Homeward Bound

by Harry Turtledove

  “Sir, the Lizards will search it eight ways from Sunday,” Johnson said. “I want your word of honor in writing, in English and the Race’s language, that I’m not trying to smuggle ginger.”

  “There is no ginger on the scooter.” Healey spoke in a hard, flat voice that defied Johnson to contradict him. Johnson didn’t. He also made no move to leave the commandant’s office. He kept waiting. After some dark mutters, Healey grabbed an indelible pencil—much more convenient in weightlessness than pens, which needed pressurized ink to work—and wrote rapidly. He scaled the sheet of paper to Johnson. It flew through the air with the greatest of ease. “There. Are you satisfied?”

  To fit his personality, Healey should have had handwriting more illegible than a dentist’s. He didn’t; instead, it would have done credit to a third-grade teacher. The commandant’s script in the language of the Race was just as neat. Johnson carefully read both versions. They said what he wanted them to say. Try as he would, he found no weasel words. “Yes, sir. This should do it. I’ll take it with me to the scooter lock.”

  “When they retire this ship, Colonel, I’ll no longer have to deal with the likes of you,” Healey said. “Even growing obsolete has its benefits.”

  “I love you, too, General.” Johnson saluted, then brachiated out of the commandant’s office.

  As usual, he stripped down to T-shirt and shorts so he could put on his spacesuit. When he stuck the folded piece of paper in the waistband of the shorts, the technician on duty at the lock raised an eyebrow. “What’s that?” he asked. “Love letter to a Lizard?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Johnson agreed. “Their eye turrets drive me nuts.” He sighed, as if in longing. The tech snickered.

  After boarding the scooter, he ran through the checklist. The technician had already cleared everything. Johnson did it anyhow. The technician wasn’t going to take the scooter out into hard vacuum, and he was. Everything checked green. He passed the word to the tech, who opened the outer door to the air lock.

  Johnson used the scooter’s attitude jets to ease the little rocketship away from the Admiral Peary. Before firing up the main engine, he called the Horned Akiss to make sure he was expected. Healey hadn’t said word one about that.

  But the answer came back in the language of the Race: “Yes, scooter from the Tosevite starship. We await your arrival. Stop well away from the ship, so that we may inspect you before you enter the air lock.”

  “It shall be done,” Johnson said. That inspection wouldn’t be for ginger. The Lizards would be making sure he wasn’t bringing them a bomb. The Admiral Peary did the same thing when Lizard scooters approached. Nobody really expected trouble now, but nobody took any chances, either.

  He aimed the scooter at the Horned Akiss, then fired the rear motor. Away the little rocket went. He liked nothing better than flying by the seat of his pants, even if he did have radar to help. A burn from the front motor killed the scooter’s velocity and left it hanging in space a couple of miles from the Lizards’ ship. One of their scooters came out to inspect it. “All appears to be in order,” a spacesuited member of the Race radioed to him when they were done. “You may proceed to the Horned Akiss.”

  “I thank you,” Johnson answered. “Can you tell me what this is all about?”

  “Not I,” the Lizard replied. “The commandant will attend to it when you have gone aboard.”

  “Have it your way,” Johnson said. They would anyhow.

  Once in the Horned Akiss’ air lock, he had to get out of his spacesuit. With the heat the Lizards preferred, T-shirt and shorts had a good deal going for them as a uniform. Males and females of the Race went over the spacesuit and the scooter. He showed them Healey’s pledge. One of them said, “Very nice. We will continue the examination even so.” Not worth the paper it’s written on, he thought. If Healey had lied, though, (maybe) they wouldn’t blame the mere pilot so much.

  “Everything appears to be as it should,” a different Lizard said after more than an hour. “We will escort you to Medium Spaceship Commander Henrep’s office.”

  “I thank you,” Johnson said once more. For someone his size, the corridors were narrow, the handholds small and set at awkward intervals. He managed even so.

  When he got to the skipper’s office, he found another Lizard in there with Henrep. The captain said, “Inspector, this is the Tosevite called Glen Johnson. Colonel Johnson, here we have Police Inspector Second Grade Garanpo.”

