Homeward Bound

17

After Kassquit bolted from the refectory and came back looking wan two or three times, none of the Americans on Home had much doubt about what was ailing her. Frank Coffey sighed. He was careful to speak English: “I wonder how you say Broken Rubber in the Race’s language.”

“Congratulations-I think,” Jonathan Yeager told him.

“Thanks-I think,” Coffey said. “That isn’t what I had in mind.”

“Hey, you’ve given us something to talk about besides the Commodore Perry, ” Tom de la Rosa said. “And they said it couldn’t be done.”

Major Coffey sent him a slightly walleyed stare. “Thanks-I think,” he said again, in the same tones he’d used with Jonathan. Everybody laughed.

Jonathan said, “Is she ready to be a mother?”

“Nobody’s ever ready to be a mother till it happens to her.” Karen Yeager spoke with great conviction. “Some people may think they are, but they’re wrong. It’s baptism by total immersion.”

“Some people are less ready to be mothers than others, though,” Dr. Melanie Blanchard said. “No offense, Frank, but I can’t think of anybody who strikes me as less ready than Kassquit.”

Karen nodded at that. Jonathan didn’t, but he’d been thinking the same thing. Frank Coffey said, “We didn’t intend for it to happen.” He held up a hand. “Yeah, I know-nobody ever intends anything like that, but it happens all the time anyway.” He sighed. “She’s got nine months-well, most of nine months-to get used to the idea. And there will be more humans here to give her a hand.” Another sigh. “She’ll need one, heaven knows. I just hope-” He broke off.

Silence fell among the humans. Smiles faded from their faces. Jonathan knew what he’d started to say-I just hope we don’t go to war — that or something like it. If they did go to war, what was one pregnant woman? No more than one pregnant woman had ever been in all the sad and sordid history of mankind.

“The Lizards wouldn’t be that stupid, not now,” Tom said. Nobody answered. Maybe he was right. On the other hand, maybe he wasn’t. The Lizards had just got the biggest shock in their whole history. They probably didn’t know how they were going to react to it. How could any mere humans guess along with them?

On the other hand, how could humans keep from trying?

People filed out of the refectory in glum silence. Jonathan looked out of the hotel’s big plate-glass windows. He imagined the sun-bright flare of an exploding warhead right outside-and then darkness and oblivion.

“Penny for ’em,” Karen said.

He shook his head. “You don’t want to know.” She didn’t push him. Maybe she’d had thoughts like that herself.

“Ah… excuse me.” That was in the language of the Race. An untidy-looking Lizard whose body paint could have used a touch-up went on, “Are you the Big Ugly I had the honor of meeting a while ago? Forgive me, but your name has gone clean out of my head. I really am a fool about such things.”

“I greet you, Inspector Garanpo. Yes, I am Jonathan Yeager,” Jonathan said. All at once, a visit from a Lizard detective hot on the trail of ginger seemed the least of his worries. “Inspector, let me present my mate, Karen Yeager. Karen, this is Inspector Garanpo. I told you about him the last time he visited us.”

“Oh, yes, of course,” Karen said. “I am pleased to meet you, Inspector.” If she wasn’t very pleased, the Lizard cop wouldn’t know it.

Garanpo bent into the posture of respect. “It is an honor to make your acquaintance, superior female. Yes, indeed-an honor. Now I have met three of you Tosevites, and you seem pretty well civilized, you truly do. Not at all the sort of creatures I thought you might be when I found out there was a connection between your kind and the ginger trade.”

“There is also a connection between members of the Race and the ginger trade,” Jonathan pointed out. “Does that turn all males and females of the Race into monsters and criminals?”

“Well, no, I would not say that it does. I certainly would not say that.” Garanpo made the negative gesture. Jonathan watched him with an odd sort of fascination. He’d never before seen a Lizard who reminded him of an unmade bed.

“Why are you here, Inspector?” Karen asked. “Has there been more ginger smuggling?”

“More? Oh, no, superior female, not that we have been able to find,” Garanpo said. “What we do have, though, is more information on the ginger smuggling that previously took place. We have detected traces of ginger aboard the Horned Akiss, where the little rocket from your starship paid a call.”

“Is that supposed to prove something, Inspector?” Jonathan said. “For all you know, there are ginger tasters in the crew.”

“Here is what I know,” Garanpo said. “I know that a shipment of ginger came down to Home not long after you Big Uglies and the Race traded little rocketships. And I know that you were going to trade them back again, but then there was a delay. After that delay, you did send back the one you got from us. There was no ginger inside it, or none to speak of, but we did detect traces of the herb inside some of the structural tubing. What have you got to say about that, superior Tosevite?” He flicked out his tongue, for all the world like one of his small Earthly namesakes.

What have I got to say? That we’re lucky their scooter only had traces of ginger in it, and not enough to choke a horse. Those people upstairs came close as could be into walking into a buzz saw.

None of that seemed like anything the Lizard detective needed to hear. Jonathan put the best face on things he could: “I am sorry, Inspector, but this proves exactly nothing. Can you tell how old those traces of ginger are? How long has the Horned Akiss orbited Home? How many of your starships has it met? How long has ginger smuggling been going on?”

He could even have been right with his guesses, too. He didn’t think he was, but he could have been. A lawyer would have called it creating a reasonable doubt. He wasn’t sure the Race’s law had ever heard of the idea.

“Well, there has been ginger smuggling ever since starships started coming back from Tosev 3,” Garanpo admitted. “But there has never been any so closely connected with the source of supply, you might say, until now.”

“You do not know there is any such thing now,” Jonathan said sharply. “You assume it, but you do not know it.”

“We would, except that the officers on your ship refuse to let us do a thorough search and analysis of their little rocketship,” Garanpo said. “That suggests a guilty conscience to me.”

It suggested the same thing to Jonathan. Again, he wasn’t about to say so. What he did say was, “Why should they? You yourself have told me that this little rocketship was in the Race’s hands for some length of time. If you wanted to discredit us, you had the chance to do it.”

Inspector Garanpo’s eye turrets swiveled every which way before finally coming to rest on him again. “How are we supposed to show guilt when all you have to do is deny it?” the Lizard asked grouchily.

“How are we supposed to show innocence when all you have to do is claim we are guilty?” Jonathan asked in return.

Garanpo’s eye turrets started swiveling again. He turned and skittered off, muttering to himself. “You did that very well,” Karen said.

“Thanks,” Jonathan said. “I wish I didn’t have to. And you know what else I wish? I wish like hell I had a cold bottle of beer right now.” The Race, unfortunately, had never heard of beer.

Karen said, “You can get their vodka at the bar. Or if you want it cold, we’ve got a bottle and ice cubes in the room.”

Jonathan shook his head. “Thanks, hon, but it’s not the same.”

“Did that strange, shabby Lizard have any idea what he was talking about?”

“Of course not,” Jonathan said, a little louder than he needed to. He cupped a hand behind his ear to remind Karen that they were in the lobby and the Lizards could monitor whatever they said. Her mouth shaped a silent okay to show she got the point. Jonathan went on, “On second thought, maybe vodka over ice isn’t such a bad idea after all. You want to fix me one?”

“Sure,” Karen answered. “I may even make one for myself while I’m at it.”

They rode up to their room. As soon as Jonathan got inside, he checked the bug suppressors. When he was convinced they were working the way they were supposed to, he said, “You’d better believe we were smuggling ginger. If you want all the gory details, you can ask Dad.”

