Homeward Bound (49 page)

“It is my opinion,” Atvar said. “Perhaps I am mistaken. Perhaps peace will prove a benefit to all concerned, and not merely a breathing space in which you Tosevites gather yourselves for a blow against the Race. Perhaps this is a truth. But the evidence from Tosev 3 makes me doubt it.”

“Why am I here, then?” Sam asked. This time, Atvar did not answer him at all.

Atvar had begun to hope he never again saw the park across the way from the hotel in Sitneff. After his talk there with Sam Yeager, he pictured bombs bursting on Tosev 3, and on Home, and on the Empire’s other two worlds. How strong
were
the Americans? No way to know, not for certain. All he could know was how strong they had been when the latest signals left Tosev 3.

The Race had comfortably run the Empire at light speed for thousands of years. Delays of signals from one planet to the next had mattered little. But Tosev 3 was farther from Home than either Rabotev 2 or Halless 1, which made delays longer, and the Tosevites changed far faster than any species in the Empire, which made those delays more critical.

Maybe there was a good answer to the problem, but Atvar failed to see it.

He was worried enough to telephone the Emperor again. He didn’t get through to Risson. He hadn’t expected to, not at once—things simply didn’t work that way. He did hope the message he left would persuade Risson to call him back. His Majesty’s courtiers knew the Emperor took a keen interest in Tosevite affairs.

Half a day later, Atvar did get a call from Preffilo. That female was on the line again. Atvar assumed the special posture of respect as the Emperor’s image appeared on the monitor. As Risson had before, he said, “Rise, Fleetlord, and tell me what is on your mind.”

“It shall be done,” Atvar said once more, and summarized what he and Sam Yeager had had to say to each other. He finished, “What are we going to do, your Majesty? It strikes me that our choices are to grant the Big Uglies privileges they have not earned and do not deserve, or else to face a devastating war. Neither seems satisfactory.”

“Will the American Tosevites fight if we refuse to make these concessions?” the Emperor asked. “Are they as strong as their ambassador claims?” He didn’t sound the least bit self-conscious at using the old, old word to describe Sam Yeager’s status.

“As for your first question, your Majesty, they might,” Atvar answered. “Pride pushes them more strongly than it does us.” That he might find it harder to recognize the Race’s pride than the Big Uglies’ had never occurred to him. He went on, “As for the second question, how can we be certain where the Tosevites are these days?” He reminded the Emperor of the problem with communicating with Tosev 3.

Risson made the affirmative gesture. “Yes, I know the difficulty. It has always been next to impossible to administer Tosev 3 from Home. As you say, the lag is much more important there than with our other two worlds.”

Back when the Race first discovered the Big Uglies were much more advanced than anyone on Home had thought, the conquest fleet had dutifully radioed the news from Tosev 3 to Home. All those years later—more than twenty of Tosev 3’s turns around its star—detailed orders had started coming back from Home and the bureaucrats here. The only problem with them was, they were ridiculously unsuited to the situation as it had developed. Atvar had had the sense to ignore them. The males and females here had taken a lot longer to have the sense to stop sending them.

“What do you recommend now?” Risson persisted. “Do you believe making the concessions the American Tosevites demand is necessary to ensure peace? Do you believe it
will
ensure peace, or will it only encourage the Big Uglies to demand more from us later?”

“With the Big Uglies, that second possibility is never far from the surface,” Atvar said. “They have only those dull nails in place of fingerclaws, but they grab fiercely even so.”

“That has also been my impression,” the Emperor said. “If we reject their demands, would they truly fight on that account?”

“I am not certain. I wish I were. In the short run, I am inclined to doubt it. But they would surely arm themselves more powerfully. They would build more starships. We might decide on a preventive war against them. There is no certainty that war would succeed now. The longer we wait, the less our likelihood of victory. That, I would say,
is
certain.”

Risson hissed unhappily. “You are telling me our best choice would be to order all-out war against them now?”

Our best choice would have been to order all-out war against them as soon as the first round of fighting stopped,
Atvar thought grimly. But he couldn’t have done that. It might have left Tosev 3 uninhabitable, and the colonization fleet was on the way. After muttering Straha’s name under his breath, he said, “When it comes to dealing with the wild Big Uglies, your Majesty, there are no good choices. We have to thread our way through the bad and try to avoid the worst.”

