Homeward Bound (5 page)

Then he started believing the other shoe wouldn’t drop. Maybe Mr. Authoritative couldn’t be bothered with him any more. Plenty of other people wouldn’t have set any conditions. Plenty of other people would have killed—in the most literal sense of the word—to get a call like that.

Jonathan had almost abandoned hope when the man with the authoritative voice did call back. “All right, Yeager. You’ve got a deal—both of you.” He hung up again.

“We’re in!” Jonathan shouted. Karen whooped.

We’re in.
Karen Yeager hadn’t dreamt two little words could lead to so many complications. But they did. Going into cold sleep was a lot like dying. From a good many perspectives, it was exactly like dying. She had to wind up her affairs, and her husband‘s, as if they weren’t coming back. She knew they might, one day. If they did, though, the world to which they returned would be as different from the one they knew as today’s world was from that lost and vanished time before the Lizards came.

The Yeagers’ sons took the news with a strange blend of mourning and jealousy. “We’ll never see you again,” said Bruce, their older boy, who’d come down from Palo Alto when he got word of what was going on.

“Never say never,” Karen answered, though she feared very much that he was right. “You can’t tell what’ll happen.”

“I wish I were going, too,” said Richard, their younger son. “The
Admiral Peary
! Wow!” He looked up at the ceiling as if he could see stars right through it. Bruce nodded. His face was full of stars, too.

“One of these days, you may find a reason to go into cold sleep,” Karen told them. “If you do, it had better be a good one. If you go under when you’re young, you stay young while you’re going, you do whatever you do when you get there, you go back into cold sleep—and everybody who was young with you when you left will be old by the time you’re back. Everybody but you.”

“And if you’re not young?” Richard asked incautiously.

Karen had been thinking about that, too. “If you’re not young when you start out,” she said, “you can still do what you need to do and come back again. But most of what you left behind will be gone when you do.”

She sometimes—often—wished she hadn’t done such figuring. The Race had been flying between the stars for thousands of years. The
Admiral Peary
would be a first try for mankind. It wasn’t as fast as the Lizards’ starships. A round trip to Home and back would swallow at least sixty-five years of real time.

She looked at her sons. Bruce was a redhead like her. Richard’s hair was dark blond, like Jonathan‘s. Hardly anybody in their generation shaved his head; to them, that was something old people did. But if she and Jonathan came back to Earth after sixty-five years, the two of them wouldn’t have aged much despite all their travel, and their boys would be old, old men if they stayed alive at all.

Karen hugged them fiercely, each in turn. “Oh, Mom!” Richard said. “It’ll be all right. Everything will be all right.” He was at an age where he could still believe that—not only believe it but take it for granted.

I wish I could,
Karen thought.

She not only had to break the news to the children of her flesh, she also had to tell Donald and Mickey. She’d been there when the two Lizards hatched from their eggs, even though Jonathan’s dad hadn’t really approved of that. She’d helped Jonathan take care of them when they were tiny, and she and Jonathan had raised them ever since Sam Yeager went into cold sleep. They were almost as dear to her as Bruce and Richard.

They were older in calendar years than her human sons. She wasn’t a hundred percent sure how much that meant. Lizards grew very rapidly as hatchlings, but after that they aged more slowly than people did. Some of the important males who’d come with the conquest fleet were still prominent today, more than fifty years later. That wasn’t true of any human leader who’d been around in 1942. Even Vyacheslav Molotov, who’d seemed ready to go on forever, was eight years dead now. He’d hoped for a hundred, but had got to only ninety-six.

The two Lizards raised as people listened without a word as she explained what would happen. When she’d finished, they turned their eye turrets towards each other, as if wondering which of them should say something. As usual, Donald was the one who did: “Are we going to go out there and live on our own, then?”

“Not right away,” Karen answered. “Maybe later. You’ll have to wait and see. For now, there will be other people to take you in.”

She didn’t like not telling them the whole truth, but she didn’t have the heart for it. The whole truth was that somebody would keep an eye on them for the rest of their lives, however long those turned out to be. The Race knew about them by now. By the very nature of things, some secrets couldn’t last forever. The Lizards’ protests had been muted. Considering Kassquit, their protests couldn’t very well have been anything but muted.

