Down to Earth (28 page)

“And now, our feature presentation,” the announcer boomed. Karen snuggled closer to Jonathan. He let his hand close on the smooth skin of her shoulder rather than just resting there. Quite involuntarily, he took a deep breath. He had to remind himself they weren’t in a hurry: for one thing, it was a three-hour movie.

Spaceships filled the enormous screen. “That’s terrific trick photography,” Karen said.

“No, it’s not—it’s real Lizard newsreel footage. I’ve seen it before,” Jonathan answered. “I wonder how much MGM had to pay the Race to use it.”

They watched the movie for a while, though the view from the backseat wasn’t so good as it would have been from up front. Jonathan soon discovered the film was even hokier than he’d feared; just from things his folks had said, he soon found half a dozen absurdities. But some of the battle sequences looked very gritty and realistic. They were newsreel footage, too, human-filmed black-and-white footage turned into color with the help of computers. Watching how the director cut back and forth from them to the actors and the story he was shooting himself kept Jonathan half interested for a while. James Dean aside, Karen hadn’t much cared to begin with. Before long, they found other things to do.

Jonathan untied the bow that held her little halter top on. It was so small, nobody coming by in the dark would notice whether she was wearing it, anyhow. And . . . “You did the body paint under there, too!” he exclaimed.

Karen smiled at him. “I thought you might find that out,” she answered as he caressed her. She turned toward him. He kissed her, then lowered his face to her breasts. She sighed and pressed him to her. They sank down onto the seat together.

Neither of them had the nerve to go all the way in the drive-in, but Jonathan’s hand glided along her thighs and then dived under the waistband of her shorts and inside her panties. He kissed her breasts and her mouth as he rubbed her. His lips were pressed against hers when she let out a little mewling cry a couple of minutes later. He’d made sure he would be kissing her just then; he knew she got noisy at such times.

“Sit up,” she said. She unzipped his fly, reached in, and pulled him out. His breath came ragged. Her touch seemed sweeter than ever as she stroked him. And then, instead of finishing him with her hands the way she usually did, she bent over him and took him in her mouth. She’d never done that before. He was astonished at how good it felt. She didn’t have to do it very long, either—he exploded almost instantly. Karen pulled back, wheezing and gulping and choking a little, too. She grabbed a napkin from the cardboard carton and wiped at her chin. “Sorry,” she told him. “You caught me by surprise.”

“You caught me by surprise, too.” Jonathan was amazed the whole drive-in couldn’t hear his thudding heart. “What made you decide to do that?” Whatever it was, he hoped it would make her decide to do it again.

“I don’t know.” Her eyes sparkled with mischief. “But my mother did tell us to have a good time, remember.” Their laughter came closer to disturbing the people a few spaces over than anything else they’d done.

Like any Tosevite, Kassquit used metabolic water to cool herself. She used a lot of it aboard her starship, which was of course kept at the temperature the Race found comfortable. Never having known any other, she took that temperature for granted. Intellectually, she knew it was warmer than the mean down on Tosev 3, but that meant little to her. It was the temperature she was used to.

Sweating, of course, made her unique on the starship. The very idea disgusted most males and females of the Race. Because it disgusted them, it disgusted Kassquit, too. She wished she could pant as they did. But that wasn’t how her kind had evolved, so she was stuck with being clammy a lot of the time.

She’d also noticed that she put forth more metabolic water when stressed. She felt stressed now, as stressed as she ever had in her life. She was expecting another telephone call from the wild Big Ugly named Sam Yeager. This time, at Ttomalss’ urging, she was going to leave the video on.

“If you are going to serve as a link between the Race and the Tosevites, you cannot fear to look at them, or to have them look at you,” her mentor had said.

“Truth,” she’d answered, for a truth it obviously was. And Sam Yeager was what passed for an expert on the Race among the Tosevites. She’d seen as much from his comments on the electronic network—and even from his gaining access to the network in the first place.

But sweat poured off her now. Her heart pounded in her chest. She wished she’d never agreed to this. She wished she could hide. She wished she could flee. She wished the video unit in the computer terminal would malfunction. She wished something would happen to the Tosevite so his call couldn’t come through.

