Homeward Bound Read online

  “Why?” the female of the Race asked. “Do they not believe me?”

  “We believe you. We do not laugh to offend you,” Karen said. “We laugh because our planet is cooler than Home. Snow is common on many parts of it. We are more familiar with it than members of the Race.” She said that even though she’d been a little girl the last time it snowed all over Los Angeles (though of course she didn’t know what had happened while she was in cold sleep).

  “I see,” Trir said . . . coldly. The female acted as if she were in the company of a group of tigers that walked on their hind legs and wore business suits. Maybe the Big Uglies wouldn’t shoot her or devour her, but she wasn’t convinced of it.

  “They speak the truth,” Kassquit said.

  “I see,” Trir said again, no more warmth in her tone. As far as she was concerned, Kassquit must have been about as barbarous as a wild Big Ugly, even if she wore body paint instead of clothes. It was definitely chilly to be walking around in nothing but body paint and a pair of sandals. Karen Yeager had a hard time feeling much sympathy for the Race’s pet human.

  Trying to be a diplomat, Frank Coffey said, “Shall we go on?”

  “I thank you. Yes. That is an excellent idea,” Trir said. “Please follow me.” She walked along a well-defined trail. Every couple of hundred yards, signs at the height of Lizard eye turrets urged members of the Race to stay on the trail and not go wandering away into the wilderness. Karen had to smile when she saw them. They reminded her of those in some of the busier national parks back in the United States.

  “What happens to the local plants and animals when it snows?” Jonathan Yeager asked.

  “Some plants go dormant. Some animals hibernate,” the guide answered. “Most survive as best they can or simply perish under those harsh conditions.”

  In broad outline, the South Polar region of Home reminded Karen of the country around Palm Springs and Indio, or perhaps more of the Great Basin desert of Nevada and Utah. Plants were scattered randomly across the landscape, with bare ground between most of them and with occasional clumps growing wherever the soil was especially rich or where there was more water than usual. The plants looked like desert vegetation, too: their leaves were small and shiny, and they didn’t get very big. A lot of them were armed with spikes and barbs to make life difficult for herbivores.

  Something skittered from one clump of plants to another. Karen didn’t get the best look at it, but it reminded her of a small-l lizard. Of course, since all the land creatures on Home seemed to be scaly, they would remind her of lizards—unless they reminded her of dinosaurs instead.

  She and the rest of the humans walked along in Trir’s wake, admiring the scenery. It was beautiful, in a bleak way. A few of the plants showed Home’s equivalent of flowers, which had black disks at their heart that attracted pollinators. Karen went up to one and sniffed at it. It didn’t smell like anything in particular.

  “Why do you do that?” Trir asked.

  “I wanted to find out if it had an odor,” she answered.

  “Why would it?” The guide didn’t sound as if she believed the explanation.

  “Because many plants on Tosev 3 use odors to attract flying animals that spread their sex cells,” Karen replied, realizing she had no idea how to say pollinators in the language of the Race.

  “How very peculiar,” Trir said, and added an emphatic cough to show she thought it was very peculiar indeed.

  Something rose from a bush and flapped away: one of the bat-winged little pterodacytloids that did duty for birds here. It was the same greenish gray as the leaves from which it had emerged. Protective coloration was alive and well on Home, then. When the flying beast landed in another bush, it became for all practical purposes invisible.

  Bigger fliers glided overhead. Karen’s shadow stretched long off to one side. Tau Ceti—more and more, Karen was just thinking of it as the sun—shone not very high in the north. She wondered what happened during the long, dark winter nights when the sun didn’t rise at all.

  When she asked, though, Trir stared at her with as little comprehension as if she’d used English. “What do you mean?” the Lizard asked. “There is a time when the sun does not rise above the horizon, yes, but there is always light here.”

  That left Karen as confused as Trir had been. “But—how?” she asked.

