Homeward Bound

10

Jonathan Yeager was glad his father had talked the Race into letting him and the rest of the American delegation come along to Preffilo for the imperial audience, and not only because a dust storm filled the air in Sitneff with a brown, gritty haze. The humans had been to a lot of places on Home, but not to the imperial capital. Except for the trip to the park near the South Pole, Jonathan had been less impressed than he’d expected. If you’d seen one Lizard city, you’d damn near seen them all. They varied among themselves much less than American towns did.

Figuring out why wasn’t hard. Cities in the USA were only a few centuries old, and showed wildly different influences of geography and culture. Cities here on Home differed one from another in geography. In culture? Not at all. They’d all been part of the same culture since long before modern man took over from the Neanderthals. They’d all been improved and reworked time and again, and they all felt pretty much the same.

Preffilo wasn’t like that, anyhow. Jonathan had expected a bustling imperial capital, something on the order of London in Victoria’s day or Moscow when he went into cold sleep. But Preffilo wasn’t like that, either. Home had its bureaucrats, its males and females who ran things, and they came to the imperial capital to hear their sovereign’s wishes. They didn’t make a swarming mess out of the city, though. And the reason they didn’t was simple: the Emperor didn’t want them to.

In a way, Preffilo was like Kyoto in the days when the Emperor of Japan was a figurehead and the shogun ran things. It preserved the way things had been a long time before (here, a long, long, long time before), back when what was now only symbolic had been real.

Stretching Earthly comparisons, though, went only so far. The Emperor here was no figurehead. He’d never been a figurehead, not-so far as Jonathan knew-throughout the whole long history of the Race. Most Emperors tempered their authority with common sense. It was a strong custom that they should. The Race respected custom more than any humans, even the Japanese, did. But there were occasional exceptions scattered through the Lizards’ history, some glorious, others-rather more-horrible. If an Emperor wanted to stir things up, he could.

Along with feeling like the beating heart of a power greater than any Earth had ever known, Preffilo also felt old. Even to the Lizards, for whom everything within the scope of written human history seemed no more antique than month before last, their capital felt old. Some Englishman had earned immortality of a sort by calling vanished Petra a rose-red city half as old as time. (It was immortality only of a sort, for nobody bothered to remember the rest of the poem these days, or even the Englishman’s name.)

There were similar poems about Preffilo in the language of the Race. The differences were twofold. For one thing, Preffilo wasn’t just half as old as time. It had been a going concern for thousands of years before Home was unified. In those days, mammoths and cave bears must have seemed about as likely to inherit the Earth as skulking human beings. And, for another, Preffilo wasn’t a vanished city. It was still a going concern, and looked forward to the next hundred thousand years with only minimal changes.

Geography, again, played a role in that. The Race’s capital happened not to lie in earthquake country. Only how well a building was built said how long it would stay up. The Lizards commonly built very well. Along with the palace, a fair number of structures in Preffilo were supposed to be older than the unification of Home, going back to what the Race called ancientest history. Jonathan was hardly in any position to disagree with what the guide told him.

The humans’ guide here was a male named Jussop. Jonathan liked him better than Trir. He didn’t seem to take questions as personal affronts, the way she sometimes did. Of course, not many folk came to see Sitneff; the tour guide business there was underdeveloped. Things weren’t like that in the capital. Lizards, Rabotevs, and Hallessi all visited here. Humans? They might be out of the ordinary, but Jussop would accommodate them.

Once they were settled in their hotel, he took them to the mausoleum where urns holding the ashes of eons’ worth of past Emperors were on display. Jonathan wasn’t sorry to escape the hotel. The Race had tried to keep its guests comfortable, but it hadn’t done the best job in the world. The rooms back in Sitneff were a lot more inviting. Considering how much they left to be desired, that wasn’t good news.

Even the little bus that took them from the hotel to the mausoleum had seats that fit human backsides worse than those on the bus in Sitneff. Jonathan grumbled, but in English. His father might have been diplomacy personified. Ignoring the miserable seats, Sam Yeager asked Jussop, “How did you arrange for us to have a private viewing of the mausoleum? I hope we do not inconvenience too many males and females who want to commune with the spirits of Emperors past.”

“Well, you must understand I did not personally make these arrangements, Ambassador,” the guide replied. Sam Yeager’s title seemed natural in his mouth, though except in historical fiction it had fallen out of the Race’s language not long after the unification of Home. Jussop went on, “His Majesty’s government does wish to extend you every courtesy. You must also understand it is not, perhaps, strictly a private viewing.”

“What does that mean?” Karen asked sharply, before Jonathan could. “It was supposed to be.”

Jussop made a vaguely conciliatory gesture. “You will not be swarmed with these others who seek to commune with spirits of Emperors past. The other superior Tosevite is right about that, never fear.” He left it there, in spite of other questions from the rest of the Americans.

The bus rounded a corner and silently stopped. The questions stopped at the same time. “That’s amazing,” Jonathan whispered. The rest of the humans stared as avidly as he did. If you had set the Parthenon in the middle of an enormous Japanese garden, you might have created a similar effect. The mausoleum didn’t really look like the Parthenon, but it had that same exquisite simplicity: nothing in excess, and everything that was there perfect without being ostentatious. The landscaping, with open ground, stones of interesting color and shape, and a few plants strategically placed and intriguingly trimmed, came a good deal closer to its Earthly counterpart.

“Lovely,” Sam Yeager said to Jussop. “I have seen pictures, but pictures do not do it justice. For some things, only being there will do.”

“That is a truth, Ambassador,” the guide replied. “It is an important truth, too, and not enough folk realize it. We walk from here. As we go along the path, the view will change repeatedly. Some even say it improves. But the walk to the mausoleum is part of the experience. You are all capable of it?… Good.”

It was somewhere between a quarter mile and half a mile. The path-made very plain on the ground by the pressure of who could say how many generations of feet-wound and curved toward the entrance. Every so often, Jussop would silently raise a hand and wave to signal that they had come to a famous view. The perspective did change. Did it improve? Jonathan wasn’t sure. How did you go about measuring one magnificence against another?

And then, when they’d drawn close to the mausoleum, the Race proved it could make mistakes to match any mere humanity ever managed. A hiss from behind made Jonathan look back over his shoulder to see what was going on. A horde of reporters and cameramales and — females hurried after them on the path like a swarm of locusts. Some of the Lizards with cameras wore wigs, which seemed not just ridiculous but-here-a desecration. “Is this building not marvelous?” one of the reporters shouted.

“Is it not inspiring?” another demanded.

“Does it not make you seek to reverence the spirits of Emperors past?” a third yelled. The closer they came, the more excited and vehement they got.

A fourth reporter said, “Tell me in your own words what you think of this mausoleum.” Then, without giving any of the Americans a chance to use their own words, the Lizard went on, “Do you not feel this is the most holy, most sacred site on four worlds? Do you not agree that nowhere else is the same combination of serenity, power, and awe-inspiring beauty? Would you not say it is unmatched in splendor, unmatched in grandeur, unmatched in importance?”

“Get them out of here,” Tom de la Rosa told Jussop, “before I pick up one of these sacred rocks and bash in their heads-assuming they have any brains there, which does not seem likely.”

