Homeward Bound Read online

  “Exalted Fleetlord, I might be too much in awe to respond at all,” Kassquit answered honestly.

  “Well, silence is probably acceptable, but if his Majesty does choose to speak to you, I think he would hope for some kind of response.” Atvar might have been trained as a soldier, but he had learned a good deal about diplomacy, too.

  Kassquit recognized as much. “If he speaks to me informally, I suppose I will try to answer the same way,” she said. “Since the setting would be informal, I do not suppose I can know in advance just what I would say.”

  “All right.” The fleetlord made the affirmative gesture. “That will do. We do not expect miracles. We hope for effort. You need not worry on that score, Researcher. You have made your effort very plain.”

  “I thank you. This is important to me.” Kassquit used an emphatic cough to show how important it was.

  “Good.” Atvar used another one. “Your loyalty does you credit. It also does credit to Ttomalss, who inculcated it in you.”

  “Yes, I suppose it does,” Kassquit said. “Please forgive me. My feelings toward Ttomalss are . . . complex.”

  “How so?” Had the fleetlord made the question perfunctory, Kassquit would have given it the same sort of answer. But Atvar sounded as if he was truly curious, and so she thought for a little while before speaking.

  At last, she said, “I think it is yet another conflict between my biology and my upbringing. When wild Big Uglies are small, they fixate on those who sired and hatched them. This is necessary for them, because they are helpless when newly hatched. But the Race does not form that kind of bond.”

  “I should hope not,” Atvar said. “Our hatchlings can take care of themselves from the moment they leave the egg. Why not? If they could not, they would have soon become prey in the days before we were civilized.”

  “Yes, I understand that,” Kassquit said. “It is only natural that Ttomalss should have had trouble forming such a bond with me. I give him credit: he did try. But it was not natural, as it would have been for wild Big Uglies. And I noticed his incomplete success—things being as they are, I could hardly help noticing. I could hardly help resenting what he could not give me, either.”

  “All this was some while ago, though,” Atvar said. “Surely your resentment has faded over the passing years?”

  “To some degree—but only to some degree,” Kassquit replied. “You will know, I am sure, that there have been times when Ttomalss has treated me as much as an experimental animal as a friend or someone else with whom he should have forged a bond of trust. This failure has naturally kept resentment alive in me. Am I an autonomous individual, or only an object of curiosity?”

  “You are both,” Atvar said, which struck Kassquit as basically honest—at least, it was the same conclusion she’d reached herself. The fleetlord went on, “Because of your biology and your upbringing, you will always be an object of interest to the Race. By now, I suspect you have also resigned yourself to this.”

  “To some degree—but only to some degree,” Kassquit repeated, adding an emphatic cough to that. “For example, the Race held me in cold sleep for years instead of reviving me and letting me become acquainted with Home. This decision was made for me; I had no chance to participate in it myself.”

  “There is some truth in that, but only some,” Atvar said. “One of the reasons the decision was made for you, as you say, is that we admire your professional competence and value your ability in dealing with the wild Big Uglies. We wanted to do our best to make sure you would be in good health when they arrived.”

  Kassquit made the negative gesture. “You do not understand, Exalted Fleetlord. You did that for your benefit, for the Race’s benefit, for the Empire’s benefit, and not for mine. There is a difference, like it or not.”

  The fleetlord sighed. “I can see that you might think so. But are you not a citizen of the Empire? You have certainly said so often enough.”

  “Yes, I am a citizen of the Empire. I am proud to be a citizen of the Empire.” Kassquit used another emphatic cough. “But does the Empire not have a certain obligation to treat its citizens justly? If it does not, why is being a citizen any sort of privilege?”

  “You are an individual.” By Atvar’s tone, he did not mean it as a compliment. “You also—forgive me—sound very much like a Tosevite. Your species is more individualistic than ours.”

  “Maybe the Empire needs more Tosevite citizens,” Kassquit said. “Perhaps things here have been too tranquil for too long.”

