Homeward Bound Read online

  The air inside the shuttlecraft had had the same sterile feel to it as it did aboard human spacecraft. It had smelled very faintly of lubricants and other less decipherable things. Now Jonathan got a whiff of dust and spicy scents that could only have come from plants of some sort. That was a world out there waiting for him, not the inside of a spacecraft.

  For a moment, none of the half dozen humans moved. Raatiil’s eye-stalks swung from one to the other. He plainly wondered why they held back. Then Karen reached out and touched Jonathan’s father on the shoulder. “Go ahead,” she told him. “You’ve got the right. You’ve been dealing with the Race longer than anybody.”

  The other three humans—another husband-and-wife team, Tom and Linda de la Rosa, and a military man, Major Frank Coffey—were all younger than Jonathan and Karen. Nobody aboard except Sam Yeager (and maybe Raatiil: who could say how long Rabotevs lived?) had been around when the Race came to Earth.

  “Yes, go ahead, Colonel Yeager,” Linda de la Rosa said. She was blond and a little plump; her husband had a beak of a nose and a fierce black mustache. He nodded. So did Major Coffey, who was the color of coffee with not too much cream.

  “Thank you all,” Jonathan’s father said. “You don’t know what this means to me.” His voice was husky. He hadn’t sounded like that since Jonathan’s mother died. He awkwardly climbed over Frank Coffey, who lay closest to the hatch, and started down. Then he paused and started to laugh. “I only get half credit for this,” he observed. “Kassquit’s been here before me.”

  “You do get that, though, because she’s only half human,” Karen said. She was right. If anything, Kassquit might have been less than half human. But Jonathan wished his wife wouldn’t have had that edge in her voice.

  Out went Jonathan’s father. The others followed. Jonathan went after Major Coffey. He’d just stuck his head out of the hatch when his father stepped down onto the flame-scarred concrete of the shuttlecraft field. In English, Sam Yeager said, “This is for everyone who saw it coming before it happened.”

  How long would people remember that? Jonathan liked it better than something on the order of, I claim this land in the names of the King and Queen of Spain. And it included not only all the scientists and engineers who’d built the Admiral Peary, but also his father’s science-fiction writers, who’d imagined travel between the stars before the Lizards came.

  If it weren’t for them, I wouldn’t be here, Jonathan thought. Here wasn’t just Home. As his father had said, if he hadn’t got involved with Lizard POWs, he never would have met his mom. Jonathan shied away from that thought. He didn’t like contemplating the strings of chance that held everyday life together.

  Somebody swatted him on the fanny. “Don’t stay there gawking,” Karen said from behind him. “The rest of us want to come out, too.”

  “Sorry,” Jonathan said. He hadn’t been gawking, only woolgathering. He didn’t think his wife would care about the difference. The descent ladder was narrow, the rungs too close together and oddly sloped for human feet. He went down slowly, then descended next to his father and Coffey.

  “Looks like an airport back home,” the major remarked. “All this wide open space in the middle of a city.”

  “I’d want plenty of wide open space around me, too, in case one of those shuttlecraft came down where it didn’t belong,” Sam Yeager said.

  “That doesn’t happen to the Lizards very often,” Jonathan said. “They engineer better than we do. Of course, just once would ruin your whole day.”

  Off in the distance, beyond the concrete, buildings rose. Most of them were utilitarian boxes. Jonathan wondered how many different styles of architecture this city held. How old were the oldest buildings? Older than the Pyramids? He wouldn’t have been surprised.

  Across the concrete came a flat, open vehicle crowded with Lizards. It stopped about twenty feet away from the humans. Two of the Lizards descended from it and strode toward the shuttlecraft. “Which of you Tosevites is Sam Yeager?” asked the one with the more ornate body paint. Jonathan’s eyes widened as he recognized a fleetlord’s markings. Was that . . . ?

  His father stepped forward. “I am. I greet you, Fleetlord. You are Atvar, is it not so?”

  “You are to call him Exalted Fleetlord,” Raatiil said.

