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Mating season distracted Ttomalss no less than Atvar. If anything, it distracted the psychologist more. He was younger than the fleetlord, and so more able and more inclined to distribute his genes as widely as he could. He knew he should have paid more attention to the wild Big Uglies and to Kassquit, but everything went to the befflem during mating season. The Race understood that. So did the Hallessi and Rabotevs, who had mating seasons of their own. If the Tosevites couldn’t figure it out, well, too bad for them.
At supper one day, Linda de la Rosa asked Ttomalss, “Our guide will regain her usual disposition after mating season is over?”
“Yes, yes,” he answered distractedly; pheromones in the air still left him half addled.
“Well, that is good,” the wild Tosevite said, “because Trir turned into a first-class bitch once it started.” She added an emphatic cough. The key word was not in the language of the Race, but from its tone Ttomalss had no trouble realizing that it was imperfectly complimentary.
He shrugged. “Hormonal changes can produce mood swings among us. Do you Tosevites know nothing similar?”
Tom de la Rosa looked up from his zisuili chop in herbs. “Oh, no, Senior Researcher, we are altogether unfamiliar with such things.” He laughed a raucous Tosevite laugh. His mate poked him in the ribs with her elbow. That only made him laugh harder.
The byplay puzzled Ttomalss. He studied a videotape of it several times. Only when his wits sharpened with the end of the mating season did he figure it out. Kassquit’s mood could swing considerably during her fertility cycle, and swing in a fairly regular way. The alterations were less extreme than the ones the Race went through during mating season, but they were there. (The Race’s physicians never had figured out why Tosevite females bled about once every twenty-eight days. Had that not been universal, they would have thought it pathological.)
Linda de la Rosa asked, “How much longer will your mating season last? How much longer until we can get down to serious business again?”
“Or even serious sightseeing?” Tom de la Rosa added. “As things are now, Trir is useless, and I do not suppose any other guide, male or female, would be much better.”
“About another ten days,” Ttomalss answered. “Already, things are less frenzied than they were when the season began.”
“If you say so,” Tom de la Rosa replied. Was that agreement or sarcasm? Ttomalss couldn’t tell. Being unable to tell annoyed him.
He went upstairs to his room. The air there was fairly free of pheromones. He could think, after a fashion. He knew from experience he would have to redo half the work he did at this season of the year. But if he didn’t do anything, he would have even more to catch up on once the mating madness ebbed.
When he checked his computer for messages and new data, he let out an interested hiss. A report from Senior Researcher Felless had just come in from Tosev 3. Felless had imagined herself an expert on Big Uglies before ever setting foot on their home planet. Once there, she’d promptly got addicted to ginger. She’d mated with Ttomalss, and once, in a scandalous scene, with the Race’s ambassador to the Deutsche and several officials who were visiting him.
Little by little, she had acquired real expertise on the Big Uglies. Ttomalss noted that she hadn’t been recalled to Home, though. Males and females trusted his judgment more than hers. He wondered how much she resented being stuck on a world whose only redeeming feature for her was a drug.
Of course, Felless was a contrarian by nature. Not liking a place might help set up a perverse attraction for it in her. And she was truly addicted to ginger. Here on Home, the herb was scarce and, because it was scarce, expensive. Not on Tosev 3. On the Big Uglies’ homeworld, Ttomalss sometimes thought it easier to taste ginger than not to. Felless would have agreed with him; he was sure of that.
Ginger-taster or not, though, Felless had become a keen observer of the Tosevite scene. Here was her image, with a little static hashing it from the journey across the light-years. She was saying, “I wish we would have brought more scientists with the colonization fleet, but who would have thought we would have needed them? Those we do have here are nearly unanimous in saying the wild Big Uglies have surpassed us in electronics, and are on their way to doing so in physics and the mathematics relating to physics.”
The camera cut away to a picture of a Tosevite journal, presumably one dealing with some science. Felless’ voice continued in the background: “I am also informed that the problem may be even more severe than was realized until quite recently. Our scientists have not kept close watch on the Big Uglies’ scientific and mathematical publications, not least because the Tosevites use mathematical notation different from ours. Our experts say the Big Uglies’ symbology is for the most part neither better nor worse than ours, simply different. But, because few of our experts have become familiar with their notation, some of their advances were not noted until years after they occurred.”
