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Kassquit thought she spoke much better than the wild Big Ugly. Not only did he have trouble with some of the pops and special hisses of the Race’s tongue, but he also spoke it with an odd syntax and accent: shadows, no doubt, of his own Tosevite language. But that had nothing to do with anything. “I am a full citizen of the Empire,” she answered proudly.
Despite the pride, it was an evasion, and Regeya recognized as much. “You did not answer my question,” he said. “Are you a Tosevite?” He answered it himself: “You must be. But how did it happen? What made you throw in your lot with the Race?”
He thought she was a Tosevite traitor, as some males of the Race from the conquest fleet had turned traitor after the Big Uglies captured them. She proceeded to disabuse him of the notion. “I would not be anything but a citizen of the Empire,” she declared. “The Race has raised me since earliest hatchlinghood.”
Regeya said something in his own language that she didn’t understand, then let out several barking yips of Tosevite laughter. When at last he returned to the language of the Race, his only comment was, “Is that a fact?”
“Yes, it is a fact,” Kassquit said with more than a little irritation. “Why in the name of the Emperor”-calling on him made her feel more secure-“would I waste my time lying to you? You are on the surface of Tosev 3, while I orbit above it. Since you must remain there, what can you possibly do to me?”
She’d nipped the Big Ugly’s pride, but not quite as she’d expected. “I have been farther from Tosev 3 than you,” he answered, “for I have walked on the surface of the moon. So I might visit you one day.”
I hope not, was the first thought that went through Kassquit’s mind. The idea of coming face to face with a wild Big Ugly terrified and horrified her. Nor would she tolerate Regeya’s scoring points off her. “You may have gone from Tosev 3 to its moon,” she said, “but the Race has come from its sun to the star Tosev.”
“Well, that is a truth,” the Big Ugly admitted. “Pretty proud of the Empire, eh?” That last grunt was almost an interrogative cough in its own right.
“I am part of it. Why should I not feel pride in it?” Kassquit said.
“All right-something to that, too,” Regeya said. “How old are you, Kassquit? How old were you when the Race took you from the female who bore you?”
“I was taken away when I was newly hatched,” Kassquit answered. “Had I been brought up as a Big Ugly, even in part, I would have had more trouble becoming as fully a part of the Race as I have. The male who raised me began the project not long after the fighting stopped.”
“So you would be close to twenty now?” Regeya said, half to himself. Kassquit began to correct him, but then realized he naturally reckoned by Tosevite years rather than those of the Race. Laughing again, he went on, “Well, well, quite a head start.” Kassquit didn’t know what that meant. Regeya was still talking: “Did the male who raised you tell you that you were not his first attempt?”
“Oh, yes,” Kassquit replied at once. “He had to return one hatchling to the Tosevites because of political considerations, and was kidnapped while seeking to obtain another. With me, however, he succeeded.” As much as he could, as much as anyone could, she thought. But she would not let the Big Ugly see what lay in her mind.
“He was honest with you, at any rate. That is something,” Regeya said. “And you may be interested to know that I have met the Tosevite whom your male released. She is a normal young adult female in most ways, except that her face has no motion in it to speak of.”
“Neither has mine,” Kassquit said. “Here among the Race, that is of small account.”
“Yes, I suppose it would be,” Regeya said. “It is different among us Big Uglies.” He wasn’t shy about using the Race’s nickname for his-and Kassquit’s-kind. “You may also be interested to know that she-this other female-is one of the leaders in the rebellion against the Race in China.”
“No, that does not interest me at all,” Kassquit answered. “In the long run, rebellions will not matter. All of Tosev 3 will become part of the Empire. Males and females will be proud citizens, as I am.”
“That is possible,” the Big Ugly on the other end of the line said, which surprised her. He went on, “But I do not think it is certain. Our kind”-by which, to Kassquit’s annoyance, he had to mean his and hers-“is different from the Race in important ways. For instance, we are sexually receptive all the time, and the Race is not. Do you not agree that that is an important difference? How do you deal with it, there by yourself?”
