As the male gave her the meal, he remarked, “Before long, they will start bringing down our own domestic animals. Then we shall have proper eggs and more kinds of meat worth eating.”
“Good,” Nesseref said, handing him her identification card so he could charge her credit balance. “Yes, that will be very good indeed. Little by little, we may be putting down roots on this world after all. Perhaps our settlement here will work out, even if not in the way we thought it would before leaving Home.”
“This is not such a bad place,” the male answered. “Cold and wet, but we already knew that. If only there were fewer Big Uglies running around loose with weapons.”
“Truth,” Nesseref said. Did the Tosevite called Anielewicz have an explosive-metal bomb? Even if he didn’t, did it matter? The Reich and the SSSR and the United States had them. She was sure the countermale had meant Tosevites with rifles and submachine guns. They were the visible danger. But the ones with bombs were worse.
Atvar was feeling harassed. He should have been used to the feeling, after so much time on Tosev 3. In fact, he was used to the feeling. But he had less chance than usual to make the male addressing him regret it, because Reffet was every bit as much a fleetlord as he was.
“By the Emperor, Atvar,” Reffet snarled now, looking most unhappy indeed on Atvar’s screen, “what are these accursed American Big Uglies playing at with their preposterous space station? The miserable thing bloats like a tumor.”
“I do not know what they are doing,” Atvar answered. What he was doing was trying to hold his temper. Being an equal, Reffet was entitled to use his unadorned name. Equal or not, the fleetlord of the colonization fleet wasn’t entitled to use his name in that tone of voice. “Whatever it is, I doubt it means danger to us. When Big Uglies plan something dangerous, they rarely let us see any of it beforehand.”
“They have no business planning anything we do not know about in advance,” Reffet said. “They have no business being in space at all. It is preposterous”-he liked that word-“that we have to endure their presumption.”
“You must adapt,” Atvar said, knowing full well he could give no more infuriating advice to a male of the Race, especially one newly come to Tosev 3. “We have been over this ground before. They were on the point of developing this technology themselves when we arrived. Much of what they use is independently invented.”
“Much also is stolen from the Race.” Reffet’s tone suggested Atvar had personally handed over the engineering drawings.
“They developed rockets on their own. They were in the process of developing explosive-metal bombs when the conquest fleet came,” Atvar said. “They made it plain they would go to war and wreck this planet if we sought to keep them from doing what they had the ability to do. The colonization fleet would have had a thin time of it then.”
“Had the conquest fleet done its job properly, we would not be having this discussion now,” Reffet snapped.
Atvar wanted to bite him. All at once, he understood how Straha must have felt when he, as fleetlord, rejected the ambitious shiplord’s schemes one after another. For the first time, he even got some inkling of understanding why Straha had defected to the Big Uglies. At the moment, he felt rather like defecting himself. Then he wouldn’t have to deal with fools like Reffet, too hidebound to shed his own skin.
“You were not here at the time,” he said. “No doubt we could have benefited from your wisdom.”
“Truth,” Reffet said, not recognizing sarcasm. “Now we have to make the best of this bad situation. And I tell you this: even some from the conquest fleet are growing alarmed. My Security personnel and I have been bombarded with messages from a female named Kassquit, urging some sort of action against this space station.”
“Have you been tasting ginger, Reffet?” Atvar demanded. “You know perfectly well that the conquest fleet had no females.” Yet the name Kassquit was familiar to him. He checked the computer records, then started to laugh. By the time it was through, that laugh was so enormous, it looked as if he were taking the bite he so desired out of the other fleetlord.
“That is an offensive expression on your face,” Reffet said angrily, “and I will have you know for a fact, Atvar-for a fact, do you hear? — that no Kassquit with that identity number came from Home aboard the colonization fleet. Therefore, she must have come with you. I do not know how she did it, but I do know that she did it.”
Atvar laughed harder and wider than ever. Almost shaking with mirth, he said, “I will have you know for a fact-for a fact, Reffet, do you hear? — that you are an idiot, addled in your eggshell before you hatched. Do you have any notion who this Kassquit is?”
“One of yours,” Reffet answered. “One of yours, by the Emperor, which is all that matters to me. Try to evade it as you will, you-”
“Oh, shut up,” Atvar told him. “Truth: Kassquit is one of mine, in a manner of speaking-but only in a manner of speaking. She is a female Big Ugly hatchling one of my research psychologists obtained not long after the fighting stopped. He has been raising her as nearly as possible as a female of the Race ever since. And because of her word you are jumping around as if you had parasites sticking their pointed little snouts between your scales and sucking your blood.”
Reffet looked as if his eyes were about to pop out of the turrets that housed them. Atvar rather wished they would. At last, the fleetlord of the colonization fleet wheezed, “A Big Ugly? I have been taken in by a Big Ugly?”
“Again, in a manner of speaking,” Atvar said. He had the computer file he needed on the screen beside Reffet’s reduced but still furious image. That gave him all the advantage over the other fleetlord he needed. “She is, however, a Big Ugly in biology only. In culture, she is a citizen of the Empire, as much as a Rabotev or one of the Hallessi.”
“A Big Ugly,” Reffet repeated. He still sounded so disbelieving, Atvar wondered if he’d heard a word other than that. Reffet went on, “Well, if one can do it, maybe more than one can do it, too.”
“And what are you maundering about now?” Atvar inquired sweetly. He hadn’t liked Reffet since the colonization fleet arrived. The more he got to know his opposite number, the more he despised him, too.
But then Reffet brought him up short. “One of the things this Kassquit keeps complaining about is possible-she says probable-Tosevite penetration of our computer network. I thought that even more ridiculous than everything else the female was saying. But if she herself is a Big Ugly and tricked me into believing her a female of the Race, other Tosevites may be practicing similar deceptions.”
“I find that unlikely,” Atvar said, but it disquieted him just the same. “What do your Security males and females think of the notion?”
“They reckoned it nothing more than the glow that comes from rotten meat-till now,” Reffet said. “With this new information, they may take the idea more seriously. With this new information, I know I take it more seriously.”
“Have them transmit Kassquit’s allegations to my males in Security,” Atvar said. “They do have more experience of Tosevites than is true of your personnel. I shall be interested to learn if they, too, revise their opinion.”
“So shall I.” Reffet used the affirmative hand gesture. “All right, Atvar, I will do that.” No Exalted Fleetlord from him, no. No It shall be done, either. Unique among all the members of the Race on and around Tosev 3, he was not Atvar’s subordinate. That was one of the reasons Atvar disliked him, even if Atvar might not fully realize as much himself. He had to hope Reffet would do as he asked; he could not insist on it. This time, Reffet had chosen to oblige him. He had to be grateful, which irked him, too.