Homeward Bound (colonization)

by Harry Turtledove

  “No, nothing is really wrong, ” he replied. “I was thinking about how you respond to stress now, as opposed to how you did when you were younger.”

  “You said it yourself, superior sir: I am more mature than I used to be,” Kassquit replied. “I am also more used to the idea of belonging to two worlds than I was. Before, I desperately wanted to be part of the Race, and if that meant abandoning my biological heritage, well then, it did, and that was all there was to it. But I have discovered that I cannot abandon my biology-and I have also discovered I do not want to.”

  “You will find your counterpart’s autobiography interesting,” Ttomalss said. “So will I. I look forward to the day the translation reaches Home.”

  “Truth.” Kassquit used the affirmative gesture. The server brought Ttomalss his food. As he began to eat, she went on, “I would give a great deal to meet Mickey and Donald. I have already told the Tosevites as much. Those two of all people should understand some of what I have experienced-though they at least had each other.”

  Ttomalss crunched a plump roasted grub between his teeth. He said, “There are times when I feel guilty because of what I have done to you. You are not a normal Tosevite, and you never can be. But you may not be worse off on account of that. The lot of a normal Tosevite, especially at the time when I, ah, found you, all too often proved unfortunate.”

  “Yes, Frank Coffey has pointed out the same thing to me,” Kassquit said. Because her room was electronically monitored, Ttomalss knew that. He also knew better than to show he knew. Kassquit went on, “I still think I would rather have been as I would have been, if you take my meaning.”

  “I think so,” Ttomalss said. “Of course, you have not experienced the disease and the hard labor you would have known had I chosen another Tosevite hatchling. You are comparing what you have now against some ideal existence, not against the reality you would have known.”

  “Perhaps,” Kassquit said. “I have certainly learned more of bodily infirmity since become gravid than I ever knew before. These are lessons I do not care to expand upon further.” She looked at her almost empty plate. “This morning, things seem willing to stay down.”

  “I am glad to hear it,” Ttomalss said. “I gather your gravidity has persuaded you not to travel on the Commodore Perry?”

  Kassquit made the affirmative gesture. “None of the wild Tosevites seemed to think it was a good idea. No one knows how traveling faster than light affects developing hatchlings, and no one seems to want to find out by experiment. I do not care for this conclusion, but I must say it makes sense.”

  “I agree.” Ttomalss bit down on a ripe ippa fruit. Tart juice and pulp flooded into his mouth. “There will be time enough for such things later.”

  “I hope so,” Kassquit said. “This is one of the occasions, though, when I notice that your likely span is longer than mine.” She shrugged. “It cannot be helped. If you will excuse me, superior sir…” She rose and left the refectory.

  As Ttomalss finished breakfast, he wondered what his likely span was. Kassquit meant that an average member of the Race lived longer than an average Big Ugly. She was right about that, of course. But it held true only in times of peace, of stability. If the missiles started flying, if the hydrogen bombs started bursting, no one of any species was likely to live very long.

  The Race and the Big Uglies hadn’t blown Tosev 3 sky-high. They’d come close when the Deutsche reached for something they weren’t big enough to grab. They’d come close, but they hadn’t quite done it. Both sides there had got used to the idea that they were living on the edge of a volcano.

  Now all the worlds of the Empire were living by the same crater. Most males and females on Home didn’t realize it yet, but it was true. Rabotev 2 and Halless 1 were blissfully unaware of it… or were they? Had Tosevite faster-than-light starships appeared out of nowhere in their skies? For that matter, had the Big Uglies bombarded or conquered the other two planets in the Empire? If they had, Home wouldn’t find out about it for years-unless more Tosevite starships brought the news.

  That thought reminded Ttomalss just what a predicament the Race found itself in. The Big Uglies could know things sooner than his own species could, and could act more quickly on what they knew. For years, the Race had tried to decide whether Tosevites were enough of a menace to be worth destroying, and had never quite made up its mind. Even if it had, doing anything would have taken years and years.

