Second Contact (65 page)

“You had better not,” the general growled, and seemed to notice Yeager still standing at attention in front of him. “Dismissed. Get the hell out of here.” Yeager saluted, then frankly fled.

Straha had the best computer equipment money could buy. It wasn’t his money, either, but that of the Tosevites with whom he had chosen to make his home. The equipment, though, was regulation issue for the Race. How the Americans had got it for him, he found it wiser not to ask. But get it they had. They had also managed, in some highly unofficial fashion, to connect it to the Race’s network by way of the consulate in downtown Los Angeles. That gave Straha one more window on the way of life he had deliberately abandoned.

It was, necessarily, a one-way window. He could observe, but did not interact. If he did interact—if he sent messages for placement on the network—he might reveal and forfeit his highly unofficial connection. In the American phrase, he stayed on the outside looking in.

And so, when he turned on the computer and discovered he had a message waiting, his first reaction was alarm. If the Race discovered his connection on its own, he was liable to lose that window.

But the message, he discovered, was not from any male of the Race, or even from some new and snoopy female. It was from Major Sam Yeager, who had connections of his own. It asked nothing more dangerous than whether Yeager could come and visit the exiled shiplord at his home one day before too long.

“Of course you may visit,” Straha said on the telephone, still not eager to send a message and make the system notice him. “I do not understand why you did not simply call, as I am doing now.”

“I like the message system the Race uses,” replied the Tosevite, whose access to that system was somewhat—but only somewhat—more official than Straha’s. It did not seem a good enough reason to the ex-shiplord, but Straha chose not to pursue the point. He proposed a time at which Yeager might come, the Big Ugly agreed, and they both hung up.

Yeager was punctual, as Straha had expected him to be. “I do not see your driver here,” the Tosevite remarked after he had exchanged greetings with Straha.

“No, he is not here; I gave him the morning off, knowing I would not be going anywhere because you would be coming here,” Straha answered. “I can quickly summon him by radio link, if that is what you require.”

“No,” Yeager said, and used an emphatic cough. “Perhaps we could go out into the back yard and talk there.”

“It is warmer inside,” Straha said unhappily. Yeager stood quiet, not saying anything more. Straha’s eye turrets swung sharply toward him. “You think my house may be—” He broke off even before Yeager began to raise a warning hand. “Yes, let us go out into the back yard.”

By local standards, it was not much of a yard, being dirt and rocks and sand and a few cacti rather than the green grass and gaudy flowers customary in the United States. But in essence if not in detail, it put Straha in mind of Home. Yeager said, “Shiplord, what do you know and what can you find out about the American space station?”

“Rather less than you can, I suspect,” Straha answered. “I have access only to what the Race knows about it. Your own people, the builders, will surely have whatever detailed knowledge you may require.”

Yeager shook his head. “I have been ordered not to inquire into it, and American computers are closed against me—indeed, are warned against me.”

Straha needed no elaborate calculation to understand what that was liable to mean. “You have in some way triggered a security alert?” he asked.

“Oh, you might say so,” the Big Ugly answered in English. Before Straha could grow too confused, he shifted back to the language of the Race: “That is an idiom of agreement.”

“Is it? I thank you; I had not encountered it before,” Straha said. “But you are a military officer, and one who, because of your dealings with the Race, is privy to many secrets. Why would questions about your space station be closed to you?”

“That is also my question,” Yeager said. “I have not found an answer for it. I have been discouraged from seeking an answer for it.”

“Something most highly secret must be going on in connection with the space station, then,” Straha said. All at once, he wondered whether his wisecrack to the Tosevite reporter who’d questioned him held truth after all. But no. “It cannot be connected to the attack on the colonization fleet.”

“My thoughts also ran in that direction,” Yeager said. “I agree; there can be no possible connection. And that there can be no possible connection gives me great relief. But I cannot imagine what else would be so secret as to keep me from inquiring about the station: indeed, would lead to my being discouraged from making any further inquiries along those lines.”

