Homeward Bound (29 page)

“I never heard that story before,” Jonathan said.

“No? Well, maybe it is because you are stubborn as a mule yourself, and would not listen even if I told it.”

Karen snickered. Jonathan gave her a dirty look, which only made her snicker again. But when he turned around and glanced at his father, Sam Yeager tipped him a wink. What was that supposed to mean? It wasn’t anything either Kassquit or Trir would notice. Was his old man making up the story about the mule so Kassquit would feel better? That would have been Jonathan’s guess, but he couldn’t prove it.

They came to the outskirts of Sitneff just in time for the evening rush hour. It was crowded on the highway, but things didn’t coagulate the way they did in Los Angeles. The roads were adequate for the number of cars that used them. Jonathan sighed. There were times when seeing how smoothly the Lizards managed things made him feel very much the barbarian.

When the bus stopped in front of the hotel, some small flying things were making small, rather sweet-sounding chirps from the shrubbery in front of the building. Jonathan listened with interest. He hadn’t heard many animals with even remotely musical calls on Home. Birdsong was unknown here. Till this moment, he hadn’t realized how much he missed it.

The chirping went on. “What are those creatures making that noise?” he asked Trir.

“Those are called evening sevod,” the guide answered. “They are related to squazeffi and other such fliers. They always call about the time the sun goes down.”

“Evening sevod.” Jonathan repeated the name so he’d remember it. “I thank you. They sound very pleasant.”

“Well, so they do,” Trir said. “Several of our musical composers have used their calls as thematic models.”

“Really?” he said. “Musicians on Tosev 3 sometimes do the same thing with the sounds of our animals.”

“That is interesting,” Trir said. “Forgive me, but I had not thought you Tosevites would know anything of music.”

Jonathan laughed at himself.
I’m not the only one who thinks we’re a bunch of barbarians.
“We do,” he said. “If you want details, I am sure Senior Researcher Ttomalss can give them to you. I have no idea whether any of our music would please you. We have many different styles.”

“You are more diverse than we are. I have noticed that in my research on Tosev 3,” Trir said.

“Home has been unified for a long time. That means the Race has been homogenized for a long time,” Jonathan said. “Back on Tosev 3, our different cultures are still
very
different from one another.”

“I know from my research on your species that this is a truth. It strikes me as very strange even so,” Trir said.

“No stranger than tens of thousands of years of sameness seem to a Tosevite,” Jonathan replied. The evening sevod kept piping in the bushes. Finally, one of them flew out. He’d never imagined a robin-sized pterodactyl. If not for the light streaming out of the hotel lobby, he wouldn’t have got more than the faintest fleeting glimpse. The little creature made one more musical squeak and then disappeared.

Trir said, “But unity is natural. Unity is inevitable. Seeing what a species is like before the inevitable occurs is unusual.”

Was she right? Jonathan started to make the negative gesture, but checked himself. Even before the Lizards came, cultures based on ideas and technology from Western Europe had become the strongest ones on Earth. To stay independent, other countries had had to adopt Western European techniques. If they didn’t, they would go under, as Africa and India had done. China had struggled with Western ideas as it now struggled against the Race. Japan had succeeded in holding its own after Commodore Perry made it open up to the wider world, but it had done so by adopting Western methods—and it might have failed, too.

“Technology, I think, is more important than culture,” Jonathan’s father said—the two Yeagers had been thinking along with each other.

“But would you not agree that in large measure technology dictates culture?” Trir asked.

“In large measure, but not completely,” Sam Yeager replied. “Different cultures and different species can use the same technology in different ways. We Big Uglies, by now, have access to almost the same technology as the Race does, but I do not think we are quite the same.”

His grin meant nothing to Trir, but she did catch his ironic tone. “That is a truth,” she said, “but you and we are biologically distinct. This is not the case with various cultures belonging to the same species.”

