Colonization_ Down To Earth Part 34

Liu Mei never learned to smile. Neither did Ka.s.squit, Jonathan thought. Jonathan thought. I wonder what sorts of things Mickey and Donald will never be able to do because we're raising them instead of Lizards. I wonder what sorts of things Mickey and Donald will never be able to do because we're raising them instead of Lizards. He didn't know. He couldn't know. And he didn't feel like broaching the subject to Karen, not when she plainly didn't want him thinking about Liu Mei or Ka.s.squit. He didn't know. He couldn't know. And he didn't feel like broaching the subject to Karen, not when she plainly didn't want him thinking about Liu Mei or Ka.s.squit.

After another wave, Donald scurried back up the hall. Karen said, "I wonder why they grow so much faster than people do."

"Dad says it's because they take care of themselves so much more than human babies do," Jonathan answered. "If you're on your own, the bigger you are, the fewer the things that can eat you and the more things you can eat."

"That sounds like it makes pretty good sense," Karen said. Jonathan automatically turned that like like to to as if as if in his mind. Karen was lucky enough not to have parents who got up in arms over grammar. in his mind. Karen was lucky enough not to have parents who got up in arms over grammar.

With a grin, he said, "Yeah, I know, but it's liable to be true anyhow." Karen started to nod, then noticed what he'd said and made a face. He made one back at her. With the air of somebody granting a great concession, he went on, "The things Dad says usually make pretty good sense."

"I know," Karen said. "You're so lucky. At least your parents know we're living in the twentieth century. My folks think we're still back in horse-and-buggy days. Or if they don't think so, they wish we were."

Jonathan didn't reckon himself particularly lucky in his choice of parents. Very few people his age did, but that never crossed his mind. He thought Mr. and Mrs. Culpepper were pretty nice, but he didn't have to try to live with them. Pretty soon, he wouldn't have to try to live with his own folks, either. Part of him eagerly looked forward to that. The rest of him wanted to stay right here, in the bedroom where he'd lived so long.

If he did stay, he couldn't very well share the bedroom with Karen. That was the best argument he could think of for leaving the nest.

His mother looked in on them. "You kids are working hard," she said. "Would you like some cookies and a couple of c.o.kes to keep you going?"

"Okay," Jonathan said.

"Sure, Mrs. Yeager. Thanks," Karen said.

The look Jonathan's mother sent him said what she wouldn't say in words: that he had no manners, but his girlfriend did. Getting away from looks like that was another good reason for striking out on his own.

Chocolate-chip cookies and sodas eased his annoyance. Were he living by himself, he'd have had to get up and fetch them himself. If I were married, I could ask my wife to bring them, If I were married, I could ask my wife to bring them, he thought. He glanced over at Karen. Looking at her made him think of some of marriage's other obvious advantages, too. That he thought. He glanced over at Karen. Looking at her made him think of some of marriage's other obvious advantages, too. That she she might ask might ask him him to fetch c.o.kes and cookies didn't cross his mind. to fetch c.o.kes and cookies didn't cross his mind.

While Jonathan and Karen were eating cookies, Mickey came into the room. He watched them in fascination. Before he and Donald were allowed to go outside their room, they hadn't seen the Yeagers eating. For all Jonathan knew, they might have thought they were the only ones who did.

They knew better now. They'd also had to learn that grabbing whatever they wanted off people's plates was against the rules. That had produced some interesting and lively scenes. Now they were good-most of the time, anyhow.

Mickey was good more often than Donald. His eye turrets followed a cookie from the paper plate on the bed by Jonathan to Jonathan's mouth. Watching, Karen snickered. "You ought to put sungla.s.ses on him and give him a little tin cup," she said.

"I'll do better than that." Jonathan snapped his fingers, the signal his family had worked out after trial and error to let the little Lizards know they could come up and have some of the food a human was eating. Mickey advanced, hand outstretched. Jonathan held out a cookie. Mickey took it with surprising delicacy. Then, delicacy forgotten, he stuffed it into his mouth.

