Down to Earth

16

Nesseref let out a soft, astonished hiss as she guided the shuttlecraft down toward the Tosevite city called Los Angeles. She hadn’t realized the Big Uglies built on such a scale. Few structures seemed very tall, but built-up areas stretched as far as her eye turrets could turn.

A Tosevite speaking the language of the Race said, “This is Los Angeles International Airport. Shuttlecraft, you are cleared for your final descent. All airplane traffic has been diverted from the area.”

“I should hope so!” Nesseref exclaimed. That the Big Uglies didn’t take the notion of clearing air traffic for granted, that they felt they had to mention it, chilled her. How many mishaps did their air travel system allow?

She didn’t care to think about that. There was the concrete expanse of the airport. The radio beacon had guided the shuttlecraft well enough. Now she saw the visual beacons, too, the ones that would mark out her precise landing spot.

As she had while in Cairo, she let her fingerclaw hover above the switch that would fire the braking rockets if the shuttlecraft’s electronics didn’t do the job. But the braking rockets ignited when they should have. Deceleration pressed her into her seat. Just routine, she told herself. Landing at a port under the Big Uglies’ control wasn’t quite routine, but she’d done it before. Once more shouldn’t be a problem.

Controlled by the computer, the braking rockets started burning just as the shuttlecraft’s landing legs touched the concrete. “Very neat job there,” the Big Ugly monitoring the descent said. “We will bring out more fuel and liquid oxygen for you, and also your passengers.”

“I thank you,” Nesseref answered, though she didn’t feel particularly thankful. She just hoped the Tosevites knew what they were doing. Even the Race treated liquid hydrogen with a great deal of respect. If the Big Uglies didn’t, they’d put her in danger.

But everything seemed to go as it should. The trucks the Big Uglies sent out had fittings that matched those of her oxygen and fuel tanks. She’d been told the fittings were supposed to be standardized, but was glad to find reality matching her suppositions. And the Tosevites handling the hoses exercised as much caution as they should have.

When the vehicles carrying the hydrogen and oxygen had withdrawn, a Tosevite motorcar approached the shuttlecraft. Two Big Uglies got out of it. One wore wrappings of a color not far removed from that of his own skin. The other… Nesseref stared at the image of the other in her monitor with more than a little bemusement. He wore minimal wrappings, shaved the hair on his head, and had body paint on his torso. She had heard some Big Uglies aped the styles of the Race, but had seldom seen it for herself-it was uncommon in Poland, and for all practical purposes nonexistent in Cairo.

She was supposed to fly two Tosevites up to a starship. She supposed these were the ones; after they got out, the motorcar had turned around and driven away. Making sure struck her as a good idea. She used the external speaker: “You are the American Tosevites Sam Yeager and Jonathan Yeager?” No doubt she was making a hash of the alien names, but she couldn’t help that.

“We are, superior sir,” answered the Big Ugly in the tan wrappings. “Mind if we join you?”

“Superior female, if you please,” Nesseref said. “Yes, you have permission to come aboard. This shuttlecraft has been fitted with seats suitable to your species.” She undogged the hatch and let in some of the local atmosphere, which was cool and moist and left the odor of partially burned hydrocarbons on her scent receptors.

“I am sorry,” the same Tosevite said as he came through the hatch. “We cannot tell your gender by voice, as we can among our own kind.” He spoke the language of the Race well, and seemed to have some feeling for proper behavior. As he lay down on one of the seats, he continued, “I am Sam Yeager, and this is my hatchling, whose familiar name is Jonathan.”

“I greet you, superior female,” said the Tosevite who wore the body paint of a psychologist’s assistant.

“I greet you… Jonathan Yeager.” Nesseref hoped she had that right. Neither Big Ugly corrected her, so she supposed she did. She went on, “We do not have long to wait before leaving for the rendezvous with the starship. Do you mind my asking the purpose of your visit?”

“By no means,” said Sam Yeager, evidently the superior of the two. “We are going to meet one of our fellow Big Uglies.” Nesseref wondered if he’d correctly understood the question. He proved he had by adding, “Yes, I mean exactly what I say there.”

“Very well,” Nesseref replied with a shrug. She had an eye turret on the chronometer, which showed the launch window rapidly approaching. When the proper moment came, she ignited the shuttlecraft’s motors. Both Big Uglies grunted under acceleration, and both behaved well when it cut off and weightlessness began.

Docking was quick and routine. Nesseref could have gone aboard the starship while waiting for the proper time to descend from orbit and return to Poland, but she didn’t bother. She just stayed where she was, enjoying a little weightlessness while knowing too much wasn’t good for her.

When she did leave the docking station at the starship’s central hub, she used her maneuvering jets to get clear of the great ship, then fired her braking rockets to fall out of orbit and down toward the surface of Tosev 3. She traveled, of course, from west to east, with the direction of the planet’s rotation, which meant she had to pass above the territory of the Greater German Reich before reaching Poland.

“Do not deviate from your course,” a Deutsch Big Ugly warned. “You and you alone will be responsible for the consequences if you do.”

“I do not intend to deviate,” Nesseref answered. “The Reich will be responsible for any aggression, as I am sure you know.”

“Do not threaten me,” the Tosevite said, and used an emphatic cough. “Do not threaten my not-empire, either. We are seeking our legitimate rights, nothing more, and we will have them. You cannot prevent it. You had better not try to prevent it.”

Silence seemed the best response to that, and silence was what Nesseref gave it. Despite bluster, the Deutsch Big Uglies did not seek to attack the shuttlecraft. Nesseref let out a long sigh of relief as she landed at the port between Warsaw and Lodz whose construction she’d supervised.

“This is the first time in a while I have heard anyone be glad to return to Poland,” a male in the control center said as she arranged ground transportation to her home. “Many males and females are looking for the chance to escape.”

“If war comes, who knows which places will be safe?” Nesseref said. “Weapons can land anywhere.”

“That is a truth, superior female,” the males said. “Weapons can land anywhere. But if war comes, weapons will land on Poland.”

And that was also a truth, even if one Nesseref didn’t care to contemplate. She also didn’t care to discover that no male or female of the Race was heading toward the new town in which she lived. The only driver available was a scrawny Big Ugly with an ancient, decrepit motorcar of Tosevite manufacture. Nesseref was anything but eager to entrust herself to it.

That must have shown, for the Big Ugly let loose one of the barking laughs of his kind and spoke in the language of the Race: “You flew between the stars. Are you afraid to drive to your apartment?”

“When I flew between the stars, I was in cold sleep,” Nesseref replied with dignity. “I will be awake to experience this, worse luck.”

The Tosevite laughed again. “That is funny. But come, get in. I have not killed anyone yet, even myself.”

Nesseref found that a dubious recommendation, but did climb into the motorcar, which had the right-side front seat modified to fit a posterior of the sort the Race had. But the motorcar boasted no safety straps of any kind. And, she rapidly discovered, the Big Ugly drove as if he labored under the delusion of being a killercraft pilot. Traveling a relatively short distance along a narrow, asphalt-topped road proved more terrifying than all the shuttlecraft flying Nesseref had ever done.

