Johnson pondered. Yeager was still taking chances, or he wouldn’t have got on the phone. But there were a lot of different ways to be sneaky. A slow grin spread over Johnson’s face. “Maybe, Major, just maybe, I can get a close-up look at that critter after all.”
Fotsev hated Basra. His reasons for hating Basra were easy to understand. The place stank. It was full of Big Uglies, and not only Big Uglies, but Big Uglies fanatically devoted to their superstition who might at any moment rise in rebellion against the Race. Patrols in Basra were never routine; any cloth-shrouded Tosevite might be an assassin, and some, expecting a happy afterlife from their preposterous outsized Big Ugly beyond the sky if they sacrificed themselves to his cause on Tosev 3, were willing, even eager, to slay themselves if only they could take males of the Race with them.
So Fotsev hated Basra. As far as he was concerned, the only decent thing about it was the weather. Compared to that of Buenos Aires, where he’d been stationed before, it seemed a delightful reminder of Home.
He let out a small, discontented hiss as he and his squad tramped through Basra’s central market square. “What is itching your tailstump?” Gorppet asked him. The male’s mouth fell open in amusement. “This place, I should not wonder. More filth and disease right here-I mean this miserable square, not the whole city: spirits of Emperors past, I don’t want to think about the whole city-than on all of Home put together.”
“You need leave again,” another male told Fotsev. “Go on out to one of the new towns and you will see how things ought to be.”
And that made Fotsev realize why he was so discontented. “I went out to the first one a while ago,” he said. “Once was enough. I have not been back. I do not want to go back. I hated the new town just about as much as I hate this place.”
“You are mad, as addled as any Tosevite ever hatched,” said the other male, a fellow named Betvoss. Only astonishment could have prompted him to come out with such a thing, for Fotsev outranked him.
A couple of males on the patrol hissed in alarm. A couple of more gestured to show they agreed with Betvoss. Fotsev could have taken offense, but he didn’t. When he spoke, he sounded more weary than anything else: “Home is an egg I have hatched out of. I am something different now. It may not be something better-I do not think it is something better. But I do not fit inside that shell any more. The males and females who live in the new towns know little of Tosev 3, and do not wish to learn. They still dwell inside the old shell. I have learned too much of Tosev 3, which I suppose is why I do not.”
Betvoss twisted his eye turrets in a way that suggested he did not understand and that there was nothing for him to understand. Fotsev had expected as much. Betvoss said, “If you hate the new town and you also hate Basra, what is left for you?”
“Nothing, probably,” Fotsev answered. “I think that will be the fate of many of us from the conquest fleet: caught betwixt and between, belonging nowhere.”
“Not me,” Betvoss said. “I like the new towns. They remind me of how things were and how they will be again.”
“I think Fotsev speaks truth,” Gorppet said, which astonished Fotsev; the dour veteran seldom took his part. Gorppet had seen much worse action during the fighting than Fotsev had, and Fotsev often thought the other male resented him for coming through so easily. But now Gorppet went on, “I went into the new town a couple of times, maybe three. I do not bother going any more, either.”
“I enjoy it,” Betvoss said. “I would sooner be there than here. I would sooner be anywhere than here.”
“They do not understand the males of the Soldiers’ Time in the new town,” Fotsev said. “They did not go through what we went through, and they cannot see why we did not deliver Tosev 3 to them as we would have if all the Big Uglies truly had ridden animals and swung swords, as the probe made us think they would.”
Betvoss seized the first part of that. “You say the colonists do not understand us? What of the Tosevites?” His wave encompassed the Big Ugly males in their wrappings of brown or white and the females in black with only their eyes showing and sometimes even those veiled away behind cloth.
Fotsev shrugged. “I do not expect Big Uglies to understand-they are Big Uglies. But the folk of the new town are my own kind-or they look like me, at any rate. I expected more than I got, and I was disappointed.”
“And I as well,” Gorppet agreed. “Only we who have been through it can understand what we endured. Some of the Tosevites who fought against us come closer than the males and females of the Race who did not.” He sighed. “When the males of the conquest fleet die, no one will understand.” After a couple of strides, he swung an eye turret toward Betvoss. “Some males do not understand now.”
“Truth,” Betvoss said. “And you are one of them.”
“Enough,” Fotsev said with a slow, tired, emphatic cough. “Are we Big Uglies, to brawl among ourselves?”
By the Emperor, I need a taste of ginger, he thought. However much he might need one, though, he was not so sure where he might come by it. The herb was in shorter supply than he could ever remember. Those above him had always fumed and grumbled about ginger, and every so often made examples of males caught tasting or dealing in it. But there had always been plenty-till females from the colonization fleet showed what the herb did to them. Now the authorities were serious about keeping it off everyone’s tongue.
One of Fotsev’s eye turrets slid toward Gorppet. If anyone could still get ginger, he was the male. And if he understood why Fotsev stayed away from the new towns, maybe he would be more willing to share some of what he had, if he had any.
The breeze shifted, changing the notes in the symphony of stinks that played over Fotsev’s scent receptors. One odor cut through the usual array of Tosevite stenches, though: the pheromones of a female in her season. Somebody is getting ginger, Fotsev thought. He wasn’t the only male to note that scent, of course. His whole squad suddenly seemed more alert. A couple of troopers began to take on the erect posture associated with mating. Betvoss started away from his comrades, toward that wonderful scent.
“Back!” Fotsev said sharply, relishing the chance to rebuke the male who’d thought he was addled. “She is a long way off. We just have to go on about our business and pretend she is not there.”
“I smell her. I want to mate with her,” Betvoss whined. Fotsev wanted to mate with her, too, wherever she was, but not to the point where he forgot himself and forgot his duty. Even as he kept eyeing the market square, the urge remained, an itch inside his head-and inside his cloaca-he couldn’t scratch. It made him irritable; he was ever so ready to leap down Betvoss’ throat if the other male got more unruly than he had already proved.
But Betvoss, though he stayed sulky, obeyed: obedience was nearly as ingrained in the Race as was desire when presented with the proper stimuli.
Small male Tosevites came running up to the patrol, jabbering in their own language. Gorppet gestured with his rifle. He did not want them to get too close. Fotsev didn’t blame him. The Race had learned from painful experience that stopping suicide attackers wasn’t easy.
So far, the fanatical Tosevites had not begun using hatchlings as suicide warriors. That did not mean they would not do such a thing, though. In all truth, Gorppet was right to be cautious.
Caution came hard, though, when the small Big Uglies (a notion that made Fotsev laugh, but that was true: he overtopped almost all of them) came up in spite of Gorppet’s warning. They’d learned a few words from the language of the Race. “Food!” they shouted. “Want food!” Others shouted, “Want money!”