Second Contact (33 page)

Goldfarb considered. “I’ll tell you what,” he said at last. “I’ll stay home and tend to things here, and you go on out into the world. You’re obviously better suited to it than I am.” Naomi laughed, just as if he’d been joking.

Ttomalss did not care to leave space, to come to the surface of Tosev 3. He especially did not care to visit the independent Tosevite not-empires. Having been kidnapped in China, he did not want to risk falling into the hands of hostile Big Uglies again.

But, when Felless asked him to assist her down in the Greater German
Reich
, he did not see how he could refuse. And the
Reich
, he noted after checking a map, was a long way from China.

He watched with more than a little interest as the shuttlecraft descended to the landing field outside Nuremberg, the capital of the
Reich
. He had landed but seldom since taking Kassquit up from China. The former capital of the
Reich
, he remembered, had been vaporized. Were Tosevites sensible beings, that would have taught the Deutsche respect for the Race. But very little taught the Big Uglies respect for anything, and the Deutsche, by all evidence, were among the more stubborn Big Uglies.

After disembarking from the shuttlecraft, he endured the formalities with the Tosevite male from the Deutsch Foreign Ministry on the broad expanse of concrete. The conversation, fortunately, was in the language of the Race. Ttomalss understood and still spoke some Chinese, but he very much doubted whether this Eberlein creature did. The language in which the official addressed the armed Big Uglies on the landing field sounded nothing like Chinese, at any rate.

Getting into a motorized vehicle of Tosevite manufacture also made Ttomalss nervous, although he was glad to see a male of the Race driving. “Have no great fear, superior sir,” the driver said. “For Big Uglies, the firm of Daimler-Benz is quite capable, and builds relatively reliable machines.”

“How long have they been building them?” Ttomalss asked.

“Longer than almost any other Tosevite firm engaged in such work,” the driver answered, “about seventy-five of the years of Tosev 3. Twice as many of ours,” he added helpfully.

“If it is all the same to you,” Ttomalss said with dignity, “I shall go right on being nervous.”

Having seen a great deal—more than he ever wanted—of the architecture of China, Ttomalss was struck by how different Nuremberg looked. That held true not only for the outsized Nazi ceremonial buildings the driver pointed out to him but also for the smaller structures that held businesses or Deutsch sexual groupings—families, the Big Uglies called them. What struck him was how unhomogenized a world Tosev 3 was. Home, after a hundred thousand years of Empire, had no real regional differences left. One city was much like another. That wasn’t so here.

“Ah, there it is,” he said with no small relief when he saw the familiar-looking cube of the Race’s embassy to the
Reich
. “A touch of Home on Tosev 3.”

“Only when you’re indoors, superior sir, only when you’re indoors,” the driver said. “And we’re coming into the cold season of the year, too. You’ll want to muffle yourself up good and snug when you stick your snout outdoors, that you will.”

“I will not want to muffle myself,” Ttomalss said. “I may do it, but I will not want to.”

“Better than freezing your scales off,” the driver told him, and with that Ttomalss could not disagree. The motorcar, which had run well enough—if more noisily than a vehicle manufactured back on Home—pulled to a halt in front of the embassy.

Veffani, the Race’s ambassador to the Deutsche, greeted Ttomalss just inside the entrance. Even the hallway that led back to the main chambers of the embassy was heated exactly to the temperature the Race found most comfortable. Ttomalss hissed with pleasure. “We shall try to make your stay here as pleasant as we can, Senior Researcher,” Veffani said. “Felless impressed me strongly with how important she thinks your contribution can be.”

“Of course, I will do everything in my power to serve the Race,” Ttomalss replied. “I am not quite certain about what sort of aid Felless seeks from me. Whatever it is, I shall do my best to give it.”

“Spoken like the sensible male you have proved yourself to be,” the ambassador said. “And, even though this is a city of Big Uglies, there are certain worthwhile aspects to life here. You must try the
bratwürste
, for instance.”

“Why must I?” Ttomalss asked suspiciously, and then, “What are they?”

