AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Probably seeing the rest of the capital with Trir or some other guide.” Karen stuck to English. Perhaps incautiously, she added, “We may not have Kassquit with us for a while, either. She’ll be studying for her audience, too.”
Jonathan nodded. “That’s true. I had nothing to do with it, either. Dad suggested it to Atvar and Atvar suggested it to Kassquit, and it went from there.”
“I know. Did I say anything else?” Karen knew her voice had an edge to it.
“No, you didn’t say anything.” Jonathan had heard it, too. “But would you say anything if she were going to walk off a cliff?”
I’d say good-bye. But that wasn’t what Jonathan wanted to hear, and would only start trouble. She might have wanted to start trouble if he’d sniffed after Kassquit like a male Lizard smelling a female’s pheromones. But he really hadn’t, even if Kassquit went right on showing everything she had-and even if, thanks to cold sleep, she literally was better preserved than she had any business being.
All that went through Karen’s head in something less than a second. Jonathan probably didn’t even notice the hesitation before she said, “Kassquit isn’t my worry here. She’s playing on the Race’s team.”
She wondered if her husband would push it any further. He just said, “Okay.” There were reasons they’d stayed married for thirty years. Not the smallest of them was that they both knew when they shouldn’t push it too far.
“I wonder what’s happening back on Earth right now,” Karen said. “I wonder what the boys are doing. They’re older than we are. That seems very strange.”
“Tell me about it!” Jonathan said, and she knew he wasn’t thinking about Kassquit any more. “Their kids may have kids by now. I don’t think I’m ready to be a great-grandfather yet.”
“If we ever do make it back to Earth, you may be able to tack another great onto that,” Karen said. Her husband nodded. She got up from the foam-rubber seat and looked out the window. When she first came down from the Admiral Peary, she’d marveled at the cityscape every time she saw it. Why not, when her eyes told her she was on a brand new world? Now, though, she took the view for granted, as she’d take the view from the front window of her house back in Torrance for granted. It was just what she saw from the place where she lived. Familiarity could be a terrible thing.
When she said that to Jonathan, he looked relieved. “Oh, good,” he said. “I was afraid I was the only one who felt that way.”
“I doubt it. I doubt it like anything,” Karen said. “We can ask Frank and the de la Rosas at lunch, if you want to. I bet they’ll all say the same thing.”
“Probably,” Jonathan said. “Dad, too, I bet. He’s seen more different things out of windows than all of us put together.” He blinked. “If we make it back to Earth, he’s liable to be a great-great-great-grandfather. You don’t see that every day.”
“We’re going to be a bunch of Rip van Winkles when we get back to Earth,” Karen said. “If we’d fallen asleep when your father was born and woke up when the colonization fleet got there, we’d think we’d gone nuts.”
Jonathan excitedly snapped his fingers. “There were people like that, remember? A few who’d gone into comas in the twenties and thirties, and then they figured out how to revive them all those years later. They didn’t think they’d gone nuts-they thought everybody around them had. Invaders from another planet? Not likely! Then they saw Lizards, and they had to change their minds.”
“They made a movie out of that, didn’t they?” Karen said. “With what’s-his-name in it… Now that’s going to bother me.”
“I know the guy you mean,” her husband said. “I can see his face, plain as if he were standing in front of me. But I can’t think of his name, either.”
“Gee, thanks a lot,” Karen said.
“Somebody down here will remember it,” Jonathan said. “Or else somebody on the Admiral Peary will.”
“And if they don’t, we can radio back to Earth and find out-if we don’t mind waiting a little more than twenty years.”
Jonathan grinned. “You’re cute when you’re sarcastic.”
“Cute, am I?” She made a face at him. He laughed at her. She made another face. They both laughed this time. Their marriage had its strains and creaks, but they got along pretty well.
Karen forgot to ask about the actor at lunch, which only annoyed her more. She remembered to try at dinner. “I saw that movie on TV,” Linda de la Rosa said. “It was pretty good.”
“Who was the guy?” Karen asked.
“Beats me,” Linda said.
Sam Yeager said, “I remember that one, too. My old friends, Ristin and Ullhass, played a couple of the Lizards. They did all kinds of funny things to make a living once they decided they liked staying with us and didn’t want to go back to the Race.”
Karen knew Ristin and Ullhass, too. She hadn’t recalled that they were in that movie. She said, “But who the devil played the lead? You know, the doctor who was bringing those people out of their comas after all those years?”
“Darned if I know.” Her father-in-law shrugged.
Tom de la Rosa and Frank Coffey couldn’t come up with it, either. Tom did say, “The guy had that TV show for a while…” He frowned, trying to dredge up the name of the show. When he couldn’t, he looked disgusted. “That’s going to itch me till I come up with it.”
“It’s been itching me all day,” Karen said. “I was hoping one of you would be able to scratch it.” She threw her hands in the air in frustration.
They’d been speaking English. They were talking about things that had to do with the USA, not with the Race-with the exception of Sam Yeager’s two Lizard friends. They went on in English even after Kassquit came into the refectory. Karen didn’t know about the others, but she thought of Kassquit as more Lizard than human… most ways.
As usual, Kassquit sat apart from the Americans. But when they kept trying and failing to remember that actor’s name, she got up and walked over to them. “Excuse me for asking,” she said, “but what is this commotion about?”
“Something monumentally unimportant,” Sam Yeager answered. “We would not get so excited about it if it really mattered.”
“Is it a riddle?” she said.
“No, just a frustration,” he t
old her. “There was an actor in a motion picture back on Tosev 3 whose name none of us can recall. We know the film. It would have come out some time not long before I went into cold sleep, because I saw it. This is like having food stuck between the teeth-it keeps on being annoying.”
“Did this film involve the Race?” Kassquit asked.
“Only a little.” Sam Yeager explained the plot in three sentences. “Why?”
Kassquit didn’t answer. She went back to her supper and ate quickly. Queer thing, Karen thought. She really isn’t very human. I just wish she’d wear clothes. She gave a mental shrug and started eating again herself. She hardly noticed when Kassquit left the refectory, though she did notice Jonathan noticing.
She was a little surprised when Kassquit not only came back a few minutes later but also came over to the Americans again. “James Dean,” Kassquit said, pronouncing the name with exaggerated care.
Everybody exclaimed. She was right. As soon as Karen heard it, she knew that. Frank Coffey bent into the posture of respect. “How did you find out?” he asked.
“It was in the computer network,” Kassquit answered. “The Race has a good deal of information on Tosevite art and entertainment that concern it. How wild Tosevites view the Race is obviously a matter of interest to males and females on Tosev 3, and also to officials here on Home. I hoped it might be so when I checked.”
“Good for you,” Linda said. “We thank you.”
“Truth,” Sam Yeager said. “James Dean. Yes, that is the name. When he first started out, I could not stand him as an actor. I thought he was all good looks and not much else. I have to say I was wrong. He kept getting better and better.”