“I see,” the Emperor said. “I always saw, but the coming of this starship has poked my snout in it more strongly than ever.” He paused. “Sam Yeager struck me as being a reasonable individual.”

“Oh, he is,” Atvar agreed. “But he has his duty, which is to represent his not-empire, and he does that quite well. When you consider that he also views the world from an alien perspective, dealing with him becomes all the more difficult.”

“An alien perspective,” Risson echoed. “We are not used to that. Sam Yeager speaks our language well. He adapted to the ceremonial of the audience as well as a citizen of the Empire could have done.”

“Truth. I was proud to be his sponsor. I do not say he is unintelligent—on the contrary,” Atvar said. “But he is
different.
His differences are to some degree disguised when he speaks our language. The assumptions behind his thoughts are not assumptions we would make. We believe otherwise at our peril.”

“What are we going to do? Can we annihilate the independent Big Uglies even if we want to?” Risson asked.

“I do not know,” Atvar answered. “I simply do not know. Conditions on Tosev 3 are different from the way they were when the latest signals reached us. How they are different, who can guess? But they
are
different. Whatever the difference is, I doubt that it redounds to our advantage.”

“This is a disaster,” the Emperor said. “A disaster, nothing less. We would have done better not to land on Tosev 3 at all, to leave the Big Uglies to their own devices. Maybe they would have destroyed themselves by now. They would not have had any external rivals then, so they might have gone on with their local wars.”

“It could be, your Majesty,” Atvar said. “Unfortunately, this is not a choice we can make now. We have to deal with the situation as it is, not as it was when the conquest fleet arrived.”

“I understand that,” the 37th Emperor Risson said. “But am I not allowed to wish it were otherwise?”

“Why not, your Majesty? We all have wishes about what might have been when it comes to the Big Uglies. How could it be otherwise? The way things really are is less than satisfactory.”

“Truth,” the Emperor said. “Now tell me this, if you would be so kind—suppose we grant every concession the American Big Uglies seek from us. If we give them everything they say they want, will that be enough to make them keep whatever agreement they may make with us?”

“They are, in their own way, honorable. They would
intend
to stick to the terms of a treaty, your Majesty,” Atvar said. “The trouble with them is that, unlike us, they are
changeable.
In twenty years, or fifty years, or at most a hundred years, they will not be what they are now. They will look at the treaty, and they will say, ‘This is not relevant, because we are not the same as we were. We are smarter. We are stronger. You need to change this, that, and the other thing to reflect these new conditions.’ And you may be sure the new terms they demand will be to their advantage, not ours.”

“We do change. But we change slowly and sensibly,” Risson said. “By all the signs, they change for the sport of changing.”

“Oh, they do, your Majesty. They admit it,” Atvar replied. “Change has become ingrained in their culture in a way it never did with us. Their motorcars look different from year to year—not because the new ones run better, though they often do, but merely so it can be seen that they
are
new. They change the style of their cloth wrappings in the same way, and for the same reason. It is as if we changed the style of our body paint every few years.”

“We could not do that! It would hatch chaos!” Risson exclaimed.

“I understand that. It is one of the reasons I find our young males and females with their false hair and even their wrappings so disturbing. But the Big Uglies embrace change, where we mostly endure it,” Atvar said. “Anyone who does not see that does not see the first thing about them. It drives us mad. That we are so different often drives the Big Uglies mad, I think. But their variability has proved a great source of strength for them.”

The Emperor let out another unhappy hiss. “Again, you are telling me war now may be our best hope.”

“It . . . may be,” Atvar said unwillingly. “But it also may not. If war comes, it will cost us more than we have paid in the whole history of the Empire. I do not believe Sam Yeager was lying or bluffing when he said the American Big Uglies would attack all our worlds in case of war. I do not believe we will be able to block all their attacks, either. They will hurt us. They will hurt us badly. Whether the other independent Tosevites will join them against us, I cannot say. If they do, that would make a bad situation worse. How much worse, I am not prepared to guess.”

“And what will happen to Tosev 3 if war breaks out between us and the independent Big Uglies?” Risson asked.

