Homeward Bound (60 page)

“Years, you say?” he persisted. “Not centuries?”

“I still say it should be centuries,” Pesskrag replied. “It probably will not be, not with everyone pushing for speed at the expense of quality and safety, but it should be. There are too many variables we do not understand well. There are too many variables we do not understand at all.”

“Very well. I thank you.” Ttomalss broke the connection. He felt slightly reassured, but only slightly. Whatever the Race could do, the Tosevites were bound to be able to do faster. How much faster?
That
much faster? He despised the idea of preventive war, but. . . .

All of a sudden, he stopped worrying about preventive war. That ginger-peddling female was on her way back. She had two large, unfriendly-looking males with her, one of them particularly bizarre with a mane of yellow hair that had never sprouted from his skin. Ttomalss did not wait to find out if their personalities belied their appearance. He left, in a hurry.

“Hey, buddy, wait! We want to talk to you!” the male with the wig shouted after him.

Ttomalss didn’t wait. He was sure the males—and that unpleasant female—wanted to do something to him. He was just as sure talking wasn’t it. He swung one eye turret back toward them. To his enormous relief, the males weren’t coming after him. The female wasn’t relieved at that. She was furious. She clawed the male with the yellow false hair. He knocked her to the sidewalk. They started fighting.

My own people,
Ttomalss thought sadly.
How are they any better than Big Uglies when they act like this?
But the answer to that was plain enough. They were
his.
Like them or not, he understood them. He understood them even if they wanted to hit him over the head and steal his valuables.

If the Big Uglies hit him over the head and stole his valuables, they weren’t just robbers. They were alien robbers, which made them a hundred times worse.

And the Big Uglies wanted to hit the whole Race over the head and steal its valuables. Things had been peaceful and stable on Home for so long. It wouldn’t last. It couldn’t last, not any more. Maybe, once the Tosevites were gone for good, peace and stability would return . . . if anything was left of the Empire afterwards.

Existence or not—that is the question.
So some Tosevite writer had put it. He’d been dead for hundreds of years, maybe even a thousand; Ttomalss didn’t know as much as he would have liked about Tosevite chronology before the conquest fleet came. But that Big Ugly had got right to the liver of things. If existence for the Race and the Empire seemed more likely after a preventive war, then preventive war there should be. If not, not. Ttomalss feared he knew what the answer was.

Karen Yeager nodded politely to Trir. “I greet you,” she told the tour guide.

“And I greet you,” Trir said, also politely. The female had acted friendly enough lately; it wasn’t close to mating season. Her eye turrets traveled up and down Karen’s length. “I had thought there might be some future in escorting you Tosevites when you come to visit Home. Now I see that is unlikely to be so.”

The hotel lobby was as warm as ever. Looking out through the big plate-glass windows, Karen could see the sun-blasted hills out beyond Sitneff. Despite all that, a chill ran through her. She hoped she was wrong as she asked, “What do you mean?”

“Why, that you Big Uglies probably will not be coming to Home any more, and that I cannot expect to see shiploads of students and travelers. We are going to have to put you in your place, or so everyone says.” Trir took the answer for granted.

More ice walked up Karen’s back. “Who told you that, if I may ask? And what do you mean by putting us in our place?”

“We shall have to make certain you cannot threaten the Race and the Empire.” By Trir’s tone, that would be not only simple but bloodless. She had lived in peace all her life. Home had lived in peace since the Pleistocene. Males and females here had no idea what anything else was like.

Karen did. For better and for worse—more often than not, for worse—Earth’s history was different from Home‘s. And the Race’s soldiers had played no small part in that history since the conquest fleet arrived. “You are talking about a war, about millions—more likely, billions—dying,” Karen said slowly. “I ask you again: who told you war was coming? Please tell me. It may be important.” She used an emphatic cough.

“Everyone around here except maybe you Tosevites seems to think it will come,” Trir replied. “And I do not think it will be as bad as you make it sound. After all, it will be happening a long way away.”

You idiot!
Karen didn’t scream that at the Lizard, though she wanted to. She contented herself with making the negative gesture instead. “For one thing, war is no better when it happens to someone else than when it happens to you,” she said, though she knew plenty of humans would have felt otherwise. “For another, I must tell you that you are mistaken.”

