Second Contact (72 page)

“Can we think about it?” Auerbach asked. “Can we talk it over, just the two of us?”

Hesskett used the hand gesture that was his equivalent of a headshake. “No. We do not have to give you anything at all. You may say that you tried to aid us, but you failed. You may have South Africa, or you may have a cell each.”

“Not much choice there,” Penny said, and Rance nodded. She looked a question at him. He nodded again. She spoke for both of them: “We’ll take South Africa.”

“You shall be sent there,” Hesskett said. “You shall live out the rest of your days there. You shall not leave, unless by order of the Race. Do you understand this?”

“Exile,” Auerbach said.

“Exile, yes,” Hesskett agreed. “I have heard this word in your language before, but I did not remember it. Now I shall.”

Auerbach tried to remember what he knew of South Africa. Not much, he discovered. Gold and diamonds came to mind. So did the Boer War. Before the Lizards arrived, the South Africans had been on the Allies’ side, but a good many of them wished they’d lined up with the Nazis instead. Whites lorded it over blacks who enormously outnumbered them. It was sort of like the American South, only more so.

He looked down at his arm. Sure as hell, he was the right color to go there. He hadn’t heard much about the place since the fighting ended. Every now and then, there’d been stories about a low-grade guerrilla war. Those had mostly disappeared from the newspapers in the past few years. That probably meant most of the guerrillas had gone to their heavenly reward.

Still, it didn’t seem too bad, especially for a white man—and a white woman. “South Africa,” he said in musing tones. “I think we can make the best of it.”

“Me, too,” Penny said. Auerbach wasn’t altogether comfortable with her expression. What it seemed to say was,
If I find something good, I can always dump this guy.
She’d done it before.

Of course, he would have been better off if she’d stayed out of his life once she dumped him. Still, getting laid regularly had its points.

Hesskett said, “Once you are there, we do not provide for you. You will have to make your own way.”

How the hell am I supposed to do that, crippled up like I am?
Rance wondered. If the other choice was a cell, though, he supposed he could try. The Lizards’ jail hadn’t been so bad as he’d expected, but he didn’t want to live there the rest of his life.

Penny said, “You can’t just drop us there without a dime in our pockets. We need enough money to keep us going till we can get on our feet.”

That started the haggling again. Auerbach wondered if he could arrange to have his government pension sent to him in Cape Town or wherever the hell he ended up. He didn’t mention that to Hesskett. He did point out his injuries, adding, “These are your fault, too.”

Hesskett wasn’t the best bargainer who ever came down the pike. Few Lizards were good bargainers, not by human standards. By the time Rance and Penny got done with him, he’d promised the Race would support them for six months, with another six months’ help forthcoming if they were still having trouble after that.

“Beats the hell out of jail,” Penny said as the Lizard airplane on which they would fly took off from Mexico City.

“Jail, nothing—beats the hell out of whatever we could think of,” Auerbach said. “Talk about coming up smelling like a rose.” He leaned over and gave Penny a kiss. Maybe she’d dump him, maybe she wouldn’t. Meanwhile, he’d enjoy what he had while it lasted.

Straha would never have got interested in the U.S. space station if it hadn’t been for Sam Yeager. The ex-shiplord knew as much. He’d agreed to stick out his tongue in the station’s direction not so much because he thought anything about it was particularly odd as because his Tosevite friend—a notion he was still getting used to—had asked it of him.

He’d always known Yeager was a clever Big Ugly. Now he was seeing just how good the American officer’s instincts were. He still hadn’t the faintest idea what the USA was doing with its station. As far as he could tell, not a male or female of the Race knew the answer to that. But something strange—which presumably meant something illicit—was going on up there.

He wondered how many American Big Uglies knew what was going on at the space station. Not many, surely, or Yeager would have been one of them. That he wasn’t anyhow puzzled Straha. He’d been entrusted with important secrets before. Straha knew of some of them. For that matter, Straha
was
one of the important secrets with which Yeager had been entrusted. That a secret should be so much more important than he had been during the fighting wounded his vanity.