Straha knew he was no expert in reading the tones in which Tosevites spoke, but he would have placed a fair-sized bet that Yeager had been strongly discouraged from making such inquiries. The exiled shiplord asked, “Are you disobeying orders in asking these questions of me?”

“No, or not precisely,” Yeager replied. “I have been ordered not to seek more information from American sources. I do not think it occurred to anyone above me that I might seek information from other sources.”

“Ah,” Straha said. “You are what we call in the language of the Race a beam-deflector—you twist your orders to your own purposes.”

“I’m obeying the letter, we would say in English,” Yeager said. “As for the spirit . . .” He shrugged.

“We would have a good deal to say to an officer who played so fast and loose with his orders,” Straha observed. “I know you Big Uglies are looser than we, but in your military, I had always believed, less so than in other areas.”

“That is truth,” Yeager admitted. “I am at—or perhaps over—the limit of my discretion. But this is something that is kept secret when it should not be. I want to know why it is. Sometimes things are made secret for no reason at all, other times to conceal bad mistakes. My not-empire needs to know of that last, should it be true.”

Straha studied Yeager. He spoke the Race’s language well. He could think like a male of the Race. But he was, at bottom, alien, as was the society that had hatched him.

A large bird with a blue back and wings and a gray belly landed near one of the cacti. It turned its head toward Straha and Yeager. “Jeep!” it screeched. “Jeep! Jeep!” It hopped a couple of paces, then pecked at something in the dirt.

“Scrub jay,” Yeager remarked in English.

“Is that what you call it?” Straha said in the same language. Birds were alien to him, too. Back on Home, flying creatures—of which there were fewer than on Tosev 3—had membranous wings, something like Tosevite bats. But their bodies were scaly like the Race’s, not hairy like the Big Uglies’. No beasts back on Home had hair or feathers; they needed less insulation than Tosevite creatures.

Another bird, a smaller one with a glistening green back and purple-red throat and crown, buzzed into the yard and hovered above the scrub jay, letting out a series of small, squeaky, indignant chirps. Its wings beat so fast, they were only a blur. Straha could hear the buzz they made. The jay paid no attention to the smaller bird, but went on looking for seeds and crawling things.

“Hummingbirds don’t like jays,” Yeager said, again in English. “I suppose jays will eat their eggs and babies if they get a chance. Jays will eat just about anything if they get a chance.”

The hummingbird finished cursing the jay and darted away. One instant it was there, the next it was gone, or so it seemed to Straha. The scrub jay pecked for a little longer, then flew off at a much more sedate pace.

“You Big Uglies are hummingbirds, now here, now there, moving faster than the eye turret can follow,” Straha said. “We of the Race are more like the jay. We are steady. We are sure. If you know where we are at one moment, you may predict where we will be for some time to come.”

Yeager’s mouth corners twisted upward in the expression Tosevites used to show amusement. Still speaking English, he said, “And you of the Race will eat just about any planet if you get a chance. We didn’t give you as much of a chance as you thought you’d have.”

“That I can scarcely deny,” Straha said. He swung his eye turrets away from the jay, which had perched in a tree in a neighbor’s yard and was screeching again. Giving Yeager his full attention, he went on, “You realize my investigations, if I make them, will have to be indirect? You also realize I may alert not only your not-empire to wrongdoing, but also the Race? I ask you these things before proceeding as you requested. If you like, I will forget the request you have made.” He could not think of another Tosevite to whom he would have made that offer.

“No, go ahead,” Yeager said. “I cannot imagine anything at the space station that would endanger your ships more than other, more secret, installations we already have in space.”

“Indeed,” Straha said. “Since you put it in those terms, neither can I. It would be easier if I could safely have a more active presence on our computer network, but I will do what I can by scanning and searching out messages pertaining to this subject, and by using surrogates to plant questions that may lead to interesting and informative answers.”

