Homeward Bound

by Harry Turtledove

  Karen thought her father-in-law’s age was showing. She’d always admired Dean’s looks—along with most of the other women in the English-speaking world—but she’d always thought he had talent, too. It was raw talent at first. She wouldn’t deny that. Maybe that was why he didn’t appeal so much to the older generation, the generation that had Cary Grant and Clark Gable as its ideals. But it was real, and the rawness of it only made it seem more real. And Sam Yeager was right about one thing: he’d got even better with age.

  “Too bad you did not get to see some of the films he had after you went into cold sleep,” she said. “Rescuing Private Renfall is particularly good.”

  “The computer network mentions that film,” Kassquit said. “It was set during the Race’s invasion, was it not?” She waited for agreement, then went on, “It has been transmitted to Home for study. You could probably arrange to see it, if you cared to.”

  “Films from our home?” Sam Yeager said. “That is good news!” He used an emphatic cough. Karen and the other Americans all made the gesture of agreement.

  When Sam Yeager let Atvar into his room, the fleetlord swung an eye turret toward the monitor. “What are you watching there?” Atvar asked.

  “A film from the United States,” Yeager answered. “Until a few days ago, I did not know any of them had been transmitted to Home. One of the actors here gives a truly memorable performance.”

  Atvar watched for a couple of minutes. Rescuing Private Renfall had its original English sound track; the Race had reinvented subtitles to let Lizards who didn’t speak English know what was going on. After a bit, Atvar said, “Much of this is inaccurate. You were a soldier yourself, Ambassador. You will see the inaccuracies just as I do.”

  Sam could hardly deny it. He’d noticed several. He said, “Drama compresses and changes. Do all of your films show reality just as it happened?”

  “Well, no,” the fleetlord admitted. “But why do your filmmakers show the Race as either vicious or idiotic? We were doing what we thought was right when we came to Tosev 3, and we were doing it as best we could. If we had been inept and vicious as this film shows us to be, not a male of the Race would have been left alive on your planet.”

  He was right about that, too. But Sam said, “I have seen some of the productions your colonists made after they came to our world. They are as unkind to Tosevites as we are to the Race. Will you tell me I am wrong?”

  He watched Atvar squirm. Plainly, the fleetlord wanted to. As plainly, he knew he couldn’t. With a sigh, Atvar said, “Well, perhaps neither you Tosevites nor the Race are as kind as possible to those who were, after all, opponents.”

  “That is a truth,” Sam said, and turned off the video. “And now, Fleetlord, I am at your service.”

  Atvar made the negative gesture. “On the contrary, Ambassador. I am at your service. It is a great honor to go before the Emperor. It is almost as great an honor to help prepare another for an audience. This says, more plainly than anything else can, that my conduct when I was in his Majesty’s presence was acceptable, and that he would be willing to have someone else imitate me.”

  “Try to imitate you, you mean,” Sam said. “I am only an ignorant Big Ugly. I will do my best not to embarrass myself, but I do not know if I can be perfect. I fear I have my doubts.”

  “Whether or not you have confidence in yourself, I have confidence in you,” Atvar said. “You will do well. You think like one of us. When the time comes, you will think like one of us in the Emperor’s presence.”

  “I hope so,” Sam said. Atvar reminded him of one of his managers sending him in to pinch-hit with the game on the line, saying, I know you can rip this guy. And sometimes Sam would, and sometimes he wouldn’t. He always had hope. He always had a chance. He didn’t always succeed. If he failed here, the consequences would be larger than those of striking out with the tying run on third base in the ninth.

  “And we do have these videos to take you through the procedure,” Atvar said. “They are not, of course, videos of actual audiences, but they should serve well enough for the sake of rehearsal. Real imperial audiences are very rarely televised. It is possible that Kassquit’s will be, and I am certain yours will, however, as it marks an extraordinary occasion.”

  Sam grinned crookedly, not that the fleetlord was likely to note the nuances of his expression. “Thanks a lot. Make sure you put no pressure on me. Am I going to have a billion males and females with both eye turrets on everything I do?”