He would have asked more questions among the humans of his acquaintance had it not been for his driver. He feared that, whatever the formidable male heard, the U.S. government would hear in short order. His driver no doubt knew a good many secrets of his own. He might even know what the Americans were doing up at the space station. Straha did not have the nerve to ask him.

At the moment, Straha was catching up on the Race’s computer discussion about the station. A female named Kassquit kept asking leading questions, good ones. She showed unusual understanding of the Big Uglies. The experience Straha had gained in twenty long Tosevite years of living among them made him able to see that.

“Psychologist’s apprentice,” he muttered, looking at the way she described herself. “She ought to be an intermediate researcher by now, heading toward senior. By the Emperor, she would if
I
were in charge. But those fools up there are dim themselves, so they think everyone else must be, too.”

If I were in charge.
Even now, after all these years of exile, the words still leapt to his mind. Atvar had bumbled along, doing the safe, doing the cautious, occasionally doing the stupid. And the Race had got by, as it had got by on Home for a hundred thousand years. Even snout-to-snout with the Big Uglies, the Race had got by. Atvar had made his share—more than his share—of mistakes, but the Tosevites had made their share, too, and disaster hadn’t come. Quite.

“Still,” Straha said, “I would have done better.” His pride was enormous. If only a few more males had gone with him at that climactic meeting after the Soviet Union touched off its first explosive-metal bomb. He would have ousted Atvar, and Tosev 3 would have looked . . . different.

The telephone rang, distracting him. Tosevite telephones were simple-minded machines, without screens and with only the most limited facilities for anything but voice transmission. Straha often missed the versatile phone he’d had before he defected. So many things he’d taken for granted . . .

“Hello?” he said in English, and then gave his name.

“I greet you, Shiplord,” a male said. “Ristin speaking. Ullhass and I will be holding another party on Saturday night”—the name of the day was in English—“and hoped you might join us.”

Straha started to decline; he hadn’t had that good a time at Ristin’s earlier gathering. Then he thought that he might meet interesting males there—former prisoners who had thrown in their lot with the American Big Uglies, perhaps even visitors from areas of Tosev 3 the Race ruled. Who could tell what he might learn from them?

And so he said, “I thank you. I believe I will come, yes.”

“I thank
you
, Shiplord.” Ristin sounded surprised and pleased. “I look forward to seeing you there.”

“I will see you then,” Straha said, and hung up. He didn’t particularly look forward to it. Having committed himself, though, he would go.

His driver greeted the news with something less than rapture. “A party?” the Tosevite said when Straha told him. “I was hoping to watch television that night.”

“You Tosevites did not even have television when you were a hatchling,” Straha told him. “You cannot find it as necessary as the Race does.”

“Who said anything about necessary?” the driver returned. “I enjoy it.” Straha said nothing. He stood and waited and looked at the driver with both eye turrets. The Big Ugly sighed. “It shall be done, Shiplord.”

“Of course it shall,” Straha said smugly. The driver gave him more trouble than a male of the Race with a similar job would have done. Big Uglies—especially American Big Uglies—did not understand the first thing about subordination. But the driver, having made his complaints, would now do what was required of him.

Body paint perfect—he had spent considerable time touching it up—Straha went off to the gathering with something approaching eagerness. Ristin and Ullhass had had good ginger at their house. If nothing else came of the evening, he could always taste till he’d sated himself. He could do that here, too, but the experience was different in company.

“Have a good time,” the driver said as he halted the motorcar in front of the house Ristin and Ullhass shared. “I will keep an eye turret on things out here.” The Race’s idiom sounded grotesque in his mouth, but
keep an eye on things
, the English usage, would have been equally strange in Straha’s language.

As at the last gathering, Ristin met him in front of the door. The ex-infantrymale’s red-white-and-blue prisoner-of-war body paint was as carefully tended as Straha’s official coat. (Straha chose not to dwell on the fact that, having deserted, he wasn’t entitled to the fancy body paint he still wore.) “I greet you, Shiplord,” Ristin said. “Alcohol and ginger in the kitchen, as before. Help yourself to anything you fancy. Plenty of food, too. Make yourself at home; you are one of the first ones here.”