  “Yes, I am Atvar.” The male who had commanded the conquest fleet sent the negative hand gesture toward the Rabotev shuttlecraft pilot. “The Tosevite is correct to address me as he does. As an ambassador, he outranks a fleetlord.” He turned back to Jonathan’s father. “In the name of the Emperor, superior Tosevite, I greet you.” He and the male with him bent into the posture of respect.

  After moving down at the mention of the Emperor’s name, Raatiil’s eyestalks swung toward Sam Yeager. Jonathan had first met the Rabotev only a little while before, but he knew astonishment when he saw it. He was all but reading Raatiil’s mind. They’re making this much fuss over a Big Ugly?

  Atvar went on, “My associate here is Senior Researcher Ttomalss. Some of you Tosevites will have made his acquaintance on your planet.”

  “Oh, yes,” Jonathan’s father said. He introduced Jonathan and Karen, Frank Coffey, and the de la Rosas.

  “One of you Tosevites, at least, will be easy to discriminate from the others,” Atvar remarked, his eye turrets on the black man.

  “Truth,” Coffey said. “No one on Tosev 3 ever had any trouble with that.” He owned a dangerously good deadpan. Jonathan had all he could do not to laugh out loud. Beside him, Karen let out a strangled snort.

  “Indeed, I believe I have met all of you Tosevites at one time or another,” Ttomalss said. “And you Yeagers performed an experiment that is an outrage to the Race.”

  “You would be in a better position to complain about it if you had not performed the same experiment with a Tosevite hatchling,” Jonathan answered. “And how is Kassquit these days?”

  “She is well. She is still as stubbornly opinionated as ever,” the Lizard psychologist answered. “You will see her shortly. Since you have come to Home, we thought this first greeting would appropriately come from the Race alone.”

  Jonathan wondered how Kassquit had taken that. Not well, if he had to guess. She’d never quite learned how to be a human, and she’d never quite been accepted by the Race, either. Neither fish nor fowl, Jonathan thought. All things considered, it was a miracle she wasn’t crazier than she was.

  His father said, “Would it be possible for us to get in out of the sun?”

  That plainly surprised the Lizards. For them, the weather was no doubt springlike. For Jonathan, the only place that had springtime like this was hell. Ttomalss said something in a low voice to Atvar. The fleetlord made the affirmative gesture, saying, “As we were always cold on Tosev 3, so you may find yourselves warm here. I should warn you, though, that you will not find it any cooler within.”

  “We understand that,” Sam Yeager said. “At least we will be out of this bright sunlight, though.”

  “I hope so,” Karen murmured in English. “Otherwise, they’ll see a red human along with a black one.” With her fair redhead’s skin, she burned with the greatest of ease.

  She did on Earth, anyhow. “Tau Ceti’s redder than the sun,” Jonathan reminded her. “It puts out less ultraviolet. The Lizards can’t even see violet—it looks black to them.”

  “I know, I know,” his wife answered. “But any ultraviolet at all is enough to do me in right now. I forgot to put on sunscreen before we came down.”

  Atvar gestured toward the vehicle. “Join us, then, and we will take you to the terminal, where we will inspect your baggage.”

  “I have already had this discussion with the Race,” Sam Yeager said. “The answer is still no.”

  “You confuse me,” Atvar said. “First you want to go in, and then you do not.”

  “Going in is fine,” Jonathan’s father said. “Inspecting baggage is not. We are a diplomatic party. We have the same rights as if we were back in our o
wn not-empire. You must know this, Fleetlord.”

  “And if I do?” Atvar said. “If I do not like it?”

  “You can expel us,” Sam Yeager said. “You can send us back to the Admiral Peary. I think that would be foolish, but you can do it.”

  “How do I know your cases of possessions are not full of the herb that causes so much trouble for us?” Atvar demanded.

  “You do not know that. But you do know your own folk must smuggle more of the herb than a few Big Uglies could. And I tell you that we have none of it with us here. Will you trust me, or will you not?”

  “You I will trust,” Atvar said heavily. “I would not trust any other Tosevite who made this assertion, not even the Doctor. Come, then, and we shall see what we have to say to one another.”

