She studied the ambassador’s performance with a critical eye. Since he represented an independent not-empire, the ceremony was somewhat different for him. He did more than well enough, remembering his responses and acting with dignity. He also seemed unaware that billions of eyes would be upon him, here on Home and then on the other worlds fully ruled by the Empire and on Tosev 3. He surely wasn’t, but seeming that way was all that mattered.
She hoped she would be able to bring off such an unaffected performance herself. She remembered hearing that Sam Yeager, when he was younger, had been an athlete of some sort. Perhaps that gave him an edge in seeming natural, for he would already have appeared before large audiences.
Let me not disgrace myself, Kassquit thought. Spirits of Emperors past, show all the worlds that I truly am a citizen of the Empire. She was not used to the idea of prayer, but it seemed more natural here in Preffilo than it ever had before. After all, the remains of the past Emperors were here. Surely their spirits would linger here as well.
She visited the mausoleum a few days after the American Tosevites had done so. The guide, a male named Jussop, said, “We had a little trouble with the wild Big Uglies. Some reporters got their livers all in an uproar when it came to asking questions. That will not happen with you.”
“I am glad to hear it,” Kassquit answered. She recognized the need for publicity every now and again, but faced the prospect without enthusiasm. Having had no privacy whatever as a hatchling and young adult, she jealously clung to what she’d been able to accumulate since.
With a disapproving hiss, Jussop went on, “Another thing is, those wild Big Uglies thought the mausoleum was handsome and everything like that-they said all the right things-but you could tell it did not mean anything to them, the way it is supposed to.”
“They have different beliefs,” Kassquit said. “They know no better. In a way, I am sorry for them.”
“Well, you sound like a proper person, a person with the right kind of attitude,” Jussop said. “Come along, then, and I will show you what there is to see.”
“I thank you.” Kassquit sketched the posture of respect without fully assuming it.
She went into the full posture once she got inside the mausoleum. It might not have meant much to the wild Big Uglies, but it certainly did to her. It was, in fact, the most spiritual moment of her life. Surrounded by the ashes of Emperors past, she also felt surrounded by their spirits. And they seemed to accept her; she seemed to belong there. She might have the body of a Tosevite, but she was part and parcel of the Empire.
Slowly, reverently, she walked from one urn to the next, glancing briefly at the memorial plaque by each. So many sovereigns, so many names… Some she knew from history. Some she’d never heard of. No doubt no one but scholars or collectors of trivia would have heard of them. Well, that was fine, too. They were all part of the ancient, magnificent edifice that was the Empire. All of their spirits would cherish her when she passed from this world.
The Americans will never know this certainty, she thought sadly. Yes, I am sorry for them.
At last, when her liver was full of peace, she turned to Jussop. “I thank you. I am ready to leave now. This has been the most awe-filled day of my life. I do not see how anything could surpass it.”
“You are going to have an audience with the Emperor, are you not?” the guide asked. Kassquit made the affirmative gesture. Jussop said, “In that case, you would do well not to speak too soon.”
Kassquit thought about it, then made the affirmative gesture again. “Truth. I stand corrected.”
Which counted for more, she wondered as she lay down on the sleeping mat of her hotel room: the spirits of Emperors past or the actual physical presence of the reigning Emperor? She had trouble deciding, but she knew she would be one of the lucky few who could decide, for she would soon meet the 37th Emperor Risson in the flesh.
A few reporters did wait outside the imperial palace when she and Atvar were driven up to it. She wondered if it was built like a fortress to hold them at bay. She wouldn’t have been surprised. “How does it feel to be the second Tosevite granted an audience with his Majesty?” one of them called as she and her sponsor got out of their car.
“I would rather think of myself as the first Tosevite citizen of the Empire granted an audience with his Majesty,” Kassquit answered.
“How did you become a citizen of the Empire?” another reporter asked, while the camera crews came closer and closer.
