Second Contact (18 page)

He regretted saying that a moment later, for the Big Ugly asked the same question all the others had: “Which not-empire do you think attacked the colonization fleet, and why?”

Having answered,
How should I know, when I am not a Tosevite?
any number of times already, Straha felt mischief stir in him. Had his character not had that streak, he wouldn’t have tried to overthrow Atvar and he likely wouldn’t have fled from the conquest fleet to the Tosevites.
And I would be better off today,
he thought, but not till after he had answered, “Why, this one, of course—the United States.”

“Really?” Herter said. “Why do you think that?”

“It stands to reason,” Straha answered. “Your not-empire could hurt the Race more easily than either the
Reich
or the Soviet Union, because fewer folk would expect you to try it.”

He heard faint scratching sounds as the reporter wrote that down; recorders were less common here than among the Race. “Really?” the Big Ugly repeated. “Well, that is something, by the Emperor! That will give me a front-page headline every other newspaper in the not-empire will envy. Let me ask you some more questions about this. Why—?”

“Wait,” Straha said. He did not care to hear the reporter swearing by the Emperor. The Tosevite cared nothing about the Emperor, and was probably using the only oath in the language of the Race he knew—and the Emperor assuredly cared nothing about the Tosevite. But that was only a detail. Straha asked, “You would print this in your newspaper?”

“Of course,” Herter answered. “This will be the biggest story since the attack on the fleet.”

“But I have accused the government of this not-empire of perpetrating that attack,” Straha said, wondering if the Big Ugly could speak the language of the Race himself but had trouble understanding what he heard in it. Straha’s English was sometimes like that.

But Herter did understand him. “Oh, yes,” the reporter said brightly. “That is what makes it such a big story. Now my next question is—”

“Wait,” Straha said again. “The government of this not-empire would never allow you to print such a story.”

“Of course they will,” Herter said. “This is not the
Reich
. This is not the Soviet Union. Here, we have freedom of the press.”

The phrase was in the language of the Race, but alien to it in spirit. Straha had heard it before, of course, but never in such a context as this: “Your not-emperor would allow you to print a story that criticizes him? I find it hard to believe.”

“It is truth,” Herter said with an emphatic cough. “We are a free not-empire. We are almost the only free not-empire left on the face of this planet. We have no censors telling us what goes in the newspapers and what does not.”

“None?” Straha had not really imagined the American passion for doing exactly as one pleased went so far as that.

“None,” the reporter answered. “We did during the fighting, but we got rid of them again after that.”

“Why would your government let ordinary males and females criticize it?” Straha asked in honest bewilderment. “What good does it do? What good do you imagine it does?” He could see none, not even turning both mental eye turrets in the direction of the problem.

But Calvin Herter could, and did: “How better to make sure the government does what the males and females of the United States want it to do than by giving them the right to criticize freely?”

“Governments do not do what males and females want them to do.” Straha spoke as if quoting a law of nature. As far as he was concerned, he
was
quoting a law of nature. “Governments do what governments want to do. How could it be otherwise, when they hold the power?”

“You have lived in America for a long time,” Herter said. “How have you lived here so long without getting a better idea of how the government of the United States works?”

“You count snouts,” Straha said. “Whichever side can persuade the most snouts to join it prevails. It does not have to be clever. It does not have to be wise. It only has to be popular.”

“There may be something to that,” Herter admitted. “But with any other way to run a government, a policy does not have to be clever or wise or popular. There is the drawback the Race faces—and the Nazis and Communists, too.”

Underestimating a Big Ugly’s wits rarely paid. The Tosevites were not stupid and, whatever else one said about them, were inspired argufiers. But Straha knew he was on solid ground in this dispute, and fired back: “Often policies that are clever or wise are not popular. A snoutcounting government cannot use them, because not enough snouts will line up behind them. This is the drawback the United States faces.”

“No system is perfect,” Herter said.

