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That got her a few seconds of silence, and then Pierre’s voice, as full of suspicion as the woman’s had been the first time Monique spoke to her: “Hello, little sister. What nonsense is this about an SS man? Is it the fellow who wanted to be your boyfriend?”
“Yes.” Monique’s face heated. She thrust the handset at Kuhn. “Here.”
“Thank you.” He took it with complete aplomb. “Bonjour, Dutourd. I just thought you ought to know that ginger is a genuine aphrodisiac for female Lizards. They didn’t like the trade before. Now they have an even bigger reason to hate it. If they come after you-when they come after you-we won’t lift a finger to stop them, not unless we get some cooperation on your end.”
He played the game well. Monique already knew that. Now she saw it again. She wondered how much difference it would make to her brother. Not much, she hoped. If Pierre didn’t play this game well, he wouldn’t have been able to stay in business so long himself.
He said something. Monique could hear his voice coming out of the telephone, but not the words. Dieter Kuhn obviously heard the words. “I think you are being an optimist,” he replied. “I think, in fact, you are being a fool. As I said, if you do not cooperate with us, we shall not cooperate with you. Au revoir. ” He hung up, then turned to Monique. “Your brother is stubborn. He will live to regret it-for how long, I cannot say.”
Monique burst into tears. Through them, she pointed to the door. “Get out.” Rather to her surprise, Kuhn left. She cried for a long time even so.
Straha turned one eye up from the documents and photographs Major Sam Yeager had given him toward the Tosevite himself. “You are confirming what my sources in lands ruled by the Race have already reported to me,” he said. “I find it highly amusing. Would you not agree?”
“I just might, Shiplord,” Yeager answered. “For the past twenty years, the Race has been calling us sexually wild, and now your males and females are mating whenever they get the chance. Yes, that is pretty funny, all right.”
“Atvar will be shedding his skin in patches,” Straha said with a certain morbid relish. “Females coming into heat outside the proper mating season will be something new and unexpected. The Race is not at its best dealing with the new and unexpected.” He added an emphatic cough. “And Atvar is not good at dealing with the new and unexpected even for a male of the Race.”
Yeager said, “If you already knew this, Shiplord, I am sorry I had you come down to my house to look at these things.”
“Do not concern yourself,” Straha answered. “I know that one of the things I am is a Tosevite tool. I chose the role myself, if you will recall.” He laughed a small laugh. “How strange that the herb which gives males so much pleasure turns out to give females and males even more.”
“Shiplord, that is one of the things I wanted to ask you,” Yeager said. “There are a couple of females of the Race in Los Angeles now. If we were to arrange to give them some ginger while you were around… if you want us to do that, we can take care of it for you. You have done a lot for us over the years.”
Straha thought about it, then made the negative hand gesture. “You mean this generously, I have no doubt. I believe a Big Ugly who had gone without a female for as long as I have would be inclined to accept. But a male of the Race, you must understand, has no desire until his scent receptors catch the odor of a female in her season.”
“No, I do understand that,” Yeager answered. “If we gave one of these females ginger, you would smell that odor. I wondered if you wanted to, is all.”
“Again, I say thank you, but no,” Straha said. “I am content to remain as I am. If I could join fully in the colonies now forming, it might be something else, but I know it will never be permitted.”
Exile. Once more, the word beat at him. It was what he was. He would never be anything else. He could never be anything else. If Atvar died tomorrow, his replacement would be Kirel, who might as well have hatched from the same egg. And Reffet, the fleetlord of the colonization fleet, was too new-come to Tosev 3 to understand what had driven Straha to do as he did.
Suppose he had succeeded in overthrowing Atvar, after the Big Uglies set off their first explosive-metal bomb. Suppose he had gone on to conquer the whole chilly, miserable planet. What would he do now? — for surely some females would taste ginger under his regime. He longed for a taste himself right now, as he sat here talking with Yeager.
