Homeward Bound (colonization)

by Harry Turtledove

  That made Trir’s mouth drop open in a laugh of her own. “How very curious,” she said. “Perhaps that accounts for some of your semibarbarous behavior.”

  “Maybe it does,” Jonathan said. He thought Trir’s rudeness was at least semibarbarous, but he was willing to let it pass. This wasn’t his planet, after all.

  Linda de la Rosa saw things differently. “What sort of behavior do you call it when you insult the guests you are supposed to be guiding? We did not need nearly as long as you did to learn to travel among the stars, and we deserve all proper respect for that.” She finished with an emphatic cough.

  Trir’s nictitating membranes flicked back and forth across her eyes: a gesture of complete astonishment. “How dare you speak to me that way?” she demanded.

  “I speak to you as one equal to another, as one equal telling another she has shown bad manners,” Linda de la Rosa answered. “If you do not care for that, behave better. You will not have the problem any more in that case, I promise you.”

  “How can you be so insolent?” Trir’s tailstump quivered furiously.

  “Maybe I am a semibarbarian, as you say. Maybe I just recognize one when I hear one,” Linda told her.

  That didn’t make Trir any happier. In tones colder than the weather even at Home’s South Pole, she said, “I think it would be an excellent idea to return to your lodgings now. I also think it would be an excellent idea to furnish you with a new guide, one more tolerant of your… vagaries.”

  They walked back to the hotel in tense silence. Trir said nothing about any of the buildings they passed. The Race might have signed its Declaration of Independence in one and its Constitution in the next. If it had, the humans heard not a word about it. The buildings remained no more than piles of stone and concrete. Whatever had happened in them in days gone by, whatever might be happening in them now, would remain forever mysterious-at least if the humans had to find out from Trir.

  And things did not improve once Jonathan and the rest of the Americans got back to the hotel. A sort of tension was in the air. Trir was far from the only snappy, peevish Lizard Jonathan saw. The scaly crests between the eyes of males, crests that normally lay flat, began to come up in display.

  “Nobody’s going to want to pay any attention to us for the next few weeks,” Jonathan said to Karen after they went up to their room.

  She nodded. “Sure does look that way, doesn’t it? They aren’t going to pay attention to anything but screwing themselves silly.”

  “Which is what they always say we do,” Jonathan added. With any luck at all, the Lizards snooping and translating would be embarrassed-if the jamming let their bugs pick up anything. “Either they don’t know us as well as they think they do, or they don’t know themselves as well as they think they do.”

  “Maybe,” Karen answered. “Or maybe they just took their data from you when you were in your twenties.”

  “Ha!” Jonathan said. “Don’t I wish!” He paused, then added, “What I really wish is that I could do half now of what I did then. Of course, there’s not a guy my age who wouldn’t say that.”

  “Men,” Karen said, not altogether unkindly. “You just have to make up in technique what you lose in, ah, enthusiasm.”

  “Is that what it is?” Jonathan said. She nodded. In an experimental way, he stepped toward her. The experiment proved successful enough that, after a little while, they lay down on the sleeping mat together. Some time after that, he asked, “Well, did I?”

  “Did you what?” Karen’s voice was lazy.

  “Make up in technique what I’ve lost in enthusiasm?”

  She poked him in the ribs. “Well, what do you think? Besides, you seemed enthusiastic enough to me.”

  “Good.”

  Later, after they were both dressed again, Karen remarked, “The funny thing is, we talk about sex even more than we do it. The Lizards?” She shook her head. “They talk about it even less than they do it. It’s like they try to forget about mating season when it isn’t happening.”

  “Hell, they do forget about it when it isn’t happening,” Jonathan said. “If something had happened to the colonization fleet so it never got to Earth, the males from the conquest fleet wouldn’t have cared if they never mated again, poor bastards. Without the pheromones, it just doesn’t matter to them.”

  “That isn’t quite what I meant. They don’t write novels about what goes on during mating season, or plays, or songs, or much of anything. They don’t care, not the way we do.”