“Our system is perfect—for us,” Straha said. “I do not know that it would be perfect for Tosevites. But I do not know that it would not be, either. I am willing to believe—I am more than willing to believe—that Tosevites have yet to establish a social system perfect for themselves.” He let his mouth fall open at the neatness with which he had squelched Herter.

But, like so many other Big Uglies, Herter refused to stay squelched. “If we are so imperfect, Shiplord, how is it that we, with our short history, fought the Race to a standstill even though you have a long history?”

Straha started to slap him down for his insolence: his first, automatic, response, as it would have been for any self-respecting male of the Race. Before he spoke, though, he realized what most other males of the Race would not have—the Big Ugly had a point. With a sigh, he answered, “Scholars of the Race—and perhaps Tosevite scholars as well—will be studying that question for thousands of years to come. I do not believe it to be one with a simple answer.”

“You are probably right about that,” the reporter said. “Now, can we return to the question I asked you before: Why do you believe the United States was the not-empire that exploded the ships from the colonization fleet?”

He was serious. Straha would not have believed it, and still did not want to believe it. But he had no choice but to believe it. That being so, he said, “I do not really believe that. I find it highly unlikely. I wanted to place a biting pest on your tailstump, to watch you leap in the air when its proboscis pierced your skin. Do you understand what I am saying?”

“I think so,” Herter replied. “In English, we call that a practical joke.” The two key words were in his own language.

“A practical joke,” Straha repeated. Thinking back on it, he’d heard Sam Yeager use the phrase a couple of times. If anything, the Big Uglies seemed fonder of the thing than the Race was. He went on, “Yes, I suppose that is what it was. I did not imagine you would publish it, so I said it to see what you would do.”

“Not funny, Shiplord. Not funny at all,” Calvin Herter said with another emphatic cough. “You might have touched off a war between the United States and the Race. That goes too far for a practical joke.”

“I suppose so,” Straha said, at the same time wondering whether a war between the United States and the Race—one in which the Race wrecked the United States, of course—would be enough to allow him to return to the society of his own kind, assuming he survived it.

He had his doubts. As long as Atvar lived, nothing was likely to allow him to return to the society of his own kind. When the fleetlord got a grudge, he kept it.

Maybe Atvar would get killed in a war between the United States and the Race. As far as Straha was concerned, that would improve the Race’s chances of winning such a war. Atvar would have been the ideal fleetlord for the conquest of the Tosev 3 the Race thought it would find. He was careful, methodical, and probably could have completed the job without losing a male. As things were . . .

As things were, Straha realized Herter had said something, but he had no idea what it was. “Please repeat that,” he said. Speaking with another male of the Race, he would have been embarrassed. To a certain degree, he was embarrassed anyhow, but only to a certain degree.

“I asked whether, once the colonization fleet lands, you will be glad to have females with you once more,” the reporter said.

“In the sense that their arrival means we will be able to plant new generations of the Race on Tosev 3, yes,” Straha replied. “In the sense that we will be wild for mating, as you Tosevites might be, of course not. Our nature is different.”
For which I am heartily glad,
he added to himself.

“You of the Race miss a lot of the spark in life, or so it seems to me,” Herter said.

“You Tosevites let your mating habits drive you wild, or so it seems to me,” Straha replied. “I am content—more than content—to be as I am.”

“Me, too,” Herter said with an emphatic cough.

“I believe you,” Straha said. He wondered what sort of progress the Race’s scientists had made since his defection toward unraveling the connection between the Big Uglies’ sexual patterns and their society. Signals intercepts and conversations with other defectors and prisoners who had stayed in the USA did not tell him everything he wanted to know. He asked, “Have you any further questions?”

“Shiplord, I have not,” the reporter answered. “And if I did, how would I know you were telling the truth?”

Straha’s mouth fell open. “How would you know?” he echoed. “You would not. That is part of the risk you run when you speak with me.”

To his surprise, Calvin Herter let out several yips of barking Big Ugly laughter. “Shiplord, we will make a Tosevite of you yet,” he said. Straha hung up in some indignation. The reporter had no business insulting him that way.

