Homeward Bound (64 page)

The de la Rosas and Dr. Blanchard also left. Sam Yeager got up, too, but only to fix himself another drink. “What’s up, Dad?” Jonathan asked—he’d noticed something was out of kilter, too, then. “You’re not just down in the dumps because Donald’s making a buffoon of himself on national TV. You were low before we got the disk.”

“Now that you mention it—yes,” his father said. He stared down at the glass in his hand, as if expecting to find the answer there. Karen had never seen him do that before. It alarmed her. After a moment, still looking down into the glass, Sam went on, “They don’t want to let me go home.”

“What? Why not?” As soon as the words were out of Karen’s mouth, she knew how silly they were. She knew damn well why not. She just hadn’t imagined it would still matter, not after all these years.

Jonathan had no trouble figuring it out, either. “That’s outrageous, Dad,” he said. “You were
right,
by God.”

“You’d better believe it,” his father said, and laughed a sour laugh. “But what’s that got to do with the price of beer?”

“What . . . exactly did Major Nichols tell you?” Karen asked.

“First off, they didn’t expect to find me the ambassador. They figured I’d be minding the Doctor’s p’s and q’s for him,” Sam Yeager said. “They were going to have me go on minding p’s and q’s for whatever young hotshot they’ve brought to take over here. Told me there were still hard feelings back home over what I did. I wonder how big a villain I am in the history books.” He swigged the almost-vodka.

“You shouldn’t be,” Karen said. “The people who ordered the attack on the colonization fleet were the villains.”

Her father-in-law shrugged. “I think so, too. But if the powers that be don’t . . .” He finished his drink. “I wonder if the
Commodore Perry
brought any real, live air conditioners for the new ambassador and his people. We should have thought of that ourselves, but we were too dumb.” His mouth twisted. “Of course, even if they do have ’em, they probably wouldn’t give me one.”

“Oh, for the love of God, Dad!” Jonathan said.

“Yes, for the love of God.” Sam Yeager sounded like something straight out of Edgar Allan Poe. Karen wondered if he did it on purpose.

She said, “Talk to their captain. Maybe he’ll change his mind.”

“Maybe.” Her father-in-law sounded dubious in the extreme. He also sounded furious—just how much so, she didn’t really understand till he went on, “I’d rather stay here than beg, though. Why should I have to beg for what I . . . darn well deserve anyway?” He held out his glass to her. “Fix me another one, would you? After all, I’ve got so much to celebrate.”

Atvar climbed out of the shuttlecraft at the Preffilo port. Males and females in the body paint of the imperial court met him in the terminal and whisked him away to the palace. He hadn’t been summoned to the capital for an audience with the Emperor, but for a working meeting with him. The ceremonial was much less involved. The honor might have been greater. A meeting with the Emperor meant he really wanted your opinion. An audience could mean anything at all. Champions at the biennial games got audiences with the Emperor.

Since it was only a meeting—if
only
was the right word—Atvar didn’t have to worry about the imperial laver and limner. His own body paint would do. The courtiers whisked him into the palace through a side entrance. No reporters waited to shout asinine questions at him. Word had got out that a second Tosevite starship had come to Home. Word on what kind of starship it was hadn’t, not yet. He wondered just how the males and females in charge of such things would get that across. He wondered if they could do it without touching off a panic. He would have panicked if he’d got news like that.

In fact, he had panicked when he got news like that. The Race was at the Big Uglies’ mercy, if they had any. If that wasn’t worth panicking about, what would be?

The 37th Emperor Risson sat in a conference room not much different from the ones in the hotel back in Sitneff, though the furniture was of higher quality. Atvar folded himself into the special posture of respect reserved for the Emperor alone. “Rise,” Risson told him, the overhead lights gleaming from his imperial gold body paint. “Now that you have done that, Fleetlord, let us forget about ceremony for the rest of this session.”

“Just as you say, your Majesty, so it shall be done,” Atvar replied. That had been a truth for Emperors for a hundred thousand years. How much longer would it stay a truth? The answer wasn’t in the Race’s hands.

