His father started to say something. His mother gave his dad a look, and his dad very visibly swallowed whatever it had been. Instead, he said, “We’d better round up your best man, too. He ducked out for a cigarette, didn’t he?”
“Yeah.” Jonathan nodded. “Greg goes through a pack a day, easy.”
“With everything they’re finding out these days about what cigarettes do to you, I think young people are foolish to start.” His mother’s grin was wry. “That doesn’t mean I don’t use them myself, of course.”
“I was going to point that out,” Jonathan’s father said. “I’ve got a pack with me, too.”
The minister opened the door. Jonathan’s best man stood behind him. Greg Ruzicka and he had known each other since the fourth grade. Greg’s head was also shaved; like so many of his generation, he found the Race at least as interesting as humanity. He gave Jonathan a thumbs-up. Jonathan grinned.
“If you’ll just come along with me now, and take your places,” Reverend Fleischer said. “Then I’ll give the organist a nod, and we shall commence.”
When Jonathan got to the door that led to the aisle down which he’d walk, he looked at the backs of the guests’ heads. His friends, his parents’ friends—Ullhass and Ristin were there; Shiplord Straha, for obvious reasons, wasn’t—and a few relatives, and those of Karen and her folks. He gulped. It was real. It was about to happen.
Karen and her mother came out of the other waiting room. She waved to him and smiled through her veil. He took a deep breath and smiled back. Reverend Fleischer bustled up to the altar and gave the organist the signal. The first couple of notes of the Wedding March rang out before Jonathan realized they had something to do with him. His best man hissed. He jumped, then started walking.
Afterwards, he remembered only bits and pieces of the ceremony. He remembered his own parents coming up the aisle after him, and Karen on her father’s arm, and her maid of honor—she’d known Vicki Yamagata even longer than he’d known Greg. After that, it was all a blur till he heard Reverend Fleischer saying, “Do you, Jonathan, take this woman to have and to hold, to love and to cherish, till death do you part?”
“I do,” he said, loud enough for the minister and Karen to hear him, but probably not for anybody else.
It seemed to satisfy Reverend Fleischer. He turned to the bride. “Do you, Karen, take this man to have and to hold, to love and to cherish, till death do you part?”
“I do,” she answered, a little louder than Jonathan had.
Beaming, the minister said, “Then by the authority vested in me by the church and by the state of California, I now pronounce you man and wife.” He nodded to Jonathan. “You may kiss the bride.”
That, Jonathan knew how to do. He swept the veil aside, took Karen in his arms, and delivered a kiss about a quarter as enthusiastic as he really wanted to give her. That still made it pretty lively for a kiss in church. When he let her go, he saw almost all the men and what was to him a surprising number of women looking as if they knew exactly what he had in mind.
“We’re really married,” he said: not exactly brilliant repartee from a new bridegroom.
“How about that?” Karen answered. That was commonplace enough to make him feel a bit better.
They went up the aisle this time, and over to the hall next to the church for the reception after the wedding. Jonathan drank champagne, fed wedding cake to Karen and got fed by her, and shook hands with everybody he didn’t know and most of the people he did.
“Congratulations,” Ristin told him in hissing English.
“I thank you, superior sir,” Jonathan answered in the language of the Race.
As his red-white-and-blue body paint showed, Ristin was an ex-POW who’d made himself thoroughly at home in the USA. He kept right on speaking English: “This is an enjoyable celebration. I almost begin to understand why those two of my kind who fled to this country would desire it.”
“Weddings are supposed to be fun,” Jonathan agreed, now sticking to English himself. “From everything I’ve heard, though, it’s the settling-down part later on that makes a marriage work.”
Ristin shrugged. “I would not know. Most of us have no interest in such unions. But I know your kind does, and I wish you every success.”
“Thanks,” Jonathan said again.
People pelted Karen and him with rice when they went out to his elderly Ford. He hoped it would start. It did. He was glad to be out of the tux and in ordinary clothes again. Karen ran a comb through her hair, getting the rice out of it. “How about that?” she said again.