Kassquit put on the artificial fingerclaws that made handling the Race’s equipment so much easier for her. She turned on the computer terminal in her chamber, then turned off the overhead light. Sitting there in the darkness, her own body hidden from her eyes, she could pretend for a while that she was a female of the Race like any other female of the Race.

News bulletins told her the Race still did not know which Tosevite faction had dared raise its hand against the ships of the colonization fleet. “Punish them all,” Kassquit whispered fiercely. “They all deserve it. Of course they deserve it. They are Big Uglies.”

Her hands folded into fists in her anger at the natives of Tosev 3. As they did so, the artificial fingerclaws poked the soft, smooth flesh of her palms. She let out a long, misery-filled sigh. Even in the darkness, she could not escape what she was. Her flesh was the flesh of the natives of the world below.

“I cannot help that,” she said in the language of the Race, the only language she knew. “I may be flesh of their flesh, but I am not spirit of their spirit. When they die, they will be gone. They will be gone forever. When I die, spirits of Emperors past will cherish me.”

She cast down her eyes in reverence for the Emperors who still watched over the Race, even though so many were tens of millennia dead. She also dared hope her spirit, when at last it was freed from the unfortunate form it bore, would resemble those of other females of the Race. Even if this flesh was not what it should be, surely no one and nothing could condemn her to be different forever.

She had sometimes thought of ending her life, to escape the prison of the body she was forced to wear. But she knew her existence helped the Race learn more about the perfidious Tosevites. If she ended it prematurely, she was all too likely to forfeit the good opinion of Emperors past. She dared not take the risk. If she were to be no more than a Big Ugly even after she was dead . . . how could she be expected to endure such a misfortune throughout eternity?

Of itself, her right hand strayed toward the joining of her legs. She noticed only when one of those fingerclaws scraped the skin of her inner thigh. She took the fingerclaws off that hand. The sole refuge she had from a difficult world was the sensation she could evoke from her Tosevite body.

But before she was well begun, the speaker beside her closed door emitted a hiss, the signal the Race used when someone wanted to enter. She jerked her hand away and flipped on the lights. “Who is it?” she asked, removing the fingerclaws from her left hand as well.

“Ttomalss,” came the answer, as she had expected. He did do his best to treat her as if she were a proper part of the Race, for which she respected and admired him hardly less than she did the Emperor back on Home. When she was a hatchling, he had come and gone as he pleased. Now that she approached adulthood, though, he used her with all due courtesy: “May I enter?”

“Of course,” she answered, and put one fingerclaw back on to touch the control that slid the door open. She folded herself into the posture of respect. “I greet you, superior sir.” As he did not usually do, Ttomalss had someone with him. Kassquit remained in the posture of respect. “And I greet you as well, superior female.”

“I greet you, Kassquit,” Felless said. “I greet you indeed. It is good to see you again. You will be very valuable to my investigations.”

“I am glad to hear it, Senior Researcher,” Kassquit replied. “Being useful to the Race is my goal and my purpose in life.”

Felless turned both eye turrets toward Ttomalss. “Truly, she speaks the language as well as one could expect a Tosevite to do,” she said, “and you have trained her well in the subordination due her superiors.”

Kassquit hid her anger. She did not like the way Felless talked about her as if she were not there, or as if she were too stupid to understand anything that was said about her. She glanced toward Ttomalss—he was not so far away from Felless that she had to embarrass herself by turning her whole head to do it—hoping he would reprove the researcher fresh from Home.

He said, “I thank you, Senior Researcher. The effort involved has been considerable, but I agree that the result has been worthwhile.”

That was praise for Kassquit, if she chose to take it the right way. She was not inclined to take it the right way, not now. She did not want Ttomalss, who had raised her from earliest hatchlinghood, to speak of her as if she were only an experimental animal. He had always been her buffer, the one who eased the strain between her and other members of the Race.