Second Contact Read online

  “You usually refuse invitations from other males of the Race to functions such as the one tonight,” the driver said. “Why did you choose to accept this one?”

  The Tosevite spoke Straha’s language about as well as a Big Ugly could. In terms of grammar and pronunciation, he probably spoke it as well as Yeager, who was Straha’s touchstone in such matters. But he did not think like a male of the Race, as Yeager was able to do.

  Straha tried to explain: “Why did I accept? First of all, because I usually decline: I have learned from you Tosevites that being too predictable does not pay. And, second, the males who sent me this invitation are old acquaintances. I have known them since not long after my arrival in the United States, when I was being concealed and interrogated at the place called Hot Springs.” That was another sensible, descriptive place-name, of the sort common back on Home.

  “I understand now,” the driver said. “You are visiting old friends.”

  “In a manner of speaking, yes,” Straha said. But he had recently found an English word that came closer to what he was doing tonight: slumming. During his days as shiplord, he would never have associated with ordinary males like these two, and they would never have presumed to ask him to associate with them. Association at Hot Springs was surely one of the reasons they did so presume now, but the pervasive and corrosive American doctrine of equality was as surely another.

  He did not hold to the doctrine of equality. What was civilization itself, if not a graduated structure of inequalities? But many prisoners who had elected to stay among the American Tosevites had become infected by their foolish politics. That made sense to Straha. They had been low, so naturally they wanted to consider themselves on the same plane as those who had been above them.

  “Here we are, superior sir,” the driver said as the motorcar squeaked to a stop just past a rather garish yellow house with a low hedge out in front of it. Decorative plants were used back on Home, too, but not in such profusion. The driver nodded to Straha. “I shall stay out here and keep an eye on things.” He was not just a driver, of course. He carried a considerable assortment of lethal hardware, and knew how to use all of it.

  “If you must smoke cigarettes while you wait for me, have the courtesy to step out of the motorcar before you do so,” Straha said. He and the Big Ugly had had previous disagreements on that subject.

  Now, though, the driver yipped out Tosevite laughter. “It shall be done, Shiplord,” he said. “And do enjoy the ginger I am sure a lot of the males there will be tasting.” He laughed again. Straha headed for the house, feeling oddly punctured.

  One of the two males who shared the house folded himself into the posture of respect in the doorway. “I greet you, Shiplord,” he said. “You honor our home by your presence.”

  “I greet you, Ristin,” Straha replied. Ristin wore red-white-and-blue body paint of no pattern authorized by the Race. Sam Yeager had devised it in Hot Springs to designate prisoners of the United States. It still scandalized Straha, even after so many years. To Ristin, though, it symbolized his abandonment of the Race and entrance into the world of the Tosevites.

  “I trust all is well with you, Shiplord?” Ristin asked with perhaps a tenth of the deference an infantrymale should have given an officer of Straha’s rank.

  “As well as it can be, yes,” Straha said.

  “Come in, then, and use our house as your own,” Ristin told him. “We have food. We have alcohol, in several flavors. We have ginger, for those who care for it.” He and the male with whom he shared the house had never got the habit. Straha did not know whether to feel scorn or pity or envy at that.

  “I thank you,” Straha said, and went inside. As in many houses built by Tosevites, he felt a little too small. The ceiling was too high, as were the counters in the kitchen. Even the light switches—aside from being a strange shape—were set higher in the wall than he would have had to reach back on Home.

  Music blared out of a playing machine in the front room. It was not the music of the Race, but some Tosevite tune. When Straha turned an eye turret toward the player, he discovered it was also of Tosevite manufacture. Instead of using a skelkwank light to release the information digitally stored on a small disk, the player had a stylus that rode the grooves of a large platter—and, with every playing, degraded them a little, so the platter eventually became unusable. That was like the Big Uglies, Straha thought—they had no consideration for the long term.

  Straha had no use for most Tosevite music, though the Big Ugly called Bach sometimes created patterns he found interesting. This was not Bach. It was, in his view, hardly music at all, even by Tosevite standards. It was full of crashes and horns—not the horns with which the Big Uglies made music, but the ones they used as warning devices on motorcars—and other absurdities.

