Homeward Bound (65 page)

But she didn’t, not because of this. This terrified her. She could see the danger it represented to the Empire. As long as the Big Uglies had this technology and the Race didn’t, the planets of the Empire lived on Tosevite sufferance.

“Do not worry, not on account of this,” Frank Coffey told her after she poured out her alarm to him in her room one afternoon. “Remember, this is the United States that has this technology. My not-empire will not do anything to touch off a war against the Race.”

“No?” Kassquit said. “I am sure the millions your not-empire killed in the attack on the colonization fleet would be ever so relieved to hear that.”

Coffey did have the grace to wince. He spread his hands, palms up. The paler skin there and on the soles of his feet, so different from the rest of his body, never failed to fascinate Kassquit. He said, “That was a long time ago. We would not do such a thing now.”

“Oh? Are you certain? If your not-emperor gave the order, would your soldiers disobey it?” Kassquit asked. “Or would they do as they were told?”

“Our not-emperor would not give such an order,” Coffey said, though he didn’t tell her how he knew such a thing. “And if he—or she—did give it, not all soldiers would obey. Remember, Sam Yeager is our ambassador to the Race. He was a soldier who disobeyed.”

“Yes, and was sent into exile because of it,” Kassquit said. “He would not be ambassador if the Doctor had lived, and he will not stay ambassador now that the new ship is here. Nor will the newcomers allow him to go back to Tosev 3. So much for the respect he won for disobeying orders.”

“You do not understand,” Frank Coffey insisted.

Kassquit made the negative gesture. “On the contrary. I fear I understand much too well.” She pointed toward the door. “I think you had better go. Otherwise, this conversation is all too likely to put an end to our friendship.” It was more than a friendship, of course, but that was the strongest word the language of the Race had.

“We might do better to talk things out,” Coffey said.

“No.” Kassquit used the negative gesture again. “What is there to say? You are loyal to your not-empire, as you should be. I am loyal to the Empire. This is also as it should be, I believe. We will not change each other’s minds. We will only quarrel, and what is the good of that?”

Coffey inclined his head. Kassquit understood that. It was what Big Uglies sometimes did instead of sketching the posture of respect. “No doubt you have found a truth. I will see you another time,” he said. He put on the few wrappings American Tosevites insisted on wearing in public even in the warmth of Home, then left her room.

Only after he was gone did Kassquit let tears start sliding down her face. She had known he was unlikely to make a permanent mating partner. She had expected him to return to Tosev 3 when the
Admiral Peary
left. But the
Commodore Perry
changed everything. Now he might leave within days, or tens of days. When she found happiness, did she always have to see it jerked out from under her feet?

She remembered the attack by the
Reich
when Jonathan Yeager was up in the starship orbiting Tosev 3 with her. Actually, for a little while that had worked out well on a personal level. It meant they’d stayed together longer than they would have otherwise, because he couldn’t go back down to the United States while the war lasted. But it had only made parting harder when the time finally came.

All at once, Kassquit wished she hadn’t thought about the
Reich
and the Deutsche. The Race would be doing everything it could to learn to travel faster than light. But so, without a doubt, would the Deutsche. They were formidably capable engineers. And, as far as she cold tell, their not-empire was governed by an equally formidable set of maniacs. What would they do if they succeeded before the Race did?

Maybe Frank Coffey had a point. Were the
Commodore Perry
a Deutsch starship, wouldn’t it have announced its presence by launching missiles at Home? The United States could have been better. But it also could have been much worse.

Kassquit yawned. She didn’t feel like thinking about it now. She felt like curling up and taking a nap. She lay down on the sleeping mat and did. When she woke up, she still felt more weary than she thought she should have. That had been happening more and more often lately. She wondered if something was wrong with her. Had she caught some Tosevite disease from Nicole Nichols or one of the other wild Big Uglies who’d come down from the
Commodore Perry
?

She went down to the refectory for a snack. That turned out to be a mistake. She’d always enjoyed spiced, chopped azwaca and niihau beans, but not today. They didn’t smell right. They didn’t taste quite right, either. And they sat in her stomach like a large, heavy boulder.

