Homeward Bound (40 page)

“Yes, I can tell you that,” Sam Yeager answered. “I can tell you in one word, as a matter of fact. We want equality.”

“Do you not believe you should wait until you have earned it?” the 37th Emperor Risson returned. “Eighteen hundred years ago, when we first discovered your kind, you were savages.” He spoke a word of command. A hologram of a knight sprang into being in the air.

Sam had seen that image a thousand times. He was, by now, good and sick of the blond Crusader. “I have never denied that the Race was civilized long before we were,” he said. “But that male is long dead, and I sit here on your home planet talking with you, your Majesty. I came here in my not-empire’s ship, too.”

“If we fought, you would lose,” Risson said.

“If we fought, we would hurt you badly,” Sam said. “We have been able to hurt you badly for some time now, and grow more able every year. But I thought we were here to talk about peace.”

“So we are,” the Emperor said. “Equality? Do you truly know what you ask?”

“Yes, your Majesty. I think I do,” Sam answered. A Japanese might have understood the demand—might have made the demand—more fiercely. The Empire looked at the USA the way the USA and Europe had looked on Japan when she muscled her way into the great powers. The Japanese weren’t white men. They were wogs, nothing else but. After they got strong enough, though, it stopped mattering.

Yeager shook his head in slow wonder. The day after Pearl Harbor, he’d tried to join the Army and fight the Japs. (Because of his false teeth, the Army turned him down then, though they’d been glad enough to take him when the Lizards came a little more than five months later.) Now here he was, sympathizing with Japan. Life could be very strange.

Kassquit said, “Your Majesty, I understand the Race’s pride, the Empire’s pride. Do you fully understand the Tosevites’ pride?”

“The
Tosevites’
pride?” By the way the 37th Emperor Risson said it, that had never once crossed his mind. Sam wasn’t surprised. The Race did look down their snouts at Big Uglies, just as Americans and Europeans had looked down their noses at the Japanese. But Risson went on, “Researcher, it is possible that I do not. I thank you for pointing it out to me.”

“I am pleased to serve your Majesty,” Kassquit murmured. Sam smiled. Her face didn’t show anything, but if that wasn’t pride of her own, he’d never heard it.

“Equality. Pride,” Risson said, perhaps half to himself, and then, “I am glad I had this talk. It has given me a great deal to think about.” That was dismissal: polite dismissal, but dismissal even so. As the Lizards whisked Sam back to his hotel, he found he too had a lot to think about.

Ttomalss was one of the few members of the Race who understood what being a parent involved. That was what all his patient years of raising Kassquit from a hatchling had got him. And now he was going through the part of parenthood that seemed strangest. The hatchling he’d raised had taken wing on her own. Not only had Kassquit enjoyed an audience with the Emperor, but she’d also conferred with him in private.

Because the conference was and stayed private, the male in the street never found out about it. To most members of the Race, Kassquit remained just another Big Ugly. But a female at the imperial court let Ttomalss know. “Are you not proud of what you accomplished?” she asked.

“Yes, I am. Very much so,” Ttomalss answered, and broke the connection in a hurry.

It wasn’t that he was lying. On the contrary. He
was
proud of Kassquit. All the same, he also felt himself surpassed, and that was an odd and uncomfortable feeling. It wasn’t so much that Kassquit had had the audience with the 37th Emperor Risson. Ttomalss saw the propaganda value there. But that Risson had summoned her back to confer . . . Yes, that got under the psychologist’s scales.

Ttomalss had never won an imperial audience himself. He didn’t particularly expect one. He was prominent, but not that prominent. He thought he might have been worthy of consultation, though. If the Emperor thought otherwise, what could he do about it? Not a thing. Not a single, solitary thing.

Yes, Kassquit had spread her wings, all right. They had proved wider and stronger than Ttomalss ever expected—maybe wider and stronger than his own. He knew Big Uglies often had this experience. He wondered how they stood it without being torn to pieces. It couldn’t be easy.

Of course, they had biological and cultural advantages he didn’t. They knew such things were liable to happen. Some of them even hoped their hatchlings would surpass them. Under other circumstances, Ttomalss might have admired such altruism. He had more trouble practicing it himself.

