Harry Turtledove: Down to Earth

More of the Deutsch official’s blood showed under his thin, scaleless skin, a sign of anger among the Big Uglies. Felless enjoyed angering the Deutsche. Their murderous style of government-and their irrationality-angered her. That they were misguided enough to reckon themselves-Tosevites! — the Master Race angered her even more. Getting a little of her own back felt sweet.

She did not think of her hatchlings again till she was leaving Freisler’s office. He had not yielded in the matter of curbing ginger smugglers; angering him had also left him stubborn. Diplomacy-and the idea that she needed to be diplomatic toward Big Uglies-still came hard to Felless, as it did to many of the Race.

She hadn’t been lying when she told the Deutsch secretary the news Slomikk gave her was of no great consequence. The only reason the hatchlings crossed her mind was an idle wish that she still had an egg tooth herself. Were it so, she might have torn the arrogant, noisy Freisler apart like an eggshell. The temptation to violence the Big Uglies raised in her was appalling.

So was their weather. They did not heat the interiors of their buildings to temperatures comfortable to civilized beings (by which, in her mind, she meant females and males of the Race). But leaving the grandiose Justice Ministry and going out onto the streets of Nuremberg was another savage jolt. Blaming the Tosevites for the cold made no logical sense. Trying not to freeze, Felless cared little for logic.

Fortunately, her heated motorcar waited nearby. “Back to the embassy, superior female?” asked the driver.

“Yes, back to the embassy,” Felless answered. “I must report the Tosevites’ obstinacy to Ambassador Veffani.”

“It shall be done,” the driver said, and set the motorcar in motion. It was of Deutsch manufacture, but ran reasonably well. The Big Uglies had been in the habit of fueling their motors with petroleum distillates; now many of them burned hydrogen, another technology stolen from the Race. Tosevites seemed to take such thefts, and the changes that sprang from them, for granted. They would have driven the Race mad. Felless more than half believed dealing with change on Tosev 3 had driven a good many males from the conquest fleet mad.

Nuremberg’s main boulevards struck her as absurdly wide, even for the capital city of an independent not-empire. The Nazis, the faction ruling the Deutsche, had an ideology that assumed bigger was automatically better. A constable in one of their preposterously fancy uniforms-which also served an ideological function-halted traffic so a female Big Ugly leading an immature Tosevite by the hand and pushing another in a wheeled cart could cross. She took her time about it, not caring that she was inconveniencing Felless.

Felless tried to take advantage of the inconvenience by studying the way the female cared for her hatchlings. The one in the cart was as absurdly helpless as all newly hatched-no, the Big Ugly term was born — Tosevites were after emerging from their mothers’ bodies. But even the one that walked by itself clung to the female who had presumably given it life. Of its own free will, it submitted itself to her authority.

Hatchlings of the Race, till reason truly sprouted in them, assumed that their elders were predators, and did their best to avoid them. Maybe that was why obedience and subordination were so thoroughly drilled into those hatchlings once they became educable. The lessons almost always sank deep. But Big Uglies, who began so compliant, ended up more individualistic than members of the Race.

Paradox. The changes came with sexual maturation, of course. That propelled Tosevites toward the autonomy to which they clung so fiercely from then on. The Race stayed on the quieter path, untouched by hormonal tides except during mating season- or when stimulated by ginger, Felless thought. Ginger disrupted patterns unshakable back on Home.

After what seemed like forever, the constable permitted traffic to move again. Now that her attention had been drawn to them, Felless kept noticing Big Uglies-mostly females, by their wrapping styles and the length of their hair-caring for Tosevite hatchlings of various sizes.

She tried to imagine leading her own pair of hatchlings down the street, holding each one by the hand. The absurdity of the notion made her mouth drop open into a wide laugh. The little creatures would do their best to bite her and escape. Civilizing hatchlings wasn’t easy. It was, in fact, one of the first specializations the Race had developed, back at, or rather before, the dawn of its history. Systematically civilizing hatchlings had helped lead to civilizing the Race.

The motorcar pulled to a halt in front of the Race’s embassy to the Greater German Reich. Felless sighed with relief, not only relief at escaping the absurd fantasy that had filled her mind but also at seeing a sensible, functional cube of a building. The newer Tosevite structures in Nuremberg partook of the Nazis’ passion for immense pretentiousness. The older ones struck her as hideously overdecorated. Escaping to simplicity was a delight.

Felless hurried to Veffani’s office. The ambassador said, “I greet you, Senior Researcher. I am glad to see you resuming your full range of duties after laying your eggs.”

“I thank you, superior sir,” Felless replied. Either Veffani or Ttomalss, an experienced researcher in Tosevite psychology, had fertilized those eggs; they’d both mated with her when ginger made her seasonal pheromones spring to life. Had she been a Tosevite, she knew she would have cared which one was the father. Luckily, being a female of the Race, she didn’t need to worry about that. Business came first. “Superior sir, I regret to report that the Deutsche appear unyielding on the matter of ginger smuggling.”

“I am disappointed, but I am not surprised,” the ambassador said. “Corrupting us appears to be part of their strategy.”

“Truth,” Felless said, though Veffani had been tactless. He could scarcely help knowing she was one of those ginger had corrupted, not when he’d been stimulated to mate with her. She feared he also knew she still craved the herb, though penalties for females who used it grew ever more severe.

“They do not fear our countersmuggling efforts, then?” Veffani said.

“If they do, they give little sign of it,” Felless said, “though you have warned me they are adept at bluffing.”

“They are better than adept. They are liars from the moment they leave their eggshells-uh, that is, the bodies of their mothers,” Veffani corrected himself.

“What is our course to be, then?” Felless asked.

“I shall have to consult with my superiors,” the ambassador replied. “My own inclination is to continue on our present course until its failure is manifest. That has certainly not been proved. The Deutsche will smuggle. We should do the same, to show them the game has its prices.”

“Truth, superior sir,” Felless said. “In fact, if you will recall, I was the first to warn the Deutsche that we were on the point of instituting such a policy.” She wanted credit for it, too.

“I do recall, Senior Researcher. I was there, after all.” Veffani sounded amused.

She didn’t mind if he laughed, so long as he remembered it, But, having reminded him, she thought it wiser to change the subject: “Slomikk tells me my hatchlings have shed their egg teeth.” As he might have sired them, that might be of some small interest to him, as it was to her.

“Yes, it would be about time for that,” he agreed, with the polite attention she’d expected. “Now, back to ways of dealing with the miserable Deutsche…”

Monique Dutourd angrily shook her head. “No, I don’t want to go to the cinema with you,” she told Dieter Kuhn. “I don’t want to go to supper with you. I don’t want to go anywhere with you. If you care anything at all about making me happy, go away and leave me alone.”