#atvar

[grievrenegeyn]

Selams, hayat bize küçük sürprizler yapıyor 🐴

[queenofmind-blog-blog]

atvar replied to your post “i might use that “england funds” for my new orleans trip… we will see...”

</3

don't be sad yet... i'm getting $1,000 back in tax returns (that will become the new "england funds")

[queenofmind-blog-blog]

atvar replied to your post “atvar replied to your post “gonna use my tax return money to go to...”

radical. hmu if you need any help or suggestions or anything, i know this country pretty well

ok! and if we don't meet in person while i'm there i s2g i will be angry.

[queenofmind-blog-blog]

atvar replied to your post “gonna use my tax return money to go to england. seeya shitlords.”

HOLY SHIT keep me updated man

i totes totes will!!!!! if i do decide to go, it will probably be sometime in early may :)

[detectivechmilewsky]

Making Earth More Like Home

Atvar studied a map of the subregion of the main continental mass called China. “We make progress,” he said in some satisfaction.

“Truth, Exalted Fleetlord,” replied Kirel, the shiplord of the 127th Emperor Hetto, the bannership of the conquest fleet. “We have taken Harbin back from the rebellious Tosevites, and this other city, this Peking, cannot hold out against us much longer.”

“I should hope not, at any rate,” Atvar said. “The Chinese have no landcruisers and no aircraft to speak of. Without them, they can still be most troublesome, but they cannot hope to defeat us in the long run.”

“Truth,” Kirel said again. He was solid and conservative and sensible; Atvar trusted him as far as he trusted any male on Tosev 3. Back during the fighting, Kirel had had his chances to overthrow the fleetlord, especially during Straha’s uprising after the Tosevites detonated their first explosive-metal bomb. He hadn’t used them. If that didn’t establish his reliability, nothing would.

Kirel cast down his eyes. “Emperor be praised, indeed,” he said. “You speak truth again, Exalted Fleetlord: they are too primitive to create explosive-metal bombs. Some other Tosevite not-empire would have to provide them with such weapons before they could use them.”

Atvar swung both eye turrets toward the second most senior male from the conquest fleet. “Now that is a genuinely appalling thought. The Chinese must understand that, if they did such a thing, we would bomb them without mercy in retaliation. Unlike the independent not-empires, they could not hope to respond in kind.”

“Even so.” Kirel gestured in agreement. “We could destroy half their population without doing the planet as a whole severe damage.”

But the fleetlord remained worried. “I wonder how much they would mind. Along with India, which presents its own problems, China is the subregion that reminds me most urgently of how many Big Uglies there are, and how few of us. The Chinese Tosevites are liable to be willing to accept the loss of half their number in the hope that doing so would damage us more in the long run.”

“Exalted Fleetlord, when have you ever known Big Uglies to think of the long run?” Kirel asked.

“Well, that is also a truth, and a good thing for us that it is, too,” Atvar said. “Even so, you have given me something new to worry about. After so long here, I thought I had exhausted the possibilities.”

“I am sorry, Exalted Fleetlord.” Kirel bent into the posture of respect. “Do you think warning the independent not-empires against pursuing such a course would be worthwhile?”

After brief consideration, Atvar made the negative hand gesture. “I fear it would be likelier to give them ideas that have not yet occurred to them, although I admit that ideas of a troublesome sort very readily occur to Big Uglies.”

“So they do.” Kirel used an emphatic cough. “Still, though, in spite of the difficulties the Tosevites pose, we do make progress all over this world.”

“Some. Not enough,” Atvar said. Kirel had put him in a fretful mood. “I would give a great deal—I would give almost anything I can think of—to know, for instance, which of the not-empires did in fact attack the colonization fleet. That, by the Emperor, would be a vengeance worth taking.”

“Indeed it would.” Kirel sighed. “But, knowing the enormity of the crime they were committing, those Big Uglies took pains to conceal their footprints.”

“One day, we shall know. One day, they will pay,” Atvar said. “And that will be progress, too, a step we can measure.”

“Indeed it will,” Kirel agreed. “I was, I confess, thinking of smaller steps: for instance, it is good to taste the flesh of our own domestic animals again, after so long living on solely Tosevite rations.”

