Harry Turtledove - Down to Earth

“It is not rare and accidental among us,” the Big Ugly said. “Some misguided males deliberately pursue it. They must be rooted out, exterminated, lest they pollute us with this unnatural behavior.”

“I do not understand,” Ttomalss said again. “If they mate among themselves, they cannot have hatchlings. This in itself eliminates them from your gene pool. Where is the need to root out and exterminate?”

“Mating among males is filthy and degenerate,” Dr. Rascher declared. “It corrupts the young in the Reich .”

“Even if what you say is true-and I have seen no evidence to that effect-do you not believe the problem to be self-correcting?” Ttomalss asked. “I repeat, these males are unlikely to breed, and so, except for new mutations-assuming this trait to be genetically induced, about which I have seen no evidence either for or against-will in the course of centuries gradually tend to diminish. You Deutsch Tosevites, if you will forgive me for saying so, have always struck the Race as being impatient even for your species.”

He had been around Big Uglies long enough to recognize Dr. Rascher’s glower for what it was. The Deutsch physician snapped, “And the Race has always struck us Aryans as being insanely tolerant. If you are daft enough to put up with degeneracy in your own kind for centuries or millennia on end, that is your affair. If we choose to take direct action in uprooting it, that is ours.”

Plainly, Ttomalss wouldn’t get anywhere with this line. The Race, to its dismay, had got nowhere in attempting to dissuade the Deutsche from slaughtering the Jews in their not-empire for no other reason than that they were Jews. Since they were as determined to slaughter males with different mating habits, they would go on doing that, too. Males… That sparked a thought in Ttomalss’ mind. “Have you also females who mate with females? If so, what do you do with them?”

“Exterminate them when we catch them, of course,” Dr. Rascher replied. “We are consistent. Did you expect anything different?”

“Not really,” Ttomalss said with a sigh. Unless he was mistaken, Rascher’s face bore an expression of smug self-satisfaction. The researcher hadn’t been familiar with that expression in his work in China, but had seen it on a great many Deutsch officials. They are ideology-mad, he thought. Too many Big Uglies are ideology-mad. They are as drunk on their ideologies as they are on their sexuality.

“You should not have,” Dr. Rascher said, and added an emphatic cough. “It is most important for the Aryan race to preserve its purity and to prevent its defilement by such elements as these.”

“I have heard you Deutsche use this term ‘Aryan’ before,” Ttomalss said. “Sometimes you seem to use it to refer to yourselves and yourselves alone, but sometimes you seem to use it in a different way. Please define it for me.” He knew how important precise definitions were. The Deutsche, all too often, preferred arguing in a circle to precision, though they vehemently denied that was the case.

Dr. Rascher said, “I will define it with great pleasure, taking the definition from the words of our great Leader, Adolf Hitler. Aryans have been and are the race which is the bearer of Tosevite cultural development. It is no accident that the first cultures arose in places where the Aryan, in his encounters with lower races, subjugated them and bent them to his will. As a conqueror, he regulated their practical activity, according to his will and for his aims. As long as he ruthlessly upheld the master attitude, not only did he really remain master, but also the preserver and increaser of culture, which was based on his abilities. When he gives up his purity of blood, he loses his place in the wonderful world which he has made for himself. This is why we so oppose the idea of mingling races.”

“You Deutsche see yourselves as Aryans, then, but not all Aryans are necessarily Deutsche-is that correct?” Ttomalss asked.

“It is, although we are the most perfect representatives of the Aryan race anywhere on Tosev 3,” Rascher replied.

“Fascinating,” Ttomalss said. “Most fascinating indeed. And what is your evidence for these assertions?”

“Why, I told you,” Dr. Rascher said. “In his writings, Hitler sets forth the doctrine of the Aryans in great detail.”

“Yes, you did tell me that,” Ttomalss agreed. “But what was Hitler’s evidence? Did he have any? What do Tosevite historians say about these questions? What does archaeology say about them? Why do you accept Hitler’s word and not the statements of those who disagree with him, if there are any?”

Behind corrective lenses that magnified them, Dr. Rascher’s eyes-they were of a washed-out gray, a very ugly color to Ttomalss-grew larger still, a token of astonishment. “Hitler was the Leader of the Reich ,” the Deutsch physician exclaimed. “But naturally, his writings on any subject are authoritative.”

“Why?” Ttomalss asked in genuine puzzlement. “He must have known something about leading, of course, or he would not have led your not empire, but how much did he understand about these other things? How much could he have understood? He spent most of his time leading or getting ready to lead, did he not? What chance did he have to study these other issues in any sort of detail?”

“He was the Leader,” Dr. Rascher replied. “He knew the truth because he was the Leader.” He tacked on another emphatic cough.

Ttomalss and he stared at each other in perfect mutual incomprehension. After a long, long pause, Ttomalss let out another sigh. He’d had a lot of these moments with Big Uglies. Trying to get past this one, he said, “You claim this as revealed belief, then, not as scientific knowledge. You hold it as a superstitious opinion, like the ones expressed in… what is the local one here? Ah, Christianity, yes.” He was pleased he’d remembered the name.

But Rascher shook his head. “This is scientific truth. Christianity, on the other fork of the tongue, is a belief similar to your veneration of the spirits of Emperors past.”

He might know the idioms of the Race’s language, but he was an ignorant, barbarous Big Ugly, and did not cast down his eyes when mentioning the Emperors. And he mentioned them in insulting fashion, too. “You have no business speaking of that which you are too foolish to comprehend,” Ttomalss snapped. Dr. Rascher laughed a yipping Tosevite laugh, which further infuriated the researcher.

“Neither have you,” the Big Ugly retorted.

Now Ttomalss and he stared at each other in perfect mutual loathing. “Whatever the veneration of the spirits of Emperors past may be”-Ttomalss lowered his eye turrets toward the ground; he was no ignorant barbarian-“we do not shape the policy of the Empire around it.”

Even as he spoke, he realized that wasn’t completely true. After its first two planetary conquests, the Race had encouraged Emperor-veneration among the Rabotevs and Hallessi, using it as one means of binding the subject peoples to the Empire. Plans had been developed to do the same here on Tosev 3. So far, however, none of those plans had come to anything.

Dr. Rascher said, “Whether the Race lives according to its principles is of no concern to me. The Reich , I am proud to say, does.”

“These principles seem to include slaughtering anyone your famous Leader happened to dislike.” Ttomalss was too nettled to stay anywhere close to diplomatic. “How fortunate for you that his dislikes did not include doctors.”

He’d succeeded in making the Big Ugly as angry as he was. Rascher sprang to his feet and pointed toward the door. “Get out!” he shouted. “Get out, and never show your ugly snouted face outside your embassy again!” He punctuated that with another emphatic cough. “Your kind deserves extermination far more than any Tosevites.”