Homeward Bound (67 page)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Well . . . yes,” Sam said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Excuse me?” the American Tosevite replied.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Or of three worlds,” Major Nichols said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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