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Alien, Kassquit thought. She might share biology with these Big Uglies-every move they made reminded her she did share biology with them-but she would never have put new and exciting and fascinating all in the same sentence. “I do not understand,” she confessed.
“Do not worry about it,” Sam Yeager said. “It is a wonder that my hatchling thinks at all, let alone that he thinks in any particular way.”
“Thank you,” Jonathan Yeager said, with an emphatic cough obviously intended to mean he was doing anything but thanking the older Tosevite. No male of the Race would have used the cough that way, but Kassquit understood it.
So did Sam Yeager, who started laughing again. He said, “A lot of Tosevite males and females of about my hatchling’s age feel the same way about the Race as he does. The Race is new on Tosev 3, which to many Big Uglies automatically makes it exciting and fascinating. And the Race is powerful. That makes it exciting and fascinating, too.”
Kassquit understood the connection between power and fascination. That connection had helped make the Rabotevs and Hallessi into contented citizens of the Empire. It would, she hoped, help do the same for the Big Uglies. The connection between novelty and fascination still eluded her. So did another connection: “Why would Tosevites”-she didn’t want to call Big Uglies Big Uglies, even if Sam Yeager casually used the term-“be so interested in the Race, when you are constantly concerned with reproduction, which matters to the Race only during the mating season?”
“I am sorry, superior female, but I did not follow all of that,” Jonathan Yeager said.
“I did. I will translate,” Sam Yeager said. Turning to his hatchling, he spoke in their own language-English, Kassquit had learned it was called. Jonathan Yeager coughed and flushed; his change in color was easily visible on the monitor. Sam Yeager returned to the language of the Race: “I think you embarrassed him, partly because, at his age, he is constantly concerned with reproduction”-the younger Yeager let out another indignant, wordless squawk, which the older one ignored-“and partly because it is not our usual custom to talk so frankly about reproductive matters with strangers.”
“Why not?” Kassquit was confused again. “If they concern you all the time, why do you not talk about them all the time? And why did you yourself talk about them with me in our last conversation?”
“Those are good questions,” Sam Yeager admitted. “As for the second, I guess I was taken by surprise when I found out you were a Tosevite like me. For the first, I do not have an answer as good as I might like. One reason is that we mate in private, I suppose. Another is that we usually form mating pairs, and try to make those pairings permanent. Mating outside a pair is liable to destroy it.”
“Why?” Kassquit asked again.
“Because it shows a lack of trust inside the pair,” Sam Yeager answered. “Since the Race raised you, you probably would not understand.”
“Maybe I do,” Kassquit said slowly. “You are speaking of a competition for attention, are you not?” She remembered how jealous she’d been of Felless when the female of the Race began taking away Ttomalss’ attention, which she’d largely had to herself till the colonization fleet arrived.
“Yes, that is exactly what I am speaking of,” Sam Yeager replied. “Perceptive of you to gasp it when you have not known it yourself.”
“You think not, do you?” Kassquit said. “This proves only that you do not know everything there is to know.” She did not hide her bitterness. Part of her didn’t want to show it to a couple of wild Big Uglies. The rest didn’t care about the embarrassment in that. After all, when would she see them or deal with them again? Who else that she knew would ever see them or deal with them? And showing someone, anyone, that bitterness was such a relief.
Sam Yeager bared his teeth in the Tosevite expression of amiability. “I never said I did know everything, superior female. I have spent a lot of years having it proved to me that I do not. But I know I am ignorant, which puts me ahead of some of the males and females who think they are smart.”
“You speak in paradoxes, I see,” Kassquit answered, which for some reason made the Big Ugly laugh again. Annoyed, Kassquit said, “I must go, for I have an appointment. Farewell.” Abruptly, she broke the connection.
After a moment, she sighed in relief. It was over. But then she stood up, and stood taller and straighter than usual. No small pride filled her. She had given as good as she’d got. She was sure of that. She had seen the wild Big Uglies face-to-face, and she had prevailed.