In the shuttlecraft, of course, she had radar and collision avoidance alarms and radio to talk with the ground and with other pilots in the neighborhood. Here she and the driver had no aids whatever. All the other Big Uglies on the road drove with the same reckless disregard for life and limb as he displayed.

“Madness!” Nesseref exclaimed as he passed a lorry and then swung back into his lane so that another lorry, this one oncoming, missed him by a scale’s thickness. She was too rattled even to bother appending an emphatic cough.

“You want to get home as soon as you can: is that not a truth?” the driver asked.

“I want to get there alive,” Nesseref answered. This time, she did use an emphatic cough. It felt very emphatic, in fact.

“Is that really so important?” the Big Ugly said. “In the end, what difference will it make? When the war comes, you will be dead either way.”

“Do you want to die sooner than you must?” Nesseref returned. She thought she would die in the next instant, when an animal-drawn wagon blithely started to cross the road on which she was traveling. But the Tosevite lunatic handling the motorcar had quick reflexes, even if he had no sense. Its suspension swaying, the motorcar dodged the wagon.

“That fellow is a fool,” the driver said; Nesseref was convinced he said so because he had no trouble recognizing others of his own kind. After a moment, he went on, “I am a Jew. Do you know what the Deutsche did to Jews when they held Poland?” He didn’t wait for her answer, but continued, “They could not kill me then. And I do not think they or anyone else will have an easy time killing me now.”

If the way he drove hadn’t killed him, Nesseref doubted explosive-metal bombs or poison gases could do the trick. But she asked, “If war does come, what will you do?”

He hesitated there no more than he did on the roadway: “Fight the Deutsche as long as I can. I have a rifle. I know what to do with it. If they want me, they will have to pay a high price for me.”

With a squeal from his overworked, underpowered brakes, he pulled to a stop in front of Nesseref’s building. She got out of his motorcar with so much relief, she almost forgot the bag in which she carried her personal belongings. The Big Ugly called her back to get it. He might be maniacal, but he wasn’t larcenous.

When she got up to her apartment, Orbit greeted her with a yawn that displayed his mouthful of sharply pointed teeth. It was hard to impress a tsiongi. Had she bought a beffel, it would have danced around her and jumped up on her, squeaking wildly all the time. But a beffel would have wrecked the apartment while she was gone. Orbit didn’t do things like that.

One of the pieces of mail she’d picked up was a flyer that began, IN CASE OF EMERGENCY. The emergency it was talking about was a Deutsch attack. Nesseref began to wonder if she should have been glad to come home.

Every step Sam Yeager took out from the hub of the starship made him feel heavier. Every step he took also made him hotter; the Race favored temperatures like those of a very hot day in Los Angeles. Turning to his son, he said, “You’re dressed for the weather better than I am, that’s for sure.”

As at his previous meeting with Kassquit, Jonathan wore only a pair of shorts. He nodded and said, “You must be dying in that uniform.”

“I’ll get by.” Sam chuckled. “Kassquit’ll be better dressed for it than either one of us.” Jonathan didn’t answer that; Sam suspected he’d embarrassed his son by implying that he noticed what a woman was or wasn’t wearing.

Somewhat to his surprise, the Lizard leading them to Kassquit turned out to speak English. He said, “The whole notion of wrappings, except to protect yourselves from the nasty cold on Tosev 3, is nothing but foolishness.”

“No.” Sam made the negative hand gesture. He thought about going into the language of the Race, but decided not to; English was better suited to the subject matter. “Clothes are also part of our sexual display. Sometimes they keep us from thinking about mating, but sometimes they make us think about it.”

Had their guide been a human being, he would have sniffed. As things were, he waggled his eye turrets and spoke one dismissive word: “Foolishness.”

“Do you think so?” Jonathan Yeager asked in the language of the Race. “Would you say the same thing after you smell the pheromones of a female who has just tasted ginger?” The Lizard didn’t answer. In fact, he didn’t say another word till he’d led Sam and Jonathan to the chamber in which Kassquit sat waiting for them.

“I greet you, superior female,” Sam said in the language of the Race. His son echoed him. They both briefly assumed the posture of respect.

Kassquit got up from her seat and politely returned it. She was smoother at it than either of them, having no doubt had much more practice. “I greet you, Sam Yeager, Jonathan Yeager,” she said, and sat down again.

“It is good to see you once more,” Sam said. It was disconcerting to see so much of her; he had to work to keep his eyes on her face and not on her small, firm breasts or the slit between her legs, which looked all the more naked for being shaved. She made no move to conceal herself; she had no idea that she ought to conceal herself. Jonathan’s right, Sam thought. I’m not as used to skin as he is.

“And it is good to see both of you,” she answered seriously, innocent in her nakedness. “I shall remember your visits all the days of my life, for they are so different from anything I have known before.”

“They are different for us, too,” Jonathan said. “You live in space. To us, getting here is an adventure in itself.”

“I did not think it would be so bad,” Kassquit said in obvious dismay; adventure had connotations of hardship in the language of the Race that it lacked in English. “You came on one of our shuttlecraft, after all, and with us spaceflight is routine.”

Sam did his best to spread oil on troubled waters: “One of these days, it would be nice if you could visit us down on the surface of Tosev 3.”

“I have thought of this,” Kassquit said. “I do not yet know whether it can be arranged, or whether it would prove expedient if it can.”

Ever since he’d whiled away summer afternoons fishing for bluegill and crappie in the creek that ran through his parents’ farm, Sam had known how to bait a hook. “Would you not be interested to learn what being among Tosevites is like?” he asked. “If you wore our style of wrappings and false hair, you would look just like everyone else.”

If that wasn’t bait, he didn’t know what was. Poor Kassquit had to be the most isolated individual in the world. Even Mickey and Donald don’t have it so bad, he thought uneasily. They’ve got each other, and she ‘s got nobody. Tempting her hardly seemed fair, but he was a soldier on duty and a human being loyal to his species, while she wasn’t human except by parentage, undoubtedly wished that parentage hadn’t happened, and served the Race with all her heart.

He could tell the hook had gone home, all right. It might well tear out of her mouth, of course; people were a lot more complicated than bluegill. Her face didn’t show much, but then, like Liu Mei’s, her face never showed much. But she leaned forward in her seat and took a couple of deep breaths. If that wasn’t intrigued interest, he had scales and eye turrets himself.

“To look like everyone else?” she said musingly. “I have never imagined such a thing-except in my wishes and dreams, where I look like a proper female of the Race.” Nobody raised by humans would have told a near-stranger anything so intimate; Kassquit didn’t understand the limits behind which people functioned. Then she said something that made Sam sit up and take notice: “If war comes, I may be safer in the not-empire called the United States than here aboard this starship.”

“Do you really think there will be a war between the Reich and the Race?” Jonathan blurted. He hardly seemed better at concealing what he felt than Kassquit did, and what he felt was horrified dismay.

“Who can know?” Kassquit answered. “The Race does not want to fight the Reich, but the Reich has no business making demands on the Race.”

