Second Contact (47 page)

“What are we to do?” Felless asked.

“I do not know,” the ambassador said. “This is still under discussion by leading officials of both the conquest fleet and the colonization fleet. One part of the emerging solution—or emerging effort to find a solution—is the imposition of harsher penalties on those guilty of tasting ginger.”

“That solution would appeal to the Big Uglies,” Felless said, and explained the conversation she’d just had with the Deutsch male. “Shall we imitate their barbarism?”

“We may have no choice,” Veffani replied. “If we do not imitate their barbarism, we seem to be heading in the direction of imitating their reproductive habits, as you must realize.” Felless realized it all too well; he had coupled with her that first time she’d tasted ginger, when she still did not know what it would do to her. The ambassador went on, “Which would you prefer?”

“Neither, superior sir,” Felless answered at once. “I would prefer for things to return to the way they have always been.”

“A sentiment worthy of the Race,” Veffani said. “Tell me, then, how to make this particular situation unhatch and return to its egg.”

“I cannot,” Felless said softly. “I wish I could. And, speaking of eggs . . .”

She could feel a pair growing inside her, though they would not be ready to lay for some time yet. She had thought a successful mating—whichever one it had been—would shut down her desire and her production of pheromones. That was the sensible way things had worked back on Home.

As the males of the conquest fleet said over and over again, nothing on Tosev 3 worked the way it did back on Home. Ginger short-circuited the end of her cycle. Even though she was gravid, she still released pheromones and wanted to mate every time she tasted. The matings, she knew, were no more than meaningless sensation, like the meaningless sensation suffusing so much of Tosevite sexuality. That did not mean she did not hunger for them.

Ginger also produced nothing but meaningless sensation. That did not mean she did not hunger for it, either.

Veffani said, “If you should have any ginger, Senior Researcher, I strongly suggest you divest yourself of it. Penalties for possession and intoxication
are
going to increase. They are going to increase more for females than for males, too.”

“That is unjust!” Felless exclaimed.

“Perhaps in one sense, it is. In another sense, however, it most assuredly is not,” Veffani replied. “Consider: a male under the influence of the herb is likely to disrupt only his own life. If he is an experienced user, and not too greedy, he does not even do that to any great extent. But a female disrupts not only her own life but also the lives of all the males who scent her pheromones. Does that not make a greater penalty for females appropriate?”

“Perhaps,” Felless said grudgingly. “But there should also be a penalty, and a severe one, for males who give females ginger in order to induce them to mate when they would not do so otherwise.”

“Such penalties are also being drafted,” the ambassador said. “We have had cases of this sort of behavior reported. Males with pheromones filling their scent receptors are less rational than we would like. Even now, I find a certain difficulty in concentrating. Somewhere in this building, a female is in her season, and the pheromones drift in through my open door. I can understand how thoughts of mating, even by trickery, might come to mind.”

“The Tosevites have a term for this disgusting trickery, which is not unknown among them,” Felless said. “They call it
seduction
.”

“Tosevite languages have borrowed many words from our tongue,” Veffani said. “How unfortunate that we should have to take such a sordid term from theirs. We never needed it before.”

“Truth,” Felless said. “And I wish we did not need it now.” She let out a worried hiss. “Eventually, smugglers are bound to carry ginger Home. What will it do there, by the Emperor?”

“Nothing good,” the ambassador answered. “I can say no more than that; I have, as yet, no data from which to program the computer to evaluate possible scenarios. But this herb can bring nothing but trouble and disruption to Home. I need no computer to see the truth in that. It brings nothing but trouble and disruption here.”

“With that, superior sir, I cannot possibly disagree,” Felless said. “And now, with your permission, I shall withdraw from your presence.” She did not say she was withdrawing so she could dispose of the ginger in her quarters; after what Veffani had told her, she did not want to admit she had any of the Tosevite herb. If he drew his conclusions from the way she acted, that was one thing. If he had actual evidence of her possessing ginger, that could be something else again.

Her mouth dropped open. He’d mated with her. She’d gone into her season, as ginger made females do. If that didn’t give him some sort of hint that she used the herb, what would?

