Homeward Bound (34 page)

When she finished, she looked to Atvar. When the fleetlord did not say anything for some little while, fear bubbled up in her. Had she made such a dreadful mess of it? She hadn’t thought so, but how much did she really know? Every so often, she got forcefully reminded that, even if she was a citizen of the Empire, she was not a member of the Race.

At last, his voice neutral, Atvar said, “You did this without previous study of these videos?”

“Yes, Exalted Fleetlord,” Kassquit replied unhappily. “I used sources that described the ceremony, but I have not seen it up until now. Did I . . . did I do it very badly?”

To her astonishment, Atvar made the negative gesture. “No. Except that you have no tailstump to move to right and left to accompany your head, you did it perfectly. The protocol masters have assured me that this is no impediment: you cannot move what you do not have. I congratulate you, and all the more so because you learned this on your own.”

“Really?” Kassquit said in amazement. The fleetlord made the affirmative gesture again. Kassquit whispered, “I thank you.”

“For what?” Atvar said. “Yours is the hard work, yours the achievement. You receive the praise you have earned. Now—do you know the next part of the ceremony as well as you know this one?”

“I . . . I believe I do, Exalted Fleetlord.”

Atvar swung his eye turrets away, then aimed them both right at her: a sign he was paying close attention. “Let me see.”

“It shall be done.” Kassquit went through the next portion. She hadn’t seen the videos for it, and wasn’t quite perfect; Atvar found a couple of small things to correct. She said, “I will improve them before the audience.” That didn’t seem enough, so she added, “I will improve them before you see me again.”

“Do not be upset,” Atvar told her. “You are doing quite well, believe me. Now—on to the portion that follows.” On to that portion they went. Kassquit imagined her way through the whole ceremony. At last, Atvar said, “You have done everything very well up to this point. Now you have come before the Emperor’s throne. You offer him your greetings.” Kassquit bent into the special posture of respect reserved for the Emperor alone. It was awkward for a Tosevite—her back was too straight—but she managed it. Atvar didn’t criticize her, so she must have done it right, or right enough. Then he said, “Now the Emperor speaks to you. How do you respond?”

“The Emperor . . . speaks to me?” Kassquit quavered. “Is that likely to happen?”

“It can happen,” Atvar answered. “When I left Home to take the conquest fleet to Tosev 3, my audience with his Majesty was purely formal. When I saw the present Emperor not long ago, there was some informal talk. It is up to his Majesty, of course. The present Emperor, I think, is more inclined to talk than his predecessor was.”

“He would not care to talk to the likes of me,” Kassquit said. “I am an individual of no importance.”

“There I would disagree with you,” Atvar said. “You are not an individual of high rank. But you are important. Never doubt it. You are the first—so far, the only—Tosevite to be reared entirely within the culture of the Empire. You are the shape of the future. We hope you are the shape of the future, at any rate.”

“How could I not be?” she asked.

“If things go wrong on Tosev 3, it would be all too easy for you not to be,” Atvar answered. “There may be no Tosevites following any cultural models, in that case.”

“What do you think the odds are?” Kassquit asked.

Atvar shrugged, a gesture the Race and Big Uglies shared. “Who can guess? It all depends on how dangerous the wild Tosevites become.” He did his best to brush aside the question: “That is not something on which it is profitable to speculate. Back to business. Should the Emperor speak to you, how would you respond?”

“Exalted Fleetlord, I might be too much in awe to respond at all,” Kassquit answered honestly.

“Well, silence is probably acceptable, but if his Majesty does choose to speak to you, I think he would hope for some kind of response.” Atvar might have been trained as a soldier, but he had learned a good deal about diplomacy, too.

Kassquit recognized as much. “If he speaks to me informally, I suppose I will try to answer the same way,” she said. “Since the setting would be informal, I do not suppose I can know in advance just what I would say.”

“All right.” The fleetlord made the affirmative gesture. “That will do. We do not expect miracles. We hope for effort. You need not worry on that score, Researcher. You have made your effort very plain.”

“I thank you. This is important to me.” Kassquit used an emphatic cough to show how important it was.

