Homeward Bound (15 page)

“So I have been told. It will be called the
Molotov,
after the longtime ruler of that not-empire. Having met Molotov the Tosevite, I hope the ship proves less unpleasant.” Atvar vividly recalled his first dreadful encounter with the Big Ugly, who at that time did not yet rule the SSSR. Molotov had explained—had been proud to explain—how his political faction came to power by murdering the emperor who formerly ruled their land. Back then, the mere idea that an emperor (even a Big Ugly) could be murdered was enough to shake Atvar’s mental world. He’d had no idea how many more unpleasant lessons the Tosevites would teach him.

“And the Nipponese and the Deutsche are also working on them?” Sam Yeager persisted.

Reluctantly, Atvar made the affirmative gesture. “I believe this to be the case, yes.” He let out an angry hiss. “How it could be, however, I confess I do not completely understand. We defeated the Deutsche. We
smashed
the Deutsche. We put strict limits on what they could do. How they could return to space even around Tosev 3, let alone contemplate an interstellar spacecraft . . .”

“We called the war we were fighting when the Race arrived the Second World War,” Sam Yeager said. “Until you came, we did not know what a world war really was, but we thought we did. A generation earlier, we had fought the First World War. The Deutsche were on the losing side there, too. The winners disarmed them and tried to make sure they stayed weak. It did not work.”

“You are Tosevites. You are slipshod. You forget things. You might as well be hatchlings,” Atvar said. “We are the Race.”

“So you are,” Sam Yeager replied. “And, evidently, you were slipshod. You forgot things. This puts you in a poor position to mock us.”

“I was not mocking you.” Atvar checked himself. “Well, yes, perhaps I was. But I was mocking Fleetlord Reffet and Shiplord Kirel much more. For you are correct, of course. They let the advantage we held over the Deutsche slip away. They should not have done so. That they did so is mortifying.”

“If it makes you feel any better, Fleetlord, the Deutsche have more experience getting around such restrictions than the Race has imposing them.”

“This may make me feel microscopically better,” Atvar replied. “On the other hand, it may not.” His tailstump quivered with anger. “For remember, Ambassador, I was recalled for incompetence. Those who came after me were going to do a far better job. They were sure of it. And look what they accomplished!”

“It does show your people that you were not to blame,” Sam Yeager said.

“I already knew as much,” Atvar said acidly. “That others also do is a matter of some gratification, but not much. I know I could have done better. I doubt I could have kept your not-empire from launching a starship. But the Deutsche, by the spirits of Emperors past, would not be a problem now if I still headed administration on Tosev 3.”

He cast down his eye turrets. Any citizen of the Empire, whether belonging to the Race, the Rabotevs, or the Hallessi, would have looked down at the ground at the mention of Emperors past or present. Sam Yeager did not. However well he behaved, however well he understood the Race, he was an alien and would always remain one.

Yeager said, “What we wanted with this mission, Fleetlord, was respect.”

“Well, you have that. I do not know precisely what you will do with it, but you have it,” Atvar said. “Along with it, you also have hatched a considerable amount of fear. Is that what you had in mind?”

To his surprise, Sam Yeager made the affirmative gesture. “As a matter of fact, yes,” he replied. “We have feared the Race now for ninety years—ninety of ours, twice as many of yours. Mutual fear is not the worst thing in the world. It may keep both sides from doing anything irrevocably stupid.”

Atvar’s mouth fell open in a laugh. “I see you look on the bright side of things. My guess would be that nothing is sure to keep both sides from doing anything irrevocably stupid.”

“My guess would be that you are right,” the Big Ugly replied. “I am still allowed to hope, though.”

“There I cannot disagree,” Atvar said. “If we did not hope, one side or the other would have destroyed Tosev 3 by now.”

“Truth,” Yeager said. “Now you of the Race have to remember that all the time, as we have had to do since the year we call 1942. And you have to remember it can apply to your planets, not just to the one we live on.”

That, no doubt, was part of what he meant by respect. To Atvar, it seemed perilously close to arrogance. That the Race had the same feeling never entered his mind. His mental horizon had expanded a great deal since he first came to Tosev 3, but he remained a part of his culture. For the Race to pressure other species seemed natural to him. For others to do the same to his kind did not.

