Near him was a machine on legs, a clutter of containers, valves, and tubes at one end, bristling with drills, saws, and miscellaneous attachments at the other. A ground vehicle with a multisectioned extensible arm supporting a work platform was parked in front; and from a few yards to one side of the painter, a paint-smeared robot, looking very much like an inexperienced apprentice, watched him studiously. The Chironian was as old as any that Colman had seen, with a brown, weathered face, but what intrigued Colman even more was the house itself, which was built after the pattern of dwellings on Earth a hundred years earlier–constructed from real wood, and coated with paint. It was not the first such anachronism that he had seen in. Franklin, where designs three centuries old coexisted quite happily alongside maglev ears and genetically modified plants, but he hadn’t had an opportunity to stop and study one before,
The painter glanced across and noticed them watching. “Nice day,” he commented and continued with his work. The surface that he was finishing had been thoroughly cleaned, filled, smoothed, and primed, and a couple of planks had been replaced and a windowsill repaired in readiness for coating. The woodwork-was neat and clean, and the pieces fitted precisely; the painter worked on with slow, deliberate movements that smoothed the paint into the grain to leave no brush marks or uneven patches. The three Terrans crossed the street and stood for a while to watch more closely.
“Nice job you’re doing,” Hanlon remarked at last. “Glad you think so.” The painter carried on.
“It’s a pretty house,” Hanlon said after another short silence.
“Yep.’ “Yours’~ ‘`Nope.”
“Someone you how?” Colman asked.
“Kind of.” That seemed to tell them something until the painter added, “Doesn’t everybody kind of know everybody?”
Colman and Hanlon frowned at each other. Obviously they weren’t going to get anywhere without being more direct. Hanlon wiped his palms on his hips. “We, ah… we don’t mean to be nosy or anything, but out of curiosity,
why are you painting it?” he asked. “Because it needs painting.”
“So why bother?” Jay asked. “What’s it to you if somebody else’s house needs painting or not?”
“I’m a painter,” the painter said over his shoulder. “I like to see a paint job properly done. Why else would anyone do it?” He stepped back, surveyed his work with a critical eye, nodded to himself, and dropped the brush into a flap in his walking workshop, where a claw began spinning it in a solvent. “Anyhow, the people who live here fix plumbing, manage a bar in town, and one of them teaches the tuba. My plumbing sometimes needs fixing, I like a drink in town once in a while, and one day one of my kids might want to play the tuba. They fix faucets, I paint houses. What’s so strange?”