“Go ahead,” Sam said. “Be my guests, both of you. As a matter of fact, the imperial government is picking up the tab for us for the time being. I suspect that will not last too much longer. Banking between solar systems will become much more practical if news of transactions does not require a good-sized part of someone’s lifetime to go from one to another.”
“No doubt that is a truth, superior sir,” Nesseref said.
“I do not care whether it is a truth,” Straha declared. “All I care about is that I shall eat well-I shall eat delightfully well-and someone else will pay for it. If this is not the ideal in such affairs, I do not know what would be.”
“Spoken like a male who has spent too much time on the lecture circuit,” Sam said.
“There is a truth!” Straha used an emphatic cough. “The only difference is, meals on the lecture circuit are usually not worth the savoring. This does not stop me from eating them, you understand, only from enjoying them as much as I might.” He hadn’t been so cheerfully mercenary when Sam first knew him. Had life in the United States changed him? Or had living as a celebrity rather than a military officer after he returned to the Race done the job? Sam didn’t know. He wondered if Straha did.
“They have made furniture for your shape, I see,” Nesseref said as she walked into the refectory with Yeager and Straha.
“They have tried,” Sam agreed. “It is not perfect, but it is better for us than what you use. Our backs and hips align differently from yours, and our fundaments have a different shape.” Lizards didn’t have much in the way of buttocks and did have tailstumps. Humans could sit in chairs made for them, but the experience wasn’t enjoyable.
A server brought menus. “Ah, plerkappi!” Straha said. “I have not had plerkappi for a very long time. No Tosevite seafood comes close to them. Have you tried them, Sam?”
“Once or twice,” Sam answered. “The flavor is a little too strong for my taste.” They reminded him of clams that had started to go bad. If Straha fancied them, he was welcome to his share and Sam’s besides.
Nesseref ordered them, too, so maybe they really were something travelers coming back after a long time away would crave. Yeager stuck to azwaca cutlets. Straha sneered. Sam didn’t care. Straha also sneered when he ordered unflavored alcohol. “All you want to do is poison yourself with it,” the Lizard said. “You should enjoy it.”
“I do not enjoy your flavorings,” Sam Yeager said. “And you were not fond of whiskey, either.”
“But that is different,” Straha said. “Who would want to drink burnt wood? You might as well drink paint or cabinet cleaner.”
Sam thought the Race’s flavorings every bit as nasty as paint. “No accounting for taste,” he said, and let it go at that.
“Well, there is a truth,” Straha agreed. The way his mouth fell open and the way his eye turrets moved were the Race’s equivalent of a sly laugh. “Look at my choices in friends, for instance.”
“I will try not to hold it against you,” Yeager said, and Straha laughed again. Sam tried for the third time: “So how is Tosev 3 these days?”
“It is a very strange place,” Straha said. Nesseref made the affirmative gesture. Straha added, “Even those parts of it ruled by the Race are strange these days.” Nesseref agreed again.
“This is interesting, but it tells me less than I might like to know,” Sam said. “In what ways is Tosev 3 strange?”
“Part of the strangeness is staying the same ourselves while we watch the Big Uglies change all around us,” Nesseref said. “This is not only strange, it is frightening.”
“She is right,” Straha said. “It is as if we are a big pot in water. When we first came to Tosev 3, the water outside was, say, halfway to the top. We had no great trouble holding it out. It has climbed up and up and up ever since. Now it is lapping over the edge, and will flood everything inside. And the Big Uglies know it, too.”
“Who was that male from the SSSR some years ago?” Nesseref asked. “ ‘We will bury you,’ he said, and he might well have been right.”
“I remember that. It was before I went into cold sleep,” Sam said. “His name was Khrushchev, and he was a nasty piece of work.”
“No doubt he was,” Straha said. “That does not necessarily mean he was wrong. Sometimes I think the nastier a Big Ugly is, the more likely he is to be right. This is not a reassuring thought for a male of the Race to have.”
“When I was first revived on Tosev 3, we could do many things you wild Tosevites could not,” Nesseref said. “Your military could come close to matching ours, but our civilian life was far richer and more pleasant. One by one, you acquired the things you did not have. Now you have things we do not.”
“And, for the most part, we are not acquiring them.” Straha made the negative gesture. “No-we are acquiring them by purchase from the Big Uglies. We are not making them ourselves. That is not good.”
“And now this,” Nesseref said. “Here we are, back on Home, and in days rather than years.”
“This, I gather, you decline to sell to us,” Straha put in.
“Well… yes,” Sam said.
“I cannot blame you,” Straha said. “If I were a Big Ugly, I would not sell this technology to the Race, either. We tried to conquer you. Thanks to Atvar, we did not quite succeed, but we tried. I would not blame you for returning the favor.”
“We do not want to conquer anyone.” Sam used an emphatic cough. The refectory was bound to be bugged. “All we want to do is live in peace with our neighbors, both the other independent Tosevites and the Empire.”
“Yes, the Empire is your neighbor now-your near neighbor,” Straha said. “It is no longer the monster down the hall that stuck a clawed paw into your room. But now, to the Race, you are the monster down the hall.”
“We are not monsters, any more than you are,” Sam insisted.
“Before, we could reach you and you could not reach us. That made us monsters to you,” Straha said. “Now you can reach us in a way in which we cannot reach you. Believe me, Sam Yeager, that makes you monsters-large, scary monsters-to us.” He added an emphatic cough of his own.
“We are not monsters. We are only neighbors,” Sam said.
Straha laughed. “What makes you think there is a difference? We have become your near neighbors. You are still not our near neighbors. That by itself is monstrous, at least as seen through our eye turrets.”
He was bound to be right. Even so… “Whenever you say these things, you make a war between the Empire and the United States more likely. Is that what you want, Shiplord? If it is, you will find some here who feel the same.”
“I will find quite a few, I suspect, even aboard the Commodore Perry, ” Straha said. “Do I hear truly that they wish to exclude you from returning to Tosev 3?”
“Some of them do, yes,” Yeager said. “Some of those in power in the United States would like to do the same. Are there none here on Home who would rather you had stayed on Tosev 3?”
“No doubt there are,” Straha said. “The American Tosevites did not consult with them, though, and so they are stuck with me.”
“That sort of trip is not open to me,” Yeager said.
“I know. This is most unfortunate, in my opinion,” Straha said. Nesseref made the affirmative gesture. Straha went on, “You should do all you can to get them to change their minds.”
“I am,” Sam answered. “Just how much good any of that will do, though, I have to tell you I do not know.”
Atvar did not enjoy his meeting with the Tosevite officer called Nicole Nichols. The Big Ugly from the Commodore Perry spoke the Race’s language as well as any of the Americans from the Admiral Peary. That did not make her any more accommodating. On the contrary: it only emphasized how different-and how difficult-she was.
When Atvar presumed to speak up for Sam Yeager, Major Nichols just looked at him-looked through him, really-with her small, immobile eyes. “Well, Exalted Fleetlord, I thank you for your opinion, but I am afraid this is the business of the United States, not that of the Race.”