By the way Risson’s eye turrets waggled, the same thought had occurred to him. Oddly, that relieved Atvar. He would not have wanted the Emperor blind to the consequences of what had happened here. Risson said, “Well, we have not seen an egg like this one since the days when Home was unified and we did not fight the last war among ourselves after all.”

“I wish I could say you were wrong, your Majesty.” Instead of saying that, Atvar made the affirmative gesture. “I only hope this one hatches as successfully. It will not be easy.”

“No.” Risson clicked his fingerclaws on the tabletop, as any thoughtful and not very happy member of the Race might have done. “By everything we can tell, the Big Uglies are not lying about what this new ship of theirs can do.”

“I wanted to think they were. I did not really believe it,” Atvar said.

“My reaction exactly,” Risson said. “Neither Straha nor the shuttlecraft pilot—Nesseref—appears to have been drugged and deluded.”

“In my opinion, Straha has long been deluded, but he thinks the same of me,” Atvar said.

“I know something of the feuds that plagued the conquest fleet. I do not care to know more, from either side. They do not matter now,” the Emperor said. “The only thing that matters is verifying the Big Uglies’ claims. Straha and Nesseref tend to do that. So does the information we are receiving at speed-of-light from Tosev 3. The American Tosevites already know what we are hearing for the first time.”

“Your Majesty, however much I tried to keep from doing so, I thought I had to believe them as soon as that ship arrived,” Atvar said. “For one thing, it seemed to come out of nowhere. For another, it is the culmination of something toward which the Big Uglies have been reaching for some time. Our physicists are behind theirs, but they are at least beginning to reach in the same direction.”

“We are behind the Big Uglies. We change more slowly than they do. This does not bode well for us,” Risson said.

“The same thought has occurred to me,” Atvar said. “I would be lying if I said it filled my liver with delight.”

“Immediate war might still be our best course,” Risson said. “I do not want it. I do not think our chances are good. But if they only grow worse, perhaps we should send that message, no matter how many years it takes to arrive.”

Atvar made the negative gesture. “No, your Majesty,” he said, and used an emphatic cough. “This same thought occurred to me, but it would be a disaster. Consider: the Big Uglies must see this is one of our options. If they put one of their ships in line between our solar system and the star Tosev, they can intercept our signal, return to Tosev 3, and be ready to attack or defend against whatever we send from here, whichever suits them better, years before the colonists have any idea they are supposed to help us go to war.”

Risson did consider, for some little while. At last, with obvious reluctance, he made the affirmative gesture. “Well, Fleetlord, that is a truth. It is not a palatable truth, but a truth it is.”

“I can see one way around it,” Atvar said. “If we were to have a passenger on their starship, that male or female could deliver a message to Fleetlord Reffet and Fleetlord Kirel. That way, the delay would be overcome.”

“You are clever, Fleetlord. Unfortunately, the Big Uglies have thought of the same thing,” Risson said. “They will let us have passengers, but they will not let them communicate with members of the Race on Tosev 3 in any way, citing exactly the danger you named.”

With an unhappy hiss, Atvar said, “That cursed Straha told me the same thing. I had forgotten—my apologies, your Majesty. We have been too naive for too long; deceit does not come naturally to us any more.”

“Instead of what we call diplomats, maybe we should have sent a shipload of azwaca-hide dealers to Tosev 3,” the Emperor said. “They always have an eye turret on the main chance, and might have done better at getting what we need out of the Big Uglies.”

“You should tell that one to your diplomatic aides, your Majesty. It holds much truth,” Atvar said. Until the conquest fleet faltered on Tosev 3, Emperors had not needed diplomatic aides since Home was unified. The very word
ambassador
was obsolete in the Empire, preserved only in historical fiction. On Tosev 3, it had hatched out of the eggshell of dormancy once more.

“I would not wish to make them unhappy,” Risson said. “They try their best. We have all tried our best. Sometimes . . . Sometimes things do not fall out as we wish they would. I have no idea what is to be done about this, except to go on doing the best we can.”

“If we do not do that, we will fail,” Atvar said. “Of course, even if we do, we may well fail anyhow.”

“This thought has also crossed my mind,” Risson said. “It is one of the reasons I have not slept well since this new starship came here. Having the other one in orbit above me, knowing some missile was bound to be aimed at this palace, was bad enough. But this one, this one we cannot imitate, let alone surpass—this is very bad. And do you know what else?”