Then, quite suddenly, they didn’t want to sit there at all any more. She bolted from the refectory with the plate of meat and beans still half full. She got to the cloacal station just in time. She bent over one of the holes in the floor and noisily gave back what she’d eaten.

She couldn’t remember ever doing
that
before. It was one of the most disgusting experiences of her life. It brought a certain relief, but the taste! And the way it came out through the inside of her nose as well as her mouth!

She rinsed and spat, rinsed and spat. That didn’t help as much as she wished it would have. “I
am
diseased. I
must
be diseased,” she said, and used an emphatic cough. No one who was healthy could possibly do something so revolting.

She thought about going back to the refectory and finishing the chopped azwaca and beans. Then, with a shudder, she made the negative gesture. She didn’t believe she would ever want that dish again. It tasted much better going down than it did coming up.

Instead, she went to her room and telephoned Dr. Melanie Blanchard. “I would like you to examine me, please,” she said when the physician’s face appeared in the monitor.

“I would be happy to,” Dr. Blanchard said. “May I ask what has made you change your mind?” Her interrogative cough was a small masterpiece of curiosity. No member of the Race could have done that better.

“I am unwell,” Kassquit said simply.

“All right,” Dr. Blanchard said. “Come to my room, and I will see if I can figure out why you are.”

“It shall be done.” Kassquit broke the connection with no more farewell than that.

“I greet you,” the American female said when Kassquit pressed the door hisser. “Before I start poking you and doing the other things physicians do, please tell me your symptoms.” Kassquit did, in harrowing detail. Dr. Blanchard nodded. “All right—nausea and fatigue. Anything else?”

Now Kassquit hesitated. “I am not sure it is relevant.”

“Tell me and let me be the judge,” Melanie Blanchard urged. “The more data I have, the better my diagnosis is likely to be.”

“Yes, that does seem reasonable.” Kassquit made the affirmative gesture, though still hesitantly. “My other notable symptom is that the blood which flows from my reproductive organs has not done so when it normally would have.”

“Really?” the doctor said, in tones of strong surprise. Kassquit used the affirmative gesture again. Dr. Blanchard reached out and squeezed one of her breasts; Kassquit yelped. Dr. Blanchard asked, “Are they unusually tender?”

“Why, yes,” Kassquit said. “How did you guess?”

“This set of symptoms is familiar to me. Sooner or later, it becomes familiar to most Tosevite females, regardless of whether they happen to be physicians. Unless I am very much mistaken, you are gravid.”

Kassquit stared. “But that is impossible. Frank Coffey uses a sheath whenever we mate. He has not failed to do so even once.”

“I am glad to hear that. It speaks well for him—and for you,” Melanie Blanchard said. “But what you have described are the textbook early symptoms of gravidity. Sheaths are good protection against such accidents, but they are not perfect.”

What Kassquit felt was irrational fury. The sheath’s failure struck her as typical slipshod Tosevite engineering. Wild Big Uglies just did things. They didn’t bother to do them right. Or maybe, considering that the prime purpose of mating was reproduction, Frank Coffey
had
done it right.

“There are other possibilities,” the physician said. “All of them involve serious illness, and all of them are much less likely than simple gravidity. Some time not quite a local year and a half from now, I believe you will lay an egg.” She laughed and used the negative gesture. “That is the first phrase that occurred to me in the Race’s language. It is
not
what will happen. You will have a hatchling.”

“A hatchling.” Kassquit still struggled to take that in. “I know nothing about caring for hatchlings.”

“I am sure the American Tosevites here on Home with you, whoever they turn out to be, will be glad to help you,” Melanie Blanchard said. “Or, if you would rather, there is a medical procedure to terminate your gravidity. It is not very difficult, especially when done early.”

“Do you recommend medically that I do this?” Kassquit asked.

“No,” Dr. Blanchard said. “You are on the old side to be gravid, but you do not seem to be dangerously so. I will have to monitor you more closely than I would if you were younger, that is all. The procedure may become medically necessary, but I do not anticipate that it will. But other factors besides the merely medical are involved in whether you wish to rear a hatchling. This may be more true for you than for most Tosevite females. You have . . . less practice at being a Big Ugly.”

