Second Contact Read online

  “We are not dictating. We are not in a position to dictate, however unfortunate that may be,” Molotov said. “We are making our views known to them. We are in a position to do that. If they choose to ignore us, they show themselves to be uncultured and give us grounds for ignoring them in appropriate circumstances.”

  “They are of the opinion—the strong opinion—that we ignore their views by continuing to supply weapons to progressive forces in China and Afghanistan,” Gromyko said.

  “I cannot imagine why they continue to hold such an opinion,” Molotov said. “We have repeatedly denied any such involvement.”

  Gromyko did own an impressive stone face, for he failed to crack a smile at that. So did Molotov. Here, as so often, denials and truth bore little relation to each other. But the Lizards had never quite been able to prove Soviet denials were false, and so the denials continued.

  “A thought,” Gromyko said, raising a forefinger.

  “Go on.” Molotov nodded. His neck creaked a little as he did so. He was up past seventy, his face more wrinkled than it had been when the Lizards first came to Earth, his hair thinner and almost entirely gray. Aging mattered relatively little to him; he had never been a man who relied on creating an overwhelming physical impression.

  Gromyko said, “Should the Yashcheritsi offer not to settle heavily along our southern border if we truly do stop arms shipments that annoy them, how ought we to respond?”

  “Ah. That is interesting, Andrei Andreyevich,” Molotov said. “Do you think they would have the imagination to propose such a bargain?” Before Gromyko could answer, Molotov went on, “If they do not, should we propose it to them?” Now he did smile, unpleasantly. “How Mao would howl!”

  “So he would. Seldom have I met a man who had so much arrogance,” Gromyko said. “Hitler came close, but Hitler actually led a state, where Mao has spent the last thirty years wishing he could.”

  “Even so,” Molotov agreed. He pondered. Would he sell his Chinese ideological brethren down the river to gain advantage for the Soviet Union? He did not need to ponder long. “I hope Queek does propose it; if we do so, it may suggest weakness to the Lizards. But we can raise the issue if we must. Keeping the Lizards well away from us counts for more than keeping Mao happy.”

  “I agree, Comrade General Secretary,” Gromyko said. “The Lizards will not settle China in any great numbers; it already has too many people. Mao’s chief value to us is keeping the countryside unsettled, and he will do that with or without our arms.”

  “A very pretty solution indeed,” Molotov said, warming up all the way to tepid. “One way or another, we shall use it.”

  Molotov’s secretary came in and announced, “The ambassador from the Race and his interpreter are here.” He did not call the Lizard a Lizard, not where the said Lizard or the interpreter could hear him.

  Queek skittered into Molotov’s office. He was about the size of a ten-year-old, though he seemed smaller because of his forward-slung posture. One of his eye turrets, weirdly like a chameleon’s, swiveled toward Molotov, the other toward Gromyko. Molotov could not read his body paint, but its ornateness declared his high rank.

  He addressed Molotov and Gromyko in his own hissing language. The interpreter, a tall, stolid, middle-aged human, spoke good Russian with a Polish accent: “The ambassador greets you in the name of the Emperor.”

  “Tell him that we greet him in return, in the name of the workers and peasants of the Soviet Union,” Molotov answered. He smiled again, down where it did not show. At his very first meeting with the Lizards, not long after their invasion, he’d had the pleasure of letting them know that the Soviets had liquidated the Tsar and his family. Their own Emperors had ruled them for fifty thousand years; the news taught them, better than anything else could have done, that they were not dealing with creatures of a familiar sort.

  The interpreter hissed and squeaked and popped and coughed. Queek made similar appalling noises. Again, the interpreter translated: “The ambassador says he is not certain this meeting has any point, as he has already made it clear to the foreign commissar that your views on the settlement of the Race are unacceptable.”

  Even more than the Nazis, the Lizards were convinced they were the lords of creation and everyone else their natural subjects. As he had almost twenty years before, Molotov took pleasure in reminding them they might be wrong: “If we are sufficiently provoked, we will attack the colonization fleet in space.”

