Homeward Bound

by Harry Turtledove

  In came Lieutenant General Healey. That did more to spoil Johnson’s appetite than remembering that he was eating a rat sandwich. How many steaks could you carve off of Healey? Or would he prove inedibly tough? That was Johnson’s guess.

  The commandant hadn’t missed any meals. His face was full. His body was round. If what he ate ever bothered him, he didn’t let it show. Johnson eyed him again, in a different way this time. Healey was bound to have even more pay saved up than Mickey Flynn did. But with that scowl on the commandant’s face, all the money in the world wouldn’t turn him into a sugar daddy.

  Johnson quickly looked away when Healey’s radar gaze swung toward him. Not quickly enough, though—the commandant got his food and then glided toward a handhold near the one Johnson was using. “Well?” Healey asked. “Why are you staring at me? Is my fly unzipped?”

  “No, sir,” Johnson said tonelessly. The trousers they wore didn’t have flies.

  “Well, then? I’m not Lana Turner, either.” Healey hopelessly dated himself with that crack. Johnson, also hopelessly dated, got it with no trouble. Did anyone on the Commodore Perry even know who Lana Turner was? They leered at the lovely Rita these days—not that she wasn’t worth leering at herself.

  “No, sir,” Johnson said again. Leering at Healey for any reason was a really scary thought.

  “Then keep your eyes to yourself,” the commandant snapped. “The only other reason you’d stare at me that way is to figure out where to stick the knife.” He took a big bite of his sandwich.

  But Johnson shook his head. “Oh, no, sir.”

  “Ha!” Healey jeered. “A likely story.”

  “It’s true, sir,” Johnson insisted. “I don’t need to figure it out. I’ve known for a long time.” They eyed each other in perfect mutual loathing.

  No matter what Kassquit had told Ttomalss about her emotional state, she clung to Frank Coffey now. “I hope you come back!” she said, and used an emphatic cough.

  “So do I,” he answered, and used one of his own. “I will do everything I can. I want to see you again, and I want to see our hatchling. And if I have trouble coming back for any reason, perhaps you and the hatchling can come to Tosev 3. You and that little male or female are bridges between the Empire and Tosevites.”

  “Truth,” Kassquit said. Tears ran down her cheeks. “I wish you were not going!”

  “We both knew I would, sooner or later,” Coffey said. “The coming of the Commodore Perry has made it sooner, that is all.” He shook his head. “I did not think I would be leaving as a sire, though. I will say that. It makes things more difficult. . . . Do something for me?”

  “If I can,” she said. “What is it?”

  “Try not to hate me after I am gone.”

  “I would not do that!” she said.

  “I hope not,” he said. “Sometimes, though, after these things end, it happens. It is a way of telling yourself, He is gone, so he could not have been any good while he was here.”

  Remembering how she’d felt after Jonathan Yeager returned to the surface of Tosev 3, and especially after he formed his permanent mating alliance with Karen, Kassquit made the affirmative gesture. She saw how doing as Frank Coffey said might make her feel better. In a small voice, she told him, “I will try not to.”

  “Good,” Coffey said. “And one other thing. When the hatchling comes, try to let it get to know both members of the Race and wild Tosevites. There will be a good many males and females from the Commodore Perry here. Their physician no doubt did not expect to take care of a hatchling, but I think he will do a good job. He probably knows more than Dr. Blanchard does, just because the state of the art has moved forward since she went into cold sleep.”

  He said such things as if they were as natural as sunrise or as stars coming out at night. (Even as Kassquit had that thought, she made the negative gesture. She’d grown up in space. There, the stars were always out. She’d had to get used to their being gone during the day.) To the wild Big Uglies, change and technical advances were natural. Were that untrue, they never would have built the Commodore Perry. For a whole swarm of reasons, Kassquit wished they hadn’t.

  “I will do that,” she said. “The hatchling will be a citizen of the Empire, but it will know more of its biological heritage than I ever did. And I will do my best to make sure that it does not become an experimental animal, the way I did.” She added an emphatic cough to her words.

