Homeward Bound (54 page)

“Yes, that is a truth,” Ttomalss agreed. “If anything, that is an understatement. I asked you this before. Now I ask it again: can you prepare a memorandum telling me in nontechnical terms what sort of engineering changes you expect to hatch from these theoretical changes?”

This time, Pesskrag made the affirmative gesture. “I think I had better now. We are further along than we were, so what I say will be much less speculative than it would have the last time you asked me. I should send it to you by the day after tomorrow.”

“That will do. I thank you. Farewell.” Ttomalss broke the connection.

He knew memoranda often hatched more slowly than their authors thought they would. This one, though, came when Pesskrag promised it. Ttomalss read it on the monitor before printing a hard copy. Once he had read it, his first impulse was to conclude that Pesskrag had lost her mind. But she had evidence on her side, and he had only his feelings. He was, as he’d said, no physicist himself.

He was also alarmed. If she did know what she was talking about . . . If the Big Uglies knew the same sorts of things, and more besides . . . Ttomalss printed out the memorandum and took it to Atvar’s chamber. He was glad to find the retired fleetlord there. “This is something you should see, Exalted Fleetlord,” he said, and held out the paper.

“What is it, Senior Researcher?” Atvar seemed distracted, uninterested. “You will forgive me, I hope, but I have other things on my mind.”

“None of them is more important than this,” Ttomalss insisted.

“No?” Atvar swung one eye turret toward him. “I am concerned with the survival, or lack of same, of both the Race and the Big Uglies. Do you still hold to your claim?”

“I do, Exalted Fleetlord,” Ttomalss replied.

Slowly, Atvar’s other eye turret followed the first. “You really mean that,” he observed, astonishment in his voice. Ttomalss made the affirmative gesture. Atvar held out his hand in a way that suggested he was about as ready to claw as to grab. “Very well. Let me see this, so I can dispose of it and go on to other things.”

“Here, Exalted Fleetlord.” Ttomalss handed him the printout. Atvar began to read with one eye turret, as if to say the memorandum deserved no more. Ttomalss waited. Before long, the fleetlord was going over the document with both eyes, a sign it had engaged his interest. Ttomalss made the affirmative gesture again, this time to himself. He’d expected nothing less.

At last, Atvar looked up from the printout. “You really believe this will happen, Senior Researcher?”

“Pesskrag has never struck me as one who exaggerates for the sake of winning attention,” Ttomalss replied. “She believes this will happen. So do her colleagues. If it does, it will be important.”

“If it does, it will turn the world—several worlds—upside down,” Atvar said. Ttomalss could hardly disagree with that. The fleetlord went on, “Did I note that this is information derived from experiments modeled after those the Big Uglies have already carried out?”

“You did, yes.” Ttomalss waited to see how Atvar would respond to that.

The fleetlord let out a furious hiss. “We are going to have our work cut out for us, then, are we not?”

“It would appear so.” Ttomalss wondered how large an understatement that was.

Atvar said, “Do your pet physicists have an idea how long this will need to go from experiment to production?”

“This report does not state it,” Ttomalss answered. “The last time I asked Pesskrag the same question, she gave me an estimate—hardly more than a guess, she said—of at least a hundred fifty years.”

“That was her estimate for us?” Atvar asked. When Ttomalss showed that it was, Atvar asked a grimly sardonic question: “How long will it take the Big Uglies?”

“Again, Exalted Fleetlord, I have no idea. I am only a messenger here. Pesskrag would not offer an estimate for that.”

“Of course she would not.” Yes, irony had its claws in the fleetlord, all right. “What do she and her colleagues know of Tosevites? About what I know of physics. They could hardly know less than that, could they?”

“Well, they could know as little as
I
know about physics,” Ttomalss said.

He startled a laugh out of Atvar. “Either way, they do not know much. And that is the problem, would you not agree? Even those of us with some understanding of the Big Uglies too often underrate them. The less the physicists’ knowledge, the greater their tendency to do so.”

“The less the physicists’ knowledge of Big Uglies, the greater their tendency to think the Tosevites are just like us,” Ttomalss replied.