“I was only a hatchling at the time. You would do better to ask Senior Researcher Ttomalss, who arranged it,” Kassquit said. “And now, if you will excuse me, I must proceed. I cannot be late for the audience.”
They could not have cared less whether she was late. All they wanted was a story from her. Her being late and being disgraced would make as good a story as her audience. It might make a better one, since another Big Ugly had just come before the Emperor. Sam Yeager was a wild Big Ugly, of course, not a citizen, but would the male or female in the street care? One Tosevite looked just like another, as far as the Race could tell.
She ignored the further shouted questions from the reporters, and walked into the entryway by which she’d been told to go in. An involuntary sigh of relief escaped her when the closing door shut off their queries.
“You did well there,” said a male waiting inside.
After reading his body paint, Kassquit bent into the posture of respect. “I thank you, Protocol Master.”
“You are welcome. You earned the praise,” Herrep replied. “Reporters will eat your life if you give them half a chance-even a quarter of a chance. So… are you ready to proceed with your audience?”
“I hope so, superior sir,” Kassquit said. “I shall do my best not to embarrass you or myself or Fleetlord Atvar, who lent me so much help.”
“I thank you,” Atvar said. “But I believe you would have done well without me, too.”
Herrep made the affirmative gesture. “I have confidence in you,” he said. “I have heard excellent reports of your preparation, and the American ambassador’s audience left nothing to be desired. Your species may differ from ours in many ways, but you seem competent. Not knowing your kind, I was hesitant before. Now, though, I see my qualms were as empty as a hatched egg.”
He did not seem like a male who said such things lightly. “I thank you, Protocol Master,” Kassquit said again.
Herrep’s only reply was, “Let the ceremony begin.”
Unlike Sam Yeager, Kassquit not only had to come before the imperial laver and limner but counted doing so a privilege. She gave them the ritual thanks. The soap the laver used to remove her everyday body paint was harsh on her soft skin. So was the brush with which the old female rubbed off the last traces. Kassquit would have endured far worse than that to come before her sovereign.
The imperial limner was even older than the laver. She poked with a fingerclaw one of the glands intended to produce nutritive fluid for a Tosevite hatchling. “How am I supposed to get the pattern right when you have these bumps here?” she complained.
That wasn’t ritual. It was just ordinary grumbling. Kassquit wondered if she dared answer it. After brief hesitation, she decided she did. “Please do the best you can. I cannot help my shape, any more than you can help yours.”
“I do not have this trouble with Rabotevs or Hallessi.” The limner heaved a sigh. “Oh, well. Might as well get used to it. I suppose more and more of you Big Ugly things will come see his Majesty.” She might have been old, but she was an artist with the brush. Despite Kassquit’s shortcomings in shape, the pattern for an imperial supplicant rapidly covered her torso.
“I thank you, gracious female,” Kassquit said when the limner finished. That was ritual. Getting back to it felt good. She went on, “I am not worthy.”
“That is a truth: you are not,” the limner agreed, and added an emphatic cough. “You are granted an audience not because of your worth but by grace of the Emperor. Rejoice that you
have been privileged to receive that grace.”
“I do.” Kassquit used her own emphatic cough.
“Advance, then, and enter the throne room.”
“I thank you. Like his Majesty, you are more gracious, more generous, than I deserve.” Kassquit bent into the posture of respect. The limner did not.
When Kassquit and Herrep paused in a jog in the corridor before she went out into the audience chamber proper, the protocol master said, “Fear not. Your talk with the limner will be edited before it is broadcast. She has done so many of these ceremonies, they have lost their grandeur for her.”
“Really? I had not noticed,” Kassquit said. Herrep started slightly, then saw the joke and gave her a polite laugh. Kassquit asked, “May I proceed, superior sir?” Herrep made the affirmative gesture, and she stepped out into that vast, shadowed, echoing hall.
For a moment, awe almost paralyzed her. This was where the Empire became the Empire upon the unification of Home. This was where the Rabotevs and Hallessi acknowledged the Emperor’s sovereignty and made the Empire more than worldwide. And now, in a smaller way, she too was becoming part of imperial history. Of itself, her back straightened. Pride filled her as she walked toward the throne.