“Little sausages,” Veffani answered, which seemed harmless enough. “They are quite flavorful, so much so that we send them to other embassies all over Tosev 3, and even to the fleetlord’s table in Cairo.”

“If the fleetlord enjoys them, I am sure I will, too,” Ttomalss said.

Veffani grew more enthusiastic still: “When commerce between Tosev 3 and Home begins, plans are to freeze some in liquid nitrogen for transport to the table of the Emperor himself.”

“They must truly be very fine, then,” Ttomalss said.
Either that or, because you like them, you think every other male and female will, too.
He didn’t say that. Instead, he remained polite to his superior: “I shall make a point of trying them.” He paused. “And here is Felless. I greet you, superior female.” He folded himself into the posture of respect, as he had for the ambassador.

Unlike Veffani, Felless returned the gesture. “I greet you, superior sir,” she said, “for while my formal rank may be somewhat higher, I want to draw once more on your superior expertise. Every meeting with these Tosevites, every analysis of what they do, brings only fresh confusion.”

“If you think I do not suffer from these same symptoms, I fear you run the risk of disappointment,” Ttomalss said. “Each day’s work with the Big Uglies only illuminates the width and breadth of our ignorance.”

“I see that,” Felless said. “I have arranged with Ambassador Veffani to quarter you in the chamber next to mine, that we may confer as conveniently as possible.” Her laugh was rueful. “Or, on the other fork of the tongue, I may simply scream in frustration. If I do, I hope it will not disturb your rest.”

“If you think I have not screamed on account of the Big Uglies—in frustration and in terror—you are mistaken, superior female,” Ttomalss said. “I shall find any screams of yours easy to forgive.”

His chamber proved more spacious and more comfortably appointed than the one aboard the ship from the conquest fleet: easier to find room in a building than in a starship, even an enormous starship. He telephoned Kassquit to make sure his Tosevite fosterling was all right and to let her know he was thinking about her even if his work called him away. He had discovered early on that she needed far more reassurance than a male or female of the Race would have.

Felless gave him a little while to settle in, then asked for admittance. When she entered the chamber, she was carrying a tray full of little sausages. “Try some of these while we work,” she said. “They are very tasty.”

“Bratwürste?”
Ttomalss asked.

“Why, yes,” Felless said. “How did you know?”

Ttomalss laughed. “The ambassador already praised them.” He picked one up and popped it into his mouth. “Well, I will say he was not wrong. They
are
quite good.” He ate several, then turned an eye turret toward Felless. “And now, superior female, what troubles you about the Deutsche?”

“Everything!” Felless said with an emphatic cough. “They administer this not-empire on the basis of a whole series of false concepts. They assume they are superior to all other Tosevites, on the basis of no credible evidence whatever—”

“This is common among groups of Tosevites,” Ttomalss broke in. “The Chinese believe the same thing of themselves.”

“But the Deutsche go further, as you must know,” Felless said. “They maintain that certain other groups—some perhaps genetically differentiated, others simply following a relatively unpopular superstition—are so inferior as to deserve extermination, and they mete it out to these groups in immense numbers.”

“We have been pondering that since our arrival on Tosev 3,” Ttomalss said. “It has, if anything, worked to our advantage. One group they persecute, the Jews, has given us a good deal of aid.”

“So I am told,” Felless said. “That, it strikes me, is as it should be. What is not as it should be is the continued survival and scientific progressivism of the Greater German
Reich
. How can beings so dedicated to utterly irrational premises at the same time fly spacecraft and control missiles tipped with nuclear weapons?”

“I congratulate you,” Ttomalss said. “You have pierced with your fingerclaw a central perplexity of Tosev 3. Part of the answer, I think, is that they have so recently emerged from complete savagery that a good deal remains just under the scales, so to speak: far more than among us.”

“They drive me mad,” Felless said with another emphatic cough. “One moment, they will be as logical, as rational, and as intelligent in conversation as any member of the Race. The next moment, they will confidently assert the truth of a premise that is, to any eye but their own, at best ludicrous, at worst preposterous. And they will proceed to reason from that premise with the same rigor they use on other, more rational, ones. It is madness, and they cannot see it. And they continue to thrive even though it is madness, and aim to infect all of Tosev 3 with these mad doctrines. How is one to deal with what strikes the unbiased observer as a pathological condition?”

