Homeward Bound

by Harry Turtledove

  “I thank your Majesty for his kindness and generosity in summoning me into his presence when I am unworthy of the honor.” Atvar stuck to the words of the ritual. How many times had how many Emperors heard them?

  “Arise, I say again,” Risson returned. Atvar obeyed. The Emperor went on, “Now—enough of that nonsense for a little while. What are we going to do about these miserable Big Uglies, anyway?”

  Atvar stared. The previous Emperor had not said anything like that when the fleetlord saw him before going into cold sleep. “Your Majesty?” Atvar said, unsure whether to believe his hearing diaphragms.

  “What are we going to do about the Big Uglies?” Risson repeated. “They are here, on Home. We have never had a problem like this before. If we do not make the right choices, the Empire will have itself a lot of trouble.”

  “I have been saying that for a long time,” Atvar said dazedly. “I did not think anyone was listening.”

  “I have been,” the Emperor said. “Some of the males and females who serve me are . . . used to doing things as they have been done since the Empire was unified. For the situation we now have, I do not think this is adequate.”

  “But if you speak, your Majesty—” Atvar began.

  “I will have a reign of a hundred years or so—a little more, if I am lucky,” Risson said. “The bureaucracy has been here for more than a hundred thousand. It will be here at least as much longer, and knows it. Emperors give orders. We even have them obeyed. It often matters much less than you would think. A great many things go on the same old way when you cannot keep both eye turrets on them—and you cannot, not all the time. Or was your experience as fleetlord on Tosev 3 different?”

  “No, your Majesty,” Atvar said. “But I am only a subject, while you are the Emperor. My spirit is nothing special. Yours will help determine if your subjects have a happy afterlife. Do not the males and females who serve you remember this?”

  “Some of them may,” the Emperor said. “But a lot of them have worked with me and with my predecessor, and some even with his predecessor. Much more than ordinary males and females, they take their sovereigns for granted.”

  Atvar had heard more startling things in this brief audience than in all the time since awakening again on Home. (He’d heard plenty of startling things on Tosev 3, but everything startling seemed to hatch there.) “I would not think anyone could take your Majesty for granted,” he said.

  “Well, that is a fine compliment, and I thank you for it, but it does not have much to do with what is truth,” Risson said. “And I tell you, Fleetlord, I want you to do everything you can to make peace with the Big Uglies. If you do not, we will have a disaster the likes of which we have never imagined. Or do you believe I am wrong?”

  “I wish I did, your Majesty,” Atvar replied. “With all my liver, I wish I did.”

  * * *

  Kassquit had an odd feeling when she came back to Sitneff after the excursion to the park near the South Pole. Whenever she was alone with members of the Race, she always stressed that she was a citizen of the Empire, and no different from any other citizen of the Empire. She made members of the Race believe it, too, not least because she believed it herself.

  But when she found herself in the company of other Tosevites, she also found herself taking their side in arguments with males and females of the Race. Part of that, there, had hatched from Trir’s outrageous rudeness. Kassquit understood as much. The rest, though? She looked like a wild Big Ugly. Her biology was that of a wild Big Ugly. In evolutionary terms, the Race’s body paint was only skin deep. Beneath it, she remained a Tosevite herself.

  “This concerns me, superior sir,” she told Ttomalss in his chamber in the hotel where the American Big Uglies also dwelt. “I wonder if my advice to the Race is adequate. I wonder if it is accurate. I have the odd feeling of being torn in two.”

  “Your words do not surprise me,” her mentor said. Kassquit was relieved to hear it. He understood her better than any other member of the Race. Sometimes, though, that was not saying much. He went on, “Since your cultural and biological backgrounds are so different, is it much of a surprise that they often conflict? I would think not. What is your view?”

  “I believe you speak the truth here,” Kassquit said, relieved to have the discussion persist and not founder on some rock of incomprehension. “Perhaps this accounts for some of my intense curiosity whenever I find myself around wild Big Uglies.”

