Homeward Bound (16 page)

“Atvar will help there,” Karen said. “After all the time he spent on Earth, he knows what’s what.”

“What are these preposterous grunts and groans?” Trir demanded.

“Our own language,” Karen answered. “We know yours, and on our planet many males and females of the Race have learned ours.”

“How extremely peculiar.” The Lizard used another emphatic cough. “I assumed all intelligent beings would naturally speak our language. That is so throughout the Empire.”

“But we do not belong to the Empire,” Karen said. “I already told you that. When the Empire tried to conquer our not-empire, we fought it to a standstill and forced it to withdraw from the territory we rule.”

“As time goes on, you will be made into contented subjects of the Empire, as so many Tosevites already have been,” Trir replied.

She sounded perfectly confident. That was the attitude the Race had taken back on Earth, too. Were the Lizards right? They thought they had time on their side. They were very patient, far more patient than humans. They routinely thought and planned in terms of thousands of years.

Hadn’t that hurt them more than it helped, though? They’d first examined Earth in the twelfth century. If they’d sent the conquest fleet then, humanity wouldn’t have been able to do a thing about it. People really would be contented citizens of the Empire now. But the Lizards had waited. They’d got all their ducks in a row. They’d made sure nothing could go wrong.

Meanwhile, Earth had had the Industrial Revolution. By the time the Race arrived, people weren’t pushovers any more. And why? Because the Lizards had planned too well, too thoroughly.

He who hesitates is lost.
If that wasn’t a proverb the Race should have taken to heart while dealing with humanity, Karen couldn’t think of one that was.

Kassquit said, “In my opinion, Senior Tour Guide, the issue you raise is as yet undetermined.”

“Well, what do you know?” Trir retorted. “You are just another one of these Big Ugly things yourself.” She could lose her temper after all.

Karen had never expected to sympathize with Kassquit, but she did here. Trir might as well have called Kassquit a nigger. In essence, she had. Kassquit said, “Senior Tour Guide, I am a citizen of the Empire. If that does not happen to please you, you are welcome to stick your head even farther up your cloaca than it is already.” She did not bother with an emphatic cough. The words carried plenty of emphasis by themselves.

Had Trir been a human, she would have turned red. As things were, her tailstump quivered with fury. “How dare you speak to me that way?” she snarled.

“I dare because I am right.” Now Kassquit did use an emphatic cough.

“Truth!” Karen said. She used another one. “Judge males and females for what they are, not for what they look like.”

“I thank you,” Kassquit said.

“You are welcome,” Karen answered. They both sounded surprised at finding themselves on the same side.

* * *

Atvar had just finished applying fresh body paint when the telephone hissed for attention. He laughed as he went to answer it. Jokes as old as the unification of Home insisted that it always hissed right when you were in the middle of the job. He felt as if he had beaten the odds.

“This is Atvar. I greet you,” he said.

“I greet you, Exalted Fleetlord. I am Protocol Master Herrep,” said the male on the other end of the line. “You recently petitioned for an imperial audience?”

“Yes?” Atvar made the affirmative gesture.

“Your petition has been granted. You are ordered to appear at the imperial court tomorrow at noon so that you may be properly prepared for the ceremony.” Herrep broke the connection. He did not ask if Atvar had any questions or problems. He assumed there would be none.

And he was right. When the Emperor commanded, his subjects—even subjects with rank as high as Atvar‘s—obeyed.

Preffilo, the imperial capital, lay halfway around the planet. That did not matter. An imperial summons took precedence over everything else. Atvar called the wild Big Uglies and canceled the session he had scheduled for the next day. Then he arranged a shuttlecraft flight to Preffilo. When he announced he was traveling to an audience with the Emperor, the usual fee was waived . . . after the shuttlecraft firm checked with the imperial court. Every so often, someone tried to steal a free flight to Preffilo.

Court officials awaited Atvar at the shuttlecraft port. “Have you enjoyed the privilege of an imperial audience before, Exalted Fleetlord?” one of them asked.

“I should hope I have,” Atvar answered proudly. “It was with his Majesty’s predecessor, more than two hundred years ago now, not long before I took the conquest fleet to Tosev 3.”