  Atvar laughed at her. “Things have not been tranquil since we found out what wild Big Uglies were capable of. They will not be tranquil again for a long time to come. But you may be right. I think his Majesty believes you are. That is part of the reason you are receiving this audience.”

  “Whatever the reason, it is a great honor,” Kassquit said. “Shall we rehearse the ceremony again, Exalted Fleetlord? I want everything to be perfect.” She used yet another emphatic cough.

  Ttomalss liked talking with Major Frank Coffey. His reason for liking that particular American had nothing to do with the Big Ugly’s personality, though Coffey was pleasant enough. It wasn’t even rational, and Ttomalss knew it wasn’t. Knowing as much didn’t make it go away.

  He liked Coffey’s color.

  He knew exactly why, too. The officer’s dark brown hide reminded him of the green-brown of his own scaly skin. It made the wild Big Ugly seem less alien, more familiar, than the pinkish beige of the other American Tosevites. He wasn’t, of course. Ttomalss understood that full well. Understanding didn’t make the feeling go away.

  Coffey got up from the chair made for a Big Ugly’s hindquarters in one of the hotel’s conference rooms. He stretched and sighed. “It was kind of you to make this furniture for us,” he said, “but you would never get rich selling chairs back on Tosev 3.”

  “I am sure that is a truth,” Ttomalss said. “Some of the things Tosevites make for the Race are also imperfect. No species can ever be completely familiar with another. The Rabotevs and Hallessi still surprise us every now and again.”

  “Interesting. And I believe you. Even different cultures on Tosev 3 run up against this same difficulty,” Coffey said. “I am glad you said it, too. It brings me to one of the fundamental troubles in the relationship between my not-empire and the Empire, one that needs to be solved.”

  “Speak. Give forth,” Ttomalss urged. “Is that not why you have come: to solve the difficulties between the United States and the Empire?” Had he been a Big Ugly himself, the corners of his mouth would have curled up in the Tosevites’ facial gesture of benevolent amiability. He liked Frank Coffey.

  He also made the mistake of assuming that, because he liked Coffey, the wild Big Ugly would not say anything he did not like. Coffey proceeded to disabuse him of that assumption. “The difficulty is that the Race does not recognize Tosevite not-empires as equals,” he declared, and added an emphatic cough. “This must change if relations between us are to find their proper footing.” He used another one.

  “But that is not so,” Ttomalss protested. “We have equal relationships with the United States, with the SSSR, with the Nipponese Empire, with Britain—even with the Reich, though we defeated it. How can you complain of this?”

  “Very easily,” Frank Coffey answered. “You say that we are your equals, but down deep in your livers you do not believe it. Can you tell me I am mistaken? You thought from the beginning that we were nothing but sword-swinging savages. Down deep, you still believe it, and you still act as if you believe it. Will you make me believe I am wrong?”

  Ttomalss thought that over. He did not have to think for very long. The wild Big Ugly had a point. The Race was proud of its ancient, long-stable civilization. What could wild Big Uglies be but uncouth barbarians who were good at fighting and treachery but very little else?

  Slowly, the psychologist said, “This is perceptive of you. How did you come to realize it?”

  Frank Coffey laughed
a loud Tosevite laugh. “It is plain enough to any Tosevite with eyes to see. And it is especially obvious to a Tosevite of my color.” He brushed a hand along the skin of his forearm, a gesture he made with the air of one who had used it before.

  “What do you mean?” Ttomalss asked.

  “You will know that pale Tosevites have discriminated against those of my color,” Coffey said, and waited. Ttomalss made the affirmative gesture. The American went on, “This discrimination is now illegal in my not-empire. We are all supposed to be equal, legally and socially. Supposed to be, I say. There are still a fair number of pale Big Uglies who would discriminate against dark ones if only they could get away with it. These days, showing that too openly is not acceptable in the United States. But one of us usually has no trouble telling when pale Tosevites have such feelings, even when they try to hide them. And so you should not be surprised when I recognize the symptoms of the disease in the Race as well.”

  “I see,” Ttomalss said slowly. “How did you persuade the pale Big Uglies to stop discriminating in law against you darker ones?”

