Homeward Bound (31 page)

Such different social structures were bound to make acculturation more difficult. That had been obvious since early in the invasion. What ginger did to the Race and its mating patterns, though, came as a rude surprise. And the Race’s adoption of Tosevite institutions on Tosev 3 reversed tens of thousands of years of precedent. Such adoptions made thoughtful observers—or perhaps just worried observers—wonder which was in fact the dominant species on Tosev 3. That had nothing to do with the Big Uglies’ rapidly advancing technology, either. It was an altogether separate concern.

Just what we need,
Ttomalss thought sourly. He returned the petition to Kassquit. She left his room. He went back to trying to figure out just where the Tosevites stood in terms of technology. Were the Race’s experts right to be as alarmed as they were? Or were they even underestimating the danger because of their unfamiliarity with so much of what was being printed in Tosevite scientific journals?

And what was
not
being printed in those scientific journals? What were the Big Uglies trying to keep secret? Penetrating their computer networks was far harder now than it had been even when Ttomalss went into cold sleep. When the conquest fleet arrived, the Big Uglies had had no computer networks. They’d had no computers, not in the sense that the Race did.

We should have knocked them flat,
Ttomalss thought, not for the first time.
We almost did. We should have finished the job. I think we could have.

He laughed, not that it was really funny. Shiplord Straha had urged an all-out push against the Big Uglies. Most males in the conquest fleet had reckoned him a maniacal adventurer. He hadn’t succeeded in toppling Atvar and imposing his program. In hindsight, it didn’t look so bad.

Could things have turned out worse had Straha got his way? Ttomalss made the affirmative gesture. If Tosev 3 taught any lesson, it taught that things could always turn out worse.
I Told You So
would have been a good title for an autobiographical account written by the planet itself.

Ttomalss laughed again, this time at the conceit. But it wasn’t really funny, either. No one who’d left Home for Tosev 3 in the conquest fleet had dreamt the Big Uglies would be able to put up a hundredth of the fight they had. No one who’d been on Tosev 3 at the time of the invasion would have dreamt the Big Uglies would have interstellar travel within a male’s lifetime . . . but here they were.

Where will they be in one lifetime more?
Ttomalss wondered uneasily.

That led to another question.
Will they be anywhere at all?
Atvar had always considered the possibility of a war of extermination against the Tosevites, to make sure they could not threaten the Empire even if they took the technological lead. He would have left his plans behind for Reffet and Kirel. He would have left those plans behind, yes, but would the current commanders have the nerve to use them? Both males struck Ttomalss as less resolute than Atvar.

Every day they waited, though, made a successful cleansing less certain.
Even if we try to annihilate the Big Uglies, could we do it?
Ttomalss shrugged. He was no soldier, and he had incomplete data. Thanks to the limitations light speed caused, everyone here on Home had incomplete data about Tosev 3. The trouble there was, not everyone seemed to realize it. Males and females here were used to change that stretched over centuries, and didn’t stretch very far even in such lengths of time. Tosev 3 wasn’t like that, no matter how much trouble members of the Race who’d never been there had remembering as much.

And, more and more, Ttomalss was growing convinced that even the males and females of the Race who actually lived on Tosev 3 were operating on incomplete data in their evaluation of what the Big Uglies were up to. Part of that was the Race’s trouble with languages not its own, part the different mathematical notation the Tosevites used, and part, he suspected, was a case of willful blindness. If you didn’t believe down deep in your liver that another species could come to know more than you did, how hard would you look for evidence that that was in fact coming to pass? Not very, he feared.

He checked his computer and telephone records to see whether Pesskrag had ever called him back. As he’d thought: no. He made a note to himself to call the physicist soon.

Having made the note, he looked at it and deleted it. Delay was the very thing he’d worried about, and there he was, telling himself to delay. Instead of waiting, he telephoned Pesskrag that very moment.

It did him no good. He got the female’s out-of-office announcement. He recorded a message of his own, finishing, “I hope to hear from you soon. The more time goes by, the more I am convinced this issue is urgent.”