She almost gasped when the Emperor’s gray-painted guards suddenly appeared out of the shadows and blocked her path. Kassquit gestured with her left hand, declaring, “I too serve the Emperor.” The guards silently withdrew. She advanced.
In the spotlight, the Emperor and his throne blazed with gold. Kassquit averted her eyes from the radiance as she assumed the special posture of respect before her sovereign. From above her, the 37th Emperor Risson said, “Arise, Researcher Kassquit.”
Her name in the Emperor’s mouth! She held the posture, saying, “I thank your Majesty for his kindness and generosity in summoning me into his presence when I am unworthy of the honor.” Ritual steadied her, as she’d hoped it would.
“Arise, I say again,” the Emperor replied, and Kassquit did. The Emperor’s eye turrets swung up and down as he examined her. He said, “I am greatly pleased to welcome my first Tosevite citizen to Home. I have heard that you are very able, which gladdens my liver.”
“I thank you, your Majesty,” Kassquit said dazedly. No one had told her Risson would say anything like that! When he made the gesture of dismissal, she might have invented antigravity, for she did not think her feet touched the floor even once as she withdrew.
Along with the rest of the Americans, Sam Yeager watched Kassquit’s audience on television. “She goes through all the rituals of submission you talked them out of,” Tom de la Rosa said to him.
“For her, they’re all right,” Sam answered. “The Emperor’s her sovereign. But he’s not mine, and I wasn’t going to pretend he is.”
“Looks like she’s got all the moves down pat,” Frank Coffey remarked.
Sam nodded. “I’m not surprised. Jonathan and I met her years before we went into cold sleep. She’s not quite human, poor thing, but she’s plenty smart.” He dropped into the Lizards’ language for a one-word question for his son: “Truth?”
“Truth,” Jonathan agreed. He didn’t add an emphatic cough, as Sam Yeager had thought he might. But then, Karen was sitting right there next to him, and wouldn’t have appreciated any such display of enthusiasm. As far as Karen was concerned, Kassquit was entirely too human. But Sam had been talking about the way she thought, not the way she was made.
Linda de la Rosa said, “The Emperor paid her a nice compliment there.”
“That’s the point of the audience,” Sam said. “He wants to show everybody-the Lizards here on Home, and eventually Rabotevs and Hallessi and humans, too-that they’re really just one big, happy family. The Race isn’t as good at propaganda as we are, but they’ve got the right idea for that.”
“What did you think of Risson, Dad?” Jonathan asked.
“We all right?” Sam asked Major Coffey. Only after Coffey’s nod showed electronics were foiling the Race’s bugs did he go on, “He impressed me more than I figured he would. Most of what he said was stuff he had to say, but the way he said it made me sit up and take notice. He’s got brains, I think. He’s not just sitting up there because he’s descended from the last Lizard who had the job.”
“The succession is about the only place where family ties really matter to the Race, isn’t it?” Karen said.
“Looks that way to me,” Sam agreed. “The Emperor has his own-harem, I guess you’d call it-of females, and one of the eggs one of those females lays hatches out the next Emperor. And how they go about deciding which egg it is, they know and God knows, but I don’t.”
He laughed. Back before he went into cold sleep, he’d never worried about how the Lizards dealt with the imperial succession. It hadn’t seemed like anything that could matter to him. Which only went to show, you never could tell. He laughed again. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t already known that. His whole career since the day he met his first Lizard-a slightly wounded prisoner somewhere south of Chicago-had been a case of you never can tell.
The door hissed for attention. Sam didn’t know about the rest of the Americans, but he missed a good, old-fashioned doorbell. His knees ached as he got to his feet. He wondered if the Lizards were going to complain about the bug suppressor. If they did, he intended to send them away with a flea in their hearing diaphragm. Bugging ambassadors’ residences was impolite, even if it happened all the time.