“Good way to start a war,” Karen observed.

She made him the drink. Once it was in his hand, he was damn glad to have it. Karen did fix one for herself, too. After a long pull at his, Jonathan coughed once or twice. It didn’t taste like much-vodka never did-but it was strong enough to put hair on his chest. He said, “There have been wars like that-the Opium Wars in China, for instance. Opium was just about the only thing England had that the Chinese wanted. And when the Chinese government tried to cut off the trade, England went to war to make sure it went on.”

“We wouldn’t do anything like that,” Karen said. Jonathan would have been happier if he hadn’t heard the question mark in her voice. It wasn’t quite an interrogative cough, but it came close.

“I hope we wouldn’t,” he said. “But it’s a weapon, no two ways about it. The Admiral Peary wouldn’t have carried it if it weren’t. And if we’re going to be able to start going back and forth between Earth and home every few weeks instead of taking years and years to do it… Well, the chances for smuggling go up like a rocket.”

“And if we smuggle lots of ginger, and the Empire decides it doesn’t like that…” Karen’s voice trailed away. She got outside of a lot of her drink. As Jonathan had, she coughed a couple of times. “We could see the Opium Wars all over again, couldn’t we?”

“It’s crossed my mind,” Jonathan said. “As long as we can go faster than light and the Lizards can’t, they’d be like Chinese junks going up against the Royal Navy. Whether they understand that or not is liable to be a different question, though. And we have no idea what things are like back on Earth these days, not really.”

“We can find out, though.” Karen looked out the window, but her eyes were light-years from Home. “Grandchildren. Great-grandchildren. Our own sons-older than we are.” She shook her head.

“Not many people will have to cope with that,” Jonathan said. “The bottom just dropped out of the market for cold-sleep stock.”

“It did, didn’t it?” Karen said. “So many things we’ll have to get used to.”

“If Dad doesn’t go back, I don’t know that I want to,” Jonathan said. “If all the people here decided to stay behind if the Commodore Perry wouldn’t let him aboard, that would show the moderns how much we thought of him. I don’t know what else we can do to change their minds.”

“That… might work,” Karen said slowly. She’d plainly been seeing Los Angeles in her mind, and didn’t seem very happy about being recalled to Home-especially about being told she might do better staying here. Jonathan gulped the rest of his drink. She was Sam Yeager’s daughter-in-law. The other Americans were just his friends. Would they sacrifice return tickets for his sake? Will I have to find out? Jonathan wondered.

The Commodore Perry excited Glen Johnson and the other pilots who’d come to the Admiral Peary from the Lewis and Clark much less than most other people. “What the hell difference does it make if we can go back to Earth in five weeks, or even in five minutes?” Johnson said. “We can’t go home any which way.”

“Wouldn’t you like to see all the newest TV shows?” Mickey Flynn asked.

“Frankly, Scarlett, I don’t give a damn, except maybe about the lovely Rita,” Johnson answered, with feeling. What male couldn’t like the lovely Rita?

“Wouldn’t you like to see some new faces?” Flynn persisted. He pointed to Walter Stone. “The old faces are wearing thin, not that anyone asked my opinion.”

Stone glowered. “I love you, too, Mickey.”

“I’d like to see some young, pretty girls in person,” Johnson said. “The only thing is, I don’t think any young, pretty girls would be glad to see me.”

“Speak for yourself, Johnson,” Flynn said.

“That was his johnson speaking,” Stone said. Johnson and Flynn both looked at him in surprise. He didn’t usually come out with such things. He went on, “I want to know what they’ll do with the Admiral Peary. We figured this crate would go obsolete, but we never thought it would turn into a dodo.”

The comparison struck Johnson as only too apt. Next to the Commodore Perry, the Admiral Peary might as well have been flightless. She’d crossed more than ten light-years-and, except for her weapons and the ginger she carried, she was ready for the scrap heap. “They ought to put her in a museum,” Johnson said.

“So our grandchildren can see how primitive we were?” Flynn inquired.

“That’s what museums are for,” Johnson said. “Our grandchildren are going to think we’re primitive anyhow. My grandfather was born in 1869. I sure thought he was primitive, and I didn’t need a museum to give me reasons why. Listening to the old geezer go on about how us moderns were going to hell in a handbasket and taking the whole world with us did the job just fine.”

“And here he was, right all the time,” Walter Stone said. “Way it looks now, we’ve got four worlds going to hell in a handbasket, not just one. Biggest goddamn handbasket anybody ever made.”

“You really think the Lizards are going to jump us?” Johnson asked. He didn’t get on well with Stone, but he had to respect the senior pilot’s military competence.

“What worries me is that it might be in their best interest to try,” Stone answered. “If they wait for us to build a big fleet of faster-than-light ships, their goose is cooked. Or we can cook it whenever we decide to throw it in the oven.”

“How many FTL ships will we have by the time their attack order reaches Earth?” Mickey Flynn asked.

“Not as many as if they wait twenty years and then decide they’re going to try to take us,” Stone said. “They usually like to dither and look at things from every possible angle and take years to figure out the best thing they could do. Well, here the best thing they can do is not take years figuring it out. I wonder if they’ve got the brains to see that.”

“It would be out of character,” Johnson said.

“They’ve been worrying about us for a long time,” Stone returned. “They were nerving themselves for something before the Commodore Perry got here. Would Yeager have had us send a war warning back to Earth if he weren’t worried?”

“The question is, will the Commodore Perry make things better or worse?” Flynn said. “Will it make them think they can’t possibly beat us, and so they’d better be good little males and females? Or will they think the way you think they’ll think, Walter, and strike while the iron is hot?”

Stone didn’t answer right away. Glen Johnson didn’t blame him. How could you help pausing to unscramble that before you tried to deal with it? When Stone did speak, he confined himself to one word: “Right.”

“Yes, but which?” Flynn asked.

“One of them, that’s for damn sure,” Stone said. “The other interesting question is, what sort of a wild card is the Commodore Perry when it comes to weapons? I know what we’ve got. Our stuff is a little better than what the Lizards use-not a lot, but a little, enough to give us a good fighting chance of making them very unhappy in case of a scrap.”

“We had junk on the Lewis and Clark, ” Johnson said.

Stone nodded. “Compared to this? You’d better believe it. Well, the Commodore Perry is more years ahead of us than the Lewis and Clark is behind us. So what is she carrying, and how much can she do to Home if she gets annoyed?”

Johnson whistled softly. “Think about the difference between World War I biplanes and what we flew when the Lizards got to Earth.”

“There’s another one,” Stone agreed.

Flynn pointed down-up? — toward the surface of home. As it happened, the Admiral Peary was flying over Preffilo. Even from so high in the sky, Johnson could pick out the palace complex at a glance. Flynn said, “Have the Lizards wondered what the Commodore Perry is carrying?”

“We haven’t had any intercepts indicating that they have,” Stone said. “Maybe they aren’t wondering. Maybe they are, but they’re keeping their mouths shut about it.”

“Somebody ought to whisper in their hearing diaphragms,” Johnson said. “The more they wonder about what’ll happen if they get cute, the better off we’ll be.”

“That’s actually a good idea.” By the way Stone said it, hearing a good idea from Johnson was a surprise. “We can arrange it, too.”

“The ambassador should be able to do it,” Johnson said. “If the Lizards will listen to anybody, they’ll listen to him.”

