Homeward Bound

11

Karen Yeager was starting to get to know the Sitneff shuttlecraft port. It wasn’t as familiar to her as Los Angeles International Air- and Spaceport, but she had some idea which turns to take to get to the waiting area. The shuttlecraft port also had one great advantage over LAX: she was a VIP here, not one more cow in a herd. She and Jonathan got whisked through security checkpoints instead of waiting in lines that often doubled back on themselves eight or ten times.

“I could get used to this,” she said as they took their seats in the waiting area. If the seats weren’t perfectly comfortable-well, they wouldn’t be here very long.

Her husband nodded. “Could be worse.” In English, he added, “Only drawback is everybody staring at us.”

“Well, yes, there is that,” Karen said. She too felt as if every eye turret in the waiting area were turned her way. That wasn’t quite true, but it wasn’t far wrong, either. Lizards attracted much less attention at airports back on Earth. Of course, there were millions of Lizards on Earth, and only a handful of humans here on Home.

She shifted in her seat. No, it wasn’t comfortable at all. Back on Earth, some airports had special seating areas for the Race. Karen didn’t plan on holding her breath till the Lizards returned the favor here.

A shuttlecraft landed. Its braking rockets roared. The Race was better at soundproofing than mere humans were, but she still felt that noise in her bones. Three Lizards got out of the shuttlecraft. Their friends or business colleagues or whatever they were greeted them when they came into the terminal.

After glancing at his watch, one of the Americans’ guards said, “Your fellow Tosevite should be grounding next.”

“I thank you.” Karen and Jonathan said the same thing at the same time. As couples who’ve been married for a long time will, they smiled at each other.

The guard was right. The groundcrew at the port moved the last shuttlecraft off the flame-scarred tarmac. A few minutes later, another one landed a hundred yards off to the left. This time, the pilot who emerged was a Rabotev. The Lizards in the waiting area paid no particular attention to him (or her); they were used to Rabotevs. But they exclaimed and pointed when Dr. Melanie Blanchard came down the landing ladder after him.

“She’s moving as if she’s got the weight of the world on her shoulders, isn’t she?” Jonathan said.

“She probably feels that way, too,” Karen said. “She’s been out of gravity for quite a while now.”

Dr. Blanchard trudged across the concrete toward the waiting area. Lifting each foot and then putting it down took an obvious effort. A Lizard scurried into the shuttlecraft and came out with a pair of suitcases of Earthly manufacture. He hurried after the human. Carrying her luggage wasn’t very hard for him. By the way things looked, it might have killed her.

Turning to the guards, Karen said, “Can you please keep the reporters away from her? She is too tired to answer questions right away.”

“It shall be done, superior sir.” The Lizards still had as much trouble telling humans’ sexes apart as people did with them. Karen couldn’t get too annoyed, though, because the guards did do what she’d asked. The reporters shouted their questions anyhow, but they had to do it from a distance.

Dr. Blanchard waved to them. That took effort, too. “I am glad to be here,” she called in the language of the Race. She didn’t look or sound glad. She looked as if she wanted to fall over. And when she got to Karen and Jonathan, she sank into one of the seats by them regardless of how uncomfortable it was. “Whew!” she said. Sweat gleamed on her face. “Can I rest for a little while before we go on?”

“Sure,” Jonathan said. “How are you?”

“Hammered,” she answered frankly. “I remember I used to take gravity for granted. What I don’t remember is how. I feel like I’ve got two great big football players strapped to my back.”

“You’ll get used to it again,” Karen said.

Melanie Blanchard nodded. Even that looked anything but easy for her. “I suppose I will,” she said. “In the meantime, though, I’m a shambling wreck-only I can’t shamble for beans, either.”

One of the Lizard guards came up to her and bent into the posture of respect. “I greet you, superior female. Shall we now return to the hotel where your species stays?”

“I thank you, but please let me rest first,” she replied. “I have been weightless for a very long time, and I need a little while to get used to being back in gravity again.”

The guard made the affirmative gesture. “As you say, so shall it be.” He went back to holding off the reporters.

“I wish it were, ‘As you say, so shall it be,’ ” Dr. Blanchard said in English. “Then I’d tell myself everything was fine, and it would be-‘physician, heal thyself.’ I’d love to. Only problem is, I can’t.”

“When we do go back to the hotel, you can stretch out on a sleeping mat,” Karen said. “Then come over to our room, if you’ve got the energy. We’ve got ice cubes. As near as I can tell, they’re the only ones on the planet.” She spoke with what she hoped was pardonable pride.

“And we’ve got the Race’s equivalent of vodka,” Jonathan added. “What they use for flavored liquor is amazingly nasty-of course, they think the same thing about scotch and bourbon. But this is just ethyl alcohol cut with water. You can drink it warm, but Karen’s right-it’s better cold.”

“Vodka over ice sounds wonderful. Getting up off the sleeping mat and going to your room…” Dr. Blanchard laughed ruefully and shook her head. “Maybe if I say pretty please, you’ll bring me a drink instead?”

“That might be arranged,” Karen said.

“We’ll be friends forever if it can,” Melanie Blanchard said. “Is the car back to the hotel very far from here?”

“About as far as it was from the shuttlecraft to where you are,” Jonathan answered.

The doctor heaved herself to her feet. She wobbled for a moment. Jonathan held out his arm. She took it, but then steadied and stood on her own. To the guard, she called, “I am ready to go to the car now, as long as I do not have to move too fast.”

“Set whatever pace you please, superior female,” the Lizard replied. “Our orders are to accommodate ourselves to your needs.”

“I thank you. That is very kind.” Dr. Blanchard dropped back into English to tell Karen and Jonathan, “Why don’t you lead the way? You know where you’re going, and I haven’t got the faintest idea.”

“I don’t think we’ll lead. I think we’ll go one on each side of you, in case you need propping up,” Jonathan said. That turned out to be a good idea. Dr. Blanchard walked as if she were a St. Bernard plowing through thick snow. Home’s gravity field seemed harder for her than drifts after a blizzard were for a dog. The Lizard carrying her suitcases followed, while the guards spread out on all sides.

When they reached the car, she sank down into a seat with a groan of pleasure. “This one even fits my butt,” she said happily. “All the time in the world on an exercise bike up there isn’t the same as ten minutes in gravity, believe you me it isn’t.”

She seemed a little better by the time they got back to the hotel. That relieved Karen; she’d feared the doctor would be in no shape to take care of herself, let alone anybody else. But Melanie Blanchard walked more easily than she had before, and even paused briefly to talk with reporters waiting outside. She might need a while to do a thorough job of adjusting, but it seemed likely she would.

When the humans went into the lobby, Karen’s father-in-law met them with an expression she found hard to fathom. Was it grim, or was he swallowing a belly laugh? He sounded grim when he said, “We have a… situation here.”

“What’s up, Dad?” Jonathan asked.

“A cleaning crew went into your room while you were out meeting Dr. Blanchard,” Sam Yeager answered. “They were fooling with the rats’ cages. We’ve had an escape.”

“Oh, dear,” Melanie Blanchard said. “I was hoping to do some work with them.”

“That’s not the problem,” Karen said, which was, if anything, an understatement.

Sam Yeager nodded. “No, it’s not. The Race told us they’d raise holy hell if anything of ours got loose on Home. We promised on a stack of Bibles we wouldn’t let the critters loose-and we didn’t.”