“Good.” Atvar used another one. “Your loyalty does you credit. It also does credit to Ttomalss, who inculcated it in you.”

“Yes, I suppose it does,” Kassquit said. “Please forgive me. My feelings toward Ttomalss are . . . complex.”

“How so?” Had the fleetlord made the question perfunctory, Kassquit would have given it the same sort of answer. But Atvar sounded as if he was truly curious, and so she thought for a little while before speaking.

At last, she said, “I think it is yet another conflict between my biology and my upbringing. When wild Big Uglies are small, they fixate on those who sired and hatched them. This is necessary for them, because they are helpless when newly hatched. But the Race does not form that kind of bond.”

“I should hope not,” Atvar said. “Our hatchlings can take care of themselves from the moment they leave the egg. Why not? If they could not, they would have soon become prey in the days before we were civilized.”

“Yes, I understand that,” Kassquit said. “It is only natural that Ttomalss should have had trouble forming such a bond with me. I give him credit: he did try. But it was not natural, as it would have been for wild Big Uglies. And I noticed his incomplete success—things being as they are, I could hardly help noticing. I could hardly help resenting what he could not give me, either.”

“All this was some while ago, though,” Atvar said. “Surely your resentment has faded over the passing years?”

“To some degree—but only to some degree,” Kassquit replied. “You will know, I am sure, that there have been times when Ttomalss has treated me as much as an experimental animal as a friend or someone else with whom he should have forged a bond of trust. This failure has naturally kept resentment alive in me. Am I an autonomous individual, or only an object of curiosity?”

“You are both,” Atvar said, which struck Kassquit as basically honest—at least, it was the same conclusion she’d reached herself. The fleetlord went on, “Because of your biology and your upbringing, you will always be an object of interest to the Race. By now, I suspect you have also resigned yourself to this.”

“To some degree—but only to some degree,” Kassquit repeated, adding an emphatic cough to that. “For example, the Race held me in cold sleep for years instead of reviving me and letting me become acquainted with Home. This decision was made for me; I had no chance to participate in it myself.”

“There is some truth in that, but only some,” Atvar said. “One of the reasons the decision was made for you, as you say, is that we admire your professional competence and value your ability in dealing with the wild Big Uglies. We wanted to do our best to make sure you would be in good health when they arrived.”

Kassquit made the negative gesture. “You do not understand, Exalted Fleetlord. You did that for your benefit, for the Race’s benefit, for the Empire’s benefit, and not for mine. There is a difference, like it or not.”

The fleetlord sighed. “I can see that you might think so. But are you not a citizen of the Empire? You have certainly said so often enough.”

“Yes, I am a citizen of the Empire. I am proud to be a citizen of the Empire.” Kassquit used another emphatic cough. “But does the Empire not have a certain obligation to treat its citizens justly? If it does not, why is being a citizen any sort of privilege?”

“You
are
an individual.” By Atvar’s tone, he did not mean it as a compliment. “You also—forgive me—sound very much like a Tosevite. Your species is more individualistic than ours.”

“Maybe the Empire needs more Tosevite citizens,” Kassquit said. “Perhaps things here have been too tranquil for too long.”

Atvar laughed at her. “Things have not been tranquil since we found out what wild Big Uglies were capable of. They will not be tranquil again for a long time to come. But you may be right. I think his Majesty believes you are. That is part of the reason you are receiving this audience.”

“Whatever the reason, it is a great honor,” Kassquit said. “Shall we rehearse the ceremony again, Exalted Fleetlord? I want everything to be perfect.” She used yet another emphatic cough.

Ttomalss liked talking with Major Frank Coffey. His reason for liking that particular American had nothing to do with the Big Ugly’s personality, though Coffey was pleasant enough. It wasn’t even rational, and Ttomalss knew it wasn’t. Knowing as much didn’t make it go away.

He liked Coffey’s color.

He knew exactly why, too. The officer’s dark brown hide reminded him of the green-brown of his own scaly skin. It made the wild Big Ugly seem less alien, more familiar, than the pinkish beige of the other American Tosevites. He wasn’t, of course. Ttomalss understood that full well. Understanding didn’t make the feeling go away.

