Homeward Bound Read online

  “Well, you’d better be,” Dr. Blanchard said, and that was effectively that.

  “I greet you, Ambassador,” Atvar told Sam Yeager when he met the Big Ugly in the hotel conference room. “And I am pleased to tell you congratulations are in order.”

  “And I greet you. I also thank you. What kind of congratulations, Fleetlord?” the American Tosevite inquired.

  “Your petition for an audience with the Emperor has been granted,” Atvar answered. “This news comes through me and not directly to you because I have been appointed your sponsor, so to speak.”

  “That is excellent news. Excellent!” Sam Yeager not only used an emphatic cough, he also got out of his chair and bent into the posture of respect. “I am in your debt for the help you gave me. Ah . . . what does being a sponsor entail?”

  He was pleased. Atvar knew that. But the wild Big Ugly was not overjoyed, as a proper citizen of the Empire would have been. He was just pleased—much too mild a reaction. His question, though, was reasonable enough. Atvar said, “A sponsor does about what you would expect. He trains his hatchling—that is the technical term—in responses and rituals required in the audience. If the hatchling disgraces himself, the sponsor is also disgraced. Not all those who win audiences have a sponsor. Getting one is most common among those least likely to have their petitions accepted and so least likely to be familiar with the rituals.”

  “Among the poor and the ignorant, eh?” Sam Yeager laughed in the noisy fashion of his kind. “Which am I?”

  “You are ignorant, of course, Ambassador. Will you deny it?” Atvar said. “I suppose I was chosen as your sponsor not only because I know you but because I am familiar with Tosevites in general and because I have had a recent audience with his Majesty. I will do my best to help you avoid the pitfalls.”

  “Again, I thank you,” Sam Yeager said. “I do hope the Race will remember that I really am ignorant, that I am only a poor, stupid wild Big Ugly who knows no better. If I make a mistake, I will not be doing it on purpose.”

  “I believe that is understood, yes,” Atvar said. “If the Emperor and his court did not understand it, your petition would have been rejected.”

  “Good.” The Tosevite paused. “And something else occurs to me. The Emperor ought to grant Kassquit an audience.”

  That took Atvar by surprise. Both his eye turrets swung sharply toward Yeager. “Interesting,” he said. “Why do you propose this?”

  “For the good of the Empire—and for Kassquit’s own good,” Sam Yeager answered. “She is a citizen of the Empire, after all, and she is proud of being a citizen of the Empire. The Empire might do well to show that it is proud to have her as a citizen.”

  “What an . . . interesting idea indeed,” Atvar said. “You realize we may do this and use it in propaganda aimed at the Tosevites under our control on Tosev 3? It would show them they can truly become part of the Empire themselves.”

  “Oh, yes. I realize that,” the wild Big Ugly replied. “I will take my chances nonetheless. For one thing, it will be more than twenty of your years before those pictures arrive at Tosev 3.” He stopped.

  Atvar eyed Yeager with amused scorn. The Tosevite thought of the interval signals took to go from Home to Tosev 3 as a long time. If it wasn’t happening right now, it wasn’t real for a Big Ugly. But then Atvar looked at Sam Yeager in a different way. Say what you would about him, he was not a fool. And . . . “You said, ‘For one thing,’ Ambassador, but you did not go on with any more after the first. What were your other points?”

  “Ah, you noticed, did you?” Sam Yeager shrugged. “Well, I suppose I can tell you. My one other point would have been simply that Kassquit’s audience with the Emperor might do you less good than you would expect if you were to broadcast it widely in the areas of Tosev 3 that you rule.”

  “Oh? And why do you say that?” Atvar wondered if Yeager was going to try to spout some persuasive nonsense to keep the Race from doing what was really in its best interest to do.

  But the wild Big Ugly answered, “Because you will be photographing a Tosevite female without her wrappings. This will perhaps arouse some of your audience. It will scandalize a great deal more. I suspect, though, that it will have the desired effect on very few.”

  Atvar’s hiss of dismay was altogether heartfelt. “I had forgotten about that,” he admitted. “You are a very clever Tosevite.”

