Second Contact Read online

  “I hope that may be so, Senior Researcher,” Veffani said. “The interview will be at his residence, and conducted through a Tosevite interpreter. The one Himmler uses is reasonably fluent in our language; you should have no difficulty following what both sides say.”

  “Again, I thank you, superior sir,” Felless said. “What should I look for in this—Hitler, was that the name?”

  “No. Himmler. Hitler was his predecessor. Hitler was the most willful intelligent being I have ever met or, indeed, ever imagined. Himmler followed him after arcane political maneuverings no one of the Race fully understands. Before, he was in charge of the Deutsch secret police—and, in fact, he still is. He is less flamboyant, less strident, and also, I believe, less intelligent than Hitler. The one thing he is not is less stubborn. This, you will find, is a common factor among Tosevite leaders. The British Big Ugly named Churchill . . .” Veffani made distressed noises.

  Felless shrugged. As far as she was concerned, one Big Ugly was very much like another. “Where will you quarter me in the meanwhile?” she asked, a not so subtle hint.

  Veffani, fortunately, recognized it for what it was. “One of the secretaries will show you to a visitor’s chamber,” he replied. “You will, of course, want to settle in. The appointment with Himmler is at midmorning; I will see you then. As Tosevites go, the Deutsche are a punctual folk.”

  “I shall not delay you,” Felless promised, and she didn’t. The same driver took her and Veffani to the Deutsch not-emperor’s residence so that they arrived just before the appointed time. A couple of tall Tosevites in long black mantlings and high-crowned caps that made them look even taller escorted the ambassador and the researcher into Himmler’s presence. The room in which the Deutsch not-emperor received them was, by Tosevite standards, bare, being ornamented only by a Deutsch hooked-cross banner and by a portrait of a Tosevite whom Felless recognized as Hitler by the peculiar little growth of hair under his snout.

  Himmler had a growth of hair there, too, but one of a more common pattern for Big Ugly males. He looked at Veffani and Felless through corrective lenses, then spoke in his gargling language. As promised, the translator used the language of the Race well: “He greets you in a polite and cordial way.”

  “Return similar greetings on behalf of my associate and myself,” Veffani said.

  “It shall be done,” the translator said.

  Himmler listened. Big Uglies had more mobile features than the Race, but he seemed schooled at holding his face still. Veffani said, “You know the SSSR and the United States both accuse the Reich of attacking the colonization fleet.”

  “Of course they do,” Himmler said. He was an alien, but Felless thought she heard indifference in his voice. She could not imagine how he could be indifferent till he went on, “What else would they say? If they say anything else, they endanger themselves. I deny it. I have always denied it. What the Reich does, it does not deny. It proclaims.”

  Felless knew that held some truth. The ideology of the Deutsche seemed to involve continual boasting. Master Race indeed, she thought scornfully.

  Unruffled, Veffani said, “They have evidence for their claims.”

  “The usual forgeries?” Yes, Himmler was indifferent, chillingly so. “I have seen this so-called evidence. The U.S. and Soviet claims contradict each other. They cannot both be true. They can both be lies. They are. We have given you much better evidence concerning the Soviet Union.” By better, Felless took him to mean more plausible, not necessarily true.

  Veffani took him the same way. The ambassador said, “I have my own evidence that several Deutsch soldiers crossed the border into Poland the other day. They have no right to do this—Poland is still ours. I insist that they be punished.”

  “They already have been,” Himmler said. “Details of the punishment will be furnished to you.”

  “I also require an apology to the Race,” Veffani said.

  “We would not have punished them if we thought they were right,” the Deutsch not-emperor said. “Since we have punished them, we must reckon them wrong. This makes any further apology unnecessary.”

  He was logical. He was reasonable. Had he been a male of the Race, he might have been a schoolmaster. He also headed a notempire that specialized in killing off certain groups of Big Uglies living within it for no logical, rational reason the Race had ever been able to find. Even as Veffani conceded that, under the circumstances Himmler had outlined, no apology would be necessary, Felless studied the Tosevite not-emperor. For his kind, he seemed utterly ordinary. Somehow, that made him more alarming, not less.

