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And what was not being printed in those scientific journals? What were the Big Uglies trying to keep secret? Penetrating their computer networks was far harder now than it had been even when Ttomalss went into cold sleep. When the conquest fleet arrived, the Big Uglies had had no computer networks. They’d had no computers, not in the sense that the Race did.
We should have knocked them flat, Ttomalss thought, not for the first time. We almost did. We should have finished the job. I think we could have.
He laughed, not that it was really funny. Shiplord Straha had urged an all-out push against the Big Uglies. Most males in the conquest fleet had reckoned him a maniacal adventurer. He hadn’t succeeded in toppling Atvar and imposing his program. In hindsight, it didn’t look so bad.
Could things have turned out worse had Straha got his way? Ttomalss made the affirmative gesture. If Tosev 3 taught any lesson, it taught that things could always turn out worse. I Told You So would have been a good title for an autobiographical account written by the planet itself.
Ttomalss laughed again, this time at the conceit. But it wasn’t really funny, either. No one who’d left Home for Tosev 3 in the conquest fleet had dreamt the Big Uglies would be able to put up a hundredth of the fight they had. No one who’d been on Tosev 3 at the time of the invasion would have dreamt the Big Uglies would have interstellar travel within a male’s lifetime… but here they were.
Where will they be in one lifetime more? Ttomalss wondered uneasily.
That led to another question. Will they be anywhere at all? Atvar had always considered the possibility of a war of extermination against the Tosevites, to make sure they could not threaten the Empire even if they took the technological lead. He would have left his plans behind for Reffet and Kirel. He would have left those plans behind, yes, but would the current commanders have the nerve to use them? Both males struck Ttomalss as less resolute than Atvar.
Every day they waited, though, made a successful cleansing less certain. Even if we try to annihilate the Big Uglies, could we do it? Ttomalss shrugged. He was no soldier, and he had incomplete data. Thanks to the limitations light speed caused, everyone here on Home had incomplete data about Tosev 3. The trouble there was, not everyone seemed to realize it. Males and females here were used to change that stretched over centuries, and didn’t stretch very far even in such lengths of time. Tosev 3 wasn’t like that, no matter how much trouble members of the Race who’d never been there had remembering as much.
And, more and more, Ttomalss was growing convinced that even the males and females of the Race who actually lived on Tosev 3 were operating on incomplete data in their evaluation of what the Big Uglies were up to. Part of that was the Race’s trouble with languages not its own, part the different mathematical notation the Tosevites used, and part, he suspected, was a case of willful blindness. If you didn’t believe down deep in your liver that another species could come to know more than you did, how hard would you look for evidence that that was in fact coming to pass? Not very, he feared.
He checked his computer and telephone records to see whether Pesskrag had ever called him back. As he’d thought: no. He made a note to himself to call the physicist soon.
Having made the note, he looked at it and deleted it. Delay was the very thing he’d worried about, and there he was, telling himself to delay. Instead of waiting, he telephoned Pesskrag that very moment.
It did him no good. He got the female’s out-of-office announcement. He recorded a message of his own, finishing, “I hope to hear from you soon. The more time goes by, the more I am convinced this issue is urgent.”
Pesskrag did call back the next day, and found Ttomalss in his room. She said, “I apologize for not getting back to you sooner, Senior Researcher. I will blame part of the delay on the mating season, which always disrupts everything.”
“Truth.” Ttomalss admitted what he could hardly deny. “But it is over now. What have you and your colleagues done with the data I provided you?”
“We are still evaluating them, trying to decide if they can possibly be credible. We are making progress on the notation,” the physicist answered. “The mathematics does appear to be internally consistent, but that does not make it easy to follow or easy to believe.”
“Can you test it experimentally?” Ttomalss asked. “You were hoping to do that when we spoke last.”
“And we still hope to,” Pesskrag said. “But funds, permissions, and equipment have all proved harder to get than we expected.”
“I see,” Ttomalss said. And he did. He saw that the Race would go at its own pace. Nothing would hurry it. Normally, that was good. If it really needed to hurry… Maybe the lessons it most needed to take from the Big Uglies had nothing to do with technology.
Kassquit came down to the refectory walking on air. Several of the American Tosevites were there eating breakfast. Kassquit wished her features could match the mobility theirs had. Since they couldn’t, she had to show her happiness in other ways.
She went up to Sam Yeager and bent into the posture of respect before him. “I thank you, Ambassador,” she said, and added an emphatic cough.
“For what?” Sam Yeager asked. Before she could answer, though, he pointed to her. “They accepted your petition for an audience with the Emperor?”
“They did!” Kassquit made the affirmative gesture. “I thank you so much for suggesting it! This is probably the proudest day of my life.”
“I am pleased for you, and I congratulate you,” the white-haired Big Ugly said. “If he would see me, I thought it was likely he would see you, too. After all, you are one of his, and I am not.”
“To meet the Emperor!” Kassquit exclaimed. “To show I really am a citizen of the Empire!”
She wondered if the wild Tosevites truly understood how important and exciting this was for her. Whether they did or not, they congratulated her warmly. Frank Coffey said, “This must mean a great deal to you, even if it would not mean so much to one of us.”
“Truth. That is a truth,” Kassquit said. The dark brown Big Ugly did see what was in her liver: intellectually, at least, if not emotionally. “What could be a greater mark of acceptance than an imperial audience?”
“Ah-acceptance.” Now Coffey made the affirmative gesture. “Acceptance is something I can appreciate.” To show how much he could appreciate it, he too added an emphatic cough. “For me, Researcher, what showed I had truly been accepted by my society was getting chosen to join the crew of the Admiral Peary. ”
Tom de la Rosa laughed a loud Tosevite laugh. “Oh, yes, Frank, this does show acceptance.” He made his emphatic cough ironic at the same time. “Everyone back in the United States loved you so much, you got sent all these light-years just so you could be part of the society there.”
Even Kassquit saw the joke in that. The American Tosevites all thought it was very funny. Frank Coffey laughed as loud as any of the others. He said, “That sounds ridiculous. I know it sounds ridiculous. But the odd thing is, no matter how ridiculous it sounds, it is a truth, and an important truth. Had I been less of an equal, I would still be back on Tosev 3.”
“And you would probably be having more fun back there than you are here, too,” de la Rosa replied.
“Maybe I would. Of course, I would be old back there, and I am… not so old here,” Coffey said. “This has its compensations.”
“If not for cold sleep, I would surely be dead,” Sam Yeager said. “Given the choice, I prefer this.”
Kassquit said, “And you will also go before the Emperor.”
“Well, so I will. But I have to tell you, I know it means less to me than it does to you,” the American ambassador said. “For one thing, I have already met several of our not-emperors-presidents, we call them.”
“I have heard the word, yes,” Kassquit said coolly. Did he really imagine a Big Ugly chosen by snoutcounting was the equal to the Emperor? By all the signs, he did, however absurd she found the notion.
He said, “The
