“I thank you, Fleetlord, and I do understand the restrictions,” Sam Yeager said. “We agreed to them from the beginning. We have not violated them, either. It was your own folk who freed the rats still-I suppose-in this hotel.”
Atvar didn’t like that I suppose. He also wasn’t happy that Sam Yeager was completely correct. With luck, the housekeepers who’d got more curious than they should have would have trouble finding work anywhere for the rest of their lives. Atvar would have loved to fine or imprison them, but they hadn’t done anything criminal-so the local prosecuting attorney assured him. Whether they’d done anything damaging was a different question, worse luck.
“Will any special Tosevite bait attract these creatures?” the fleetlord asked. “If so, we will use it in our traps.”
“Our traditional bait is cheese, ” Sam Yeager answered.
Then he had to explain to Atvar what cheese was. The explanation left the fleetlord as much revolted as enlightened. The idea of milk was disgusting enough to the Race. The idea of deliberately letting it rot before eating it was worse. Trying to suppress nausea, Atvar inquired, “Do you have any of this stuff closer than the Tosevite solar system?”
“We have none here on the surface of Home-I know that,” the American ambassador said. “There may be some aboard the Admiral Peary. If you like, I will ask the ship to send some down with the rats if there is.”
“I thank you,” Atvar said. “I thank you very much, in fact. That would be generous of you, and greatly appreciated.”
Sam Yeager sounded wryly amused: “Unlike a certain species I could name, we do not deliberately seek to disrupt the ecology of another world.”
“You have made your political point, Ambassador.” Atvar, on the other hand, sounded sour. “We have sought to make Tosev 3 more Homelike and friendly to ourselves. You have done the same on certain parts of the planet.”
“Never so drastically as your folk are doing,” the Tosevite ambassador said. “And we know better now. You brag about the Race’s long spell of civilization, but it does not seem to have made you sensitive to ecological concerns.”
The Race was chiefly interested in shaping ecologies to its own needs. It had done so on Rabotev 2 and Halless 1, and was still busy doing it on Tosev 3. Sam Yeager’s attitude made Atvar less proud of that than he might have been.
He did not intend to let the wild Big Ugly see what he was thinking. Bitter experience on Tosev 3 had taught him that revealing anything to the Big Uglies was a mistake. They never took such revelations as simple confidences, but always as signs of weakness. And they exploited such signs for all they were worth. Would Sam Yeager do the same? Atvar did not doubt it for an instant.
“We see nothing wrong in manipulating the environment for our own benefit,” the fleetlord said. “That is one of the hallmarks of an intelligent species, would you not agree?”
“Manipulation is one thing, destruction something else altogether,” the American ambassador insisted.
“Very often, the difference lies in the point of view,” Atvar said. “Or will you tell me I am mistaken?” He waited. Sam Yeager used the negative gesture. Atvar respected his honesty. He went on, “This being so, you accuse us of being strong enough to make ourselves comfortable on a new world. To this I must plead guilty.”
“Who gave you the right to do that?” Sam Yeager asked.
“We gave it to ourselves, by being strong enough to do it,” Atvar replied.
Yeager studied him. “You say these words, Fleetlord, and you seem pleased with them. And I suppose you have reason to be pleased with them-now. But I tell you this: when I hear them, they are to me nothing to be pleased with. They are a judgment on your kind, a judgment on the whole Race. And judgments like that have a way of being fulfilled.”
Atvar stared at him in astonishment. He sounded more like one of the mullahs who’d made life so unpleasant for the Race on Tosev 3’s main continental mass than the highly civilized being the fleetlord knew him to be. “Do you threaten me, Ambassador?” Atvar demanded.
“No, Fleetlord,” the wild Big Ugly replied. “I do not threaten you if I say the sun will rise tomorrow, either. I simply observe.”
“If that is the sort of observation you are going to make, you would do better to keep it to yourself,” Atvar said coldly.
“As you wish, Fleetlord,” Sam Yeager said. “But have you not seen that the truth will come and find you regardless of whether anyone points it out to you ahead of time?”
Yes, he did sound like a mullah. “What I have not seen, in this particular instance, is that you are speaking truth,” Atvar said. Sam Yeager only shrugged. He spread his hands, as if to say, You will find out. Atvar deliberately turned his eye turrets away from those hands. To his annoyance, the American ambassador only laughed-a loud, grating Tosevite laugh.
At supper in the refectory that evening, Jonathan Yeager listened to his father’s account of the conversation with Atvar. Sam Yeager was speaking English: “I tell you, I felt like Daniel in the Old Testament. I was doing everything but shouting and waving my arms and yelling, ‘Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting.’ ”
“How did he take it?” Dr. Melanie Blanchard asked.
“He got mad,” Sam answered. “I would have got mad, too, if somebody talked to me like that. But I still don’t think I’m wrong. If you’re that arrogant, it usually comes back and bites you.”
“As far as I’m concerned, you handled it just right,” Tom de la Rosa said. “What they’ve done to ecosystems back on Earth is a shame and a disgrace. They’d better not think we’re happy about it.”
“But now the shoe is on the other foot,” Jonathan said. “Now they’re worried about rats here, not zisuili and azwaca and befflem and all their plants back on Earth. The shoe pinches more when it’s on their foot.”
“Oh. The rats.” Dad snapped his fingers. “Almost forgot. We do have permission to bring down replacements.”
“You insulted Atvar, and you still got away with that?” Frank Coffey said. “Not bad, Ambassador. Not bad at all.” He clapped his hands together.
“I didn’t insult him till after he’d agreed.” Sam Yeager grinned. “Aren’t I sly?”
Everybody laughed. Jonathan said, “He didn’t change his mind afterwards?”
“Nope,” his father answered. “Or if he did, he didn’t tell me. If they shoot down the shuttlecraft with the rats in it, then we’ll know he was really angry.” That drew more laughs. Tom de la Rosa hoisted his glass of more-or-less vodka in salute. All the Americans drank.
A couple of tables away, Kassquit sat by herself. Sometimes she joined the other humans when they ate, sometimes she didn’t. That seemed to fit her betwixt-and-between nature: stuck between what she’d been born and what she’d been raised as. Having watched Mickey and Donald grow from their eggs into… fair copies of human beings, Jonathan thought he understood that better than most.
He scratched his head, which reminded him he needed to shave it again soon. Was he wrong, or had Kassquit been more standoffish than usual lately? After a moment’s thought, he nodded to himself. Unless he was wrong, she hadn’t eaten with the Americans since Dr. Blanchard came down from the Admiral Peary.
He switched to the language of the Race, calling, “Say, Researcher, will you not come over and eat with us?”
Karen gave him a hard look. He pretended not to notice. This had nothing to do with the fact that he and Kassquit had been lovers up on her starship in the early 1960s. He and Karen hadn’t been married yet, or even engaged. They had been going together, though, and his… research had almost spelled the end of that. This was just social. Jonathan really meant that. Because of what she was, Kassquit was to a certain degree isolated from everyone around her, humans and Lizards alike. Getting her to mingle wasn’t just diplomacy; it also felt like psychotherapy.