  8

  Having composed the document about which she’d been thinking for some time, Kassquit was polishing it when the speaker by the door hissed, announcing that someone outside wanted to come in. “Who is it?” she asked, using her fingerclaw to make the document vanish from her computer screen.

  “I: Ttomalss,” came the reply.

  “Come in, superior sir,” she said. “You are welcome.” That last was not altogether true, but she couldn’t do anything about it. She intended to present the document to Ttomalss when she finished it, but she didn’t want him seeing it till she did. And how could she work on it while he was here?

  “I greet you, Kassquit,” he said as the door slid open to reveal his familiar face and form.

  “I greet you, superior sir,” she replied. As she bent into the posture of respect, she realized how glad she was that he did not have Felless with him. No matter how the other researcher might have apologized, she still looked on Kassquit as half alien, half animal. When she was with Ttomalss, he seemed to look on Kassquit the same way. When he visited her by himself, though, he came closer to treating her as if she were a female of the Race in all fashions.

  Whatever Ttomalss wanted now, he looked to be having some difficulty coming to the point. He said, “I am glad you have grown out of hatchlinghood and into something approaching maturity.”

  “I thank you, superior sir,” Kassquit said gravely. “I am also glad of this as it makes me less of a burden for you and more readily able to care for myself.”

  “You are gracious, Kassquit,” Ttomalss said.

  “I know I was more difficult to raise than a proper hatchling would have been, superior sir, and I applaud your patience in caring for me as you have,” Kassquit said. “I cannot help it if I was not so ready to begin life on my own as a hatchling of the Race would have been.”

  Ttomalss shrugged. “Now that the experience is behind me, I can truthfully say not all of it was negative. You must know that, while you were more dependent than a hatchling of the Race, you also acquired language more readily than such a hatchling would be likely to do. Once I could communicate with you, matters did improve considerably.”

  “I am glad to hear this,” Kassquit said, one of the larger understatements of her young life. Usually, comparisons between the way she looked or behaved and the standards of the Race were to her disadvantage. Praise fell on her like rain on a desert that rarely saw it: a figure applicable to large stretches of Home.

  “It is the truth,” Ttomalss said. “And it is also the truth, as I mentioned before, that you are now mature, or nearly so.”

  He was uncomfortable. Something was wrong. For the life of her, Kassquit couldn’t tell what. Sometimes the direct approach worked well. She tried it now: “What is troubling you, superior sir? If it is anything with which I can help, you know that is my privilege as well as my duty.”

  It didn’t work, not this time. It only made Ttomalss even twitchier than before. He strode back and forth across the chamber, his toeclaws clicking off metal, his tailstump twitching in agitation. At last, with what looked like a distinct effort of will, he stopped and cautiously turned one eye turret toward her. He said, “Are you aware that this chamber can be illuminated with infrared light, light to which your eyes—and, to a lesser degree, mine as well—do not respond?”

  Kassquit stared. She could not imagine a greater
irrelevancy. Puzzled still, she said, “I did not know such a thing could be done in this chamber, no. I did know it could be done, speaking more generally. Landcruisers, for example, can see targets by these infrared rays even in complete darkness.”

  “Yes, that is so,” Ttomalss agreed. He started pacing again. His tailstump twitched harder than ever. “That is precisely one of the purposes for which infrared rays are useful: seeing in what would otherwise be darkness, I mean.”

  “Well, of course,” Kassquit said, still trying to understand why he was so agitated. Then she grew agitated herself, remembering the last time he and Felless had visited her together, and what she’d been doing when they visited her. “You have been observing me in the dark,” she whispered.

  Blood rushed to her cheeks and ears and scalp, as it did when she was mortified. He had seen her when she evoked pleasure by stroking her private parts. Of course she was mortified. What else could she be? By pleasuring herself thus, she proved beyond any hope of contradiction that she was a Big Ugly and not anything even close to a proper female of the Race.