“They don’t care what they’ve done to Earth’s ecology,” Karen said. “They claim that’s not their worry. But if we return the favor, it’s a different story. How many got away?”

“Eight or ten, I think,” her father-in-law answered. “You’ll know better than I do when you see your room, because you have a better notion of how the cages were laid out. But as of now, I’m open to suggestions.”

“Why should we worry?” Karen said. “It’s the Lizards’ own fault. If they want to catch the rats, tell ’em to buy a cat.”

Everybody laughed. Dr. Blanchard said, “Excuse me,” and sat down on the edge of a table. That was probably more comfortable than perching in what the Race used for chairs. The table was flat, not curved the wrong way for a human fundament.

“They are setting traps,” Sam Yeager said. “I have no idea how much good that will do. Can they find something rats really want to eat? Can the rats find something to eat and drink on their own?” He spread his hands. “I don’t know about that, either. Stay tuned for the next exciting episode, and we’ll find out.”

“They’ll have vermin of their own.” Dr. Blanchard looked and sounded happier sitting down. “They’ll have creatures that hunt vermin, too. The next interesting question may be whether those creatures feel like hunting rats.”

“Befflem, tsiongyu, and their wild cousins, I’d expect,” Jonathan said. “Yes, that could be mighty interesting. Befflem have turned into godawful nuisances back on Earth. There’d be a sort of poetic justice if rats did the same thing here.”

“I doubt the Race would appreciate it,” his father said dryly. “But they can’t blame us for the escape. They did it themselves. I wouldn’t want to be one of those cleaners right now, not for all the tea in China I wouldn’t.”

“If I wake up and find myself nose to nose with a rat, I’ll probably scream,” Karen said.

“If I wake up and find myself nose to nose with a rat, I’ll probably scream, too,” Sam Yeager said. “That’ll scare the rat out of a year’s growth, but I don’t suppose it’ll do much else.”

“If anything Earthly can establish itself on Home, I’d bet on rats,” Dr. Blanchard said thoughtfully. “They’ve evolved to live anywhere and eat anything. And they’ve evolved to live in cities alongside people. They might feel right at home here on Home.”

“That occurred to me, too,” Sam Yeager said. “I don’t know if it’s fully occurred to the Race yet. You have to have lived on Earth for a while before you understand just what pests rats can be, and there aren’t that many Lizards here who have.”

“If they don’t get it now, they will pretty soon,” Karen said.

“They may, anyhow,” Jonathan said. “Maybe rats can’t make it here. Maybe they won’t find anything to eat. Maybe the exterminators will get ’em. Maybe something local will think they’re delicious.”

“Maybe,” Dr. Blanchard said. “But nobody’s ever gone broke betting on rats.”

Senyahh held a strange creature by the tail. The creature was deceased. The bandage on the kitchen chief’s other hand said it hadn’t perished without putting up a fight. “What is this horrible thing, Exalted Fleetlord?” Senyahh demanded.

Atvar eyed it with a grim sense of recognition. The tail was long and naked and scaly, which made the animal seem a little less alien. The creature’s body, though, was soft-skinned and furry. Its head had the flaps of skin Tosevite creatures used to concentrate sound waves for their hearing diaphragms. The head was, at the moment, somewhat the worse for wear.

“What did you hit it with?” Atvar inquired.

“A frying pan,” Senyahh answered. “It bit me anyhow. And I almost missed it. It is as fast as a beffel, but I never saw anything like it before. What is it?”

“I believe it is called a rat. ” Atvar pronounced the unfamiliar word as well as he could. “It is one of the escaped Tosevite animals. Congratulations on killing it.”

“Oh, one of those horrible creatures,” Senyahh said. “I thought they would be bigger and uglier and go around on their hind legs.”

“This is quite ugly enough, in my opinion,” Atvar said. “And I meant those congratulations. We believe the housekeeping staff let eight or ten rats escape. This is the first one of which we have seen the slightest trace.”

Senyahh swung the dead beast by the tail. “It will cause no more trouble,” she declared, a hunter’s pride in her voice.

“This one will not, no,” Atvar agreed. “But what of the others? What if they breed? What if they flourish? On Tosev 3, they are major pests. Do they have any diseases or predators here? I have my doubts.”

The head of the kitchens had her own concerns. She asked, “Are they good to eat?”

“I believe so, but the Big Uglies do not commonly consume them.” Atvar pointed to the female. “You are welcome to experiment on your own, but do not, do not, serve the results of your experiment to the American Tosevites-not even to Karen Yeager, with whom you quarreled.” He used an emphatic cough. “The cleaning crew that freed the rats has been sacked. If you give the Americans rat to eat, you will envy their fate. Do you understand me? Do I make myself plain?”

“Yes, Exalted Fleetlord. It shall be done. Or rather, it shall not be done, no matter how tempting it may be. You have my word on it,” Senyahh declared.

“All right. Take the miserable creature away, then,” Atvar said. “I am more familiar with these animals than I ever wanted to be.”

After the kitchen chief left his room, Atvar said several pungent things. He did not blame the female who had killed the rat. She was only doing her job. The cleaning crew… Had it been up to him, they would have got worse than the sack. Their foolishness had endangered all of Home. Yes, Atvar knew more about rats than he wanted to. He knew much more about rats than any male or female who’d never been to Tosev 3.

He hadn’t wanted the animals to come down to the surface of Home in the first place. He’d wondered if the Big Uglies had brought them here to wage their own brand of ecological warfare. He’d warned. He’d fussed. And he’d been undone not by the American Tosevites but by the hotel’s housekeeping staff. They’d decided they felt like playing with the animals. Now everyone would have to pay for it.

Then Atvar made the negative gesture. The Big Uglies wouldn’t have to pay a thing. They might have got what they wanted. He couldn’t prove that, no matter how it seemed to him. But it hadn’t been their fault. That was only too obvious.

He tried to look on the bright side of things, an exercise with which he’d had frequent practice on Tosev 3. Species from Home were making the Big Uglies’ planet more livable, more comfortable, for the Race. The Tosevites couldn’t make that sort of arrangement here on Home. All they could do was make nuisances of themselves. That, unfortunately, was an exercise with which they’d had frequent practice on Tosev 3.

As if to prove the point, Sam Yeager chose that moment to telephone him. “I greet you, Ambassador,” Atvar said resignedly. “What can I do for you this morning?”

“I would like to request permission to bring down another ten rats from the Admiral Peary to replace the ones that were allowed to escape,” the ambassador replied.

“Oh, you would?” Atvar said.

“Yes, please,” Sam Yeager said. “They are very useful to us because they let us test foods easily and conveniently. We were sorry to lose the ones the housekeepers released.”

He made sure that got under Atvar’s scales. Atvar couldn’t do anything about it, either, because he’d earned the right. The fleetlord tried to stall: “I cannot decide this on my own. I will have to consult with local authorities.”

“Back on Tosev 3, Fleetlord, we call that passing the buck. ” Sam Yeager used three words of English. “It means seeking to evade responsibility. That is not like you. I hope to hear an answer very soon. Good day.” He broke the connection.

Atvar hissed angrily. Some of the anger was aimed at the Big Ugly, the rest at himself. The ambassador was right: he did seek to evade responsibility for letting more rats come down to the surface of Home. Unlike the males and females who had never left this planet, he had a pretty good notion of how damaging the Tosevite creatures could be. Letting more of them come here, even caged, was not in the Race’s best interest.

