Homeward Bound (18 page)

Jonathan thought it over, then slowly nodded. “Well, maybe you’re right. I sure hope so. But I still remember what happened in the 1960s, even if nobody back there will. What they did to you wasn’t right.”

“It was a long time ago—for everybody except me,” his father said. “Even for me, it wasn’t yesterday.” He finished his drink, then got up and fixed himself another. “See? You’ve got a lush for an old man.”

“You’re no lush,” Jonathan said.

“Well . . . not like that,” Sam Yeager admitted. “When I was playing ball . . . Sweet Jesus Christ, some of those guys could put the sauce away. Some of ’em drank so much, it screwed them out of a chance to make the big leagues. And some of ’em knew they weren’t ever going to make the big leagues because they just weren’t good enough, and they drank even harder so they wouldn’t have to think about that.”

“You weren’t going to,” Jonathan said incautiously.

“And I drank some,” his father answered. “I might have made it to the top if I hadn’t torn up my ankle. That cost me most of a season and most of my speed. Hell, I might have made it if the Lizards hadn’t come. I could still swing the bat some, and I was 4-F as could be—they wouldn’t draft me with full upper and lower plates. But even if it was the bush leagues, I liked what I was doing. The only other thing I knew how to do then was farm, and playing ball beat the crap out of that.”

Jonathan took another pull at his glass. It didn’t taste like much, but it was plenty strong. He said, “You like what you’re doing now.”

“You bet I do.” His father dropped an emphatic cough into English. “There hasn’t been a really big war with the Lizards since the first round ended the year after you were born. The Germans were damn fools to take ’em on alone in the 1960s, but then, the Nazis
were
damn fools. If there’s another fight, it won’t just take out Earth. Home will get it, too.”

“And the other worlds in the Empire,” Jonathan said. “We wouldn’t leave them out.”

His father nodded. “No, I don’t suppose we would. They could hit back if we did. That’s a lot of people and Lizards and Rabotevs and Hallessi dead. And for what? For what, goddammit?” Every once in a while, he still cussed like the ballplayer he had been. “For nothing but pride and fear, far as I can see. If I can do something to stop that, you’d better believe I will.”

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

Instead of answering straight out, his father said, “If anything happens to me here, the Lizards are liable to ask for you to take over as our ambassador. Are you ready for that, just in case?”

“I’m not qualified, if that’s what you mean,” Jonathan answered. “I’m not telling you any big secrets; you know it as well as I do. The only reason they might think of me is that I’m your kid.”

“Not the only reason, I’d say.” His father drank another slug of ersatz vodka. “I’ve been studying ever since they revived me, trying to catch up on all the stuff that happened after I went into cold sleep. From everything I’ve been able to find out, you were doing a hell of a job as Lizard contact man. They wouldn’t have asked you to come on the
Admiral Peary
if you and Karen weren’t good.”

“Oh, we are.” The hooch had left Jonathan with very little modesty, false or otherwise. “We’re damn good. And all those years of dealing with Mickey and Donald gave us a feel for the Race I don’t think anybody could get any other way. But neither one of us is as good as you are.”

That wasn’t modesty. That was simple truth, and Jonathan knew it even if he didn’t like it. He and Karen and most human experts on the Race learned more and more over years about how Lizards thought and behaved. No doubt his old man had done that, too. But his father, somehow, wasn’t just an expert on the Race, though he was that. Sam Yeager had the uncanny ability to think like a Lizard, to become a Lizard in all ways except looks and accent. People noticed it. So did members of the Race. So had Kassquit, who was at the same time both and neither.

He had the ability. Jonathan didn’t. Neither did Karen. They were both outstanding at what they did. That only illustrated the difference between being outstanding and being a genius.

With a wry chuckle, the genius—at thinking like a Lizard, anyhow—who was Jonathan’s father said, “That’s what I get for reading too much science fiction. Nothing like it to kill time on a train ride or a bus between one bush-league town and the next.” He’d said that many times before. He claimed the stuff had loosened up his mind and helped him think like a Lizard.

But Jonathan shook his head. “I used to believe that was what did it for you, too. But I read the stuff. I started younger than you, ’cause we had it in the house and I knew ever since I was little what I wanted to do. I liked it, too. It was fun. And I got to study the Race in college, where you had to learn everything from scratch. You’re still better at it than I am—better than anybody else, too.”