“They may be the only ones who will,” Flynn said. “I understand that that’s the purpose of an ambassador and all, but when your own side won’t…”

“Healey,” Johnson said, in the tones he would have used to talk about a fly in his soup. Walter Stone stirred. He was and always had been in the commandant’s corner. He was about as decent a guy as he could be while ending up there, which said a good deal about his strengths and his weaknesses.

Before Stone could rise to Healey’s defense, before Johnson could snarl back, and before the inevitable fight could break out, Mickey Flynn went on, “Ah, but it isn’t just Healey. There’s a difficulty, you might say, with the people from the Commodore Perry, too.”

“Why, for God’s sake?” Johnson asked. “The people on that ship either weren’t born or weren’t out of diapers when he went into cold sleep.”

“Call it institutional memory,” Flynn said. “Call it whatever you want, but they don’t want to give him a ride back to Earth. He’s not like us-he could go home again. He could, except that he can’t.”

“Where did you hear that?” Johnson asked.

“One of the junior officers who was touring this flying antiquity,” Flynn said.

“Only goes to show the brass hats back home haven’t changed.” The opinion of the powers that be in the United States that Johnson expressed was not only irreverent but anatomically unlikely. He went on, “Yeager saved our bacon back there in the 1960s. He let us come talk with the Lizards now with our hands clean.”

“Indianapolis.” Stone pronounced the name of the dead city like a man passing sentence. Anyone who was in Lieutenant General Healey’s corner wasn’t going to be in Sam Yeager‘s.

“Yeah, Indianapolis,” Johnson said. “How many Lizards in cold sleep did we blow to hell and gone? We say ‘pulled a Jap.’ The Lizards must say ‘pulled an American.’ But we were the ones who ’fessed up, too, and they paid us back, and now things are pretty much square.”

“Those were Americans,” Stone said stubbornly. They’d been round this barn a good many times before.

“Okay. Have it your way. Suppose Yeager kept his mouth shut like a good little German,” Johnson said. Stone glared at him, but he plowed ahead: “Suppose he did that, and it’s now, and we’re here-somebody else is ambassador, natch, because Yeager wouldn’t have been anybody special then. We’re here, and the Commodore Perry gets here, and the Lizards are dithering about whether to make peace or go to war. And suppose they find out just now that we were the ones who fried their colonists all those years ago. What happens then, goddammit? What happens then? Four worlds on fire, that’s what, sure as hell. You think they could ever hope to trust us after they learned something like that? So I say hooray for Sam Yeager. And if you don’t like it, you can stick it up your ass.”

Stone started to say something. He stopped with his mouth hanging open. He tried again, failed again, and left the control room very suddenly.

Mickey Flynn eyed Johnson. “Your usual suave, debonair charm is rather hard to see,” he remarked.

Johnson was breathing hard. He’d been ready for a brawl, not just an argument. Now that he wasn’t going to get one, he needed a minute or two to calm down. “Some people are just a bunch of damn fools,” he said.

“A lot of people are fools,” Flynn said. “Ask a man’s next-door neighbor and you’ll find out what kind of fool he is.”

“We have to do something to get Yeager aboard the Commodore Perry if he wants to go home,” Johnson said. “We have to.”

Flynn pointed at him. “I advise you to have nothing visible to do with it. You’re under the same sort of cloud as he is.”

“Ouch,” Johnson said. That was altogether too likely. If his name showed up on any kind of petition, Lieutenant General Healey would do his goddamnedest to blacken it. For that matter, Healey would probably do the same for-to-Yeager. The commandant of the Admiral Peary was a son of a bitch, all right. Of course, the hotshots on the Commodore Perry might not want to pay attention to any of the geezers who’d made the trip before them. They were bound to be sure they had all the answers themselves. Johnson did some finger pointing of his own. “How about you, Mickey? You going to try and give Yeager a hand?”

He asked the question with real curiosity. He knew where Walter Stone stood on Yeager. He’d never been sure about the other pilot. Flynn’s deadpan wit made him hard to read.

Flynn didn’t answer right away. He didn’t seem happy about having to stand up and be counted. At last, he said, “They ought to let the man go home. They owe him that much. I wouldn’t leave a half-witted dog-or even a Marine-on Home for the rest of his days.”

“And I love you, too,” Johnson said sweetly. He was bound to be the longest-serving Marine in the history of the Corps.

“If you do, that proves you’ve been in space too long.” Yes, Flynn kept jabbing and feinting and falling back. Johnson wasn’t going to worry about it. However reluctantly, the other man had given him the answer he needed. It also happened to be the answer he’d wanted. So much the better, he thought. He hoped Yeager got back to Earth, and wondered what the place was like these days.

Two Lizards walked into the hotel in Sitneff. Sam Yeager sat in a human-style chair waiting for them. He got to his feet when they came in. “I greet you,” he called. “I greet both of you. It is good to see you again, Shiplord. And it is also good to see you again, Shuttlecraft Pilot.”

“You remember!” Nesseref said in surprise.

Yeager made the affirmative gesture. “I certainly do. You took my hatchling and me up to one of your ships in orbit around Tosev 3.”

“Truth-I did. I remembered, because I did not fly Tosevites very often, especially back then. That you should also recall the time-”

“We did not go up there all that often. Each time was interesting and exciting enough for every bit of it to be memorable.”

“Touching,” Straha said dryly, using the language of the Race. Then he switched to English: “It is very good to see you, old friend. I hope you are well.”

“As well as I can be, all things considered,” Sam answered.

“Good. I am glad to hear it. And here we are, together again: the two biggest traitors in the history of several worlds.”

“No. We did what needed doing.” Even though Sam was speaking English, he added an emphatic cough. Straha’s mouth dropped open in amusement. Sam went back to the Race’s language so Nesseref could follow, too: “And how is Tosev 3 these days? The two of you have seen much more of it than I have lately. That would be a truth even if you had come in cold sleep.”

“Since I came out of cold sleep myself, I have watched Tosevite technology change,” Nesseref said. “This is astonishing to me. I never would have expected to see the way individuals live change visibly in the course of part of a lifetime.”

Straha laughed again. “The change in the years between the coming of the conquest fleet and that of the colonization fleet was in some ways even larger, I think.”

“That may well be a truth,” Sam said. “We were adapting the Race’s technology in those first few years, and-”

“Stealing it, you mean,” Straha broke in.

“If you like.” Sam didn’t argue, not when that held so much truth. “But we did adapt it, too, and use it in ways you never thought of. You also have to remember that our technology had been changing rapidly even before the Race came to Tosev 3. If it had not been, you would have conquered us.”

“Well, that is a truth,” Straha said. “We should have conquered you, too-that is another truth. Atvar will tell you differently, but it is a truth. Had I been in command, we would have done it. But our officers were afraid of change, and so they went on doing the same old thing.” He laughed again. “Look how well that worked out.”

He’d been saying the same old thing ever since he went into exile in the United States. Maybe he was right, maybe he was wrong. Sam suspected he was wrong. To him, the only way the Race could have conquered Earth was by using enough nuclear weapons to leave it unfit for anyone to live on. With the colonization fleet already on its way, the Lizards couldn’t have done that. Sam didn’t argue with Straha. What point to it? All he said was, “No one will ever know now.”

“Atvar knows. In his liver, he knows. This is his fault, no one else‘s.” Straha spoke with a certain dour satisfaction.