“Superior female, you do not strike me as an unbiased observer toward the Deutsche,” Ttomalss said with amusement.

“Very well, then. I shall revise that: with what strikes the non-Deutsch observer as a pathological condition,” Felless answered tartly. “There. Does that satisfy you? Will you now answer the question? How does one deal with Big Uglies whose ideology is nothing but a systematized delusion?”

“All Big Uglies sophisticated enough to have ideologies have them laced with delusions,” Ttomalss replied. “The Deutsche believe themselves to be biologically superior, as you have mentioned here. The Tosevites of the SSSR believe the workers will rule and then no one will rule, for perfect goodness and equity will come to all Big Uglies.”

“Looking for goodness and equity among the Big Uglies is indeed a systematized delusion,” Felless said.

“Truth,” Ttomalss said with a laugh. “And the Big Uglies of the United States believe that counting the snouts of the ignorant and clever together will somehow automatically create wise policy. Much as I have pondered this, I have never grasped its philosophical underpinnings, if there are any.”

“Madness. Utter madness,” Felless said with yet another emphatic cough. “As one researcher to another, I tell you I am near despair. There have been times when I have been tempted to withdraw to my spacecraft, and other times when I have been even more tempted to indulge in the Tosevite herb that has gained such popularity among the conquest fleet.”

“Ginger? I do not think that would be wise, superior female,” Ttomalss said. “Whatever the pleasures of the herb, it is without a doubt destructive of sound intellect and sensible habits. I have seen no exceptions to this rule.”

“Then it might make me better able to understand Big Uglies, don’t you think?” Felless said. “That in itself could make the herb valuable.” Ttomalss must have shown his alarm, for the female added, “I was but joking.”

“Superior female, I should hope so,” Ttomalss said primly.

 9

“Where will it be today, superior sir?” Straha’s Tosevite driver asked him after closing the door to the motorcar. The ex-shiplord had learned to rely on the machine even though it broke down more often than the Race would have tolerated. Los Angeles was not a city wherein it was convenient for even a Big Ugly without a motorcar to travel, let alone a male of the Race.

He gave the driver the address. Like his own residence, it was in the district called the Valley—a place-name that, unlike a lot of the ones the Tosevites used, made perfect sense to him. This part of the city was warmer in summer than the rest, and so endeared itself to the Race. It was also colder in winter, but winter anywhere in Los Angeles was chilly enough to be unpleasant.

Even hereabouts, the air tasted wet and green to Straha on warm days and cold alike. That had amused Sam Yeager, who probably would have failed to be comfortable on the coolest, dampest days Home had to offer. The mere idea that Straha would consider the comfort of a Big Ugly was a telling measure of how far he had fallen since defecting from the conquest fleet.

“May I ask you something, superior sir?” the driver asked.

“Ask,” Straha said resignedly. The Big Uglies never stopped trying to learn this, that, and the other thing from him. He didn’t suppose he could blame them—were he still with the conquest fleet, he would have done the same with any prominent Tosevite defector—but it grew wearisome at times.

“You usually refuse invitations from other males of the Race to functions such as the one tonight,” the driver said. “Why did you choose to accept this one?”

The Tosevite spoke Straha’s language about as well as a Big Ugly could. In terms of grammar and pronunciation, he probably spoke it as well as Yeager, who was Straha’s touchstone in such matters. But he did not think like a male of the Race, as Yeager was able to do.

Straha tried to explain: “Why did I accept? First of all, because I usually decline: I have learned from you Tosevites that being too predictable does not pay. And, second, the males who sent me this invitation are old acquaintances. I have known them since not long after my arrival in the United States, when I was being concealed and interrogated at the place called Hot Springs.” That was another sensible, descriptive place-name, of the sort common back on Home.

“I understand now,” the driver said. “You are visiting old friends.”

“In a manner of speaking, yes,” Straha said. But he had recently found an English word that came closer to what he was doing tonight:
slumming.
During his days as shiplord, he would never have associated with ordinary males like these two, and they would never have presumed to ask him to associate with them. Association at Hot Springs was surely one of the reasons they did so presume now, but the pervasive and corrosive American doctrine of equality was as surely another.

