Inside, where reconnaissance couldn’t spot them, two real live soldiers came to attention when Auerbach walked through the door with Rachel and Penny. “Yes, sir, you can see the colonel now,” one of them said.
“Thanks,” Auerbach said, and headed for Nordenskold’s office.
Behind him, one of the sentries turned to the other and said, not quite quietly enough, “Look at that lucky son of a bitch, will you, walkin’ out with two o’ the best-lookin’ broads in town.”
Auerbach thought about going back and calling him on it, then decided he liked it and kept on toward the colonel’s office.
The Tosevite hatchling made a squealing noise that grated in Ttomalss’ hearing diaphragms. It reached up for the handle of a low cabinet, grabbed hold on about the third try, and did its best to pull itself upright. Its best wasn’t good enough. It fell back down, splat.
Ttomalss watched curiously to see what it would do next. Sometimes, after a setback like that, it would wail, which he found even more irritating than its squeals. Sometimes it thought a fall was funny, and let out one of its annoyingly noisy laughs.
Today, rather to Ttomalss’ surprise, it did neither of those. It just reached up and tried again, as deliberate and purposeful an action as he’d ever seen from it. It promptly fell down again, and banged its chin on the floor. This time, it did start to wail, the cry it made to let the world know it was in pain.
When it did that, it annoyed everyone up and down the corridor of the starship orbiting above Tosev 3. When the other males researching the Big Uglies got annoyed, they grew more likely to side against Ttomalss in his struggle to keep the hatchling and keep studying it rather than returning it to the female from whose body it had emerged.
“Be silent, foolish thing,” he hissed at it. The hatchling, of course, took no notice of him, but continued to make the air hideous with its howls. He knew what he had to do: he stooped and, being careful not to prick its thin, scaleless skin with his claws, held it against his torso.
After a little while, the alarming noise eased. The hatchling liked physical contact. Young of the Race, when newly out of the eggshell, fled from anything larger than they were, instinctively convinced it would catch and eat them. For the first part of their lives, Big Uglies were as immobile as some of the limestone-shelled creatures of Home’s small seas. If they got into trouble, the females who’d ejected them (and a hideous processthat was, too) had to save them and comfort them. With no such female available here, the job fell to Ttomalss.
The hatchling’s cheek rubbed against his chest. That touched off its sucking reflex. It turned its head and pressed its soft, wet mouth against his hide. Unlike a Tosevite female, he did not secrete nutritive fluid. Little by little, the hatchling was realizing that faster than it had.
“A good thing, too,” Ttomalss muttered, and tacked on an emphatic cough. The little Tosevite’s saliva did unpleasant things to his body paint. He swung down an eye turret so he could look at himself. Sure enough, he’d have to touch up a spot before he was properly presentable. He hadn’t intended to demonstrate experimentally that body paint was not toxic to Big Uglies, but he’d done it.
He turned the other eye turret down, studied the hatchling with both eyes. It looked up at him. Its own eyes were small and flat and dark. He wondered what went on behind them. The hatching had never seen itself, nor its own kind. Did it think it looked like him? No way to know, not until its verbal skills developed further. But its perceptions would have changed by then, too.
He watched the corners of its absurdly mobile mouth curl upwards. Among the Tosevites, that was an expression of amiability, so he had succeeded in making it forget about its hurt. Then he noticed the cloth he kept around its middle was wet. The Tosevite had no control over its bodily function. Interrogations suggested Big Uglies did not learn such control for two or three of their years-four to six of those by which Ttomalss reckoned. As he carried the hatchling over to a table to clean it off and set a new protective cloth in place, he found that a very depressing prospect.
“Youare a nuisance,” he said, adding another emphatic cough.
The hatchling squealed, then made a noise of its own that sounded like an emphatic cough. It had been imitating the sounds Ttomalss made more and more lately, not just emphatic and interrogative coughs but sometimes real words. Sometimes he thought it was making those noises with deliberate intent. Tosevites could and did talk, often to excess-no doubt about that.
