Homeward Bound

by Harry Turtledove

  “I’d like to be a fly on the wall when you do talk to him,” Jonathan said.

  “Nope. No flies. This has got to be between him and me,” his father said. “Officially, I don’t know anything. Officially, I don’t even suspect anything. I’m just calling to check. That’s how it’s got to be . . . officially. The rest is . . . officially . . . off the record.”

  There were times, Jonathan knew, when arguing with his father was useless. He could tell this was one of those times. Since his hint hadn’t worked, he just said, “Okay, Dad. You know what you’re doing.” He hoped his father would let him know how things had gone somewhere later on.

  Sam Yeager sent him a look of mingled surprise and gratitude. He thought I was going to squawk, Jonathan realized. And Jonathan might well have squawked if he were the age he had been when his father went into cold sleep. But he’d done some growing and changing of his own in the seventeen years till they put him on ice.

  He set a hand on his father’s shoulder. “It really is okay. I’ll just stay tuned for the next exciting episode, that’s all. We’ll find out who done it then, right?”

  “Well, sure,” his father answered. “Right before the last commercial break. That’s how it always works, isn’t it?” They both smiled. Jonathan wished life really were so simple. Who didn’t? Who wouldn’t?

  He went back down to the lobby. He more than half expected to find Inspector Garanpo poking around there, looking for signs of ginger. But the Lizard had left. Garanpo had a disorganized air that was also disarming. Jonathan had the feeling a keen brain lurked behind that unimpressive façade.

  With a sigh, he went into the refectory. He couldn’t do anything about whatever Garanpo found out. He hoped his father could. Whether anyone up on the Admiral Peary would pay attention to the American ambassador was an interesting question. Sam Yeager was a civilian these days, while the starship was a military vessel. Would Lieutenant General Healey remember he was supposed to take orders from civilians? If he didn’t, what could Dad do about it?

  Frank Coffey was sitting in the refectory talking with Kassquit. Jonathan would have liked to hash out some of his worries with the major, but he couldn’t now. What he would have to say wasn’t for Kassquit’s ears. Jonathan hoped Coffey did remember not to tell his new lady friend too much. Then he laughed at himself. He’d assured Karen that that couldn’t possibly happen, and now he was worrying about it.

  Kassquit and Frank Coffey laughed. They had not a care in the world—not a care in more than one world. Jonathan envied them more than he’d thought he could. He had worries, sure enough. So did Coffey, as a matter of fact. The only difference was, he didn’t know it yet.

  How stupid had they been, up on the Admiral Peary?

  When Sam Yeager had a long conversation with Lieutenant General Healey, nobody aboard the Admiral Peary except the commandant officially knew what they talked about. That didn’t keep rumors from flying, of course. If anything, it made them fly faster than ever. As soon as Glen Johnson heard a rumor involving Healey and ginger, he just nodded to himself.

  Sure as hell, the scooter hadn’t performed the way it should have when he took it over to the Horned Akiss. Sure as hell, it had seemed as if the little rocketship was heavier than usual. It had been heavier than usual. Somebody must have figured out a way to pack it full of ginger while fooling the Race’s sensors—or maybe the Lizards using those sensors had been well paid not to notice anything out of the ordinary. Such arrangements were common enough on Earth; no doubt they could be cooked up here, too.

  Johnson felt like kicking himself because he hadn’t figured out what was going on before he delivered the scooter. He didn’t like thinking of himself as a chump or a jerk. What choice did he have, though? Not much.

  He wasn’t the only one on the starship to work out what had probably happened, either. When he came up to the control room to take a shift less than a day after Yeager and Healey talked, Mickey Flynn greeted him with, “And how is everyone’s favorite drug smuggler this morning?”

  “I haven’t the faintest idea,” Johnson answered. “You can’t mean me.”

  “I can’t? Why not?”

  “Because that would violate regulations, and I’d get a spanking if I violated them.”

  “This has, of course, been your abiding concern since time out of mind.”

  “Why, certainly,” Johnson said. “Would I be here if it weren’t?”

