“It would be convenient if you could,” Straha said. “Before long, the Big Uglies will realize I have gone missing. They may not know why. On the other fork of the tongue, they may. And this is bound to be one of the first places they search.”
8
By now, Nesseref had flown into Los Angeles several times. It was, in her view, one of the better Tosevite facilities for receiving shuttlecraft. For that matter, she would rather have landed there than at Cairo. No one had ever shot at her when she descended toward the Los Angeles airport that also did duty as a shuttlecraft port.
“Shuttlecraft, your descent is nominal in all respects,” a Big Ugly at the local control center radioed to her. “Continue on trajectory and land in the usual area.”
“It shall be done,” Nesseref answered. “I hope the ambulance is waiting to bring the sick male directly to the shuttlecraft.” Had she been dealing with her own kind, she would have assumed that to be the case. With Big Uglies, you never could tell.
But the Tosevite on the other end of the radio link said, “Shuttlecraft Pilot, that ambulance is waiting at the terminal here. So are the hydrogen and oxygen for your next burn. As soon as you are refueled, you are cleared for launch, so you can get that male to proper medical facilities for your kind. I hope he makes a full recovery.”
“I thank you,” Nesseref said, “both for your kind wishes and for the well-organized preparations you have made to assist one of my species.”
Braking rockets fired. Deceleration pressed Nesseref into her seat. She eyed the radar and her velocity. The Race’s engineering was good, very good. Most shuttlecraft pilots-almost all, in fact-went through their whole careers without ever coming close to using a manual override. But the pilot who wasn’t alert to the possibility was the one who might come to grief.
Not this time. Electronics and rocket motor functioned with their usual perfection. Landing legs deployed. The shuttlecraft gently touched down on the concrete of the Los Angeles airport. Three vehicles immediately rolled toward it: the hydrogen and oxygen trucks, and another one with flashing lights and with red crosses painted on it in several places. Nesseref had seen vehicles with such symbols in Poland, and recognized this one as a Tosevite ambulance.
“Will the male require aid to board the shuttlecraft?” she asked, releasing the landing ladder so that its extensible segment reached the concrete.
“I am given to understand that he will not,” replied the Tosevite in the control tower. “He is said to be weak but capable of moving on his own.”
“Very well,” Nesseref said. “I await him.” She didn’t have to wait long. Her external camera showed the male leaving the ambulance by the rear doors and moving toward the landing ladder at a startlingly brisk clip. Noting his body paint, she let out a small hiss of surprise as he scrambled up toward the cabin-nobody had bothered to tell her he was a shuttlecraft pilot, too.
“I greet you,” he said as he slid down into the compartment with her. He got into his seat and fastened the safety harness with a practiced ease that showed he was indeed familiar with shuttlecraft.
“And I greet you, comrade,” Nesseref answered. “Are you in pain? I have analgesics in the first-aid kit, and will be happy to give you whatever you may need.”
“I thank you, but I am not suffering in the least, except from anxiety,” the male said. “When this shuttlecraft lifts off, I shall be the happiest male on-or rather, above-the surface of Tosev 3.”
He certainly didn’t seem infirm. Nesseref wondered why she’d been summoned halfway around the planet to take him to Cairo. For that matter, she wondered why she wasn’t taking him to the nearby city of Jerusalem, which boasted more specialized medical facilities. What sort of pull did he have? She was astonished to discover a shuttlecraft pilot with any pull at all.
She said, “We cannot go anywhere till the Big Uglies give us hydrogen and oxygen.”
“I understand that,” he said, a touch of asperity in his voice.
Who do you think you are? Nesseref thought in some annoyance. Before she could call him on it, the Tosevite in the tower radioed, “Please open the port to your hydrogen tank. I say again, to your hydrogen tank.”
“It shall be done,” Nesseref said. “I am opening the port to my hydrogen tank. I repeat, to my hydrogen tank.” The Tosevites had sensibly adopted the Race’s refueling procedures, which minimized the possibility of error. Nesseref’s fingerclaws entered the proper control slot. The hydrogen tank rolled forward and delivered its liquefied contents. As soon as Nesseref said, “I am full,” the hose uncoupled and the truck withdrew.