She had a point. She could be annoying, but she wasn’t stupid. Jonathan said, “You have to understand that it has only been a little more than a thousand of your years since we first went all the way around Tosev 3. It has only been half that time since one culture on our world got ahead of the others technologically to any great degree. And, of course, it has been less than two hundred of your years since the Race came. Maybe we will grow more alike as time goes by. But not enough time has passed yet for that to happen.”

“Only a thousand years since you circumnavigated your world . . .” Trir let out a soft hiss full of wonder. “I had read this, mind you. In the abstract, I knew it. But to be reminded of it in that way . . .” She hissed again.

Kassquit said, “Is there any possibility that we could circumnavigate the refectory? I am very hungry.”

“I am not so sure about circumnavigating it,” Frank Coffey said. “We could probably sit down in it.”

“That might do,” Kassquit said.

Trir’s eye turrets went from one of them to the other. It was a shame, Jonathan thought, that Lizards didn’t play tennis. The crowds on Home could have followed the action without moving their heads back and forth. While he woolgathered, the guide said, at least half to herself, “Tosevites are very peculiar.”

Since he’d just been thinking about tennis, of all the useless things, he could hardly quarrel with her. His father didn’t even try. “Truth—we
are
peculiar,” Sam Yeager said. “And the Race is peculiar. And when we get to know Rabotevs and Hallessi better, I am sure we will find they are peculiar, too.”

Trir probably hadn’t been thinking about the idiosyncracies of the different intelligent species. She’d been thinking Big Uglies were bizarre. But all she said now was, “Supper does seem a good idea.”

The refectory featured krellepem from the Ssurpyk Sea. Finding out what krellepem were took some work. Jonathan finally gathered they were something like crabs or lobsters. He ordered them. So did the rest of the humans, Kassquit included.

Trir wanted nothing to do with them. “When we evolved, we left the seas and came up on land,” she said. “I am not interested in eating anything that did not bother to evolve.”

Jonathan had heard all sorts of excuses for not eating all sorts of things—quite a few of them from his sons when they were little—but never one that Darwin would have approved of. He admired Trir’s creativity.

When the krellepem came, they looked more like trilobites than anything else Jonathan had ever seen. They’d evolved even less than he’d expected. The servers brought special tools for eating them—tools that put him in mind of a hammer and chisel. Each segment of shell had its own chunk of meat inside.

“This is a savage way of feeding oneself,” Kassquit said as the pile of broken bits of krellep shell in front of her grew taller.

“Possibly,” Frank Coffey said. “But the results are worth it.”

“Truth,” Jonathan agreed. The krellepem tasted something like oysters, something like scallops. He discovered they had meat inside their skinny little legs, too, and sucked it out one leg at a time. The others started imitating him.

“How do you do that?” Trir asked, watching them. Jonathan demonstrated. Trir said, “We would have to use tools to get at that meat. Our mouthparts are not flexible enough to do what you are doing.”

She was right, though Jonathan hadn’t thought about it till that moment. Lizards didn’t have lips, not the way humans did. The edges of their mouths were hard. They couldn’t suck meat out of a tubular leg, they couldn’t kiss. . . .
They can’t make fart jokes,
Jonathan thought, and realized he was even tireder than he’d suspected.

“What is funny?” Karen asked when he snorted. He told her.

“What is a
fart joke
?” Trir asked; the relevant phrase had been in English.

“Something that proves my mate is seriously deranged,” Karen told her.

“I thank you. I thank you very much.” Jonathan used an emphatic cough.

“You Tosevites can be most confusing,” Trir said.

All the Americans chorused, “We thank you. We thank you very much.” They all used emphatic coughs. Trir was . . . most confused.

G
len Johnson looked down on Home from his orbital path in the
Admiral Peary.
He shared the control room with Mickey Flynn and Dr. Melanie Blanchard. Flynn eyed him and said, “I don’t believe the Lizards are going to want to let you aboard any more of their spacecraft. I told you bathing before you went would have been a good idea.”