“I thank you.” Straha went into the kitchen and poured himself a small glass of vodka. Ginger could wait for the time being. He also took some thinly sliced ham, some potato chips, and some of the little, highly salted fish the Big Uglies used to spice up dishes. Like most males of the Race, Straha found them delicious by themselves. And Ullhass and Ristin had laid in another delicacy he did not see often enough: Greek olives. He let out a small, happy hiss. Regardless of what sort of company the night yielded, the food was good.

He carried his plate and glass out into the main room, where Ullhass, who’d been talking with a couple of other males, greeted him. Like Ristin, Ullhass wore American-style body paint instead of what the Race authorized. The other guests were more conventional. They also seemed astonished to see a shiplord there. Then they realized
which
shiplord Straha had to be, and were astonished again in a different way. Straha had seen that before. He’d heard the whispered, “There is
the
traitor,” before, too. He sat down and relaxed. In a while, with alcohol and ginger in them, they’d grow less shy of him.

His eye turrets scanned the shelves of books and videos along the walls of the main room. “Some of these are new, are they not?” he asked Ullhass. “New since the conquest fleet left Home, I mean?”

“Yes, Shiplord,” the male answered. “We have had visitors from the colonization fleet here before. We expect some tonight, in fact.”

“I thought you might,” Straha said. “I wonder if, some time or another, I might borrow some of these, to see what they were doing on Home after we went into cold sleep.”

“I would be pleased if you did,” Ullhass told him. That might be more polite than sincere, but Straha intended to take him up on it.

Sure enough, some males and a couple of females from the colonization fleet, in Los Angeles on a trade mission, joined the gathering. They exclaimed in pleasure at the delicacies. Seeing Straha’s body paint, they began to fawn on him till Ristin took one of them aside and spoke quietly. After that, they didn’t seem to know what to make of the self-exiled shiplord.

After a while, he did get into a conversation with one of them, a male whose body paint proclaimed him a foods dealer. “It must be strange living here,” the fellow remarked.

“It is,” Straha agreed. “At times, I feel as out of place as the American space station in orbit not far from the ships of the colonization fleet.”

He threw out the comparison to see if the foods dealer would rise to it. “That thing!” the male said with an indignant hiss. “A big, ugly construction from the Big Uglies.” His mouth fell open in appreciation of his own wit. He went on, “I hear they are building a separate section onto it, well removed from the main body. It will be even uglier than it is now.”

“That is difficult to imagine,” Straha said. It was also something he had not heard before. He wondered if Sam Yeager knew about it. He would have to remember to pass it on to the Tosevite. Maybe Yeager would have some better idea of what it meant than he did.

After drinking some more vodka, he went back into the kitchen to get his first taste of ginger. One of the females from the trade delegation was in there. She had an almost empty glass of vodka or rum in her hand, and was laughing a wide-mouthed, foolish laugh. Pointing to the bowl of ginger on the counter, she said, “In any proper land”—by which she meant any land the Race ruled—“I would be punished for standing even this close to that herb.”

“It is not against the law in this not-empire,” Ristin said. “If you want to taste, go ahead.” He gestured invitingly.

“It smells good.” The female laughed again, even more foolishly than before. “I think I will.” She scooped up about four tastes’ worth. Her tongue flicked in and out, in and out, till the herb was gone. “Oh.” Her voice went soft with wonder. “I did not think it would be like
this
.”

Remembering his own first taste of ginger, Straha empathized with her—and his hadn’t been nearly so monumental as this one. But then, a moment later, he almost stopped thinking altogether as his scent receptors caught the pheromones the ginger released in the female. Sam Yeager had offered to get him a female who’d tasted ginger. He’d turned the Big Ugly down. What an addled egg he’d been! The long scales of his crest rose.

He straightened into his mating posture as the female bent into hers. Ristin started for her, too, but Straha’s display of crest, outspread fingerclaws, and colorful body paint made the other male yield to him. He took his place behind the female. Their bodies joined. Not much later, he let out a loud, ecstatic hiss.