“Because there are times when my being here on Home feels as if it came from one of those stories,” the Tosevite said. “If I were to meet the Emperor of another intelligent species, how could it seem like anything but what we call science fiction?” He laughed. “I probably should not tell you that. I am sure the Doctor never would have said anything so undiplomatic.”
“You are honest. You are candid,” Atvar said. And, no matter how well you can think like one of us, you are not, and I fear, never will be.
After some little while on Home, Karen Yeager was getting used to being stared at whenever she went out on the streets of Sitneff. The Lizards didn’t come right up and harass her and Jonathan and the de la Rosas, but eye turrets always swiveled toward the humans. Some males and females would exclaim and point. Karen didn’t like it, but she supposed it was inevitable.
Sometimes she stared right back-mostly at the males and females who wore wigs and T-shirts and sometimes even shorts: shorts ventilated for their tailstumps. Did they have any idea how ridiculous they looked? Probably about as ridiculous as humans with shaved heads and body paint, but she didn’t dwell on that.
And then one day, like the most curious Lizard, she was pointing and exclaiming at the little green man-that was what he looked like-coming out of a shop. “Look!” she exclaimed in English. “A Halless!” She felt as if she’d spotted a rare and exotic species of bird.
The Halless was about as tall as a Lizard, which meant he came up to her chest. He was the green of romaine lettuce, though his hide was scaly, not leafy. He stood more nearly erect than Lizards did. His feet were wide and flat, his hands-only three fingers and a thumb on each-spidery and delicate.
Like the Rabotev shuttlecraft pilot they’d met, he had a shorter snout than did males and females of the Race. Unlike the Rabotevs and the Lizards, he had ears: long, pointed ones, set high up on his round head. His eyes were on stalks longer than those of the Rabotevs, and could look in different directions at the same time.
None of the Lizards paid any special attention to him. They were used to Hallessi. He stared at the humans with as much curiosity as the members of the Race showed. In a high, thin, squeaky voice, he said, “I greet you, Tosevites.”
“And we greet you, Halless,” Karen answered, wondering what she sounded like to him. “May I ask your name?”
“Wakonafula,” he answered, which didn’t sound like a handle a Lizard would carry. “And you are…?”
Karen gave her name. So did her husband and Tom and Linda de la Rosa. They seemed willing to let her do the talking, so she did: “We have never met anyone from your world before. Can you tell us what it is like?”
Wakonafula made the negative gesture. “I am sorry, but I cannot, not from personal experience. I was hatched here on Home, as were several generations of my ancestors. I have seen videos of Halless 1, but I suppose you will have done that, too. And I have also seen videos of Tosev 3. How can you possibly exist on such a miserably cold, wet world?”
“It does not seem that way to us,” Tom de la Rosa said. “We are evolved to find it normal. To us, Home is a miserably hot, dry world.”
“That strikes me as very strange,” Wakonafula said. “When it is so pleasant here… But, as you say, you are adapted to conditions on Tosev 3, however nasty they may be.”
“Why did your ancestors leave their planet and come to Home?” Karen asked.
“A fair number of students come here from Halless 1-and also from Rabotev 2, for that matter-for courses not available on other worlds,” the Halless answered. “Home still has the best universities in the Empire, even after all these millennia. And some students, having completed their work, choose to stay here instead of going back into cold sleep and back to the worlds where they hatched. We are citizens of the Empire, too, after all.”
Back when India belonged to Britain and not to the Race, some of its bright youngsters had traveled halfway around the world to study at Oxford and Cambridge. Not all of them went back to their homeland once their studies were done, either. Some stayed in London and formed an Indian community there. Funny to think that the same sort of thing could happen so many light-years from Earth.
“May I ask you a question?” Linda de la Rosa asked.
Now Wakonafula used the affirmative gesture. “Speak,” he urged.