But if it was in the Big Uglies’ best interest… Atvar hissed again. Sam Yeager had come right out and said it was. The only way the Race could reject the ambassador’s request would be to insult the American Tosevites and possibly to jeopardize their health. Atvar did not care to be responsible for that. He did not think any other male or female would care for it, either.

He wondered if he ought to make some calls anyhow, on the off chance he was wrong. His hand shaped the negative gesture. That struck him as pointless-and also as passing the buck, as Sam Yeager had put it.

Instead of telephoning members of his own species, he called the Big Ugly back. “Why, hello, Fleetlord. I greet you,” Sam Yeager said, as politely as if they hadn’t been sparring not long before.

“And I greet you,” Atvar replied, trying-with indifferent success, he feared-to match that politeness.

“What can I do for you now?” the American Tosevite asked, still smoothly. “Does this have to do with what we were talking about a little while ago, or is it about something else?”

“The same topic.” Atvar respected the Big Ugly for coming to the point, and respected him even more for doing so in an inoffensive way. “You have permission to bring ten more of these rats here. They are to remain caged at all times, as their predecessors were to have done.”

“I thank you, Fleetlord, and I do understand the restrictions,” Sam Yeager said. “We agreed to them from the beginning. We have not violated them, either. It was your own folk who freed the rats still-I suppose-in this hotel.”

Atvar didn’t like that I suppose. He also wasn’t happy that Sam Yeager was completely correct. With luck, the housekeepers who’d got more curious than they should have would have trouble finding work anywhere for the rest of their lives. Atvar would have loved to fine or imprison them, but they hadn’t done anything criminal-so the local prosecuting attorney assured him. Whether they’d done anything damaging was a different question, worse luck.

“Will any special Tosevite bait attract these creatures?” the fleetlord asked. “If so, we will use it in our traps.”

“Our traditional bait is cheese, ” Sam Yeager answered.

Then he had to explain to Atvar what cheese was. The explanation left the fleetlord as much revolted as enlightened. The idea of milk was disgusting enough to the Race. The idea of deliberately letting it rot before eating it was worse. Trying to suppress nausea, Atvar inquired, “Do you have any of this stuff closer than the Tosevite solar system?”

“We have none here on the surface of Home-I know that,” the American ambassador said. “There may be some aboard the Admiral Peary. If you like, I will ask the ship to send some down with the rats if there is.”

“I thank you,” Atvar said. “I thank you very much, in fact. That would be generous of you, and greatly appreciated.”

Sam Yeager sounded wryly amused: “Unlike a certain species I could name, we do not deliberately seek to disrupt the ecology of another world.”

“You have made your political point, Ambassador.” Atvar, on the other hand, sounded sour. “We have sought to make Tosev 3 more Homelike and friendly to ourselves. You have done the same on certain parts of the planet.”

“Never so drastically as your folk are doing,” the Tosevite ambassador said. “And we know better now. You brag about the Race’s long spell of civilization, but it does not seem to have made you sensitive to ecological concerns.”

The Race was chiefly interested in shaping ecologies to its own needs. It had done so on Rabotev 2 and Halless 1, and was still busy doing it on Tosev 3. Sam Yeager’s attitude made Atvar less proud of that than he might have been.

He did not intend to let the wild Big Ugly see what he was thinking. Bitter experience on Tosev 3 had taught him that revealing anything to the Big Uglies was a mistake. They never took such revelations as simple confidences, but always as signs of weakness. And they exploited such signs for all they were worth. Would Sam Yeager do the same? Atvar did not doubt it for an instant.

“We see nothing wrong in manipulating the environment for our own benefit,” the fleetlord said. “That is one of the hallmarks of an intelligent species, would you not agree?”

“Manipulation is one thing, destruction something else altogether,” the American ambassador insisted.

“Very often, the difference lies in the point of view,” Atvar said. “Or will you tell me I am mistaken?” He waited. Sam Yeager used the negative gesture. Atvar respected his honesty. He went on, “This being so, you accuse us of being strong enough to make ourselves comfortable on a new world. To this I must plead guilty.”

“Who gave you the right to do that?” Sam Yeager asked.

“We gave it to ourselves, by being strong enough to do it,” Atvar replied.

Yeager studied him. “You say these words, Fleetlord, and you seem pleased with them. And I suppose you have reason to be pleased with them-now. But I tell you this: when I hear them, they are to me nothing to be pleased with. They are a judgment on your kind, a judgment on the whole Race. And judgments like that have a way of being fulfilled.”

Atvar stared at him in astonishment. He sounded more like one of the mullahs who’d made life so unpleasant for the Race on Tosev 3’s main continental mass than the highly civilized being the fleetlord knew him to be. “Do you threaten me, Ambassador?” Atvar demanded.

“No, Fleetlord,” the wild Big Ugly replied. “I do not threaten you if I say the sun will rise tomorrow, either. I simply observe.”

“If that is the sort of observation you are going to make, you would do better to keep it to yourself,” Atvar said coldly.

“As you wish, Fleetlord,” Sam Yeager said. “But have you not seen that the truth will come and find you regardless of whether anyone points it out to you ahead of time?”

Yes, he did sound like a mullah. “What I have not seen, in this particular instance, is that you are speaking truth,” Atvar said. Sam Yeager only shrugged. He spread his hands, as if to say, You will find out. Atvar deliberately turned his eye turrets away from those hands. To his annoyance, the American ambassador only laughed-a loud, grating Tosevite laugh.

At supper in the refectory that evening, Jonathan Yeager listened to his father’s account of the conversation with Atvar. Sam Yeager was speaking English: “I tell you, I felt like Daniel in the Old Testament. I was doing everything but shouting and waving my arms and yelling, ‘Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting.’ ”

“How did he take it?” Dr. Melanie Blanchard asked.

“He got mad,” Sam answered. “I would have got mad, too, if somebody talked to me like that. But I still don’t think I’m wrong. If you’re that arrogant, it usually comes back and bites you.”

“As far as I’m concerned, you handled it just right,” Tom de la Rosa said. “What they’ve done to ecosystems back on Earth is a shame and a disgrace. They’d better not think we’re happy about it.”

“But now the shoe is on the other foot,” Jonathan said. “Now they’re worried about rats here, not zisuili and azwaca and befflem and all their plants back on Earth. The shoe pinches more when it’s on their foot.”

“Oh. The rats.” Dad snapped his fingers. “Almost forgot. We do have permission to bring down replacements.”

“You insulted Atvar, and you still got away with that?” Frank Coffey said. “Not bad, Ambassador. Not bad at all.” He clapped his hands together.

“I didn’t insult him till after he’d agreed.” Sam Yeager grinned. “Aren’t I sly?”

Everybody laughed. Jonathan said, “He didn’t change his mind afterwards?”

“Nope,” his father answered. “Or if he did, he didn’t tell me. If they shoot down the shuttlecraft with the rats in it, then we’ll know he was really angry.” That drew more laughs. Tom de la Rosa hoisted his glass of more-or-less vodka in salute. All the Americans drank.

A couple of tables away, Kassquit sat by herself. Sometimes she joined the other humans when they ate, sometimes she didn’t. That seemed to fit her betwixt-and-between nature: stuck between what she’d been born and what she’d been raised as. Having watched Mickey and Donald grow from their eggs into… fair copies of human beings, Jonathan thought he understood that better than most.