  Through the cacophonous din, a singer howled in English:

  “When the fleetlord say, ‘We’ll rule this world from space,’

  We—hiss, hiss—right in the fleetlord’s face.

  The fleetlord thinks the Earth is for the Race.

  We—hiss, hiss—right in the fleetlord’s face.”

  The hisses did not come from a Big Ugly’s throat. They sounded more as if they were made by pouring water onto red-hot metal. That would have fit in well with the other strange noises coming out of the playing machine.

  Several males stood in front of the player. Their mouths hung wide open. They thought the recording was the funniest thing they’d ever heard. Straha considered. It was barbaric, it was crude, it was rude—and it was aimed at Atvar. That made up Straha’s mind for him: he decided the recording was pretty funny, too.

  “I greet you, Shiplord.” That was Ullhass, the male with whom Ristin shared his home. Like his comrade, he wore U.S. prisoner-of-war body paint. Maybe he found that funny, in the same sort of way the Tosevite song was funny. That was as close as Straha had ever come to understanding why these two males preferred U.S. body paint to that of the Race.

  “I greet you, Ullhass.” Straha took pride in keeping his own ornate body paint touched up, even though he would never again command the 206th Emperor Yower or any other ship of the Race. He had made sure of that.

  “Help yourself to anything that suits you, Shiplord,” Ullhass said, much as Ristin had at the entrance. “Plenty to eat, plenty to drink, plenty to taste. Plenty of gossip, too. I am glad you decided to join us. We are pleased to see you. You do not come among your own kind often enough.”

  “I am here.” Straha let it go at that. These former captives who had happily settled into Tosevite society and who had one another for company were hardly more his own kind than were the Big Uglies. Because they had been captured, the Race readily forgave them. Many of them had traveled back and forth between the United States and areas of Tosev 3 the Race ruled.

  Straha had not. He would not. He could not. The Race had made it very plain that he was liable to arrest if he ever left the USA. The leaders of the local not-empire had also made it very plain they did not want him to leave. Just as he knew too much about the Race, so he also knew too much about them.

  He went into the kitchen, took some ham and some potato chips—as long as he was here, he would enjoy himself—and poured some clear spirits. The Big Uglies flavored a lot of their alcohol with things most males of the Race found highly unpleasant—burnt wood and tree berries were a couple of their favorites—but they also distilled it without flavorings. That Straha could drink without qualms, and he did.

  A ginger jar sat on the high counter. Anyone who wanted a taste could have one, or more than one. Later, Straha told himself. Had he told himself no, he would have known he was lying. Later was easier to deal with.

  Skittering in, a male almost bumped into Straha. “Sorry, friend,” he said as he spooned some ginger out into the palm of his hand. Then one of his eye turrets swung toward Straha, taking in his complex swirls of paint. The other male gave him respect. “Uh, sorry, Shiplord.”

  “It is all right,
” Straha said, and the other male tasted the ginger he’d taken. Seeing his pleasure made Straha abruptly decide later had become now. After a good-sized taste of his own, even exile seemed more palatable than it had. But, through the exaltation, he knew it would not last.

  “Did I hear true, Shiplord?” the other male asked. “Did you tell one of those Big Uglies you thought this not-empire had shot up the colonization fleet?” Without waiting for an answer, he opened his mouth to laugh. “That is even funnier than Spike Jones.” Seeing Straha’s incomprehension, he added, “The Tosevite with the silly song.”

  “Oh,” Straha said, and then, wary as usual, asked, “How did you hear of that? I know it never appeared in a newspaper.”

  “That Big Ugly male who interviewed you—Herter, is that the name?—spoke with me a little later,” the other male replied. “He talked about the way you yanked his tailstump. He thought it was funny, too, once he realized you did not mean it.”

  “What I did not realize was that he was ready to print it,” Straha said. “The Big Uglies in this not-empire carry freedom to the point of license.”

  Several other males had heard the story of Straha’s misadventure with the reporter, too. That let him have a more entertaining time at the gathering than he’d expected. Even males who used English as readily as their own original speech would laugh at the follies of Tosevites.

