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She hadn’t expected such a thoughtful answer. She had only the Race’s view of Big Ugly sexuality-that it was constant and indiscriminate. It occurred to her that the Race might have as much trouble understanding Tosevites as the Big Uglies had understanding the Race. Though Ttomalss knew of her own sexual urges, she doubted he understood them. For that matter, she doubted she understood them herself, and wished she did.
“What makes one Tosevite sexually attractive to another?” she asked.
“Appearance,” Jonathan Yeager answered at once.
“That is one thing, often the most important thing at first,” Sam Yeager said, “but character is also important, and perhaps more important in the long rum.” He paused, then added, “I think character may be more important at first to females judging males than to males judging females.”
“Why?” Kassquit asked. Both wild Big Uglies shrugged. They saw each other do it, and both laughed. Kassquit noted the byplay without having any notion what might have caused it. And then she found a question the Tosevites were uniquely suited to answer, one that would have been utterly meaningless if not repellent to Ttomalss: “By your standards, am I sexually attractive?”
Jonathan Yeager had never imagined being asked such a question by a naked woman who obviously didn’t know the answer. He looked to his father for help, only to discover his father looking back at him. He needed a couple of seconds to understand why. Then he realized his dad was a married man, and probably thought he wasn’t the one to be talking about whether a woman was sexy or not.
And so Jonathan had to figure out the answer for himself. After a moment, he realized only one answer was possible, regardless of what he really thought. “Yes,” he said, and added an emphatic cough. Anything else would have been a diplomatic disaster. By the speed with which his father added the Lizards’ affirmative hand gesture, he knew he’d done the right thing.
Better still, he hadn’t been lying. He was used to girls who shaved their heads, even though his own girlfriend didn’t. And living in Gardena, which a lot of Japanese-Americans called home, had accustomed him to Oriental standards of beauty. Kassquit had a pretty face-it would have been prettier still, of course, had it shown more expression-and he could be in no possible doubt that she had a nice figure to go with it.
To his astonishment, she folded herself into the posture of respect. “I thank you,” she said with an emphatic cough of her own. “You will understand that this is not a question I could possibly ask Ttomalss or any other male or female of the Race.” She corrected herself: “No, that is not true. I could ask, but without hope of obtaining a meaningful answer.”
She certainly wouldn’t have been attractive to the Lizards, not when their everyday name for human being was Big Ugly. Jonathan tried to imagine what living among aliens would be like after you discovered the truth about your body and the delights it could bring. He tried, yes, but felt himself failing. The one thought that stuck in his mind was that he was damn glad it hadn’t happened to him.
His father said, “There are times, superior female, when you must have been-must be-very lonely.”
“Truth,” Kassquit said. What was she thinking? With her impassive features, Jonathan couldn’t tell. She went on, “I do not know if I myself realized how lonely I was until I first began communicating with you wild Tosevites. Who can say with certainty where the intersection between biology and culture lies? Even among the Race, it remains a subject for debate.”
“It is among us Tosevites, too,” Jonathan said. Mickey and Donald, at least, wouldn’t grow up worrying about whether they were sexually interesting. Unless they turned out to be females who went into their mating season or males who met a female in her season, they wouldn’t worry about such things at all. Jonathan suspected being a Lizard was easier than being a human.
But what if one of them’s a male and the other’s a female? That hadn’t occurred to him before. It would sure complicate things. Then he shrugged. Even if it was so, the Yeagers wouldn’t have to worry about it for a good many years yet. How old were Lizards when they hit puberty? He couldn’t remember. Have to look it up, he thought.
Kassquit said, “I do not find Tosevite scientific research likely to be of much value.”
Before Jonathan could respond indignantly to that, his father shrugged and said, “Well, in that case I do not suppose you have any reason to want anything to do with us at all. Shall we go, Jonathan?”
Leaving was the last thing Jonathan wanted. But a glance at his father’s face warned him he’d better play along. “All right,” he said, and started to rise. He turned to Kassquit. “It was pleasant and interesting to talk with you again.”
“No, do not go!” Kassquit’s face still showed nothing-it could show nothing-but alarm and grief filled her voice. “Please do not go. We had not yet come close to finishing this discussion.”
Jonathan looked down at the metal floor of the chamber so Kassquit couldn’t see him grin. Sure as hell, his old man knew how to bait a hook. And Kassquit had swallowed the bait, damned if she hadn’t.
