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He had to give Pesskrag credit. She did try to imagine that, though it was alien to all her thinking patterns. “We would have to be completely addled to work in that way,” she said. “You do understand as much?”
Ttomalss used the affirmative gesture. “Oh, yes. That is part of the assumption I am asking you to make.”
“Very well.” Pesskrag’s eye turrets both turned up toward the ceiling. Ttomalss had seen that gesture in many males and females who were thinking hard. He used it himself, in fact. After a little while, the physicist’s eyes swung toward him again. “You understand my estimate is highly provisional?”
Now Ttomalss had all he could do not to laugh. However wild Pesskrag was trying to be, she remained a typical, conservative female of the Race. He could not hold it against her. “Yes, I understand that,” he said gently. “I am only looking for an estimate, not a statement of fact.”
“Very well,” she said. “Always bearing that in mind, if I were as wild as a wild Big Ugly-for that is what you have in mind, is it not? — I might find something useful within, oh, a hundred fifty years. This assumes no disasters in the engineering and no major setbacks.”
“I see. I thank you.” Ttomalss was willing to bet the Tosevites would be faster than that. The question was, how much faster than that would they be? Pesskrag was pretending to a wildness she did not have. The Big Uglies did not have a great many things, but they had never lacked for wildness. She’d given Ttomalss an upper limit. He had to figure out the lower limit for himself.
She said, “I thought I would shock you. I see I do not.”
“No, you do not,” Ttomalss agreed. “Your expertise is in physics. Mine is in matters pertaining to the wild Big Uglies. I admit the field lacks the quantitative rigor yours enjoys. Even so, what I do know of the Tosevites persuades me that your answer is believable.”
“That is truly frightening,” Pesskrag said. “I have trouble taking my own estimate seriously, and yet it fazes you not at all.”
“Oh, it fazes me, but not quite in the way you mean,” Ttomalss said. How long had the Big Uglies been working on this line of experiments before Felless noticed they were doing it? How much of their research had never got into the published literature for fear of drawing the Race’s notice-or, come to that, for fear of drawing rival Tosevites’ notice? Those were all relevant questions. He had answers to none of them. He found another question for Pesskrag: “If the Big Uglies do succeed within the timeframe you outline, could we quickly match them?”
“Maybe.” Her voice was troubled. “If so, though, we would have to abandon the caution and restraint we have come to take for granted. That would produce even more change than I have outlined.”
“I know,” Ttomalss said.
Pesskrag said, “If we are forced to change as rapidly as the Big Uglies, will we become as unstable as they are?”
“I doubt it. I doubt we could. But we would have to become more changeable than we are, I think. To some degree, this has already happened with the colonists on Tosev 3,” Ttomalss answered.
“As far as I am concerned, that is not a recommendation,” Pesskrag said. “I have read of the colonists’ strange perversions inspired by Tosevite drugs. I have even read that some of them prefer living among the wild Big Uglies to staying with their own kind. Can such things be true?”
“They can. They are,” Ttomalss said. “As is often true when examining social phenomena, though, causation is more complex than it is in the purely physical world.”
“I do not care,” Pesskrag said stoutly. “Why would any sensible male or female want to live among alien barbarians? Anyone who does such a thing cannot possibly be worthwhile, in my opinion.”
“Why? Some males and females who were good friends beforehand become addicted to ginger together. They formed mating bonds like those common among the Big Uglies,” Ttomalss said. Pesskrag let out a disgusted hiss. Ttomalss shrugged. “Like them or not, these things have happened on Tosev 3. For a long time, we reckoned such mated pairs perverts, as you say, and were glad to see them go-”
“As well we should have been!” Pesskrag broke in.
“Perhaps. We certainly thought so when these pairs first came to our attention,” Ttomalss said. “But ginger is widespread on Tosev 3, and a surprising number of close friends of opposite sexes have become more or less permanent mating partners: so many that we saw we were losing valuable males and females to the Big Uglies by driving all such pairs into exile. These days, there is a sort of tacit tolerance for them on Tosev 3, as long as they do not behave too blatantly in public.”
“Disgusting!” Pesskrag added an emphatic cough. “Bad enough that the Big Uglies have revolting habits. But they are as they have evolved to be, and so I suppose they cannot help it. If our own males and females on that planet are no longer fit to associate with decent members of the Race, though, we have a real problem.”
“Tosev 3 has presented us with nothing but problems ever since the conquest fleet got there,” Ttomalss said. “And yes, I think our society on that world will be different from the way it is elsewhere in the Empire-unless ginger becomes so widespread here and on our other worlds that we begin to match patterns first seen there.”
“I hope with all my liver that this does not happen,” Pesskrag said.
“So do I. I am a conservative myself, as any sensible male past his middle years should be,” Ttomalss said. “But you were the one who said we would see change in the relatively near future. Is it a surprise that some of this change would be social as well as technological?”
“I understand technological change. I understand how to manage it,” Pesskrag said. “I am not sure anyone knows how to manage social change. Why should anyone? The Race has little experience with it, and has not had any to speak of since Home was unified.”
“Do you know who has experience managing social change?” Ttomalss asked.
Pesskrag made the negative gesture, but then said, “The colonists on Tosev 3?”
“That is astute, but it is not quite what I meant. Close, but not quite,” the psychologist said. “As a matter of fact, I had in mind the Tosevites themselves. Their whole history over the past thousand of our years has involved managing major social changes. They have gone from slave-owning agrarians to possessors of a technical civilization that rivals our own, and they have not destroyed themselves in the process.”
“Too bad,” the physicist said.
“You may be right. If we had stayed away for another few hundred years, they might have solved our problem for us,” Ttomalss said. “Then again, if we had stayed away for another few hundred years, they might have come to Home anyway. In that case, all the problems we have with them now would seem trivial by comparison.”
“All the problems we have now, yes,” Pesskrag said. “The problems on the horizon are not small. Believe me, superior sir-they are not.”
“Please give me a written report, in language as nontechnical as you can make it,” Ttomalss said.
“As things are, I would rather not put any of this in writing until my colleagues and I are ready to publish,” the physicist said.
“Do you believe others will steal your work? I am sure we can discourage that,” Ttomalss said.
“Until we know more, I am afraid to let this information out at all,” Pesskrag said, and Ttomalss could not make her change her mind.
“Excuse me.” The Lizard who spoke to Jonathan Yeager in the lobby of the hotel in Sitneff was not one he had seen before. The male was evidently unfamiliar with his kind, too, continuing, “You would be one of the creatures called Big Uglies, would you not?”
“Yes, that is a truth.” Jonathan’s amusement faded as he got a look at the Lizard’s rather sloppily applied body paint. “And you would be a police officer, would you not?”
“Yes, that is also a truth.” The Lizard had a quiet, almost hangdog air. He seemed embarrassed to make the affirmative gesture. “I am Inspector Second Grade Garanpo
. I have a few questions to ask you, if you would be so kind.”
“Questions about what?” Jonathan asked.
“Well, about the ginger trade, superior sir, if you really want to know,” Garanpo answered. “Ginger comes from your world, does it not?”
“Yes, of course it does,” Jonathan said. “But I do not know why you need to ask me about it. I have been here ever since the American diplomatic party came down to the surface of Home. We had no ginger with us then, and we have none now.”
“Which of the Tosevites would you be? Meaning no offense, but you all look alike to me,” the inspector said. Jonathan gave his name. Garanpo sketched the posture of respect without fully assuming it. “I thank you. I want to know because when there is ginger, one naturally thinks of you Tosevites.”