  “Perhaps it does,” Ttomalss agreed. “Well, no harm indulging your curiosity. You are not likely to betray the Race by doing so. Nor are you likely to go back into cold sleep and return to Tosev 3. Or do you think I am mistaken?”

  “No, superior sir, I do not. And I thank you for your patience and understanding,” Kassquit said. “I hope you will forgive me for saying that I still find this world strange in many ways. Living on the starship orbiting Tosev 3 prepared me for some of it, but only for some. The males and females here are different from those I knew back there.”

  “Those were picked males—and, later, females,” Ttomalss said. “The ones you meet here are not. They are apt to be less intelligent and less sophisticated than the males and females chosen to travel to the Tosevite solar system. Would you judge all Big Uglies on the basis of the ones the not-empire of the United States chose to send to Home?”

  “I suppose not,” Kassquit admitted. “Still, that is a far smaller sample than the one the Race sent in the conquest and colonization fleets.”

  “Indeed it is,” Ttomalss replied. “The reason being that we can send two large fleets to Tosev 3, while the wild Big Uglies have just managed to send a single starship to Home.”

  “Yes, superior sir,” Kassquit said dutifully. But she could not resist adding, “Of course, when the Race first came to Tosev 3, the wild Big Uglies could not fly beyond their own atmosphere, or very far up into it. In what short period has the Race shown comparable growth?”

  For some reason, that seemed to upset Ttomalss, who broke off the conversation. Kassquit wondered why—so much for his patience and understanding. Only the next day did she figure out what had gone wrong. He had compared Tosevites to the Race in a way that slighted her biological relatives. And what had she done in response? She had compared her species and the Race—to the advantage of the wild Big Uglies.

  Things were as she’d warned him. Altogether without intending to, she’d proved as much. She was more like the Race than wild Big Uglies—and she was more like wild Big Uglies than the Race.

  Males and females of the Race stared at her whenever she ventured out in public. Some of them asked her if she was a wild Big Ugly. That was a reasonable question. She always denied it politely. The males and females who kept talking with her after that were often curious how a Tosevite could be a citizen of the Empire. That was reasonable, too.

  But then there were the males and females who had no idea what she was. Video had been coming back from Tosev 3 for 160 of Home’s years, but a good many members of the Race did not seem to know what a Big Ugly looked like. She got asked if she was a Hallessi, and even if she was a Rabotev. One of the ones who did that was wearing false hair to pretend to be a Big Ugly himself. Kassquit hadn’t imagined such ignorance was possible.

  And males and females who did recognize her for a Tosevite kept sidling up to her and asking her if she could sell them any ginger. They got angry when she said no, too. “But you are from there!” they would say. “You must have some of the herb. You must!” Some of them were trembling in the early stages of ginger withdrawal.

  At first, she tried to reason with them. “Why would I have any ginger?” she would ask. “It does nothing for my metabolism. For me, it is a spice, not a drug. And I have never tasted it; it was forbidden on the starship where I lived.”

  Reasoning with members of the Race who craved ginger quickly proved impractical. It wasn’t Kassquit’s fault. She was willing, even eager, to go on reasoning. The males and females who were desperate for the h
erb weren’t.

  “I will do anything. Anything!” a female said. Her emphatic cough was the most unnecessary one Kassquit had ever heard. “Just let me have some of the herb!” She would not believe Kassquit had none.

  After a meeting with the wild Big Uglies, Kassquit asked them, “Do the males and females of Home cause you difficulties?”

  They looked from one to another without answering right away. At last, the dark-skinned male, the one named Frank Coffey, said, “It is only to be expected that they are curious about us. Except for you, they have never seen a real live Big Ugly before.”

  “You do not seem upset at the Race’s name for your folk,” Kassquit said.

  Coffey shook his head, then remembered to use the negative hand gesture. “I am not,” he said. “We have our own name for the Race, you know, which is no more flattering to them than ‘Big Uglies’ is to us. And besides, I have been called worse things than a Big Ugly in my time.”

  “Have you?” Kassquit said. This time, Coffey remembered right away to use the Race’s affirmative gesture. She asked him, “Do you mean as an individual? Why would anyone single you out as an individual? You do not seem much different from any other wild Tosevite I have met.”