  “I greet you,” Johnson said, thinking unkind thoughts about Lieutenant General Healey. Healey hadn’t lied to him—oh, no. But even if the scooter didn’t have any ginger aboard it this time, he was still in trouble.

  “And I greet you,” Garanpo said. “I am very glad to make your acquaintance—I certainly am.” He took out a recorder, which escaped from him and floated around till he caught it again. Johnson watched with interest. A clumsy Lizard was out of the ordinary. Having snagged the little gadget, Garanpo went on, “You have flown your scooter to this ship before, is that not a truth?”

  “Yes, that is a truth.” Johnson wished he could deny it.

  “Well, well. So you admit it, then?” the male said.

  “Why should I not? I have done nothing wrong,” Johnson said.

  “Did I say you had?” Inspector Garanpo asked archly. “Now, then—did you ever bring ginger—this herb you Tosevites have—to this ship?”

  “No, and I can prove it,” Johnson answered. I never knew I was bringing it, anyway. He didn’t get into that. As far as he was concerned, the best defense was a good offense: “The proof is, your males and females always inspected the scooter, and you never found any ginger.”

  “Well, that is a truth, just as you say it is,” Garanpo said. “But is it a proof? That may be a different question. If the inspectors were corrupt, they would say they found nothing even if they lied. And did they not find traces of ginger on the scooter from this ship after it was returned from its exchange?”

  “I do not know anything about that, Inspector, so you may claim whatever you please,” Johnson answered. Oh, my, would I have been set up with that one. “If you check your records, you will see I did not bring this ship’s scooter back here.”

  “That is also a truth,” Henrep said. “It is unusual, in that this Tosevite does most of their scooter flying, but it is a truth.”

  “Why did you not fly the scooter that time?” Garanpo asked.

  “Because my commandant ordered someone else to do it,” Johnson answered. Garanpo was welcome to make what he wanted of that.

  “Would your commandant—Healey is the name, is it not?—speak to me about this business?” Garanpo asked. He might act like a clumsy buffoon, but that didn’t mean he was one. Oh, no—it didn’t mean that at all.

  “I cannot say, Inspector,” Johnson replied. “How can I speak for my superior? You would have to ask him.”

  “I have seen that you Tosevites are good at hiding behind one another,” Garanpo observed.

  “Lieutenant General Healey could not hide behind me,” Johnson said, which was literally true—Healey was twice as wide as he was.

  “Most unsatisfactory. Most unsatisfactory. I will get to the root of this.” Inspector Garanpo used an emphatic cough.

  “I wish you luck. Whatever your problems with ginger are, I had nothing to do with them.” The first part of that was truth. The second part should have been. As far as Johnson was concerned, that made it effectively true, too. Somehow, he suspected Inspector Garanpo would have a different opinion.

  * * *

  The imperial laver scrubbed off Ttomalss’ old body paint. The imperial limner painted on the new. The psychologist absentmindedly made the correct responses to what the two old females said, and to the guards who made as if to bar his path as he approached the Emperor’s throne. He hadn’t expected this summons to an audience, which made it all the more welcome.

  He bent into the special posture of respect before the 37th Emperor Risson, whose gold body paint g
leamed in the spotlights that shone on the throne. “Arise, Senior Researcher Ttomalss,” the Emperor said.

  Ttomalss stayed hunched over. “I thank your Majesty for his kindness and generosity in summoning me into his presence when I am unworthy of the honor.” He probably sounded more sincere than most males and females who came before the Emperor, if only because he’d given up hope of ever gaining an audience until the order to come to Preffilo dashed out from behind a sand dune.

  “Arise, I say again,” Risson told him. This time, Ttomalss did. The Emperor said, “The Race owes you a debt of gratitude for bringing Senior Researcher Felless’ alert to the attention of our physicists. We would be much further behind the Big Uglies than we are—and we would not know where to begin to catch up—if you had not. I thank you.”

  “Your Majesty, I thought Felless had come upon something important. I turned out to be right, when it might have been better for the Empire had I turned out to be wrong. Felless deserves more credit than I do. She was the one who noticed what the Tosevites were saying—and then, suddenly, what they were not.” He didn’t much like Felless. He never had, even before her ginger habit made her a whole different sort of nuisance. But he couldn’t try to rob her of credit here, not when anyone with an eye turret half turned toward things could tell she deserved it.

