He said, “Until I am told otherwise, the experiment will continue in its present form. Even if I am told otherwise, I shall not surrender the hatchling to the inept mercies of the Big Uglies without an appeal to highest authority. And I, too, have backers for my cause. This work is an important part of understanding not only our future relations with the Tosevites but also that of their sexuality and its consequences for their species. Terminating it would disrupt several research tracks.”
“And probably send you back down to the surface of Tosev 3,” Tessrek said maliciously.
“At least I’vebeen down to the surface of Tosev 3,” Ttomalss retorted. Though he regarded that surface and the Big Uglies who dwelt on it as rivaling each other for unpleasantness, he added, “Some males seem to be of the opinion that research can be conducted only in sterile laboratory settings; they do not understand that interactions with the environment are significant, and that results obtained in the laboratory are liable to be skewed precisely because the setting is unnatural.”
“Some males, on the other fork of the tongue, simply enjoy stepping into lumps of excrement and stooping to wash it out from between their toes.” Tessrek turned his eye turrets toward the Tosevite hatchling. “And some males, I might add, are in a poor position to sneer at the practices of others when they themselves are comfortably ensconced in a laboratory aboard ship.”
“Being here is a necessary component of my research,” Ttomalss answered angrily. “I am trying to determine how well the Big Uglies can be made to conform to our practices if those are inculcated into them from hatchlinghood. Just as one intending fraud goes to a computer for access to resources, I have brought the hatchling here for access to the Race undiluted by contact with the Tosevites. Such would be most difficult to arrange down on the surface of Tosev 3.”
“You’ve certainly given the rest of us undiluted olfactory contact with the wretched little creature,” Tessrek said. “The scrubbers up here are designed to eliminateour wastes from the air, not its, and some of those odors have proved most persistent and most disgusting.” He added an emphatic cough.
The hatching made a noise that, if you were in a charitable mood, you might have recognized as an emphatic cough. Perhaps you didn’t need to be in a charitable mood; Tessrek’s eyes swung sharply toward the little Tosevite, then moved away as if to say he refused to acknowledge what he’d just heard.
Triumphantly, Ttomalss said, “There, you see? The hatching, despite its deficiencies, is being socialized toward our usages even at this early stage in its development.”
“It was just another in the series of loud, unpleasant sounds the creature emits,” Tessrek insisted. “It held no intelligible meaning whatsoever.” To show he meant what he said, he let out a second emphatic cough.
Now Ttomalss looked anxiously toward the hatchling. Even he would have been willing to concede it did not know the meanings of the noises it made in imitation of his. It seemed likely to learn meanings by observing what the beings around it did in response to the stimuli varying sounds evoked. But despite his knowledge, he would have yielded a pay period’s wages to have it come out with another emphatic cough.
He didn’t think it was going to happen. But then, just when he’d given up hope, the little Tosevite did make a noise that sounded like an emphatic cough-sounded more like one, in fact, that its first effort had.
“Coincidence,” Tessrek declared, before Ttomalss could say a thing. Yet no matter how dogmatically certain he sounded, he did not presume to tack yet a third emphatic cough on behind his assertion.
“I think not,” Ttomalss said. “This is how the Big Uglies go about acquiring language. Since we are the language possessors with whom the hatchling is in constant contact, it is imitating our repertoire of sounds. Eventually, I believe, it will attach mental signification to the sounds it uses: in other words, it will begin to speak intelligibly.”
“The Big Uglies have enough trouble doing that no matter what language they use,” Tessrek said. But he did not try directly refuting Ttomalss, from which Ttomalss inferred he conceded the point.
Ttomalss said, “Since video and audio monitors constantly record the activities in this chamber, I want to thank you for adding to our store of data concerning Tosevite language acquisition.”
Tessrek hissed something unpleasant and departed more quickly than he’d come in. Ttomalss let his mouth fall open in a long laugh, which he thought well-earned. The Tosevite hatchling emitted one of the squeals it used in place of a sensibly quiet gesture. Sometimes those squeals, so unlike any sound the Race made, annoyed Ttomalss no end. Now he laughed even harder. The hatchling had understood his mirth and responded with its own.
For the benefit of the recorders, he emphasized that point aloud, adding, “This growing level of successful interspecies communication appears to me to warrant further serious investigation.” He looked at the little Tosevite with something more nearly approaching warmth than he ever remembered showing it. “Let’s see them try to take you away from me now. Even if you are a nuisance, you’re too valuable to give back to the Big Uglies.”
20
Jens Larssen peered out the window of the farmhouse where he’d taken shelter for the past several days. That was what he’d been doing lately: peering out the window and waiting for the searchers to give up and go away. “They aren’t going to catch me,” he muttered. “I’m too smart for them. I won’t let them catch me.”
He was pretty sure he could have outrun pursuit from Denver and made it to Lizard-held territory. Pursuit wasn’t the only problem, though. People would have been waiting for him out east. He hadn’t forgotten telegraph and telephone lines (even if those were likely to be down, could you take the chance?) and radio and even carrier pigeons. They’d know he was coming, oh yes they would.
So he’d been waiting for them to give up and quit looking for him. Sooner or later, they’d figure he’d got caught in a snowstorm and frozen to death, or that he’d managed a clean getaway, or else the war would heat up and they’d forget all about him and go off to fight. Then he’d start moving again. The time, he judged, was nearly ripe.
He laughed. “They aren’t going to catch me,” he repeated. “Hell, they were right in this house and they didn’t have a clue.”
He’d been smart. He was a physicist-he was supposed to be smart. He’d picked a house with a storm cellar in it. Whenever prying eyes came around, he’d ducked down into the cellar. He’d even tied a throw rug to a chair near the cellar door so it kept that door covered up after he went down below. He’d heard combat boots thumping up above his head, but none of the soldiers had had a hint that he was sitting in the darkness with his finger on the trigger of his Springfield in case anything had gone wrong.
He laughed again. The soldiers hadn’t had the brains to look beyond the ends of their noses. He’d expected nothing different, and he’d been right. “I usually am,” he said. “If those fools would have listened to me-” He shook his head. They hadn’t listened. The Lizards would.
Even though they hadn’t been physicists, the people who’d built this farm had been pretty smart, too. They weren’t around, though, so they hadn’t been smart enough to escape the Lizards. Or maybe they hadn’t been lucky enough. You never could tell. Whichever way it was, they were gone.
But they’d left behind that storm cellar, stocked with enough home-canned goodies to feed a platoon for a month. That was how it seemed to Jens, anyhow. Beef, pork, chicken, vegetables-they didn’t seem to have had any fruit trees, and he missed sweets till he came upon a gallon jar of tapioca pudding. The wife of the house must have made a lot more than she could use right away, and put up the rest. He ate tapioca till it started coming out of his ears.