Homeward Bound

by Harry Turtledove

  One very ordinary, unwigged, unclothed Lizard didn’t seem sophisticated at all. After looking Jonathan over from head to foot (his moving eye turrets made the process obvious), the male said, “So you are one of those things they call Big Uglies, are you?”

  Jonathan hid a smile, not that the Lizard would have known what one meant. He made the affirmative gesture. “Yes, I am a Big Ugly,” he agreed gravely.

  “Do you by any chance know a male called Telerep?” the Lizard asked. “He went to Tosev 3 with the conquest fleet. He was a land-cruiser gunner, and a friend of mine.”

  “I am sorry, but no.” Sorry or not, Jonathan couldn’t help smiling now. “For one thing, I was hatched near the end of the fighting. For another, Tosev 3 is a planet the size of Home, even if it does have more water. Do you know where your friend served? It might have been halfway around the world from me.”

  “No, I do not know that,” the male said. “Tosev 3 does not seem so big. I often wonder what happened to Telerep, and if he came through all right. He was a good fellow. We had some fine times together. I know a few males and females who have heard from friends who joined the conquest fleet, but not many. For most, well, it is a long way between here and your world.”

  “That is a truth,” Jonathan said. “When I see our sun in the night sky as just another star, I realize how far it is.”

  “Tosev, yes. Hard for me to think of it as anything but a star, you understand,” the Lizard said, and Jonathan made the affirmative gesture again. The Lizard went on, “We call the constellation Tosev is in the Sailing Ship. What is your name for it?”

  “To us, it is the Herder,” Jonathan answered; that was as close a translation of Boötes as he could manage in the Lizards’ language. “Of course, when we see that constellation, we do not see our own sun in it.”

  The Lizard drew back half a pace in surprise. Then his mouth fell open. “That is funny. I had not thought of it so, but you would not, would you? What do you call the constellation in which you see our sun?”

  “That is the Whale,” Jonathan told him. He had to explain the key word, which came out in English: “A whale is a large creature that swims in our seas. Your sun is dimmer than ours. I mean no offense when I tell you it seems faint when we see it on Tosev 3.”

  “I understand,” the Lizard replied. “Even if you are a wild Big Ugly, I must say you sound quite civilized.”

  “I thank you,” Jonathan replied, not without irony. “So do you.”

  That line drew different responses from different Lizards. This one laughed once more. “And I thank you, superior Tosevite.” His mouth dropped down yet again. “Are you a superior Tosevite or an inferior Tosevite? You have only those wrappings—no body paint to let me see what your rank is.” He straightened a little to show his own paint to Jonathan. “As you can tell, I am an optician, second grade.”

  Actually, Jonathan couldn’t have told that without a chart. The Race’s system of using body paint to mark social distinctions went back to before Home was unified. It had been getting more complex since the days when men weren’t even painting mammoths on cave walls. Every seniority level in every occupation had its own distinctive pattern and colors. Lizards—and Rabotevs and Hallessi—read body paint as easily as they read the characters of their written language. Some humans were nearly that good. Jonathan wasn’t bad, but optician wasn’t one he recognized offhand.

  He said, “If I had body paint, it would say I was an ambassador’s assistant.”

  “Ambassador!” Another laugh came from the Lizard. “There is a very old-fashioned word, superior Tosevite. There have been no ambassadors since the days of ancientest history.”

  “Again, I mean no offense, but I must tell you you are mistaken,” Jonathan said. “On Tosev 3, there have been ambassadors to and from the Race for nearly ninety years—ninety of ours, twice as many of yours. Where independent empires and not-empires meet as equals, they need ambassadors.”

  “Independent empires and not-empires,” the male echoed. “What an . . . interesting phrase. I suppose I can imagine an independent empire; after all, you Big Uglies did not know about the Empire till we came. But what might a not-empire be? How else would you govern yourselves?”