“Now open the port to your oxygen tank. I say again, to your oxygen tank,” the Big Ugly in the control tower told her.
“It shall be done,” Nesseref repeated. She went through the ritual once more. The control activating that port was nowhere near the one for the hydrogen port, again to make sure the two were not mistaken for each other. After the oxygen truck finished refilling her tank, it also disengaged and drove away from the shuttlecraft.
“Am I now cleared for takeoff?” Nesseref asked. “I want to get this male to treatment as quickly as possible.”
“I understand, Shuttlecraft Pilot,” replied the Big Ugly in the control tower. “There will be a five-minute delay. Do you understand five minutes, or shall I convert it to your time system?”
“I understand,” Nesseref said, as the male beside her let out a loud hiss of dismay. “What is the difficulty?”
“We have an airliner coming in for a landing a little low on fuel,” the Tosevite answered. “Due to the short notice given for your arrival, we could not divert it to another airport. As soon as it is down, you will be cleared.”
“Very well. I understand.” Nesseref didn’t see what else she could say. The other shuttlecraft pilot, the male, was twisting and wriggling as if he had the purple itch. Nesseref turned an anxious eye turret toward him. She hoped he didn’t. The purple itch was highly infectious; she didn’t want to have to have the cabin here sterilized.
“Hurry,” the male kept muttering under his breath. “Please hurry.”
After what wasn’t a very long delay for Nesseref-but one that must have seemed an eternity to that male-the Big Ugly in the control tower radioed, “Shuttlecraft, you are cleared for takeoff. Again, apologies for the delay, and I hope your patient makes a full recovery.”
“I thank you, Los Angeles Control.” Nesseref’s eye turrets swiveled as she gave the instruments one last check. After satisfying herself that everything read as it should, she said, “Control, I am beginning my countdown from one hundred. I shall launch at zero.”
The countdown, of course, was electronic. As it neared the zero mark, her fingerclaw hovered over the ignition control. If the computer didn’t trigger the shuttlecraft’s motor, she would. But, again, everything went as it should. Ignition began precisely on schedule. Acceleration squashed her.
It squashed the other shuttlecraft pilot, too. Even so, he let out an exultant shout through the roar of the rocket: “Praise the Emperor and spirits of Emperors past, I am finally free!”
Nesseref asked him no questions till acceleration cut off and left them weightless and the shuttlecraft quiet. Then she said, “Can you tell me how you can sound so delighted in spite of an illness?”
“Shuttlecraft Pilot, I have no illness,” the male answered, which, by then, wasn’t the greatest surprise Nesseref had ever had. He went on, “Changes in my appearance are from makeup, which makes me look infirm and also disguises me. Nor, I must confess, do I share your rank. My name is Straha. Perhaps you will have heard of me.”
Had Nesseref not kept her harness on, her startled jerk would have sent her floating around the cabin. “Straha the traitor?” she blurted.
“So they call me,” the male replied. No, he was no shuttlecraft pilot; he’d been a shiplord, and a high-ranking one, before going over to the Big Uglies. He continued, “No-so, they called me. I have redeemed myself now.”
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br /> “How?” Nesseref asked in genuine astonishment, wondering what could have made the Race welcome Straha once more. Something must have, or she wouldn’t have been ordered to Los Angeles, and no one there would have helped him disguise himself to get to the shuttlecraft.
He answered, “I am sorry, but I had better not tell you that. Until the authorities decide what to do with this information, it should not be widely spread about.”
“Is it as sensitive as that?” Nesseref asked, and Straha made the affirmative gesture. Once more, she wasn’t very surprised. If he hadn’t learned something important, the Race wouldn’t have done anything for him.
Cairo Control came on the radio then, to report that the shuttlecraft’s trajectory accorded with calculations. “But your departure was late,” the control officer said in some annoyance. “We have had to put two aircraft in a holding pattern to accommodate your landing.”
