What she’d intended for consolation seemed to have the opposite effect. Ttomalss twitched again. Then he spun and hurried back into the hotel, leaving her alone in the darkness outside. She couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so rude. He was worried about something, all right—something to do with the Big Uglies and their experiments.
Whatever it was, Kassquit realized she probably wouldn’t find out any time soon. If Ttomalss wouldn’t give her the information, no one would. She thought she was entitled to it. If higher-ups in the Race disagreed with her, what could she do about it? Nothing she could see.
She followed Ttomalss back into the hotel. He wasn’t waiting in the lobby for her. He’d gone upstairs—probably to report on her curiosity to some of those higher-ups. Kassquit shrugged. She couldn’t do anything about that, either.
Ttomalss peered out of his hotel window into the night. That was not the ideal way to look at the stars. In a crowded town like Sitneff, there was no ideal way to look at them. Even for an urban setting, pressing your snout against some none-too-clean glass was less than optimal.
But Tosev was bright enough for him to spot in spite of everything. Just a sparkling point of light . . . Strange to think how something that small and lovely could cause so much trouble.
The psychologist made the negative gesture. It wasn’t Tosev’s fault. It was that of the annoying creatures infesting the star’s third planet. If not for them, if not for that miserable world, Tosev would be . . . just another star, brighter than most but not bright enough to seem really special.
If. If not. But things were as they were. One way or another, the Race was going to have to deal with the Big Uglies. If that meant exterminating them, then it did. If the Race didn’t exterminate the Big Uglies, weren’t the Tosevites likely to do it to them first?
A star moving across the sky . . . But that wasn’t a star, only a warning light on an airplane. It was deep in the red to Ttomalss’ eyes. The Big Uglies might not have been able to see it at all. Their eyes could sense hues past deep blue, but did not reach as far into the red as the Race’s did. Tosev was a hotter, brighter star than the sun. Tosevites were adapted to its light, as the Race was adapted to that of the sun. Hallessi, now, had names for colors at the red end of the spectrum that the Race could not see. Their star was cooler and redder than the sun, let alone Tosev.
With a sorrowful hiss, Ttomalss looked away from the window. The authorities on Tosev 3 had put him into cold sleep and sent him back to Home to work toward peace with the wild Big Uglies. He’d done everything he could toward that end, too. And what had it got him? Only the growing certainty that war was on the way.
He’d seen war on Tosev 3, and from orbit around the Big Uglies’ home world. He tried to imagine that coming to the surface of Home. Peace had prevailed here since the planet was unified under the Empire: for more than a hundred thousand years. Males and females of the Race took it for granted. So did Rabotevs and Hallessi; they’d been freed from war since their worlds were brought into the Empire.
But if war was unimaginable to citizens of the Empire, it was anything but to the Big Uglies. They took it as much for granted as members of the Race took peace. And, because they did, responsible members of the Race also had to.
If war came now, it would ruin Tosev 3 and probably devastate the worlds of the Empire. What could be worse than that? The trouble was, Ttomalss feared he knew the answer. If war came later, it might only devastate Tosev 3 while ruining the worlds of the Empire.
How fast were the Big Uglies progressing? What did they know that Pesskrag and her colleagues were trying so hard to find out? Even more to the point, what did they know that Felless and other members of the Race on Tosev 3 didn’t know they knew? Whatever it was, was it enough to tip the balance of power between the Empire and the independent Tosevites? If it wasn’t now, would it be in a few years? In a few hundred years? What were the odds?
Would the independent Tosevites go to war with one another, and not with the Race? They’d been fighting one another when the conquest fleet arrived. Since then, the Race had seemed a bigger threat to them than they had to one another. But that wasn’t necessarily a permanent condition. With the Big Uglies, no condition was necessarily permanent.
That went a long way toward making them as dangerous as they were.
So many questions. So few answers. Or maybe the answers were there on Tosev 3, but light’s laggard speed simply hadn’t brought them Home yet. Ttomalss let out another unhappy hiss. There were times when he wished Felless had never passed on the information she’d found.
