Harry Turtledove - Down to Earth

Some of the curious part of her also wished Regeya remained on the network. Before she’d recognized him as a Big Ugly, he’d come close to doing the same in reverse. She didn’t know how; her command of the Race’s written language was perfect, which his wasn’t quite. But he had. He’d asked to talk to her by telephone. She couldn’t do that, not without giving away what she was.

“Fun,” she said aloud. “Amusement.” She went to a new area on the network, one that offered both of those: the area devoted to discussion of the best ways to nurture hatchlings. The conquest fleet had been all-male; not till the colonization fleet arrived did that area become necessary.

How do you make hatchlings not bite when you feed them? someone-a harassed someone-had written since Kassquit last checked there.

Someone else, evidently a voice of experience, had given a three-word reply to that: You do not. The responder had also added the Race’s conventional symbol for an emphatic cough.

The next message was a glyph of an open mouth, the conventional symbol for laughter. Kassquit’s mouth fell open, too. She laughed like that when she remembered to. Sometimes, though, amusement made her yip the way a Big Ugly was biologically programmed to do.

A few messages further on, someone named Maargyees wrote, This is my very first clutch of eggs. I wish I had never laid them. Not being able to talk to the hatchlings is driving me out of my scales. What do I do about that?

Live with it, answered the cynic who’d replied to the earlier message.

We all do, someone else added. Sooner or later, they turn into civilized beings. We did, you know.

Maargyees wasn’t easily quelled. Sure seems like later to me, she wrote.

How is it that you are so ignorant of hatchlings and their ways? a male asked.

Me? Maargyees answered. I was hatched in a barn myself I do not know anything. Know? I do not even suspect anything.

That sent several laughter signs up onto the computer screen. Kassquit added one of her own. Maargyees had a flippant, irreverent way of looking at the world, very different from the endless run of boring comments from most males and females. Kassquit hadn’t seen anything like it for quite a while. She hadn’t seen anything like it, as a matter of fact, since…

She paused with her artificial fingerclaws poised above the keyboard. “Since Regeya,” she said aloud. And she knew only too well who, or rather what, Regeya had turned out to be.

Could the obstreperous Big Ugly, having been booted off the network once, have found a new disguise under which to return? Kassquit decided to do a little checking. No messages from anyone named Maargyees appeared anywhere until some time after Regeya had been removed. That didn’t prove anything, but it was suggestive. Maargyees sounded more like a name a Rabotev should carry than one belonging to a female of the Race, but that didn’t prove anything, either-some members of the Race hatched on Rabotev 2 had local names.

As she had for the falsely named Regeya, Kassquit checked the records. Sure enough, a Maargyees had come with the colonization fleet-a Maargyees with a personal identification number different from the one this female was using.

“Well, well,” Kassquit murmured. She knew she ought to report the wild Big Ugly’s return to the network, but had trouble bringing herself to do it. Things had been dull since Regeya vanished from the network. And Kassquit had a hard time seeing how asking questions about hatchlings constituted any sort of danger for the Race.

She could always report the Tosevite later. For now, she sent him-him, not her-an electronic message: I greet you, Maargyees. And how is the life of a senior tube technician these days? That was the fictitious occupation the equally fictitious Regeya had said he used.

If she didn’t get an answer, Kassquit vowed she would report that the Tosevite was roaming the network again. But one came back before long: I greet you, Kassquit. And how is the life of a snoopy nuisance these days? With the words, he used the symbol suggesting he didn’t intend to be taken seriously.

Very well; I thank you, Kassquit answered. And have you truly laid eggs?

Oh, yes, Regeya-so she thought of him-answered. A big square green one and a little purple one with orange spots.

Kassquit stared at the words on the screen, imagining a Big Ugly producing such a preposterous clutch. She dissolved in Tosevite-style noisy giggles. The picture was too deliciously absurd for anything else. I like you, she wrote. I really do.

You must, Regeya wrote back. Why else would you get me in so much trouble? Kassquit cocked her head to one side. How in the name of the Emperor was she supposed to take that ?

Straha jumped when the telephone rang. The exiled shiplord laughed at himself as he went to answer it. He’d been living in the United States more than forty years now: more than twenty of Tosev 3’s slow turns about its star. After all that time, ringing telephones could still sometimes startle him. By rights, phones were supposed to hiss, as they did back on Home.

He reached for the handset with a small, scornful hiss of his own. Tosevite telephones were good for little more than voice communication: not nearly so sophisticated as the flexible instruments the Race used. This is what you get-this is part of what you get-for casting your lot with the local primitives, he thought. But he’d been sure Atvar would give him worse had he stayed. Defying the fleetlord-defying him but not overthrowing him-had a price.

So did exile. He’d paid, again and again. He would go on paying till the day he died-and maybe after that, if the spirits of Emperors past turned their backs on him for his betrayal.

He picked up the telephone. “I greet you,” he said in his own language. By now, he spoke and understood English quite well, but his native hisses and pops went along way toward getting rid of annoying Big Uglies who wanted nothing more than to sell him something.

“I greet you, Shiplord, and hope you are well.” That was a Big Ugly speaking, all right, but one whose voice was familiar and welcome in Straha’s hearing diaphragm.

“I greet you, Sam Yeager,” Straha answered. Yeager might inhabit a Tosevite body, but he was good at thinking like a male of the Race-better than any other Big Ugly Straha knew. “And what would you like today?”

What do you want from me? was really what he meant. As exiles had to do, he’d earned his keep by telling the rulers of his new home everything they wanted to know about his old one. He’d known he would have to do that when he fled the 206th Emperor Yower in a shuttlecraft. He’d been doing it ever since.

But all Yeager asked was, “How does the Race ever manage to civilize its hatchlings? Far as I can see, predators are welcome to them.”

Straha laughed. “We do eventually improve. You Tosevites are liable to be less patient than we are, as your hatchlings develop language faster than ours. In every other way, though, ours are more advanced.”

“Shiplord, that is a big exception.” The Tosevite used an emphatic cough.

“I suppose so,” Straha said indifferently. “As for myself, I never had much interest in trying to civilize hatchlings. I never had much interest in trying to civilize anyone. Maybe that is why I have not had too much difficulty living among you Big Uglies.” He used the Race’s imperfectly polite name for the Tosevites without self-consciousness; when they were speaking English, Yeager called him a Lizard just as casually.