The fleetlord sighed. “I can see that you might think so. But are you not a citizen of the Empire? You have certainly said so often enough.”
“Yes, I am a citizen of the Empire. I am proud to be a citizen of the Empire.” Kassquit used another emphatic cough. “But does the Empire not have a certain obligation to treat its citizens justly? If it does not, why is being a citizen any sort of privilege?”
“You are an individual.” By Atvar’s tone, he did not mean it as a compliment. “You also-forgive me-sound very much like a Tosevite. Your species is more individualistic than ours.”
“Maybe the Empire needs more Tosevite citizens,” Kassquit said. “Perhaps things here have been too tranquil for too long.”
Atvar laughed at her. “Things have not been tranquil since we found out what wild Big Uglies were capable of. They will not be tranquil again for a long time to come. But you may be right. I think his Majesty believes you are. That is part of the reason you are receiving this audience.”
“Whatever the reason, it is a great honor,” Kassquit said. “Shall we rehearse the ceremony again, Exalted Fleetlord? I want everything to be perfect.” She used yet another emphatic cough.
Ttomalss liked talking with Major Frank Coffey. His reason for liking that particular American had nothing to do with the Big Ugly’s personality, though Coffey was pleasant enough. It wasn’t even rational, and Ttomalss knew it wasn’t. Knowing as much didn’t make it go away.
He liked Coffey’s color.
He knew exactly why, too. The officer’s dark brown hide reminded him of the green-brown of his own scaly skin. It made the wild Big Ugly seem less alien, more familiar, than the pinkish beige of the other American Tosevites. He wasn’t, of course. Ttomalss understood that full well. Understanding didn’t make the feeling go away.
Coffey got up from the chair made for a Big Ugly’s hindquarters in one of the hotel’s conference rooms. He stretched and sighed. “It was kind of you to make this furniture for us,” he said, “but you would never get rich selling chairs back on Tosev 3.”
“I am sure that is a truth,” Ttomalss said. “Some of the things Tosevites make for the Race are also imperfect. No species can ever be completely familiar with another. The Rabotevs and Hallessi still surprise us every now and again.”
“Interesting. And I believe you. Even different cultures on Tosev 3 run up against this same difficulty,” Coffey said. “I am glad you said it, too. It brings me to one of the fundamental troubles in the relationship between my not-empire and the Empire, one that needs to be solved.”
“Speak. Give forth,” Ttomalss urged. “Is that not why you have come: to solve the difficulties between the United States and the Empire?” Had he been a Big Ugly himself, the corners of his mouth would have curled up in the Tosevites’ facial gesture of benevolent amiability. He liked Frank Coffey.
He also made the mistake of assuming that, because he liked Coffey, the wild Big Ugly would not say anything he did not like. Coffey proceeded to disabuse him of that assumption. “The difficulty is that the Race does not recognize Tosevite not-empires as equals,” he declared, and added an emphatic cough. “This must change if relations between us are to find their proper footing.” He used another one.
“But that is not so,” Ttomalss protested. “We have equal relationships with the United States, with the SSSR, with the Nipponese Empire, with Britain-even with the Reich, though we defeated it. How can you complain of this?”
“Very easily,” Frank Coffey answered. “You say that we are your equals, but down deep in your livers you do not believe it. Can you tell me I am mistaken? You thought from the beginning that we were nothing but sword-swinging savages. Down deep, you still believe it, and you still act as if you believe it. Will you make me believe I am wrong?”
Ttomalss thought that over. He did not have to think for very long. The wild Big Ugly had a point. The Race was proud of its ancient, long-stable civilization. What could wild Big Uglies be but uncouth barbarians who were good at fighting and treachery but very little else?
Slowly, the psychologist said, “This is perceptive of you. How did you come to realize it?”
Frank Coffey laughed a loud Tosevite laugh. “It is plain enough to any Tosevite with eyes to see. And it is especially obvious to a Tosevite of my color.” He brushed a hand along the skin of his forearm, a gesture he made with the air of one who had used it before.
“What do you mean?” Ttomalss asked.
“You will know that pale Tosevites have discriminated against those of my color,” Coffey said, and waited. Ttomalss made the affirmative gesture. The American went on, “This discrimination is now illegal in my not-empire. We are all supposed to be equal, legally and socially. Supposed to be, I say. There are still a fair number of pale Big Uglies who would discriminate against dark ones if only they could get away with it. These days, showing that too openly is not acceptable in the United States. But one of us usually has no trouble telling when pale Tosevites have such feelings, even when they try to hide them. And so you should not be surprised when I recognize the symptoms of the disease in the Race as well.”