“I see.” The courtier’s tone was absolutely neutral. Not the faintest quiver of tailstump or motion of eye turrets showed what he was thinking. And yet, somehow, he managed to convey reproach. Atvar should have returned to Home as Atvar the Conqueror, who had added a new world to the empire. Instead, he might have been called Atvar the Ambiguous, who had added just over half a world to the Empire, and who had left the other half full of independent, dangerous wild Big Uglies.

Atvar remained convinced he’d done the best he could under the circumstances. Conditions on Tosev 3 were nothing like the ones the conquest fleet had been led to expect. Anyone with half a brain should have been able to see that. His recall and the scorn heaped on him since he’d come back only proved a lot of males and females had less than half a brain. So he believed, anyhow—and if this courtier didn’t, too bad.

“Come with us,” the courtier said. “We will refresh you on the rituals as we go.”

“I thank you,” Atvar replied. Every youngster learned the rituals of an imperial audience in school, on the off chance they might prove useful. Unlike the vast majority of males and females, Atvar actually had used what he’d learned. But, even discounting a round trip in cold sleep, that had been a long time ago. He welcomed a chance to review. Embarrassing yourself before the Emperor was as near unforgivable as made no difference.

Most of the buildings in Preffilo were the usual utilitarian boxes. Some had a little more in the way of ornament than others. None was especially out of the ordinary. The imperial palace was different. Ordinary buildings came and went. The palace went on forever. It had stood in the same spot for more than a hundred thousand years. It wasn’t quite the oldest building on Home, but it was the oldest continuously inhabited one.

It looked like a fortress. In the early days, before Home was unified, it had been a fortress. It had bastions and outwalls and guard towers, all in severe gray stone with only tiny, narrow windows. Here on peaceful Home, most of the travelers who came to see the palace thought of it only as ancient, not as military. No one on Home thought of matters military on first seeing any building. Atvar had had to worry about military architecture, both that of the Race and Tosevite, on Tosev 3. He could appreciate what the builders here had done.

And he could appreciate the gardens in which the palace was set. Almost as many males and females came to see them as came to see the palace. With multicolored sand, carefully placed rocks of different sizes, colors, and textures, and an artistic mixture of plants, they were famous on three planets. To most Big Uglies, Atvar thought, they would have been nothing special. The Tosevites had an embarrassment of water on their native world. They appreciated great swaths of greenery much more than the Race did. This spare elegance would not have appealed to them.

But there were exceptions to everything. While fleetlord, he had learned that photographs of the gardens around the imperial palace were wildly popular in the Tosevite empire—and it really was an empire—of Nippon. The Nipponese Big Uglies practiced a somewhat similar gardening art of their own . . . although Atvar doubted whether the gardeners or courtiers here would have appreciated the comparison.

As soon as he entered the palace, he assumed the posture of respect. He held it till one of the courtiers gave him leave to straighten. Then he went on to the cleansing chamber, where a female known as the imperial laver removed the body paint he’d applied only the day before. He felt as bereft as an unwrapped wild Big Ugly, but only for a moment. Another court figure, the imperial limner, painted on the special pattern worn only by petitioners coming before the Emperor.

“I am not worthy,” Atvar said, as ritual required.

“That is a truth: you are not,” the imperial limner agreed. An emphatic cough showed how unworthy Atvar was. She continued, “You are granted an audience not because of your worth but by grace of the Emperor. Rejoice that you have been privileged to receive that grace.”

“I do.” Atvar used an emphatic cough of his own.

“Advance, then, and enter the throne room,” the imperial limner said.

“I thank you. Like his Majesty, you are more gracious, more generous, than I deserve.” Atvar assumed the posture of respect again. The imperial limner did not return the courtesy. She represented the sovereign, and so outranked any official not connected with the court.

The throne room held banners seen nowhere else on Home. After a hundred thousand years, it held reproductions of the original banners that had once hung between the tall, thin windows. Awe made Atvar suck a deep breath into his lung. He knew what those banners stood for. They were the emblems of the empires
the
Empire had defeated in unifying the planet and the Race. Everywhere else on Home, they were forgotten. Here, where conquest had begun, the Emperor and those who served him remembered. There were also newer insignia from Rabotev 2 and Halless 1, and some, newer still, from Tosev 3. But other banners Atvar knew well from the Big Uglies’ world were conspicuously absent.

