Down to Earth

by Harry Turtledove

  If she didn’t get an answer, Kassquit vowed she would report that the Tosevite was roaming the network again. But one came back before long: I greet you, Kassquit. And how is the life of a snoopy nuisance these days? With the words, he used the symbol suggesting he didn’t intend to be taken seriously.

  Very well; I thank you, Kassquit answered. And have you truly laid eggs?

  Oh, yes, Regeya—so she thought of him—answered. A big square green one and a little purple one with orange spots.

  Kassquit stared at the words on the screen, imagining a Big Ugly producing such a preposterous clutch. She dissolved in Tosevite-style noisy giggles. The picture was too deliciously absurd for anything else. I like you, she wrote. I really do.

  You must, Regeya wrote back. Why else would you get me in so much trouble? Kassquit cocked her head to one side. How in the name of the Emperor was she supposed to take that?

  Straha jumped when the telephone rang. The exiled shiplord laughed at himself as he went to answer it. He’d been living in the United States more than forty years now: more than twenty of Tosev 3’s slow turns about its star. After all that time, ringing telephones could still sometimes startle him. By rights, phones were supposed to hiss, as they did back on Home.

  He reached for the handset with a small, scornful hiss of his own. Tosevite telephones were good for little more than voice communication: not nearly so sophisticated as the flexible instruments the Race used. This is what you get—this is part of what you get—for casting your lot with the local primitives, he thought. But he’d been sure Atvar would give him worse had he stayed. Defying the fleetlord—defying him but not overthrowing him—had a price.

  So did exile. He’d paid, again and again. He would go on paying till the day he died—and maybe after that, if the spirits of Emperors past turned their backs on him for his betrayal.

  He picked up the telephone. “I greet you,” he said in his own language. By now, he spoke and understood English quite well, but his native hisses and pops went along way toward getting rid of annoying Big Uglies who wanted nothing more than to sell him something.

  “I greet you, Shiplord, and hope you are well.” That was a Big Ugly speaking, all right, but one whose voice was familiar and welcome in Straha’s hearing diaphragm.

  “I greet you, Sam Yeager,” Straha answered. Yeager might inhabit a Tosevite body, but he was good at thinking like a male of the Race—better than any other Big Ugly Straha knew. “And what would you like today?”

  What do you want from me? was really what he meant. As exiles had to do, he’d earned his keep by telling the rulers of his new home everything they wanted to know about his old one. He’d known he would have to do that when he fled the 206th Emperor Yower in a shuttlecraft. He’d been doing it ever since.

  But all Yeager asked was, “How does the Race ever manage to civilize its hatchlings? Far as I can see, predators are welcome to them.”

  Straha laughed. “We do eventually improve. You Tosevites are liable to be less patient than we are, as your hatchlings develop language faster than ours. In every other way, though, ours are more advanced.”

  “Shiplord, that is a big exception.” The Tosevite used an emphatic cough.

  “I suppose so,” Straha said indifferently. “As for myself, I never had much interest in trying to civilize hatchlings. I never had much interest in trying to civilize anyone. Maybe that is why I have not had too much difficulty living among you Big Uglies.” He used the Race’s imperfectly polite name for the Tosevites without self-consciousness; when they were speaking English, Yeager called him a Lizard just as casually.

  “You came down in the right not-empire, Shiplord—that is what it is,” Yeager said. “Suppose you had landed in the Soviet Union. Whatever sort of time you are having here, it would be worse there.”

  “So I am given to understand,” Straha answered. “At the time, it was a matter of luck: I had a friend stationed in this not-empire, which gave me a plausible excuse for coming here, so I instructed Vesstil to bring me down not far from that other male’s ship. Had he been in the SSSR, I would have gone where he was.”

  By everything he’d learned since, he would indeed have regretted that. The Russkis seemed interested in nothing but squeezing males dry and then discarding them. The Americans had squeezed him dry, but they’d rewarded him, too, as best they could. He had this house in the section of Los Angeles called the Valley, he had a motorcar and a Tosevite driver (who was also bodyguard and spy) at his disposal, and he had the society—such as it was—of other males of the Race living in this relatively decent climate. They weren’t exiles, but former prisoners of war who’d decided they liked living among the Big Uglies. They could, if they chose, travel to areas of Tosev 3 where the Race ruled. Straha couldn’t, not while Atvar remained fleetlord.

