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Despite its breezily informal syntax, Kassquit studied that message with considerable respect. Wild Big Ugly Sam Yeager might be, but he was anything but a fool. Yes, that is why I am being immunized, Kassquit told him, her artificial fingerclaws clicking on the keyboard. And yes, you and your hatchling are two of the Tosevites I am interested in meeting.
Sam Yeager’s hatchling, Jonathan Yeager, intrigued her no end. She had never seen anyone who resembled her so closely. Living as she did among the Race, she had never imagined that anyone could resemble her so closely. He even shaved his head and wore body paint. It was as if he and she were two ends of the same bridge, reaching toward the middle to form… what?
If this world has a future as part of the Empire, she thought, its future will be as whatever forms in the middle of that bridge.
Once more, Sam Yeager wasted no time in replying. We very much look forward to it, superior female, he wrote. Shall we start setting up arrangements with the Race?
Part of Kassquit-probably the larger part-dreaded the idea. The rest, though, the rest was intrigued. And she agreed with Ttomalss that such a meeting would bring advantage to the Race. And so, in spite of a sigh, she answered, Yes, you may do that, and I will do the same. I do not know how long the negotiations will take.
Too long, Sam Yeager predicted.
Kassquit laughed. You are intolerant of bureaucracy, she observed.
I hope so, the wild Big Ugly wrote, which made Kassquit laugh again. Sam Yeager went on, Bureaucracy is like spice in food. A little makes food taste good. Because it does, too many males and females think a lot will make the food taste even better. But cooking does not improve that way, and neither does bureaucracy.
Some regulation is necessary, Kassquit wrote. She had known nothing but regulation throughout her life.
I said as much, Sam Yeager answered. But when does some become too much? Tosevites have been arguing that question for as long as we have been civilized. We still are. I suppose the Race is, too.
No, not really. Kassquit keyed the characters one by one. I have never heard such a discussion among the Race. We have, for the most part, the amount of regulation that suits us.
I do not know whether to congratulate the Race or offer my sympathy, the Tosevite responded. And as for you, you are with the Race but not of it, the way hatchlings of the Race would be if Big Uglies raised them.
I would like to meet such hatchlings, if there were any, Kassquit wrote. I have thought about that very possibility, though I do not suppose it is likely. Even if it were, such hatchlings would still be very small.
So they would, Sam Yeager replied. And I have another question for you-even if you did meet these hatchlings when they were grown, what language would you speak with them?
Why, the language of the Race, of course, Kassquit wrote, but she deleted the words instead of sending them. The Big Ugly had thought of something she hadn’t. If his kind were raising hatchlings of the Race to be as much like Tosevites as possible, they would naturally teach them some Tosevite tongue. Kassquit had trouble imagining males and females of the Race who didn’t know their own language, but it made sense that such hatchlings wouldn’t. And why not? She was a Big Ugly by blood, but spoke not a word of any Tosevite tongue.
What she did transmit was, I see that you have done a good deal of thinking on these matters. Do I understand that you have been dealing with the Race since the conquest fleet came to Tosev3?
Yes, the Tosevite answered. In fact, I was interested in non-Tosevite intelligences even before the conquest fleet got here.
Kassquit studied the words on the screen. Sam Yeager wrote the language of the Race well, but not as a male of the Race would have: every so often, the syntax of his own language showed through. That was what had first made her suspect he was a Big Ugly. Did his message mean what it looked to mean, or had he somehow garbled it? Kassquit decided she had to ask. How could you have known of non-Tosevite intelligences before the conquest fleet came? she wrote. Big Uglies had no space travel of their own up till that time.
No, we had no space travel, Sam Yeager agreed. But we wrote a lot of fiction about what it might be like if Tosevites met all different kinds of intelligent creatures. I used to enjoy that kind of fiction, but I never thought it would come true till the day the Race shot up the railroad train I was riding.
“How strange.” Kassquit spoke the words aloud, and startled herself with the sound of her own voice. The more she learned about the species of which she was genetically a part, the more alien it seemed to her. She wrote, Such things would never have occurred to the Race before spaceflight.
