Homeward Bound Read online

  “Very well,” Ttomalss said, though it was anything but.

  Sam Yeager must have sensed that. Laughing again in his noisy way, he said, “Senior Researcher, I would have been ignorant about these things before I went into cold sleep. Now the scientists have worked for all these years without me. It only makes me more ignorant still.”

  He sounded as if he was telling the truth about that. Ttomalss wasn’t sure how far to trust him, though. One thing worried the psychologist: the American Big Uglies were not broadcasting news of what their physicists had learned toward Home and their starship in orbit around it. Why not, if they were making such advances? Ttomalss saw one possible reason: they knew the Race would be deciphering their signals, and did not want it learning too much.

  That worried him. That worried him a lot.

  Mickey Flynn watched Glen Johnson climbing into his spacesuit. “Teacher’s pet,” Flynn said solemnly—the most sobersided jeer Johnson had ever heard. “Look at the teacher’s pet.”

  Johnson paused long enough to flip the other pilot the bird. “The Lizards know quality when they see it.”

  Flynn pondered that, then shook his head. “There must be some rational explanation instead,” he said, and then, “Why do they want to see you again so soon, anyhow? Haven’t they got sick of you by now? I would have, and they’re supposed to be an intelligent species.”

  Instead of rising to that, Johnson just kept on donning the suit. As he settled the helmet on its locking ring, he said, “The one advantage of this getup is that I don’t have to pay attention to you when I’ve got it on.” With the helmet in place, he couldn’t heard Flynn any more. That much was true. But Flynn went right on talking, or at least mouthing, anyhow. He looked very urgent while he was doing it, too. Were this the first time Johnson had seen him pull a stunt like that, he would have been convinced something urgent was going on and he needed to know about it. As things were, he went on into the air lock and began checking out the scooter.

  He didn’t expect to find anything wrong with the little local rocket ship, but he made all the checks anyhow. Any pilot who didn’t was a damn fool, in his biased opinion. It was, after all, his one and only neck.

  Everything checked out green. Yes, he would have been surprised if it hadn’t, but life was full of surprises. Avoiding the nasty ones when you could was always a good idea.

  The outer airlock door swung open. He used the scooter’s maneuvering jets to ease it out of the lock, then fired up the stern motor to take it in the direction of the nearest Lizard spacecraft, the Pterodactyl’s Wing (that wasn’t an exact translation, but it came close enough). He had no idea why the Lizards wanted to talk with him, but he was always ready to get away from the Admiral Peary for a little while.

  As he crossed the double handful of kilometers between his spaceship and theirs, he got one of those surprises life was full of: a Lizard scooter came out to meet him. “Hello, scooter of the Race. I greet you,” Johnson called on the Lizards’ chief comm frequency. “What is going on?”

  “I greet you, Tosevite scooter,” the Lizard pilot answered. “You are ordered to stop for inspection before approaching the Pterodactyl’s Wing.”

  “It shall be done,” Johnson said. On the radio, nobody could see him shrug. “I do not understand the need for it, but it shall be done.” He applied the same blast to the forward engine as he’d used in the rear to make his approach run to the Lizards’ ship. With his motion towards it killed, he hung in space between it and the Admiral Peary.

  He watched the Lizards’ scooter approach on the radar screen and by eye. It was bigger than the one he flew. He had room for only a couple of passengers. The other scooter could carry eight or ten members of the Race. At the moment, though, it had just two aboard. Whoever was piloting it had a style very different from his. Instead of a long blast precisely canceled, the Lizard flew fussily, a little poke here, a little nudge there, his maneuvering jets constantly flaring like fireflies. Any human pilot would have been embarrassed to cozy up like that, but the Lizard got the job done. After what seemed like forever, the two scooters floated motionless relative to each other and only a few meters apart.

  “I am going to cross to your scooter for the inspection,” one of the spacesuited Lizards said. The male—or possibly female—waved to show which one it was.

  “Come ahead.” Johnson waved back.

