Aftershocks (78 page)

“That is . . . very good news, superior sir.” Kassquit added an emphatic cough. She knew she sounded astonished. She
was
astonished. That the Race would put her wishes ahead of its own research was something to be astonished about. Then she checked her swelling delight. “Wait.”

“What is it?” Ttomalss asked.

“You say you are able to tell me the routine recording of my actions has stopped,” Kassquit answered. “You do not say that this is a truth.
Is
it a truth, superior sir?”

She watched him narrowly. She was not a female of the Race, to have instinctual cues about what his body language meant, but she’d been watching him all her life. When he flinched now, the motion was tiny, but she saw it. And when he said, “What do you mean?” she caught the startled alarm in his voice.

“I mean that you were lying to me,” she said sadly. “I mean that you thought I would not pay close enough attention to your words. When I was a hatchling, I would not have. But I am an adult now. When you lie to me, I have some chance of realizing it.”

“You do not understand.” But Ttomalss didn’t deny what she’d said.

She wished he would have denied it. “I understand you have lied to me. I understand I cannot trust you any more. Do you understand—do you have any idea—how much pain that causes me? I am sorry, superior sir, but I do not think I want to see you again for some time to come. Please go.”

“Kassquit, I—” Ttomalss began.

“Get out!” Kassquit shrieked at the top of her lung—no, lungs; being a Tosevite, she had two. They seemed to make her voice doubly loud, doubly shrill, inside the little cubicle. Ttomalss cowered in alarm as her cry echoed and reechoed from the metal walls. Without a word, he fled.

As the door hissed shut behind him, Kassquit fought the urge to run after him and do him an injury. Assuming she actually could, what would it do except land her in trouble?
It would make me feel better,
she thought. But, in the end, that proved not quite reason enough, and she let her mentor escape.

She made the negative gesture. “No. I let him escape physically,” she said, much more quietly than she’d ordered him to go. “But he will not get away with it, by the spirits of Emperors past.”

After casting down her eyes as any other citizen of the Empire would have, she made a telephone call. A female of the Race said, “Office of Fleetlord Reffet, fleetlord of the colonization fleet. How may . . . I help . . . you?” Her voice faltered as she saw herself facing a Tosevite rather than the member of the Race she’d expected.

“I am Junior Researcher Kassquit,” Kassquit said. “I should like to speak to the Exalted Fleetlord, if that is possible.”

“I doubt very much that it will be,” the female replied.

Such a lack of acceptance didn’t even anger Kassquit any more; she’d encountered it too often. She said, “Please mention my name to the fleetlord. You may possibly be surprised.”

To another member of the Race, the females surely would have said,
It shall be done.
Here, she plainly debated refusing Kassquit altogether. At last, with a shrug, she replied, “Oh, very well.” Her image disappeared as she set herself to finding out whether Fleetlord Reffet would indeed condescend to speak to this Big Ugly who bore the title and name of a female of the Race.

If Reffet decided he didn’t care to speak with Kassquit, she probably wouldn’t see the female in his office again; the connection would just be broken. But Kassquit knew she’d done the Race—and Reffet—a considerable service in identifying the male who called himself Regeya on the electronic network as Sam Yeager, wild Big Ugly. She hoped the fleetlord would remember, too.

And, for a moment, she wished she could forget. Had she not unmasked Sam Yeager, she would never have become intimate with Jonathan Yeager. She would have come closer—much closer—to remaining a good counterfeit female of the Race. But that hadn’t been how things worked out. Now Jonathan Yeager was permanently mated to another wild Big Ugly. And now Kassquit knew she was doomed always to stay betwixt and between. She could never make herself into a proper member of the Race, but she could never fully be a Tosevite, either.

The female reappeared. “The fleetlord
will
speak to you,” she said in startled tones. She vanished again. Reffet’s image replaced hers.

Kassquit folded into the posture of respect. “I greet you, Exalted Fleetlord,” she said. “Is it not a truth that I have been adjudged a full citizen of the Race?”

“Let me examine the facts before I answer, Junior Researcher,” Reffet said. One of his eye turrets swung away from her, presumably to look at another monitor. No matter how she tried to make them behave so, her eyes refused. After a little while, Reffet swung both eye turrets back toward her. “Yes, that does appear to be a truth.”