“In what way?” Trir asked.

“This war, if there is a war, will ravage the Empire’s worlds as well as Tosev 3. That is a truth.” Karen added another emphatic cough.

“That would be barbaric!” Trir exclaimed, with an emphatic cough of her own.

“Why would it be more barbaric than the other?” Karen asked.

“Because this is the Empire, of course,” Trir answered.

“I see.” Karen hoped the Lizard could hear the acid dripping from her voice. “If you do it to someone else who is far away, it is fine, but it is barbaric if someone else presumes to do it to you right here.”

“I did not say that. I did not mean that. You are confusing things,” Trir said.

“I do not know what you meant. Only you can know that, down deep in the bottom of your liver,” Karen replied. “But I know what you said. I know what I said. And I know one other thing—I know which of us is confused. Please believe me: I am not the one.”

Trir’s tailstump quivered with anger. “I think you have it coming, for telling lies if nothing else.” She stalked away.

Karen felt like throwing something at her. That would have been undiplomatic, no matter how satisfying it might also have been. Karen thought hard about flipping Trir the bird. That would have been undiplomatic, too. She might have got away with it, simply because nobody here was likely to understand what the gesture meant.

And then, in spite of herself, she started to laugh. Could you flip somebody the bird here on Home? Wouldn’t you have to flip her (or even him) the pterodactyl instead?

However much she wanted it to, the laughter wouldn’t stick. That Trir seemed happy war would come was bad enough. That she seemed so sure was worse. And Karen muttered a curse under her breath. She hadn’t got the guide to tell her who among the Lizard higher-ups was so certain war was on the way.

Did that matter? Weren’t
all
the Lizards acting that way these days? She knew too well that they were. And if they acted that way, they were much more likely to bring it on.

An elevator opened, silently and smoothly. Everything the Race did was silent, smooth, efficient. Next to the Lizards, humans
were
a bunch of noisy, clumsy barbarians. But if they went down, they’d go down swinging, and the Empire would remember them for a long time—or else go down into blackness with them.

Kassquit came out of the elevator. She waved when she saw Karen in the lobby. She not only waved, she came over to her, saying, “I greet you.”

“And I greet you,” Karen answered cautiously. She and Kassquit still didn’t usually get along. “What can I do for you today?” Would Kassquit be gloating at the prospect of war, too? She never got tired of bragging how she was a citizen of the Empire. As far as Karen was concerned, that was one of the things that made her less than human. She didn’t
want
to be human, and wished she weren’t.

But now Kassquit said, “If you know any way to keep the peace between your not-empire and the Empire, please speak of it to Sam Yeager and to Fleetlord Atvar. We must do whatever we can to prevent a war.”

“I completely agree with you,” Karen said—and if that wasn’t a surprise, it was close enough for government work.
Government work is exactly the problem here,
she thought. She went on, “From my perspective, the problem is that the Race thinks war would be more to its advantage than peace.” And how would Kassquit take
that
?

Kassquit used the affirmative gesture. “Truth. And a truth I do not know how to get around. My superiors are convinced they will have to fight later if they do not fight now, and they will be at a greater disadvantage the longer they delay. By the spirits of Emperors past, they must be addled!”

Karen wondered if they were. Humans progressed faster than Lizards. Both sides could see that. But . . . “If we can destroy each other, what difference does it make who has the fancier weapons? Both sides will be equally dead.”

“That is also a truth.” As usual, Kassquit’s face showed nothing, but urgency throbbed in her voice. “Under such circumstances, war is madness.”

“Yes,” Karen said. “The United States has always held this view.”

“After its experience when the colonization fleet came to Tosev 3 and in the unprovoked attack by the Deutsche, the Empire is not sure that is a truth,” Kassquit said. “And, speaking of unprovoked attacks, consider the one your not-empire made against the colonization fleet not long after its ships went into orbit around your world. If you see a way to seize a victory cheaply and easily, will you not take it? This is the Race’s fear.”