He scratched his head, which reminded him he needed to shave it again soon. Was he wrong, or had Kassquit been more standoffish than usual lately? After a moment’s thought, he nodded to himself. Unless he was wrong, she hadn’t eaten with the Americans since Dr. Blanchard came down from the Admiral Peary.

He switched to the language of the Race, calling, “Say, Researcher, will you not come over and eat with us?”

Karen gave him a hard look. He pretended not to notice. This had nothing to do with the fact that he and Kassquit had been lovers up on her starship in the early 1960s. He and Karen hadn’t been married yet, or even engaged. They had been going together, though, and his… research had almost spelled the end of that. This was just social. Jonathan really meant that. Because of what she was, Kassquit was to a certain degree isolated from everyone around her, humans and Lizards alike. Getting her to mingle wasn’t just diplomacy; it also felt like psychotherapy.

As usual, Kassquit’s face showed nothing. She might have been joyful, furious, gloomy-you couldn’t tell by looking. She said, “I did not think you would want me there, not when you were so busy using your own language.”

“We will speak yours if you do join us.” That wasn’t Jonathan-it was Melanie Blanchard. “We have no problem speaking the Race’s language, even if we are a little more comfortable with our own. The familiar is often welcome, especially when one is far from home.”

“Well, I suppose that could be a truth, if one had known anything resembling a home in one’s past,” Kassquit said. “I have concluded that a cubicle in a starship makes an inadequate substitute.”

“No doubt you are right,” Sam Yeager said, trying to smooth things over. “But if you join us, you may make a closer approach to something homelike than you would with the Race. Or, of course, you may not. But how will you know unless you try the experiment?”

“I do not think I can have a true home either with the Race or with you wild Tosevites,” Kassquit said unhappily. “If there were more Tosevite citizens of the Empire-not Tosevites raised as I was, necessarily, but those who live in the Empire’s culture despite their species-I might find more in common with them than I do with you or the Race.”

“There are probably a fair number of such persons on Tosev 3 now,” Jonathan’s father said. “This, of course, does you no good at all here.”

“Truth,” Kassquit said. “And if I were to go back into cold sleep and seek them out on Tosev 3, who knows how things would change there by the time I arrived? Variability, I think, is the key to Tosevites generally.”

That was undoubtedly how humans seemed from the Race’s point of view-the one Kassquit naturally adopted as her own. But a lot of Lizards refused to see that changes in the way humans did things could affect them. Kassquit didn’t make that mistake, anyhow.

Frank Coffey said, “Do come sit with us, Kassquit.”

“You ask me this?” she said. “Are you certain you desire my company?”

Major Coffey made the affirmative gesture. “Of course I am,” he said, and added an emphatic cough.

Kassquit’s face still showed nothing. But she brought her plate to the table where the Americans were sitting. “Do you mind if I ask what you were talking about before?” she inquired.

“Mostly about the rats that were released here, and about bringing more of them down from the Admiral Peary so we can go on testing food,” Jonathan answered.

“Is that still necessary?” Kassquit asked. “Have the animals found many problems for you? I had no such aids when I woke up on Home, but I have eaten the food here and I am still well.”

“We would rather not take chances we do not have to take,” Dr. Melanie Blanchard said. “We would also rather avoid unpleasant surprises if we can. The Race can eat almost anything we Tosevites can eat on our world, but who would have expected the trouble ginger causes them?”

That seemed only common sense to Jonathan. He thought Kassquit would make the affirmative gesture; she was nothing if not logical. Instead, she let out an audible sniff. “How likely is this?”

Dr. Blanchard shrugged. The motion seemed easier and less of an effort than it would have right after she came down to the surface of Home. Little by little, she was getting reacquainted with gravity. She said, “Who knows? What is certain is that we would like to prevent it if possible. Do you object? Few members of the Race would, not on those grounds. The Race is more cautious than we Tosevites are.”

“I do not object on the grounds of prudence,” Kassquit said. “I do wonder if one of the reasons you wanted to bring rats here was in the hope that they might escape and establish themselves. That would let you pay the Race back for ecological changes caused by creatures from Home on Tosev 3.”

“Not fair,” Jonathan said. “If we had released the rats, you could accuse us of that. But members of the Race did it. We kept the animals caged. We were going to keep them caged, too. We know just what sort of pests they can be.”

Kassquit considered that. At last, reluctantly, she did use the affirmative gesture. “From you, Jonathan Yeager, I will believe this.”

“Why would you not also believe it from Dr. Blanchard?” Jonathan asked. “She knows much more about these things than I do.”

“Yes-why?” Melanie Blanchard echoed. “I mean you no harm, Researcher. In fact, I would like to examine you, if you do not mind. I probably know less about medicine as a whole than a physician from the Race, but I know a lot more about being a Tosevite. I might find something a physician from the Race would miss.”

Had Jonathan been in Kassquit’s shoes, he could have been grateful for that offer. If she got sick, what could the Lizards do about it? Not much, not that he could see. A human doctor, though, had to know how people ticked.

But Kassquit looked at Dr. Blanchard as if she’d just suggested vivisection. “I thank you, but no,” she said. “The Race’s techniques have always been adequate up until now.”

“No doubt,” Dr. Blanchard said. “But then, you have never been very ill, have you? You are still young, and you were never exposed to most Tosevite diseases. You are now beginning to reach the age where your body will show the wear it has accumulated. More regular examinations are a good idea.”

“I thank you, but no,” Kassquit repeated. “I will continue in my present way of doing things until it shows itself to be unsatisfactory.”

“This is not a good idea,” Jonathan told her. “Technicians maintain computers and other machines. You should also maintain yourself.”

“And so I do. And so I shall-with the Race,” Kassquit said. “If this proves inadequate, as I told you, I shall consider other options.”

Her determination was unmistakable. Jonathan scratched his head again. It didn’t add up-not to him, anyway. But Karen whispered in his ear in English: “She doesn’t like the doctor.”

Jonathan blinked. That hadn’t occurred to him. Once his wife pointed it out, though, it seemed so obvious that he wondered why it hadn’t. He also wondered why Kassquit didn’t like the doctor. They’d hardly had anything to do with each other.

Frank Coffey asked, “Would a member of the Race want a Tosevite doctor?”

“Certainly not.” Kassquit didn’t use an emphatic cough, but her tone of voice left no doubt about how she felt.

“All right, then.” Coffey was unperturbed. “Why would you want to use a physician of a different species when you have another choice?”

Kassquit looked at him. “You too would recommend that I trust myself to Dr. Blanchard?” She had a little trouble pronouncing the name, but less than a Lizard would have. When Coffey made the affirmative gesture, Kassquit sprang to her feet. “You are all against me!” she exclaimed, and stormed out of the refectory. The only reason she didn’t slam the glass door behind her was that its mechanism wouldn’t let her.

“What was that all about?” Linda de la Rosa asked in English.

“Is it me she doesn’t want to deal with, or is it because I’m a human being and not a Lizard?” Melanie Blanchard asked in the same language.

I think it may be you, went through Jonathan’s mind. He glanced at his wife, and would have bet she was thinking the same thing. Neither he nor Karen said anything, though. They might have been wrong. Even if they turned out to be right, who could guess why Kassquit felt the way she did? She was a riddle-sometimes, Jonathan suspected, even to herself.