  If the American Big Uglies decided the Race was still enough of a menace to be worth destroying, how long would they take to act on their decision? Not long at all, both because they were generally quicker to act than the Race and because they now had the technology to match their speed of thought.

  Involuntarily, Ttomalss’ eye turrets looked up toward the ceiling. Even if he could have looked up through the ceiling, he couldn’t have seen the Commodore Perry in orbit around Home, not in daylight. If the starship launched missiles, he would never know about it till too late.

  One eye turret swung down to the grubs and fruit he’d been eating. He was glad he’d just about finished his meal before such thoughts occurred to him. They would have robbed him of his appetite.

  After he left the refectory, he thought about going out into Sitneff to call Pesskrag and see how her research team was coming. He’d taken several steps toward the door before he stopped and made the negative gesture. What good would that do? She’d said the research would take years. Asking her about it mere days after he’d last spoken to her wouldn’t gain him any new information. He would just be tugging at her tailstump, annoying her for no good reason.

  But he wanted reassurance. He laughed, not that it was particularly funny. Back when Kassquit was a hatchling, he’d constantly had to reassure her that everything was all right, that he would go on taking care of her, that she was a good little female. Sometimes it had almost driven him mad. Hatchlings of the Race, being more independent from their earliest days, didn’t need that constant reinforcement. He’d probably been ill-equipped to give it. Whatever psychological problems Kassquit had were in no small measure of his making.

  And now he understood Kassquit in a way he hadn’t while he was raising her. In the huge, frightening world of interspecies rivalries and new technologies, what was he but a tiny hatchling calling out for someone, anyone, to help make him feel safe?

  He didn’t think Pesskrag could do for him what he’d once done for Kassquit. He didn’t think anyone could-not Atvar, not even the 37th Emperor Risson himself. He suspected they were all looking for reassurance in the same way he was, and for the same reasons. That didn’t make him crave it any less.

  Change was here. For millennia, the Race had insulated itself against such misfortunes. Everyone had praised that as wisdom. Countless generations had lived peaceful, secure, happy lives because of it.

  Now, though, like it or not, change was hissing at the door. If the Race couldn’t change… If the Race couldn’t change, then in a certain ultimate sense those hundred thousand years of peace and stability might not matter at all.

  Ttomalss shivered. Few males or females had ever bumped snouts with the extinction of their species. That was what he saw now. Maybe it was nothing but panic over the arrival of the Commodore Perry. On the other hand, maybe panic was what the arrival of the Commodore Perry demanded. However much he wished it didn’t, the second seemed more likely than the first.

  The wild Big Uglies hadn’t panicked when the conquest fleet arrived. They’d fought back more ferociously and more ingeniously than the Race dreamt they could. Now the Race had to respond in turn. Could it? Ttomalss shivered again. He just didn’t know.

  There was Home, spinning by as it had ever since the Admiral Peary went into orbit around it. The sight had raised goose bumps in Glen Johnson. Here he was, eyeing the scenery as his spacecraft circled a world circling another sun. The Admiral Peary was still doing the same thing it had always done-but the starship had gone from history-maker to historical after
thought in the blink of an eye.

  When Johnson said that out loud, Walter Stone shook his head. “Not quite yet,” he said. “We still have another few weeks of serious duties to perform. Till the Commodore Perry goes to Earth and then comes back here, we’re the ones on the spot. Up to us to keep the Lizards from doing something everybody would regret.”

  He was right. He usually was. And yet, his being right suddenly seemed to matter very little. “Yes, sir,” Johnson said. “Sorry about that. We’re not a historical afterthought right this minute. But we will be any day now.”

  Stone gave him a fishy stare. “You never have had the right attitude, have you?”

  Johnson shrugged, there in the control room. “The right attitude? I don’t know anything about that. All I know is, we’re about the most obsolete set of spacemen God ever made. We spent all those years weightless, and now we can’t be anything else. And we made a fine, successful crew for a cold-sleep starship-the only problem being that they won’t make any more of those. Buggy whips, slide rules-and us. What do the Russians call it? The ash-heap of history, that’s what it is. And that’s where we’re at.”

