Homeward Bound (22 page)

“To tell you the truth, I was never so horrified in all my life,” Atvar said, and Sam Yeager laughed again. The former head of the conquest fleet asked, “And what did you think of Rizzaffi?”

“Interesting place to visit,” Yeager said dryly—not the fitting word, not when speaking of the port city. “I would not care to live there.”

“Only someone addled in the eggshell would,” Atvar said. “I marvel that you chose to visit the place at all.” There. Now he’d said it. He could try to find out if someone really had insulted the Big Uglies by suggesting they go there.

But Sam Yeager shrugged and said, “It is an unusual part of your planet.”

“Well,
that
is a truth, by the spirits of Emperors past!” Atvar used an emphatic cough.

“Fair enough,” the Tosevite ambassador said. “I, for one, would like to see unusual places. We will see enough of the ordinary while we are here. And if the unusual is not always pleasant—we can leave. And I am glad we have left. But I am also glad we went.”

“If you go to Rizzaffi with that attitude, you will do all right,” Atvar said. “If you go to Rizzaffi with any other attitude—any other attitude at all, mind you—you will want to run away as fast as you can.”

“Not so bad as that,” Yeager said. “It does have some interesting animals in the neighborhood. That fibyen is a queer-looking beast, is it not?”

“Well, yes,” Atvar admitted. “But I would not go to Rizzaffi for interesting animals alone. If I wanted to see interesting animals, I would go to the zoo. That way, I would not grow mildew all over my scales.”

He got another loud Tosevite laugh from Sam Yeager. “When I put on corrective lenses outside to see something up close, they steamed over,” Yeager said.

“I am not surprised,” Atvar replied. “When you go back to your hotel, we will talk of things more interesting than Rizzaffi. The Emperor himself has taken an interest in your being here, you know.” He cast down his eye turrets.

“We are honored, of course,” Yeager said. Polite or ironic? Atvar couldn’t tell. The Big Ugly went on, “He probably wants to figure out the smoothest way to get rid of us, just like the rest of you.”

“No such thing!” Atvar had to work hard not to show how appalled he was. Was the Race so transparent to Tosevites? If it was, it was also in a lot of trouble. Or was that just Sam Yeager proving once again that he could think along with the Race as if he had scales and eye turrets and a tailstump? Atvar dared hope so. Other Big Uglies often didn’t listen to Yeager, no matter how right he usually proved.

Now he asked, “Is there any chance I might have an audience with the Emperor myself?”

“Would you like to?” Atvar said in surprise, and Sam Yeager made the affirmative gesture, for all the world as if he were a male of the Race. The fleetlord replied, “I cannot arrange that. You must submit a request to the court. The courtiers and the Emperor himself will make the final decision.”

“I see.” Yeager eyed Atvar in a way that made him uncomfortable despite the Big Ugly’s alien, nearly unreadable features. “I suspect a recommendation from someone of fleetlord’s rank would not hurt in getting my request accepted,” Yeager said shrewdly. “Or am I wrong?”

“No, you are not wrong. Influence matters, regardless of the world,” Atvar said. “I will make that recommendation on your behalf. If it is accepted, you will have to learn some fairly elaborate ceremonial.”

“I can do that, I think,” Sam Yeager said. “And I thank you for your kindness. I expect you will want something for it one of these days, which is only right. I will do what I can to arrange that. Influence runs both ways, after all. We have a saying: ‘You scratch my back and I will scratch yours.’ ”

“I understand your meaning,” Atvar said. “This saves me the trouble of raising such a delicate topic.”

“I am glad,” Yeager said, and that
was
irony. “I also hope the Emperor will be kind enough to forgive any breaches of protocol I might accidentally commit. I am only an ignorant alien who knows no better.”

Had any other alien ever known so much about the Race? Atvar had his doubts. He said, “Yes, there is precedent for such forgiveness from the days when the first Rabotevs and Hallessi came to reverence sovereigns long ago.”

“Well, I am very glad to hear it,” the Big Ugly said. “What is the usual penalty for botching the rituals in front of the Emperor?”

He would not cast down his eyes when he named the sovereign. That proved him foreign—a word the Race hadn’t had to think about for a long time before invading Tosev 3. It also irritated Atvar no end. With a certain sour amusement, then, he answered, “Traditionally, it is being thrown to the beasts.”