  “Good.” Frank Coffey caressed her and kissed her. “Believe me, I like your biological heritage.” He had a way of showing enthusiasm without an emphatic cough. They lay down together. The last time, Kassquit thought. She did her best to make the most of it.

  The next morning, the American Tosevites from the Admiral Peary got into the bus that would take them to the shuttlecraft port. Atvar got on the bus, too; he was going to Tosev 3 as final proof that the Commodore Perry was what the wild big Uglies claimed it was. No one on Home really doubted it any more. The Tosevites on the new starship already knew about things speed-of-light transmission from Tosev 3 was just now revealing here. But the Race wanted to see for itself, and the Big Uglies had agreed.

  Shiplord Straha and Shuttlecraft Pilot Nesseref also boarded the bus. They would not be going back to Tosev 3. They were colonists no more. The American Tosevites could not be sure they would not deliver a message ordering Kirel and Reffet to start a last desperate war.

  And Kassquit got on, too. Up till the last moment, she had not been sure whether she would. But she did. She would stretch things out to the very end. If that made the hurt that would follow worse, then it did, that was all.

  Much of the talk aboard the bus was in English. Even Straha spoke the language well. I should have learned it, Kassquit thought once more. My hatchling will learn it. A Tosevite should know a Tosevite language.

  After a little while, Frank Coffey told her, “I am sorry. This must be boring for you.”

  “I wish it were boring,” Kassquit said. “I do not understand what you are saying, but that is not the same thing. I do not know how long it will be before I see you again. I do not know if I will ever see you again. It is hard, but it is not boring.”

  “I am sorry,” he repeated. “This is a chance to go home again.”

  “I understand,” Kassquit said. “I do understand. But it is not easy for me whether I understand or not.”

  Atvar and Straha got into a shouting match, which distracted everyone else. They seemed to be trying to decide which of them was the bigger idiot. By the way they were behaving, it was a contest they both wanted to lose. Atvar had made it very plain he did not like Straha. Straha seemed to be doing his best to show it was mutual.

  “Enough!” Nesseref exclaimed after a while. “You will scandalize the Big Uglies!”

  “Truth,” Atvar said with such dignity as he could muster. “It is enough, Straha.”

  Straha only laughed at that—a huge, rude, tongue-wagging laugh. “You say that because you know you are in the wrong. There is no other reason. If you thought you were right, you would tell me so.”

  “I do think I am right, and in a moment I will put my toeclaws up your cloaca to prove it,” Atvar retorted.

  “I am not afraid of you,” Straha said.

  “Enough!” That wasn’t Nesseref—it was Sam Yeager. “Both of you are my friends, and both of you are acting like hatchlings.”

  The two prominent males hadn’t really listened to the shuttlecraft pilot, any more than they’d listened to each other. They did heed the departing American ambassador. Straha said, “Perhaps this is not the ideal time or place.”

  “Perhaps it is not,” Atvar agreed. “After I return . . .”

  “After you return, I will be at your service,” Straha said. “When you get to Tosev 3, you will also see the other ways the wild Big Uglies have got ahead of us. If we had only done as I wanted—”

  “Enough!” This time, all the American Tosevites shouted it together. A volley of emphatic coughs rang o
ut.

  When they got to the shuttlecraft port, the row threatened to break out anew. The American Tosevites got between the two angry males of the Race. Jonathan Yeager spoke to Atvar. “I am bigger than you are, Exalted Fleetlord, and my sire is bigger than the shiplord. Between the two of us, I hope we can keep the two of you from disgracing yourselves and the Race.”

  “I think you have just called us barbarians,” Atvar said mournfully.

  “What have you been acting like?” Jonathan Yeager asked.

  After that, Atvar and Straha really did subside. Embarrassment was a weapon more potent than many. Females and males in the body paint of Security examined everything that would be going up on the shuttlecraft. “We cannot be too careful,” they said, over and over.

