Homeward Bound

by Harry Turtledove

  For a moment, Kassquit thought he was serious in spite of that laugh. He sounded exactly like a pompous male grumbling about the Big Uglies. Then she realized he had to be joking, no matter how serious he sounded. That made the jest all the more delicious. She laughed, too, at first the way the Race did and then noisily, like any other Tosevite. She did that only when she thought something was very funny.

  Frank Coffey raised an eyebrow. “Do you disagree with me? How can you possibly disagree with me? I wonder how we Big Uglies can hope to deal with creatures so constantly obsessed with mating.”

  That only made Kassquit laugh harder. “Do you have any idea how much you sound like some kind of self-important fool of a male pontificating about Tosevites?”

  “Why, no,” Coffey said.

  Again, Kassquit needed a couple of heartbeats to be sure he was kidding. Again, the brief doubt made the joke funnier. She got out of her seat and bent into the full posture of respect. “I thank you,” she said.

  “For what?” Now the brown Big Ugly seemed genuinely confused, rather than playing at confusion as he had a little while before.

  “For what?” Kassquit echoed. “I will tell you for what. For puncturing the pretensions of the Race, that is for what.”

  “You are grateful for that?” Coffey asked. Was his surprise here genuine or affected? Kassquit couldn’t tell. The wild Big Ugly went on, “Since you are a citizen of the Empire, I would have thought that you would be angry at me for poking fun at the Race.”

  Kassquit made the negative gesture. “No,” she said, and added an emphatic cough. “The Race can be foolish. The Race can be very foolish. Sometimes they realize it, sometimes they do not. But being a citizen of the Empire is more, much more, than being a member of the Race.”

  “That is not how it has seemed to us Tosevites,” Coffey said.

  “Well, no,” Kassquit admitted. “But that is because of the special circumstances surrounding the occupation of Tosev 3.”

  “Special circumstances?” Now Frank Coffey did the echoing. “I should say so!”

  “I have never denied them,” Kassquit said. “I could not very well, could I? But you will have seen, I think, that the Empire treats all its citizens alike, regardless of their species. And we all have the spirits of Emperors past looking after our spirits when we pass from this world to the next.”

  She looked down for a moment when she mentioned the spirits of Emperors past. Coffey didn’t. None of the wild Big Uglies did. He said, “I will admit you are better at treating all your citizens alike than we are, though we do improve. But you will understand we have different opinions about what happens after death.”

  The Tosevite opinions Kassquit had studied left her convinced they were nothing but superstition. How could a being like a male Big Ugly with preposterous powers have created the entire universe? The idea was ridiculous. And even if such a being had done such a thing, why had he not seen fit to tell the Big Uglies about the Race and the Empire before the conquest fleet arrived? No, the notion fell apart the moment it was examined closely.

  But mocking Tosevite superstitions only hatched hatred and enmity. Kassquit said, “In this case, I think we will have to agree to disagree.”

  “Fair enough,” Coffey replied. “That is an idiom in English. I did not know the Race’s language also used it.”

  For her part, Kassquit was surprised the Big Uglies could come up with such a civilized concept. She did not say that, either, for fear of causing offense. She did say, “You wild Tosevites have proved less savage than many here on Home expected.”

  That set Frank Coffey laughing. “By our standards, we are civilized, you know. We may not be part of the Empire, but we are convinced we deserve to stand alongside it.”

  “Yes, I know you are,” Kassquit replied, which kept her from having to state her own opinion about American convictions.

  Evidently, though, she did not need to, for the wild Big Ugly said, “You do not think we are right.”

  “No, I do not. Home has been unified for a hundred thousand years. The Race has been traveling between the stars for twenty-eight thousand years. When the Race came to Tosev 3, you Tosevites were fighting an enormous war among yourselves. You are still not a unified species. All this being true, how do you presume to claim equality with the Empire?”

