Homeward Bound

by Harry Turtledove

  No matter how dedicated an academic he was, he couldn’t write all the time. When he went down to the refectory for a snack one afternoon, he found Trir there ahead of him. The tour guide was in a foul temper. “Those Big Uglies!” she said.

  A couple of Tosevites sat in the refectory, though some distance away. Trir made not the slightest effort to keep her voice down. “What is the trouble with them?” Ttomalss asked. He spoke quietly, hoping to lead by example.

  A forlorn hope—Trir didn’t seem to notice the example he set. “What is the trouble?” she echoed at the top of her lung. “They are the most insulting creatures ever hatched!”

  “They insulted you?” Ttomalss asked. “I hope you did nothing to cause it.”

  “No, not me,” Trir said impatiently. “They have insulted Home.”

  “How did they do that? Why did they do that?” Ttomalss asked.

  “Why? Because they are barbarous Big Uglies, that is why.” Trir still did nothing to keep her voice down. “How? They had the nerve to complain about the lovely weather Sitneff enjoys, and that all the architecture here looks the same. As if it should not! We build buildings the right way, so they look the way they should.”

  “I have some sympathy, at least in the abstract, for their complaints about the weather. It is warmer here than it is on Tosev 3. What is comfortable for us is less so for them,” Ttomalss said.

  “I should say so!” Trir exclaimed. “The air conditioners they brought down from this new ship of theirs chill their rooms until I think I am back at the South Pole, or maybe somewhere beyond it.”

  Ttomalss tried to figure out what on Home might be beyond the South Pole. He gave it up as a bad job. Trir didn’t care whether she was logical. Ttomalss said, “You see? You dislike the weather they prefer as much as they dislike ours.”

  “But ours is proper and normal.” Trir was not the sort to think that several billion years of separate evolution could produce different choices. She judged everything from the simplest of perspectives: her own.

  “As for architecture, they have more variety than we do,” Ttomalss said. “They enjoy change for its own sake.”

  “I told you they were barbarians.” As if sure she’d made a decisive point, Trir got up and stormed out of the refectory.

  Ttomalss sighed. Trir came closer to the average member of the Race in the street than any other male or female he knew. Her reaction to the Big Uglies wasn’t encouraging. How would the Race react to Tosevite tourists here on Home? Could simple dislike spark trouble where politics didn’t?

  The tour guide hurried back into the refectory, as angry as when she’d left it. She pointed a clawed forefinger at Ttomalss. “And the horrible creatures had the nerve to say we were backward! Backward!” she added, and stormed out again.

  “Did they?” Ttomalss said, but he was talking to Trir’s retreating tailstump.

  His eye turrets swung to the Big Uglies in their specially made chairs. They’d paid no attention to Trir’s outburst. Did that mean they hadn’t understood it or hadn’t heard it? He didn’t think so, not for a moment. It meant they were being diplomatic, which was more than Trir could say. Who was the barbarian, then?

  Ttomalss’ head started to ache. He hadn’t wanted that thought right now. Whether he’d wanted it or not, he’d got it.

  So the Big Uglies thought Home was backward? Had the Americans from the Admiral Peary presumed to say such a thing, Ttomalss would have been as furious as Trir. The Tosevites from the Commodore Perry . . . Hadn’t they earned the right? From a Tosevite perspective, Home probably was a backward place. But it had proved it could prosper and stay peaceful for tens of millennia. If the Big Uglies dragged their competing not-empires and empires and the Empire into a string of ruinous wars, what price progress?

  The psychologist could see what the price of progress would be: higher than anyone in his right mind wanted to pay.

  But, now, he could also see what the price of backwardness was. Having moved forward technologically at such a slow pace over the millennia, the Race was vulnerable to a hard-charging species like the Big Uglies. With hindsight, that was obvious. But no one here had imagined a species like the Big Uglies could exist. We knew ourselves, and we knew the Rabotevs and Hallessi, who are like us in most ways, and we extrapolated that all intelligent species would be similar. That was reasonable. Based on the data we had, it was logical.

  And oh, how wrong it was!

