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Felless shrugged. As far as she was concerned, one Big Ugly was very much like another. “Where will you quarter me in the meanwhile?” she asked, a not so subtle hint.
Veffani, fortunately, recognized it for what it was. “One of the secretaries will show you to a visitor’s chamber,” he replied. “You will, of course, want to settle in. The appointment with Himmler is at midmorning; I will see you then. As Tosevites go, the Deutsche are a punctual folk.”
“I shall not delay you,” Felless promised, and she didn’t. The same driver took her and Veffani to the Deutsch not-emperor’s residence so that they arrived just before the appointed time. A couple of tall Tosevites in long black mantlings and high-crowned caps that made them look even taller escorted the ambassador and the researcher into Himmler’s presence. The room in which the Deutsch not-emperor received them was, by Tosevite standards, bare, being ornamented only by a Deutsch hooked-cross banner and by a portrait of a Tosevite whom Felless recognized as Hitler by the peculiar little growth of hair under his snout.
Himmler had a growth of hair there, too, but one of a more common pattern for Big Ugly males. He looked at Veffani and Felless through corrective lenses, then spoke in his gargling language. As promised, the translator used the language of the Race well: “He greets you in a polite and cordial way.”
“Return similar greetings on behalf of my associate and myself,” Veffani said.
“It shall be done,” the translator said.
Himmler listened. Big Uglies had more mobile features than the Race, but he seemed schooled at holding his face still. Veffani said, “You know the SSSR and the United States both accuse the Reich of attacking the colonization fleet.”
“Of course they do,” Himmler said. He was an alien, but Felless thought she heard indifference in his voice. She could not imagine how he could be indifferent till he went on, “What else would they say? If they say anything else, they endanger themselves. I deny it. I have always denied it. What the Reich does, it does not deny. It proclaims.”
Felless knew that held some truth. The ideology of the Deutsche seemed to involve continual boasting. Master Race indeed, she thought scornfully.
Unruffled, Veffani said, “They have evidence for their claims.”
“The usual forgeries?” Yes, Himmler was indifferent, chillingly so. “I have seen this so-called evidence. The U.S. and Soviet claims contradict each other. They cannot both be true. They can both be lies. They are. We have given you much better evidence concerning the Soviet Union.” By better, Felless took him to mean more plausible, not necessarily true.
Veffani took him the same way. The ambassador said, “I have my own evidence that several Deutsch soldiers crossed the border into Poland the other day. They have no right to do this-Poland is still ours. I insist that they be punished.”
“They already have been,” Himmler said. “Details of the punishment will be furnished to you.”
“I also require an apology to the Race,” Veffani said.
“We would not have punished them if we thought they were right,” the Deutsch not-emperor said. “Since we have punished them, we must reckon them wrong. This makes any further apology unnecessary.”
He was logical. He was reasonable. Had he been a male of the Race, he might have been a schoolmaster. He also headed a notempire that specialized in killing off certain groups of Big Uglies living within it for no logical, rational reason the Race had ever been able to find. Even as Veffani conceded that, under the circumstances Himmler had outlined, no apology would be necessary, Felless studied the Tosevite not-emperor. For his kind, he seemed utterly ordinary. Somehow, that made him more alarming, not less.
8
Having composed the document about which she’d been thinking for some time, Kassquit was polishing it when the speaker by the door hissed, announcing that someone outside wanted to come in. “Who is it?” she asked, using her fingerclaw to make the document vanish from her computer screen.
“I: Ttomalss,” came the reply.
“Come in, superior sir,” she said. “You are welcome.” That last was not altogether true, but she couldn’t do anything about it. She intended to present the document to Ttomalss when she finished it, but she didn’t want him seeing it till she did. And how could she work on it while he was here?
“I greet you, Kassquit,” he said as the door slid open to reveal his familiar face and form.
“I greet you, superior sir,” she replied. As she bent into the posture of respect, she realized how glad she was that he did not have Felless with him. No matter how the other researcher might have apologized, she still looked on Kassquit as half alien, half animal. When she was with Ttomalss, he seemed to look on Kassquit the same way. When he visited her by himself, though, he came closer to treating her as if she were a female of the Race in all fashions.
Whatever Ttomalss wanted now, he looked to be having some difficulty coming to the point. He said, “I am glad you have grown out of hatchlinghood and into something approaching maturity.”
“I thank you, superior sir,” Kassquit said gravely. “I am also glad of this as it makes me less of a burden for you and more readily able to care for myself.”
“You are gracious, Kassquit,” Ttomalss said.
“I know I was more difficult to raise than a proper hatchling would have been, superior sir, and I applaud your patience in caring for me as you have,” Kassquit said. “I cannot help it if I was not so ready to begin life on my own as a hatchling of the Race would have been.”
Ttomalss shrugged. “Now that the experience is behind me, I can truthfully say not all of it was negative. You must know that, while you were more dependent than a hatchling of the Race, you also acquired language more readily than such a hatchling would be likely to do. Once I could communicate with you, matters did improve considerably.”
“I am glad to hear this,” Kassquit said, one of the larger understatements of her young life. Usually, comparisons between the way she looked or behaved and the standards of the Race were to her disadvantage. Praise fell on her like rain on a desert that rarely saw it: a figure applicable to large stretches of Home.
“It is the truth,” Ttomalss said. “And it is also the truth, as I mentioned before, that you are now mature, or nearly so.”
He was uncomfortable. Something was wrong. For the life of her, Kassquit couldn’t tell what. Sometimes the direct approach worked well. She tried it now: “What is troubling you, superior sir? If it is anything with which I can help, you know that is my privilege as well as my duty.”
It didn’t work, not this time. It only made Ttomalss even twitchier than before. He strode back and forth across the chamber, his toeclaws clicking off metal, his tailstump twitching in agitation. At last, with what looked like a distinct effort of will, he stopped and cautiously turned one eye turret toward her. He said, “Are you aware that this chamber can be illuminated with infrared light, light to which your eyes-and, to a lesser degree, mine as well-do not respond?”
Kassquit stared. She could not imagine a greater irrelevancy. Puzzled still, she said, “I did not know such a thing could be done in this chamber, no. I did know it could be done, speaking more generally. Landcruisers, for example, can see targets by these infrared rays even in complete darkness.”
“Yes, that is so,” Ttomalss agreed. He started pacing again. His tailstump twitched harder than ever. “That is precisely one of the purposes for which infrared rays are useful: seeing in what would otherwise be darkness, I mean.”
“Well, of course,” Kassquit said, still trying to understand why he was so agitated. Then she grew agitated herself, remembering the last time he and Felless had visited her together, and what she’d been doing when they visited her. “You have been observing me in the dark,” she whispered.
Blood rushed to her cheeks and ears and scalp, as it did when she was mortified. He had seen her when she evoked pleasure by stroking her private parts. Of course she was mortified. What else
could she be? By pleasuring herself thus, she proved beyond any hope of contradiction that she was a Big Ugly and not anything even close to a proper female of the Race.
She looked up at the ceiling in shame. “I did not think you knew, superior sir,” she said, whispering still.
“I know,” Ttomalss said. “I have known for some time. I am not angry, Kassquit.” He used an emphatic cough to stress that. “I am not even disappointed in you. Please understand that. You are not only a product of your environment. You are also a product of your biology. If it were otherwise, you would now be a female of the Race, not… what you are.”
“Why do you tell me this?” Kassquit asked. “Could you not have observed in silence and discretion?”
“I could have, yes,” Ttomalss said. “I did, in fact. But now choices must be made: not this instant, you understand-we are not hasty, after all, as the wild Tosevites are-but consideration must nonetheless begin.”
