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“Oh, I think I’ll vote to reelect President Warren,” the driver answered in English.
Straha didn’t blame him for shifting languages; the Big Uglies’ tongue was better suited to discussing this strange quadrennial rite of theirs. The ex-shiplord also used English: “And why is that?”
“Well, the country’s doing okay, or better than okay,” the Tosevite said. “Warren’s made sure we’re strong, and I like the way he’s handled relations with the Race. We have a saying: don’t change horses in midstream. So I figure staying with the man we’ve got is probably the best way to go.”
That sounded cautious and conservative. It might almost have been a male of the Race speaking, not a Big Ugly. As a Tosevite might have stuck out his index finger, Straha stuck out his tongue. “Suppose Warren loses, though. Suppose more American Tosevites choose the snout of this other male, this… Humpty?”
“Humphrey,” his driver corrected. His sigh sounded like the sigh of a male of the Race. “Then they do, that’s all. Then Humphrey becomes president, and we all hope he does as good a job as Warren did. I’d support him. I’d follow his orders. I’d have to.”
“But you would still think all the time that this other male, the one you have leading you now, would be able to do the job better,” Straha persisted.
“Yes, I probably would,” the driver said.
“Then why would you follow Humphrey?” Straha took care to pronounce the name correctly.
“Because more people would have voted for him than for Warren,” the Big Ugly replied. “We’ve been over this before, Shiplord. With us, the government is more important than the names of the people in the top slots. Things go on any which way.”
“Madness,” Straha said with conviction. “What would happen if some large number of American Tosevites decided they did not like the way the snoutcounting-uh, the election-turned out, and refused to obey the male who was chosen?”
To his surprise, the driver answered, “We had that happen once, as a matter of fact. It was just over a hundred years ago.”
“Oh? And what was the result?” Straha asked.
“It was called the Civil War,” the driver said. “You may have noticed some of the anniversary celebrations we’ve been having.” Straha made the negative hand gesture. Lots of things went on around him that he didn’t notice. With a shrug, the driver went on, “Well, whether you’ve noticed or not, the war caused so much damage that we’ve never come close to having another one over an election.”
So Big Uglies could learn from history. Straha wouldn’t have bet on it. The Tosevites were most adept technically; had they not been, this planet would be a firmly held part of the Empire. But they’d been doing their best to destroy one another when the conquest fleet arrived.
Straha wondered what would have happened if the Race had waited another couple of hundred years before sending out the conquest fleet. The Big Uglies had already been working on explosive-metal bombs. Maybe they would have committed suicide. Or maybe, Straha thought unhappily, not a single ship from the conquest fleet would have managed to land on Tosev 3.
The ginger was leaving him. So was the euphoria it had brought. Imagining the Race ambushed by fearsome Big Uglies came easy at such times. It had come too close to happening as things were.
“Is there anything else, Shiplord?” The driver returned to the language of the Race, a sure sign he considered the conversation on snoutcounting at an end.
“No, nothing else,” Straha answered. “You may return to your reading. What publication have you got there?”
By the way the driver hesitated, Straha knew he’d hit a nerve. He thought he knew what kind of nerve he’d hit, too. Sure enough, when the driver showed him the magazine, he found it to be one featuring female Big Uglies divested of most of the cloth wrappings they customarily used.
“I do not mind your titillating your mating urge if that does not interfere with your other duties, and it does not seem to,” Straha said.
Despite that reassurance, the driver closed the magazine and would not open it again while Straha was in the room. He was as embarrassed about openly indulging his sexuality as Straha was about tasting ginger in front of him. While different in so many ways, Big Uglies and the Race shared some odd things.
Straha said, “Never mind. I will leave you in privacy. And I will not hold it against you that you are so reluctant to extend me the same privilege.”
“Shiplord, my job is to keep you safe first and happy second,” the driver answered. “It is much harder for me to keep you safe if I do not know where you are and what you are doing.”
“But it would be much easier for you to keep me happy under those circumstances,” Straha said. The driver only shrugged. He had his priorities. He’d spelled them out for the ex-shiplord. And Straha, like it or not, was stuck with them: one more delight of exile.
Arguing with Heinrich Himmler hadn’t got Felless tossed out of the Reich. From that, she reluctantly concluded nothing she would do would get her expelled. The proper attitude under those circumstances was to buckle down and do her job in Nuremberg as well as she could.
Felless cared very little for the proper attitude. She was gloomily certain she could do her job here without an error for the next hundred years and Veffani would still refuse to transfer her to a starship or even to a different Tosevite not-empire. And she could not appeal to Cairo for relief from such high-handed treatment, not after several leading officials from the Race’s administrative center on Tosev 3 had mated with her in the ambassador’s conference chamber.
Among the Big Uglies, mating created bonds of affection. Among the Race, all it seemed to create was resentment, especially when it was an out-of-season, ginger-induced mating. Felless sighed. Just what she didn’t want: a reason to wish she were a Tosevite.
What she did want was another taste of ginger. The craving gnawed at her like an itch deep under her scales that she couldn’t hope to scratch. She had several tastes waiting in her desk. The battle she fought wasn’t to keep from tasting. It was to wait till she had the best chance of going long enough after her taste to keep from exciting males with her pheromones when she left her office.
It was also a losing battle. Her eye turrets kept sliding away from the monitor and toward the desk drawer where she’d hidden the ginger. You are nothing but an addict, dependent on a miserable Tosevite herb, she told herself severely. That should have shamed her. Back when she’d first started tasting, it had shamed her. It didn’t any more. Now she knew it was nothing but a statement of fact.
Like her eye turrets, the chair swiveled. Before she quite knew what she’d done, she turned the chair away from the computer table and toward the desk. She’d just started to rise when the telephone circuitry inside the computer hissed for attention.
She turned back with a hiss of her own, one that mixed frustration and relief. “I greet you,” she said, and then, when she saw Veffani’s image on the screen, “I greet you, superior sir.”
“And I greet you, Senior Researcher,” the ambassador to the Reich replied. “Come to my office immediately.”
“It shall be done,” Felless said, and switched off. If she was busy, she could keep her mind-or some of her mind-off her craving. Had Veffani waited a little longer before calling, she would have created fresh scandal by poking her nose outside her office.
Maybe the call was a test. If it was, she would pass it. She’d passed other, similar, tests before. If she passed enough of them… odds were it still wouldn’t matter. Veffani had made it all too clear he wouldn’t let her go no matter what she did.
As she had on that disastrous day when the ambassador summoned her after she’d tasted, she walked by Slomikk in the hall. The science officer turned an eye turret in her direction, no doubt wondering whether mating pheromones would reach his scent receptors in a moment. When they didn’t, he kept on walking. Felless felt as if she’d won an obscure victory.
Pheromones didn’t matter to
Veffani’s secretary, a female from the colonization fleet. Even so, after Felless’ previous fiasco, the female was wary. “I trust there will be no problem when you go in to see him?” she said.