  He glumly finished his food and left the refectory. No histrionics from him. His swiveling eye turrets noted the Big Uglies turning their heads so their eyes could follow him out. Oh, yes, they’d heard what Trir had to say to him, all right.

  Escaping the hotel was a relief, as it often was. He walked down the street toward the public telephone he’d used before. Every time he passed a male or female wearing a fuzzy wig or what the Big Uglies called a T-shirt, he wanted to shout. Members of the Race had taken to imitating Tosevites out of amusement. Would they keep on doing it now that the Tosevites were no longer amusing but powerful?

  He thought the Race’s power was the main reason so many Big Uglies on Tosev 3 had shaved their heads and started wearing body paint that showed ranks to which they were not entitled. Would power attract more males and females here now that the situation was reversing? He wouldn’t have been surprised. Monitoring such things would make an interesting experiment—for someone else.

  When he got to the phone, he swung his eye turrets in all directions. If that ginger-tasting female and her hoodlum friends were around, he would take himself elsewhere as fast as he could go. He did not see any of them. Feeling safe because he didn’t, he telephoned Pesskrag. Impatience and worry overwhelmed the careful logic of a few days before.

  The phone hissed several times in his hearing diaphragm. He was afraid he would have to record a message. But then she answered: “This is Pesskrag. I greet you.”

  “And I greet you. This is Ttomalss,” he said.

  “Ah. Hello, Senior Researcher,” the physicist said. “Let me tell you right out of the eggshell, we have made no dramatic breakthroughs since the last time I talked with you.”

  “All right.” Ttomalss might have been hoping for such a breakthrough, but he hadn’t counted on one. He gave himself that much credit, anyhow. Science seldom worked so conveniently. “I hope you have not gone backwards, though.”

  “Well, no, or I also hope not,” Pesskrag answered. “We may even have taken one or two tiny steps forward. Once we devise some new experiments, we will have a better notion of whether we have. We have opened a door and entered a new room. So far, it is a dark room. We are trying not to trip over the furniture.”

  “The Big Uglies charged all the way through to the other side,” Ttomalss said. “Why can we not do the same?”

  “It is less simple than you think,” Pesskrag said. “What we have are only the early hints that appeared in the Tosevite literature. I gather the Big Uglies stopped publishing after that. We have to reconstruct what they did after they stopped giving us hints. No matter how provocative the early experiments, this is not an easy matter. We do not want to waste time going down blind alleys.”

  “And so we waste time being thorough,” Ttomalss said.

  The physicist let out an angry hiss. “I fear I am wasting time talking to you, Senior Researcher. Good day.” She broke the connection.

  As Ttomalss was unhappily walking back to the hotel, a male wearing the body paint of a bus repairer accosted him. “Hello, friend,” the stranger said, so heartily that Ttomalss’ suspicions kindled at once. “Want to buy some ginger?”

  “If you do not mind selling to an officer of the police,” Ttomalss answered. The repairmale disappeared in a hurry. Ttomalss wished he were a police officer. He would have been glad to arrest the petty criminal.

  Kassquit was standing in the hotel lobby when Ttomalss came in. “I greet you, superior sir,” she said, sketching the posture of respect.

  “And I greet you,�
� he said. “I hope you are feeling well?”

  “I am as well as can be expected, anyhow,” Kassquit answered. “This new Tosevite physician says the same thing Dr. Blanchard did—my gravidity seems normal to them, however nasty it is for me.”

  “How are you emotionally?” Ttomalss said. “You do seem less distressed at Frank Coffey’s departure than you did when Jonathan Yeager first returned to Tosev 3.”

  “I am less distressed,” she said. “Most of the time I am, anyhow. My moods do swing. The wild Big Uglies say this has to do with hormone shifts during gravidity. But I have experience now that I did not have when Jonathan Yeager left me. And Frank Coffey may come back, where Jonathan Yeager entered into that permanent mating contract. So yes, I remain more hopeful than I was then.”

  “Good. I am glad to hear it. Whatever you may think, I have done my best to raise you so that you would become a fully independent person,” Ttomalss said. “I know I have made mistakes. I think that is inevitable when raising someone of another species. I am sorry for it,” Ttomalss said.