  “Because we have won it,” the wild Big Ugly answered, and used an emphatic cough. “I do not care how old the Race is. In America, the question to ask is, what have you done yourself? No one cares what your ancient ancestor did. Here is what we did in the United States: when the Race attacked us without warning, we fought the invaders to a standstill. We won our independence, and we deserve it. You said as much yourself to Trir down by the South Pole. I admired you for your honesty, for I know we are not altogether your folk.”

  “Admired . . . me?” Kassquit wasn’t used to hearing such praise. Home had plants that always turned toward the sun. She turned toward compliments in much the same way. “I thank you. I thank you very much.”

  “You are welcome,” Frank Coffey said. “And I will tell you one other reason why we deserve to stand alongside the Empire.” He waited. Kassquit made the affirmative gesture, urging him to go on. He did: “Because you and I are sitting here in the refectory of a medium-good hotel in Sitneff, on Home, and I, at least, did not come here on a starship the Race built. Is that not reason enough?”

  I am proud of the Empire, Kassquit thought, but the wild Big Uglies have their pride, too, even if it is for smaller achievements. “Perhaps it is—for you, at any rate,” she said. She would not admit the Tosevites’ deeds matched those of the Race. That would have gone too far.

  “All right. I suspect we are also agreeing to disagree here.” Coffey shrugged. “That too is part of diplomacy.”

  “I suppose it is.” Kassquit hesitated, then said, “There are times when I wish I did not have to deal with my own species as if it were made up of aliens. But, to me, it is. I do not know what to do about that.”

  “You have a real problem there,” Frank Coffey said gravely. “I have had some trouble with some part of my own species, because I am dark in a not-empire dominated by pale Tosevites. That was more true when I was young than it is now.” He laughed at himself. “Than it was when I went into cold sleep, I should say. I would expect it to be better still now, but I have no data. And I was never as cut off from my own kind as you are.”

  “No. You have a common language with other American Tosevites, a common set of beliefs, a common history. All I share with Tosevites are my looks and my biochemistry. There are times when I wish we could meet halfway: I could become more like a wild Big Ugly and you wild Tosevites could become more like citizens of the Empire.”

  “We have changed a good deal since the Race came to Tosev 3,” Coffey said. “Maybe we will change more. But maybe the whole Empire—not just you—will need to change some to accommodate us.” The sheer arrogance of that made Kassquit start to flare up. Coffey held up a hand to forestall her. “You know that the Race has done this on Tosev 3. I admit ginger has driven some of the change, but it is no less real on account of that.”

  Males and females of the Race did act differently there from the way they did here on Home. Kassquit had seen that. It wasn’t just ginger, either. On Tosev 3, the Race moved faster than it did here. It had to, to try to keep up with the surging Big Uglies.

  “You may have spoken a truth,” Kassquit said slowly. “That is most interesting.”

  “If you do not mind my saying so, you are most interesting,” Coffey said. “You balance between the Race and us Tosevites. I know you are loyal to the Empire. But have you ever wondered what living as an ordinary Big Ugly would be like?”

  “I should say I have!” Kassquit added an emphatic cough. “I thank you for thinking to ask. I thank you very much. Sometimes, perhaps, biology can more readily lead to empathy than culture can.”

  “Perhaps that is so,” Frank Coffey said.

&
nbsp; Mating season distracted Ttomalss no less than Atvar. If anything, it distracted the psychologist more. He was younger than the fleetlord, and so more able and more inclined to distribute his genes as widely as he could. He knew he should have paid more attention to the wild Big Uglies and to Kassquit, but everything went to the befflem during mating season. The Race understood that. So did the Hallessi and Rabotevs, who had mating seasons of their own. If the Tosevites couldn’t figure it out, well, too bad for them.

  At supper one day, Linda de la Rosa asked Ttomalss, “Our guide will regain her usual disposition after mating season is over?”

  “Yes, yes,” he answered distractedly; pheromones in the air still left him half addled.

