Second Contact

by Harry Turtledove

  Liu Han said, “Shiplord, how do we best use ginger against the Race?”

  “Give it to females, obviously,” Straha answered. “The more females in season, the more addled males become.”

  “I understand this,” the Chinese female said—was that impatience in her voice? “How to give ginger to females over and over to keep males addled all the time?”

  “Ah,” Straha said. Liu Han did see the obvious, then; the ex-shiplord hadn’t been sure. He went on, “Introducing it into food or drink would do the job, I think. They might not even know they were tasting. . . . No, they would, because they would come into their season.”

  “Truth,” Liu Han said. “This endangers those who prepare food for the Race; they would naturally be suspect.”

  “Ah,” Straha said again. “Yes, that is so.” He hadn’t thought the Big Uglies would care; they hadn’t seemed to worry much about spending lives during the fighting.

  “If we could get enough females and males excited at the same time, it might be worth the risk,” Liu Mei said: maybe the Tosevites, or some of them, retained their ruthlessness after all.

  Jonathan Yeager came back into the study. Did the younger female’s voice draw him, as pheromones would have drawn a male of the Race? “That could get a lot of people hurt,” he observed. He might be interested in Liu Mei, but was not addled by her; Straha heard reproof in his voice.

  “It is war,” Liu Mei said simply. “Here, the fighting is over. You Americans have won your freedom. In China, the struggle against the imperialism of the Race goes on. The People’s Liberation Army shall free my not-empire, too.”

  “And make it as free as the SSSR?” Straha inquired with sarcasm he thoroughly enjoyed. “That is the model the People’s Liberation Army uses, is it not?”

  Sam Yeager whistled softly. Straha had learned Big Uglies sometimes did that when they thought someone had made a good point. But Liu Han said, “We would be freer under our own kind at their worst than the Race at their best, for we did not choose to have the Race come here and try to set itself over us.”

  Straha leaned forward. “Now there is a topic on which we could have considerable debate,” he said, anticipating that debate. “If you believe that—”

  Several loud pops resounded outside, followed by a fierce, ripping roar. Straha was slower to recognize the noise than he should have been; as shiplord, he’d had no experience with close combat. Before he could react, Sam Yeager spoke in English: “That’s gunfire. Everybody down!”

  Straha dove for the floor. Yeager did not follow his own order. He grabbed a pistol from a desk drawer in the study and hurried out toward the front of the house. “Be careful, Sam,” his wife called from the next room.

  More gunfire sounded from the direction of the street. A window—or maybe more than one—shattered. Yeager’s pistol resounded, the noise shockingly loud indoors. Liu Han came as close to taking the shots calmly as anyone could—closer than Straha was doing, for that matter. Liu Mei never seemed to get excited about anything. And Jonathan Yeager, though he had no weapon, hurried to his father’s aid.

  “It’s over,” Sam Yeager called from the front room. “I think it’s over, anyhow. Barbara, call the cops, not that half the neighborhood hasn’t already. Jesus, I can’t afford new window glass, but we sure as hell need it.”

  Barbara Yeager came in and picked up the telephone. Straha went out into the front room to see what had happened. His driver was coming toward the house, an automatic weapon in his hand. “Is the shiplord all right?” he shouted.

  “I am well,” Straha answered.

  “He’s fine,” Yeager said at the same time. “What the devil happened out there?”

  “I was sitting in the car, reading my book,” the driver answered. “The guy who drives for the Chinese women was in the car behind me, doing whatever he was doing. A car came by. A couple of guys leaned out the window and started blazing away. Lousy technique. I think I may have nailed one of them. Thanks for the backup, Yeager.”

  “Any time,” Sam Yeager said. “You okay?”

  “Right as rain,” Straha’s driver answered. “The Chinese guy, though, he took one right in the ear, poor bastard. Never knew what hit him, anyway.”

  Through the howls that Tosevite constabulary vehicles used to warn others out of their way, Yeager said, “Whom were they after? The shiplord? The Chinese women? Could have been either one.”

