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Coffey shrugged. “So it may. But it will not happen soon, even by the way the Race reckons time. During your mating seasons, your males and females are not too fussy about mating partners. That helps you mix. With us, it is different.”
“I suppose it would be,” Ttomalss said. “So social discrimination also lingers in mating, even though discrimination in law does not?”
“Yes, it does,” the American Big Ugly replied. “Now I praise you for your perceptiveness. Not many from another culture, from another biology, would have seen the implications of that.”
“I thank you,” Ttomalss said. “I have been studying your species and its paradoxes for some years now. I am glad to be reminded every now and then that I have gained at least a little insight. Perhaps my close involvement with Kassquit has also helped.”
Coffey nodded. He started to catch himself and add the Race’s gesture of agreement, but Ttomalss waved for him not to bother. The Tosevite said, “I can see how it might have. Kassquit is a remarkable individual. You did a good job of raising her. By our standards she is strange-no doubt of that-but I would have expected any Tosevite brought up by the Race to be not just strange but hopelessly insane. We are different in so many vital ways.”
“Again, I thank you. And I will not lie to you: raising Kassquit was the hardest thing I have ever done.” Ttomalss thought about what he’d just said. He had spent some time in the captivity of the Chinese female, Liu Han. She’d terrorized him, addicted him to ginger, and made him think every day in her clutches would be his last. Had raising Kassquit been harder than that? As a matter of fact, it had. “Is imperfect gratitude always the lot of those who bring up Tosevites?”
Major Coffey laughed again, this time loud and long. “Maybe not always, Senior Researcher, but often, very often. You need not be surprised about that.”
“How do those who raise hatchlings tolerate this?” Ttomalss asked.
“What choice have they-have we-got?” the wild Big Ugly said. “It is one of the things that come with being a Tosevite.”
“Do you speak from experience? Have you hatchlings of your own?”
“Yes and no, respectively,” Coffey replied. “I have no hatchlings myself. I am a soldier, and I always believed a soldier would not make a good permanent mate. But you must recall, Senior Researcher-I was a hatchling myself. I locked horns with my own father plenty of times.”
“ ‘Locked horns,’ ” Ttomalss repeated. “This must be a translated idiom from your language. Does it mean, to quarrel?”
“That is exactly what it means.”
“Interesting. When you Tosevites use our tongue, you enliven it with your expressions,” Ttomalss said. “Some of them, I suspect, will stay in the language. Others will probably disappear.”
“Your language has done the same thing to English,” Major Coffey said. “We use interrogative and emphatic coughs. We say, ‘Truth,’ when we mean agreement. We use other phrases and ways of speaking of yours, too. Languages have a way of rubbing off on one another.”
“You would know more about that than I do,” Ttomalss told him. “Our language borrowed place names and names for animals and plants from the tongues of Rabotev 2 and Halless 1. Past that, those tongues did not have much of an effect on it. And, of course, the Rabotevs and Hallessi speak our language now, and speak it the same way as we do.”
“You expect the same thing to happen on Tosev 3, don’t you?” Coffey said.
Ttomalss made the affirmative gesture. “Yes, over the course of years. It may-it probably will-take longer there than with the Rabotevs and Hallessi. Your leading cultures are more advanced than theirs were.” He held up a hand. “You were going to say something about your equality. Let me finish, if you please.”
“It shall be done, Exalted Researcher,” the wild Big Ugly said with a fine show of sarcasm. “By all means, go on.”
“I thank you so very much,” Ttomalss said, matching dry for dry. “What I wanted to tell you was that the process has already begun in those parts of Tosev 3 the Race rules. That is more than half the planet. Your not-empire may still be independent, but you cannot claim it is dominant.”
“I do not claim that. I never have. The United States never has,” Coffey replied. “But the Race seems unwilling to admit that independence means formal equality. The Emperor may have more power than the President of the United States. As sovereigns, though, they both have equal rank.”
That notion revolted Ttomalss. It would have revolted almost any member of the Race. To say the Emperor was no more than equal to a wild Big Ugly chosen for a limited term by snoutcounting… was absurd. Even if it was true under the rules of diplomacy (rules the Race had had to resurrect from ancientest history, and also to borrow from the Tosevites), it was still absurd.
That he should think so went a long way toward proving Frank Coffey’s point. If Ttomalss hadn’t spent so many years working with the Big Uglies, he wouldn’t even have realized that. Realizing it made him like it no better.
“You are very insistent on this sovereign equality,” he said.
“And so we ought to be,” Coffey answered. “We spilled too much of our blood fighting to keep it. You take yours lightly because it has never been challenged till now.”
Ttomalss started to make a sharp reply: Coffey was presumptuous if he imagined the American Tosevites truly challenged the Race. At the last moment, though, the psychologist held his peace. Not for the first time, dealing with the Tosevites made him feel as if he were trying to reach into a mirror and deal with all the reversed images he found there. That the American Big Uglies could be as proud of their silly snoutcounted temporary leader as the Race was of the Emperor and all the tradition behind his office was preposterous on the face of it… to the Race.
But it was not preposterous to the Americans. Ttomalss had needed a long time to realize that. The Big Uglies might be as wrong about their snoutcounting as they were about the silly superstitions they used in place of due reverence for the spirits of Emperors past. They might be wrong, yes, but they were very much-very much-in earnest. The Race needed to remember that.
It made dealing with the American Tosevites more complicated and more difficult. But, when dealing with Tosevites, what wasn’t difficult?
Karen Yeager looked at her husband. She said,
“Do you know what I’d do?”
“No, but you’re going to tell me, so how much difference does that make?” Jonathan replied with the resigned patience of a man who’d been a husband for a long time.
She sniffed. Resigned patience wasn’t what she wanted right now. She wanted sympathy. She also wanted ice cubes. “I’d kill for a cold lemonade, that’s what I’d do,” she declared.
“Now that you mention it, so would I,” Jonathan said. “But you haven’t got any, and I haven’t got any, either. So we’re safe from each other, anyway. Besides, we’re more than ten light-years from the nearest lemon.”
“A cold Coke, then. A cold glass of ippa-fruit juice. A cold anything. Ice water, for heaven’s sake.” Karen walked over to the window of their hotel room and stared out. The alien landscape had grown familiar, even boring. “Who would have thought the Race didn’t know about ice?”
“They know. They just don’t care. There’s a difference,” Jonathan said. “And besides, we already knew they didn’t care. We’ve spent enough time in their cities back on Earth.”
He was right. Karen sniffed again anyhow. She didn’t want right. She really wanted ice cubes. She said, “They don’t care what we like. That’s what the problem is. They know we like cold things, and they haven’t given us a way to get any. You call that diplomacy?”
“Some of them know we like ice, yeah. They know it here.” Her husband tapped his head. “But they don’t know it here.” He set a hand on his stomach. “They don’t really believe it. Besides, I can guaran-damn-tee you there’s not a single ice-cube tray on this whole planet.”
“And this is a real for-true civilization?” Karen exclaimed. Jonathan laughed, but she went on, “Dammit, there’s bound to be something they could use to make ice cubes. Gelatin molds, maybe-I don’t know. But we ought to be asking for them, whatever they are, and for a freezer to put them in.”
“Talk to the concierge,” Jonathan suggested. “If that doesn’t work, talk to Atvar. If he can’t do anything about it, you’re stuck.”