Again, what point to arguing? Yeager knew Atvar would deny everything Straha said. How sincere would the fleetlord be when he did? That was hard to tell even with people, let alone with Lizards. Sam said, “Come into the refectory with me, both of you. We can eat together, and you can tell me about Tosev 3 these days-and about your trip here on the Commodore Perry. ”

“It shall be done, and on your expense account, too,” Straha said. “I shall order something expensive, something I have not tasted since before I went into cold sleep for the journey to Tosev 3.”

“Go ahead,” Sam said. “Be my guests, both of you. As a matter of fact, the imperial government is picking up the tab for us for the time being. I suspect that will not last too much longer. Banking between solar systems will become much more practical if news of transactions does not require a good-sized part of someone’s lifetime to go from one to another.”

“No doubt that is a truth, superior sir,” Nesseref said.

“I do not care whether it is a truth,” Straha declared. “All I care about is that I shall eat well-I shall eat delightfully well-and someone else will pay for it. If this is not the ideal in such affairs, I do not know what would be.”

“Spoken like a male who has spent too much time on the lecture circuit,” Sam said.

“There is a truth!” Straha used an emphatic cough. “The only difference is, meals on the lecture circuit are usually not worth the savoring. This does not stop me from eating them, you understand, only from enjoying them as much as I might.” He hadn’t been so cheerfully mercenary when Sam first knew him. Had life in the United States changed him? Or had living as a celebrity rather than a military officer after he returned to the Race done the job? Sam didn’t know. He wondered if Straha did.

“They have made furniture for your shape, I see,” Nesseref said as she walked into the refectory with Yeager and Straha.

“They have tried,” Sam agreed. “It is not perfect, but it is better for us than what you use. Our backs and hips align differently from yours, and our fundaments have a different shape.” Lizards didn’t have much in the way of buttocks and did have tailstumps. Humans could sit in chairs made for them, but the experience wasn’t enjoyable.

A server brought menus. “Ah, plerkappi!” Straha said. “I have not had plerkappi for a very long time. No Tosevite seafood comes close to them. Have you tried them, Sam?”

“Once or twice,” Sam answered. “The flavor is a little too strong for my taste.” They reminded him of clams that had started to go bad. If Straha fancied them, he was welcome to his share and Sam’s besides.

Nesseref ordered them, too, so maybe they really were something travelers coming back after a long time away would crave. Yeager stuck to azwaca cutlets. Straha sneered. Sam didn’t care. Straha also sneered when he ordered unflavored alcohol. “All you want to do is poison yourself with it,” the Lizard said. “You should enjoy it.”

“I do not enjoy your flavorings,” Sam Yeager said. “And you were not fond of whiskey, either.”

“But that is different,” Straha said. “Who would want to drink burnt wood? You might as well drink paint or cabinet cleaner.”

Sam thought the Race’s flavorings every bit as nasty as paint. “No accounting for taste,” he said, and let it go at that.

“Well, there is a truth,” Straha agreed. The way his mouth fell open and the way his eye turrets moved were the Race’s equivalent of a sly laugh. “Look at my choices in friends, for instance.”

“I will try not to hold it against you,” Yeager said, and Straha laughed again. Sam tried for the third time: “So how is Tosev 3 these days?”

“It is a very strange place,” Straha said. Nesseref made the affirmative gesture. Straha added, “Even those parts of it ruled by the Race are strange these days.” Nesseref agreed again.

“This is interesting, but it tells me less than I might like to know,” Sam said. “In what ways is Tosev 3 strange?”

“Part of the strangeness is staying the same ourselves while we watch the Big Uglies change all around us,” Nesseref said. “This is not only strange, it is frightening.”

“She is right,” Straha said. “It is as if we are a big pot in water. When we first came to Tosev 3, the water outside was, say, halfway to the top. We had no great trouble holding it out. It has climbed up and up and up ever since. Now it is lapping over the edge, and will flood everything inside. And the Big Uglies know it, too.”

“Who was that male from the SSSR some years ago?” Nesseref asked. “ ‘We will bury you,’ he said, and he might well have been right.”

“I remember that. It was before I went into cold sleep,” Sam said. “His name was Khrushchev, and he was a nasty piece of work.”

“No doubt he was,” Straha said. “That does not necessarily mean he was wrong. Sometimes I think the nastier a Big Ugly is, the more likely he is to be right. This is not a reassuring thought for a male of the Race to have.”

“When I was first revived on Tosev 3, we could do many things you wild Tosevites could not,” Nesseref said. “Your military could come close to matching ours, but our civilian life was far richer and more pleasant. One by one, you acquired the things you did not have. Now you have things we do not.”

“And, for the most part, we are not acquiring them.” Straha made the negative gesture. “No-we are acquiring them by purchase from the Big Uglies. We are not making them ourselves. That is not good.”

“And now this,” Nesseref said. “Here we are, back on Home, and in days rather than years.”

“This, I gather, you decline to sell to us,” Straha put in.

“Well… yes,” Sam said.

“I cannot blame you,” Straha said. “If I were a Big Ugly, I would not sell this technology to the Race, either. We tried to conquer you. Thanks to Atvar, we did not quite succeed, but we tried. I would not blame you for returning the favor.”

“We do not want to conquer anyone.” Sam used an emphatic cough. The refectory was bound to be bugged. “All we want to do is live in peace with our neighbors, both the other independent Tosevites and the Empire.”

“Yes, the Empire is your neighbor now-your near neighbor,” Straha said. “It is no longer the monster down the hall that stuck a clawed paw into your room. But now, to the Race, you are the monster down the hall.”

“We are not monsters, any more than you are,” Sam insisted.

“Before, we could reach you and you could not reach us. That made us monsters to you,” Straha said. “Now you can reach us in a way in which we cannot reach you. Believe me, Sam Yeager, that makes you monsters-large, scary monsters-to us.” He added an emphatic cough of his own.

“We are not monsters. We are only neighbors,” Sam said.

Straha laughed. “What makes you think there is a difference? We have become your near neighbors. You are still not our near neighbors. That by itself is monstrous, at least as seen through our eye turrets.”

He was bound to be right. Even so… “Whenever you say these things, you make a war between the Empire and the United States more likely. Is that what you want, Shiplord? If it is, you will find some here who feel the same.”

“I will find quite a few, I suspect, even aboard the Commodore Perry, ” Straha said. “Do I hear truly that they wish to exclude you from returning to Tosev 3?”

“Some of them do, yes,” Yeager said. “Some of those in power in the United States would like to do the same. Are there none here on Home who would rather you had stayed on Tosev 3?”

“No doubt there are,” Straha said. “The American Tosevites did not consult with them, though, and so they are stuck with me.”

“That sort of trip is not open to me,” Yeager said.

“I know. This is most unfortunate, in my opinion,” Straha said. Nesseref made the affirmative gesture. Straha went on, “You should do all you can to get them to change their minds.”

“I am,” Sam answered. “Just how much good any of that will do, though, I have to tell you I do not know.”

Atvar did not enjoy his meeting with the Tosevite officer called Nicole Nichols. The Big Ugly from the Commodore Perry spoke the Race’s language as well as any of the Americans from the Admiral Peary. That did not make her any more accommodating. On the contrary: it only emphasized how different-and how difficult-she was.