To keep from thinking about Kassquit and her triumphs, he telephoned Pesskrag. Getting hold of the physics professor wasn’t easy. Returning calls might have been a custom from another world, as far as she was concerned. Ttomalss hoped she was busy in the laboratory, not off to the South Pole with friends. Her messages would follow her either way, of course, but she might be more inclined to answer them if she was working and not out having a good time.

When she didn’t call back for two days, Ttomalss began to get not only annoyed but worried. He wondered if something had happened to her. He called her department chairfemale, only to learn that that worthy had just gone into the hospital with a prolapsed oviduct.
Excesses of the mating season,
he thought sourly. No one else in the department seemed to know anything about where Pesskrag was or what she was doing. He wondered if he ought to get hold of the police.

Pesskrag finally did call him the next day. When Ttomalss saw her image in the monitor, he still wondered if he ought to get hold of the police. Her nictitating membranes were swollen and puffy with exhaustion. She looked as if she’d just escaped a kidnapping attempt. She said, “I apologize for being so very hard to reach, Senior Researcher,” and then she yawned right in Ttomalss’ face.

Seeing that teeth-filled gape of jaw made Ttomalss want to yawn, too. That desire to imitate a yawn was almost a reflex in the Race. Idly, Ttomalss wondered if the Big Uglies had anything similar. That would have to wait, though. It would probably have to wait for years. This, on the other hand . . . “What have you been doing?” Ttomalss asked.

“Experimenting,” Pesskrag said, and yawned again. This time, Ttomalss did yawn back. The physicist shut her mouth with an audible snap. She pointed at him. “And it is your fault, too—yours and the Big Uglies’.”

“All right. I accept my share of the blame,” Ttomalss said. “Do you have any results from your experiments yet?”

“Only very preliminary ones,” she answered, and gave forth with another yawn. She seemed on the point of falling asleep where she sat. Gathering herself, she went on, “Full computer analysis will take some time. It always does. Preliminary results do suggest that the Big Uglies probably are correct.”

“How interesting,” Ttomalss said, and Pesskrag made the affirmative gesture. The psychologist went on, “You are the expert in this matter. If the Big Uglies
are
correct, what are the implications?”

“Again, much of this will have to wait for full analysis,” Pesskrag replied. Ttomalss impatiently lifted a hand. The psychologist opened her mouth again—this time for a laugh, not a yawn. She might have been drunk with weariness as she continued, “But we are going to see some changes made.”

“What sort of changes?” Ttomalss asked.

“How should I know?” she said. “Would you judge a hatchling’s whole career when it is still wet from the juices of its egg?”

Ttomalss did his best to sink his fingerclaws into patience. “Let me ask you a different way,” he said. “Is this a matter that will only matter in learned journals and computer discussion groups, or will it have practical meaning?”

“Sooner or later, a lot of what is discussed in learned journals and computer groups has practical meaning,” Pesskrag said stiffly. But then she relented: “All right. I know what you mean. I would say this will have practical meaning. Just how soon, I am less certain. We will need to confirm what we think we have found, and that too will take some time. Then, assuming we do confirm it, we will have to see what sort of engineering the physics leads to.”

“How long do you suppose that will take?” Ttomalss asked.

“Years, certainly. I would not be surprised if it took centuries,” the physicist answered. “We will have to be very careful here, after all. Everything will have to be worked out in great detail. We will have to make sure these changes do not disrupt our society, or do so to the smallest possible degree. Deciding what the safest course is will of course be the responsibility of planners, not scientists.”

“Of course,” Ttomalss echoed. “Tell me one thing more, if you would be so kind: how soon could something like this pass from physics to engineering if those in charge cared nothing for change or disruption?”

“What an addled notion!” Pesskrag said. Ttomalss did not argue. He only waited. She went on, “I cannot imagine the circumstances under which such a thing would be permitted. I certainly hope the males and females in charge of such things are more responsible than you seem to believe.”

“If such matters were gripped by the fingerclaws of our males and females alone, I would agree with you,” Ttomalss said. “Do please remember the source of your inspiration here, though. Let me ask my question in a different way: what do you suppose the Big Uglies have been doing with the data you are just now discovering?”