“Yeah. How about that, Mrs. Yeager?” Jonathan said. “You’re going to have to get used to signing your name a new way.”
Karen looked startled. “You’re right. I will. And I’ll have to get used to being at the end of the alphabet, too, instead of near the front. Culpepper was good for that.”
The hotel they’d picked for their wedding night was close to the airport. When they got up to their room, he picked her up and carried her over the threshold. Inside, they discovered a bottle of champagne waiting in a bucket of ice. Karen read the little card tied to the bottle. “It’s from your folks,” she said, and sighed. “My mom and dad wouldn’t have thought of anything like that.”
“Your parents are nice people,” Jonathan said loyally.
But he didn’t want to think about his new in-laws—or his own parents, for that matter. That wasn’t what a wedding night was for. He wasn’t very interested in more champagne at the moment, either. It might make him sleepy. He didn’t want to be sleepy, not tonight.
Karen might have been reading his mind. “We don’t have to hurry,” she said, glancing toward the bed that dominated the hotel room. “We don’t have to worry about getting caught, either. I like that.” Her eye went to the ring with the very little diamond Jonathan had set on her finger. “I like this, too.”
“Good.” Jonathan had a slim gold band on his own finger. He wasn’t used to wearing rings; it felt funny. “That’s the idea.” He walked over to her. Their arms went around each other. Who kissed whom was a matter of opinion. This time, in privacy, they didn’t have to hold back any enthusiasm.
Not very much later, they lay side by side on the bed. Jonathan’s hands wandered. So did Karen’s. She said, “This is a lot better than parking in a drive-in, you know?”
“Yeah!” Jonathan couldn’t take his eyes off his bride. They’d never had the chance to be fully naked together before. “You’re beautiful. I already knew that—but even more so.”
She pulled him to her. “You say the sweetest things.” After they’d kissed for quite a while, Karen pulled back perhaps half an inch and said, “I’ll bet you tell that to all the girls.” She poked him in the ribs.
He squeaked—she’d found a ticklish spot. And, just for half a second, the corny old joke put him off his stride. He had told Kassquit something pretty much like that, or as close to it as he could come in the language of the Race, which wasn’t really made for such sentiments. He wondered how Kassquit was doing, and hoped she was doing well.
But then his mouth found its way to the tip of Karen’s breast again. She sighed and pressed his head against her. He stopped thinking about Kassquit. He stopped thinking about everything. A moment later, the marriage became official in a way that had nothing to do with either the church or the state of California, but that was as old as mankind nonetheless.
“Oh, Jonathan,” Karen said softly.
“I love you,” he answered.
They made love a couple of times, fell asleep in each other’s arms, and woke up to make love again. Over the course of the night, the champagne did disappear. It wasn’t enough to make them drunk; it was enough to make them happy, not that they weren’t pretty happy already.
The wakeup call at eight the next morning interrupted something that wasn’t sleep. Afterwards, Jonathan said, “I don’t know why we’re flying up to San Francisco for our honeymoon.”
“It�
�ll be fun,” Karen said. “We’ll see all sorts of things we haven’t seen before.”
“If we ever get out of the hotel room, we will,” he said. “I don’t know about that.”
“Braggart.” She wrinkled her nose at him. They both laughed. Jonathan squeezed her. They went downstairs for breakfast, and then back up to the room to find something to do in the couple of hours before the plane took off. To Jonathan’s considerable pride, they did. On the basis of a bit more than half a day, he liked being married just fine.
Kassquit stooped slightly to look in the mirror in her cubicle. That she had to stoop reminded her she wasn’t biologically part of the Race: the mirror was at the perfect height for a male or female from Home. She’d had to start stooping even before she reached her full growth. Either she’d tried not to think about it or she’d let it mortify her, as did every difference between herself as she was and the female of the Race she wished she were.