The American Big Uglies had a saying: if stupidity is happiness, it is foolish to be intelligent. That was how it went in the language of the Race, anyhow; Ttomalss suspected it lost something in the translation. Whatever truth it held depended on the status of the first clause—which suddenly seemed truer to the psychologist than it ever had before.
Ttomalss started to telephone Pesskrag, then stopped and made the negative gesture. He had almost been stupid, to say nothing of unintelligent, himself. The American Tosevites had shown they could monitor telephone calls inside the hotel. He didn’t want them listening to anything he had to say to the physicist. He used an emphatic cough by itself, which showed how upset he was. No, he didn’t want that at all.
He rode down to the lobby, and then went out into the night. His mouth fell open in a laugh. He did not have to worry about any of the Big Uglies sneaking after him. They would be as inconspicuous as an azwaca in a temple dedicated to the spirits of Emperors past. No, more so—an azwaca, at least, would belong to this world.
Ttomalss relished being one ordinary male among many ordinary males and females. This was where he belonged. These other members of the Race—even the occasional less than ordinary ones wearing false hair or wrappings—were his own kind. He might have spent many years studying the Big Uglies, but he knew them only intellectually. His liver belonged with his own.
He found a public telephone by a market whose sign boasted it was open all night. Passersby might hear snatches of his conversation. So what, though? Those snatches would mean nothing to them. If the Tosevites listened to everything he said . . . He made the negative gesture. They wouldn’t. They couldn’t, not now.
Before he could place the call, a skinny female sidled up to him. “Do you want to buy some ginger?” she asked.
He made the negative gesture. “No. Go away.”
“You do not need to get huffy about it. Do you want to buy me some ginger? Then you can smell my pheromones and mate with me.”
“No! Go away!” This time, Ttomalss used an emphatic cough.
“‘No! Go away!’ ” the female echoed mockingly. “You can stuff that right on up your cloaca, too, pal.” She skittered down the street.
He found himself quivering with anger. Ginger was a problem back on Tosev 3, certainly. That was where the stuff came from, so the scope of the problem there wasn’t so surprising. To get his snout rubbed in it here on Home, though, when he’d just stepped away from the hotel for a little while . . . Maybe we really ought to slag the Big Uglies’ home planet. Then we would not have to worry about the herb any more.
Or was that a truth? Wouldn’t clever chemists start synthesizing the active ingredient? Getting rid of the trouble Tosevites caused might be even harder than getting rid of the Tosevites themselves. Somehow, that seemed altogether fitting to Ttomalss.
His fingerclaws poked in Pesskrag’s number. He more than half expected to have to leave a message, but the physicist’s image appeared on the screen. She said, “This is Pesskrag. I greet you.”
“And I greet you. This is Ttomalss.”
“Oh, hello, Senior Researcher. Good to hear from you. I was just thinking of you not long ago, as a matter of fact. What can I do for you?”
“Are you in a place where you can speak without being overheard?”
“Actually, I have had all my calls forwarded here to the laboratory. Some of my coll
eagues may hear what I say, but without their work I would not be able to tell you nearly so much as I can.”
“All right. That will do.” Ttomalss was impressed that she was working into the night. She recognized how important this research was, then. Good. The psychologist said, “I was wondering if you had gained any better idea of how long it might take to translate these new discoveries into real-world engineering.”
“Well, I still cannot tell you I am certain about that,” Pesskrag answered. “I presume you are asking based on the notion that speed counts for more than safety, and that the usual checks and reviews will be abandoned or ignored?”
“Yes, that is right,” Ttomalss agreed.
“My opinion is that it will still be a matter of years, and more of them rather than fewer. No one will walk confidently on this sand. There will be errors and misfortunes, and they will lead to delays. I do not see how they can help leading to delays.”
That only proved she’d never watched Big Uglies in action. They charged right past errors and misfortunes. If those left dead or maimed individuals in their wake—well, so what? To the Tosevites, results counted for more than the process used to obtain them.
