Down to Earth (21 page)

“Bye-bye,” Jonathan said to them, and waved. His father echoed him with word and gesture. And, a little tentatively, a little awkwardly, the hatchlings waved back. Even a couple of weeks before, they hadn’t known to do that. Excitement tingled through Jonathan. The Lizards couldn’t talk. Heaven only knew when they would. But they’d started to communicate without words.

“Slowly,” Ttomalss said. “Tell me slowly about the conversation you had with this Big Ugly.” He was most careful not to say,
with this other Big Ugly.

“It shall be done, superior sir,” Kassquit said, but a moment later she was babbling again, her words falling over one another in their eagerness to come forth. Ttomalss tried to decide whether that eagerness sprang from glee at surviving the encounter or from Kassquit’s desire to talk with the Tosevite—
the other Tosevite—
again as soon as she got the chance. He couldn’t.

I shall have to check the recording of the conversation myself
, the researcher thought. Kassquit didn’t know her telephone was constantly monitored. Ttomalss knew he would have to take care not to reveal any undue knowledge. That would destroy Kassquit’s spontaneity and lessen her value as an experimental subject.

When she finally slowed down, Ttomalss asked her, “And how do you feel about this encounter?”

Her face, unlike those of Big Uglies raised by their own kind, revealed little of what she thought. That made her seem a little less alien to Ttomalss. After a pause for thought, she said, “I do not precisely know, superior sir. In some ways, he seemed to understand me remarkably well.”

Like calls to like,
Ttomalss thought. But he did not say it, for fear of putting thoughts in Kassquit’s mind that she hadn’t had for herself. What he did say was more cautious: “In some ways, you say? But not in all?”

“Oh, no, superior sir, not in all,” Kassquit answered. “How could that be possible? I have been raised among the Race, while he is only a wild Big Ugly.”

Unmistakable pride rang in her voice. Ttomalss understood that; he wouldn’t have wanted to be a wild Big Ugly, either. He asked, “Are you interested in holding further conversations with this—what did you say the Tosevite’s name was?”

“Sam Yeager.” Kassquit, naturally, pronounced the alien syllables more clearly than Ttomalss could have done. “Yes, superior sir, I think I am—or willing, at any rate. You have spoken of me as a link between the Race and the Tosevites. I know the Race’s side of this link well. Except for my biology, though, I know next to nothing about the Tosevite side.”

Her ignorance was deliberate on Ttomalss’ part; he’d wanted to integrate her as fully into the Race as he could. Now it was time to see how well he’d done. But something else sprang to mind first. “Sam Yeager?” he said, knowing he was botching the name but wanting to bring it out as well as he could. “That is somehow familiar. Why is it somehow familiar?”

“I do not know, superior sir,” Kassquit answered. “It was not familiar to me.”

But Ttomalss hadn’t asked the question of her, not really; he’d been talking to himself. He went over to his computer terminal and keyed in the name. The answer came back almost at once. “I thought so!” he exclaimed, skimming through the information on the screen. “This Yeager is one of the Big Uglies’ leading experts on the Race, and has done considerable writing and speaking on the subject.”

“As if the Big Uglies could have experts on the Race!” Kassquit said scornfully.

“They seek to learn about us, as we seek to learn about them,” Ttomalss answered. “I am, in some measure, an expert on Tosevites, so this Big Ugly may be my counterpart in the not-empire known as the United States.”

After some thought, Kassquit made the affirmative gesture. “It could be so,” she said. “He appeared on our computer network for some time without drawing suspicion. No one with only a little familiarity with the Race could have done that.”

“Truth,” Ttomalss said; he would not have cared to try to impersonate a Big Ugly, even if only electronically. “In his way, then, he too may be a link between the Tosevites and the Race. Perhaps further conversations between you may indeed be of value. I am glad you are willing to hold them.”

“I suppose I am,” Kassquit agreed. “We must make arrangements before we can do that, of course. His telephone is not fully integrated into our network; he came to our consulate in his city to call me. I can exchange messages with him by computer, but that is not quite the same thing.”

“No—it lacks immediacy,” Ttomalss agreed. “But it will do to set up a time for another conversation. Feel free to make those arrangements.”