  “The mind reels at the possibilities,” Flynn replied. “Even if you were smuggling drugs to the Race, though, why would you worry about it?”

  That was a good question. In truth, Johnson didn’t much care how the Lizards amused themselves in their spare time. He wouldn’t have minded sending them ginger . . . if it had been his idea. His voice roughened as he answered, “I’ll be damned if I want that shithead in charge of us making me do his dirty work for him.”

  “I’m shocked—shocked, I tell you. Anyone who didn’t know better would think you’d conceived a dislike for the man.”

  What Johnson said to that had something to do with conceiving, but not much. His opinion of Lieutenant General Healey was certainly less than immaculate.

  It seemed like fate, then—and not a very benign sort of fate, either—that the commandant of the Admiral Peary summoned Johnson to his office as the pilot came off his shift. Mickey Flynn said, “There, you see? He was listening all along.”

  “I don’t care. He already knows what I think of him,” Johnson answered, which was true enough. But, however little he wanted to, he did have to find out why Lieutenant General Healey wanted to see him.

  Healey greeted him with the usual unfriendly glare. But he said nothing about what Johnson had said in the control room. Instead, fixing him with a glare, the commandant barked, “Are you ready to fly the Lizards’ scooter back to the Horned Akiss? We’ve learned everything we’re likely to from it.”

  “That depends, sir,” Johnson answered.

  Healey’s bulldog glower only got angrier. “Depends on what?” he demanded, hard suspicion in his voice.

  “On whether you’ve loaded it up with ginger, the way you did with ours. If you have, you can find yourself another sucker, on account of the Lizards are going to land on whoever tries to pull the same stunt twice like a ton of bricks.”

  “You’re the best scooter pilot we’ve got. It’s almost the only thing you’re good for. I can order you to fly that scooter,” the commandant said.

  “Yes, sir, you sure can,” Johnson agreed cheerfully. “And you can fling me in the brig for disobeying orders, too, because I won’t take it out of the air lock till you tell me the truth about it.”

  “I always knew you and that Lizard-loving Yeager were two of a kind,” the commandant snarled.

  That answered Johnson’s question without directly answering it. “Why don’t you send Stone, sir?” he asked in turn. “He’s always happy to do anything you say.”

  “He is the senior pilot,” Healey said stiffly.

  “You mean you can’t afford to lose him but you can afford to lose me?” Johnson said. “Well, sir, I’ve got news for you: I can’t afford to lose me. So when you send that scooter over, find yourself another boy to ride herd on it.”

  The commandant glowered at him. Healey had come to expect insubordination from him over the years. Outright insurrection was something else again. “Consider yourself under arrest, Colonel,” Healey said. “Report to the brig at once.”

  “Happy to, sir,” Johnson answered. “Only one question: where the hell is it? I haven’t gone looking for it till now. I didn’t even think we had one.”

  “We do, and you have so,” Healey said. “It’s on B deck, room 227. Enjoy yourself.”

  “Sir, I won’t be talking to you, so I expect it’ll be a pleasure.”

  Johnson also had the pleasure of leaving before the commandant could reply. He headed straight for the brig. It proved to be a compartment like any other on the starship. The only differenc
e was, it had a door that wouldn’t open from the inside once he closed it after himself. That could be no fun at all in case of emergency, but Johnson refused to dwell on unpleasant possibilities. He strapped himself onto the standard-issue bunk and took a nap.

  Nobody bothered him. He began to wonder if Healey’d told anyone he was jugged. Then he wondered if anybody would come by and feed him. He had visions of someone finding a starved, shriveled corpse in the brig the next time Healey decided to throw someone in there, which could be years from now.

  He told himself he was being silly. Stone and Flynn would notice he wasn’t showing up for his shift. They’d ask where he was . . . wouldn’t they? Healey would have to tell them . . . wouldn’t he? It all seemed logical enough. But when logic and Lieutenant General Healey collided, all bets were off.

  Three hours later, the door to the cell opened. It was Major Parker, Healey’s adjutant. Johnson looked at him and said, “I want a lawyer.”