Karen didn’t care to consider Kassquit. To keep from thinking about the Lizard-raised Chinese woman, she gave her attention back to the two American-raised Lizards. “What do you guys think? Are you ready to try living on your own?”

“Hell, yes.” To her surprise, that wasn’t Donald. It was Mickey, the smaller and most of the time the more diffident of the pair. He went on, “We can do it, as long as we have money.”

“We can work, if we have to,” Donald said. “We aren’t stupid or lazy. We’re good Americans.”

“Nobody ever said you were stupid or lazy. Nobody ever thought so,” Karen answered. Some Lizards
were
stupid. Others didn’t do any more than they had to, and sometimes not all of that. But her scaly foster children had always been plenty sharp and plenty active.

“What about being good Americans?” Mickey’s mouth gave his English a slightly hissing flavor. Other than that, it was pure California. “We are, aren’t we?” He sounded anxious.

“Sure you are,” Karen said, and meant it. “That’s part of the reason why somebody will help take care of you—because you’ve been so good.”

Mickey seemed reassured. Donald didn’t. “Aren’t Americans supposed to take care of themselves?” he asked. “That’s what we learned when you and Grandpa Sam taught us.”

“Well . . . yes.” Karen couldn’t very well deny that. “But you’re not just Americans, you know. you’re, uh, special.”

“Why?” Donald asked. “Because we’re short?”

He laughed out loud, which showed how completely American he was: the Race didn’t do that when it was amused. Karen laughed, too. The question had come from out of the blue and hit her right in the funny bone.

She had to answer him, though. “No, not because you’re short. Because you’re you.”

“It might be interesting to see Home,” Mickey said. “Maybe we could go there, too, one of these days.”

Did he sound wistful? Karen thought so. She didn’t suppose she could blame him. Kassquit had sometimes shown a longing to come down to Earth and see what it was like. Karen wasn’t sorry Kassquit hadn’t got to indulge that longing. Worry about diseases for which she had no immunity had kept her up on an orbiting starship till she went into cold sleep. Those same worries might well apply in reverse to Mickey and Donald.

No sooner had that thought crossed Karen’s mind than Donald said, “I bet the Lizards could immunize us if we ever wanted to go.”

“Maybe they could,” Karen said, amused he called the Race that instead of its proper name. She doubted the U.S. government would ever let him and Mickey leave even if they wanted to. That wasn’t fair, but it likely was how things worked. She went on, “For now, though, till everything gets sorted out, do you think you can stay here with Bruce and Richard?” Stanford had promised her older son graduate credit for at least a year’s worth of Lizard-sitting. Where could he get better experience dealing with the Race than this?

“Sure!” Mickey said, and Donald nodded. Mickey added, “It’ll be the hottest bachelor pad in town.”

That set Karen helplessly giggling again. Until Mickey met a female of the Race in heat and giving off pheromones, his interest in the opposite sex was purely theoretical. But, because he’d been raised as a human, he didn’t think it ought to be. And Bruce and Richard would love a hot bachelor pad. Their interest in females of their species was anything but theoretical.

Doubt tore at Karen. Was this worth it, going off as if dying (and perhaps dying in truth—neither cold sleep nor the
Admiral Peary
could be called perfected even by human standards, let alone the sterner ones the Race used) and leaving all the people who mattered to her (in which she included both humans and Lizards) to fend for themselves? Was it?

The doubt didn’t last long. If she hadn’t wanted, hadn’t hungered, to learn as much about the Race as she could, would she have started studying it all those years ago? She shook her head. She knew she wouldn’t have, any more than Jonathan would.

No, she wanted to go aboard the
Admiral Peary
more than anything else. She wished she could go and come back in a matter of weeks, not in a stretch of time that ran closer to the length of a man’s life. She wished that, yes, but she also understood she couldn’t have what she wished. Being unable to have it made her sad, made her wish things were different, but wouldn’t stop her.

The day finally came when all the arrangements were made, when nothing was left to do. Richard drove Karen and Jonathan from their home in Torrance up to the heart of Los Angeles. Bruce rode along, too. Richard would, of course, drive the Buick back. Why not? He could use it. Even if everything went perfectly and Karen did come back to Earth and Southern California one day, the Buick would be long, long gone.