Before the guide could do anything, the reporters and camera crews had caught up with the humans. The reporter who wanted to put words in everyone’s mouth thrust his-or possibly her-microphone in Jonathan’s face. “I will not comment about the mausoleum, since I have not yet been inside,” Jonathan said, “but I think you are unmatched in rudeness, except possibly by your colleagues.”

“I am the ambassador,” his father said, and the archaic word seemed to have some effect even on the jaded reporters. Sam Yeager went on, “My hatchling speaks truth. We did not come to this place for publicity. We came to see what is here to see, and to pay our respects to your beliefs even if we do not share them. Will you kindly have the courtesy and decency to let us do that-undisturbed?”

“But the public needs to know!” a Lizard shouted.

“This is not a public matter. It is private, strictly private,” Jonathan’s father said. “And if you do not go away, the protest I make when I have my audience with the Emperor will be most public indeed.”

Jussop had been quietly speaking into a handheld telephone. The Race’s police were most efficient. No more than two or three minutes went by before they hurried up to escort the reporters away. “Come on, come on,” one of them said. “The Big Uglies do not want you around. This is not a traffic accident, where you can ask bloodthirsty questions of some poor male who has just lost his best friend.”

Spluttering protests, the reporters and camera crews reluctantly withdrew. Most reluctantly-some of them kept shouting inane questions even as the police pushed them away from the Americans. “I apologize for that, superior Tosevites,” Jussop said. “I apologize with all my liver. I did not think it would be so bad.”

Maybe he was telling the truth, maybe he wasn’t. Short of making a worse scene, the Americans couldn’t do much about it now. Major Frank Coffey said, “Let us just go on, then, and hope the moment is not ruined.”

It turned out not to be. The only reason it turned out not to be was that the mausoleum was wonderful enough inside to take the bad taste of the reporters out of Jonathan’s mouth-and, by what he could see, from everyone else‘s, too. Tau Ceti’s buttery light poured through windows and glowed from granite and marble. Urns of Hellenic simplicity and elegance but not of a shape any human potter would have chosen held the last remains of a couple of thousand Emperors. The sequence was spotty before Home was unified; it seemed to be complete after that.

Nobody said anything for a long time. People wandered where they would, looking, admiring. Even footfalls rang monstrously loud here. Because the Americans were representatives of an independent country, they had special permission to take pictures inside the mausoleum. Permission or not, no one touched a camera. It would have profaned the place. Karen quietly squeezed Jonathan’s hand. He nodded. Not even the memorial to Washington, D.C., in Little Rock had affected him like this. Whatever the many differences between mankind and the Race, the Lizards understood majesty.

Sam Yeager paused outside the imperial palace to admire the grounds. They were landscaped with the same spare elegance that informed the gardens surrounding the imperial mausoleum. He turned to Atvar, who as his sponsor walked one neat pace behind him and to his right, and who had stopped at the same time as he had. “I hope you will not be angry if I tell you that these grounds remind me of something the Nipponese might do,” Sam said.

The fleetlord made the negative gesture. “I am not angry, for the same thing has occurred to me. I think you would do better, though, not to make this comparison to the courtiers within.”

That made Sam chuckle. “No doubt you speak truth. I suppose they would say the Race had the idea first, and that too would be a truth.”

“Indeed it would. These grounds have been more or less as they are for a very long time, even by the standards of the Race-much longer than all of Tosevite history put together,” Atvar said. “And now, shall we proceed?”

“One moment, if you please,” Sam said after glancing at his watch. “I left the hotel early so I could gawk a bit before the ceremony starts. We have time. I will not disgrace the United States by being late.” When he was playing minor-league ball-in a vanished century, in a vanished time that had not known the Lizards-he’d never once missed the train or the bus to the next town. Half of getting anywhere in life was simply showing up on time.

Atvar also wore a watch. Like every other Lizard timepiece Sam Yeager had ever seen, his was digital. Their style had started a fad among humans for the same kind of watches, and even for clocks. Yeager was old-fashioned. He went right on wearing a watch with hands (even if this one had been made for Home’s day, which was about an hour and a quarter longer than Earth‘s, and for keeping time by tenths).

But that was a small thing. The palace in front of him was anything but. Unlike most of the Race’s buildings, it had been designed when those within had to worry about their safety, and it looked the part. Sam wouldn’t have wanted to attack it with anything short of an armored division. Where the grounds looked Japanese, the palace seemed more Russian than anything else. He supposed the onion domes topping some of the gray stone towers put that thought in his mind. But the palace wasn’t really Russian, any more than the mausoleum was really a match for the Parthenon. Those were just comparisons his human mind groped for. The Race’s architecture had its own logic, and not all of it followed anything he was used to.

He looked at his watch again, then gathered himself. “I am ready,” he said. “It is time. Let us go on.”

On they went. The entry door was made of some flame-colored, tiger-striped wood truly unearthly in its beauty. It had been polished till it shone. The ironwork of the hinges and latch looked massive enough to stop a charging elephant. Sam laughed at himself. This door might have been built to stop a great many things, but elephants weren’t one of them.

The great portal silently swung open. Herrep, the protocol master, stood just inside. Sam took a deep breath. He’d faced up to presidents. He’d faced up to hard-throwing kids who’d stick one in your ear just because they had no idea where the lousy ball would go once they let loose of it. And he could damn well face up to this snooty Lizard.

He took one more deep breath, then crossed the threshold. As soon as he did, he assumed the posture of respect. He had to work to keep from laughing again. I’m an old man. I must look like a real idiot crouched down here with my butt in the air. No air conditioning, either, not even what passed for it among the Lizards. Sweat rolled off him.

“You may rise,” Herrep said.

“I thank you.” Sam’s back creaked as he got to his feet. “In the name of the people of the United States, in the name of the President of the United States, I thank you. I come in peace. In the name of peace, I convey my folk’s greeting to the Emperor, and wish him good health and many years.”

“In his name, I thank you, and I accept the greeting in the spirit in which you offer it,” the protocol master said. “Now, if you would be so kind as to follow me…”

“It shall be done,” Sam said. Remote-control cameras on the ceiling and the wall swung with him as he moved: no baying swarm of cameramales and — females here, as there had been at the mausoleum. Sam was old enough to remember the ballyhoo days of the 1920s. They had nothing on what the Lizards had done there.

Herrep led him past an elderly female who sat with a basin of water and a scrubbing brush: the imperial laver. Then the protocol master walked past another female, just as ancient, this one with a fancy set of body paints: the imperial limner. Sam sketched the posture of respect to each of them in turn without fully assuming it. They both returned the gesture. He recognized them as important parts of the imperial court; they recognized him as someone who did not require their services. It was a quiet compromise, and one that did not show how much argument lay behind it. Proper compromises seldom did.

After leaving the imperial limner behind a bend in the corridor, Herrep paused for a moment. “We are not on camera here,” he said. “I just wanted to tell you, researching this ceremonial was endlessly fascinating. I believe the Emperors of ancientest days would recognize what we do here. It might not be exactly what they were used to seeing, but they would recognize it.”

“I am glad to hear you say so,” Yeager replied politely. “It is also not too different from the ceremonies we use on Tosev 3.”