“I do not know what to tell you, except that Sam Yeager is the one who made sure our unjust act would not go unpunished,” Karen said. “I do not think we would make the same mistake twice. And I cannot help seeing that you have just made a strong case for war, at least from the Empire’s point of view.”

“I know I have. Making the case for war is easy—if one does not reckon in the dangers involved,” Kassquit said. “My hope is that your not-empire has indeed changed from its previous aggressive stance. If I can persuade my superiors of that—and if you wild Tosevites work to convince them of the same thing—we may possibly avert this fight, even now.”

“Would Sam Yeager be the American ambassador to the Race if we had not changed our ways?” Karen asked.

“Sam Yeager would not be your ambassador if the Doctor had survived,” Kassquit pointed out. “The Doctor was a very able diplomat. No one would say otherwise. But no one would say he was a shining example of peace and trust, either.”

She was right about that. If you were in a dicker with the Doctor, he would have had no qualms about picking your pocket. Not only that, he would have tried to persuade you afterwards that he’d done it for your own good. That talent had made him very valuable to the United States. Whether it had made him a paragon of ethics might be a different question.

“Do what you can with your own officials,” Karen said. “I will speak to Sam Yeager. As you say, we have to try.”

Kassquit used the affirmative gesture. They might not like each other, but that had nothing to do with anything right now. Karen rode up to her father-in-law’s room and knocked on the door. When he opened it, he said, “You look like a steamroller just ran over your kitten.”

She eyed him. “You don’t look so happy yourself.”

“To tell you the truth, I’m not,” Sam Yeager said. “The small stuff is, Atvar is mad as hops because the Race found a rat—a half-grown rat—in a building a couple of miles from here. He keeps trying to make it out to be our fault, even though the cleaners let the darn things out.”

“A half-grown rat? So they’re breeding here, then,” Karen said.

“Sure looks that way,” Sam Yeager agreed. “And that’s just the small stuff. The big stuff is . . . Well, you know about the big stuff.”

“Yes, I know about the big stuff. That’s why I wanted to talk to you.” Karen summed up the conversations she’d just had with Trir and Kassquit. She went on, “What can we do? We have to be able to do
something
to convince the Lizards this war’s not worth fighting. Something—but I don’t know what.”

Sam Yeager let out a long, weary sigh. “If they’re bound and determined to go ahead and fight, I don’t know what we can do about it but hit back as hard as we can. They look to have decided that this is going to be the best chance they’ve got.” He shrugged. “They may even be right.”

“Even if they are, it’ll be a disaster!” Karen exclaimed.

Her father-in-law nodded. “I know that. I think they know it, too. If they don’t, it’s not because I haven’t told ’em. But if they think it’ll be a disaster now but maybe a catastrophe later . . .” He spread his hands.

“We don’t want a war with them. We just
don’t,
” Karen said.

“Their attitude is, we may not want one now, but we’re a bunch of changeable Big Uglies, and sooner or later we will,” Sam Yeager said. “I don’t know how to convince them they’re wrong, either. And I’d better. If I can’t . . .”

“Kassquit is trying the same thing on their side.” Karen wasn’t used to talking about Kassquit with unreserved approval—or with any approval at all—but she did now.

“Good for her. I hope it helps some, but I wouldn’t bet the house on it,” Sam Yeager said. “I hope something helps some. If it doesn’t . . .” He paused again, and grimaced. “If it doesn’t, we’ll have a war on our hands.”

“We can see it’s madness. Kassquit can see it’s madness. The Lizards are usually more reasonable than we are. Why not now?” Karen could hear the despair in her voice.

“It’s what I told you before. They must think this is their best chance, or maybe their last chance. It doesn’t look that way to me, but I’m not Atvar or the Emperor.” Sam Yeager’s scowl grew blacker. “I’m just a scared old man. If something big doesn’t change in a hurry, four worlds are going to go up in smoke.”

* * *

In the control room these days, Glen Johnson felt more as if he were in a missile-armed upper stage in Earth orbit, or even in the cockpit of a fighter heading for action against the Lizards. Anything could happen, and probably would. He knew damn well that the Race could overwhelm the
Admiral Peary.
His job, and the job of everybody else on board, was to make sure they remembered they’d been in a fight.