He had the sense to see a change of subject might be a good idea. “Why did you not go sightseeing with the other Tosevites?” he asked.

“Please do not misunderstand me,” the Big Ugly replied. “I will be pleased to see as much of your planet as I can. If the Doctor were in charge now, I would be out with the others. But I have more responsibility than I thought I would. I need to talk with you—with your government—about how we can all get along now that things have changed and you really need to recognize our fundamental equality.”

Atvar laughed again. “You assume what you wish to prove, something I have seen a great many Tosevites do. We have sent fleets to Tosev 3. You have sent one ship here, and a slow one at that. This, to me, does not argue in favor of fundamental equality. The balance has changed. There is a new weight on your side of the scale. But the two sides do not match.”

“Maybe not.” The corners of Sam Yeager’s mouth turned up. That could be a gesture of amiability or of something else masquerading as amiability. “When we do fly a fleet here, are you sure you will want to meet us? You will know I mean no disrespect when I tell you our technology changes much faster than yours.” That said what sort of gesture the upturned mouth corners were, all right.

“You have been stealing from us since we first came to Tosev 3, you mean,” Atvar said.

“Truth,” Sam Yeager said again, surprising Atvar, but he also made the negative hand gesture. “But what we know for ourselves and what we have discovered has also grown, and we have already started doing things with what we have learned from you that you never thought of.”

He told another truth there. The fleetlord wished he hadn’t. Reports that came in at light speed kept talking about Tosevite advances in electronics, in biochemistry, and in many other areas. It was indeed worrisome.
Why could you not have gone sightseeing?
the fleetlord thought resentfully.

Karen Yeager found herself enjoying a winter day near the South Pole of Home. It felt like an April day in Los Angeles: a little chilly for the T-shirt and shorts she had on, but not bad. The guide, a female named Trir, seemed more interested in the Tosevites she had charge of than in the scenery around her. Her eye turrets kept going every which way, staring at the Big Uglies.

In a distracted voice, Trir said, “Conditions here today are relatively mild. On rare occasions, water has been known to freeze and fall to the ground in strange crystals that are known as
snow
. . . . What is that appalling noise?”

“They are laughing,” Kassquit told her. “That is the noise they make to show amusement.”

“Why?” the female of the Race asked. “Do they not believe me?”

“We believe you. We do not laugh to offend you,” Karen said. “We laugh because our planet is cooler than Home. Snow is common on many parts of it. We are more familiar with it than members of the Race.” She said that even though she’d been a little girl the last time it snowed all over Los Angeles (though of course she didn’t know what had happened while she was in cold sleep).

“I see,” Trir said . . . coldly. The female acted as if she were in the company of a group of tigers that walked on their hind legs and wore business suits. Maybe the Big Uglies wouldn’t shoot her or devour her, but she wasn’t convinced of it.

“They speak the truth,” Kassquit said.

“I see,” Trir said again, no more warmth in her tone. As far as she was concerned, Kassquit must have been about as barbarous as a wild Big Ugly, even if she wore body paint instead of clothes. It was definitely chilly to be walking around in nothing but body paint and a pair of sandals. Karen Yeager had a hard time feeling much sympathy for the Race’s pet human.

Trying to be a diplomat, Frank Coffey said, “Shall we go on?”

“I thank you. Yes. That is an excellent idea,” Trir said. “Please follow me.” She walked along a well-defined trail. Every couple of hundred yards, signs at the height of Lizard eye turrets urged members of the Race to stay on the trail and not go wandering away into the wilderness. Karen had to smile when she saw them. They reminded her of those in some of the busier national parks back in the United States.

“What happens to the local plants and animals when it snows?” Jonathan Yeager asked.

“Some plants go dormant. Some animals hibernate,” the guide answered. “Most survive as best they can or simply perish under those harsh conditions.”

In broad outline, the South Polar region of Home reminded Karen of the country around Palm Springs and Indio, or perhaps more of the Great Basin desert of Nevada and Utah. Plants were scattered randomly across the landscape, with bare ground between most of them and with occasional clumps growing wherever the soil was especially rich or where there was more water than usual. The plants looked like desert vegetation, too: their leaves were small and shiny, and they didn’t get very big. A lot of them were armed with spikes and barbs to make life difficult for herbivores.

