Homeward Bound

by Harry Turtledove

  “Well, you must understand I did not personally make these arrangements, Ambassador,” the guide replied. Sam Yeager’s title seemed natural in his mouth, though except in historical fiction it had fallen out of the Race’s language not long after the unification of Home. Jussop went on, “His Majesty’s government does wish to extend you every courtesy. You must also understand it is not, perhaps, strictly a private viewing.”

  “What does that mean?” Karen asked sharply, before Jonathan could. “It was supposed to be.”

  Jussop made a vaguely conciliatory gesture. “You will not be swarmed with these others who seek to commune with spirits of Emperors past. The other superior Tosevite is right about that, never fear.” He left it there, in spite of other questions from the rest of the Americans.

  The bus rounded a corner and silently stopped. The questions stopped at the same time. “That’s amazing,” Jonathan whispered. The rest of the humans stared as avidly as he did. If you had set the Parthenon in the middle of an enormous Japanese garden, you might have created a similar effect. The mausoleum didn’t really look like the Parthenon, but it had that same exquisite simplicity: nothing in excess, and everything that was there perfect without being ostentatious. The landscaping, with open ground, stones of interesting color and shape, and a few plants strategically placed and intriguingly trimmed, came a good deal closer to its Earthly counterpart.

  “Lovely,” Sam Yeager said to Jussop. “I have seen pictures, but pictures do not do it justice. For some things, only being there will do.”

  “That is a truth, Ambassador,” the guide replied. “It is an important truth, too, and not enough folk realize it. We walk from here. As we go along the path, the view will change repeatedly. Some even say it improves. But the walk to the mausoleum is part of the experience. You are all capable of it? . . . Good.”

  It was somewhere between a quarter mile and half a mile. The path—made very plain on the ground by the pressure of who could say how many generations of feet—wound and curved toward the entrance. Every so often, Jussop would silently raise a hand and wave to signal that they had come to a famous view. The perspective did change. Did it improve? Jonathan wasn’t sure. How did you go about measuring one magnificence against another?

  And then, when they’d drawn close to the mausoleum, the Race proved it could make mistakes to match any mere humanity ever managed. A hiss from behind made Jonathan look back over his shoulder to see what was going on. A horde of reporters and cameramales and -females hurried after them on the path like a swarm of locusts. Some of the Lizards with cameras wore wigs, which seemed not just ridiculous but—here—a desecration. “Is this building not marvelous?” one of the reporters shouted.

  “Is it not inspiring?” another demanded.

  “Does it not make you seek to reverence the spirits of Emperors past?” a third yelled. The closer they came, the more excited and vehement they got.

  A fourth reporter said, “Tell me in your own words what you think of this mausoleum.” Then, without giving any of the Americans a chance to use their own words, the Lizard went on, “Do you not feel this is the most holy, most sacred site on four worlds? Do you not agree that nowhere else is the same combination of serenity, power, and awe-inspiring beauty? Would you not say it is unmatched in splendor, unmatched in grandeur, unmatched in importance?”

  “Get them out of here,” Tom de la Rosa told Jussop, “before I pick up one of these sacred rocks and bash in their heads—assuming they have any brains there, which does not seem likely.”

  Before the guide could do anything, the reporters and camera crews had caught up with the humans. The reporter who wanted to put words in everyone’s mouth thrust his—or possibly her—microphone in Jonathan’s face. “I will not comment about the mausoleum, since I have not yet been inside,” Jonathan said, “but I think you are unmatched in rudeness, except possibly by your colleagues.”

  “I am the ambassador,” his father said, and the archaic word seemed to have some effect even on the jaded reporters. Sam Yeager went on, “My hatchling speaks truth. We did not come to this place for publicity. We came to see what is here to see, and to pay our respects to your beliefs even if we do not share them. Will you kindly have the courtesy and decency to let us do that—undisturbed?”

  “But the public needs to know!” a Lizard shouted.