  But, when Straha related the tale to his driver on the way back to his own home, the Big Ugly was anything but amused. “Do not ever tell that story again, Shiplord,” he said with an emphatic cough. “The Reich and the USSR can gain too much benefit if you do.” He remained polite, even deferential, but he was giving an order just the same.

  To this I have been reduced: to taking orders from Big Uglies. Straha sighed. He had been reduced to worse circumstances than that, but few more humiliating. He sighed again, a long, mournful hiss. “It shall be done.”

  The Liberty Explorer had been a long time crossing the Pacific from Shanghai to San Pedro, with stops in Japanese-held Manila and in Honolulu. Even though the paperwork for her daughter and her was in good order, Liu Han had stayed in her cabin aboard the U.S. freighter all through the stop in Manila, and had made sure Liu Mei did the same. Liu Han still felt lucky to have survived the Japanese attack on her village north of Hankow. She did not want to give the eastern dwarfs a chance to finish the job, not when she had to put out a bowl for alms—and arms—in the USA.

  Liu Mei had wanted at least to go out on deck and see more of Manila than she could from the cabin’s porthole. When Liu Han vetoed that, her daughter had protested, “The Japanese are not going to bomb this ship.”

  “Not openly—they cannot afford to anger the USA,” Liu Han had answered. “But they do not want the progressive forces in China gaining strength in the United States. If they know we are aboard—and they have spies, and so does the Kuomintang—they may try to make us or the ship suffer a misfortune. Best take no chances.”

  Neither the Liberty Explorer nor its handful of passengers had suffered any undue misfortune on the long passage across the ocean. Liu Han had taken advantage of the slow voyage to study English as best she could, and to work with Liu Mei on it. She would never be fluent. She hoped she would be able to make herself understood, and to understand some of what people said to her.

  Now, standing at the bow of the old freighter, she looked ahead and spoke in Chinese to her daughter: “There it is. Now we will have to convince the Americans to give arms and money to us as well as to the Kuomintang.”

  “We could have done this in Hawaii,” Liu Mei said.

  Liu Han shook her head. “No. It is not part of the mainland, so what happens there does not always reach the rest of the country. And Honolulu is not the port it was before the little scaly devils dropped one of their big, horrid bombs on it. We had to finish this journey, to come to the province—no, the state—of California.”

  She did not mention her biggest fear: that the Americans would have forgotten she was coming. All that was supposed to be arranged. Liu Han knew how often things that were supposed to be arranged went wrong in China, and the Chinese, it went without saying, were the best people in the world. Relying on these round-eyed foreign devils to do as they should tested her nerves.

  San Pedro looked to be about as busy a port as Shanghai, though all the boats and ships, as far as she could tell, had engines. She saw no sail-powered junks hauling freight from one harbor to another, as she would have in Chinese waters. As the Liberty Explorer drew closer to land, she did spot a few tiny sailboats, too tiny for any use she could find.

  She went up to a sailor and pointed at one. “That boat, what for?” she asked, learning and practicing her English at the same time.

  “Ma’am, that’s a pleasure boat,” the American foreign devil answered. “Whoever’s in it is just sailing to have a good time, maybe do a little fishing, too.”

  “Boat for good time?” Liu Han wasn’t sure she’d understood, but the sailor nodded, so she had. “Eee!” she said. “Fellow sail boat, he very rich.” In her mind, she pictured the unknown man ruthlessly exploiting foreign devils so he could gain the wealth he needed to buy his own boat.

  But the sailor shook his head. “Don’t have to be all that rich, ma’am. My brother makes parts for clocks here in L.A, and he’s got himself a little sailboat. He likes it. I spend enough time on the water as is, so I don’t go out with him all that often, but he has a fine old time.”

  Liu Han didn’t follow all of that, but she got most of it. Either boats here were much cheaper than she’d imagined, or American proletarians made far more money than she’d thought possible.