  Frank Coffey explained it for both of them. Speaking in the Race’s language, he said, “Tosev 3 has the ecliptic inclined to the equator at twenty-six parts per hundred.” The Lizards didn’t use degrees; they reckoned a right angle as having a hundred divisions, not ninety. “Here on Home, the inclination is only about ten parts per hundred. On our world, the far north and the far south can be altogether dark for a long time. There must always be at least twilight here during the day, because the sun does not get so far below the horizon.”

  “That, at least, is a truth,” Trir said. “You . . . Tosevites must come from a very peculiar world indeed.”

  Karen hid her amusement. The guide had almost said Big Uglies, but had remembered her manners just in time. The sky wouldn’t have fallen if she’d slipped, but she didn’t know that. Just as well she didn’t, probably. The more polite the Race and humanity were to each other, the better things were likely to go. And that was all to the good, since each side could reach the other now.

  She did say, “To us, Home seems the peculiar world.”

  “Oh, no. Certainly not.” Trir used the negative gesture and an emphatic cough. “Home is a normal world. Home is the world against which all others are measured. Rabotev 2 and Halless 1 come fairly close, but Tosev 3 must be much more alien.”

  “Only because you come from Home is this world normal to you,” Karen said. “To us, Tosev 3 is the standard.”

  “Home is the standard for everyone in the Empire,” Trir insisted.

  “Except for Kassquit here, we are not citizens of the Empire,” Karen said. “We come from the United States, an independent not-empire.”

  Trir must have been briefed about that, but it plainly meant nothing to her. She could not imagine intelligent beings who did not acknowledge the Emperor as their sovereign. And she would not admit that the choice of Home as a standard for how worlds should be was as arbitrary as that of Earth. Even Kassquit weighed into the argument on Karen’s side. She couldn’t convince Trir, either. And the guide did seem to find her just as alien as she found the Americans.

  In English, Jonathan said, “If this is the Race’s attitude, we’re going to have a devil of a time making them see reason.”

  “The higher-ups, the males and females we’ll be dealing with, have better sense,” Tom de la Rosa said, also in English.

  “I hope so,” Jonathan said. “But down deep, they’re still going to feel the same way. They’re the center of the universe, and everything revolves around them. If they think that’s how it ought to be, we’re going to have a hard time persuading them they’re wrong.”

  “Atvar will help there,” Karen said. “After all the time he spent on Earth, he knows what’s what.”

  “What are these preposterous grunts and groans?” Trir demanded.

  “Our own language,” Karen answered. “We know yours, and on our planet many males and females of the Race have learned ours.”

  “How extremely peculiar.” The Lizard used another emphatic cough. “I assumed all intelligent beings would naturally speak our language. That is so throughout the Empire.”

  “But we do not belong to the Empire,” Karen said. “I already told you that. When the Empire tried to conquer our not-empire, we fought it to a standstill and forced it to withdraw from the territory we rule.”

  “As time goes on, you will be made into contented subjects of the Empire, as so many Tosevites already have been,” Trir replied.

  She sounded perfectly confident. That was the attitude the Race had taken back on Earth, too. Were the Lizards right? They thought they had time on their side. They were very patient, far more patient
than humans. They routinely thought and planned in terms of thousands of years.

  Hadn’t that hurt them more than it helped, though? They’d first examined Earth in the twelfth century. If they’d sent the conquest fleet then, humanity wouldn’t have been able to do a thing about it. People really would be contented citizens of the Empire now. But the Lizards had waited. They’d got all their ducks in a row. They’d made sure nothing could go wrong.

  Meanwhile, Earth had had the Industrial Revolution. By the time the Race arrived, people weren’t pushovers any more. And why? Because the Lizards had planned too well, too thoroughly.

  He who hesitates is lost. If that wasn’t a proverb the Race should have taken to heart while dealing with humanity, Karen couldn’t think of one that was.

  Kassquit said, “In my opinion, Senior Tour Guide, the issue you raise is as yet undetermined.”

  “Well, what do you know?” Trir retorted. “You are just another one of these Big Ugly things yourself.” She could lose her temper after all.

