Homeward Bound

9

When Sam Yeager let Atvar into his room, the fleetlord swung an eye turret toward the monitor. “What are you watching there?” Atvar asked.

“A film from the United States,” Yeager answered. “Until a few days ago, I did not know any of them had been transmitted to Home. One of the actors here gives a truly memorable performance.”

Atvar watched for a couple of minutes. Rescuing Private Renfall had its original English sound track; the Race had reinvented subtitles to let Lizards who didn’t speak English know what was going on. After a bit, Atvar said, “Much of this is inaccurate. You were a soldier yourself, Ambassador. You will see the inaccuracies just as I do.”

Sam could hardly deny it. He’d noticed several. He said, “Drama compresses and changes. Do all of your films show reality just as it happened?”

“Well, no,” the fleetlord admitted. “But why do your filmmakers show the Race as either vicious or idiotic? We were doing what we thought was right when we came to Tosev 3, and we were doing it as best we could. If we had been inept and vicious as this film shows us to be, not a male of the Race would have been left alive on your planet.”

He was right about that, too. But Sam said, “I have seen some of the productions your colonists made after they came to our world. They are as unkind to Tosevites as we are to the Race. Will you tell me I am wrong?”

He watched Atvar squirm. Plainly, the fleetlord wanted to. As plainly, he knew he couldn’t. With a sigh, Atvar said, “Well, perhaps neither you Tosevites nor the Race are as kind as possible to those who were, after all, opponents.”

“That is a truth,” Sam said, and turned off the video. “And now, Fleetlord, I am at your service.”

Atvar made the negative gesture. “On the contrary, Ambassador. I am at your service. It is a great honor to go before the Emperor. It is almost as great an honor to help prepare another for an audience. This says, more plainly than anything else can, that my conduct when I was in his Majesty’s presence was acceptable, and that he would be willing to have someone else imitate me.”

“Try to imitate you, you mean,” Sam said. “I am only an ignorant Big Ugly. I will do my best not to embarrass myself, but I do not know if I can be perfect. I fear I have my doubts.”

“Whether or not you have confidence in yourself, I have confidence in you,” Atvar said. “You will do well. You think like one of us. When the time comes, you will think like one of us in the Emperor’s presence.”

“I hope so,” Sam said. Atvar reminded him of one of his managers sending him in to pinch-hit with the game on the line, saying, I know you can rip this guy. And sometimes Sam would, and sometimes he wouldn’t. He always had hope. He always had a chance. He didn’t always succeed. If he failed here, the consequences would be larger than those of striking out with the tying run on third base in the ninth.

“And we do have these videos to take you through the procedure,” Atvar said. “They are not, of course, videos of actual audiences, but they should serve well enough for the sake of rehearsal. Real imperial audiences are very rarely televised. It is possible that Kassquit’s will be, and I am certain yours will, however, as it marks an extraordinary occasion.”

Sam grinned crookedly, not that the fleetlord was likely to note the nuances of his expression. “Thanks a lot. Make sure you put no pressure on me. Am I going to have a billion males and females with both eye turrets on everything I do?”

“Maybe more,” Atvar said. “This would attract considerable interest among the Race. And, of course, this event would also be broadcast to Rabotev 2 and Halless 1-and, I suppose, to Tosev 3 as well. But speed of light means viewers on other worlds will not see your performance for some years.”

“Oh, good,” Sam said. “That means I would not be known as an idiot on four worlds all at the same time. It would take a while for the news to spread.”

Atvar might not have recognized a crooked grin for what it was, but he knew sarcasm when he heard it. He laughed. “The simplest way not to have this problem would be to do well in the audience.”

“Easy for you to say,” Sam muttered darkly. But then, bones creaking, he bent into the posture of respect. “I am at your service, superior teacher. Let us watch these videos. You can explain the fine points to an ignorant foreigner like me.”

“Foreigner,” Atvar repeated in musing tones. “You may have noticed some archaic words in Gone with the Wind. Well, foreigner is much more old-fashioned than any of those. If not for the conquests of the Rabotevs and Hallessi, it would have entirely disappeared from the language.”

“This is not necessarily bad,” Sam said. “We Big Uglies have always needed the word. Foreigners are the individuals you fight with-when you are not fighting with friends and relations instead.”

“Our conquest would have been easier if you had not fought among yourselves,” Atvar said. “You already had armies mobilized and factories producing military hardware as fast as you could.”

“Truth. Friends of mine were thinking about going to work in them when the Race came,” Sam said. “But now-the videos.”

“It shall be done,” Atvar said, obedient and ironic at the same time.

He spoke to the computer, and done it was. Sam watched the ceremony-or rather, the simulation of the ceremony-over and over. He could pause whenever he wanted, go back and look at something again whenever he needed to, and skip whatever he already had down. After a while, he said, “I notice the male playing the role of the Emperor wears an actor’s body paint, not the gold paint the real Emperor uses.”

“Truth. In dramas and films, we allow that only on a case-by-case basis,” Atvar replied. “Here, it was judged inessential. Everyone knows whom the male is impersonating, whether the actual gold is seen or not.” He turned an eye turret toward Sam. “I suppose you will mock us for this sort of discrimination.”