None of those wishes, none of the prayers she breathed to spirits of Emperors past, came true. At precisely the appointed time, her screen lit. She muttered a worried curse under her breath—had the spirits of Emperors past forsaken her because she was so irrevocably a Big Ugly herself?

Her internal torment did not show on her face. Nothing much showed on her face. She knew that set her apart from other Tosevites as much as sweating set her apart from the Race, but she didn’t want Tosevites perceiving her thoughts and feelings anyhow.

“I greet you, Sam Yeager,” she said, and then stopped in surprise, for not one but two Tosevite faces peered out of the screen at her.

“I greet you, superior female,” one of the Big Uglies said. His skin had wrinkles in it that almost made him look scaled. He had yellowish gray hair on his head and wore cloth wrappings. “I am Sam Yeager. I also present to you my hatchling here. His name is Jonathan Yeager.”

“I greet you, superior female,” the other Big Ugly said. He spoke a little less fluently than his father, but Kassquit had no trouble understanding him. She eyed him in some surprise. Like her, he shaved his head. And, like her, he wore body paint rather than wrappings—at least, on as much of him as she could see.

“I greet you, Jonathan Yeager,” she replied, doing her best to say the name as Sam Yeager had. “Are you truly a missile radar technician?”

“No, superior female,” he answered, still speaking the language of the Race slowly and carefully. The corners of his mouth turned upward. That, Kassquit had learned, was an expression of amiability. He went on, “I wear the body paint for decoration and amusement, no more.”

“I see,” Kassquit said, though not at all sure she did. She continued, “And I greet you, Sam Yeager. You are surely senior to your hatchling, so I am remiss in making my greetings out of order. I apologize.”

“Do not fret about it. I am not offended,” Sam Yeager replied. “I am not such an easy fellow to offend. I brought my hatchling along with me so you could see that we also have bridges between the Race and the Tosevites.”

“You are such a bridge yourself, I am given to understand,” Kassquit said.

“Yes, that is also a truth,” Sam Yeager agreed. “We have realized the Race is going to be on Tosev 3 for a long time to come. That means we are going to have to deal with it one way or another. And besides . . .” He glanced over to Jonathan Yeager. Like Kassquit, he had to turn his whole head to do it; he couldn’t just flick one eye turret toward the other Tosevite in the screen. Far more than his words, that motion reminded her she was his biological kin. “Besides, he is ignorant enough to think the Race is a whole lot of fun.”

Was that an insult? Kassquit looked toward Sam Yeager’s hatchling. The corners of Jonathan Yeager’s mouth turned up again. “Truth,” he said, and added an emphatic cough.

“What sort of truth?” Kassquit asked, bewildered. “That you are ignorant?”

“He will never admit that,” Sam Yeager said with a barking Tosevite laugh.

Another insult? Evidently not, for Jonathan Yeager laughed, too, laughed and said, “No—truth that things having to do with the Race are fun.”

“Fun.” Kassquit chewed on the word. She knew what it meant, of course, but she’d never thought of applying it to the Race or the way the Race lived. More bewildered than ever, she asked, “Why?”

“Good question,” Sam Yeager said cheerfully. “I never have been able to figure it out myself.” Then he waved one of his hands—one of his fleshy, soft-skinned hands, so like hers—back and forth, palm out. “I do not intend you to take that seriously.”

“You never intend anyone to take anything you say seriously,” Jonathan Yeager said, and both Big Uglies laughed. Then the younger one turned his face back toward Kassquit. He too had to move his whole head. Kassquit watched in fascination. The wild Tosevites took such motions utterly for granted, while she’d never failed to feel self-conscious about them. But then, they all used those motions, while she was the only individual she knew who did. Jonathan Yeager went on, “Of course the Race is fun. It is new and exciting and fascinating. Is it any wonder that I think as l do?”

Alien,
Kassquit thought. She might share biology with these Big Uglies—every move they made reminded her she
did
share biology with them—but she would never have put
new
and
exciting
and
fascinating
all in the same sentence. “I do not understand,” she confessed.

“Do not worry about it,” Sam Yeager said. “It is a wonder that my hatchling thinks at all, let alone that he thinks in any particular way.”

