Homeward Bound (32 page)

“We have fools.” Kassquit wished she could deny it, but the language of the Race wouldn’t let her. It had the word, and the word pointed infallibly to the thing. Besides, anyone who saw a male or female of the Race topped with red or green false hair almost infallibly spotted a fool. With such dignity as she could muster, she added, “But we do not believe the word applies to those who reverence the spirits of Emperors past.”

“I do not believe it does, either, if they have been brought up in their beliefs since hatchlinghood,” de la Rosa said. “But those who change their beliefs later in life, those who change them as a Big Ugly changes his wrappings—individuals like that are often fools.”

He sounded reasonable. Kassquit cherished reason. She clung to it. Clinging to it had helped her stay as close to sane as she had. There were times when she wondered how close that was. With her cultural and biological heritages so different, was it any wonder her stability often balanced on the point of a fingerclaw? The wonder, perhaps, was that she had any stability to balance.

Here, Tom de la Rosa’s reason threatened that stability. The thought that her spirit would be sustained by the spirits of Emperors past in the world to come had also helped sustain her when things did not go well in this world. Even the slightest hint that that might not happen left her feeling threatened.

Frank Coffey said, “Pale Tosevites used to believe dark Tosevites were inferior just because they were dark. Some pale Tosevites still believe that.”

“I used to believe it,” Sam Yeager said. “It was something I was taught from hatchlinghood. But there is no evidence to support it, and I hope I know better now.”

“I hope you do, too.” Coffey sounded jocular, but he did not laugh. He nodded to Kassquit. “By your looks, I would say you are Chinese.” Sam Yeager said something in English. Coffey nodded again, then went on, “He tells me you are. Pale Tosevites have shown these misplaced beliefs against Chinese, too.”

“And Chinese against pale Tosevites,” Tom de la Rosa added. “It is not all the fault of my kind of Big Ugly. A lot of it is, but not all.”

“Believe what you will,” Kassquit said. “What I believe is, I am proud to have been granted an audience with the Emperor. And, come what may, I will go right on being proud.” And she did.

Lizards always stared at Jonathan Yeager and the other Americans when they left their hotel for any reason. Jonathan didn’t suppose he could blame them. People had done plenty of staring at Lizards when they first met them.
He
hadn’t. Because of what his father and mother did, he’d grown up around Lizards, and took them as much for granted as he did humans.

Being neither a mad dog nor an Englishman, he tried not to go out in Home’s noonday sun. Oh, it wouldn’t have killed him, any more than a hot summer day in Los Angeles would have. It wasn’t much over a hundred, and, as Angelenos were endlessly fond of saying, it was a dry heat. But, while that made it more or less bearable, it didn’t make it pleasant.

Early morning
was
pleasant. Sitneff cooled down into the seventies at night—another consequence of low humidity. Jonathan enjoyed going to the park not far from the hotel, finding a bench in the shade of the shrubby treeish things, and watching Home go by.

Lizards on the way to work drove past in cars and buses that didn’t look too different from the ones he would have seen in the United States. These were smaller, because Lizards were smaller. They had smoother lines, and the differences between one model and another seemed smaller than in the USA. Maybe he was missing subtleties. Or maybe, because the Race valued efficiency more than people did, their vehicles just deviated less from ideal designs than human machines did.

Males and females skittered by on the sidewalk, too, some of them no doubt on the way to work, others moving faster for the sake of exercise. Some of the runners would stop short when they noticed him. Others would keep one eye turret trained on him till they got out of sight. They would use the other eye to watch where they were going. There they had an advantage over mankind. It wasn’t necessarily an enormous advantage, as Jonathan saw when a Lizard watching him banged into another coming the other way. Watching didn’t just mean seeing. It also meant paying attention. Anyone of any species could fail that test.

Other males and females trotted through the park. Some were regulars, and had seen him and the other humans there before. A few would call out, “I greet you, Tosevite!” as they went by. Jonathan always waved and answered when they did.
Friendly relations, one Lizard at a time,
he thought.

