As Ttomalss was unhappily walking back to the hotel, a male wearing the body paint of a bus repairer accosted him. “Hello, friend,” the stranger said, so heartily that Ttomalss’ suspicions kindled at once. “Want to buy some ginger?”
“If you do not mind selling to an officer of the police,” Ttomalss answered. The repairmale disappeared in a hurry. Ttomalss wished he were a police officer. He would have been glad to arrest the petty criminal.
Kassquit was standing in the hotel lobby when Ttomalss came in. “I greet you, superior sir,” she said, sketching the posture of respect.
“And I greet you,” he said. “I hope you are feeling well?”
“I am as well as can be expected, anyhow,” Kassquit answered. “This new Tosevite physician says the same thing Dr. Blanchard did-my gravidity seems normal to them, however nasty it is for me.”
“How are you emotionally?” Ttomalss said. “You do seem less distressed at Frank Coffey’s departure than you did when Jonathan Yeager first returned to Tosev 3.”
“I am less distressed,” she said. “Most of the time I am, anyhow. My moods do swing. The wild Big Uglies say this has to do with hormone shifts during gravidity. But I have experience now that I did not have when Jonathan Yeager left me. And Frank Coffey may come back, where Jonathan Yeager entered into that permanent mating contract. So yes, I remain more hopeful than I was then.”
“Good. I am glad to hear it. Whatever you may think, I have done my best to raise you so that you would become a fully independent person,” Ttomalss said. “I know I have made mistakes. I think that is inevitable when raising someone of another species. I am sorry for it,” Ttomalss said.
“Your biggest mistake might have been to try to raise someone of another species at all,” Kassquit said. “I understand why you did it. The wild Big Uglies did the same thing. No doubt you and they learned a great deal. That still does not make it easy for the individuals who have to go through it.”
When she’d been angry before, she’d said worse things to him-and about him. “I am afraid it is too late to change that now,” Ttomalss said. “For what has happened to you, you have done very well.” Kassquit didn’t quarrel with that, which left him more relieved than he’d thought it would.
The shuttlecraft’s rockets roared. Deceleration shoved up at Karen Yeager. The pilot said, “Final approach now. The rockets are radar-controlled. They fire automatically, and nothing can go wrong… go wrong… go wrong… go wrong…”
On the couch beside Karen‘s, Jonathan grunted. “Funny,” he said. “Funny like a crutch.”
Karen nodded. That took effort. After one-tenth g and weightlessness, she felt heavy as lead weighing more than she normally would. The rockets fell silent. Three soft bumps meant the shuttlecraft’s landing struts had touched the ground. Earth. One Earth gravity. Normal weight. Karen still felt heavy as lead. She said, “I could use that funny crutch right now.”
“You said it,” Sam Yeager agreed from beyond Jonathan.
“Are you all right?” she asked him. He was spry, no doubt about it, but he wasn’t a young man. What was hard on her and Jonathan had to be worse for him.
“I’ll do,” he answered. “We had to twist their arms to get them to let me come back here. I’ll be darned if I’ll give ’em the satisfaction of keeling over the minute I get home.”
“There you go, Dad!” Jonathan said.
The pilot undogged the hatch and flipped it open. The air that came into the shuttlecraft was damp and cool and smelled of the sea, the way it usually did around the Los Angeles International Air- and Spaceport. Karen smiled before she even knew she was doing it. To her, this was the feel and smell of home. She and Jonathan had grown up in the South Bay, only a few miles from L.A. International. “All ashore that’s going ashore,” the pilot said, determined to be a comedian.
“I’m not going first this time,” Sam Yeager said. “If I fall off the ladder, I want you youngsters to catch me.” Maybe he was trying to be funny, too. More likely, he was kidding on the square.
“Ladies first,” Jonathan said, so Karen took the ladder down to the tarmac. Jonathan followed a moment later. “Whew!” he said when he got to the bottom; full gravity was pressing on, and oppressing, him, too. His father descended then. Karen tensed to help Sam if he had any trouble, but he didn’t. If anything, he stood more easily than she and Jonathan did.
“Well, well,” he said. “We’ve got a welcoming committee. Only thing I don’t see is the brass band.”
Karen didn’t see a brass band, either. What she did see were cops and soldiers all around, pistols and rifles at the ready. The soldiers’ uniforms looked something like the ones she’d known in 1994, but only something. The same applied to their weapons. A captain-her rank badge hadn’t changed, anyway-who surely hadn’t been born in 1994 came up to the Yeagers. “Please come with me, folks,” she said.
“Like we’ve got a choice,” Jonathan said.
She gave him a reproachful look. “Do you really want to stand on the cement for the rest of the day?” She added an interrogative cough.
“Since you put it that way, no,” Karen said. “Just don’t go too fast. We’ve been light for a while.”
The shuttlecraft terminal was a lot bigger and fancier than Karen remembered. Some of the columns supporting things looked as if they’d fall down in a good-sized earthquake. Karen hoped that meant building techniques had improved, not that people had stopped worrying about quakes.
She and her husband and her father-in-law didn’t have much luggage. Customs officials pounced on what they did have. “We’re going to irradiate this,” one of them declared.
“For God’s sake, why?” Karen asked.
“Who knows what sort of creatures you’re bringing back from Home?” the woman answered.
“Isn’t that locking the barn door after the horse is gone?” Sam asked.
“We don’t think so,” the customs inspector replied. “The Lizards have brought in what they wanted here. That’s been bad enough. But who knows what sort of fungi or pest eggs you’re carrying? We don’t want to find out. And so-into the X-ray machine everything goes.”
“Do you want us to take off what we’re wearing?” Karen inquired.
She intended it for sarcasm, but the inspector turned and started talking with her boss. After a moment, she turned back and nodded. “Yes, I think you had better do that. You come with me, Mrs. Yeager.” A couple of male inspectors took charge of Jonathan and Sam.
That’ll teach me to ask questions when I don’t really want to know the answers, Karen thought. She stripped and sat draped in a towel till they deigned to give her back her clothes. She half expected to see smoke rising from her shoes when she finally did get them back, but they seemed unchanged. The inspector led her out of the waiting room. Her husband and father-in-law emerged from another one five minutes later.
“Boy, that was fun,” Jonathan said.
“Wasn’t it just?” his father agreed. “Are we all right now?” he asked one of the inspectors riding herd on him.
“We think so, sir,” the man answered seriously. “We’re going to take the chance, anyhow.” He sounded like a judge reluctantly letting some dangerous characters out on parole.
Signs and painted arrows led the Yeagers to the reception area. Waiting there were more cops and soldiers. Some of them were holding reporters at bay, which seemed a worthwhile thing to do. Others kept a wary eye on Karen and Jonathan and Sam. What do they think we’ll do? Karen wondered. This time, she didn’t ask; somebody might have told her.
Also waiting in the reception area were two men about halfway between Jonathan and Sam in age and two Lizards. Karen saw that the Lizards were Mickey and Donald a heartbeat before she realized the two men had to be her sons. She’d known time had marched on for them. She’d known, yes, but she hadn’t known. Now the knowledge hit her in the belly.
It hit Richard and Bruce at the same time, and just about as hard. They both seemed to go weak in the knees for a moment before they hurried forward. “Mom? Dad? Grandpa?” They sounded disbelieving. Mickey and Donald followed them.