“What happens to the local plants and animals when it snows?” Jonathan Yeager asked.
“Some plants go dormant. Some animals hibernate,” the guide answered. “Most survive as best they can or simply perish under those harsh conditions.”
In broad outline, the South Polar region of Home reminded Karen of the country around Palm Springs and Indio, or perhaps more of the Great Basin desert of Nevada and Utah. Plants were scattered randomly across the landscape, with bare ground between most of them and with occasional clumps growing wherever the soil was especially rich or where there was more water than usual. The plants looked like desert vegetation, too: their leaves were small and shiny, and they didn’t get very big. A lot of them were armed with spikes and barbs to make life difficult for herbivores.
Something skittered from one clump of plants to another. Karen didn’t get the best look at it, but it reminded her of a small-l lizard. Of course, since all the land creatures on Home seemed to be scaly, they would remind her of lizards-unless they reminded her of dinosaurs instead.
She and the rest of the humans walked along in Trir’s wake, admiring the scenery. It was beautiful, in a bleak way. A few of the plants showed Home’s equivalent of flowers, which had black disks at their heart that attracted pollinators. Karen went up to one and sniffed at it. It didn’t smell like anything in particular.
“Why do you do that?” Trir asked.
“I wanted to find out if it had an odor,” she answered.
“Why would it?” The guide didn’t sound as if she believed the explanation.
“Because many plants on Tosev 3 use odors to attract flying animals that spread their sex cells,” Karen replied, realizing she had no idea how to say pollinators in the language of the Race.
“How very peculiar,” Trir said, and added an emphatic cough to show she thought it was very peculiar indeed.
Something rose from a bush and flapped away: one of the bat-winged little pterodacytloids that did duty for birds here. It was the same greenish gray as the leaves from which it had emerged. Protective coloration was alive and well on Home, then. When the flying beast landed in another bush, it became for all practical purposes invisible.
Bigger fliers glided overhead. Karen’s shadow stretched long off to one side. Tau Ceti-more and more, Karen was just thinking of it as the sun — shone not very high in the north. She wondered what happened during the long, dark winter nights when the sun didn’t rise at all.
When she asked, though, Trir stared at her with as little comprehension as if she’d used English. “What do you mean?” the Lizard asked. “There is a time when the sun does not rise above the horizon, yes, but there is always light here.”
That left Karen as confused as Trir had been. “But-how?” she asked.
Frank Coffey explained it for both of them. Speaking in the Race’s language, he said, “Tosev 3 has the ecliptic inclined to the equator at twenty-six parts per hundred.” The Lizards didn’t use degrees; they reckoned a right angle as having a hundred divisions, not ninety. “Here on Home, the inclination is only about ten parts per hundred. On our world, the far north and the far south can be altogether dark for a long time. There must always be at least twilight here during the day, because the sun does not get so far below the horizon.”
“That, at least, is a truth,” Trir said. “You… Tosevites must come from a very peculiar world indeed.”
Karen hid her amusement. The guide had almost said Big Uglies, but had remembered her manners just in time. The sky wouldn’t have fallen if she’d slipped, but she didn’t know that. Just as well she didn’t, probably. The more polite the Race and humanity were to each other, the better things were likely to go. And that was all to the good, since each side could reach the other now.
She did say, “To us, Home seems the peculiar world.”
“Oh, no. Certainly not.” Trir used the negative gesture and an emphatic cough. “Home is a normal world. Home is the world against which all others are measured. Rabotev 2 and Halless 1 come fairly close, but Tosev 3 must be much more alien.”
“Only because you come from Home is this world normal to you,” Karen said. “To us, Tosev 3 is the standard.”
“Home is the standard for everyone in the Empire,” Trir insisted.
“Except for Kassquit here, we are not citizens of the Empire,” Karen said. “We come from the United States, an independent not-empire.”
Trir must have been briefed about that, but it plainly meant nothing to her. She could not imagine intelligent beings who did not acknowledge the Emperor as their sovereign. And she would not admit that the choice of Home as a standard for how worlds should be was as arbitrary as that of Earth. Even Kassquit weighed into the argument on Karen’s side. She couldn’t convince Trir, either. And the guide did seem to find her just as alien as she found the Americans.
In English, Jonathan said, “If this is the Race’s attitude, we’re going to have a devil of a time making them see reason.”
“The higher-ups, the males and females we’ll be dealing with, have better sense,” Tom de la Rosa said, also in English.
“I hope so,” Jonathan said. “But down deep, they’re still going to feel the same way. They’re the center of the universe, and everything revolves around them. If they think that’s how it ought to be, we’re going to have a hard time persuading them they’re wrong.”
“Atvar will help there,” Karen said. “After all the time he spent on Earth, he knows what’s what.”
“What are these preposterous grunts and groans?” Trir demanded.
“Our own language,” Karen answered. “We know yours, and on our planet many males and females of the Race have learned ours.”
“How extremely peculiar.” The Lizard used another emphatic cough. “I assumed all intelligent beings would naturally speak our language. That is so throughout the Empire.”
“But we do not belong to the Empire,” Karen said. “I already told you that. When the Empire tried to conquer our not-empire, we fought it to a standstill and forced it to withdraw from the territory we rule.”
“As time goes on, you will be made into contented subjects of the Empire, as so many Tosevites already have been,” Trir replied.
She sounded perfectly confident. That was the attitude the Race had taken back on Earth, too. Were the Lizards right? They thought they had time on their side. They were very patient, far more patient than humans. They routinely thought and planned in terms of thousands of years.
Hadn’t that hurt them more than it helped, though? They’d first examined Earth in the twelfth century. If they’d sent the conquest fleet then, humanity wouldn’t have been able to do a thing about it. People really would be contented citizens of the Empire now. But the Lizards had waited. They’d got all their ducks in a row. They’d made sure nothing could go wrong.
Meanwhile, Earth had had the Industrial Revolution. By the time the Race arrived, people weren’t pushovers any more. And why? Because the Lizards had planned too well, too thoroughly.
He who hesitates is lost. If that wasn’t a proverb the Race should have taken to heart while dealing with humanity, Karen couldn’t think of one that was.
Kassquit said, “In my opinion, Senior Tour Guide, the issue you raise is as yet undetermined.”
“Well, what do you know?” Trir retorted. “You are just another one of these Big Ugly things yourself.” She could lose her temper after all.
Karen had never expected to sympathize with Kassquit, but she did here. Trir might as well have called Kassquit a nigger. In essence, she had. Kassquit said, “Senior Tour Guide, I am a citizen of the Empire. If that does not happen to please you, you are welcome to stick your head even farther up your cloaca than it is already.” She did not bother with an emphatic cough. The words carried plenty of emphasis by themselves.