“Do I have all the privileges of any other citizen of the Empire, then?” she persisted.

“I would say that would follow from the other.” Reffet added the affirmative gesture.

“In that case, Exalted Fleetlord . . .” Kassquit took a deep breath. “In that case, I request that you formally reprimand my mentor, Senior Researcher Ttomalss, for falsely assuring me that he had stopped recording my every activity when in fact he has not. He admitted as much when I caught him in the lie. And I daresay you can see and hear him admit as much on the recording he has denied making. I also request that you order him to cease such recordings in the future.”

“Junior Researcher, are you sure you wish to pursue this formally?” Reffet asked.

“Exalted Fleetlord, I am,” Kassquit replied. “I see no other way to gain at least some of the privacy a citizen of the Race is entitled to. Being who I am, being what I am, I know I can never hope to lead a normal life. But a citizen of the Empire should not have to lead a life in which she is on constant display.”

“Truth,” the fleetlord of the colonization fleet said. He let out a soft hiss as he pondered. At last, he made the affirmative gesture to show he had decided. “I shall order Ttomalss to cease this recording. But I shall not reprimand him. As you note, your situation is not and cannot be normal.”

“I thank you,” Kassquit said. “But perhaps you misunderstood. I do not want him reprimanded for the recording. I want him reprimanded for the lie.”

“Think carefully on this, Junior Researcher,” Reffet said. “I understand your reasons, I believe. But do you truly wish to alienate your mentor? For one in your . . . unusual position, having a prominent friend could prove valuable, and not having one could prove the reverse.” He used an emphatic cough.

Kassquit started to answer with something sharp, but checked herself while she thought. Reluctantly, she decided the fleetlord’s advice was good. “I thank you,” she said. “Let it be as you suggested. But could you please informally let Ttomalss know you are displeased with him because of the lie?”

Reffet’s mouth fell open in a laugh. “Perhaps you do not need a prominent friend after all. You are a strong advocate for yourself. I shall do that. Farewell.”

Well enough pleased with herself, Kassquit began checking the areas of the electronic network in which she was interested. Before long, Ttomalss telephoned her. Without preamble, he said, “I suppose you are responsible for the tongue-whipping I just got from Fleetlord Reffet.”

“Yes, superior sir, I am,” Kassquit answered.

“I am certain you think I deserve it, too,” Ttomalss said. “Things are now arranged as you desired. You are no longer being routinely recorded, and that
is
a truth.” He used an emphatic cough.

“Good,” Kassquit said, and used one of her own. She and Ttomalss both broke the connection at the same time. She hoped she wouldn’t have to go on without his help. If she did, though, she expected she would manage. She was fundamentally alone. Being who and what she was, how could she be anything else? “I just have to live with it,” she murmured, and set about to do exactly that.

Vyacheslav Molotov was walking past his secretary’s desk on the way to his own office when his legendary impassivity cracked. Stopping in his tracks, he pointed at the object that had startled him and said,
“Bozhemoi,
Pyotr Maksimovich, what on earth is
that?
”

“Comrade General Secretary, it is called a Furry,” his secretary replied. “My cousin is the protocol officer in our embassy to the United States, and he sent it to me. They are, apparently, all the rage there—by what he said, he had to fight a mob of housewives at a department store to get his hands on any of them.”

“I had forgotten you were related to Mikhail Sergeyevich,” Molotov said. He peered over the tops of his spectacles at the so-called Furry. “I fail to see the appeal. There must be many more attractive stuffed animals.”

“But this is not an ordinary stuffed animal, Comrade General Secretary,” his secretary said. “Here, let me show you.” He aimed a handheld control at the toy’s nose. The Furry opened its eyes and swung them over the room, for all the world as if it really were waking up and looked around. It waved a hand and spoke in English.

“Bozhemoi!
” Molotov said again. “I see what you mean. It is almost as if the devil’s grandmother lives inside the little thing.” When he spoke, the Furry’s eyes turned toward him. It said something else in English. For all he knew, it was answering him. “Does it hear me?” he asked.