  “Well, there are several ways,” Jonathan said. “The not-empire we are from, the United States, is what we call a democracy.” He said that word in English, then returned to the Race’s language: “That means giving all adult males and females a voice in how they are governed.” As best he could, he explained voting and representative government.

  “Snoutcounting!” the optician exclaimed when Jonathan was done, and tapped his own snout with a fingerclaw. If Jonathan had had a nickel for every time he’d heard that derisive comment from a Lizard, he could have damn near bought the Admiral Peary. This male went on, “But what happens when the males and females being snout-counted make a mistake?”

  “We try to fix it,” Jonathan answered. “We can choose a new set of representatives if we are not happy with the ones in power. What happens when your government makes a mistake? You are stuck with it— is that not a truth?”

  “Our government makes very few mistakes,” the Lizard said. On Earth, that would have been a boast with no truth behind it, a boast the USSR or the Reich would have made. Here on Home, it might well have been true.

  But very few mistakes were different from no mistakes at all. Jonathan said, “I can think of one mistake your government made.”

  “Speak. What could that be?” the male asked, plainly doubting it was anything of much weight.

  “Trying to conquer Tosev 3,” Jonathan answered.

  The Lizard said, “Well, that may be a truth, superior Big Ugly. Yes, it may be. Actually, I would say trying was not the difficulty. I would say the difficulty was failing.”

  “A nice point.” Jonathan smiled again. “Are you sure you are not an attorney?”

  One of the optician’s eye turrets rolled downward, as if he were examining his own body paint. “No, I seem to be what I am. So you Tosevites make jokes about attorneys, too, do you? We say they are the only males and females who can go into a revolving door behind someone else and come out ahead.”

  He and Jonathan spent the next ten minutes trading lawyer jokes. Jonathan had to explain what a shark was before the one about professional courtesy made sense to the Lizard. Once the male got it, his mouth opened enormously wide—the Race’s equivalent of a belly laugh.

  He said, “If you Big Uglies tell stories like those, you really will convince me you are civilized.”

  “I thank you, though I was not worrying about it very much,” Jonathan answered. “Back on Tosev 3, we have stayed independent of the Race. We have come to Home in our own starship. If things like that do not make us civilized, can a few silly jokes do the job?”

  “You never can tell,” the Lizard answered. “That is a truth, superior Big Ugly: you never can tell. Those other things may prove you are strong. Jokes, though, jokes show you can enjoy yourselves. And if being able to enjoy yourself is not a part of civilization, what is?”

  Jonathan thought that over. Then he got off the bench and bent into the posture of respect before the startled Lizard. He got sand on his knees, but he didn’t care. “That is also a truth, and a very important one,” he said. “I thank you for reminding me of it.”

  “Happy to be a help,” the Lizard said. As Jonathan straightened, the male added, “And now, if you will excuse me, I must be on my way.” He skittered off down the path.

  Had he been an ordinary Lizard in the street, or had the government sent him by? After thinking that over, Jonathan slowly nodded to himself. A plant, he judged, would have been more likely to call him a Tosevite all the time, simply for politeness’ sake. This male either hadn’t known or more probably hadn’t cared that Big Ugly might be insulting. That argued that he was genuine. Jonathan hoped so. He’d liked him. He went back to the hotel room to write up the encounter while it was still fresh in his
memory.

  In the room they shared, Karen Yeager read her husband’s notes. “Get into a revolving door in back of you and come out in front of you?” she said. “We tell that one.”

  “I know,” Jonathan answered. “We can’t swap dirty jokes with the Lizards. We—”

  “Too bad,” Karen broke in. “I can just see a bunch of guys and a bunch of males standing around in a bar, smoking cigarettes, and trading smut. Men!”

  “Tell me gals don’t talk dirty when guys aren’t around to listen to it,” Jonathan said. Karen gave him a sour look, because she couldn’t. He laughed. “Told you so. Anyway, we can’t swap dirty jokes with the Race, because they don’t work the way we do, not for that. But jokes about the way society goes along—those are different.”