  “This is not a public matter. It is private, strictly private,” Jonathan’s father said. “And if you do not go away, the protest I make when I have my audience with the Emperor will be most public indeed.”

  Jussop had been quietly speaking into a handheld telephone. The Race’s police were most efficient. No more than two or three minutes went by before they hurried up to escort the reporters away. “Come on, come on,” one of them said. “The Big Uglies do not want you around. This is not a traffic accident, where you can ask bloodthirsty questions of some poor male who has just lost his best friend.”

  Spluttering protests, the reporters and camera crews reluctantly withdrew. Most reluctantly—some of them kept shouting inane questions even as the police pushed them away from the Americans. “I apologize for that, superior Tosevites,” Jussop said. “I apologize with all my liver. I did not think it would be so bad.”

  Maybe he was telling the truth, maybe he wasn’t. Short of making a worse scene, the Americans couldn’t do much about it now. Major Frank Coffey said, “Let us just go on, then, and hope the moment is not ruined.”

  It turned out not to be. The only reason it turned out not to be was that the mausoleum was wonderful enough inside to take the bad taste of the reporters out of Jonathan’s mouth—and, by what he could see, from everyone else‘s, too. Tau Ceti’s buttery light poured through windows and glowed from granite and marble. Urns of Hellenic simplicity and elegance but not of a shape any human potter would have chosen held the last remains of a couple of thousand Emperors. The sequence was spotty before Home was unified; it seemed to be complete after that.

  Nobody said anything for a long time. People wandered where they would, looking, admiring. Even footfalls rang monstrously loud here. Because the Americans were representatives of an independent country, they had special permission to take pictures inside the mausoleum. Permission or not, no one touched a camera. It would have profaned the place. Karen quietly squeezed Jonathan’s hand. He nodded. Not even the memorial to Washington, D.C., in Little Rock had affected him like this. Whatever the many differences between mankind and the Race, the Lizards understood majesty.

  Sam Yeager paused outside the imperial palace to admire the grounds. They were landscaped with the same spare elegance that informed the gardens surrounding the imperial mausoleum. He turned to Atvar, who as his sponsor walked one neat pace behind him and to his right, and who had stopped at the same time as he had. “I hope you will not be angry if I tell you that these grounds remind me of something the Nipponese might do,” Sam said.

  The fleetlord made the negative gesture. “I am not angry, for the same thing has occurred to me. I think you would do better, though, not to make this comparison to the courtiers within.”

  That made Sam chuckle. “No doubt you speak truth. I suppose they would say the Race had the idea first, and that too would be a truth.”

  “Indeed it would. These grounds have been more or less as they are for a very long time, even by the standards of the Race—much longer than all of Tosevite history put together,” Atvar said. “And now, shall we proceed?”

  “One moment, if you please,” Sam said after glancing at his watch. “I left the hotel early so I could gawk a bit before the ceremony starts. We have time. I will not disgrace the United States by being late.” When he was playing minor-league ball—in a vanished century, in a vanished time that had not known the Lizards—he’d never once missed the train or the bus to the next town. Half of getting anywhere in life was simply showing up on time.

  Atvar also wore a watch. Like every other Lizard timepiece Sam Yeager had ever seen, his
was digital. Their style had started a fad among humans for the same kind of watches, and even for clocks. Yeager was old-fashioned. He went right on wearing a watch with hands (even if this one had been made for Home’s day, which was about an hour and a quarter longer than Earth‘s, and for keeping time by tenths).

  But that was a small thing. The palace in front of him was anything but. Unlike most of the Race’s buildings, it had been designed when those within had to worry about their safety, and it looked the part. Sam wouldn’t have wanted to attack it with anything short of an armored division. Where the grounds looked Japanese, the palace seemed more Russian than anything else. He supposed the onion domes topping some of the gray stone towers put that thought in his mind. But the palace wasn’t really Russian, any more than the mausoleum was really a match for the Parthenon. Those were just comparisons his human mind groped for. The Race’s architecture had its own logic, and not all of it followed anything he was used to.