  “Your biggest mistake might have been to try to raise someone of another species at all,” Kassquit said. “I understand why you did it. The wild Big Uglies did the same thing. No doubt you and they learned a great deal. That still does not make it easy for the individuals who have to go through it.”

  When she’d been angry before, she’d said worse things to him—and about him. “I am afraid it is too late to change that now,” Ttomalss said. “For what has happened to you, you have done very well.” Kassquit didn’t quarrel with that, which left him more relieved than he’d thought it would.

  The shuttlecraft’s rockets roared. Deceleration shoved up at Karen Yeager. The pilot said, “Final approach now. The rockets are radar-controlled. They fire automatically, and nothing can go wrong . . . go wrong . . . go wrong . . . go wrong. . . .”

  On the couch beside Karen‘s, Jonathan grunted. “Funny,” he said. “Funny like a crutch.”

  Karen nodded. That took effort. After one-tenth g and weightlessness, she felt heavy as lead weighing more than she normally would. The rockets fell silent. Three soft bumps meant the shuttlecraft’s landing struts had touched the ground. Earth. One Earth gravity. Normal weight. Karen still felt heavy as lead. She said, “I could use that funny crutch right now.”

  “You said it,” Sam Yeager agreed from beyond Jonathan.

  “Are you all right?” she asked him. He was spry, no doubt about it, but he wasn’t a young man. What was hard on her and Jonathan had to be worse for him.

  “I’ll do,” he answered. “We had to twist their arms to get them to let me come back here. I’ll be darned if I’ll give ’em the satisfaction of keeling over the minute I get home.”

  “There you go, Dad!” Jonathan said.

  The pilot undogged the hatch and flipped it open. The air that came into the shuttlecraft was damp and cool and smelled of the sea, the way it usually did around the Los Angeles International Air- and Spaceport. Karen smiled before she even knew she was doing it. To her, this was the feel and smell of home. She and Jonathan had grown up in the South Bay, only a few miles from L.A. International. “All ashore that’s going ashore,” the pilot said, determined to be a comedian.

  “I’m not going first this time,” Sam Yeager said. “If I fall off the ladder, I want you youngsters to catch me.” Maybe he was trying to be funny, too. More likely, he was kidding on the square.

  “Ladies first,” Jonathan said, so Karen took the ladder down to the tarmac. Jonathan followed a moment later. “Whew!” he said when he got to the bottom; full gravity was pressing on, and oppressing, him, too. His father descended then. Karen tensed to help Sam if he had any trouble, but he didn’t. If anything, he stood more easily than she and Jonathan did.

  “Well, well,” he said. “We’ve got a welcoming committee. Only thing I don’t see is the brass band.”

  Karen didn’t see a brass band, either. What she did see were cops and soldiers all around, pistols and rifles at the ready. The soldiers’ uniforms looked something like the ones she’d known in 1994, but only something. The same applied to their weapons. A captain—her rank badge hadn’t changed, anyway—who surely hadn’t been born in 1994 came up to the Yeagers. “Please come with me, folks,” she said.

  “Like we’ve got a choice,” Jonathan said.

  She gave him a reproachful look. “Do you really want to stand on the cement for the rest of the day?” She added an interrogative cough.

  “Since you put it that way, no,” Karen said. “Just don’t go too fast. We’ve been light for a while.”

  The shuttlecraft terminal was a lot bigger and fancier than Karen remembered. Some of the columns supporting things looked as if they’d fall down in a good-sized earthquake. Karen hoped that meant building techniques had improved, not that people had stopped worrying about quakes.

  She and her husband and her father-in-law didn’t have much luggage. Customs officials pounced on what they did have. “We’re going to irradiate this,” one of them declared.

  “For God’s sake, why?” Karen asked.

  “Who knows what sort of creatures you’re bringing back from Home?” the woman answered.

  “Isn’t that locking the barn door after the horse is gone?” Sam asked.