Every so often, a Lizard would stop what he was doing and want to talk. The ones with wigs and T-shirts were more likely to do that than the ones who didn’t try to imitate people. That made sense—they’d already proved their interest in mankind. Jonathan was glad whenever it happened. It let him—he hoped it let him—get an unfiltered view of what life on Home was like. Maybe Lizards who paused and came up to talk were government plants, but Jonathan didn’t think so. In the USSR or the
Reich,
he would have been suspicious of what strangers told him. He didn’t think the Race was so sophisticated about propaganda.

One very ordinary, unwigged, unclothed Lizard didn’t seem sophisticated at all. After looking Jonathan over from head to foot (his moving eye turrets made the process obvious), the male said, “So you are one of those things they call Big Uglies, are you?”

Jonathan hid a smile, not that the Lizard would have known what one meant. He made the affirmative gesture. “Yes, I am a Big Ugly,” he agreed gravely.

“Do you by any chance know a male called Telerep?” the Lizard asked. “He went to Tosev 3 with the conquest fleet. He was a land-cruiser gunner, and a friend of mine.”

“I am sorry, but no.” Sorry or not, Jonathan couldn’t help smiling now. “For one thing, I was hatched near the end of the fighting. For another, Tosev 3 is a planet the size of Home, even if it does have more water. Do you know where your friend served? It might have been halfway around the world from me.”

“No, I do not know that,” the male said. “Tosev 3 does not seem so big. I often wonder what happened to Telerep, and if he came through all right. He was a good fellow. We had some fine times together. I know a few males and females who have heard from friends who joined the conquest fleet, but not many. For most, well, it is a long way between here and your world.”

“That is a truth,” Jonathan said. “When I see our sun in the night sky as just another star, I realize how far it is.”

“Tosev, yes. Hard for me to think of it as anything but a star, you understand,” the Lizard said, and Jonathan made the affirmative gesture again. The Lizard went on, “We call the constellation Tosev is in the Sailing Ship. What is your name for it?”

“To us, it is the Herder,” Jonathan answered; that was as close a translation of Boötes as he could manage in the Lizards’ language. “Of course, when we see that constellation, we do not see our own sun in it.”

The Lizard drew back half a pace in surprise. Then his mouth fell open. “That is funny. I had not thought of it so, but you would not, would you? What do you call the constellation in which you see our sun?”

“That is the Whale,” Jonathan told him. He had to explain the key word, which came out in English: “A whale is a large creature that swims in our seas. Your sun is dimmer than ours. I mean no offense when I tell you it seems faint when we see it on Tosev 3.”

“I understand,” the Lizard replied. “Even if you are a wild Big Ugly, I must say you sound quite civilized.”

“I thank you,” Jonathan replied, not without irony. “So do you.”

That line drew different responses from different Lizards. This one laughed once more. “And I thank you, superior Tosevite.” His mouth dropped down yet again. “Are you a superior Tosevite or an inferior Tosevite? You have only those wrappings—no body paint to let me see what your rank is.” He straightened a little to show his own paint to Jonathan. “As you can tell, I am an optician, second grade.”

Actually, Jonathan couldn’t have told that without a chart. The Race’s system of using body paint to mark social distinctions went back to before Home was unified. It had been getting more complex since the days when men weren’t even painting mammoths on cave walls. Every seniority level in every occupation had its own distinctive pattern and colors. Lizards—and Rabotevs and Hallessi—read body paint as easily as they read the characters of their written language. Some humans were nearly that good. Jonathan wasn’t bad, but optician wasn’t one he recognized offhand.

He said, “If I had body paint, it would say I was an ambassador’s assistant.”

“Ambassador!” Another laugh came from the Lizard. “There is a very old-fashioned word, superior Tosevite. There have been no ambassadors since the days of ancientest history.”

“Again, I mean no offense, but I must tell you you are mistaken,” Jonathan said. “On Tosev 3, there have been ambassadors to and from the Race for nearly ninety years—ninety of ours, twice as many of yours. Where independent empires and not-empires meet as equals, they need ambassadors.”

“Independent empires and not-empires,” the male echoed. “What an . . . interesting phrase. I suppose I can imagine an independent empire; after all, you Big Uglies did not know about
the
Empire till we came. But what might a not-empire be? How else would you govern yourselves?”

