“Madness. Utter madness,” Felless said with yet another emphatic cough. “As one researcher to another, I tell you I am near despair. There have been times when I have been tempted to withdraw to my spacecraft, and other times when I have been even more tempted to indulge in the Tosevite herb that has gained such popularity among the conquest fleet.”
“Ginger? I do not think that would be wise, superior female,” Ttomalss said. “Whatever the pleasures of the herb, it is without a doubt destructive of sound intellect and sensible habits. I have seen no exceptions to this rule.”
“Then it might make me better able to understand Big Uglies, don’t you think?” Felless said. “That in itself could make the herb valuable.” Ttomalss must have shown his alarm, for the female added, “I was but joking.”
“Superior female, I should hope so,” Ttomalss said primly.
9
“Where will it be today, superior sir?” Straha’s Tosevite driver asked him after closing the door to the motorcar. The ex-shiplord had learned to rely on the machine even though it broke down more often than the Race would have tolerated. Los Angeles was not a city wherein it was convenient for even a Big Ugly without a motorcar to travel, let alone a male of the Race.
He gave the driver the address. Like his own residence, it was in the district called the Valley-a place-name that, unlike a lot of the ones the Tosevites used, made perfect sense to him. This part of the city was warmer in summer than the rest, and so endeared itself to the Race. It was also colder in winter, but winter anywhere in Los Angeles was chilly enough to be unpleasant.
Even hereabouts, the air tasted wet and green to Straha on warm days and cold alike. That had amused Sam Yeager, who probably would have failed to be comfortable on the coolest, dampest days Home had to offer. The mere idea that Straha would consider the comfort of a Big Ugly was a telling measure of how far he had fallen since defecting from the conquest fleet.
“May I ask you something, superior sir?” the driver asked.
“Ask,” Straha said resignedly. The Big Uglies never stopped trying to learn this, that, and the other thing from him. He didn’t suppose he could blame them-were he still with the conquest fleet, he would have done the same with any prominent Tosevite defector-but it grew wearisome at times.
“You usually refuse invitations from other males of the Race to functions such as the one tonight,” the driver said. “Why did you choose to accept this one?”
The Tosevite spoke Straha’s language about as well as a Big Ugly could. In terms of grammar and pronunciation, he probably spoke it as well as Yeager, who was Straha’s touchstone in such matters. But he did not think like a male of the Race, as Yeager was able to do.
Straha tried to explain: “Why did I accept? First of all, because I usually decline: I have learned from you Tosevites that being too predictable does not pay. And, second, the males who sent me this invitation are old acquaintances. I have known them since not long after my arrival in the United States, when I was being concealed and interrogated at the place called Hot Springs.” That was another sensible, descriptive place-name, of the sort common back on Home.
“I understand now,” the driver said. “You are visiting old friends.”
“In a manner of speaking, yes,” Straha said. But he had recently found an English word that came closer to what he was doing tonight: slumming. During his days as shiplord, he would never have associated with ordinary males like these two, and they would never have presumed to ask him to associate with them. Association at Hot Springs was surely one of the reasons they did so presume now, but the pervasive and corrosive American doctrine of equality was as surely another.
He did not hold to the doctrine of equality. What was civilization itself, if not a graduated structure of inequalities? But many prisoners who had elected to stay among the American Tosevites had become infected by their foolish politics. That made sense to Straha. They had been low, so naturally they wanted to consider themselves on the same plane as those who had been above them.
“Here we are, superior sir,” the driver said as the motorcar squeaked to a stop just past a rather garish yellow house with a low hedge out in front of it. Decorative plants were used back on Home, too, but not in such profusion. The driver nodded to Straha. “I shall stay out here and keep an eye on things.” He was not just a driver, of course. He carried a considerable assortment of lethal hardware, and knew how to use all of it.
“If you must smoke cigarettes while you wait for me, have the courtesy to step out of the motorcar before you do so,” Straha said. He and the Big Ugly had had previous disagreements on that subject.
Now, though, the driver yipped out Tosevite laughter. “It shall be done, Shiplord,” he said. “And do enjoy the ginger I am sure a lot of the males there will be tasting.” He laughed again. Straha headed for the house, feeling oddly punctured.
One of the two males who shared the house folded himself into the posture of respect in the doorway. “I greet you, Shiplord,” he said. “You honor our home by your presence.”
“I greet you, Ristin,” Straha replied. Ristin wore red-white-and-blue body paint of no pattern authorized by the Race. Sam Yeager had devised it in Hot Springs to designate prisoners of the United States. It still scandalized Straha, even after so many years. To Ristin, though, it symbolized his abandonment of the Race and entrance into the world of the Tosevites.
“I trust all is well with you, Shiplord?” Ristin asked with perhaps a tenth of the deference an infantrymale should have given an officer of Straha’s rank.
“As well as it can be, yes,” Straha said.
“Come in, then, and use our house as your own,” Ristin told him. “We have food. We have alcohol, in several flavors. We have ginger, for those who care for it.” He and the male with whom he shared the house had never got the habit. Straha did not know whether to feel scorn or pity or envy at that.
“I thank you,” Straha said, and went inside. As in many houses built by Tosevites, he felt a little too small. The ceiling was too high, as were the counters in the kitchen. Even the light switches-aside from being a strange shape-were set higher in the wall than he would have had to reach back on Home.
Music blared out of a playing machine in the front room. It was not the music of the Race, but some Tosevite tune. When Straha turned an eye turret toward the player, he discovered it was also of Tosevite manufacture. Instead of using a skelkwank light to release the information digitally stored on a small disk, the player had a stylus that rode the grooves of a large platter-and, with every playing, degraded them a little, so the platter eventually became unusable. That was like the Big Uglies, Straha thought-they had no consideration for the long term.
Straha had no use for most Tosevite music, though the Big Ugly called Bach sometimes created patterns he found interesting. This was not Bach. It was, in his view, hardly music at all, even by Tosevite standards. It was full of crashes and horns-not the horns with which the Big Uglies made music, but the ones they used as warning devices on motorcars-and other absurdities.
Through the cacophonous din, a singer howled in English:
“When the fleetlord say, ‘We’ll rule this world from space,’
We-hiss, hiss-right in the fleetlord’s face.
The fleetlord thinks the Earth is for the Race.
We-hiss, hiss-right in the fleetlord’s face.”
The hisses did not come from a Big Ugly’s throat. They sounded more as if they were made by pouring water onto red-hot metal. That would have fit in well with the other strange noises coming out of the playing machine.
Several males stood in front of the player. Their mouths hung wide open. They thought the recording was the funniest thing they’d ever heard. Straha considered. It was barbaric, it was crude, it was rude-and it was aimed at Atvar. That made up Straha’s mind for him: he decided the recording was pretty funny, too.