  The Lizard had a reaction pistol to go from yon to hither. The gas jet pushed it across to Johnson’s scooter, where it braked. “I greet you, Tosevite pilot,” resounded in Johnson’s headphones. “I am Nosred.”

  “And I greet you.” Johnson gave his own name, adding, “This is unusual. Why have you changed your procedures?”

  “Why? I will tell you why.” Nosred leaned toward Johnson. When their helmets touched, the Lizard spoke without benefit of radio: “Turn off your transmitter.” Direct sound conduction brought the words to Johnson’s ears.

  He flipped the switch and took another precaution. If Nosred wanted a private chat, the human was willing to find out why, and the precaution wouldn’t be noticeable from the outside. Their helmets still touching, Johnson said, “Go ahead.”

  “I thank you. What I want to discuss with you is the possibility of your bringing ginger out of your starship the next time you come forth,” Nosred said.

  I might have known, Johnson thought. The Race figured Big Uglies were obsessed with sex. The way it looked to people, Lizards were obsessed with ginger—which sometimes led them to be obsessed with sex, but that was a different story.

  Not without a certain pang, Johnson made the negative gesture. “I do not have any. The ship does not have any.”

  Nosred made the negative gesture, too. “I do not believe you, Tosevite pilot. Ginger is too valuable a commodity and too valuable a weapon for you Big Uglies to have left it all in your own solar system. You must have brought some with you. Logic requires it.”

  “This is your own opinion. This is not a truth,” Johnson said. He knew more than he was telling. One of the things he knew was that he couldn’t tell whether this Lizard was setting a trap for him. Till he knew that, he had no intention of trusting Nosred—or any other male or female of the Race.

  “You do not think I am reliable,” Nosred said in accusing tones. “That is the truth here, that and nothing else.”

  He was right. Being right wouldn’t get him any ginger. Johnson said, “It would be best if I proceeded on to the Pterodactyl’s Wing now. Your own folk will begin to wonder why we linger here without any communication they can monitor.”

  With an angry hiss, Nosred pulled back. His radio came to life: “Our preliminary inspection here reveals no ginger, Tosevite pilot. You have permission to proceed on to our ship.”

  “I thank you. It shall be done.” Johnson had to remember to turn his own radio back on. He used his steering jets to reorient the scooter’s nose toward the Pterodactyl’s Wing, then made his acceleration and deceleration burns by eyeball and feel. He was good at what he did. That deceleration burn left him motionless with respect to the Lizard spaceship and only a few meters from the air lock.

  Nosred and his silent friend arrived several minutes later, after another series of small, finicky burns. The Lizards took them back aboard first, though, which meant Johnson had nothing to do but twiddle his thumbs till the airlock master condescended to let him into the Pterodactyl’s Wing.

  “I thank you so very much,” Johnson said, and tacked on an emphatic cough so very emphatic, he sprayed the inside of his faceplate with spit. Somehow, though, he doubted whether the Lizard appreciated or even noticed the sarcasm.

  His scooter and his person got the same sort of painstaking search they had the last time he went aboard one of the Race’s spacecraft. A small machine floated out of his spacesuit. He snagged it. “What is that?” the airlock master demanded suspiciously.

  “A recorder,” Johnson answered. “Go ahead and examine it. You will find no hidden ginger.” The Liza
rd ran it through a sniffer and an X-ray machine. Only after he was satisfied did he return it to Johnson. The pilot bent into the posture of respect. “Again, you have my most deep and profound gratitude.” He used another nearly tubercular emphatic cough.

  “You are welcome,” the Lizard said complacently. Johnson wondered if anything short of a kick in the snout would penetrate that unconscious arrogance. The airlock master went on, “Medium Spaceship Commander Ventris wishes to speak with you now.”

  “Does he?” Johnson said. “Well, then, it shall be done, of course.” Once more, the Lizard in charge of the air lock took that for obedience, not irony.

  Ventris let out a warning hiss when Johnson floated into his office. The Lizard’s tailstump twitched angrily, in anger or a good bureaucratic simulation thereof. “What is this I hear from Scooter Copilot Nosred about your trying to sell him ginger while he inspected you out beyond my ship?”