  Sam Yeager shook his head. Atvar understood the gesture. The American Big Ugly said, “Not at all, Fleetlord. But I do know my own kind. I had better, would you not agree?”

  “Well, perhaps,” Atvar said, which made Sam Yeager come out with another of his noisy laughs. But then the fleetlord brightened. “I may be able to persuade her to wear wrappings for the purpose of the audience.”

  “Good luck,” Sam Yeager said.

  At first, Atvar thought he meant that sincerely. Then he suspected irony. Judging such things when they came from one of another species, another culture, was never easy. And then Atvar thought about how stubbornly Kassquit had refused to wear wrappings when the wild Big Uglies asked it of her. She was proud to be a citizen of the Empire, and would not want to conform to the usages common among wild Tosevites. She did not seem to notice that her stubbornness was one of the most Tosevite things about her.

  “Maybe I can persuade her,” Atvar said at last. “An audience with the Emperor would be something she highly desired.”

  “That is a truth,” Sam Yeager said. “But she would desire it as a citizen of the Empire. Would she desire it as nothing but a propaganda tool?”

  “I think finding out may be worth my while,” Atvar said. “If you will excuse me . . .”

  He rang up Kassquit on the conference-room phone. “Yes, Exalted Fleetlord, I would be pleased to see you,” she said. Her intonation when speaking the Race’s language differed only slightly from Sam Yeager’s. He had a language of his own. She didn’t. But her Tosevite mouthparts were the most important factor in determining how she sounded.

  Atvar said his farewells to Yeager and went up to her room. It had, he saw, been modified in the same ways as had the wild Big Uglies’. That made sense; biology outweighed culture when it came to comfort. “I greet you,” Atvar said. “I hope all is well?”

  “As well as it can be when one is neither azwaca nor fibyen,” Kassquit replied. “How may I help you today?”

  “How would you like to present yourself before the Emperor?” Atvar asked.

  Kassquit’s small, narrow, immobile eyes widened. That was a sign of astonishment in Tosevites. Citizen of the Empire or not, Kassquit shared reflexes with the rest of her species. Only natural, Atvar thought. Kassquit said, “There is nothing I would like better, Exalted Fleetlord, but why would the Emperor wish to see one such as me?”

  “What do you mean?” Atvar asked, though he knew perfectly well. Pretending he did not, he went on, “Are you not a citizen of the Empire like any other?”

  “You know what I am,” Kassquit said bleakly. “I am a Big Ugly. I am a citizen of the Empire not like any other.”

  She had reason to sound bleak. She was perfectly right. As she’d said, she was a citizen of the Empire unlike any other. She was not and could not be a wild Big Ugly. The Race had made sure of that. Atvar sounded resolutely cheerful: “That is all the more reason for his Majesty to wish to grant your petition—to show that every citizen of the Empire is like every other citizen once out of the shell.”

  The cliché held good for members of the Race, for Rabotevs, and for Hallessi. It did not hold good for Tosevites, as Atvar remembered just too late. Kassquit rubbed his snout in the mistake, saying, “I remind you, Exalted Fleetlord, that I did not hatch from an egg.”

  “Well, soon there will be millions of citizens who did not hatch from eggs,” Atvar said resolutely. “You are the first—truth. But you will not be the last. Far from it.” He used an emphatic cough.

  “Possibly not.” Kassquit spoke with the air of one making a great concessio
n. Then she hesitated. “Would my audience be used for propaganda purposes with the wild Big Uglies on Tosev 3?”

  She might have been—she was—betwixt and between, but that did not make her a fool. Atvar reminded himself of that once more. Had she been less bright, she would have had much more trouble coping with her situation than she did in fact. Cautiously, the fleetlord answered, “It might. That would depend in part on whether you are willing to put on wrappings for the occasion. An unwrapped female might cause more, ah, controversy than approval among the wild Tosevites.”

  Kassquit made the negative gesture. “Why should I accommodate myself to the prejudices of barbarians?” she demanded. “I am a citizen of the Empire. Let the wild Big Uglies see what that means.” She did not use an emphatic cough. Her words were quite emphatic enough.

  Atvar answered her question, though no doubt she’d posed it rhetorically: “Why should you accommodate yourself to barbarians? Because in so doing you would serve the Empire’s interests.”

