Harry Turtledove: Aftershocks

Kassquit was naked, too. She’d never worn clothes, not after she’d got out of diapers. The Lizards-Ttomalss in particular-had raised her ever since she was a newborn. They’d wanted to see how close they could come to turning a human into a female of the Race.

Jonathan shaved his head. Plenty of kids of his generation-girls as well as boys, though not so many-did that, aping the Lizards and incidentally annoying their parents. Kassquit shaved not only her head-including her eyebrows-but all the hair on her body in an effort to make herself as much like a Lizard as she could. She’d told him once that she’d thought about having her ears removed to make her head look more like a Lizard’s, and had decided against it only because she didn’t think it would help enough.

She said, “I wonder if I will be allowed to meet him before he returns to the surface of Tosev 3. I should learn more about wild Tosevites.”

With a chuckle, Jonathan said, “I think he would be glad to meet you, especially without wrappings.” The Lizards’ language had no specific term for clothes, which the Race didn’t use, but could and did go into enormous detail about body paint.

“What do you mean?” By Earthly standards, Kassquit had a remorselessly literal mind. “Do you mean he might want to mate with me? Would he find me attractive enough to want to mate with?”

“Of course he would. I certainly do.” Jonathan used another emphatic cough. He always praised Kassquit as extravagantly as he could. She unfolded like a flower when he did. He got the idea the Lizards hadn’t bothered-or maybe they just hadn’t known people needed such things. Whenever he thought Kassquit acted strangely, he had to step back and remind himself it was a wonder she got even to within shouting distance of sanity.

And he hadn’t been lying. She was of Oriental descent; living in Gardena, California, which had a large Japanese-American population, he’d got used to Asian standards of beauty. And by them she was more than pretty enough. Her shaved head didn’t put him off, either; he knew plenty of girls at UCLA who shaved theirs. The only thing truly odd about her was her expression, or lack of expression. Her face was almost masklike. She hadn’t learned to smile when she was a baby-Lizards could hardly smile back at her-and it was evidently too late after that.

She asked, “Would you be upset if I decided to mate with him?” She didn’t have much in the way of tact, either.

To keep from examining his own feelings right away, Jonathan answered, “Even if he finds you attractive, I am not sure he would want to mate with you. He is concerned with his own mate down in the Reich, and does not know her fate.”

“I see,” Kassquit said slowly.

Jonathan wondered if she really did. She hadn’t known anything about the emotional attachments men and women could form… till she started making love with me, he thought. He hadn’t wanted to explain to the German spaceman the sort of sociological research project in which he was engaged. It was really more the Lizards’ project, not his. He was just along for the ride.

He chuckled. They brought me up here and put me out to stud. He wondered how much they’d learned. He’d certainly learned a lot.

He went over to Kassquit and put a hand on her shoulder. She squeezed him. She liked being touched. He got the idea she hadn’t been touched a whole lot before he came up to the starship. Touching was a human trait, not one the Race shared to anywhere near the same degree.

“He will be going down to his not-empire before long,” Kassquit said.

“Truth,” Jonathan agreed.

“And you will be going down to your not-empire before long,” Kassquit said.

“You knew I would,” Jonathan told her. “I cannot stay up here. This is your place, but it is not mine.”

“I understand that,” Kassquit answered. She spoke the language of the Race as well as someone with a human mouth possibly could. And why not? It was the only language she knew. She went on, “Intellectually, I understand that. But you must understand, Jonathan, that I will be sorry when you go. I will be sad.”

Jonathan sighed and squeezed her, though he didn’t know whether that made things better or worse. “I am sorry,” he said. “I do not know what to do about that. I wish there were something I could do.”

“You also have a female waiting for you on the surface of Tosev 3, even if she is not a female with whom you have arranged for permanent exclusive mating,” Kassquit said.

“Yes, I do,” Jonathan admitted. “You have known that all along. I never tried to keep it a secret from you.”

He wondered if Karen Culpepper would still be his girl when he came home. They’d been dating since high school. When he’d come up to the starship, he hadn’t expected to stay, and he hadn’t thought he would have that much explaining to do once he got back. He hadn’t really believed the Nazis would be crazy enough to attack the Lizards over Poland. But they had, and he’d been here for weeks-and he’d almost died a couple of times, too. Karen would have an excellent notion of where he was and why he’d come up here. He didn’t think she’d be very happy about it.

“You will go back to her. You will mate with her. You will forget about me,” Kassquit said.

She didn’t know it, but she was reinventing the lines everyone who’d ever lost a lover used. “I will never forget you,” Jonathan said, which was the truth. But even if it was, he doubted it consoled her much. Had someone told him the same thing, it wouldn’t have consoled him, either.

“Can that really be so?” she asked. “You know many other Tosevites. To you, I am only one of many. To me, you are the most important Tosevite I have ever known.” She let her mouth fall open, mimicking the way Lizards laughed. “The size of the sample is small, I admit, but it is not likely to increase to any great degree soon. Why, if I meet the Deutsch male before he leaves the ship, it will go up from two to three.”

She wasn’t trying to make him feel sorry for her. He was sure of that. She didn’t have the guile to do any such thing. No doubt because of the way she’d been raised, she was devastatingly frank. He said, “You could make it larger if you came down to visit the United States. You would be most welcome in my… city.”

He’d started to say in my house. But Kassquit wouldn’t be welcome in his house. His father and mother-and he, too, when he was there-were raising a couple of Lizard hatchlings who were Kassquit’s exact inverses: Mickey and Donald were being brought up as much like human beings as possible. The Race wouldn’t be delighted to learn about that, and Kassquit’s first loyalty was inevitably to the Lizards.

“I may do that,” she said. “On the other fork of the tongue, I may not, too. Is it not a truth that there are Tosevite diseases for which your physicians have as yet developed no vaccines?”

“Yes, that is a truth,” Jonathan admitted.

Kassquit continued, “From the Race’s research, it appears that some of these diseases are more severe for an adult than they would be for a hatchling. I do not wish to risk my health-my life-for the sake of a visit to Tosev 3, interesting as it might otherwise be.”

“Well, I understand that.” Jonathan made the affirmative gesture. “But surely other Tosevites will be coming here to the starship.” Getting away from the personal, getting away from guilt he couldn’t help feeling at leaving someone with whom he’d been making love as often as he could, was something of a relief.

“I suppose so,” Kassquit answered. “But still, you must understand, you will be the standard of comparison. I will judge every other Tosevite I meet, every other male with whom I mate, by what I have learned from and about you.”