  “She will have what she deserves,” the Emperor said. “Unfortunately, the speed of light still imposes delays for us, so she will not have it right away. I hope she is still living when our signal of congratulations reaches Tosev 3. You being here on Home, I can congratulate you on the spot.”

  “I thank you for the kindness, your Majesty,” Ttomalss said.

  “Why thank me for what you have earned and richly deserve?” Risson straightened on the throne, signaling the end of the audience. Ttomalss made a retreat as formal as his advance had been.

  Herrep, the protocol master, waited for him in the bend in the corridor just outside the audience chamber proper. “You did pretty well, Senior Researcher, especially on such short notice,” Herrep said.

  “I thank you, superior sir,” Ttomalss said. “This was my first audience with an Emperor. I have long hoped for the honor, and now it is here.”

  “His Majesty spoke highly of your work, and of what it means for the Race,” Herrep said. “You will, of course, be lodged at his expense this evening, and our budget naturally covers the shuttlecraft fare back to Sitneff.”

  “Everyone at the palace has shown me great kindness,” Ttomalss said. That was polite if not altogether true; he doubted whether the imperial laver and limner had ever shown anyone great kindness, or even a little. The two horrid old females got their fingerclaws on him again after he turned away from the protocol master. The laver cleaned off the special body paint suppliants wore before the Emperor; the limner replaced Ttomalss’ usual paint. She did it perfectly, without checking any reference books. Ttomalss wondered how many different occupations and ranks she knew. Had she not intimidated him so much, he might have asked.

  The hotel put to shame the one in Sitneff in which Ttomalss and the American Big Uglies were staying. The refectory was as fine as any in which Ttomalss had ever eaten. The sleeping mat in his room was almost as soft as a squashy Tosevite bed; it stopped just this side of being too soft. The psychologist wouldn’t have minded spending much more time there.

  He had an excellent breakfast the next morning. The ippa-fruit juice was as tangy as any he’d ever tasted. A car from the palace waited outside the lobby to whisk him to the shuttlecraft port. As he got out, he remarked to the driver, “I could get used to feeling important.”

  She laughed. “You are not the first who has had an audience to tell me that.”

  “No, I do not suppose I would be.” Had Ttomalss come to Preffilo just a little earlier, he likely would have mated with her. But the season was over, and he could think clearly again.

  Flying back to Sitneff was routine. He wondered how many shuttlecraft he’d flown in over the years. He couldn’t begin to guess. A lot—he knew that.

  He wondered why he bothered going back to the hotel. Nothing of substance was happening there these days. The wild Big Uglies were just waiting for the Commodore Perry to get back so they could finish rubbing the Race’s snout in its inferiority. To them, he was just another male. Just another Lizard, he thought; the Tosevites had an insulting nickname for his folk, as the Race did for them.

  But sitting in the lobby was the shuttlecraft pilot the Americans had brought back to Home from Tosev 3. She got up and came over to him. “I greet you, Senior Researcher,” she said.

  “And I greet you,” Ttomalss answered. “Can I do something for you?”

  Nesseref started to make the negative gesture, but checked herself. “Maybe you can,” she said. “Can we talk for a while?”

  “I am at your service,” Ttomalss said. “Shall we go to the refectory and eat while we talk? I had a snack in the shuttlecraft port, but I could do with a little more.”

  What he ordered here wouldn’t be as good as what he’d had in the hotel in Preffilo. He sighed. He wasn’t rich enough to eat there very often. He and Nesseref both chose zisuili cutlets—hard to go wrong with those. The shuttlecraft pilot said, “The American Tosevites do at least try to act civilized. What will become of us if the Deutsche learn to travel faster than light before we do?”

  “You are not the only one to whom this unpleasant thought has occurred,” Ttomalss said. “I do not believe anyone has a good answer for it.”

  “This is also my impression,” Nesseref said. “And it worries me. The Americans, as I say, do make an effort. When the Deutsche find a group they do not care for, they set about exterminating it. I have seen this at first hand, living as I did in the part of the main continental mass called Poland.”