“I thank you,” Yeager said. “More than that I cannot ask. Very likely, you understand, all of this will prove to be of no consequence.”

“Of course,” Straha replied. “But then, most of my life since defecting to the United States has proved to be of no consequence, so this is not of any great concern to me.” He could not think of another Tosevite—for that matter, he could not think of a male of the Race—to whom he would have exposed his bitterness thus. He longed for a taste of ginger.

Yeager said, “Shiplord, that is not true. Your presence here has meant a great deal to my not-empire and to all Tosevites. Thanks in no small part to you and to what we learned from you, we were able to make and for the most part to keep our armistice with the Race.” He held up a hand. “I know this may only make you think of yourself as a tremendous traitor, but that is not so. You have helped save everyone on Tosev 3: males of the conquest fleet, males and females of the colonization fleet, and Big Uglies.” He used the Race’s nickname for his kind without self-consciousness.

“I wish I could believe everything you tell me,” Straha said slowly. “I also try to tell it to myself, but I do not believe it from my own mouth, either.”

“Well, you should,” Yeager said, like one male encouraging another to go forward in combat. “You should, for it is truth.”

Straha had never imagined he could be so preposterously grateful to a Big Ugly. He wondered if Yeager understood his own kind as well as he understood the Race. “You are a friend,” he said, and sounded surprised after the words came out: the idea of a Tosevite friend seemed very strange to him. But that he had one was also truth. “You are a friend,” he repeated, “and I will help you as one friend helps another.”

  17

Kassquit pondered the computer screen in front of her. She often kept one eye turret turned toward discussions about objects in orbit around Tosev 3 (so she thought of it, though she, of course, had no eye turrets and usually had to turn her whole head to see something). This was, after all, the environment in which she’d spent her whole life. It was the environment in which she would likely spend the rest of her life. Tracking what went on here mattered to her.

After the disaster that befell the colonization fleet, Kassquit paid more attention than she had to discussions about Tosevite space objects. Before that attack, she’d wanted nothing to do with the species of which she was biologically a part. She still didn’t, not really, but she’d had to realize the wild Tosevites were dangerous to her. Their missiles could have vaporized her ship as easily as one from the colonization fleet. Only chance had put her on the opposite side of the planet from the ships that were destroyed. Chance, to a member of the Race (or even to a Tosevite trained to act like a member of the Race), did not seem protection enough.

Little by little and then more and more, the messages of a male named Regeya drew her notice. They stood out for a couple of reasons: Regeya seemed quite well informed about the doings of the not-empire called the United States, and he wrote oddly. Most males and females sounded very much alike, but he spiced his messages with peculiar turns of phrase and hardly seemed to notice he was doing it.

Those qualities finally prompted her to send him a private message.
Who are you?
she wrote.
What is your rank? How have you become so knowledgeable about these Big Uglies?
She did not ask him why he wrote strangely. She was strange herself, in ways more intimate than writing quirks. But, in writing, her strangeness didn’t show. That was another reason she cherished computer discussions: males and females who couldn’t see her assumed she was normal.

Regeya took his time about answering. Just when Kassquit began to wonder if he would answer at all—he would have been within his rights, though on the abrupt side, to ignore her—he did send a reply:
I am a senior tube technician. The American Big Uglies taught me, and were so interesting, I got hooked on them.
She admired the phrase for a moment before reading his last sentence:
Other than that, I am an ordinary male. What about you?

“What about me?” Kassquit asked rhetorically. She wrote,
I am a junior researcher in Tosevite psychology, which comes close to addling me.
That was all true, and proved truth could be the best deception. She added,
You have an interesting way of writing,
and sent the message.

Wondering just what a senior tube technician did and what his body paint looked like, she checked a data store. The answer came back in moments: there was no such classification as senior tube technician. As usual, her face showed little expression, but she found that puzzling. She checked the computer to see how many Regeyas had come to Tosev 3 with the conquest fleet: the male showed too much knowledge of American Tosevites to belong to the colonization fleet, or so it seemed to her.