  “If we are sufficiently provoked, we will serve the present rulers of the Soviet Union as you butchers served your emperor,” Queek retorted. The interpreter looked as if he enjoyed translating the Lizard’s reply; Molotov wondered what grievance he held against the Soviet Union.

  No time to worry about that now. Molotov said, “Whatever sacrifices are required of us, we shall make them.”

  He wondered how true that was. It had certainly been true a generation before, with the Soviet people mobilized to battle first the Nazis and then the Lizards. Now, after a time of comfort, who could be sure if it still was? But the Lizards might not—he hoped they did not—know that.

  Queek said, “Even after so long, I cannot understand how you Tosevites can be such madmen. You are willing to destroy yourselves, so long as you can also harm your foes.”

  “This often makes our foes less eager to attack us,” Andrei Gromyko pointed out. “Sometimes we must convince people we mean what we say. Your taste for aggression, for instance, is less than it was before you encountered the determination of the Soviet people.”

  By studying motion pictures of prisoners, Molotov had gained a good working knowledge of what Lizards’ gestures and motions meant. Gromyko had succeeded in alarming Queek. Molotov added, “If you expect to get good treatment from us, you must show us good treatment in return.”

  That was a lesson the Lizards had had a hard time learning. It was also an invitation to dicker. Would Queek see as much? Molotov wasn’t sure. The Lizards were better diplomats now than they had been when they first came—they had more practice at the art, too. They weren’t stupid. Anyone who thought otherwise quickly paid the price. But they were naive, even more naive than Americans.

  “The converse should also apply,” Queek said. “Why should we even deal with you, when you keep sending weapons to those who would overthrow our rule?”

  “We deny this,” Molotov said automatically. But did Queek offer an opening? Molotov was willing to trade hint for hint: “Why should we trust you, when you plainly plan on packing the borders with your kind?”

  Queek paused before replying. Was he also trying to decide whether he heard the beginnings of a deal? At last, he said, “We should have less need to rely on the Race’s military might if you did not keep provoking your surrogates against us with hopes of a triumph surely impossible.”

  “Have you not seen, Ambassador, how little is impossible on this world?” Molotov said.

  “We have seen this, yes: seen it to our sorrow,” Queek replied. “Were it not so, I would not be here negotiating with you. But since I am, perhaps we can discuss this matter further.”

  “Perhaps we can,” Molotov said. “I have doubts as to whether it will come to anything, but perhaps we can.” He watched Queek lean forward slightly. Yes, the Lizard was serious. Molotov did not smile. Getting down to business was a capitalist phrase, but in the privacy of his own mind he used it anyway.

  Ttomalss politely inclined his head. “It is a pleasure to see a new face from Home, superior female,” he said to the researcher from the colonization fleet who had come to consult with him. On the whole, he was telling the truth; he had not always got on well with the colleagues who had accompanied him in the colonization fleet, or with the Big Uglies he studied.

  “In this matter, I should call you ‘superior sir,’ ” the newcomer—her name was Felless—replied. “You have the expertise. You have the experience with these Tosevites.”

  More than I ever wanted, Ttomalss thought, remembering
captivity in China he’d expected to lead to his death. Aloud, he said, “You are gracious,” which was also true, for Felless’ body paint showed that she outranked him.

  “You have had all the time since the arrival of the conquest fleet to assimilate the implausible nature of the natives of Tosev 3,” Felless said. “To me, having to try to understand it in a matter of days—a most hasty and inefficient procedure—it seems not merely implausible but impossible.”

  “This was our reaction on reaching this world, too,” Ttomalss said. “We have since had to adapt to changing conditions.” He let his mouth fall open. “Anyone on Tosev 3 who fails to adapt is ruined. We have seen that demonstrated—and most often painfully demonstrated—time and again.”

  “So I gather,” Felless said. “It must have been very difficult for you. Change, after all, is an unnatural condition.”