  Brigadier General Stone’s gaze got fishier yet. “If we are, Johnson, you’re still a pain in the ash.”

  “Aiii!” Johnson looked back reproachfully. “And here I thought you were you, and not Mickey Flynn.”

  “Is someone taking my name in vain?” Flynn asked from the corridor that led into the interior of the Admiral Peary. He came out into the control room a moment later. “How did I get into trouble without even being here?”

  “Native talent?” Johnson suggested.

  Flynn shook his head. His jowls wobbled. “Can’t be that.”

  “Why not?” Stone asked. “It makes sense to me.”

  “As if that proved anything,” Flynn said with dignity. He pointed to the planet they were circling. “How can I be native talent in this solar system?”

  “He’s got a point,” Johnson said.

  Stone shrugged this time. “Well, what if he does?” Without waiting for an answer, he pushed off, slid gracefully past Flynn, and vanished down that corridor.

  “Was it something I said?” Flynn wondered.

  “Nope. He just doesn’t care to be last year’s model, but he can’t do anything about it,” Johnson answered.

  “Anybody who can remember when rockets to the Moon were the province of pulp magazines is not going to be right up to date,” Flynn observed. “For that matter, neither is anybody who can remember pulp magazines.”

  “That’s true,” Johnson said. “I was never on the Moon. Were you? And here we are in orbit around Home. It’s pretty peculiar, when you think about it.”

  “The Moon’s not worth going to. This place is,” Flynn said.

  He wasn’t wrong about that, either. The Lizards had been amused when humans flew to the Moon. Since the Race was used to flying between the stars, that first human journey to another world must have seemed like the smallest of baby steps. And when people went to Mars, the Lizards were just plain perplexed. Why bother? The place obviously wasn’t worth anything.

  “Heck,” Johnson said, “they didn’t even get all that hot and bothered when we went out to the asteroid belt in the Lewis and Clark. ”

  “At least they were curious then,” Flynn said. “We had a constant-boost ship. That made them sit up and take notice. And they wondered what the dickens we were up to. Those spy machines of theirs…”

  Johnson laughed. “Oh, yeah. I remember spoofing one of them when I was in a scooter. I signaled to it just the same way as I had to some of the bases we’d set up on the rocks close by the ship.”

  “That should have given some Lizard monitoring the signals the spy machine was picking up a case of the hives,” Flynn said.

  “Well, I hope so. I don’t suppose I’ll ever know for sure, though,” Johnson said. “What I do know for sure is, it gave our dearly beloved commandant a case of the hives. He called me into his lair, uh, office to grill me on the weird signal I’d sent. Somehow, he never appreciated my sense of humor.”

  “He probably thought it lacked that quality of mirth known as being funny,” Flynn said.

  “Thanks a hell of a lot, Mickey. I’ll remember you in my nightmares.” Johnson wished he could have left the control room in a display of at least medium dudgeon, the way Walter Stone had. But it was still his shift. He did everything required of him. He always had. He always would, for as long as he was physically able to. He was damned and double-damned if he would give Lieutenant General Healey the excuse to come down on him for something small like that.

  He laughed out loud. “Are you attempting to contradict me?” Flynn inquired in moderately aggrieved tones. “How can I know whether something is funny unless you tell me the joke?”

  Johnson explained, finishing, “Of course Healey doesn’t come down on me for the small stuff. He comes down on me for big stuff instead.”

  After grave consideration, Flynn shook his head. “I don’t think you’d make Bob Hope quake in his boots, or Jack Benny, either.”

  “I should say not,” Johnson replied. “They’re dead.”

  “I don’t even think you’d get them worried enough to start spinning in their graves,” Flynn said imperturbably. “Neither would that Lizard called Donald, the one who runs the quiz show.”

  “How’s he going to spin in his grave? He’s still alive,” Johnson said. “And so is that gal called Rita-oh, yeah.” Recordings of You’d Better Believe It had made it to the Admiral Peary. Some people found Donald funny. Johnson didn’t, or not especially. But, like every other male on the ship, he… admired the lovely Rita’s fashion statements. “One more reason to be sorry I’m not going back to Earth.”

