“You are the ambassador? Sam Yeager?” Lizards had as much trouble telling people apart as most people did with members of the Race. If Sam hadn’t been the only human on the planet with white hair, the assistant protocol master wouldn’t have had a chance.
I ought to dye it, he thought irreverently. But heaven only knew what the Race used for dyes. He made the affirmative gesture. “Yes, I am the ambassador.”
“Good. You will come with me immediately.”
“What? Why?” Yeager was primed to tell the assistant protocol master that he still had a thing or two-dozen-to learn about diplomacy. You didn’t order an ambassador around like a grocery boy.
But he never got the chance, for the female said, “Because you are summoned to a conference by the Emperor.”
“Oh,” Sam said. A sovereign could order an ambassador around like a grocery boy. He gave the only reply he could under the circumstances: “It shall be done.”
“What are they up to, Dad?” Jonathan asked in English.
“Beats me. This one isn’t in the rules, or not in the part they showed me, anyhow,” Sam answered in the same language. “If I’m not back in two days, call the cops.” He was joking-and then again, he wasn’t. His own government had kidnapped him. It wasn’t completely inconceivable that the Race might do the same. If the Race did, though, he was damned if he knew what the humans here could do about it-this side of starting a war, anyhow.
The assistant protocol master hissed. For a bad moment, Sam feared she understood English. Some Lizards here did-even that Rabotev shuttlecraft pilot had. But the female said only, “Please be prompt.”
She led Yeager out of the hotel and into a car with darkened windows. No one looking in could see the car held a human. No reporters waited at the curb. None waited outside the imperial palace, either. Sam was impressed again. Whatever this was, it wasn’t a publicity stunt.
“This will be a private audience?” he asked the assistant protocol master.
“Semiprivate,” the Lizard replied. “And it will be a conference, not an audience. Ceremony will be at a minimum.”
“All right. I am sure it is a great honor to be called like this.” Sam didn’t say whether it was an honor he wanted. That was part of diplomacy, too.
“You are the first ambassador so summoned in more than a hundred thousand years,” the assistant protocol master said. The Race hadn’t had any independent ambassadors come before it in all that time. Yeager thought about pointing that out, but forbore. Diplomacy again.
He almost laughed when he found the conference room nearly identical to those in the hotel back in Sitneff. All across the USA, such rooms looked about the same. Evidently, that also held true on Home. The walls were a green-brown not far from the color of a Lizard’s hide. The table in the middle was too low to be quite comfortable for humans.
There were a couple of chairs more or less made for people in the conference room. Yeager sat down in one of them. A few minutes later, Kassquit came in and took the other. “I greet you, Ambassador,” she said politely.
“And I greet you,” Sam replied. How many conferences back on Earth had featured a naked woman? Not many-he was sure of that. Jumping out of a cake afterwards, maybe, but not at the conference itself.
When the door opened again, the Emperor came in. His gilding marked him off from his subjects. Kassquit sprang out of her chair and assumed the special posture of respect. Sam followed suit more slowly. He did everything more slowly these days.
“Rise, both of you,” the 37th Emperor Risson said. “The reason I called you here was to see whether we could progress toward settling the differences between the Race and the American Tosevites.”
He didn’t think small. In a sovereign, that was, or could be, an admirable quality. Sam returned to the chair that wasn’t quite right for his shape. “I hope we can, your Majesty,” he said. “That would be wonderful.”
The 37th Emperor Risson turned one eye turret toward him, the other toward Kassquit. “Which of us is outnumbered, Ambassador?” he asked.
“Both of us,” Yeager replied. “Two Big Uglies, one male of the Race. Two citizens of the Empire, one American.”
“No Emperor has ever been outnumbered by Tosevites before,” Risson said. Even though Sam had used the Race’s slang for humans, the Emperor was too polite to imitate him. Risson went on, “And yet, Tosevites have occupied the Race’s thoughts, and the thoughts of the Emperors, for a good many years now.”
“Well, your Majesty, we have been paying a fair amount of attention to the Race ourselves lately,” Sam said in a dry voice.
He wondered whether Risson would catch the dryness. When the Emperor’s mouth dropped open in a laugh, Sam knew he had. Matching dry for dry, Risson said, “Yes, I can see how that might possibly be so.” The Lizard leaned forward. “And now, can you tell me what you American Tosevites require from the Race, since it has drawn your notice?”
“Yes, I can tell you that,” Sam Yeager answered. “I can tell you in one word, as a matter of fact. We want equality.”
“Do you not believe you should wait until you have earned it?” the 37th Emperor Risson returned. “Eighteen hundred years ago, when we first discovered your kind, you were savages.” He spoke a word of command. A hologram of a knight sprang into being in the air.
Sam had seen that image a thousand times. He was, by now, good and sick of the blond Crusader. “I have never denied that the Race was civilized long before we were,” he said. “But that male is long dead, and I sit here on your home planet talking with you, your Majesty. I came here in my not-empire’s ship, too.”
“If we fought, you would lose,” Risson said.
“If we fought, we would hurt you badly,” Sam said. “We have been able to hurt you badly for some time now, and grow more able every year. But I thought we were here to talk about peace.”
“So we are,” the Emperor said. “Equality? Do you truly know what you ask?”
“Yes, your Majesty. I think I do,” Sam answered. A Japanese might have understood the demand-might have made the demand-more fiercely. The Empire looked at the USA the way the USA and Europe had looked on Japan when she muscled her way into the great powers. The Japanese weren’t white men. They were wogs, nothing else but. After they got strong enough, though, it stopped mattering.
Yeager shook his head in slow wonder. The day after Pearl Harbor, he’d tried to join the Army and fight the Japs. (Because of his false teeth, the Army turned him down then, though they’d been glad enough to take him when the Lizards came a little more than five months later.) Now here he was, sympathizing with Japan. Life could be very strange.
Kassquit said, “Your Majesty, I understand the Race’s pride, the Empire’s pride. Do you fully understand the Tosevites’ pride?”
“The Tosevites’ pride?” By the way the 37th Emperor Risson said it, that had never once crossed his mind. Sam wasn’t surprised. The Race did look down their snouts at Big Uglies, just as Americans and Europeans had looked down their noses at the Japanese. But Risson went on, “Researcher, it is possible that I do not. I thank you for pointing it out to me.”
“I am pleased to serve your Majesty,” Kassquit murmured. Sam smiled. Her face didn’t show anything, but if that wasn’t pride of her own, he’d never heard it.
“Equality. Pride,” Risson said, perhaps half to himself, and then, “I am glad I had this talk. It has given me a great deal to think about.” That was dismissaclass="underline" polite dismissal, but dismissal even so. As the Lizards whisked Sam back to his hotel, he found he too had a lot to think about.
Ttomalss was one of the few members of the Race who understood what being a parent involved. That was what all his patient years of raising Kassquit from a hatchling had got him. And now he was going through the part of parenthood that seemed strangest. The hatchling he’d raised had taken wing on her own. Not only had Kassquit enjoyed an audience with the Emperor, but she’d also conferred with him in private.