  He looked at his watch again, then gathered himself. “I am ready,” he said. “It is time. Let us go on.”

  On they went. The entry door was made of some flame-colored, tiger-striped wood truly unearthly in its beauty. It had been polished till it shone. The ironwork of the hinges and latch looked massive enough to stop a charging elephant. Sam laughed at himself. This door might have been built to stop a great many things, but elephants weren’t one of them.

  The great portal silently swung open. Herrep, the protocol master, stood just inside. Sam took a deep breath. He’d faced up to presidents. He’d faced up to hard-throwing kids who’d stick one in your ear just because they had no idea where the lousy ball would go once they let loose of it. And he could damn well face up to this snooty Lizard.

  He took one more deep breath, then crossed the threshold. As soon as he did, he assumed the posture of respect. He had to work to keep from laughing again. I’m an old man. I must look like a real idiot crouched down here with my butt in the air. No air conditioning, either, not even what passed for it among the Lizards. Sweat rolled off him.

  “You may rise,” Herrep said.

  “I thank you.” Sam’s back creaked as he got to his feet. “In the name of the people of the United States, in the name of the President of the United States, I thank you. I come in peace. In the name of peace, I convey my folk’s greeting to the Emperor, and wish him good health and many years.”

  “In his name, I thank you, and I accept the greeting in the spirit in which you offer it,” the protocol master said. “Now, if you would be so kind as to follow me . . .”

  “It shall be done,” Sam said. Remote-control cameras on the ceiling and the wall swung with him as he moved: no baying swarm of cameramales and -females here, as there had been at the mausoleum. Sam was old enough to remember the ballyhoo days of the 1920s. They had nothing on what the Lizards had done there.

  Herrep led him past an elderly female who sat with a basin of water and a scrubbing brush: the imperial laver. Then the protocol master walked past another female, just as ancient, this one with a fancy set of body paints: the imperial limner. Sam sketched the posture of respect to each of them in turn without fully assuming it. They both returned the gesture. He recognized them as important parts of the imperial court; they recognized him as someone who did not require their services. It was a quiet compromise, and one that did not show how much argument lay behind it. Proper compromises seldom did.

  After leaving the imperial limner behind a bend in the corridor, Herrep paused for a moment. “We are not on camera here,” he said. “I just wanted to tell you, researching this ceremonial was endlessly fascinating. I believe the Emperors of ancientest days would recognize what we do here. It might not be exactly what they were used to seeing, but they would recognize it.”

  “I am glad to hear you say so,” Yeager replied politely. “It is also not too different from the ceremonies we use on Tosev 3.”

  Herrep waved that aside, as if of no account. That was, no doubt, how he felt about it. To him, Big Uglies were barbarians, and how could what barbarians did among themselves matter to a civilized male? The answer to that was simple: it began to matter when the barbarians grew too strong for a civilized male to ignore. And that was what had happened here.

  “Shall we proceed, then?” the protocol master said.

  “We can hardly stop now. Males and females would talk,” Sam answered. Herrep’s eye turrets swung sharply toward him. Sam Yeager only waited. He wasn’t surprised to discover that the protocol master had no idea what to make of levity, even of the mildest sort. Herrep pointed forward. Sam made the affirmative gesture. As soon as he turned the next corner, he knew he would be back on camera.

  Knowing this was all part of a fancy charade did not, could not, keep awe from prickling through him. The audience chamber was designed to make anyone of any species coming before the Emperor feel small and unworthy. The eons-dead males and females who’d done the designing had known their business, too. Up near the shadow-filled ceiling, a small flying thing chittered shrilly. Long colonnades of shining stone drew the eye up and drew it on toward the throne at the far end of the hall.

  A courtier appeared before Sam. He carried on a staff an American flag. Data transmissions from Earth meant the Race knew what the Stars and Stripes looked like. As Sam and the flagbearer walked down the aisle toward the throne, a recording of “The Star-Spangled Banner” blared out. No doubt Lizard commentators would be quietly explaining to their audience what the strange music meant.