“I will not say you are wrong, for I think you are right. The thought of grilled azwaca cutlets makes my mouth water.” Atvar had always been especially fond of azwaca. He walked over to the window of his suite and looked west across the great river toward the pyramidal funerary monuments that passed for ancient on Tosev 3. In the green strips between the monuments and the river, azwaca were grazing, though without magnification he could not see them.

“I am more partial to zisuili myself, but the taste of every one of the beasts is a reminder of Home,” Kirel said.

“Truth. But do you know what?” Atvar asked. He waited for Kirel to make the negative hand gesture, then continued, “I have already begun receiving complaints from Tosevite agriculturalists and pastoralists to the effect that our domestic animals graze so thoroughly, no fodder is left for any of theirs.”

“I had not heard of such complaints, but they do not surprise me,” Kirel said. “Tosevite grazers have evolved in an environment of relative abundance. Because moisture is more widespread here than back on Home, so is vegetation. Tosevite animals can afford to leave some behind and still flourish. Our own beasts, by the nature of the terrain to which they are adapted, have to be more efficient.”

“Over the course of time, it will be interesting to see what they do to the ecosystems in which they find themselves,” Atvar said. “They may well make large stretches of this world resemble Home more closely than is now the case.”

“Do we have analysts examining the issue?” Kirel asked.

“I do not,” Atvar answered. “Reffet should: this is, after all, more properly an issue involving the colonization of this planet than its conquest. But what Reffet should be doing and what he is doing are too often not one and the same.” He scribbled a note to himself. “I shall send an inquiry.”

“He will resent it,” Kirel said.

“He resents everything I do and everything I do not do,” the fleetlord said scornfully. “Let him resent this, too. But if Tosevite ecosystems become more Homelike, that will aid in assimilating this world into the Empire, will it not? I can justify the query on those grounds.”

“No doubt you can, Exalted Fleetlord. Fleetlord Reffet will still resent it.” Kirel had long since made plain that his opinion of the head of the colonization fleet was not high. That had not failed to endear him to the head of the conquest fleet. He added, “Since you are rationalizing it as a conquest issue, perhaps our experts should also examine it.”

“Perhaps they should.” Atvar sighed. “We are stretched very thin. We have been stretched very thin—thinner than anyone ever imagined we would be—since we came to Tosev 3 and discovered the inadequacies of the data our probe sent us. Well, perhaps we can stretch a little thinner yet.”

“We have said that a good many times, and we have always succeeded in stretching up till now,” Kirel said. “We should be able to stretch once more.”

“So we should,” Atvar said. “I keep worrying that we will eventually snap and break, but it has not happened yet. Why it has not happened yet, I cannot imagine, given what this world is, but it has not.”

Before Kirel could answer, Atvar’s telephone hissed for attention. When he activated the screen link, his adjutant stared out at him. “What is it, Pshing?” he asked suspiciously. Pshing, being one of his principal links to Tosev 3, was also one of his principal sources of bad news.

“Exalted Fleetlord—” the adjutant began, and then broke off.

Atvar’s heart sank. This was going to be one of those times. Like an itch, the certainty burrowed under his scales. “You had better tell me,” he said heavily.

“It shall be done, Exalted Fleetlord,” Pshing said. Yes, he was gathering himself. Yes, that meant he needed to gather himself. After a deep pause, he went on, “Exalted Fleetlord, there has been an attack on the desalination plants supplying fresh water to the new towns in this region.”

A map appeared on the screen beside his face. It showed the eastern coast of the peninsula the Big Uglies called Arabia that depended from the main continental mass. “Tell me more,” Atvar said. “How serious is this attack? Is it the work of the local Tosevites springing from their superstitious fanaticism, or are the independent not-empires using them as a cloak for their own larger designs against us?”

“Those two need not be inseparable,” Kirel pointed out.

Atvar made the hand gesture of agreement, but then waved the shiplord to silence; he wanted to hear what Pshing had to say. “One of the plants is destroyed, another badly damaged,” the adjutant reported. Red dots appeared on the map to show the affected desalination plants; the others remained amber. “Our defense forces have slain a large number of Tosevites, all of whom appear to be native to the vicinity. Whether they were inspired or aided by other groups of Big Uglies as yet remains to be determined.”