“That is about what our government thinks, too, but we have little influence on what goes on in the Reich,” Sam said.

“Too bad,” Kassquit told him. “For Big Uglies, you seem sensible, you Americans, aside from your absurd custom of snoutcounting.”

“We like it,” Sam said. “It seems to suit us. We are not a people who care to be told what to do by anyone.”

“But what if those who tell you what to do know more about a question than you do?” Kassquit asked. “Does a physician not know more about how to keep you healthy than you can know for yourself?”

“Judging who is an expert in public affairs is harder,” Sam replied. “Many claim to be experts, but they all want to do different things. That makes choosing among them harder. So we let those who convince the largest number of us that they are wise and good govern our not-empire.”

“What if they lie?” Kassquit asked bluntly.

“If we find out, we do not choose them again,” Yeager said. “We choose them for terms of so many years, not for life, and we hope they cannot do too much damage while in office. What if the Race has a very bad Emperor? He is the Emperor for as long as he lives.”

“His ministers will do what is right regardless,” Kassquit said. “And even a bad Emperor’s spirit will watch over the spirits of citizens of the Empire. What good is a bad Tosevite snout-counted official after he is dead? None whatever.”

No sooner had Sam discarded one particular question as impolitic than Jonathan asked it: “How do you know spirits of Emperors past watch over other spirits? Is it not a superstition, the same as our Tosevite superstitions?”

“Of course it is not a superstition,” Kassquit said indignantly. “It is a truth. The truth is not a superstition.”

“How do you know?” Jonathan persisted. Sam made a small gesture, warning his son not to push it too hard.

He gave Kassquit credit. Instead of saying something like, I just do, she gave a serious answer: “All the males and females of three species on three worlds believe it. All the males and females of the Race have believed it for more than a hundred thousand years, since Home was unified. Could so many believe such a thing for so long if it were not true?”

“And you believe it?” Sam asked gently.

“I do.” Kassquit made the affirmative gesture. “Spirits of Emperors past will cherish my spirit. And my spirit, when that time comes, will look no different from any other.” She spoke with great confidence.

You poor kid, Yeager thought. He had to look away from her for a moment; tears were stinging his eyes, and he couldn’t let her see that. And the worst part of it is, you only know a fraction of what all the Lizards have done to you, because there so much of it you can’t see, any more than a fish sees water. But then he shook his head. No, that wasn’t the worst part of it after all. He could see just how warped the Race had made Kassquit, and he knew damn well he was going to go right on raising Mickey and Donald as if they were human beings. What a son of a bitch I am. But it’s my job, dammit.

He supposed the SS men who put Jews and fairies and Gypsies into gas chambers said the same thing. How could they do anything else if they wanted to go home afterwards and kiss their wives and eat pig’s knuckles and knock back a seidel or two of beer? If they really thought about what they were doing, wouldn’t they go nuts?

It’s not the same. He knew it wasn’t, but had the uncomfortable feeling the difference was of degree, not of kind.

A silence had fallen in the chamber, as if nobody knew what to say next. Finally, Kassquit made a pointed return to a new take on an earlier subject: “Do you not think the present aggressive policy of the Deutsche makes it more likely that they were the Big Uglies who attacked the ships of the colonization fleet?”

“A good question,” Sam said. Jonathan nodded, but then remembered to make the proper hand gesture, too. Sam went on, “I am not sure the one has anything to do with the other. It might, but I have no proof.”

He would have been happy to incite the Race against the Nazis had he had proof. He didn’t think that would make his superiors happy, though, and he more or less understood why: however thoroughgoing a lot of bastards the Germans were, they were also part of the balance of power. He sighed. Life never turned out to be as simple as you thought it would when you were Jonathan’s age, or Kassquit’s.

Kassquit said, “I can understand why you would not admit any such thing about your own not-empire, but are the Deutsche not your foes as well as the Race’s?”

That was also balance-of-power politics. Speaking carefully, Sam answered, “It is a truth that the United States and the Reich were fighting a war when the Race came. But each decided the Race was a bigger danger than the other.”

“I do not understand this,” Kassquit said. “In the Empire, all Tosevites would be at peace. You would not fight the Race, and you would not fight among yourselves, either. Is this not good?”

“One of the parts of the United States-‘provinces’ is as close as I can come in your language, but that is not quite right-has a slogan,” Sam said. “That slogan is, ‘Live free or die.’ Many, many Big Uglies feel that way.”

“I do not understand,” Kassquit repeated. “How are the Tosevites in the USA or the SSSR or the Reich freer than those the Empire rules?”

Sam wished she hadn’t phrased the question like that. Millions of Frenchmen and Danes and Lithuanians and Ukrainians weren’t free, or anything close to it. Neither were millions of Germans or Russians, for that matter. “Not all Tosevite not-empires are the same,” he said at last.

“They look that way to us,” Kassquit answered.

Whoever’d raised her had done a good job: she really did think of herself as a member of the Race. Sam made a small clucking noise. I hope I can do that well with Mickey and Donald, no matter how unfair it is to them.

Kassquit had trouble getting used to the way the wild Big Uglies looked at her. With a male or female of the Race, eye turrets said exactly where eyes pointed. The gaze of the Tosevites was shiftier, subtler. She thought their eyes kept drifting down her body, but they would return to her face whenever she was at the point of remarking on it.

Their words were also confusing and evasive. They steadfastly defended what was to her obvious nonsense. And they seemed sure they made perfect sense. Alien, she thought. How can they be so strange, when they look so much like me?

After a moment, she realized she was the strange one by Tosevite standards. That realization was something of an intellectual triumph, because she loathed the idea of judging herself by the standards of wild Big Uglies.

And the Tosevites insisted they didn’t have one set of standards, but many-perhaps one for each of their not-empires. “You are all one species,” she said. “How can you have more than one standard? The Empire has three species-four now, counting Tosevites-but only one standard. Having many on a single planet is absurd.” Ttomalss had also said the Big Uglies varied by culture, but she wanted to hear how these wild ones explained it.

Jonathan Yeager said, “We do not always agree on what the right way to do things is.”

Sam Yeager made the affirmative gesture. “Sometimes there is no right or wrong way to do something, only different ways. Being different is not always the same as being right or wrong. I think the Race has trouble seeing that.”

“Back on Home, the Race has no trouble seeing right from wrong,” Kassquit said; that was what she’d been taught. “Contact with Tosevites has corrupted some of us.”

To her surprise and annoyance, both wild Big Uglies burst into loud barking yips of laughter. “That is not a truth, superior female,” Sam Yeager said, and used an emphatic cough. “I have met plenty of males-and some females now, too-who are as crooked as any Big Ugly ever hatched.”

He sounded very sure of himself. In the face of direct experience, how much was teaching worth? Kassquit decided to change the subject again: “What do the two of you hope to learn by these visits with me?”

“How to meet the Race halfway,” Jonathan Yeager answered.

Sam Yeager amended that: “To see whether we can meet the Race halfway. If we cannot, then perhaps war is the best hope we have after all.”