“Not me.” Yeager used the negative gesture. “Instead of special body paint, our emperors would often wear special wrappings that no one else was allowed to use. That was one way you told emperors from ordinary males and females.” Ermine, the purple… If you wanted to paint your belly gold instead, why not? He couldn’t help adding, “In the United States, though, our not-emperor is just an ordinary citizen with a special job.”

“Snoutcounting,” Atvar said disdainfully. “Why you think this is a suitable way to rule a state of any size is beyond me. Why should a mass of males and females added together be wiser than the decision a ruler makes after consulting with experts in the field under consideration? Answer me that, if you please.”

“First, experts can be wrong, too. Look what the Race thought about Tosev 3,” Sam Yeager said. If that wasn’t a baleful stare Atvar sent him, he’d never seen one. He went on, “And second, Fleetlord, who says rulers who do not need to answer to those who chose them always consult with experts before they make their choices? Sometimes-often-they just do as they please. This is a truth for us Big Uglies. Is it any less a truth for the Race?”

“Perhaps a little,” Atvar answered, and Sam thought he might have a point. Except during mating season, Lizards were a little calmer, a little more rational, than people. As Sam had seen, both back on Earth and here on Home, they made up for it then. The fleetlord continued, “We are sometimes guilty of arbitrary behavior. If you will tell me the snoutcounting United States is not also sometimes guilty of it, I must say you will surprise me. You have seen the contrary for yourself.”

“Well, so I have,” Sam said gruffly. He’d almost paid with his neck for President Warren’s arbitrary decision to attack the colonization fleet. “We think our system does better than others in reducing such behavior, though.”

“You have been snoutcounting for how long in your not-empire?” Atvar asked.

Sam had to stop and think. To him, the Bicentennial had happened quite recently-but that ignored his cold sleep. It was 2031, not 1977. “A little more than five hundred of your years,” he answered.

Atvar’s hiss was a small masterpiece of sarcasm. “When you have five thousand-or, better, twenty-five thousand-years of experience with it, then you may claim some small credit for your system. Meanwhile… Meanwhile, shall we go back to preparing you for your audience with his Majesty?”

“Maybe that would be a good idea.” Sam had no idea whether democracy could lead humans to a state stable for millennia like the Empire. He had no idea whether any system could lead humans to a state stable for millennia. Humans were more restlessly changeable than Lizards.

Or, at least, humans with cultures springing from Western Europe had been more restlessly changeable than Lizards for the past few hundred years. That wasn’t always so elsewhere on Earth. It hadn’t been so in Western Europe before, say, the fifteenth century, either. If the Lizards had chosen to come not long after they sent their probe, they would have won everything their livers desired. That thought had given a lot of human statesmen and soldiers nightmares over the years.

Atvar started the video again. He made it pause in the middle of the ceremony. In thoughtful tones, he said, “I still do not know what we are going to do about the imperial laver and limner.”

“I am not going to go before the Emperor naked,” Yeager said. “That is not our custom. And I am not going to wear the body paint of a supplicant. I am not a supplicant. I am the representative of an independent not-empire, a not-empire with all the same rights and privileges as the Empire has. My president ”-he used the English word, which Atvar understood-“is formally the equal of the Emperor.”

“You make too much of yourself here,” Atvar said stiffly. “He is not as powerful as the Emperor.”

“I did not say he was. Back on Tosev 3, we had many not-empires and empires before the Race came. Some were large and strong, others small and not so strong. But they were independent. A strong one did not have the right to tell a weak one what to do. That principle was part of why we were fighting a war among ourselves when you came. The president is not as powerful as the Emperor. But he is independent of him, and sovereign in his own land.”

Atvar’s tailstump wiggled in agitation. “I am not the one to answer this. The protocol masters at the imperial court will have to decide.”

“Do please remind them that the United States is an independent not-empire,” Yeager said. “Males and females who have never been to Tosev 3 are liable to have a hard time understanding that on their own.”

“Believe me, Ambassador-I am painfully aware of this,” Atvar replied. “I will tell them to consult their records from ancientest history, from the days before Home was unified, when there were still other sovereignties here besides the Empire. I do not know what survives from those times, but they will.”

“I thank you.” Sam didn’t want to push Atvar too far. Not many Lizards here on Home had experience back on Earth. No point to antagonizing the highest-ranking one who did. “This is important for both my not-empire and the Race.” He knew more than a little relief when the fleetlord made the affirmative gesture.

Kassquit told the video on her monitor to pause. She asked Atvar, “You say these are the same images Sam Yeager is using to prepare for his audience with the Emperor?”

“Yes, that is correct,” the fleetlord told her. “If you practice diligently, you should do well enough.”

“Oh, I will!” Kassquit promised. “I can think of no greater honor than to have the imperial laver remove my ordinary body paint and the imperial limner put on the new.”

To her surprise, Atvar laughed. Hastily, he said, “I mean no offense, Researcher. But your reaction there is the opposite of the wild Big Ugly‘s. He refuses to have anything to do with the laver and the limner.”

“What?” For a moment, Kassquit could hardly believe her ears. She’d never liked them; the Race’s hearing diaphragms were much neater. Whenever they told her something she had trouble believing, she mistrusted them. “Did I hear you correctly, Exalted Fleetlord?”

“You did. You must remember-Sam Yeager was at pains to make sure everyone remembers-the American Tosevites are not imperial subjects, and are proud of not being imperial subjects. The pride may be misplaced, but it is no less real on account of that.”