As Sam Yeager and his son left the Race’s consulate in Los Angeles and headed for his car, he turned to Jonathan and asked, “Well, what did you think of that?”
“It was pretty strange, Dad,” Jonathan answered, and Sam could hardly disagree. His son went on, “It was interesting, too, I guess. I got to practice the language some more. That’s always good.”
“You spoke well. And you look a lot more like a Lizard than I do, too,” Yeager said. “That’s one of the big reasons I brought you along: to give her somebody who might look halfway familiar to deal with. Maybe it helped some. I hope so.” He shook his head. “That poor kid. Listening to her, seeing her, makes me feel terrible about what we’re doing to Mickey and Donald.”
“Her face is like Liu Mei’s,” Jonathan said as they got to the car. “It doesn’t show anything.”
“Nope,” Sam agreed, sliding behind the wheel. “I guess what they say is, you have to learn how to use expressions when you’re a baby, or else you don’t. Since the Lizards’ faces don’t move much, the kids they took couldn’t do that.” He glanced over at his son. “Were you just looking at her face?”
Jonathan coughed and spluttered a little, but rallied fast: “I’ve seen lots of bare tits before, Dad. They’re not such a big deal for me as they would have been for you when you were my age.”
And that was undoubtedly true. Sam sighed as he started the engine. “Having ’em out in the open so much takes away some of the thrill, I think,” he said. His son looked at him as if he’d started speaking some language much stranger than that of the Race. So he was: to Jonathan, he was speaking the language of the nostalgic old-timer, a tongue the young would never understand.
Proving as much, Jonathan changed the subject. “She seems pretty smart,” he said.
“Yeah, she does.” Sam nodded as he got on the southbound freeway for the ride back to Gardena. “That probably helps her. I bet she’d be a lot crazier if she were stupid.”
“She didn’t seem all that crazy to me,” his son said. “She acts more like a Lizard than a person, yeah, but heck, half my friends do that.” He chuckled.
So did Sam Yeager, but he shook his head while he did it. “There’s a difference. Your friends are acting, as you said.” He’d been married to Barbara for quite a while, and most of the time he automatically kept his grammar clean. “But Kassquit isn’t-acting, I mean. The Race is all she knows. As best I can tell, we’re the first Big Uglies she’s ever seen face-to-face. We’re at least as strange to her as she is to us.”
He watched Jonathan think about that and slowly nod. “No ordinary person would have come out and talked about, uh, reproduction like that.”
“Well, it would have been surprising, anyhow,” Sam said. “But she thinks about it the way the Lizards would. She can’t help that-they’ve taught her everything she knows.” He took a hand off the wheel to remove his uniform cap-he’d gone to the consulate in full regalia-and scratch his head. “Still, she’s not made the way they are. She can’t even be as old as you are, Jonathan. If she’s like anybody else your age, she’s going to get urges. I wonder what she does about them.”
“What can she do, up there by herself?” Jonathan asked.
“What anybody by himself, or by herself, can do.” Sam raised an eyebrow. “Sooner or later, you find out it doesn’t grow hair on the palm of your hand.”
That made Jonathan turn red and clam up for the rest of the drive back home. Sam used the quiet to do some t
hinking of his own. Not only seeing Kassquit, but also listening to her trying so hard to be something she couldn’t be, did bring on guilt about Mickey and Donald. No matter how hard he and his family tried to raise them up as people, they would never be human beings, any more than Kassquit could really be a Lizard.
And what would happen when they met Lizards, as they surely would one day? Would they be as confused and dismayed as Kassquit had been at the prospect of talking with a couple of genuine human beings? Probably. He didn’t see how they would be able to help it.
It wasn’t fair. They hadn’t asked to be hatched in an incubator on his service porch. But nobody, human or Lizard, had any say about where he got his start in life. Mickey and Donald would have to make the best of it they could, as did everybody else on four worlds. And Sam and his family would have to help.