“I thank you,” Linda said. “Does it not trouble you that Home has the best universities? If your folk ruled Halless 1 instead of the colonists from Home, would it not have the very best of everything?”
Trir, the humans’ Lizard guide, spluttered indignantly. She sounded like an angry tea kettle. Karen had trouble blaming her. If Linda wasn’t preaching sedition, she was coming mighty close.
But Wakonafula said, “You have asked several questions, not one. Let me answer like this: if it were not for the Race, we would still be barbarians. We would die of diseases we easily cure today, thanks to the Race. We would go to war with one another; our planet had several rival empires when the conquest fleet came. Thanks to the Race, we live at peace. If Halless 1 is not equal to Home in every way-and it is not, as far as I can tell from here-it is far closer than it was before the conquest. In the fullness of time, it will catch up.”
He sounded calmly confident. In the fullness of time… How many humans had ever had the patience to wait for the fullness of time? The Race did. Back on Earth, the Lizards had always insisted that Hallessi and Rabotevs thought more like them than like humans. Judging by Wakonafula, they had a point. Humans commonly preferred kicking over the apple cart now to waiting for the fullness of time.
On the other hand, how reliable was Wakonafula? Was he a chance-met Hallessi, as he seemed to be? Or was he a plant, primed to tell the Big Uglies what the Race wanted them to hear? How could anyone be sure? That was a good question. Karen knew she had no certain answer for it.
“If you will excuse me, I must be on my way,” the Halless said now, and left. Yes, he might well have had-probably did have-business of his own to take care of. But that casual departure roused Karen’s suspicions.
And then Trir said, “You see that all species within the Empire are happy to be a part of it.”
Once roused, Karen’s suspicions soared. This was pretty clumsy propaganda-but then, the Lizards never had been as smooth about such things as people were. More than a little annoyed, she said, “I am very sorry, but I do not see anything of the sort.”
“How could you not?” the guide asked in what sounded like genuine surprise. “The Halless said-”
“I heard what he said,” Karen broke in. “But his saying it does not have to make it a truth. He could easily have received instructions from superiors about what he was to tell us.”
“That is a shocking suggestion,”
Trir exclaimed.
Karen’s husband made the negative gesture. “I do not think so,” Jonathan Yeager said. “Such things happen all the time on Tosev 3. No reason they should not happen here as well.”
“Why should we resort to such trickery?” Trir asked.
“To make us believe things in the Empire are better than they really are,” Karen said. “Do you not agree that would be to your advantage?”
Trir let out an indignant hiss. “I will not even dignify such a claim with a response. Its foolishness must be as obvious to you as it is to me.”
Was there any point to arguing more? Reluctantly, Karen decided there wasn’t. The Lizard was not going to admit anything. Maybe Trir really didn’t see there was anything to admit. Karen wouldn’t have been surprised, only saddened, to find that was so. Plenty of humans couldn’t see their superiors’ ulterior motives, either.
And the guide also seemed perturbed, saying, “Perhaps we should go back to the hotel. That way, no more unfortunate incidents can take place.”
“This was not unfortunate. This was interesting,” Tom de la Rosa said. “We learned something about the Hallessi and something about the Empire.” And if we didn’t learn exactly what you wanted us to, well, too bad, Karen thought. But Trir was unlikely to see things like that.
A genuinely unfortunate incident did happen not long before they got to the hotel. A Lizard skittered up to them and said, “You things are what they call Big Uglies, right? You are not Hallessi or Rabotevs? No-you cannot be. I know what they look like, and you do not look like that. You must be Big Uglies.”
“Go away. Do not bother these individuals,” Trir said sharply.
“It is not a bother,” Karen Yeager said. “Yes, we are from Tosev 3. Why do you ask?”
“Ginger!” The stranger added an emphatic cough. “You must have some of the herb. I will buy it from you. I will give you whatever you want for it. Tell me what that is, and I will pay it. I am not a poor male.” Another emphatic cough.