Herrep waved that aside, as if of no account. That was, no doubt, how he felt about it. To him, Big Uglies were barbarians, and how could what barbarians did among themselves matter to a civilized male? The answer to that was simple: it began to matter when the barbarians grew too strong for a civilized male to ignore. And that was what had happened here.

“Shall we proceed, then?” the protocol master said.

“We can hardly stop now. Males and females would talk,” Sam answered. Herrep’s eye turrets swung sharply toward him. Sam Yeager only waited. He wasn’t surprised to discover that the protocol master had no idea what to make of levity, even of the mildest sort. Herrep pointed forward. Sam made the affirmative gesture. As soon as he turned the next corner, he knew he would be back on camera.

Knowing this was all part of a fancy charade did not, could not, keep awe from prickling through him. The audience chamber was designed to make anyone of any species coming before the Emperor feel small and unworthy. The eons-dead males and females who’d done the designing had known their business, too. Up near the shadow-filled ceiling, a small flying thing chittered shrilly. Long colonnades of shining stone drew the eye up and drew it on toward the throne at the far end of the hall.

A courtier appeared before Sam. He carried on a staff an American flag. Data transmissions from Earth meant the Race knew what the Stars and Stripes looked like. As Sam and the flagbearer walked down the aisle toward the throne, a recording of “The Star-Spangled Banner” blared out. No doubt Lizard commentators would be quietly explaining to their audience what the strange music meant.

Atvar had said that the banners displayed in the audience hall belonged to empires extinguished by the Empire here on Home, on Rabotev 2, on Halless 1-and on Earth. Yeager recognized the Mexican flag, and the Australian, and the Brazilian, and the Chinese. He could not stop to look for and look at others.

Spotlights gleamed from the gilded throne-or was it solid gold? They also gleamed from the Emperor’s gilded chest and belly. Sam thought that was funny. No doubt the Lizards found human royal regalia just as ridiculous.

Two large Lizards-they came up past the middle of his chest-in plain gray body paint stepped out to block his path. They were imperial guards: an ancient survival in an empire where no one had tried to assassinate a sovereign in tens of thousands of years. Like the Swiss Guards who protected the Pope, they looked as if they still knew how to fight, even if they didn’t have to.

“I come in peace,” Sam assured them. They drew back.

Yeager advanced to the end of the aisle, just in front of the throne. The spotlights on the 37th Emperor Risson made his all-gold body paint glow. That might have awed any Lizard who came before him. It didn’t do much for Sam one way or the other. He assumed the special posture of respect reserved for the Emperor, there on the stone smoothed by uncounted tens of thousands of males and females of the Race, the Rabotevs, and the Hallessi who’d done the same thing on the same spot.

From the throne, the Emperor said, “Arise, Ambassador Sam Yeager.”

“I thank you, your Majesty,” Sam replied, and again rose creakily to his feet. “I bring peaceful greetings from my not-emperor and from the males and females of the United States. Our hope is for trade, for mutual prosperity, and for mutual respect.”

“May this be so,” Risson said. “It has been a very long time since an independent ambassador came before an Emperor of the Race.”

“Everything changes, your Majesty,” Sam said. “Some things change quickly, some very slowly. But everything changes.”

Most members of the Race would have argued with him. Change here happened at a pace to make a snail into a bullet. It was seldom visible within the course of a single lifetime. For the Lizard in the street, that meant it might as well not have happened at all. But appearances deceived.

“Truth,” Risson said simply. Yeager was relieved the Emperor knew what he was talking about. Risson went on, “One thing I hope will never change, though, is the friendship and peace between your not-empire and the Empire.”

“Your Majesty, that is also my fondest hope.” Sam got to try out an emphatic cough for all the Lizards across the planet who might be watching.

“Excellent,” the Emperor replied. “So long as there is good will on both sides, much can be accomplished. I hope to converse with you again on other occasions, Sam Yeager of the United States.” Risson had been rehearsing, too; he pronounced the name of Sam’s country as well as any Lizard could.

And he spoke the words of dismissal as smoothly and politely as anyone could have. Yeager assumed the special posture of respect once more. This time, he could rise without waiting for permission. The flagbearer preceded him up the aisle, away from the imperial throne. The audience was over.

Risson had more personality than he’d expected. The gold paint and all the ceremonial hemming in the Emperor made him seem more a thing than an individual. Plainly, making any such assumption about Risson would be rash. Despite the role he played, he was very much himself.

“I thank you for your help,” Sam quietly told the Lizard who’d carried the Stars and Stripes.

“Ambassador, it was my privilege,” the Lizard replied, which might have meant that he was proud to have played a role, no matter how small, in history-or might have meant someone had told him to carry the flag and he’d done it.

He peeled off where he had joined the American. Yeager continued into the bend in the corridor where, Herrep had assured him, he was not being filmed. The protocol master waited for him there. “I congratulate you, Ambassador,” Herrep said. “Your performance was most satisfactory.”

“I thank you,” Sam answered. Not splendid or magnificent or brilliant or anything like that. Most satisfactory. He nodded to himself. Under the circumstances, and from such an exacting critic, it would definitely do.

Kassquit watched Sam Yeager’s audience from a hotel room in Preffilo. She had not come to the imperial capital with the delegation of wild Big Uglies, but separately. She did not want her audience with the 37th Emperor Risson to be seen as merely an afterthought to that of the American ambassador. It probably would be-she was, after all, a Big Ugly herself, even if not a wild one-but she wanted to distance it as much as she could.

She studied the ambassador’s performance with a critical eye. Since he represented an independent not-empire, the ceremony was somewhat different for him. He did more than well enough, remembering his responses and acting with dignity. He also seemed unaware that billions of eyes would be upon him, here on Home and then on the other worlds fully ruled by the Empire and on Tosev 3. He surely wasn’t, but seeming that way was all that mattered.

She hoped she would be able to bring off such an unaffected performance herself. She remembered hearing that Sam Yeager, when he was younger, had been an athlete of some sort. Perhaps that gave him an edge in seeming natural, for he would already have appeared before large audiences.

Let me not disgrace myself, Kassquit thought. Spirits of Emperors past, show all the worlds that I truly am a citizen of the Empire. She was not used to the idea of prayer, but it seemed more natural here in Preffilo than it ever had before. After all, the remains of the past Emperors were here. Surely their spirits would linger here as well.

She visited the mausoleum a few days after the American Tosevites had done so. The guide, a male named Jussop, said, “We had a little trouble with the wild Big Uglies. Some reporters got their livers all in an uproar when it came to asking questions. That will not happen with you.”

“I am glad to hear it,” Kassquit answered. She recognized the need for publicity every now and again, but faced the prospect without enthusiasm. Having had no privacy whatever as a hatchling and young adult, she jealously clung to what she’d been able to accumulate since.

With a disapproving hiss, Jussop went on, “Another thing is, those wild Big Uglies thought the mausoleum was handsome and everything like that-they said all the right things-but you could tell it did not mean anything to them, the way it is supposed to.”

“They have different beliefs,” Kassquit said. “They know no better. In a way, I am sorry for them.”

“Well, you sound like a proper person, a person with the right kind of attitude,” Jussop said. “Come along, then, and I will show you what there is to see.”