“Eventually, they will outgrow their presumption,” Kassquit said.

“Perhaps. Such is the hope, at any rate.” Atvar’s voice was dry. “Meanwhile, let me see you go through this section of the ceremony once more.”

“It shall be done, Exalted Fleetlord.” Kassquit bent herself into several positions related to but not identical with the posture of respect. She looked to the left. She looked to the right. She looked behind her. None of that was as easy for her as it would have been for a member of the Race, for she had to turn her whole head to do it since she did not have eye turrets. As with her ears, there were still times when she resented having physical equipment different from that of the Race. She did not let her resentment show, though, or even dwell on it, for she had to concentrate on the responses she was supposed to make to courtiers who were not in fact in the hotel room with her.

When she finished, she looked to Atvar. When the fleetlord did not say anything for some little while, fear bubbled up in her. Had she made such a dreadful mess of it? She hadn’t thought so, but how much did she really know? Every so often, she got forcefully reminded that, even if she was a citizen of the Empire, she was not a member of the Race.

At last, his voice neutral, Atvar said, “You did this without previous study of these videos?”

“Yes, Exalted Fleetlord,” Kassquit replied unhappily. “I used sources that described the ceremony, but I have not seen it up until now. Did I… did I do it very badly?”

To her astonishment, Atvar made the negative gesture. “No. Except that you have no tailstump to move to right and left to accompany your head, you did it perfectly. The protocol masters have assured me that this is no impediment: you cannot move what you do not have. I congratulate you, and all the more so because you learned this on your own.”

“Really?” Kassquit said in amazement. The fleetlord made the affirmative gesture again. Kassquit whispered, “I thank you.”

“For what?” Atvar said. “Yours is the hard work, yours the achievement. You receive the praise you have earned. Now-do you know the next part of the ceremony as well as you know this one?”

“I… I believe I do, Exalted Fleetlord.”

Atvar swung his eye turrets away, then aimed them both right at her: a sign he was paying close attention. “Let me see.”

“It shall be done.” Kassquit went through the next portion. She hadn’t seen the videos for it, and wasn’t quite perfect; Atvar found a couple of small things to correct. She said, “I will improve them before the audience.” That didn’t seem enough, so she added, “I will improve them before you see me again.”

“Do not be upset,” Atvar told her. “You are doing quite well, believe me. Now-on to the portion that follows.” On to that portion they went. Kassquit imagined her way through the whole ceremony. At last, Atvar said, “You have done everything very well up to this point. Now you have come before the Emperor’s throne. You offer him your greetings.” Kassquit bent into the special posture of respect reserved for the Emperor alone. It was awkward for a Tosevite-her back was too straight-but she managed it. Atvar didn’t criticize her, so she must have done it right, or right enough. Then he said, “Now the Emperor speaks to you. How do you respond?”

“The Emperor… speaks to me?” Kassquit quavered. “Is that likely to happen?”

“It can happen,” Atvar answered. “When I left Home to take the conquest fleet to Tosev 3, my audience with his Majesty was purely formal. When I saw the present Emperor not long ago, there was some informal talk. It is up to his Majesty, of course. The present Emperor, I think, is more inclined to talk than his predecessor was.”

“He would not care to talk to the likes of me,” Kassquit said. “I am an individual of no importance.”

“There I would disagree with you,” Atvar said. “You are not an individual of high rank. But you are important. Never doubt it. You are the first-so far, the only-Tosevite to be reared entirely within the culture of the Empire. You are the shape of the future. We hope you are the shape of the future, at any rate.”

“How could I not be?” she asked.

“If things go wrong on Tosev 3, it would be all too easy for you not to be,” Atvar answered. “There may be no Tosevites following any cultural models, in that case.”

“What do you think the odds are?” Kassquit asked.

Atvar shrugged, a gesture the Race and Big Uglies shared. “Who can guess? It all depends on how dangerous the wild Tosevites become.” He did his best to brush aside the question: “That is not something on which it is profitable to speculate. Back to business. Should the Emperor speak to you, how would you respond?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He liked Coffey’s color.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What do you mean?” Ttomalss asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“That is exactly what it means.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Talk to the concierge,” Jonathan suggested. “If that doesn’t work, talk to Atvar. If he can’t do anything about it, you’re stuck.”

The concierge was a snooty Lizard named Nibgris. He understood about freezers; the Race used them to keep food fresh, just as humans did. But the idea that someone might want small bits of frozen water flummoxed him. “What would you use them for, superior Tosevite?” he asked, using the honorific with the same oily false politeness hotel people laid on back on Earth.

“To make the liquids I drink colder and more enjoyable,” Karen answered.

Nibgris’ eye turrets aimed every which way but right at her. That meant he thought she was crazy but was too polite to say so out loud. “How can a cold drink possibly be more enjoyable than one at the proper temperature?” he asked.

“To Tosevites, cold drinks are proper,” she said.

“What do you expect me to use to hold the bits of water?” he inquired.

“I do not know,” Karen said. “This is not my world. It is yours. I was hoping you might help me. Is that not why you are employed here?”

“Perhaps, superior female, you might use a few tens of measuring cups.” Nibgris’ mouth fell open in a laugh. He didn’t expect to be taken seriously.

Karen didn’t care what he expected. Briskly, she made the affirmative gesture. “They would do excellently. I thank you. Please bring a small freezer and the measuring cups up to my room at once.”