“Well, your Majesty, I am not there. In his wisdom, the previous Emperor, your illustrious predecessor, chose to recall me.” Atvar could not keep acid from his voice. He went on, “My opinion, however, for what it may be worth, is that the Big Uglies should never get another chance to start a war if they are addled enough to fight now. And if that means leaving Tosev 3 uninhabitable for us and for them, so be it. Up until this time, they were local menaces, restricted to their own solar system. That, unfortunately, is no longer the case.”

“It is too late now to send you back to Tosev 3,” the Emperor said. Atvar bent into the special posture of respect. Risson had just done what no one else had done before him: he’d admitted the Race had made a mistake in recalling the fleetlord. He gestured for Atvar to rise, then went on, “Do all you can to promote a peaceful resolution of our difficulties. If that fails . . . If that fails, we will do what becomes necessary, and we will do our best.”

“It shall be done, your Majesty,” Atvar said.

“I hope it shall,” Risson replied. “As I say, we shall attempt it, at any rate.”

He is not confident we can beat the Big Uglies if it comes to war,
Atvar realized. The fleetlord would have been more shocked had he been more confident himself. What had the Tosevites learned in the years since the latest signals from Tosev 3 reached Home? What would they learn in the years while the order to attack was speeding from Home to Tosev 3? Whatever it was, how would they apply it to weapons? Would the Race be able to keep up, to counter them?

“If the spirits of Emperors past are with us, we will not have to do that,” Atvar said.

“Let us hope they are. Let us hope we do not have to,” Risson said. “But let us also be as ready as we can, so we will see trouble as it hatches and before it grows . . . too much.” Atvar wished the Emperor hadn’t added the last two words, but made the affirmative gesture anyway.

T
tomalss had stopped stalking around Sitneff looking for befflem to boot. Kassquit would do whatever she did. If it brought her emotional and physical satisfaction, well and good. If it brought her emotional travail . . . she was an adult, and would have to cope with it as best she could.

So the psychologist told himself, anyhow. If a small, mean part of him rather hoped his former ward ran into emotional travail, he had the grace to be ashamed of that part. He did his best not to let it affect his thinking or his actions.

It wasn’t as if he had nothing else on his mind. One morning—
early
one morning—Pesskrag telephoned him and said, “I hope you know you are responsible for commencing the unraveling of work thought to be truth for tens of millennia.”

“Am I?” Ttomalss said around a yawn. “And how should I feel about this—besides sleepy, I mean?”

“You are—you and that other psychologist back on Tosev 3, that Felless,” Pesskrag said. “If you two had not brought the Big Uglies’ research to our attention, we might have remained ignorant of these developments . . . forever.”

“Now that you know of them, what can you do with them?” Ttomalss’ eye turrets were beginning to decide they would work together after all. Once he got some breakfast, he probably would be capable of rational thought. He wouldn’t have bet on that when the telephone first hissed for his attention.

“That is why my colleagues and I have been experimenting so diligently: to begin to find out what we can do,” the physicist answered. She went on, “We are not altogether sure we believe what we are finding.”

“I have asked you before—just what is so startling about these Tosevite discoveries?” Ttomalss said. “Are you in a better position to tell me than you were the last time we spoke?”

“We may see more change in the next two to five hundred years than we have seen at any time in our history since Home was unified,” Pesskrag said.

“What
sort
of change?” Ttomalss demanded. “
How
will things be different?” He hoped for concrete answers.

Pesskrag remained resolutely abstract. “Senior Researcher, at present I have no idea. But, as we evaluate each experiment, it will suggest others, and we will probably have a much better notion of exactly where we are going in a few more years.”

“There are times when I believe you are doing your best to addle me with frustration,” Ttomalss said. Pesskrag laughed and made the negative gesture. Ttomalss made the affirmative one. “Yes, I do believe that. Will you not give me at least some idea of how much you have learned since we last spoke?”

Laughing still, the physicist replied, “It shall be done, superior sir. Last time we spoke, I believe I said our knowledge was like a new hatchling, still wet with the juices from its egg. We have indeed advanced from that point. Now, in my opinion, our knowledge is like a new hatchling on which the sun has dried the juices from its egg.”

“I thank you so very much.” Ttomalss’ pungent sarcasm set Pesskrag laughing all over again. Ttomalss stubbornly persisted: “How far is the gap from fascinating experiment to workable new technology?”

“I am very sorry, Senior Researcher, but I have no way to judge that,” Pesskrag replied. “It will be a while. Technology that induces such major changes will have to be investigated with unusual care. That will slow its implementation. We will need a good many lifetimes before we can fully evaluate it.”