He truly did not know what he would do. He did know Atvar was welcome to the problem. Whatever Atvar did would probably be a half measure, too little and too late. That was Atvar’s way. Straha said as much.
“It is not easy to figure out what he might do,” Yeager said, echoing Straha’s thought. “A lot of ginger goes into the parts of Tosev 3 the Race occupies, and a lot gets grown there, too. I do not see how the Race will be able to stop females from tasting it. And when they do…”
“Indeed, Sam Yeager,” Straha said. “Preventing that will be difficult. And I have heard that females continue to give off the pheromones for some time after first being stimulated to do so by the herb.”
“I had not heard that. I had better write it down.” Yeager did. The chimes at his front door pealed. He got to his feet. “Excuse me.” He hurried out to see who was there; he had no intercom to check from back here in his study.
After the door opened, Straha heard Yeager speaking English: “Oh, hello, Karen. Come on in. Jonathan’s back in his bedroom. Chemistry tonight, isn’t it?”
“That’s right, Mr. Yeager. He’s got to help me on this one-he’s better at it than I am.” This voice was higher and thinner than Yeager’s: it came, Straha judged, from a female Big Ugly. And, sure enough, the Tosevite who walked past the doorway wore her coppery hair long and possessed-and, indeed, displayed-prominent mammary glands. She also displayed a lot of skin, which was painted in a good imitation of the pattern a mine-clearance underofficer wore.
Straha did not know what to make of young Big Uglies imitating the Race like that. The first time he’d seen it, a couple of years before, he’d been offended. Now he was more nearly resigned, and hoped it meant assimilation in action. Even Sam Yeager’s offspring decorated himself so.
“Oh,” the young Tosevite said, seeing him. She assumed the posture of respect about as well as a Big Ugly could and shifted from English to the language of the Race: “I greet you, superior sir.”
“I greet you, Mine-Clearance Underofficer,” Straha replied with wry amusement. “My proper title is Shiplord.”
“Ship-?” The female’s small eyes went as wide as they could. Still in the posture of respect, she said, “I meant no offense.”
“I do not reckon myself insulted.” Straha watched her staring at his ornate body paint, and wondered if she would be sporting somethi
ng like it soon. “You speak and understand my language well,” he said. “Now go and study your chemistry. It may prove useful to you later in life.”
From behind the young female, Sam Yeager spoke again in English: “Yeah, run along, Karen. I’m talking shop here, I’m afraid.” On she went, that bright hair shining. Yeager came back into the study. “I hope she did not disturb you too much, Shiplord.”
“By her presence? No,” Straha replied. “I spoke truth when I said she spoke well. But I hope you will not be insulted when I say I would sooner have a more experienced underofficer in charge of securing a mined area.”
“As a matter of fact, I agree with you.” Yeager shook his head, a gesture of bemusement Straha understood. “But I sometimes think a lot of young males and females would sooner belong to the Race than to their own kind.” He laughed a loud Tosevite laugh. “Even the ones who imitate the Race most closely, though, forget how different your mating habits are from ours. Imitating those would not be easy for them.”
“As things seem to have turned out, your young females and males would say they are imitating our females and males under the influence of ginger,” Straha observed. “That would let them do anything they like in matters pertaining to mating.”
“They already come too close to doing anything they like,” Yeager answered. “It was not like this when I was an adolescent. And my father could have said the same thing before me, and his father before him.”
“There in a sentence you have the difference between your species and mine,” Straha replied. “With us, everything is always the same from one generation to the next.” He paused. “Though I do wonder whether that will hold as true on Tosev 3 as it has on the other worlds we rule. Everything we do here seems built on sand.”
“If you cannot change on this world, you are going to have problems, sure enough,” Sam Yeager said.
“Changing our mating habits will not be easy,” Straha said. “But I can also see that keeping from changing our mating habits will not be easy, either. I crave ginger right now. Surely females will crave it as much as males. If at each taste it stimulates them to give off the pheromones that indicate they are in season… life on this planet will grow even more complicated for us than it is already.”