  “Two more reasons, I’d say.” Mickey Flynn paused to let that sink in, then went on, “However much you might like looking at her, you don’t suppose she’d look at you, do you? You were not born yesterday, mon vieux. ”

  Except for the minor detail that gravity would quickly kill him, Johnson was in reasonably good shape for his age, which was about the same as Flynn‘s. But the other pilot wasn’t wrong; neither one of them had been born yesterday, even subtracting cold sleep. After some thought, Johnson said, “I’ve been accruing pay since the 1960s, and I haven’t had a goddamn thing to spend it on. I may not be pretty, but I might do for a sugar daddy.”

  “Maybe you would-if they still have sugar daddies back on Earth,” Flynn said.

  “They will. That, I’m not worried about.” Johnson spoke with great conviction. “As long as old guys have more money than they know what to do with, pretty girls’ll give ’em ideas.”

  “Hmm. On those grounds, I might even qualify for sugar daddyhood myself,” Flynn said. “I’ve been accruing pay longer than you have, since I joined the crew of the Lewis and Clark on the up and up instead of stowing away, and I’ve been a bird colonel longer than you have. I could outbid you.” He seemed to like the idea.

  Johnson laughed at him. “If we’re back on Earth-or in orbit around it, anyway-there’ll be enough girls to go around. You get one, I’ll get another one. Hell, get more than one if you want to.”

  “An embarrassment of riches. And, probably, a richness of embarrassments,” Flynn said. “But then, a richness of embarrassments is what sugar daddies are for. I should endeavor to give satisfaction.”

  How did he mean that? Johnson refused to give him the satisfaction of asking. Instead, he said, “It’s pretty good weightless, from what I remember. Of course, it’s pretty damn good any which way.”

  “There, for once, I find I cannot disagree with you.” Flynn looked aggrieved. “What an unfortunate development. Who could have imagined it?”

  Johnson patted him on the shoulder. “Don’t worry. It won’t last.” Flynn seemed suitably relieved.

  When Johnson’s shift ended, he went down to the refectory. A couple of doctors were in there, talking while they ate about how they could reacquaint thems
elves with the state of the art once they got back to Earth. They’d been weightless only since reviving aboard the Admiral Peary. Johnson was jealous of them; he couldn’t go all the way home again.

  He got himself a chopped-meat sandwich and a squeeze bottle full of rhubarb juice. The juice wasn’t bad-was damn good, in fact. He wouldn’t have been surprised if somebody on the starship were fermenting it. The meat was full of pepper and cumin and other spices. That helped keep people from thinking about what it was: rat or guinea pig. The Admiral Peary hadn’t brought along any regular domestic animals, and the frozen beef and pork and lamb was long gone. The rodents could live-could thrive-on the vegetable waste from the hydroponic farm. Better just to contemplate them as… meat.

  In came Lieutenant General Healey. That did more to spoil Johnson’s appetite than remembering that he was eating a rat sandwich. How many steaks could you carve off of Healey? Or would he prove inedibly tough? That was Johnson’s guess.

  The commandant hadn’t missed any meals. His face was full. His body was round. If what he ate ever bothered him, he didn’t let it show. Johnson eyed him again, in a different way this time. Healey was bound to have even more pay saved up than Mickey Flynn did. But with that scowl on the commandant’s face, all the money in the world wouldn’t turn him into a sugar daddy.

  Johnson quickly looked away when Healey’s radar gaze swung toward him. Not quickly enough, though-the commandant got his food and then glided toward a handhold near the one Johnson was using. “Well?” Healey asked. “Why are you staring at me? Is my fly unzipped?”

  “No, sir,” Johnson said tonelessly. The trousers they wore didn’t have flies.

  “Well, then? I’m not Lana Turner, either.” Healey hopelessly dated himself with that crack. Johnson, also hopelessly dated, got it with no trouble. Did anyone on the Commodore Perry even know who Lana Turner was? They leered at the lovely Rita these days-not that she wasn’t worth leering at herself.