“Thank you,” Jonathan Yeager said, with an emphatic cough obviously intended to mean he was doing anything but thanking the older Tosevite. No male of the Race would have used the cough that way, but Kassquit understood it.

So did Sam Yeager, who started laughing again. He said, “A lot of Tosevite males and females of about my hatchling’s age feel the same way about the Race as he does. The Race
is
new on Tosev 3, which to many Big Uglies automatically makes it exciting and fascinating. And the Race is powerful. That makes it exciting and fascinating, too.”

Kassquit understood the connection between power and fascination. That connection had helped make the Rabotevs and Hallessi into contented citizens of the Empire. It would, she hoped, help do the same for the Big Uglies. The connection between novelty and fascination still eluded her. So did another connection: “Why would Tosevites”—she didn’t want to call Big Uglies
Big Uglies,
even if Sam Yeager casually used the term—“be so interested in the Race, when you are constantly concerned with reproduction, which matters to the Race only during the mating season?”

“I am sorry, superior female, but I did not follow all of that,” Jonathan Yeager said.

“I did. I will translate,” Sam Yeager said. Turning to his hatchling, he spoke in their own language—English, Kassquit had learned it was called. Jonathan Yeager coughed and flushed; his change in color was easily visible on the monitor. Sam Yeager returned to the language of the Race: “I think you embarrassed him, partly because, at his age, he is constantly concerned with reproduction”—the younger Yeager let out another indignant, wordless squawk, which the older one ignored—“and partly because it is not our usual custom to talk so frankly about reproductive matters with strangers.”

“Why not?” Kassquit was confused again. “If they concern you all the time, why do you not talk about them all the time? And why did you yourself talk about them with me in our last conversation?”

“Those are good questions,” Sam Yeager admitted. “As for the second, I guess I was taken by surprise when I found out you were a Tosevite like me. For the first, I do not have an answer as good as I might like. One reason is that we mate in private, I suppose. Another is that we usually form mating pairs, and try to make those pairings permanent. Mating outside a pair is liable to destroy it.”

“Why?” Kassquit asked again.

“Because it shows a lack of trust inside the pair,” Sam Yeager answered. “Since the Race raised you, you probably would not understand.”

“Maybe I do,” Kassquit said slowly. “You are speaking of a competition for attention, are you not?” She remembered how jealous she’d been of Felless when the female of the Race began taking away Ttomalss’ attention, which she’d largely had to herself till the colonization fleet arrived.

“Yes, that is exactly what I am speaking of,” Sam Yeager replied. “Perceptive of you to gasp it when you have not known it yourself.”

“You think not, do you?” Kassquit said. “This proves only that you do not know everything there is to know.” She did not hide her bitterness. Part of her didn’t want to show it to a couple of wild Big Uglies. The rest didn’t care about the embarrassment in that. After all, when would she see them or deal with them again? Who else that she knew would ever see them or deal with them? And showing someone, anyone, that bitterness was such a relief.

Sam Yeager bared his teeth in the Tosevite expression of amiability. “I never said I did know everything, superior female. I have spent a lot of years having it proved to me that I do not. But I know I am ignorant, which puts me ahead of some of the males and females who think they are smart.”

“You speak in paradoxes, I see,” Kassquit answered, which for some reason made the Big Ugly laugh again. Annoyed, Kassquit said, “I must go, for I have an appointment. Farewell.” Abruptly, she broke the connection.

After a moment, she sighed in relief. It was over. But then she stood up, and stood taller and straighter than usual. No small pride filled her. She had given as good as she’d got. She was sure of that. She had seen the wild Big Uglies face-to-face, and she had prevailed.

As Sam Yeager and his son left the Race’s consulate in Los Angeles and headed for his car, he turned to Jonathan and asked, “Well, what did you think of that?”

“It was pretty strange, Dad,” Jonathan answered, and Sam could hardly disagree. His son went on, “It was interesting, too, I guess. I got to practice the language some more. That’s always good.”

“You spoke well. And you look a lot more like a Lizard than I do, too,” Yeager said. “That’s one of the big reasons I brought you along: to give her somebody who might look halfway familiar to deal with. Maybe it helped some. I hope so.” He shook his head. “That poor kid. Listening to her, seeing her, makes me feel terrible about what we’re doing to Mickey and Donald.”