“I thank you.” Kassquit sketched the posture of respect without fully assuming it.

She went into the full posture once she got inside the mausoleum. It might not have meant much to the wild Big Uglies, but it certainly did to her. It was, in fact, the most spiritual moment of her life. Surrounded by the ashes of Emperors past, she also felt surrounded by their spirits. And they seemed to accept her; she seemed to belong there. She might have the body of a Tosevite, but she was part and parcel of the Empire.

Slowly, reverently, she walked from one urn to the next, glancing briefly at the memorial plaque by each. So many sovereigns, so many names… Some she knew from history. Some she’d never heard of. No doubt no one but scholars or collectors of trivia would have heard of them. Well, that was fine, too. They were all part of the ancient, magnificent edifice that was the Empire. All of their spirits would cherish her when she passed from this world.

The Americans will never know this certainty, she thought sadly. Yes, I am sorry for them.

At last, when her liver was full of peace, she turned to Jussop. “I thank you. I am ready to leave now. This has been the most awe-filled day of my life. I do not see how anything could surpass it.”

“You are going to have an audience with the Emperor, are you not?” the guide asked. Kassquit made the affirmative gesture. Jussop said, “In that case, you would do well not to speak too soon.”

Kassquit thought about it, then made the affirmative gesture again. “Truth. I stand corrected.”

Which counted for more, she wondered as she lay down on the sleeping mat of her hotel room: the spirits of Emperors past or the actual physical presence of the reigning Emperor? She had trouble deciding, but she knew she would be one of the lucky few who could decide, for she would soon meet the 37th Emperor Risson in the flesh.

A few reporters did wait outside the imperial palace when she and Atvar were driven up to it. She wondered if it was built like a fortress to hold them at bay. She wouldn’t have been surprised. “How does it feel to be the second Tosevite granted an audience with his Majesty?” one of them called as she and her sponsor got out of their car.

“I would rather think of myself as the first Tosevite citizen of the Empire granted an audience with his Majesty,” Kassquit answered.

“How did you become a citizen of the Empire?” another reporter asked, while the camera crews came closer and closer.

“I was only a hatchling at the time. You would do better to ask Senior Researcher Ttomalss, who arranged it,” Kassquit said. “And now, if you will excuse me, I must proceed. I cannot be late for the audience.”

They could not have cared less whether she was late. All they wanted was a story from her. Her being late and being disgraced would make as good a story as her audience. It might make a better one, since another Big Ugly had just come before the Emperor. Sam Yeager was a wild Big Ugly, of course, not a citizen, but would the male or female in the street care? One Tosevite looked just like another, as far as the Race could tell.

She ignored the further shouted questions from the reporters, and walked into the entryway by which she’d been told to go in. An involuntary sigh of relief escaped her when the closing door shut off their queries.

“You did well there,” said a male waiting inside.

After reading his body paint, Kassquit bent into the posture of respect. “I thank you, Protocol Master.”

“You are welcome. You earned the praise,” Herrep replied. “Reporters will eat your life if you give them half a chance-even a quarter of a chance. So… are you ready to proceed with your audience?”

“I hope so, superior sir,” Kassquit said. “I shall do my best not to embarrass you or myself or Fleetlord Atvar, who lent me so much help.”

“I thank you,” Atvar said. “But I believe you would have done well without me, too.”

Herrep made the affirmative gesture. “I have confidence in you,” he said. “I have heard excellent reports of your preparation, and the American ambassador’s audience left nothing to be desired. Your species may differ from ours in many ways, but you seem competent. Not knowing your kind, I was hesitant before. Now, though, I see my qualms were as empty as a hatched egg.”

He did not seem like a male who said such things lightly. “I thank you, Protocol Master,” Kassquit said again.

Herrep’s only reply was, “Let the ceremony begin.”

Unlike Sam Yeager, Kassquit not only had to come before the imperial laver and limner but counted doing so a privilege. She gave them the ritual thanks. The soap the laver used to remove her everyday body paint was harsh on her soft skin. So was the brush with which the old female rubbed off the last traces. Kassquit would have endured far worse than that to come before her sovereign.

The imperial limner was even older than the laver. She poked with a fingerclaw one of the glands intended to produce nutritive fluid for a Tosevite hatchling. “How am I supposed to get the pattern right when you have these bumps here?” she complained.

That wasn’t ritual. It was just ordinary grumbling. Kassquit wondered if she dared answer it. After brief hesitation, she decided she did. “Please do the best you can. I cannot help my shape, any more than you can help yours.”

“I do not have this trouble with Rabotevs or Hallessi.” The limner heaved a sigh. “Oh, well. Might as well get used to it. I suppose more and more of you Big Ugly things will come see his Majesty.” She might have been old, but she was an artist with the brush. Despite Kassquit’s shortcomings in shape, the pattern for an imperial supplicant rapidly covered her torso.

“I thank you, gracious female,” Kassquit said when the limner finished. That was ritual. Getting back to it felt good. She went on, “I am not worthy.”

“That is a truth: you are not,” the limner agreed, and added an emphatic cough. “You are granted an audience not because of your worth but by grace of the Emperor. Rejoice that you have been privileged to receive that grace.”

“I do.” Kassquit used her own emphatic cough.

“Advance, then, and enter the throne room.”

“I thank you. Like his Majesty, you are more gracious, more generous, than I deserve.” Kassquit bent into the posture of respect. The limner did not.

When Kassquit and Herrep paused in a jog in the corridor before she went out into the audience chamber proper, the protocol master said, “Fear not. Your talk with the limner will be edited before it is broadcast. She has done so many of these ceremonies, they have lost their grandeur for her.”

“Really? I had not noticed,” Kassquit said. Herrep started slightly, then saw the joke and gave her a polite laugh. Kassquit asked, “May I proceed, superior sir?” Herrep made the affirmative gesture, and she stepped out into that vast, shadowed, echoing hall.

For a moment, awe almost paralyzed her. This was where the Empire became the Empire upon the unification of Home. This was where the Rabotevs and Hallessi acknowledged the Emperor’s sovereignty and made the Empire more than worldwide. And now, in a smaller way, she too was becoming part of imperial history. Of itself, her back straightened. Pride filled her as she walked toward the throne.

She almost gasped when the Emperor’s gray-painted guards suddenly appeared out of the shadows and blocked her path. Kassquit gestured with her left hand, declaring, “I too serve the Emperor.” The guards silently withdrew. She advanced.

In the spotlight, the Emperor and his throne blazed with gold. Kassquit averted her eyes from the radiance as she assumed the special posture of respect before her sovereign. From above her, the 37th Emperor Risson said, “Arise, Researcher Kassquit.”

Her name in the Emperor’s mouth! She held the posture, saying, “I thank your Majesty for his kindness and generosity in summoning me into his presence when I am unworthy of the honor.” Ritual steadied her, as she’d hoped it would.

“Arise, I say again,” the Emperor replied, and Kassquit did. The Emperor’s eye turrets swung up and down as he examined her. He said, “I am greatly pleased to welcome my first Tosevite citizen to Home. I have heard that you are very able, which gladdens my liver.”