“My apologies,” Nesseref said. “The Big Uglies held me up, because one of their aircraft was landing at the facility and lacked the fuel to go into a holding pattern.”
“Inefficiency,” the control officer said. “It is the Tosevites’ besetting flaw. The only thing in which they are efficient is addling us.”
“Truth,” Nesseref said, while Straha’s mouth opened wide in amusement. Even though it hadn’t been her fault, Nesseref felt bad about inconveniencing the aircraft her landing was delaying. Since she couldn’t do anything about it, though, she put it out of her mind and concentrated on making sure the landing went perfectly. On her radar, she spotted not only those two aircraft but also helicopter gunships on patrol around the landing area.
Straha saw them, too, and understood what they meant. “I should be honored,” he said. “Atvar does not want this shuttlecraft shot out of the sky.”
“I too am thoroughly glad the fleetlord feels that way,” Nesseref replied. “I have taken gunfire from the Big Uglies a couple of times while landing here, and I do not wish to do it again. There are too many parts of this planet where our rule is far less secure than it should be.”
“If I had succeeded in overturning Atvar during the first round of fighting-” Straha began, but then he checked himself and laughed again, this time with a waggle in the lower jaw that showed wry amusement. He finished, “It is entirely possible that things might look no different, save that you would be flying Atvar here to see me and not the other way round. I like to think that would not be so, but I have no guarantee that what I like to think would be a truth.”
Braking rockets roared. The shuttlecraft approached the concrete landing area. To Nesseref’s vast relief, no fanatical Big Uglies opened fire on it. It settled to the surface of Tosev 3 as smoothly as it might have on a training video.
No mere mechanized combat vehicle came out to meet the shuttlecraft, but a clanking, slab-sided landcruiser. “The fleetlord takes your safety very seriously,” Nesseref said to Straha. “I have not been met by a landcruiser here since my first descent to this city.”
“Perhaps he worries about my security,” Straha replied, “and perhaps he just wants to secure me.” He sighed. “I have no choice but to find out. You, at least, Shuttlecraft Pilot, are sure to remain free.” Nesseref pondered that as she and the renegade shiplord left the shuttlecraft and headed for the massive armored vehicle awaiting them.
Inside the Race’s administrative center in what had once been known as Shepheard’s Hotel, Atvar awaited the arrival of the landcruiser coming through Cairo from the shuttlecraft with all the delighted anticipation with which he would have faced a trip to the hospital for major surgery. “I hoped Straha would stay in the United States forever,” he said to Kirel and Pshing. “As long as he remained out of my jurisdiction, I could pretend he did not exist. Believe me, such pretense left me not in the least unhappy.”
“That is understandable, Exalted Fleetlord,” Pshing answered. “Straha’s defection, his treason, hurt us far more than any of the mutinies ordinary soldiers raised during the first round of fighting against the Big Uglies.”
“Truth.” Atvar sent his adjutant a grateful look. “And now, with what he has given us, I am not altogether sure I can punish him at all, let alone as he deserves for that treachery.”
“What he has given us,” Kirel said, “is, in a word, trouble. I would not have been altogether dismayed had that knowledge, like Straha himself, stayed far, far away. We shall have to calculate our response most carefully.”
“We have always had to calculate our responses to Straha and everything that has to do with him most carefully,” Atvar replied, to which Kirel returned the affirmative gesture. The two of them had been the only males in the conquest fleet who outranked Straha. What would Straha’s rank be now? That, at the moment, was the least of Atvar’s worries. But it would not be shiplord again-so he vowed.
He peered out the window toward the west, the direction from which the landcruiser would come. And there it was, like a bad dream brought to life. The outer armored gate of the compound slid back to admit it. As soon as it had gone through, the outer gate closed and the inner gate opened. The two gates were never open at the same time; that would have invited the Big Uglies to fire a gun or launch a rocket through them. As if they need an invitation to make trouble, Atvar thought.
A voice came from the intercom: “Exalted Fleetlord, the passenger has entered the compound.”