  “‘Discriminating in law,’ ” Frank Coffey echoed. “That is a nice phrase, a very nice phrase. We had two advantages. First, the Reich discriminated against groups it did not like, discriminated very blatantly—and we were at war with the Reich, so whatever it did looked bad to us, and became something we were embarrassed to imitate. And then the Race tried to conquer all Tosevites. To resist, the United States had to draw support from all its own inhabitants. Discriminating in law became something we could not afford to do, and so we stopped.”

  “Back in ancientest history, I believe the Race was also divided into subspecies,” Ttomalss said. “But long years of mixing have made us highly uniform. I suspect the same may happen with you.”

  Coffey shrugged. “So it may. But it will not happen soon, even by the way the Race reckons time. During your mating seasons, your males and females are not too fussy about mating partners. That helps you mix. With us, it is different.”

  “I suppose it would be,” Ttomalss said. “So social discrimination also lingers in mating, even though discrimination in law does not?”

  “Yes, it does,” the American Big Ugly replied. “Now I praise you for your perceptiveness. Not many from another culture, from another biology, would have seen the implications of that.”

  “I thank you,” Ttomalss said. “I have been studying your species and its paradoxes for some years now. I am glad to be reminded every now and then that I have gained at least a little insight. Perhaps my close involvement with Kassquit has also helped.”

  Coffey nodded. He started to catch himself and add the Race’s gesture of agreement, but Ttomalss waved for him not to bother. The Tosevite said, “I can see how it might have. Kassquit is a remarkable individual. You did a good job of raising her. By our standards she is strange—no doubt of that—but I would have expected any Tosevite brought up by the Race to be not just strange but hopelessly insane. We are different in so many vital ways.”

  “Again, I thank you. And I will not lie to you: raising Kassquit was the hardest thing I have ever done.” Ttomalss thought about what he’d just said. He had spent some time in the captivity of the Chinese female, Liu Han. She’d terrorized him, addicted him to ginger, and made him think every day in her clutches would be his last. Had raising Kassquit been harder than that? As a matter of fact, it had. “Is imperfect gratitude always the lot of those who bring up Tosevites?”

  Major Coffey laughed again, this time loud and long. “Maybe not always, Senior Researcher, but often, very often. You need not be surprised about that.”

  “How do those who raise hatchlings tolerate this?” Ttomalss asked.

  “What choice have they—have we—got?” the wild Big Ugly said. “It is one of the things that come with being a Tosevite.”

  “Do you speak from experience? Have you hatchlings of your own?”

  “Yes and no, respectively,” Coffey replied. “I have no hatchlings myself. I am a soldier, and I always believed a soldier would not make a good permanent mate. But you must recall, Senior Researcher—I was a hatchling myself. I locked horns with my own father plenty of times.”

  “‘Locked horns,’ ” Ttomalss repeated. “This must be a translated idiom from your language. Does it mean, to quarrel?”

  “That is exactly what it means.”

  “Interesting. When you Tosevites use our tongue, you enliven it with your expressions,” Ttomalss said. “Some of them, I suspect, will stay in the language. Others will probably disappear.”

  “Your language has done the same thing to English,” Major Coffey said. “We use interrogative and emphatic coughs. We say, ‘Truth,’ when we mean agreement. We use other phrases and ways of speaking of yours, too. Languages have a way of rubbing off on one another.”

  “You would know more about that than I do,” Ttomalss told him. “Our language borrowed place names and names for animals and plants from the tongues of Rabotev 2 and Halless 1. Past that, those tongues did not have much of an effect on it. And, of course, the Rabotevs and Hallessi speak our language now, and speak it the same way as we do.”

  “You expect the same thing to happen on Tosev 3, don’t you?” Coffey said.

  Ttomalss made the affirmative gesture. “Yes, over the course of years. It may—it probably will—take longer there than with the Rabotevs and Hallessi. Your leading cultures are more advanced than theirs were.” He held up a hand. “You were going to say something about your equality. Let me finish, if you please.”

