Aftershocks c-3

by Harry Turtledove

  But laughter soon faded. What would she do now that she was by herself again? The question wouldn’t go away. No answer suggested itself, either.

  Someone outside asked for attention; the speaker by the door hissed again. “Who is it?” Kassquit asked.

  “I: Ttomalss. May I come in?”

  “Yes, superior sir.” Kassquit opened the door for him, as she had for the shuttlecraft pilot. She bent into the posture of respect. “I greet you, superior sir.”

  “And I greet you, Kassquit,” the psychological researcher said. “I came in to inquire about your feelings now that the wild Big Ugly named Jonathan Yeager is returning to the surface of Tosev 3.”

  “Yes, I thought you might.” Kassquit didn’t realize how sarcastic she sounded till the words were out of her mouth.

  Ttomalss let out a wounded hiss. “Your well-being is a matter of considerable concern to me, you know, not only for personal reasons but also because of what I am trying to learn about successfully integrating the Race’s cultural patterns with the limits imposed by Tosevite biology.”

  Yes, I understand that, superior sir, and I apologize,” Kassquit said, on the whole sincerely. “How do I feel?” She took a deep breath. “Confused may well be the best word. Too much has happened to me emotionally, and it has happened too fast, for me to be at all certain what it means. Bereft is another word that comes to mind.”

  “It was so important, then, for you to have this contact with one who was like you biologically even if so different culturally?” Ttomalss asked.

  “Superior sir, at the moment I feel it was,” Kassquit said. “How I will feel in several days’ time, or in a year’s, I cannot tell you at present, but for now I feel I have been deprived of something I never knew I needed.”

  Ttomalss sighed. “I feared that might be so when we began this experiment. I especially feared it might be so when Jonathan Yeager stayed longer than anticipated, solidifying your sexual and emotional bonds with him. I do take some consolation in noting that Tosevite emotions, while generally stronger than those of the Race, are also generally more transient.”

  That was meant to console Kassquit, too, and should have. Instead, it somehow made her furious. “So you think my emotions will go away just because I am a Big Ugly, do you?” she shouted. “I think you had better go away, superior sir!” She turned the honorific into a curse, and used an emphatic cough afterwards. When she took a step toward the psychological researcher, he left in a very great hurry indeed.

  Jonathan Yeager descended from the shuttlecraft and let his feet thump down on the concrete runway at Los Angeles International Airport. The breeze smelled of the nearby ocean. It played on him at random, not with the gentle regularity of the starship’s ventilation system. After so long, random breezes felt strange, unnatural. He laughed. Random breezes were anything but.

  His teeth started to chatter. After so long aboard the Lizards’ starship, the breeze that swept across the airport also felt damn cold. Because of the sea breeze, the airport was one of the coolest spots in the L.A. basin. Jonathan knew that. He’d never known it to be so downright arctic, though.

  He moved away from the shuttlecraft as trucks came up to refill its hydrogen and oxygen tanks. A car came up, too, a familiar car. There was his father behind the wheel. They waved to each other. The car stopped. Jonathan’s dad hopped out and gave him a hug. “Good to see you, son!” he said. “Good to have you home!”

  “Good to be back, Dad,” Jonathan answered. “It’d be even better if I weren’t freezing to death.” He tacked on an emphatic cough. It seemed the most natural thing in the world. Except for the odd word of English here and there, he’d spoken nothing but the language of the Race for a couple of months. Going back to his native tongue felt odd: English seemed sloppy and imprecise after the Lizards’ language.

  His father laughed. “It’s a nice day, if you ask me. But you’ve been up in the bake oven for a while, so you wouldn’t think so.” He went around to the passenger side of the Buick and opened the door. “Hop in and we’ll head for home. Your mom’ll be just as glad to see you as I am. She’s riding herd on Mickey and Donald right now.”

  “How are they doing?” Jonathan asked. He hadn’t been able to inquire about them while he was on the starship; as far as the Race was concerned, they didn’t exist.

  “They’re growing like weeds,” his father answered. “They’re only two and a half now, but they’re already something like three-quarters as big as they will be. And talking quite a bit, too. If Lizard psychologists wore hats, they’d have to eat ’em, because they say that kind of thing just doesn’t happen.”