  “I see.” Karen went a little farther in the notes. “So he liked the one about professional courtesy, did he?”

  “I thought he’d bust a gut,” Jonathan answered. “I bet he’ll be telling it all over Sitneff today, changing the shark to one of their dangerous animals. They don’t have a lawyer joke just like that one, the way they do with some of the others.”

  “They don’t have as many dangerous animals as we do, either,” Karen answered. “Maybe that’s why.”

  “Maybe they don’t have as many dangerous lawyers.” With pretty good timing, her husband shook his head. “Nah, not likely.”

  Karen made a horrible face. “If you want to tell dumb jokes with the Lizards, that’s fine. Kindly spare me.”

  “It shall be done, superior female,” Jonathan said, dropping into the language of the Race. He didn’t bother returning to English as he went on, “When my father goes to see the Emperor, I wonder what we will be doing.”

  “Probably seeing the rest of the capital with Trir or some other guide.” Karen stuck to English. Perhaps incautiously, she added, “We may not have Kassquit with us for a while, either. She’ll be studying for her audience, too.”

  Jonathan nodded. “That’s true. I had nothing to do with it, either. Dad suggested it to Atvar and Atvar suggested it to Kassquit, and it went from there.”

  “I know. Did I say anything else?” Karen knew her voice had an edge to it.

  “No, you didn’t say anything.” Jonathan had heard it, too. “But would you say anything if she were going to walk off a cliff?”

  I’d say good-bye. But that wasn’t what Jonathan wanted to hear, and would only start trouble. She might have wanted to start trouble if he’d sniffed after Kassquit like a male Lizard smelling a female’s pheromones. But he really hadn’t, even if Kassquit went right on showing everything she had—and even if, thanks to cold sleep, she literally was better preserved than she had any business being.

  All that went through Karen’s head in something less than a second. Jonathan probably didn’t even notice the hesitation before she said, “Kassquit isn’t my worry here. She’s playing on the Race’s team.”

  She wondered if her husband would push it any further. He just said, “Okay.” There were reasons they’d stayed married for thirty years. Not the smallest of them was that they both knew when they shouldn’t push it too far.

  “I wonder what’s happening back on Earth right now,” Karen said. “I wonder what the boys are doing. They’re older than we are. That seems very strange.”

  “Tell me about it!” Jonathan said, and she knew he wasn’t thinking about Kassquit any more. “Their kids may have kids by now. I don’t think I’m ready to be a great-grandfather yet.”

  “If we ever do make it back to Earth, you may be able to tack another great onto that,” Karen said. Her husband nodded. She got up from the foam-rubber seat and looked out the window. When she first came down from the Admiral Peary, she’d marveled at the cityscape every time she saw it. Why not, when her eyes told her she was on a brand new world? Now, though, she took the view for granted, as she’d take the view from the front window of her house back in Torrance for granted. It was just what she saw from the place where she lived. Familiarity could be a terrible thing.

  When she said that to Jonathan, he looked relieved. “Oh, good,” he said. “I was afraid I was the only one who felt that way.”

  “I doubt it. I doubt it like anything,” Karen said. “We can ask Frank and the de la Rosas at lunch, if you want to. I bet they’ll all say the same thing.”

  “Probably,” Jonathan said. “Dad, too, I bet. He’s seen more different things out of windows than all of us put together.” He blinked. “If we make it back to Earth, he’s liable to be a great-great-great-grandfather. You don’t see that every day.”

  “We’re going to be a bunch of Rip van Winkles when we get back to Earth,” Karen said. “If we’d fallen asleep when your father was born and woke up when the colonization fleet got there, we’d think we’d gone nuts.”

  Jonathan excitedly snapped his fingers. “There were people like that, remember? A few who’d gone into comas in the twenties and thirties, and then they figured out how to revive them all those years later. They didn’t think they’d gone nuts—they thought everybody around them had. Invaders from another planet? Not likely! Then they saw Lizards, and they had to change their minds.”

