AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I greet you, Senior Researcher.” Felless’ voice was a scratchy parody of the way she usually sounded.
Ttomalss noticed. His eyes turrets went up and down her, noting the way she stood. “You have laid!” he exclaimed.
“Truth,” Felless said. “It is over. It is done.” She amended that: “Until the hatchlings break out of their shells, it is done. Then begins the task of civilizing them, which is never easy.”
“Yes, I know of this, although with a hatchling of a different sort,” Ttomalss said.
“Why, so you do,” Felless said. “In that, you are an unusual male. But now, if you want to keep talking with me, come along to the refectory.” She started that way herself.
“It shall be done.” Ttomalss fell into stride beside her.
“How does it feel to bear the burden of rearing a hatchling?” Felless asked. “Even if Kassquit is a hatchling of a very different sort, you are to be commended for your diligence. On Home, that is the work of females.”
“Kassquit is indeed a hatchling of a different sort,” Ttomalss said, “and she truly may have discovered a male of the Race of a different sort.” He told her more about Regeya, and about the cryptic message he’d had from Security.
“She still thinks he may be a Big Ugly masquerading as a male of the Race?” Felless said. “As I told you before, I find that very hard to believe.”
“The more I think about it, the more plausible I find it,” Ttomalss said. “Underestimating the Tosevites’ cleverness has hurt us countless times before.”
Felless said, “They are what they are. They cannot be what we are. They cannot.” She added an emphatic cough, then continued, “Can you imagine one of these Deutsch males with whom we have to deal carrying off such an imposture for even the time light takes to cross an atomic nucleus? The Reichs minister of justice, for instance-this Sepp Dietrich. I doubt he can even use a computer, let alone pretend he belongs to the Race on one.”
She snorted at the absurdity of the notion. But then she remembered Dietrich’s secretary. That male had spoken the language of the Race well, for a Tosevite. If he could somehow sneak onto the computer network, could he pass himself off as a male of the Race? She made the negative hand gesture. She couldn’t believe it.
Ttomalss said, “Kassquit has had trouble making anyone in authority think Regeya might be a Big Ugly. Investigators believe him more likely to be some sort of swindler, but analysis of his messages shows no attempt to defraud. Real interest in the question is minimal.”
“If the authorities do not believe Regeya is a Tosevite, how can Kassquit persist in opposing them?” Felless said. She was typical of the Race in that she trusted and followed those above her till they gave her some overwhelming reason not to.
“Perhaps, as you said, like calls to like,” Ttomalss suggested.
“I said she wished like called to like,” Felless pointed out.
He thought about it. “Truth: you did,” he admitted.
“Yes, I did,” Felless said. “And now, very loudly, food calls to me.” She hurried on toward the refectory, not caring in the least whether Ttomalss came along.
19
Little by little, Nesseref was getting used to her flat in the new town that had gone up east of the Tosevite hamlet called Jezow. The flat itself boasted all the conveniences she’d enjoyed back on Home. She had access to the Race’s computer network, which put her in touch with all of Tosev 3. Telephone and television service were also as good as they would have been on the world she’d left behind. She could find entertainment programs at the touch of a fingerclaw. They were all recordings, of course, but that mattered little to her. Over the course of a hundred thousand years, the Race had produced so much that one lifetime’s viewing couldn’t give a female even a smattering of it.
Only her furnishings told her she dwelt on Tosev 3. The pieces that had come from Home with the colonization fleet were of the lightest and most austere manufacture, nothing she would have had in her apartment there. The tables and chairs made locally did not look like work the Race would do. Even the ones that weren’t too tall and too large were… not so much wrong but alien in style and decoration. The very grains of the woods were strange, as were the gaudy fabrics the Polish Tosevites reckoned the height of style.
Also strange was the view out her window. It is all far too green, she kept thinking. The trees sprouted great profusions of leaves. Grass and shrubs grew lavishly, far more lavishly than most places on Home. Having rain drum against that window almost every other day also felt unnatural.
Going to the shuttlecraft port was always a relief. The facilities there were full of the Race’s gear, even if Big Uglies had erected them. Taking a shuttlecraft up into orbit was an even greater relief. The craft and the starships they served were pure products of the Race. Aboard them, she could almost forget she wasn’t orbiting Home.
Almost. For one thing, the world beneath her looked different. Waterlogged was the word that most readily came to mind. Those vast expanses of ocean seemed as wrong as the frequent rain. And, for another, the Race had to share orbital space with the Big Uglies. Their mushy voices, chattering in their languages and in hers, crowded the radio bands even worse than their hardware crowded space.
One piece of hardware in particular stood out. “What are the Big Uglies doing?” she asked as she floated weightless at the central docking hub of the 27th Emperor Korfass. “Are they building a starship of their own?”
“Do not be absurd,” answered the male she had come to ferry down to the surface of Tosev 3, a chemical engineer named Warraff. “They cannot hope to fly between the stars. They did not even travel beyond their own atmosphere until after the fighting stopped. That is only the space station of the not-empire called the Confederated-no, excuse me, the United-States.”
“Why is it so large?” Nesseref asked. “I am certain the Tosevites had nothing of that size in orbit when we first came to Tosev 3.”
“No one knows the answer to that,” Warraff replied. “No one of the Race, at any rate. The American Tosevites are doing something peculiar there; I would be the last to deny it. Keep an eye turret on the computer network to stay up with the latest gossip, but bear in mind it is only gossip.”
“I thought you told me it belonged to the United States,” Nesseref said. “Who are the Americans?”
Straightening out that misunderstanding took a little while. Nesseref had paid little attention to the lesser continental mass. She knew about the SSSR and the Reich because Poland lay sandwiched between them. But she’d had only radio contact with U.S. spacefliers and ground stations, and had forgotten those Big Uglies had an alternative name for themselves.
Several officials were waiting for Warraff when she brought him down to the shuttlecraft port outside the new Australian cities; he was, evidently, good at what he did. No one was waiting for Nesseref, no matter how good she was at what she did. She found transportation from the shuttlecraft port to the airfield not far away. Then she had to wait for the next flight to Poland, and then she had to endure the journey halfway round the planet.
By the time she walked into her flat, her body had no idea whether it was supposed to be day or night. Locally, it was late afternoon. She did know that felt wrong. Uncertain whether to eat breakfast or go to sleep, she chose the latter. When she woke up, it was the middle of the night, but she could not go back to sleep no matter how hard she tried.
She felt caged inside the flat. She’d spent too much time inside her shuttlecraft and inside the airplane that had brought her home. She rode the elevator down to the lobby of her building and then strode out into the street. This sort of thing had happened to her after other missions, too. Once more was an annoyance, not a catastrophe.
Few other males or females of the Race were on the street. Nesseref eyed the ones who walked or motored past with a certain amount of wariness, but only a certain amount. The Race was generally more law-abiding than the Big Uglies, and males and fem
ales chosen as colonists were generally law-abiding even by the standards of the Race. Still, every hatching ground held a few addled eggs.
Tosev 3 could do some addling of its own. A male sidled up to Nesseref, saying, “I greet you. How would you like to greet something nice for your tongue?”
