Aftershocks

14

Gorppet turned an eye turret toward Hozzanet. “Excuse me, superior sir, but exactly how much of the Greater German Reich does the Race in fact control?”

“Ah.” Hozzanet waggled an eye turret of his own: ironic approval. “You are beginning to understand, I see. How much of the Reich do you think we control?”

“As much as we can see,” Gorppet answered at once. “Not the thickness of a scale more. Wherever our eyes or our reconnaissance photographs do not reach, I am convinced the Deutsche do as they please. And what they please is anything that can harm us.”

“I should bring more infantrymales into Security,” Hozzanet remarked. “You have no trouble seeing that which appears invisible to many whose body paint is a great deal more complex than yours.”

“Why am I not surprised?” Gorppet said. “Males of high rank never get out to see for themselves. They rely on reports from others, and the reports commonly tell them everything is fine. And everything usually is fine… where we are known to be looking. Elsewhere-I will not answer for elsewhere.”

“I think you are wise not to,” Hozzanet replied. “Here is another question for you: what is the only thing that keeps the Deutsche from rising against us?”

“The certainty that we will smash them flat if they try,” Gorppet said. “Smash them flatter, I mean. I almost wish they would rebel, to give us the excuse to do it.”

“In this, you are not alone,” Hozzanet said. “In fact, for your hearing diaphragms only, I will say that there has been some discussion of touching off a Deutsch rebellion, to give us an excuse to punish these Big Uglies again and take fuller control over the area.”

“But for one difficulty, I would like to see us do that,” Gorppet said.

“I know what you are going to say,” Hozzanet told him. “You are going to say something like, ‘Where will we get the males to garrison the Reich?’ Am I right, or am I wrong? Was that what you were going to say, or not?”

“As a matter of fact, it was, superior sir,” Gorppet admitted. “We have enough trouble finding the males to garrison this not-empire now. Where would we come up with more, no matter how much we need them?”

To his surprise, Hozzanet said, “I may have an answer for you. I am given to understand that we may actually start training members of the colonization fleet to fight. That would give us the extra soldiers we need.”

“So it would,” Gorppet agreed. “I will, however, believe it when I see it, and not a moment before. We should have done it as soon as the colonization fleet got here. When we did not do it then, my guess was that we never would, that the colonists had done such a good job of fussing and complaining that they would never have to start earning their own keep.”

“You are a cynical fellow.” Hozzanet spoke with considerable admiration. “Here again, I admit you have had some reason to be. But I think you are wrong this time. After all, however much we wish we would, we are not going to stay around forever. Sooner or later, the colonists will have to protect themselves against the Big Uglies. If they do not, who will do it for them?”

“They have not worried about that so far,” Gorppet said. “Why should they worry now?” Something else occurred to him; he started to laugh. “I wish I were an underofficer training them. I would enjoy that, I think.”

“Yes, plenty of males will be looking for the chance to show the colonists just how ignorant they are of the way things work on Tosev 3,” Hozzanet agreed. “We shall have no shortage of volunteers for that duty.”

Gorppet made the affirmative gesture. Then another new thought struck him. “Do they intend to teach males and females to be soldiers, or just males? Before, it would have mattered only during mating season. With ginger, though, it matters all the time. Has anyone bothered to think about that?”

“I do not know,” Hozzanet said. “It would not surprise me if our leaders did their best to forget about the herb.”

“They would be fools if they did,” Gorppet said. “Of course, that may not stop them. But I am far from sure that military discipline and mating behavior can stand side by side. Someone ought to point that out to them.”

“Truth,” Hozzanet said. “Go ahead.”

“Me?” Now Gorppet made the negative gesture. “No one would pay any attention to me. I am lucky to be an officer at all.”

“Your skill made you an officer. Luck had nothing to do with it,” Hozzanet said. “Draft a memorandum. I will endorse it and pass it up the line.”

“It shall be done, superior sir.” Gorppet could say nothing else. What he thought was, Look what your big mouth got you into this time. After a moment, he did add, “Some members of the Race are likely to say that this makes us like the Big Uglies, who also usually exclude their females from combat.”

“Some members of the Race are fools,” Hozzanet replied. “You will, I suspect, have observed this for yourself. The Big Uglies are sexually dimorphic to a greater degree than we are, and have practiced mechanized warfare only a short time. Up till recently, raw strength was necessary for their combat, so it is no wonder their females were commonly excluded. That is not an issue for us, but control of our sexuality is. Can you imagine what the Deutsche would have done to us after spraying ginger over a battlefield with both males and females on it?”

“I can, but I would rather not.” Gorppet shuddered at the thought. “Very well, superior sir. I will emphasize that point when I write.”

He didn’t enjoy drafting the memorandum. He hadn’t had to do such things very often as an infantrymale and then an underofficer. The risks of combat were familiar: pain, mutilation, death. The risks here were subtler, but real nevertheless: embarrassment, mockery, humiliation. He was no writer, and was painfully aware of his own deficiencies. He feared everyone else who saw the memorandum would be painfully aware of them, too.

With some-more than some-trepidation, he showed Hozzanet the document once he’d finished it. The other officer read through the piece without a word. Gorppet was sure he’d produced nothing but a broken egg. At last, when Hozzanet turned one eye turret away from the monitor and toward him, he managed to ask, “Well, superior sir?” He sounded miserable. Fair enough-he felt miserable.

“I shall do what I said,” Hozzanet answered. “I shall endorse it and send it on to our superiors in the hope that it will do some good. I think it is very effective-very clear, very straightforward. You make a good case. You certainly have convinced me. Some of the officers set above us, of course, have trouble seeing past the ends of their own snouts. Maybe they will ignore this. But maybe, on the other fork of the tongue, it will help them see farther. We can but hope, eh?”

“Yes, superior sir.” Now Gorppet sounded dazed. Delight coursed through him, almost as if he’d had a taste of ginger. “Clear? Straightforward? My work? I thank you, superior sir!”

“You are welcome,” Hozzanet said. “You are very welcome indeed. You did the work. I am merely approving its quality, which should be-and, I think, will be-obvious to everyone.”

“I thank you,” Gorppet repeated, more dazed still. This was better than ginger, for the pleasure lingered. It didn’t steal away to be replaced by gloom at least as strong.

“As I said, you have earned the praise,” Hozzanet told him. “I would not be surprised if I were calling you ‘superior sir’ one of these days.”

That, as far as Gorppet could see, was a preposterous extravagance. He didn’t say so; contradicting Hozzanet would have been rude. But he didn’t take the notion seriously, either. His longtime service below officer’s rank had convinced him that surviving was more important than advancing, anyhow.

Work went on while he waited for his superiors to respond to the memorandum. Longtime service below officer’s rank had convinced him that they would take their own sweet time about it, too. One afternoon, he let out a surprised hiss. Hozzanet swung an eye turret his way and asked, “Something interesting?”

“Yes, superior sir,” Gorppet answered. “Remember that Tosevite male named Drucker, who was going down to Neu Strelitz to search for his mate and hatchlings?”

Hozzanet made the affirmative gesture. “I am not likely to forget him. That trip cost us a good male and a motorcar. Cursed Deutsch bandits. Why? What about him now?”