“Why should we stay, if you mock us?” Sam Yeager asked sternly. “You are proud, as the Race is proud, but it never occurs to the Race that we Big Uglies also have reason to be proud of what we have done.”
“This is not something easy for a citizen of the Empire to grasp,” Kassquit said. “I meant no offense.” It wasn’t quite an apology, but it came closer than Jonathan had expected.
He had to hide another smile. Kassquit wasn’t apologizing because she hadn’t intended to offend; she was apologizing because she wanted to go on talking with the only other human beings she’d ever met. Jonathan knew he wasn’t the most socially conscious fellow around, but he had no trouble seeing that.
“Not long after the colonization fleet arrived,” Kassquit said, “I was asked if I wanted a Tosevite male brought up from the surface of Tosev 3 as a means of obtaining sexual release. I said no at the time. The thought of a strange wild Big Ugly as a mate was too distressing to contemplate. But the two of you do not seem like such strangers to me now?”
Jesus! Jonathan thought. I’ve just been propositioned! How am I supposed to say no, when I just told her I thought she was attractive?
Part of him-one particular part of him-didn’t want to say no. If he said yes, of course, Karen would kill him. But Karen’s down there, and I’m up here in space. She wouldn’t have to know. I wouldn’t be unfaithful, not really. It’s research, that’s what it is.
While those thoughts were going through his mind, his father said, “Superior female, you will have to forgive me. I do find you attractive, as I said, but I am not in a position to do anything about it. My permanent mate would be most unhappy if I were to mate with any female but her, and I do not wish to make her unhappy in any way.”
Like any child, Jonathan had trouble imagining his parents making love with each other. When he tried to imagine his father making love with Kassquit, the picture in his mind did not want to form. And when he tried to imagine his father telling his mother he’d made love with Kassquit, that picture would not form at all. What he saw instead was the mushroom cloud from an explosive-metal bomb.
Kassquit said, “I do not understand why such a mating would make her unhappy.”
“Because we try to concentrate all our affection on our principal mate, and an outside mating implies a loss of that affection,” Jonathan’s father answered. “We have a word in our language that means something like affection, but it is a stronger term. We say love.” The last word, necessarily, was in English.
“Love,” Kassquit echoed. To her, plainly, it was just a noise. Sure enough, she went on, “I do not understand. But I gather you are telling me this is a strong custom among American Tosevites.” Jonathan’s father made the affirmative hand gesture. Kassquit turned her attention back to Jonathan. “Do I gather that you, as yet, have no such permanent mating commitment?”
“Uh, that is, uh, correct,” Jonathan said
, and then wished he’d lied instead of telling the truth. A lie would have let him escape gracefully. The truth made things more complicated. He turned to his father and spoke in English: “What am I going to do, Dad?”
“Good question.” His father sounded amused, which only made things worse. “If you want to be this particular kind of guinea pig, go ahead. If you don’t, you’ll figure out some way around it.”
“What are the two of you talking about?” Kassquit asked sharply.
“We are trying to decide what is proper here,” Jonathan answered, which was true enough. Picking his words with great care, he went on, “I do not have a permanent arrangement with a female, no, but I am seeing a female with whom I may have such an arrangement one day.”
“What does this mean-you are seeing her?” Kassquit asked. “Is this a euphemism for mating with her?”
Jonathan’s father had to translate euphemism for him. The question made Jonathan cough. It also made him wonder how to answer. He and Karen hadn’t actually gone to bed with each other, but they’d sure done everything else. He was damned if he’d try to explain petting and oral sex to Kassquit with his father listening. Instead, keeping it simple, he just said, “Yes.”
And that made his dad’s eyebrows shoot up, too, as he’d known it would. Kassquit said, “If you do not have a permanent mating arrangement, you may mate with whomever you choose. Is this not a truth? Do you choose to mate with me, Jonathan Yeager?”
That wasn’t a proposition; it was more like an ultimatum. Before Jonathan could answer, his father said, “Superior female, regardless of what my hatchling may decide, there should be no matings at this meeting.”
“And why not?” Kassquit’s face didn’t show emotion, but her voice did. She sounded furious.
“Why not?” Jonathan’s father echoed. “Because the purpose of mating-or a purpose of mating, anyhow-is reproduction. Do you want to take the chance of becoming gravid as a result of mating? How well equipped is the Race to handle that problem?”