“Funny. Ha, ha. I laugh,” Johnson said. “Hear me laugh?”

He glanced over toward the doctor. She smiled, but she wasn’t laughing. That left him relieved. She said, “They really are anxious about ginger, though, aren’t they?”

“Anxious about it and eager for it, both at the same time,” Johnson answered. “That one scaly bastard who went helmet-to-helmet with me . . .”

“Good thing you had the recorder going,” she said.

“If somebody wants to talk off the record, that’s usually the time when it’s a good idea to make sure he’s on,” Johnson said. “As soon as he told me to turn off my radio, I figured he had to have ginger on his miserable little mind. And as soon as I knew that, I knew he was liable to try to diddle me if I didn’t have any to give him.”

“Did the captain of the Lizard ship ever apologize for seizing you?” Dr. Blanchard asked.

“Ventris? Oh, hell, yes—pardon my French—finally, in a way, once I browbeat him into it. Then he made it sound like it was our fault his scooter pilot got trapped by the wicked herb. To hear him talk, it was like ginger came after that Lizard with a gun.
He
didn’t have anything to do with it, of course.”

“Why, heaven forfend,” Mickey Flynn said. “The very idea is ridiculous. That anything could possibly be a Lizard’s fault . . . ?” He shook his head. “Next thing you know, there’ll be Big Uglies traveling between the stars.”

“Don’t hold your breath for that,” Johnson said.

Melanie Blanchard looked from one of them to the other. “I can see how both of you’d be welcome guests on the surface of Home.”

“Certainly,” Flynn said. “The Lizards wouldn’t kill me. They’d let their planet do it for them.” He mimed being squashed flat.

“When are you going down to the surface?” Johnson asked the doctor.

“I don’t know yet,” she answered. “I’ll have to take it easy down there for a while—I do know that. I spent too long weightless aboard the
Lewis and Clark.
”

“Is it safe for you to go?” he said.

“I think so,” Dr. Blanchard answered. “If I have any doubts when the time comes, I’ll get a second opinion.”

“What if the other docs lie to you because they want to be the ones who go down there?” Johnson asked.

She looked startled, then shook her head. “No, they wouldn’t do that,” she said. “They need to know they can count on me, too.”

“Wouldn’t be so good if the doctor who was treating you might want you dead instead of better,” Flynn observed.

“Wanted—dead more than alive,” Johnson intoned solemnly.

She glared at each of them in turn. Had she been a Lizard with eye turrets that moved independently, she would have glared at both of them at the same time. “Thanks a lot, guys,” she said, mostly in jest. “Thanks a hell of a lot. Now I’ll be looking back over my shoulder whenever I see anybody else wearing a white coat.”

“Well, spread the word around,” Flynn said. “That way, the others will be looking over their shoulders at you, too.”

“Helpful,” Melanie Blanchard said. “Very goddamn helpful.” To show how helpful it was, she glided out of the control room.

“There—now look what you did,” Flynn said to Johnson. “You scared her away.”

“Me?” Johnson shook his head. “I thought it was you.”

Her voice floated up the hatchway by which she’d departed: “It was both of you, as a matter of fact.”

The two pilots looked at each other. They pointed at each other. Johnson started to laugh. Mickey Flynn, refusing to yield to such vulgar displays of emotion, looked even more impassive than before. That only made Johnson laugh harder than ever. He said, “No wonder we confuse the damned Lizards. We confuse each other, too.”

“You don’t confuse me a bit,” Flynn declared.

“That’s because you were confused to begin with,” Johnson answered. “And if you don’t believe me, ask Stone. He’ll tell you.”

Flynn shook his head. “He thinks he’s not confused, which only makes him the most confused of all.”

Johnson raised an eyebrow. “I have to think that one over.”

“I hope nothing breaks,” Flynn said helpfully. “But if it will assist in your cogitations, let me remind you that he still more than half wants to see how long you’ll last if you go out the air lock without a suit.”