His father said the same thing a different way: “Kassquit takes some getting used to. It’s not her fault she is the way she is, God knows. I do think she’s got a good heart.”

Jonathan nodded. Karen let out a distinct sniff. Among the Americans, though, she found herself outvoted. Snoutcounting, Jonathan thought. He was amused, but knew neither his wife nor Kassquit would have been.

Kassquit wanted nothing more than to avoid the wild Big Uglies. She wished she could have nothing to do with them. They did not understand her, they mocked her… So it seemed from her point of view, at any rate.

No matter what she wanted, though, she had to deal with the Tosevites. She’d been brought to Home to deal with them. No matter how revolting they acted, she couldn’t just walk away from her work with them. More than once, she thought, If I were a female of the Race, I could. Being what she was, she had fewer choices. She could not abandon the wild big Uglies. Half the time-more than half the time-members of the Race couldn’t tell her apart from them anyway.

She tried to avoid them at mealtimes. That didn’t always work, because they didn’t all eat at the same times every day. She stayed as far from them in the refectory as she could. That probably would have sufficed with the Race, whose members were sophisticated enough to recognize a good sulk. The Big Uglies, though, were as nosy as so many befflem, and just about as enthusiastic.

Because the American Tosevites usually ate breakfast early, Kassquit had started eating late. She didn’t like that, because she got hungry. She did it even so. But when Frank Coffey came in for a snack, he found her there. She hoped he would take care of what he wanted and leave her alone.

He didn’t. He came over to the table where she was sitting and said, “May I join you?”

“If you insist,” Kassquit said coldly.

A male of the Race would have taken the hint. She would have thought the Big Ugly might also; she hadn’t been subtle. But Coffey just said, “I thank you,” and sat down. Then he asked, “Why are you angry at Dr. Blanchard? What has she done to you? How could she have done anything to you? She just got here.”

“I am not angry at Dr. Blanchard!” Kassquit said-angrily. The wild Big Ugly sitting across the table from her did not respond. He just let the words hang in the air. They seemed so manifestly false, Kassquit felt she had to modify them: “She has not done anything to me-not directly.”

“Ah?” Yes, Frank Coffey was like a beffel that had taken a scent. “What has she done indirectly, then?”

“You ought to know.” Kassquit did not bother to hide the bitterness she felt.

“I do not have any idea what you are talking about,” the American Big Ugly said.

“A likely story,” Kassquit said. “You do not need to lie to me, you know. That is nothing but a waste of time on your part.”

“Lie about what?” Coffey asked. “You have completely confused me. I am sorry, but that is a truth. I wish I believed in the spirits of Emperors past. I would swear by them to convince you. What oath would you like me to use?”

“For a truthful person, oaths do not matter. For one who is not truthful, they do not help,” Kassquit snapped.

The Big Ugly made the affirmative gesture. “That is well said. You have known me since I came down to the surface of Home. I have been here most of a year now. What is your opinion of me? Have you believed me to be a truthful person, or one of the other sort?”

“Up until now, I believed you to be truthful,” Kassquit said. “Your behavior here, though, makes me doubt it very much.”

“What behavior here? What have I done?” Frank Coffey asked. “As I say, I confess that you have baffled me.”

Kassquit took a deep breath. “Your pretending not to know why I dislike Dr. Blanchard and what grievance I hold against her.”

“I do not know that. I do not understand it.” He used an emphatic cough. “That is a truth, Kassquit. For the sake of your own health, I think you would be wise to let her examine you. If you do not like her, I can see how you might be reluctant, but I do not know why you do not like her. She seems friendly enough, and she is a capable physician.”

“Friendly enough. Friendly enough!” Kassquit all but spat the words. “Yes, I can see why you would say so. I certainly can.”

“And what is that supposed to mean?” Did the American Tosevite make his interrogative cough sound sarcastic, or was that just a trick of Kassquit’s overheated imagination? She recognized the possibility, but she didn’t think so.

“As if you do not know,” she said furiously. “You all got along fine down here without the services of a physician. None of you has needed a physician.” Coffey started to say something-probably that you never could tell when someone would need a physician. She overrode him: “The real reason she came down to Home is obvious enough.”

“Not to me,” he said. “You had better tell me what this ‘real reason’ is.”

“Why, to provide you with a mating partner from among your fellow wild Big Uglies, of course,” Kassquit said.

Frank Coffey stared at her. Again, he started to say something. Kassquit didn’t stop him this time. He stopped himself-by starting to laugh. And once he started, he could not stop. Raucous Tosevite mirth poured out of him. Kassquit thought it would never end. Finally, after what seemed like forever, the torrent slowed.

“I see nothing funny about it,” Kassquit said in icy tones.

That only started the wild Tosevite laughing again. This time, the fit did not last quite so long. But when it ended, tears left bright streaks down Coffey’s cheeks. “Oh, dear,” he said, wheezing and gasping for breath. “I think I hurt myself. But I could not help it. I am very sorry, Kassquit, but you packed an impressive amount of misunderstanding into one sentence there.”

“I do not believe I misunderstood anything,” Kassquit said. “You had better explain to me why you think I did.”

“It shall be done, superior female.” Coffey began ticking off points on his fingers. “Dr. Blanchard did not come down here to become my mating partner. The two of us have not mated. We have never discussed mating, not even once. We have not made advances at each other. I have no idea whether she would be interested in mating with me. If I had to guess, I would doubt it. I know for a fact that I am not particularly interested in mating with her.”

“So you say,” Kassquit jeered.

Coffey nodded. Then he used the Race’s affirmative gesture. “Yes. So I say. And it is a truth, too. I see you are a citizen of the Empire. You certainly do not understand how things work among wild Big Uglies. And I ought to ask you a question of my own: why do you care about what Dr. Blanchard and I may or may not do?”

“Because I was hoping to mate with you myself,” Kassquit answered. Had she been raised as a wild Big Ugly, she might not have been so blunt. But then, had she been raised as a wild Big Ugly, she would have been different in so many ways, the question wouldn’t have arisen in that form.

“Oh,” Frank Coffey said, and then, “Oh,” again in an altogether different tone of voice.

When he didn’t say anything else for some little while, Kassquit asked, “Well? What do you think of that?”

He wasn’t laughing any more. Kassquit didn’t think she could have borne it if he were. Despite her prodding, he didn’t answer right away. When he did, he spoke slowly and thoughtfully: “I think you know I would be lying if I said the idea of mating with you had never crossed my mind.”

“I had thought that, yes,” Kassquit agreed. “That was why I was so upset when Dr. Blanchard came down from your starship. She is one of your kind in a way that I cannot be. I thought-I feared-she would make a better partner for you.”

The brown Big Ugly did laugh then, but, Kassquit judged, much more at himself than at her. He said, “I have trouble believing anyone named Melanie could make a good partner for me-but to understand that you would need to know the American Gone with the Wind, not the Race’s book of the same name.”

Kassquit didn’t understand; the American Gone with the Wind meant nothing to her. She did finally start to believe that he wasn’t eager to mate with Dr. Blanchard. And if he wasn’t… “This idea had crossed your mind, then, you say? And what did you think of it when it did?”

“Obviously, part of me liked it very much-but that part has never been what anyone would call fussy,” he replied. No matter how far removed from the affairs of wild Big Uglies she was, she had no trouble figuring out what he meant. He went on, “The rest of me was not nearly so sure-is not nearly so sure-that would be a good idea. You are isolated from our ways of doing things. I was very much afraid I would be taking advantage of you.”