Coffey got up from the chair made for a Big Ugly’s hindquarters in one of the hotel’s conference rooms. He stretched and sighed. “It was kind of you to make this furniture for us,” he said, “but you would never get rich selling chairs back on Tosev 3.”

“I am sure that is a truth,” Ttomalss said. “Some of the things Tosevites make for the Race are also imperfect. No species can ever be completely familiar with another. The Rabotevs and Hallessi still surprise us every now and again.”

“Interesting. And I believe you. Even different cultures on Tosev 3 run up against this same difficulty,” Coffey said. “I am glad you said it, too. It brings me to one of the fundamental troubles in the relationship between my not-empire and the Empire, one that needs to be solved.”

“Speak. Give forth,” Ttomalss urged. “Is that not why you have come: to solve the difficulties between the United States and the Empire?” Had he been a Big Ugly himself, the corners of his mouth would have curled up in the Tosevites’ facial gesture of benevolent amiability. He
liked
Frank Coffey.

He also made the mistake of assuming that, because he liked Coffey, the wild Big Ugly would not say anything he did not like. Coffey proceeded to disabuse him of that assumption. “The difficulty is that the Race
does not
recognize Tosevite not-empires as equals,” he declared, and added an emphatic cough. “This
must
change if relations between us are to find their proper footing.” He used another one.

“But that is not so,” Ttomalss protested. “We have equal relationships with the United States, with the SSSR, with the Nipponese Empire, with Britain—even with the
Reich,
though we defeated it. How can you complain of this?”

“Very easily,” Frank Coffey answered. “You say that we are your equals, but down deep in your livers you do not believe it. Can you tell me I am mistaken? You thought from the beginning that we were nothing but sword-swinging savages. Down deep, you still believe it, and you still act as if you believe it. Will you make me believe I am wrong?”

Ttomalss thought that over. He did not have to think for very long. The wild Big Ugly had a point. The Race was proud of its ancient, long-stable civilization. What could wild Big Uglies be but uncouth barbarians who were good at fighting and treachery but very little else?

Slowly, the psychologist said, “This is perceptive of you. How did you come to realize it?”

Frank Coffey laughed a loud Tosevite laugh. “It is plain enough to any Tosevite with eyes to see. And it is especially obvious to a Tosevite of my color.” He brushed a hand along the skin of his forearm, a gesture he made with the air of one who had used it before.

“What do you mean?” Ttomalss asked.

“You will know that pale Tosevites have discriminated against those of my color,” Coffey said, and waited. Ttomalss made the affirmative gesture. The American went on, “This discrimination is now illegal in my not-empire. We are all supposed to be equal, legally and socially. Supposed to be, I say. There are still a fair number of pale Big Uglies who
would
discriminate against dark ones if only they could get away with it. These days, showing that too openly is not acceptable in the United States. But one of us usually has no trouble telling when pale Tosevites have such feelings, even when they try to hide them. And so you should not be surprised when I recognize the symptoms of the disease in the Race as well.”

“I see,” Ttomalss said slowly. “How did you persuade the pale Big Uglies to stop discriminating in law against you darker ones?”

“‘Discriminating in law,’ ” Frank Coffey echoed. “That is a nice phrase, a very nice phrase. We had two advantages. First, the
Reich
discriminated against groups it did not like, discriminated very blatantly—and we were at war with the
Reich,
so whatever it did looked bad to us, and became something we were embarrassed to imitate. And then the Race tried to conquer all Tosevites. To resist, the United States had to draw support from all its own inhabitants. Discriminating in law became something we could not afford to do, and so we stopped.”

“Back in ancientest history, I believe the Race was also divided into subspecies,” Ttomalss said. “But long years of mixing have made us highly uniform. I suspect the same may happen with you.”

Coffey shrugged. “So it may. But it will not happen soon, even by the way the Race reckons time. During your mating seasons, your males and females are not too fussy about mating partners. That helps you mix. With us, it is different.”

“I suppose it would be,” Ttomalss said. “So social discrimination also lingers in mating, even though discrimination in law does not?”

“Yes, it does,” the American Big Ugly replied. “Now I praise you for your perceptiveness. Not many from another culture, from another biology, would have seen the implications of that.”