  Jonathan thought that over. Slowly, he said, “When they’re not in the mating season, they don’t care about sex at all.” He held up a hasty hand. “Yes, I know you just said that. I wasn’t done. When they are in the season, they don’t care about anything else. They’re too busy doing it to want to write about it or sing about it.”

  “Maybe,” Karen said.

  Jonathan suddenly laughed. She sent him a quizzical look. He said, “Back on Earth, if they keep using ginger the way they were, they really will get to where they’re a little horny all the time, the way we are. I wonder if they will start writing about it then back there, and what the Lizards here on Home will think of them if they do.”

  “Probably that they’re a bunch of perverts,” Karen said. “They already think that about us.”

  “Yeah, I know, you old pervert, you,” Jonathan said. “But we have fun.”

  Atvar tried to keep his mind on the discussion. Sam Yeager had presented some serious proposals on ways in which the Race and the wild Big Uglies could hope to keep the peace, both back on Tosev 3 and in the solar systems that made up the Empire. He’d also pointed out the obvious once more: now that the Big Uglies had interstellar travel of their own, trade with the Empire would take on a new footing. The Race would have to start taking steps to accommodate Tosevite starships.

  Those were important points. Certain males and females here on Home had realized as much years earlier. Nothing had been done about that realization, though. No one seemed to know when or if anything would be taken care of. Nothing moved quickly here. Nothing had had to, not for millennia.

  But anyone who delayed while dealing with the Big Uglies would be sorry, and in short order. Atvar knew that. He made the point whenever he could, and as forcefully as he could. Hardly anybody seemed to want to listen to him.

  And he had trouble listening to Sam Yeager right now. The scales on his crest kept twitching up. They were not under his conscious control. He had pheromones in the scent receptors on his tongue. Next to that, ordinary business, even important ordinary business, seemed pallid stuff.

  At last, when he realized he hadn’t heard the last three points the wild Big Ugly had brought up, he raised a hand. “I am sorry, Ambassador,” he said. “I am very sorry indeed. But even for an old male like me, mating season is here. I cannot keep my mind on business while I smell females. We can take this up again when the madness subsides, if that is all right with you.”

  Sam Yeager laughed in the loud, barking Tosevite way. “And we can take it up again when the madness subsides even if that is not all right with me,” he said. “The Race may not have mating on its mind most of the year, but you sure make up for lost time when you do.”

  Ruefully, Atvar made the affirmative gesture. “That is a truth, Ambassador. It is not a truth we are particularly proud of, but it is a truth.”

  “You do not offend me. You are what you are,” the Big Ugly said. “I will remind you that you needed much longer to say the same thing about us.”

  “That is also a truth,” Atvar admitted. “And it is a truth that your habits still strike us as unhealthy and repulsive. But your biology has made you what you are, as ours has done with us. We can accept that. What is particularly unhealthy and repulsive to us is the way ginger has made us begin to imitate your sexual patterns. Our biology has not adapted us to be continuously interested in mating.”

  “Well, you can borrow some of our forms from us,” Sam Yeager replied. “Back on
Tosev 3, you already seem to have discovered the idea of marriage-and the idea of prostitution.” The two key words were in English; the language of the Race had no short, exact term for either.

  Atvar had heard both English words often enough before going into cold sleep to know what they meant. He despised the words and the concepts behind them. The Race had brought civilization to the Rabotevs and the Hallessi-and to the Tosevites. What could be more humiliating than borrowing ways to live from barbarians? Nothing he could think of.

  But right now he could hardly think at all-and he did not much want to, either. “If you will excuse me…” he said, and rose from his chair and hurried out of the conference chamber.

  Somewhere not far away, a female was ready to mate. That was all he needed to know. He turned his head now this way, now that, seeking the source of that wonderful, alluring odor. It was stronger that way… He hurried down a corridor. His hands spread, stretching out his fingerclaws as far as they would go. Males often brawled during mating season. Some of the brawls were fatal. Penalties for such affrays were always light, and often suspended. Everyone understood that such things happened under the influence of pheromones. It was too bad, but what could you do?

