After entering the name and pay number into the computer, the male gave the affirmative hand gesture. “Your leave is confirmed: three days,” he said. “Will you be going into the new town?”
“Of course, superior sir,” Fotsev answered. “I have been away from Home, and from the way life was on Home, for a very long time now. I look forward to being reminded of it. From what other males have said, the new town is the best antidote possible for the mud and the stinks and the mad Tosevites of Basra.”
“I have heard the same,” the clerk said. “My leave time has not yet come, but it is approaching. When it arrives, I too shall go to the new town.” He pointed out the door. “The shuttle bus leaves from there. It should arrive very soon.”
“I thank you.” Fotsev knew where the shuttle bus left. He knew when, too. With barracks cleverness, he had timed the beginning of his leave to spend as little time as he could manage waiting for transportation.
As usual, the bus rolled up on time. Had it been late, he would have suspected Tosevite terrorism. Being late through inefficiency was a failing of the Big Uglies, not the Race. Fotsev and a small knot of similarly canny males waited for the fellows returning from leave to descend, then filed aboard.
With a rumble, the bus-of Tosevite manufacture, and so noisy and smelly and none too comfortable-rolled off down the new highway leading southwest. Big Ugly farmers grubbing in their fields would sometimes look up as it passed. Before long, though, it left the region river water irrigated and entered more barren country that put Fotsev in mind of Home. The plants that did grow here were different from the ones he’d known before going into cold sleep, but not all that different, not from the window of a bus.
He twisted, trying to find as comfortable a position as he could. After a while, he wrestled a window open, and sighed with pleasure as the mild breeze blew across his scales. This was the weather the Race was made for. With the Big Uglies and their noxious city and their even more noxious habits and superstitions fading behind him, he was ready to enjoy himself until he had to return to unpleasant, mundane duty.
“Look!” Another male pointed. “You can see the ships of the colonization fleet ahead in the distance. There is a sight to make a male feel good.”
“Truth!” Several troopers spoke at the same time. A volley of emphatic coughs rang through the bus.
“They were smart,” Fotsev said. “They gave the ships and the new town a good safety zone, so the local Tosevites will have a hard time sneaking up on them and doing anything frightful.” The converse of that was, all three independent Tosevite not-empires doubtless had explosive-metal-tipped missiles aimed at the ships and the town. But Fotsev chose not to dwell on the converse. He was on leave.
He thought about tasting ginger, but decided to wait till he got to the new town. Since finding out what the herb did to females, officers had acted like males with the purple itch. The driver was too likely to be watching for that sort of thing.
“No pheromones in my scent receptors,” another trooper remarked. “Such a relief to feel normal again, not to have mating in the back of my mind all the time. I can think straight again.”
Not one of the other males argued with him. Several voiced loud agreement. Fotsev didn’t, but he didn’t think the fellow was wrong, either.
The ships from the colonization fleet dwarfed the buildings of the new town, even the taller ones, so those buildings didn’t come into view till the males on the bus had seen the ships for some little while. When Fotsev spied the buildings, he let out a hiss of pleasure. “By the Emperor,” he said softly, “it really is a piece of Home dropped down onto Tosev 3.”
With a squeal of brakes, the bus stopped in the middle of the new town. The driver said, “You males have yourselves a good time.”
“How can we help it?” Fotsev said as he descended from the bus and rapturously stared this way and that. With every motion of his eye turrets, he catalogued new marvels. Paved streets. Better yet-clean paved streets. Buildings like the practical, functional cubes he’d known from hatchlinghood till the day when, in a Soldiers’ Time, he was made a soldier. Males and females of the Race strolling those streets and going into and out of those buildings. No guards, or at least no obtrusive ones. Perhaps best of all, no Big Uglies.
He sighed with delight. As he inhaled afterwards, he caught the pheromones of a distant female. She’d surely been tasting ginger. He sighed again, on a different note: half stimulation, half resignation. He shouldn’t have been surprised the chief vice for the Race on Tosev 3 had reached the new city, but somehow he was.
After a moment, he laughed at himself, a laugh full of mockery. He’d brought ginger here himself, to help make the leave more pleasant. If he’d done it, other males had done it. If other males had done it, some of the new colonists would have got ginger by now. And half those colonists, more or less, were females.
Instead of tasting as soon as he found a quiet place, as he’d intended, he strolled along the streets, looking into shop windows. Restaurants and places to drink alcohol were open and doing well. So were the establishments of males and females who sold services: physicians, brokers, and the like.
Few manufactured goods were yet on sale. After a moment, Fotsev corrected himself about that. Few goods manufactured by the Race were yet on sale. Factories hadn’t had a chance to start producing. He did see Tosevite goods for sale, imported from one or another of the not-empires whose technical standards were higher than those prevailing around Basra.
He made a discontented noise. He wouldn’t have wanted to watch a Tosevite televisor, even if the Big Uglies had borrowed, or rather stolen, the technology from the Race. On the other fork of the tongue, if it was a choice between a Tosevite televisor and none, as it would be for a while… He made another discontented noise. If the Big Uglies could manufacture televisors more cheaply than the Race, what would the males and females who would have made them do? That was not a problem the colonization fleet would have worried about before leaving Home. As far as anyone knew then, the Big Uglies had no manufacturing capacity.
If only it were so, Fotsev thought. He’d had too many painful lessons about what the Tosevites could do. And he hadn’t had a particularly hard time of it, not as the fighting went. Other males told stories much worse than any he had.
Still, thinking about what he’d seen over the years since the conquest fleet arrived was enough to tempt him to reach for one of the vials of ginger he carried in his belt pouch. With a distinct effort of will, he checked himself. He’d have time later. He wouldn’t have tasted back on Home, and he was trying his best to pretend he was there now.
What would he have done? He would have gone and drunk some distilled potation. He could do that here, easily enough. He strolled into one of the places that sold such potations.
As per custom immemorial, it was dark and quiet inside. What light there was suited his eyes better than the somewhat harsher glare of the star Tosev. Several males from the new city sat on chairs and stools, talking about work and friends, as they would have back on Home.
Fotsev walked up to the server. The bottles behind the male were all of Tosevite manufacture. Fotsev supposed he shouldn’t have been disappointed. As with realizing ginger had reached the new town, he was. He gave the server his account card. “Let me have a glass from that one there,” he said, pointing to the drink he wanted. “I have had it before, and it is not bad.”
The server billed his card, then gave him the drink. The price he had to pay for it disappointed him, too. He could have got the like from a Big Ugly in Basra for half as much in barter. He’d heard the local Tosevites’ superstition forbade them from drinking alcohol, but had seen little proof of it.
But some of the things he was paying for here were a room that suited his kind and getting away from the Big Uglies. He raised his glass in salute. “To the Emperor!” he exclaimed, and drank.