“He has been positively identified in Neu Strelitz,” Gorppet said. “Up till now, the assumption was that he too perished in the attack, even if his body was not found.”

“Assumptions are commonly worth their weight in ginger,” Hozzanet said, which made Gorppet laugh. The other male went on, “Do you suppose he might tell you the truth about what happened if you went down to Neu Strelitz and asked him?”

“Superior sir, I do not know,” Gorppet answered. “Some of that, I suppose, will depend on what did happen and how close his ties to the bandits are. Even if he owes me certain debts, Big Uglies reckon kinship more important and friendship less so than we do.”

“I understand that,” Hozzanet said. “I ought to, on this miserable ball of mud. Go on. Do your best.”

“It shall be done,” Gorppet said-again, what other choice had he?

When he got to Neu Strelitz, he found it to be another small city that had taken considerable damage during the fighting. The Deutsche were doing their best to put things to rights again. They were energetic and hardworking, almost alarmingly so.

“There!” said the informant whose tip had got back to him-a yellow-haired Tosevite female who went by the name of Friedli. She spoke the language of the Race badly but understandably. “See you him, walking there?”

“Yes.” Gorppet found one question to ask before going after Drucker: “Why do you give him away to us?”

“He my mate threatened and betrayed,” she answered. “Now get him!”

Kinship, not friendship, Gorppet thought. He skittered down the street after Johannes Drucker. When he caught up, he said, “I greet you.”

The Deutsch male stopped and stared down at him. “Gorppet?” he said, and Gorppet used the affirmative gesture. “What are you doing here?”

“I came to ask you the same question,” Gorppet said. “How did you escape the ambush that killed Chinnoss? Have you found your mate and your hatchlings?”

Drucker hesitated before answering. In that moment of hesitation, Gorppet became convinced he wouldn’t learn anything. And he was right. The Big Ugly replied, “I am sorry, but I really cannot tell you what happened that day. I was knocked unconscious when the motorcar rolled over, so I know nothing.”

“I do not believe you,” Gorppet said bluntly.

“I am sorry,” Drucker repeated. “I was lucky not to be killed.”

“That was not luck,” Gorppet said. “You were not killed because you are not a male of the Race.”

Johannes Drucker shrugged. “I must go. Will you excuse me?”

“Suppose I arrest you instead?” Gorppet demanded, his temper kindling.

“You may try.” The Big Ugly shrugged again. “I doubt you will succeed, not here in a town without a garrison.”

He was, unfortunately, almost sure to be correct. Gorppet sent him a reproachful stare, not that any Tosevite was likely to recognize it as such. He said, “I thought we were friends, you and I.”

Drucker surprised him by using the Race’s negative hand gesture. “You and I are not enemies. That is a truth. But your folk and mine are not friends, and that is also a truth. Now I must say farewell.” He walked on down the street.

Gorppet could have gone after him. Gorppet could have raised his weapon and started shooting. Instead, with a sigh, he returned to his vehicle. No, keeping the Deutsche suppressed wouldn’t be easy, or anything close to it. As if I hadn’t known as much already, he thought bitterly.

Sam Yeager wondered why he’d been summoned to Little Rock. He hadn’t wanted to come to the capital. His wife and son hadn’t wanted him to go, either; sticking your head in the lion’s mouth was the phrase Barbara had used. But he remained an officer of the U.S. Army. Unless he wanted to resign his commission, he had to follow orders. And he didn’t want to resign it; he’d worked too hard to get where he was. Resigning would have been like admitting that everything he’d been through was something he’d somehow deserved. He was damned if he’d do that.

Don’t rub. He’d learned that code in the bush leagues. Don’t let the bastards know they hurt you. A pitcher who’d just stuck a fastball in your ribs might suspect you weren’t too happy about it. But not rubbing was all about not letting the other guys know what you were feeling, or that you were feeling anything.

And so, outwardly calm, he sat in a waiting room in the Gray House, reading a Newsweek and pretending everything was just routine. After a while, a flunky came up to him and said, “The president will see you now, Lieutenant Colonel.”

“Okay.” Yeager put down the magazine and got to his feet. The Gray House dignitary led him into the president’s office. Seeing Harold Stassen behind the big desk there was a jolt. Yeager didn’t want to show that, either. He stiffened to attention and saluted. “Reporting as ordered, sir.”

“Sit down, Lieutenant Colonel,” President Stassen said. His voice didn’t carry nearly the weight of authority Earl Warren’s had. But Warren was gone, dead and buried. The king is dead; long live the king. Stassen asked, “Would you care for coffee, or anything else?”

“No, thank you, sir,” Sam answered.

“All right.” The president looked down at what were probably notes. “I understand you and your family are responsible for raising a couple of Lizard hatchlings as though they were human beings.”

“That’s right, Mr. President.” Hope blossomed in Yeager. Maybe Stassen had called him here to talk about Mickey and Donald. They were important, no doubt about it. If he were here on account of that, maybe Warren hadn’t said anything to anybody about his role in bringing down a presidency and wiping a city off the face of the earth. Maybe I’m the only one who knows the whole story, Sam thought. Christ, I hope I am.

President Stassen said, “And how are the hatchlings now?”

“They’re fine, sir,” Sam said. “They’re toddlers right now, you know: growing like weeds and learning something new every day. They talk a lot more than regular Lizard hatchlings the same age would.”

Stassen shuffled papers-notes, sure enough. “I understand the Lizards have a long head start on us in this sort of research.”

“That’s true, but there’s nothing we could do about it,” Yeager said. “They got a hatchling-uh, a human baby-right after the first round of fighting ended. We couldn’t even think of trying the same sort of experiment till the colonization fleet brought females of the Race here.”

“Of course.” The president nodded. “Now, you’ve met the girl the Lizards are raising as one of their own.” He waited for Sam to nod, too, then asked, “What do you think of her?”

“Sir, Kassquit’s… pretty screwy, I’m afraid,” Yeager answered. “I don’t know how else to put it. Considering the way she was brought up, I don’t suppose that’s any big surprise. It’s probably God’s own miracle that she’s not even crazier than she is.”

“Does that mean…” Stassen glanced down again. “Does that mean Mickey and Donald are liable to end up disturbed, too?”

“From the point of view of the Race, do you mean, sir?” Sam sighed. “I’m afraid it does. I don’t know what to do about that. I don’t think there’s anything to be done about it. I feel bad sometimes, but it’s important for us to know just how much like people they can become.” He sighed again. “Ttomalss, the Lizard who’s raised Kassquit, probably feels the same way in reverse.”

“I see.” Stassen scribbled something on a scratch pad. “To turn to another matter, how seriously do you view the spread of plants and animals from the Lizards’ home planet here on Earth?”

Did Stassen know Yeager had been seized while investigating that very thing? If he did, he didn’t show it. Sam decided to assume he didn’t, and answered, “It’s going to be a problem, yes, Mr. President. It may not be too big a problem here in the States, because I didn’t think too many creatures from Home will be able to stand the winters in most of the country. But in the tropics, especially the deserts, I’d bet there’ll be wholesale replacements. The Lizards are going to try to make Earth over to suit themselves. We’d probably do the same thing if the shoe were on the other foot.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised.” Stassen wrote himself another note. “Your opinion closely matches the views of other experts I’ve consulted.”

