“Ask.” Still feeling some of the delight he’d known during the mating act, Atvar was inclined to be magnanimous.
“How does the Race get anything done during mating season?” the wild Big Ugly inquired.
“That is a good question,” Atvar answered. “Females too old to lay eggs help keep things going, and there are a few males who, poor fellows, do not respond to pheromones. Rabotevs and Hallessi are useful in this role, too, now that we can bring them back here. They have mating seasons of their own, of course, but we do not need to take those into account here as much as we do on their home planets.”
“I suppose not,” Coffey said, and then, thoughtfully, “I wonder how many intelligent species have mating seasons and how many mate all through the year.”
“Until we got to know about you Tosevites, we thought all such species were like the Race,” Atvar said. “The first two we came to know certainly were, so we thought it was a rule. Now, though, the tally stands at three species with seasons and one without. I would have to say this sample is too small to be statistically significant.”
“I would say you are bound to be right.” The Tosevite looked up toward the ceiling-no, up beyond the ceiling, as his next words proved: “I wonder how many intelligent species the galaxy holds.”
“Who can guess?” Atvar said. “We have probed several stars like Home with no planets at all, and one other with a world that supports life but is even colder and less pleasant for us than Tosev 3: not worth colonizing, in our judgment. One of these days, we will find another inhabited world and conquer it.”
“Suppose someone else finds the Empire?” Coffey asked.
Atvar shrugged. “That has not happened in all the history of the Race, and by now our radio signals have spread across most of the galaxy. No one from beyond has come looking for us yet.” He swung his eye turrets toward the wild Big Ugly. “I think we would do better to worry about the species with which we are already acquainted.” Coffey did not presume to disagree with him.
7
Most of the time, the Race mocked Tosevite sexuality. For a small stretch of each year, though, males and females here far outdid the wildest of wild Big Uglies in sheer carnality. Kassquit had seen two mating seasons before this one. They astonished and appalled her. The creatures she’d thought she knew turned into altogether different beings for a little while.
She had seen mating behavior in the starship orbiting Tosev 3 after the colonization fleet brought females to her homeworld. Some of those females had come into season on their own. Others, ginger-tasters, had had chemical help. That was disruptive enough, as their pheromones sent males all over the ship into heat. But this… this was a world gone mad.
And it was a madness of which she had no part. The Race scorned Tosevite sexuality, yes. Kassquit knew that only too well. She’d been on the receiving end of such comments more times than she could count back in the starship orbiting Tosev 3. She hadn’t heard so many since waking up on Home. It wasn’t that males and females here were more polite. If anything, the reverse was true. But a lot of them were simply ignorant of how Big Uglies worked.
For the time being, Kassquit could have done the mocking. Males and females coupled on the streets. They coupled in the middle of the streets. Males brawling over females clawed and bit one another till they bled. Yes, Kassquit could have done the mocking-had she found anyone to listen to her.
The Race paid no attention. Right now, males and females were too busy joining to worry about anything else. Later, once the females’ pheromones wore off, everyone would try to pretend the mating season had never happened. Kassquit had already seen that. And, once the females’ pheromones had worn off, males and females would go back to disparaging the Tosevites for their lascivious and disgusting habits. She’d seen that, too.
Now, though, she could talk with the American Big Uglies. They hadn’t come down to the surface of Home when she watched the two previous mating seasons. The server in the hotel refectory was a female. She skittered about as if she’d tasted too much ginger, but Kassquit did not think that was the problem. Unless she was wrong, the female had to hurry to get her work done before some male interrupted her.
To Frank Coffey, Kassquit said, “This is a difficult time.”
“Truth.” The wild Big Ugly laughed. “We Tosevites do not do things like this. The Race must think about nothing but mating. What a perverse and depraved sexuality its males and females must have.”
For a moment, Kassquit thought he was serious in spite of that laugh. He sounded exactly like a pompous male grumbling about the Big Uglies. Then she realized he had to be joking, no matter how serious he sounded. That made the jest all the more delicious. She laughed, too, at first the way the Race did and then noisily, like any other Tosevite. She did that only when she thought something was very funny.
Frank Coffey raised an eyebrow. “Do you disagree with me? How can you possibly disagree with me? I wonder how we Big Uglies can hope to deal with creatures so constantly obsessed with mating.”
That only made Kassquit laugh harder. “Do you have any idea how much you sound like some kind of self-important fool of a male pontificating about Tosevites?”
“Why, no,” Coffey said.
Again, Kassquit needed a couple of heartbeats to be sure he was kidding. Again, the brief doubt made the joke funnier. She got out of her seat and bent into the full posture of respect. “I thank you,” she said.
“For what?” Now the brown Big Ugly seemed genuinely confused, rather than playing at confusion as he had a little while before.
“For what?” Kassquit echoed. “I will tell you for what. For puncturing the pretensions of the Race, that is for what.”
“You are grateful for that?” Coffey asked. Was his surprise here genuine or affected? Kassquit couldn’t tell. The wild Big Ugly went on, “Since you are a citizen of the Empire, I would have thought that you would be angry at me for poking fun at the Race.”
Kassquit made the negative gesture. “No,” she said, and added an emphatic cough. “The Race can be foolish. The Race can be very foolish. Sometimes they realize it, sometimes they do not. But being a citizen of the Empire is more, much more, than being a member of the Race.”
“That is not how it has seemed to us Tosevites,” Coffey said.
“Well, no,” Kassquit admitted. “But that is because of the special circumstances surrounding the occupation of Tosev 3.”
“Special circumstances?” Now Frank Coffey did the echoing. “I should say so!”
“I have never denied them,” Kassquit said. “I could not very well, could I? But you will have seen, I think, that the Empire treats all its citizens alike, regardless of their species. And we all have the spirits of Emperors past looking after our spirits when we pass from this world to the next.”
She looked down for a moment when she mentioned the spirits of Emperors past. Coffey didn’t. None of the wild Big Uglies did. He said, “I will admit you are better at treating all your citizens alike than we are, though we do improve. But you will understand we have different opinions about what happens after death.”
The Tosevite opinions Kassquit had studied left her convinced they were nothing but superstition. How could a being like a male Big Ugly with preposterous powers have created the entire universe? The idea was ridiculous. And even if such a being had done such a thing, why had he not seen fit to tell the Big Uglies about the Race and the Empire before the conquest fleet arrived? No, the notion fell apart the moment it was examined closely.
But mocking Tosevite superstitions only hatched hatred and enmity. Kassquit said, “In this case, I think we will have to agree to disagree.”
“Fair enough,” Coffey replied. “That is an idiom in English. I did not know the Race’s language also used it.”