“Have we got the plague?” Karen asked.
“We’re only following orders,” Captain Benn answered, which probably meant yes.
An open doorway was a surprise. Stenciled on the door were the words OFFICE OF THE COMMANDANT. “Oh, boy,” Sam Yeager said. “We’re here.”
They went in. Another surprise was the appearance of Lieutenant General Chesneau. Karen had expected a J. Edgar Hoover-jowled bulldog of a man, stamped from the mold that had produced Lieutenant General Healey. But Chesneau was small and thin-faced and didn’t look as if he bit nails in half for fun. His voice was a light tenor, not a bass growl. Mildly enough, he said, “Hello. Pleased to meet all of you. So you’re the people who’ve made my life so much fun since I got here, are you?”
He couldn’t have been more disarming if he’d tried-and he no doubt was trying. Sam Yeager said, “Well, General, no offense, but you’ve made my life a whole lot of fun since you got here, too.”
Chesneau looked pained. When he said, “Ambassador, I am sorry about that,” he sounded as if he meant it. But he went on, “You wore the uniform for a long time, sir. I’m sure you understand the need to follow orders.”
“He also understands when not to follow them,” Karen said. “Do you?”
“In that sense, I hope so,” the commandant answered, not raising his voice at all. Yes, he was trying to be disarming. “Whether that sense applies here may be a different question. And it’s because the ambassador chose not to follow them on one particular occasion that I have the orders I do.” Something tightened in his jawline. However soft he sounded, steel lay underneath.
“I did it. I’ll stand by it,” Sam Yeager said. “Here’s a question for you, General. Suppose, back in the 1960s, that the Lizards found out we’d done what we’d done to them without finding out any of us gave a damn about it. What do you think they would have done to us? You ask me, the answer is, whatever they wanted to. Back then, we weren’t strong enough to stop them. Slow them down, maybe, but not stop them.”
Will Chesneau believe that? Karen wondered. The commandant was somewhere around fifty, which meant he’d been born in the early 1980s. He’d grown up with the USA pulling ahead of the Race, not struggling desperately to get even. Did he understand what things had been like twenty years after the conquest fleet arrived?
All he said now was, “Maybe.” He looked at the people from the Admiral Peary one after another, then spoke to Sam Yeager: “You must inspire tremendous loyalty in those who know you, Ambassador. It’s not a small gift.”
“Thanks, but I don’t think that’s what’s going on here,” Karen’s father-in-law answered. “What’s going on is, your orders are such a bad mistake, everybody can see it but you.”
“No offense, sir, but the ambassador’s right,” Frank Coffey told Lieutenant General Chesneau. “What he’s done here is plenty to earn him a ticket back home all by itself. Those other things a long time ago… You can argue about them. I admit that-you can. But for one thing, arguing means there’s lots to be said on both sides. And for another, nobody can argue about what he’s done here. The Race was thinking hard about a preventive war against us. It might have started by the time you got here if not for him. Meaning no disrespect to the Doctor, but I don’t think he could have held it off as long as Sam Yeager did.”
Chesneau pursed his lips. “We did not expect that we would find Colonel Yeager holding the position he does,” he admitted. Then his jawline tightened again. “So-you say you’ll all stay on Home if the ambassador doesn’t go back to Earth? I am going to tell you, this is your one and only chance to change your minds. Anybody?”
He waited. He very visibly waited. Karen knew she and Jonathan weren’t going to say anything. Coffey? The de la Rosas? Dr. Blanchard? How could you be sure? How could you blame anybody who didn’t want to die on Home?
But no one said a word. Chesneau’s jaw tightened once more, this time, Karen judged, as a bulwark against astonishment. The commandant inclined his head to Sam Yeager. “What I told you before still holds, Ambassador-double, I’d say.”
“Thanks.” Yeager’s voice was husky. He nodded to his colleagues. “Thanks,” he repeated, more huskily still.
“You did the right thing,” Karen said. “We should be able to do the same.”
“Touching,” Lieutenant General Chesneau said dryly. “Last chance, people. Going once… Going twice… Gone.”
“If Dad’s not going anywhere, we’re not going anywhere, either,” Jonathan said. One by one, the men and women who’d come down from the Admiral Peary nodded.
Lieutenant General Chesneau eyed them in bemusement. Sam Yeager said, “Just for the record, you ought to know this wasn’t my idea.”
“Truth,” Karen said in the Lizards’ language, and added an emphatic cough. Her colleagues made the affirmative gesture. She eyed Chesneau. Plainly, he did understand the word, the cough, and the gesture. That was something, anyhow.
He let out a long sigh. “You are a bunch of obstreperous hooligans.”
“Truth,” Karen repeated, with another emphatic cough. The rest of the Americans used the affirmative gesture again. By their grins, they took it for a compliment, just as she did.
Chesneau saw that, too. “If you think you can blackmail me…” He paused and grimaced and finally started to laugh. “It’s possible you’re right. If I showed up in the Solar System without any of you, I suspect I would get some fairly sharp questions. So would the administration that sent me out-and unlike you, I can’t go into cold sleep and outlast it.” Karen’s hopes soared. Chesneau eyed her father-in-law. “Well, Ambassador, are you willing to go back to a country where you may not be especially welcome?”
“No, I’m not willing,” Sam Yeager answered. Karen stared. But then he went on, “I’m eager, General. What I’m willing to do is take my chances.”
“All right, then,” Chesneau said. “I’ll use altered circumstances here on Home as justification for disregarding my orders-and we’ll see which of us ends up in more trouble.” He started to add something, but found he couldn’t: the old-timers crowding his office were clapping and cheering too loud for anybody to hear another word he said.
As the American Tosevites from the Admiral Peary got ready to return to Tosev 3, Ttomalss waited for Kassquit to come wailing to him. She’d done it before, when Jonathan Yeager returned to the United States from her starship orbiting Tosev 3. Now she was losing not only a mate but the sire of the hatchling growing inside her. And Frank Coffey wasn’t just traveling down through the atmosphere. He would be light-years away.
But Kassquit did nothing of the sort. She began striking up acquaintances with the wild Big Uglies the Commodore Perry was leaving behind. The new physician seemed surprised to have a gravid patient, but also seemed confident he would be able to cope with whatever difficulties arose.
Finally, Ttomalss’ curiosity got the better of him. He came up to Kassquit in the hotel refectory one morning and said, “May I join you?”
She made the affirmative gesture. “Of course, superior sir… provided my nausea does not make me leave more quickly than I would like.”
A server came up and offered Ttomalss a printout. He declined; after so long, he had the refectory’s choices graven on his liver, and needed no reminders. He ordered. The server sketched the posture of respect and skittered away. Ttomalss swung his eye turrets toward Kassquit. “How are you feeling?” he asked.
“About the same as before,” she answered. “The wild Big Uglies assure me these symptoms are nothing out of the ordinary. I have to believe them.”
“That is not exactly what I meant,” Ttomalss said. “How do you feel about losing your mating partner?”