  “Well, that is good,” the wild Tosevite said, “because Trir turned into a first-class bitch once it started.” She added an emphatic cough. The key word was not in the language of the Race, but from its tone Ttomalss had no trouble realizing that it was imperfectly complimentary.

  He shrugged. “Hormonal changes can produce mood swings among us. Do you Tosevites know nothing similar?”

  Tom de la Rosa looked up from his zisuili chop in herbs. “Oh, no, Senior Researcher, we are altogether unfamiliar with such things.” He laughed a raucous Tosevite laugh. His mate poked him in the ribs with her elbow. That only made him laugh harder.

  The byplay puzzled Ttomalss. He studied a videotape of it several times. Only when his wits sharpened with the end of the mating season did he figure it out. Kassquit’s mood could swing considerably during her fertility cycle, and swing in a fairly regular way. The alterations were less extreme than the ones the Race went through during mating season, but they were there. (The Race’s physicians never had figured out why Tosevite females bled about once every twenty-eight days. Had that not been universal, they would have thought it pathological.)

  Linda de la Rosa asked, “How much longer will your mating season last? How much longer until we can get down to serious business again?”

  “Or even serious sightseeing?” Tom de la Rosa added. “As things are now, Trir is useless, and I do not suppose any other guide, male or female, would be much better.”

  “About another ten days,” Ttomalss answered. “Already, things are less frenzied than they were when the season began.”

  “If you say so,” Tom de la Rosa replied. Was that agreement or sarcasm? Ttomalss couldn’t tell. Being unable to tell annoyed him.

  He went upstairs to his room. The air there was fairly free of pheromones. He could think, after a fashion. He knew from experience he would have to redo half the work he did at this season of the year. But if he didn’t do anything, he would have even more to catch up on once the mating madness ebbed.

  When he checked his computer for messages and new data, he let out an interested hiss. A report from Senior Researcher Felless had just come in from Tosev 3. Felless had imagined herself an expert on Big Uglies before ever setting foot on their home planet. Once there, she’d promptly got addicted to ginger. She’d mated with Ttomalss, and once, in a scandalous scene, with the Race’s ambassador to the Deutsche and several officials who were visiting him.

  Little by little, she had acquired real expertise on the Big Uglies. Ttomalss noted that she hadn’t been recalled to Home, though. Males and females trusted his judgment more than hers. He wondered how much she resented being stuck on a world whose only redeeming feature for her was a drug.

  Of course, Felless was a contrarian by nature. Not liking a place might help set up a perverse attraction for it in her. And she was truly addicted to ginger. Here on Home, the herb was scarce and, because it was scarce, expensive. Not on Tosev 3. On the Big Uglies’ homeworld, Ttomalss sometimes thought it easier to taste ginger than not to. Felless would have agreed with him; he was sure of that.

  Ginger-taster or not, though, Felless had become a keen observer of the Tosevite scene. Here was her image, with a little static hashing it from the journey across the light-years. She was saying, “I wish we would have brought more scientists with the colonization fleet, but who would have thought we would have needed them? Those we do have here are nearly unanimous in saying the wild Big Uglies have surpassed us in electronics, and are on their way to doing so in physics and the mathematics relating to physics.”

  The camera cut away to a picture of a Tosevite journal, presumably one dealing with some science. Felless’ voice continued in the background: “I am also informed that the problem may be even more severe than was realized until quite recently. Our scientists have not kept close watch on the Big Uglies’ scientific and mathematical publications, not least because the Tosevites use mathematical notation different from ours. Our experts say the Big Uglies’ symbology is for the most part neither better nor worse than ours, simply different. But, because few of our experts have become familiar with their notation, some of their advances were not noted until years after they occurred.”

  “Give me some examples, please,” Ttomalss said, as if Felless could reply at once. Even had he been speaking into a microphone hooked up to a transmitter to Tosev 3, he would have had to wait all the years for his signal to cross between this solar system and Tosev‘s, and then just as long for her answer to come back. He knew that. Maybe the stresses of the mating season were leaving him less rational than usual. Or maybe he had realized that these journal articles amplified what had been in the public press and caught the physicist Pesskrag’s interest even then. Now maybe she would have the chance to learn more about what the Big Uglies really were up to when it came to physics.