“When I was a kid, I wanted to be Babe Ruth,” his father said. “The only times I ever got into a big-league ballpark, I had to pay my own way. You’re playing in the majors, son, and you’re a star. That’s not bad.”

“Yeah. I know.” Jonathan had his own fair share of the gray, middle-aged knowledge that told him he’d fallen somewhat short of the place he’d aimed at when he was younger. That was somewhat mitigated because he hadn’t fallen as far short as a lot of people did. But that his father held the place he’d aimed for and couldn’t quite reach . . . “I do wonder how Babe Ruth’s kid would have turned out if he’d tried to be a ballplayer. Even if he were a good one, would it have been enough?”

“I think Ruth had girls,” his father said.

Jonathan sent him an angry look.
How could he misunderstand what I was saying like that?
he wondered. And then, catching the gleam behind his old man’s bifocals, Jonathan realized he hadn’t misunderstood at all. He’d just chosen to be difficult. “Damn you, Dad,” he said.

His father laughed. “I’ve got to keep you on your toes somehow, don’t I? And if Babe Ruth’s son turned out to be Joe DiMaggio, he wouldn’t have one goddamn thing to be ashamed of. Do you hear me?”

“I suppose so,” Jonathan said. In a way, being very good at what he’d always wanted to do was not only enough but an embarrassment of riches. He’d been good enough—and so had Karen—to get chosen to come to Home, as his father’d said. But that wasn’t all of what he’d wanted. He’d wanted to be the
best.

And there was his father, sitting in this cramped little Lizard-sized room with him, slightly pie-eyed from all that almost-vodka he’d poured down, and he
was
the best. No doubt about it, they’d broken the mold once they made Sam Yeager.

How many human ballplayers had sons who couldn’t measure up to what they’d done? A good many. Most of them you never even heard about, because their kids couldn’t make the majors at all. How many had had sons who were better than they were? Few. Damn few.

His father said, “When it comes to this stuff, I can’t help being what I am, any more than you can help being what you are. We both put in a lot of hard work. I know what all you did while I was awake to see it. I don’t know everything you did while I was in cold sleep, but you couldn’t have been asleep at the switch. You’re here, for heaven’s sake.”

“Yeah,” Jonathan said in what he hoped wasn’t too hollow a voice. “I’m here.” He
was
an expert on the Race. He
had
busted his hump in the seventeen years after Dad went into cold sleep. And if expertise didn’t quite make up for genius, he couldn’t help it. His father was right about that.

“I’m going to ask you one thing before I throw you out and flop,” Sam Yeager said, finishing his drink and standing up on legs that didn’t seem to want to hold him. “If you want to blame fate or God or the luck of the draw for the way things are, that’s fine. What I want to ask you is, don’t blame me. Please? Okay?”

He really sounded anxious. Maybe that was the booze talking through him. Or maybe he understood just what Jonathan was thinking. After all, he’d had to deal with failure a lot larger than Jonathan’s.

What would he have done if the Lizards hadn’t come? For all his brave talk, odds were he wouldn’t have made the big leagues. Then what? Played bush-league ball as long as he could, probably. And after that? If he was lucky, he might have hooked on as a coach somewhere, or a minor-league manager. More likely, he would have had to look for ordinary work wherever he happened to be when he couldn’t get around on a fastball any more.

And the world never would have found out the one great talent he had in him. He would have gone through life—well, not quite ordinary, because not everybody could play ball even at his level, but unfulfilled in a certain ultimate sense. Jonathan couldn’t say that about himself, and he knew it. He nodded. He smiled, too, and it didn’t take too much extra effort. “Okay, Dad,” he said. “Sure.”

Although Ttomalss had gone into cold sleep after all the Big Uglies who’d come to Home, he’d been awake longer than they had. His starship had traveled from Tosev 3 to Home faster than their less advanced craft. He called up an image of their ramshackle ship on his computer monitor. It looked as if it would fall apart if anyone breathed on it hard. That wasn’t so, of course. It
had
got here. It might even get back to Tosev’s solar system.

The psychologist made the image go away. Looking at it only wasted his time. What really mattered wasn’t the ship that had brought the Tosevites here. What mattered was that they were here— and everything that had happened back on Tosev 3 since they left.

