Second Contact c-1

by Harry Turtledove

  “I thank you, superior sir,” Nesseref said in some surprise. “That is generous of you.” It was more generous than she’d expected him to be.

  “Anyone who tries to hurry things on Tosev 3 is doomed to disappointment, just as anyone with the purple itch is doomed to scratching,” Bunim replied. “I am given to understand the problem is worse elsewhere on Tosev 3 than here.”

  “Emperor preserve me from those regions, then,” the shuttlecraft pilot said.

  “Indeed,” Bunim said. “But you must also remember that the Big Uglies, when moving to their own purposes rather than to ours, are capable of bursts of speed we could not hope to match. Thus their acquisition of industrial technology in a mere handful of years. Thus also their extremely rapid growth in technical ability both while fighting the conquest fleet and since the fighting stopped.”

  “I do remember this,” Nesseref said. “I do not understand it, but I remember it. My opinion, for whatever it may be worth to you, is that they have more technical ability than they know what to do with. If they had more social stability, they might not advance so fast, but they would be better off.”

  “I agree with you,” Bunim said. “They were already working on explosive-metal weapons when the conquest fleet arrived. By now, the Deutsche and the Americans, say, might already have fought a nuclear war. Had we come in the aftermath of such a fight, we would only have had to pick up the pieces.” He sighed. “It would have been much easier.”

  “For the conquest fleet, certainly,” Nesseref said. “The colonization fleet would have had a harder time dealing with a wrecked planet, though.”

  “Truth.” Bunim sighed again. “That is one reason we did not use many explosive-metal bombs. Even so, however, there are times when I think it would have been worth it.” He broke the connection, leaving Nesseref standing alone in the chilly rain.

  The science officer at the Race’s embassy in Nuremberg was a male named Slomikk. Ttomalss had had occasional questions for him since coming down to the surface of Tosev 3, and had generally been pleased with his replies. He seemed to have more insight into the way the Tosevites thought than was common among the Race.

  Today, though, Ttomalss came to him with a query of a different sort: “How much danger am I in from the abnormal amount of background radiation in this part of Deutschland?”

  Slomikk swung both eye turrets toward the researcher into Tosevite psychology. “How did you learn of this increase in radiation?” he inquired. “You are correct-it does exist-but we do not go out of our way to advertise it.”

  “I can see that you would not,” Ttomalss said with considerable warmth. “I stumbled upon it by accident; I was investigating the effects of local climate on agriculture, and the next map to leap onto the screen was one of radiation distribution as related to wind patterns.”

  “I… see,” Slomikk said slowly. “Well, that is one link I shall have to remove from the computer system.”

  “Is that all you have to say about it?” Ttomalss demanded, more indignantly than before. “Can you do nothing more than conceal the evidence from those who are compelled to serve here?”

  “What else would you recommend, Senior Researcher?” the science officer said. “I cannot make the radiation disappear, and the Deutsche insist on placing their center here. Their former center, Berlin, was during an early stage of the fighting a great deal more radioactive than this.”

  “I am aware of that, of course,” Ttomalss said, “as I am aware that we also bombed the Deutsch city of Munchen, south of here. But both those events took place during the fighting; the radioactivity from them should have subsided by now, should it not?”

  “Indeed it should have, were that the only radioactivity we were discussing,” Slomikk said. “But the Deutsche, back in the days when they were first experimenting with explosive metals, built a pile with inadequate moderators, or perhaps with no moderators at all. As you would expect, it melted down, and its radioactivity has not declined to any great degree in the years since. It is still too strong for anyone, even condemned criminals, to go in and clean it out, and it is the source of the increased radioactivity you noticed in this area.”

  “A pile without moderators?” Ttomalss shuddered at the mere idea. “Big Uglies are mad. What prompted them to do such a thing?”

  “As best I can gather-you will understand, the Deutsche are not forthcoming about this-the answers are, desperate haste and complete inexperience,” Slomikk replied. “From our point of view, it is unfortunate that they acquired technical proficiency so fast.”

  “Yes.” Ttomalss used the affirmative hand gesture. “Better by far for us had they succeeded in rendering a good stretch of their not-empire completely uninhabitable rather than…” He returned to the question that had brought him to Slomikk in the first place: “How dangerous is this environment, anyhow?”

  “Risk of malignancy is certainly higher than it would be had the Deutsche not acted with such flagrant stupidity,” Slomikk said. “That does not mean it is extremely high. Among the Deutsche of Nuremberg, the incidence of neoplasms is about thirty percent higher than it is in areas with lower radiation levels. Closer to the site of the meltdown, that increases considerably.”

  “How do you know this?” Ttomalss answered his own question: “You have access to Deutsch records, then?”

  “Some of them,” Slomikk said. “Frustratingly, only some. Many of their records remain handwritten or produced on machines that are not electronic. We have to examine them physically, which is not easy for us to do without revealing ourselves. And working through Tosevite intermediaries to gain access to what these records contain is not everything it might be, either, for there is always the question of whom a Big Ugly truly works for.”

  “So there is,” Ttomalss agreed. “Tosevites have played us false so many times in the past, we have every reason to be alert to treachery now.”