“I thank you, your Majesty,” Kassquit said dazedly. No one had told her Risson would say anything like that! When he made the gesture of dismissal, she might have invented antigravity, for she did not think her feet touched the floor even once as she withdrew.

Along with the rest of the Americans, Sam Yeager watched Kassquit’s audience on television. “She goes through all the rituals of submission you talked them out of,” Tom de la Rosa said to him.

“For her, they’re all right,” Sam answered. “The Emperor’s her sovereign. But he’s not mine, and I wasn’t going to pretend he is.”

“Looks like she’s got all the moves down pat,” Frank Coffey remarked.

Sam nodded. “I’m not surprised. Jonathan and I met her years before we went into cold sleep. She’s not quite human, poor thing, but she’s plenty smart.” He dropped into the Lizards’ language for a one-word question for his son: “Truth?”

“Truth,” Jonathan agreed. He didn’t add an emphatic cough, as Sam Yeager had thought he might. But then, Karen was sitting right there next to him, and wouldn’t have appreciated any such display of enthusiasm. As far as Karen was concerned, Kassquit was entirely too human. But Sam had been talking about the way she thought, not the way she was made.

Linda de la Rosa said, “The Emperor paid her a nice compliment there.”

“That’s the point of the audience,” Sam said. “He wants to show everybody-the Lizards here on Home, and eventually Rabotevs and Hallessi and humans, too-that they’re really just one big, happy family. The Race isn’t as good at propaganda as we are, but they’ve got the right idea for that.”

“What did you think of Risson, Dad?” Jonathan asked.

“We all right?” Sam asked Major Coffey. Only after Coffey’s nod showed electronics were foiling the Race’s bugs did he go on, “He impressed me more than I figured he would. Most of what he said was stuff he had to say, but the way he said it made me sit up and take notice. He’s got brains, I think. He’s not just sitting up there because he’s descended from the last Lizard who had the job.”

“The succession is about the only place where family ties really matter to the Race, isn’t it?” Karen said.

“Looks that way to me,” Sam agreed. “The Emperor has his own-harem, I guess you’d call it-of females, and one of the eggs one of those females lays hatches out the next Emperor. And how they go about deciding which egg it is, they know and God knows, but I don’t.”

He laughed. Back before he went into cold sleep, he’d never worried about how the Lizards dealt with the imperial succession. It hadn’t seemed like anything that could matter to him. Which only went to show, you never could tell. He laughed again. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t already known that. His whole career since the day he met his first Lizard-a slightly wounded prisoner somewhere south of Chicago-had been a case of you never can tell.

The door hissed for attention. Sam didn’t know about the rest of the Americans, but he missed a good, old-fashioned doorbell. His knees ached as he got to his feet. He wondered if the Lizards were going to complain about the bug suppressor. If they did, he intended to send them away with a flea in their hearing diaphragm. Bugging ambassadors’ residences was impolite, even if it happened all the time.

But the Lizard who stood in the hallway wore the body paint of an assistant protocol master. Sam recognized it because it was similar to Herrep’s but a little less ornate. “Yes?” he said, as neutrally as he could. “What can I do for you?”

“You are the ambassador? Sam Yeager?” Lizards had as much trouble telling people apart as most people did with members of the Race. If Sam hadn’t been the only human on the planet with white hair, the assistant protocol master wouldn’t have had a chance.

I ought to dye it, he thought irreverently. But heaven only knew what the Race used for dyes. He made the affirmative gesture. “Yes, I am the ambassador.”

“Good. You will come with me immediately.”

“What? Why?” Yeager was primed to tell the assistant protocol master that he still had a thing or two-dozen-to learn about diplomacy. You didn’t order an ambassador around like a grocery boy.

But he never got the chance, for the female said, “Because you are summoned to a conference by the Emperor.”

“Oh,” Sam said. A sovereign could order an ambassador around like a grocery boy. He gave the only reply he could under the circumstances: “It shall be done.”

“What are they up to, Dad?” Jonathan asked in English.

“Beats me. This one isn’t in the rules, or not in the part they showed me, anyhow,” Sam answered in the same language. “If I’m not back in two days, call the cops.” He was joking-and then again, he wasn’t. His own government had kidnapped him. It wasn’t completely inconceivable that the Race might do the same. If the Race did, though, he was damned if he knew what the humans here could do about it-this side of starting a war, anyhow.

The assistant protocol master hissed. For a bad moment, Sam feared she understood English. Some Lizards here did-even that Rabotev shuttlecraft pilot had. But the female said only, “Please be prompt.”

She led Yeager out of the hotel and into a car with darkened windows. No one looking in could see the car held a human. No reporters waited at the curb. None waited outside the imperial palace, either. Sam was impressed again. Whatever this was, it wasn’t a publicity stunt.

“This will be a private audience?” he asked the assistant protocol master.

“Semiprivate,” the Lizard replied. “And it will be a conference, not an audience. Ceremony will be at a minimum.”

“All right. I am sure it is a great honor to be called like this.” Sam didn’t say whether it was an honor he wanted. That was part of diplomacy, too.

“You are the first ambassador so summoned in more than a hundred thousand years,” the assistant protocol master said. The Race hadn’t had any independent ambassadors come before it in all that time. Yeager thought about pointing that out, but forbore. Diplomacy again.

He almost laughed when he found the conference room nearly identical to those in the hotel back in Sitneff. All across the USA, such rooms looked about the same. Evidently, that also held true on Home. The walls were a green-brown not far from the color of a Lizard’s hide. The table in the middle was too low to be quite comfortable for humans.

There were a couple of chairs more or less made for people in the conference room. Yeager sat down in one of them. A few minutes later, Kassquit came in and took the other. “I greet you, Ambassador,” she said politely.

“And I greet you,” Sam replied. How many conferences back on Earth had featured a naked woman? Not many-he was sure of that. Jumping out of a cake afterwards, maybe, but not at the conference itself.

When the door opened again, the Emperor came in. His gilding marked him off from his subjects. Kassquit sprang out of her chair and assumed the special posture of respect. Sam followed suit more slowly. He did everything more slowly these days.

“Rise, both of you,” the 37th Emperor Risson said. “The reason I called you here was to see whether we could progress toward settling the differences between the Race and the American Tosevites.”

He didn’t think small. In a sovereign, that was, or could be, an admirable quality. Sam returned to the chair that wasn’t quite right for his shape. “I hope we can, your Majesty,” he said. “That would be wonderful.”

The 37th Emperor Risson turned one eye turret toward him, the other toward Kassquit. “Which of us is outnumbered, Ambassador?” he asked.

“Both of us,” Yeager replied. “Two Big Uglies, one male of the Race. Two citizens of the Empire, one American.”

“No Emperor has ever been outnumbered by Tosevites before,” Risson said. Even though Sam had used the Race’s slang for humans, the Emperor was too polite to imitate him. Risson went on, “And yet, Tosevites have occupied the Race’s thoughts, and the thoughts of the Emperors, for a good many years now.”

“Well, your Majesty, we have been paying a fair amount of attention to the Race ourselves lately,” Sam said in a dry voice.