“None of your business,” Kassquit snapped. She felt blood rising to her face, as it did when she was embarrassed. Having continuous sexuality among beings who did not was extremely embarrassing. She had learned that stroking her private parts brought relief from the tension that sometimes threatened to overwhelm her, but she’d been humiliated to find out Ttomalss knew what she did, even if he intellectually understood her need. She wished she were like the Race in that regard, but she wasn’t.
To her relief, Regeya did not press her. He said, “I am going to go now. I am using a telephone at the Race’s consulate in Los Angeles, and it is expensive for me. If you want to get in touch with me again, my name is Sam Yeager. I decided to call just to say hello. I tell you the truth when I say that I had no ideal would be speaking with another Tosevite.”
“I am not a Tosevite, not in the same sense you are,” Kassquit said, once more with considerable pride. “As I told you, I am a citizen of the Empire, and glad of it.” Now she broke the connection. She did not think it would offend the Big Ugly-the other Big Ugly-for Sam Yeager (not Regeya) had already said he was going.
A wild Tosevite… Her hand moved in the gesture of negation. The two of them might be similar genetically, but in no other way. His accent, his alien way of looking at things, made that perfectly clear.
But, in some ways, genetics and genetic predispositions did matter. Regeya had, for instance, unerringly focused on her sexuality as an important difference between herself and the Race. Ttomalss, looking at the issue from the other side of the divide, had proved far less perceptive.
Kassquit wondered what the Big Ugly looked like.
It does not matter, she told herself. He probably had hair all over his head, which would make him even uglier than Tosevites had to be. His face would be snoutless, his skin scaleless. He could not help being ugly, given all that. But she remained curious about the details.
On the telephone, he seemed much as he did in his electronic messages: clever, and possessed of a quirky wit very different from the way males and females of the Race thought. She should have despised him for being what he was. She tried, but could not do it. He intrigued her too much.
He is a relation, she thought. In a way, he is the closest relation with whom I have ever spoken. She shivered, though the air in her chamber was not cold, or even cool: it was adjusted to the warmth the Race found comfortable. She’d never known air of a different temperature. She’d never known anyone but males and females of the Race, either-not till now, she hadn’t. She shivered again.
Over lamb chops and carrots and mashed potatoes, Jonathan Yeager listened to his father in fascination. “That’s amazing,” he said. “They’re holding her prisoner up there, and she doesn’t even know she is one.”
His father shook his head. “Are Mickey and Donald prisoners?”
“No,” Jonathan said. “We’re raising them to see how much like people they’ll turn into. They’re guinea pigs, I guess, but they’re not…” Shoveling in another forkful of potatoes let him make the pause less awkward than it might have been otherwise. “Okay. I see where you’re going.”
“The girl up there is a guinea pig, too,” his mother said.
“That’s right.” Now his father nodded. “Twenty years ago, the Lizards started doing what we’re doing now. I wonder what sort of experiments they’ve run on her.” He sipped from a glass of Lucky Lager. “Makes me think twice about what we’re doing with
the baby Lizards-seeing the shoe on the other foot, I mean.”
“It certainly does,” Jonathan’s mother said. “That poor girl-brought up to be as much like a Lizard as she could?” She shuddered. “If she’s not completely out of her mind, it’s God’s own miracle.”
“She sounded sensible enough,” his father said. “She doesn’t know what being a human is like. What bothers her most, I think, is that she can’t be as much like the Race-like the rest of the Race, she’d probably say-as she’d like.”
“If that’s not crazy, what is?” his mother returned. His father took another sip of beer, in much the same way as Jonathan had eaten those mashed potatoes.
“We ought to set her free,” Jonathan exclaimed: the idea blazed in him. “We-the United States, I mean-ought to tell the fleetlord we know they’ve got her and they have to let her go.”
He expected his mother and father to catch fire, too. Instead, they looked at each other and then at him. “I don’t think that would be a good idea, Jonathan,” his mother said after a moment.