“The Big Uglies?” Pesskrag spoke as if she were hearing of Tosevites for the first time. After some thought, she shrugged. “I am sorry, Senior Researcher, but I have not the faintest idea. How matter and energy behave is my province. How these strange aliens act is yours.”

“I will tell you how to estimate their behavior,” Ttomalss said.

“Please do.” The physicist sounded polite but skeptical.

“Make the most radical estimate of possibilities you have the power to invent in your own mind,” Ttomalss said. He waited again. When Pesskrag made the affirmative gesture, he went on, “Once you have made that estimate, multiply its capacity for disaster by about ten. Having done that, you will find yourself somewhere close to the low end of Tosevite possibilities.”

Pesskrag laughed. Ttomalss didn’t. He didn’t say anything at all. After a little while, Pesskrag noticed he wasn’t saying anything. She exclaimed, “But surely you must be joking!”

“I wish I were,” the psychologist said. “If anything, I am not giving the Big Uglies enough credit—or maybe blame is more likely to be the word I want.”

“I do not understand,” Pesskrag said.

“Let me show you, then. You may possibly have seen this image before.” Ttomalss called up onto the screen the picture of the Tosevite warrior the Race’s probe had snapped. He said, “Please believe me when I tell you this was the state of the art on Tosev 3 eighteen hundred years ago—eighteen hundred of our years, half that many by the local count.”

“Oh. I see,” Pesskrag said slowly. “And now . . .” Her voice trailed away.

“Yes. And now,” Ttomalss said. “And now several of their not-empires have kept their independence in spite of everything the Race could do. And now they are making important discoveries in theoretical physics before we are. Do you still believe I am joking, or even exaggerating?”

“Possibly not,” Pesskrag said in troubled tones. “We would not have made
this
discovery for a long time, if ever. I am convinced of that. So are my colleagues. Even imagining the experiment requires a startling radicalism.”

“And the Race is not radical,” Ttomalss said. Pesskrag hesitated, then used the affirmative gesture once more. So did the psychologist. He went on, “I need to tell you, I need to make you understand in your belly, that by our standards the Big Uglies are radical to the point of lunacy. If you do not understand that, you cannot hope to understand anything about them. Let me give you an example. During the fighting after the conquest fleet landed, they destroyed a city we held with an atomic weapon—a weapon they had not had when the fighting started. Do you know how they did it?”

“By remote control, I would assume,” Pesskrag replied.

Ttomalss made the negative gesture. “No. That is how we would do it. That is how they would do it now, I am sure. At the time, their remote-control systems were primitive and unreliable. They sailed a boat that travels underwater—one of their military inventions—carrying the bomb into this harbor. When the boat arrived, a brave male on it triggered the bomb, killing himself and the rest of the crew in the process.”

“Madness!” the physicist said.

“Yes and no,” Ttomalss answered. “Remember, it did us much more harm than it did the Big Uglies. And so they did not count the cost. They have a way of proceeding without counting the cost. That is why I asked where this discovery might go, and how long it might take to get there.”

The way Pesskrag’s eye turrets twitched told how troubled she was. “I am sorry, Senior Researcher, but I still cannot say for certain. We are going to have to modify a good deal of theory to account for the results of this experiment. We will also have to design other experiments based on this one to take into account what we have just learned. I do not know what sort of theoretical underpinnings the Big Uglies already have. If this was an experiment of confirmation for them, not an experiment of discovery . . . If that turns out to be so, they may have a bigger lead than I believe.”

“And in that case?” Ttomalss always assumed the Tosevites knew more and were more advanced than the available evidence showed. He was rarely wrong about that. He did sometimes err on the conservative side even so. Since he was trying to be radical, that worried him. But no member of the Race could be as Radical as a Big Ugly. Realizing that worried him, too.

“I need to do more work before I can properly answer you,” Pesskrag said. Her words proved Ttomalss’ point for him. That worried him more still. A Tosevite physicist wouldn’t have hesitated before answering. And that worried him most of all.

Lieutenant General Healey gave Glen Johnson a baleful stare as the two of them floated into the
Admiral Peary
’s small, cramped refectory. “Too bad sending you down to the surface of Home would kill you,” the starship commandant rasped. “Otherwise, I’d do it in a red-hot minute.”