  But Kassquit used the negative gesture again. “The Empire should not accommodate itself to the wild Big Uglies, either. It should find ways to get them to accommodate themselves to it.”

  “Having them see another Tosevite treated as an equal here on Home would go some way toward that end,” Atvar said.

  “Then let them see me treated as an equal, and not artificially wrapped,” Kassquit said firmly. “If the Emperor is willing to accept my petition under those circumstances, I will submit it. If not”—she shrugged—“not.”

  “Submit it in any case,” Atvar urged. “His Majesty and the court may well accept it come what may, simply because of the services you have already rendered the Empire.” He was careful not to say, the Race.

  “Well, then, it shall be done, Exalted Fleetlord, and I thank you for the suggestion,” Kassquit said.

  “Sam Yeager urged me to propose this to you,” Atvar said, knowing she would hear as much from one of the wild Big Uglies if not from him. “His opinion is that your petition will probably be accepted whether or not you wear wrappings.”

  “He is a clever male. I hope he is right here,” Kassquit said.

  “In my opinion, he probably is,” Atvar said. “The Emperor should have a special interest in meeting a Tosevite subject, especially as he will also be meeting with the ambassador from these independent Big Uglies.”

  “I would hope he might accept my petition even if I were not—” But Kassquit broke off and made the negative gesture. “That is pointless. I am a special case. I have been made into a special case, and I can do nothing about it. No matter what I hope for, there is no point to hoping for normality.”

  “If I could tell you you were wrong, I would. But you are right, and telling you otherwise would be not only pointless but untrue,” Atvar said. “Since you are special, however, you should exploit that for all it is worth.”

  “That, no doubt, is a truth,” Kassquit replied. “It is a truth I have been reluctant to use, however. I do want to be valued for myself, not as . . . as a curiosity, you might say.”

  “There will be many more Tosevite citizens of the Empire in years to come,” Atvar said. “There may even be some on Tosev 3 now. But I do not think there will ever be another one as completely acculturated as you are.”

  “I would disagree with you,” Kassquit said. “Some hundreds or thousands of years from now, after Tosev 3 is firmly incorporated into the Empire, all the Big Uglies there will be as I am.”

  “I have my doubts about that,” Atvar said. “Thanks to ginger and to the strong native civilizations, I suspect Tosev 3 will always be something of a special case, a world apart, in the Empire. Tosevite cultures will not be subsumed to the same degree as those of the Rabotevs and Hallessi have been.”

  “And, of course, I knew nothing of any Tosevite culture when I was a hatchling,” Kassquit said. “I thought of myself as a misshapen female of the Race. I kept wishing I would grow scales and eye turrets. When it did not happen, I wondered what I had done to be so bad.”

  Atvar had authorized Ttomalss’ experiment with Kassquit. He’d followed it with interest. Not only had it been interesting, it had also been necessary. He’d always been convinced of that. Up till now, he’d never felt guilty about it. He wondered why not.

  “Write your petition,” he said. “I fear we have done you an injustice in the past, one we cannot possibly make up to you. But what we can do, we will. By the Emperor, by the spirits of Emperors past, I promise you that.”

  “Yes, of course,” Ttomalss said in some surprise, staring at Kassquit’s image in the monitor. “I would be pleased to review your petition for an audience with the Emperor. But why, if you do not mind my asking, is this the first that I have heard of your submitting such a petition?”

  “Fleetlord Atvar suggested that I do so.” Kassquit’s features showed no expression, but excitement sang in her voice. “He said he had the idea from Sam Yeager. The wild Big Ugly reasoned that, if the Emperor would consent to see him, he might also consent to seeing a Tosevite citizen of the Empire—the Tosevite citizen of the Empire now living on Home.”

  Ttomalss didn’t need to think that over for very long before deciding Sam Yeager was bound to be right. The propaganda value of such an audience was obvious—once someone pointed it out. Ttomalss’ tail-stump quivered in agitation. “I should have thought of this for myself.”

  “Truth—you should have.” Kassquit could be particularly liverless when she chose. She went on, “But, as long as someone has thought of it, who does not matter very much. May I bring you the petition now?”

