Part 31 (2/2)

”Oh, yeah.” The Navy man glanced over at Jonathan. ”First time l ever took up a guy dressed like a Lizard, I'll tell you that.”

Jonathan knew his dad would defend him if he didn't speak up for himself. But he figured he was old enough to do that, even if he hadn't hit twenty-one yet: ”One of the reasons I'm going up is that I dress this way. It's supposed to set their minds at ease, I guess you'd say.” He still kept quiet about Ka.s.squit; the lieutenant commander didn't need to know about her.

”Okay, kid,” Jacobson said. ”You're on the manifest, so you're going. Strap in good there. I know your old man's done this before, but you haven't, have you?”

”No, sir.” Jonathan tried not to be nervous as he settled himself on the foam-padded seat. He didn't know how much good the safety harness would do, but he fastened it.

”Been a while for me,” his father said. ”But I know I'd rather go up there in just body paint and shorts than in my uniform here. The Race likes it hot.”

”That's what I've heard,” Jacobson said. ”Well, get as comfy as you can, because we've got an hour to kill now, waiting for launch time.”

That hour seemed to Jonathan to stretch endlessly. At last, though, the countdown, hallowed by endless books and films, reached zero. The rocket motor roared to life beneath him; all at once, it felt as if three or four guys had piled onto his chest. He'd had that happen in football games. But here, the guys didn't get up. They couldn't-they were him, his own body weight multiplied by acceleration. Though it was only a matter of minutes, the time felt as long as the hour's wait before blastoff.

Beside him, his father forced out a sentence a word at a time: ”Watch that first step-it's a lulu.”

”You all right, Dad?” Jonathan asked: wheezed, actually. He wasn't having too much trouble with the acceleration, but his father-heck, his father was practically an old man.

”I'll manage,” Sam Yeager answered. ”I reckon I was born to hang.”

Before Jonathan could answer that, he stopped weighing several hundred pounds. In fact, as the rockets cut off he stopped weighing anything at all. He discovered another reason for his safety harness: to keep him from floating all over the Redtail Redtail's cramped little cabin. He also discovered his stomach was trying to climb up his gullet hand over hand. Gulping, he did his best to get it back where it belonged.

Lieutenant Commander Jacobson recognized that gulp. ”Airsick bag to your right,” he said. ”Grab it if you need it. Grab it before you need it, if you please.”

”I'll try,” Jonathan said weakly. He found the bag, but discovered he didn't have to clap it over his mouth, at least not right away. The pilot, meanwhile, was talking in the language of the Race and getting answers from the Lizards. Every so often, he'd use the Redtail Redtail's motors to change course a little. Jonathan was too sunk in misery to pay much attention. His father was also quiet and thoughtful.

”We dock at the central hub of the Lizard s.h.i.+p,” Jacobson said after a while. ”They spin most of their vessels for artificial gravity, but the axis stays weightless, of course.”

Again, Jonathan didn't much care. The s.h.i.+p the Redtail Redtail approached looked big enough to have respectable gravity just from its own ma.s.s. Clanks and bangs announced contact. ”Very neat,” his father said. ”Very smooth.” It hadn't felt smooth to him, but he had no standards of comparison. approached looked big enough to have respectable gravity just from its own ma.s.s. Clanks and bangs announced contact. ”Very neat,” his father said. ”Very smooth.” It hadn't felt smooth to him, but he had no standards of comparison.

”I'll be waiting for you when the Lizards bring you back,” Jacobson said. ”Have fun.” By his snort, he found that unlikely.

When the hatch opened, it revealed a couple of Lizards floating in a corridor. ”The two Tosevites for the interview will come with us,” one of them said.

Jonathan undid his harness and pushed himself toward the Lizards. He flew as easily as if in a dream, but in a dream he wouldn't have been fighting nausea. His father followed him. Sure enough, it was hot and dry in the s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p, as hot and dry as it got in L.A. with the devil winds blowing.

Little by little, as Jonathan and his father followed the Lizards outward from the hub, weight, or a semblance of it, returned. By the time they got to the second deck out, they were walking, not floating. Jonathan approved. His stomach approved even more. The curved horizon of each deck seemed as surreal as something out of an Escher painting, but bodily well-being made him willing to forgive a lot.

At last, when his weight felt about the way it should have, the Lizard guides stopped using stairs and led his father and him along a corridor to a chamber with an open doorway. ”The female Ka.s.squit awaits within,” he said.

”We thank you,” Jonathan's father replied in the language of the Race. He dropped back into English for Jonathan: ”Let's do it.”

”Okay, Dad,” Jonathan said, also in English. ”You go in first-that's how they do things.” He was pleased he remembered some of what he'd learned.

”Right.” His father squared his shoulders and entered the chamber. As Jonathan followed, his father went back to the language of the Race: ”I greet you, superior female. I am Sam Yeager; here with me is my hatchling, Jonathan Yeager.”