“I’m glad to hear it, sir.” Sam breathed a little easier. This was just business. With any luck at all, he’d be able to get back home and go on raising the Lizard hatchlings-and, rather more than incidentally, getting ready for Jonathan’s wedding. He shifted in his chair, getting ready to stand up. “Is there anything else?”

“Just one thing more, Lieutenant Colonel.” The president switched gears: “How do you feel about your part in everything that’s happened over the past few months?”

Yeager grunted, but did his best to pull his face straight. Don’t rub. “Sir, I did what I thought I had to do,” he said. “I don’t know what else to tell you.”

“And you have no trouble living with the loss of Indianapolis?” Stassen asked.

“No trouble?” Sam shook his head. “I wouldn’t say that, Mr. President. I wouldn’t say that at all. A day doesn’t go by that I don’t think about it. But the scales balance, as far as I’m concerned. Do you think President Warren lost any sleep over the Lizards in the colonization fleet?”

“I honestly don’t know,” Stassen said. “Until the recent tragic events, I had no idea he’d had anything to do with them.” His chuckle was mirthless. “As you may know, the vice president mostly has about as much use as the vermiform appendix.”

“If you don’t mind my saying so, sir, you should have known what he’d done,” Yeager said. “The way things are these days, a vice president needs to be able to hit the ground running if he finds out he’s president all of a sudden. And that’s happened a couple of times lately-well, Cordell Hull wasn’t vice president when he took over, but you know what I mean.”

“I know what you mean,” the president agreed. “Hull probably had an easier time taking over than I did, because he was more involved in making decisions than I was. President Warren did as he thought best. Now I have to do the same.”

He started to say something more, but checked himself. Sam had a pretty good idea of what it would have been, though. Everything would have been fine if only you hadn’t stuck your big nose into the middle of things. It was even true, for those who didn’t think of the Lizards as people. Earl Warren hadn’t, not down deep where it counted.

“Is there anything else?” Sam asked again.

This time, Harold Stassen shook his head. “That will be all, Lieutenant Colonel. I did want to meet you, though. I think you understand the reasons for my curiosity.”

“Yes, sir, I think so.” Now Yeager was the one who didn’t say everything he was thinking. If it weren’t for me, you wouldn’t be president right now. He’d never dreamt of having that kind of influence on events. He’d never wanted it, either. But what you wanted and what you got were two different things. He’d turned fifty-eight this year. For a while there, in that house somewhere near the Four Corners, he’d wondered if he would ever see an-other birthday.

“All right, then,” Stassen told him. “You may go.”

“Thank you, Mr. President.” But before he left the office, Sam said, “May I ask you something, sir?”

“Go ahead,” the president said. “But I don’t promise to answer. I think you understand the reasons for that, too.”

Nobody will ever trust you with anything truly important again, not as long as you live. That was what the president meant, even if he was too polite to say so. Sam held his face steady. Don’t rub, no matter how much it hurts. He tried to speak casually, too: “Wasn’t that an awfully big meteor that slammed into Mars? The Race’s computer network had some pretty spectacular pictures from their space-based telescopes.”

“Yes, I’ve seen a few of them,” Harold Stassen said. “The astronomers will have a new crater to name, from what I understand. Mars, fortunately, is pretty much worthless real estate.”

“A good thing a rock that size didn’t hit Earth,” Sam agreed. “It would have been worse than an explosive-metal bomb, from what the Lizards say.”

“You’re probably right-or my briefing officers tell me the same thing, anyhow,” Stassen said. “Now, what was this question you wanted to ask?”

“Never mind, sir,” Sam said. “You’d probably just tell me I was sticking my nose in again where it didn’t belong, and I don’t see much point to that. I’ll keep my mouth shut from the beginning this time.”

“That is probably a very good idea,” the president said. “Good day, Lieutenant Colonel, and a safe flight back to Los Angeles.”

“Thank you, Mr. President.” Yeager wished Stassen hadn’t said that. Now he was going to worry till the airplane’s landing gear hit the runway at L.A. International Airport. The president, or people close to him, wouldn’t make an airliner crash to get rid of one gadfly… would they? Sam didn’t want to think so, but he knew there were people who wanted to see him dead.

If something like that happened, the Lizards would have a lot of sharp questions to ask American authorities. If they didn’t like the answers they got, they were liable to take a spectacular revenge. Sam didn’t care too much about that-he wouldn’t be around to see it. But the thought of such revenge might give second thoughts to anybody who wanted his family to cash his life-insurance policy.

When Yeager got back out onto the street, he noticed that some of the trees were going from green to yellow and red. He’d been too worried about the meeting to pay any attention to that when he came to the Gray House. Now the sight made him smile. Living in California as he did these days, he seldom got such strong reminders of the passage from one season to the next.

He took a deep breath, then let it out. I made it, he thought. If my plane home doesn’t crash, I made it, anyhow. He didn’t really believe that would happen. Had Stassen wanted to get rid of him, his flight coming into Little Rock could have crashed, too. Everything’s going to be okay. Sometimes he could make himself believe that for as long as two or three minutes at a time.

“I shall soon be returning to the starship,” Ttomalss said from the monitor. Kassquit watched him with something less than delight. He was, as happened all too often these days, oblivious to that. Sounding more cheerful than he had any reasonable business being, he went on, “And then, I hope, your life can return to something approaching normal after the stressful time you have endured.”

“How do you define ‘normal,’ superior sir?” Kassquit asked.

“Why, as things were before you became involved with Big Uglies, of course,” Ttomalss answered. “That is your default setting, so to speak. Would not a return to such conditions prove welcome?”

He does not understand, Kassquit thought. And he has no idea how much of my interior life he either misunderstands or misses altogether. He was, after all, a male of the Race. And she… wasn’t a female of the Race, no matter how much of a duplicate of a female of the Race he’d tried to make her into.

Speaking carefully, she replied, “If I could forget the memories of the time when Jonathan Yeager was here, that might perhaps be possible, superior sir. As things are, however, I have learned what it means to be part of a species with a continuously active sexuality. This knowledge goes some way toward redefining normality for me.”

And the inside of a fusion reaction is rather warm, and walking from Tosev 3 to Home would take a long time. Kassquit felt in her belly the size of the understatement she’d just given her mentor.

Ttomalss, however, took it as literal truth without understatement. He said, “I suspect time will create a certain distancing effect. Your emotions will no longer seem so urgent as they do now.”

That did it. Kassquit snapped, “Do you not see-can you not see-that I do not want these emotions to fade? I want to preserve them. I want to feel others like them. They come closer to making life worth living than anything I have ever known aboard this starship.”

“Oh,” Ttomalss said tonelessly.

Kassquit knew she’d wounded him. Part of her was too angry to care. The rest of her remembered the time when he’d been far and away the most important individual in her universe. It hadn’t been very long before. It only seemed like forever. Her hands folded into fists. She was at war within herself. She feared she would stay that way as long as she lived.