Richard and Bruce might be gone, too. Karen didn’t care to think about that. It made her start to puddle up, and she didn’t want to do that in front of her sons. She squeezed them and kissed them. So did Jonathan, who was usually more standoffish. But this was a last day. Her husband knew that as well as she did. Not death, not quite—they had to hope not, anyhow—but close enough for government work. Karen laughed. It
was
government work.

After last farewells, her sons left. If they were going to puddle up, they probably didn’t want Jonathan and her to see it. She reached for her husband’s hand. He was reaching for hers at the same time. His fingers felt chilly, not from the onset of cold sleep but from nerves. She was sure hers did, too. Her heart pounded a mile a minute.

A man wearing a white coat over khaki uniform trousers came out from behind a closed door. “Last chance to change your mind, folks,” he said.

Karen and Jonathan looked at each other. The temptation was there. But she said, “No.” Her husband shook his head.

“Okay,” the Army doctor said. “First thing you need to do, then, is sign about a million forms. Once you’re done with those, we can get down to the real business.”

He exaggerated. There couldn’t have been more than half a million forms. Karen and Jonathan signed and signed and signed. After a while, the signatures hardly looked like theirs, the way they would have at the end of a big stack of traveler’s checks.

“Now what?” Karen asked after the doctor took away the last piece of paper with a horizontal line on it.

“Now I get to poke holes in you,” he said, and he did. Karen hung on to Jonathan’s hand while they both felt the drugs take hold.

“I love you,” Jonathan muttered drowsily. Karen tried to answer him. She was never quite sure if she succeeded.

A
Big Ugly walked into the office at the Race’s headquarters in Cairo that Ttomalss was using. “I greet you, Senior Physician,” the psychologist said. “It was good of you to come here to talk to me.”

“And I greet you, Senior Researcher.” Dr. Reuven Russie spoke the Race’s language about as well as a Tosevite could. The hair had receded from the top of his head, as often happened with aging male Big Uglies, and what he had left was gray.

“Please—take a seat.” Ttomalss waved to the Tosevite-style chair he’d had brought into the office.

“I thank you.” Russie sat. “You are, I gather, interested in the American Tosevites’ progress on cold sleep.”

Ttomalss used the affirmative gesture. “That is correct. You will, I trust, understand why the issue is of considerable concern to us.”

“Oh, yes.” Reuven Russie’s head went up and down. The way he nodded was a subtle compliment to Ttomalss. An ignorant Big Ugly would have used his own gesture because he did not know what the Race did. A Tosevite who knew more would have imitated the Race’s gesture. Russie, who knew more still, knew Ttomalss was an expert on Big Uglies and so of course would understand a nod even where some other member of the Race might not. The physician went on, “I think they know enough to fly between the stars. That is what concerns you, is it not?”

“Truth.” Ttomalss’ tailstump twitched in agitation. “But how can this be so? It is only a little more than fifty local years since we came to Tosev 3. Before then, neither the Americans nor any other Tosevites would have had the least interest in cold sleep. And they have had to adapt our techniques to their biochemistry, which is far from identical to ours.”

“Every word you say is true,” Reuven Russie replied. “I do not know the details of their techniques. They keep them secret. But I can infer what they know by what they do not talk about. Lately, they do not talk about a great many things, enough so the silence is likely to cover all they need to know of this art.”

“I had arrived at a similar conclusion,” Ttomalss said unhappily. “I was hoping you would tell me I was wrong. When trying to figure out what Tosevites are capable of, the worst conclusion a male of the Race can draw is usually not bad enough.”

“I do not know what to do about that,” the Big Ugly said. “But I can tell you where some of the differences arise. How long has the Race known cold sleep?”

“More than thirty-two thousand of our years—half as many of yours,” Ttomalss answered. “We developed it when we knew we would send out our first conquest fleet, the one that brought Rabotev 2 into the Empire. That was twenty-eight thousand years ago.”

“You started working on it . . . four thousand of your years before you needed it.” Russie let out a soft, shrill whistle. Ttomalss had heard that sound before; it meant bemusement. Gathering himself, the Big Ugly said, “That is even longer than I had thought. And now, of course, you take it completely for granted.”

“Yes, of course,” Ttomalss said, wondering where Russie was going with this. “Why should we not? We had it largely perfected for the first conquest fleet, and have made small improvements in the process from time to time ever since. We want things to work as well as they possibly can.”