Now she knew those differences were even larger than she’d thought before she met wild Big Uglies. That knowledge could mortify her, too. “I am a citizen of the Empire,” she said. “I am a Tosevite, but I am also a citizen of the Empire.”
It was a truth. Sometimes—perhaps, even, more often than not—it helped calm her. But the converse held, too. She was a citizen of the Empire, but she was also a Tosevite. And, at the moment, she was engaged in a task which proved exactly that.
Her hair—the hair on her scalp, that is, not the hair that sprouted elsewhere on her body—had got long enough to need combing. The black plastic comb she held had come up from the surface of Tosev 3 at her request. The Race didn’t make anything like it: what point, with scales instead of hair? She’d needed to send an electronic message to Sam Yeager to find out how the Big Uglies kept hair in any kind of order. “Comb,” she said as she used it. The word was English. The Race did not have the thing, and so did not have a term for it.
After she finished using the comb, she studied the result. Her hair was neater, no doubt about it. She suspected any Big Ugly who saw her would have approved. She also suspected neither males nor females of the Race would care one way or the other. Members of the Race disapproved of her hair on general principles. Not long ago, that disapproval would have crushed her. Now, every once in a while, she enjoyed annoying males and females. If that wasn’t her Tosevite blood coming out, she had no idea what it was.
The intercom panel by the door hissed for her attention. “Who is it?” she asked.
“I: Ttomalss,” came the reply.
Kassquit stuck on an artificial fingerclaw for a moment, so she could prod the switch to let him in. “I greet you, superior sir,” she said, bending into the posture of respect.
“And I greet you,” Ttomalss replied. “I hope you are well?”
She made the affirmative gesture. “Yes. I thank you. And yourself?” After Ttomalss used the same gesture, Kassquit asked him, “And what can I do for you today, superior sir?”
“You mentioned to me the ambiguities involved in recording every action of an individual who is a citizen of the Empire with the same privileges as those enjoyed by other citizens of the Empire,” Ttomalss said.
“I certainly did mention that to you, yes,” Kassquit said. “And I do not believe the issue is in the least ambiguous.”
“You will, I hope, understand that I did not and do not altogether agree with you,” Ttomalss said. “But a review committee of higher-ranking individuals has come to a different conclusion. I am now able to tell you that the routine recording of your actions has ceased and will not resume.”
“That is . . . very good news, superior sir.” Kassquit added an emphatic cough. She knew she sounded astonished. She was astonished. That the Race would put her wishes ahead of its own research was something to be astonished about. Then she checked her swelling delight. “Wait.”
“What is it?” Ttomalss asked.
“You say you are able to tell me the routine recording of my actions has stopped,” Kassquit answered. “You do not say that this is a truth. Is it a truth, superior sir?”
She watched him narrowly. She was not a female of the Race, to have instinctual cues about what his body language meant, but she’d been watching him all her life. When he flinched now, the motion was tiny, but she saw it. And when he said, “What do you mean?” she caught the startled alarm in his voice.
“I mean that you were lying to me,” she said sadly. “I mean that you thought I would not pay close enough attention to your words. When I was a hatchling, I would not have. But I am an adult now. When you lie to me, I have some chance of realizing it.”
“You do not understand.” But Ttomalss didn’t deny what she’d said.
She wished he would have denied it. “I understand you have lied to me. I understand I cannot trust you any more. Do you understand—do you have any idea—how much pain that causes me? I am sorry, superior sir, but I do not think I want to see you again for some time to come. Please go.”
“Kassquit, I—” Ttomalss began.
“Get out!” Kassquit shrieked at the top of her lung—no, lungs; being a Tosevite, she had two. They seemed to make her voice doubly loud, doubly shrill, inside the little cubicle. Ttomalss cowered in alarm as her cry echoed and reechoed from the metal walls. Without a word, he fled.
As the door hissed shut behind him, Kassquit fought the urge to run after him and do him an injury. Assuming she actually could, what would it do except land her in trouble? It would make me feel better, she thought. But, in the end, that proved not quite reason enough, and she let her mentor escape.