Gathering himself, Ttomalss said, “Obliging you in this regard will not be easy, you know. I must tell you that, even among Tosevites, regular sexual relations do not necessarily guarantee happiness. The literature and music and moving pictures the Tosevites produce demonstrate as much without the shed skin of a doubt.”

“I believe it,” Kassquit said. “Please understand that I am not seeking only sexual pleasure. I can, to some degree, supply that for myself. But the companionship I enjoyed with Jonathan Yeager along with the sexual pleasure… I miss that very much.” She sighed. “However much I might wish to be one, I am not and cannot be a female of the Race. I am, to some degree, irrevocably a Big Ugly.”

She’d had that thought before she’d ever met any wild Tosevites, too. It had horrified and disgusted her then. It still did, to some degree. But she could not deny that she wanted to know more of the feelings she’d had when Jonathan Yeager was aboard the starship with her.

Ttomalss said, “Several Tosevite languages have a word for the emotional state you describe. Jonathan Yeager used the tongue called English, is that not a truth? In English, the term is…” He paused to consult the computer, then made the affirmative gesture to show he’d found what he wanted. “The term is love.”

By the nature of things, he could have only an intellectual understanding of the emotion he named. But he was not a fool; he had indeed identified the feeling Kassquit craved. She made the affirmative gesture, too. “Jonathan Yeager taught me the word,” she agreed. “And, as you must know, he has informed me that he is entering into a permanent mating arrangement with a wild female Big Ugly-that, in effect, he loves someone else. This has been difficult for me to accept with equanimity.”

There. She’d topped her own earlier understatement. She hadn’t thought she could.

“You knew when Jonathan Yeager came to the starship that his relation with you would be only temporary,” Ttomalss reminded her. “It was as much an experiment from his perspective as from yours-an experiment prolonged because of the fighting that broke out against the Deutsche. Perhaps it would have been better had the experiment not been prolonged.”

“Yes, perhaps it would have,” Kassquit said. “But I cannot do anything about that except try to adjust as well as I can to the consequences of what did happen. Learning to experience this intensely pleasurable emotion and then having it taken away has been difficult.” Another fine understatement.

“I have asked you before if you wanted me to find you another Tosevite male,” Ttomalss said. “If you wish me to do so, I will do my best to provide you with one who will be pleasing.”

“I thank you, superior sir, but that is still not what I want,” Kassquit said. “For one thing, I have no certainty of matching the pleasure I received from Jonathan Yeager, pleasure both sexual and emotional. For another, suppose I should. That liaison would also necessarily be temporary, and I would go into another fit of depression after it ended. From what I am given to understand, this is rather like the emotional cycle ginger tasters experience.”

“Perhaps it is. I cannot speak there from personal experience, and I am glad I cannot,” Ttomalss said. “I can say that some ginger tasters appear to enjoy the cycle between pleasure and gloom, while others wish they could escape it and escape from their use of the herb.”

“But what am I to do?” Kassquit asked, though Ttomalss was hardly in a position to be able to tell her.

He pointed that out: “Your two choices are to remain as you are and to regret the one sexual and emotional relationship you had or to embark on another and then come to regret that, too. I would be the first to admit that neither of these strikes me as ideal.”

“They both strike me as disastrous.” Kassquit’s fingerclaws were short and wide and blunt. They bit into the soft flesh of her palms even so. “And yet, superior sir, I see no others, either.”

“We shall do what we can for you, Kassquit. On that you have my word,” Ttomalss said. Kassquit wondered how much his word would be worth, and whether it would be worth anything. But she did believe he would try. He went on, “Soon I shall see you in person. I look forward to it. For now, farewell.”

“Farewell,” Kassquit echoed, and Ttomalss’ image vanished from the monitor.

She looked around her cubicle and sighed again. For most of her life, this little space had been her refuge against the males-and, later, the females-of the Race who’d scorned her. Now it seemed much more like a trap. What could she do here by herself? What could she do anywhere here by herself? And how, among the males and females of the Race, could she ever feel as if she weren’t by herself? Her hand shaped the negative gesture. It was impossible.

After shaping that gesture, she scratched her head. It felt rough and a little itchy. She should have shaved it the day before, but she hadn’t felt like taking the trouble. The next time she washed, though, she would have to do it.

Why bother? she wondered. The answer leaped into her mind as soon as the thought formed: to look more as if I were a member of the Race.

Kassquit walked over to the built-in mirror in the cubicle. As always, she had to stoop a little to see herself in it; it was made for a member of the Race, not a Big Ugly. She looked at her flat, vertical, short-snouted, softskinned, eye-turretless face with the fleshy sound receptors to either side.

“What difference would hair make?” she said aloud. Try as she would, she’d never look like a member of the Race. Then a new thought occurred to her. “Rabotevs and Hallessi do not look like members of the Race, either, but they are citizens of the Empire. I am a Tosevite citizen of the Empire. If I want, I can look like a Tosevite.”

Wild Big Uglies-except the ones like Jonathan Yeager, who also imitated the Race-let their hair grow. Even Jonathan Yeager had shaved only the hair on his scalp and face, not that on the rest of his body. And, from what he had said, most females, even among those who imitated the Race, let the hair on their scalps grow.

That female with whom he will be mating, that Karen Culpepper, probably has hair, Kassquit thought. At first, that struck her as a good argument for shaving. But then she hesitated. Perhaps hair increased sexual attractiveness, in the same way that, among the Race, a male’s upraised scaly crest helped prompt a female to mate with him.

I am a Big Ugly. I cannot help being a Big Ugly. Even after this world becomes part of the Empire, Tosevite citizens of the Empire will probably go right on letting their hair grow. Why should I not do the same? I cannot be a female of the Race, but I can be a Tosevite female who is a citizen of the Empire. In fact, I cannot be anything else.

She ran a hand over her scalp, wondering how long the hair would take to grow to a respectable length. Then she let that hand slide down between her legs. She would grow hair there, too, and under her arms as well. She wondered whether she ought to keep shaving those areas even if she left her scalp alone. Then she shrugged. Jonathan Yeager hadn’t shaved around his private parts, or under his arms, either. She decided to let the hair grow. If she decided she didn’t like it, she could always get rid of it later.

The hair on her scalp quickly became noticeable. After she’d ignored the razor only a few days, the researcher named Tessrek spoke to her in the refectory: “Are you trying to look like a wild Big Ugly? If so, you are succeeding.”

He’d never liked her, not even when she was a hatchling. She didn’t like him, either, not even a little. She answered, “Why should I not look like a Tosevite, superior sir? As you never tire of pointing out, it is what I am.”

“High time you admit as much, too, instead of trying to act like a photocopy of a member of the Race,” he said, but warily-she’d already proved she could hold her own in a war of wits.

“Civilization does not depend on shape or appearance,” she said now. “Civilization depends on culture. You certainly prove that.”

“I thank you,” he said, before realizing she didn’t mean it as a compliment. A couple of males at the table with him were quicker on the uptake. Their laughter told Tessrek he’d made a fool of himself. He sprang to his feet and angrily skittered away. Kassquit ran her hand over her now fuzzy scalp. It itched a little. So did her underarms and private parts. Even so, she thought she might learn to enjoy having hair.