He still didn’t know
everything,
of course—didn’t and wouldn’t. Radio took all those years to travel between Tosev’s system and this one. But, in the communications both Fleetlord Reffet, who led the colonization fleet, and Shiplord Kirel, who headed what was left of the conquest fleet after Atvar’s recall, sent back to Home, Ttomalss found a rising note of alarm.

It had been obvious even to Ttomalss, back during his time on Tosev 3, that the Big Uglies were catching up with the Race in both technology and knowledge. He’d assumed the Tosevites’ progress would plateau as time went on and they finally did pull close to even with the Race. He’d assumed, in other words, that the Race knew everything, or almost everything, there was to know.

That was turning out not to be true. Reports from both Reffet and Kirel talked about Tosevite scientific advances that had the psychologist wondering whether he fully understood the news coming from Tosev 3. He also began to wonder whether Reffet and Kirel and the males and females working under them fully understood what was happening on Tosev 3.

When he said as much to Atvar, the former fleetlord of the conquest fleet responded with the scorn Ttomalss had expected from him: “Reffet never has understood anything. He never will understand anything, and he never can understand anything. He has not got the brains of a retarded azwaca turd.”

“And Kirel?” Ttomalss asked.

“Kirel is capable enough. But Kirel is stodgy,” Atvar said. “Kirel has brains enough. What Kirel lacks is imagination. I have seen kamamadia nuts with more.” He rolled out one striking phrase after another that morning.

“What would you do, were you still in command on Tosev 3?” Ttomalss asked.

Atvar swung both eye turrets toward him. They were sitting in one of the small conference rooms in the hotel where the Big Uglies were staying. How many other conference rooms all across Home were just like this one, with its sound-absorbing ceiling tiles, its greenish brown walls—walls not far from the color of skin for the Race, a soothing color—its writing board and screen and connection to the planetwide computer network, its stout tables and not quite comfortable chairs? Only the fact that some of the chairs now accommodated Tosevite posteriors—not quite comfortably, from what the Big Uglies said— hinted at anything out of the ordinary.

After a pause, Atvar said, “Why do you not come for a walk with me? It is a nice enough day.”

“A walk?” Ttomalss responded as if he’d never heard the words before. Atvar made the affirmative gesture. With a shrug, the researcher said, “Well, why not?”

Out they went. It
was
a nice enough day. Atvar let out what sounded like a sigh of relief. “We were certain to be recorded in there,” he said. “Now that I am no longer in charge on Tosev 3, I do not wish to be quoted on what to do about it by anyone who could substantiate the record.”

“I see,” Ttomalss said. “Well, since I am not in a position to do that, what is your opinion on what to do in aid of Tosev 3?”

“That Reffet and Kirel are cowards.” Atvar’s voice went harsh and hard. “The Big Uglies are gaining an advantage on us. You know this is true. So do I. So does everyone else with eyes in his eye turrets. But the males allegedly leading on Tosev 3 have not the courage to draw the proper conclusion.”

“Which is?”

“You were there. You already know my view. We cannot afford to let the Big Uglies get ahead of us. They are already here with one ship. That is bad enough, but tolerable. All this ship can do is hurt us. If they send fleets to all our solar systems, though, they can destroy us. They can, and they might. We attacked them without warning. If they have the chance, why should they not return the favor? And so, as I proposed many years ago, our best course is to destroy them first.”

“That would also mean destroying our own colony,” Ttomalss said.

“Better a part than the whole.” Atvar used an emphatic cough. “Far better.”

“I gather Reffet and Kirel do not agree?”

“They certainly do not.” Atvar spoke with fine contempt. “They fail to see the difference between the purple itch, for which a soothing salve is all the treatment needed, and a malignancy that requires the knife.”

“You are outspoken,” Ttomalss observed.

“By the spirits of Emperors past, Senior Researcher, I feel here what Straha must have felt back on Tosev 3 before he tried to oust me,” Atvar exclaimed.

Ttomalss hissed in astonishment. Shiplord Straha had been so disgusted over the way the conquest fleet was being run that, after his attempt to supplant Atvar failed, he’d defected to the American Big Uglies. He’d later returned to the Race with news from Sam Yeager that the Americans had been the ones to attack the colonization fleet. Nothing less than news like that could have restored him to the fleetlord’s good graces, or even to a semblance of them.