In short order, the answer came back. Unless the computer was mistaken, only one male bearing that name had belonged to the conquest fleet, and he had been killed in the early days of the invasion. Kassquit checked the records for the colonization fleet. They showed two Regeyas. One had been a bureaucrat aboard a ship destroyed in the attack on the fleet. The other, a graphic designer, was newly revived. Kassquit checked past messages in the discussion section. Regeya, whoever he was, had sent messages while the graphic designer remained in cold sleep.

“That is very strange,” Kassquit said, a considerable understatement. She wondered what to do next.

While she was wondering, a message from Regeya—
from the mysterious Regeya,
she thought—reached her.
Tosevites are strange creatures, but not so bad once you get to know them,
he wrote, and then,
I write with my fingerclaws, the same as everybody else.

Kassquit would have forgiven him a good deal for his kind words about Big Uglies. He, of course, whoever he was, could have no way of knowing she’d been hatched (no, born: a thoroughly disgusting process) one herself. And she liked his strange slant on the world. But he was not who and what he pretended to be. Such deceptions, she had gathered, were common among the Tosevites, but rarely practiced by members of the Race.

What does a senior tube technician do?
she wrote, hoping that in answering he would betray himself.

But his reply was altogether matter-of-fact:
I tell intermediate and junior tube technicians what to do. What would you expect?

She stared at the screen. Her mouth fell open. That was laughter in the style of the Race. In the privacy of her chamber, she also laughed aloud, as Big Uglies did. Whoever this Regeya was, he had both wit and nerve.

But who was he? Why was he using a name not his own? She could find no good reason. Nothing in the discussions in which he took part could gain him any profit, only, at most, a little information. Unable to solve the problem herself, she mentioned it to Ttomalss the next time they spoke.

“I can think of two possibilities,” the senior researcher said. “One is that he is indeed a male of the Race using a false name for deceptive purposes of his own. The other is that he is a Tosevite who has partially penetrated our computer system.”

“A Tosevite!” Kassquit exclaimed. That had not occurred to her—nor would it have. “Could a Big Ugly seem like a male of the Race in discussion groups and electronic messages?”

“Why not?” Ttomalss asked. “You certainly seem like a female of the Race whenever your physiognomy is not visible.”

“But that is different,” Kassquit said. “This Regeya, by your hypothesis, would be a wild Big Ugly, not one civilized from birth, as I have been.” She heard the pride in her voice.

“We have been studying the Tosevites since our arrival here,” Ttomalss said. “Indeed, thanks to our probe, we studied them before we arrived here—although, as events proved, not well enough. And they have been studying us, too. Some of them, I suppose, will have learned a good deal about us by now.”

“Learned enough to imitate us that well?” Kassquit had trouble believing it. She’d not only taken this Regeya for a male of the Race, she’d taken him for a clever one. He had an unusual way of looking at the world, one that made her see things in a new light. But perhaps that sprang not from cleverness but from an alienness he couldn’t fully conceal. She said as much to Ttomalss.

“It could be so,” he answered. “I will not say that it is, but it could be. I fear you will have to conduct that investigation for yourself. I am too occupied with matters here to lend you much assistance. Felless will soon be laying her pair of eggs—she stubbornly refuses to leave Deutschland, despite possible health hazards—and will not be able to do as much work as usual for a little while before she finally does. That means I will have to do some of hers as well as my own.”

“Very well, superior sir,” Kassquit said coolly. To her, Felless remained an unscratchable itch deep under the scales she did not have. “I shall attempt to draw out this Regeya, whoever and whatever he may be, and to see exactly what information he is seeking. Armed with that knowledge, I may be able to convince the authorities to take me seriously.”

