AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Look!” Another male pointed. “You can see the ships of the colonization fleet ahead in the distance. There is a sight to make a male feel good.”
“Truth!” Several troopers spoke at the same time. A volley of emphatic coughs rang through the bus.
“They were smart,” Fotsev said. “They gave the ships and the new town a good safety zone, so the local Tosevites will have a hard time sneaking up on them and doing anything frightful.” The converse of that was, all three independent Tosevite not-empires doubtless had explosive-metal-tipped missiles aimed at the ships and the town. But Fotsev chose not to dwell on the converse. He was on leave.
He thought about tasting ginger, but decided to wait till he got to the new town. Since finding out what the herb did to females, officers had acted like males with the purple itch. The driver was too likely to be watching for that sort of thing.
“No pheromones in my scent receptors,” another trooper remarked. “Such a relief to feel normal again, not to have mating in the back of my mind all the time. I can think straight again.”
Not one of the other males argued with him. Several voiced loud agreement. Fotsev didn’t, but he didn’t think the fellow was wrong, either.
The ships from the colonization fleet dwarfed the buildings of the new town, even the taller ones, so those buildings didn’t come into view till the males on the bus had seen the ships for some little while. When Fotsev spied the buildings, he let out a hiss of pleasure. “By the Emperor,” he said softly, “it really is a piece of Home dropped down onto Tosev 3.”
With a squeal of brakes, the bus stopped in the middle of the new town. The driver said, “You males have yourselves a good time.”
“How can we help it?” Fotsev said as he descended from the bus and rapturously stared this way and that. With every motion of his eye turrets, he catalogued new marvels. Paved streets. Better yet-clean paved streets. Buildings like the practical, functional cubes he’d known from hatchlinghood till the day when, in a Soldiers’ Time, he was made a soldier. Males and females of the Race strolling those streets and going into and out of those buildings. No guards, or at least no obtrusive ones. Perhaps best of all, no Big Uglies.
He sighed with delight. As he inhaled afterwards, he caught the pheromones of a distant female. She’d surely been tasting ginger. He sighed again, on a different note: half stimulation, half resignation. He shouldn’t have been surprised the chief vice for the Race on Tosev 3 had reached the new city, but somehow he was.
After a moment, he laughed at himself, a laugh full of mockery. He’d brought ginger here himself, to help make the leave more pleasant. If he’d done it, other males had done it. If other males had done it, some of the new colonists would have got ginger by now. And half those colonists, more or less, were females.
Instead of tasting as soon as he found a quiet place, as he’d intended, he strolled along the streets, looking into shop windows. Restaurants and places to drink alcohol were open and doing well. So were the establishments of males and females who sold services: physicians, brokers, and the like.
Few manufactured goods were yet on sale. After a moment, Fotsev corrected himself about that. Few goods manufactured by the Race were yet on sale. Factories hadn’t had a chance to start producing. He did see Tosevite goods for sale, imported from one or another of the not-empires whose technical standards were higher than those prevailing around Basra.
He made a discontented noise. He wouldn’t have wanted to watch a Tosevite televisor, even if the Big Uglies had borrowed, or rather stolen, the technology from the Race. On the other fork of the tongue, if it was a choice between a Tosevite televisor and none, as it would be for a while… He made another discontented noise. If the Big Uglies could manufacture televisors more cheaply than the Race, what would the males and females who would have made them do? That was not a problem the colonization fleet would have worried about before leaving Home. As far as anyone knew then, the Big Uglies had no manufacturing capacity.
If only it were so, Fotsev thought. He’d had too many painful lessons about what the Tosevites could do. And he hadn’t had a particularly hard time of it, not as the fighting went. Other males told stories much worse than any he had.
Still, thinking about what he’d seen over the years since the conquest fleet arrived was enough to tempt him to reach for one of the vials of ginger he carried in his belt pouch. With a distinct effort of will, he checked himself. He’d have time later. He wouldn’t have tasted back on Home, and he was trying his best to pretend he was there now.
What would he have done? He would have gone and drunk some distilled potation. He could do that here, easily enough. He strolled into one of the places that sold such potations.
As per custom immemorial, it was dark and quiet inside. What light there was suited his eyes better than the somewhat harsher glare of the star Tosev. Several males from the new city sat on chairs and stools, talking about work and friends, as they would have back on Home.
Fotsev walked up to the server. The bottles behind the male were all of Tosevite manufacture. Fotsev supposed he shouldn’t have been disappointed. As with realizing ginger had reached the new town, he was. He gave the server his account card. “Let me have a glass from that one there,” he said, pointing to the drink he wanted. “I have had it before, and it is not bad.”
The server billed his card, then gave him the drink. The price he had to pay for it disappointed him, too. He could have got the like from a Big Ugly in Basra for half as much in barter. He’d heard the local Tosevites’ superstition forbade them from drinking alcohol, but had seen little proof of it.
But some of the things he was paying for here were a room that suited his kind and getting away from the Big Uglies. He raised his glass in salute. “To the Emperor!” he exclaimed, and drank.
“To the Emperor,” the server echoed, and cast down his eyes, as he should have d
one. Then, after reading Fotsev’s body paint, he said, “I would have thought you soldiers would forget the Emperor after so many years on this miserable planet.”
“That could never happen,” Fotsev said with an emphatic cough. “If I do not remember him, spirits of Emperors past will forget me when I die.”
“How can you males of the conquest fleet remember anything?” the server asked. “Everything on this world seems topsy-turvy; nothing is the same from one moment to the next.”
“Truth there,” Fotsev agreed.
A female sitting at the table not far away turned an eye turret toward him. “How could you of the conquest fleet not give us a properly conquered planet?” she demanded. “Too many of these wild Big Ugly creatures are still running their own affairs, and even the ones that are supposed to be conquered are not safe. That is what everyone keeps shouting at us, anyhow.”
“Those creatures turned out not to be what we thought they were,” Fotsev answered. “They were much more advanced than we expected, and are still more advanced today.”
“When the conquest fleet came, they were less advanced than we are,” the server said. “Is that truth, or is it not?”
“It is,” Fotsev began, “but-”
“Then you should have defeated them,” the server broke in, as if the continued independence of some Tosevites were Fotsev’s fault and his alone. “That you failed speaks only of your own incompetence.”
“Truth,” the female said, and a couple of her companions made the affirmative hand gesture. “We came here to a world that was not ready for us, and whose fault is that? Yours!”
Fotsev finished his alcohol, slid off his seat, and left the establishment without another word. He had already seen that the colonists had a hard time fitting in when they came to Basra. But he’d never imagined the reverse might be true, that he might have a hard time fitting in when he came to the new town.