Jonathan waited to see how he liked it. Lizards were more carnivorous than people, and Mickey and Donald were as emphatic as any human babies or toddlers about rejecting things they didn't care for. But Mickey, after a couple of meditative smacks, gave a gulp, and the cookie was gone. He pointed to the paper plate, then rubbed his belly.

Karen giggled. "He's saying he wants some more."

"He sure is. And he's not trying to steal it, either. Good boy, Mickey." Jonathan held out another cookie. "You want this?"

Mickey's head went up and down in an unmistakable nod. "He's really learning," Karen said. "The Lizards use a hand gesture when they mean yes."

"He doesn't know what the Lizards do, though," Jonathan said. "He just knows what we do. That's the idea." He gave Mickey another cookie. This one disappeared without meditation. Mickey rubbed his belly again. Jonathan laughed. "You're going to get fat. You give him one, Karen."

"Okay," she said. "That way you get to keep more of yours, huh? See, I'm on to you." But she held out a cookie. "Here, Mickey. It's all right. You can have it."

Mickey hesitated. He was shier than Donald. And neither hatchling was as used to Karen as he was to the Yeagers. But the lure of chocolate chips seduced Mickey, as it had so many before him. He skittered forward, s.n.a.t.c.hed the cookie out of Karen's hand, and then scuttled away so she couldn't grab him.

"You like that?" Karen said as he devoured the prize. "I bet you do. You want another one? I bet you do." Mickey stood there, eye turrets riveted on the cookie in her hand. "Come on. You want it, don't you?"

Mickey opened his mouth. That alarmed Jonathan. Was the hatchling going to take the cookie that way? He'd mostly outgrown such behavior-and Jonathan didn't want him biting Karen. But, instead of going forward, Mickey stood there; he quivered a little, as if from intense mental effort. At last, he made a sound: "Esss."

"Jesus," Jonathan said softly. He sprang to his feet. "Give him the cookie, Karen. He just said, 'Yes.' " He hurried past her. "I'm going to get my folks. If he's started talking, they need to know about it."

The motorcar pulled to a halt in front of a house not much different from the one in which Straha lived. By now, the ex-shiplord had grown used to stucco homes painted in bland pastels with swaths of gra.s.s in front of them. They seemed to be the local Tosevites' ideal. He'd never been able to figure out why-taking care of gra.s.s struck him as a waste of both time and water-but it was so.

"Here we are," his driver said. "You may have a more interesting time than you expect."

"Why?" Straha asked. "Do you think someone will start shooting at the house, as happened on an earlier visit to Sam Yeager?"

"No, that is not what I meant," the driver answered. "If that happens, I will do my best to see that no harm comes to you. But the surprise I had in mind is not likely to be dangerous."

"What is it, then?" Straha demanded.

His driver smiled. "If I told you, Shiplord, it would not be a surprise any more. Go on. The Yeagers will be waiting for you. And who knows? You may not be surprised at all."

"Who knows?" Straha said irritably. "I may one day have a driver who does not enjoy annoying me." The driver laughed a loud, braying Tosevite laugh, which annoyed Straha more than ever. He got out of the motorcar and slammed the door. That only made the driver laugh louder.

Tailstump quivering with irritation he couldn't hide, Straha went up onto the front porch and rang the bell. He could hear it chime inside the house. He never had liked bells; he thought hisses the proper way to gain attention. But this was not his world, not his species. If the American Big Uglies liked bells and pastel stucco and gra.s.s, he had to accommodate himself to them, not the other way round.

The door opened. There stood Barbara Yeager. She briefly bent into the posture of respect. "I greet you, Shiplord," she said in the language of the Race. "How are you?"

"Fine, thanks," Straha answered in English. "And you?"

"We are also well," Sam Yeager's mate answered. She shifted to English, too: "Sam! Straha's here."