“Very well, superior sir.” Kassquit assumed the posture of respect. “I depart.” She left his compartment, ducking her head a little to get out through the doorway.

Ttomalss wondered if he ought to get in touch with this Yeager himself. After the Deutsche, a Tosevite who showed some understanding of the Race would prove a refreshing change. In the end, though, he refrained.
Let Kassquit handle it,
he thought.
Best to learn how she will fare in this new situation.
She had the right of it; he had brought her up as a link between the wild Tosevites and the Empire, between Tosev 3’s past and its future. An unused link was useless.

And it was very interesting indeed that the Big Uglies were developing links of their own to the Race. Ttomalss spoke into the computer: “The Tosevites consistently demonstrate coping skills far superior to those the Rabotevs and the Hallessi showed after their initial contact with the Race. This no doubt hatches from the intense competition among groups of Big Uglies prior to the arrival of the Race. The Tosevites have come to view us as if we were one more of their not-empires: dangerous to them, but not necessarily of overwhelming superiority.”

He stabbed out a fingerclaw and turned off the recording mechanism. Nevertheless, he continued speaking out loud. It helped him put his thoughts in order: “And how do the Tosevites’ coping skills compare to those of the Race? Unless I am badly mistaken, they outdo us to the same degree as they do the Rabotevs and Hallessi. They are used to dealing with powerful rivals and to adapting themselves to changing circumstances. Both these things are unfamiliar to us, or were unfamiliar to us before we came to Tosev 3.”

He sighed. That was, if anything, an understatement. Back on Home and throughout the Empire, the Race viewed change with active suspicion. It occurred slowly, over centuries, so that it was rarely visible in the course of a male or female’s lifetime. Things weren’t like that on Tosev 3—another understatement.

With the recorder still off, Ttomalss continued, “And the Big Uglies have had an altogether unexpected influence on the Race. Because the Tosevites have proved so strong and so quick to change, they have forced the males of the conquest fleet to become far more changeable than is our norm. This is also proving true for the males and females of the conquest fleet, but to a lesser degree. Indeed, the difference in outlook between veterans of Tosev 3 and the far more numerous newcomers has caused considerable friction between the two groups.”

He’d seen that firsthand, not least in his dealings with Felless. She had learned a good deal since her revival, but still did not really appreciate just how changeable the Big Uglies were, because she was not very changeable herself . . . except when she’d tasted ginger.

“Ginger,” Ttomalss muttered. Before he said anything else, he checked to make sure he truly had turned off the recorder. Talking about ginger was nearly as dangerous as talking about explosive metal. Once he’d satisfied himself no one but he would ever hear his words, he went on, “Ginger is another change agent here on Tosev 3. That was true before the colonization fleet came, but it is even more true now, thanks to the herb’s effects on females. Tosev 3 disrupts even our sexuality, pushing us closer to Tosevite norms. This will have profound consequences for the relationship between this world and the rest of the Empire for a very long time to come.”

No, he couldn’t have said any of that in a place where it might have become public. From things he’d gathered down at the embassy to the
Reich,
discussions on these subjects were under way at the highest levels. If the fleetlords and shiplords and ambassadors wanted his opinions, they would ask for them. His title might be senior researcher, but he was not senior enough to offer his views unsolicited. Nor would those above him be delighted if his unsolicited views went out over the computer network.

He sighed. Hierarchy and concern for status were and always had been hallmarks of the Race. Back on Home, where everyone played by the rules, they worked fine and contributed to the stability of society. On Tosev 3 . . . Here, Ttomalss feared they made the Race less adaptable than it should have been.

“Adaptable,” he muttered. “Coping skills.” The Race shouldn’t have had to adapt. It shouldn’t have had to cope. The Big Uglies should have been the ones doing all the coping. By now, they should have accepted the conquest. They should have been learning the language of the Race in place of their own multitude of tongues. They should have begun to venerate the Emperor, as Ttomalss did himself.

Instead, they stubbornly preferred their own superstitions. Some of them even presumed to mock the veneration of Emperors past, even if it had served the Race well for a hundred thousand years and more, and the Rabotevs and Hallessi since they were conquered. Ttomalss hissed angrily, remembering the arrogant Dr. Rascher in the
Reich.