  Jonathan slid into the car. It was warmer in there than outside. “What else has been going on while I was away?” he asked, tossing his bag onto the back seat.

  His father got behind the wheel and started up the hydrogen-burning engine. “Oh, this and that,” he answered. His tone was casual. Too casual? Jonathan shot him a sharp look. The elder Yeager went on, “We can talk more about that when we get home, okay?”

  “Okay.” Jonathan didn’t know what else to say. The car glided up to a security gate in the chain-link fence that kept normal traffic off the runways. His dad showed a guard his ID. The guard nodded and handed his dad a clipboard. His father signed the paper it held and gave it back. The guard opened the gate. The car left the restricted area and went out into a parking lot. Jonathan found another question. With a certain amount of apprehension, he asked, “How’s Karen doing?”

  “Not… too bad,” his father answered judiciously. “She comes over once or twice a week. She likes the hatchlings, you know.”

  “Yeah,” Jonathan answered. “Does she… still like me?”

  “She hasn’t said much.” His father paused as he left the lot and merged into traffic. “Your mother and I haven’t asked her a whole lot of questions, you know. We figured it would be best if you took care of all that yourself.”

  “Okay,” Jonathan said again, and then, after a moment, “Thanks. Uh-does she know what all I was doing up on the starship?”

  “Well…” His father made another one of those judicious pauses. “Let me put it this way: I don’t think she thinks you were playing tiddlywinks up there.”

  “Oh.” Jonathan thought about that. He sighed. “Has she said anything about it?”

  “Not much.” His dad sounded admiring. On the farm and in the minor leagues and in the Army, keeping your mouth shut was praiseworthy. A phrase his father sometimes used when his mother couldn’t hear was, He wouldn’t say shit if he had a mouthful. He meant it as approval.

  But what was Karen not saying? Jonathan sighed. He’d have to find out. On the other hand, Karen might not want to say anything to him ever again. But if she didn’t, would she keep coming around to see Mickey and Donald? She might, dammit, he thought. She was wild to learn anything she could about Lizards. A lot of kids-maybe even most-her age and Jonathan’s were the same way.

  Getting from the airport to Jonathan’s house took about half an hour. Up in the starship, he would have gone around a significant fraction of the Earth’s circumference in that time. His dad pulled into the driveway. When they got out, Jonathan noticed something he hadn’t before. He pointed to his father’s hip. “Are you wearing that pistol all the time now, Dad?”

  “Every waking minute,” his father answered, dropping his right hand to the holstered.45. “And it’s always where I can grab it fast when I’m sleeping, too.”

  “Are things really that bad?” Jonathan knew about the attacks on his father and the house, of course. But none of them had come to anything, so he had trouble taking them seriously.

  “No.” His father’s voice belied the word. After a moment, the elder Yeager added, “They’re worse.”

  Before Jonathan could respond to that, the front door opened and his mother hurried out to say hello. Between embraces and kisses, he stopped worrying about the pistol for a while. “I’m so glad to see you,” his mom said
over and over. “I’m so glad you’re safe.”

  She didn’t know how close that German had come to blowing the starship out of the sky. He didn’t intend to tell her, either. All he said was, “It’s great to be back.” He wondered if he meant it. Next to where he’d been, the stucco house looked like a primitive makeshift.

  “I bet you’ll be glad to sleep in your own bed again,” his mother said. “From what your father tells me, a Lizard sleeping mat isn’t what you’d call comfortable.”

  “My own bed sounds great, Mom.” Jonathan didn’t have to work too hard to sound enthusiastic. The sleeping mat hadn’t been all that great. But he’d be sleeping alone in his room. He’d had company, friendly company, up on the starship. His eyes slid to his father. By the way his dad was holding his mouth a little too tightly, he knew what Jonathan was thinking.

  His mother said, “I wonder if the hatchlings will remember you. It’s been a good-sized part of their lives since they’ve seen you.”

  “Let’s go find out,” Jonathan said. He wanted to discover if Mickey and Donald still knew who he was, too. And, if he was dealing with the hatchlings, his mom wouldn’t have the chance to harass him about how he shouldn’t have gone up to the starship in the first place or about how he shouldn’t have spent all his time up there fooling around with Kassquit.