  “What is it?” Johnson echoed. “Sounds like nonsense to me.”

  “I think not,” Ventris said. “I think you Big Uglies are involved in more of your nefarious schemes.”

  “I think it is nonsense,” Johnson repeated. “What is more, superior sir, I think you are a fool for believing it. And what is still more, I can prove what I say. I would like to see Nosred do the same.”

  When Ventris’ tailstump twitched now, it was in genuine fury. “Big talk comes easy to Big Uglies,” he said.

  Johnson pulled the little recorder from the front pocket of his shorts. Ventris stared at it as if he’d never seen anything like it before. He probably hadn’t. It was an American design, not one taken directly from the Race. “Here. Your own hearing diaphragms will tell you what you need to know.” He punched the PLAY button. The recorder gave back a somewhat muffled version of the conversation Johnson and Nosred had had while their helmet radios were off. When the recording ended, Johnson shut off the machine and put it back in his pocket. “You see?”

  “I see that Scooter Copilot Nosred will soon regret that he was ever hatched,” Ventris said heavily.

  “Good,” Johnson said. “But do you also see that you owe me an apology? Do you see you owe my entire species an apology?”

  “You are either joking or addled,” Ventris said with a scornful hiss.

  “Shall I take a recording of your remarks about Big Uglies and nefarious schemes to our ambassador, superior sir?” Johnson had no such recording, but Ventris didn’t need to know that.

  By the way Ventris looked, he might have stepped in a large pile of azwaca droppings. “I am sorry . . . that you Big Uglies are here. I am sorry . . . that I have to have anything to do with you. I apologize . . . that Nosred has been corrupted by a vile Tosevite herb. If your ambassador is unhappy about these sentiments, too bad. Let him start a war.”

  Sam Yeager wouldn’t start a war on account of a male who couldn’t stand Big Uglies. Johnson knew it. And Ventris was only saying what a lot of Lizards felt. Johnson knew that, too. He said, “Well, superior sir, I just think there is something you ought to know.”

  “And that is?” Ventris asked icily.

  “We love you, too.”

  “Good,” Ventris said. He got the irony there with no trouble at all. “Here is a basis for understanding.” Johnson had tried talking about friendship with Henrep, the commandant of the Horned Akiss. It hadn’t worked. Maybe mutual loathing would.

  Sam Yeager misspelled a word. He muttered something disgusted, wadded up the paper, and flung it in the direction of the wastebasket. It didn’t go in. He got up, walked over, grabbed it, and dropped it in. Then he went back to the table, got a fresh sheet, and started over. A petition for an audience with the Emperor had to be written by hand, and it had to be perfect. If you didn’t care enough to do it right, you didn’t deserve to see the sovereign. That was how the Lizards saw it, and he was in no position to persuade them they were wrong.

  Writing such a petition was easy for them. They learned how in school. Even though their writing system was perfectly phonetic, it wasn’t the one Yeager had grown up with—and some of the language required for the petition was so old-fashioned, it wasn’t used on anything but petitions to the Emperor. So Sam had already made errors on four sheets of paper.

  After some more muttering, he started writing again. At least half the petition involved proclaiming his own unworthiness, over and over again. He laughed as he went through that part. Males and females of the Race probably felt their own unworthiness as they wrote. This was a much bigger deal for them than it was for him. He wondered what would happen to him after he died. When you got to be seventy, you couldn’t very well help wondering. In the not too indefinite future, you’d find out. But unlike the Lizards, he didn’t believe spirits of Emperors past were likely to be involved.

  Then he laughed again, this time on a more sour note. The Lizards had run up temples to spirits of Emperors past in their own territory on Earth and wherever independent countries would let them. Thanks to the First Amendment, the United States hadn’t tried to stop them, and human reverence for the spirits of Emperors past was stronger in the USA—and especially in California, and most especially in Los Angeles—than anywhere else in the world. That so many years of so many crude jokes had been so solidly confirmed never failed to irk an adopted Angeleno like him.

