Harry Turtledove: Homeward Bound

“We really have nothing to say to each other, do we?” Tsaisanx said sadly. “And here all this time, I thought you understood.”

“I do-or I think I do, anyhow,” Sam replied. “I just don’t agree. There’s a difference.”

“Farewell.” Tsaisanx hung up.

“So long,” Sam said, though the Lizard couldn’t hear him. He put the handset back in the cradle. Shaking his head, he returned to the galleys of Safe at Home.

A minute later, he stood up again. He couldn’t concentrate on the words in front of him. All these years, all these upheavals, and what did it mean? His own people thought he’d betrayed them, and now the Lizards thought he’d betrayed them, too? He wondered if he should have called the book A Moderate’s Story. What was a moderate but somebody both sides could shoot at?

But he still thought he’d had it right with Tsaisanx. Even if the Race hadn’t come, the United States would be a better place now than it was in 1942. The rest of the world might be better, too, in ways it had never had a chance to show with the Lizards sitting on half of it.

He shrugged and returned to the galleys. He’d already seen so much happen, more than almost any man alive. He’d gone from horse and buggy to spanning the light-years one way in cold sleep, the other in the wink of an eye.

And what would the next chapter be? He could hardly wait to find out.

HARRY TURTLEDOVE was born in Los Angeles in 1949. After flunking out of CalTech, he earned a Ph.D. in Byzantine history from UCLA. He has taught ancient and medieval history at UCLA, Cal State Fullerton, and Cal State L.A., and he has published a translation of a ninth-century Byzantine chronicle, as well as several scholarly articles. His alternate history works have included many short stories, the Civil War Classic The Guns of the South, the epic World War I series The Great War, and the Worldwar tetralogy that began with Worldwar: In the Balance. He is a winner of the Sidewise Award for Best Alternate History for his novels How Few Remain and Ruled Britannia , and of the Hugo for his novella “Down in the Bottomlands.”