  She looked up at the ceiling in shame. “I did not think you knew, superior sir,” she said, whispering still.

  “I know,” Ttomalss said. “I have known for some time. I am not angry, Kassquit.” He used an emphatic cough to stress that. “I am not even disappointed in you. Please understand that. You are not only a product of your environment. You are also a product of your biology. If it were otherwise, you would now be a female of the Race, not . . . what you are.”

  “Why do you tell me this?” Kassquit asked. “Could you not have observed in silence and discretion?”

  “I could have, yes,” Ttomalss said. “I did, in fact. But now choices must be made: not this instant, you understand—we are not hasty, after all, as the wild Tosevites are—but consideration must nonetheless begin.”

  “I suppose so,” Kassquit said reluctantly. “What you say makes good logical sense.” What she felt when she touched herself, though, was about as far removed from good logical sense as anything could be. The Race, as far as she knew, was logical all the time. She wished she could be. Except when she was touching herself, she wished she could be. Then . . . She didn’t know what she wished then, except that it could go on forever.

  Ttomalss said, “I must tell you, Kassquit, this is not easy for me. Matters pertaining to Tosevite reproduction behavior are most alien to the Race, and lie at the heart of the differences between us and the Big Uglies.”

  He is embarrassed, too, Kassquit realized. Had he not felt it to be his duty to bring this up with her, he would without a doubt have been happier saying nothing. She admired him for doing his duty despite embarrassment.

  She said, “What are my possibilities, superior sir? The only ones I can see are continuing my present behavior and not continuing it . . . and not continuing it, at least occasionally, would be difficult for me.” Without some sort of release when the pressure of not quite belonging to the Race grew too great, what would she do? She had no idea. She did not want to have to find out.

  “I understand,” Ttomalss said. “That is, I understand as well as our differences in biology permit me to understand. Tosevite females have the potential to be sexually available to males at all seasons of the year. From this, it follows that there would be interest in and desire for activities pertaining to mating throughout the year as well. Your behavior seems to affirm this.”

  “I suppose you may be correct, superior sir,” Kassquit said, “although I have never thought of what I do as a mating behavior, only as something that gives me pleasure.”

  “Mating behavior is designed to give pleasure, to ensure that organisms continue to pursue it,” Ttomalss said. Kassquit made an affirmative hand gesture; she had encountered that concept before. Ttomalss went on, “There are, or could be, other possibilities available to you besides those you mention, though they might require considerable discussion before they could be implemented.”

  “What other possibilities?” Kassquit demanded. “If any other researchers have raised Big Uglies from hatchlinghood, I am not aware of it.”

  “No, nothing of the sort,” Ttomalss said. “It might have been better—I daresay it would have been better—for researchers other than myself to have undertaken such a project, but none chose to. Other than myself, none had the patience for it.”

  “I understand, superior sir,” Kassquit said. “You have spoken many times of the difficulties involved in rearing Tosevite hatchlings. This being so, what other alternatives are there for me?”

  Ttomalss let out a hissing sigh. “If the urge to mate grows uncontrollable, I suppose it could be arranged to bring a male up from the surface of Tosev 3 to attend to the matter. I do not urge this course, mind you; I merely mention it as a possibility.”

  “A—wild Tosevite?” Kassquit used the negative hand gesture. “I think not, superior sir. I want as little acquaintance with the Big Uglies as I may have; my destiny, for better or worse, is with the Race.”

  “I agree, Kassquit,” Ttomalss said gravely. “But, however much your spirit may belong to the Race, it is housed in a Tosevite body with Tosevite hormonal urges. The strength of these we are still in the process of ascertaining, but everything we have learned proves they are not to be despised.”

  Kassquit bent into the posture of respect again. “You are generous, superior sir, to show me so much consideration. But, first, I do not wish to meet any wild Tosevite males.” She used an emphatic cough. “And, second, you understand that I am as ignorant of proper Tosevite mating behavior as the Race was before coming to this world. I suppose there is such a thing as proper Tosevite mating behavior; however beastly they may act, Big Uglies are not beasts.”