“Literally, no,” his secretary said. “In effect, yes. It has all manners of sensors and circuits stolen from the Lizards’ technology, which make it much more versatile than toys commonly are.”

“Versatile,” Molotov echoed, watching the Furry. It had been looking at the secretary, but its alarmingly lifelike eyes returned to him when he spoke. “Amazing,” he murmured. “The Americans are foolish to use so much of this valuable technology in something to amuse children. They are, in some ways, very much like children themselves.”

“My cousin writes that a Canadian actually invented the Furries, though they’re being made in the United States,” his secretary said.

“Canadians. Americans.” Molotov shrugged. “Six of one, half a dozen of the other. There are no big differences between them, the way there are between us Russians and the Ukrainians, for instance.” He warily eyed the Furry. Sure enough, it was eyeing him, too. “Turn it off, Pyotr Maksimovich.”

“Certainly, Comrade General Secretary.” His secretary wasn’t about to tell him no. When he used the control again, the Furry yawned, waved good-bye, said one last thing in English (“That means, ‘Good night,’ ” Molotov’s secretary said), and closed its eyes. It truly might have been falling asleep.

“I hope your children enjoy it,” Molotov said. He had to repress the urge to sidle around his secretary’s desk as he finally went on into his office.
It is only a toy, a machine,
he told himself,
nothing but plush and plastic and circuits programmed to perform one way or another
. He was a thorough-going rationalist and materialist, so that should have been self-evident truth. And so it was—when he forced himself to look at it rationally. When he didn’t . . . When he didn’t, the devil’s grandmother might have animated the Furry.

Sitting down at his desk, going through paperwork—all that seemed a great relief. He’d done it every day for years, for decades. Getting up for some tea and a couple of little sweet cakes dusted with powdered sugar was routine, too. The more he stuck to routine, the less he had to think about the Furry and what it implied. So much technology, casually lavished on a toy! The USSR had stolen the same technology from the Race, and could have matched the Furry—but any economic planner who dared suggest such a thing would have gone to the gulag the next minute.

Molotov wondered how many Furries would be imported into the Soviet Union, and what sort of demand for such fripperies they would create among the majority who would not prove able to get their hands on them. He shrugged. He cared very little whether or not people clamored for consumer goods. What sensible planner would? The Red Army got what it needed. The Party got what it needed. If anything happened to be left over after that, the people got it.
Unlike the capitalist Americans, we have our priorities straight,
Molotov thought smugly.

After a while, he glanced at the clock. It was after ten. Zhukov and Gromyko should have been here on the hour. Molotov tapped one finger on the desk. Most Russians were hopelessly unpunctual, but those two had learned to come and go by the clock, not by their own inclination. Where were they, then?

Almost as soon as the question formed in his mind, he got the answer. Squeaky English came from the anteroom. Molotov’s secretary’s Furry had captured the head of the Red Army and the foreign commissar no less than it had ensnared Molotov himself. He went out to the anteroom and said, “Good morning, Comrades. Have you begun your second childhoods, to play with toys instead of conducting the business of the Soviet Union?”

Gromyko said, “It
is
a clever gadget, Vyacheslav Mikhailovich. It is also a funny gadget, if you speak English.”

Zhukov nodded. Delight glowed on his broad peasant features. Plainly, he would sooner have gone on fooling around with the Furry than dealing with state business. He said, “I’m going to get some of these . . . for my grandchildren, of course.”

“Of course,” Molotov said dryly.

With obvious regret, the diplomat and the soldier allowed themselves to be led away from the American toy. Even as Zhukov sat down in front of Molotov’s desk, he said, “That’s a damn fine toy, no two ways about it.”

“There are always two ways about everything, Georgi Konstantinovich,” Gromyko said. “The second way here is that the Americans waste so much energy and technological expertise on this piece of frivolity when they could be using them to some advantage on their own defense.”

“All right, something to that,” Zhukov allowed. “But a little fun’s not against the law every now and then.” He still sometimes thought like a peasant, all right.

Molotov said, “Can we forget the toys for the time being and discuss our plan of action for China? That was, if you will recall, the reason we were to assemble here today. Had I known of the Furry in advance, I assure you I would have put it at the head of the agenda.”