  And he had ginger. The Americans made sure he had all he wanted. Why not? It was legal here. The local Big Uglies wanted him happy, and ginger made him that way—until he crashed down into depression, even into despair, as the effects of each taste wore off.

  Thinking about tasting made him want to do it. It also made him miss a few words of what Yeager was saying: “—do not guess you are the right male to come to for advice about the little creatures, then.”

  “No, I fear not,” Straha said. “Why are you suddenly interested in them, anyhow? As I said, I am not so very interested in them myself.”

  “I am always curious about the Race and its ways,” the Tosevite replied, an answer that was not an answer. “You may find out more than that one of these days, but the time is not right yet. I hope you will excuse me now, but I have other calls to make. Goodbye, Shiplord.”

  “Farewell, Sam Yeager.” Straha swiveled an eye turret in perplexity. Why was Yeager asking questions about hatchlings? The only time Straha had thought about them since coming to Tosev 3 was after he’d mated with a female who’d tasted ginger at a former prisoner’s home: he’d wondered if his genes would go on in the society the Race was building here on Tosev 3, even though he couldn’t.

  Well, if Yeager had got an itch under his scales, that was his problem, not Straha’s. Big Uglies had more curiosity than they knew what to do with. What Straha had was a yen for ginger.

  The house in which he lived was built to Tosevite scale, which meant it was large for a male of the Race. He kept his supply of the powdered herb at the back of a high cupboard shelf. If he didn’t want a taste badly enough to go to the trouble of climbing up onto a chair and then onto a counter to get the jar, then he would do without.

  He was perfectly willing to go clambering today. A breathy sigh of anticipation escaped him as he got down and set the jar on the counter. He took a small measuring spoon out of a kitchen drawer, then undid the lid to the jar. He sighed again when the ginger’s marvelously spicy aroma floated up to his scent receptors. One hand trembled a little as he took a spoonful of the herb from the jar and poured it into the palm of his other hand.

  Of itself, his head bent. His tongue shot out and lapped up the ginger. Even the flavor was wonderful, though it was the least part of why he tasted. Almost before he knew it, the herb was gone.

  And, almost before he knew it, the ginger went straight to his head. Like that of mating, its pleasure never faded. He felt twice as tall as a Big Ugly, full of more data than the Race’s computer network, able to outpull a landcruiser. All that (or almost all of it—he really did think, or thought he thought, faster with the herb than without it) was a ginger-induced illusion. That made it no less enjoyable.

  Experience had taught him not to try to do too much while he was tasting. He really wasn’t infinitely wise and infinitely strong, no matter what the herb told him. During the fighting, a lot of males had got themselves and their comrades killed, for ginger made them think they could do more than they really could.

  Straha simply stood where he was, eyeing the ginger jar. Before long, the herb would leave his system. Then he would feel as weak and puny and miser
able as he felt wonderful now. And then, without a doubt, he would have another taste.

  He was still feeling happy when the telephone rang again. He picked it up and, speaking as grandly as if he were still the third most senior male in the conquest fleet rather than a disgraced exile, he said, “I greet you.”

  “And I greet you, Shiplord.”

  This time, the telephone wire brought Straha the crisp tones of a male of the Race. “Hello, Ristin,” he said, grandly still. “What can I do for you?”

  Ristin had been one of the first infantrymales captured by the Americans. These days, he might almost have been a Big Ugly himself, so completely had he taken on Tosevite ways. He said, “No, Shiplord, it is what I can do for you.”

  “Ah? And what is that?” Straha asked. He did not altogether like or particularly trust Ristin. While he himself lived among the Big Uglies, he had not abandoned the ways of the Race: he still kept his body paint perfect, for instance, and often startled males and females who saw him without realizing for a moment which shiplord he was. Ristin, by contrast, wore and wore proudly the red, white, and blue prisoner-of-war body paint the Big Uglies had given him in Hot Springs, Arkansas. His housemate Ullhass was the same way. Straha found them in large measure unfathomable.

