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“Me, too,” Herter said with an emphatic cough.
“I believe you,” Straha said. He wondered what sort of progress the Race’s scientists had made since his defection toward unraveling the connection between the Big Uglies’ sexual patterns and their society. Signals intercepts and conversations with other defectors and prisoners who had stayed in the USA did not tell him everything he wanted to know. He asked, “Have you any further questions?”
“Shiplord, I have not,” the reporter answered. “And if I did, how would I know you were telling the truth?”
Straha’s mouth fell open. “How would you know?” he echoed. “You would not. That is part of the risk you run when you speak with me.”
To his surprise, Calvin Herter let out several yips of barking Big Ugly laughter. “Shiplord, we will make a Tosevite of you yet,” he said. Straha hung up in some indignation. The reporter had no business insulting him that way.
Kassquit put on the artificial fingerclaws that made handling the Race’s equipment so much easier for her. She turned on the computer terminal in her chamber, then turned off the overhead light. Sitting there in the darkness, her own body hidden from her eyes, she could pretend for a while that she was a female of the Race like any other female of the Race.
News bulletins told her the Race still did not know which Tosevite faction had dared raise its hand against the ships of the colonization fleet. “Punish them all,” Kassquit whispered fiercely. “They all deserve it. Of course they deserve it. They are Big Uglies.”
Her hands folded into fists in her anger at the natives of Tosev 3. As they did so, the artificial fingerclaws poked the soft, smooth flesh of her palms. She let out a long, misery-filled sigh. Even in the darkness, she could not escape what she was. Her flesh was the flesh of the natives of the world below.
“I cannot help that,” she said in the language of the Race, the only language she knew. “I may be flesh of their flesh, but I am not spirit of their spirit. When they die, they will be gone. They will be gone forever. When I die, spirits of Emperors past will cherish me.”
She cast down her eyes in reverence for the Emperors who still watched over the Race, even though so many were tens of millennia dead. She also dared hope her spirit, when at last it was freed from the unfortunate form it bore, would resemble those of other females of the Race. Even if this flesh was not what it should be, surely no one and nothing could condemn her to be different forever.
She had sometimes thought of ending her life, to escape the prison of the body she was forced to wear. But she knew her existence helped the Race learn more about the perfidious Tosevites. If she ended it prematurely, she was all too likely to forfeit the good opinion of Emperors past. She dared not take the risk. If she were to be no more than a Big Ugly even after she was dead… how could she be expected to endure such a misfortune throughout eternity?
Of itself, her right hand strayed toward the joining of her legs. She noticed only when one of those fingerclaws scraped the skin of her inner thigh. She took the fingerclaws off that hand. The sole refuge she had from a difficult world was the sensation she could evoke from her Tosevite body.
But before she was well begun, the speaker beside her closed door emitted a hiss, the signal the Race used when someone wanted to enter. She jerked her hand away and flipped on the lights. “Who is it?” she asked, removing the fingerclaws from her left hand as well.
“Ttomalss,” came the answer, as she had expected. He did do his best to treat her as if she were a proper part of the Race, for which she respected and admired him hardly less than she did the Emperor back on Home. When she was a hatchling, he had come and gone as he pleased. Now that she approached adulthood, though, he used her with all due courtesy: “May I enter?”
“Of course,” she answered, and put one fingerclaw back on to touch the control that slid the door open. She folded herself into the posture of respect. “I greet you, superior sir.” As he did not usually do, Ttomalss had someone with him. Kassquit remained in the posture of respect. “And I greet you as well, superior female.”
“I greet you, Kassquit,” Felless said. “I greet you indeed. It is good to see you again. You will be very valuable to my investigations.”
“I am glad to hear it, Senior Researcher,” Kassquit replied. “Being useful to the Race is my goal and my purpose in life.”
Felless turned both eye turrets toward Ttomalss. “Truly, she speaks the language as well as one could expect a Tosevite to do,” she said, “and you have trained her well in the subordination due her superiors.”