  “So I thought before leaving Home,” Ttomalss replied. “So I still think, at times, for so I was trained to think all my life. But, had we not changed, the best we could have done would have been to destroy this planet—and where would that have left you and the colonization fleet, superior female?”

  Felless did not take him seriously. He could tell at a glance; he barely needed one eye turret to see it, let alone two. That saddened him, but hardly surprised him. She had the beginnings of an intellectual understanding of what the Race had been through on Tosev 3. Ttomalss had been through every bit of it. The scars still marked his spirit. It would never be free of them till it met the spirits of Emperors past face to face.

  “You are to be commended for your diligent efforts to gain understanding of the roots of Tosevite behavior,” Felless said.

  “Nice to know someone thinks so,” Ttomalss said, remembering quarrels down through the years. “Some males, I think, would sooner stay ignorant. And some would sooner put their tongues in a ginger jar and forget their research and everything else.”

  He waited. Sure enough, Felless asked a hesitant question: “Ginger? I have seen the name in the reports. It must refer to a drug native to Tosev 3, for it is certainly unknown back on Home.”

  “Yes. It’s an herb that grows here,” Ttomalss said. “For the natives, it is just a spice, the way balj is back on Home. It is a drug for us, though, and a nasty one. It makes a male feel smart and bold and strong—and when it wears off, it makes him feel like having some more. Once it gets its claws in you, you will do almost anything for another taste.”

  “With more enforcement personnel here now, we should be able to root it out without much trouble,” Felless said.

  Ttomalss remembered that pristine confidence, that sense that things would keep going smoothly because they always had. He’d known it himself. Then he’d started dealing with the Big Uglies. Like so many males on Tosev 3, he’d lost it and never got it back. He didn’t try to explain that to Felless. The female would find out for herself.

  “Why would anyone want a drug in the first place, especially an alien drug?” Felless asked him.

  “At first because you are bored, or else because you see someone else having a good time and you want one, too,” he answered. “We shall have trouble with ginger when the colonists land, mark my words.”

  “I shall record your prediction,” Felless said. “I tend to doubt its accuracy, but, as I said, you are the one with experience on Tosev 3, so perhaps you will prove correct in the end.”

  Was she so serious all the time? A lot of people back on Home were. Ttomalss remembered as much. Contact with the Big Uglies—even contact with males who had contact with the Big Uglies—had a way of abrading such seriousness. And now a hundred million colonists, once revived, would look on the relative handful of males from the colonization fleet as slightly addled eggs. Ttomalss didn’t see what anyone could do about that, either.

  Deep inside, he laughed to himself. Eventually, the colonists would have to start dealing with the Tosevites. Then they’d start getting addled, too. In spite of his best efforts to believe otherwise, Ttomalss could reach no other conclusion. Even if Tosev 3 at last came completely under the Emperor’s rule, it would be the odd world out in more ways than one for years, centuries, millennia to come.

  Because he’d been mentally picking parasites out from under his scales, he missed a comment from Felless. “I am sorry, superior female?” he said, embarrassed.

  “I said that of all the researchers with the conquest fleet, you seem to have gone furthest in your efforts to examine the integration of Tosevites and the Race.” Felless repeated the compliment with no sign of exasperation. She continued, “Some of your activities strike me as going above and beyond the call of duty.”

  “You are generous, superior female,” Ttomalss said. “My view has always been that, if this world is to be successfully colonized, effecting such integration will be mandatory.”

  “You doubt the possibility of successful colonization?” Now Felless sounded reproving, not complimentary.

  “I doubt the certainty of successful colonization,” Ttomalss replied. “Anyone with experience of Tosev 3 doubts the certainty of anything pertaining to it.”

  “And yet you have persisted,” Felless said. “In your reports, you indicate that your first experimental specimen was forcibly taken away from you, and that you yourself were kidnapped by Tosevite bandits while seeking to obtain a replacement for it.”

  “Truth,” Ttomalss said. “We badly underestimated the importance of family bonds on Tosev 3, due not only to long-term sexual pairings but also to the absurdly helpless nature of Tosevite hatchlings, which need constant care if they are to survive. Because of these factors, my experiments have met with far more opposition from the Big Uglies than they would have from any other intelligent race with which we are familiar.”