She’d said that before, too. “Suppose we were reckless. Suppose we were reckless to the point of being addled.” Ttomalss tried to force on her a mental exercise he’d used before. “Suppose we knew whatever it is you now think we know. Suppose we cared nothing for consequences, only for getting the maximum use from this new knowledge. How soon after your discoveries
could
we have workable new technology?”

He had to give Pesskrag credit. She did try to imagine that, though it was alien to all her thinking patterns. “We would have to be completely addled to work in that way,” she said. “You do understand as much?”

Ttomalss used the affirmative gesture. “Oh, yes. That is part of the assumption I am asking you to make.”

“Very well.” Pesskrag’s eye turrets both turned up toward the ceiling. Ttomalss had seen that gesture in many males and females who were thinking hard. He used it himself, in fact. After a little while, the physicist’s eyes swung toward him again. “You understand my estimate is highly provisional?”

Now Ttomalss had all he could do not to laugh. However wild Pesskrag was trying to be, she remained a typical, conservative female of the Race. He could not hold it against her. “Yes, I understand that,” he said gently. “I am only looking for an estimate, not a statement of fact.”

“Very well,” she said. “Always bearing that in mind, if I were as wild as a wild Big Ugly—for that is what you have in mind, is it not?—I might find something useful within, oh, a hundred fifty years. This assumes no disasters in the engineering and no major setbacks.”

“I see. I thank you.” Ttomalss was willing to bet the Tosevites would be faster than that. The question was, how much faster than that would they be? Pesskrag was pretending to a wildness she did not have. The Big Uglies did not have a great many things, but they had never lacked for wildness. She’d given Ttomalss an upper limit. He had to figure out the lower limit for himself.

She said, “I thought I would shock you. I see I do not.”

“No, you do not,” Ttomalss agreed. “Your expertise is in physics. Mine is in matters pertaining to the wild Big Uglies. I admit the field lacks the quantitative rigor yours enjoys. Even so, what I do know of the Tosevites persuades me that your answer is believable.”

“That is truly frightening,” Pesskrag said. “I have trouble taking my own estimate seriously, and yet it fazes you not at all.”

“Oh, it fazes me, but not quite in the way you mean,” Ttomalss said. How long had the Big Uglies been working on this line of experiments before Felless noticed they were doing it? How much of their research had never got into the published literature for fear of drawing the Race’s notice—or, come to that, for fear of drawing rival Tosevites’ notice? Those were all relevant questions. He had answers to none of them. He found another question for Pesskrag: “If the Big Uglies do succeed within the timeframe you outline, could we quickly match them?”

“Maybe.” Her voice was troubled. “If so, though, we would have to abandon the caution and restraint we have come to take for granted. That would produce even more change than I have outlined.”

“I know,” Ttomalss said.

Pesskrag said, “If we are forced to change as rapidly as the Big Uglies, will we become as unstable as they are?”

“I doubt it. I doubt we could. But we would have to become more changeable than we are, I think. To some degree, this has already happened with the colonists on Tosev 3,” Ttomalss answered.

“As far as I am concerned, that is not a recommendation,” Pesskrag said. “I have read of the colonists’ strange perversions inspired by Tosevite drugs. I have even read that some of them prefer living among the wild Big Uglies to staying with their own kind. Can such things be true?”

“They can. They are,” Ttomalss said. “As is often true when examining social phenomena, though, causation is more complex than it is in the purely physical world.”

“I do not care,” Pesskrag said stoutly. “Why would any sensible male or female want to live among alien barbarians? Anyone who does such a thing cannot possibly be worthwhile, in my opinion.”

“Why? Some males and females who were good friends beforehand become addicted to ginger together. They formed mating bonds like those common among the Big Uglies,” Ttomalss said. Pesskrag let out a disgusted hiss. Ttomalss shrugged. “Like them or not, these things have happened on Tosev 3. For a long time, we reckoned such mated pairs perverts, as you say, and were glad to see them go—”

“As well we should have been!” Pesskrag broke in.

“Perhaps. We certainly thought so when these pairs first came to our attention,” Ttomalss said. “But ginger is widespread on Tosev 3, and a surprising number of close friends of opposite sexes have become more or less permanent mating partners: so many that we saw we were losing valuable males and females to the Big Uglies by driving all such pairs into exile. These days, there is a sort of tacit tolerance for them on Tosev 3, as long as they do not behave too blatantly in public.”