Asking the Race to imitate that sort of behavior was probably useless. No, it was bound to be useless. The Race simply did not and could not operate the way the Big Uglies did. Most of the time, Ttomalss thanked the spirits of Emperors past for that. Every once in a while, as now, it made him want to curse.
“Years, you say?” he persisted. “Not centuries?”
“I still say it should be centuries,” Pesskrag replied. “It probably will not be, not with everyone pushing for speed at the expense of quality and safety, but it should be. There are too many variables we do not understand well. There are too many variables we do not understand at all.”
“Very well. I thank you.” Ttomalss broke the connection. He felt slightly reassured, but only slightly. Whatever the Race could do, the Tosevites were bound to be able to do faster. How much faster? That much faster? He despised the idea of preventive war, but. . . .
All of a sudden, he stopped worrying about preventive war. That ginger-peddling female was on her way back. She had two large, unfriendly-looking males with her, one of them particularly bizarre with a mane of yellow hair that had never sprouted from his skin. Ttomalss did not wait to find out if their personalities belied their appearance. He left, in a hurry.
“Hey, buddy, wait! We want to talk to you!” the male with the wig shouted after him.
Ttomalss didn’t wait. He was sure the males—and that unpleasant female—wanted to do something to him. He was just as sure talking wasn’t it. He swung one eye turret back toward them. To his enormous relief, the males weren’t coming after him. The female wasn’t relieved at that. She was furious. She clawed the male with the yellow false hair. He knocked her to the sidewalk. They started fighting.
My own people, Ttomalss thought sadly. How are they any better than Big Uglies when they act like this? But the answer to that was plain enough. They were his. Like them or not, he understood them. He understood them even if they wanted to hit him over the head and steal his valuables.
If the Big Uglies hit him over the head and stole his valuables, they weren’t just robbers. They were alien robbers, which made them a hundred times worse.
And the Big Uglies wanted to hit the whole Race over the head and steal its valuables. Things had been peaceful and stable on Home for so long. It wouldn’t last. It couldn’t last, not any more. Maybe, once the Tosevites were gone for good, peace and stability would return . . . if anything was left of the Empire afterwards.
Existence or not—that is the question. So some Tosevite writer had put it. He’d been dead for hundreds of years, maybe even a thousand; Ttomalss didn’t know as much as he would have liked about Tosevite chronology before the conquest fleet came. But that Big Ugly had got right to the liver of things. If existence for the Race and the Empire seemed more likely after a preventive war, then preventive war there should be. If not, not. Ttomalss feared he knew what the answer was.
Karen Yeager nodded politely to Trir. “I greet you,” she told the tour guide.
“And I greet you,” Trir said, also politely. The female had acted friendly enough lately; it wasn’t close to mating season. Her eye turrets traveled up and down Karen’s length. “I had thought there might be some future in escorting you Tosevites when you come to visit Home. Now I see that is unlikely to be so.”
The hotel lobby was as warm as ever. Looking out through the big plate-glass windows, Karen could see the sun-blasted hills out beyond Sitneff. Despite all that, a chill ran through her. She hoped she was wrong as she asked, “What do you mean?”
“Why, that you Big Uglies probably will not be coming to Home any more, and that I cannot expect to see shiploads of students and travelers. We are going to have to put you in your place, or so everyone says.” Trir took the answer for granted.
More ice walked up Karen’s back. “Who told you that, if I may ask? And what do you mean by putting us in our place?”
“We shall have to make certain you cannot threaten the Race and the Empire.” By Trir’s tone, that would be not only simple but bloodless. She had lived in peace all her life. Home had lived in peace since the Pleistocene. Males and females here had no idea what anything else was like.
Karen did. For better and for worse—more often than not, for worse—Earth’s history was different from Home‘s. And the Race’s soldiers had played no small part in that history since the conquest fleet arrived. “You are talking about a war, about millions—more likely, billions—dying,” Karen said slowly. “I ask you again: who told you war was coming? Please tell me. It may be important.” She used an emphatic cough.
