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“Why are you asking me?” Straha said. “I am not an ecological engineer, and I do not know what resources you have available to you.”
“We are willing to commit whatever resources prove necessary,” his driver said. “These animals are highly unwelcome here, and they seem to be spreading very fast. Wherever the weather stays warm the year around, they appear at home.”
“Unless you can hunt them into extinction, they probably will stay that way, too,” Straha said.
“How nice,” the Big Ugly said, his voice sour. That was an English idiom, translated literally into the language of the Race. It didn’t mean what it said, but just the opposite. “I am sure my superiors will be delighted to hear that.” He didn’t mean what he said there, either.
Straha said, “I expect that we are also introducing the plants from Home on which our domestic animals prefer to feed. They too will take advantage of any ecological niches available to them here on Tosev 3. In fact, I am given to understand that this process has already begun in the subregion of the main continental mass called India.”
“Terrific.” The driver didn’t bother to translate that ironic comment into the language of the Race, but left it in English. Straha had grown reasonably fluent in the language of the USA as the years went by. Gathering himself, the Tosevite switched to Straha’s tongue: “How are we supposed to hunt weeds into extinction?”
“As a matter of fact, I doubt you can do it,” Straha replied. “Now that we have come to Tosev 3, we are going to make this world as much like Home as we can. You would be addled to expect us to behave any differently.”
“The war between the Race and us Tosevites has never really stopped, has it?” his driver said. “We are not shooting at each other as much as we used to, but we are still fighting.”
“When there is shooting, you Big Uglies do not usually enjoy it,” Straha said. “I offer the example of the Deutsche for your contemplation.”
“Believe me, Shiplord, my superiors are contemplating it,” his driver said. “But you did not answer my question, or did not answer it fully.”
“I am surprised you needed to ask it,” Straha replied. “Of course the struggle goes on, by whatever means appear convenient. The leaders of the Race will not be excessively concerned as to what those methods are. Results will matter far more to them. They are not in a hurry. They are never in a hurry.”
“That has cost them, here on Tosev 3,” the Big Ugly remarked.
“Truth,” Straha admitted. “I advocated more haste myself, which led to nothing but my exile. But our usual slow pace also has its advantages. We move so slowly, our pressure is all but imperceptible. That does not mean it is not there, however.”
Pursing his absurdly mobile lips, the Big Ugly let out a soft, low whistle. The sound was utterly different from anything the Race could produce. Straha had needed a long time to figure out what it meant: something on the order of resignation. At last, his driver said, “Well, we shall just have to go on exerting pressure of our own if we intend to survive-is that not also a truth?”
“Yes, I should say so,” Straha answered. “The question is whether you Tosevites will be able to discover and to use effective forms of pressure.”
“I think we shall manage,” his driver said. “If there is one thing we Big Uglies are good at, it is making nuisances of ourselves.”
Straha could hardly quarrel with that. Had the Tosevites not been good at making nuisances of themselves, their world would be firmly under the dominion of the Race today. The ex-shiplord turned an eye turret toward the driver and found a way in which to change the subject: “Are you not letting the hairs between your mouth and your snout escape from cutting?”
“I’m growing a mustache, yes,” the Big Ugly replied in English.
“Why?” Straha asked. “I have seen other male Tosevites with such adornments, and I do not have a high opinion of them. When yours is complete, you will look as if you have a large, dark brown moth”-that last, necessarily, was an English word-“perched on your upper lip.”
His driver laughed: loud, noisy Tosevite laughter. “I think it’ll look good,” he said, still in English. “If I decide I don’t like it, I can always shave the damn thing off, you know.”
“I suppose so,” Straha said. “We of the Race would not be so casual about altering our appearance.”
“I know that.” The driver returned to the language of the Race. “It is one of the advantages we Tosevites still have over you. Ginger is another.” He held up a fleshy hand to keep Straha from interrupting. “I do not mean its effect on males. I mean its effect on females. Like it or not, you are becoming more and more like us in matters pertaining to mating.”
Straha’s thoughtful hiss was the Race’s equivalent of the driver’s low whistle. The American authorities had not saddled him with a fool. Life would have been easier if they had. Slowly, the ex-shiplord said, “We are doing our best to resist these changes, and may yet succeed.”
“And we may succeed in keeping your domestic animals out of the United States,” his driver said, “but I do not think that is the way to bet. Besides, you are not thinking in the long term here, Shiplord. How long before some enterprising male or female sends a big crate of ginger back to Home aboard a starship? What will happen then, do you suppose?”
This time, Straha’s hiss was more dismayed than thoughtful. Once commerce between Tosev 3 and Home got going, half the males and females involved in it would want to smuggle ginger for the sake of the profits involved in it. Only items of enormous value and low bulk traveled between the stars: nothing else made economic sense. And, without the tiniest shred of doubt, the Tosevite herb fit the bill in every particular.
Interstellar smuggling between Home and either Rabotev 2 or Halless 1 had never amounted to much. Between Home and Tosev 3…? Well, Straha thought, however large that problem may become, it is not one about which I shall have to worry.
Winter in Edmonton had put David Goldfarb in mind of Siberia-not that he’d ever been to Siberia, of course, but he was used to the mild temperatures of the British Isles. A great many words might have described winter in Edmonton, but mild wasn’t any of them.
Goldfarb had almost dreaded summer, wondering if it would rise above the subarctic. To his surprise and relief, it did. It got as warm as London ever did, and even a bit warmer. At the end of June, it soared into the eighties, and stayed there for more than a
week.
“I should be wearing a pith helmet and shorts,” he told his boss when he came into the Saskatchewan River Widget Works, Ltd.
Hal Walsh grinned at him. “I wouldn’t lose any sleep if you did,” he answered. “But you’d look like a jerk if it decided to snow while you were dressed that way.”
To Goldfarb’s still inexperienced ear, Walsh sounded like a Yank. An Englishman would have said something like a right chump in place of the widgetmaster’s American slang. But that, when you got right down to it, was beside the point. “Could it snow?” Goldfarb asked in a small voice.
Jack Devereaux spoke before Walsh could: “It doesn’t snow in summer here more than every other year.”
For a horrid moment, Goldfarb thought he was serious. When Hal Walsh’s grin made it plain the other engineer didn’t mean it, Goldfarb glared at Devereaux. “If you pull my leg any harder, it’ll come off in your hand,” he said, doing his best to seem the picture of affronted dignity.
All he accomplished was to make Walsh and Devereaux both laugh at him. His boss said, “If you can’t look at the world cross-eyed, you shouldn’t be working here, you know.”
“Really?” Every once in a while, British reserve came in handy. “I never should have noticed.”
This time, Walsh stared at him, wondering whether to believe. Jack Devereaux was quicker on the uptake. “Okay, David,” he said. “Now you can let go of my leg.”
“Fair enough.” New boy on the block, Goldfarb often felt he had to make a stand and defend his own turf. He turned to Hal Walsh. “What’s on the plate for this morning?”
“The usual,” Walsh replied: “Trying to steal more secrets from the Lizards’ gadgetry and turning it into things people can use.”
“If you’re very, very good, sometimes you’re even allowed to have an idea all your own,” Devereaux added. “But you’re not supposed to let on that you did. Then everybody else might start having ideas, too, and where would we be if that happened?”
“About where we are, if the ideas we come up with are better than the other blokes’,” Goldfarb answered.