  Karen had never expected to sympathize with Kassquit, but she did here. Trir might as well have called Kassquit a nigger. In essence, she had. Kassquit said, “Senior Tour Guide, I am a citizen of the Empire. If that does not happen to please you, you are welcome to stick your head even farther up your cloaca than it is already.” She did not bother with an emphatic cough. The words carried plenty of emphasis by themselves.

  Had Trir been a human, she would have turned red. As things were, her tailstump quivered with fury. “How dare you speak to me that way?” she snarled.

  “I dare because I am right.” Now Kassquit did use an emphatic cough.

  “Truth!” Karen said. She used another one. “Judge males and females for what they are, not for what they look like.”

  “I thank you,” Kassquit said.

  “You are welcome,” Karen answered. They both sounded surprised at finding themselves on the same side.

  * * *

  Atvar had just finished applying fresh body paint when the telephone hissed for attention. He laughed as he went to answer it. Jokes as old as the unification of Home insisted that it always hissed right when you were in the middle of the job. He felt as if he had beaten the odds.

  “This is Atvar. I greet you,” he said.

  “I greet you, Exalted Fleetlord. I am Protocol Master Herrep,” said the male on the other end of the line. “You recently petitioned for an imperial audience?”

  “Yes?” Atvar made the affirmative gesture.

  “Your petition has been granted. You are ordered to appear at the imperial court tomorrow at noon so that you may be properly prepared for the ceremony.” Herrep broke the connection. He did not ask if Atvar had any questions or problems. He assumed there would be none.

  And he was right. When the Emperor commanded, his subjects—even subjects with rank as high as Atvar‘s—obeyed.

  Preffilo, the imperial capital, lay halfway around the planet. That did not matter. An imperial summons took precedence over everything else. Atvar called the wild Big Uglies and canceled the session he had scheduled for the next day. Then he arranged a shuttlecraft flight to Preffilo. When he announced he was traveling to an audience with the Emperor, the usual fee was waived . . . after the shuttlecraft firm checked with the imperial court. Every so often, someone tried to steal a free flight to Preffilo.

  Court officials awaited Atvar at the shuttlecraft port. “Have you enjoyed the privilege of an imperial audience before, Exalted Fleetlord?” one of them asked.

  “I should hope I have,” Atvar answered proudly. “It was with his Majesty’s predecessor, more than two hundred years ago now, not long before I took the conquest fleet to Tosev 3.”

  “I see.” The courtier’s tone was absolutely neutral. Not the faintest quiver of tailstump or motion of eye turrets showed what he was thinking. And yet, somehow, he managed to convey reproach. Atvar should have returned to Home as Atvar the Conqueror, who had added a new world to the empire. Instead, he might have been called Atvar the Ambiguous, who had added just over half a world to the Empire, and who had left the other half full of independent, dangerous wild Big Uglies.

  Atvar remained convinced he’d done the best he could under the circumstances. Conditions on Tosev 3 were nothing like the ones the conquest fleet had been led to expect. Anyone with half a brain should have been able to see that. His recall and the scorn heaped on him since he’d come back only proved a lot of males and females had less than half a brain. So he believed, anyhow—and if this courtier didn’t, too bad.

  “Come with us,” the courtier said. “We will refresh you on the rituals as we go.”

  “I thank you,” Atvar replied. Every youngster learned the rituals of an imperial audience in school, on the off chance they might prove useful. Unlike the vast majority of males and females, Atvar actually had used what he’d learned. But, even discounting a round trip in cold sleep, that had been a long time ago. He welcomed a chance to review. Embarrassing yourself before the Emperor was as near unforgivable as made no difference.

  Most of the buildings in Preffilo were the usual utilitarian boxes. Some had a little more in the way of ornament than others. None was especially out of the ordinary. The imperial palace was different. Ordinary buildings came and went. The palace went on forever. It had stood in the same spot for more than a hundred thousand years. It wasn’t quite the oldest building on Home, but it was the oldest continuously inhabited one.