"I'm coming, hon," Yeager called. Straha listened with mingled amus.e.m.e.nt and perplexity. Despite having lived so long among the Big Uglies, he didn't-by the nature of things, he couldn't-fully understand the way their family relationships worked. Neither the Race, the Rabotevs, nor the Hallessi had anything similar, so that was hardly surprising. The former shiplord found endearments like the one Yeager had used particularly hard to fathom. They struck him as informal honorifics, a contradiction in terms if ever there was one. But the Big Uglies didn't seem to find it a contradiction; they used them all the time.

Sam Yeager came into the front room. "I greet you, Shiplord," he said, as his mate had before. "I hope things are not too bad."

"No, not too," Straha answered. With Sam Yeager, he stuck to his own language; more than with any other Big Ugly, even his driver, he felt as if he were talking with another male of the Race. That I hope things are not too bad I hope things are not too bad proved how well Yeager understood his predicament. Any other Tosevite would have said, proved how well Yeager understood his predicament. Any other Tosevite would have said, I hope things are good. I hope things are good. Things weren't good. They couldn't be, not in exile. They could be not too bad. Things weren't good. They couldn't be, not in exile. They could be not too bad.

"Come on into the kitchen, then," Yeager said. "I have a new kind of salami you might want to try. I have rum and vodka-and bourbon for Barbara and me. And I have ginger, if you care for a taste."

"I shall gladly try the salami," Straha said. "If you pour me the gla.s.s of rum, I expect it will manage to empty itself. But I shall decline the ginger, thank you."

"Whatever suits you," Sam Yeager said, turning and walking through the front room and dining room toward the kitchen. His mate and Straha followed. Over his shoulder, Yeager went on, "Shiplord, you had better know by now that I do not mind if you taste ginger, any more than I mind if you drink alcohol. No Prohibition here." The second word of the last sentence came out in English. By Yeager's chuckle, it was a joke.

Straha didn't get it. "Prohibition?" he echoed, confused.

"When I was young, the United States tried to prohibit the drinking of alcohol," Yeager explained. "It did not work. Too many Tosevites like alcohol too well. I wonder if that will happen with the Race and ginger."

Addicted to the Tosevite herb though he was, Straha said, "I hope not. I can drink a little alcohol and have my mood slightly altered, or I can drink more for greater changes. Ginger is not like that. If I taste ginger, I will will enjoy the lift it gives me, and I enjoy the lift it gives me, and I will will suffer the depression afterwards. I have far less control with it than I do with alcohol, and the same holds true for other tasters." suffer the depression afterwards. I have far less control with it than I do with alcohol, and the same holds true for other tasters."

"All right," Yeager said. "That makes better sense than a lot of things I have heard." Once in the kitchen, he got out gla.s.ses, poured rum into Straha's, and put ice and whiskey into the ones for his mate and himself. He raised his in salute. "Mud in your eye." That was in English, too.

The Race also used informal toasts. After drinking to Yeager's, Straha returned one: "May your toeclaws tingle." Yeager drank to that, then started slicing salami. Straha went on, "I never have understood why you Big Uglies do not freeze up, what with all the ice you use."

He had been teasing the Yeagers about that for a long time. "We like it," Barbara said. "If you are too ignorant to appreciate it, that only leaves more for us."

"We have no reason to like ice," Straha said. "If this planet did not have so much snow and ice, we would have had a better chance of conquering it. Of course, if I had been made fleetlord instead of failing in my effort to overthrow Atvar, we would also have had a better chance of conquering it."

After more than twenty Tosevite years, he seldom let his bitterness show so openly. Sam Yeager said, "We Big Uglies are glad you failed, then. Here, see how you like this." He gave Straha a plate full of salami slices.

After trying one, the ex-shiplord said, "It is certainly salty enough. Some of the Tosevite spices I enjoy, while others are harsh on my tongue." He turned an eye turret toward the wrapper in which the salami had come. He found English spelling a masterpiece of inefficiency even by Tosevite standards, but he could read the language well enough. "Hebrew National?" he asked. "Hebrew has to do with the Big Uglies called Jews, is it not so? Is this salami brought into the United States from regions the Race rules?"