  A tugboat came out to help nudge the Liberty Explorer up against a pier. Liu Han looked at the men working on the pier. They had no basic similarity, one to another, as Chinese did. Some of the white men she saw had yellow hair, some had black, and one, astonishingly, had hair the color of a newly minted copper coin. Along with the whites, there were also black men and brown men who did look a little like Chinese, save that they were stockier and hairier.

  Liu Mei stared at the various workers. “So many different kinds, all together,” she murmured. She’d seen a few Russians, but not many others who were something besides Chinese. “How can they live together and make a nation?”

  “It is a good question,” Liu Han said. “I do not know the answer.” Looking at the Americans, she kept trying to spot ones who looked like Bobby Fiore. In a way, that was foolishness, and she knew it. But, in another way, it made sense. Liu Mei’s father was the only American she’d ever known. What could be more natural than looking for others like him?

  Liu Mei pointed. “And look! There is a man holding up a sign in Chinese. That must be for you, Mother.” She beamed with pride. “See. It says, ‘The American people welcome Liu Han.’ Oh!”

  Before she could finish reading the sign, her mother did it for her. “It also says, ‘The American people welcome Liu Mei.’ And the last line reads, ‘Two heroes in the fight for freedom.’ ”

  “I am not a hero,” Liu Mei said with becoming modesty. “I am only your comrade, your fellow traveler.”

  “You are young yet,” Liu Han said. “With the world as it is, you will have your chances to become a hero.” She prayed to the gods and spirits in whom, as a good Communist, she was not supposed to believe to protect her daughter. Bobby Fiore had been a hero, giving his life in the revolutionary struggle against the imperialism of the little scaly devils. Liu Han hoped with all her heart that her daughter would never be called upon to make the same sacrifice.

  Lines fore and aft moored the Liberty Explorer fast to the pier. The gangplank thudded down. “Come on, Mother,” Liu Mei said when Liu Han didn’t move right away. “We have to get the arms for the People’s Liberation Army.”

  “You are right, of course,” Liu Han said. “Just let me make sure these stupid turtles don’t lose our baggage or run off with it.” Actually, she did not think the sailors w
ould. They struck her as being unusually honest. Maybe they were just unusually well paid. She had heard that Americans were, but hadn’t taken it seriously till that one sailor spoke of his brother the factory worker owning a sailboat.

  When she was satisfied the few belongings she and Liu Mei had brought from China would accompany them off the freighter, she went down the gangplank, her daughter following. The man holding the Chinese sign came up to them. “You are Miss Liu Han?” he asked, speaking Mandarin with an accent that said he was more at home in Cantonese.

  “I am Comrade Liu Han, yes,” Liu Han answered in English. “This is my daughter, Comrade Liu Mei. Who are you?” She was wary of traps. She would be wary of traps as long as she lived.

  The Chinese man grinned, set down the sign, and clapped his hands together. “Nobody told me you spoke English,” he said in that language, using it rapidly and slangily. “My name’s Frankie Wong. I’m supposed to be your helper—your driver, your translator, whatever you need. You follow me?”

  “I understand most, yes,” Liu Han said, and took more than a little pleasure in disconcerting him. Still in English, she went on, “You with Kuomintang?”

  “I’m not with anybody,” Frankie Wong said. He dropped back into Chinese: “Why would I want to be with any faction over there? My grandfather was a peasant when he came here to help build the railroads. All the round-eyes hated him and called him filthy names. But he was a laborer, and I am a lawyer. If he’d stayed in China, he would have stayed a peasant all his life, and I would be a peasant, too.”

  “That does not have to be true,” Liu Mei said. “Look at my mother. She was born a peasant, and now she is on the Central Committee.”

  Frankie Wong looked from mother to daughter and back again. “I think maybe Mao did a better job of picking people to come to the United States for him than anyone over here thought he did,” he said slowly. A sailor with a dolly brought a crate down the gangplank and rolled it toward the Chinese women. Wong eyed it. “Is that your stuff?” At Liu Han’s nod, he spoke to the sailor in rapid-fire English, now faster than she could keep up with. He turned back to her. “Okay. It’ll follow us to the hotel. Come on; I’ll take you to my car.”