  “It shall be done, Exalted Researcher,” the wild Big Ugly said with a fine show of sarcasm. “By all means, go on.”

  “I thank you so very much,” Ttomalss said, matching dry for dry. “What I wanted to tell you was that the process has already begun in those parts of Tosev 3 the Race rules. That is more than half the planet. Your not-empire may still be independent, but you cannot claim it is dominant.”

  “I do not claim that. I never have. The United States never has,” Coffey replied. “But the Race seems unwilling to admit that independence means formal equality. The Emperor may have more power than the President of the United States. As sovereigns, though, they both have equal rank.”

  That notion revolted Ttomalss. It would have revolted almost any member of the Race. To say the Emperor was no more than equal to a wild Big Ugly chosen for a limited term by snoutcounting . . . was absurd. Even if it was true under the rules of diplomacy (rules the Race had had to resurrect from ancientest history, and also to borrow from the Tosevites), it was still absurd.

  That he should think so went a long way toward proving Frank Coffey’s point. If Ttomalss hadn’t spent so many years working with the Big Uglies, he wouldn’t even have realized that. Realizing it made him like it no better.

  “You are very insistent on this sovereign equality,” he said.

  “And so we ought to be,” Coffey answered. “We spilled too much of our blood fighting to keep it. You take yours lightly because it has never been challenged till now.”

  Ttomalss started to make a sharp reply: Coffey was presumptuous if he imagined the American Tosevites truly challenged the Race. At the last moment, though, the psychologist held his peace. Not for the first time, dealing with the Tosevites made him feel as if he were trying to reach into a mirror and deal with all the reversed images he found there. That the American Big Uglies could be as proud of their silly snoutcounted temporary leader as the Race was of the Emperor and all the tradition behind his office was preposterous on the face of it . . . to the Race.

  But it was not preposterous to the Americans. Ttomalss had needed a long time to realize that. The Big Uglies might be as wrong about their snoutcounting as they were about the silly superstitions they used in place of due reverence for the spirits of Emperors past. They might be wrong, yes, but they were very much—very much—in earnest. The Race needed to remember that.

  It made dealing with the American Tosevites m
ore complicated and more difficult. But, when dealing with Tosevites, what wasn’t difficult?

  Karen Yeager looked at her husband. She said, “Do you know what I’d do?”

  “No, but you’re going to tell me, so how much difference does that make?” Jonathan replied with the resigned patience of a man who’d been a husband for a long time.

  She sniffed. Resigned patience wasn’t what she wanted right now. She wanted sympathy. She also wanted ice cubes. “I’d kill for a cold lemonade, that’s what I’d do,” she declared.

  “Now that you mention it, so would I,” Jonathan said. “But you haven’t got any, and I haven’t got any, either. So we’re safe from each other, anyway. Besides, we’re more than ten light-years from the nearest lemon.”

  “A cold Coke, then. A cold glass of ippa-fruit juice. A cold anything. Ice water, for heaven’s sake.” Karen walked over to the window of their hotel room and stared out. The alien landscape had grown familiar, even boring. “Who would have thought the Race didn’t know about ice?”

  “They know. They just don’t care. There’s a difference,” Jonathan said. “And besides, we already knew they didn’t care. We’ve spent enough time in their cities back on Earth.”

  He was right. Karen sniffed again anyhow. She didn’t want right. She really wanted ice cubes. She said, “They don’t care what we like. That’s what the problem is. They know we like cold things, and they haven’t given us a way to get any. You call that diplomacy?”

  “Some of them know we like ice, yeah. They know it here.” Her husband tapped his head. “But they don’t know it here.” He set a hand on his stomach. “They don’t really believe it. Besides, I can guarandamn-tee you there’s not a single ice-cube tray on this whole planet.”

  “And this is a real for-true civilization?” Karen exclaimed. Jonathan laughed, but she went on, “Dammit, there’s bound to be something they could use to make ice cubes. Gelatin molds, maybe—I don’t know. But we ought to be asking for them, whatever they are, and for a freezer to put them in.”