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“In two ways,” the Emperor said. “First, the wild Big Uglies can now reach us on our own planets. Any war against them would be Empirewide rather than confined to the system of Tosev 3. The longer we delay, the more harm they can do us, too.” Kassquit used the affirmative gesture; that was an obvious truth. Risson went on, “The second factor has grown more important as time passes. It is the growing fear that soon they will be able to hurt us and we will not be able to hurt them, as they can tap our telephones undetected till they admit it while we cannot monitor their conversations.”
“Does this have to do with certain experiments that have been conducted on Tosev 3?”
Risson’s eye turrets both swung sharply toward Kassquit. Yes, that had been the right question to ask. “You heard of this from…?” he asked.
“I heard of their existence from Senior Researcher Ttomalss, your Majesty. I heard no more than that,” Kassquit answered.
“Ah. Very well.” Risson seemed to relax, which doubtless meant Ttomalss did have orders from on high not to say much about such things to Kassquit. The Emperor went on, “Yes, important experiments have taken place on Tosev 3. Just how important they are, our physicists are now trying to determine. We do not know how far or how fast the wild Tosevites have advanced from what we know they were doing some years ago. We do know we will have to try to catch up, and that will not be easy, since the Tosevites generally run faster than we do.”
“What are the consequences if the Empire fails to catch up?” Kassquit asked.
“Bad. Very bad,” Risson said.
That wasn’t what Kassquit had expected to hear, but it told her how seriously the Emperor took the situation. She tried again: “In what way are these consequences bad, your Majesty?”
“In every way we can imagine, and probably also in ways we have yet to imagine,” Risson replied. “It is because of these experiments that we view the current situation with such concern.”
“Can you please tell me why you view them with such alarm?” Kassquit persisted. “The better I understand the situation, the more help I will be able to give the Empire.”
“For the time being, I am afraid that this information is secret,” Risson said. “We are still evaluating it ourselves. Also, the American Tosevites appear to be ignorant of what has taken place on their home planet. It would be to our advantage to have them remain ignorant. If they knew the full situation, their demands would become even more intolerable than they already are. And now, Researcher, if you will excuse me…” He broke the connection.
Kassquit stared at the monitor. Risson hadn’t told her everything she wanted to know. But he had, perhaps, told her more than he thought he had. Whatever the wild Big Uglies back on Tosev 3 had discovered, it was even more important than she’d imagined.
15
Sam Yeager had faced plenty of frustrations on Home. He’d been ready for most of them-he knew what the Lizards were like and what they were likely to do as well as any mere human could. That (along with the Doctor’s bad luck) was why he was the American ambassador today.
But one frustration he hadn’t expected was having the Race know more about what was happening back on Earth than he did.
Things had worked out that way, though. Physicists back on the home planet seemed to be dancing a buck-and-wing about something. (Did anybody back on Earth dance a buck-and-wing about anything any more? Sometimes the phrases that popped into Sam’s head made him feel like an antique even to himself.) The Race had a pretty good idea of what it was. None of the Americans on Home had even a clue.
His own ignorance made Sam call Lieutenant General Healey one more time. He relished that about as much as he would have a visit to the proctologist’s. Sometimes, though, he had to bend over. And sometimes he had to talk to the Admiral Peary ’s commandant. He consoled himself by remembering Healey liked him no better than he liked Healey.
“What’s on your mind, Ambassador?” Healey growled when the connection went through. Then came the inevitable question: “And is this call secure?”
“As far as I can tell, it is,” Yeager answered after checking the electronics in his room one more time.
“All right. Go ahead.”
“Here’s what I want to know: has the ship picked up any transmissions from the Lizards on Earth about human physicists’ recent experiments, whatever they are? And have the Lizards here on Home been blabbing about that kind of thing anywhere you can monitor them? I’d like to find out what’s going on if I can.”
“I don’t remember anything like that.” By the way Healey said it, it couldn’t have happened if he didn’t remember it.
More often than not, Sam would have accepted that just to give himself an excuse to get off the phone with a man he couldn’t stand. That he didn’t now was a measure of how urgent he thought this was. “Could you please check, General? Could you please check as carefully as possible? It’s liable to be very important.”
“How important is very important?” Healey asked scornfully.
“Peace or war important. I don’t think it gets any more important than that. Do you?”
The commandant didn’t answer, not for some little while. Yeager started to wonder if he really did think something else was more important. With Healey, you never could tell. At last, though, he said, “I’ll see what I can find out.”
“Thanks,” Yeager said. Again, Healey didn’t answer. A glance at the electronics told Sam the commandant had hung up on him. He laughed. The man was consistent. Yeah, he’s consistently a son of a bitch, jeered the little voice inside Sam’s head.
Talks with Atvar faltered. It was as if both the fleetlord and Sam were waiting for the other shoe to drop. Sam wasn’t even sure what the other shoe was, but he had to wait-and he had to seem to know more than he did. At one point, Atvar said, “It would be better for all concerned if this turned out to be a dead end.”
“Do you truly think so?” Yeager said, wondering what this was. “Our belief is that knowledge is never wasted.”
“Yes, I understand that,” the fleetlord answered. “You have this notion of what you call progress, of change as improvement. We think differently. When we think of change, we think of all the things that can go wrong, all the things that will need fixing. We are more realistic than you.”
Sam made the negative gesture. “Meaning no disrespect, but I do not think so. The Race and Tosevites have different histories, that is all. You gained your technology slowly, one piece at a time, and that made you notice the disruptions it caused. We got ours over a couple of long lifetimes. It made things much better for us in spite of the disruptions.”
“Did it?” Atvar asked. “Would the Jews the Deutsche exterminated agree with you? Without your newly advanced technology-railroads, poisons, and so on-the Deutsche could not have done as they did. This is not the only example. Will you deny it?”
“I wish I could,” Sam answered. But that was not what Atvar had asked. Sam Yeager sighed. “No, I will not deny it. It is a truth. But you ignore, for example, the medical advances that allow most of us to live out our full spans without fear of the diseases that killed so many of us not long ago.”
“I do not ignore them,” Atvar said. Yeager thought he meant they also had a black side, as in the experiments Nazi doctors had undertaken while they were getting rid of Jews. But the fleetlord went down a different road: “Will your agriculture keep up with population growth? Will you regulate the number of hatchlings you are allowed to produce? Or will you simply start to starve because you do not think of difficulties until it is too late?”
Those were good questions. Sam had answers for none of them. All he could say was, “Tosevites have also predicted these disasters, but they have not happened yet. If progress continues, perhaps none of them will.”
Atvar’s mouth fell open. He knew Sam well enough to know he would not offend him by laughing at him. “There is such a thing as optimism, Ambassador, and there is such a thing as what we call drooling optimism.”
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“We would say wild-eyed optimism,” Sam replied. “But you see optimism in general turning into that kind of optimism sooner than we do.”
“No doubt you have come out with another truth,” Atvar said. “As for me, I can speak only as a male of the Race. And one of the things I have to say is this: from the Race’s perspective, your optimism leads to arrogance. You think you can ask for anything you want and everything will somehow turn out all right. I must tell you that that is not a truth, nor will it ever be.” He added an emphatic cough.
“When you brought the conquest fleet to Tosev 3, you expected to find a bunch of sword-swinging barbarians,” Sam said.
“Truth. We did,” Atvar said. “I do not disagree. This is so.”
“Forgive me, Fleetlord, but I have not finished,” Sam said. “Instead of being sword-swinging barbarians, we were as you found us-”
“Barbarians with aircraft and landcruisers,” Atvar broke in.