So I gather Sam Yeager replied. We speculate more than the Race does, or so it seems.
Is that good or bad? Kassquit wrote.
Yes. The unadorned word made her stare. After a moment, in a separate message, Sam Yeager went on, Sometimes differences are not better or worse. Sometimes they are just different. The Race does things one way. Big Uglies do things a different way-or sometimes a lot of different ways, because we are more various than the Race.
If it hadn’t been for that variability, Kassquit knew the Race would easily have conquered Tosev 3. The majority of the planet’s inhabitants, the majority of the regions of its land surface, had fallen to the conquest fleet with relatively little trouble. But the minority… The minority had given, and continued to give, the Race enormous difficulties.
Before Kassquit could find a way to put any of that into words, SamYeager wrote, I have to leave now-time for my evening meal. I will be in touch by message and by telephone-if you care to talk with me-and I hope to see you in person before too long. Goodbye.
Goodbye, Kassquit answered. She got up from her seat in front of the computer, took off the artificial fingerclaws one by one, and set them in a storage drawer near the keyboard. It wasn’t time for her evening meal, or anywhere close to it. All the ships in the conquest fleet-and now in the colonization fleet, too-kept the same time, independent of where in their orbit around Tosev 3 they happened to be. Intellectually, Kassquit understood how time on the surface of a world was tied to its sun’s apparent position, but it had never mattered to her.
She hoped she would hear from Sam Yeager again soon. Such hope surprised her; she remembered how frightened she’d been at first of the idea of communicating with a wild Big Ugly. But he looked at the world in a way so different from the Race, he gave her something new and different to think about in almost every message. Not even Ttomalss did that.
And Sam Yeager, just because he was a Big Ugly, knew her and knew her reactions, or some of them, better than even Ttomalss could. In some ways, Kassquit suspected Sam Yeager knew her better than she knew herself. She made the negative hand gesture. No. He knows what I would be, were I an ordinary Big Ugly.
But wasn’t she some of that anyhow? She shrugged helplessly. How was she supposed to know?
Reuven Russie had thought he knew a good deal about medicine. His father was a doctor, after all; he’d had the benefit of insight and training no one starting from scratch could hope to equal. And he’d attended the Moishe Russie Medical College, learning things from the Race that human physicians wouldn’t have discovered for themselves for generations. If that didn’t prepare him for practice, what could?
After his first few hectic weeks of working with his father, he began to wonder if anything could have prepared him for the actual work of medicine. Moishe Russie laughed when he complained about that, laughed and remarked, “The Christians say, ‘baptism by total immersion.’ That’s what you’re going through?”
“Don’t I know it?” Reuven said. “The medicine itself isn’t all that different from what I thought it would be. The diagnostic tests work the same way, and the results are pretty clear, even if the lab you use isn’t as good as the one attached to the college.”
“Isn’t it?” Moishe Russie’s eyebrows rose in surprise.
“Not even close,” Reuven told him. “Of course, the technicia
ns are only human.” He didn’t realize how disparaging that sounded till he’d already said it.
Now his father’s laugh held a wry edge. “You’d better get used to dealing with human beings, son. We mostly do the best we can, you know.”
“Yes, I do,” Reuven said. He glanced around his father’s office, where they were talking. It was a perfectly fine place, with palm trees swaying in the breeze just outside the window; with Moishe Russie’s diplomas, one of them in the language of the Race, in frames on the wall; with shelves full of reference books; with a gleaming microscope perched on a corner of the desk.
And yet, to Reuven’s eyes, it was as if he’d fallen back through time a century, maybe even two. The plaster on the walls was uneven and rough. It was at home, too, but he noticed it more here because he contrasted it to the smooth walls of the Moishe Russie Medical College. The microscope seemed hopelessly primitive next to the instruments he’d used there. And books… He enjoyed reading books for entertainment, but electronics were much better for finding information in a hurry. His father had access to some electronics, but didn’t display them where his patients could see them. He didn’t seem to want people to know he used such things.