  Kassquit waited inside the terminal at the shuttlecraft port, along with a small swarm of middle-ranking functionaries from the Race. When she looked out the window, she could see the shuttlecraft that had descended from the Tosevite starship. She could even see the wild Big Uglies who had come down from it.

  As wild Big Uglies were in the habit of doing, these wore cloth wrappings and foot coverings. The wrappings were minimal, leaving arms and legs mostly bare, but she wondered why the Tosevites wore anything in this climate. She looked down at her own body, nude except for her body paint and the foot coverings she too used. Her soles were softer than those of the Race, and often needed protection.

  Which Tosevite out there was Jonathan Yeager? She saw only one who shaved his hair, but that didn’t necessarily prove anything. He might have stopped shaving, as she had done, and some other Tosevite might follow the practice. At this distance, it was hard to be sure.

  And which wild Big Ugly was Jonathan Yeager’s permanent mate? There, Kassquit had no trouble finding an answer. That female had copper-colored hair, and only one of the Tosevites fit the bill. Kassquit’s nearly motionless face would have scowled if only it could. She knew her resentment was irrational, but that made it no less real.

  The Big Uglies outside boarded the passenger-mover that normally ferried elderly and disabled males and females around the shuttleport. It had been adapted to Tosevite needs with special seats. Kassquit had been the model on which those were formed. What fit her back and fundament, so different from those of the Race, should also accommodate other Big Uglies.

  The passenger-mover came back to the terminal building. A door opened. A male with a cart went out to take charge of the Big Uglies’ baggage. The cases he brought back were larger than those members of the Race would have used. Of course, members of the Race didn’t take extra sets of wrappings with them wherever they went.

  In came the baggage handler. In came Ttomalss and Fleetlord Atvar. And in came the wild Big Uglies. As soon as they got inside the building, someone aimed televisor lights at them. Half a dozen reporters thrust microphones at them and shouted questions. Some of the questions were idiotic. The rest were a great deal stupider than that.

  “How do you like Home?” a female yelled, over and over.

  “Fine, so far. A little warm,” said the Big Ugly with the shaved head. That was Jonathan Yeager; Kassquit recognized his voice. He caught her eye and nodded, a very Tosevite style of greeting.

  “Do you understand me?” another reporter shouted, as if doubting that a Big Ugly could speak the Race’s language.

  “No, of course not,” the white-haired Tosevite replied. “If I understood you, I would answer your question, and I am obviously not doing that.”

  Kassquit recognized not only Sam Yeager’s voice but also his offbeat slant on things. The reporter, by contrast, seemed to have no idea what to make of the answer. “Back to you in the studio,” the female said, looking for help wherever she could find it.

  Another reporter asked, “Will it be peace or war?”

  Had someone asked that of Sam Yeager in private, he would have said something like, Probably. But, while it was a foolish question, it wasn’t one where a joke was fitting in public. He said, “We always hope for peace. We have lived in peace with the Race on Tosev 3 for most of the time since you first came there. Now that we too can fly between the stars, that seems to me to be one more reason for each side to treat the other as an equal.”

  “You sound so . . . so civilized,” the reporter said.

  “I thank you. So do you,” Sam Yeager said.

  That reporter went off in confusion. Kassquit’s mouth fell open in the silent laugh the Race used. One of the noisier kind Tosevites favored almost escaped her. If Sam Yeager kept this up, he would clear the terminal building of fools in short order. And if his methods could be more widely applied, that might have a salutary effect on the Race, or at least on how it did business.

  None of the reporters or cameramales and -females wore false hair and wrappings. Those had jolted Kassquit when she first saw them. They seemed as strange to her as the first shaven-headed Big Uglies with body paint must have seemed to the Race back on Tosev 3.

  Ttomalss beckoned and called out something. In the noisy chaos inside the terminal, Kassquit couldn’t make out what he said, but she thought he was beckoning to her. She pointed to herself. He made the affirmative gesture. She pushed forward through the crowd.

  Males and females grumbled as she went by them, then got out of the way in a hurry when they saw who and what she was. That even applied to a female in the body paint of a police officer who was holding back the crowd. As she stepped inside, the female asked, “Why are you not already with them?”