  But then Ristin said, “Shiplord, I can get you several prime ssefenji cutlets. Are you interested?”

  “I am. I cannot deny it, and I thank you,” Straha said. “I had heard that the colonization fleet was beginning to bring down domestic animals, but I did not know the meat was available yet. Ssefenji!” He let out a soft exclamation redolent of longing. “I have not tasted ssefenji since before we left Home.”

  “Neither had I,” Ristin answered. “It is as good—well, very nearly as good—as I remembered, too. I have some in the freezer. I will bring it to you today or perhaps tomorrow. May you eat it with enjoyment. And may you eat it with Greek olives—they go with it very well.”

  “I shall do that. I have some in the house,” Straha said.

  “I thought you would,” Ristin said.

  Straha made the affirmative hand gesture, though the other male couldn’t see that, not over a primitive, screenless Tosevite telephone. Males—and females—of the Race found a lot of the food Big Uglies ate on the bland side. Ham, salted nuts, and Greek olives were welcome exceptions. Straha said, “So there are herds of ssefenji roaming Tosev 3 now, eh? And azwaca and zisuili, too, I should not wonder.”

  “I believe so, Shiplord, though I have not been able to get any of their flesh yet,” Ristin answered.

  “Perhaps I can manage that,” Straha said. His connections within the American army and the American government ought to be able to arrange it. “If I can do it, of course I shall make you a return gift.”

  “You are gracious, Shiplord,” Ristin said, for all the world as if Straha were still his superior.

  “Ssefenji,” Straha said dreamily. The ginger was wearing off now, but he didn’t feel so depressed as he would have otherwise. “Azwaca. Zisuili. Good eating.” The herb still sped his wits to some degree, for he went on, “And not only good eating, but also a sign that we are beginning to make this planet more Homelike. High time we had our own beasts here.”

  “Truth. And my tongue quivers at the thought of fried azwaca.” Ristin sounded dreamy, too.

  In musing tones, Straha said, “I wonder how our animals and the local ecology will interact with each other. That is always the question in introducing new life-forms to a world. The results of the competition should be interesting.”

  “Our beasts and plants prevailed on Rabotev 2 and Halless 1,” Ristin said. “No doubt it will be the same here.”

  “You are likely to be right.” Perhaps it was the onset of after-tasting depression that made Straha add, “But this is Tosev 3. You never can tell.”

  Jonathan Yeager’s alarm clock woke him at twenty minutes before six. He sat up in bed and rubbed his eyes. He hated getting up so early, but he had an eight o’clock class in the language of the Race at UCLA and chores to do before then. With a grunt, he got out of bed, turned on the ceiling light, and put on a pair of tight-fitting blue jeans and an even tighter-fitting flesh-colored T-shirt adorned with a fleetlord’s body paint.

  He’d showered just before he went to bed, so he ran a hand over his scalp and his chin. His face needed shaving; his scalp didn’t. That saved him a little time in the bathroom.

  He went out to the kitchen as quietly as he could. His parents—lucky them!—were still asleep. He poured himself a big glass of milk and cut a slab off the coffee cake in the refrigerator. Inhaling breakfast was a matter of moments. He ate like a shark and never gained any weight. Over the years, the things his father said about that had grown increasingly rude.

  That thought made Jonathan laugh. His old man was an old man, all right, even if he did know a hell of a lot about the Lizards. Jonathan washed his glass, his plate, and the silverware he’d used and set everything in the dish drainer by the sink. The hard time his mom would have given him if he’d left the stuff for her made that more trouble than it was worth.

  Then he muttered to himself. He was going to have to get another knife dirty. He got a cooked ham out of the refrigerator, cut off a couple of thick slices, and cut them into inch-wide strips. He put those strips on a paper towel, took a pair of leather gloves from a drawer and put them on, and went down the hall to the room in which the baby Lizards lived.

  Before he opened the door to that room, he shut the door at the end of the hall. Every so often, the Lizards didn’t feel like eating—instead, they would run past him and try to get away. They were much easier to catch in the hall than when they got into places where they could skitter under or behind furniture.