The concierge’s tailstump quivered in agitation. “We have not got that many cups in the entire establishment!”

“Do you suppose you could send someone out to buy them?” Karen asked. “I am sure your government would reimburse you. Even if it did not, though, I doubt the expense would bankrupt the hotel.”

Nibgris jerked as if a mosquito had bitten him. A sarcastic Big Ugly seemed to be the last thing he knew how to face. “It is not the expense,” he said plaintively. “It is the ridiculousness of the request.”

“Is any request that leads to making a guest more comfortable ridiculous?” Karen asked.

“Well… no.” Nibgris spoke with obvious reluctance. People who worked in hotels always claimed their first goal was making their guests comfortable. More often than not, it was really making things more convenient for themselves. That didn’t seem much different here on Home.

“I would do it myself, but I do not have any of your money,” Karen said. “It would be a great help to me and to my mate and to all the other Tosevites. We would be most grateful.” She added an emphatic cough.

By the way Nibgris’ tongue flicked in and out, he cared nothing for humans’ gratitude. But the resigned sigh that followed was amazingly manlike. “It shall be done, superior Tosevite.”

“I thank you,” Karen said sweetly. She could afford to be sweet now. She’d got what she wanted-or thought she had.

Nibgris took his own sweet time about having the Lizards who served him bring up the freezer. When Karen called the next day to complain, the concierge said, “My apologies, superior Tosevite, but there has been a certain disagreement with the kitchens. The cooks claim that anything connected with food or drink in any way is their province, and they should be the ones to bring the freezer and the measuring cups to you.”

“I do not care who does it. I only care that someone does it.” Karen used another emphatic cough. “Transfer my call to the head of the kitchens, if you would be so kind. I will see if I can get some action out of that male-or is it a female?”

“A female-her name is Senyahh.” Nibgris transferred the call with every sign of relief.

Senyahh seemed startled to see a Big Ugly staring out of the monitor at her. “Yes? You wish?” she asked in tones just this side of actively hostile.

“I wish the freezer Nibgris promised me yesterday, and the measuring cups in which to freeze water.” Karen was feeling just this side-or perhaps just the other side-of hostile herself. Snarling at one more Lizard functionary was the last thing she wanted to do, but by then she would have crawled through flames and broken glass to get her hands on ice cubes.

“Why do you think I am responsible for fulfilling Nibgris’ rash promises?” Senyahh demanded. “I see no necessity for such a bizarre request.”

“That is because you are not a Tosevite,” Karen said.

“By the spirits of Emperors past, I am glad I am not, too.” Senyahh tacked on a scornful emphatic cough.

Karen’s temper snapped. “By the spirits of Emperors past, Senyahh, I am glad of the same thing. You would be as much a disgrace to my species as you are to your own.” The head of the kitchens hissed furiously. Ignoring her, Karen went on, “I expect the freezer and the cups inside of a tenth of a day. If they are not here, I shall complain to Fleetlord Atvar, who has the hearing diaphragm of the present Emperor. Once Atvar is through with you, you may find out more about the spirits of Emperors past than you ever wanted to know. A tenth of a day, do you hear me?” She broke the connection before Senyahh could answer.

As she angrily stared at the blank monitor, she wondered if she’d gone too far. Would fear of punishment persuade the head of the kitchens to do as she wanted? Or would Senyahh decide Atvar was unlikely to side with a Big Ugly and against a fellow Lizard? Karen would know in a couple of hours.

“Being mulish?” Jonathan asked-a word he must have got from his father.

“I’ll say!” The trouble Karen had had poured out of her. She finished, “Do you think I antagonized the miserable Lizard?”

“Probably-but so what?” Jonathan sounded unconcerned. “If you act like a superior, the Lizards will think you are. It works the same way with us, only a little less, I think. And if you don’t have a freezer inside a tenth of a day, you really ought to give Atvar a piece of your mind. He’ll back you.”

“Do you think so?” Karen asked anxiously.

“You bet I do.” Jonathan used an emphatic cough even though they were speaking English. “If he tells you no, you can sic Dad on him, and you’d better believe he doesn’t want that.”

Karen judged Jonathan was right. Atvar had enough important things to quarrel and quibble about with Sam Yeager that something as monumentally trivial as ice cubes would only prove an irritation. If she were Senyahh, she wouldn’t have cared to risk the fleetlord’s wrath.

Time scurried on. Just before-just before-the deadline, the Race’s equivalent of a doorbell hissed for attention. Two Lizards with a square metal box on a wheeled cart stood outside. A cardboard carton full of plastic cups lay on top of the metal box. “You are the Tosevite who wanted a freezer?” one of the Lizards asked. He sounded as if he couldn’t have cared less one way or the other.

“I am,” Karen said.

“Well, here it is,” he said, and turned to his partner. “Come on, Fegrep. Give it a shove. As soon as we plug it in, we can go do something else.”

“Right,” Fegrep said. “Pretty crazy, a freezer in a room. And why does the Big Ugly want all those stupid cups?” He’d just heard Karen speak his language, but seemed to think she couldn’t understand it. Or maybe he just didn’t care.

Under other circumstances, Karen might have got angry. As things were, she was too glad to see the freezer to worry about anything else. The workmales wheeled it into the room, eased it down off the cart, and plugged it in. Then they left. Karen opened the freezer. It was cold in there, sure enough. She started filling the measuring cups full of water and sticking them inside the freezer. “Ice cubes!” she told Jonathan. “All we have to do is wait.”