He did not hold to the doctrine of equality. What was civilization itself, if not a graduated structure of inequalities? But many prisoners who had elected to stay among the American Tosevites had become infected by their foolish politics. That made sense to Straha. They had been low, so naturally they wanted to consider themselves on the same plane as those who had been above them.

“Here we are, superior sir,” the driver said as the motorcar squeaked to a stop just past a rather garish yellow house with a low hedge out in front of it. Decorative plants were used back on Home, too, but not in such profusion. The driver nodded to Straha. “I shall stay out here and keep an eye on things.” He was not just a driver, of course. He carried a considerable assortment of lethal hardware, and knew how to use all of it.

“If you must smoke cigarettes while you wait for me, have the courtesy to step out of the motorcar before you do so,” Straha said. He and the Big Ugly had had previous disagreements on that subject.

Now, though, the driver yipped out Tosevite laughter. “It shall be done, Shiplord,” he said. “And do enjoy the ginger I am sure a lot of the males there will be tasting.” He laughed again. Straha headed for the house, feeling oddly punctured.

One of the two males who shared the house folded himself into the posture of respect in the doorway. “I greet you, Shiplord,” he said. “You honor our home by your presence.”

“I greet you, Ristin,” Straha replied. Ristin wore red-white-and-blue body paint of no pattern authorized by the Race. Sam Yeager had devised it in Hot Springs to designate prisoners of the United States. It still scandalized Straha, even after so many years. To Ristin, though, it symbolized his abandonment of the Race and entrance into the world of the Tosevites.

“I trust all is well with you, Shiplord?” Ristin asked with perhaps a tenth of the deference an infantrymale should have given an officer of Straha’s rank.

“As well as it can be, yes,” Straha said.

“Come in, then, and use our house as your own,” Ristin told him. “We have food. We have alcohol, in several flavors. We have ginger, for those who care for it.” He and the male with whom he shared the house had never got the habit. Straha did not know whether to feel scorn or pity or envy at that.

“I thank you,” Straha said, and went inside. As in many houses built by Tosevites, he felt a little too small. The ceiling was too high, as were the counters in the kitchen. Even the light switches—aside from being a strange shape—were set higher in the wall than he would have had to reach back on Home.

Music blared out of a playing machine in the front room. It was not the music of the Race, but some Tosevite tune. When Straha turned an eye turret toward the player, he discovered it was also of Tosevite manufacture. Instead of using a
skelkwank
light to release the information digitally stored on a small disk, the player had a stylus that rode the grooves of a large platter—and, with every playing, degraded them a little, so the platter eventually became unusable. That was like the Big Uglies, Straha thought—they had no consideration for the long term.

Straha had no use for most Tosevite music, though the Big Ugly called Bach sometimes created patterns he found interesting. This was not Bach. It was, in his view, hardly music at all, even by Tosevite standards. It was full of crashes and horns—not the horns with which the Big Uglies made music, but the ones they used as warning devices on motorcars—and other absurdities.

Through the cacophonous din, a singer howled in English:

“When the fleetlord say, ‘We’ll rule this world from space,’

We—
hiss, hiss
—right in the fleetlord’s face.

The fleetlord thinks the Earth is for the Race.

We—
hiss, hiss
—right in the fleetlord’s face.”

The hisses did not come from a Big Ugly’s throat. They sounded more as if they were made by pouring water onto red-hot metal. That would have fit in well with the other strange noises coming out of the playing machine.

Several males stood in front of the player. Their mouths hung wide open. They thought the recording was the funniest thing they’d ever heard. Straha considered. It was barbaric, it was crude, it was rude—and it was aimed at Atvar. That made up Straha’s mind for him: he decided the recording was pretty funny, too.

“I greet you, Shiplord.” That was Ullhass, the male with whom Ristin shared his home. Like his comrade, he wore U.S. prisoner-of-war body paint. Maybe he found that funny, in the same sort of way the Tosevite song was funny. That was as close as Straha had ever come to understanding why these two males preferred U.S. body paint to that of the Race.