“We both said the same thing, in slightly different ways,” Atvar said. Ttomalss wished he could disagree with that, but knew he could not. The fleetlord continued, “We are going to have some interesting times, are we not? Not pleasant, necessarily, but interesting.”

“I would think so, yes,” Ttomalss said. “Forgive me, but you seemed out of sorts when I brought you this report.”

“Did I? I suppose I did,” Atvar said. “Talks with the Big Uglies are not going as well as I wish they were. Sam Yeager simply does not have a realistic view of the situation.”

“Are you sure, Exalted Fleetlord?” Ttomalss asked. “From all I have seen, the American ambassador is about as reasonable a Tosevite as was ever hatched.”

“This has also been my view,” Atvar replied. “He has also been as friendly to the Race as any Tosevite could be expected to be. That makes his present intransigence all the more disappointing. I fear he must have instructions that constrain him, for he is not at all yielding, even on small points.”

“How much have you yielded to him?”

“What I am allowed to,” Atvar said. “He pushes the notion of formal equality to ridiculous extremes, though. If one believes his assumptions, there is no difference between the Empire and the United States in sovereignty and in obligations, none whatever.”

“What is the likely result if these talks fail?” Ttomalss asked.

“War. What else?” Atvar sounded particularly bleak.

“Then they had better not fail. Or do you disagree?”

“Oh, no.” The fleetlord used the negative gesture. “I think you are absolutely right. The Emperor agrees with you, too. But if the wild Big Uglies present impossible demands, what are we supposed to do? Yield to them? I am very sorry, Senior Researcher, but I think not.”

“One more question, Exalted Fleetlord, and then I will leave,” Ttomalss said. “Do the Tosevites think our requirements are as ridiculous as we think theirs? If they do, perhaps both sides should be more flexible and seek some sort of compromise solution.”

“Easier to propose a compromise than to propose compromise terms both sides would find acceptable,” Atvar said coldly. “Farewell.”

That was an unmistakable dismissal. “Farewell,” Ttomalss said, and left the fleetlord’s chamber. He had done what he could. The Race as a whole had done what it could. The wild Big Uglies, no doubt, would loudly insist that they had done what they could. And what was the likely result of all that? The same disaster that would have appeared if everyone had gone into these talks with the worst will imaginable.
So much for good intentions,
the psychologist thought. There was some sort of Tosevite saying about what good intentions were worth. He couldn’t recall the details, but remembered thinking that the phrase, when he’d heard it translated, held more truth than he wished it did.

The elevator ride down to the lobby felt like a fall, perhaps a fall straight into despair. Hoping to make himself feel better with some food, Ttomalss went into the refectory. The result was not what he’d hoped for. Oh, the food would be pleasant enough; the hotel had a good kitchen. But Kassquit and Frank Coffey were in there ahead of him, sitting in a couple of chairs designed for Big Uglies.

It wasn’t that Ttomalss begrudged his former ward’s happiness. So he told himself, at any rate. Still, seeing her so obviously pleased with the company of her fellow Tosevite got under his scales. If behavior sprang from biology more than from culture, perhaps conflict with the wild Big Uglies
was
inevitable—a conclusion he would rather not have reached just then.

He did his best to reach a different conclusion. Maybe their happiness together showed that citizens of the Empire and wild Tosevites could get on well despite their cultural differences. That sounded reassuring, but he couldn’t make himself believe it. It would have been a truth had all citizens of the Empire been Tosevites. Had Kassquit been a member of the Race, Frank Coffey would not have been interested in her in the way he was.
Tosevite sexuality makes cultural differences less important,
he judged. But that was an argument for biological primacy, not against it, and one he wished he had not thought of.

The server brought his zisuili ribs. They were tender and meaty, the sauce that covered them tart on his tongue. He savored them less than he wished he would have. His mind was on other things. Atvar had always been on the optimistic side when it came to dealing with the Big Uglies. If even he feared a clash was inevitable, maybe it was.

Sam Yeager knew the commandant of the
Admiral Peary
was the sort of man who would have disposed of him like a crumpled paper towel for letting the Lizards know who was responsible for the attack on the colonization fleet. That was one reason Yeager hated talking with Lieutenant General Healey.