When Jonathan Yeager’s father got off the telephone, he was laughing fit to burst. “What’s funny, Dad?” Jonathan asked.

“We’ve got ourselves something brand new, that’s what,” his father answered. “We’re going to accept a couple of Lizards-and I do mean a couple, in every sense of the word-who aren’t just political refugees. They’re sexual refugees, too. Sexual outlaws, you might even say.”

“Outlaws?” That intrigued Jonathan, as his dad must have known it would. “Why? What have they done?” He tried to imagine what sort of sex crime a Lizard-no, two Lizards-could commit. Imagination, unfortunately, failed him.

Grinning, Sam Yeager said, “They’ve fallen in love, and they want to get married. And so the Lizards are throwing them right out of their territory and letting us worry about ’em. They’d tar ’em and feather ’em and ride ’em out of town on a rail, too, except they think feathers are just about as strange and unnatural as falling in love.”

Jonathan didn’t think falling in love was unnatural. He enjoyed it. But it hadn’t occurred to him that Lizards might do the same. “How on earth did that happen?” he asked. Before his father could answer, he held up a hand. “It’s got something to do with ginger, doesn’t it? It would have to.”

“Sure enough.” His father nodded. “The female Lizard and her male friend would mate whenever she tasted ginger, and she tasted a lot. After a while-from what I heard over the phone just now, they were best friends before she got the habit-they decided they wanted to stay together all the time. And boy, did they get in trouble when they told their local mayor or whomever it was they told what they wanted.”

“I bet they would,” Jonathan exclaimed. He tried to look at things from the point of view of a Lizard official. Having done so, he whistled softly. “It’s a wonder they didn’t lock ’em in jail and throw away the key.”

“Truth,” his father said in the language of the Race, and added an emphatic cough. “Maybe they figured this pair would be a bad influence even in jail. I don’t know anything about that. What I do know is, the Race let ’em ask for asylum here in the United States, and we’ve granted it. They expect to settle in California, as a matter of fact.”

“We’ve probably got the biggest expatriate community in the country-either Los Angeles or Phoenix,” Jonathan said.

His father laughed again. “Not a whole lot of them move to Boston or Minneapolis,” he agreed. “They don’t much fancy the weather in places like those. I grew up not all that far from Minneapolis. I don’t much fancy the weather there, either.”

Having lived most of his life in Los Angeles, Jonathan had trouble imagining the sort of weather Minneapolis got. He didn’t waste his time trying. Instead, he asked, “May I tell Karen about this? She’ll think it’s funny, too.”

“Sure, go ahead,” his dad answered. He walked across the kitchen and set a hand on Jonathan’s shoulder. “And thanks for asking before you talked with her, too. This one isn’t classified, but it could’ve been.”

“I know better than to run my mouth, Dad,” Jonathan said righteously. After a moment, though, he admitted, “I did tell her about what you’d found out-but only after those goons grabbed you. Looking back, I don’t suppose I was doing her any big favor.”

“No, I don’t think you were, either,” his father said. “But you were trying to make sure people didn’t get away with what they’d done to the Race. And, incidentally, you were trying to save my neck, so I guess I’ll forgive you.”

“Okay.” Jonathan walked over to the phone. “I’m going to call her now, if that’s okay with you. The people she works with’ll think that’s funny, too.”

Because of his time up on the space station, he still had a couple of quarters left at UCLA. After Karen graduated, she’d landed a job at a firm that adapted Lizard technology to human uses. Jonathan dialed her work number. When she answered, she didn’t go, Borogove Engineering-Karen Culpepper speaking, the way she had the day before. What she did say was, “Hello, Jonathan. How are you today?”

“I’m fine,” he answered automatically. Then he blinked. “How’d you know it was me? I didn’t say anything.”

“We’ve just got a new gadget-we’re sublicensing it from a company up in Canada,” she answered. “It reads phone numbers for calls you get and displays them on a screen.”

“That’s hot,” Jonathan said. “Somebody had a real good idea there. Anyway, the reason I called…” He repeated the story he’d heard from his father.

When he finished, Karen gurgled laughter. “Oh, I do like that,” she said. “That’s funny, Jonathan. I wonder what the Race will think of us from now on. The United States of America, the place where they can dump their perverts.”

“Yeah.” Jonathan laughed, too, but not for long. “You know, that might not be so good. If they start looking at us that way, it’s liable to make them start looking down their snouts at us, too.”

“Maybe you ought to say something about that to your dad,” Karen said.

“I think I will,” he answered. “You still want to go to Helen Yu’s for dinner tonight?”

“Sure,” Karen said. “It’s Friday, so we can do something afterwards, too-we don’t have to get up in the morning. Come get me around half past six, okay? That’ll let me hop in the shower after I get home.”

“Okay. See you at six-thirty. ‘Bye.” He hung up and turned to his father. “Dad…”

“I know what you’re going to want from me.” Sam Yeager pulled his wallet out of his hip pocket. “Twenty bucks do the job?”

“Thanks. That’d be great.” Jonathan took the bill and stuck it in his own pocket. “But that wasn’t the only thing I had in mind.”

His father laughed at him. “That’s a line you’re supposed to use with Karen, not with me.” Jonathan’s ears burned. Sometimes his dad could be very crude. Sam Yeager went on, “I’ll bite. What’s so important besides money?”

“Something Karen said,” Jonathan answered, and explained her reaction to what the Race might think about America sheltering the two Lizards who wanted to get married.

“That is interesting,” his father said. “But we’re a free country, and we keep getting freer a little bit at a time. If we can start giving our own Negroes a fair shake, I expect we’ll be able to find room for a few Lizards who do strange things. The Race already thinks we’re too free for our own good.”

“All right,“ Jonathan said. “If you’re not going to worry about it, I won’t, either.”

“I expect you’ve got other things on your mind right now, anyway,” his dad said. Jonathan did his best to look innocent. His father laughed some more, so his best probably wasn’t very good.

He pulled up in front of Karen’s house at six-thirty on the dot. Since they were engaged, he could even give her a quick kiss in front of her parents. When they got to Helen Yu’s, on Rosecrans near Western, only a couple of spaces in the lot were empty. Jonathan grabbed one. Yu’s was one of the oldest and most popular Chinese restaurants in Gardena-actually, just outside the city limits.

They ate egg-flower soup and sweet-and-sour pork ribs and chow mein and crunchy noodles and drank tea, something neither of them did outside a Chinese restaurant. After a while, Karen said, “I wonder what Liu Mei would think of the food here.”

“She’d probably say it was good,” Jonathan replied. “I don’t know how Chinese she’d think it was.” That question had occurred to him before. He’d sensibly kept his mouth shut about it. When Liu Mei visited the States with her mother, he’d had something of a crush on her. Karen had known it, too, and hadn’t been very happy about it. But now that she’d asked the question, he could safely answer it.

After fortune cookies and almond cookies, Jonathan paid for dinner. They went out to the car. His arm slipped around Karen’s waist. She leaned against him. “What time is it?” she asked.

Jonathan looked at his watch. “A little past eight,” he answered. “Next show at the drive-in starts at 8:45. We can do that, if you feel like it.”

