It was no surprise to Reuven, not when Atvar had summoned his father to Cairo to confer with him about the problem. Looking around the hall, he saw that his classmates didn’t look astonished, either. Stories of Lizards seen coupling in the streets of Jerusalem had been making the rounds at the medical college for the past few days. Some students had doubted them. Reuven knew better.
Now Jane showed proper etiquette: “Superior sir, permission to ask another question?”
“Granted,” Shpaaka said. “The search for understanding proceeds through questions. It can proceed no other way.”
“How do you believe we Tosevites can help you, superior sir?” Jane asked. Reuven knew what she thought of the Race, and of what the Race had done to Australia. None of that showed in her speech as she went on, “We know little or nothing about the reproductive behavior of the Race. We have had no chance to learn about it until now, when females have come to Tosev 3. In what way, then, can we possibly assist you?”
“This is a good question, a cogent question,” Shpaaka said. “But I must tell you, the reproductive behavior the Race has begun exhibiting here on Tosev 3 is not similar to that which we display on Home.” He sighed, an amazingly humanlike sound. “Very little the Race does on Tosev 3 appears to be similar to what we do back on Home.” An emphatic cough stressed that.
After a moment during which he seemed to gather himself, he went on, “Back on Home, virtually all females come into their season within a short time. Virtually all males are stimulated by the pheromones they release and have the opportunity to mate with at least one of them. That is normality.”
It was normality for most life on Earth, too. Reuven understood that perfectly well. He also understood it was not normality for humans. Glancing over at Jane Archibald, he was glad things worked the way they did, even if he hadn’t had the chance to put all the theory into practice.
Maybe Jane felt his eye on her. She looked his way and impudently stuck out her tongue. He laughed and looked toward Shpaaka again.
The Lizard physician had needed another pause to marshal his thoughts. After that second-embarrassed? — hesitation, he said, “Here on Tosev 3, it appears that ginger causes females almost immediately to enter their season, and to emit the pheromones showing males they have done so. But only a relatively small number of females taste ginger. More males are apt to scent the pheromones than have an in-season female readily accessible to them. This causes tension and frustration of a sort we are not used to.
“Furthermore, females-and males-do not taste ginger only during one short season of the year, but continuously. This means pheromones showing females to be in season are, or will be, released into the air throughout the year. Sexual tension of the sort I previously mentioned will likewise be continuous.
“Now, this runs contrary to all our long-established instinctual patterns. It is, however, the paradigm of normality for you Big Uglies. Your insights on how we are to cope with it will be greatly appreciated.”
Atvar had made the identical appeal to Reuven’s father. Reuven wondered if, all over the world, Lizards were asking such questions of humans they thought they could trust. He pitied them and laughed at them at the same time. They’d been smugly superior for a long time. Now, abruptly, things weren’t so simple for them.
With sudden indignation, Shpaaka added, “We have even had a couple of incidents where a male, smelling a distant female’s pheromones, has surreptitiously given an adjacent female ginger so he could mate with her. This is a depth of iniquity to which I doubt even you Tosevites have ever plunged.”
The lecture hall erupted in loud Tosevite laughter. Reuven joined in. He couldn’t help himself. Even after twenty years on Earth, after twenty years of intensive research on human beings, the Lizards remained painfully naive. They were likely to be right, too: they would need human help in dealing with problems of sexuality. Reuven doubted they could do it on their own.
Shpaaka looked out at his students. “Perhaps I was mistaken,” he said, his voice dry. “Do you find it amusing that your kind may be more iniquitous than I had previously imagined?”
“Yes, superior sir,” they chorused, which touched off another round of raucous laughter.
Shpaaka laughed, too, in the silent manner of his kind. “Very well, perhaps it is amusing,” he said. “But tell me, how do we prevent more such unfortunate incidents in the future?”
That was a serious question, seriously meant. After a little thought, Reuven raised his hand. When Shpaaka recognized him, he said, “Superior sir, I do not know if you will be able to prevent them altogether. We cannot; we have never been able to. We do work to keep them to a minimum.”
“You Tosevites are, in many circumstances, more readily satisfied than we would be,” Shpaaka returned. Reuven glowered; the Lizard had asked for advice, but then what had he done with it? Mocked it, nothing else. Shpaaka seemed to realize his discontent, saying, “In matters pertaining to desire, perfect success may be more difficult to obtain than elsewhere.”
“Permission to speak, superior sir?” an Argentine student named Pedro Magallanes asked. When he got it, he said, “Do the other races in your Empire ever have, ah, problems of this sort?”
“Only in rare instances, due to one hormonal imbalance or another,” Shpaaka replied. “The same holds true for the Race. Until becoming acquainted with you Tosevites, we thought it must necessarily hold true for any intelligent species. Now we discover it does not even necessarily hold true for ourselves. I would appreciate the irony more were it less painful.”
That he noticed it at all spoke well for him. The human rulers of the Greater German Reich and the Soviet Union could not recognize irony if it cocked its leg and pissed on their ankles; of that Reuven was certain.
“You Tosevites have had long practice controlling continuous reproductive urges,” Shpaaka went on. “Since we are newcomers to the business, we shall probably end up borrowing from you: yes, I know, another irony.”
Shpaaka’s students whispered and murmured to one another. The Lizard affected not to notice, an indulgence he seldom granted them. Bahadur Singh, a turbaned Sikh, spoke to Reuven in English: “This will drive the Lizards to distraction-assuredly, to distraction-for some time to come.” His eyes glowed. “Maybe my country can use the distraction to make itself free.”
“It could be so.” Reuven didn’t really think it likely. The Lizards, distracted or not, would do whatever they had to do to hold on to India. But Bahadur Singh had hope. Reuven had no hope that Palestine could ever shake off the Lizards’ yoke. Even if it could, it would be torn between Arabs and Jews. The aliens’ rule was about as good as anyone here could hope for, having at least the advantage of disinterest.
Most of the time, Reuven took that for granted. Now, when he looked at it, he found it depressing. Couldn’t people get along well enough so they didn’t need to have disinterested aliens keeping them from quarreling with one another?
His quiet laugh was rueful. His father would have known better even than to bother shaping the question in his own mind. If Poland hadn’t taught that the only possible answer was, Of course not, you fool, what would? The squabbles in Palestine even under Lizard rule should have driven the point home with a sledgehammer.
Before he let it depress him too much, a student from the Soviet Union named Anna Suslova asked, “Permission to speak, superior sir?” Reuven sometimes wondered how she’d got into the medical college, and whether someone capable had taken the entrance exams for her. She often seemed out of her depth here. The question she put to Shpaaka showed how her mind worked: “Superior sir, why not punish ginger users so severely, fear of punishment keeps females from using the drug?”