  Slomikk was the sort of methodical male who, once he got started on an explanation, kept right on no matter what the male to whom he was explaining said: “And not all the Deutsch security systems for the data they do have in electronic format are easy to penetrate. Big Uglies worry about espionage far more than the Race has done since the formative days of our species.”

  “With all the competing sovereignties among the Big Uglies, they have needed such fears,” Ttomalss observed. “This is an area where unity has not given us strength.”

  “They have even entrapped us a few times,” Slomikk said, “defending data with all their strength, making us exert great effort and ingenuity to win them. Then, when we had done so, we eventually discovered the data were thoroughly falsified.” He let out an irate hiss.

  “I have had firsthand experience of Tosevite treachery,” Ttomalss said. “I can well believe these Big Uglies could be as devious as you say. Do you suppose they could have penetrated any of our data networks without our knowing it?”

  “That is not my area of expertise, but I would doubt it very much,” Slomikk said. “You would be better advised seeking such answers from the head of Security here. But I, for my part, am certain the Deutsche are too ignorant to attempt, let alone succeed at, electronic espionage of their own.”

  “I hope you are right,” Ttomalss said, “but one of the things I have seen again and again is that the Tosevites encourage us to underestimate them, which enables them to prepare for and carry out outrageous deeds under our snouts. They have given us so many large, unpleasant surprises that successful espionage here would be only a small, unpleasant surprise.”

  “Surprises from espionage are not always small.” Slomikk paused thoughtfully. “Perhaps it would be wise if one of us did mention this matter to the head of Security here. I will take care of it, if you like.”

  The science officer’s voice was casual-too casual. I will take the credit if you turn out to be right was what he meant. Ttomalss should have got angry. He knew that. He couldn’t make himself do it. The embassy to the Reich was not his
permanent station. He didn’t much care what the males and females here thought of him, and their opinions would have no large effect on his career.

  “Go ahead,” he said, as if it were a small matter. To him, it was. If it wasn’t to Slomikk, fine.

  “I thank you.” Slomikk scribbled a note to himself.

  “You are wise not to note this problem electronically,” Ttomalss observed. Slomikk did his best to look wise. What he did look like was a male who had reached for a pen without the least concern for security, with only the thought that it would be the quickest way to set down the idea and make sure he did not forget it.

  “If you are right,” he said, “it will be good that we find out about it.”

  “Truth,” Ttomalss said. If he was right, the embassy’s security officer would end up wishing he’d never been hatched. Thinking about hatchlings put Ttomalss on a new line of thought: “Is increased background radiation more likely to affect eggs and hatchlings than adults? We have several gravid females here in the embassy, you know.”

  “Obviously, there is more concern where cell growth is rapid,” Slomikk said. “We have few data to suggest how urgent that concern should be. We, unlike the Big Uglies, have been sensible enough to minimize exposure of the vulnerable to radiation.” He hesitated. “Or we have until now, at any rate. I may have to discuss with Veffani the wisdom of moving gravid females out of this area until such time as they have laid their eggs.”

  One more notion you did not think of, but for which you are willing to take the credit, Ttomalss thought. Again, he had trouble being as angry as he might have. The only gravid female he knew well was Felless. He wondered whether he or Veffani had fertilized the eggs she bore.

  Had he been a Tosevite, the question would have been of enormous importance to him. All his own research and most of the Tosevite literature he’d studied convinced him of the truth of that. Back on Home, the question of paternity would scarcely have arisen. During her season, Felless would have mated with any number of males. Here on Tosev 3, Ttomalss found himself in the middle: more than curious, less than concerned.

  “You seem to have a knack for posing stimulating questions, Senior Researcher,” Slomikk said. “You are to be congratulated.”

  “I thank you,” Ttomalss said, in what he feared were abstracted tones. He’d asked himself an interesting question, and one for which he had as yet no good answer. Ginger seemed certain to make more females here on Tosev 3 become gravid after mating with a smaller number of males, or perhaps with only one, than happened back on Home. There were more circumstances in which that could make important who the father was: if he’d given the female ginger to induce her to mate with him, for instance, or if she’d taken credit from his account in exchange for tasting ginger and becoming sexually receptive.

  Ttomalss sighed. “This world is doing its best to change us, no matter how much we are in the habit of resisting change.”

  “I agree. You are not the first to raise this notion, of course,” Slomikk said. “Even creating embassies and reviving the title of ambassador was new and strange, for the Race has needed neither embassies nor ambassadors these past tens of thousands of years.”

  “Forcing us to revive the old is one thing,” Ttomalss said. “It is, in itself, not a small thing. But we have had to respond to so much that is new both from the Tosevites and among ourselves, that the revivals pale to insignificance by comparison.”

  “Again, I agree. I wish I could disagree. Too much change is not good for a male, or for a female, either,” the science officer said. “Change swift enough to be perceptible in the course of an individual’s lifetime is too much. This is one of the reasons the Race so seldom goes conquering: to spare the large majority of individuals from ever experiencing the stress of drastic change. It is not the only reason, but it is not the least of reasons. Indeed, we have endured such stress here on Tosev 3 better than I thought we could.”