“They’re round,” he observed. “How can they be ice cubes?”

She corrected herself: “Ice cylinders. Thank you, Mr. Webster’s Dictionary of the English Language.” Her husband might have got angry, too. Instead, he took a bow. As he must have known it would, that annoyed her even more.

After she started making ice cubes (she refused to think of them as cylinders) she kept opening the freezer every so often to see how they were doing. “You’re letting the cold air out,” Jonathan said helpfully.

“I know I am,” she answered. “I don’t care. I’ve been waiting all this time. I can wait a little longer.”

Some small stretch of time after she would have had ice cubes if she’d been patient, she had them anyhow. Coaxing them out of the measuring cups wasn’t so easy, but she managed. She put five of them in a glass of room-temperature-which is to say, lukewarm-water, then waited for them to do their stuff. After five minutes, she rested the glass against her cheek for a moment.

“Ahh!” she said. Then she drank. “Ahhhh!” she said. She’d never thought of ice water as nectar of the gods, but it would do. It would definitely do.

“Let me have some,” Jonathan said.

“Get your own glass,” Karen told him. “I earned this one.” He bent into the posture of respect and gave her an emphatic cough. Her snort turned into a laugh. Jonathan fixed himself a glass of ice water. He made the same sort of ecstatic noises as she had. She laughed again. She’d known he would.

Atvar gave only half a hearing diaphragm to Senyahh’s complaints. When the female finally paused to draw more air into her lung, he cut her off: “Hear me, Kitchen Chief. Any reasonable requests from these Tosevites are to be honored. Any-do you hear me?”

Senyahh glared at him out of the monitor. “I do not call a request for a freezer and a swarm of measuring cups reasonable, Exalted Fleetlord.”

Members of the Race were more patient than Big Uglies. At times like this, Atvar wondered why. “Let me make myself very plain. Any request is reasonable that does not involve major expense-a yeartenth’s hotel revenues, let us say-or danger to a member of the Race. Anything within those limits, your only proper response is, ‘It shall be done, superior Tosevite.’ And then you do it.”

“That is outrageous!” Senyahh exclaimed.

“I am sorry you feel that way,” Atvar replied. “But then, your record at this hotel has been good up until now. I am sure that will help you gain a new position once you are released from this one. For you will be released from this one if your insubordination continues for even another instant. Do I make myself plain enough for you to understand, Kitchen Chief?”

“You do. You are not nearly so offensive as the Big Ugly I dealt with, though,” Senyahh said.

“Is that a resignation?” Atvar asked.

With obvious reluctance, the kitchen chief made the negative gesture. “No, Exalted Fleetlord. It shall be done.” She broke the connection.

Atvar hoped he had put the fear for a happy afterlife into her. He wouldn’t have bet anything he worried about losing, though. If she’d tried so hard to obstruct one Tosevite request, she was liable to do the same or worse with another. Some males and females enjoyed being difficult. She might as well be a Big Ugly, Atvar thought. His mouth fell open in a laugh. A moment later, he wondered why and snapped it shut. That wasn’t funny.

But the real trouble with the Big Uglies wasn’t that they reveled in making nuisances of themselves. The real trouble was that they were too good at it. He’d thought that too many times back on Tosev 3. That he had reason to think it here on Home only proved he’d been right to worry on the other world, and that the males and females who’d recalled him hadn’t known what they were doing.

It proved that to Atvar, anyhow. Several of the officials who’d ordered him back from Tosev 3 still held their posts. By all appearances, they were still satisfied they’d done the right thing. That they now had to deal with Big Uglies here on Home should have given them a hint that the problem on Tosev 3 hadn’t been Atvar. It should have, but had it? Not likely, not as far as the former fleetlord could see.

The trouble-well, a trouble, anyhow-with the Big Uglies was that they were too good at whatever they set their minds to. The way Kassquit and Sam Yeager were approaching their imperial audiences was a case in point. He hadn’t said so to either one of them, but few members of the Race could have matched how much they’d learned, or how quickly.

He hissed softly. That thought reminded him of something he had to do. He called the protocol master in the capital. The male’s image appeared on the screen. “This is Herrep. I greet you, Exalted Fleetlord.”

“And I greet you, Protocol Master,” Atvar replied politely. “I wonder whether your staff has yet finished researching the question I put to you not long ago. The time for the wild Big Ugly’s audience with his Majesty fast approaches.”

“I am aware of that, yes,” Herrep said. He was an old male, older even than Atvar, and had held office a long time. His scales had the dusty tone age gave them, and sagged slightly on his bones. Because of their looser hides, old males and females looked a little more like Tosevites than younger members of the Race did. Herrep went on, “I hope you understand this is a matter from the very ancientest days, and not one to be researched in the same way as one from more recent times.”

“Why not?” the fleetlord asked. “Research is research, is it not? So it would seem to me, at any rate.”

But the protocol master made the negative gesture. “Not necessarily. For most research, anyone with a computer connected to the network and a certain curiosity can do as well as anyone else. But much of the material we are looking through is so old, it never went into the computer network at all. We have to locate it physically, to make sure we do not destroy it by examining it, and sometimes also to interpret it: the language is so very old, it has changed a good deal between that time and this.”

