“Come into the study,” Yeager said obliquely. “Make yourself comfortable. Can I get you alcohol? Can I get you ginger?”
“Alcohol, please-rum.” Straha used an English word. “Ginger later, perhaps. I have been trying to cut back on my tasting lately.” He hadn’t succeeded, but he had been trying.
“Rum. It shall be done.” Yeager attended to it. He had some himself, with cubes of ice in it. Straha did not care for drinks so cold. After they had both sipped, the Tosevite asked, “And have you heard anything new about who might have attacked the ships of the colonization fleet?”
“I have not,” Straha answered, “and, I admit, this perplexes me. You Big Uglies are not usually so astute in such matters. The incentive here, of course, is larger than it would be in other cases.”
“Yes, I would say so,” Yeager agreed. “Whoever did it, the Race will punish-and whoever did it deserves to be punished, too. I wonder if your contacts with males-maybe even with females now, for all I know-in the occupied parts of Tosev 3 had brought you any new information.”
“As far as who the culprit may be, no,” Straha said. “I have learned that one of the ships destroyed carried most of the specialists in imperial administration. Whether the guilty party knew this in advance or not, I cannot say. My sources cannot say, either. I would be inclined to doubt it, but am without strong evidence for my doubt.”
“I think you are right. The attack came too soon for Tosevites to have known such details about the colonization fleet-I believe,” Major Yeager said. “But it is an interesting datum, and not one I had met before. I thank you, Shiplord.”
“You are welcome.” Straha drank more rum. Another minor treachery to his kind. After so many larger acts of treason, one more was hardly noticeable.
Yeager did not scorn him as a traitor, not where it showed. He did not think Yeager scorned him at any deeper level. The Big Ugly was too interested in the Race in general to do anything of that sort: one more part of his character that made him so unusual.
Before too long, the Chinese Tosevites came. Yeager introduced them as Liu Han and Liu Mei. They spoke the language of the Race fairly well, with an accent different from the American’s. Straha noted that Yeager’s son, who had paid little attention to his own arrival despite fascination with the Race, joined the group and made polite conversation for a time after the new Big Uglies arrived.
From their voices, both of them were female. Did Jonathan Yeager find one of them sexually attractive? If so, which? After a while, Straha remembered that Liu Mei was Liu Han’s daughter. Since Jonathan was younger than Sam Yeager, that made him more likely to be interested in Liu Mei-or so Straha thought. The subtleties of Tosevite behavior patterns were lost on him, and he knew it.
Presently, Sam Yeager spoke in English: “Enough chitchat-time to talk turkey.” Straha didn’t follow the idiom, but Jonathan evidently did, for he left. Liu Mei stayed. Maybe that meant she didn’t find him attractive. Maybe it meant she put duty above desire, which Straha found admirable. Or maybe it just meant the exiled shiplord didn’t fully grasp the situation.
Liu Han said, “Shiplord, how do we best use ginger against the Race?”
“Give it to females, obviously,” Straha answered. “The more females in season, the more addled males become.”
“I understand this,” the Chinese female said-was that impatience in her voice? “How to give ginger to females over and over to keep males addled all the time?”
“Ah,” Straha said. Liu Han did see the obvious, then; the ex-shiplord hadn’t been sure. He went on, “Introducing it into food or drink would do the job, I think. They might not even know they were tasting… No, they would, because they would come into their season.”
“Truth,” Liu Han said. “This endangers those who prepare food for the Race; they would naturally be suspect.”
“Ah,” Straha said again. “Yes, that is so.” He hadn’t thought the Big Uglies would care; they hadn’t seemed to worry much about spending lives during the fighting.
“If we could get enough females and males excited at the same time, it might be worth the risk,” Liu Mei said: maybe the Tosevites, or some of them, retained their ruthlessness after all.
Jonathan Yeager came back into the study. Did the younger female’s voice draw him, as pheromones would have drawn a male of the Race? “That could get a lot of people hurt,” he observed. He might be interested in Liu Mei, but was not addled by her; Straha heard reproof in his voice.
“It is war,” Liu Mei said simply. “Here, the fighting is over. You Americans have won your freedom. In China, the struggle against the imperialism of the Race goes on. The People’s Liberation Army shall free my not-empire, too.”
“And make it as free as the SSSR?” Straha inquired with sarcasm he thoroughly enjoyed. “That is the model the People’s Liberation Army uses, is it not?”
Sam Yeager whistled softly. Straha had learned Big Uglies sometimes did that when they thought someone had made a good point. But Liu Han said, “We would be freer under our own kind at their worst than the Race at their best, for we did not choose to have the Race come here and try to set itself over us.”
Straha leaned forward. “Now there is a topic on which we could have considerable debate,” he said, anticipating that debate. “If you believe that-”
Several loud pops resounded outside, followed by a fierce, ripping roar. Straha was slower to recognize the noise than he should have been; as shiplord, he’d had no experience with close combat. Before he could react, Sam Yeager spoke in English: “That’s gunfire. Everybody down!”
Straha dove for the floor. Yeager did not follow his own order. He grabbed a pistol from a desk drawer in the study and hurried out toward the front of the house. “Be careful, Sam,” his wife called from the next room.
More gunfire sounded from the direction of the street. A window-or maybe more than one-shattered. Yeager’s pistol resounded, the noise shockingly loud indoors. Liu Han came as close to taking the shots calmly as anyone could-closer than Straha was doing, for that matter. Liu Mei never seemed to get excited about anything. And Jonathan Yeager, though he had no weapon, hurried to his father’s aid.
“It’s over,” Sam Yeager called from the front room. “I think it’s over, anyhow. Barbara, call the cops, not that half the neighborhood hasn’t already. Jesus, I can’t afford new window glass, but we sure as hell need it.”
Barbara Yeager came in and picked up the telephone. Straha went out into the front room to see what had happened. His driver was coming toward the house, an automatic weapon in his hand. “Is the shiplord all right?” he shouted.
“I am well,” Straha answered.
“He’s fine,” Yeager said at the same time. “What the devil happened out there?”
“I was sitting in the car, reading my book,” the driver answered. “The guy who drives for the Chinese women was in the car behind me, doing whatever he was doing. A car came by. A couple of guys leaned out the window and started blazing away. Lousy technique. I think I may have nailed one of them. Thanks for the backup, Yeager.”
“Any time,” Sam Yeager said. “You okay?”
“Right as rain,” Straha’s driver answered. “The Chinese guy, though, he took one right in the ear, poor bastard. Never knew what hit him, anyway.”
Through the howls that Tosevite constabulary vehicles used to warn others out of their way, Yeager said, “Whom were they after? The shiplord? The Chinese women? Could have been either one.”
Someone trying to kill me? Straha thought. He hadn’t imagined Atvar could sink so low. Assassination was a Tosevite ploy, not one the Race used. No, he thought. Not one the Race had used. Maybe Atvar was able to learn some unpleasant things from the Tosevites after all.
“Either one’s possible,” his driver said. “And how about you, Major? Got any people who aren’t fond of you?”