Live free or die. It struck her as a slogan fit only for the hopelessly addled. Plainly, it meant something different to the wild Big Uglies. She did not want to explore that path again. Instead, she pointed with her tongue at Jonathan Yeager and said, “It seems to me that you are meeting the Race halfway.”

“I enjoy your culture,” he answered. “It interests me. I am learning your language, because I cannot deal with the Race without it. But under this”-he patted his shaven head and tapped the body paint on his chest-“under this, I am still a Tosevite with my own culture. Meeting you helped show me what a truth that is.”

“Did it?” Kassquit felt a pang of disappointment. “Meeting you made me hope you were leading toward…” Her voice trailed away. She was not sure how to say what she wanted without giving offense.

Sam Yeager, who seemed not to take offense easily, spoke for her: “You thought Jonathan was leading toward the Race’s quiet, bloodless conquest of Tosev 3.”

“Well, yes.” Kassquit made the affirmative gesture, even if she wouldn’t have been so frank as the wild Tosevite.

Then the older Yeager surprised her again, saying, “You could be right. I do not know if you are. Frankly, I doubt that you are. But you could be.”

“Why do you doubt it?” Kassquit asked.

“Because no matter how much of the Race’s outward culture we adopt-no matter whether we start using body paint instead of wrapping, no matter whether we reverence the spirits of Emperors past instead of keeping our own superstitions-we are still too different from you,” Sam Yeager answered. “And we will stay different from you, because of our sexuality and the social patterns that come from it.”

“Truth,” Jonathan Yeager said. His agreement with his father hurt Kassquit more than the elder Yeager’s words. And he went on, “In fact, is not ginger making males and females of the Race here on and around Tosev 3 more like us than like the Race as it is back on Home?”

Kassquit thought of Felless, who could not stop tasting ginger and who was going to lay her second clutch of eggs as a result. She thought of the mating she’d watched in a corridor of this very starship. That had shaken her faith in the Race’s wisdom and rationality. She thought of the endless prohibitions against ginger, and of how widely they were flouted.

“I hope not,” she said, and used an emphatic cough of her own.

“But you recognize the possibility?” Sam Yeager asked. “I do not suppose I have to tell you that officials of the Race recognize the possibility?”

“No, you do not have to tell me that,” Kassquit admitted. “I am quite aware of it. I wish I were not, but such is life.”

“Indeed,” Sam Yeager said. “May I ask you another question?” He waited for her to use the affirmative gesture before going on, “You have talked about what you hope will happen with the Big Uglies, and you have talked about what you hope will happen with the Race. What do you hope will happen to you?”

Ttomalss would sometimes ask her what she thought would happen, or even what she wanted. But what she hoped? He didn’t seem to think about that. Kassquit hadn’t done a whole lot of thinking about it, either. After a long pause, she said, “I do not know. My position is too anomalous to give me the luxury of many hopes, would you not agree?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact, I would,” he replied. “I wondered if you understood that. You might well be better off, or at least have more peace of mind, if you did not. Does that sound very callous?”

“It does indeed.” Kassquit considered. “But then, the truth often sounds callous, does it not?”

“I fear it does,” Sam Yeager said. “One more question, if you please.” He asked it before she could tell him yes or no: “What would you wish for yourself? If you could have anything, what would it be?”

Kassquit had hardly dared ask that question of herself. Ttomalss hadn’t thought to ask about her desires any more than he had about her hopes. To him, she remained part experimental animal, part hatchling. Over the past few years, he’d had to recognize that she had a will, a mind, of her own, but he was a long way from liking the idea. But she answered Sam Yeager without hesitation, saying, “If I could have anything I wanted, I would be rehatched as a female of the Race.”

Sam Yeager and Jonathan Yeager both made the affirmative hand gesture. “Yes, I can see how you would want that,” the older Big Ugly said. “Let me ask it a different way, then-if you could have anything you wanted that you might actually get, what would it be?”

That was harder. All of Kassquit’s material needs were met; only in the social sphere did she have problems. “I do not know,” she said at last. “I have plenty to eat; I have the Race’s communication network; what more in that regard could I desire?” She met question with question: “What would you choose, Sam Yeager? See how you like answering.”

The Big Ugly yipped Tosevite laughter. “The easy answer is, ‘more money.’ Ask any Tosevite, and he will say that, or something like it. He might ask for a bigger house, or a fancier motorcar, or other such things, but it all means the same in the end. Unlike you, we mostly do not have enough to keep us happy.”

Kassquit turned her head toward Jonathan Yeager. “And what of you?”

“I do not know if this is possible or not,” the younger Tosevite answered, “but I hope I live long enough to be able to travel to Home, either on a ship of the Race or on a Tosevite starship.”

“A Tosevite starship?” The very idea was a nightmare to Kassquit, as it was to every male and female of the Race. She didn’t know whether she ought to spell that out, so she contented herself with asking, “If that should prove impossible, what would you like?”

Jonathan Yeager hesitated. Sam Yeager said something in their own language. Jonathan Yeager’s answer was short. Sam Yeager laughed again. He turned to Kassquit and returned to the language of the Race: “I told him that having a mate with whom he can be happy throughout his life is also important.”

“You did not wish for that yourself,” Kassquit pointed out.

“No, but then, I am lucky enough to have such a mate,” Sam Yeager answered. “Jonathan has a female friend who may become such a mate, but it is difficult to be sure about such things ahead of time.”

“What are the criteria for judging whether a mate is good or not?” Kassquit asked. If she was questioning the Big Uglies, they couldn’t very well question her. She liked this better.

Jonathan Yeager’s skin was more transparent than Kassquit’s. She could watch blood rise to his face. She’d felt the same thing in herself in moments of embarrassment, so that was probably what he was feeling, too. If Sam Yeager also felt it, he showed no sign. He answered, “That varies from individual to individual. A mate who makes one male or female happy would addle another in short order.”

“How does one judge the possibility that one of these lifelong matings”-the notion struck Kassquit as very strange-“will be successful?”

“Some of that involves the sexual desire each partner arouses in the other, and the sexual pleasure each gives the other,” Sam Yeager answered. “Those are often enough reason for the partners to come together, but they do not mean that the mating will be a long-term success. The male and the female also have to be friends, to see things in similar ways, and to forgive each other’s small failings. It is not easy to judge in advance whether this will happen.”

She hadn’t expected such a thoughtful answer. She had only the Race’s view of Big Ugly sexuality-that it was constant and indiscriminate. It occurred to her that the Race might have as much trouble understanding Tosevites as the Big Uglies had understanding the Race. Though Ttomalss knew of her own sexual urges, she doubted he understood them. For that matter, she doubted she understood them herself, and wished she did.

“What makes one Tosevite sexually attractive to another?” she asked.

“Appearance,” Jonathan Yeager answered at once.

“That is one thing, often the most important thing at first,” Sam Yeager said, “but character is also important, and perhaps more important in the long rum.” He paused, then added, “I think character may be more important at first to females judging males than to males judging females.”