  “My memory of Tosevite geography is not all it might be,” Ttomalss said.

  “The point is that Poland borders the Reich,” Nesseref said. “It also has a large number of Jews living in it. You are familiar with the Tosevite superstition called Judaism, and with how the Deutsche react to it?”

  “Oh, yes.” Ttomalss used the affirmative gesture. “That was one of the first great horrors the conquest fleet found on Tosev 3.”

  “If the Deutsche had it in their power, they would do the same to us,” Nesseref insisted. “And if they can travel faster than light, they gain that power. They could appear out of nowhere, bombard one of our worlds, and flee faster than we could follow.”

  “Our defenses are ready here,” Ttomalss said. “We have sent messages to Rabotev 2 and Halless 1, ordering them to prepare themselves. I suppose we could also send ships to help them, though they would take twice as long as the messages to arrive. What we have the technology to do, we are doing.”

  “I can only hope it will be enough, and done soon enough,” Nesseref said, and then paused while the server set cutlets in front of Ttomalss and her. After the male left, she continued, “I had a friend who was a Jew—a Tosevite male named Mordechai Anielewicz. He had been a guerrilla leader when the conquest fleet came, sometimes opposing the Deutsche, sometimes opposing the Race. He eventually decided he could trust us. He never trusted them. Now his grandchildren are fully mature, but they like the Deutsche no better, and I cannot blame them.”

  “The Jews are unlikely to be objective,” Ttomalss pointed out after swallowing a bite of zisuili meat. It was . . . all right. “They have no reason to be.”

  “Truth—but the behavior of the Deutsche leads me to mistrust them, too.” Nesseref also took a bite. She ate with more enthusiasm than Ttomalss felt. “Do you recall the Deutsch pilot who attacked your ship during the war between the Reich and the Race? I flew him back down to Tosev 3. His name was Drucker.”

  “I did not recall the name. I recall the Big Ugly.” Ttomalss used an emphatic cough. “What about him?”

  “His hatchling belonged to one of the bandit groups the Deutsche set up after their defeat to resist the Race covertly,
” Nesseref said.

  “Wait.” Ttomalss let out a sharp hiss. “There was a Big Ugly called Drucker who served as the Reich’s minister for air and space when the Deutsche began to admit they had such a position again.”

  “That is the same male,” Nesseref said. “He was good at what he did, and cautious about putting his fingerclaws where they did not belong. His hatchling later rose to a high rank in the military of the Reich.”

  “A pity the Deutsche never quite gave us the excuse to suppress them altogether,” Ttomalss said.

  “A great pity,” Nesseref agreed. “But then, one could say the same about the rest of the Tosevites. They were trouble enough when they managed to come to Home by any means at all. Now that their technology has got ahead of ours . . .” She didn’t go on. She didn’t have to, either.

  Ttomalss made the affirmative gesture. He said, “We are doing what we can to catch up with them.” He didn’t go on, either. The wild Big Uglies were too likely to monitor what went on in the refectory.

  Nesseref might not have realized that. But she did grasp the problem facing the Race, for she asked, “Can we endure until we do?”

  “I hope so,” Ttomalss answered. “As you say, the Americans do approach civilization, at any rate.” He didn’t think the Big Uglies would be offended to hear that. They already knew what he and most members of the Race thought of them. But, as Nesseref had pointed out, the Americans were not the only Big Uglies. “As for the Deutsche . . . well, if they attack us here on Tosev 3, our colony can strike back at them as soon as it learns of what they have done—and either the Deutsche themselves or the Americans would bring word to Tosev 3 before our signals got there. The Reich is not large. It is vulnerable. Its not-emperor must realize this.”

  “‘Must’ is a large word to use when speaking of big Uglies,” Nesseref said. “But I dare hope you are right.”

  “So do I,” Ttomalss said. “So do I.”

  When the Big Uglies decided it was time for Atvar to return to his own solar system, they didn’t fly him back on the Commodore Perry. The starship setting out for Home this time was called the Tom Edison. That the United States had built more than one ship that traveled faster than light worried him. The Race would have refined the first one till it was exactly the way they wanted it before making more. Tosevites didn’t worry about refinement. They just went ahead and did things.