“That is a truth,” Kassquit said. “Still, if anything will teach me, this is likely to be the experience that would.”

“You do not need to decide at once,” Dr. Blanchard said. “During the first third of your gravidity, the procedure remains fairly simple. After that, as the hatchling grows inside you, it does become harder and more dangerous for you.”

Kassquit set the palm of her hand on her belly. “I will think about it,” she said, “but I believe I wish to go forward with this.”

A
fter Kassquit bolted from the refectory and came back looking wan two or three times, none of the Americans on Home had much doubt about what was ailing her. Frank Coffey sighed. He was careful to speak English: “I wonder how you say Broken Rubber in the Race’s language.”

“Congratulations—I think,” Jonathan Yeager told him.

“Thanks—I think,” Coffey said. “That isn’t what I had in mind.”

“Hey, you’ve given us something to talk about besides the
Com
modore Perry,
” Tom de la Rosa said. “And they said it couldn’t be done.”

Major Coffey sent him a slightly walleyed stare. “Thanks—I think,” he said again, in the same tones he’d used with Jonathan. Everybody laughed.

Jonathan said, “Is she ready to be a mother?”

“Nobody’s ever ready to be a mother till it happens to her.” Karen Yeager spoke with great conviction. “Some people may think they are, but they’re wrong. It’s baptism by total immersion.”

“Some people are
less
ready to be mothers than others, though,” Dr. Melanie Blanchard said. “No offense, Frank, but I can’t think of anybody who strikes me as less ready than Kassquit.”

Karen nodded at that. Jonathan didn’t, but he’d been thinking the same thing. Frank Coffey said, “We didn’t intend for it to happen.” He held up a hand. “Yeah, I know—nobody ever intends anything like that, but it happens all the time anyway.” He sighed. “She’s got nine months—well, most of nine months—to get used to the idea. And there will be more humans here to give her a hand.” Another sigh. “She’ll need one, heaven knows. I just hope—” He broke off.

Silence fell among the humans. Smiles faded from their faces. Jonathan knew what he’d started to say—
I just hope we don’t go to war
—that or something like it. If they did go to war, what was one pregnant woman? No more than one pregnant woman had ever been in all the sad and sordid history of mankind.

“The Lizards wouldn’t be that stupid, not now,” Tom said. Nobody answered. Maybe he was right. On the other hand, maybe he wasn’t. The Lizards had just got the biggest shock in their whole history.
They
probably didn’t know how they were going to react to it. How could any mere humans guess along with them?

On the other hand, how could humans keep from trying?

People filed out of the refectory in glum silence. Jonathan looked out of the hotel’s big plate-glass windows. He imagined the sun-bright flare of an exploding warhead right outside—and then darkness and oblivion.

“Penny for ’em,” Karen said.

He shook his head. “You don’t want to know.” She didn’t push him. Maybe she’d had thoughts like that herself.

“Ah . . . excuse me.” That was in the language of the Race. An untidy-looking Lizard whose body paint could have used a touch-up went on, “Are you the Big Ugly I had the honor of meeting a while ago? Forgive me, but your name has gone clean out of my head. I really am a fool about such things.”

“I greet you, Inspector Garanpo. Yes, I am Jonathan Yeager,” Jonathan said. All at once, a visit from a Lizard detective hot on the trail of ginger seemed the least of his worries. “Inspector, let me present my mate, Karen Yeager. Karen, this is Inspector Garanpo. I told you about him the last time he visited us.”

“Oh, yes, of course,” Karen said. “I am pleased to meet you, Inspector.” If she wasn’t
very
pleased, the Lizard cop wouldn’t know it.

Garanpo bent into the posture of respect. “It is an honor to make your acquaintance, superior female. Yes, indeed—an honor. Now I have met three of you Tosevites, and you seem pretty well civilized, you truly do. Not at all the sort of creatures I thought you might be when I found out there was a connection between your kind and the ginger trade.”

“There is also a connection between members of the Race and the ginger trade,” Jonathan pointed out. “Does that turn all males and females of the Race into monsters and criminals?”