There, he took Sam Yeager by surprise. “Is it?” he said. “Forgive me for saying so, but that strikes me as a trifle drastic.” He paused. “What are the beasts these wicked males and females are thrown to?”

“You are too clever,” Atvar said. “In the ancientest days, long before Home was unified, they were sdanli—large, fierce predators. Ever since, though, they have been courtiers in sdanli-skin masks who tell the incompetent wretches what fools and idiots they are and how they did not deserve their audiences.”

“Really?” Sam Yeager asked. Atvar made the affirmative gesture. The wild Big Ugly laughed. “I like that. It is very . . . symbolic.”

“Just so,” Atvar said. “The pain, perhaps, is less than that of actually being devoured. But the humiliation remains. Males and females have been known to slay themselves in shame after such a session with the courtiers. For most of them, of course, one audience with the Emperor”—he cast down
his
eye turrets—“is all they will ever have, and is, or would be, the high point of their lives. When it suddenly becomes the low point instead, they can think only of escape.”

An audience with the Emperor would in a sense be wasted on a wild Big Ugly. He wouldn’t appreciate the honor granted him. Without a hundred thousand years of tradition behind it, what would it mean to him? A meeting with a sovereign not his own, a meeting with a sovereign he reckoned no more than equal to his own. Back on Tosev 3, Atvar had had to pretend he believed the Big Uglies’ not-emperors to be of the same rank as
the
Emperor. Here on Home, he didn’t have to go through that farce. But for Sam Yeager, it was no farce. It was a truth.

The Big Ugly said, “Well, you would not have to worry about that with me.”

“No, I suppose not,” Atvar said; Yeager had just gone a long way toward confirming his own thoughts of a moment before. Even so, the fleetlord went on, “I will, as I said, support your request if you like. How the courtiers and the Emperor respond to it, though, is not within the grip of my fingerclaws.”

“I would be very grateful for your support, Fleetlord, very grateful indeed.” Yeager used an emphatic cough. “Back on Tosev 3, the Race’s ambassador would meet with my not-emperor. Only seems fair to turn things around here.”

He truly did believe a wild Big Ugly chosen for a limited term by an absurd process of snoutcounting matched in importance the ruler of three and a half inhabited planets spread over four solar systems.

Ah, but if the Emperor had only ruled four planets . . . ! Since he didn’t, Atvar had to put up with Yeager’s provincial arrogance. “Again, Ambassador, I will do what I can on your behalf.”

Maybe the Emperor would reject the idea. But maybe he wouldn’t. He was certainly interested in the Big Uglies and concerned about them. Atvar suspected the audience, if granted, would not be publicized. Too many males and females would envy the Big Ugly.

Yeager said, “You know we American Big Uglies”—he used the Race’s slang for his species without self-consciousness—“have a literature imagining technological achievements of which we are not yet capable?”

“I have heard that, yes,” Atvar replied. “Why do you mention it now?”

“Because there are times when my being here on Home feels as if it came from one of those stories,” the Tosevite said. “If I were to meet the Emperor of another intelligent species, how could it seem like anything but what we call science fiction?” He laughed. “I probably should not tell you that. I am sure the Doctor never would have said anything so undiplomatic.”

“You are honest. You are candid,” Atvar said.
And, no matter how well you can think like one of us, you are not, and I fear, never will be.

After some little while on Home, Karen Yeager was getting used to being stared at whenever she went out on the streets of Sitneff. The Lizards didn’t come right up and harass her and Jonathan and the de la Rosas, but eye turrets always swiveled toward the humans. Some males and females would exclaim and point. Karen didn’t like it, but she supposed it was inevitable.

Sometimes she stared right back—mostly at the males and females who wore wigs and T-shirts and sometimes even shorts: shorts ventilated for their tailstumps. Did they have any idea how ridiculous they looked? Probably about as ridiculous as humans with shaved heads and body paint, but she didn’t dwell on that.

And then one day, like the most curious Lizard, she was pointing and exclaiming at the little green man—that was what he looked like—coming out of a shop. “Look!” she exclaimed in English. “A Halless!” She felt as if she’d spotted a rare and exotic species of bird.

The Halless was about as tall as a Lizard, which meant he came up to her chest. He was the green of romaine lettuce, though his hide was scaly, not leafy. He stood more nearly erect than Lizards did. His feet were wide and flat, his hands—only three fingers and a thumb on each—spidery and delicate.

