"He's not going to study xenology."
"Eh? He told Mr. Greenberg that he meant to."
"Oh, he has that silly idea but I have no intention of indulging him. He will study some sound profession-the law, probably."
Mr. Kiku's brows went up. "Please, Mrs. Stuart," he said plaintively. "Not that. I am a lawyer-he might wind up where I am."
She looked at him sharply. He went on, "Will you tell me why you plan to thwart him?"
"But I won't be... No, I see no reason why I should. Mr. Kiku, this discussion is useless."
"I hope not, ma'am. May I tell a story?" He assumed consent and went on, "These Hroshii are most unlike us. What is commonplace to us is strange to them, and vice versa. All we seem to have in common is that both races are intelligent
"To us they seem unfriendly, so remote that I would despair, were it not for one thing. Can you guess what that is?"
"What? No, I can't"
"Your son and Lummox. They prove that the potential is there if we will only dig for it. But I digress. More than a hundred years ago a young Hroshia encountered a friendly stranger, went off with him. You know our-half of that story. Let me tell you their side, as I have learned it with the help of an interpreter and our xenologists. This little Hroshia was important to them; they wanted her back very badly. Their patterns are not ours; they interweave six distinct sorts of a genetic scheme we will be a long time understanding.
"This little Hroshia had a role to play, a part planned more than two thousand years ago, around the time of Christ. And her part was a necessary link in a larger planning, a shaping of the race that has been going on, I am told, for thirty-eight thousand of our years. Can you grasp that, Mrs. Stuart? I find it difficult. A plan running back to when Cro-Magnon man was disputing with Neanderthals for the prize of a planet... but perhaps my trouble lies in the fact that we are ourselves the shortest-lived intelligent race we have yet found.
"What would we do if a child was missing for more than a century? No need to discuss it; it in no way resembles what the Hroshii did. They were not too worried about her welfare; they did not think of her as dead... but merely misplaced. They do not die easily. They do not even starve to death. Uh, perhaps you have heard of flatworrns? Euplanaria?"
"I have never taken any interest in xenobiology, Mr. Kiku."
"I made the same error, ma'am; I asked, 'What planet is it from?' Euplanaria are relatives of ours; there are many more flatworms on Earth than there are men. But they have a characteristic in common with Hroshii; both breeds grow when fed, shrink when starved and seem to be immortal, barring accidents. I had wondered why Lummox was so much larger than the other Hroshii. No mystery... you fed Lummox too much."
"I told John Thomas that repeatedly!"
"No harm done. They are already shrinking her down. The Hroshii were not angry, it seems, over the theft or kidnapping or luring away of their youngster. They knew her-a lively, adventuresome disposition was part of what had been bred into her. But they did want her back and they searched for her year after year, following the single clue that she must have gone off with a certain group of visitors from space; they knew what those visitors looked like but not from what part of the sky they came.
"It would have discouraged us... but not them. I have a misty impression that the century they spent chasing rumors, asking questions, and checking strange planets was-to them-about what a few months would be to us. In time they found her. Again, they were neither grateful nor angry; we simply did not count.
"That might have been our only contact with the noble Hroshii had not a hitch developed; the Hroshia, now grown big but still young, refused to leave without her monstrous friend-I speak from the Hroshian viewpoint This was terrible to them, but they had no way to force her. How bitter a disappointment it was I ask you to imagine... a mating planned when Caesar fought the Gauls all now in readiness, with the other strains matured and ready... and Lummox refuses to go home. She shows no interest in her destiny... remember, she is very young; our own children do not develop social responsibility very early. In any case she won't budge without John Thomas Stuart." He spread his hands. "You see the predicament they are in?"
Mrs. Stuart set her mouth. "I'm sorry but it is no business of mine."
"True. I suppose that the simplest thing to do is to let Lummox go home ... to your home, I mean... and..."
"What? Oh, no!"
"Ma'am?"
"You can't send that beast back! I won't stand for it."
Mr. Kiku stroked his chin. "I don't understand you, ma'am. It's Lummox's home; it has been the Hroshia's home much longer than it has been yours, about five times as long I believe. If I remember correctly, it isn't your property, but your son's. Am I right?"
"That has nothing to do with sit! You can't load me down with that beast."
"A court might decide that it was up to your son. But why cross that bridge? I am trying to find out why you oppose something so clearly to your son's advantage."
She sat silent, breathing hard, and Mr. Kiku let her sit. At last she said, "Mr. Kiku, I lost my husband to space; I won't let my son go the same way. I intend to see to it that he stays and lives on Earth."
He shook his head sadly. "Mrs. Stuart, sons are lost from the beginning."
She took out a handkerchief and dabbed at her eyes. "I can't let him go off into the sky... he's only a little boy!"
"He's a man, Mrs. Stuart. Younger men have died in battle."
"Is that what you think makes a man?"
"I know of no better gauge."
He went on, "I call my assistants 'boys' because I am an old man. You think of your son as a boy because you are, by comparison, an old woman. Forgive me. But the notion that a boy becomes a man only on a certain birthday is a mere legal fiction. Your son is a man; you have no moral right to keep him an infant."
"What a wicked thing to say! It's not true; I am merely trying to help him and guide him."
Mr. Kiku smiled grimly. "Madam, the commonest weakness of our race is our ability to rationalize our most selfish purposes. I repeat, you have no right to force him into your mold."
"I have more right than you have! I'm his mother."
"Is 'parent' the same as 'owner'? No matter, we are poles apart; you are trying to thwart him, I am helping him to do what he wants to do."
"From the basest motives!"
"My motives are not an issue and neither are yours." He stood up. "As you have already said, it seems pointless to continue. I am sorry."
"I won't let him! He's still a minor... I have rights."
"Limited rights, ma'am. He could divorce you."
She gasped. 'He wouldn't do that to me! His own mother!"
"Perhaps. Our children's courts have long taken a dim view of the arbitrary use of parental authority; coercion in choice of career is usually open-and-shut. Mrs. Stuart, it is best to give into the inevitable gracefully.
Don't oppose him too far, or you will lose him completely. He is going."
XV Undiplomatic Relations
Mr. Kiku returned to his office with his stomach jumping but he did not stop to cater to it. Instead he leaned across his desk and said, "Sergei. Come in now."
Greenberg entered and laid down two spools of sound tape. "I'm glad to get rid of these. Whoo!"
"Wipe them, please. Then forget you ever heard them."
"Delighted." Greenberg dipped them in a cavity. "Cripes, boss, couldn't you have given him an anesthetic?"
'Unfortunately, no."
"Wes Robbins was pretty rough on him. I felt like a window peeper. Why did you want me to hear them? I don't have to deal with the mess. Or do I?"