And the commandant despised him right back. He knew it. As far as Healey was concerned, he was a traitor and a Lizard-lover, somebody who cared about the Race more than he did about humanity or his own country. Their mutual lack of affection had made their conversation about ginger not long before particularly unpleasant.

Healey could have worked much more easily with the Doctor. Nobody had ever questioned the Doctor’s patriotism. And the Doctor would have figured Healey was a useful tool, and treated him with the respect required to keep him . . . useful. (Nobody, Yeager was convinced, could have kept Healey happy. The capacity for happiness simply was not in the man.)

But the USA was stuck with one Sam Yeager as ambassador. It meant Lieutenant General Healey had to take him seriously, for his position if not for himself. And it also meant that, now and again, like it or not, Sam had to deal with Healey.

“Are you sure this conversation is secure?” Healey growled. Yeager might have guessed those would be the first words out of his mouth.

“As sure as my instruments will let me be,” he answered. Of course the Race would try to monitor conversations between the ground and the
Admiral Peary.
The scrambling equipment was human-made, the best around in 1994. That put it a little ahead of anything the Lizards owned. But they had a whole solar system’s worth of electronics here to try to tease signal out of noise. Maybe they could. Sam felt he had to add, “Life doesn’t come with a guarantee, you know.”

“Yes, I am aware of that.” By Healey’s sour rasp, he was wishing he were having this conversation with the Doctor. He muttered something Sam couldn’t make out, which was probably just as well. Then he gathered himself. “Tell me what’s on your mind, Ambassador.” In his own crabbed way, he was making an effort. If he dealt with Sam Yeager the ambassador, he wouldn’t have to think so much about Sam Yeager the man—the man he couldn’t stand.

“I think you would do well to stay alert for anything unexpected.” Sam picked his words with as much care as he could.

“We always do,” Healey said, as if Sam couldn’t be trusted to know that for himself. But then his tone sharpened: “Are you telling me there may be some special reason we need to be alert?” He was narrow. He was sour. He was also professionally competent, however little Yeager cared to acknowledge that.

And Yeager had to answer, “Yes, I’m afraid there may be.”

“Suppose you tell me more,” the commandant rapped out.

“There are . . . sovereignty issues,” Sam said unhappily. “Free-trade issues. The Race has most-favored-nation status in commerce with the United States. It doesn’t want to see that there are reciprocity issues. If tariffs keep us from carrying on any sort of trade with the planets in the Empire—”

“Then we have a problem,” Healey broke in, and Sam couldn’t disagree with him. Healey went on, “All right, Ambassador. I suppose I have to thank you for the heads-up. I promise you, we won’t be caught napping. Anything else?”

“I don’t think so,” Sam said. “Out.” He broke the connection. It was his turn to do some muttering. One reason the
Admiral Peary
had come to Home heavily armed was to remind the Race war with the United States didn’t just mean war within the Sun’s solar system. War could come home to the other worlds the Empire ruled.

Healey was probably the right man to be up there, too. If he had to fight for his ship, he would do it till the Lizards overwhelmed him. Inevitably, they would, but they’d know they’d been in a scrap, too.

They’d never had anybody insist on full equality with them before. They didn’t know how to respond. No, that wasn’t true. They couldn’t see that they needed to agree. That came closer to the truth.

Shaking his head, Sam left his room. He went down to the lobby, where he found Tom de la Rosa and Frank Coffey good-naturedly arguing about, of all things, a blown call in the 1985 World Series. De la Rosa rounded on him as he came up. “What do you think, Sam? Was the guy safe or out?”

“Beats me,” Sam said. “I’d been on ice for years.”

“So had that stupid umpire,” Coffey said. “The only difference is, they ran him out there anyway.”

Yeager looked around. There weren’t any Lizards close by—just a couple of guards at the door. But the Race was bound to have bugged the area. He would have, in the Lizards’ place. Any edge you could get was better than none. He said, “Come on back up to my room, gentlemen, if you’d be so kind.” The Lizards had bugs there, too. The difference was, those bugs didn’t work—Sam didn’t think they did, anyhow.

“What’s up?” Tom asked. Yeager only shrugged, pointed at a wall, and tapped his own ear. The Lizards could have all the bugs they wanted down here, but they wouldn’t get everything that was going on.