Atvar let out another low hiss, this one of wonder. “I did not realize your material was as old as that. You have my apology. You might as well be dealing with the same sort of situation as the Big Uglies do when they go through their archives.”

“I do not know what sort of research the Big Uglies do, or what sort of archives they have,” Herrep said. “But I do know I have an answer for you, or the beginnings of an answer.”

“Do you?” Atvar said eagerly. “Tell me, please!”

“However little I care to admit it, your wild Big Ugly of an aspirant appears to be correct,” the protocol master replied. “The imperial laver and imperial limner are not involved in the ceremony when the representative from an independent empire greets the Emperor. In ancientest days, before Home was unified, the Emperor sometimes sent out ambassadors of his own to other emperors. Their lavers and limners-for they too had such officials-were not involved, either.”

“I thank you,” Atvar said. “So independence is what matters? I do not suppose that Sam Yeager’s coming from a not-empire would affect the situation?”

“A not-empire?” Herrep said. “Please forgive me, Exalted Fleetlord, but I am unfamiliar with the term.” As best he could, Atvar explained the American Tosevite penchant for snoutcounting. The protocol master’s eye turrets moved in a way that said the idea revolted him. It revolted Atvar, too, but the Big Uglies seemed to thrive on it. Herrep asked, “On Tosev 3, such a temporary, snoutcounted sovereign is considered the equal of any other?”

“That is a truth. You need have no doubt of it whatever.” Atvar used an emphatic cough. “Not-empires are more common than empires there. The United States is one of the oldest ones; it has used this system for more than five hundred of our years.”

Herrep hissed scornfully. “And this is supposed to be a long time?”

“By our standards, no. By the standards Big Uglies use, Protocol Master, it is a fairly long time,” Atvar answered.

“You realize I would have to stretch a point, and stretch it a long way, to consider the representative of such a sovereign equal to an ambassador from a true empire,” Herrep said. “There is no precedent for such a thing.”

“There may not be any precedent on Home, but there is a great deal of it on Tosev 3,” Atvar said.

The protocol master made the negative gesture. “On Tosev 3, there is precedent for fleetlords treating with such individuals. There is none for the Emperor to do so.”

“If you refuse-and especially if you refuse at this stage-you offer the American Big Uglies a deadly insult. This is the sort of insult that could prove deadly in the most literal sense of the word,” Atvar said. “As for stretching a point-there is all the Tosevite precedent for empires dealing with not-empires. If we recognize the United States as independent-and what choice do we have, when it is? — we have to recognize that precedent, too. And remember, the American Big Uglies are here. They are also as formidable as that implies.”

“I do not want to do what is expedient,” Herrep said. “I want to do what is right.”

Alarm coursed through Atvar. He wished he’d never uttered the word not-empire in the protocol master’s hearing. By the nature of his job, Herrep cared more for punctilio than for the real world. The real world hadn’t impinged on the imperial court for more than a hundred thousand years. But it was here again. One way or another, Herrep was going to have to see that.

Carefully, the fleetlord said, “If helping to ensure peace not just between two independent entities”-that took care of empires and not-empires-“is not right, what is? And if you consult with his Majesty himself, I think you will find he has a lively interest in meeting the ambassador from the United States.”

On the monitor, Herrep stirred uncomfortably. “I am aware of that. I had, for a moment, forgotten that you were as well.” Atvar almost laughed, but at the last moment kept his amusement from showing. That struck him as a particularly revealing comment. The protocol master went on, “Very well, Exalted Fleetlord. I have no good reason to accept Tosevite precedents, but you remind me I have no good reason to reject them, either. We shall go forward as if this wild Big Ugly represented a proper empire.”

“I thank you,” Atvar said. “By the spirits of Emperors past, I think you are doing that which is best for the Empire.”

“I hope so,” Herrep said dubiously. “But I wonder about the sort of precedent I am setting. Will other wild Big Uglies from different not-empires come to Home seeking audience with his Majesty? Should they have it if they do?”

“It is possible that they may,” replied Atvar, who thought it was probable that they would. A starship from the SSSR was supposed to be on the way, in fact-but then, the SSSR’s rulers had killed off their emperor, something the fleetlord did not intend to tell Herrep. “If they succeed in coming here, they will have earned it, will they not? One group of independent Big Uglies, the Nipponese, have an emperor whose line of descent, they claim, runs back over five thousand of our years.”

“Still a parvenu next to the Emperor,” Herrep said. Atvar made the affirmative gesture. The protocol master sighed. “Still, I could wish they had got here first. We shall just have to endure these others.”

“They are all nuisances, whether they come from empires or not-empires,” Atvar said. With a sigh of his own that came from years of experience, much of which he would rather not have had, he went on, “It may almost be just as well that many of them have kept their independence. They are too different from us. We had little trouble assimilating the Rabotevs and Hallessi, and we thought building the Empire would always be easy. Even if we do eventually succeed with the Big Uglies, they have taught us otherwise.”

“You would know better than I,” Herrep said. “Aside from the obvious fact that snoutcounting is ridiculous, everything I have seen of these Big Uglies-the ones who have come to Home-suggests they are at least moderately civilized.”

Atvar made the affirmative gesture. “Oh, yes. I would agree with you. The American Tosevites sent the best they had. I was not worried about their lack of civilization, especially not here on Home. I was worried about how fast they progress in science and technology, and about how different from us they are sexually and socially. I do wonder if those two difficulties are related.”