Out shot his fingerclaw again. This was for the record: “My view is that we should go forward as aggressively as possible with programs to acquaint the Big Uglies with the spiritual benefits of Emperor veneration. Bringing them to a belief system more congruent to the truth than are their own superstitions can only help in assimilating them into the Empire.”

With an emphatic cough, he turned off the recorder once more. That opinion
needed
to get into the Race’s data stream. He felt so strongly about it, he added an emphatic cough. The sooner fanatics like Khomeini could no longer use the local superstitions to rouse the Big Uglies against the Race, the better.

And then Ttomalss had an inspiration. He turned on the recorder for the third time. “Economic incentives,” he said, getting the main idea out, and then amplified it: “If Tosevites are taxed for the privilege of continuing to adhere to their native superstitions but not if they agree to venerate the spirits of Emperors past, the truth will be more readily propagated among them.”

Almost of itself, his hand shaped the affirmative gesture. If adhering to their superstitions cost the Tosevites under the Race’s rule money, they would be more inclined to drop those superstitions and adopt the correct usages that prevailed on the other three planets of the Empire. They would not be compelled to do so, which was apt to spark fanatical resistance. They would simply come to see it was in their own best interest to conform to standard practice.

“How splendidly devious,” Ttomalss said. What better way to get rid of superstition than to tax it out of existence?

Now he was going to have to look for males and females in positions of authority to support his scheme. He wanted to skitter with glee and excitement. He hadn’t had such a good idea since he’d decided to raise a Tosevite, hatchling among the Race.

Then he remembered what had happened to him after he took his second hatchling. He was lucky Liu Han hadn’t murdered him after his kidnapping. But surely the Big Uglies would not get so excited about taxes as they did about their own offspring.

 
6

Gorppet liked Baghdad no more than he’d liked Basra. If anything, he liked it less than he’d liked Basra, because it was a bigger city with more Big Uglies in it. And all of those Big Uglies were united in their hatred of the Race.

His squad always moved together. That was a standard order in Baghdad. Males could not travel these narrow, winding streets by ones and twos. They simply disappeared when they did, disappeared or were ambushed and slain. Whole squads had perished that way, too. Gorppet didn’t like to dwell on that.

“How do we tell what is a street and what is not?” Betvoss asked peevishly—he could always find something to complain about. “With so much rubble strewn everywhere, what used to be streets and what used to be houses look the same.”

“Just follow me,” Gorppet answered, and pressed on. He had trouble telling streets from houses, too, but wasn’t about to admit it. He picked what looked like the easiest route through the cratered landscape. His eye turrets tried to look every which way at once. The rubble showed that the Big Uglies had fought hard hereabouts. Enough was left standing to give their diehards lots of hiding places, too. And there were plenty of diehards.

Someone had scrawled something in the sinuous local script on a whitewashed stretch of mud-brick wall that hadn’t been knocked down. “What does that say, superior sir?” one of Gorppet’s troopers asked.

“Spirits of Emperors past turn their backs on me if I know,” he answered. “I’ve learned to speak some of this miserable language—Arabic, they call it—but I can’t read a word. Each sound has one character if it is at the beginning of a word, another one in the middle, and still another if it is at the end. More trouble than it is worth.”

“It probably just says,
‘Allahu akbar!’
anyhow,” Betvoss said. “I do not think these Tosevites know how to say anything else.”

Shouts—Tosevite shouts—came from ahead. Gorppet swung his rifle toward them. “We advance—cautiously,” he said. He envisioned all sorts of dire possibilities as he took advantage of piled rubble to climb up and see what was going on without exposing most of himself to gunfire.

“What is it, superior sir?” Even Betvoss sounded anxious. Anyone who wanted another fight with the Big Uglies was addled, or so Gorppet thought. He reckoned Betvoss addled, all right, but not so addled as that.

And then, when he could see what was going on, he laughed in relief. “Nothing but a pack of Tosevites kicking a ball around a flat stretch of ground,” he said. “We can go on.”