  “In some ways, I am typical. In other ways, I am not.” The Big Ugly tapped his bare left forearm with the first two fingers of his right hand. “I was not so much singled out as an individual. I was singled out because of this.”

  “Because of what? Your arm?” Kassquit was confused, and did not try to hide it.

  Frank Coffey laughed in the loud, uproarious Tosevite style. So did the other American Big Uglies. Coffey was so uproarious, he almost fell off the foam-rubber chair on which he was sitting. Shaped chunks of foam made a tolerable substitute for the sort of furniture Big Uglies used. The Race’s stools and chairs were not only too small but also made for fundaments of fundamentally different shape.

  “No, not on account of my arm,” Coffey said when at last he stopped gasping and wheezing. “Because of the color of the skin on it.”

  He was a darker brown than the other wild Big Uglies on Home, who had a good deal more pale tan and pink in their complexions. Kassquit was darker than they were, too, though not to the same degree as Frank Coffey. She said, “Ah. I have heard about that, yes. But I must say it puzzles me. Why would anyone do such an irrational thing?”

  “How much time do you have?” Coffey asked. “I could tell you stories that would make your hair as curly as mine.” The rest of the wild Big Uglies took their leave, one by one. Maybe they had heard his stories before, or maybe they didn’t need to.

  Kassquit’s hair was straight. She had never thought about it much one way or the other. The dark brown Big Ugly’s hair, by contrast, grew in tight ringlets on his head. She had noticed that before, but, again, hadn’t attached any importance to it. Now she wondered if she should. “Why would a story make my hair curl?” she asked. Then a possible answer occurred to her: “Did you translate one of your idioms literally into this language?”

  Coffey made the affirmative gesture. “I did, and I apologize. Stories that would appall you, I should have said.”

  “But why?” Kassquit asked. Then she held up a hand in a gesture both the Race and the Big Uglies used. “Wait. During the fighting, the Race tried to recruit dark-skinned Big Uglies in your not-empire. I know that.”

  “Truth,” Coffey said. Kassquit was not expert at reading tone among Big Uglies, but she thought he sounded grim. His next words pleased her, for they showed she hadn’t been wrong: “They were able to do that because Tosevites of that race—that subspecies, you might say—had been so badly treated by the dominant lighter group.”

  “But the experiment failed, did it not?” Kassquit said. “Most of the dark Tosevites preferred to stay loyal to their own not-empire.”

  “Oh, yes. They decided being Tosevite counted most of all, or the large majority of them did, and they deserted the Race when combat began,” Frank Coffey said. “But that they joined the Race at all says a lot about how desperate they were. And, although we in the United States do not like to remember it, some of them did stay on the Race’s side, and they fought against my not-empire harder than the soldiers from your species did.”

  Was he praising or condemning them? Kassquit couldn’t tell. She asked, “Why did they do that?”

  Coffey’s expression was—quizzical? That would have been Kassquit’s guess, again from limited experience. He said, “You have never heard the word ‘nigger,’ have you?”

  “Nigger?” Kassquit pronounced the unfamiliar word as well as she could. She made the negative gesture. “No, I never have. It must be from your language. What does it mean?”

  “It means a dark-skinned Tosevite,” Coffey answered. “It is an insult, a strong insult. Next to it, something like ‘Big Ugly’ seems a compliment by comparison.”

  “Why is there a special insulting term for a dark-skinned Tosevite?” Kassquit asked.

  “There are special insulting terms for many different kinds of Tosevites,” Frank Coffey said. “There are terms for those with different beliefs about the spirit. And there are terms based on what language we speak, and those based on how we look. The one for dark-skinned Tosevites . . . One way to subject a group is to convince yourself—and maybe that group, too—that they are not fully intelligent creatures, that they do not deserve to share what you have. That is what ‘nigger’ does.”

  “I see.” Kassquit wondered if she did. She pointed to him. “Yet you are here, in spite of those insults.”

  “So I am,” the wild Tosevite said. “We have made some progress—not enough, but some. And I am very glad to be here, too.”