  He missed the girl the Lizards had done their best to raise as one of theirs. He couldn’t help it. He’d broken off a love affair. It never would have worked, not for life, not the way his folks’ marriage had. He could see that. But it had been intense while he was up there. With him and Kassquit closed up in one little cubicle all the time, how could it have been anything else?

  When he got inside the house, he dropped his bag in the middle of the living room. His mom gave him a look. His dad murmured, “It’s okay this once, Barbara.” His mother frowned, but nodded a second later.

  Mickey and Donald were in their room. When Jonathan opened the door, he gaped at how much they’d grown. Sure as hell, they were well on their way to being full-sized Lizards. But they looked funny. He needed a moment to realize why: they wore no body paint. He wanted to speak to them in the language of the Race. That wouldn’t work. They didn’t know it, any more than Kassquit knew any human tongue. As she’d been raised as a Lizard, they were being brought up as people.

  “Hi, guys,” Jonathan said in English. “I’m Jonathan. Remember me?”

  They came up to him, slowly, a little bit warily-he was bigger than either of his parents. Their eye turrets swiveled as they looked him up and down. Did they have any idea who he was? However much he wanted to, he couldn’t tell.

  Then Mickey took another step toward him and stuck out his right hand. “Hello, Jonathan,” he said. His mouth couldn’t make all the sounds of English, any more than Jonathan’s could shape all those the Lizards’ language used. He was probably talking baby talk, too. But Jonathan understood him.

  “Hello, Mickey,” he said gravely, and shook the little scaly hand. Then he nodded to Donald. “Hello, Donald. How are you?”

  “Hello.” Donald was bigger and stronger than Mickey, but Mickey talked better; he-or maybe she-had always been the more clever hatchling.

  Before Jonathan and the Lizards could say anything more, the telephone rang. Jonathan jumped a bit. He’d got used to hearing hisses. But then old habit took over. “I’ll get it,” he said, and hurried into the kitchen. “Hello?”

  “Hello, Mr. Yeager,” said the voice on the other end of the line: Karen’s voice. “Could I-”

  “I’m not my dad,” Jonathan broke in, wondering what the devil would happen next. “I’m me. I’m back. Hi.”

  “Oh,” Karen said. Then there was silence-quite a bit of silence. At last, Karen went on, “Hello, Jonathan. Did you… have a good time up on the starship?” She knew what he’d been doing up there, all right. He could hear it in her voice.

  “Yeah, I did.” Jonathan could hardly deny it. “I didn’t expect to stay up there so long, though. Who would have thought the Germans would really start that war? I’m awful glad to be home.” His mother would have coughed at the colloquialism, but she’d stayed down at the other end of the house. He gave it his best shot: “I’d like to see you again, if you still want to see me.”

  “Well…” More silence. Karen finally continued, “I do want to go on seeing Mickey and Donald, and that’ll mean seeing you, too, won’t it? But that’s not what you meant. I know it isn’t. You were doing research, yeah, but… that kind of research?” Another pause. “Maybe when I come over there for the hatchlings, we can talk about the other stuff. That’s about the best I can do, okay?”

  “Okay,” Jonathan said at once-it was as much as he’d hoped for, maybe even a little more. “Do you still want to talk to my dad?”

  “No, never mind-it’ll keep,” Karen said. “Good-bye.” She hung up. So did Jonathan.

  Maybe the sound of the handset going onto the cradle told his father it was safe to come into the kitchen. He glanced at Jonathan and chuckled. “You’re still in one piece, I see,” he remarked.

  “Yeah.” Jonathan knew he sounded relieved. “Maybe we can work things out.”

  “I hope so. She’s a nice girl.” His dad pulled a couple of bottles of Lucky Lager out of the icebox and handed one to Jonathan. “Come on out to the back yard.”

  That wasn’t an invitation he usually made, but Jonathan followed. “What’s up?” he asked when they were standing on the grass.

  “You asked what was new when you got into the car. I didn’t want to tell you there, or in the house. Here, I think it’s okay-who’d put a microphone on a lemon tree?”

  His father sounded as weary and cynical as Jonathan had ever heard him.