  “Please do,” Ttomalss said, trying his best to hide the vaguely punctured feeling he had. “I am sure you will have written it out without a flaw. After all, the language we are speaking, the language we both write, is as much yours as mine.”

  “So it is, superior sir,” Kassquit said. “For better and for worse, so it is. I will be there very shortly.”

  She was, as usual, as good as her word. When the door button hissed, Ttomalss let her in. “I greet you,” he said.

  “And I greet you,” she replied, bending into the posture of respect. Then she handed him the papers. “Please tell me if everything is in order.”

  “Certainly.” Ttomalss’ eye turrets flicked back and forth, back and forth, as he read through the petition. When he looked at it, he saw nothing that showed a Big Ugly rather than a female of the Race had written it. He occasionally raised one eye turret to look at Kassquit. She was, of course, what she had always been. Physically, she was a Tosevite. Culturally, she belonged to the Empire. “As far as I can see, this is perfect. I congratulate you.”

  “I thank you,” Kassquit said.

  “I am given to understand Sam Yeager had some trouble completing his petition,” Ttomalss said.

  “I have spoken to him about this while I was preparing mine,” Kassquit replied. “He tells me he has some trouble with formal written composition in a language not his own. He is certainly fluent enough while speaking, and in informal postings on electronic bulletin boards.”

  “Yes, that is a truth,” Ttomalss agreed. Back on Tosev 3, Sam Yeager had electronically masqueraded as a member of the Race for some time before Kassquit realized what he was. The Big Uglies, generally speaking, were better at languages than the Race. They had to be, with so many different tongues on their planet. The last time the Race had had to deal with languages other than its own was during the conquest of Halless 1, and that was ten thousand years ago now. Except for a handful of scholars, no one knew anything about the Hallessi languages any more. That of the Race had supplanted them within a few centuries after the conquest.

  However much Ttomalss hoped that would happen on Tosev 3, he had his doubts about whether it would. English, in particular, was flourishing like a weed. Members of the Race had had to learn it not to administer a conquered people but to treat with equals. Conservatives balked at doing so, and more and more often were getting left behind.
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  Kassquit said, “Since you confirm that this petition is in proper format and correct, superior sir, I am going to give it to Fleetlord Atvar, in the hope that his name will help win approval for it.”

  That jabbed a dagger of jealousy under Ttomalss’ scales. Kassquit was his protégée, not Atvar’s. A moment’s thought made him see the sense of Kassquit’s plan. Atvar had recently earned an imperial audience himself. He was serving as Sam Yeager’s sponsor, preparing the wild Big Ugly for his encounter with the 37th Emperor Risson. That all had to mean the imperial courtiers—and perhaps even the Emperor himself—thought well of the former fleetlord of the conquest fleet.

  Ttomalss had petitioned for an imperial audience not long after coming back to Home. The court had not accepted his petition. That hadn’t left him particularly downlivered; he knew how many petitions were submitted, how few accepted. Still, he had not imagined that the Big Ugly he’d raised from a hatchling might win an audience ahead of him.

  She was a grown individual now. Tosevite literature was full of references to generational struggles, to young asserting their authority— no, their right to wield authority—against those who had raised them. Such conflicts were much less common among the Race, where hatchlings were physically able to care for themselves at an early age, and where those who mated to produce them were unlikely to be the ones who reared them.

  Such different social structures were bound to make acculturation more difficult. That had been obvious since early in the invasion. What ginger did to the Race and its mating patterns, though, came as a rude surprise. And the Race’s adoption of Tosevite institutions on Tosev 3 reversed tens of thousands of years of precedent. Such adoptions made thoughtful observers—or perhaps just worried observers—wonder which was in fact the dominant species on Tosev 3. That had nothing to do with the Big Uglies’ rapidly advancing technology, either. It was an altogether separate concern.

  Just what we need, Ttomalss thought sourly. He returned the petition to Kassquit. She left his room. He went back to trying to figure out just where the Tosevites stood in terms of technology. Were the Race’s experts right to be as alarmed as they were? Or were they even underestimating the danger because of their unfamiliarity with so much of what was being printed in Tosevite scientific journals?