Since he was right yet again, Johnson did the only thing a sensible man could do: he changed the subject. “Well,” he said, “one of these days, the Lizards are going to get in an uproar about ginger that has something behind it.”

“How can they do that?” the other pilot replied. “Everybody knows there is no ginger aboard the
Admiral Peary.
”

“Yeah, and then you wake up,” Johnson said scornfully. “Missiles with bombs in their noses are weapons. We brought plenty of those. Ginger is a weapon, too. You think we don’t have any?”

Flynn shrugged. “I know about missiles. I know where they fit on the plans for the ship. I know how to arm them. I know how to launch them. I know how to tell the ship to do all that automatically in about nothing flat, so we can get the missiles away even if we’re under attack. Nobody has briefed me about ginger, which is the sum total of what I know about it. I will also point out that it’s the sum total of what you know about it, too.”

He was right again, of course. That didn’t mean Johnson wasn’t also right, not this time. “We can addle half the scaly so-and-sos down on that planet,” he insisted. “There’s got to be a way to get the herb from hither to yon.”

“You are assuming what you want to prove,” Mickey Flynn said. “If you’d gone to the same sort of school I did, the nuns would have rapped your knuckles with a steel yardstick for a breach of logic like that.”

“If I’d gone to the kind of school you did, I’d have to drop my pants if I wanted to count to twenty-one,” Johnson retorted.

Flynn eyed him with mild astonishment. “You mean you don’t? Truly, you are a fount—or at least a drip—of knowledge.”

“Thank you so much.” Johnson suddenly snapped his fingers. “I’ve got it!”

“I hope you can take something for it,” Flynn said with well-simulated concern.

Johnson ignored him. “I know where I’d put the ginger if I were designing the
Admiral Peary.
” He held up a hand. “If you make that particular suggestion, I’m going to be very annoyed at you.”

With dignity, the other pilot said,
“Moi? Je ne comprende pas.”

“Of course you don’t,” Johnson said. “Listen, how many people in cold sleep is this ship carrying?”

“Seventeen,” Flynn answered. “Or was it forty-six thousand? I forget.”

“Heh,” Johnson said. “Funny. But the point is, you don’t know for sure. I don’t, either. And neither do the Lizards. What looks like space for people in cold sleep could be space for the herb just as easily.”

“You have a low, nasty, suspicious mind,” Flynn told him.

“Why, thank you,” Johnson said.

“I don’t know. Why not thank me?”

Johnson scowled. “I’d throw something at you, but I might miss you and hit something valuable instead.”

Flynn assumed a look of injured innocence. By his face, his innocence had suffered enough injuries to end up on the critical list. Then he said, “You know, if you keep speculating about all these things we haven’t got, you won’t make our esteemed and benevolent commandant very happy with you.”

“Who’s going to tell him?” Johnson asked. “You?”

“Certainly not,” Mickey Flynn replied. “But the walls have ears, the ceilings have eyes, and the floors probably have kidneys or livers or something else you wouldn’t want to eat unless your stomach were rubbing up against your backbone.”

Walls with ears were a cliché. Ceilings with eyes at least made sense. As for the rest . . . “Your mother dropped you on your head when you were little.”

“Only when I needed it,” Flynn said. “Of course, there were times when she needed to be retrained. Or was that restrained? Amazing how one’s entire childhood can revolve around a typographical error.”

“That’s not all that’s amazing,” Johnson said darkly, but Flynn took it for a compliment, which spoiled his fun.

Over the next few days, he wondered if the commandant would summon him to his office to give him a roasting. Then, when that didn’t happen, he wondered why it didn’t. Because the
Admiral Peary
carried no ginger, and the idea that it might was ridiculous? Or because the ship was full of ginger, and the less said about the herb, the better? The one thing that didn’t occur to Johnson was that Healey hadn’t heard his speculation. The floors did indeed have kidneys, or maybe livers.