When the hatchling was clean and dry and content, he set it back down on the floor. He tossed the soaked cloth into an airtight plastic bin to prevent its ammoniacal reek from spreading, then squirted cleansing foam on his hands. He found the Tosevites’ liquid wastes particularly disgusting; the Race excreted neat, tidy solids.
The hatchling got up on all fours and crawled toward the cabinets again. Its quadrupedal gait was much more confident than it had been at the beginning; for a couple of days, the only way it had been able to get anywhere was backwards. It tried pulling itself erect-and promptly fell down once more.
The communicator chimed for attention. Ttomalss hurried over to it. The screen lit, showing him the image of Ppevel, assistant administrator for the eastern region of the main continental mass. “I greet you, superior sir,” Ttomalss said, doing his best to hide nervousness.
“I greet you, Research Analyst,” Ppevel replied. “I trust the Tosevite hatchling whose fate is now under discussion with the Chinese faction known as the People’s Liberation Army remains healthy?”
“Yes, superior sir,” Ttomalss said. He turned one eye turret away from the screen for a moment, trying to spot the hatchling. He couldn’t. That worried him. The little creature was much more mobile than it had been, which meant it was much more able to get into mischief, too… He’d missed some of what Ppevel was saying. “I’m sorry, superior sir?”
Ppevel waggled his eye turrets ever so slightly, a sign of irritation. “I said, are you prepared to give up the hatchling on short notice?”
“Superior sir, of course I am, but I do protest that this abandonment is not only unnecessary but also destructive to a research program vital for the successful administration of this world after it is conquered and pacflied.” Ttomalss looked around for the hatchling again, and still didn’t see it. In a way, that was almost a relief. How could he turn it over to the Chinese if he didn’t know where it was?
“No definitive decision on this matter has yet been made. If that is your concern,” the administrator said. “If one is reached, however, rapid implementation will be mandatory.”
“At need, it shall be done, and promptly,” Ttomalss said, hoping he could keep relief from his voice. “I understand the maniacal stress the Big Uglies sometimes place on speedy performance.”
“If you do understand it, you have the advantage over most males of the Race,” Ppevel said. “The Tosevites have sped through millennia of technical dev
elopment in a relative handful of years. I have heard endless speculation as to the root causes of this: the peculiar geography, the perverse and revolting sexual habits the Big Uglies practice-”
“This latter thesis has been central to my own research, superior sir,” Ttomalss answered. “The Tosevites certainly differ in their habits from ourselves, the Rabotevs, and the Hallessi. My hypothesis is that their constant sexual tensions, to use an imprecise simile, are like a fire continually simmering under them and stimulating them to ingenuity in other areas.”
“I have seen and heard more hypotheses than I care to remember,” Ppevel said. “When I find one with supporting evidence, I shall be pleased. Our analysts these days too often emulate the Tosevites not only in speed but also in imprecision.”
“Superior sir, I wish to retain the Tosevite hatching precisely so I can gather such evidence,” Ttomalss said. “Without studying the Big Uglies at all stages of their development, how can we hope to understand them?”
“A point to be considered,” Ppevel admitted, which made Ttomalss all but glow with hope; no administrator had given him so much reason for optimism in a long time. Ppevel continued, “We-”
Ttomalss wanted to hear more, but was distracted by a yowl-an alarmed yowl-from the Big Ugly hatchling. It also sounded oddly far away. “Excuse me, superior sir, but I believe I have encountered a difficulty,” the researcher said, and broke the connection.
He hurried along the corridors of his laboratory area, looking to see what the hatchling had managed to get itself into this time. He didn’t see it anywhere, which worried him-had it managed to crawl inside a cabinet? Was that why its squawks sounded distant?
Then it wailed again. Ttomalss went dashing out into the corridor-the hatchling had taken it into its head to go exploring.