Now Kassquit was the one who needed some time to think about how she would reply. At last, she said, “Had you asked if I would accept the delay in revival, I probably would have said yes. I recognize the needs of the Empire, too, superior sir, regardless of what you may think. But it was presumptuous of you to believe you could decide this matter for me without consulting me. That is what gets under my scales.”

She had no scales, of course, but that was the Race’s idiom. She did have a point… of sorts. Remembering that he would have to try to work with her, Ttomalss yielded to the degree he could: “I apologize for my presumption. I should have asked you, as you say. I will not make such an error again. I will also try to keep any other member of the Race from doing so.”

Another pause from Kassquit. At the end of it, she said, “Thank you, superior sir. That is better than nothing. It is also better than anything I expected to hear you say.”

Ttomalss sighed. “You are not fully happy among us.”

“That is a truth, superior sir.” Kassquit used another emphatic cough.

“Do you believe you would be happier among the wild Big Uglies?” he asked. “That can in large measure be arranged if you so desire, now that they have come to Home.”

But Kassquit said, “No,” with yet another emphatic cough. “I am betwixt and between, one thing biologically, something very different culturally. This is your doing. There have been times when I was grateful to you. There have been times when I loathed you beyond all measure. There have been times when I felt both those things at once, which was very confusing.”

“I believe you,” Ttomalss said. “What do you feel now?”

“Are you still working on your research, superior sir?” Kassquit gibed.

“Of course I am. I always will be, till my dying day,” the male answered. He said nothing about Kassquit’s dying day, which was liable to occur first. “But I also want to know for my own sake-and for yours. Your welfare matters to me. It matters very much.” Now he let out an emphatic cough of his own.

Maybe his sentiment helped disarm Kassquit. Maybe that emphatic cough convinced her he was sincere. Slowly, she said, “These days, what I feel is that what I feel does not matter so much. You did what you did. Neither of us can change it these days. Far too much time has passed for that to be possible. I have to make the best of things as they are.”

“That strikes me as a sensible attitude,” Ttomalss said.

“It strikes me as a sensible attitude, too,” Kassquit said. “That is why I strive to hold on to it, but holding on to it is not always easy.”

Just before he asked why not, Ttomalss checked himself. Males and females of the Race were full of irrational behavior. The Big Uglies, from all he’d seen, were even fuller. Their hormonal drives operated all the time, not only during mating season. He sighed again. At bottom, the Race and the Big Uglies were both evolved animals. That they behaved like animals was no wonder. That they sometimes didn’t behave like animals might have been.

And now the Big Uglies were here. Ttomalss looked up into the night sky again. No, he couldn’t tell which moving star was in fact their spaceship. Which it was didn’t matter, anyhow. That they were here at all meant one thing and one thing only: trouble. And when had dealing with Tosevites ever meant anything else?