"No, we have plenty of Jews here, too," Yeager told him. "This salami is made only with beef. Jews are not supposed to eat pork."

"One more superst.i.tion I shall never understand," Straha said.

Yeager shrugged. "I am not a Jew, so I cannot say I understand it, either. But they follow it."

Back in the days before the Empire unified Home-long before the Empire unified Home-males and females of the Race had held such preposterous beliefs. They'd all been subsumed in the simple elegance of reverencing the spirits of Emperors past. Only scholars knew any details of the ancient beliefs. But here on Tosev 3, the Big Uglies had developed a formidable civilization while keeping their bizarre hodgepodge of superst.i.tions. It was a puzzlement.

Before Straha could remark on what a puzzlement it was, he heard a loud thump from down the hall, and then another. "What was that?" he asked.

"That?" Sam Yeager said. "That was... a research project."

"What kind of research project goes thump?" Straha asked.

"A noisy one," the Big Ugly answered, which was no answer at all. After yet another thump, Yeager added, "A very noisy one."

Straha was about to insist on some sort of real explanation when he got one, not from Sam Yeager but again from down the hall. Though they came only faintly, as if through a door, the hisses and squawks he heard were unmistakable. "You have other males or females of the Race here!" he exclaimed. "Are they prisoners?" He c.o.c.ked his head to one side, listening intently. Try as he would, he could make out no words. Then he realized there were no words to make out. "Hatchlings! You have hatchlings!"

Sam and Barbara Yeager looked at each other. That was much more obvious among Big Uglies than in the Race, for the Tosevites had to turn their whole heads. In English, Barbara Yeager said, "I told you we should have put them out in the garage."

"Yeah, you did," Sam answered in the same language. "But the neighbors might have seen them when we moved them, and that would have been worse." He swung back toward Straha. "The shiplord here, he's a soldier. He knows how to keep secrets."

His tone implied that Straha had better know how to keep secrets. Straha hardly noticed. He was still too astonished. "How did you get hold of hatchlings?" he asked. "Why did you get hold of hatchlings?"

Sam Yeager regathered his composure and returned to the language of the Race: "I cannot tell you how we got the eggs, for I do not know myself. You understand that, Shiplord: what I do not know, I cannot betray. Why? So we can raise them as Big Uglies, or see how close they can come to being like us."

Just for a moment, Straha felt as if he were a shiplord of the Race once more. To have his own kind raised by these Tosevite barbarians, never to know their own heritage... "It is an outrage!" he shouted, tailstump quivering with fury.

"Maybe it is," Yeager said, which surprised him. The Big Ugly went on, "But if it is, how is it anything different from what you have done with Ka.s.squit?"

"But these are ours," Straha said automatically. Even he realized that wasn't a good enough answer. Some of the blind anger that had filled him began to seep away. He was glad he hadn't tasted ginger. If he had, he probably would have bitten and clawed first and talked later, if at all.

"We are free. We are independent. We have as much right to do this as you do," Sam Yeager said. Logically, he was right.

But logic still had a hard time penetrating. "You have robbed them of their heritage," Straha burst out.

"Maybe," Yeager said, "but maybe not, too. We have had them a little more than two of your years, and they are already starting to talk."

"What?" Straha stared. "That is impossible."

"It is a truth," Sam Yeager said, and the ex-shiplord found him impossible to disbelieve.

Another realization exploded within Straha: his driver had known about this all along. He'd known, and never said a word. No, not quite never. Now some of the things he'd said that hadn't made sense to Straha did. Straha wondered what he could do to take revenge on the Big Ugly. Nothing came to mind, not right away, but something would, something would. He was sure of that.

"This is all quite astonishing," he said at last.

"I would sooner you had not learned," Yeager said, "but they got too boisterous." He ruefully spread his hands. "And you understand security, so it is not so bad." Was he trying to convince himself? Probably.