  “Maybe more,” Atvar said. “This would attract considerable interest among the Race. And, of course, this event would also be broadcast to Rabotev 2 and Halless 1—and, I suppose, to Tosev 3 as well. But speed of light means viewers on other worlds will not see your performance for some years.”

  “Oh, good,” Sam said. “That means I would not be known as an idiot on four worlds all at the same time. It would take a while for the news to spread.”

  Atvar might not have recognized a crooked grin for what it was, but he knew sarcasm when he heard it. He laughed. “The simplest way not to have this problem would be to do well in the audience.”

  “Easy for you to say,” Sam muttered darkly. But then, bones creaking, he bent into the posture of respect. “I am at your service, superior teacher. Let us watch these videos. You can explain the fine points to an ignorant foreigner like me.”

  “Foreigner,” Atvar repeated in musing tones. “You may have noticed some archaic words in Gone with the Wind. Well, foreigner is much more old-fashioned than any of those. If not for the conquests of the Rabotevs and Hallessi, it would have entirely disappeared from the language.”

  “This is not necessarily bad,” Sam said. “We Big Uglies have always needed the word. Foreigners are the individuals you fight with— when you are not fighting with friends and relations instead.”

  “Our conquest would have been easier if you had not fought among yourselves,” Atvar said. “You already had armies mobilized and factories producing military hardware as fast as you could.”

  “Truth. Friends of mine were thinking about going to work in them when the Race came,” Sam said. “But now—the videos.”

  “It shall be done,” Atvar said, obedient and ironic at the same time.

  He spoke to the computer, and done it was. Sam watched the ceremony—or rather, the simulation of the ceremony—over and over. He could pause whenever he wanted, go back and look at something again whenever he needed to, and skip whatever he already had down. After a while, he said, “I notice the male playing the role of the Emperor wears an actor’s body paint, not the gold paint the real Emperor uses.”

  “Truth. In dramas and films, we allow that only on a case-by-case basis,” Atvar replied. “Here, it was judged inessential. Everyone knows whom the male is impersonating, whether the actual gold is seen or not.” He turned an eye turret toward Sam. “I suppose you will mock us for this sort of discrimination.”

  “Not me.” Yeager used the negative gesture. “Instead of special body paint, our emperors would often wear special wrappings that no one else was allowed to use. That was one way you told emperors from ordinary males and females.” Ermine, the purple . . . If you wanted to paint your belly gold instead, why not? He couldn’t help adding, “In the United States, though, our not-emperor is just an ordinary citizen with a special job.”

  “Snoutcounting,” Atvar said disdainfully. “Why you think this is a suitable way to rule a state of any size is beyond me. Why should a mass of males and females added together be wiser than the decision a ruler makes after consulting with experts in the field under consideration? Answer me that, if you please.”

  “First, experts can be wrong, too. Look what the Race thought about Tosev 3,” Sam Yeager said. If that wasn’t a baleful stare Atvar sent him, he’d never seen one. He went on, “And second, Fleetlord, who says rulers who do not need to answer to those who chose them always consult with experts before they make their choices? Sometimes—often—they just do as they
please. This is a truth for us Big Uglies. Is it any less a truth for the Race?”

  “Perhaps a little,” Atvar answered, and Sam thought he might have a point. Except during mating season, Lizards were a little calmer, a little more rational, than people. As Sam had seen, both back on Earth and here on Home, they made up for it then. The fleetlord continued, “We are sometimes guilty of arbitrary behavior. If you will tell me the snoutcounting United States is not also sometimes guilty of it, I must say you will surprise me. You have seen the contrary for yourself.”

  “Well, so I have,” Sam said gruffly. He’d almost paid with his neck for President Warren’s arbitrary decision to attack the colonization fleet. “We think our system does better than others in reducing such behavior, though.”

  “You have been snoutcounting for how long in your not-empire?” Atvar asked.