Kicking a ball around was the Big Uglies’ favorite sport hereabouts. It was, from what Gorppet had heard, the Big Uglies’ favorite sport in almost all the lands the Race ruled. Gorppet couldn’t see much point to it himself, but then—the Emperor be praised!—he was no Big Ugly.

The Tosevites looked up warily as he and his comrades approached. “Go on,” he said in the guttural local language. “Play. We do not trouble you if you do not trouble us.”

If the Big Uglies did feel like causing trouble . . . But one of them spoke in the language of the Race: “It is good.” He said the same thing in Arabic, so his fellow Tosevites would understand. They started kicking the ball again, their robes flapping as they ran after it.

Still wary, Gorppet led his males past the Big Uglies. But they were intent on their sport, and paid the squad little attention. Gorppet wondered how many of them had been fighting hereabouts till the Race brought in enough soldiers to reduce the latest uprising from boil to sizzle. Quite a few, unless he missed his guess.

As if getting by the pack of Tosevites were a good omen, the rest of the patrol also went smoothly. Gorppet brought his squad through the perimeter of razor wire and back to the barracks without any untoward incidents. “If only it were this easy all the time,” he said.

“It probably means the Big Uglies are plotting something,” Betvoss said. Gorppet wished he could quarrel with that, but he couldn’t.

As things turned out, the Race was plotting something. An officer harangued the patrol leaders: “One of our experts on the Big Uglies has come up with a way to bring them round toward reverencing the spirits of Emperors past—making them pay if they do anything else. We are ordered to collect coins outside the houses of their superstition. If they do not pay, they are not to be admitted.”

Gorppet stuck out his tongue, calling for attention. When the officer granted him leave to speak, he said, “Superior sir, do you mean to say that we are becoming tax collectors rather than soldiers?”

“We are becoming tax collectors
and
soldiers,” the officer replied, and Gorppet realized the fellow’s fancy body paint didn’t keep him from being very unhappy about the orders he’d received. “I do not say this will be easy, for I do not believe that for a moment. But it is what we are required to do, and so it shall be done.”

“Superior sir, have you any idea what the Big Uglies are likely to do if we try to make them pay before we let them enter the houses of their superstition?” Gorppet demanded. He had such an idea, and did not care for it at all.

“We are also going to move a landcruiser or mechanized combat vehicle up before each of the said houses by tomorrow morning,” the officer answered, which proved he did indeed have some idea. The way he ignored the nearly insubordinate tone of Gorppet’s questioning proved the same thing. He went on, “This policy, you must understand, is not regional in scope. It shall be done over all the areas of Tosev 3 under the Race’s rule. The sooner the Big Uglies begin venerating the spirits of Emperors past as we do, the sooner they will become contented citizens of the Empire.”

Gorppet supposed that made sense, at least in the long run. The Race habitually thought in terms of the long run, and had succeeded by pursuing long-term strategies . . . until Tosev 3. Such strategies might yet succeed here, too, but they were apt to end up unpleasant for the poor males who had to put them into motion right at the moment.

Another squad leader had to be thinking along those same lines, for he said, “I expect we can count on Khomeini and the other fanatics to exploit our policy to the greatest possible degree.”

“I think that is likely to be truth,” the officer agreed unhappily. “We shall have to see whether the results of the policy justify the difficulties it will bring with it. We are all veterans here, every single male from the conquest fleet. We know our dealings with the Tosevites are full of experiments and improvisations. Maybe this one will work. Maybe it will not. We shall have to wait and see.” He made a peremptory gesture. “You males are dismissed.”

So much for being veterans together,
Gorppet thought. He went back to the barracks and told the males of his squad what the new plan was. None of them had much to say about it. Betvoss was too startled—perhaps too appalled—even to complain. An orderly came by with the locale of the house of superstition to which the squad was assigned. That confirmed Gorppet’s words and left everyone glummer than ever.

When morning came, all the males made sure they were carrying plenty of ammunition. They also made sure their body armor did the best possible job of covering their vitals. It might not hold out a high-powered bullet, but it was the best hope they had.