“Well, there are several ways,” Jonathan said. “The not-empire we are from, the United States, is what we call a
democracy.
” He said that word in English, then returned to the Race’s language: “That means giving all adult males and females a voice in how they are governed.” As best he could, he explained voting and representative government.

“Snoutcounting!” the optician exclaimed when Jonathan was done, and tapped his own snout with a fingerclaw. If Jonathan had had a nickel for every time he’d heard that derisive comment from a Lizard, he could have damn near bought the
Admiral Peary.
This male went on, “But what happens when the males and females being snout-counted make a mistake?”

“We try to fix it,” Jonathan answered. “We can choose a new set of representatives if we are not happy with the ones in power. What happens when
your
government makes a mistake? You are stuck with it— is that not a truth?”

“Our government makes very few mistakes,” the Lizard said. On Earth, that would have been a boast with no truth behind it, a boast the USSR or the
Reich
would have made. Here on Home, it might well have been true.

But very few mistakes were different from no mistakes at all. Jonathan said, “I can think of one mistake your government made.”

“Speak. What could that be?” the male asked, plainly doubting it was anything of much weight.

“Trying to conquer Tosev 3,” Jonathan answered.

The Lizard said, “Well, that may be a truth, superior Big Ugly. Yes, it may be. Actually, I would say trying was not the difficulty. I would say the difficulty was failing.”

“A nice point.” Jonathan smiled again. “Are you sure you are not an attorney?”

One of the optician’s eye turrets rolled downward, as if he were examining his own body paint. “No, I seem to be what I am. So you Tosevites make jokes about attorneys, too, do you? We say they are the only males and females who can go into a revolving door behind someone else and come out ahead.”

He and Jonathan spent the next ten minutes trading lawyer jokes. Jonathan had to explain what a shark was before the one about professional courtesy made sense to the Lizard. Once the male got it, his mouth opened enormously wide—the Race’s equivalent of a belly laugh.

He said, “If you Big Uglies tell stories like those, you really will convince me you are civilized.”

“I thank you, though I was not worrying about it very much,” Jonathan answered. “Back on Tosev 3, we have stayed independent of the Race. We have come to Home in our own starship. If things like that do not make us civilized, can a few silly jokes do the job?”

“You never can tell,” the Lizard answered. “That is a truth, superior Big Ugly: you never can tell. Those other things may prove you are strong. Jokes, though, jokes show you can enjoy yourselves. And if being able to enjoy yourself is not a part of civilization, what is?”

Jonathan thought that over. Then he got off the bench and bent into the posture of respect before the startled Lizard. He got sand on his knees, but he didn’t care. “That is also a truth, and a very important one,” he said. “I thank you for reminding me of it.”

“Happy to be a help,” the Lizard said. As Jonathan straightened, the male added, “And now, if you will excuse me, I must be on my way.” He skittered off down the path.

Had
he been an ordinary Lizard in the street, or had the government sent him by? After thinking that over, Jonathan slowly nodded to himself. A plant, he judged, would have been more likely to call him a Tosevite all the time, simply for politeness’ sake. This male either hadn’t known or more probably hadn’t cared that
Big Ugly
might be insulting. That argued that he was genuine. Jonathan hoped so. He’d liked him. He went back to the hotel room to write up the encounter while it was still fresh in his memory.

In the room they shared, Karen Yeager read her husband’s notes. “Get into a revolving door in back of you and come out in front of you?” she said. “
We
tell that one.”

“I know,” Jonathan answered. “We can’t swap dirty jokes with the Lizards. We—”

“
Too
bad,” Karen broke in. “I can just see a bunch of guys and a bunch of males standing around in a bar, smoking cigarettes, and trading smut. Men!”

“Tell me gals don’t talk dirty when guys aren’t around to listen to it,” Jonathan said. Karen gave him a sour look, because she couldn’t. He laughed. “Told you so. Anyway, we can’t swap dirty jokes with the Race, because they don’t work the way we do, not for that. But jokes about the way society goes along—those are different.”

“I see.” Karen went a little farther in the notes. “So he liked the one about professional courtesy, did he?”