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“Maybe,” Dr. Blanchard said. “But nobody’s ever gone broke betting on rats.”
Senyahh held a strange creature by the tail. The creature was deceased. The bandage on the kitchen chief’s other hand said it hadn’t perished without putting up a fight. “What is this horrible thing, Exalted Fleetlord?” Senyahh demanded.
Atvar eyed it with a grim sense of recognition. The tail was long and naked and scaly, which made the animal seem a little less alien. The creature’s body, though, was soft-skinned and furry. Its head had the flaps of skin Tosevite creatures used to concentrate sound waves for their hearing diaphragms. The head was, at the moment, somewhat the worse for wear.
“What did you hit it with?” Atvar inquired.
“A frying pan,” Senyahh answered. “It bit me anyhow. And I almost missed it. It is as fast as a beffel, but I never saw anything like it before. What is it?”
“I believe it is called a rat. ” Atvar pronounced the unfamiliar word as well as he could. “It is one of the escaped Tosevite animals. Congratulations on killing it.”
“Oh, one of those horrible creatures,” Senyahh said. “I thought they would be bigger and uglier and go around on their hind legs.”
“This is quite ugly enough, in my opinion,” Atvar said. “And I meant those congratulations. We believe the housekeeping staff let eight or ten rats escape. This is the first one of which we have seen the slightest trace.”
Senyahh swung the dead beast by the tail. “It will cause no more trouble,” she declared, a hunter’s pride in her voice.
“This one will not, no,” Atvar agreed. “But what of the others? What if they breed? What if they flourish? On Tosev 3, they are major pests. Do they have any diseases or predators here? I have my doubts.”
The head of the kitchens had her own concerns. She asked, “Are they good to eat?”
“I believe so, but the Big Uglies do not commonly consume them.” Atvar pointed to the female. “You are welcome to experiment on your own, but do not, do not, serve the results of your experiment to the American Tosevites-not even to Karen Yeager, with whom you quarreled.” He used an emphatic cough. “The cleaning crew that freed the rats has been sacked. If you give the Americans rat to eat, you will envy their fate. Do you understand me? Do I make myself plain?”
“Yes, Exalted Fleetlord. It shall be done. Or rather, it shall not be done, no matter how tempting it may be. You have my word on it,” Senyahh declared.
“All right. Take the miserable creature away, then,” Atvar said. “I am more familiar with these animals than I ever wanted to be.”
After the kitchen chief left his room, Atvar said several pungent things. He did not blame the female who had killed the rat. She was only doing her job. The cleaning crew… Had it been up to him, they would have got worse than the sack. Their foolishness had endangered all of Home. Yes, Atvar knew more about rats than he wanted to. He knew much more about rats than any male or female who’d never been to Tosev 3.
He hadn’t wanted the animals to come down to the surface of Home in the first place. He’d wondered if the Big Uglies had brought them here to wage their own brand of ecological warfare. He’d warned. He’d fussed. And he’d been undone not by the American Tosevites but by the hotel’s housekeeping staff. They’d decided they felt like playing with the animals. Now everyone would have to pay for it.
Then Atvar made the negative gesture. The Big Uglies wouldn’t have to pay a thing. They might have got what they wanted. He couldn’t prove that, no matter how it seemed to him. But it hadn’t been their fault. That was only too obvious.
He tried to look on the bright side of things, an exercise with which he’d had frequent practice on Tosev 3. Species from Home were making the Big Uglies’ planet more livable, more comfortable, for the Race. The Tosevites couldn’t make that sort of arrangement here on Home. All they could do was make nuisances of themselves. That, unfortunately, was an exercise with which they’d had frequent practice on Tosev 3.
As if to prove the point, Sam Yeager chose that moment to telephone him. “I greet you, Ambassador,” Atvar said resignedly. “What can I do for you this morning?”
“I would like to request permission to bring down another ten rats from the Admiral Peary to replace the ones that were allowed to escape,” the ambassador replied.
“Oh, you would?” Atvar said.
“Yes, please,” Sam Yeager said. “They are very useful to us because they let us test foods easily and conveniently. We were sorry to lose the ones the housekeepers released.”
