Harry Turtledove - Homeward Bound

Fleetlord Atvar pressed his fingerclaw into the opening for a control. There is a last time for everything, he thought with dignity as a holographic image sprang into being above his desk. He’d studied the image of that armed and armored Big Ugly a great many times indeed in the sixty years-thirty of this planet’s slow revolutions around its star-since coming to Tosev 3.

The Tosevite rode a beast with a mane and a long, flowing tail. He wore chainmail that needed a good scouring to get rid of the rust. His chief weapon was an iron-tipped spear. The spearhead also showed tiny flecks of rust, and some not so tiny. To protect himself against similarly armed enemies, the Tosevite carried a shield with a red cross painted on it.

Another poke of the fingerclaw made the hologram disappear. Atvar’s mouth fell open in an ironic laugh. The Race had expected to face that kind of opposition when it sent its conquest fleet from Home to Tosev 3. Why not? It had all seemed so reasonable. The probe had shown no high technology anywhere on the planet, and the conquest fleet was only sixteen hundred years behind-eight hundred years here. How much could technology change in eight hundred years?

Back on Home, not much. Here… Here, when the conquest fleet arrived, the Big Uglies had been fighting an immense war among themselves, fighting not with spears and beasts and chainmail but with machine guns, with cannon-carrying landcruisers, with killercraft that spat death from the air, with radio and telephones. They’d been working on guided missiles and on nuclear weapons.

And so, despite battles bigger and fiercer than anyone back on Home could have imagined, the conquest fleet hadn’t quite conquered. More than half the land area of Tosev 3 had come under its control, but several not-empires-a notion of government that still seemed strange to Atvar-full of Big Uglies (and, not coincidentally, full of nuclear weapons) remained independent. Atvar couldn’t afford to wreck the planet to beat the Tosevites into submission, not with the colonization fleet on the way and only twenty local years behind the fleet he commanded. The colonists had to have somewhere to settle.

He’d never expected to need to learn to be a diplomat. Being diplomatic with the obstreperous Big Uglies wasn’t easy. Being diplomatic with the males and females of the conquest fleet had often proved even harder. They’d expected everything to be waiting for them and in good order when they arrived. They’d expected a conquered planet full of submissive primitives. They’d been loudly and unhappily surprised when they didn’t get one. Here ten local years after their arrival, a lot of them still were.

Atvar’s unhappy musings-and had he had any other kind since coming to Tosev 3?-cut off when his adjutant walked into the room. Pshing’s body paint, like that of any adjutant, was highly distinctive. On one side, it showed his own not particularly high rank. On the other, it matched the body paint of his principal-and Atvar’s pattern, as befit his rank, was the most ornate and elaborate on Tosev 3.

Pshing bent into the posture of respect. Even his tailstump twitched to one side. “I greet you, Exalted Fleetlord,” he said in the hissing, popping language of the Race.

“And I greet you,” Atvar replied.

Straightening, Pshing said, “They are waiting for you.”

“Of course they are,” Atvar said bitterly. “Eaters of carrion always gather to feast at a juicy corpse.” His tailstump quivered in anger.

“I am sorry, Exalted Fleetlord.” Pshing had the courtesy to sound as if he meant it. “But when the recall order came from Home, what could you do?”

“I could obey, or I could rebel,” Atvar answered. His adjutant hissed in horror at the very idea. Among the Race, even saying such things was shocking. There had been mutinies and rebellions here on Tosev 3. Perhaps more than anything else, that told what sort of place this was. Atvar held up a placating hand. “I obey. I will go into cold sleep. I will return to Home. Maybe by the time I get there, those who will sit in judgment on me will have learned more. Our signals, after all, travel twice as fast as our starships.”

“Truth, Exalted Fleetlord,” Pshing said. “Meanwhile, though, as I told you, those who wish to say farewell await you.”

“I know they do.” Atvar waggled his lower jaw back and forth as he laughed, to show he was not altogether amused. “Some few, perhaps, will be glad to see me. The rest will be glad to see me-go.” He got to his feet and sardonically made as if to assume the posture of respect before Pshing. “Lead on. I follow. Why not? It is a pleasant day.”

The fleetlord even meant that. Few places on Tosev 3 fully suited the Race; most of this world was cold and damp compared to Home. But the city called Cairo was perfectly temperate, especially in summertime. Pshing held the door open for Atvar. Only the great size of that door, like the height of the ceiling, reminded Atvar that Big Uglies had built the place once called Shepheard’s Hotel. As the heart of the Race’s rule on Tosev 3, it had been extensively modified year after year. It would not have made a first-class establishment back on Home, perhaps, but it would have been a decent enough second-class place.

When Atvar strode into the meeting hall, the males and females gathered there all assumed the posture of respect-all save Fleetlord Reffet, the commander of the colonization fleet, the only male in the room whose body paint matched Atvar’s in complexity. Reffet confined himself to a civil nod. Civility was as much as Atvar had ever got from him. He’d usually had worse, for Reffet had never stopped blaming him for not presenting Tosev 3 to the colonists neatly wrapped up and decorated.

To Atvar’s surprise, a handful of tall, erect Tosevites towered over the males and females of the Race. Because they did not slope forward from the hips and because they had no tailstumps, their version of the posture of respect was a clumsy makeshift. Their pale, soft skins and the cloth wrappings they wore stood out against the clean simplicity of green-brown scales and body paint.

“Did we have to have Big Uglies here?” Atvar asked. “If it were not for the trouble the Big Uglies caused us, I would not be going Home now.” I would be Atvar the Conqueror, remembered in history forever. I will be remembered in history, all right, but not the way I had in mind before I set out with the conquest fleet.

“When some of them asked to attend, Exalted Fleetlord, it was difficult to say no,” Pshing replied. “That one there, for instance-the one with the khaki wrappings and the white fur on his head-is Sam Yeager.”

“Ah.” Atvar used the affirmative hand gesture. “Well, you are right. If he wanted to be here, you could not very well have excluded him. Despite his looks, he might as well be a member of the Race himself. He has done more for us than most of the males and females in this room. Without him, we probably would have fought the war that annihilated the planet.”

He strode through the crowd toward the Big Ugly, ignoring his own kind. No doubt they would talk about his bad manners later. Since this was his last appearance on Tosev 3, he didn’t care. He would do as he pleased, not as convention dictated. “I greet you, Sam Yeager,” he said.

“And I greet you, Exalted Fleetlord,” Yeager replied in the language of the Race. His accent was mushy, as a Big Ugly’s had to be. But the rhythms of his speech could almost have come from Home. More than any other Tosevite, he thought like a male of the Race. “I wish you good fortune in your return. And I also want you to know how jealous I am of you.”