  “And yet, in the end, your work seems to have met with success,” Felless said. “I wonder if you would be so kind as to allow me to make the acquaintance of the specimen you finally succeeded in obtaining and rearing.”

  “I thought you might ask that.” Ttomalss rose. “Kassquit is waiting in the next chamber. I shall return in a moment.”

  “My first Tosevite, even if not quite a wild specimen,” Felless said in musing tones. “How interesting this will be!”

  “Please do your best to treat the Big Ugly as you would a member of the Race,” Ttomalss warned. “Since the Tosevite gained speech—which Big Uglies do more quickly than our own hatchlings—all males have followed this course, which appears to have worked well.”

  “It shall be done,” Felless promised.

  Ttomalss went into the adjacent chamber, where Kassquit sat in front of a screen, engrossed in a game. “The researcher from Home wishes to speak with you,” Ttomalss said.

  “It shall be done, superior sir,” Kassquit said obediently, and got up. The Big Ugly, though not large for a Tosevite, stood head and neck above Ttomalss. Kassquit followed him back to the chamber where Felless waited. Bending into the posture of respect, the Tosevite said to her, “I greet you, superior sir.”

  “Superior female,” Ttomalss corrected. He turned to Felless. “You are the first female Kassquit has met.”

  “I am very pleased to make your acquaintance, Kassquit,” Felless said.

  “I thank you, superior female.” Kassquit used the correct title this time. The Big Ugly’s voice was slightly mushy; Tosevite mouthparts could not quite handle all the sounds of the language of the Race. “You are truly from Home?”

  “I am,” Felless said.

  “I would like to visit Home,” Kassquit said wistfully, “but cold sleep has not yet been adapted to my biochemistry.”

  “Perhaps it will be one day,” Felless said. Ttomalss watched her try to hide surprise; Kassquit was young, but far from stupid. Felless went on, “Rabotevs and Hallessi travel between the stars—no reason Tosevites should not as well.”

  “I hope you are right, superior female.” Kassquit turned small, immobile eyes toward Ttomalss. “May I be excused, superior sir?”


  Was that shyness or a desire to return to the game? Whatever it was, Ttomalss yielded to it: “You may.”

  “I thank you, superior sir. I am glad to have met you, superior female.” After another respectful bend, Kassquit left, tall and ridiculously erect.

  “Brighter than I expected,” Felless remarked once the Big Ugly was gone. “Less alien-seeming, too; far less so than the Tosevites in the images I have seen.”

  “That is by design, to aid in integration,” Ttomalss said. “The body paint, of course, designates Kassquit as my apprentice. The unsightly hair at the top of the Tosevite’s head is frequently clipped to the skin. When Kassquit reached sexual maturity, more hair grew at the armpits and around the genital area, though Kassquit’s race is less hairy than most Tosevites.”

  “What is the function of these hairy patches that emerge at sexual maturity?” Felless asked. “I presume they pertain to reproduction in some way.”

  “That is not yet fully understood,” Ttomalss admitted. “They may help spread pheromones from odorous glands in these areas, but Tosevite reproductive behavior is less closely tied to odor cues than our own.”

  “Are these creatures truly accessible to one another at all seasons?” Felless asked. A wriggle said what she thought of the idea.

  But Ttomalss had to answer, “Truly. And they find our way as strange and repugnant as we find theirs. I confess that, despite my scientific objectivity, I have a great deal of trouble grasping this. Surely our way is far more convenient. You are not in season; my scent receptors know as much; and so you are simply a colleague. No complications involved with mating need arise.”

  “And a good thing, too,” Felless exclaimed. She and Ttomalss both laughed at the absurdities of the Big Uglies.

  “Home.” Kassquit tasted the sound of the word. Home was more real in the Tosevite’s mind than Tosev 3, around which this ship had orbited longer than Kassquit had been alive.