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“I understand now,” the driver said. “You are visiting old friends.”
“In a manner of speaking, yes,” Straha said. But he had recently found an English word that came closer to what he was doing tonight: slumming. During his days as shiplord, he would never have associated with ordinary males like these two, and they would never have presumed to ask him to associate with them. Association at Hot Springs was surely one of the reasons they did so presume now, but the pervasive and corrosive American doctrine of equality was as surely another.
He did not hold to the doctrine of equality. What was civilization itself, if not a graduated structure of inequalities? But many prisoners who had elected to stay among the American Tosevites had become infected by their foolish politics. That made sense to Straha. They had been low, so naturally they wanted to consider themselves on the same plane as those who had been above them.
“Here we are, superior sir,” the driver said as the motorcar squeaked to a stop just past a rather garish yellow house with a low hedge out in front of it. Decorative plants were used back on Home, too, but not in such profusion. The driver nodded to Straha. “I shall stay out here and keep an eye on things.” He was not just a driver, of course. He carried a considerable assortment of lethal hardware, and knew how to use all of it.
“If you must smoke cigarettes while you wait for me, have the courtesy to step out of the motorcar before you do so,” Straha said. He and the Big Ugly had had previous disagreements on that subject.
Now, though, the driver yipped out Tosevite laughter. “It shall be done, Shiplord,” he said. “And do enjoy the ginger I am sure a lot of the males there will be tasting.” He laughed again. Straha headed for the house, feeling oddly punctured.
One of the two males who shared the house folded himself into the posture of respect in the doorway. “I greet you, Shiplord,” he said. “You honor our home by your presence.”
“I greet you, Ristin,” Straha replied. Ristin wore red-white-and-blue body paint of no pattern authorized by the Race. Sam Yeager had devised it in Hot Springs to designate prisoners of the United States. It still scandalized Straha, even after so many years. To Ristin, though, it symbolized his abandonment of the Race and entrance into the world of the Tosevites.
“I trust all is well with you, Shiplord?” Ristin asked with perhaps a tenth of the deference an infantrymale should have given an officer of Straha’s rank.
“As well as it can be, yes,” Straha said.
“Come in, then, and use our house as your own,” Ristin told him. “We have food. We have alcohol, in several flavors. We have ginger, for those who care for it.” He and the male with whom he shared the house had never got the habit. Straha did not know whether to feel scorn or pity or envy at that.
“I thank you,” Straha said, and went inside. As in many houses built by Tosevites, he felt a little too small. The ceiling was too high, as were the counters in the kitchen. Even the light switches-aside from being a strange shape-were set higher in the wall than he would have had to reach back on Home.
Music blared out of a playing machine in the front room. It was not the music of the Race, but some Tosevite tune. When Straha turned an eye turret toward the player, he discovered it was also of Tosevite manufacture. Instead of using a skelkwank light to release the information digitally stored on a small disk, the player had a stylus that rode the grooves of a large platter-and, with every playing, degraded them a little, so the platter eventually became unusable. That was like the Big Uglies, Straha thought-they had no consideration for the long term.
Straha had no use for most Tosevite music, though the Big Ugly called Bach sometimes created patterns he found interesting. This was not Bach. It was, in his view, hardly music at all, even by Tosevite standards. It was full of crashes and horns-not the horns with which the Big Uglies made music, but the ones they used as warning devices on motorcars-and other absurdities.
Through the cacophonous din, a singer howled in English:
“When the fleetlord say, ‘We’ll rule this world from space,’
We-hiss, hiss-right in the fleetlord’s face.
The fleetlord thinks the Earth is for the Race.
We-hiss, hiss-right in the fleetlord’s face.”
The hisses did not come from a Big Ugly’s throat. They sounded more as if they were made by pouring water onto red-hot metal. That would have fit in well with the other strange noises coming out of the playing machine.
Several males stood in front of the player. Their mouths hung wide open. They thought the recording was the funniest thing they’d ever heard. Straha considered. It was barbaric, it was crude, it was rude-and it was aimed at Atvar. That made up Straha’s mind for him: he decided the recording was pretty funny, too.
“I greet you, Shiplord.” That was Ullhass, the male with whom Ristin shared his home. Like his comrade, he wore U.S. prisoner-of-war body paint. Maybe he found that funny, in the same sort of way the Tosevite song was funny. That was as close as Straha had ever come to understanding why these two males preferred U.S. body paint to that of the Race.
“I greet you, Ullhass.” Straha took pride in keeping his own ornate body paint touched up, even though he would never again command the 206th Emperor Yower or any other ship of the Race. He had made sure of that.
“Help yourself to anything that suits you, Shiplord,” Ullhass said, much as Ristin had at the entrance. “Plenty to eat, plenty to drink, plenty to taste. Plenty of gossip, too. I am glad you decided to join us. We are pleased to see you. You do not come among your own kind often enough.”
“I am here.” Straha let it go at that. These former captives who had happily settled into Tosevite society and who had one another for company were hardly more his own kind than were the Big Uglies. Because they had been captured, the Race readily forgave them. Many of them had traveled back and forth between the United States and areas of Tosev 3 the Race ruled.
Straha had not. He would not. He could not. The Race had made it very plain that he was liable to arrest if he ever left the USA. The leaders of the local not-empire had also made it very plain they did not want him to leave. Just as he knew too much about the Race, so he also knew too much about them.
He went into the kitchen, took some ham and some potato chips-as long as he was here, he would enjoy himself-and poured some clear spirits. The Big Uglies flavored a lot of their alcohol with things most males of the Race found highly unpleasant-burnt wood and tree berries were a couple of their favorites-but they also distilled it without flavorings. That Straha could drink without qualms, and he did.
A ginger jar sat on the high counter. Anyone who wanted a taste could have one, or more than one. Later, Straha told himself. Had he told himself no, he would have known he was lying. Later was easier to deal with.
Skittering in, a male almost bumped into Straha. “Sorry, friend,” he said as he spooned some ginger out into the palm of his hand. Then one of his eye turrets swung toward Straha, taking in his complex swirls of paint. The other male gave him respect. “Uh, sorry, Shiplord.”
“It is all right,” Straha said, and the other male tasted the ginger he’d taken. Seeing his pleasure made Straha abruptly decide later had become now. After a good-sized taste of his own, even exile seemed more palatable than it had. But, through the exaltation, he knew it would not last.
“Did I hear true, Shiplord?” the other male asked. “Did you tell one of those Big Uglies you thought this not-empire had shot up the colonization fleet?” Without waiting for an answer, he opened his mouth to laugh. “That is even funnier than Spike Jones.” Seeing Straha’s incomprehension, he added, “The Tosevite with the silly song.”
“Oh,” Straha said, and then, wary as usual, asked, “How did you hear of that? I know it never appeared in a newspaper.”
“That Big Ugly male who interviewed you-Herter, is that the name? — spoke with me a little later,” the other male replied. “He talked about the way you yanked his tailstump.
He thought it was funny, too, once he realized you did not mean it.”
“What I did not realize was that he was ready to print it,” Straha said. “The Big Uglies in this not-empire carry freedom to the point of license.”
Several other males had heard the story of Straha’s misadventure with the reporter, too. That let him have a more entertaining time at the gathering than he’d expected. Even males who used English as readily as their own original speech would laugh at the follies of Tosevites.