“They were surely aided in one way or another,” Atvar said. “They do not produce the weapons they use against us.”

“Truth,” Kirel said. “But whether the Deutsche or the Americans or the Russkis furnished weapons for this particular attack is another matter.”

“Indeed it is.” Atvar’s voice was grim. “Adjutant, were there, for example, rockets fired at these installations?”

“There do appear to have been some, yes, Exalted Fleetlord,” Pshing replied, “but only those of the common and primitive type manufactured in the SSSR and known as Katyushas.” He had as much trouble with the Tosevite word as Big Uglies did with the language of the Race.

“Those things.” Kirel spoke in disgust. “They are as common as sand, and are easy to carry on the backs of beasts. Even if they were supplied especially for this assault, the independent not-empires will be able to deny it and still seem plausible.”

“They have done that too often,” Atvar said. “We shall have to seek ways to punish them nevertheless.” He swung an eye turret back toward Pshing. “One plant destroyed, you said, and one damaged? How severe is the impact on the new towns in the area?”

“Production loss is about fifteen percent, Exalted Fleetlord,” Pshing replied. “The damaged plant will return to full operation in about forty days, as a preliminary estimate. That will reduce losses to about ten percent. Rebuilding the wrecked plant will take three times as long—assuming no more attacks from Khomeini’s fanatics.”

“Ah—you did not mention that maniac before,” Atvar said. “So these Big Uglies profess his variant of the local superstition?”

“They do,” Pshing said. “Those captured proudly proclaim it during interrogation.”

“We would be better off if he were dead,” Kirel said. “We have not been able to eliminate him, and rewards have failed to turn any Big Uglies against him.” Now he sighed. “The Tosevites will betray us whenever they see the chance. It seems most unfair.”

“So it does.” Atvar knew he sounded unhappy, but couldn’t help it. “I shall increase the size of the reward—again.”

[detectivechmilewsky]

Missile Attack!

Atvar was glad to return to Australia. It was late summer in this hemisphere now, and the weather was fine by any standards, those of Home included. Even in Cairo, though, the weather had been better than bearable. What pleased him more was how far the colony had come since his last visit.

“Then, all we had were the starships,” he said to Pshing. “Now look! A whole thriving city! Streets, vehicles, shops, a power plant, a pipeline to the desalination center—a proper city for the Race.”

“Truth, Exalted Fleetlord,” his adjutant replied. “Before very much longer, it will be like any city back on Home.”

“As you say, Exalted Fleetlord,” Pshing answered. “My only concern is that we are, in certain areas, still vulnerable to sabotage from the Tosevites. The desalination plant and pipeline spring to mind.”

“I am assured the security plans are good,” Atvar said. “They had better be good; we have had enough painful lessons from the Big Uglies on how to construct them and where our vulnerabilities lie.”

He did not want to think about security plans and sabotage, not now. He wanted to walk along the sidewalks of the growing city, to watch males and females peacefully going about their business and getting on with their lives. Before too many generations, if all went well, they would rule the whole planet, not just a little more than half. And the Empire could get on with the job of civilizing another world.

If all went well...

Very faintly, he could smell the pheromones that meant a female somewhere upwind was ripe for mating. He tried to ignore the odor. He couldn’t quite. For one thing, it made him a little more irritable than he would have been otherwise. Even here, in the heart of the Race’s haven on Tosev 3, the Tosevite herb had come. He sighed. The troubles this world brought seemed inescapable.

All over the town, alarms began hissing. Amplified voices shouted: “Missile attack! Incoming missile attack! Take cover against missile attack!”

“No!” Atvar screeched. All around him, the colonists stared foolishly. Every moment counted, but they did not seem to realize it. They had not been trained for this. Atvar did not know which way to start himself. The missiles could be coming from any direction. If they’d been launched from one of the accursed submersible ships the Big Uglies had developed, they would be here all too soon.

Antimissile sites ringed the city, as they ringed the whole area of settlement here in Australia. But they were not infallible. They had not been infallible against even the crude missiles the Big Uglies had had during the fighting. And Tosevite technology was better now than it had been then.

Atvar turned his eye turrets toward Pshing. “If we perish here, Kirel will take vengeance the likes of which this world has never seen.”