“Why?” Kassquit asked. Both wild Big Uglies shrugged. They saw each other do it, and both laughed. Kassquit noted the byplay without having any notion what might have caused it. And then she found a question the Tosevites were uniquely suited to answer, one that would have been utterly meaningless if not repellent to Ttomalss: “By your standards, am I sexually attractive?”

Jonathan Yeager had never imagined being asked such a question by a naked woman who obviously didn’t know the answer. He looked to his father for help, only to discover his father looking back at him. He needed a couple of seconds to understand why. Then he realized his dad was a married man, and probably thought he wasn’t the one to be talking about whether a woman was sexy or not.

And so Jonathan had to figure out the answer for himself. After a moment, he realized only one answer was possible, regardless of what he really thought. “Yes,” he said, and added an emphatic cough. Anything else would have been a diplomatic disaster. By the speed with which his father added the Lizards’ affirmative hand gesture, he knew he’d done the right thing.

Better still, he hadn’t been lying. He was used to girls who shaved their heads, even though his own girlfriend didn’t. And living in Gardena, which a lot of Japanese-Americans called home, had accustomed him to Oriental standards of beauty. Kassquit had a pretty face-it would have been prettier still, of course, had it shown more expression-and he could be in no possible doubt that she had a nice figure to go with it.

To his astonishment, she folded herself into the posture of respect. “I thank you,” she said with an emphatic cough of her own. “You will understand that this is not a question I could possibly ask Ttomalss or any other male or female of the Race.” She corrected herself: “No, that is not true. I could ask, but without hope of obtaining a meaningful answer.”

She certainly wouldn’t have been attractive to the Lizards, not when their everyday name for human being was Big Ugly. Jonathan tried to imagine what living among aliens would be like after you discovered the truth about your body and the delights it could bring. He tried, yes, but felt himself failing. The one thought that stuck in his mind was that he was damn glad it hadn’t happened to him.

His father said, “There are times, superior female, when you must have been-must be-very lonely.”

“Truth,” Kassquit said. What was she thinking? With her impassive features, Jonathan couldn’t tell. She went on, “I do not know if I myself realized how lonely I was until I first began communicating with you wild Tosevites. Who can say with certainty where the intersection between biology and culture lies? Even among the Race, it remains a subject for debate.”

“It is among us Tosevites, too,” Jonathan said. Mickey and Donald, at least, wouldn’t grow up worrying about whether they were sexually interesting. Unless they turned out to be females who went into their mating season or males who met a female in her season, they wouldn’t worry about such things at all. Jonathan suspected being a Lizard was easier than being a human.

But what if one of them’s a male and the other’s a female? That hadn’t occurred to him before. It would sure complicate things. Then he shrugged. Even if it was so, the Yeagers wouldn’t have to worry about it for a good many years yet. How old were Lizards when they hit puberty? He couldn’t remember. Have to look it up, he thought.

Kassquit said, “I do not find Tosevite scientific research likely to be of much value.”

Before Jonathan could respond indignantly to that, his father shrugged and said, “Well, in that case I do not suppose you have any reason to want anything to do with us at all. Shall we go, Jonathan?”

Leaving was the last thing Jonathan wanted. But a glance at his father’s face warned him he’d better play along. “All right,” he said, and started to rise. He turned to Kassquit. “It was pleasant and interesting to talk with you again.”

“No, do not go!” Kassquit’s face still showed nothing-it could show nothing-but alarm and grief filled her voice. “Please do not go. We had not yet come close to finishing this discussion.”

Jonathan looked down at the metal floor of the chamber so Kassquit couldn’t see him grin. Sure as hell, his old man knew how to bait a hook. And Kassquit had swallowed the bait, damned if she hadn’t.

“Why should we stay, if you mock us?” Sam Yeager asked sternly. “You are proud, as the Race is proud, but it never occurs to the Race that we Big Uglies also have reason to be proud of what we have done.”

“This is not something easy for a citizen of the Empire to grasp,” Kassquit said. “I meant no offense.” It wasn’t quite an apology, but it came closer than Jonathan had expected.

He had to hide another smile. Kassquit wasn’t apologizing because she hadn’t intended to offend; she was apologizing because she wanted to go on talking with the only other human beings she’d ever met. Jonathan knew he wasn’t the most socially conscious fellow around, but he had no trouble seeing that.

“Not long after the colonization fleet arrived,” Kassquit said, “I was asked if I wanted a Tosevite male brought up from the surface of Tosev 3 as a means of obtaining sexual release. I said no at the time. The thought of a strange wild Big Ugly as a mate was too distressing to contemplate. But the two of you do not seem like such strangers to me now?”

Jesus! Jonathan thought. I’ve just been propositioned! How am I supposed to say no, when I just told her I thought she was attractive?

Part of him-one particular part of him-didn’t want to say no. If he said yes, of course, Karen would kill him. But Karen’s down there, and I’m up here in space. She wouldn’t have to know. I wouldn’t be unfaithful, not really. It’s research, that’s what it is.

While those thoughts were going through his mind, his father said, “Superior female, you will have to forgive me. I do find you attractive, as I said, but I am not in a position to do anything about it. My permanent mate would be most unhappy if I were to mate with any female but her, and I do not wish to make her unhappy in any way.”

Like any child, Jonathan had trouble imagining his parents making love with each other. When he tried to imagine his father making love with Kassquit, the picture in his mind did not want to form. And when he tried to imagine his father telling his mother he’d made love with Kassquit, that picture would not form at all. What he saw instead was the mushroom cloud from an explosive-metal bomb.

Kassquit said, “I do not understand why such a mating would make her unhappy.”

“Because we try to concentrate all our affection on our principal mate, and an outside mating implies a loss of that affection,” Jonathan’s father answered. “We have a word in our language that means something like affection, but it is a stronger term. We say love.” The last word, necessarily, was in English.

“Love,” Kassquit echoed. To her, plainly, it was just a noise. Sure enough, she went on, “I do not understand. But I gather you are telling me this is a strong custom among American Tosevites.” Jonathan’s father made the affirmative hand gesture. Kassquit turned her attention back to Jonathan. “Do I gather that you, as yet, have no such permanent mating commitment?”

“Uh, that is, uh, correct,” Jonathan said, and then wished he’d lied instead of telling the truth. A lie would have let him escape gracefully. The truth made things more complicated. He turned to his father and spoke in English: “What am I going to do, Dad?”

“Good question.” His father sounded amused, which only made things worse. “If you want to be this particular kind of guinea pig, go ahead. If you don’t, you’ll figure out some way around it.”

“What are the two of you talking about?” Kassquit asked sharply.

“We are trying to decide what is proper here,” Jonathan answered, which was true enough. Picking his words with great care, he went on, “I do not have a permanent arrangement with a female, no, but I am seeing a female with whom I may have such an arrangement one day.”

“What does this mean-you are seeing her?” Kassquit asked. “Is this a euphemism for mating with her?”

Jonathan’s father had to translate euphemism for him. The question made Jonathan cough. It also made him wonder how to answer. He and Karen hadn’t actually gone to bed with each other, but they’d sure done everything else. He was damned if he’d try to explain petting and oral sex to Kassquit with his father listening. Instead, keeping it simple, he just said, “Yes.”