Like the Rabotev shuttlecraft pilot they’d met, he had a shorter snout than did males and females of the Race. Unlike the Rabotevs and the Lizards, he had ears: long, pointed ones, set high up on his round head. His eyes were on stalks longer than those of the Rabotevs, and could look in different directions at the same time.

None of the Lizards paid any special attention to him. They were used to Hallessi. He stared at the humans with as much curiosity as the members of the Race showed. In a high, thin, squeaky voice, he said, “I greet you, Tosevites.”

“And we greet you, Halless,” Karen answered, wondering what she sounded like to him. “May I ask your name?”

“Wakonafula,” he answered, which didn’t sound like a handle a Lizard would carry. “And you are . . . ?”

Karen gave her name. So did her husband and Tom and Linda de la Rosa. They seemed willing to let her do the talking, so she did: “We have never met anyone from your world before. Can you tell us what it is like?”

Wakonafula made the negative gesture. “I am sorry, but I cannot, not from personal experience. I was hatched here on Home, as were several generations of my ancestors. I have seen videos of Halless 1, but I suppose you will have done that, too. And I have also seen videos of Tosev 3. How can you possibly exist on such a miserably cold, wet world?”

“It does not seem that way to us,” Tom de la Rosa said. “We are evolved to find it normal. To us, Home is a miserably hot, dry world.”

“That strikes me as very strange,” Wakonafula said. “When it is so pleasant here . . . But, as you say, you are adapted to conditions on Tosev 3, however nasty they may be.”

“Why did your ancestors leave their planet and come to Home?” Karen asked.

“A fair number of students come here from Halless 1—and also from Rabotev 2, for that matter—for courses not available on other worlds,” the Halless answered. “Home still has the best universities in the Empire, even after all these millennia. And some students, having completed their work, choose to stay here instead of going back into cold sleep and back to the worlds where they hatched. We are citizens of the Empire, too, after all.”

Back when India belonged to Britain and not to the Race, some of its bright youngsters had traveled halfway around the world to study at Oxford and Cambridge. Not all of them went back to their homeland once their studies were done, either. Some stayed in London and formed an Indian community there. Funny to think that the same sort of thing could happen so many light-years from Earth.

“May I ask you a question?” Linda de la Rosa asked.

Now Wakonafula used the affirmative gesture. “Speak,” he urged.

“I thank you,” Linda said. “Does it not trouble you that Home has the best universities? If your folk ruled Halless 1 instead of the colonists from Home, would it not have the very best of everything?”

Trir, the humans’ Lizard guide, spluttered indignantly. She sounded like an angry tea kettle. Karen had trouble blaming her. If Linda wasn’t preaching sedition, she was coming mighty close.

But Wakonafula said, “You have asked several questions, not one. Let me answer like this: if it were not for the Race, we would still be barbarians. We would die of diseases we easily cure today, thanks to the Race. We would go to war with one another; our planet had several rival empires when the conquest fleet came. Thanks to the Race, we live at peace. If Halless 1 is not equal to Home in every way—and it is not, as far as I can tell from here—it is far closer than it was before the conquest. In the fullness of time, it will catch up.”

He sounded calmly confident. In the fullness of time . . . How many humans had ever had the patience to wait for the fullness of time? The Race did. Back on Earth, the Lizards had always insisted that Hallessi and Rabotevs thought more like them than like humans. Judging by Wakonafula, they had a point. Humans commonly preferred kicking over the apple cart now to waiting for the fullness of time.

On the other hand, how reliable was Wakonafula? Was he a chance-met Hallessi, as he seemed to be? Or was he a plant, primed to tell the Big Uglies what the Race wanted them to hear? How could anyone be sure? That was a good question. Karen knew she had no certain answer for it.

“If you will excuse me, I must be on my way,” the Halless said now, and left. Yes, he might well have had—probably did have—business of his own to take care of. But that casual departure roused Karen’s suspicions.

And then Trir said, “You see that all species within the Empire are happy to be a part of it.”

Once roused, Karen’s suspicions soared. This was pretty clumsy propaganda—but then, the Lizards never had been as smooth about such things as people were. More than a little annoyed, she said, “I am very sorry, but I do not see anything of the sort.”