  There! There she was! And there was another male-a miserable creature, by his body paint a hotel nutritionist, second class-headed for her. Atvar hissed furiously. Of their own accord, the scales that made up his crest lifted themselves from the top of his head. That was partly display for the female’s sake, partly a threat gesture aimed at the hotel nutritionist.

  “Go away!” the nutritionist said, hissing angrily.

  Instead of answering with words, Atvar leaped at him, ready to claw and bite and do whatever he had to do to make his rival retreat. The hotel nutritionist was much younger, but not very spirited. He snapped halfheartedly as Atvar came forward, but then turned and fled without making a real fight of it.

  Atvar let out a triumphant snort. He turned back to the female. “Now,” he said urgently.

  And now it was. She bent before him. Her tailstump twisted to one side, out of the way. He poised himself above and behind her. Their cloacas joined. Pleasure shot through him.

  Still driven by the pheromones in the air, Atvar would have coupled again. But the female skittered away. “Enough!” she said. “You have done what you needed to do.”

  “I have not yet done everything I want to do,” Atvar said. The female ignored him. He hadn’t expected anything different. He might have hoped, but he hadn’t expected. And his own mating drive was less urgent than it had been in his younger days. He trotted off. If that hotel nutritionist, second class, made a sufficiently aggressive display to this female, he might yet get a chance to mate with her. But my sperm are still in the lead, Atvar thought smugly.

  He went out into the street. It was chaos there, as he’d thought it would be. Males and females coupled on the sidewalk and even in the middle of traffic. Sometimes, males overwhelmed by pheromones would leap out of their vehicles and join females. Or females in cars and trucks would see a mating display and be so stimulated that they would stop their machines, get out, and assume the mating position in the middle of the road.

  Accidents always skyrocketed at this time of year, along with the brawls. It was no wonder that the Race didn’t care to think about the mating season when it finally ended. Males and females simply were not themselves, and they knew it. Who would want to remember a time like this, let alone celebrate the mating urge the way the Big Uglies did? Incomprehensible.

  Atvar coupled with another female out in front of the hotel. Then, sated for the moment, he watched the show all around him. It was interesting for the time being, but he knew he was pheromone-addled. When the pheromones wore off, so would the appeal of the spectacle.

  Overhead, a pair of squazeffi flew by. They were conjoined. A lot of creatures mated at this time of year. That way, the eggs the females laid would hatch in the springtime, when the chance for hatchlings’ survival was highest. Like other flying creatures on Home, they had long necks, beaky mouths full of teeth, and bare, membranous wings with claws on the forward margin. Their hides were a safe, sensible green-brown, not much different from the color of his own skin.

  Tosev 3 had nothing like squazeffi. Similar animals had once existed there, but were millions of years extinct. Instead, the dominant fliers there were gaudy creatures with feathers. Atvar had never got used to birds, not in all the time he’d spent on the Big Uglies’ homeworld. They looked more like something a gifted but strange video-game designer might imagine than anything real or natural.

  He wondered what the Tosevites thought of squazeffi and other proper flying things. If he still remembered to ask after mating season-by no means certain, not with the pheromones addling him-he would have to ask them. In the meantime…

  In the meantime, he ambled back into the hotel. A Big Ugly-the dark brown one named Coffey-walked past him. Like Rabotevs and Hallessi, the Tosevite was oblivious to the pheromones filling the air around him. He said, “I greet you, Exalted Fleetlord,” as if Atvar weren’t thinking more of females than of anything else.

  The fleetlord managed to reply, “And I greet you.” Frank Coffey smelled like a Tosevite-a strange odor to a male of the Race, but not one to which to pay much attention during mating season.