She made the negative gesture. “No. I let him escape physically,” she said, much more quietly than she’d ordered him to go. “But he will not get away with it, by the spirits of Emperors past.”
After casting down her eyes as any other citizen of the Empire would have, she made a telephone call. A female of the Race said, “Office of Fleetlord Reffet, fleetlord of the colonization fleet. How may . . . I help . . . you?” Her voice faltered as she saw herself facing a Tosevite rather than the member of the Race she’d expected.
“I am Junior Researcher Kassquit,” Kassquit said. “I should like to speak to the Exalted Fleetlord, if that is possible.”
“I doubt very much that it will be,” the female replied.
Such a lack of acceptance didn’t even anger Kassquit any more; she’d encountered it too often. She said, “Please mention my name to the fleetlord. You may possibly be surprised.”
To another member of the Race, the females surely would have said, It shall be done. Here, she plainly debated refusing Kassquit altogether. At last, with a shrug, she replied, “Oh, very well.” Her image disappeared as she set herself to finding out whether Fleetlord Reffet would indeed condescend to speak to this Big Ugly who bore the title and name of a female of the Race.
If Reffet decided he didn’t care to speak with Kassquit, she probably wouldn’t see the female in his office again; the connection would just be broken. But Kassquit knew she’d done the Race—and Reffet—a considerable service in identifying the male who called himself Regeya on the electronic network as Sam Yeager, wild Big Ugly. She hoped the fleetlord would remember, too.
And, for a moment, she wished she could forget. Had she not unmasked Sam Yeager, she would never have become intimate with Jonathan Yeager. She would have come closer—much closer—to remaining a good counterfeit female of the Race. But that hadn’t been how things worked out. Now Jonathan Yeager was permanently mated to another wild Big Ugly. And now Kassquit knew she was doomed always to stay betwixt and between. She could never make herself into a proper member of the Race, but she could never fully be a Tosevite, either.
The female reappeared. “The fleetlord will speak to you,” she said in startled tones. She vanished again. Reffet’s image replaced hers.
Kassquit folded into the posture of respect. “I greet you, Exalted Fleetlord,” she said. “Is it not a truth that I have been adjudged a full citizen
of the Race?”
“Let me examine the facts before I answer, Junior Researcher,” Reffet said. One of his eye turrets swung away from her, presumably to look at another monitor. No matter how she tried to make them behave so, her eyes refused. After a little while, Reffet swung both eye turrets back toward her. “Yes, that does appear to be a truth.”
“Do I have all the privileges of any other citizen of the Empire, then?” she persisted.
“I would say that would follow from the other.” Reffet added the affirmative gesture.
“In that case, Exalted Fleetlord . . .” Kassquit took a deep breath. “In that case, I request that you formally reprimand my mentor, Senior Researcher Ttomalss, for falsely assuring me that he had stopped recording my every activity when in fact he has not. He admitted as much when I caught him in the lie. And I daresay you can see and hear him admit as much on the recording he has denied making. I also request that you order him to cease such recordings in the future.”
“Junior Researcher, are you sure you wish to pursue this formally?” Reffet asked.
“Exalted Fleetlord, I am,” Kassquit replied. “I see no other way to gain at least some of the privacy a citizen of the Race is entitled to. Being who I am, being what I am, I know I can never hope to lead a normal life. But a citizen of the Empire should not have to lead a life in which she is on constant display.”
“Truth,” the fleetlord of the colonization fleet said. He let out a soft hiss as he pondered. At last, he made the affirmative gesture to show he had decided. “I shall order Ttomalss to cease this recording. But I shall not reprimand him. As you note, your situation is not and cannot be normal.”
“I thank you,” Kassquit said. “But perhaps you misunderstood. I do not want him reprimanded for the recording. I want him reprimanded for the lie.”
Aftershocks Page 71