  “Because I am a citizen of the Empire, not a wild Big Ugly,” Kassquit answered proudly. She went on up to Ttomalss. “I greet you, superior sir.” To Atvar, she added, “And I greet you, Exalted Fleetlord.”

  “I greet you,” the two males said together. Ttomalss went on to present her to the wild Big Uglies.

  “I greet you,” Sam Yeager said. “It is good to see you again. We have both spent a lot of time on ice.”

  “Truth,” Kassquit said after a moment’s pause to figure out the idiom, which did not belong naturally to the Race’s language. “Yes, indeed. Truth.” She glanced toward Ttomalss. The Race had kept her on ice till it needed her here.

  “And I greet you,” the male named Frank Coffey said. “I have heard much about you. It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

  “I thank you. The pleasure is mine,” Kassquit said. She studied him with interest. She had never met a member of the black race of Big Uglies in person till now. Coffey spoke the Race’s language well enough, if less fluently than Sam Yeager.

  Back in the days when the conquest fleet was still trying to bring all of Tosev 3 into the Empire, the Race had tried to use black Big Uglies in the not-empire of the United States against the pinkish Big Uglies who often oppressed them. The strategy had failed, for too many of the dark Tosevites had feigned loyalty to the Race only to betray it. Coffey would not have been hatched at that time, but he was plainly loyal to the regime of the United States. Were he not, he never would have been chosen for this mission.

  Thinking about him helped keep Kassquit from thinking about Jonathan Yeager, who was standing beside him. “I greet you,” Jonathan said. “I hope you have been well, and I hope you have been happy.”

  “I have been well,” Kassquit said. Happy? She didn’t want to think about that. She doubted she could be happy, caught as she was between her biology and her culture. She did not know how to be a Tosevite, and she could never be the female of the Race she wished she were.

  Jonathan Yeager said, “I present to you my mate, Karen Yeager.”

  “I greet you,” Kassquit said, as politely as she could. She was as jealous of the copper-haired Big Ugly as she was of females of the Race. Karen Yeager could live a life normal for her species. That was something Kassquit would never know.

  “And I greet you,” Karen Yeager said. “Forgive me, but it is customary for Tosevites to wear some form of wrapping.”

  “This is Home,” Kassquit said sharply. �
��Here, the customs of the Race prevail. If you want to wrap yourself, that is your business. If you expect me to do so, you ask too much.”

  Several of the wild Big Uglies spoke to Karen Yeager in their own language. Kassquit had learned to read Tosevite facial expressions, even if she did not form them herself. Jonathan Yeager’s mate did not look happy. Jonathan Yeager himself did not take part in the discussion in English.

  In a low voice, Ttomalss said, “Remember, being without wrappings is often a sexual cue among the wild Big Uglies. The other female thinks you are making a mating display in front of her nominally exclusive mate.”

  “Ah.” Kassquit bent into the posture of respect, which was itself derived from the Race’s mating posture. “I believe you are right, superior sir.”

  Greetings from the de la Rosas followed. The female of that mated pair made no comments about what Kassquit was or wasn’t wearing. Kassquit thought that wise on her part.

  Ttomalss said, “And is the female named Karen Yeager correct in having such concerns?”

  Kassquit didn’t answer right away. She had to look inside herself for the truth. “Perhaps, from her point of view,” she admitted unhappily.

  “We do not want to provoke the Tosevites,” Ttomalss said. “Any matings or attempts at matings leading to such provocation are discouraged in the strongest possible terms. Do you understand that?”

  “Yes, superior sir. I understand it very well,” Kassquit said.

  She did her best to keep her voice impassive, but her best wasn’t good enough. Ttomalss, after all, had known her since she was a hatchling. He asked, “Do you not only understand but agree to it?”

  “Yes, superior sir,” she said again. She knew she sounded sulky, but she couldn’t help it.

  “This is important, Kassquit.” Ttomalss used a soft emphatic cough.

  “I said I understood and agreed,” Kassquit answered. “If you do not believe me, remove me from the diplomatic team.”

  Challenged, Ttomalss retreated. “I do not wish to do that. Nor does Fleetlord Atvar. Your insights will be invaluable—provided you do not let emotional involvement color them.”