Homeward Bound (66 page)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Yes, but which?” Flynn asked.

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

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

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

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

“There’s another one,” Stone agreed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Where did you hear that?” Johnson asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*    *    *

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

“You remember!” Nesseref said in surprise.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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