It was on his mind, for, after using the affirmative hand gesture, he added, “Do bear in mind what I have said, Senior Researcher.”

“It shall be done,” Felless said, and departed. She sneaked back up to the chamber the embassy staff had assigned her, and managed to get inside without having Ttomalss notice her. As males went, he wasn’t a bad fellow. He hadn’t given her ginger in the hope of inciting her to mate, as Veffani’s first secretary had done. So far as she knew, he did not even use the herb. He’d warned her against it before anyone knew the effect it had on females. But even so . . .

Even so, he’d mated with her. Under most circumstances, that bond was far more casual in the Race than among the Tosevites. Under many circumstances, it was no bond at all. During the season, who could say with certainty with whom one had mated? But ginger changed that, as ginger changed everything Felless knew. She knew only too well, in the cases of Ttomalss and Veffani.

She also knew only too well that she did still have ginger hidden in her office. She opened a drawer, lifted up the folders full of printouts, and took out the vial. Pouring the herb down the sink, letting water wash away the herb, was surely the most expedient course.

Her craving rose up to smite her. She could not throw the ginger away, no matter how hard she tried. She thrust the vial back into the drawer and slammed it shut. Then she stood and quivered for some little while. The temptation was not to take out the vial again and get rid of the ginger. The temptation was to take out the vial again and taste till the ginger was gone.

And then it would do what it did with her mind, bringing exaltation and then crushing depression. And it would do what it did with her body, making her randier than any Big Ugly. And she still craved it. “What am I going to do?” she whispered in desperation and despair. “What
can
I do?”

A male sidled toward Nesseref as she walked through Lodz. The shuttlecraft pilot watched him with a wariness she’d had to acquire in a hurry. Sure enough, his posture was a little more upright than it might have been. Sure enough, the scales along the midline of his skull kept starting to twitch upright. Sure enough, all that meant the pheromones of an upwind female had addled whatever wits he owned.

“I greet you, superior female,” he said, his voice as ingratiating as he could make it. At least he recognized she was of higher rank; she’d met males too far gone in lust to know or to care.

“I greet you,” she answered resignedly. Maybe she was wrong. Maybe he wouldn’t do what she thought he would.

But he did. He reached into his belt pouch and pulled out a small glass vial. “How would you like a taste of this?” he asked.

“No!” she said, and used an emphatic cough. That wasn’t empathic enough to make him understand and pay attention to her. He poured some into the palm of his hand, then invitingly held that hand in front of her snout. All she had to do was flick out her tongue and taste the herb.

She pushed him away. He let out a startled squawk, and then a low cry of dismay as the ginger was lost forever. “Curse you, that is not friendly!” he exclaimed.

“It is not friendly to try to make me want to mate when I do not feel like mating, either,” Nesseref said angrily. The male advanced—now, if she was any judge, to hurt her because she’d made him lose some of his precious herb. Used to making quick decisions, she made one here: she lashed out and kicked him as hard as she could. “Go away!” she shouted.

Maybe he hadn’t expected her to fight back. Maybe he hadn’t expected her to start fighting before she did. Whatever he’d expected, she’d given him something else. He hissed in surprise and pain and did scuttle away.

“Well, well,” said someone—a Tosevite—behind her. “That was interesting. Did it mean what I thought it meant?”

Nesseref whirled. The Big Ugly’s voice was familiar, though she still had scant skill at telling Tosevites apart by appearance. “You are Anielewicz, the male I met in Glowno?” she asked. If she was right, splendid. If she was wrong, she would not be embarrassed.

But, as she had been with the male of her own kind, she was right. The Big Ugly’s head bobbed up and down in his kind’s gesture of agreement. “Yes, I am Anielewicz,” he said. “And you are Nesseref. And I have answered your question, and you have not answered mine.”

Was that irony in his voice? With a male of the Race, she would have been certain. Reading Tosevites was harder. Cautiously—but with less caution than she used with the male of her kind—Nesseref said, “How can I answer your question when I do not know what you thought it meant?”

“Did he give you ginger there, or try to, so you would mate with him?” Anielewicz asked.