  “I am also glad you are here,” Kassquit said politely.

  Though Sam Yeager had not gone to the South Pole, there were times when he wanted to see more of Home than the Race felt like showing him. Because the Lizards had insisted on him as ambassador when the Doctor didn’t wake up, they had a hard time refusing him outright. They did do their best to make matters difficult.

  Guards accompanied him wherever he went. “There are many males and females here who lost young friends on Tosev 3,” one of the guards told him. “That they should seek revenge is not impossible.”

  He wished he could afford to laugh at the guard. But the female had a point. Friendship ties were stronger among the Race than in mankind, family ties far weaker. Save in the imperial family, kinship was not closely noted. In a species with a mating season, that was perhaps unsurprising.

  Going into a department store was not the same when you had a guard with an assault rifle on either side of you. Of course, Sam would have stood out any which way: he was the alien who was almost tall enough to bump the ceiling. But that might have made members of the Race curious had he been alone. As things were, he frightened most of them.

  Their department stores frightened him—or perhaps awed would have been the better word. Everything a Lizard could want to buy was on display under one roof. The store near the hotel where the Americans were quartered was bigger than any he’d ever seen in the USA: this even though Lizards were smaller than people and even though there was no clothing section, since the Race—except for the trend setters and weirdos who imitated Big Uglies—didn’t bother with clothes. If the Lizards wanted a ball for a game of long toss, a fishing net (what they caught weren’t quite fish, but the creatures did swim in water), a new mirror for an old car, something to read, something to listen to, something to eat, something to feed their befflem or tsiongyu, a television, a stove, a pot to put on the stove, a toy for a half-grown hatchling, an ointment to cure the purple itch, a sympathy card for someone else who had the purple itch, a plant with yellow almost-flowers, potting soil to transplant it, body paint, or anything else under Tau Ceti, they could get what they needed at the department store. The proud boast outside—WITH OUR MART, YOU COULD BUILD A WALL AROUND THE WORLD—seemed perfectly true.

  The clerks wore special y
ellow body paint, and were trained to be relentlessly cheerful and courteous. “I greet you, superior sir,” they would say over and over, or else, “superior female.” Then they would add, “How may I serve you?”

  Even in the face of a wild Big Ugly flanked by guards with weapons rarely seen on Home, their training did not quite desert them. More than one did ask, “Are you a male or a female, superior Tosevite?” And a couple of them thought Sam was a Hallessi, not a human. That left him both amused and bemused.

  “I am a male, and the ambassador from the not-empire of the United States,” he would answer.

  That often created more confusion than it cleared up. The clerks did not recognize the archaic word. “What is an ambassador?” they would ask, and, “What is a not-empire?”

  Explaining an ambassador’s job wasn’t too hard, once Sam got across the idea of a nation that didn’t belong to the Empire. Explaining what a not-empire was proved harder. “You make your choices by counting snouts?” a clerk asked him. “What if the side with the most is wrong?”

  “Then we try to fix it later,” Sam answered. “What do you do if the Emperor makes a mistake?”

  He horrified not only the clerk but also his guards with that. “How could the Emperor make a mistake?” the clerk demanded, twisting his eye turrets down to the ground as he mentioned his sovereign. “He is the Emperor!” He looked down again.

  “We think he made a mistake when he tried conquering Tosev 3,” Sam said. “This caused many, many deaths, both among the Race and among us Tosevites. And the Empire has gained very little because of it.”

  “It must have been for the best, or the spirits of Emperors past would not have allowed it,” the clerk insisted.

  Again, the guards showed they agreed. Sam only shrugged and said, “Well, I am a stranger here. Maybe you are right.” The Lizards seemed pleased. They thought he had admitted the clerk was right. He knew he’d done no such thing. But, more than a hundred years before, while he was growing up on a Nebraska farm, his father had always loudly insisted there was no point to arguing about religion, because nobody could prove a damned thing. The Race had believed what it believed for a lot longer than mankind had clung to any of its faiths—which again proved exactly nothing.