“Well, no, I would not say that it does. I certainly would not say that.” Garanpo made the negative gesture. Jonathan watched him with an odd sort of fascination. He’d never before seen a Lizard who reminded him of an unmade bed.

“Why are you here, Inspector?” Karen asked. “Has there been more ginger smuggling?”

“More? Oh, no, superior female, not that we have been able to find,” Garanpo said. “What we do have, though, is more information on the ginger smuggling that previously took place. We have detected traces of ginger aboard the
Horned Akiss,
where the little rocket from your starship paid a call.”

“Is that supposed to prove something, Inspector?” Jonathan said. “For all you know, there are ginger tasters in the crew.”

“Here is what I know,” Garanpo said. “I know that a shipment of ginger came down to Home not long after you Big Uglies and the Race traded little rocketships. And I know that you were going to trade them back again, but then there was a delay. After that delay, you did send back the one you got from us. There was no ginger inside it, or none to speak of, but we did detect traces of the herb inside some of the structural tubing. What have you got to say about
that,
superior Tosevite?” He flicked out his tongue, for all the world like one of his small Earthly namesakes.

What have I got to say? That we’re lucky their scooter only had traces of ginger in it, and not enough to choke a horse. Those people upstairs came close as could be into walking into a buzz saw.

None of that seemed like anything the Lizard detective needed to hear. Jonathan put the best face on things he could: “I am sorry, Inspector, but this proves exactly nothing. Can you tell how old those traces of ginger are? How long has the
Horned Akiss
orbited Home? How many of your starships has it met? How long has ginger smuggling been going on?”

He could even have been right with his guesses, too. He didn’t think he was, but he could have been. A lawyer would have called it creating a reasonable doubt. He wasn’t sure the Race’s law had ever heard of the idea.

“Well, there has been ginger smuggling ever since starships started coming back from Tosev 3,” Garanpo admitted. “But there has never been any so closely connected with the source of supply, you might say, until now.”

“You do not know there is any such thing now,” Jonathan said sharply. “You assume it, but you do not know it.”

“We would, except that the officers on your ship refuse to let us do a thorough search and analysis of their little rocketship,” Garanpo said. “That suggests a guilty conscience to me.”

It suggested the same thing to Jonathan. Again, he wasn’t about to say so. What he did say was, “Why should they? You yourself have told me that this little rocketship was in the Race’s hands for some length of time. If you wanted to discredit us, you had the chance to do it.”

Inspector Garanpo’s eye turrets swiveled every which way before finally coming to rest on him again. “How are we supposed to show guilt when all you have to do is deny it?” the Lizard asked grouchily.

“How are we supposed to show innocence when all you have to do is claim we are guilty?” Jonathan asked in return.

Garanpo’s eye turrets started swiveling again. He turned and skittered off, muttering to himself. “You did that very well,” Karen said.

“Thanks,” Jonathan said. “I wish I didn’t have to. And you know what else I wish? I wish like hell I had a cold bottle of beer right now.” The Race, unfortunately, had never heard of beer.

Karen said, “You can get their vodka at the bar. Or if you want it cold, we’ve got a bottle and ice cubes in the room.”

Jonathan shook his head. “Thanks, hon, but it’s not the same.”

“Did that strange, shabby Lizard have any idea what he was talking about?”

“Of course not,” Jonathan said, a little louder than he needed to. He cupped a hand behind his ear to remind Karen that they were in the lobby and the Lizards could monitor whatever they said. Her mouth shaped a silent
okay
to show she got the point. Jonathan went on, “On second thought, maybe vodka over ice isn’t such a bad idea after all. You want to fix me one?”

“Sure,” Karen answered. “I may even make one for myself while I’m at it.”

They rode up to their room. As soon as Jonathan got inside, he checked the bug suppressors. When he was convinced they were working the way they were supposed to, he said, “You’d better believe we were smuggling ginger. If you want all the gory details, you can ask Dad.”

“Good way to start a war,” Karen observed.