  Then Atvar spotted Trir. The guide saw him at the same time. His crest flared erect. He straightened into a display a male used only at this time of year. Trir might not have intended to mate with him. But the visual cues from his display had the same effect on her as females’ pheromones had on him. She bent into the mating posture. He hurried around behind her and completed the act. After his hiss of pleasure, she hurried away.

  Frank Coffey had paused to watch the brief coupling. “May I ask you a question, Exalted Fleetlord?” he said.

  “Ask.” Still feeling some of the delight he’d known during the mating act, Atvar was inclined to be magnanimous.

  “How does the Race get anything done during mating season?” the wild Big Ugly inquired.

  “That is a good question,” Atvar answered. “Females too old to lay eggs help keep things going, and there are a few males who, poor fellows, do not respond to pheromones. Rabotevs and Hallessi are useful in this role, too, now that we can bring them back here. They have mating seasons of their own, of course, but we do not need to take those into account here as much as we do on their home planets.”

  “I suppose not,” Coffey said, and then, thoughtfully, “I wonder how many intelligent species have mating seasons and how many mate all through the year.”

  “Until we got to know about you Tosevites, we thought all such species were like the Race,” Atvar said. “The first two we came to know certainly were, so we thought it was a rule. Now, though, the tally stands at three species with seasons and one without. I would have to say this sample is too small to be statistically significant.”

  “I would say you are bound to be right.” The Tosevite looked up toward the ceiling-no, up beyond the ceiling, as his next words proved: “I wonder how many intelligent species the galaxy holds.”

  “Who can guess?” Atvar said. “We have probed several stars like Home with no planets at all, and one other with a world that supports life but is even colder and less pleasant for us than Tosev 3: not worth colonizing, in our judgment. One of these days, we will find another inhabited world and conquer it.”

  “Suppose someone else finds the Empire?” Coffey asked.

  Atvar shrugged. “That has not happened in all the history of the Race, and by now our radio signals have spread across most of the galaxy. No one from beyond has come looking for us yet.” He swung his eye turrets toward the wild Big Ugly. “I think we would do better to worry about the species with which we are already acquainted.” Coffey did not presume to disagree with him.

  7

  Most of the time, the Race mocked Tosevite sexuality. For a small stretch of each year, though, males and females here far outd
id the wildest of wild Big Uglies in sheer carnality. Kassquit had seen two mating seasons before this one. They astonished and appalled her. The creatures she’d thought she knew turned into altogether different beings for a little while.

  She had seen mating behavior in the starship orbiting Tosev 3 after the colonization fleet brought females to her homeworld. Some of those females had come into season on their own. Others, ginger-tasters, had had chemical help. That was disruptive enough, as their pheromones sent males all over the ship into heat. But this… this was a world gone mad.

  And it was a madness of which she had no part. The Race scorned Tosevite sexuality, yes. Kassquit knew that only too well. She’d been on the receiving end of such comments more times than she could count back in the starship orbiting Tosev 3. She hadn’t heard so many since waking up on Home. It wasn’t that males and females here were more polite. If anything, the reverse was true. But a lot of them were simply ignorant of how Big Uglies worked.

  For the time being, Kassquit could have done the mocking. Males and females coupled on the streets. They coupled in the middle of the streets. Males brawling over females clawed and bit one another till they bled. Yes, Kassquit could have done the mocking-had she found anyone to listen to her.

  The Race paid no attention. Right now, males and females were too busy joining to worry about anything else. Later, once the females’ pheromones wore off, everyone would try to pretend the mating season had never happened. Kassquit had already seen that. And, once the females’ pheromones had worn off, males and females would go back to disparaging the Tosevites for their lascivious and disgusting habits. She’d seen that, too.

  Now, though, she could talk with the American Big Uglies. They hadn’t come down to the surface of Home when she watched the two previous mating seasons. The server in the hotel refectory was a female. She skittered about as if she’d tasted too much ginger, but Kassquit did not think that was the problem. Unless she was wrong, the female had to hurry to get her work done before some male interrupted her.