“Sure,” Karen said, so Jonathan drove east on Rosecrans to Vermont and then south past Artesia to the drive-in. It wasn’t very crowded. The movie-a thriller about the ginger trade set in Marseille before it had gone up in radioactive fire-had been there for a couple of weeks, and would be closing soon. Jonathan didn’t mind. He found a spot well away from most of the other cars, under a light pole with a dead lamp.

Karen snickered. “How much of the movie are we going to watch?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” he answered. “We’ll find out. Shall I go get some Cokes?”

“Sure,” she said. “Don’t bother with candy or popcorn, though-not for me, anyway. I’m pretty full.”

“Okay. Me, too. Be right back.” Jonathan got out of the car and went over to the concession stand. When he returned to the car with the sodas, he found Karen sitting in the back seat. His hopes rose. They probably wouldn’t see a whole lot of the film. He slid in beside her. “Here.” He handed her one of the Cokes. “We’d better be careful not to spill these later.”

She looked at him. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, which made both of them laugh so hard, they almost spilled the Cokes then.

They did pay some attention to the first few minutes of the movie, but even then they were paying a lot more attention to each other. Jonathan put his arm around Karen. She snuggled against him. He never did figure out which of them started the first kiss. Whichever one it was, the kiss went on and on. Karen put a hand on the back of his neck to pull him to her.

He rubbed her breasts through the fabric of her blouse. She made a noise deep in her throat-almost a growl. Thus encouraged, he undid two buttons of the blouse and reached inside the cup of her bra. Her flesh was soft and smooth and warm.

Before very long, her blouse and bra were off. Now that they were en-gaged, there didn’t seem to be much point to the stop-and-start games they’d played while they were dating. She rubbed him, too, through his chinos. He hoped he wouldn’t explode.

He slid his hand under her skirt to the joining of her legs. “Oh, God, Jonathan,” she whispered as he stroked her.

“I’ve got a rubber in my wallet,” he said. She hesitated. They still hadn’t gone all the way. But then she lay back on the seat. Jonathan tried to get her panties off, get his trousers down far enough, and put on the rubber, all at the same time. At last, he managed all three. “I love you,” he gasped as he clumsily poised himself over her.

The rubber helped. Without it, he was sure he would have come as soon as he started. As he had with Kassquit, he discovered this was Karen’s first time. Since it wasn’t his, he had a better notion of what to do than he’d had up in the starship. Karen still winced when he pierced her.

Even with the rubber, he didn’t last long. After gasping his way to delight, he asked, “Are you okay? Was it okay?”

“It hurt,” she answered. “I know it’s supposed to get better. Right now, I like your hand and your mouth more. Is that all right?” She sounded anxious.

“I guess so,” Jonathan answered. He liked her hand and especially her mouth at least as well, too. But this had a finality to it that nothing else could match. He kissed her. “I love you.”

“I love you, too,” Karen said. “Give me my top back, will you?” Inside a couple of minutes, they were fully dressed again-just in time for the big car chase. Jonathan couldn’t think of a movie he’d enjoyed more.

Ttomalss wondered whether all the time he’d spent raising Kassquit had been for nothing. Every time he looked at her, his liver twinged inside him.

Her hair grew longer every day, making her resemble a wild Big Ugly more and more. Her spirit seemed more like a wild Big Ugly’s every day, too.

In something close to despair, he railed at her: “Will you also wash off your body paint and put on wrappings?”

“No, I see no need for that,” Kassquit answered with maddening calm. “But if I am a Tosevite citizen of the Empire, should I not follow Tosevite usages where they do no harm? I do not think a head of hair is very harmful.”

“In any direct sense, probably not,” Ttomalss admitted. “But your grow-ing it seems a slap in the snout at the Race, which has spent so much effort to nurture you and to acculturate you.”

“You have made me a creature, a tool, a thing to be used,” Kassquit said. “It has taken me a long time, probably too long, to realize I can be more than that. If I am a citizen of the Empire, I should have as much freedom as any other citizen. If I choose to be eccentric, I may.” She ran a hand over her dark, hairy scalp.

“If you choose to make yourself ugly, you mean,” Ttomalss said.

But Kassquit made the negative gesture. “For Tosevites, and especially for Tosevite females, hair seems to contribute to attractiveness. I should prefer to be judged by the standards of my own biological species there. I have had enough of being thought a repulsively ugly imitation of a female of the Race. Believe me, superior sir, I have had more than enough of that.” She used an emphatic cough.

Ttomalss flinched. He knew some of the things Tessrek and other males had said while he was rearing Kassquit. He’d never really thought about the effect that hearing such things might have on a young individual isolated from everyone around her because of her appearance and biology. There were probably a lot of things he’d never thought about while rearing Kassquit. Some of them were coming up out of the shadows to bite him now.

Slowly, he said, “Punishing me for errors I made in the past serves no useful purpose I can see.”

“I am not punishing you. That is not my intention at all,” Kassquit said. “I am, however, asserting my own individuality. Any citizen of the Empire may do as much.”

“That is a truth,” Ttomalss said. “Another truth, however, is that most citizens of the Empire suppress a good deal of their individuality, the better to fit into the society of which they are but small parts.”

Kassquit ran a hand over her hair again, and then along her smooth, scaleless, upright body. Even as she bent into the posture of respect, she spoke with poisonous politeness: “Exactly how, superior sir, am I supposed to suppress my individuality? You cannot change me into a female of the Race. You do not know how many times I have wished you could. Since I cannot be a female of the Race, how can I do better than to be the best Tosevite female I can possibly be?”

Her argument was painfully cogent. But Ttomalss had an argument of his own: “You are not culturally prepared to be a Tosevite female.”

“Of course I am not,” Kassquit said. “You were the one who told me I was the first Tosevite citizen of the Empire. Do you now disavow those words because I have learned to see that I am truly a Tosevite and cannot imitate the Race in every imaginable way?”

“At the moment, you seem to be doing your best not to imitate the Race in any imaginable way.” Ttomalss didn’t try to hide his bitterness.

“I have spent my whole life imitating the Race,” Kassquit said. “Am I not entitled to spend some little while discovering what the biological part of my individuality means, and how I can best adjust to its demands?”

“Of course you are,” Ttomalss answered, wishing he could say no. “But I do wish you would not throw yourself into this voyage of discovery with such painful intensity. It will do you no good.”

“No doubt you were the proper judge of such things when I was a hatchling,” Kassquit said. “Now that I am an adult, however, I will plot my course as I think best, not in accordance with anyone else’s views.”

“Even if that course proves a disastrous mistake?” Ttomalss asked.

Kassquit made the affirmative gesture. “Even if that course proves a di-sastrous mistake. You, of course, superior sir, have never made a single mistake in all the days since you broke out of your eggshell.”

At the moment, Ttomalss was thinking the most disastrous mistake he’d ever made was deciding to rear a Tosevite hatchling. He’d thought that before, when the terrifying Chinese female named Liu Han kidnapped him as vengeance for his trying to raise her hatchling as he’d succeeded in raising Kassquit. But even his success here was proving full of thorns he’d never expected.

“Every male, every female makes mistakes,” he said. “Wise ones, however, do not make unnecessary mistakes.”