“I thank you,” Atvar replied, one of the larger lies he’d ever hatched. No one felt easy about speaking Straha’s name in public. He’d been an object of reproach among the males of the conquest fleet since fleeing to the Americans, while males and females of the colonization fleet had trouble believing such a defection could have taken place; to them, it seemed like a melodrama set in the ancientest history of Home, back in the days before the Empire unified the planet. For a hundred thousand years, treason had been unimaginable-except to Straha.
“Exalted Fleetlord, ah, what shall we do with him now that he is here?” asked one of the males at the gate.
Shoot him as soon as he comes out of the landcruiser, Atvar thought. But, however much he was tempted to imitate the savage and barbarous Big Uglies, he refrained. “Send him here, to my office,” he said. “No-escort him here. He will not know the way. The last time he had anything to do with the business of the conquest fleet, our headquarters were in space.”
“It shall be done, Exalted Fleetlord,” came the reply. The male down there was properly obedient, properly subordinate. Atvar wished he hadn’t been.
Kirel spoke in musing tones: “I wonder what he will have to say for himself. Something clever, something sneaky-of that I have no doubt.”
“Straha knows everything,” Atvar said. “If you do not believe me, you have but to ask him.”
Both Kirel and Pshing laughed. Then, as the door to the fleetlord’s office opened, their mouths snapped shut. In strode Straha, two armed infantry-males flanking him. The first thing Atvar noticed was that he wouldn’t have recognized Straha in a crowd. The next thing he noticed was that Straha’s body paint was not as it should have been. Irony in his voice, the fleetlord said, “I greet you, Shuttlecraft Pilot.”
Straha shrugged. “I needed the makeup and the false body paint to get away from the American Big Uglies. They worked.” Only then did he bend into the posture of respect. “And I greet you, Exalted Fleetlord, even if neither of us much wants to see the other.”
“Well, that is a truth, and I will not try to deny it,” Atvar said. “You relieve me in one way, Straha: you are not claiming friendship, or even comradeship, as I feared you might.”
“Not likely,” Straha said, and appended an emphatic cough. “As I told you, I did not do what I did for your sake. I did it for the sake of my friend, the Big Ugly. Having done it, though, I thought I might get a warmer reception here than among the American Tosevites.” He waggled an eye turret at Atvar. “Or was I wrong?”
“As a matter of fact, I truly am not sure,” Atvar replied. “You know the
harm you did the Race when you defected.”
Straha made the affirmative gesture. “And I also know the service I just did the Race with those documents I sent you.”
“Is it a service? I wonder.” Straha spoke in musing tones.
“Fleetlord Reffet would reckon it one,” Straha said slyly.
“Fleetlord Reffet’s opinion…” Atvar checked himself. He did not care to advertise his long-running feud with the head of the colonization fleet. Picking his words with some care, he went on, “Fleetlord Reffet has had a bit of difficulty adapting to the unanticipated conditions existing on Tosev 3.”
Straha laughed at that. “You think he is as stodgy as I always thought you were.”
Atvar sighed. Evidently, he didn’t need to advertise the feud. “There is some truth to that,” he admitted. “But we have just fought one war that was harder and far more expensive than anyone thought it would be. There was, I am told, a Big Ugly who exclaimed, ‘One more such victory and I am ruined,’ after a fight of that sort. I understand the sentiment. I not only understand it, I agree with it. And so I am something less than delighted to receive these documents, though I cannot and do not deny their importance.”
“Tosev 3 has changed you, too,” Straha said in surprised tones. “It took longer to change you than it did me, but it managed.”
“Perhaps,” Atvar answered, knowing the renegade shiplord was right. “Tosev 3 changes everyone and everything it touches.”
Straha made the affirmative gesture. “We discovered that even before we made planetfall,” he said. “Now, if this were up to me, what I would do is-”
Atvar let out an angry hiss. Before he could turn that hiss into coherent speech, Kirel said, “I see there is one way in which Tosev 3 has not changed you at all, Straha: you still want to give orders, even when you are not entitled to do so.”
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