“Give me some examples, please,” Ttomalss said, as if Felless could reply at once. Even had he been speaking into a microphone hooked up to a transmitter to Tosev 3, he would have had to wait all the years for his signal to cross between this solar system and Tosev‘s, and then just as long for her answer to come back. He knew that. Maybe the stresses of the mating season were leaving him less rational than usual. Or maybe he had realized that these journal articles amplified what had been in the public press and caught the physicist Pesskrag’s interest even then. Now maybe she would have the chance to learn more about what the Big Uglies really were up to when it came to physics.
As if listening to him even though she’d spoken years before, Felless did start giving examples. They impressed Ttomalss less than she’d plainly expected they would. Had she claimed the Big Uglies were building weapons systems the Race could not hope to match, he would have been alarmed. So would the governing bureaucrats here on Home, and so would Reffet and Kirel back on Tosev 3.
Advances in theoretical physics, though? Ttomalss was a psychologist, not a physicist; he wasn’t sure what Felless was talking about half the time. For that matter, she was a psychologist, too. He wondered how well she understood the material that had agitated her.
Again, she addressed the very point that had concerned him: “Several theoreticians will be submitting their own reports on these topics before long. They are still working to discover all the implications of the new data. They are unanimous, however, that these implications are startling.”
“If the Big Uglies want to muck around on experiments that will never have any practical use, they are welcome and more than welcome to do just that,” Ttomalss said. “It distracts them from the sort of engineering that could actually prove dangerous to us.”
When he checked to see if anyone else on Home had evaluated Felless’ latest report, he was amused but not astonished to discover that one male and two females had already submitted reports whose essence was what he’d just said. One of the females made a cautious addition to her report: “Not being familiar with the physical sciences or with Tosevite notation, I am not ideally suited to judge whether Felless’ concerns are justified.”
Ttomalss called that female and asked, “Do we have anyone here on Home who is familiar with the Tosevites’ notation?”
She shrugged. “Senior Researcher, I have not the faintest idea. Why would anyone wish to learn such things, though, when our own notation has served us well for as long as Home has been unified and probably longer?”
“A point,” the psychologist admitted. “Still, at the moment it could be relevant simply in terms of threat evaluation.”
“That is a truth-of sorts,” the female said. “If, however, there is no threat to evaluate, then the issue becomes irrelevant.” She hung up. M
aybe the question did not interest her. Maybe, like Ttomalss, she was still at the tag end of the mating season, and not inclined to take anything too seriously if she didn’t have to.
At the moment, about the only ones not half addled by the urge to reproduce were the Big Uglies. Even in his present state, Ttomalss felt the irony there. One evening at supper, he approached Sam Yeager and said, “I greet you, superior Tosevite. May I ask you a few questions?”
“And I greet you, Senior Researcher,” the ambassador from the United States replied. “Go ahead and ask. I do not guarantee that I will answer. That depends on the questions. We can both find out.”
“Truth,” Ttomalss said. “What do you know of theoretical physics and Tosevite mathematical notation?”
Sam Yeager laughed. “Of theoretical physics, I know nothing. I do not even suspect anything.” He used an emphatic cough to show how very ignorant he was. “Of mathematical notation, I know our numbers and the signs for adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing.” He held up a finger in a gesture the Big Uglies used when they wanted to add something. “Oh, wait. I know the sign for a square root, too, though I have not had to extract one since I got out of school, which is a very long time ago now.”
“Somehow I do not think this is what concerns our scientists on Tosev 3,” Ttomalss said.
“Well, what does concern them?” the Big Ugly asked.
“Possible Tosevite advances in theoretical physics,” Ttomalss answered. “I do not know all the details myself.”
“I do not know any of them,” Sam Yeager said with what sounded like a certain amount of pride. “I never thought theoretical physics could be important until we had to figure out how to make atomic bombs to use against the Race. Back during the fighting, I was involved in that project, because I was one of the few Tosevites who had learned enough of the Race’s language to interrogate prisoners.”
“Even if you do not know the details, then, you are aware that these theoretical advances can be important,” Ttomalss said.
