“Fleetlord Reffet continues to assure me that he is,” Pshing replied. “He was quite taken aback to receive radio transmissions from the various Tosevite not-empires.”
“He should not have been,” Atvar said. “We have been warning him for some time of the Big Uglies’ ever-increasing capacities.”
Kirel said, “Exalted Fleetlord, he will have to learn by experience, as we also had to do. Let us hope his experience proves less painful than ours.”
“Indeed.” Atvar let out a worried hiss. His voice grew grim: “And let us hope all the Tosevites take seriously our warning to them that an attack on the colonization fleet by any of them will be construed as an attack by all of them, and that we shall do our utmost to punish all of them should any such attack occur.”
“I wish we had not had to issue such a warning,” Kirel said.
“So do I,” Atvar replied. “But at least four and perhaps five of their realms possess missile-firing undersea ships-who back on Home would have dreamt of such things?”
“Oh, I understand the problem,” Kirel said. “But the general warning all but invites the Tosevites to combine against us and to reduce their conflicts among themselves.”
“Diplomacy.” Atvar made the word into a curse. Manuals on the subject, their data gleaned from the Race’s ancient history and early conquests, suggested playing the locals against one another. But, to Atvar and his colleagues, such concerns were but theory, and musty theory at that. The Big Uglies, divided among themselves, were expert practitioners of the art. After a negotiating session with them, Atvar always wanted to count his fingers and toes to make sure he hadn’t inadvertently traded them away.
Pshing said, “When the colonists are revived from cold sleep, when they come down to Tosev 3, we will begin to turn this into a proper world of the Empire.”
“I admire your confidence, Adjutant,” Kirel said. Pshing crouched respectfully. Kirel went on, “I wonder what the colonists will make of us. We are hardly proper males of the Race ourselves any more-dealing with the Tosevites for so long has left us as addled as bad eggs.”
“We have changed,” Atvar agreed. Back on Home, that would have been a curse. Not here, though he had taken a long time to realize it. “Had we not changed, our war with the Big Uglies would have wrecked this planet, and what would the colonization fleet have done then?”
Not a single male on Tosev 3 had found an answer to that question. Atvar was sure Reffet would have no answer for it, either. But he was also sure the fleetlord of the colonization fleet would have questions of his own. Would he himself, would any male on Tosev 3, be able to find answers for them?
The pitcher windmilled into his delivery. The runner took off from first base. The batter hit a sharp ground ball to short. The shortstop gobbled it up and fired it over to first. The softball slapped Sam Yeager’s mitt, beating the runner to the bag by a step and a half. The umpire had hustled up from behind home plate. “You’re out!” he yelled, and threw his fist in the air.
“That’s the ballgame,” Yeager said happily. “Another win for the good guys.” He tacked on an emphatic cough for good measure.
“Nice game, Major,” the pitcher said. “A homer and a double-I guess we’ll take that.”
“Thanks, Eddie,” Yeager said, chuckling. “I can still get around on a softball.” He was in his mid-fifties, and in good shape for his mid-fifties, but he couldn’t hit a baseball for beans any more. It irked him; he’d been in his eighteenth season of minor-league ball when the Lizards came, and he’d kept playing as much and as long as he could after going into the Army.
He rolled the softball toward the chicken-wire dugout in back of first base. He’d been an outfielder when he played for money, but he couldn’t cover the ground out there any more, either, so nowadays he played first. He could still catch and he could still throw.
A couple of guys from the other team came over and shook his hand. They’d been playing just for the fun of playing. He’d had fun, too-he wouldn’t have put on spikes if he didn’t have fun-but he’d gone out there to win. Playing for money for all those years had ingrained that in him.
Up in the wooden bleachers behind the wire fence, Barbara clapped her hands along with the other wives and girlfriends. Sam doffed his cap and bowed. His wife made a face at him. That wasn’t why he put the cap back on in a hurry, though. He was getting thin on top, and Southern California summer sunshine was no joke. He’d sunburned his scalp a couple of times, but he intended never, ever, to do it again.
“Head for Jose’s!” Win or lose, that cry rang out after a game. Winning would make the tacos and beer even better. Sam and Barbara piled into their Buick and drove over to the restaurant. It was only a few blocks from the park.
The Buick ran smoothly and quietly. Like more and more cars every year, it burned hydrogen, not gasoline-technology borrowed from the Lizards. Sam coughed when he got stuck behind an old gas-burner that poured out great gray clouds of stinking exhaust. “Ought to be a law against those miserable things,” he complained.
Barbara nodded. “They’ve outlived their usefulness, that’s certain.” She spoke with the precision of someone who’d done graduate work in English. Yeager minded his p’s and q’s more closely than he would have had he not been married to someone like her.
At Jose’s, the team hashed over the game. Sam was ten years older than anybody else and the only one who’d ever played pro ball, so his opinions carried weight. His opinion in other areas carried weight, too; Eddie, the pitcher, said, “You deal with the Lizards all the time, Major. What’s it going to be like when that big fleet gets here?”
“Can’t know for sure till it does get here,” Yeager answered. “If you want to know what I think, I think it’ll be the biggest day since the conquest fleet came down. We’re all doing our best to make sure it isn’t the bloodiest day since the conquest fleet came down, too.”
Eddie nodded, accepting that. Barbara raised an eyebrow-just a little, so only Sam noticed. She saw the logical flaw the young pitcher missed. If all of mankind wanted the colonization fleet to land peacefully, that would happen. But no one on this side of the Atlantic could guess what Molotov or Himmler might do till he did it-if he did it. And the Nazis and the Reds-and the Lizards-would be worrying about President Warren, too.
After Sam finished his glass of Burgermeister, Barbara said, “I don’t want to rush you too much, but we did tell Jonathan we’d be home when he got back.”
“Okay.” Yeager got up, set a couple of bucks on the table to cover food and drink, and said his goodbyes. Everybody-including Jose from behind the counter-waved when he and Barbara took off.
They lived over in Gardena, one of the suburbs on the west side of L.A. that had burgeoned since the end of the fighting. When they got out of the car, Barbara remarked, as she often did, “Cooler here.”
“It’s the sea breeze,” Sam answered, as he often did. Then he plucked at his flannel uniform top. “It may be cooler, but it’s not that cool. I’m going to hop in the shower, is what I’m going to do.”
“That would be a very good idea, I think,” Barbara said. Yeager stuck out his tongue at her. They both laughed, comfortable with each other. Why not? Sam thought. They’d been together since late 1942, only a few months after the conquest fleet arrived. Had the Lizards not come, they never would have met. Sam didn’t like thinking about that; Barbara was the best thing that had ever happened to him.
To keep from dwelling on might-have-beens, he hurried into the house. Photographs in the hallway that led to the bathroom marked the highlights of his career: him in dress uniform just after being promoted from sergeant to lieutenant; him weightless, wearing olive-drab undershirt and trousers, aboard an orbiting Lizard spaceship-overheated by human standards-as he helped dicker a truce after a flare-up; him in a spacesuit on the pitted surface of the moon; him in captain’s uniform, standing between Robert Heinlein and Theodore Sturgeon.