“Yes, that is what he did.” Spelling it out infuriated Nesseref all over again. “I have tasted ginger, and I have mated while the herb excited me. That male had no business trying to make it excite me.”

“We think alike there,” Anielewicz said. “Sometimes a male Tosevite will give a female alcohol, to make her want to mate or to make her too drunk to stop him from mating with her. We also think this is wrong. Among us, in fact, it is reckoned a crime.”

“It should be,” Nesseref said. “Among us, it is not, though there is talk of making it one. Among us, no one would have or could have done such a thing without this cursed herb, so we did not even consider such possibilities.” She paused thoughtfully. “You Big Uglies have had to do more planning about problems pertaining to reproduction than we have.”

“It has been necessary for us,” Mordechai Anielewicz answered. “Now, with ginger, it may become necessary for you, too.”

“Us, imitating Tosevites?” Nesseref started to laugh, but stopped. “I suppose it could happen. You may have already found solutions for which we would need to spend a long time searching.”

“Truth,” the Big Ugly said. “And now, Shuttlecraft Pilot, may I ask you one question more?”

“You may ask,” Nesseref told him. “I do not promise to answer.”

“You would be a fool if you did promise,” Anielewicz replied. He had good sense for a Big Ugly.
No,
Nesseref thought.
He has good sense. He would have good sense as a male of the Race.
He asked his question: “Did you not crave the ginger when the male offered it to you?”

“Some,” Nesseref said. “But, as best I can, I do the things I ought to do, not the things I crave doing.”

To her surprise, Anielewicz burst into the barking laughter of his kind. “You had better be careful, or you will end up a Jew.”

“I do not understand the differences between one group of Tosevites and another,” Nesseref said. “I know there are differences, but I do not see why you put such weight on them.”

“That . . . is not simple,” the Big Ugly said. “Not all the differences are weighed rationally. I think you of the Race, taken as a whole, are more rational than we Tosevites. We think with our feelings as much as with our brains.”

“I have heard that this is so,” Nesseref replied. “I have seen that it is so, in my small experience of Big Uglies. I find it interesting that a Tosevite should also believe it is so.”

Anielewicz grimaced in such a way that the outer corners of his mouth turned up. Nesseref could not remember whether that meant he was happy or sad. Happy, evidently, for he said, “One friend should not lie to another.”

“Truth,” Nesseref said, and then decided to tease him: “Were you lying to me when you told me you were going to check on that explosive-metal bomb in Glowno? I thought you were, but was I wrong?”

The Big Ugly stood very still. He had a rifle slung on his back, a weapon of Tosevite manufacture. Nesseref had paid it no mind till that moment. She wouldn’t have then, save that he started to reach for it before arresting the motion. “I made a mistake when I ever mentioned that,” he said slowly. “And you, of course, went and told others of the Race.”

She had told Bunim, who hadn’t believed her. She started to say as much, but checked herself. If Anielewicz had been telling the truth then and did not want her or anyone of the Race to know it was truth, she would be in danger if she gave the impression she was the only one who did believe it—with her disposed of, no one would credit it. So all she said was, “Yes, I did that.”

“And now the Race knows where the weapon is,” Anielewicz said with a sigh. He began to reach for the rifle again. Nesseref braced herself to leap for him as she’d attacked the male of her own kind. But he checked himself once more. After shaking his head, he continued, “No blame attaches to you. You could not have known how much this would inconvenience me and my fellow Jews.”

“I do not understand why it does inconvenience you,” Nesseref said. “The Race rules here. No group of Tosevites does. No group of Tosevites can. What need has a small faction like yours for an explosive-metal bomb?”

“You are new to Tosev 3, sure enough,” Mordechai Anielewicz answered patiently. “I must remember: this means you are new to the way groups deal with one another, for the Race has no groups, not as we Tosevites do.”

“And a good thing, too,” Nesseref said, with an emphatic cough. “We do not spend our time squabbling among ourselves. In our unity is our strength.”

Anielewicz’s mouth went up at the corners. “That holds some truth, but only some. With us Tosevites, disunity is our strength. Had we not had so many groups competing against one another, we could never have come far enough fast enough to have resisted when the Race landed on our planet.”