“What could we do if they are?”

“As of now, nothing has occurred to me-or, so far as I know, to anyone else.”

“Then why waste time wondering?”

“You are a sensible male, Protocol Master. Of course this is what you would say,” Atvar replied. “The trouble is, the Big Uglies make me wonder about the good sense of good sense, if that makes any sense to you.” By Herrep’s negative gesture, it didn’t. Atvar wasn’t surprised. Nothing about Tosev 3 really made sense to the Race. Trouble? Oh, yes. Tosev 3 made plenty of trouble.

Dr. Melanie Blanchard and Mickey Flynn were floating in the Admiral Peary ’s control room when Glen Johnson pulled himself up there. Johnson felt a small twinge of jealousy listening to them talk as he came up the access tube. He knew that was idiotic, which didn’t prevent the twinge. Yes, Dr. Blanchard was a nice-looking woman-one of the nicer-looking women for more than ten light-years in any direction-but it wasn’t as if she were his. And she would be going down to the surface of Home before long, a journey on which neither he nor Flynn could hope to follow.

“It’s too bad,” she was saying when Johnson emerged. “That is really too bad.”

“What is?” Johnson asked.

“News from Earth,” Mickey Flynn said.

Johnson waited. Flynn said no more. Johnson hadn’t really expected that he would. With such patience as the junior pilot could muster, he asked, “What news from Earth?”

“An Arab bomb in Jerusalem killed Dr. Chaim Russie,” Melanie Blanchard said. “He was the grandson of Dr. Moishe Russie, the man for whom the Lizards’ medical college for people is named.”

“Did you know this Chaim Russie?” Johnson asked.

“I met him once. He was still a boy then,” she answered. “I knew Reuven Russie, his father, a little better. He’d married a widow. She had a boy, and they’d had Chaim and another son of their own, who I think was also a doctor, and they were happy.” She shook her head. “Reuven Russie would have been up in his eighties when this happened, so he might not have lived to see it. For his sake, I hope he didn’t.”

Johnson nodded. The news was fresh here, but all those years old back on Earth. Dr. Blanchard had taken that into account. A lot of people didn’t. Johnson said, “Was the bomb meant for Lizards or for Jews?”

“Who knows?” she answered. “I don’t think the bombers were likely to be fussy. They weren’t before I went into cold sleep, anyhow.”

“No, I suppose not.” Johnson looked at Flynn. “There were advantages to being out in the asteroid belt for so long. News from Earth had to be big to mean much to us. When the Lizards fought the Nazis, that mattered-especially because they blew up the Germans’ spaceship.”

“The Hermann Goring, ” Flynn said.

“Yeah.” Glen Johnson felt a certain dull surprise that the name didn’t rouse more hatred in him than it did. Back in the vanished age before the Lizards came, Hitler had been public enemy number one, and the fat Luftwaffe chief his right-hand man. Then all of a sudden the Nazis and the USA were on the same side, both battling desperately to keep from being enslaved by the Race. Goring went from zero to hero in one swell foop. If the Germans started shooting missiles at the Lizards, more power to ’em. And if they’d been building the missiles to shoot them at England or the Russians, well, that was then and this was now. Nothing like a new enemy to turn an old one into a bosom buddy.

That was then and this was now. Now was unimaginably distant for anybody old enough to remember the days before the Lizards came: the most ancient of the ancient back on Earth, and a handful of people here who’d cheated time through cold sleep. He looked out through the antireflection-coated glass. That was Home unwinding beneath him, in its gold and greens and blues: seas surrounded by lands, not continents as islands in the world ocean. The Admiral Peary was coming up toward Sitneff, where Sam Yeager and the rest of the American delegation were staying.

“Looks like a pretty good dust storm heading their way,” Johnson said. The gold-brown clouds obscured a broad swath of ground.

“That kind of weather is probably why the Lizards have nictitating membranes,” Dr. Blanchard said.

“Gesundheit,” Mickey Flynn responded gravely. “I’ve heard the term before, but I never knew quite what it meant.”

Why, you sandbagging so-and-so, Johnson thought. If that wasn’t bait to get the nice-looking doctor to show off and be pleasant, he’d never heard of such a thing. He only wished he’d thought of it himself.

Melanie Blanchard was only too happy to explain: “It’s their third eyelid. A lot of animals back on Earth have them, too. It doesn’t go up and down. It goes across the eye like a windshield wiper and sweeps away the dust and grit.”

“Oh,” Flynn said. He paused, no doubt for effect. “I always thought it had something to do with cigarettes.”

“With cigarettes?” Dr. Blanchard looked puzzled.

Johnson did, too, but only for a moment. Then he groaned. His groan made the doctor think in a different way. She groaned, too, even louder. Flynn smiled beatifically. He would have seemed the picture of innocence if he hadn’t been so obviously guilty.

“That’s one more thing these evil people did when they shanghaied me,” Johnson told Dr. Blanchard. “I used to spend more of my time on Earth than I did in space, and I used to smoke. So when they tied me up and carried me away on the Lewis and Clark, I had to quit cold turkey.”

“Take a good look at him,” Flynn told the doctor. “Can you imagine anyone who’d want to tie him up and carry him away? Anyone in his right mind, I mean?”