And that made his dad’s eyebrows shoot up, too, as he’d known it would. Kassquit said, “If you do not have a permanent mating arrangement, you may mate with whomever you choose. Is this not a truth? Do you choose to mate with me, Jonathan Yeager?”

That wasn’t a proposition; it was more like an ultimatum. Before Jonathan could answer, his father said, “Superior female, regardless of what my hatchling may decide, there should be no matings at this meeting.”

“And why not?” Kassquit’s face didn’t show emotion, but her voice did. She sounded furious.

“Why not?” Jonathan’s father echoed. “Because the purpose of mating-or a purpose of mating, anyhow-is reproduction. Do you want to take the chance of becoming gravid as a result of mating? How well equipped is the Race to handle that problem?”

“Oh.” Kassquit bent into the posture of respect. “I had not thought of that.”

“A lot of Tosevites do not think of it ahead of time.” Sam Yeager answered dryly. “This ends up making their lives more difficult than they would be otherwise-or more interesting, anyhow.” By his expression, he was looking a long way back into the past. Had they been somewhere else, Jonathan might have asked him about it. But not here, not now.

“What is the solution, then?” Kassquit asked. “It cannot be not mating. That, by what I am given to understand, is not the Tosevite way.”

“The usual American solution is a thin rubber sheath worn on the male’s reproductive organ,” Sam Yeager said. Jonathan admired his dispassionate tone. It came easier in the language of the Race, but even so… His father went on, “This permits mating but keeps sperm and egg from meeting.”

“Ingenious,” Kassquit said. “Sanitary. Do you have any of these sheaths with you?”

“No,” Jonathan said. “We did not expect the issue of mating to arise.”

“Very well,” Kassquit made the affirmative gesture. “Next time you visit, do bring some. Or I can arrange for a supply to be brought up from some of the territory the Race rules. Is it agreed?”

She sounded as brisk as if she were arranging a business deal. Maybe that was what she thought she was doing. She had no idea what being human meant-and she wanted to start learning in the most intimate way possible. That made sense of a sort, but only of a sort: Jonathan kept wondering if he wanted to be her teacher.

“Is it agreed?” she repeated.

Jonathan looked at Sam Yeager. His father’s face said nothing at all. Jonathan knew it was up to him, no one else. Well, no one from the starship was likely to tell Karen, which was more than he could say about most Earthly situations. Ever so slightly, he nodded. “It is agreed,” Sam Yeager said, and Jonathan couldn’t tell for the life of him whether or not his dad thought he was doing the right thing.

“Tosevite sheaths for mating without the risk of reproduction,” Ttomalss said bemusedly, one eye turret on the recording of the meeting between Kassquit and the two wild Big Uglies, the other on Kassquit herself.

“Yes, superior sir,” Kassquit said. “I can certainly understand how becoming gravid as the result of a mating would be undesirable. These sheaths reduce the risk of such a mischance.”

“Are you sure you are not being precipitate in this?” Ttomalss had trouble getting used to the idea of Kassquit grabbing at things with her own fingerclaws.

“Yes, superior sir. I am sure I would like to make the experiment, at any rate,” Kassquit told him. “Remember, some time ago you offered me a wild Tosevite for such purposes. I declined then, but no longer wish to decline.”

“I… see.” What Ttomalss mostly saw was occasion to worry. He knew how strongly the mating urge and the urge to form families affected the Big Uglies. Would Kassquit become addicted to that gratification, as so many males and females of the Race had to ginger?

“Everything will be all right,” Kassquit reassured him.

“How can you know that in advance of the event?” Ttomalss demanded. “The answer is, you cannot. You have committed yourself to this course of action without adequate forethought.” And if that wasn’t a Tosevite thing to do, what was? Ttomalss did not tax Kassquit with it, though, for fear of prompting an indignant denial-another typical Tosevite response.

“I have not,” she said. “I have been considering this, pondering it, since you made your offer to me some time ago. Indeed, I have been pondering it longer than that-ever since I discovered some of the physiological responses of my own body. This is something evolution has adapted me to do.”

She was likely to be right in that. She was almost certain to be right in that, in fact. Even so, Ttomalss said, “Suppose I forbid it? I have the authority to do so, as you must know.”

“On what grounds would you do such a thing?” Kassquit demanded angrily. “And you do not have the authority.”

“I must assuredly do.” Ttomalss hadn’t intended to get angry in return, but found he couldn’t help himself. “And my authority is based on my continuing wardship of you.”

“I see.” Kassquit leaned forward and glared at him. “So all your talk about my being a citizen of the Empire was nothing but talk? Is that what you are telling me now, superior sir?” She made the title one of reproach. “So much for any hope of equality, I see.”

“Calm yourself!” Ttomalss exclaimed, though he was feeling anything but calm himself. Dealing with Big Uglies had that effect on him, though he hadn’t thought of Kassquit as a Big Ugly in such matters for quite a while. “I am trying to see what is best for you. This of course is for your own long-term good.”

He wondered if mature Tosevites ever spoke to their hatchlings thus. He doubted it. How likely were any Big Uglies, young or old, to value the long-term at the expense of the immediate?

Kassquit certainly remained unconvinced. “Considering who I am and what I am, who are you to judge my long-term good? No one, either among the Race or among the Big Uglies, is so well suited to evaluate that as I am myself. I am, in this particular case, unique, and my judgment must stand.”

“A moment ago, you were claiming you were not unique: you were claiming to be a citizen of the Empire,” Ttomalss pointed out. “Which is it? It cannot be both at once, you know.”

“You are being deliberately obstructive,” Kassquit said, That was a truth, but not one Ttomalss intended to admit. Kassquit went on, “You realize you are trying to keep me from following a course you once urged on me? You cannot do both at once, either, superior sir.”

“You do not seem to understand what a large step mating is for a Tosevite,” Ttomalss said. “You are taking it too lightly.”

“And you are equipped to understand this better? Forgive me, superior sir, but I doubt it.” Yes, Kassquit could be devastating when she chose. And she chose now.

Ttomalss said, “I told you, I believe you were hasty in this. May I propose a compromise?”

“Go ahead, though I do not see where there is room for one,” Kassquit said. “Either I shall mate with this wild Big Ugly or I shall not.”

“We will obtain some of these sheaths.” Ttomalss didn’t think that would be difficult. “But I want you to consider whether they should be used, and I want there to be some little while before the wild Big Ugly comes up here. This may be wise in any case: in the event of war between the Race and the Reich, all space travel may well entail unacceptable risks.”

Now Kassquit exclaimed in dismay, “Do you truly believe war is likely, superior sir?”

With along, hissing sigh, Ttomalss answered, “I wish I did not, but I am afraid I do. Having visited the Reich, having sojourned there, I must say that the Deutsche are, of all the Tosevites I have seen and heard of, the least susceptible to reason. They are also among the most technically adept and the most arrogant. It strikes me as a combination bound to cause trouble and grief.”