"Yes, I understand security," Straha agreed. But his thoughts were far away. He knew he would need something approaching a miracle to get back into Atvar's good graces and be allowed to rejoin the Race. Reporting a couple of hatchlings kidnapped by the Big Uglies... would that be enough? He didn't know. He couldn't know-but it was worth thinking about.

Gorppet wasn't so sure he'd been smart in coming to South Africa after all. It was a lot more easygoing than his longtime former posting, that was certain. Of course, that would have been true of anywhere the Race ruled. But the weather, as far as he was concerned, left a lot to be desired. In what was allegedly summer in this hemisphere, it was tolerable, he supposed, but what would winter be like? Not good-he was sure of that. He hoped it wouldn't be as bad as the SSSR. The males stationed here said it wouldn't, but Gorppet had learned the hard way not to trust what others said without testing it.

He sighed as he tramped through the streets of Cape Town's District Six. However atrocious the Big Uglies in the district known as Iraq had been, he'd enjoyed the weather there. Every so often, he'd even felt hot. He didn't think he would do that here.

Black and brown and pinkish-tan Big Uglies filled the streets around him. They chattered in several languages he didn't understand. Learning Arabic had come in handy in Iraq, but did him no good here. Even this script was different from the one they'd used there. He hadn't been able to read Arabic writing, but he'd got used to the way it looked. These angular characters seemed wrong somehow.

He paused at a street corner. More motorized vehicles were on the streets here than in Basra or Baghdad-many more driven by Big Uglies. More bicycles were on the road, too. They were ingenious contraptions, and made individual Tosevites into little missiles.

A male Big Ugly came up to the corner at a slow limp, leaning on a stick. "I greet you, Gorppet," he said, speaking the language of the Race with a thick accent.

"And I greet you, Rance Auerbach," Gorppet replied. "How are you today?"

"Bad," Auerbach answered, as he usually did. He used an emphatic cough, and then several that showed nothing but infirmity. "Very bad. That hurts."

"I believe it. It sounds as if it should," Gorppet said. "A wound from the fighting, you told me?"

"That is right." Auerbach nodded. "One of your miserable friends put a couple of bullets in me, and I have never been the same since." He shrugged. "And some of your friends may limp on account of bullets I put in them back then. That is how things were. I only wish the male would have missed me."

"I can understand that." Gorppet liked Rance Auerbach, liked him better than he'd expected to like any Big Ugly. Auerbach was able to greet him and deal with him without rancor in spite of what had happened during the fighting. Gorppet thought he himself would have been able to do the same with the Soviet Tosevites he'd faced then. They'd all been doing what they'd been told to do, and doing it as best they could. How could you hate anyone who'd only been doing his best?

Auerbach said, "Come on. Let us go to the Boomslang. Penny and Frederick will be waiting for us."

"All right," Gorppet said. "I will listen to what all of you have to say." He paused, then added, "I am less sure I would listen to the others if you were not with them."

"Me?" Auerbach said, and Gorppet knew he'd startled the Big Ugly. "Why me? Penny found you. Of all of us involved in the deal, I am the least."

Gorppet made the negative hand gesture. "No. You are mistaken. I understand you in ways I do not understand the female and the black-skinned male. We have been through many of the same things, you and I. It gives us something of a bond."

"Maybe.'' Auerbach didn't sound convinced.

But Gorppet wanted to convince him. "It is a truth," he said earnestly. "Did you never feel, back in those days, that you had more likenesses to the males you fought than to your own high officers and to the Tosevites who were not fighting?"

Rance Auerbach stopped walking so abruptly, Gorppet took a couple of paces before realizing the Big Ugly wasn't with him any more. The male turned an eye turret back toward Auerbach. Hoa.r.s.ely, the Tosevite said, "I had that feeling more times than I could count. I did not know it worked the other way."

"Well, it did," Gorppet said. "We were sent here, to a world about which, as it turned out, we knew less than nothing. We were told conquering it would be easy, a walk in the sand. We were told all sorts of things. Not one of them turned out to be truth. Is it any wonder that we were not always happy with those who led us and those who sent us forth?"