Pesskrag did call back the next day, and found Ttomalss in his room. She said, “I apologize for not getting back to you sooner, Senior Researcher. I will blame part of the delay on the mating season, which always disrupts everything.”

“Truth.” Ttomalss admitted what he could hardly deny. “But it is over now. What have you and your colleagues done with the data I provided you?”

“We are still evaluating them, trying to decide if they can possibly be credible. We are making progress on the notation,” the physicist answered. “The mathematics does appear to be internally consistent, but that does not make it easy to follow or easy to believe.”

“Can you test it experimentally?” Ttomalss asked. “You were hoping to do that when we spoke last.”

“And we still hope to,” Pesskrag said. “But funds, permissions, and equipment have all proved harder to get than we expected.”

“I see,” Ttomalss said. And he did. He saw that the Race
would
go at its own pace. Nothing would hurry it. Normally, that was good. If it really needed to hurry . . . Maybe the lessons it most needed to take from the Big Uglies had nothing to do with technology.

*     *     *

Kassquit came down to the refectory walking on air. Several of the American Tosevites were there eating breakfast. Kassquit wished her features could match the mobility theirs had. Since they couldn’t, she had to show her happiness in other ways.

She went up to Sam Yeager and bent into the posture of respect before him. “I thank you, Ambassador,” she said, and added an emphatic cough.

“For what?” Sam Yeager asked. Before she could answer, though, he pointed to her. “They accepted your petition for an audience with the Emperor?”

“They did!” Kassquit made the affirmative gesture. “I thank you so much for suggesting it! This is probably the proudest day of my life.”

“I am pleased for you, and I congratulate you,” the white-haired Big Ugly said. “If he would see me, I thought it was likely he would see you, too. After all, you are one of his, and I am not.”

“To meet the Emperor!” Kassquit exclaimed. “To show I really am a citizen of the Empire!”

She wondered if the wild Tosevites truly understood how important and exciting this was for her. Whether they did or not, they congratulated her warmly. Frank Coffey said, “This must mean a great deal to you, even if it would not mean so much to one of us.”

“Truth. That is a truth,” Kassquit said. The dark brown Big Ugly did see what was in her liver: intellectually, at least, if not emotionally. “What could be a greater mark of acceptance than an imperial audience?”

“Ah—acceptance.” Now Coffey made the affirmative gesture. “Acceptance is something I can appreciate.” To show how much he could appreciate it, he too added an emphatic cough. “For me, Researcher, what showed I had truly been accepted by my society was getting chosen to join the crew of the
Admiral Peary.
”

Tom de la Rosa laughed a loud Tosevite laugh. “Oh, yes, Frank, this
does
show acceptance.” He made his emphatic cough ironic at the same time. “Everyone back in the United States loved you so much, you got sent all these light-years just so you could be part of the society there.”

Even Kassquit saw the joke in that. The American Tosevites all thought it was very funny. Frank Coffey laughed as loud as any of the others. He said, “That sounds ridiculous. I know it sounds ridiculous. But the odd thing is, no matter how ridiculous it sounds, it is a truth, and an important truth. Had I been less of an equal, I would still be back on Tosev 3.”

“And you would probably be having more fun back there than you are here, too,” de la Rosa replied.

“Maybe I would. Of course, I would be old back there, and I am . . . not so old here,” Coffey said. “This has its compensations.”

“If not for cold sleep, I would surely be dead,” Sam Yeager said. “Given the choice, I prefer this.”

Kassquit said, “And you will also go before the Emperor.”

“Well, so I will. But I have to tell you, I know it means less to me than it does to you,” the American ambassador said. “For one thing, I have already met several of our not-emperors—
presidents,
we call them.”

“I have heard the word, yes,” Kassquit said coolly. Did he really imagine a Big Ugly chosen by snoutcounting was the equal to
the
Emperor? By all the signs, he did, however absurd she found the notion.

He said, “There is something else, too, something that shows how different from the Empire we truly are. Here, the goal is to meet the Emperor. In the United States, the goal is to
become
the president. Do you see what I mean?”

