Homeward Bound (44 page)

“Obviously, part of me liked it very much—but that part has never been what anyone would call fussy,” he replied. No matter how far removed from the affairs of wild Big Uglies she was, she had no trouble figuring out what he meant. He went on, “The rest of me was not nearly so sure—is not nearly so sure—that would be a good idea. You are isolated from our ways of doing things. I was very much afraid I would be taking advantage of you.”

“Why?” Kassquit asked in genuine puzzlement. “Would we not both take pleasure from this? How is that more advantageous to you than to me?”

“Things are more complicated than that—or they often are, anyway, back on Tosev 3,” Coffey said. “We do not have a mating season the way the Race does, and emotional attachments between partners are usual with us. In fact, mating among us does not just spring from previously existing emotional attachments. The act of mating, the pleasure of mating, giving pleasure to another in mating, helps
cause
emotional attachments. Do you have any idea what I am talking about?”

“Oh, yes,” Kassquit said softly. She remembered all too well how bereft she had felt when Jonathan Yeager left the Race’s starship and returned to the surface of Tosev 3, and how devastated she was when she learned he was making a permanent mating arrangement with Karen Yeager. That had seemed like betrayal—nothing less. If Frank Coffey were to abandon her for a wild Tosevite female, too . . . She shoved that thought aside and made the affirmative gesture. “I understand exactly what you mean.”

Her tone must have carried conviction, for Coffey did not argue with her any more. He just said, “Knowing all this, you would still wish to go forward?”

“I would,” she answered. “I may end up unhappy. I understand that. But I feel empty now. Next to empty, even unhappy does not seem so bad.”

“That . . . makes more sense than I wish it did,” the wild Big Ugly said. He nodded—again, Kassquit thought, more to himself than to her—and laughed quietly. “In that case, superior female, there is an English expression that seems to fit here: my place or yours?”

Kassquit needed a moment to figure out what that meant, but only a moment. “Why not mine?” she said.

They rode up the elevator together. Kassquit hung the
PRIVACY, PLEASE
sign in front of her room. Then Frank Coffey said, “Wait. I had better make sure you do not become gravid. Let me get a sheath. I will be back right away.”

He took a little longer than Kassquit had expected, but not long enough for her to complain when he returned. It had been a long time since she lay down with a male Tosevite, but she remembered what to do. And he knew how to stimulate her. He turned out to know better than Jonathan Yeager had. At first, that surprised her. Then she realized Jonathan Yeager must have been almost as inexperienced as she was. And then she stopped caring about such things.

Afterwards, Frank Coffey was careful to keep his weight on his elbows and knees and not on her. “The Race’s language does not have words for this,” he said. “‘I thank you’ is not nearly strong enough.” He kissed her. “I hope that says something.”

“Oh, yes.” Kassquit felt near tears. She hadn’t realized how much she’d missed this. “
Oh,
yes.” She used an emphatic cough. It didn’t seem adequate, either. She kissed him this time. A member of the Race wouldn’t have understood. He seemed to.

Ttomalss knew he had too many things going on all at the same time. He kept waiting to hear whether Pesskrag and her fellow physicists were making progress in their experiments. He monitored what the wild Big Uglies were up to, and reported back on that to Atvar. The retired fleetlord also seemed to be running in too many directions at once.

“
Rats!
” he said to Ttomalss out of a clear sky. “We have got to find those creatures and get rid of them, Senior Researcher, or this entire world will suffer on account of them.”

“Truth,” Ttomalss agreed. “Maybe you should clear everyone out of this hotel and fumigate it, the way you would for pests of our own.”

“I have discussed this matter with Sam Yeager,” Atvar said unhappily. “He is not enthusiastic about moving. He is not obstructive—he will relocate if we insist. But he is not enthusiastic. Diplomacy is, or can be, a nuisance. I hesitate to displace him if I can accomplish my goals by other means.”

“How many more rats have you recovered?” Ttomalss asked.

Even more unhappily, Atvar answered, “One after that which Senyahh killed. And it was not captured here in the hotel but in the park across the way. That is another reason I hesitate to displace the wild Big Uglies: it may already be too late.”

It may already be too late.
Ttomalss didn’t respond to that. It was the Race’s usual lament when dealing with the Tosevites. Here, it was liable to be true in more ways than Atvar had meant it.