When Atvar presumed to speak up for Sam Yeager, Major Nichols just looked at him-looked through him, really-with her small, immobile eyes. “Well, Exalted Fleetlord, I thank you for your opinion, but I am afraid this is the business of the United States, not that of the Race.”

“I must say I do not completely agree with you,” Atvar replied. “Sam Yeager is your not-empire’s ambassador here. What affects him affects us.”

The Tosevite looked through him again. You must be kidding, was what he thought he saw in her manner. The Big Uglies from the Admiral Peary had taken-did take-the Race seriously. They were not sure the United States was the Empire’s equal. Atvar hadn’t been sure of that, either. Major Nichols assumed the United States was more powerful than the Empire. She might have been right. Even so, the way she acted grated on Atvar. He was used to looking down his snout at Big Uglies. He was not used to their doing it to him.

She said, “We have our orders from Little Rock. We may have some discretion, but no one-let me repeat, no one-is going to tell us what to do.” She added an emphatic cough.

“You would do well to remember whose world you are on,” Atvar said.

“You would do well to remember how we got here,” the wild Big Ugly replied. “We can form our own judgments on what needs doing and what does not. We can, and we will. Is there anything else, Exalted Fleetlord?” She sounded polite enough when she used his title, but she didn’t take it seriously.

“Only one thing,” Atvar said heavily. “You would do well to remember that we can still devastate your planet, even if we cannot do it right away.”

“This may be a truth,” Major Nichols said. “Then again, it may not. You would do well to remember we can devastate all the planets of the Empire before half a year passes. Whether we could do the same to a fleet moving against us at half of light speed… well, I admit I am not certain of that. But the state of the art is bound to improve in the next few years. What we cannot do now, we probably will be able to soon.”

She showed that chilling confidence again. What made it all the more chilling was that the Big Uglies had earned the right to use it. Their technology did keep getting better and better. The Race’s didn’t, or hadn’t. Now it would have to, or the Empire would go under.

Major Nichols added, “In any case, we can certainly deal with your ships once they decelerate in our solar system.”

We can certainly deal with your ships. When the conquest fleet came to Tosev 3, the wild Big Uglies hadn’t even been sure its ships were there till the fighting started. They’d thought the scoutcraft were electronic faults in their radar systems. Now… Who could say what they could do now?

But Atvar said, “Suppose they do not decelerate?”

“Excuse me?” the American Tosevite replied.

“Suppose they do not decelerate?” Atvar repeated. “A large ship at half light speed is a formidable projectile weapon, would you not agree?”

Nicole Nichols didn’t say anything for a little while. When she did, it was one cautious word: “Possibly.”

Atvar’s mouth fell open. He knew what that meant. It meant the answer was yes, but the American Big Uglies hadn’t worried about the question till now. But even though he laughed, he also watched as the wheels began to spin behind Major Nichols’ eyes. The Tosevite female was starting to calculate ways by which her not-empire could knock out starships that were also projectiles.

She said, “They still would not arrive for some time. I believe that we would probably be able to intercept them once they got there. And I should also point out that you would have a hard time aiming them precisely. You would be more likely to hit areas on Tosev 3 that you rule than you would be to hit the United States.”

“So what?” Atvar answered. “By then, we would be out to destroy all Tosevites. Enough impacts of that sort might well render Tosev 3 uninhabitable, which would be the point of the exercise. For many years, we have considered the possibility that this might become necessary. We never thought it was urgent enough to attempt. If you launch a war against us, though…”

He wondered if that would surprise Nicole Nichols. If it did, she didn’t show it, not so he could see. She said, “No doubt you would try. Whether you would succeed… That is a matter for doubt, Exalted Fleetlord.”

“Many things are,” Atvar said. “We did not think so, not till we made the acquaintance of you Tosevites. You taught us there are no certainties in matters military. You should remember it, too, especially when a mistake in these matters could lead to the destruction of a world.”

“Or of three worlds,” Major Nichols said.

“Or of four,” Atvar said. “That would be a disaster for four species. The Empire will not go down alone.” He used an emphatic cough.

Did the wild Big Ugly finally begin to believe he was serious, believe the Race was serious? Again, he had a harder time judging than he would have for any citizen of the Empire. Tosevites were alien, biologically and culturally. Nicole Nichols said, “I will take your words back to my superiors. You may be sure we will treat them with the importance they deserve.”

How much importance did the Tosevite female think that was? A little? A lot? She did not say. Atvar almost asked her. The only thing that stopped him was the suspicion that she wouldn’t tell him the truth.

After she left, Atvar took notes on their conversation and his impressions of it. He wanted to get those impressions down while they were still fresh in his mind. He was about two-thirds of the way through when the telephone hissed for attention. He hissed, too, in annoyance. He thought about letting whoever was on the other end of the line record a message, but the hissing got under his scales. As much to shut it up as for any other reason, he said, “This is Fleetlord Atvar. I greet you.”

Kassquit’s image appeared on the screen. She sketched the posture of respect. “And I greet you, Exalted Fleetlord. May I come to see you? There is something of some importance that I would like to discuss with you.”

“Give me a little while, Researcher,” Atvar answered. “I am finishing up some work. After that, I would be glad to hear what you have to say.”

“I thank you. It shall be done.” Kassquit broke the connection.

A wild Big Ugly would probably have come to Atvar’s room too soon. The Tosevites’ notion of a little while was shorter than the Race‘s. What that said about the two species, Atvar would rather not have contemplated. Kassquit, though, was a citizen of the Empire, and understood its rhythms. A moment after Atvar finished his notes, the door hisser announced that she was there.

When he opened the door, Kassquit came in and gave him the full posture of respect. She rose. They exchanged polite greetings. “What can I do for you?” Atvar asked.

“Exalted Fleetlord, I would like you to speak for Sam Yeager to the American Big Uglies from the Commodore Perry, ” Kassquit replied.

“I have done it,” Atvar said. “Much good has it done me. The crewfemale from the Commodore Perry is full of her own rightness to the choking point. She becomes offensive to those around her because they do not share in what she reckons her magnificence.”

He was going to add that even the name of the American Tosevites’ new starship was an affront to the Empire. He was going to, yes, but before he could Kassquit murmured, “How very much like the Race.”

Both of Atvar’s eye turrets broke off from their usual scan of his surroundings and swung sharply toward her. His voice was also sharp as he snapped, “If that is a joke, Researcher, it is in questionable taste.”

“A joke, Exalted Fleetlord?” Kassquit made the negative gesture. “Not at all. By no means, in fact. Ever since the Race conquered the Rabotevs, it set itself up as the standard of comparison, the standard of emulation. Now the glove is on the other hand, is it not?”

“But we…” Atvar’s voice trailed away. Again, he didn’t get the chance to say what he’d planned to: that the Race, having the most advanced civilization and technology, had earned the right to tell other species what they ought to do and how they ought to live. Somewhere up in the sky, the Commodore Perry laughed at his pretensions. The Big Uglies had pretensions of their own. He’d resented those. What had the Rabotevs and Hallessi thought about the Race’s pretensions before they were fully assimilated into the Empire? How long had it been since a member of the Race thought to ask the question? Had a member of the Race ever thought to ask it?

His silence told its own story. Quietly, Kassquit said, “Do you see, Exalted Fleetlord? I think perhaps you do.”