  “They made a movie out of that, didn’t they?” Karen said. “With what’s-his-name in it . . . Now that’s going to bother me.”

  “I know the guy you mean,” her husband said. “I can see his face, plain as if he were standing in front of me. But I can’t think of his name, either.”

  “Gee, thanks a lot,” Karen said.

  “Somebody down here will remember it,” Jonathan said. “Or else somebody on the Admiral Peary will.”

  “And if they don’t, we can radio back to Earth and find out—if we don’t mind waiting a little more than twenty years.”

  Jonathan grinned. “You’re cute when you’re sarcastic.”

  “Cute, am I?” She made a face at him. He laughed at her. She made another face. They both laughed this time. Their marriage had its strains and creaks, but they got along pretty well.

  Karen forgot to ask about the actor at lunch, which only annoyed her more. She remembered to try at dinner. “I saw that movie on TV,” Linda de la Rosa said. “It was pretty good.”

  “Who was the guy?” Karen asked.

  “Beats me,” Linda said.

  Sam Yeager said, “I remember that one, too. My old friends, Ristin and Ullhass, played a couple of the Lizards. They did all kinds of funny things to make a living once they decided they liked staying with us and didn’t want to go back to the Race.”

  Karen knew Ristin and Ullhass, too. She hadn’t recalled that they were in that movie. She said, “But who the devil played the lead? You know, the doctor who was bringing those people out of their comas after all those years?”

  “Darned if I know.” Her father-in-law shrugged.

  Tom de la Rosa and Frank Coffey couldn’t come up with it, either. Tom did say, “The guy had that TV show for a while. . . .” He frowned, trying to dredge up the name of the show. When he couldn’t, he looked disgusted. “That’s going to itch me till I come up with it.”

  “It’s been itching me all day,” Karen said. “I was hoping one of you would be able to scratch it.” She threw her hands in the air in frustration.

  They’d been speaking English. They were talking about things that had to do with the USA, not with the Race—with the exception of Sam Yeager’s two Lizard friends. They went on in English even after Kassquit came into the refectory. Karen didn’t know about the others, but she thought of Kassquit as more Lizard than human . . . most ways.

  As usual, Kassquit sat apart from the Americans. But when they kept trying and failing to remember that actor’s name, she got up and walked over to them. “Excuse me for asking,” she said, “but what is this commotion about?”

  “Something monumentally unimportant,” Sam Yeager answered. “We would not get so excited about it if it really mattered.”

  “Is it a riddle?” she said.

&
nbsp; “No, just a frustration,” he told her. “There was an actor in a motion picture back on Tosev 3 whose name none of us can recall. We know the film. It would have come out some time not long before I went into cold sleep, because I saw it. This is like having food stuck between the teeth—it keeps on being annoying.”

  “Did this film involve the Race?” Kassquit asked.

  “Only a little.” Sam Yeager explained the plot in three sentences. “Why?”

  Kassquit didn’t answer. She went back to her supper and ate quickly. Queer thing, Karen thought. She really isn’t very human. I just wish she’d wear clothes. She gave a mental shrug and started eating again herself. She hardly noticed when Kassquit left the refectory, though she did notice Jonathan noticing.

  She was a little surprised when Kassquit not only came back a few minutes later but also came over to the Americans again. “James Dean,” Kassquit said, pronouncing the name with exaggerated care.

  Everybody exclaimed. She was right. As soon as Karen heard it, she knew that. Frank Coffey bent into the posture of respect. “How did you find out?” he asked.

  “It was in the computer network,” Kassquit answered. “The Race has a good deal of information on Tosevite art and entertainment that concern it. How wild Tosevites view the Race is obviously a matter of interest to males and females on Tosev 3, and also to officials here on Home. I hoped it might be so when I checked.”

  “Good for you,” Linda said. “We thank you.”

  “Truth,” Sam Yeager said. “James Dean. Yes, that is the name. When he first started out, I could not stand him as an actor. I thought he was all good looks and not much else. I have to say I was wrong. He kept getting better and better.”