  “We don’t think so,” the customs inspector replied. “The Lizards have brought in what they wanted here. That’s been bad enough. But who knows what sort of fungi or pest eggs you’re carrying? We don’t want to find out. And so—into the X-ray machine everything goes.”

  “Do you want us to take off what we’re wearing?” Karen inquired.

  She intended it for sarcasm, but the inspector turned and started talking with her boss. After a moment, she turned back and nodded. “Yes, I think you had better do that. You come with me, Mrs. Yeager.” A couple of male inspectors took charge of Jonathan and Sam.

  That’ll teach me to ask questions when I don’t really want to know the answers, Karen thought. She stripped and sat draped in a towel till they deigned to give her back her clothes. She half expected to see smoke rising from her shoes when she finally did get them back, but they seemed unchanged. The inspector led her out of the waiting room. Her husband and father-in-law emerged from another one five minutes later.

  “Boy, that was fun,” Jonathan said.

  “Wasn’t it just?” his father agreed. “Are we all right now?” he asked one of the inspectors riding herd on him.

  “We think so, sir,” the man answered seriously. “We’re going to take the chance, anyhow.” He sounded like a judge reluctantly letting some dangerous characters out on parole.

  Signs and painted arrows led the Yeagers to the reception area. Waiting there were more cops and soldiers. Some of them were holding reporters at bay, which seemed a worthwhile thing to do. Others kept a wary eye on Karen and Jonathan and Sam. What do they think we’ll do? Karen wondered. This time, she didn’t ask; somebody might have told her.

  Also waiting in the reception area were two men about halfway between Jonathan and Sam in age and two Lizards. Karen saw that the Lizards were Mickey and Donald a heartbeat before she realized the two men had to be her sons. She’d known time had marched on for them. She’d known, yes, but she hadn’t known. Now the knowledge hit her in the belly.

  It hit Richard and Bruce at the same time, and just about as hard. They both seemed to go weak in the knees for a moment before they hurried forward. “Mom? Dad? Grandpa?” They sounded disbelieving. Mickey and Donald followed them.

  Then they were all embracing, people and Lizards alike. Tears ran down Karen’s face, and not hers alone. Everybody kept saying things like, “My God!” and, “I don’t believe it!” and, “I never thought I’d see the day!”

  “Where are the grandchildren? Where are the great-grandchildren?” Karen asked.

  “Add a generation for me, please,” Sam said, and everybody laughed.

  “They’re at my house,” Bruce answered. “I�
��m living in Palos Verdes, south of where your house was.”

  Sam pointed at Donald. “You have a lot to answer for, buster.”

  “They drugged me,” Donald said. “They held a gun to my head. They waved money under my nose. How was I supposed to tell them no?”

  “He always was a ham,” Mickey said sadly.

  “You always were a bore,” Donald retorted. “And they always liked you best.”

  “We did not!” Karen, Jonathan, and Sam all said it at the same time. Karen and Jonathan added emphatic coughs.

  Donald’s face couldn’t show much expression, but his body language did. What it showed was scorn. “I pretend to be human better than you people pretend to be Lizards,” he said.

  “You’ve had more practice,” Karen said mildly.

  Bruce said, “Let’s go to the cars, shall we? We can wrangle about this some more when we get back to my house. The kids will want to get in on it and throw rocks, too.” He sounded more weary than amused. How often had this argument played itself out—or, more likely, gone round and round without getting anywhere? It’s a family. Of course it has squabbles, Karen thought.

  Two different sets of bodyguards formed up around them as they went to the parking lot. One bunch belonged to Donald. Celebrities had needed protection from their fans in Karen’s day, too; she wasn’t surprised to see that hadn’t changed. The other contingent kept an eye on her father-in-law. That worried her. The two groups of hard-faced men and women affected not to notice each other.

  Cars reminded her much more of the ones she’d seen on Home than those she remembered from before she went on ice. The designs were simpler, more sensible, less ornate. “Are any gasoline-burners left?” she asked. Bruce shook his head. Richard held his nose. Karen wasn’t surprised. The cleaner air had made her suspect as much. She hadn’t been quite sure, though. With its constant sea breeze, the airport had always had some of the best air in the L.A. basin.