“Why?” Kassquit asked in genuine puzzlement. “Would we not both take pleasure from this? How is that more advantageous to you than to me?”

“Things are more complicated than that-or they often are, anyway, back on Tosev 3,” Coffey said. “We do not have a mating season the way the Race does, and emotional attachments between partners are usual with us. In fact, mating among us does not just spring from previously existing emotional attachments. The act of mating, the pleasure of mating, giving pleasure to another in mating, helps cause emotional attachments. Do you have any idea what I am talking about?”

“Oh, yes,” Kassquit said softly. She remembered all too well how bereft she had felt when Jonathan Yeager left the Race’s starship and returned to the surface of Tosev 3, and how devastated she was when she learned he was making a permanent mating arrangement with Karen Yeager. That had seemed like betrayal-nothing less. If Frank Coffey were to abandon her for a wild Tosevite female, too… She shoved that thought aside and made the affirmative gesture. “I understand exactly what you mean.”

Her tone must have carried conviction, for Coffey did not argue with her any more. He just said, “Knowing all this, you would still wish to go forward?”

“I would,” she answered. “I may end up unhappy. I understand that. But I feel empty now. Next to empty, even unhappy does not seem so bad.”

“That… makes more sense than I wish it did,” the wild Big Ugly said. He nodded-again, Kassquit thought, more to himself than to her-and laughed quietly. “In that case, superior female, there is an English expression that seems to fit here: my place or yours?”

Kassquit needed a moment to figure out what that meant, but only a moment. “Why not mine?” she said.

They rode up the elevator together. Kassquit hung the PRIVACY, PLEASE sign in front of her room. Then Frank Coffey said, “Wait. I had better make sure you do not become gravid. Let me get a sheath. I will be back right away.”

He took a little longer than Kassquit had expected, but not long enough for her to complain when he returned. It had been a long time since she lay down with a male Tosevite, but she remembered what to do. And he knew how to stimulate her. He turned out to know better than Jonathan Yeager had. At first, that surprised her. Then she realized Jonathan Yeager must have been almost as inexperienced as she was. And then she stopped caring about such things.

Afterwards, Frank Coffey was careful to keep his weight on his elbows and knees and not on her. “The Race’s language does not have words for this,” he said. “ ‘I thank you’ is not nearly strong enough.” He kissed her. “I hope that says something.”

“Oh, yes.” Kassquit felt near tears. She hadn’t realized how much she’d missed this. “Oh, yes.” She used an emphatic cough. It didn’t seem adequate, either. She kissed him this time. A member of the Race wouldn’t have understood. He seemed to.

Ttomalss knew he had too many things going on all at the same time. He kept waiting to hear whether Pesskrag and her fellow physicists were making progress in their experiments. He monitored what the wild Big Uglies were up to, and reported back on that to Atvar. The retired fleetlord also seemed to be running in too many directions at once.

“Rats! ” he said to Ttomalss out of a clear sky. “We have got to find those creatures and get rid of them, Senior Researcher, or this entire world will suffer on account of them.”

“Truth,” Ttomalss agreed. “Maybe you should clear everyone out of this hotel and fumigate it, the way you would for pests of our own.”

“I have discussed this matter with Sam Yeager,” Atvar said unhappily. “He is not enthusiastic about moving. He is not obstructive-he will relocate if we insist. But he is not enthusiastic. Diplomacy is, or can be, a nuisance. I hesitate to displace him if I can accomplish my goals by other means.”

“How many more rats have you recovered?” Ttomalss asked.

Even more unhappily, Atvar answered, “One after that which Senyahh killed. And it was not captured here in the hotel but in the park across the way. That is another reason I hesitate to displace the wild Big Uglies: it may already be too late.”

It may already be too late. Ttomalss didn’t respond to that. It was the Race’s usual lament when dealing with the Tosevites. Here, it was liable to be true in more ways than Atvar had meant it.

After leaving the fleetlord’s suite, Ttomalss left a message for Pesskrag. The physicist took her time about calling him back. Maybe she was busy experimenting. Maybe she’d finished experimenting but had nothing new to tell him. Maybe she was just sick and tired of him. Till she did eventually answer, he couldn’t say.

What with everything else that was going on, Ttomalss hardly had the chance to turn an eye turret toward Kassquit every now and then. Her room in the hotel was not electronically monitored, as were those of the wild Big Uglies (not that those microphones had yielded much; the American Tosevites appeared to have antimonitoring electronics of their own). Not only was she assumed to be on the Emperor’s side, but she had also strongly objected to being monitored back on the starship orbiting Tosev 3.

Without that continuous monitoring, Ttomalss had to rely on what he observed when he and Kassquit were together. He would have done better observing one of his own species. He knew that. However acculturated Kassquit was, her basic responses remained Tosevite, and alien.

One morning at breakfast, he said, “You will correct me if I am wrong, but do you not seem more cheerful than usual?”

Kassquit paused to take a bite of aasson. After she swallowed, she answered, “You might say so. Yes, superior sir, you might say so.”

“Good. I am glad to hear it.” Ttomalss was also glad he had seen it. “Do you happen to know why you are more cheerful?” If she did, he would do his best to make sure conditions did not change for her.

“Yes, superior sir, I do know,” Kassquit said, and said no more.

Trying not to show the exasperation he felt, Ttomalss asked, “Do you mind telling me why you are more cheerful than usual? Is it by any chance the aftereffect of your audience with the Emperor?” He felt proud of himself for being so insightful.

And he felt correspondingly deflated and annoyed when Kassquit used the negative gesture. “No, superior sir, I do not mind telling you,” she replied. Ttomalss brightened, hoping that was why she’d used it. But she went on, “Though I am and always will be proud the Emperor received me, I must confess that that is not the main reason why I am more cheerful these days.”

Once more, she didn’t elaborate. This time, Ttomalss did let out an irked hiss. “I ask again: why are you, then?”

“Do you truly want to know?” Kassquit inquired-perhaps ironically, though that did not occur to the psychologist till later. At the time, he just made the affirmative gesture. Kassquit said, “Very well, then, superior sir-I will tell you. I am more cheerful than usual because I have begun mating again. I find it much more satisfactory and much more enjoyable than self-stimulation. Do you have any other questions?”

Ttomalss didn’t. He finished breakfast in a hurry and left the refectory as fast as he could. That didn’t take him far enough away. He left the hotel, too, and strode at random down the streets of Sitneff. He hoped immersing himself in his own kind would take the bad taste of Tosevites off his tongue.

Even Kassquit! Or was it, especially Kassquit? She had everything the Race and the Empire could give her. She had a reasonable rank and more than adequate wealth. She even had the privilege of an imperial audience, which Ttomalss himself did not enjoy. And what did she value? What made her happy-made her so happy, Ttomalss couldn’t help but notice? Tosevite mating behavior-and that even after she was warned against it!

It hardly seemed fair.

She is a Big Ugly after all, Ttomalss thought sadly. In spite of everything we have done for her, she is still nothing but a Big Ugly. That was a liverbreaking notion. Air whooshed out of his lung in a long, sad sigh. She was as much a citizen of the Empire as any Tosevite could possibly be, more than any other Tosevite was likely to be for thousands of years, if ever. But her biology still drove her in ways no member of the Race could fully understand.