He made sure that got under Atvar’s scales. Atvar couldn’t do anything about it, either, because he’d earned the right. The fleetlord tried to stall: “I cannot decide this on my own. I will have to consult with local authorities.”
“Back on Tosev 3, Fleetlord, we call that passing the buck. ” Sam Yeager used three words of English. “It means seeking to evade responsibility. That is not like you. I hope to hear an answer very soon. Good day.” He broke the connection.
Atvar hissed angrily. Some of the anger was aimed at the Big Ugly, the rest at himself. The ambassador was right: he did seek to evade responsibility for letting more rats come down to the surface of Home. Unlike the males and females who had never left this planet, he had a pretty good notion of how damaging the Tosevite creatures could be. Letting more of them come here, even caged, was not in the Race’s best interest.
But if it was in the Big Uglies’ best interest… Atvar hissed again. Sam Yeager had come right out and said it was. The only way the Race could reject the ambassador’s request would be to insult the American Tosevites and possibly to jeopardize their health. Atvar did not care to be responsible for that. He did not think any other male or female would care for it, either.
He wondered if he ought to make some calls anyhow, on the off chance he was wrong. His hand shaped the negative gesture. That struck him as pointless-and also as passing the buck, as Sam Yeager had put it.
Instead of telephoning members of his own species, he called the Big Ugly back. “Why, hello, Fleetlord. I greet you,” Sam Yeager said, as politely as if they hadn’t been sparring not long before.
“And I greet you,” Atvar replied, trying-with indifferent success, he feared-to match that politeness.
“What can I do for you now?” the American Tosevite asked, still smoothly. “Does this have to do with what we were talking about a little while ago, or is it about something else?”
“The same topic.” Atvar respected the Big Ugly for coming to the point, and respected him even more for doing so in an inoffensive way. “You have permission to bring ten more of these rats here. They are to remain caged at all times, as their predecessors were to have done.”
“I thank you, Fleetlord, and I do understand the restrictions,” Sam Yeager said. “We agreed to them from the beginning. We have not violated them, either. It was your own folk who freed the rats still-I suppose-in this hotel.”
Atvar didn’t like that I suppose. He also wasn’t happy that Sam Yeager was completely correct. With luck, the housekeepers who’d got more curious than they should have would have trouble finding work anywhere for the rest of their lives. Atvar would have loved to fine or imprison them, but they hadn’t done anything criminal-so the local prosecuting attorney assured him. Whether they’d done anything damaging was a different question, worse luck.
“Will any special Tosevite bait attract these creatures?” the fleetlord asked. “If so, we will use it in our traps.”
“Our traditional bait is cheese, ” Sam Yeager answered.
Then he had to explain to Atvar what cheese was. The explanation left the fleetlord as much revolted as enlightened. The idea of milk was disgusting enough to the Race. The idea of deliberately letting it rot before eating it was worse. Trying to suppress nausea, Atvar inquired, “Do you have any of this stuff closer than the Tosevite solar system?”
“We have none here on the surface of Home-I know that,” the American am
bassador said. “There may be some aboard the Admiral Peary. If you like, I will ask the ship to send some down with the rats if there is.”
“I thank you,” Atvar said. “I thank you very much, in fact. That would be generous of you, and greatly appreciated.”
Sam Yeager sounded wryly amused: “Unlike a certain species I could name, we do not deliberately seek to disrupt the ecology of another world.”
“You have made your political point, Ambassador.” Atvar, on the other hand, sounded sour. “We have sought to make Tosev 3 more Homelike and friendly to ourselves. You have done the same on certain parts of the planet.”
“Never so drastically as your folk are doing,” the Tosevite ambassador said. “And we know better now. You brag about the Race’s long spell of civilization, but it does not seem to have made you sensitive to ecological concerns.”
The Race was chiefly interested in shaping ecologies to its own needs. It had done so on Rabotev 2 and Halless 1, and was still busy doing it on Tosev 3. Sam Yeager’s attitude made Atvar less proud of that than he might have been.
He did not intend to let the wild Big Ugly see what he was thinking. Bitter experience on Tosev 3 had taught him that revealing anything to the Big Uglies was a mistake. They never took such revelations as simple confidences, but always as signs of weakness. And they exploited such signs for all they were worth. Would Sam Yeager do the same? Atvar did not doubt it for an instant.