  A dark-scaled Rabotev pilot awaited them, eyestalks turning this way and that. Nesseref went up to him—or perhaps her—and started talking shop. Kassquit turned to Frank Coffey. “Do you see? They still worry that a member of the Race might smuggle ginger.”

  He found it less funny than she did. “If lots of our ships are going to come from Tosev 3 to Home, they are going to have to worry about it. Either that, or they will have to start to accept ginger, the way the Race has on Tosev 3.”

  “More changes,” Kassquit said sadly.

  “More changes,” Coffey agreed.

  A male whose body paint proclaimed him a security chief bawled, “Final check! All boarding the shuttlecraft, form a line here!” He pointed, reveling in his petty power. Along with Atvar, all the Tosevites except Kassquit formed a line there. The security male’s eye turrets swung toward her. “What about you?”

  “I am not going. I am a citizen of the Empire,” she answered. The male started to challenge her, but Atvar spoke quietly to him. He hissed in irritation. Then he shrugged, one of the few gestures the Race and Tosevites shared.

  Frank Coffey stepped out of line. The security male hissed again. Coffey ignored him. He came up to Kassquit for one last embrace. “Take care of yourself,” he said. “I will be back if I possibly can.”

  “I know. I believe you,” Kassquit said. In a way, she was lucky. She had no idea how many Tosevite males had made that same promise to gravid Tosevite females without the slightest intention of keeping it. Some, of course, did, but not all. She added, “I hope everything goes well for you.”

  “So do I,” he said, and smiled what even she recognized as a tight little smile. Here he was—here all the American Big Uglies were—trusting to a technology that was anything but proved. The Race was more sensible, and would never have allowed anything so risky. That was one reason the Big Uglies now had faster-than-light travel, while the Race had never even looked for it very hard. The rest of the Americans and Atvar started out of the terminal building and toward the shuttlecraft. Frank Coffey let Kassquit go. “I have to leave.”

  “I know,” she said again. I will not cry in front of him. That was her last determination. She managed to hold on to it as he let the security male wave a metal-detecting wand around him one more time. Then he hurried after the rest of the wild Big Uglies. The door to the field closed, and Kassquit dissolved in tears. The males and females of the Race in the terminal stared at her. They had no idea what to make of the display, or what to do about it.

  She wished for a soft cloth to wipe her snout. It always dripped mucus when she cried; the plumbing between it and her eyes was cross-connected in some strange way. Here, the back of her forearm had to do, as it did for her eyes. When her vision finally cleared, she found Straha standing in front of her. She started to bend into the posture of respect.

  Straha made the negative gesture. “No need to bother with that foolishness, not for me,” he said. “I am only a writer these days, not a shiplord. I just wanted to tell you that you have turned out better than those who took you have any right to expect.”

  Kassquit did not feel better. She felt worse. She’d known she would, but knowing didn’t help. She tried to think of something that might make her less miserable. To her surprise, she did: “When you were on Tosev 3, superior sir, did you ever meet the males called, uh, Donald and Mickey?” She pronounced the strange names with care.

  Now Straha used the affirmative gesture. “I did. I can see why you would want to know. They are also luckier than they might have been, but they make very strange males of the Race. Their mouthparts can form all the sounds our language uses, but they have accents anyway—they are used to speaking English. They know of you, by the way. I have heard them say they would like to meet you.”

  “I would like to meet them, too,” Kassquit said. “That is why I asked.” The shuttlecraft took off, riding an almost colorless plume of hydrogen flame. Despite the soundproofing, a dull roar filled the terminal. Misery filled Kassquit’s liver. She burst into tears again.

  * * *

  The chamber Sam Yeager got aboard the Commodore Perry was cramped but comfortable. The starship accelerated out of Home’s solar system at a tenth of a g, so he didn’t have to get used to weightlessness again. “We’re heading off to where space flattens out,” one of the crew, a woman, told him casually. That was evidently supposed to mean something, but it didn’t, not to him.