After leaving the fleetlord’s suite, Ttomalss left a message for Pesskrag. The physicist took her time about calling him back. Maybe she was busy experimenting. Maybe she’d finished experimenting but had nothing new to tell him. Maybe she was just sick and tired of him. Till she did eventually answer, he couldn’t say.

What with everything else that was going on, Ttomalss hardly had the chance to turn an eye turret toward Kassquit every now and then. Her room in the hotel was not electronically monitored, as were those of the wild Big Uglies (not that those microphones had yielded much; the American Tosevites appeared to have antimonitoring electronics of their own). Not only was she assumed to be on the Emperor’s side, but she had also strongly objected to being monitored back on the starship orbiting Tosev 3.

Without that continuous monitoring, Ttomalss had to rely on what he observed when he and Kassquit were together. He would have done better observing one of his own species. He knew that. However acculturated Kassquit was, her basic responses remained Tosevite, and alien.

One morning at breakfast, he said, “You will correct me if I am wrong, but do you not seem more cheerful than usual?”

Kassquit paused to take a bite of aasson. After she swallowed, she answered, “You might say so. Yes, superior sir, you might say so.”

“Good. I am glad to hear it.” Ttomalss was also glad he had seen it. “Do you happen to know why you are more cheerful?” If she did, he would do his best to make sure conditions did not change for her.

“Yes, superior sir, I do know,” Kassquit said, and said no more.

Trying not to show the exasperation he felt, Ttomalss asked, “Do you mind telling me why you are more cheerful than usual? Is it by any chance the aftereffect of your audience with the Emperor?” He felt proud of himself for being so insightful.

And he felt correspondingly deflated and annoyed when Kassquit used the negative gesture. “No, superior sir, I do not mind telling you,” she replied. Ttomalss brightened, hoping that was why she’d used it. But she went on, “Though I am and always will be proud the Emperor received me, I must confess that that is not the main reason why I am more cheerful these days.”

Once more, she didn’t elaborate. This time, Ttomalss did let out an irked hiss. “I ask again: why are you, then?”

“Do you truly want to know?” Kassquit inquired—perhaps ironically, though that did not occur to the psychologist till later. At the time, he just made the affirmative gesture. Kassquit said, “Very well, then, superior sir—I will tell you. I am more cheerful than usual because I have begun mating again. I find it much more satisfactory and much more enjoyable than self-stimulation. Do you have any other questions?”

Ttomalss didn’t. He finished breakfast in a hurry and left the refectory as fast as he could. That didn’t take him far enough away. He left the hotel, too, and strode at random down the streets of Sitneff. He hoped immersing himself in his own kind would take the bad taste of Tosevites off his tongue.

Even Kassquit! Or was it, especially Kassquit? She had everything the Race and the Empire could give her. She had a reasonable rank and more than adequate wealth. She even had the privilege of an imperial audience, which Ttomalss himself did not enjoy. And what did she value? What made her happy—made her so happy, Ttomalss couldn’t help but notice? Tosevite mating behavior—and that even after she was warned against it!

It hardly seemed fair.

She is a Big Ugly after all,
Ttomalss thought sadly.
In spite of everything we have done for her, she is still nothing but a Big Ugly.
That was a liverbreaking notion. Air whooshed out of his lung in a long, sad sigh. She was as much a citizen of the Empire as any Tosevite could possibly be, more than any other Tosevite was likely to be for thousands of years, if ever. But her biology still drove her in ways no member of the Race could fully understand.

Or was that true? Back on Tosev 3, there was a small but growing number of males and females who used ginger to simulate the Big Uglies’ year-round sexuality. Some of them had even adopted the Tosevite custom of permanent exclusive mating bonds. To most of the Race, they were perverts, even more depraved than the Big Uglies themselves. But might they not one day serve as a bridge between the Empire on the one hand and the wild and stubbornly independent Tosevites on the other? And might Kassquit not be part of that same bridge?

Ttomalss could dare hope. But Tosev 3 had dashed the Race’s hopes again and again ever since the conquest fleet arrived. In a Tosevite legend, hope was the last thing to emerge from a box of troubles. The legend didn’t say what happened next. Ttomalss’ guess was that the troubles leaped on new-hatched hope and devoured it.