  “What’s up?” Jonathan asked again, swigging from the bottle of beer.

  And his father told him. As he listened, his eyes got wider and wider. “That’s what I’m sitting on,” his father finished. “Do I need to remind you just how important it is not to repeat it?”

  “No, sir,” Jonathan said at once, still shocked-maybe more shocked than he’d ever been in his life. “Besides, who’d believe me?”

  5

  Everything Kassquit and Jonathan Yeager had done together on the starship-everything from mating to cleaning their teeth-was recorded. Ttomalss studied the video and audio records with great attention: how better to learn about the interactions between a civilized Tosevite and one of the wild Big Uglies from the surface of Tosev 3?

  What he found distressed him in a number of ways. He had spent Kassquit’s entire lifetime shaping her as he thought she should go. When she was with him even now, she behaved as a civilized being ought to behave. But when she was with Jonathan Yeager…

  When Kassquit was with Jonathan Yeager, she behaved much as a wild Big Ugly did. She learned to imitate him far more quickly than she had learned to imitate Ttomalss-and she’d startled Ttomalss with how fast she’d learned to imitate him while she was a hatchling.

  Also infuriating to the senior researcher was how quickly and accurately Jonathan Yeager could divine what was in Kassquit’s mind. Blood will tell, the male thought unhappily. That was not the conclusion he would have wanted as a culmination of his long-running experimental project.

  He was so distressed about what he found, he called Felless to talk about it. “I greet you, Senior Researcher,” she said when she saw his image in the video screen. “I am glad to speak with you.”

  “And I greet you, superior female.” Ttomalss wondered if his hearing diaphragms were working as they should. Felless only rarely admitted to being glad to speak with anyone, and most especially not with him.

  A moment later, she explained why she was: “After so much time spent dealing with the Francais, it is good to talk shop with a member of my own species.”

  “Ah,” Ttomalss said. “Yes, I can certainly understand that.”

  “And why are you interested in speaking with me?” Felless asked.

  �
�For your insights, of course,” Ttomalss answered, which was even more or less true. He told her of the disturbing data about Kassquit.

  “Why does this surprise you?” she asked, sounding surprised herself. “A common law of psychological development states that hatchlings are more influenced by their peers than by the previous generation. This holds for the Race, it holds for the Rabotevs, and it holds for the Hallessi, too. Why should it not also hold for the Big Uglies?”

  “I had assumed it would be different as a result of the prolonged parental care they receive, which makes them unlike the species-the other species, I should say-of the Empire,” Ttomalss replied. “I might also note that the leading Tosevite psychological theories stress the primacy of the relationship between parents and hatchlings.”

  Felless’ mouth opened wide in hearty, unabashed laughter. “Why in the name of the Emperor do you take Tosevite psychological theories seriously?” she asked. “I have examined a few of them. For one thing, they strike me as preposterous. For another, they contradict one another in any number of ways, demonstrating that they cannot all be true and that, very likely, none of them is true.”

  “I do understand that,” Ttomalss said stiffly. “I have been examining Tosevite psychological theories a good deal longer than you have, I might add. And one point where they are in unanimity is on the vital importance of this bond.”

  “But it makes no logical sense!” Felless exclaimed. “Even in Tosevite terms, it makes no logical sense.”

  “There I might well disagree with you, superior female,” Ttomalss said. “Some of the Big Uglies appear to have very persuasive arguments for the nurturing influence of parents upon hatchlings. Given their biological patterns, I have no trouble finding these arguments plausible.”

  “Plausibility and truth hatch from different eggs,” Felless said, something Ttomalss could hardly deny. The female from the colonization fleet went on, “Consider, Senior Researcher. Where will even a Big Ugly end up spending most of his time? With his parents and their other hatchlings, or with his peers? With his peers, of course. Whom will he have to work harder to accommodate, his parents and their other hatchlings, or his peers? Again, his peers, of course. His parents and close kin are biologically programmed to be accommodating to him. If they were not, they probably could not stand him at all, Big Uglies being what they are. If, however, he acts as if he has his head up his cloaca among his peers, are they not likely to inform him of this in no uncertain terms? No male or female of the Race with whom I am familiar has ever composed songs of praise for the Tosevites’ kindness or gentle manners.”