Harry Turtledove: Aftershocks

Kassquit wished he hadn’t asked the question that particular way. The older and the more conscious of her alienness she’d become, the less happy she’d grown. Some of the males and females of the Race were only too willing to rub her snout in that alienness, too. She answered, “How can I know? How does one find an answer to a counterfactual question?”

“Carefully,” the wild Tosevite said. For a moment, Kassquit thought he hadn’t understood. Then she realized he was making a joke. She let her mouth drop open for a moment to show she’d got it. He went on, “Everyone’s life is full of counterfactuals. Suppose I this had done. Suppose I that had not done. What would I be now? Dealing with the things that are real is hard enough.”

That was also a truth. Kassquit made the affirmative gesture. She said, “I am told you do not know what has happened to your mate and your hatchlings. I hope they are well.”

“I thank you,” Johannes Drucker answered. “I wish I knew, one way or the other. Then I would also how to go ahead know. Now I can only at the same time hope and worry.”

“What will you do if they are dead?” Kassquit asked. Not until the question was out did she think to wonder whether she should have asked it. By then, of course, it was too late.

Though still imperfectly familiar with the facial expressions wild Big Uglies used, she was sure Johannes Drucker’s did not show delight. He said, “The only thing I can do then is try to put my life back together one piece at a time. It is not easy, but it happens all the time. It is certainly all the time in the Reich happening now.”

“Males and females of the Race are also having to rebuild their lives,” Kassquit pointed out. “And the Race did not start this war. The Reich did.”

“No matter who started it, it is over now,” the wild Big Ugly said. “The Race won. The Reich lost. Putting the pieces back together is always easier for the winners.”

Was that a truth or only an opinion? Since Kassquit wasn’t sure, she didn’t challenge it. She asked, “If your mate is dead, will you seek another one?”

“You have all sorts of awkward questions, is it not so?” Johannes Drucker laughed a loud Tosevite laugh, but still did not seem amused. Kassquit did not think he would answer, but he did: “I cannot tell you that now. It depends on how I feel, and it also depends on whether I meet a female I find interesting.”

“And what makes a female interesting?” Kassquit asked.

The wild Big Ugly laughed again. “Not only awkward questions, but questions different from the ones the males of the Race, the military males, have asked. What makes a female interesting? Ask a thousand male Tosevites and you will have a thousand answers. Maybe two thousand.”

“I did not ask a thousand male Tosevites. I asked you,” Kassquit said.

“So you did.” Instead of mocking her, Johannes Drucker paused and thought. “What makes a female interesting? Partly the way she looks, partly the way she acts. And part of it, of course, depends on whether she me interesting finds, too. Sometimes a male will find a female interesting, but not the other way round. And sometimes a female will want a male who does not want her.”

“I think the Race’s mating season is a much tidier, much less stressful way of handling reproduction,” Kassquit said.

“I am sure it is-for the Race,” the wild Big Ugly said. “But it is not how Tosevites do things. We can only what we are be.”

Confronting her own differences from the Race, Kassquit had seen that, too. Culture went a long way toward minimizing those differences, but could not delete them. She wondered whether to ask Johannes Drucker if he found her attractive, and whether to use an affirmative answer, if she got one, to initiate mating. In the end, she decided not to ask. None of his words showed he might be interested. Neither did his reproductive organ, which was liable to be a more accurate-or at least less deceitful-indicator. As she left the compartment, she wondered if her decision would please Jonathan Yeager.

He was quiet when she returned to the compartment. He did not ask her whether she’d mated with the Deutsch captive. It was as if he did not want to know. He did not have much to say about anything else, either. Kassquit didn’t care for that. She’d grown used to talking with the wild-but not too wild-Tosevite about almost everything. She felt empty, alone, when he responded so little.

At last, she decided to confront things directly. “I did not mate with Johannes Drucker,” she said.

“All right,” Jonathan Yeager answered, still not showing much animation. But then he asked, “Why not?”

“He did not show much interest,” Kassquit replied, “and I did not want to make you unhappy.”

“I thank you for that,” he said. “I thank you for thinking of me.” He hesitated, then went on, “You ought to think of yourself, too, you know.”

Kassquit had thought of herself-as a member of the Race, or as close an approximation to a member of the Race as she could be. She’d given little thought to herself as an individual. She hadn’t been encouraged to give much thought to herself as an individual. She said, “Does it not seem that wild Tosevites-especially wild American Tosevites-concern themselves too much with their individual concerns and not enough with the concerns of their society?”

He shrugged. “I do not know anything about that. But if the individuals are happy, how can the society be unhappy?”

Big Uglies had a knack for turning things on their head. The Race always thought of society first: if society was well ordered, then individuals would be happy. To look at individuals first… was probably the mark of American Tosevites, with their mania for snoutcounting. “Do you know that you are subversive?” she asked Jonathan Yeager.

When his eyes narrowed and the corners of his mouth turned up, she responded to his amusement, even if she couldn’t duplicate the expression. Genetic programming, she thought. It couldn’t be anything else.

He said, “I hope so. As far as we Tosevites are concerned, a lot about the Race could use subverting.”

Had he said that when he first came up to the starship, she would have been furious. But now she had seen that he had his own way of looking at things, different from hers. From his sense of perspective, she was beginning to get one of her own. She said, “Well, you are halfway to subverting me.” They both laughed.

As a senior researcher, Ttomalss stayed busy on a wide variety of projects, some his own, others assigned him by his superiors. Staying busy was what he got for being an expert on the Big Uglies. Of course, his research on Kassquit remained an important part of his work. Now that she was an adult, though, he did not have to give her constant attention, as he had when she was a hatchling.

He still recorded everything that went on in her compartment. He would do that as long as she lived (unless she chanced to outlive him, in which case whoever succeeded him would continue the recording). She was far too valuable a specimen to let any data go to waste. Even if Ttomalss couldn’t evaluate all of it, some other analyst would in years or generations to come. The Race would be a long time figuring out what made the Tosevites respond as they did.

Because he had been involved in her life so long and so closely, Ttomalss still evaluated as much of the raw data as he could. Kassquit’s interactions with Jonathan Yeager had taught him as much about the Big Uglies’ sexual dynamics as he’d learned anywhere else. Those interactions had also taught him a great deal about the limits of cultural indoctrination for Tosevites.

“Well, you are halfway to subverting me,” Kassquit had told the wild Big Ugly a couple of days before Ttomalss reviewed the audio and video. Both Tosevites had used their barking laughter, so Ttomalss presumed she was making a joke.