“It strikes me as a combination logically impossible.” Kassquit replied.

“And that is also a truth,” Ttomalss replied. “But logic, like reason, goes by the board far more often on Tosev 3 than it does here. And, because the Deutsche are so fond of reasoning from premises that strike even other Big Uglies as absurd, logic, however well applied, becomes less valuable: the most perfect logic cannot make truth hatch from false premises.”

“What will we do if they attack this ship?” Kassquit asked.

“Logic should be able to tell you that.” Ttomalss answered. “Unless we can deflect or prematurely detonate a missile with an explosive-metal warhead, it will destroy us. We have to hope we are not attacked.”

He hoped Kassquit wouldn’t ask him how likely it was that the Race could deflect or prematurely detonate Deutsch missiles. He knew too well what the answer was: not very. When the conquest fleet came to Tosev 3, no one had imagined the Big Uglies would ever be in a position to assail orbiting starships. The ships had had some antimissile launchers added in the years since the Tosevites taught the Race how inadequate its imagination was, but few males thought they could knock down everything.

Kassquit didn’t choose the question Ttomalss dreaded, but did ask a couple related to it: “If the Deutsche do go to war with the Race, how much damage can they do to us and to our colonies? Can they cripple us to the point where we would be vulnerable to attacks from the other Tosevite not-empires?”

“I do not know the answers there,” Ttomalss said slowly. “I would doubt that even the exalted fleetlord knows the answers there. My opinion-and it is only my opinion-is that they could hurt us badly, though I do not know just how badly, or whether they could, as you say, cripple us. But of this I am sure: if they undertake to attack us, we will smash them to the point where they will never be able to do so again.” He used an emphatic cough to show how sure he was.

“Good,” Kassquit said, with an emphatic cough of her own. “I thank you, superior sir. To some degree, that relieves my mind.”

“I am glad to hear it,” Ttomalss replied. That was a truth. The psychological researcher knew more than a little relief at having managed to distract his ward from thoughts of mating with the wild Big Ugly named Jonathan Yeager. Of course, the means of distracting her was contemplating great damage to the Race and the devastation of a good-sized stretch of Tosev 3. It occurred to him that such distractions might be more expensive than they were worth.

And this one didn’t even prove completely successful. Kassquit said, “Very well, then, superior sir: after this discussion, I do understand the need for delay in carrying out these matings. But, once the crisis with the Deutsche is resolved, I want to go forward with them, assuming, of course, that part of the resolution does not involve the destruction of this ship.”

“Yes-assuming.” Ttomalss’ tone was dry. “I assure you, Kassquit, you have made your views on that matter very plain, and I will do what I can, consistent with your safety and welfare, to obtain for you that which you desire.” That which you lust after, he thought. Biologically, she was a Big Ugly, sure enough. Pointing that out, though, would only inflame the situation further. Instead of doing anything so counterproductive, he asked, “Do we need to concern ourselves with other topics at this time?”

“No, superior sir,” Kassquit answered. No matter what she was biologically, she did belong to the Race as far as culture went. Recognizing Ttomalss’ question as a dismissal, she rose, briefly assumed the posture of respect, and left his office.

He sighed again once she was gone. He’d managed to slow her a bit, but she’d seized the initiative. She was going to do what she wanted to do, not what he and the rest of the Race wanted her to do. And if that didn’t re-create in miniature the history of the relationship between the Race and the Big Uglies, he didn’t know what did.

Hoping to distract himself from worries about Kassquit-and from larger worries about the Deutsche, a situation over which he had no control whatever-he turned to the latest news reports on the computer monitor. Deutsch bluster formed a part of those, too. If the Big Uglies were bluffing, they were doing a masterful job. He feared they weren’t.

Video from elsewhere on Tosev 3 came up on the screen: rioting brown Big Uglies, most of whom wore only a strip of white cloth wrapped around their reproductive organs. The Race’s commentator said, “Farmers in the subregion of the main continental mass known as India have resorted to violence to protest the appearance of hashett in their fields. The plant from Home is of course a prime feed source for our own domestic animals, but the Big Uglies are concerned because it is successfully competing against grains they use for food. No males or females of the Race were reported injured in this latest round of unrest, but property damage is widespread.”

If hashett grew well on Tosev 3, other crops from Home would, too. They would help make this world a more Homelike place, as would the spread of the Race’s domestic animals. If Tosev 3 did not go up in nuclear explosions, the Race might do very well for itself here. If…

Can we acculturate the Big Uglies before they go to war with us? That was the question, no doubt about it. Increasing the Tosevites’ reverence for the spirits of Emperors past would help; Ttomalss was sure of that. But it would help only slowly. Danger was growing in a hurry. The Race was running up against a deadline, not a situation familiar to its males and females. What can we do? Ttomalss wondered. Can we do anything? He could hope. Past that, he had no answers, which worried him more than anything.

As Gorppet patrolled the streets of Cape Town, his eye turrets swiveled this way and that. He was, as always, alert for the possibility of trouble from the Big Uglies who crowded those streets. The dark-skinned Tosevites were supposed to be much more friendly to the Race than the pinkish beige ones, but he trusted none of them. To a male who’d served in the SSSR, in Basra, and in Baghdad, all Big Uglies were objects of suspicion till proved otherwise.

But Gorppet’s eye turrets swiveled this way and that for other reasons, too. He kept waiting for a male with an investigator’s commission to come up, tap him on the flank, and say, “Come along with me for interrogation.”

It hadn’t happened yet. He had trouble understanding why it hadn’t. By the spirits of Emperors past, he and his pals had got into a firefight not only with the Big Uglies who’d wanted to hi-jack his gold without giving him any ginger but also with a patrol of his own kind! For all he knew, he might have shot another male of the Race. That wasn’t mutiny, not quite, but it came too close for comfort. He knew the Race would be turning everything inside out to find out who had committed such a crime.

They haven’t caught me yet, he thought. Maybe being officially a hero helped. He’d captured the infamous Khomeini, after all. Who could imagine that a male with such a glorious accomplishment on his record might also be a male interested in acquiring large amounts of ginger?

No one had imagined it yet. Gorppet counted himself very lucky that no one had. Any investigator with a nasty, suspicious mind would have noticed that his credit balance, which had swollen with the bonus he’d won for capturing the Tosevite fanatic, then proceeded to shrink not long after he came to Cape Town.

But it was growing again. By now, it was almost back to where it had been before he turned so much credit into gold. He’d sold a good deal of ginger. Even now, an investigator who looked only at his current balance and not at his transaction record would be unlikely to notice anything out of the ordinary.

Maybe I will get away with it, he thought. He wouldn’t have bet a fingerclaw clipping on that when he’d returned to his barracks after the three-cornered gunfight. Had the investigators descended on him then, he would have confessed everything. Now… Now he intended to fight them as aggressively as if they were so many Big Ugly bandits.

He turned a corner and came onto a street where vehicle traffic had halted. Several hundred Tosevites on foot filled the street from curb to curb. Almost all of them were of the pinkish beige variety. They carried signs lettered in the angular local script, which Gorppet couldn’t read. He couldn’t understand their shouts, either, but those cries didn’t sound friendly.