Now Kassquit had to try to understand emotionally something that was plain enough intellectually. American Big Uglies could aspire to become the ruler of their not-empire. She knew those not-emperors ruled for only a limited period, and had other checks on their power. Even so . . .

She tried to imagine a male or female of the Race setting out to become the Emperor. The picture refused to form in her mind. Oh, such things had happened in the days of ancientest history, though they weren’t much mentioned in the lessons hatchlings learned at school. And once, even after Home was unified, a deranged male had tried to murder an Emperor (that was mentioned even less often).

But that a member of the Race, a Rabotev, a Halless, or even a Tosevite could aspire to supplant the Emperor and rule the Empire now . . . Automatically, her hand shaped the negative gesture. She said, “I do not believe your not-emperors have control over the afterlife as well as this life.”

“Well, no, neither do I, though some of them would probably be happy enough to claim authority like that,” Sam Yeager said. The other American Big Uglies laughed again, which was the only thing that told Kassquit he didn’t mean it. He went on, “And what you need to grasp, Researcher, is that I do not believe your Emperors have control over the afterlife, either.”

The Race’s language did not have a word precisely equivalent to
blasphemy.
It had never needed a word like that, because the idea of denying that the spirits of Emperors past controlled the existence yet to come had not hatched on Home. But, even without a word for it, Kassquit understood the idea as soon as she heard it.

She said, “Many billions of individuals of several different species have accepted what you reject.”

That didn’t faze Sam Yeager. He said, “A great many individuals have believed a great many things that eventually turned out not to be so.” He held up a hand before Kassquit could speak. “I do not say this
is
true for the spirits of Emperors past. I say it
may
be true. As far as I know, no one has found a way to bring certain truth back from the next world.”

“So many who have believed make a strong argument for truth all by themselves,” she said.

“No.” He shook his head before remembering and using the Race’s negative gesture. “As I said before, many can believe something that is not a truth. On Tosev 3, for centuries, most males and females— almost all, in fact—believed the planet was flat, and that the star Tosev revolved around it instead of the other way round. Belief does not make truth. Evidence makes truth. And belief does not make evidence.”

Had he been talking about anything but belief in the afterlife, Kassquit would have agreed with him without hesitation. As things were . . . As things were, she held that belief in a mental compartment separate from the rest of her life and the rest of her attitudes. Almost every citizen of the Empire did the same. Belief in the spirits of Emperors past and in what they could do in the world to come was deeply ingrained in the Race, the Rabotevs, the Hallessi . . . and Kassquit.

Angrily, she said, “How can you tell me the beliefs of many do not matter when your not-empire counts snouts to run its affairs?”

To her annoyance, that did not irritate the wild Big Uglies. It amused them. Jonathan Yeager said, “She has got you there, sire of mine.”

“Oh, no. She is sly, but she is not sly enough to trick a gamy old zisuili like me,” Sam Yeager answered. He turned back to Kassquit. “Snoutcounting is not about evidence. It is about beliefs. There is no sure evidence for the future, and providing for the future is what a government does. There are only beliefs about what is likely to happen next and what ought to happen next. When it comes to beliefs, snout-counting is fine. But beliefs are not truths, no matter how much you might wish they were.”

“He is right,” Karen Yeager said. She, of course, could be counted on to side against Kassquit. She continued, “On Tosev 3, we have many different beliefs about what happens after we die. They cannot all be true, but how can we tell for certain which ones are false?”

Kassquit’s opinion was that they were all false, and that citizens of the Empire held the only true belief. She knew she had no evidence for that, though, not evidence of the sort that would help her in this argument. She did the best she could: “From what I have heard, a growing number of Tosevites are accepting the Empire’s beliefs. This is true not only in the regions where the Race rules but also in your own not-empire. Or is that not so?”

The wild Big Uglies started laughing again. Kassquit was confused and furious at the same time. Before she could say anything more, Tom de la Rosa said, “Some American Big Uglies want to believe in the spirits of Emperors past because they are not happy with the beliefs they had before. Some want to believe in them because they like to imitate the Race any way they can. And some want to imitate them because they are fools. Or do you have no fools in the Empire?”