“No, your Majesty. What else?” Atvar asked.

The 37th Emperor Risson let out an indignant hiss. “You will not be surprised to learn we have Tosevite encyclopedias here on Home,” he said. “What better way to learn about the Big Uglies than through their own words? Some of our scholars who read English have investigated the American Tosevites after whom these two starships were named.” He hissed again, even more irately than before.

“And?” Atvar asked, as the Emperor surely meant him to do.

“And the first ship, the
Admiral Peary,
is named for the Big Ugly who first reached the North Pole on Tosev 3,” Risson said. “That was surely a Big Ugly who went into the unknown, and so his is a good name to give an early starship. But the
Commodore Perry . . .
” He hissed one more time. “This Commodore Perry traveled by sea from the United States to the islands of Nippon, where he forced the Nipponese into concluding trade agreements with him because of the strength of his warships. Is this a deliberate insult to us? Do the Americans reckon us similar barbarians to exploit as they please?”

“Today, your Majesty, the Nipponese are no more—and no less—barbarous than any other wild Big Uglies,” Atvar replied. “And—” He broke off.

Not soon enough. “Yes?” Risson prodded.

Atvar wished he’d kept quiet. Now he had to go on with his thought, such as it was: “I was going to say, your Majesty, that I understand the analogy the Big Uglies may have been drawing. Commodore Perry could travel by sea to the Nipponese. They could not travel by sea on their own to the land he came from. We are in a like situation in regard to that second starship.”

Risson stiffened. Atvar wondered if he would be sent away, never to see his sovereign again. Then, to his vast relief, the Emperor laughed. “Well, Fleetlord, you have made your point, I must say. That analogy has more teeth than I wish it did. Until we can match the Tosevites’ prowess, maybe we are in truth no better than semibarbarians.”

“For many millennia, we have believed ourselves to stand at the pinnacle of biological and social evolution,” Atvar said. “And why not? Our society was successful and stable. We easily overcame the other intelligent species we met and remolded their cultures and their worlds in the image of ours. Who could oppose us? Who could show us there were other ways of doing things?” He laughed, too, bitterly. “Well, now we know the answer to that.”

“Yes. Now we know.” Risson’s voice was heavy with worry. “But thinking we were superior to all around us helped make us that way in fact . . . for a long time. Now that we see we are not at the pinnacle, as you said, will we begin to view ourselves as permanently inferior to the Big Uglies? That could also become a self-fulfilling prophecy, you know.”

The fleetlord didn’t answer right away. He’d had more experience worrying about Big Uglies than perhaps any other member of the Race. What worried him more than anything else was that they needed to be worried about. When the conquest fleet first landed, the Tosevites had used numbers and appalling heroism and even more appalling deceit to make up for their technological deficit. More appalling still was how fast that deficit had shrunk. And now . . .
Yes. And now,
Atvar thought.

“As you said, your Majesty, we have to do the best we can,” he said at last. “They learned from us. For a while now, we will have to learn from them. And then, with a little luck, we can learn from each other. One thing this breakthrough will do: it will mean both the Tosevites and we can colonize much more widely than ever before. Both sides are vulnerable now because we are so concentrated. If we have colonies on hundreds of worlds rather than a handful, the situation changes.”

It was Risson’s turn to stop and think. “The Empire would not be the same. It would not, it could not, hope to hold together.”

“Probably not, your Majesty,” Atvar said. “But the Race would survive. In the end, is that not the most important thing?” Risson thought again, then used the affirmative gesture.

Now that Kassquit knew what Ttomalss had not wanted to tell her about, she also understood why her mentor and the Emperor had been so unwilling. Nothing would ever be the same again for the Empire. The Race, convinced faster-than-light travel was impossible, hadn’t seriously looked for it. For the Big Uglies,
impossible
seemed nothing but a word to get around. And now they’d got around it. If the Race couldn’t, it would find itself in deadly peril.

She’d wondered if she would have mixed feelings about what the American Tosevites had done. They were, after all, her own kin, far more than any members of the Race could have been. She might have shared some of the pride at their achievement. She had before, over smaller things.