  “Funny, Colonel. Funny like a crutch,” Parker answered.

  “What, you think I’m kidding?” Johnson said. “My ass, pardon my French.”

  “And where are you going to find a lawyer here?” the other officer asked in what he evidently intended for reasonable tones. He looked dyspeptic. Anyone who had to listen to Healey all the time had a good reason for looking dyspeptic, as far as Johnson was concerned.

  He said, “Okay, fine. Screw the lawyer. Let me talk to Ambassador Yeager. That ought to do the job. By God, that ought to do it up brown.”

  Parker looked as if he’d asked for the moon. “The commandant sent me here to let you out as long as you give me your word of honor you’ll keep your mouth shut.”

  “Sorry.” Johnson shook his head. “No deal. He’s the one who got into this mess, and got me into it with him. He ought to be making me promises, not asking for them. I’d just as soon stay here. How long before the whole ship starts wondering why? How long before the Lizards start wondering why, too?”

  “Colonel, you are deliberately being difficult,” the adjutant said, his voice starchy with disapproval.

  “You noticed!” Johnson exclaimed. Parker turned red. Johnson nodded. “You bet your left nut I’m being difficult, Major. Healey still thinks this is my problem, and he’s dead wrong. It’s his, and he’d better figure that out pretty damn quick.”

  “I’ll be back.” Parker made it sound like a threat. “The commandant won’t be very happy with you.”

  “Well, I’m not very happy with him, either,” Johnson said, but he didn’t think the other officer heard him.

  Another two hours went by. They were not the most exciting time Glen Johnson had ever spent. He wondered if Healey knew how potent a weapon boredom could be. Leave him in here long enough and he’d start counting the rows of thread in his socks for want of anything more interesting to do. Maybe he should have agreed when Parker offered him the deal.

  No, goddammit, he thought. Healey had played him for a patsy. He wouldn’t be the commandant’s good little boy now.

  The door opened again. There floated Parker, his face as screwed up as if he’d bitten into a persimmon before it was ripe. He jerked a thumb toward the corridor behind him. “Go on,” he said. “Get out.”

  Johnson didn’t move. “What’s the hitch?” he asked.

  “No hitch,” Parker said. “Your arrest is rescinded. Officially, it never happened. You’re restored to regular duty, effective immediately. What more do you want, egg in your beer?”

  “An apology might be nice,” Johnson said. If he was going to be difficult, why not be as difficult as he could?

  Healey’s adjutant laughed in his face. “You’ll wait till hell freezes over, and then twenty minutes longer. Do you want to?” He made as if to close the door once more.

  “No, never mind,” Johnson said. He hadn’t actually demanded one, only suggested it. He didn’t have to back down, or not very far. He pushed off from the far wall of the brig and glided out into the corridor. “Ah! Freedom!”

  “Funny,” Parker said. “Har-de-har-har. You bust me up.”

  “You think I was kidding?” Johnson said. “Well, you probably would.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” the other man said. “I’m just as much an American as you are. I know what freedom’s worth.”

  “You sure don’t act like it,” Johnson said. “And your boss wouldn’t know what it was if it piddled on his shoes.”

  The two-word answer Healey’s adjutant gave was to the point, if less than sweet. Johnson laughed and blew him a kiss. That only seemed to make Parker angrier. Johnson wasn’t about to lose any sleep on account of it. He pushed off again and returned to the land of the free and, he hoped, the home of the brave.

  He brachiated to the refectory. Walter Stone was there, eating a sandwich and drinking water out of a bulb. The senior pilot waved to Johnson, who glided over to him and grabbed a handhold. “I hear you’ve been naughty again,” Stone said.

  “Not me.” Johnson shook his head. “It’s our beloved skipper. He told me to smuggle more ginger to the Lizards, and I’m afraid I turned him down. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”

  “You haven’t got the right attitude,” Stone said.

  “Sorry, but I’m afraid I do,” Johnson said. “Healey wants me to give the Lizards ginger? Okay, fine. He doesn’t care if they catch me and toss me in one of their clinks for the next thirty years? That’s not fine, not by me, not when the Race knows what we’re up to. And the Lizards do know. You can’t tell me any different.”

