“I greet you, Shiplord.” That was Ullhass, the male with whom Ristin shared his home. Like his comrade, he wore U.S. prisoner-of-war body paint. Maybe he found that funny, in the same sort of way the Tosevite song was funny. That was as close as Straha had ever come to understanding why these two males preferred U.S. body paint to that of the Race.
“I greet you, Ullhass.” Straha took pride in keeping his own ornate body paint touched up, even though he would never again command the 206th Emperor Yower or any other ship of the Race. He had made sure of that.
“Help yourself to anything that suits you, Shiplord,” Ullhass said, much as Ristin had at the entrance. “Plenty to eat, plenty to drink, plenty to taste. Plenty of gossip, too. I am glad you decided to join us. We are pleased to see you. You do not come among your own kind often enough.”
“I am here.” Straha let it go at that. These former captives who had happily settled into Tosevite society and who had one another for company were hardly more his own kind than were the Big Uglies. Because they had been captured, the Race readily forgave them. Many of them had traveled back and forth between the United States and areas of Tosev 3 the Race ruled.
Straha had not. He would not. He could not. The Race had made it very plain that he was liable to arrest if he ever left the USA. The leaders of the local not-empire had also made it very plain they did not want him to leave. Just as he knew too much about the Race, so he also knew too much about them.
He went into the kitchen, took some ham and some potato chips-as long as he was here, he would enjoy himself-and poured some clear spirits. The Big Uglies flavored a lot of their alcohol with things most males of the Race found highly unpleasant-burnt wood and tree berries were a couple of their favorites-but they also distilled it without flavorings. That Straha could drink without qualms, and he did.
A ginger jar sat on the high counter. Anyone who wanted a taste could have one, or more than one. Later, Straha told himself. Had he told himself no, he would have known he was lying. Later was easier to deal with.
Skittering in, a male almost bumped into Straha. “Sorry, friend,” he said as he spooned some ginger out into the palm of his hand. Then one of his eye turrets swung toward Straha, taking in his complex swirls of paint. The other male gave him respect. “Uh, sorry, Shiplord.”
“It is all right,” Straha said, and the other male tasted the ginger he’d taken. Seeing his pleasure made Straha abruptly decide later had become now. After a good-sized taste of his own, even exile seemed more palatable than it had. But, through the exaltation, he knew it would not last.
“Did I hear true, Shiplord?” the other male asked. “Did you tell one of those Big Uglies you thought this not-empire had shot up the colonization fleet?” Without waiting for an answer, he opened his mouth to laugh. “That is even funnier than Spike Jones.” Seeing Straha’s incomprehension, he added, “The Tosevite with the silly song.”
“Oh,” Straha said, and then, wary as usual, asked, “How did you hear of that? I know it never appeared in a newspaper.”
“That Big Ugly male who interviewed you-Herter, is that the name? — spoke with me a little later,” the other male replied. “He talked about the way you yanked his tailstump. He thought it was funny, too, once he realized you did not mean it.”
“What I did not realize was that he was ready to print it,” Straha said. “The Big Uglies in this not-empire carry freedom to the point of license.”
Several other males had heard the story of Straha’s misadventure with the reporter, too. That let him have a more entertaining time at the gathering than he’d expected. Even males who used English as readily as their own original speech would laugh at the follies of Tosevites.
But, when Straha related the tale to his driver on the way back to his own home, the Big Ugly was anything but amused. “Do not ever tell that story again, Shiplord,” he said with an emphatic cough. “The Reich and the USSR can gain too much benefit if you do.” He remained polite, even deferential, but he was giving an order just the same.
To this I have been reduced: to taking orders from Big Uglies. Straha sighed. He had been reduced to worse circumstances than that, but few more humiliating. He sighed again, a long, mournful hiss. “It shall be done.”
The Liberty Explorer had been a long time crossing the Pacific from Shanghai to San Pedro, with stops in Japanese-held Manila and in Honolulu. Even though the paperwork for her daughter and her was in good order, Liu Han had stayed in her cabin aboard the U.S. freighter all through the stop in Manila, and had made sure Liu Mei did the same. Liu Han still felt lucky to have survived the Japanese attack on her village north of Hankow. She did not want to give the eastern dwarfs a chance to finish the job, not when she had to put out a bowl for alms-and arms-in the USA.
Liu Mei had wanted at least to go out on deck and see more of Manila than she could from the cabin’s porthole. When Liu Han vetoed that, her daughter had protested, “The Japanese are not going to bomb this ship.”
“Not openly-they cannot afford to anger the USA,” Liu Han had answered. “But they do not want the progressive forces in China gaining strength in the United States. If they know we are aboard-and they have spies, and so does the Kuomintang-they may try to make us or the ship suffer a misfortune. Best take no chances.”
Neither the Liberty Explorer nor its handful of passengers had suffered any undue misfortune on the long passage across the ocean. Liu Han had taken advantage of the slow voyage to study English as best she could, and to work with Liu Mei on it. She would never be fluent. She hoped she would be able to make herself understood, and to understand some of what people said to her.
Now, standing at the bow of the old freighter, she looked ahead and spoke in Chinese to her daughter: “There it is. Now we will have to convince the Americans to give arms and money to us as well as to the Kuomintang.”
“We could have done this in Hawaii,” Liu Mei said.
Liu Han shook her head. “No. It is not part of the mainland, so what happens there does not always reach the rest of the country. And Honolulu is not the port it was before the little scaly devils dropped one of their big, horrid bombs on it. We had to finish this journey, to come to the province-no, the state-of California.”
She did not mention her biggest fear: that the Americans would have forgotten she was coming. All that was supposed to be arranged. Liu Han knew how often things that were supposed to be arranged went wrong in China, and the Chinese, it went without saying, were the best people in the world. Relying on these round-eyed foreign devils to do as they should tested her nerves.
San Pedro looked to be about as busy a port as Shanghai, though all the boats and ships, as far as she could tell, had engines. She saw no sail-powered junks hauling freight from one harbor to another, as she would have in Chinese waters. As the Liberty Explorer drew closer to land, she did spot a few tiny sailboats, too tiny for any use she could find.
She went up to a sailor and pointed at one. “That boat, what for?” she asked, learning and practicing her English at the same time.
“Ma’am, that’s a pleasure boat,” the American foreign devil answered. “Whoever’s in it is just sailing to have a good time, maybe do a little fishing, too.”
“Boat for good time?” Liu Han wasn’t sure she’d understood, but the sailor nodded, so she had. “Eee!” she said. “Fellow sail boat, he very rich.” In her mind, she pictured the unknown man ruthlessly exploiting foreign devils so he could gain the wealth he needed to buy his own boat.