  It looked like a fortress. In the early days, before Home was unified, it had been a fortress. It had bastions and outwalls and guard towers, all in severe gray stone with only tiny, narrow windows. Here on peaceful Home, most of the travelers who came to see the palace thought of it only as ancient, not as military. No one on Home thought of matters military on first seeing any building. Atvar had had to worry about military architecture, both that of the Race and Tosevite, on Tosev 3. He could appreciate what the builders here had done.

  And he could appreciate the gardens in which the palace was set. Almost as many males and females came to see them as came to see the palace. With multicolored sand, carefully placed rocks of different sizes, colors, and textures, and an artistic mixture of plants, they were famous on three planets. To most Big Uglies, Atvar thought, they would have been nothing special. The Tosevites had an embarrassment of water on their native world. They appreciated great swaths of greenery much more than the Race did. This spare elegance would not have appealed to them.

  But there were exceptions to everything. While fleetlord, he had learned that photographs of the gardens around the imperial palace were wildly popular in the Tosevite empire—and it really was an empire—of Nippon. The Nipponese Big Uglies practiced a somewhat similar gardening art of their own . . . although Atvar doubted whether the gardeners or courtiers here would have appreciated the comparison.

  As soon as he entered the palace, he assumed the posture of respect. He held it till one of the courtiers gave him leave to straighten. Then he went on to the cleansing chamber, where a female known as the imperial laver removed the body paint he’d applied only the day before. He felt as bereft as an unwrapped wild Big Ugly, but only for a moment. Another court figure, the imperial limner, painted on the special pattern worn only by petitioners coming before the Emperor.

  “I am not worthy,” Atvar said, as ritual required.

  “That is a truth: you are not,” the imperial limner agreed. An emphatic cough showed how unworthy Atvar was. She continued, “You are granted an audience not because of your worth but by grace of the Emperor. Rejoice that you have been privileged to receive that grace.”

  “I do.” Atvar used an emphatic cough of his own.

  “Advance, then, and enter the throne room,” the imperial limner said.

  “I thank you. Like his Majesty, you are more gracious, more generous, than I deserve.” Atvar assumed the posture of respect again. The imperial limner did not return the courtesy. She represented the sovereign, and so outrank
ed any official not connected with the court.

  The throne room held banners seen nowhere else on Home. After a hundred thousand years, it held reproductions of the original banners that had once hung between the tall, thin windows. Awe made Atvar suck a deep breath into his lung. He knew what those banners stood for. They were the emblems of the empires the Empire had defeated in unifying the planet and the Race. Everywhere else on Home, they were forgotten. Here, where conquest had begun, the Emperor and those who served him remembered. There were also newer insignia from Rabotev 2 and Halless 1, and some, newer still, from Tosev 3. But other banners Atvar knew well from the Big Uglies’ world were conspicuously absent.

  All the throne room was designed to make a male or female advancing to an audience feel completely insignificant. Colonnades led the eye up to the tall, distant, shadowy ceiling. The path up to the throne lay in shadow, too, while the throne itself was gorgeous with gold and brilliantly illuminated. The spotlights glowed also from the gilding that ornamented the Emperor’s chest and belly. The 37th Emperor Risson did not need ornate patterns of body paint to display his rank. He simply glowed.

  In ancient days, Atvar had heard, the Emperor had been thought to represent the sun on Home. He didn’t know whether it was true or simply an explanation of why the Emperor wore solid gold body paint. It sounded as if it ought to be true, which was good enough.

  Two large males in gray paint as simple as the Emperor’s suddenly stepped into the aisle, blocking Atvar’s progress. He gestured with his left hand. “I too serve his Majesty,” he declared. That sent them away; they slunk back into the shadows from which they had sprung. They represented what had once been a more rigorous test of loyalty.

  At last, Atvar dropped into the posture of respect before the throne. He cast his eye turrets down to the ground. The stone floor here was highly polished. How many males and females had petitioned how many Emperors in this very spot? The numbers were large. That was as far as Atvar was willing to go.

  “Arise, Fleetlord Atvar,” the 37th Emperor Risson said, from somewhere up above Atvar.