She made him the drink. Once it was in his hand, he was damn glad to have it. Karen did fix one for herself, too. After a long pull at his, Jonathan coughed once or twice. It didn’t taste like much—vodka never did—but it was strong enough to put hair on his chest. He said, “There have been wars like that—the Opium Wars in China, for instance. Opium was just about the only thing England had that the Chinese wanted. And when the Chinese government tried to cut off the trade, England went to war to make sure it went on.”

“We wouldn’t do anything like that,” Karen said. Jonathan would have been happier if he hadn’t heard the question mark in her voice. It wasn’t quite an interrogative cough, but it came close.

“I hope we wouldn’t,” he said. “But it’s a weapon, no two ways about it. The
Admiral Peary
wouldn’t have carried it if it weren’t. And if we’re going to be able to start going back and forth between Earth and home every few weeks instead of taking years and years to do it . . . Well, the chances for smuggling go up like a rocket.”

“And if we smuggle lots of ginger, and the Empire decides it doesn’t like that . . .” Karen’s voice trailed away. She got outside of a lot of her drink. As Jonathan had, she coughed a couple of times. “We could see the Opium Wars all over again, couldn’t we?”

“It’s crossed my mind,” Jonathan said. “As long as we can go faster than light and the Lizards can’t, they’d be like Chinese junks going up against the Royal Navy. Whether they understand that or not is liable to be a different question, though. And we have no idea what things are like back on Earth these days, not really.”

“We can find out, though.” Karen looked out the window, but her eyes were light-years from Home. “Grandchildren. Great-grandchildren. Our own sons—older than we are.” She shook her head.

“Not many people will have to cope with that,” Jonathan said. “The bottom just dropped out of the market for cold-sleep stock.”

“It did, didn’t it?” Karen said. “So many things we’ll have to get used to.”

“If Dad doesn’t go back, I don’t know that I want to,” Jonathan said. “If all the people here decided to stay behind if the
Commodore Perry
wouldn’t let him aboard, that would show the moderns how much we thought of him. I don’t know what else we can do to change their minds.”

“That . . . might work,” Karen said slowly. She’d plainly been seeing Los Angeles in her mind, and didn’t seem very happy about being recalled to Home—especially about being told she might do better staying here. Jonathan gulped the rest of his drink. She was Sam Yeager’s daughter-in-law. The other Americans were just his friends. Would they sacrifice return tickets for his sake?
Will I have to find out?
Jonathan wondered.

The
Commodore Perry
excited Glen Johnson and the other pilots who’d come to the
Admiral Peary
from the
Lewis and Clark
much less than most other people. “What the hell difference does it make if we can go back to Earth in five weeks, or even in five minutes?” Johnson said. “We can’t go home any which way.”

“Wouldn’t you like to see all the newest TV shows?” Mickey Flynn asked.

“Frankly, Scarlett, I don’t give a damn, except maybe about the lovely Rita,” Johnson answered, with feeling. What male couldn’t like the lovely Rita?

“Wouldn’t you like to see some new faces?” Flynn persisted. He pointed to Walter Stone. “The old faces are wearing thin, not that anyone asked my opinion.”

Stone glowered. “I love you, too, Mickey.”

“I’d like to see some young, pretty girls in person,” Johnson said. “The only thing is, I don’t think any young, pretty girls would be glad to see me.”

“Speak for yourself, Johnson,” Flynn said.

“That was his johnson speaking,” Stone said. Johnson and Flynn both looked at him in surprise. He didn’t usually come out with such things. He went on, “I want to know what they’ll do with the
Admiral Peary.
We figured this crate would go obsolete, but we never thought it would turn into a dodo.”

The comparison struck Johnson as only too apt. Next to the
Com
modore Perry,
the
Admiral Peary
might as well have been flightless. She’d crossed more than ten light-years—and, except for her weapons and the ginger she carried, she was ready for the scrap heap. “They ought to put her in a museum,” Johnson said.

“So our grandchildren can see how primitive we were?” Flynn inquired.

“That’s what museums are for,” Johnson said. “Our grandchildren are going to think we’re primitive anyhow. My grandfather was born in 1869. I sure thought he was primitive, and I didn’t need a museum to give me reasons why. Listening to the old geezer go on about how us moderns were going to hell in a handbasket and taking the whole world with us did the job just fine.”