“And there is the difference between you and the Americans,” Reuven Russie said. “All they care about is that things work
well enough.
Also, they reach out with both hands—with every fingerclaw, you would say—in a way the Race never seems to have done. Add those things together with their strong motivation to learn to fly from one star to another, and I am not so very surprised they have learned enough to attempt this.”

“Will they—can they—succeed?” Ttomalss said.

“This, you understand, is only a matter of my opinion,” the Big Ugly replied. “I would not, however, care to bet against them.”

Ttomalss did not care to bet against the Big Uglies, either, however much he wished he could. “But suppose they visit Home? Suppose they fill their ship up with ginger?”

Russie’s shrug was uncannily like one a male of the Race would have used. “Suppose they do,” he said. “What can you do about it? Destroying their ship would surely start a war here. Are you certain the Race would win it?”

Thirty local years earlier, at the time of the last great crisis between the Race and Big Uglies, the answer to that would undoubtedly have been yes. The victory might have left Tosev 3 largely uninhabitable, but it would have been a victory. Since then, though, the Americans—and the Russkis, and the Nipponese, and even the Deutsche, whom the Race
had
defeated—had learned a great deal. Who would beat whom today was anyone’s guess. Ttomalss’ miserable hiss said he knew as much.

Not wanting to dwell on that, the male changed the subject. “I hope your sire is well?” he said, such matters being part of polite conversation among Tosevites.

“I thank you for asking. He is as well as he can be, considering that he is nearly eighty years old,” Reuven Russie replied.

Even doubling the number to make the years match those of Home left Ttomalss unimpressed. His own folk wore out more slowly than Big Uglies. He wondered whether the frenetic pace with which one generation replaced another on Tosev 3 had something to do with the equally frenetic pace of progress here. He knew he was not the Race’s first researcher to have that thought.

“I am glad to hear it,” he said, perhaps a heartbeat more slowly than he might have. He swung one eye turret to the computer screen for a moment. “You have also a kinsmale who now lives in the not-empire of the United States, is that not a truth?”

“David Goldfarb lives in Canada,” Russie answered. “The two not-empires are similar to each other in many ways. He is also well enough. He is younger than my sire, but not by much.”

“I thank you for the correction,” Ttomalss said. The record stated Goldfarb was living in North America, the local name for the northern part of the lesser continental mass. He’d assumed that meant the United States. The not-empire of Canada often got lost in the shadow cast by its more populous, more powerful neighbor. He wondered what the Canadians thought of that.

“Is there anything else, Senior Researcher?” Russie asked. “I have told you what I know, and what I have guessed. You will be aware that I am not formally affiliated with the Moishe Russie Medical College, nor have I been for many years. If you need technical details, someone who completed the full course there or one of your own experts could do a better job of furnishing them.”

“I was not seeking technical details. I wanted a feel for the data,” Ttomalss said. “You have given me that, and I thank you for it.”

“You are welcome.” The Tosevite physician rose, towering over Ttomalss once more and demonstrating why the rooms in the Race’s headquarters were the size they were: they had originally been built for Big Uglies. Reuven Russie nodded stiffly and walked out of the interview chamber.

Ttomalss began drafting his report. He suspected no one would pay much attention to it. It would not be optimistic, not from the Race’s point of view. The powers that be favored optimism. They pointed to the successful colonies on Tosev 3, and to the way animals and plants from Home were spreading across the warmer regions of this planet. They did not like turning an eye turret toward the Tosevites’ continued technical progress, any more than they cared to remember the rebellions that still simmered in China and elsewhere. But colonists here were trained as soldiers. This world had what bid fair to become a permanent Soldiers’ Time, something unprecedented in the Empire. The authorities did to some degree recognize reality, even if they wished they didn’t have to.

Tosev 3 imposed haste even on the Race. Ttomalss finished and submitted his report at what would have been a breakneck pace back on Home. But he was astonished when, three days later, his computer screen lit up to show the features of Fleetlord Reffet, who was in charge of the colonists. “I greet you, Exalted Fleetlord,” the psychologist said, assuming the seated version of the posture of respect.

“And I greet you, Senior Researcher,” Reffet replied.

“To what do I owe the honor of this call?” Ttomalss asked.

“The American Big Uglies have launched what can only be a starship,” Reffet said bluntly. “Its course is in the general direction of Home, though not precisely aimed toward our sun.”