  Someone trying to kill me? Straha thought. He hadn’t imagined Atvar could sink so low. Assassination was a Tosevite ploy, not one the Race used. No, he thought. Not one the Race had used. Maybe Atvar was able to learn some unpleasant things from the Tosevites after all.

  “Either one’s possible,” his driver said. “And how about you, Major? Got any people who aren’t fond of you?”

  “I didn’t think so,” Yeager said slowly. “It’d be a real kick in the teeth finding out I was wrong. The shiplord and the Red Chinese are a lot more important targets than I’ll ever be, though.”

  “Yeah, you’re right,” Straha’s driver agreed, adding, “No offense.”

  While Sam Yeager yipped Tosevite laughter, Straha stared out at the dead Big Ugly in the motorcar behind his own. That could have been me, he thought, with a chill worse than any Tosevite winter. By the Emperor whom I betrayed, that could have been me.

  Back at the Biltmore Hotel after endless questioning by American policemen and others from the FBI (which Liu Han thought of as the American NKVD), her daughter asked, “Were those bullets meant for us or for the scaly devil?”

  “I am not sure. How can I be sure?” Liu Han answered. “But I think they were meant for the little devil. Can you guess why?” She sent Liu Mei an appraising glance.

  Her daughter considered that with her usual seriousness. “If the NKVD had sent assassins after us, they would not have made such a poor attack.”

  “Exactly so,” Liu Han answered, pleased. “The Russians do not attempt assassinations. They assassinate.”

  “But”—Liu Mei sounded abashed at disagreeing, as a good daughter should, but disagreed nonetheless—“what about the Kuomintang or the Japanese? They might have sent killers after us, too, and theirs would not be so good as the ones Beria could hire.”

  “I had not thought of them for a while,” Liu Han admitted in a small voice. “Next to the Russians, everything else seemed such a small worry, I forgot about it. But that was a mistake, and you are right to remind me of it.” She grimaced. “No one will remind Frankie Wong of it, not now.”

  “No,” Liu Mei said. “He helped us.”

  “Yes, he did,” Liu Han said. “He did not do it out of the goodness of his heart—I am certain of that. But he did help us, even if he was helping himself and maybe others at the same time. But his wife is a widow tonight, and his children are orphans. And now they have reason to hate us, too. A bad business, oh, a very bad business.”

  “The Americans were brave when the shooting started,” Liu Mei said. “They knew just what to do.”

  “Major Yeager is a soldier,” Liu Han replied, a little tartly. “His job is to know what to do when shooting starts.” She glanced over at her daughter out of the corner of her eye. “Or were you thinking of his son?”

  Liu Mei did not look flustered. Liu Mei’s face had trouble holding any expression. But she sounded troubled as she answered, “The father had a gun. The son had none, but went forward anyhow.”

  “He went to aid his father,” Liu Han said. “That is what a son should do. It is what a daughter should do for a mother, too.”

  “Yes, Mother,” Liu Mei said dutifully. Less dutifully, she went on, “Will we be able to go outside this hotel again, now that assassins are loose?”

  “I do not know the answer to that,” Liu Han said. “In part, it will be up to the Americans. I do not know if they will want to take the chance.”

  “Why should they worry?” Liu Mei’s voice was expressive, even if her face was not. She sounded bitter now. “C
hina cannot harm the United States. The People’s Liberation Army cannot conquer America—the People’s Liberation Army cannot even conquer China. We are not the little scaly devils, or even the Russian or German foreign devils. The Americans will not be very worried about letting us go into danger.”

  She was probably right. That did not make her words any more pleasant for Liu Han to hear. “Mao would think well of you,” Liu Han said at last. “You see things in terms of power.”

  “How else?” Liu Mei sounded surprised. Liu Han was surprised to hear that in her daughter’s voice, but realized she shouldn’t have been. She herself had been involved in the revolutionary struggle since before she’d managed to liberate Liu Mei from the scaly devils. That meant Liu Mei had been involved in the revolutionary struggle for as long as she could remember. No wonder she thought in those terms.