  As if listening to him even though she’d spoken years before, Felless did start giving examples. They impressed Ttomalss less than she’d plainly expected they would. Had she claimed the Big Uglies were building weapons systems the Race could not hope to match, he would have been alarmed. So would the governing bureaucrats here on Home, and so would Reffet and Kirel back on Tosev 3.

  Advances in theoretical physics, though? Ttomalss was a psychologist, not a physicist; he wasn’t sure what Felless was talking about half the time. For that matter, she was a psychologist, too. He wondered how well she understood the material that had agitated her.

  Again, she addressed the very point that had concerned him: “Several theoreticians will be submitting their own reports on these topics before long. They are still working to discover all the implications of the new data. They are unanimous, however, that these implications are startling.”

  “If the Big Uglies want to muck around on experiments that will never have any practical use, they are welcome and more than welcome to do just that,” Ttomalss said. “It distracts them from the sort of engineering that could actually prove dangerous to us.”

  When he checked to see if anyone else on Home had evaluated Felless’ latest report, he was amused but not astonished to discover that one male and two females had already submitted reports whose essence was what he’d just said. One of the females made a cautious addition to her report: “Not being familiar with the physical sciences or with Tosevite notation, I am not ideally suited to judge whether Felless’ concerns are justified.”

  Ttomalss called that female and asked, “Do we have anyone here on Home who is familiar with the Tosevites’ notation?”

  She shrugged. “Senior Researcher, I have not the faintest idea. Why would anyone wish to learn such things, though, when our own notation has served us well for as long as Home has been unified and probably longer?”

  “A point,” the psychologist admitted. “Still, at the moment it could be relevant simply in terms of threat evaluation.”

  “That is a truth—of sorts,” the female said. “If, however, there is no threat to evaluate, then the issue becomes irrelevant.” She hung up. Maybe the question did not interest her. Maybe, like Ttomalss, she was still at the tag end of the mating season, and not inclined to take anything too seriously if she didn’t have to.

  At the moment, about the only ones not half addled by the urge to reproduce were the Big Ug
lies. Even in his present state, Ttomalss felt the irony there. One evening at supper, he approached Sam Yeager and said, “I greet you, superior Tosevite. May I ask you a few questions?”

  “And I greet you, Senior Researcher,” the ambassador from the United States replied. “Go ahead and ask. I do not guarantee that I will answer. That depends on the questions. We can both find out.”

  “Truth,” Ttomalss said. “What do you know of theoretical physics and Tosevite mathematical notation?”

  Sam Yeager laughed. “Of theoretical physics, I know nothing. I do not even suspect anything.” He used an emphatic cough to show how very ignorant he was. “Of mathematical notation, I know our numbers and the signs for adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing.” He held up a finger in a gesture the Big Uglies used when they wanted to add something. “Oh, wait. I know the sign for a square root, too, though I have not had to extract one since I got out of school, which is a very long time ago now.”

  “Somehow I do not think this is what concerns our scientists on Tosev 3,” Ttomalss said.

  “Well, what does concern them?” the Big Ugly asked.

  “Possible Tosevite advances in theoretical physics,” Ttomalss answered. “I do not know all the details myself.”

  “I do not know any of them,” Sam Yeager said with what sounded like a certain amount of pride. “I never thought theoretical physics could be important until we had to figure out how to make atomic bombs to use against the Race. Back during the fighting, I was involved in that project, because I was one of the few Tosevites who had learned enough of the Race’s language to interrogate prisoners.”

  “Even if you do not know the details, then, you are aware that these theoretical advances can be important,” Ttomalss said.

  The Tosevite ambassador made the affirmative gesture. “Yes, I know that. I said I knew that. But I also said I have no idea what American physicists are working on back on Tosev 3, and that too is a truth.”