I agree, he wrote back a little later. It was not worth being kept secret. In that case, why was it?
Who can tell, with Tosevites? Kassquit answered.
This time, Yeager did not reply. She wondered if she’d insulted him. She didn’t want to do that by accident. When she offended, she aimed to get full value from it.
Then she began to wonder if he’d been trying to tell her something else, something she would miss if she weren’t paying attention. If the American space station or spaceship or whatever it turned out to be had been kept so secret without there being any need for that, all that implied was that Big Uglies were fools, a notion Kassquit was prepared to take on faith.
But not all Big Uglies were fools all the time. She didn’t like believing that so well, but the conclusion was inescapable. Tosev 3, or some parts of Tosev 3, had come too far too fast for her to doubt it. Suppose the American Tosevites had had good reason to keep their project secret. What then?
Then, by logic inescapable as that of geometry, their spacecraft wasn’t so harmless as it now seemed. They had to have something in mind beyond what the Race was seeing.
“But what?” Kassquit wondered aloud. “Their atomic motor?”
Maybe. The idea appealed to her. Having fought the Race with explosive-metal bombs, the American Tosevites had to know the Race would be less than delighted at their using nuclear energy in space. Before the space station turned into a ship, the United States could have shouted its peaceful intentions as often as it liked, but it would have had a hard time convincing the Race it was telling the truth.
Was the United States telling the truth now? Had the Big Ugly named Sam Yeager, the Big Ugly who was and was not Regeya, hinted otherwise? Or was Kassquit reading too much into what he had written? And even if she read him aright, was he really in any position to know?
Those were good questions. Kassquit wished she knew the answers to all of them. As things were, she didn’t know the answer to any of them. She sighed. As she came into adulthood, she was discovering that such frustrations were part of life.
20
Fotsev’s head came up sharply. His eye turrets swung now this way, now that, as he prowled through the streets of Basra. “Something is wrong here,” he said in a voice that came out flat because he forced all the nervousness from it. “Something does not taste the way it should.”
“Truth,” Gorppet said. His eye turrets were moving unnaturally fast, too. That he thought something wasn’t the way it should be helped ease Fotsev’s mind. With the combat Gorppet had seen, he ought to have a knack for recognizing trouble before it became obvious.
“Everything seems quiet to me,” Betvoss said.
“I wish you seemed quiet to me,” Gorppet told him.
Betvoss liked to contradict for the fun of contradicting. Fotsev had seen that before. But, this time, the other male’s words helped Fotsev see where the trouble lay. “Everything does seem quiet,” he said. Gorppet gave him a reproachful look till he went on, “Everything seems too quiet.”
“Yes, it does.” Gorppet used an emphatic cough. “That is it exactly! Not many Big Uglies on the street, not even many of the cursed yapping creatures they use for pets.”
“Not many weapons, either.” Betvoss kept right on contradicting. “Usually the local Tosevites have about as much firepower as we do. If anyone thinks I am sorry to see something different for once, he is an addled egg.”
“If something is different, that is likely to mean something is wrong,” Fotsev said. His opinion sprang partly from the innate conservatism of the Race, partly from his own experience on Tosev 3.
Gorppet made the affirmative hand gesture. “If things go quiet all of a sudden, you always wonder what the Big Uglies are hiding. Or you should.”
“And it could be anything,” Fotsev said gloomily. “It could be anything at all. Remember the riots we had to put down when the colonization fleet started landing? If I never hear one more Big Ugly wrapped in rags screaming ‘Allahu akbar!’ I will be the happiest male on the face of this planet.”
Betvoss didn’t argue with that. Fotsev didn’t see how even Betvoss could have argued with that. Another male on patrol said, “Hardly any of the little half-grown beggars around today. And if that does not prove something is wrong, what would?”
“Truth,” Fotsev said. “They act like parasites-or they do most of the time. But where are they this morning?”
“Not at their lessons, that is certain,” Gorppet said with a nasty laugh. Most of the local Tosevite hatchlings had no lessons to attend. The ones who did receive what the locals considered an education learned to add and subtract a little, to write in their language, and to read from the manual of the superstition dominant hereabouts. Maybe that was better than nothing. Fotsev would not have bet anything he cared to lose on it.
When the patrol came into the central market square, he saw for himself that things were not right. On almost every day, the pandemonium in the market square outdid the rest of Basra put together. Not today. Today, hardly any merchants displayed food or cloth or brasswork or the other things they made. Today, males and females of the Race from the new towns out in the desert outnumbered Tosevites as customers.
“Too quiet,” Gorppet said.
“Much too quiet,” Fotsev agreed. He waited for Betvoss to weigh in on the opposite side, but the other male said not a word.
Horrible electrified squawkings burst from the towers attached to the buildings where the local Big Uglies practiced their superstition. “The call to prayer,” Gorppet said, and Fotsev made the affirmative gesture. “Now we shall see how many of them come out,” Gorppet went on. “If they stay home for this… well, they never have, not in all the time I have been here.”
Sure enough, robed Big Uglies emerged from houses and shops and streamed toward the mosques of Basra. “Praying is not the only thing they do in those buildings,” Fotsev said worriedly. “The males who lead them in prayer are also known to lead them in rebellion against the Empire.”
“We ought to go in there and make sure they say only things that have to do with their foolish beliefs,” Betvoss said. “Those males have no business meddling in politics. They should be punished if they try.”
“We have punished some of them,” Fotsev said. “Others keep popping up.”
“The other fork of the tongue is, they have no notion where their superstition ends and politics begins,” Gorppet added. “For them, the two are not to be separated.”
“We should instruct them, then.” Betvoss flourished his rifle to show what kind of instruction he had in mind. “We should go into those houses of superstition and kill the Big Uglies who preach against us, kill them or at least take them away and imprison them so they cannot inflame the others.”
“We tried that, not long after we occupied these parts,” Gorppet said. “It did not work: it created more turbulence than it suppressed. And so many of these Tosevites are experts in the fine points of their foolish belief that new leaders arose almost at once to replace the ones we captured.”
“Too bad,” Betvoss said, and there, for once, Fotsev couldn’t disagree with him.
With most of the Big Uglies worshiping, the patrol prowled down streets even more deserted than before. “Too easy,” Fotsev muttered under his breath. “Too easy, too quiet.”
His eye turrets kept on sliding now this way, now that, looking for places from which the Tosevites might ambush the patrol, and also for good defensive positions in case of trouble. That there was no sign of trouble except for things being calmer than usual did nothing to deter him. He felt like a hatchling still in the egg that trembled when it heard a predator’s footsteps. It could not see danger, but knew danger was there nonetheless. Fotsev thought it was here, too.