To Gorppet’s relief, the house of superstition where his squad had to collect fees wasn’t far from the barracks. The troopers got there just before sunrise. A landcruiser had already arrived, which made the squad leader feel better. He devoutly hoped its immense bulk and formidable gun would make the Big Uglies think twice about any trouble.

A Tosevite in wrappings and head cloth was expostulating at the landcruiser commander, who stood up in his cupola watching and waiting. That male either spoke no Arabic or preferred to pretend he didn’t. The Big Ugly rounded on Gorppet. “What are you doing here?” he demanded.

“Collecting money,” Gorppet answered. “If your males and females do not pay half a dinar each, they do not go in.”

“Half a dinar?” the Big Ugly howled. “Half a dinar at each of five daily prayers? You will make beggars of us!”

“I have my orders,” Gorppet said stolidly. He gestured with his rifle barrel toward the landcruiser. “I have the power to make orders good.”

“You are wicked. The great Satan will burn you in the fires of hell forever!” the Big Ugly said. “Why do you torment us? Why do you persecute us?”

As far as Gorppet was concerned, Tosevites tormented the Race far more than the other way round. Before he could say as much, amplified screeches from the towers at the corners of the house of superstitions summoned the local Big Uglies to the day’s first petitions to the imaginary all-powerful Big Ugly beyond the sky.

Gorppet positioned his males in the entranceway. Since he knew more Arabic than the others, he made the announcement: “Half a dinar to go inside. If you do not pay, go home and venerate the spirits of Emperors past.”

His fellow males backed him up with rifles aimed at the Big Uglies coming to worship. The landcruiser backed him up with its cannon and machine gun and intimidating massiveness. Despite all that, he thought he would have to start firing into the building crowd. The Tosevites screamed and cursed and waved their arms in the air and jumped up and down. But they had been taken by surprise, and had not thought to bring firearms to the house of superstition.

Some of them threw down coins or fluttering pieces of paper also in circulation as money. Gorppet wasn’t sure all of those payments were half-dinars. He didn’t check very closely. Any payment was enough to satisfy him. He used the barrel of his rifle to beckon into the house of superstition those who gave money of any sort.

Some of the others kept angrily milling about. Others headed back toward their homes. He hoped they were relieved to have an excuse to go away, and were not going to return later with weapons.

Rather to his surprise, the Big Uglies didn’t start shooting. Betvoss said, “Well, we got away with it. I would not have believed that we could.”

“We got away with it
this time,”
Gorppet said. “These Tosevites come here to pray five times a day, remember. We are going to have to charge them this fee every time they come. Who knows how long they will tolerate it?” He sighed. “If only they would venerate the spirits of Emperors past, life would be easier for us.”

“Truth,” Betvoss said. “But they have all these houses for their own superstition, and none for the truth. How can we expect them to venerate the Emperors if they have nowhere to do it?”

Gorppet stared at the other male in surprise. Like any malcontent, Betvoss was full of ideas. As with any malcontent, most of them were bad. But this one struck Gorppet as quite good. He said, “You ought to pass that along to the authorities, Betvoss. It might get you a bonus or a promotion.”

If it got Betvoss a bonus, that might improve his sour attitude. Stranger things had happened—on Tosev 3, plenty of stranger things had happened. And if it got Betvoss a promotion, Gorppet wouldn’t have to worry about him any more. Gorppet swiveled his eye turrets this way and that. He wouldn’t have to worry about much of anything—not till the next call for worship at this house of superstition, anyhow.

Along with his family, Reuven Russie walked toward the synagogue a few blocks away for Friday evening services. He was less devout than his parents, and sometimes felt guilty about it. They’d suffered because of their Judaism even before the Nazis invaded Poland. For him, being a Jew had been pretty easy through most of his life: the Lizards generally preferred Jews to Muslims. He wondered if his faith needed strengthening in the fire of persecution.

On the other hand, Judith and Esther took their belief more seriously than he did his, and they’d never been persecuted at all. They chattered with their mother as the family rounded the last corner on the way to the synagogue. Maybe they just hadn’t yet been exposed to the flood of secular knowledge he’d acquired.

But his father was full of secular knowledge, too, and still believed. Reuven scratched his head. Plainly, he didn’t understand everything that was going on.