“Which are which is for me to judge, superior sir,” Kassquit said. “And now, if you will excuse me…” She didn’t wait to find out if he would excuse her. She just turned and strode out of his chamber. Had the door been the type common on Tosev 3, she would have slammed it. As things were, she could only leave in a huff.

With a sigh, Ttomalss got down to the rest of his work, to everything that had accumulated while he was down in Cairo working with the other members of the commission on Earl Warren. He studied a report of Tosevite attendance at shrines dedicated to the spirits of Emperors past. Since establishing those shrines had been his idea, reports naturally came to him.

He would have liked to see the numbers larger than they were. Few Big Uglies in the regions where their native superstitions were particularly powerful sought to modify those superstitions. That was unfortunate, because those were the areas where Ttomalss had most hoped to change Tosevite behavior and beliefs.

“Patience,” Ttomalss said to himself. Patience was the foundation upon which the Race had built its success. But it seemed to be more a virtue on Home than here on Tosev 3.

Ttomalss hissed in surprise on noticing that the shrines with the highest attendance were not on territory the Race ruled at all, but in the not-empire of the United States. He wondered what that meant, and wondered all the more so because the Americans had gone to the extreme of immolating their own city to keep the Race from gaining influence over them.

Further investigation of this apparent paradox may well prove worth-while, he wrote. Then he noticed that Atvar had arranged to send the two perverts who had caused so much scandal to the United States. The Amen-cans would apparently put up with anything, no matter how bizarre.

The telephone hissed. “Senior Researcher Ttomalss,” he said. “I greet you.”

“And I greet you.” The image that appeared on the monitor belonged to Tessnek, who’d been an itch under Ttomalss’ scales every since he started trying to raise Tosevite hatchlings. With him, I have to put up with any-thing, too, Ttomalss thought. Tessnek went on, “Are you aware of the latest disgusting behavior on the part of your pet Big Ugly?”

“She is not my pet,” Ttomalss said. However much Kassquit disheartened him, Tessrek was the last male before whom he would show that. “She is a citizen of the Empire, as I am and as you are.”

“She certainly boasts of being one,” Tessrek said, “but her behavior hardly makes the boast anything in which she or the Empire can take pride.”

“By which I suppose you mean that you tried baiting her again and found yourself unhappy at the outcome,” Ttomalss said. “You really should learn, Tessrek. This has happened before, and it will keep right on happening as long as you refuse to recognize that she is an adult and an intelligent being.” He himself was none too eager to recognize Kassquit as an adult, but he wouldn’t admit that to Tessrek, either.

Tessnek hissed scornfully. “I am not referring to the Big Ugly’s usual rudeness. I am resigned to that.” He was lying, as Ttomalss knew, for the sake of moral advantage. Before Ttomalss could call him on it, he continued, “I am referring to the disgusting growth of hair she is cultivating on top of her head. It truly does sicken me. I want to turn my eye turrets away every time I see her.”

“You have never complained about the hair wild Big Uglies grow,” Ttomalss replied, “so I think you are singling her out for undue, unfair attention.”

“But those other Big Uglies are, as you point out, wild,” Tessnek said. “Both you and Kassquit have been prating that she is a proper citizen of the Empire. Proper citizens of the Empire do not grow hair.”

“I know of no law or regulation forbidding citizens of the Empire from growing hair.” Ttomalss swung both eye turrets toward Tessrek and spoke in judicious tones: “As a matter of fact, you might try it yourself. It could do wonders for your appearance.”

Tessrek hissed again, this time in real fury. Ttomalss broke the connection in the middle of the hiss. With any luck, Tessrek wouldn’t bother him for some time. Ttomalss’ mouth fell open in a laugh. He hadn’t enjoyed himself so much since… Since mating with Felless, he thought. But then he made the negative gesture. The pleasures of mating were altogether distinct from other sorts.

He went back to work with a lighter liver. A moment later, though, he too hissed, in chagrin and dismay. He’d bounced Kassquit’s arguments off Tessnek’s snout. They made a surprisingly good case when he used them against a male he’d long disliked.

Of course, when Kassquit used those arguments against him, he’d thought them absurd. What did that mean? He was scientist enough to see one possibility he’d rejected out of hand before. By the Emperor, he thought, and cast down his eye turrets. What if she is right?

Once conquered, the Rabotevs and the Hallessi had soon abandoned almost all of their own cultural baggage and been assimilated into the larger, more complex, more sophisticated culture that was the Empire. And their cases had always been the Race’s models for what would happen on Tosev 3.

But what if the model was wrong? In terms of biology, the Big Uglies were fan more different from the Race than either the Rabotevs on the Hal-lessi. And in terms of culture, they were far closer to the Race than the Rabotevs on the Hallessi had been. Both those factors argued that they would acculturate more slowly and to a lesser degree than either of the other species the Race had conquered.

Even if Tosev 3 was finally conquered in full, Tosevites might go right on letting their hair grow and wearing wrappings. They might keep speaking their own languages and practicing their own superstitions. That would make life-to say nothing of administration-more difficult for the Race.

Ttomalss wondered if in their own history the Big Uglies had known any situations analogous to this one. He knew less than he should have about Tosevite history. So did the Race as a whole. It hadn’t seemed germane. But maybe it was. I wonder how I can get in touch with a Tosevite historian, he thought. Maybe Felless will know a way, down there on the surface of Tosev 3.

“No,” Pshing told Straha when he tried to call Atvar. “The fleetlond is busy with important matters, and has given orders that he cannot be disturbed.”

“Am I no longer an important matter, then?” Straha demanded angrily. “Were it not for me, you would still have no idea which Tosevite not-empire struck at the colonization fleet.”

“I am sorry, sup-” Atvan’s adjutant checked himself. Straha’s rank remained a point of ambiguity. He wasn’t a shiplond any more, not to anyone but himself. What was he? Nobody quite knew. Not enough for Pshing to call him superior sir, evidently. “I am sorry,” Pshing repeated. “The fleetlond has given me explicit orders, and I cannot disobey them.”

Straha wondered if he were the only male of the Race on Tosev 3 who’d ever imagined disobeying orders. After a moment’s thought, he realized he wasn’t. There had been mutinies during the first round of fighting-only a handful, but they did happen. By all he’d been able to find out, few of them had had happy aftermaths for the mutineers.

Had his own defection had a happy aftermath for him? He was still try-ing to figure that out. It could have been worse. He did know that. He could have defected to the SSSR, for instance. He shuddered at the thought. He might have done it. He hadn’t known any better then.

“And now, if you will excuse me…” Pshing said, and broke the connection.

Straha wondered what would happen if he tried to walk into Atvar’s of-fice despite being unwelcome. By far the most likely result would be his expulsion. He sighed. Much as he enjoyed irritating the fleetlond, here he would get more irritation than he gave out.

I was freer in the United States, he thought. For a moment, the idea of redefecting crossed his mind. But he made the negative gesture. After the destruction of Indianapolis, the Americans would not welcome him.

On the other fork of the tongue, the Race didn’t welcome him, either. He was still Straha the traitor as far as males and females here in Cairo were concerned. What he knew was useful. He himself? They wished they could take his knowledge and leave him alone. They might as well have been Americans.

