He spoke altogether matter-of-factly, though speaking of horror. Felless stared at him; his psychology was almost as alien to her as that of the Tosevites she’d been sent to study. Then another bullet zipped by, and another. Realization smote: she could die up here. She had all she could do to follow Pshing to the head of the stairs at a steady walk. She wanted to skitter as if pursued by a bagana or some other fearsome beast of prey.
Helicopters flew low, pouring gunfire into the Big Uglies. Above the racket, Pshing said, “I hope the Tosevites here have not managed to smuggle any rockets into Cairo, as they have in some other places. Helicopter crews are vulnerable to that kind of fire.”
Again, he spoke as he might have of a factory accident. Maybe that helped him deal with the dangers that accompanied his trade, dangers different from any Felless had ever known. Thoughtfully, she said, “I begin to understand why some of the males on this world turn to the local herb called ginger to escape its rigors.”
“Ginger will be a problem for the colonists, too,” Pshing said. “It creates too much pleasure for it to be anything else: so much, in fact, that it is severely destructive of order and discipline. We believe the worst mutinies on this planet were instigated by ginger-tasters.”
“Mutinies.” Felless shivered, though the stairwell, like the rest of the building, was comfortably warm. She had heard males from the conquest fleet complain endlessly about Tosev 3’s climate; much of the video she’d seen tended to bear them out. But Cairo seemed comfortable enough. She went on, “I cannot imagine males of the Race turning on duly constituted authority. I believe it happened- I have seen the records proving it happened-but I cannot imagine it.”
“You were not here to see for yourself the fighting that took place after the conquest fleet landed.” Pshing shivered, too, at bad memories Felless did not, could not, share. “We came closer than you can imagine to losing the war altogether. We almost had”-he swiveled his eye turrets, to make sure no one was close enough to overhear him-“we almost had our fleetlord cast down from his office as a result of shiplords’ dissatisfaction with the conduct of the war.”
“What?” Felless hadn’t seen anything about that-or had she? Pieces that hadn’t fit together now suddenly did. “That would explain why one of the shiplords defected to the Tosevites.” She’d seen that mentioned, but the data she’d seen made the shiplord out to be a treacherous idiot. Had he been a treacherous idiot, how had he managed to become a shiplord?
“Indeed it would.” Pshing sighed. “This world has had a corrosive effect on us, even after the fighting stopped. We have been too few, and have slowly begun to dissolve in the sea of Big Uglies all around us. Now that you folk have come, I hope we shall be able to reverse that trend, so that the Tosevites shall begin to be assimilated into the larger Empire, as should have begun from the outset. I hope we shall be able to do that.”
He did not sound sure the Race would be able to do that. “Of course they will be assimilated,” Felless declared. “That is why we have come. That is why I am here: to learn how best to integrate the Tosevites into the structure of the Empire. We did it with the Rabotevs and Hallessi. We shall do it here.”
“One difference, superior female,” Pshing said, which meant he was going to contradict her.
“And that is?” She gave him the chance.
“You must always remember that the Tosevites, unlike the Rabotevs or Hallessi, are also trying to learn how to integrate us into their structures,” Pshing said. “They are skilled at the art, having practiced it so much among themselves. We have more strength-we will have more still, now that the colonization fleet is here. They, however, may well have more skill.”
Felless shivered again. Maybe the building wasn’t so warm after all.
Atvar studied the latest set of reports scrolling across his computer screen. “This is not satisfactory,” he said, and paused a moment to wonder how many times he had said that since coming to Tosev 3. Too many was the answer that immediately sprang to mind.
“Exalted Fleetlord?” Pshing inquired.
“Unsatisfactory,” Atvar repeated. Saying it gave him a certain amount of pleasure. Doing something about it gave him more. He got that larger pleasure less often than he would have liked. “The Tosevites have been doing altogether too much maneuvering with their accursed satellites lately.”
“To which not-empire shall we protest, Exalted Fleetlord?” his adjutant asked.
“They are all doing it,” Atvar said peevishly. “I think they are doing it deliberately, to confuse us. Whether they are trying to confuse us or not, they have certainly succeeded. By now, we are not altogether certain whose satellites are in which orbits. This distresses me.”
“It could be worse,” Pshing said. “The more fuel they use up in these maneuvers, the sooner they will have none left.”
“Truth.” Atvar hissed sadly. “The other truth, worse luck, is that the Big Uglies will either refuel them or send new ones up to take their place. Maybe we would have been wiser to forbid them from going into space at all.” He hissed again. “They made it all too plain that they were ready to resume fighting if we enforced that prohibition. They meant it. Indeed, they meant it.”
“Yes, Exalted Fleetlord.” Pshing’s job was not to disagree with Atvar.
Before the fleetlord could say anything else, something hit the building a thunderous blow. The floor shook under Atvar’s feet; little bits of plaster and plaster dust floated down from the ceiling. Atvar snatched up a telephone and clawed in the code he needed.
“Security,” the male on the other end said.
“Not enough of it, evidently,” Atvar said, acid in his voice. “What was it that just impacted on us?”
The male in Security paused a moment, no doubt to check his caller’s code. When he realized to whom he was speaking, he got deferential in a hurry. “Exalted Fleetlord, that was a small, I would say locally made, rocket detonating against our armored facade here. No casualties, minimal damage. A lot of smoke, a lot of noise. Maybe the Big Uglies will think they really did something. They did not, and I will take an oath by the Emperor’s name on it.”
“Very well. Thank you.” Atvar broke the connection. He turned an eye turret toward Pshing. “The fanatics, as you could have guessed for yourself. I wonder which of the Deutsche or the Russkis or the British stirred them up to this latest round of madness.”
“Exalted Fleetlord, did anyone necessarily stir them up?” Pshing asked. “They are Tosevites, and so quite able to stir themselves up.”
“I wish I could say you were wrong,” Atvar said mournfully. “But you are correct, as we have seen again and again to our sorrow. And the male in Security believes it to have been a locally made rocket. Perhaps that is just as well. One of the independent not-empires might well have furnished the fanatics with something more lethal.”
He wished Tosev 3 had been as the Race fondly believed it would be. Had that been so, he would now have been turning over his duties to the fleetlord of the colonization fleet. He would have gone down in the records of four worlds as Atvar the Conqueror. For tens of thousands of years to come, hatchlings of four races would have learned of him in their lessons. Conquerors were rarer by far than Emperors, and more likely to stay in a student’s memory.
He hissed softly. He would go down in history, all right. He would go down as the first male the Emperor had designated a Conqueror to succeed incompletely. He hoped the landing of the colonization fleet would succeed in bringing Tosev 3 firmly within the Empire. On good days, he had some confidence that that would happen. On bad days, he wondered if the Big Uglies wouldn’t end up overwhelming the Race instead.