”I greet you, superior female,” Jonathan echoed. He had to work to hold his voice steady, but thought he managed. He'd known Ka.s.squit would be naked, but knowing and experiencing were two different things, especially since she wasn't just naked but shaved, not only her head but on all of her body.

”I greet you,” she said. She took her nudity altogether for granted. Her face showed nothing of what she thought. ”How strange to make the acquaintance of my own biological kind at last.” She pointed to the body paint on Jonathan's chest. ”I see you are now wearing the marking of a psychological researcher's a.s.sistant.”

”Yes,” Jonathan answered. ”It is a true marking, for I a.s.sist my father here.” He tried to eye her paint without eyeing her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. ”It is not much different from yours.”

”It is an accurate marking,” Ka.s.squit said. ”But it is not a true marking, for the Race did not give it to you.” She was as fussily precise as any real Lizard Jonathan had ever met.

His father asked, ”How do you feel about meeting real Big Uglies at last?”

”Sore,” Ka.s.squit replied at once. Jonathan was wondering whether he'd understood her correctly when she went on, ”I had to be immunized against many Tosevite diseases before taking the risk of physical contact.”

”Ah,” Sam Yeager said. ”Yes, you wrote to me about that. I respect your courage. I hope we bring you no diseases.”

”So do I,” Ka.s.squit said. ”I have never known illness, and have no desire to make its acquaintance.”

Jonathan gaped. He couldn't help himself. She'd never been sick a day in her life? That hardly seemed possible. He wondered what his father was thinking-his father who'd almost died in the influenza epidemic of 1918, and who complained these days that colds hung on a lot longer than they had when he was younger. Not wanting to contemplate his father's mortality, he wondered if Mickey and Donald would grow up disease-free, too, because they wouldn't meet any adult Lizards. He also wondered how many diseases Lizards had. They had doctors-he knew that much.

Ka.s.squit said, ”And what do you Big Uglies think of me?”

”You are an attractive young female,” Jonathan's father answered. Jonathan would have agreed with that. His generation was a lot more relaxed about showing skin than his old man's had been, but not so altogether oblivious about its even being an issue as Ka.s.squit was. He had to work to keep his eyes on her face, not her b.r.e.a.s.t.s or the shaved place between her legs. His father went on, ”The biggest differences between you and a wild Big Ugly are that you shave all your hair and that your face does not move much.”

”Your hatchling also shaves his hair,” Ka.s.squit said.

”Uh-not as much of it as you do,” Jonathan said, and felt his face heat in a way that had nothing to do with the temperature of the chamber. ”I try to look like a member of the Race.”

”So do I-with rather more reason than you.” Ka.s.squit could be tart when she chose. She went on, ”As for my face, my caregiver, Ttomalss, speculates that I needed to see moving faces when newly hatched to learn to move mine as wild Tosevites do. Since his face cannot move, I never acquired the art myself. I do not miss it.” She shrugged. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s were so small and firm, they hardly jiggled. Jonathan couldn't help noticing that.

His father asked, ”From what you know of life down on Tosev 3, what do you miss about it?”

”Nothing!” Ka.s.squit used an emphatic cough. ”Except genetically, I am not of your kind.”

”But that is a large exception,” Jonathan's father said. ”It means you can never be fully of the Race, either. What is it like, staying forever betwixt and between?”

What was going on behind Ka.s.squit's impa.s.sive mask? Jonathan couldn't tell. At last, she said, ”I was made to be a bridge between my kind and Big Uglies.” She pointed at Jonathan. ”He-your hatchling-is a bridge between your kind and the Race. So are you, Sam Yeager-or should I say, Regeya? We reach from opposite sides toward each other.”

”To the Race, you are a Big Ugly, too,” Jonathan's father pointed out.

Ka.s.squit shrugged again. ”I am of the Empire. You are not. Males and females of the Race, Rabotevs, Hallessi-they are my kind. You are not.”

”Look in a mirror,” Jonathan suggested. ”Then try to say that. See if it is truth.”

For the first time, Ka.s.squit raised her voice. ”This interview is over,” she said sharply, with another emphatic cough. She strode out of the chamber through a side door Jonathan hadn't noticed till she used it. He glanced over at his father, wondering if he'd horribly botched things. Only when his dad winked back at him did he relax-a little.

If Ottawa wasn't the end of the line, you could see it from there. So thought David Goldfarb, at any rate, as he and his family stayed and stayed and stayed at the detention center for immigrants about whom the Canadians weren't certain. People who'd come in after the Goldfarbs had already gone on their way, but the authorities remained dissatisfied with him.

He was dissatisfied with them, too, and with their country. Ottawa lay six degrees of lat.i.tude south of London, ten degrees south of Belfast. But, as 1964 drifted toward 1965, he thought he'd chosen to emigrate to Siberia. He'd never known such cold as he found every time he stuck his nose outdoors. Schoolchildren learned about what the Gulf Stream did for Britain's climate, but he'd never had to think about it outside of school till now.

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