“I see,” Ttomalss said slowly. “How did you persuade the pale Big Uglies to stop discriminating in law against you darker ones?”
“ ‘Discriminating in law,’ ” Frank Coffey echoed. “That is a nice phrase, a very nice phrase. We had two advantages. First, the Reich discriminated against groups it did not like, discriminated very blatantly-and we were at war with the Reich, so whatever it did looked bad to us, and became something we were embarrassed to imitate. And then the Race tried to conquer all Tosevites. To resist, the United States had to draw support from all its own inhabitants. Discriminating in law became something we could not afford to do, and so we stopped.”
“Back in ancientest history, I believe the Race was also divided into subspecies,” Ttomalss said. “But long years of mixing have made us highly uniform. I suspect the same may happen with you.”
Coffey shrugged. “So it may. But it will not happen soon, even by the way the Race reckons time. During your mating seasons, your males and females are not too fussy about mating partners. That helps you mix. With us, it is different.”
“I suppose it would be,” Ttomalss said. “So social discrimination also lingers in mating, even though discrimination in law does not?”
“Yes, it does,” the American Big Ugly replied. “Now I praise you for your perceptiveness. Not many from another culture, from another biology, would have seen the implications of that.”
“I thank you,” Ttomalss said. “I have been studying your species and its paradoxes for some years now. I am glad to be reminded every now and then that I have gained at least a little insight. Perhaps my close involvement with Kassquit has also helped.”
Coffey nodded. He started to catch himself and add the Race’s gesture of agreement, but Ttomalss waved for him not to bother. The Tosevite said, “I can see how it might have. Kassquit is a remarkable individual. You did a good job of raising her. By our standards she is strange-no doubt of that-but I would have expected any Tosevite brought up by the Race to be not just strange but hopelessly insane. We are different in so many vital ways.”
“Again, I thank you. And I will not lie to you: raising Kassquit was the hardest thing I have ever done.” Ttomalss thought about what he’d just said. He had spent some time in the captivity of the Chinese female, Liu Han. She’d terrorized him, addicted him to ginger, and made him think every day in her clutches would be his last. Had raising Kassquit been harder than that ? As a matter of fact, it had. “Is imperfect gratitude always the lot of those who bring up Tosevites?”
Major Coffey laughed again, this time loud and long. “Maybe not always, Senior Researcher, but often, very often. You need not be surprised about that.”
“How do those who raise hatchlings tolerate this?” Ttomalss asked.
“What choice have they-have we-got?” the wild Big Ugly said. “It is one of the things that come with being a Tosevite.”
“Do you speak from experience? Have you hatchlings of your own?”
“Yes and no, respectively,” Coffey replied. “I have no hatchlings myself. I am a soldier, and I always believed a soldier would not make a good permanent mate. But you must recall, Senior Researcher-I was a hatchling myself. I locked horns with my own father plenty of times.”
“ ‘Locked horns,’ ” Ttomalss repeated. “This must be a translated idiom from your language. Does it mean, to quarrel?”
“That is exactly what it means.”
“Interesting. When you Tosevites use our tongue, you enliven it with your expressions,” Ttomalss said. “Some of them, I suspect, will stay in the language. Others will probably disappear.”
“Your language has done the same thing to English,” Major Coffey said. “We use interrogative and emphatic coughs. We say, ‘Truth,’ when we mean agreement. We use other phrases and ways of speaking of yours, too. Languages have a way of rubbing off on one another.”
“You would know more about that than I do,” Ttomalss told him. “Our language borrowed place names and names for animals and plants from the tongues of Rabotev 2 and Halless 1. Past that, those tongues did not have much of an effect on it. And, of course, the Rabotevs and Hallessi speak our language now, and speak it the same way as we do.”
“You expect the same thing to happen on Tosev 3, don’t you?” Coffey said.
Ttomalss made the affirmative gesture. “Yes, over the course of years. It may-it probably will-take longer there than with the Rabotevs and Hallessi. Your leading cultures are more advanced than theirs were.” He held up a hand. “You were going to say something about your equality. Let me finish, if you please.”
“It shall be done, Exalted Researcher,” the wild Big Ugly said with a fine show of sarcasm. “By all means, go on.”
“I thank you so very much,” Ttomalss said, matching dry for dry. “What I wanted to tell you was that the process has already begun in those parts of Tosev 3 the Race rules. That is more than half the planet. Your not-empire may still be independent, but you cannot claim it is dominant.”
“I do not claim that. I never have. The United States never has,” Coffey replied. “But the Race seems unwilling to admit that independence means formal equality. The Emperor may have more power than the President of the United States. As sovereigns, though, they both have equal rank.”