An automobile warning hissed at him. He sprang in the air in surprise and skittered back to the curb. He’d walked off against traffic, something he never would have done if he hadn’t been so gloomy and distracted.
If that car had smashed me, it would have been your fault, Kassquit.

The audience with the Emperor made her proud. But mating with a wild Big Ugly (and with which?—she hadn’t said) made her happy. Ttomalss wondered if he ought to see which American Tosevite seemed unusually happy these days. But would a wild Big Ugly show it the way Kassquit did? The Americans were used to mating in a way she wasn’t.

She would rather be pleased in this way by her own kind than honored by the Empire.
A stray beffel beeped at Ttomalss. He was usually kind to animals, but he made as if to kick this one. The beffel had been a stray for a while. It recognized that gesture, and scrambled away on its short, strong legs before the blow could connect. He wouldn’t have actually kicked, but the beffel couldn’t know that.

My superiors will have to hear of this, but how am I supposed to put it in a report?
Ttomalss wondered.
How can I phrase it so that it does not reflect badly on Kassquit—or on me?
Atvar would understand. He’d seen how things were on Tosev 3, and he had some notion of normal Tosevite sexual behavior. But most of the so-called experts here on Home had no direct experience with Big Uglies. They would be offended or disgusted—or maybe they would be offended
and
disgusted. Ttomalss didn’t want Kassquit punished for what was, to her, normal behavior. That wouldn’t be fair.

He stopped, so abruptly that a female in a blue wig that looked nothing like any real Big Ugly’s hair almost ran into him. She said something rude. He ignored her, which made her say something even ruder. He still paid her no attention. He stood there on the sidewalk in front of a meat market.
If Kassquit’s behavior is normal for her, why are
you
getting so upset about it?

Because she took me by surprise.
No, the answer there wasn’t very hard to find, was it? The Race did not approve of surprises or respond well to them—another reason Tosev 3 had caused it so many headaches. Males and females liked to know how everything worked, how all the pieces fit together, and exactly what their part was in the bigger scheme of things.

To the Race, Big Uglies sometimes seemed to act almost at random. Part of that was because Tosevites worried less about the future than did members of the Race. If they saw present opportunity, they grabbed with both hands. And their sexual and family ties made them do things inexplicable to the Race.

“Sexual ties.” Ttomalss muttered the words out loud. A male going by kept one eye turret on him till he passed out of sight. Again, the psychologist hardly noticed, though in other circumstances he would have been mortified to draw so much attention. He still didn’t know with which American male Kassquit had mated.

Only four candidates. Two of them had permanent mating contracts with females. Ttomalss had learned, though, that Big Uglies respected such contracts only imperfectly. And Jonathan Yeager had been Kassquit’s first partner, all those years before. Would they have returned to each other?

Or would Tom de la Rosa have forsaken his partner? As an ecological expert, de la Rosa was formidable. In sexual terms . . . Ttomalss had no idea what he was like in sexual terms.

He knew just as little about Major Frank Coffey in that context. Dark brown Big Uglies had a formidable sexual reputation among paler ones, but that reputation appeared to be undeserved. Under the skin, Tosevite subspecies were remarkably similar.

Then there was Sam Yeager himself. He had been mated, but his longtime partner was dead. Would he be looking for sexual opportunities now? How could a member of the Race hope to know?

You could ask him,
Ttomalss thought. Then he made the negative gesture. The American ambassador would not get angry at the question. Ttomalss was reasonably sure of that. But Yeager would laugh at him. He was pretty sure of that, too. He was no more fond of making a fool of himself than anyone else of any species.

Just when he had decided he couldn’t make a reasonable guess about the candidates, he realized he hadn’t really considered all of them. Big Uglies occasionally became intimate with members of their own sex. Because of pheromones and crest displays, such behavior was much rarer among the Race. Could Kassquit have experimented with a female?

Kassquit
could
have done almost anything. What she
had
done, she knew and Ttomalss didn’t. He also had to admit to himself that he couldn’t figure it out from the evidence he had. Maybe a Big Ugly could have. He wouldn’t have been surprised. But, despite all his years studying the Tosevites, he was no Big Ugly himself.