His silence told its own story. Quietly, Kassquit said, “Do you see, Exalted Fleetlord? I think perhaps you do.”
“I think perhaps I do, too,” Atvar answered, also quietly. “Humility is something we have not had to worry much about lately.” He laughed, not that it was funny from anyone’s point of view except maybe a Tosevite‘s. “Lately!” Another laugh, this one even more bitter. “We have not had to worry about it since Home was unified. From this, we concluded we did not have to worry about it at all.”
“Change has returned to the Race. Change has come to the Empire,” Kassquit said. “We had better embrace it, or soon there will be no more Empire.”
She was a citizen of the Empire. She was a Big Ugly. If that did not make her a symbol of change, what would? And she was right. Anyone with eye turrets in his head could see that. “It is a truth,” Atvar said. “Not a welcome truth, mind you, but a truth nonetheless.”
“You spent many years on Tosev 3. You can see this,” Kassquit said. “Will those who have lived all their lives on Home and who are not familiar with wild Big Uglies and what they can do?”
“Oh, yes. Oh, yes.” Atvar made the affirmative gesture. “If the Big Uglies can fly between their sun and ours in a fifth of a year while we take more than forty years to make the same journey, they will see. They will have to see.”
“For the Empire’s sake, I hope so,” Kassquit said, which could only mean she wasn’t completely convinced. “And I do thank you for speaking up for Sam Yeager, whether it did all you hoped or not. In his case, the wild Big Uglies should not be allowed to match the Race’s high-handedness.”
“We agree there,” Atvar said. “The American Tosevites from the Admiral Peary also agree on it. Whether we and they can persuade the newly hatched Americans from the Commodore Perry may be a different question.”
“Arrogance lets you think you can do great things,” Kassquit said. “To that extent, it is good. But arrogance also makes you think no one else can do anything great. That, I fear, is anything but good.”
“Again, we agree,” Atvar said. “I do not see how anyone could disagree-anyone who is not very arrogant, I mean.” Did that include the crew of the Commodore Perry? Did it, for that matter, include most of the Race? Atvar could pose the question. Knowing the answer was something else again. Actually, he feared he did know the answer-but it was not the one he wanted.
Jonathan Yeager and Major Nicole Nichols sat in the refectory in the Americans’ hotel in Sitneff. Jonathan was finishing an azwaca cutlet. People said every unfamiliar meat tasted like chicken. As far as he was concerned, azwaca really did. Major Nichols had ordered zisuili ribs. She had enough bones in front of her to make a good start on building a frame house. She wasn’t a big woman, and she certainly wasn’t fat; she was in the hard good shape the military encouraged. She sure could put it away, though.
A sheet of paper lay on the table between them. Jonathan tapped it with his forefinger. “You see,” he said.
Major Nichols nodded. “Yes. So I do. Very impressive.” No matter what she said, she did not sound much impressed.
“If you don’t take my father home, the rest of us don’t want to go, either,” Jonathan insisted. How readily he’d got the other Americans to put their signatures on the petition surprised and touched him. It had been much easier than he’d worried it would be when he first thought about taking the step.
She looked at the paper, then up at him. She was a strikingly attractive woman, but she had a sniper’s cold eyes. “Forgive me, Mr. Yeager, but you and your wife can’t be objective about your father.”
That only made Jonathan angry. He did his best not to show it. “I’m sure you’re right,” he said. “I wouldn’t want to try to be objective about him. But you’re pretending not to see something. My signature and Karen’s aren’t the only ones there. Every American on Home has signed it. That includes Major Coffey. Anyone would expect him to be on your side, not ours, if my dad had done anything even the least little bit out of line. And Shiplord Straha and Shuttlecraft Pilot Nesseref signed it, too, and you were the ones who brought them to Home.”
“They’re Lizards,” Major Nichols said. “Of course they’d be happy enough to stay on Home.”
“Come on. We both know better than that,” Jonathan said. “Nesseref has lived on Earth for the past seventy years. Her friends are there. Friends count with Lizards the way family does with us. And Straha… Straha would complain no matter where he was staying.”
“In some ways, his situation is a lot like your father‘s,” Nicole Nichols said. She drummed her nails on the white plastic of the tabletop. “He’s not particularly welcome no matter where he goes.”
“Looks to me as though you’re saying being right is the worst thing you can do,” Jonathan said tightly.
“Have it your way, Mr. Yeager.” Major Nichols folded the petition and put it in her handbag. “Besides, with the Lizards it’s academic. They aren’t going back to Earth with us, for fear they might pass on a message to the Race’s authorities back there. And the choice about your father isn’t mine any which way. I will take this document back to the Commodore Perry and let my superiors decide.”
“Yeah. You do that,” Jonathan said. “It wouldn’t look so good if you came back to Earth with none of us aboard, would it?”
She only shrugged. She was a cool customer. “We’d handle it,” she said. “We can handle just about anything, Mr. Yeager.” She got to her feet. “No need to show me the way out. I already know.” Away she went.
Jonathan muttered under his breath. This younger generation struck him as a mechanical bunch. For a nickel, he would have kicked Major Nichols in the teeth. He would have tried, anyway. He suspected she could mop the floor with him, and probably with any other three people here who weren’t Frank Coffey.
He got up, too, and slowly walked out of the refectory. He’d done everything he could do. So had everybody else on Home. He saw that Major Coffey’s John Hancock didn’t much impress Major Nichols-not that anything much did impress her. But Coffey’s signature sure impressed him. Even if Frank was going to be a daddy, he didn’t want to spend the rest of his life on Home. He’d signed anyway, to keep an injustice from being done to Jonathan’s father.
A Lizard came skittering up to Jonathan. His body paint proclaimed him a reporter. Jonathan immediately grew wary. The Race’s reporters were much like those on Earth: too many of them were sensation-seeking fools. “How does it feel to travel faster than light?” this one demanded, shoving a microphone at Jonathan.
“I do not know,” Jonathan answered. “I have never done it.” The Race evidently couldn’t keep secret any longer what the Commodore Perry had done.
The reporter gave Jonathan what was obviously intended as a suspicious stare. “But you are a Big Ugly,” he said, as if challenging Jonathan to deny it. “How could you be here without having traveled faster than light?”
“Because I am a Tosevite from the Admiral Peary, not from the Commodore Perry, ” Jonathan said resignedly. “We flew here in cold sleep slower than light, the same way your ships travel. You do remember the Admiral Peary, do you not?” He made his interrogative cough as sarcastic as he could.