“I approve of this course,” Ttomalss said, and broke the connection. Kassquit wasn’t sure she approved of it. Being a Tosevite,
would
she be able to convince the authorities to take her seriously no matter what she did? She was not looking forward to the experiment, but saw no alternative.

Meanwhile, she had the chance to converse with Regeya and monitor his messages to learn what interested him. He knew where he wanted to sink his claws, that was plain: he aimed to learn all he could about whatever the Race knew of the American space station. That puzzled Kassquit. If he was a Big Ugly himself, why wouldn’t he know such things?

Her first assumption had been that, if he was a Tosevite, he was an American—how else would he know so much about the United States? Then she began to wonder. She supposed the Big Uglies spied on one another as well as on the Race. Was Regeya from the
Reich
or the SSSR, seeking what the Race knew about a rival?

She couldn’t ask him that, not in so many words. She did ask,
How and why do you know so much about these particular Big Uglies?

In due course, Regeya answered,
I have followed their doings since they freed me after the fighting stopped. The Race and the Big Uglies will be sharing this planet for a long time. Sooner or later, Tosevites will travel to other worlds of the Empire, as Rabotevs and Hallessi will come here. We and the Big Uglies had better get to know each other, do you not think?
After the interrogative character, he used the Race’s conventional symbol for an emphatic cough.

Kassquit studied that. No matter who—or what sort of being—had written it, it made good sense.
Truth,
she replied.

Some in the discussion group reported that the Americans were again increasing the number of shipments up to their station.
No one can tell what they are shipping, though,
the male who sent the message said.
Whatever it is, it stays crated until inside the station. This is inefficient even by Tosevite standards.

What are the Big Uglies hiding?
Regeya asked on noting that message.

If they were not hiding it, we would know,
the male who had sent the earlier message replied. Kassquit laughed to see that. The message continued,
Whatever it is, we know enough always to keep an eye turret on that station.

A good thing, too,
Regeya replied.

Kassquit made a small, exasperated sound. Would an American Big Ugly have said such a thing? Would any Big Ugly have said such a thing? Didn’t the Big Uglies know enough to show solidarity against the Race, as the Race showed solidarity against them? She knew the Big Uglies did not show solidarity among themselves, but still . . .

Finally, curiosity got the better of her.
Are you a Tosevite?
she sent to Regeya.

If he was, she thought that had a decent chance of scaring him out of the Race’s computer network. But she did not have to wait long for his reply.
Of course I am,
he answered.
Just as much as you are.

She stared at that. Her heart fluttered. Did Regeya, could Regeya, know who and what she was? He would have to have excellent connections indeed to gain even a hint of that. And Kassquit, unlike Regeya, was a fairly common name. Or was he just making a joke? She had gathered he was fond of joking.

What do I tell him?
she wondered.
By the Emperor—
dutifully, she cast down her eyes—
what do I tell him?

What if I am?
she wrote back.

We would both be surprised,
Regeya replied, again very quickly. He had to be waiting at the computer for her messages.
What is your telephone code?
he asked.
Perhaps we need to discuss this in person.
Kassquit was appalled. Even if she left the vision blank, Regeya would be able to hear that she did not fully belong to the Race.

I would rather leave things as they are,
she wrote. She knew that was rude, but better to be rude than to betray herself.

As you wish,
Regeya answered promptly.
We may be more alike than you think.
Kassquit made the negative hand gesture. Whether Regeya belonged to the Race or to the Tosevites, she would not be much like him. She was sure of that.

Getting back into space felt good to Glen Johnson. After his run-in with Lieutenant General Curtis LeMay, he’d wondered if his superiors would let him ride
Peregrine
again. But nobody else at the Kitty Hawk launch site had said boo to him about LeMay’s appalling visit to the BOQ. It was as if the general had delivered his tongue-lashing and then cleared out without mentioning it to anybody, which was possible but not in accord with the usual habits of general officers. Johnson had feared his career would be blighted for good.