  “Now there is an interesting observation,” Ttomalss said. “The Big Uglies have been in the throes of drastic change for generations. Do you suppose that is one of the reasons they are so strange?”

  “I do not know, but it strikes me as something worth investigating,” Slomikk said. “You would, I suppose, have to compare their present behavior with the way they acted before change was a daily occurrence in their lives.”

  “So I would,” Ttomalss said. “As best I can tell, they have always behaved badly. Whether they have behaved badly in different ways of late… may be worth learning.”

  Thanks to his Army security clearance and his connections with Lizard expatriates and exiles, Sam Yeager had access to as much sensitive computer data as any but a handful of men. Some of those data were on the USA’s computers, others on those that belonged to the Race. The only place where the separate streams flowed together was inside his head. That suited him fine.

  Every time he had to switch from a computer built by the Race to one made in the USA, he was reminded of the gap in both technology and engineering that still existed. Apples and oranges, he thought. The Lizards have had a lot more practice at this than we have.

  He shrugged. Back before the Lizards came, he’d never imagined one computer would fit on his desk, let alone two. Back before the Lizards came, he’d scarcely imagined computing machines at all. If he had, he’d imagined them the size of a building and half mechanical, half electronic. That was about as far as science-fiction writers had seen by 1942.

  Putting on artificial fingerclaws to deal with the keyboard of the Lizard machine, he grinned. He could see a lot further now. Had he really been a Lizard, he could have done most of his work on their machine by talking to it rather than typing. Its voice-recognition system, though, wasn’t set up to deal with a human’s accent. Voice commands sometimes went spectacularly wrong, so he avoided them. The computer didn’t care who typed into it.

  Because he was an expert on the Race, he was one of the few humans in the independent countries allowed even limited access to the Lizards’ vast data network; in his case, the connection was wired through the Race’s consulate in downtown Los Angeles. He admired that network tremendously, but sometimes-often-felt going through it for information made looking for a needle in a haystack seem simple by comparison.

  That was especially true because he had access to more of the data network than the Lizards at the consulate or back in Cairo thought he did. Some of his friends among the former prisoners who’d decided to stay in the United States after the fighting ended were clever with computers. They’d forked-their idiom-the programs the consulate had given him to let him range more widely than Lizard officialdom thought it was permitting. They reckoned that a good joke on their own kind. Yeager reckoned it highly useful.

  The Lizards had never stopped discussing the attack on the colonization fleet. The topic filled several fora-the best translation Sam could make. He wasn’t supposed to be able to read what was said in those fora, but he could. That topic interested him, too. If he could pin the crime on the Greater German Reich or the Soviet Union, the Lizards would punish the guilty party-preferably with a two-by-four-and life could finally get back to normal.

  A name-Vesstil-caught his notice. “I knew a Vesstil once upon a time,” he muttered, and noted down the number that accompanied the Lizard’s name. Then he had to take off the fingerclaw so he could use the American-made computer that took up twice as much desk space as its Lizardly counterpart. It didn’t run as well, either, despite using technology borrowed-or, more accurately, stolen-from the Race. But one of the things that computer stored was a list of all the Lizard prisoners the United States had captured.

  Sure enough, there was Vesstil’s name. And, sure enough, the number attached to it matched that of the Lizard now holding forth about the attack on the colonization fleet. This was the shuttlecraft pilot who’d flown Straha down to the USA when the shiplord decided to defect. Yeager remembered that he had repatriated himself not long after the fighting ended.


  It is unlike the Big Uglies to keep secrets so well, Vesstil had written. Even with their safety hanging in the balance, it is unlike them. This argues something unusual even for Tosevites went on in relation to this attack.

  Another Lizard had answered, Interesting speculation, but useless to us, and the discussion had drifted on to other things.

  “I’m not sure it is useless,” Sam muttered, deliberately using English to get himself out of the chattering among the Lizards in which he’d been immersed. In fact, he’d been collecting examples of unusual actions by the Germans and Russians in the hope that one of them would lead to more clues he could use to pin down the guilty party. It hadn’t happened yet, and didn’t look as if it would happen any time soon, but that didn’t mean he’d abandoned hope.

  Yeager also collected examples of strange American behavior: those were easier for him to come by and let him hone his analytical skills, though they had nothing to do with the colonization fleet. He wondered why one of the spacemen who flew out of Kitty Hawk had got a black mark by his name for getting too curious about the growing U.S. space station.

  He suspected he could have found out with a couple of phone calls, but playing detective through the American computer network gave him more practice at manipulating such creations, so he went at it that way. Back in the bush leagues, he’d always asked for curves from the batting-practice pitchers because he’d had more trouble hitting them than fastballs.

  He grumbled as he waited for the human-made computer to spit out the information he needed. It was slower than the one the Lizards made, and the U.S. computer network, a creation of the past five years, far smaller and more fragmented than the one the Lizards took for granted.

  As things turned out, he had to make the phone calls anyhow, because the network let him down. He really did have U.S. security clearances-unlike the ones the Lizards had flanged up for him for a lark-but they didn’t seem to be high enough to take him where he needed to go. They should have been, or so he thought, but they weren’t.