  Atvar had said that the banners displayed in the audience hall belonged to empires extinguished by the Empire here on Home, on Rabotev 2, on Halless 1—and on Earth. Yeager recognized the Mexican flag, and the Australian, and the Brazilian, and the Chinese. He could not stop to look for and look at others.

  Spotlights gleamed from the gilded throne—or was it solid gold? They also gleamed from the Emperor’s gilded chest and belly. Sam thought that was funny. No doubt the Lizards found human royal regalia just as ridiculous.

  Two large Lizards—they came up past the middle of his chest—in plain gray body paint stepped out to block his path. They were imperial guards: an ancient survival in an empire where no one had tried to assassinate a sovereign in tens of thousands of years. Like the Swiss Guards who protected the Pope, they looked as if they still knew how to fight, even if they didn’t have to.

  “I come in peace,” Sam assured them. They drew back.

  Yeager advanced to the end of the aisle, just in front of the throne. The spotlights on the 37th Emperor Risson made his all-gold body paint glow. That might have awed any Lizard who came before him. It didn’t do much for Sam one way or the other. He assumed the special posture of respect reserved for the Emperor, there on the stone smoothed by uncounted tens of thousands of males and females of the Race, the Rabotevs, and the Hallessi who’d done the same thing on the same spot.

  From the throne, the Emperor said, “Arise, Ambassador Sam Yeager.”

  “I thank you, your Majesty,” Sam replied, and again rose creakily to his feet. “I bring peaceful greetings from my not-emperor and from the males and females of the United States. Our hope is for trade, for mutual prosperity, and for mutual respect.”

  “May this be so,” Risson said. “It has been a very long time since an independent ambassador came before an Emperor of the Race.”

  “Everything changes, your Majesty,” Sam said. “Some things change quickly, some very slowly. But everything changes.”

  Most members of the Race would have argued with him. Change here happened at a pace to make a snail into a bullet. It was seldom visible within the course of a single lifetime. For the Lizard in the street, that meant it might as well not have happened at all. But appearances deceived.

  “Truth,” Risson said simply. Yeager was relieved the Emperor knew what he was talking about. Risson went on, “One thing I hope will never change, though, is the friendship and peace between your not-empire and the Empire.”

 
“Your Majesty, that is also my fondest hope.” Sam got to try out an emphatic cough for all the Lizards across the planet who might be watching.

  “Excellent,” the Emperor replied. “So long as there is good will on both sides, much can be accomplished. I hope to converse with you again on other occasions, Sam Yeager of the United States.” Risson had been rehearsing, too; he pronounced the name of Sam’s country as well as any Lizard could.

  And he spoke the words of dismissal as smoothly and politely as anyone could have. Yeager assumed the special posture of respect once more. This time, he could rise without waiting for permission. The flagbearer preceded him up the aisle, away from the imperial throne. The audience was over.

  Risson had more personality than he’d expected. The gold paint and all the ceremonial hemming in the Emperor made him seem more a thing than an individual. Plainly, making any such assumption about Risson would be rash. Despite the role he played, he was very much himself.

  “I thank you for your help,” Sam quietly told the Lizard who’d carried the Stars and Stripes.

  “Ambassador, it was my privilege,” the Lizard replied, which might have meant that he was proud to have played a role, no matter how small, in history—or might have meant someone had told him to carry the flag and he’d done it.

  He peeled off where he had joined the American. Yeager continued into the bend in the corridor where, Herrep had assured him, he was not being filmed. The protocol master waited for him there. “I congratulate you, Ambassador,” Herrep said. “Your performance was most satisfactory.”

  “I thank you,” Sam answered. Not splendid or magnificent or brilliant or anything like that. Most satisfactory. He nodded to himself. Under the circumstances, and from such an exacting critic, it would definitely do.