“Everyone around here except maybe you Tosevites seems to think it will come,” Trir replied. “And I do not think it will be as bad as you make it sound. After all, it will be happening a long way away.”
You idiot! Karen didn’t scream that at the Lizard, though she wanted to. She contented herself with making the negative gesture instead. “For one thing, war is no better when it happens to someone else than when it happens to you,” she said, though she knew plenty of humans would have felt otherwise. “For another, I must tell you that you are mistaken.”
“In what way?” Trir asked.
“This war, if there is a war, will ravage the Empire’s worlds as well as Tosev 3. That is a truth.” Karen added another emphatic cough.
“That would be barbaric!” Trir exclaimed, with an emphatic cough of her own.
“Why would it be more barbaric than the other?” Karen asked.
“Because this is the Empire, of course,” Trir answered.
“I see.” Karen hoped the Lizard could hear the acid dripping from her voice. “If you do it to someone else who is far away, it is fine, but it is barbaric if someone else presumes to do it to you right here.”
“I did not say that. I did not mean that. You are confusing things,” Trir said.
“I do not know what you meant. Only you can know that, down deep in the bottom of your liver,” Karen replied. “But I know what you said. I know what I said. And I know one other thing—I know which of us is confused. Please believe me: I am not the one.”
Trir’s tailstump quivered with anger. “I think you have it coming, for telling lies if nothing else.” She stalked away.
Karen felt like throwing something at her. That would have been undiplomatic, no matter how satisfying it might also have been. Karen thought hard about flipping Trir the bird. That would have been undiplomatic, too. She might have got away with it, simply because nobody here was likely to understand what the gesture meant.
And then, in spite of herself, she started to laugh. Could you flip somebody the bird here on Home? Wouldn’t you have to flip her (or even him) the pterodactyl instead?
However much she wanted it to, the laughter wouldn’t stick. That Trir seemed happy war would come wa
s bad enough. That she seemed so sure was worse. And Karen muttered a curse under her breath. She hadn’t got the guide to tell her who among the Lizard higher-ups was so certain war was on the way.
Did that matter? Weren’t all the Lizards acting that way these days? She knew too well that they were. And if they acted that way, they were much more likely to bring it on.
An elevator opened, silently and smoothly. Everything the Race did was silent, smooth, efficient. Next to the Lizards, humans were a bunch of noisy, clumsy barbarians. But if they went down, they’d go down swinging, and the Empire would remember them for a long time—or else go down into blackness with them.
Kassquit came out of the elevator. She waved when she saw Karen in the lobby. She not only waved, she came over to her, saying, “I greet you.”
“And I greet you,” Karen answered cautiously. She and Kassquit still didn’t usually get along. “What can I do for you today?” Would Kassquit be gloating at the prospect of war, too? She never got tired of bragging how she was a citizen of the Empire. As far as Karen was concerned, that was one of the things that made her less than human. She didn’t want to be human, and wished she weren’t.
But now Kassquit said, “If you know any way to keep the peace between your not-empire and the Empire, please speak of it to Sam Yeager and to Fleetlord Atvar. We must do whatever we can to prevent a war.”
“I completely agree with you,” Karen said—and if that wasn’t a surprise, it was close enough for government work. Government work is exactly the problem here, she thought. She went on, “From my perspective, the problem is that the Race thinks war would be more to its advantage than peace.” And how would Kassquit take that?
Kassquit used the affirmative gesture. “Truth. And a truth I do not know how to get around. My superiors are convinced they will have to fight later if they do not fight now, and they will be at a greater disadvantage the longer they delay. By the spirits of Emperors past, they must be addled!”
Karen wondered if they were. Humans progressed faster than Lizards. Both sides could see that. But . . . “If we can destroy each other, what difference does it make who has the fancier weapons? Both sides will be equally dead.”
Homeward Bound Page 54