“I greet you, Ullhass.” Straha took pride in keeping his own ornate body paint touched up, even though he would never again command the
206th Emperor Yower
or any other ship of the Race. He had made sure of that.

“Help yourself to anything that suits you, Shiplord,” Ullhass said, much as Ristin had at the entrance. “Plenty to eat, plenty to drink, plenty to taste. Plenty of gossip, too. I am glad you decided to join us. We are pleased to see you. You do not come among your own kind often enough.”

“I am here.” Straha let it go at that. These former captives who had happily settled into Tosevite society and who had one another for company were hardly more his own kind than were the Big Uglies. Because they had been captured, the Race readily forgave them. Many of them had traveled back and forth between the United States and areas of Tosev 3 the Race ruled.

Straha had not. He would not. He could not. The Race had made it very plain that he was liable to arrest if he ever left the USA. The leaders of the local not-empire had also made it very plain they did not want him to leave. Just as he knew too much about the Race, so he also knew too much about them.

He went into the kitchen, took some ham and some potato chips—as long as he was here, he would enjoy himself—and poured some clear spirits. The Big Uglies flavored a lot of their alcohol with things most males of the Race found highly unpleasant—burnt wood and tree berries were a couple of their favorites—but they also distilled it without flavorings. That Straha could drink without qualms, and he did.

A ginger jar sat on the high counter. Anyone who wanted a taste could have one, or more than one.
Later,
Straha told himself. Had he told himself
no
, he would have known he was lying.
Later
was easier to deal with.

Skittering in, a male almost bumped into Straha. “Sorry, friend,” he said as he spooned some ginger out into the palm of his hand. Then one of his eye turrets swung toward Straha, taking in his complex swirls of paint. The other male gave him respect. “Uh, sorry, Shiplord.”

“It is all right,” Straha said, and the other male tasted the ginger he’d taken. Seeing his pleasure made Straha abruptly decide
later
had become
now
. After a good-sized taste of his own, even exile seemed more palatable than it had. But, through the exaltation, he knew it would not last.

“Did I hear true, Shiplord?” the other male asked. “Did you tell one of those Big Uglies you thought this not-empire had shot up the colonization fleet?” Without waiting for an answer, he opened his mouth to laugh. “That is even funnier than Spike Jones.” Seeing Straha’s incomprehension, he added, “The Tosevite with the silly song.”

“Oh,” Straha said, and then, wary as usual, asked, “How did you hear of that? I know it never appeared in a newspaper.”

“That Big Ugly male who interviewed you—Herter, is that the name?—spoke with me a little later,” the other male replied. “He talked about the way you yanked his tailstump. He thought it was funny, too, once he realized you did not mean it.”

“What I did not realize was that he was ready to print it,” Straha said. “The Big Uglies in this not-empire carry freedom to the point of license.”

Several other males had heard the story of Straha’s misadventure with the reporter, too. That let him have a more entertaining time at the gathering than he’d expected. Even males who used English as readily as their own original speech would laugh at the follies of Tosevites.

But, when Straha related the tale to his driver on the way back to his own home, the Big Ugly was anything but amused. “Do not ever tell that story again, Shiplord,” he said with an emphatic cough. “The
Reich
and the USSR can gain too much benefit if you do.” He remained polite, even deferential, but he was giving an order just the same.

To this I have been reduced: to taking orders from Big Uglies.
Straha sighed. He had been reduced to worse circumstances than that, but few more humiliating. He sighed again, a long, mournful hiss. “It shall be done.”

The
Liberty Explorer
had been a long time crossing the Pacific from Shanghai to San Pedro, with stops in Japanese-held Manila and in Honolulu. Even though the paperwork for her daughter and her was in good order, Liu Han had stayed in her cabin aboard the U.S. freighter all through the stop in Manila, and had made sure Liu Mei did the same. Liu Han still felt lucky to have survived the Japanese attack on her village north of Hankow. She did not want to give the eastern dwarfs a chance to finish the job, not when she had to put out a bowl for alms—and arms—in the USA.