“Disgusting!” Pesskrag added an emphatic cough. “Bad enough that the Big Uglies have revolting habits. But they are as they have evolved to be, and so I suppose they cannot help it. If our own males and females on that planet are no longer fit to associate with decent members of the Race, though, we have a real problem.”

“Tosev 3 has presented us with nothing but problems ever since the conquest fleet got there,” Ttomalss said. “And yes, I think our society on that world will be different from the way it is elsewhere in the Empire—unless ginger becomes so widespread here and on our other worlds that we begin to match patterns first seen there.”

“I hope with all my liver that this does not happen,” Pesskrag said.

“So do I. I am a conservative myself, as any sensible male past his middle years should be,” Ttomalss said. “But you were the one who said we would see change in the relatively near future. Is it a surprise that some of this change would be social as well as technological?”

“I understand technological change. I understand how to manage it,” Pesskrag said. “I am not sure anyone knows how to manage social change. Why should anyone? The Race has little experience with it, and has not had any to speak of since Home was unified.”

“Do you know who has experience managing social change?” Ttomalss asked.

Pesskrag made the negative gesture, but then said, “The colonists on Tosev 3?”

“That is astute, but it is not quite what I meant. Close, but not quite,” the psychologist said. “As a matter of fact, I had in mind the Tosevites themselves. Their whole history over the past thousand of our years has involved managing major social changes. They have gone from slave-owning agrarians to possessors of a technical civilization that rivals our own, and they have not destroyed themselves in the process.”

“Too bad,” the physicist said.

“You may be right. If we had stayed away for another few hundred years, they might have solved our problem for us,” Ttomalss said. “Then again, if we had stayed away for another few hundred years, they might have come to Home anyway. In that case, all the problems we have with them now would seem trivial by comparison.”

“All the problems we have now, yes,” Pesskrag said. “The problems on the horizon are not small. Believe me, superior sir—they are not.”

“Please give me a written report, in language as nontechnical as you can make it,” Ttomalss said.

“As things are, I would rather not put any of this in writing until my colleagues and I are ready to publish,” the physicist said.

“Do you believe others will steal your work? I am sure we can discourage that,” Ttomalss said.

“Until we know more, I am afraid to let this information out at all,” Pesskrag said, and Ttomalss could not make her change her mind.

“Excuse me.” The Lizard who spoke to Jonathan Yeager in the lobby of the hotel in Sitneff was not one he had seen before. The male was evidently unfamiliar with his kind, too, continuing, “You would be one of the creatures called Big Uglies, would you not?”

“Yes, that is a truth.” Jonathan’s amusement faded as he got a look at the Lizard’s rather sloppily applied body paint. “And you would be a police officer, would you not?”

“Yes, that is also a truth.” The Lizard had a quiet, almost hangdog air. He seemed embarrassed to make the affirmative gesture. “I am Inspector Second Grade Garanpo. I have a few questions to ask you, if you would be so kind.”

“Questions about what?” Jonathan asked.

“Well, about the ginger trade, superior sir, if you really want to know,” Garanpo answered. “Ginger comes from your world, does it not?”

“Yes, of course it does,” Jonathan said. “But I do not know why you need to ask me about it. I have been here ever since the American diplomatic party came down to the surface of Home. We had no ginger with us then, and we have none now.”

“Which of the Tosevites would you be? Meaning no offense, but you all look alike to me,” the inspector said. Jonathan gave his name. Garanpo sketched the posture of respect without fully assuming it. “I thank you. I want to know because when there is ginger, one naturally thinks of you Tosevites.”

“Why?” Jonathan asked. “Unless I am mistaken, there has been ginger on Home for many years. It must have been brought here by males and females of the Race, because this is the first Tosevite starship to come here. Perhaps you should be looking closer to home, so to speak, than you are.”

“Perhaps we should. Perhaps we are. You are a very clever fellow, to make a joke in our language.” Garanpo’s mouth dropped open in what was obviously a polite laugh. “But perhaps we should also come to the source, you might say.”

“Why?” Jonathan asked again. “Whatever your latest problem with ginger is, why do you think it has anything to do with me?”