Dr. Blanchard worked with grim intensity in the exercise chamber, doing her best to build up her strength for the trip down to the surface of Home. Johnson spent stretches on the exercise bicycle, too, but he didn’t get excited about them the way she did. He was in pretty good shape for a man who’d spent the last twenty years of his life weightless. He could exercise till everything turned blue and not be fit enough to face gravity.

He said, “I wish they’d send one of the other docs down, not you.”

“Why?” she demanded, working the bicycle harder than ever so that her sweaty hair plastered itself against the side of her face. “I’ll be damned if I want to go through all this crap for nothing.”

“Well, I can see that,” he said, pedaling along beside her at his own slower pace—one of the great advantages of a stationary bike. “But you’re a hell of a lot better looking than they are.”

“Not right now, I’m not,” she said, which wasn’t true, at least not to someone of the male persuasion. She added, “Besides, I must smell like an old goat,” which was.

Johnson denied it anyway, saying, “I’m the old goat.”

“What you are is a guy with too much time on his hands,” she said. “Exercise more. That’ll help some.”

“Thanks a lot,” he muttered. “Some problems, you know, you’re not really looking for a cure.”

“Well, you’d better be,” Dr. Blanchard said, and that was effectively that.

“I greet you, Ambassador,” Atvar told Sam Yeager when he met the Big Ugly in the hotel conference room. “And I am pleased to tell you congratulations are in order.”

“And I greet you. I also thank you. What kind of congratulations, Fleetlord?” the American Tosevite inquired.

“Your petition for an audience with the Emperor has been granted,” Atvar answered. “This news comes through me and not directly to you because I have been appointed your sponsor, so to speak.”

“That is excellent news. Excellent!” Sam Yeager not only used an emphatic cough, he also got out of his chair and bent into the posture of respect. “I am in your debt for the help you gave me. Ah . . . what does being a sponsor entail?”

He was pleased. Atvar knew that. But the wild Big Ugly was not overjoyed, as a proper citizen of the Empire would have been. He was just pleased—much too mild a reaction. His question, though, was reasonable enough. Atvar said, “A sponsor does about what you would expect. He trains his hatchling—that is the technical term—in responses and rituals required in the audience. If the hatchling disgraces himself, the sponsor is also disgraced. Not all those who win audiences have a sponsor. Getting one is most common among those least likely to have their petitions accepted and so least likely to be familiar with the rituals.”

“Among the poor and the ignorant, eh?” Sam Yeager laughed in the noisy fashion of his kind. “Which am I?”

“You are ignorant, of course, Ambassador. Will you deny it?” Atvar said. “I suppose I was chosen as your sponsor not only because I know you but because I am familiar with Tosevites in general and because I have had a recent audience with his Majesty. I will do my best to help you avoid the pitfalls.”

“Again, I thank you,” Sam Yeager said. “I do hope the Race will remember that I really am ignorant, that I am only a poor, stupid wild Big Ugly who knows no better. If I make a mistake, I will not be doing it on purpose.”

“I believe that is understood, yes,” Atvar said. “If the Emperor and his court did not understand it, your petition would have been rejected.”

“Good.” The Tosevite paused. “And something else occurs to me. The Emperor ought to grant Kassquit an audience.”

That took Atvar by surprise. Both his eye turrets swung sharply toward Yeager. “Interesting,” he said. “Why do you propose this?”

“For the good of the Empire—and for Kassquit’s own good,” Sam Yeager answered. “She is a citizen of the Empire, after all, and she is proud of being a citizen of the Empire. The Empire might do well to show that it is proud to have her as a citizen.”

“What an . . . interesting idea indeed,” Atvar said. “You realize we may do this and use it in propaganda aimed at the Tosevites under our control on Tosev 3? It would show them they can truly become part of the Empire themselves.”

“Oh, yes. I realize that,” the wild Big Ugly replied. “I will take my chances nonetheless. For one thing, it will be more than twenty of your years before those pictures arrive at Tosev 3.” He stopped.