  “I hope the assassins were after the little scaly devil,” Liu Han said, tacitly yielding the earlier point to her daughter. “I also hope the Americans can catch them and get answers out of them. That should not be too hard; this country does not have so many people among whom they could disappear.”

  “No, but they were in a motorcar—the American who serves the little devil said so,” Liu Mei countered. “With a motorcar, they could go a long way from Major Yeager’s house, to a place where no one was looking for them.”

  “You are right again.” Now Liu Han eyed her daughter with respectful curiosity. Liu Mei was getting the hang of the way the USA worked faster than her mother did. Maybe that was just because she was younger. Maybe it was because she was smarter, too. Liu Han didn’t like to admit the possibility even to herself, but she was too much a realist to be blind to it.

  And Liu Mei, no matter how clever she was, still had certain blind spots of her own. In musing tones, she repeated, “The Americans were very brave when the shooting started.”

  Liu Han didn’t know whether to laugh or to go over to her and shake her. “When you say ‘the Americans,’ you are talking about the younger one, the one called Jonathan, aren’t you?”

  Liu Mei flushed. Her skin was slightly fairer than it would have been were she of pure Chinese blood, which let Liu Han more easily see the flush rise and spread. Her daughter lifted her head, which also made her stick out her chin. “What if I am?” she asked defiantly. She was bigger and heavier-boned than Liu Han; if they quarreled, she might do some shaking of her own.

  “He is an American, a foreign devil.” Liu Han pointed out the obvious.

  “He is the son of my father’s friend,” Liu Mei answered. Liu Han hadn’t realized how much that meant to her daughter till Liu Mei started learning about Bobby Fiore. Liu Han had known the American, known his virtues and his flaws—and he’d had plenty of each. He hadn’t—he couldn’t have—seemed quite real to Liu Mei, not till chance let her meet his friend. Jonathan Yeager drew especially favorable notice in her eyes because he was associated with Bobby Fiore.

  Picking her words with care, Liu Han said, “He is one who likes the scaly devils a great deal, you know.” If her daughter was infatuated with Major Yeager’s son, she did not want to push too hard. That would only make Liu Mei cling to him and cling to everything he represented harder than she would have otherwise. Liu Han remembered the paradox from her own girlhood.

  “So what?” Liu Mei tossed her head. Her hair bounced, as Liu Han’s would not have; Bobby Fiore had had wavy hair. Liu Mei went on, “Is it not so that having more people who better understood the little scaly devils would be useful for the People’s Liberation Army?”

  “Yes, that is always so,” Liu Han admitted. She pointed a finger at her daughter. “What? Are you thinking of showing him your body to lure him back to China to help us against the scaly devils? Not even a maker of bad films would think such a plan could work.” And so much for being careful of what I say, she thought.

  Liu Mei blushed again. “I would not do such a thing!” she exclaimed. “I would never do such a thing!” Liu Han believed her, though some young girls would have lied in such a situation. She remembered the scandal surrounding one in her home village. . . . But the village was gone, and the girl who’d had a bulging belly very likely dead. Liu Mei went on, in more thoughtful tones, “But he is a nice young man, even if he is a foreign devil.”

  And Liu Han could not even disagree with that, not when she’d thought the same thing herself. She did say, “Remember, he may have a foreign devil for a sweetheart.”

  “I know that,” her daughter answered. “In fact, he does, or he did. He has spoken of her to me. She has hair the color of a new copper coin, he says. I have seen a few people like that here. They look even stranger to me than black people and blonds.”

  “There is a fable,” Liu Han said. “When the gods first made the world, they did not bake the first men they made long enough, so they came out pale. Those are the usual foreign devils. They left the second batch of men in too long, and that is how blacks came to be. The third time, they baked them perfectly, and made Chinese. It is only a fable, because there are no gods, but we look the way people are supposed to look.”