Kassquit hid her anger. She did not like the way Felless talked about her as if she were not there, or as if she were too stupid to understand anything that was said about her. She glanced toward Ttomalss-he was not so far away from Felless that she had to embarrass herself by turning her whole head to do it-hoping he would reprove the researcher fresh from Home.
He said, “I thank you, Senior Researcher. The effort involved has been considerable, but I agree that the result has been worthwhile.”
That was praise for Kassquit, if she chose to take it the right way. She was not inclined to take it the right way, not now. She did not want Ttomalss, who had raised her from earliest hatchlinghood, to speak of her as if she were only an experimental animal. He had always been her buffer, the one who eased the strain between her and other members of the Race.
Was that what he was doing now? Or did he really think of her as nothing more than a creature he had taught to imitate some of the ways of the Race? Did that not betray the bond between superiors and subordinates, the bond on account of which superiors deserved deference?
Oblivious to her annoyance, oblivious to her worries, Ttomalss pointed to the computer screen and said to Felless, “As you see, she takes a keen interest in the events of the day.”
Kassquit coughed, trying to remind Ttomalss and Felless that she was there, that they were, in fact, standing in her chamber. Neither of them paid any attention to her. “And what is her perspective on these events?” Felless asked Ttomalss.
She might have asked Kassquit. She did not. Ttomalss might have let Kassquit speak for herself. He did not. He answered for her: “Why, the perspective of a female of the Race, of course.”
“Not the perspective of her own kind in any way?” Felless said. “How interesting. What an excellent job you have done.”
“I thank you, Senior Researcher,” Ttomalss said. Kassquit recognized the tones of a male seeking favor.
At last, Felless deigned to notice her again. “Since you have been studying the events of the day, what is your view on which band of Tosevites carried out this murderous attack against us?”
“My view, superior female, is that it matters very little, because all the Tosevite not-empires are bloodthirsty and murderous,” Kassquit replied. “My view is that they should all be chastised, no matter which of them actually did it. That would discourage them from doing such a thing again.” She eyed Felless with something less than warmth. “Only luck that your ship was not one of those targeted.” By her tone, she meant, Only bad luck.
Felless did not read that tone accurately. “Only luck, yes,” she agreed. “We are too vulnerable
to these bloodthirsty maniacs, as you said; far too vulnerable.”
Thanks to his greater experience with her, Ttomalss did recognize the tone. After a series of splutters, he said, “Indeed. It is most fortunate.”
Still feeling irritable, Kassquit eyed Felless and asked, “Superior female, why did you seek my opinion of what the Tosevites have done, when I have never met a Big Ugly and so can have only limited knowledge of the differences, if any, among their various groups?”
Again, Felless was slower on the uptake than she might have been. She began, “But you are a-”
“I am as much a female of the Race as I can possibly be,” Kassquit broke in. “This is, I daresay, more than certain other individuals can claim.”
Now Felless could not ignore the insult. Neither could Ttomalss, who said, “Kassquit…” in warning tones he had not used since she was a hatchling.
“What?” she flung back at him. Mortifyingly, her eyes began to fill with moisture, an emotional response built into her Tosevite body but alien to the Race. Sometimes the water would even spill down her face. By blinking rapidly-all she could do, since she had no nictitating membranes-she managed to keep that from happening now, though her nasal passages began to fill with mucus. “If I cannot receive my due from this female, if I cannot receive my due from you, from whom shall I receive it? The fleetlord?”
She had not been guilty of such an outburst since she was a hatchling. Back then, her eruptions had been pure emotion. This one had logic behind it, too. Ttomalss and Felless both stared at her in astonishment. At last, Felless said, “I think I may have been guilty of several false assumptions here. I apologize, Kassquit. You are more one of us and less a Tosevite than I had believed.”
“Ah,” Ttomalss said, finally understanding. “Yes, Kassquit is indeed as much a female of the Race as she can be.”