He wondered whether Risson would catch the dryness. When the Emperor’s mouth dropped open in a laugh, Sam knew he had. Matching dry for dry, Risson said, “Yes, I can see how that might possibly be so.” The Lizard leaned forward. “And now, can you tell me what you American Tosevites require from the Race, since it has drawn your notice?”

“Yes, I can tell you that,” Sam Yeager answered. “I can tell you in one word, as a matter of fact. We want equality.”

“Do you not believe you should wait until you have earned it?” the 37th Emperor Risson returned. “Eighteen hundred years ago, when we first discovered your kind, you were savages.” He spoke a word of command. A hologram of a knight sprang into being in the air.

Sam had seen that image a thousand times. He was, by now, good and sick of the blond Crusader. “I have never denied that the Race was civilized long before we were,” he said. “But that male is long dead, and I sit here on your home planet talking with you, your Majesty. I came here in my not-empire’s ship, too.”

“If we fought, you would lose,” Risson said.

“If we fought, we would hurt you badly,” Sam said. “We have been able to hurt you badly for some time now, and grow more able every year. But I thought we were here to talk about peace.”

“So we are,” the Emperor said. “Equality? Do you truly know what you ask?”

“Yes, your Majesty. I think I do,” Sam answered. A Japanese might have understood the demand-might have made the demand-more fiercely. The Empire looked at the USA the way the USA and Europe had looked on Japan when she muscled her way into the great powers. The Japanese weren’t white men. They were wogs, nothing else but. After they got strong enough, though, it stopped mattering.

Yeager shook his head in slow wonder. The day after Pearl Harbor, he’d tried to join the Army and fight the Japs. (Because of his false teeth, the Army turned him down then, though they’d been glad enough to take him when the Lizards came a little more than five months later.) Now here he was, sympathizing with Japan. Life could be very strange.

Kassquit said, “Your Majesty, I understand the Race’s pride, the Empire’s pride. Do you fully understand the Tosevites’ pride?”

“The Tosevites’ pride?” By the way the 37th Emperor Risson said it, that had never once crossed his mind. Sam wasn’t surprised. The Race did look down their snouts at Big Uglies, just as Americans and Europeans had looked down their noses at the Japanese. But Risson went on, “Researcher, it is possible that I do not. I thank you for pointing it out to me.”

“I am pleased to serve your Majesty,” Kassquit murmured. Sam smiled. Her face didn’t show anything, but if that wasn’t pride of her own, he’d never heard it.

“Equality. Pride,” Risson said, perhaps half to himself, and then, “I am glad I had this talk. It has given me a great deal to think about.” That was dismissal: polite dismissal, but dismissal even so. As the Lizards whisked Sam back to his hotel, he found he too had a lot to think about.

Ttomalss was one of the few members of the Race who understood what being a parent involved. That was what all his patient years of raising Kassquit from a hatchling had got him. And now he was going through the part of parenthood that seemed strangest. The hatchling he’d raised had taken wing on her own. Not only had Kassquit enjoyed an audience with the Emperor, but she’d also conferred with him in private.

Because the conference was and stayed private, the male in the street never found out about it. To most members of the Race, Kassquit remained just another Big Ugly. But a female at the imperial court let Ttomalss know. “Are you not proud of what you accomplished?” she asked.

“Yes, I am. Very much so,” Ttomalss answered, and broke the connection in a hurry.

It wasn’t that he was lying. On the contrary. He was proud of Kassquit. All the same, he also felt himself surpassed, and that was an odd and uncomfortable feeling. It wasn’t so much that Kassquit had had the audience with the 37th Emperor Risson. Ttomalss saw the propaganda value there. But that Risson had summoned her back to confer… Yes, that got under the psychologist’s scales.

Ttomalss had never won an imperial audience himself. He didn’t particularly expect one. He was prominent, but not that prominent. He thought he might have been worthy of consultation, though. If the Emperor thought otherwise, what could he do about it? Not a thing. Not a single, solitary thing.

Yes, Kassquit had spread her wings, all right. They had proved wider and stronger than Ttomalss ever expected-maybe wider and stronger than his own. He knew Big Uglies often had this experience. He wondered how they stood it without being torn to pieces. It couldn’t be easy.

Of course, they had biological and cultural advantages he didn’t. They knew such things were liable to happen. Some of them even hoped their hatchlings would surpass them. Under other circumstances, Ttomalss might have admired such altruism. He had more trouble practicing it himself.

To keep from thinking about Kassquit and her triumphs, he telephoned Pesskrag. Getting hold of the physics professor wasn’t easy. Returning calls might have been a custom from another world, as far as she was concerned. Ttomalss hoped she was busy in the laboratory, not off to the South Pole with friends. Her messages would follow her either way, of course, but she might be more inclined to answer them if she was working and not out having a good time.

When she didn’t call back for two days, Ttomalss began to get not only annoyed but worried. He wondered if something had happened to her. He called her department chairfemale, only to learn that that worthy had just gone into the hospital with a prolapsed oviduct. Excesses of the mating season, he thought sourly. No one else in the department seemed to know anything about where Pesskrag was or what she was doing. He wondered if he ought to get hold of the police.

Pesskrag finally did call him the next day. When Ttomalss saw her image in the monitor, he still wondered if he ought to get hold of the police. Her nictitating membranes were swollen and puffy with exhaustion. She looked as if she’d just escaped a kidnapping attempt. She said, “I apologize for being so very hard to reach, Senior Researcher,” and then she yawned right in Ttomalss’ face.

Seeing that teeth-filled gape of jaw made Ttomalss want to yawn, too. That desire to imitate a yawn was almost a reflex in the Race. Idly, Ttomalss wondered if the Big Uglies had anything similar. That would have to wait, though. It would probably have to wait for years. This, on the other hand… “What have you been doing?” Ttomalss asked.

“Experimenting,” Pesskrag said, and yawned again. This time, Ttomalss did yawn back. The physicist shut her mouth with an audible snap. She pointed at him. “And it is your fault, too-yours and the Big Uglies’.”

“All right. I accept my share of the blame,” Ttomalss said. “Do you have any results from your experiments yet?”

“Only very preliminary ones,” she answered, and gave forth with another yawn. She seemed on the point of falling asleep where she sat. Gathering herself, she went on, “Full computer analysis will take some time. It always does. Preliminary results do suggest that the Big Uglies probably are correct.”

“How interesting,” Ttomalss said, and Pesskrag made the affirmative gesture. The psychologist went on, “You are the expert in this matter. If the Big Uglies are correct, what are the implications?”

“Again, much of this will have to wait for full analysis,” Pesskrag replied. Ttomalss impatiently lifted a hand. The psychologist opened her mouth again-this time for a laugh, not a yawn. She might have been drunk with weariness as she continued, “But we are going to see some changes made.”

“What sort of changes?” Ttomalss asked.

“How should I know?” she said. “Would you judge a hatchling’s whole career when it is still wet from the juices of its egg?”

Ttomalss did his best to sink his fingerclaws into patience. “Let me ask you a different way,” he said. “Is this a matter that will only matter in learned journals and computer discussion groups, or will it have practical meaning?”

“Sooner or later, a lot of what is discussed in learned journals and computer groups has practical meaning,” Pesskrag said stiffly. But then she relented: “All right. I know what you mean. I would say this will have practical meaning. Just how soon, I am less certain. We will need to confirm what we think we have found, and that too will take some time. Then, assuming we do confirm it, we will have to see what sort of engineering the physics leads to.”