  He liked the little bit of weight he had. It was enough to keep his feet on the floor and liquids in glasses, though they’d slop out if he raised or lowered them too suddenly. It also made him feel light and quick, which was something he hadn’t felt for years—maybe not since that broken ankle ruined his chances of making the big leagues.

  Even better than the low weight was the lower temperature. He’d spent too long in air that never got below the eighties and was often a lot warmer than that. As Southern Californians were fond of saying, it was a dry heat. That made it more tolerable than its Alabama equivalent would have been. Even so, there was a difference between tolerable and pleasant.

  He rediscovered long pants and long sleeves aboard the Commodore Perry. He also thanked God that he wasn’t a nineteenth-century British diplomat, doomed to wear full Victorian formal finery no matter what tropical hellhole (Washington, D.C., for instance) he found himself in. Those nineteenth-century British diplomats had died like flies. He suspected the Americans on Home would have done the same if they’d gone around in tuxedo jackets and heavy wool trousers.

  The most he ever said to any of the crew was, “It could be worse. If you don’t believe me, ask your colleagues on Home when you get back there.” He didn’t even add an emphatic cough.

  He reveled in fried chicken and real hen’s eggs and orange juice and pineapple and ice cream and string beans and carrots and pork chops and mashed potatoes and coffee and Coca-Cola and all the other familiar things he’d done without for too long. Quite a bit of what he’d eaten on Home had been tolerable. Some of it had been pretty good. But all of it had been exotic—literally so, in that it and he had evolved separately for several billion years. Part of him knew that every time he took a bite.

  Little by little, he began to realize he was almost as alien to the crew of the Commodore Perry as smoked zisuili ribs were to his taste buds and digestive tract. That wasn’t just because of what he’d done in the 1960s and what had happened to Indianapolis, either. Some of them thought he was an ogre for that. Others didn’t: like him, they saw Lizards, no less than human beings, as people.

  But he remembered the days before the conquest fleet came to Earth. He not only remembered them, he’d been shaped by them. To the crew of the Commodore Perry, that made him a Neanderthal. The very language they spoke was subtly different from his. He’d started noticing that with Major Nichols. Oh, the crew understood what he said, but the way he said it often made them smile. And he mostly understood what they said, too—but only because he was also fluent in the Race’s language. A lot of it wouldn’t have been English when he went into cold sleep.

  Such changes had already started before he went on ice. People had begun peppering their sentences with emphatic and interrogative coughs and using them by thems
elves—something the Lizards always found barbarous. But they’d gone further since. Words and phrases from the Race’s language got treated as if they were English. By all the signs, they were English now. Even word order occasionally shifted.

  The Commodore Perry’s crew didn’t notice they were doing anything out of the ordinary. “We just talk,” one of them said. As far as she was concerned, the emphatic cough she added was as much a part of the language as the words that had gone before it.

  Little by little, Sam realized he was the one who was out of the ordinary. Had Shakespeare read Hemingway, the Bard would have felt the same jolt. He would obviously have been reading English. He would have been able to make sense of most of it. Just as obviously, it wouldn’t have been the language he was used to using. Most of the time, people didn’t notice how language changed around them, because they got the changes one by one, piece by piece. They all fell in Sam’s lap at once; he didn’t have the time he needed to get used to them.

  He wasn’t the only one from the Admiral Peary to feel the same way. “It’s a good thing we didn’t have to go back into cold sleep,” Dr. Blanchard said at supper one evening. “We’d be like ancient Romans trying to deal with Italian.”

  Sam suspected they might be like Romans trying to deal with the modern world in other ways, too. He didn’t even try to use some of the controls in his room because he couldn’t figure out what they were supposed to do. One of Caesar’s legionaries behind the wheel of a Chevy could have been no more confused.

  When he said as much, Jonathan asked, “Why haven’t you asked one of the crew about them?”

  “Because I don’t want to look like a rube,” Sam answered. “Have you asked? What is that button with the gold star? What does it do? Does it change the air conditioning, or is it the emergency switch? There’s no label on it. You’re just supposed to know, and I don’t.”