All these shocks registered only peripherally in her eyes, because the thing she saw most clearly was a woman. A bare-busted, bulgingly pregnant, saber-wavingly grinning and huge woman who stood triumphant among the aliens as though they belonged to her—or she to them— and bawled at the three undressed visitors, "Welcome! Be brave! We'll save you yet!"
"Oh, my God," whispered Miranda from beside her, and Delilah could not guess what she meant to say. None of them knew what to say. They were in shock.
It was only a little less startling, and not reassuring at all, when the aliens on the second platform twitched themselves into a sort of regular cluster and raised objects before them. Some they blew into or rubbed against; the most common were things like horizontally held xylophones, and they struck them.
It was music that came out. Approximately music, anyway.
Delilah had no way of recognizing it, but beside her Miranda caught her breath and sobbed, "Oh, Castor! They remembered! It's 'Hail to the Chief!'"
Part III
I
JUPE was out hunting when the great day arrived. He didn't plan it that way. The event caught him by surprise. The Real-Americans weren't due for days yet, he thought. But he was wrong, and so he missed it all, the landing of the Presidential yacht, the welcoming ceremonies by the first-contact party, the whole thing. He'd stopped off to shoot an inkling on the way— he was always fond of inkling roasts, so succulent and sweet once you leached the iron salts out of them. He never enjoyed inkling again. When at last he strolled into his home nest—sweating profusely in the hot, dank air of World, picking up a fuzzy leaf on the way to towel off the sweat—his senior sisters greeted him with jeers and reproaches. "You missed it, Jupe, you fool." "It's just like you to be off killing something when—" "He's really the President, Jupe, and—" "And, oh, Jupe, he's so handsome!"
"Ah, no!" he bawled, making sense at last of what they were telling him. He dropped the inkling on the floor, causing Senior Sister Marcia to boom complaints at him for dirtying her clean mats with inkling blood. He didn't listen. "They camel" he demanded in outrage at the unjust universe. "No one told me?" But of course no one could have, as several of his sisters took pleasure in explaining to him. Other sisters, especially the more pregnant ones, flinched away from his reddening face and flailing arms. Jupiter would never hurt one of them on purpose, that was certain. But sometimes when he windmilled his arms in excitement and rage someone got in the way. That was just temper, and Jupe had a lot of it.
"Please, Jupiter, hold still," one of the junior sisters begged, approaching him from behind. She was a bright ten-year-old named Susify, and she carried the softest of toweling leaves to rub him down and oil away the spatters of inkling blood from his bronzed skin. She edged him gently away from the mess on the floor. Marcia was already kicking a crew of dumb erks toward it, to the task of mopping it up and taking the fresh meat to the kitchen, while Jupiter stomped and swore at the bad news.
No—not bad news! It was all good, really. The only bad part was that Jupe himself had been off adventuring in the woods instead of being in Space City for the glorious moment, or at least clustered around the index-viewers with his sisters. The greatest thrill a lifetime could provide! And he had missed it! Had missed seeing the Han Chinese launch the Presidential yacht, as relayed by the spy-eyes in orbit around Earth's sun. Had missed the yacht's bursting into near-space when the spaceway transporter whirled it out of one universe and into another. Had missed the capture of the yacht, the landing, the first greeting by the bursting hearts of the loyal Yankees of World.
Had missed it all!
His sisters told him about it, of course, one or another chirping her bit to fill out the mosaic for him. The President was alone—malewise he was alone, anyway. Of course, there were two sisters with him—but such funny-looking ones, Jupe, the old one sallow and lined, the young one sallow and angry! Who had met them at Space City? Why, the Governor herself, of course, Big Polly. Yes, she had made a speech. Yes, of course they had recorded it, had recorded every minute of every event; would he like to watch the replay?
No, he would not like to watch the replay! His place was there! He was going there, as soon as possible!
It was not just that Jupe was a blazing patriot (they all were that), or even that he'd taken combat training. They all did that, too; it was their most important social function other than childbearing, from which Jupiter was biologically exempt. But the tiny minority of males were not merely combat-ready; they were combat -prone. Everybody knew that. Sisters were ready to fight because they must. Males were ready to fight because they were warriors. Most of Jupiter's discontent with the universe— and he had plenty of that—arose from the fact that no one was conveniently near to be a warrior against. You couldn't fight the erks, either the dumb ones or the smart, if only because there were too many of them. (Besides, it was their planet, sort of.) You could hunt and kill inklings or wild carry-birds, of course, and that was pretty good, although the foolish creatures never fought back.
But what Jupiter had longed for since he got his first set of pugil sticks at the age of five was an enemy.
There was a guaranteed enemy for every Yank, of course, but they had never been near enough to actually fight.
Until now.
So, "Feed my carry-bird," Jupe ordered the stablehand sisters, and, "Get my uniform!" to the twelve-year-olds detailed to housemaid duty, and, "Fix me a light lunch for the trip!" to the kitchen staff. He threw orders in all directions, in fact, and the nest bustled, as it always bustled, around its one and cherished male.
It is a proud and a scary thing to be an emigre, to spend your whole life knowing that there is a Homeland that has been stolen from you. To want it back. The emigre mentality fueled the aspirations of every Yank on World. It was the same fire in the belly that kept generations of Cubans and Poles and Jews forever consecrated to the lost, the never-seen, the semimythical Home. The more improbable its recapture became, the hotter that fire burned.
Jupiter wanted to fight for that Homeland. He wanted it very badly, and that was not his fault. It was the product of his age and life. And, yes, of his gender; an ancient named Daniel Patrick Moynihan once said that every society gets invaded by its own barbarians once in each generation—those barbarians it generates itself, the young males from seventeen to twenty-three. Jupiter was a large-size, prime-quality barbarian. He was looking for cities to pillage or foes to slay; that was what his glands made him. He was also an emigre, third generation on a planet forty-some light-years from Home, so the combative urge was focused. Recapture! Recover! Revenge! Those were the key words in the litanies he had learned with his first lisped baby words.
Because there was only one human male to every one hundred and seventy human females on World, naturally the invading force could not be exclusively male. The females would fight, too. They were trained for it. They were dedicated to it no less than Jupiter. They could be as deadly as he and would be when the battles began. But they did not have Jupiter's glands. So all the sisters admired and chirped around him, even the ones who were as eager as he for the fray. Dumb erks scuttled around the nest to get out his uniform, sponge off stains, iron in creases sharp as knives. Sisters came running in from all over to praise and admire as he bathed and shaved and practiced fierce military expressions before a glass. Senior Sister Loyola even left the nursery, abandoning the fifteen nestlings not yet old enough to talk; they would be fed by a dumb erk crew under the supervision of a twelve-year-old. "I wish I could go with you, Jupiter," she sighed. "You don't want to wait until I put the nestlings to bed?"