“Oh,” Ttomalss said. “Well, we did think this day would eventually come.”

“Yes, but not so soon,” Reffet said. “You understand that this means the folk of Home, folk with no experience of Big Uglies, will now have to learn to deal with them and try to understand them.”

“They will have a lively time of it, then, as did we of the conquest fleet—and as did you of the colonization fleet,” Ttomalss said. “It may even be good for them. They have not begun to understand us when we talk of what things are like on Tosev 3. Now they will gain the experience they need to form a more accurate opinion.” He did not say,
Serves them right,
but the thought was prominent in his mind.

But Reffet said, “That attitude will not do, Senior Researcher. We have to assume that ship is heavily armed. For the first time since the Empire was unified, Home may be in danger. They need to have someone there with some real knowledge of Tosevites.”

“Fleetlord Atvar is there,” Ttomalss said.

Reffet hissed angrily. “Fleetlord Atvar is a disaster waiting to happen. He proved that often enough here on Tosev 3. We need someone there with real expertise, not just wide-mouthed bombast. We need someone like you there, Senior Researcher.”

“Me?” Ttomalss hissed, too, in horrified dismay. “But my research program here is progressing so well!”

“Nevertheless, I am ordering you back to Home,” Reffet said. “Which counts for more, the individual or the Race as a whole? Have you yourself been infected by the rampant egotism of the Big Uglies you study?”

At first, Ttomalss reckoned the question horribly unfair. The more he turned his eye turrets towards it, though, the more reasonable it seemed. In any case, Reffet had the authority to do as he said he would. Ttomalss assumed the posture of respect again. “You may command me, Exalted Fleetlord.”

“Yes, I may,” Reffet said complacently. “I may, and I shall. Settle your affairs as quickly as you can. I want you in cold sleep on the next Homeward-bound ship. I do not know when the Tosevite starship will get there. I hope you will arrive first. I believe you will; the Big Uglies’ acceleration was relatively low. Remember—you may directly serve the Emperor himself.” He cast down his eye turrets.

So did Ttomalss. He would have reckoned the honor greater before years of studying Tosevite superstitions, none of which took seriously the cult of spirits of Emperors past or the reverence given the living Emperor. The Big Uglies’ ignorance had sown the seeds of doubt in him. But excitement soon cast out doubt and hesitation. After so long dealing with this barbarous world, he was going Home again at last! And if he did gain the privilege of seeing the Emperor—well, so much the better.

For a long time after Atvar woke up on Home once more, he’d thought the sun looked strange in the sky. He’d got used to the star Tosev, which was hotter and bluer. Only Tosev 3’s much greater distance from its primary left it with such a chilly climate.

Now, though, the sun seemed normal to him once more. Life on Home had also seemed strange to him when he came out of cold sleep. That dislocation had lasted longer. In fact, it hadn’t disappeared to this day. He had changed, changed irrevocably, during his tenure on Tosev 3.

The change wasn’t just one of holding a prominent command, either. He would have been glad enough to lay that aside. But he had lived with danger and intrigue and the unexpected for year after year. On Home, such things scarcely existed. They had been obsolete here for so very long, most people forgot they had ever existed. Atvar had long since given up trying to explain them. He knew it was hopeless. He might as well have tried explaining the effects of ginger to a female who had never tasted it.

His mouth fell open in a sardonic laugh. As he’d known they would, smugglers had brought ginger back to Home. The herb was fabulously expensive here, which only seemed to make males and females want it more. It had already produced its first scandals. More, no doubt, would come.

Even the look of things had changed here. That had truly rocked him back on his tailstump, for it was almost unprecedented on Home. But young males and females seemed to enjoy acting and looking as much like Big Uglies as they could. They wore false hair, often in colors no Tosevite could have grown naturally. And some of them even wore cloth wrappings over their body paint, which seemed a ploy deliberately designed to cause confusion. Atvar had expected the Big Uglies to imitate the Race; that was how things were supposed to work. For the process to go into reverse struck him as altogether unnatural.

The fleetlord had never been found guilty of anything. Males and females here had endlessly questioned his judgment, but no one came close to showing criminal intent. That struck many other members of the Race as altogether unnatural. Atvar lived in half disgrace: the first fleetlord of a conquest fleet who wasn’t a conqueror.