  He went back to the petition. Only a few lines to go now. He felt like a pitcher working on a no-hitter. Nobody would mention it, for fear of putting in the jinx. Here it came, the last line. No mistakes yet. Three more words, two more words, one more word—done! Sam felt like cheering. He waited for his infielders to come up and slap him on the back.

  They didn’t, of course. Nobody else knew he’d finished the petition. Jonathan and Karen knew he was working on it. So did Atvar. But here it was, done, all in the form the Race required. He didn’t see how the most finicky protocol master could turn him down.

  Trouble was, the Lizardly equivalent of dotting every i and crossing every t might not be enough. The protocol masters might turn him down because he wasn’t scaly enough to satisfy them. Or they might turn him down for the hell of it—after all, they turned down most Lizards who petitioned for an audience with the Emperor.

  He still hoped they wouldn’t. When was the last time a foreign ambassador had come before an Emperor? Before Home was unified, surely. That was a long time ago now, back when Neanderthals still squatted in caves in Europe. Since then, Rabotevs and Hallessi had come to Home to pay their respects to the rulers of the folk who’d conquered them, but that was different. That didn’t count. They’d already been conquered. A subject’s greetings weren’t worth as much as an equal‘s.

  So Sam thought, anyway. The Lizards were liable to have different ideas. Equality didn’t mean to them what it did back in the United States. Back home, it was an excuse to let everybody run like hell, aiming at the top. Here on Home? Here on Home, equality meant everybody staying in place and being content to stay in place. The USA had been a growing concern for 250 Earth years. Home had been unified for two hundred times that long.

  Two hundred U.S. histories, all laid end to end . . . Say what you pleased about the Lizards, but this society worked. No human culture had been around long enough to make that claim—which didn’t stop any number of human cultures from proclaiming their magnificent wonderfulness at the top of their lungs.

  But in the space of one U.S. history, people had gone from sailing ships to starships. How long had the Race needed to make the same jump? A hell of a lot longer; of that Sam was sure.

  He telephoned Atvar. Would the fleetlord answer, or was he out enjoying the last little stretch of the mating season? His image appeared on the monitor. “I greet you, Fleetlord,” Sam said.

  “And I greet you, Ambassador,” Atvar answered. “What is the occasion for this call?”

  “May I come to your room?” Yeager asked. “I have prepared my petition for an imperial audience, and I would like a member of the Race to check it for mistakes before I s
ubmit it.”

  “I will gladly do this,” Atvar said, “though I doubt it will be necessary. You use our language very well. Even when you do not speak just as we do, you often speak as we would if we were a little more interesting.”

  “I thank you.” Sam hoped that was a compliment. “I thank you, but I would still like you to look the petition over. I speak your language pretty well, yes, but it is not the one I learned from hatchlinghood. And I have to try to write it much less often than I speak it, and the language of this petition is different from what the Race usually uses. All these things being so . . .”

  “Well, come ahead,” Atvar said. “I still think you are worrying about having your clutch of eggs stolen by a beast that is not there, but you are right that it is better to be too careful than not careful enough.”

  “See you very soon, then.” Sam broke the connection. His guards waited in the hall outside the door. “I am only going to visit Fleetlord Atvar, two floors down,” he told them.

  “We have our orders, superior Tosevite,” one of the guards replied. That sentence implied even more blind obedience among the Lizards than it would have in the most spit-and-polish military outfit back on Earth. Arguing would have been pointless. Sam didn’t try. He just walked down the hall. The guards accompanied him.

  The floor was hard. With their scaly feet, the Lizards had never seen as much need for carpets as people did. The walls were painted a muddy greenish brown that never would have passed muster on Earth. The ceiling was too low; Sam had to duck whenever he walked by a lighting fixture. But it was unmistakably a hotel. The rows of identical doors with numbers on them, the indifferent paintings on the walls (some of them all the more indifferent to his eyes because the Race saw two colors in what was the near infrared to him)—what else could it be?

  He went down the stairway. The steps weren’t quite the right size and spacing for his legs, and the handrail was too low, but he got down without a stumble. One of the guards skittered ahead of him. The other followed.