  Jonathan sighed. “Mom and Dad never had to do this when I was little,” he muttered as he opened the door to the Lizards’ room and flipped on the light. Now, closing the door behind him, he spoke aloud: “Come on, Mickey. Wake up, Donald. Rise and shine.”

  Both baby Lizards were holed up in a corner, behind a chair that had been ragged before they hatched and that their sharp little claws had torn up further. They often slept back there; it wasn’t quite a hole in the ground or a cave, but it came pretty close.

  They came out at the light and the sound of Jonathan’s voice. Donald was a bit bigger and a bit more rambunctious than Mickey; he (if he was a he; the Yeagers didn’t know for sure) was also a little darker. He and his brother—sister?—both made excited hissing and popping noises when they saw the ham strips Jonathan was carrying.

  He squatted down. The Lizards were a good deal bigger than they had been when they hatched, but their heads didn’t come anywhere close to his knee. He held out a piece of ham. Donald ran up, grabbed it out of his hand, and started gulping it down.

  Mickey got the next one, Donald the one after that. Jonathan talked to them while he fed them. They were pretty much used to him and to his mother and father by now, and associated humans with the gravy train. Feeding them, these days, was a lot like feeding a dog or a cat. Jonathan wore the gloves more because the Lizards got excited when they ate than because they were trying to nip him.

  After awhile, Donald finished a piece in nothing flat and tried to get the next one even though it was Mickey’s turn. “No!” Jonathan said in English, and wouldn’t let him have it. Jonathan wanted to use the language of the Race—the noises the baby Lizards made clearly showed where its sounds came from—but his father would have pitched a fit. The idea here was to make the Lizards as nearly human as possible, not that they’d be speaking any language themselves for quite a while.

  Seeing Mickey get the strip of ham he’d wanted, Donald went over and bit his sibling on the tailstump. They started fighting like a couple of puppies or kittens. That was another reason Jonathan wore leather gloves: to break up squabbles without getting hurt in the process.

  “No, no!” he said over and over as he separated them. Like puppies or kittens or small children, they didn�
�t hold grudges: they wouldn’t start up again after he left the room. Sooner or later, with luck, they’d learn that “No, no!” meant they were supposed to stop what they were doing. Then he wouldn’t need the gloves any more. That wasn’t close to happening yet, though.

  When the ham was gone, Mickey and Donald kept on looking expectantly at him. He wondered what was going on inside those long, narrow skulls. The hatchlings had no words, so it couldn’t be anything too complex. But was he only room service for them, or did they like him, too, the way a puppy liked its master? He couldn’t tell, and wished he could.

  Before he left, he used a strainer to sift through the cat box in another corner of the Lizards’ room. They’d figured that out even faster than a cat would have, and rarely made messes on the floor. Even when they did, the messes weren’t too messy: their droppings were firm and dry.

  Chores done, he shut the door on the Lizards, went back to his own room, grabbed his books, and hopped in the jalopy he drove to school: a gasoline-burning 1955 Ford, an aqua-and-white two-tone job that seemed almost as tall as he was. It got lousy mileage and drank oil, but it ran . . . most of the time. As he started it up, the tinny car radio blared out the electrified country music that was all the rage these days.

  The Westside Freeway was new, and cut travel time from Gardena to UCLA almost in half. Now that he was a sophomore, he’d gained an on-campus parking permit. That saved him a good part of the hike he’d had to make from Westwood every day during his freshman year.

  A lot of students had early classes. Some of them carried coffee in waxed-cardboard cups. Jonathan had never got that habit, which amused his father to no end. He often got the idea his dad thought he had life pretty soft. But he didn’t have to listen to the “When I was your age . . .” lecture too often, so he supposed things could have been worse.

  A few students wore jackets and slacks. The rest were about evenly divided between guys who kept their hair and wore ordinary shirts and their female counterparts in clothes their mothers might have worn on the one hand (on the one fork of the tongue, Jonathan thought, using the Lizard idiom) and those like him on the other: fellows and coeds who made the Race their fashion, wearing body paint or, with the weather cool, body-paint T shirts. A lot of the fellows in that crowd shaved their heads, but only a few of the girls.