“How long do you suppose that will take?” Ttomalss asked.

“Years, certainly. I would not be surprised if it took centuries,” the physicist answered. “We will have to be very careful here, after all. Everything will have to be worked out in great detail. We will have to make sure these changes do not disrupt our society, or do so to the smallest possible degree. Deciding what the safest course is will of course be the responsibility of planners, not scientists.”

“Of course,” Ttomalss echoed. “Tell me one thing more, if you would be so kind: how soon could something like this pass from physics to engineering if those in charge cared nothing for change or disruption?”

“What an addled notion!” Pesskrag said. Ttomalss did not argue. He only waited. She went on, “I cannot imagine the circumstances under which such a thing would be permitted. I certainly hope the males and females in charge of such things are more responsible than you seem to believe.”

“If such matters were gripped by the fingerclaws of our males and females alone, I would agree with you,” Ttomalss said. “Do please remember the source of your inspiration here, though. Let me ask my question in a different way: what do you suppose the Big Uglies have been doing with the data you are just now discovering?”

“The Big Uglies?” Pesskrag spoke as if she were hearing of Tosevites for the first time. After some thought, she shrugged. “I am sorry, Senior Researcher, but I have not the faintest idea. How matter and energy behave is my province. How these strange aliens act is yours.”

“I will tell you how to estimate their behavior,” Ttomalss said.

“Please do.” The physicist sounded polite but skeptical.

“Make the most radical estimate of possibilities you have the power to invent in your own mind,” Ttomalss said. He waited again. When Pesskrag made the affirmative gesture, he went on, “Once you have made that estimate, multiply its capacity for disaster by about ten. Having done that, you will find yourself somewhere close to the low end of Tosevite possibilities.”

Pesskrag laughed. Ttomalss didn’t. He didn’t say anything at all. After a little while, Pesskrag noticed he wasn’t saying anything. She exclaimed, “But surely you must be joking!”

“I wish I were,” the psychologist said. “If anything, I am not giving the Big Uglies enough credit-or maybe blame is more likely to be the word I want.”

“I do not understand,” Pesskrag said.

“Let me show you, then. You may possibly have seen this image before.” Ttomalss called up onto the screen the picture of the Tosevite warrior the Race’s probe had snapped. He said, “Please believe me when I tell you this was the state of the art on Tosev 3 eighteen hundred years ago-eighteen hundred of our years, half that many by the local count.”

“Oh. I see,” Pesskrag said slowly. “And now…” Her voice trailed away.

“Yes. And now,” Ttomalss said. “And now several of their not-empires have kept their independence in spite of everything the Race could do. And now they are making important discoveries in theoretical physics before we are. Do you still believe I am joking, or even exaggerating?”

“Possibly not,” Pesskrag said in troubled tones. “We would not have made this discovery for a long time, if ever. I am convinced of that. So are my colleagues. Even imagining the experiment requires a startling radicalism.”

“And the Race is not radical,” Ttomalss said. Pesskrag hesitated, then used the affirmative gesture once more. So did the psychologist. He went on, “I need to tell you, I need to make you understand in your belly, that by our standards the Big Uglies are radical to the point of lunacy. If you do not understand that, you cannot hope to understand anything about them. Let me give you an example. During the fighting after the conquest fleet landed, they destroyed a city we held with an atomic weapon-a weapon they had not had when the fighting started. Do you know how they did it?”

“By remote control, I would assume,” Pesskrag replied.

Ttomalss made the negative gesture. “No. That is how we would do it. That is how they would do it now, I am sure. At the time, their remote-control systems were primitive and unreliable. They sailed a boat that travels underwater-one of their military inventions-carrying the bomb into this harbor. When the boat arrived, a brave male on it triggered the bomb, killing himself and the rest of the crew in the process.”

“Madness!” the physicist said.

“Yes and no,” Ttomalss answered. “Remember, it did us much more harm than it did the Big Uglies. And so they did not count the cost. They have a way of proceeding without counting the cost. That is why I asked where this discovery might go, and how long it might take to get there.”

The way Pesskrag’s eye turrets twitched told how troubled she was. “I am sorry, Senior Researcher, but I still cannot say for certain. We are going to have to modify a good deal of theory to account for the results of this experiment. We will also have to design other experiments based on this one to take into account what we have just learned. I do not know what sort of theoretical underpinnings the Big Uglies already have. If this was an experiment of confirmation for them, not an experiment of discovery… If that turns out to be so, they may have a bigger lead than I believe.”

“And in that case?” Ttomalss always assumed the Tosevites knew more and were more advanced than the available evidence showed. He was rarely wrong about that. He did sometimes err on the conservative side even so. Since he was trying to be radical, that worried him. But no member of the Race could be as Radical as a Big Ugly. Realizing that worried him, too.

“I need to do more work before I can properly answer you,” Pesskrag said. Her words proved Ttomalss’ point for him. That worried him more still. A Tosevite physicist wouldn’t have hesitated before answering. And that worried him most of all.

Lieutenant General Healey gave Glen Johnson a baleful stare as the two of them floated into the Admiral Peary ’s small, cramped refectory. “Too bad sending you down to the surface of Home would kill you,” the starship commandant rasped. “Otherwise, I’d do it in a red-hot minute.”

“Since when has that kind of worry ever stopped you?” After a long, long pause, Johnson added, “Sir?” He didn’t have to waste much time being polite to Healey. As far as he knew, the Admiral Peary had no brig. He didn’t need to worry about blowing a promotion, either. What difference did it make, when he never expected to see Earth again? He could say whatever he pleased-and if Healey felt like baiting him, he’d bait the commandant right back.

Healey’s bulldog countenance was made for glowering. But the scowl lost a lot of its force when its owner lost the power to intimidate. “You are insubordinate,” the commandant rasped.

“Yes, sir, I sure am,” Johnson agreed cheerfully. “You’d be doing me a favor if you sent me down to Home with the doctor, you know that? I’d be keeping company with a nice-looking woman till gravity squashed me flat. You’d be stuck up here with yourself-or should I say stuck on yourself?”

That struck a nerve. Healey turned the glowing crimson of red-hot iron. A comparable amount of heat seemed to radiate from him, too. He got himself a plastic pouch of food and spent the rest of supper ignoring Johnson.

The meal was a sort of a stew: bits of meat and vegetables and rice, all bound together with a gravy that was Oriental at least to the extent of having soy sauce as a major ingredient. A spoon with a retracting lid made a good tool for eating it.

Johnson did wonder what the meat was. It could have been chicken, or possibly pork. On the other hand, it could just as well have been lab rat. How much in the way of supplies had the starship brought from Earth? The dietitians no doubt knew to the last half ounce. Johnson didn’t inquire of any of them. Some questions were better left unanswered.

When he reported to the control room the next morning, Brigadier General Walter Stone greeted him with a reproachful look. “You shouldn’t ride the commandant so hard,” the senior pilot said.

“He started it.” Johnson knew he sounded like a three-year-old. He didn’t much care. “Did you tell him he should stay off my back?”