  “I understand,” Liu Mei said. “But I have got used to pale skins, because I see them around me all the time these days. Red hair, though, still seems strange.”

  “And to me, too,” Liu Han agreed, remembering the redheaded man she’d seen the day the Liberty Explorer came into the harbor at San Pedro.

  Before she could say anything more, someone knocked on the door to the suite the two Chinese women shared. Liu Han went to open it without hesitation; the U.S. government had posted armed guards in the hallway, and so she did not fear another attempt at murder.

  Indeed, the fellow standing in the hallway could not have looked less like an assassin. He was pudgy and wore dark-rimmed spectacles. To her surprise, he spoke fairly good Mandarin, even though he was a white man: “Comrade Liu Han, I am Calvin Gordon, aide to the Undersecretary of State for the Occupied Territories. I am pleased to be able to tell you that the first shipments of arms for the People’s Liberation Army left San Francisco and San Pedro harbors, bound for China. I hope they will reach your country safely, and that your comrades use them well and wisely against the little scaly devils.”

  “I thank you very much,” Liu Han said. “I did not expect anyone to tell me, especially in person.” She glanced toward the telephone that sat on a table by one end of the overstuffed sofa in the suite. Americans seemed to think talking on it was as good as actually being with a person.

  But Calvin Gordon said, “President Warren ordered me to fly out from Little Rock and let you know. He wants you to understand that China is important to the United States, and we will do everything we can to help free your country.”

  “That is good,” Liu Han said. “That is very good. But, of course, we do not know if these arms will actually reach the People’s Liberation Army.”

  “No, we do not know that,” Gordon agreed. “The world is an uncertain place. If the weapons get past the Japanese and the little devils and the Kuomintang, the People’s Liberation Army will use them. And if they do not get past the Japanese and the little devils and the Kuomintang, we will send some more, and we will keep sending them until the People’s Liberation Army has them. Does that satisfy you?”

  “How could I ask for anything better?” Liu Han said. “I thank you, and I thank President Warren, and I thank the United States. Now that you have done this, I have done what I came here to do.”

  She exchanged polite pleasantries with Gordon for a few minutes. Then he gave her what was almost a bow and left. As she turned in triumph to Liu Mei, she realized she had told the American diplomat the exact truth. Nothing held her daughter and her in the United States any more. She could go home.

  Existence crawled past for Kassquit. She had never had nor wanted a great deal of contact with males of the Race other than Ttomalss. She would undoubtedly have spent much of her time in her chamber while he was in Nuremberg even without the confu
sion females and ginger brought to her ship. With it, she felt even more alone than she had before.

  Penalties for tasting ginger—especially for females—kept getting harsher. Males and females kept on tasting, though. Kassquit hadn’t found herself in the middle of any more mating brawls since that first one, but she knew she could at any time. That made her even less interested in coming out of her chamber than she would have been otherwise.

  But, as always, she had to come out to eat. Although she avoided the busiest times at the refectory, she still did need to deal with occasional males and females of the Race. Sometimes they would be eating when she came in. More often, she would encounter them in the corridors on her way to and from eating.

  She met Tessrek more often than she wanted. For one thing, the researcher’s compartment was close to her own. For another, he had enjoyed baiting her for as long as she could remember, and perhaps for longer than that.

  “What is that sour smell?” he said one day as she was returning to her compartment. “It must be the reek of a Big Ugly.”

  Of themselves, Kassquit’s lips drew back, displaying her teeth in an expression that was anything but a smile. “Not the smell you want, is it, superior sir?” she said, sardonic and polite at the same time. “You would sooner sniff a female of your own kind drugged into her season, would you not? Then you can behave like an animal without shame, truth?”

  Tessrek recoiled. He was not used to counterattacks from Kassquit. “You are only a Tosevite,” he snapped. “How dare you presume to question a male of the Race on what he does?”

  “I am an intelligent being,” Kassquit returned. “When I see a male of the Race acting like an animal, I am intelligent enough to recognize it, which is more than can be said for the male in question.”