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“Truth,” Jonathan said in the Race’s language. He went on, “Even so, there’s a clique of star travelers who stick together because they aren’t so connected to the present. I suppose that would have happened with us, too.”
“Probably,” Richard said. “Better this way, though. Now we don’t have to spend some large part of our loved ones’ lifetime traveling from star to star.”
Before Jonathan or his father could add anything to that, Donald came up to them. He aimed one eye turret at Jonathan, the other at Sam. “Did the two of you have any idea-any idea at all-what you were doing to Mickey and me when you decided to raise us as people?” he demanded.
“No,” Jonathan and his father said at the same time. Sam went on, “Do you know of Kassquit, the girl the Race raised?”
“We’ve heard of her,” Donald answered. “We’d like to meet her one of these days. If anybody would understand some of the things we’ve been through growing up, she’s the one.”
“She’s said the same thing about the two of you,” Jonathan said.
“The Race tried to raise a human as much like one of their kind as they could,” his father said. “We did the same thing with you. When we met Kassquit, we realized how unfair that was to you, but we were committed to doing it.”
“National security,” Donald said scornfully. He stuck out his tongue. “This for national security. You ruined our lives for the sake of national security.”
“Things could be worse,” Jonathan pointed out. “You’ve made a lot of money. People admire you. Millions of them watch you every night. And Mickey’s prosperous, too, even if he’s less public about it.”
“Yes, we have money. You know that old saying about money and happiness? It’s true,” Donald said. “All the money in the world can’t make up for the simple truth: we’re sorry excuses for males of the Race and we’re even sorrier excuses for humans. You want to know how sorry? I really do leer at Rita, because that’s what a man would do. I can’t do anything with her. Even if I smelled pheromones from a female of the Race and got excited, I couldn’t do anything with her. But I leer anyway. There they are, hanging out, and I stare at them.”
What could you say to something like that? Jonathan looked to his father, who didn’t seem to have any idea, either. “I’m sorry,” Jonathan said at last. “We did the best we could.”
“I know that. I never said you didn’t,” Donald answered. “But there’s a goddamn big difference between that and good enough.” He used an emphatic cough. It didn’t sound like the one an ordinary Lizard would have made. He had most of the same accent a human English-speaker would have. All by itself, that went a long way toward proving his point.
Jonathan wondered again if coming home had been such a good idea after all.
Of all the things Glen Johnson had looked for while orbiting Home, boredom was the last. He didn’t know why that was so. He’d spent a lot of time on the Lewis and Clark bored. Maybe he’d thought seeing the Lizards’ home planet would make sure he stayed interested. No such luck.
This wasn’t entirely bad. He realized as much. He and everybody else on the Admiral Peary could have had a very interesting time trying to fight off missiles from however many spaceships the Lizards threw at them. They wouldn’t have lasted long, but they wouldn’t have had a dull moment.
Still… He had to fight not to go to sleep on watch. Back in the Civil War, they would have shot him for that. When he was a kid, he’d known an old man who as a boy had shaken hands with Abraham Lincoln. He wondered if anyone else still breathing a third of the way through the twenty-first century could say that.
When he mentioned it to Mickey Flynn, the other pilot said, “Well, I can’t. I had ancestors who fought in it. People were willing to have Irishmen shot to keep the country in one piece, but not to give ’em a job once they’d managed to miss the bullets. American generosity knows no bounds.”
“I don’t know. Sounds fair to me,” Johnson said.
“And what could I expect from a Sassenach?” Flynn didn’t put on a brogue, but his speech pattern changed.
“Don’t let it worry you,” Johnson told him. “As far as the Lizards are concerned, we’re all riffraff.”
“They are a perceptive species, aren’t they?” Flynn said.
“That’s one word,” Johnson said. “The Commodore Perry should be back on Earth by now. I wonder when it’ll come here again.”
“Sooner than anything else is likely to,” Flynn said.