“I think perhaps I do, too,” Atvar answered, also quietly. “Humility is something we have not had to worry much about lately.” He laughed, not that it was funny from anyone’s point of view except maybe a Tosevite‘s. “Lately!” Another laugh, this one even more bitter. “We have not had to worry about it since Home was unified. From this, we concluded we did not have to worry about it at all.”

“Change has returned to the Race. Change has come to the Empire,” Kassquit said. “We had better embrace it, or soon there will be no more Empire.”

She was a citizen of the Empire. She was a Big Ugly. If that did not make her a symbol of change, what would? And she was right. Anyone with eye turrets in his head could see that. “It is a truth,” Atvar said. “Not a welcome truth, mind you, but a truth nonetheless.”

“You spent many years on Tosev 3. You can see this,” Kassquit said. “Will those who have lived all their lives on Home and who are not familiar with wild Big Uglies and what they can do?”

“Oh, yes. Oh, yes.” Atvar made the affirmative gesture. “If the Big Uglies can fly between their sun and ours in a fifth of a year while we take more than forty years to make the same journey, they will see. They will have to see.”

“For the Empire’s sake, I hope so,” Kassquit said, which could only mean she wasn’t completely convinced. “And I do thank you for speaking up for Sam Yeager, whether it did all you hoped or not. In his case, the wild Big Uglies should not be allowed to match the Race’s high-handedness.”

“We agree there,” Atvar said. “The American Tosevites from the Admiral Peary also agree on it. Whether we and they can persuade the newly hatched Americans from the Commodore Perry may be a different question.”

“Arrogance lets you think you can do great things,” Kassquit said. “To that extent, it is good. But arrogance also makes you think no one else can do anything great. That, I fear, is anything but good.”

“Again, we agree,” Atvar said. “I do not see how anyone could disagree-anyone who is not very arrogant, I mean.” Did that include the crew of the Commodore Perry? Did it, for that matter, include most of the Race? Atvar could pose the question. Knowing the answer was something else again. Actually, he feared he did know the answer-but it was not the one he wanted.

Jonathan Yeager and Major Nicole Nichols sat in the refectory in the Americans’ hotel in Sitneff. Jonathan was finishing an azwaca cutlet. People said every unfamiliar meat tasted like chicken. As far as he was concerned, azwaca really did. Major Nichols had ordered zisuili ribs. She had enough bones in front of her to make a good start on building a frame house. She wasn’t a big woman, and she certainly wasn’t fat; she was in the hard good shape the military encouraged. She sure could put it away, though.

A sheet of paper lay on the table between them. Jonathan tapped it with his forefinger. “You see,” he said.

Major Nichols nodded. “Yes. So I do. Very impressive.” No matter what she said, she did not sound much impressed.

“If you don’t take my father home, the rest of us don’t want to go, either,” Jonathan insisted. How readily he’d got the other Americans to put their signatures on the petition surprised and touched him. It had been much easier than he’d worried it would be when he first thought about taking the step.

She looked at the paper, then up at him. She was a strikingly attractive woman, but she had a sniper’s cold eyes. “Forgive me, Mr. Yeager, but you and your wife can’t be objective about your father.”

That only made Jonathan angry. He did his best not to show it. “I’m sure you’re right,” he said. “I wouldn’t want to try to be objective about him. But you’re pretending not to see something. My signature and Karen’s aren’t the only ones there. Every American on Home has signed it. That includes Major Coffey. Anyone would expect him to be on your side, not ours, if my dad had done anything even the least little bit out of line. And Shiplord Straha and Shuttlecraft Pilot Nesseref signed it, too, and you were the ones who brought them to Home.”

“They’re Lizards,” Major Nichols said. “Of course they’d be happy enough to stay on Home.”

“Come on. We both know better than that,” Jonathan said. “Nesseref has lived on Earth for the past seventy years. Her friends are there. Friends count with Lizards the way family does with us. And Straha… Straha would complain no matter where he was staying.”

“In some ways, his situation is a lot like your father‘s,” Nicole Nichols said. She drummed her nails on the white plastic of the tabletop. “He’s not particularly welcome no matter where he goes.”

“Looks to me as though you’re saying being right is the worst thing you can do,” Jonathan said tightly.

“Have it your way, Mr. Yeager.” Major Nichols folded the petition and put it in her handbag. “Besides, with the Lizards it’s academic. They aren’t going back to Earth with us, for fear they might pass on a message to the Race’s authorities back there. And the choice about your father isn’t mine any which way. I will take this document back to the Commodore Perry and let my superiors decide.”

“Yeah. You do that,” Jonathan said. “It wouldn’t look so good if you came back to Earth with none of us aboard, would it?”

She only shrugged. She was a cool customer. “We’d handle it,” she said. “We can handle just about anything, Mr. Yeager.” She got to her feet. “No need to show me the way out. I already know.” Away she went.

Jonathan muttered under his breath. This younger generation struck him as a mechanical bunch. For a nickel, he would have kicked Major Nichols in the teeth. He would have tried, anyway. He suspected she could mop the floor with him, and probably with any other three people here who weren’t Frank Coffey.

He got up, too, and slowly walked out of the refectory. He’d done everything he could do. So had everybody else on Home. He saw that Major Coffey’s John Hancock didn’t much impress Major Nichols-not that anything much did impress her. But Coffey’s signature sure impressed him. Even if Frank was going to be a daddy, he didn’t want to spend the rest of his life on Home. He’d signed anyway, to keep an injustice from being done to Jonathan’s father.

A Lizard came skittering up to Jonathan. His body paint proclaimed him a reporter. Jonathan immediately grew wary. The Race’s reporters were much like those on Earth: too many of them were sensation-seeking fools. “How does it feel to travel faster than light?” this one demanded, shoving a microphone at Jonathan.

“I do not know,” Jonathan answered. “I have never done it.” The Race evidently couldn’t keep secret any longer what the Commodore Perry had done.

The reporter gave Jonathan what was obviously intended as a suspicious stare. “But you are a Big Ugly,” he said, as if challenging Jonathan to deny it. “How could you be here without having traveled faster than light?”

“Because I am a Tosevite from the Admiral Peary, not from the Commodore Perry, ” Jonathan said resignedly. “We flew here in cold sleep slower than light, the same way your ships travel. You do remember the Admiral Peary, do you not?” He made his interrogative cough as sarcastic as he could.

That might have been lost on the Lizard. After some thought, the reporter used the affirmative gesture. “I think perhaps I may. But the Admiral Peary is old news. I am sure of that. I want new news.” He hurried away.

“Old news,” Jonathan said in English. He sighed. It wasn’t that the Lizard was wrong. In fact, there was the problem: the male was right. The Americans from the Admiral Peary were old news, in more ways than one. Had Major Nichols heard the reporter, she would have agreed with him.

Jonathan found himself hoping the none-too-bright Lizard did end up running into Nicole Nichols. He would infuriate her, and she would horrify him. As far as Jonathan was concerned, they deserved each other.

One of the elevators opened up. Tom de la Rosa came out. Jonathan waved to him. Tom came over. Jonathan said, “Beware of idiot Lizard reporters running around loose.”

“Sounds like a good thing to beware of,” Tom agreed. “And speaking of bewares, have you talked with the gal from the Commodore Perry?”

“I sure have-I just finished lunch with her, in fact. I gave her the petition, too.” Jonathan set a hand on Tom’s shoulder for a moment. “Thanks for signing it.”