  Stone looked as if he would have liked nothing better. He didn’t, though. And if he couldn’t, Johnson thought, nobody could.

  Kassquit was happy. She needed a while to recognize the feeling. She hadn’t known it for a while—a long while. She’d known satisfaction of a sort, most commonly at a job well done. Sometimes that masqueraded as happiness. Now that she’d run into the genuine article again, she recognized the masquerade for what it was.

  She knew sexual satisfaction was part of her happiness. So she’d told Ttomalss—and she’d taken a different kind of satisfaction at discomfiting him. But the longer the feeling lasted, the more she noticed other things that went into it.

  Chief among them was being valued for her own sake. That was something she’d seldom known among the Race. By the nature of things, it wasn’t something she could easily know in the Empire. To Ttomalss and to the other males and females who dealt with her, she was about as much experimental animal as she was person. She couldn’t be a proper female of the Race, and she couldn’t be a normal Big Ugly, either.

  But Frank Coffey made her feel as if she were. He talked with her. Members of the Race had talked to her. Looking back, she thought even Jonathan Yeager had talked to her. Now she discovered the difference.

  But to Frank Coffey, what she said mattered at least as much as what he said. And that held true whether they were talking about something as serious as the relations between the Empire and the United States or as foolish as why her hair was straight while his curled tightly.

  “There are black Tosevites in the United States whose hair is straight,” he said one day.

  “Are there?” she said, and he made the affirmative gesture. “And are there also Tosevites of my type with hair like yours?”

  This time, he used the negative gesture. “No, or I have never heard of any. The black Tosevites I mentioned artificially straighten theirs.”

  “Why would they want to do such a foolish thing?” Kassquit asked.

  “To look more like the white Tosevites who dominate in the United States.” Coffey sounded a little—or maybe more than a little—grim.

  “Oh.” Kassquit felt a sudden and altogether unexpected stab of sympathy for wild Big Uglies she’d never seen. “By the spirits of Emperors past, I understand that. I used to shave all the hair on my body to try to look more like a female of the Race. I used to be sorry I had these flaps of skin—ears—instead of hearing di
aphragms, too. I even thought of having them surgically removed.”

  “I am glad you did not,” he said, and leaned over to nibble on one of them. Kassquit liked that more than she’d thought she would. After a moment, Frank Coffey went on, “You know more than I do about being a minority. That is something surprising for a black American Tosevite to have to admit. But I was never a minority of one.”

  “Never till now,” Kassquit pointed out.

  “Well, no,” he said. “For once, though, I feel more isolated simply because I am a Tosevite than because I am a black Tosevite. That, I admit, is an unusual feeling.”

  “You are not black,” Kassquit said “You are an interesting shade of brown—a good deal darker than I am, certainly, but a long way from black.” His skin tone showed up to fine advantage against the smooth white plastic of the furniture in the refectory.

  “Sometimes my shade of brown has proved more interesting than I wished it would,” he said, laughing. This time, Kassquit heard no bitterness in his voice. He added, “You and I are part of the default setting for Tosevites, after all.”

  “The default setting?” Kassquit wondered if she’d heard correctly, and also if Coffey had used the Race’s language correctly.

  He made the affirmative gesture. He meant what he’d said, whether it was correct or not. Then he explained: “Most Tosevites have dark brown eyes and black hair. Skin color can vary from a dark pinkish-beige like Tom de la Rosa through Tosevites like you to those a little darker than I am, but the hair and eyes stay the same. The default setting, you see? Only in the northwestern part of the main continental mass did Tosevites with very pale skins, light eyes, and yellow or reddish hair evolve. They have colonized widely—they were the ones who developed technological civilization on our planet—but they hatched in a limited area.”

  “The default setting.” Kassquit said it again, thoughtfully this time. “This makes me one of the majority?”

  “As far as Tosevites are concerned, it certainly does.” Coffey made the affirmative gesture. “You were hatched in China, I believe, and there are more Chinese than any other kind of Tosevite.”