  “This is all truth.” Ttomalss sounded surprised, and soon showed why: “It is also truth that did not occur to me. If you wish to learn more of Tosevite mating behavior, you may consult our archives on the subject.” He gave her the code by which she could retrieve them from the data system.

  “I thank you, superior sir,” Kassquit said. “I did not realize these archives existed. One cannot search for what one does not know is there.”

  “Again, truth,” Ttomalss said. “Examine some of them, if you care to. It may help influence your decision. And now, having said what I came to say, I shall depart.” He did, with every sign of relief.

  Kassquit went back to the computer. She intended to call up the document on which she had been working, the one in which she was requesting increased autonomy from Ttomalss. But here he had come to give her more autonomy of a different sort.

  Curiosity overcame her. She supposed she had known it would. She used the access code Ttomalss had given her. The computer screen showed two wild, unshaven Tosevites coupling. Kassquit watched with fascination and horror mixed. The posture struck her as absurd, and what the male was doing as unlikely to cause pleasure. It looked, in fact, as if it ought to be acutely painful.

  Evidently it was not, though. The female gave signs of the same pleasure Kassquit knew when stroking herself. The male’s deeper groans seemed to be of the same kind, even if different in degree. After the recording finished, the computer menu asked if she wanted to view another. She gave an affirmative response.

  Again, fascination and disgust warred. Some of the practices in which the Big Uglies indulged looked most unsanitary. Finally, Kassquit turned off the computer. She was very, very glad she had not asked Ttomalss to supply her with a wild Tosevite male.

  Monique Dutourd stopped her bicycle in front of a public telephone kiosk on her way home from the university. Before she slid off the bicycle, though, she shook her head and started pedaling again, this time up a side street. A phone on her regular route was too likely to be tapped. After a few blocks, she came to another kiosk, this one in front of a little market.

  “Better,” she said, and let down the kickstand. Before she approached the telephone, she looked all around, making certain the coast was clear. She e
ven stuck her head into the market, to make sure Sturmbannführer Dieter Kuhn was not lurking there after outthinking her. The fellow inside washing squashes—rather a handsome young man, with a diabolical little chin beard—waved and blew her a kiss. She ignored him, as she ignored half a dozen casual invitations every day.

  Rummaging in her purse, she found a twenty-five pfennig coin and put it in the telephone’s coin slot. She was glad to hear a dial tone; she would not have wanted to place the call through an operator. She still wondered if she ought to be placing it at all. But surely the brother from whom she’d been so long separated got other calls. What was one more?

  Everything, Monique thought. Everything, or maybe nothing.

  She dialed the number. Finding it had taken a long time, and meant dealing with people of a sort she’d had nothing to do with since the tense days just after the fighting stopped. She hadn’t trusted them then; she still did not. For all she knew, they’d taken her money and given her a number that would connect her with the city pound. And if they had, maybe that was just as well.

  The telephone rang . . . and rang, and rang. Monique was about to hang up, get her quarter-mark back, and give up the whole thing as a bad job when someone answered: “Allô? Who’s there?”

  Monique had not expected a woman with a sexy voice on the other end of the line. Flustered, she blurted, “Let me talk to Pierre.”

  “And who the devil are you?” From sexy, the voice went to hard and suspicious in the blink of an eye.

  “I’m his sister,” Monique said desperately.

  “You’re a lying bitch, is what you are,” the other woman snapped. “He hasn’t got a sister. So he’s two-timing me again, is he? He’ll be sorry.”

  “I am not. He has. And he isn’t,” Monique said. “Tell him I remember that the name of the dog we had when he went off to war was Alexandre.”

  She waited to discover whether the woman would hang up on her. Silence stretched. At last, the woman said, “He has spoken of this dog to me. I do not think—I could be wrong, but I do not think—he would have spoken of it to any of his whores. You wait. I will see if he will speak to you.”