But the Lizard who stood in the hallway wore the body paint of an assistant protocol master. Sam recognized it because it was similar to Herrep’s but a little less ornate. “Yes?” he said, as neutrally as he could. “What can I do for you?”
“You are the ambassador? Sam Yeager?” Lizards had as much trouble telling people apart as most people did with members of the Race. If Sam hadn’t been the only human on the planet with white hair, the assistant protocol master wouldn’t have had a chance.
I ought to dye it, he thought irreverently. But heaven only knew what the Race used for dyes. He made the affirmative gesture. “Yes, I am the ambassador.”
“Good. You will come with me immediately.”
“What? Why?” Yeager was primed to tell the assistant protocol master that he still had a thing or two-dozen-to learn about diplomacy. You didn’t order an ambassador around like a grocery boy.
But he never got the chance, for the female said, “Because you are summoned to a conference by the Emperor.”
“Oh,” Sam said. A sovereign could order an ambassador around like a grocery boy. He gave the only reply he could under the circumstances: “It shall be done.”
“What are they up to, Dad?” Jonathan asked in English.
“Beats me. This one isn’t in the rules, or not in the part they showed me, anyhow,” Sam answered in the same language. “If I’m not back in two days, call the cops.” He was joking-and then again, he wasn’t. His own government had kidnapped him. It wasn’t completely inconceivable that the Race might do the same. If the Race did, though, he was damned if he knew what the humans here could do about it-this side of starting a war, anyhow.
The assistant protocol master hissed. For a bad moment, Sam feared she understood English. Some Lizards here did-even that Rabotev shuttlecraft pilot had. But the female said only, “Please be prompt.”
She led Yeager out of the hotel and into a car with darkened windows. No one looking in could see the car held a human. No reporters waited at the curb. None waited outside the imperial palace, either. Sam was impressed again. Whatever this was, it wasn’t a publicity stunt.
“This will be a private audience?” he asked the assistant protocol master.
“Semiprivate,” the Lizard replied. “And it will be a conference, not an audience. Ceremony will be at a minimum.”
“All right. I am sure it is a great honor to be called like this.” Sam didn’t say whether it was an honor he wanted. That was part of diplomacy, too.
“You are the first ambassador so summo
ned in more than a hundred thousand years,” the assistant protocol master said. The Race hadn’t had any independent ambassadors come before it in all that time. Yeager thought about pointing that out, but forbore. Diplomacy again.
He almost laughed when he found the conference room nearly identical to those in the hotel back in Sitneff. All across the USA, such rooms looked about the same. Evidently, that also held true on Home. The walls were a green-brown not far from the color of a Lizard’s hide. The table in the middle was too low to be quite comfortable for humans.
There were a couple of chairs more or less made for people in the conference room. Yeager sat down in one of them. A few minutes later, Kassquit came in and took the other. “I greet you, Ambassador,” she said politely.
“And I greet you,” Sam replied. How many conferences back on Earth had featured a naked woman? Not many-he was sure of that. Jumping out of a cake afterwards, maybe, but not at the conference itself.
When the door opened again, the Emperor came in. His gilding marked him off from his subjects. Kassquit sprang out of her chair and assumed the special posture of respect. Sam followed suit more slowly. He did everything more slowly these days.
“Rise, both of you,” the 37th Emperor Risson said. “The reason I called you here was to see whether we could progress toward settling the differences between the Race and the American Tosevites.”
He didn’t think small. In a sovereign, that was, or could be, an admirable quality. Sam returned to the chair that wasn’t quite right for his shape. “I hope we can, your Majesty,” he said. “That would be wonderful.”
The 37th Emperor Risson turned one eye turret toward him, the other toward Kassquit. “Which of us is outnumbered, Ambassador?” he asked.
“Both of us,” Yeager replied. “Two Big Uglies, one male of the Race. Two citizens of the Empire, one American.”
Homeward Bound (colonization) Page 35
