Turtledove, Harry - Colonization 04 - Homeward Bound by Turtledove Harry

Author:Turtledove, Harry
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf

He wondered if he ought to make some calls anyhow, on the off chance he was wrong. His hand shaped the negative gesture. That struck him as pointless—and also as passing the buck, as Sam Yeager had put it.

Instead of telephoning members of his own species, he called the Big Ugly back. “Why, hello, Fleetlord. I greet you,” Sam Yeager said, as politely as if they hadn’t been sparring not long before.

“And I greet you,” Atvar replied, trying—with indifferent success, he feared—to match that politeness.

“What can I do for you now?” the American Tosevite asked, still smoothly. “Does this have to do with what we were talking about a little while ago, or is it about something else?”

“The same topic.” Atvar respected the Big Ugly for coming to the point, and respected him even more for doing so in an inoffensive way. “You have permission to bring ten more of these rats here. They are to remain caged at all times, as their predecessors were to have done.”

“I thank you, Fleetlord, and I do understand the restrictions,” Sam Yeager said. “We agreed to them from the beginning. We have not violated them, either. It was your own folk who freed the rats still—I suppose—in this hotel.”

Atvar didn’t like that I suppose. He also wasn’t happy that Sam Yeager was completely correct. With luck, the housekeepers who’d got more curious than they should have would have trouble finding work 73

HARRY TURTLEDOVE ———————————————————————————

anywhere for the rest of their lives. Atvar would have loved to fine or imprison them, but they hadn’t done anything criminal—so the local prosecuting attorney assured him. Whether they’d done anything damaging was a different question, worse luck.

“Will any special Tosevite bait attract these creatures?” the fleetlord asked. “If so, we will use it in our traps.”

“Our traditional bait is cheese, ” Sam Yeager answered.

Then he had to explain to Atvar what cheese was.

The explanation left the fleetlord as much revolted as enlightened. The idea of milk was disgusting enough to the Race. The idea of deliberately letting it rot before eating it was worse. Trying to suppress nausea, Atvar inquired, “Do you have any of this stuff closer than the Tosevite solar system?”

“We have none here on the surface of Home—I know that,” the American ambassador said. “There may be some aboard the Admiral Peary. If you like, I will ask the ship to send some down with the rats if there is.”

“I thank you,” Atvar said. “I thank you very much, in fact. That would be generous of you, and greatly appreciated.”

Sam Yeager sounded wryly amused: “Unlike a certain species I could name, we do not deliberately seek to disrupt the ecology of another world.”

“You have made your political point, Ambassador.” Atvar, on the other hand, sounded sour. “We have sought to make Tosev 3 more Homelike and friendly to ourselves. You have done the same on certain parts of the planet.”

“Never so drastically as your folk are doing,” the Tosevite ambassador said. “And we know better now.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.