A handful of males of the Race were walking along with the Big Uglies, keeping an eye turret on what they were up to. There weren’t nearly enough males, not in Gorppet’s view. From his experience in Basra, a parade of this sort always led to fights, often to gunplay.

“Suppress them!” he called to one of the males.

But the male, to his surprise, made the negative hand gesture. “It is not necessary,” he said, and then, noting Gorppet’s body paint, “It is not necessary, superior sir. I do not expect any trouble to arise from this demonstration.”

“Why not?” Gorppet exclaimed. “They will go from fighting to shooting any moment now. They always do.”

“Do I gather, superior sir, that you are new to this subregion?” the other male asked. He sounded, of all things, amused.

“Well, what if I am?” Gorppet knew how he sounded: disbelieving. No male who wasn’t addled would have sounded any other way.

“It is only that you do not know that peaceful protest was a tradition here, at least among these pale Big Uglies, before the Race conquered this area,” the other male said. “If we let them yell and fuss and release energy in this fashion, we have less trouble here than we would otherwise. Think of it as a safety valve, venting pressure that might otherwise lead to an explosion.”

In Gorppet’s experience, parades didn’t vent pressure-they manifested it. He asked, “What are they fussing and yelling about here?”

“A small increase in the tax on meat,” the other male replied.

“That is all?” Gorppet had trouble believing it. “What do they do if they get worked up over something really important?”

“Then they start shooting at us from ambush, and we have to take steps against them,” the other male replied. “But this is for show, nothing more. We may even end up reducing the tax increase somewhat, to give them the impression that we care about what they think even when we do not.”

“I… see,” Gorppet said slowly. “This has a kind of deviousness I find appealing. It is not like this, believe me, in the lands that cling to the Muslim superstition.” He used an emphatic cough. “Marches there are not for show, no indeed.”

“It is not usually like this with the dark-skinned Tosevites, either,” said the male who was keeping an eye turret on the marching Big Uglies. “When they come out into the streets, trouble often follows. But these pale ones seem to take the parade for a real action. Strange, I know, but true.”

“Very strange,” Gorppet said. “It must make them easier to administer than they would be otherwise.”

“Truth,” the other male said. “When we ended the privileges their kind had enjoyed and we enforced equal treatment far all varieties of Tosevites within this subregion, they were outraged and rebellious. But once they saw we were not to be shifted from that course-and once we quashed their uprisings-they settled down, and now the biggest trouble we have with them is ginger trafficking.”

“Ah,” Gorppet said, and his guilty conscience twinged. “Is that a severe problem here?”

“Is it not a severe problem everywhere?” the other male answered. “When it was just a matter of you or me tasting, it was not such an important business, I agree. But with females involved, it became more important. Have you never had pheromones reach your scent receptors?”

“Every now and then,” Gorppet admitted. “Sometimes more often than every now and then. It makes me feel as shameless as a Big Ugly.”

“Well, there you are, superior sir,” the other male said. “It is the same for everyone, which is why ginger is such a problem.”

“Truth,” Gorppet said, and went on his way. Ginger was not a problem for him. He’d been tasting ever since the Race first discovered what the herb could do. Oh, he’d let himself get a little addled every now and again, but most of the time he was pretty careful with his tastes. So were a large number of the males from the conquest fleet. They’d had plenty of practice with ginger. They knew what it could do for them, and they knew what it could do to them, too.

On the other fork of the tongue, the colonists were still learning-and females who bad trouble learning addled the males around them, too. Most of the really large sales Gorppet had made were to colonists seeking excess. They were fools. Gorppet was convinced they would have got into trouble regardless of whether he was the one who sold them the herb.

He looked back with one eye turret. The protesting Big Uglies went round a corner, herded along by that handful of males from the Race. For all the noise the Tosevites made, they evidently weren’t after trouble; they might as well have been a herd of azwaca driven to a fresh part of their feeding range.

Domesticated, Gorppet thought. They weren’t completely domesticated, not the way azwaca were, but they were getting there. The Muslim Big Uglies farther north, by contrast, remained wild beasts. And what of the Tosevites in the independent not-empires? Gorppet hadn’t had much to do with them since the fighting stopped, but they’d kept on being independent. That argued they were tough customers still, and a long way from domestication or assimilation or whatever the Race wanted to call it.

So did the pugnaciousness of the not-empire called the Reich. Gorppet had fought Deutsch soldiers as well as Russkis in the SSSR. He hadn’t liked them then; he still didn’t. And now they had more in the way of technology than they’d enjoyed then. That went a long way toward making them more dangerous.

But when Gorppet got back to his barracks, all thoughts of Big Uglies, even pugnacious ones, disappeared from his head. A couple of males whose body paint showed they were from the inspector general’s office awaited him there. “You are Gorppet, recently promoted to the rank of small-unit group leader?” It was phrased as a question-it even came with an interrogative cough-but it was not a question.

“I am, superior sir,” Gorppet answered, more calmly than he felt. “And who are you?” If they had him, they had him. If they didn’t, he was cursed if he would make life easy for them.

“Who we are is of no consequence, nor is it any of your business,” the other male said. “We ask the questions here.” Sure enough, he had the arrogance that went with the office he served.

“Go ahead and ask, then. I have nothing to hide.” Gorppet was guilty of enough that one more lie wouldn’t hurt him in the least-if they had him. If they did, they’d have to show him they did.

The other inspector spoke up: “Are you now or have you ever been acquainted with Tosevites named Rance Auerbach and Penny Summers?”

If they knew enough to ask, they could tell whether he lied or not on that one. “I have met them a few times,” he answered. “They are more interesting than most Big Uglies, because they speak our language fairly well-the female better than the male. I have not seen them for some little while, however. Why do you wish to know?”

“We ask the questions here,” the first male repeated. “Were you aware that they were and are notorious ginger smugglers?”

“No, superior sir,” Gorppet said. “Ginger-smuggling is illegal, and we never discussed anything illegal. Discussing illegal acts is illegal in itself, is it not?”

“It is indeed,” both males from the inspectorate said together. The second one went on, “Now-when was the last time you saw these two Big Uglies?”

“I do not precisely remember,” Gorppet answered. “As I say, it was some time ago. Do you know what has become of them? I rather miss their company.” Was that too audacious? He’d find out.

Together, the two males made the negative gesture. “We were hoping you would be able to tell us,” the second one said.

Gorppet made the same gesture himself. “I am sorry, superior sir, but I cannot do it. I hope nothing unfortunate has happened to them.” That was even true, especially when he thought of Rance Auerbach. The Big Ugly had been through the worst the fighting could do, just as Gorppet had himself.

“We do not know,” the first inspector said. “We believe, however, that they were involved in the recent unfortunate incident. You do know to which matter I refer?”

“I believe so, superior sir-gossip is everywhere,” Gorppet answered. “I hope not, for their sakes.” And you don’t know about me after all! He felt like laughing in the inspectors’ faces.