“He has reasons for being leery of you,” Stone said. “We both know what they are, don’t we?”

“Too bad,” Johnson said. “We both know his reasons never amounted to a hill of beans, too, don’t we?”

“No, we don’t know that,” Walter Stone said. “What we know is, nobody ever proved those reasons have anything to do with reality.”

“There’s a reason for that, too: they don’t.” Johnson had stuck with his story since the 1960s.

“Tell it to the Marines,” said Stone, an Army man.

Since Johnson had been a Marine now for something approaching ninety years, he chose to take umbrage at that-or at least to act as if he did. He got on fine with Mickey Flynn; he and Stone had been wary around each other ever since he involuntarily joined the crew of the Lewis and Clark. They would probably stay that way as long as they both lived.

Stone wasn’t obnoxious about his opinions, the way Lieutenant General Healey was. That didn’t mean he didn’t have them. To him, Johnson would always be below the salt, even if they’d come more than ten light-years from home.

Prig, Johnson thought, and then another word that sounded much like it. The first was fair enough. The second wasn’t, and he knew as much. Stone was extremely good at what he did. Johnson knew himself to be unmatched at piloting a scooter. No human being was better than Walter Stone at making a big spaceship behave. Johnson had seen that with both the Lewis and Clark and the Admiral Peary. If the other man had a personality that seemed to be made of stamped tin… then he did, that was all.

“Hello!” Dr. Melanie Blanchard floated up into the control room, and Johnson forgot all about Stone’s personality, if any. The doctor went on, “I’m making my good-byes. The shuttlecraft will take me down to Home tomorrow.”

“We’ll miss you,” Johnson said, most sincerely. Stone nodded. The two of them had no quarrel about that.

Dr. Blanchard said, “No need to. The doctors aboard will be able to take care of you just fine in case anything goes wrong. They’ll do better than I could, in fact. My specialty is cold-sleep medicine, and they tend to people who are actually warm and breathing to begin with.”

Johnson and Stone looked at each other. Johnson could see he and the senior pilot shared the same thought. He spoke before Stone could: “We weren’t exactly thinking of your doctoring.”

“Oh.” Melanie Blanchard laughed. “You boys say the sweetest things.” She was careful to keep her tone light. She’d been careful for as long as Johnson had known her. He was sure he and Stone weren’t the only men aboard the Admiral Peary who thought of her not just as a physician. He was pretty sure nobody’d had the chance to do anything but think. The ship was big enough to fly from Earth to Home, but not big enough to keep gossip from flying if there were anything to gossip about. If anything could travel faster than light, gossip could.

No gossip had ever clung to Dr. Blanchard. Johnson wished some would have; it would have left him more hopeful. He smiled at her now. “You think we talk sweet, you should give us a chance to show you what we can do.”

“Take no notice of him,” Walter Stone told the doctor. “I agree with everything he says, but take no notice of him anyway.” Johnson looked at Stone in surprise. Flynn wouldn’t have disdained that line. Johnson hadn’t thought Stone had it in him.

Melanie Blanchard laughed. “Flattery will get you-not as much as you wish it would,” she said, the laugh taking any sting from the words. “Being noticed is nice. Having people make nuisances of themselves isn’t.” She held up a hand. “You two haven’t. I could name names. I could-but I won’t.”

“Why not?” Johnson asked. “If you do, we’ll have something interesting to talk about.”

“You’ll be talking about me behind my back whether I name names or not,” she said. “I know how things work. If you were going down there, they’d talk about you, too. Oh, not the same way-you aren’t women, after all-but they would. Will you tell me I’m wrong?”

“Sure,” Johnson said. “If we were going down to Home, they’d talk about him. ” He jerked a thumb at Walter Stone.

“Me? Include me out,” Stone said.

“Thank you, Mr. Goldwyn,” Johnson said. Stone grimaced. He looked as if he hadn’t wanted to give Johnson even that much reaction. Johnson turned back to Melanie Blanchard. “Five gets you ten your shuttlecraft pilot won’t be a Lizard. Rabotevs and Hallessi don’t care about ginger.”

“They don’t care about taking ginger,” she said. “I bet they’d like the money they’d make for smuggling it-you’ve said that yourself. Of course, we haven’t got any ginger to give them, so it doesn’t matter.”

“Of course,” Johnson and Stone agreed together.

Johnson didn’t know for sure whether the Admiral Peary carried ginger, whatever his suspicions. He could think of three people who might: Sam Yeager, Lieutenant General Healey, and Walter Stone. He didn’t ask the senior pilot. He was sure of one thing-the Lizards thought the humans’ starship was full of the stuff from top to bottom.

Come to think of it, Dr. Blanchard might know the truth about the herb, too. Had she just come out and told it, or was she operating on the principle that the Race might have managed to bug the Admiral Peary and needed to be told what they already wanted to hear?

She said, “I’m going to go below and make sure I’ve got everything I’ll need down on the surface of Home. In the meantime…” She glided over to Johnson and gave him a hug and a kiss. Then she did the same thing with Walter Stone. And then, waving impartially to both of them, she was gone.

“Damn,” Johnson said: a reverent curse if ever there was one. The memory of her body pressed against his would stay with him a long time. At his age, sex wasn’t such an urgent business as it had been when he was younger. That didn’t mean he’d forgotten what it was all about.

Walter Stone looked amazingly lifelike as he stared toward the hatchway down which Dr. Blanchard had gone. He shook himself like a man coming out of cold water. “Now that you mention it, yes,” he said.

“Lot of woman there,” Johnson observed. “I’d run into somebody like that, I probably would have stayed married and stayed on Earth.”

He waited for Stone to point out that he’d be dead now in that case. The other man didn’t. He only nodded.

With a sigh, Johnson added, “Of course, you notice she isn’t married herself. Maybe she’s not as nice as she seems.”

“Or maybe she thinks men are a bunch of bums,” Stone said. “You’ve got an ex-wife. Maybe she’s got an ex-husband or three.”

That hadn’t occurred to Johnson. Before he could say anything, a Lizard’s voice spoke from the radio: “Attention, the Tosevite starship. Attention, the Tosevite starship. We have launched a shuttlecraft to pick up your physician. This is the object you will discern on your radar.”

Sure enough, there it was: a blip rising from Home toward the Admiral Peary. “We thank you for the alert, Ground Control,” Stone said in the language of the Race.

A little later, the shuttlecraft pilot’s face appeared in the monitor. As Johnson had guessed, he was (or perhaps she was) a dark-skinned, short-faced Rabotev with eyes on stalks, not in turrets. “I greet you, Tosevites,” the pilot said. “Please give me docking instructions.”

“Our docking apparatus is the same as the Empire uses,” Stone said. He had, no doubt, almost said the same as the Race uses, but that wouldn’t do with a Rabotev. “Lights will guide you to the docking collar. Call again if you have any trouble.”

“I thank you,” the shuttlecraft pilot replied. “It shall be done.”

The Rabotev was certainly capable. He-she? — docked with the Admiral Peary with a smooth efficiency anyone who’d flown in space had to respect. With the duty in the control room, Johnson couldn’t give Dr. Blanchard another personal good-bye. He sighed again. Memory wasn’t a good enough substitute for the real thing.