De la Rosa shrugged. “Hey, what else could I do? Right is right. Those yahoos have no business marooning your old man here.”

“You know that, and I know that, but I’ll be damned if I’m sure they know that,” Jonathan said. “And you know you’re taking a chance with that thing. They’re liable to call us on it. If they do, none of us goes home from Home.”

“Yeah, well…” Tom shrugged again. “Linda and I hashed that one out. If they’re the kind of stiff-necked bastards who won’t bend even when they ought to, I don’t think I want to go back to the USA any more. It wouldn’t be my country, you know? The company’d be better here.”

Tears stung Jonathan’s eyes. He blinked several times; he didn’t want Tom to see that. Pride, he thought, and laughed at himself. “We can be expatriates sitting in the sleazy bars in Sitneff, and all the earnest young American tourists who come here can stare at us and wonder about all the nasty things we’ve done.”

“There you go!” Tom laughed out loud. “The Lost Generation. Hell, we’re already the Lost Generation. If you don’t believe me, ask anybody from the Commodore Perry. Those people are convinced we’ve got no business being alive any more.”

“You’d better believe it!” Jonathan used the catch phrase with sour glee. “Major Nichols told Dad they tried to get here before we did. Wouldn’t that have been a kick in the nuts for us?”

“Oh, yeah. Sweet Jesus, yeah.” De la Rosa made a horrible face. “We’d’ve been like the dead atheist decked out in a suit: all dressed up with no place to go.”

“As it is, we get into the history books whether our ungrateful grandchildren like it or not,” Jonathan said, and Tom nodded. Jonathan’s thoughts traveled the light-years far faster than the Commodore Perry could hope to. “I do wonder what things are like back on Earth.”

“Well, from what I’ve been able to pick up, the politics are the same old yak-yak-yak,” de la Rosa said. “The ecology…” He looked revolted. “It’s about as bad as we figured it would be. Lots and lots of species from Home crowding out ours wherever it’s hot and dry. Earth isn’t the place it was when we left.”

Jonathan sighed. “Like you say, it’s not a hot headline. I don’t know how we’re going to be able to put that genie back in the bottle again. The place I feel sorry for is Australia.” He used an emphatic cough. “It’s had its ecology turned upside down twice in two hundred years.”

“Isn’t that the sad and sorry truth?” Tom said. “You hate to see something like that, because there’s just no way in hell to repair the damage. Too many native species have already gone extinct, and more are going all the time. When you add in rabbits and rats and cats and cane toads and cattle and azwaca and zisuili and befflem… And plants are just as bad, or maybe worse.”

“I know. I don’t know the way you do-you’re the expert-but I’ve got the basic idea,” Jonathan said, and de la Rosa nodded. “I hope we get to see for ourselves, that’s all.”

“Me, too.” De la Rosa looked fierce. His piratical mustache helped. “If we don’t, I’m going to blame you. And I’ll have all the time in the world to do it, too, because we’ll both be stuck here for the rest of our lives.”

“Well, if we start throwing missiles back and forth with the Lizards, that won’t be real long,” Jonathan said. Tom looked unhappy, not because he was wrong but because he was right. He went on, “Of course, that’s liable to be just as true back on Earth as it is here.”

“You think the Lizards can still hurt us back on Earth?” Tom asked. “People from the Commodore Perry don’t seem to.”

“I’m not sure. I’m not sure anybody else is sure, either,” Jonathan answered. “I’ll tell you this, though, for whatever you think it’s worth: the last time Major Nichols came out of a meeting with Atvar, she’d had some of that up-yours knocked out of her. Whatever he told her, it didn’t make her very happy. Maybe the Race has figured out how to do something, even if they’ve got to do it in slow motion.”

“I almost wouldn’t mind-almost,” Tom emphasized. “Where one side figures it can lick the other one easy as pie, that’s where your wars come from. If both sides figure they’ll get hurt, they’re more likely to take it easy on each other.”

Jonathan nodded. “That makes more sense than I wish it did.” He thought back to Earth again. “Before too long, maybe it won’t matter so much. We’ll have colonies all over the place. Eggs and baskets, you know what I mean?”

“Oh, hell, yes,” Tom de la Rosa said. “We will, and one of these days maybe the Lizards will, too, if we don’t kill each other off first. And the Germans will, and the Russians, and the Japanese…”

“Lord!” That took some more contemplating. Jonathan said, “I hope the Nazis and the Reds don’t end up with colonies on the same planet. They’d start banging away at each other, same as they were doing when the conquest fleet came.”

“Yeah, that‘d be fun, wouldn’t it?” Tom said.

Jonathan nodded, though fun wasn’t what either of them had in mind. He said, “The Nazis owe the Race one, too. If I were a Lizard, I’d worry about that.”

“If you were a Lizard, you’d have other things to worry about, like not looking right,” Tom pointed out. Jonathan made a face at him. People had much more mobile features than Lizards did. The Race used hand gestures to get across a lot of things humans did with their faces and heads. De la Rosa went on, “I wonder how Kassquit feels about being pregnant now. This isn’t the best time to bring a kid into the world-any world.”

“She’ll do okay, I think,” Jonathan said. “There’s always been more to her than meets the eye.” And even if she is knocked up, I had nothing to do with it, and Karen can’t say I did, he thought.

Kassquit did not enjoy Dr. Melanie Blanchard’s examinations, which was putting it mildly. The wild Big Ugly had warned she would poke and prod, and she did, in Kassquit’s most intimate places. For that matter, Kassquit enjoyed next to nothing about being gravid, which was also putting it mildly. She wanted to sleep all the time. Her breasts were constantly sore. And she went on vomiting. Dr. Blanchard called that morning sickness, but it could strike her at any time of the day or night.

Hoping to distract the doctor from her probings and pushings, Kassquit asked, “What possible evolutionary good is there in these disgusting symptoms?”

“I do not know.” Dr. Blanchard wasn’t distracted a bit. Kassquit hadn’t really thought she would be. “I do not believe anyone else does. It is a good question, though.”

“I thank you so very much.” Kassquit packed as much irony as she could into her voice.

Instead of getting angry, Melanie Blanchard laughed a loud Tosevite laugh. “I am sorry not to be able to give you more help about this,” she said. “Some doctors claim that women who have morning sickness are less likely to produce a hatchling that cannot survive than those who do not, but I am not sure this has been proved.”

“Produce a hatchling that cannot survive?” The phrase sounded awkward to Kassquit.

“English has a term for this-miscarry. ” Dr. Blanchard spoke the word in her language. “If you miscarry, you discharge the hatchling from your body long before it would come out if everything were normal. Miscarried hatchlings usually have something wrong with them that would not let them live.”

“I see. They are like eggs that are fertile and laid where conditions are good, but that do not hatch,” Kassquit said.

The doctor made the affirmative gesture. “Yes, I think that is a good comparison,” she said. “I must tell you, Researcher: I do not know as much as I might about how the Race develops. Keeping track of how Tosevites work is a full-time job in itself.”

“I believe that,” Kassquit said.

“Good. It is a truth.” Dr. Blanchard used an emphatic cough. She peeled off the elastomere glove she’d been wearing and tossed it into a trash can. “For now, I am glad to say, you seem as healthy and normal as any female could.”

“This is good to hear,” Kassquit said. “Do you have any idea how long the morning sickness will last?”

