Fortunately, the eppori seemed good-natured. It snuffled again, but didn’t buck or jump or do anything else too very horrifying. It plodded forward for a couple of strides, then turned one eye turret back toward her as if asking, Well, what do you want me to do now?
The saddle was uncomfortable as could be. She ignored that; she wouldn’t be on long. “How do I control it?” she asked Gatemp.
“With the reins, and with your legs, and with your voice.” He might have been talking about a horse, sure enough. After he gave her the basic instructions, he said, “Now you try. Make the eppori walk and go to the left.”
“It shall be done,” she said, and hoped it would. She squeezed the scaly body with her knees and twitched the reins as he’d told her. The eppori walked. Karen felt like cheering. She tugged the reins to the left. The animal turned in that direction. She hadn’t come more than ten light-years to go riding, but by God she could!
On the bus on the way back to Sitneff, Jonathan Yeager turned to his wife and said, “You smell like an eppori.”
“So do you,” Karen answered. “We all do.”
“Well, no,” Jonathan said. “Tom smells more like zisuili. But then, he was the one who stepped in it.”
“You guys are never going to let me live that down, are you?” Tom de la Rosa’s voice rose in mock anger.
“You’ll be famous on four planets, once the word gets around,” Jonathan’s father said. They’d been speaking English. He translated for Kassquit and Trir.
“Being around animals larger than I am makes me nervous,” Kassquit said. “Who knows what they will do next? They are animals, after all.” By the way she spoke, that should have been obvious to anybody.
Jonathan, who’d grown up in the city, had a certain amount of sympathy for her point of view. But Kassquit had never even seen an animal in person, not till she got to Home. No wonder she was hinky about them now. Jonathan didn’t say any of that, though. The less he said that involved agreeing with Kassquit, the less trouble he’d have with Karen.
Frank Coffey said, “Animals-most animals, I should say; I do not mean large carnivores or anything of the sort-are not so bad once you get to know them and to know what they are likely to do. Until that happens, though, it is only natural to be wary near them.”
“Truth,” Sam Yeager said. “As I told you, I grew up on a farm, so I ought to know. We had the meanest mule in the county. A mule is a work animal and can be a riding animal, and is often stubborn. I was very careful around him until I figured out what he would put up with and what made him angry. After that, we got along well enough.”
“I never heard that story before,” Jonathan said.
“No? Well, maybe it is because you are stubborn as a mule yourself, and would not listen even if I told it.”
Karen snickered. Jonathan gave her a dirty look, which only made her snicker again. But when he turned around and glanced at his father, Sam Yeager tipped him a wink. What was that supposed to mean? It wasn’t anything either Kassquit or Trir would notice. Was his old man making up the story about the mule so Kassquit would feel better? That would have been Jonathan’s guess, but he couldn’t prove it.
They came to the outskirts of Sitneff just in time for the evening rush hour. It was crowded on the highway, but things didn’t coagulate the way they did in Los Angeles. The roads were adequate for the number of cars that used them. Jonathan sighed. There were times when seeing how smoothly the Lizards managed things made him feel very much the barbarian.
When the bus stopped in front of the hotel, some small flying things were making small, rather sweet-sounding chirps from the shrubbery in front of the building. Jonathan listened with interest. He hadn’t heard many animals with even remotely musical calls on Home. Birdsong was unknown here. Till this moment, he hadn’t realized how much he missed it.
The chirping went on. “What are those creatures making that noise?” he asked Trir.
“Those are called evening sevod,” the guide answered. “They are related to squazeffi and other such fliers. They always call about the time the sun goes down.”
“Evening sevod.” Jonathan repeated the name so he’d remember it. “I thank you. They sound very pleasant.”
“Well, so they do,” Trir said. “Several of our musical composers have used their calls as thematic models.”
“Really?” he said. “Musicians on Tosev 3 sometimes do the same thing with the sounds of our animals.”
“That is interesting,” Trir said. “Forgive me, but I had not thought you Tosevites would know anything of music.”
Jonathan laughed at himself. I’m not the only one who thinks we’re a bunch of barbarians. “We do,” he said. “If you want details, I am sure Senior Researcher Ttomalss can give them to you. I have no idea whether any of our music would please you. We have many different styles.”
“You are more diverse than we are. I have noticed that in my research on Tosev 3,” Trir said.
“Home has been unified for a long time. That means the Race has been homogenized for a long time,” Jonathan said. “Back on Tosev 3, our different cultures are still very different from one another.”
“I know from my research on your species that this is a truth. It strikes me as very strange even so,” Trir said.
“No stranger than tens of thousands of years of sameness seem to a Tosevite,” Jonathan replied. The evening sevod kept piping in the bushes. Finally, one of them flew out. He’d never imagined a robin-sized pterodactyl. If not for the light streaming out of the hotel lobby, he wouldn’t have got more than the faintest fleeting glimpse. The little creature made one more musical squeak and then disappeared.
Trir said, “But unity is natural. Unity is inevitable. Seeing what a species is like before the inevitable occurs is unusual.”
Was she right? Jonathan started to make the negative gesture, but checked himself. Even before the Lizards came, cultures based on ideas and technology from Western Europe had become the strongest ones on Earth. To stay independent, other countries had had to adopt Western European techniques. If they didn’t, they would go under, as Africa and India had done. China had struggled with Western ideas as it now struggled against the Race. Japan had succeeded in holding its own after Commodore Perry made it open up to the wider world, but it had done so by adopting Western methods-and it might have failed, too.
“Technology, I think, is more important than culture,” Jonathan’s father said-the two Yeagers had been thinking along with each other.
“But would you not agree that in large measure technology dictates culture?” Trir asked.
“In large measure, but not completely,” Sam Yeager replied. “Different cultures and different species can use the same technology in different ways. We Big Uglies, by now, have access to almost the same technology as the Race does, but I do not think we are quite the same.”
His grin meant nothing to Trir, but she did catch his ironic tone. “That is a truth,” she said, “but you and we are biologically distinct. This is not the case with various cultures belonging to the same species.”
She had a point. She could be annoying, but she wasn’t stupid. Jonathan said, “You have to understand that it has only been a little more than a thousand of your years since we first went all the way around Tosev 3. It has only been half that time since one culture on our world got ahead of the others technologically to any great degree. And, of course, it has been less than two hundred of your years since the Race came. Maybe we will grow more alike as time goes by. But not enough time has passed yet for that to happen.”
“Only a thousand years since you circumnavigated your world…” Trir let out a soft hiss full of wonder. “I had read this, mind you. In the abstract, I knew it. But to be reminded of it in that way…” She hissed again.