She ignored that and replied to Johnson: “In a way, you know, they did you a favor. Smoking tobacco is one of the dumbest things you can do if you want to live to a ripe old age. Lung cancer, heart disease, stroke, emphysema… All sorts of pleasant things can speed you out the door.”

“I liked it,” Johnson said. “Nothing like a cigarette after dinner, or after…” He sighed. It had been a very, very long time since he’d had a cigarette after sex. He tried to remember just how long, and with whom. Close to seventy years now, even if he’d managed to dodge a lot of them.

Now Mickey Flynn surveyed him with an eye that, if it wasn’t jaundiced, definitely had some kind of liver trouble. He knew why perfectly well. He’d managed to hint about sex in front of Dr. Blanchard. If he hinted about it, he might make her interested in it, perhaps even with him.

Or he might not. Doctors were unflappable about such matters. And Melanie Blanchard didn’t like-really didn’t like-cigarettes. “Damn things stink,” she said.

“Been so long now since I’ve had one, I’d probably say you were right,” Johnson admitted. “But I sure used to like them.”

“Lots of people did,” she answered. “Lots of people back on Earth are paying for it, too. Back when disease was likely to kill you before you got old, I don’t suppose there was anything much wrong with tobacco. Something else would get you before it did. But now that we know something about medicine, now that most people can expect to live out their full span, smoking has to be one of the stupidest things anybody can do.”

Johnson busied himself with looking out the window. He hadn’t had a cigarette in something close to fifteen years of body time. If a kindly Lizard offered him a smoke, though, he suspected he would take one. A male of the Race who hadn’t been able to enjoy a taste of ginger in a long time probably felt the same way about his chosen herb.

Johnson never got tired of the view. One of the reasons he’d become a flier was so he could look down and see the world from far above. Now he was looking down at another world from even farther above. As such things went, Home was an Earthlike planet. A lot of the same geological and biological forces were at work both places. But, while the results they’d produced were similar enough for beings evolved on one planet to live fairly comfortably on the other, they were a long way from identical. The differences were what fascinated him.

He got so involved staring at an enormous dry riverbed, he almost missed the intercom: “Colonel Johnson! Colonel Glen Johnson! Report at once to Scooter Bay One! Colonel Johnson! Colonel Glen Johnson! Report at once to-”

“ ’Bye,” he said, and launched himself down the tube he’d ascended a little while before. As long as nobody was screaming at him to report to Lieutenant General Healey’s office, he’d cheerfully go wherever he was told. He’d go to see Healey, too; he was military down to his toes. But he wouldn’t be cheerful about it.

“Good-you got here fast,” a technician said when he came gliding up.

“What’s going on?” Johnson asked.

“We got a Mayday call from the Lizards, if you can believe it,” the tech answered. “Their stuff is good, but it looks like it isn’t quite perfect. One of their scooters had its main engines go out not far from us. We’re closer than any of their ships, and they ask if we can bring the scooter crew back here till they make pickup.”

“I’ll go get ’em,” Johnson said, and started climbing into the spacesuit that hung by the inner airlock door. He paused halfway through. Laughing, he went on, “They’ll fluoroscope every inch of those poor Lizards before they let ’em into their ships. Gotta make sure they aren’t smuggling ginger, you know.”

“Well, sure,” the technician said. “They’ll probably send that Rabotev for the pickup, too. He doesn’t care anything about the stuff-though he might care about the money he can bring in for smuggling it.”

“There’s a thought.” Johnson finished getting into the spacesuit. He ran diagnostic checks on the scooter as fast as he could without scanting them. He didn’t want to get in trouble out there and need rescuing himself. When the outer airlock door opened he guided the scooter out with the steering jets. The tech gave him a bearing on the crippled Lizard scooter. His own radar identified the target. He fired a longish blast with his rear motor. The Admiral Peary shrank behind him.

He used the Lizards’ signaling frequency: “I greet you, members of the Race. Are you well? Do you need anything more than transportation? This is a scooter from the Tosevite starship, come to pick you up.” Partly by eye and partly by radar, he decided when to make the burn that would bring him to a halt near the Lizard craft in difficulties.

“We thank you, Tosevite. Except for engine failure, we are well.” The Lizard who’d answered was silent for a moment, probably pausing for a rueful laugh. “These things are not supposed to happen. They are especially not supposed to happen when you Big Uglies can make fun of us for bad engineering.”

“Yours is better than ours, and everyone knows it.” Johnson peered ahead. Yes, that was a scooter of the sort the Race built. “Nobody’s engineering is perfect, though. We already know that, too.”

“You are generous to show so much forbearance,” the Lizard replied. “Were our roles reversed, we would mock you.”

“If you like, you may think of me as laughing on the inside,” Johnson said. “Meanwhile, why not leave your scooter and come over to mine once I kill my relative velocity? I will take you back to my ship. Your friends can pick you up at their convenience.”

“It shall be done, superior sir,” the Lizard said. By the way the two members of the Race handled themselves as they pushed off from their disabled craft, they were experienced in free fall. Johnson put one of them in front of him and one behind, so as not to disturb his scooter’s center of mass too much.

As he burned for the Admiral Peary, he made the same sort of remark he had with the technician: “They will fumigate you before they let you back on any of your own ships.” His passengers were silent. They would have been silent if they were laughing, too. He looked at each of them in turn. Laughing, they weren’t.