Or was that true? Back on Tosev 3, there was a small but growing number of males and females who used ginger to simulate the Big Uglies’ year-round sexuality. Some of them had even adopted the Tosevite custom of permanent exclusive mating bonds. To most of the Race, they were perverts, even more depraved than the Big Uglies themselves. But might they not one day serve as a bridge between the Empire on the one hand and the wild and stubbornly independent Tosevites on the other? And might Kassquit not be part of that same bridge?

Ttomalss could dare hope. But Tosev 3 had dashed the Race’s hopes again and again ever since the conquest fleet arrived. In a Tosevite legend, hope was the last thing to emerge from a box of troubles. The legend didn’t say what happened next. Ttomalss’ guess was that the troubles leaped on new-hatched hope and devoured it.

An automobile warning hissed at him. He sprang in the air in surprise and skittered back to the curb. He’d walked off against traffic, something he never would have done if he hadn’t been so gloomy and distracted. If that car had smashed me, it would have been your fault, Kassquit.

The audience with the Emperor made her proud. But mating with a wild Big Ugly (and with which? — she hadn’t said) made her happy. Ttomalss wondered if he ought to see which American Tosevite seemed unusually happy these days. But would a wild Big Ugly show it the way Kassquit did? The Americans were used to mating in a way she wasn’t.

She would rather be pleased in this way by her own kind than honored by the Empire. A stray beffel beeped at Ttomalss. He was usually kind to animals, but he made as if to kick this one. The beffel had been a stray for a while. It recognized that gesture, and scrambled away on its short, strong legs before the blow could connect. He wouldn’t have actually kicked, but the beffel couldn’t know that.

My superiors will have to hear of this, but how am I supposed to put it in a report? Ttomalss wondered. How can I phrase it so that it does not reflect badly on Kassquit-or on me? Atvar would understand. He’d seen how things were on Tosev 3, and he had some notion of normal Tosevite sexual behavior. But most of the so-called experts here on Home had no direct experience with Big Uglies. They would be offended or disgusted-or maybe they would be offended and disgusted. Ttomalss didn’t want Kassquit punished for what was, to her, normal behavior. That wouldn’t be fair.

He stopped, so abruptly that a female in a blue wig that looked nothing like any real Big Ugly’s hair almost ran into him. She said something rude. He ignored her, which made her say something even ruder. He still paid her no attention. He stood there on the sidewalk in front of a meat market. If Kassquit’s behavior is normal for her, why are you getting so upset about it?

Because she took me by surprise. No, the answer there wasn’t very hard to find, was it? The Race did not approve of surprises or respond well to them-another reason Tosev 3 had caused it so many headaches. Males and females liked to know how everything worked, how all the pieces fit together, and exactly what their part was in the bigger scheme of things.

To the Race, Big Uglies sometimes seemed to act almost at random. Part of that was because Tosevites worried less about the future than did members of the Race. If they saw present opportunity, they grabbed with both hands. And their sexual and family ties made them do things inexplicable to the Race.

“Sexual ties.” Ttomalss muttered the words out loud. A male going by kept one eye turret on him till he passed out of sight. Again, the psychologist hardly noticed, though in other circumstances he would have been mortified to draw so much attention. He still didn’t know with which American male Kassquit had mated.

Only four candidates. Two of them had permanent mating contracts with females. Ttomalss had learned, though, that Big Uglies respected such contracts only imperfectly. And Jonathan Yeager had been Kassquit’s first partner, all those years before. Would they have returned to each other?

Or would Tom de la Rosa have forsaken his partner? As an ecological expert, de la Rosa was formidable. In sexual terms… Ttomalss had no idea what he was like in sexual terms.

He knew just as little about Major Frank Coffey in that context. Dark brown Big Uglies had a formidable sexual reputation among paler ones, but that reputation appeared to be undeserved. Under the skin, Tosevite subspecies were remarkably similar.

Then there was Sam Yeager himself. He had been mated, but his longtime partner was dead. Would he be looking for sexual opportunities now? How could a member of the Race hope to know?

You could ask him, Ttomalss thought. Then he made the negative gesture. The American ambassador would not get angry at the question. Ttomalss was reasonably sure of that. But Yeager would laugh at him. He was pretty sure of that, too. He was no more fond of making a fool of himself than anyone else of any species.

Just when he had decided he couldn’t make a reasonable guess about the candidates, he realized he hadn’t really considered all of them. Big Uglies occasionally became intimate with members of their own sex. Because of pheromones and crest displays, such behavior was much rarer among the Race. Could Kassquit have experimented with a female?

Kassquit could have done almost anything. What she had done, she knew and Ttomalss didn’t. He also had to admit to himself that he couldn’t figure it out from the evidence he had. Maybe a Big Ugly could have. He wouldn’t have been surprised. But, despite all his years studying the Tosevites, he was no Big Ugly himself.

He was glad of that, too. Imagine putting a sexual liaison ahead of an audience with the Emperor! If that didn’t prove how different the Tosevites were, what would?

He did his best to look on the bright side of things. Sooner or later, the truth would come out. His store of data would grow. The bright side turned darker. No matter how much data he had, would he ever really understand?

The Americans had been living in one another’s pockets ever since they got to Home. They had few secrets from one another. Keeping secrets wasn’t easy, and they hardly ever bothered. Even so, not everything got talked about right out in the open. Karen Yeager was probably the last one to realize Major Coffey and Kassquit had started sleeping together.

When she did, she was horrified. “Isn’t that treason or something?” she demanded of her husband.

“I doubt it,” he answered. “I can’t see Frank giving secrets away to the Lizards no matter what. Can you? It would take a lot more than a what-do-you-call-it-a honey trap, that’s what they say-to get him to do anything like that.”

Karen considered. Reluctantly, she decided Jonathan was right. She made herself an almost-vodka, chilling it with ice she’d fought so hard to win. “Well, maybe so,” she said. “But it’s still disgusting. She’s hardly even human.”

Jonathan didn’t say anything. That was no doubt smart on his part. Karen remembered, just too late, that he hadn’t found anything disgusting about sleeping with Kassquit. If men could, they would, or most of them would.

“She really isn’t,” Karen said, as if Jonathan had contradicted her.

“I know she’s not,” he answered uncomfortably. “But she does try. It makes her more… more pathetic than if she didn’t. Part of her wants to be-I think a lot of her wants to be. But she doesn’t know how. How could she, seeing the way she was raised? She’s crazy, yeah, but she could be a lot crazier. And you know what the saddest thing is?”

“Tell me.” Ominous echoes filled Karen’s voice.

Her husband usually heeded those echoes. Not today. He spoke as if he hadn’t heard them: “The saddest thing is, she knows how much she’s missing. And she knows she’s never going to get it-not from us, and not from the Lizards, either. How do you go on after you’ve figured something like that out?”

“She seems to have found some way to amuse herself,” Karen said.

“That’s not fair, hon,” Jonathan said. “If you hadn’t done anything for twenty years-and I don’t think Kassquit has, not since me-wouldn’t you grab the chance if it came along?”

Karen thought about twenty years of celibacy. Going without was easier for most women than for most men, but even so… “Maybe,” she said grudgingly.

No matter how grudgingly she said it, Jonathan had to know how big an admission that was. “Give her a break, will you?” he said. “She needs all the breaks she can get, and she hasn’t caught very many of them.”