Johnson clapped his hands. “Give the man a cigar!”
“Not necessary,” the other pilot said modestly. “A small act of adoration will suffice.”
“Adoration, my-” Johnson broke off with a snort. He started a new hare: “I do wonder when the Russians and the Germans and the Japanese will start flying faster than light. The Lizards are probably wondering the same thing.”
“I would be, if I were in the shoes they don’t wear,” Flynn agreed.
Johnson started to reply to that. Then he started trying to work through it. After a few seconds, he gave it up as a bad job. “Right,” was all he did say. Mickey Flynn’s nod announced anything else was unthinkable.
Home spun past the reflectionless windows. The Admiral Peary was coming up on Sitneff. Clouds covered the city, though. The Americans from the Commodore Perry were saying it might rain. That didn’t happen every day. Johnson hoped the Johnny-come-latelies got wet. It would serve them right. He had little use for the great-grandchildren of his old-time friends and neighbors. They struck him as intolerably arrogant and sure of themselves. Maybe they’d earned the right, but even so…
“No matter how much you influence people, having friends is better,” Johnson said.
“And what inspired this burst of profundity?” Flynn’s voice was gravely curious.
“The punks downstairs.” Johnson pointed to the clouded city where the Americans lived.
“Oh. Them.” Mickey Flynn also spoke with noticeable distaste. “They aren’t the most charming people God ever made, are they?” He answered his own question: “Of course they aren’t. All the people like that are aboard the Admiral Peary. ”
The intercom crackled to life: “Colonel Johnson! Colonel Glen Johnson! Report to the commandant’s office immediately! Colonel Johnson! Colonel Glen Johnson!..”
Over the noise, Johnson made a wry face. “And some who aren’t the most charming, too. Oh, well. See you later, alligator.” Out of the control room he went.
As usual, Lieutenant General Healey looked as if he wanted to bite something when Johnson glided into his sanctum. “Took you long enough,” the commandant growled.
“Reporting as ordered, sir,” Johnson repli
ed blandly. “I would have been here sooner except for the traffic accident on Route 66. I had to wait till they towed away a station wagon and cleaned up the spilled gasoline.”
Healey looked more baleful than ever. He probably wasn’t thrilled at being stuck in command of the most obsolete starship the United States owned. “Bullshit,” he said, and waited for Johnson to deny it. When Johnson just hung silently in midair, Healey scowled and went on, “I need you to fly a scooter to the Horned Akiss. ”
“Sir, the Lizards will search it eight ways from Sunday,” Johnson said. “I want your word of honor in writing, in English and the Race’s language, that I’m not trying to smuggle ginger.”
“There is no ginger on the scooter.” Healey spoke in a hard, flat voice that defied Johnson to contradict him. Johnson didn’t. He also made no move to leave the commandant’s office. He kept waiting. After some dark mutters, Healey grabbed an indelible pencil-much more convenient in weightlessness than pens, which needed pressurized ink to work-and wrote rapidly. He scaled the sheet of paper to Johnson. It flew through the air with the greatest of ease. “There. Are you satisfied?”
To fit his personality, Healey should have had handwriting more illegible than a dentist’s. He didn’t; instead, it would have done credit to a third-grade teacher. The commandant’s script in the language of the Race was just as neat. Johnson carefully read both versions. They said what he wanted them to say. Try as he would, he found no weasel words. “Yes, sir. This should do it. I’ll take it with me to the scooter lock.”
“When they retire this ship, Colonel, I’ll no longer have to deal with the likes of you,” Healey said. “Even growing obsolete has its benefits.”
“I love you, too, General.” Johnson saluted, then brachiated out of the commandant’s office.
As usual, he stripped down to T-shirt and shorts so he could put on his spacesuit. When he stuck the folded piece of paper in the waistband of the shorts, the technician on duty at the lock raised an eyebrow. “What’s that?” he asked. “Love letter to a Lizard?”