Something skittered from one clump of plants to another. Karen didn’t get the best look at it, but it reminded her of a small-l lizard. Of course, since all the land creatures on Home seemed to be scaly, they would remind her of lizards—unless they reminded her of dinosaurs instead.

She and the rest of the humans walked along in Trir’s wake, admiring the scenery. It was beautiful, in a bleak way. A few of the plants showed Home’s equivalent of flowers, which had black disks at their heart that attracted pollinators. Karen went up to one and sniffed at it. It didn’t smell like anything in particular.

“Why do you do that?” Trir asked.

“I wanted to find out if it had an odor,” she answered.

“Why would it?” The guide didn’t sound as if she believed the explanation.

“Because many plants on Tosev 3 use odors to attract flying animals that spread their sex cells,” Karen replied, realizing she had no idea how to say
pollinators
in the language of the Race.

“How very peculiar,” Trir said, and added an emphatic cough to show she thought it was very peculiar indeed.

Something rose from a bush and flapped away: one of the bat-winged little pterodacytloids that did duty for birds here. It was the same greenish gray as the leaves from which it had emerged. Protective coloration was alive and well on Home, then. When the flying beast landed in another bush, it became for all practical purposes invisible.

Bigger fliers glided overhead. Karen’s shadow stretched long off to one side. Tau Ceti—more and more, Karen was just thinking of it as
the sun
—shone not very high in the north. She wondered what happened during the long, dark winter nights when the sun didn’t rise at all.

When she asked, though, Trir stared at her with as little comprehension as if she’d used English. “What do you mean?” the Lizard asked. “There is a time when the sun does not rise above the horizon, yes, but there is always light here.”

That left Karen as confused as Trir had been. “But—how?” she asked.

Frank Coffey explained it for both of them. Speaking in the Race’s language, he said, “Tosev 3 has the ecliptic inclined to the equator at twenty-six parts per hundred.” The Lizards didn’t use degrees; they reckoned a right angle as having a hundred divisions, not ninety. “Here on Home, the inclination is only about ten parts per hundred. On our world, the far north and the far south can be altogether dark for a long time. There must always be at least twilight here during the day, because the sun does not get so far below the horizon.”

“That, at least, is a truth,” Trir said. “You . . . Tosevites must come from a very peculiar world indeed.”

Karen hid her amusement. The guide had almost said
Big Uglies,
but had remembered her manners just in time. The sky wouldn’t have fallen if she’d slipped, but she didn’t know that. Just as well she didn’t, probably. The more polite the Race and humanity were to each other, the better things were likely to go. And that was all to the good, since each side could reach the other now.

She did say, “To us, Home seems the peculiar world.”

“Oh, no. Certainly not.” Trir used the negative gesture and an emphatic cough. “Home is a normal world. Home is the world against which all others are measured. Rabotev 2 and Halless 1 come fairly close, but Tosev 3 must be much more alien.”

“Only because you come from Home is this world normal to you,” Karen said. “To us, Tosev 3 is the standard.”

“Home is the standard for everyone in the Empire,” Trir insisted.

“Except for Kassquit here, we are not citizens of the Empire,” Karen said. “We come from the United States, an independent not-empire.”

Trir must have been briefed about that, but it plainly meant nothing to her. She could not imagine intelligent beings who did not acknowledge the Emperor as their sovereign. And she would not admit that the choice of Home as a standard for how worlds should be was as arbitrary as that of Earth. Even Kassquit weighed into the argument on Karen’s side. She couldn’t convince Trir, either. And the guide did seem to find her just as alien as she found the Americans.

In English, Jonathan said, “If this is the Race’s attitude, we’re going to have a devil of a time making them see reason.”

“The higher-ups, the males and females we’ll be dealing with, have better sense,” Tom de la Rosa said, also in English.

“I hope so,” Jonathan said. “But down deep, they’re still going to feel the same way. They’re the center of the universe, and everything revolves around them. If they think that’s how it ought to be, we’re going to have a hard time persuading them they’re wrong.”