“It usually ends after the first third of your gravidity-about half of one of Home’s years after your egg was fertilized,” Dr. Blanchard answered. “Bear in mind, though, that is not a promise. Each female is different. Some never have morning sickness at all. Some have it much more severely than you do, and suffer from it until the hatchling comes out. I am sorry, but you will just have to wait and see.”

“I am sorry, too.” Kassquit felt like using an emphatic cough of her own. “Have you finished inspecting me for this time?”

“Yes.” Dr. Blanchard nodded, then used the affirmative gesture. “As I say, you have earned the stamp of approval.” She mimed applying the stamp to Kassquit’s left buttock. Kassquit’s mouth fell open. That was funny, but not funny enough to make her laugh out loud the way the wild Big Uglies did.

Laughter or no, she was anything but sorry to escape the doctor. Getting examined took her back to the days of her hatchlinghood. Members of the Race had constantly poked and prodded at her then. In a way, she couldn’t blame them for that. They were trying to find out as much as they could about Tosevites. In another way…

She shrugged. No doubt she would have been addled no matter how the Race raised her. One species simply could not fill all the needs the hatchlings of another had. That was all the more true when the first was imperfectly familiar with the needs of the second.

Part of her wished she could go back to Tosev 3 on the Commodore Perry. She would have liked to meet Mickey and Donald. If anybody on four worlds could understand her and what she’d gone through over the years, the males the Yeagers had raised were the ones. By all accounts, they had done well for themselves in the United States. But they were also surely caught between their biology and their culture. Mickey had said as much in the title of his autobiography.

Had they learned the Race’s language, or did they speak only English? If they had learned the Race’s tongue, did they speak it with an accent? They would have the right mouthparts to speak it properly, yes. They wouldn’t have the mushy tone Tosevites couldn’t help. But they would have grown up using very different sounds: the sounds of English. How much difference would that make?

I should have learned English, she thought. But she had a pretty good idea why the Race had never taught it to her. The males and females in charge of such things must have feared learning a Tosevite language would make her too much like a wild Big Ugly. And maybe they’d even been right. Who could say for sure?

If she did ask to go aboard the Commodore Perry and visit Tosev 3, what would the American Tosevites say? Kassquit paused and then made the negative gesture. That was the wrong question. The right question was, how was she worse off even if they said no? If they did, she would be where she was now. If they said yes, she would be better off than she was now. As was true most of the time, asking was the right thing to do here.

But whom could she ask? The formidable female officer named Nichols? Kassquit hadn’t seen her around the hotel lately. She hadn’t seen anyone from the Commodore Perry around the hotel lately. Maybe that meant nothing. Maybe it meant the faster-than-light ship was about to bombard Sitneff. How could you tell what wild Big Uglies would do next? Kassquit knew she couldn’t.

She went to see Ambassador Yeager. He laughed. “You want me to get them to take you?” he said. “I cannot even get them to take me.”

“I know that, superior sir. I am sorry for it. I think it is altogether unjust.” Kassquit added an emphatic cough.

“Now that you mention it, so do I,” Sam Yeager said. “I hope you will not be angry, but I have to tell you that I do not think traveling on the Commodore Perry would be good for you, at least not in the near future.”

“Why not?” Kassquit demanded. There were times when she thought everyone on four worlds joined together in thwarting her. She knew such thoughts were not true, but that did not always keep her from having them.

“Well, for one thing, you would keep company with many more wild Big Uglies than you ever have before,” the American ambassador answered. “You would have a much greater risk of disease than you ever had before. Who can say how you would respond? You have never been exposed to diseases before. And remember, you are gravid. Disease could also affect the hatchling growing inside you. So could traveling faster than light. I do not know that it would. But I do not know that it would not, either. I do know that hatchlings growing inside females are often more sensitive to changes in environment than adults are. If I commanded the Commodore Perry, I would not accept you as a passenger simply because you are gravid.”

“I… see.” Kassquit had expected Sam Yeager to argue in terms of politics and statesmanship. Instead, he’d talked about biology. That was harder to refute or get around. Kassquit wasn’t sure she should try to get around it, either. She said, “Would Dr. Blanchard confirm what you say?”

“I think so. By all means, ask her,” the ambassador replied. “And ask a member of the Race who has studied Tosevites. I am not a physician.” He tacked on an emphatic cough to stress the not. “All I can tell you is what a reasonably well-educated wild Big Ugly thinks he knows. Experts know better than I do. Talk to them.”

“It shall be done.” Kassquit pointed accusingly at Yeager. “You make entirely too much sense.”

He laughed again, on the same sour note he’d used the first time. “I am glad you think so. I am glad somebody thinks so. There are a good many who think I am nothing but an old fool.”

“I have never been one of those,” Kassquit said. “The way you think has always interested me, ever since the days when we both pretended to be members of the Race on the computer bulletin-board system back on Tosev 3.” She pointed at him again. “You should not have been able to gain access to that system.”

Now Sam Yeager’s laugh held real amusement. “I know. I had a friend who got the necessary programming for me.”

“A friend,” Kassquit echoed. She had no trouble figuring out what that meant. “Not another wild Big Ugly, not that long ago. You mean a male of the Race, someone from the conquest fleet.”

“Well, what if I do?” Yeager answered. “Even then, plenty of males decided they would rather live in the United States than in the lands the Race ruled. We released all the prisoners of war we held who wanted to go. The rest became what we call naturalized citizens of our not-empire.”

“It sounds like treason to me,” Kassquit said darkly.

But Sam Yeager made the negative gesture. “No, not at all. You are a citizen of the Empire. You are loyal to the Race and the Emperor. Your species does not matter. When members of the Race become naturalized citizens of the United States, they give it their loyalty. Their species does not matter, either.”

“Maybe,” Kassquit said. “But I am suspicious of those who change their loyalty after they are adult.”

“There is some truth in that, but, I think, only some,” Yeager said. “The history of Tosev 3 shows that there can be more reasons for changing one’s loyalty than somebody familiar only with the history of the Race might think.”

“I would guess the history of Tosev 3 also shows more treason than the history of the Race,” Kassquit said.

“And I would guess you are right,” the American ambassador said, which surprised her-she’d been trying to make him angry. He went on, “The Race has been politically unified for all these years. That leaves small room for treason. On Tosev 3, we have had and do have all sorts of competing sovereignties. An individual may work for one while loyal to another. We may be barbarous-a lot of the time, we are barbarous-but we have more complicated, more sophisticated politics than the Race does.”

“More complicated, anyhow.” Kassquit was in no mood the praise wild Big Uglies.

Sam Yeager only laughed again. “Have it your way, Researcher. I would like to see you come back to Tosev 3 one of these days. Mickey and Donald would be glad to meet you-you have a lot in common with them.”

He could think along with her. She’d seen that before, even when neither of them knew the other was a Big Ugly. She said, “That is one of the reasons I want to go back. I would love to speak with them.”

“If the doctor says you should not go yet, you could send them letters,” Yeager said. “With the new ships, you ought to have answers before too long.”

“That is a truth,” Kassquit said thoughtfully; it was one that had not occurred to her. “Would you be kind enough to deliver such letters?”

“You might do better asking my hatchling and his mate,” Yeager replied. “They are more sure of a place on the Commodore Perry than I am.”

“They say they will not go if you do not,” Kassquit said. Yeager only shrugged. She left his room wondering what that meant. More complicated Tosevite diplomacy? She wouldn’t have been surprised.