He made the negative gesture again. In that regard, the Race was worse than the Americans, because his own kind were more self-righteous and sanctimonious. And, he realized, he had more of a taste for freedom, for doing what he wanted to do when he wanted to do it, than had been true before he defected to the United States.

Who would have believed it? he thought. The Big Uglies’ ideology has painted itself on me. That wasn’t true to any enormous extent-he still thought the American reporter who would have printed his opinion that the United States had been responsible for attacking the colonization fleet was addled. The male had had no business doing any such thing.

And then the ex-shiplord’s mouth fell open in a startled laugh. When he’d offered the reporter that opinion, he’d thought of it as nothing but a joke, a way to get under the Tosevite’s scales-no, under his skin was the English idiom, because Big Uglies had no scales. But he’d told the fellow the truth after all.

So what? he thought. Even if it was the truth, it had no business appearing in a newspaper. Maybe I am not so enamored of freedom as I thought. But he made the negative gesture once more. Compared to the Americans, he was a reactionary. Compared to his own kind, he was a radical, and a worse radical than he’d been before fleeing to the USA.

And there were plenty of males-and, by now, very likely some females, too-who were a good deal more radical than he. The expatriate community in the United States was flourishing. Some males were even prepared to look kindly on snoutcounting, and to propose institutionalizing it for the Race as well. That still struck Straha as laughable.

That members of the Race could hold such ideas, though, was bemusing. Everyone talked about the ways in which the Race was influencing Tosev 3 and the Tosevites. And with good reason: the Race’s influence on the planet and its folk was profound. And the Race’s influence on the Tosevites had been envisioned since the first probe sent to this world found it habitable.

No one-at least, no one among the Race-seemed much interested in talking about ways in which Tosev 3 and the Tosevites were exerting influence in the other direction. Nobody had expected the Big Uglies to own any ideas worth investigating. The probe sent to this world hadn’t shown everything worth showing-or rather, Tosev 3 and the Tosevites had changed far faster than anyone back on Home had imagined possible. The leading civilizations here were formidable intellectually as well as technologically.

And Tosev 3 itself was influencing the Race. A good-sized jar of ginger sat on the floor by Straha’s sleeping mat. He went over and had a taste. How many males, how many females, indulged themselves so whenever they found the chance? He could freely do so-a small mercy from Atvar, who did not seem inclined to grant any large ones.

For the Race as a whole, though, and especially for females, ginger nemained illegal, with harsh penalties levied against those caught using it. But males and females kept right on tasting. Mating season as a brief, separate time was a thing of the past. The colonists were still new to Tosev 3. They hadn’t fully adjusted to the change yet; a lot of them kept trying to pretend it hadn’t happened. But how would things look in a couple of generations?

Straha had heard the scandalous story of the two perverts who’d become as sexually addicted to each other as they were physically addicted to the herb. All things considered, Straha supposed Atvar had been wise to exile them to the USA, where the Big Uglies reckoned such infatuations normal.

“But Atvar has all the imagination of a mud puddle,” Straha said. He was sure his chamber was monitored, but didn’t care; his opinion of the fleetlond was about as far removed from secret as it could be. Atvar no doubt believed the two perverts an aberration. Maybe they were. Straha wouldn’t have bet on it. To him, they seemed far more likely to be the shape of things to come.

The telephone hissed. “Former shiplord and current nuisance Straha speaking,” Straha said. “I greet you.”

“And I greet you.” Atvan’s image appeared in the monitor. “You have named yourself well.”

“For which I more or less thank you.” With ginger making every nerve twang, Straha didn’t much care what he said.

“Pshing tells me you tried to call,” Atvan said. “I was occupied. I am no longer. What do you want? If it is anything reasonable, I will try to get it for you.”

“That is more than you have said for some time,” Straha replied. “What I chiefly want to know is whether you have finally extracted all the yolk from my egg. If you have, I would like to live somewhere other than Shepheard’s Hotel.”

“Your debriefing appears to be complete, yes,” Atvar answered. “But what will you do if you are turned loose on the members of the Race here on Tosev 3? How will you support yourself? The position of shiplord came with pay. The position of nuisance, while otherwise eminent, does not.”

In genuine curiosity, Straha asked, “Where did you learn such sarcasm? You did not speak so when I was a shiplord.”

“Dealing with Fleetlord Reffet may have something to do with it,” Atvar told him. “Dealing with Big Uglies may have something to do with it, too. In different ways, they drive a sensible male mad.”

That assumed he was sensible. Straha made no such assumption. But he kept quiet about the assumptions he did make. Atvar held his fate in his fingerclaws. All he said was, “You are not quite the male you were.”

“No one who comes to Tosev 3 escapes unchanged,” Atvar said. “But you have not answered my question. Have you any plans for making a living if you are allowed entry into the greater society of the Race?”

“As a matter of fact, I have,” Straha said. “I was thinking of drafting my memoirs and living off the proceeds of publication. I am, I gather, notorious. I ought to be able to exploit that for the sake of profit.”

“No one who comes to Tosev 3 escapes unchanged,” Atvar repeated. “When you were a shiplord, you would never have debased yourself so.”

“Perhaps not,” Straha said. “But then again, who knows? I have had unique experiences. Why should others not be interested in learning of them?”

“Because they were illegal?” Atvar suggested. “Because they were shameful? Because your descriptions of them may be libelous?”

“All those things should attract interest to my story,” Straha said cheerfully. “No one would care to read the memoirs of a clerk who did nothing but sit in front of a monitor his whole life long.”

“No one will read your memoirs if they are libelous,” Atvar said. “You are not in the United States any more, you know.”

“Exalted Fleetlord, I do not need to be libelous to be interesting,” Straha said.

“I will be the judge of that, when my aides and I see the manuscript you produce,” Atvar said.

Had Straha been a Big Ugly, he would have smiled. “You and your aides will not be the only ones judging it. I am sure Fleetlord Reffet and many of the colonists would be fascinated to learn all the details of what happened before they got here. And, as I say, I doubt I would need to distort the truth in any way to keep them entertained and their tongues wagging.”

He waited to see how Atvar would take that. He despised Reffet almost as much as Atvar did, but if he could use the fleetlord of the colonization fleet as a lever against the fleetlord of the conquest fleet, he would not only do it, he would enjoy doing it. And, sure enough, Atvar said, “You mean you will go out of your way to embarrass me and hope Reffet will like the result enough to let you go ahead and publish it.”

“That is not at all what I said, Exalted Fleetlord,” Straha protested, although it was exactly what he’d meant.

“Suppose I let you get away with that,” Atvar said. “Suppose I pretend not to notice whatever you may have to say about me. Will you include in your memoirs passages indicating the need for a long-term Soldiers’ Time here on Tosev 3, to help stop the endless grumbling from the colonists? The Race, after all, is more important than either one of us.”

Straha hadn’t expected that, either. Yes, Atvar had changed over the years. To some degree, that made him harder to dislike, but only to some degree. Straha made the affirmative gesture. “I think we have a bargain.”

“Imagine my delight.” Atvar broke the connection. No, he wasn’t so hard to dislike after all.