“Maybe,” Karen said again, even more grudgingly than before. “But what about Frank? What’s he thinking? Is he thinking?”

“There are four women on this planet,” Jonathan said. “As far as I know, he’s never come on to you or Linda. If he has, nobody’s said anything about it.”

“He hasn’t with me, anyway,” Karen said.

“All right, then. Let’s figure he hasn’t with Linda, either,” Jonathan said. “Melanie Blanchard just got here. That leaves…” He didn’t finish the sentence, but he didn’t have to.

Every word he said made good logical sense. But this wasn’t a matter for logic-or it didn’t feel like one to Karen, anyhow. When she said, “It’s Kassquit!” she summed up everything that wasn’t logical about it.

Jonathan only shrugged. “I can’t do anything about it. I haven’t done anything about it, either, and you know darn well I haven’t. If you don’t like it, take it up with Frank. And good luck to you.”

He wasn’t often so blunt. Karen wished he hadn’t been this time, either. She said, “I couldn’t do that!”

“Okay, fine,” her husband said. “In that case, wouldn’t you say it’s none of your beeswax? And if it isn’t, what are you worrying about?”

“Talk about not being fair!” Karen exclaimed. “How long have you known without telling me?”

“A while,” he said, which told her less than she wanted to know. He went on, “If you watch them, you can kind of tell. It’s the way they look at each other when they think nobody else is paying any attention.”

Karen had always paid as little attention to Kassquit as she could while staying polite, or maybe even a little less than that. And she evidently hadn’t paid as much to Frank Coffey as she should have. “I still have trouble believing it,” she said.

“Oh, it’s true,” Jonathan said. “If it weren’t, why would Frank have started taking rubbers from the medical supplies?”

For that, Karen had no answer. She did wonder how her husband knew Coffey was doing that. Had he actually seen him? Or did he know how many he and Tom de la Rosa were likely to use, and figure the excess must have gone to Frank? Karen decided she wasn’t curious enough about that to ask.

She said, “I still don’t think it can be good for what we’re trying to do here. It’s… sleeping with the enemy, that’s what it is.”

“Sorry, hon, but I don’t think you’re right,” Jonathan told her. “Anything that keeps us from going nuts here is pretty good, far as I’m concerned. Kassquit’s no more Mata Hari than she is Martha Washington. If anybody gives anything away in pillow talk, she’s likely to be the one.”

He was altogether too likely to be right about that. Because he was, Karen didn’t try to contradict him. She just said, “The whole idea is repulsive, that’s all.”

Jonathan said nothing at all. No, sleeping with Kassquit hadn’t repelled him. That wasn’t anything Karen didn’t already know; after all, he’d done it before they were married. Since he hadn’t tried doing it since, she didn’t suppose she ought to mention it. But biting her tongue wasn’t easy.

In the face of that silence from her husband, she said, “I’m going down to the refectory. It’s just about time for lunch.”

“Go ahead,” Jonathan answered. “I’m not hungry yet. I’ll come down in a while. I’ve got some paperwork I need to catch up on.”

Maybe he did and maybe he didn’t. Karen wouldn’t have bet one way or the other. Plainly, though, he didn’t want to go on talking about Kassquit and Frank Coffey. Karen didn’t see what she could do about it short of ramming the topic down his throat. That wouldn’t accomplish anything but starting a fight. Life was too short… wasn’t it? With a twinge of regret, she decided it was.

“I’ll see you later, then,” she said. “I am hungry.” That wasn’t a lie. She left the room and walked down the hall to the elevators.

When one arrived, it announced itself with a hiss, not a bell. She wondered if she would ever hear a bell again when a door opened. Sometimes small things made all the difference between feeling at home and being forcibly reminded you were on an alien world. She got into the elevator. It was smoother than any Earthly model she’d ever known.

She braced herself for more alienness in the refectory. The food there, or most of it, wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t what she was used to, either. She supposed a Japanese traveling through South Dakota had the same problem. If so, she sympathized.

Some of the booths had been adapted to accommodate humans. The adaptations were clumsy but functional. A Lizard came up to her with a menu. “Here are today’s offerings, superior Tosevite,” the server said.

“I thank you.” Karen read through it. “Ah, you have the azwaca cutlets again. Bring me those, please.”

“It shall be done, superior Tosevite. And to drink?”

“The ippa-fruit juice. Chilled, if you have it.” Ippa-fruit juice had a citrusy tartness to it.

“We do.” The server made the affirmative gesture. “We would not for ourselves, but we have seen how fond of cold things you Tosevites are. Please wait. I will take your order to the cooks. It will not be long.”

“Good,” Karen said. For the moment, she had the refectory to herself. That suited her. She wasn’t in the mood to face anyone else just then anyhow. She wished the refectory were cooler. She wished all of Home were cooler.

Of course, what she wished had nothing to do with how things really worked. She knew that, even if she didn’t like it very much. The Race had cooled the refectory even this far only to accommodate her kind. The Lizards liked things hot. The heat of a medium summer’s day in Los Angeles wasn’t heat to them at all. It was chill.

The server brought the ippa-fruit juice. It wasn’t as cold as lemonade would have been back on Earth, but it was chilled. The tangy sweetness pleased her. Had the Race brought ippa fruit to Earth? If so, a trade might easily spring up. Plenty of people would like it. I’ll have to ask Tom, she thought. If anyone here would know, he was the man.

When she finished the juice, the server refilled her glass from a pitcher. In a lot of ways, restaurants on Earth and Home were similar. “Your meal will come very shortly,” he assured her two or three times, sounding much like a human waiter anxious to preserve his tip. The Americans didn’t need to worry about tipping, though, not while they ate in the hotel refectory. Karen didn’t even know if Lizards were in the habit of tipping. If they were, the government took care of it here.

The server had just brought her the cutlets-and some roasted tubers on the side-when Kassquit walked into the refectory. Karen nodded, not in a friendly way (that was beyond her), but at least politely. She wanted to see how Kassquit would behave and what, if anything, she had to say for herself.

Kassquit nodded back with that same wary politeness. “I greet you,” the half-alien woman said.

“And I greet you,” Karen answered. “I hope you are well and happy?”

“I am well, yes. I thank you for asking.” Kassquit considered the rest of the question. “Happy? Who can say for certain? There certainly were times in the past when I was more unhappy.”

What was that supposed to mean? “Ah?” Karen said: the most noncommittal noise she could make, but one that invited Kassquit to keep talking if she wanted to.

She must have, for she went on, “I suppose even ordinary wild Tosevites are often unhappy when they are young, for they do not yet know how they will fit into their society.” She paused. Karen made the affirmative gesture; that was true enough. Kassquit continued, “It was, I think, worse for me, for I knew I did not fit in at all, not in biology, not in appearance, not in speaking-not in anything, really-and I was often reminded of this. No, I was not happy.”

Karen felt ashamed of disliking Kassquit. No other human being in the history of the world had gone through what Kassquit had. And a good thing, too, Karen thought. “And now?” she asked.

“Now I have a place of my own. I have some acceptance-even the Emperor does not find me altogether unworthy. And I am not completely cut off from my biological heritage, as I was for so long.”

Again, what did she mean? That she and Frank Coffey were fooling around, as Jonathan had said? Karen couldn’t think of anything else that seemed likely. She surprised herself when she nodded again and said, “Good.”