  Sam had to stop and think. To him, the Bicentennial had happened quite recently—but that ignored his cold sleep. It was 2031, not 1977. “A little more than five hundred of your years,” he answered.

  Atvar’s hiss was a small masterpiece of sarcasm. “When you have five thousand—or, better, twenty-five thousand—years of experience with it, then you may claim some small credit for your system. Meanwhile . . . Meanwhile, shall we go back to preparing you for your audience with his Majesty?”

  “Maybe that would be a good idea.” Sam had no idea whether democracy could lead humans to a state stable for millennia like the Empire. He had no idea whether any system could lead humans to a state stable for millennia. Humans were more restlessly changeable than Lizards.

  Or, at least, humans with cultures springing from Western Europe had been more restlessly changeable than Lizards for the past few hundred years. That wasn’t always so elsewhere on Earth. It hadn’t been so in Western Europe before, say, the fifteenth century, either. If the Lizards had chosen to come not long after they sent their probe, they would have won everything their livers desired. That thought had given a lot of human statesmen and soldiers nightmares over the years.

  Atvar started the video again. He made it pause in the middle of the ceremony. In thoughtful tones, he said, “I still do not know what we are going to do about the imperial laver and limner.”

  “I am not going to go before the Emperor naked,” Yeager said. “That is not our custom. And I am not going to wear the body paint of a supplicant. I am not a supplicant. I am the representative of an independent not-empire, a not-empire with all the same rights and privileges as the Empire has. My president”—he used the English word, which Atvar understood—“is formally the equal of the Emperor.”

  “You make too much of yourself here,” Atvar said stiffly. “He is not as powerful as the Emperor.”

  “I did not say he was. Back on Tosev 3, we had many not-empires and empires before the Race came. Some were large and strong, others small and not so strong. But they were independent. A strong one did not have the right to tell a weak one what to do. That principle was part of why we were fighting a war among ourselves when you came. The president is not as powerful as the Emperor. But he is independent of him, and sovereign in his own land.”

  Atvar’s tailstump wiggled in agitation. “I am not the one to answer this. The protocol masters at the imperial court will have to decide.”

  “Do please remind them that the United States is an independent not-empire,” Yeager said. “Males and females who have never been to Tosev 3 are liable to have a hard time understanding that on their own.”

  “Believe me, Ambassador—I am painfully aware of this,” Atvar replied. “I will tell them to consult their records from ancientest history, from the days before Home was unified, when there were still other sovereignties here besides the Empire. I do not know what survives from those times, but they will.”

  “I thank you.” Sam didn’t want to push Atvar too far. Not many Lizards here on Home had experience back on Earth. No point to antagonizing the highest-ranking one who did. “This is important for both my not-empire and the Race.” He knew more than a little relief when the fleetlord made the affirmative gesture.

  Kassquit told the video on her monitor to pause. She asked Atvar, “You say these are the same images Sam Yeager is using to prepare for his audience with the Emperor?”

  “Yes, that is correct,” the fleetlord told her. “If you practice diligently, you should do well enough.”

  “Oh, I will!” Kassquit promised. “I can think of no greater honor than to have the imperial laver remove my ordinary body paint and the imperial limner put on the new.”

  To her surprise, Atvar laughed. Hastily, he said, “I mean no offense, Researcher. But your reaction there is the opposite of the wild Big Ugly’s. He refuses to have anything to do with the laver and the limner.”

  “What?” For a moment, Kassquit could hardly believe her ears. She’d never liked them; the Race’s hearing diaphragms were much neater. Whenever they told her something she had trouble believing, she mistrusted them. “Did I hear you correctly, Exalted Fleetlord?”

  “You did. You must remember—Sam Yeager was at pains to make sure everyone remembers—the American Tosevites are not imperial subjects, and are proud of not being imperial subjects. The pride may be misplaced, but it is no less real on account of that.”

  “Eventually, they will outgrow their presumption,” Kassquit said.

