Down to Earth

by Harry Turtledove

  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-ski
nned 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 whos
e 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.