All the throne room was designed to make a male or female advancing to an audience feel completely insignificant. Colonnades led the eye up to the tall, distant, shadowy ceiling. The path up to the throne lay in shadow, too, while the throne itself was gorgeous with gold and brilliantly illuminated. The spotlights glowed also from the gilding that ornamented the Emperor’s chest and belly. The 37th Emperor Risson did not need ornate patterns of body paint to display his rank. He simply glowed.

In ancient days, Atvar had heard, the Emperor had been thought to represent the sun on Home. He didn’t know whether it was true or simply an explanation of why the Emperor wore solid gold body paint. It sounded as if it ought to be true, which was good enough.

Two large males in gray paint as simple as the Emperor’s suddenly stepped into the aisle, blocking Atvar’s progress. He gestured with his left hand. “I too serve his Majesty,” he declared. That sent them away; they slunk back into the shadows from which they had sprung. They represented what had once been a more rigorous test of loyalty.

At last, Atvar dropped into the posture of respect before the throne. He cast his eye turrets down to the ground. The stone floor here was highly polished. How many males and females had petitioned how many Emperors in this very spot? The numbers were large. That was as far as Atvar was willing to go.

“Arise, Fleetlord Atvar,” the 37th Emperor Risson said, from somewhere up above Atvar.

“I thank your Majesty for his kindness and generosity in summoning me into his presence when I am unworthy of the honor.” Atvar stuck to the words of the ritual. How many times had how many Emperors heard them?

“Arise, I say again,” Risson returned. Atvar obeyed. The Emperor went on, “Now—enough of that nonsense for a little while. What are we going to do about these miserable Big Uglies, anyway?”

Atvar stared. The previous Emperor had
not
said anything like that when the fleetlord saw him before going into cold sleep. “Your Majesty?” Atvar said, unsure whether to believe his hearing diaphragms.

“What are we going to do about the Big Uglies?” Risson repeated. “They are here, on Home. We have never had a problem like this before. If we do not make the right choices, the Empire will have itself a lot of trouble.”

“I have been saying that for a long time,” Atvar said dazedly. “I did not think anyone was listening.”

“I have been,” the Emperor said. “Some of the males and females who serve me are . . . used to doing things as they have been done since the Empire was unified. For the situation we now have, I do not think this is adequate.”

“But if you speak, your Majesty—” Atvar began.

“I will have a reign of a hundred years or so—a little more, if I am lucky,” Risson said. “The bureaucracy has been here for more than a hundred thousand. It will be here at least as much longer, and knows it. Emperors give orders. We even have them obeyed. It often matters much less than you would think. A great many things go on the same old way when you cannot keep both eye turrets on them—and you cannot, not all the time. Or was your experience as fleetlord on Tosev 3 different?”

“No, your Majesty,” Atvar said. “But I am only a subject, while you are the Emperor. My spirit is nothing special. Yours will help determine if your subjects have a happy afterlife. Do not the males and females who serve you remember this?”

“Some of them may,” the Emperor said. “But a lot of them have worked with me and with my predecessor, and some even with his predecessor. Much more than ordinary males and females, they take their sovereigns for granted.”

Atvar had heard more startling things in this brief audience than in all the time since awakening again on Home. (He’d heard plenty of startling things on Tosev 3, but everything startling seemed to hatch there.) “I would not think anyone could take your Majesty for granted,” he said.

“Well, that is a fine compliment, and I thank you for it, but it does not have much to do with what is truth,” Risson said. “And I tell you, Fleetlord, I want you to do everything you can to make peace with the Big Uglies. If you do not, we will have a disaster the likes of which we have never imagined. Or do you believe I am wrong?”

“I wish I did, your Majesty,” Atvar replied. “With all my liver, I wish I did.”

* * *

Kassquit had an odd feeling when she came back to Sitneff after the excursion to the park near the South Pole. Whenever she was alone with members of the Race, she always stressed that she was a citizen of the Empire, and no different from any other citizen of the Empire. She made members of the Race believe it, too, not least because she believed it herself.