  “Perhaps. Such is the hope, at any rate.” Atvar’s voice was dry. “Meanwhile, let me see you go through this section of the ceremony once more.”

  “It shall be done, Exalted Fleetlord.” Kassquit bent herself into several positions related to but not identical with the posture of respect. She looked to the left. She looked to the right. She looked behind her. None of that was as easy for her as it would have been for a member of the Race, for she had to turn her whole head to do it since she did not have eye turrets. As with her ears, there were still times when she resented having physical equipment different from that of the Race. She did not let her resentment show, though, or even dwell on it, for she had to concentrate on the responses she was supposed to make to courtiers who were not in fact in the hotel room with her.

  When she finished, she looked to Atvar. When the fleetlord did not say anything for some little while, fear bubbled up in her. Had she made such a dreadful mess of it? She hadn’t thought so, but how much did she really know? Every so often, she got forcefully reminded that, even if she was a citizen of the Empire, she was not a member of the Race.

  At last, his voice neutral, Atvar said, “You did this without previous study of these videos?”

  “Yes, Exalted Fleetlord,” Kassquit replied unhappily. “I used sources that described the ceremony, but I have not seen it up until now. Did I . . . did I do it very badly?”

  To her astonishment, Atvar made the negative gesture. “No. Except that you have no tailstump to move to right and left to accompany your head, you did it perfectly. The protocol masters have assured me that this is no impediment: you cannot move what you do not have. I congratulate you, and all the more so because you learned this on your own.”

  “Really?” Kassquit said in amazement. The fleetlord made the affirmative gesture again. Kassquit whispered, “I thank you.”

  “For what?” Atvar said. “Yours is the hard work, yours the achievement. You receive the praise you have earned. Now—do you know the next part of the ceremony as well as you know this one?”

  “I . . . I believe I do, Exalted Fleetlord.”

  Atvar swung his eye turrets away, then aimed them both right at her: a sign he was paying close attention. “Let me see.”

  “It shall be done.” Kassquit went through the next portion. She hadn’t seen the videos for it, and wasn’t quite perfect; Atvar found a couple of small things to correct. She said, “I will improve them before the audience.” That didn’t seem enough, so she added, “I will improve them before you see me again.”

  “Do not be upset,” Atvar told her. “You are doing quite well, believe me.
Now—on to the portion that follows.” On to that portion they went. Kassquit imagined her way through the whole ceremony. At last, Atvar said, “You have done everything very well up to this point. Now you have come before the Emperor’s throne. You offer him your greetings.” Kassquit bent into the special posture of respect reserved for the Emperor alone. It was awkward for a Tosevite—her back was too straight—but she managed it. Atvar didn’t criticize her, so she must have done it right, or right enough. Then he said, “Now the Emperor speaks to you. How do you respond?”

  “The Emperor . . . speaks to me?” Kassquit quavered. “Is that likely to happen?”

  “It can happen,” Atvar answered. “When I left Home to take the conquest fleet to Tosev 3, my audience with his Majesty was purely formal. When I saw the present Emperor not long ago, there was some informal talk. It is up to his Majesty, of course. The present Emperor, I think, is more inclined to talk than his predecessor was.”

  “He would not care to talk to the likes of me,” Kassquit said. “I am an individual of no importance.”

  “There I would disagree with you,” Atvar said. “You are not an individual of high rank. But you are important. Never doubt it. You are the first—so far, the only—Tosevite to be reared entirely within the culture of the Empire. You are the shape of the future. We hope you are the shape of the future, at any rate.”

  “How could I not be?” she asked.

  “If things go wrong on Tosev 3, it would be all too easy for you not to be,” Atvar answered. “There may be no Tosevites following any cultural models, in that case.”

  “What do you think the odds are?” Kassquit asked.

  Atvar shrugged, a gesture the Race and Big Uglies shared. “Who can guess? It all depends on how dangerous the wild Tosevites become.” He did his best to brush aside the question: “That is not something on which it is profitable to speculate. Back to business. Should the Emperor speak to you, how would you respond?”