“Of course, Exalted Fleetlord.” Pshing sounded so calm, Atvar envied him. The fleetlord did not want to fall here. He wanted to bring the assimilation of this world into the Empire as far forward as he could. How much the universe cared about what he wanted was liable to be another question.

Alarms kept hissing. Atvar looked around for someplace to shelter against the nuclear missile he assumed would momentarily burst overhead. He saw nowhere to hide. Turning to Pshing, he said, “I am sorry you had to come here with me as part of your duties.” If he was about to die, he didn’t want to die with the apology unspoken.

Before Pshing could answer, antimissiles roared off their launch platforms. They would do what they could, but Atvar knew some of their targets were all too likely to elude them.

Explosions to the north, to the northwest, and overhead smote his hearing diaphragms. Debris fell out of the sky, crashing down around and in the city the Race was building. A great chunk dug a hole in the ground not far from Atvar. The leg and tailstump of a male or female stuck out from under it. That leg still twitched feebly, but no one could have lived after so much metal fell on him.

Still, despite the bursts overhead, no new temporary sun blazed into life above the city. “Exalted Fleetlord, we may live!” Pshing cried.

“We may indeed,” Atvar said. “The antimissiles are performing excellently.” They were performing better than he’d imagined they could, let alone hoped. Those continuing explosions above him had to be Tosevite missiles intercepted and blasted out of the sky. Had they been anything else, one of those missiles would have ensured that he never heard anything again.

He opened his mouth to laugh exultantly. As he inhaled, all the strange, alien scents of the Australian desert went past his scent receptors and into his lung. Among them was a spicy scent he did not remember from his previous visit. He had never smelled anything like it before. It was, he thought, the most delicious odor he’d ever known, with the possible exception of a female’s pheromones. It reminded him of those pheromones, as a matter of fact.

“What is that splendid smell?” he asked aloud.

No sooner asked than answered. The response formed in his head even as Pshing spoke the words: “Exalted Fleetlord, I do not know for certain, but I think that must be ginger.”

“Yes. Truth,” Atvar said. He could see the truth, all but hanging there in front of his eyes. It was as obvious as Venteff’s Theorem on the relationship between the squares of the sides of a right triangle and the square of the hypotenuse. Everything suddenly seemed obvious to him. He had never felt so brilliant, never since the day when he’d used the egg tooth at the end of his snout to break through the shell that separated him from the wider world.

“I never tasted ginger before,” Pshing said.

“Neither did I.” Regret filled Atvar. If he’d been using the Tosevite herb during the fighting, the Big Uglies surely would have had to yield to the Race. He felt certain and swift and strong, very strong.

Other males and females must have felt the same way, for they rushed upon the chunk of metal that had crushed one of their comrades and hauled it away. Some of them exclaimed in horror and disgust, for they were colonists, not males from the conquest fleet, and the crushed remains they uncovered were outside their experience. But they had acted swiftly and decisively, without the Race’s usual long pauses for thought.

“They did well,” Pshing said. For the moment, the action was what counted, not what resulted from it.

“Truth,” Atvar said again. He wondered which Tosevite notempire had launched this attack against the Race in its citadel on Tosev 3. Whoever it was certainly had some strange notions of what an attack was. But for the handful of males and females hit by falling pieces of rocket, the rest of the members of the Race on whom the Big Uglies had chosen to shower so much ginger were, if anything, enjoying themselves more than they had before.

He paused and looked about, now here, now there, his eye turrets moving independently of each other. The smell of ginger was not the only marvelous odor coming to his scent receptors now. Along with it, he smelled female pheromones.

Yes, of course, he thought. I remember. Ginger brings them into their season. The Big Uglies had spent all the years since his arrival on Tosev 3 raising his ire; never once had the erectile scales atop his head risen with it. They were for only one sort of display, the sort he made now.

Pshing was also displaying his crest. So were other males, too, as far as the eye turret could reach. And females were lowering their heads and raising their hindquarters into the mating posture. They might have been uninterested mere moments before, but the ginger floating through the air in a fine, delicious cloud did to them what the coming of the season would have done back on Home.

Atvar advanced on the nearest female he saw. With every step he took, his own posture grew more nearly upright. But he was not the only male approaching her. Fury filled him, lest the other male get there before him. “Go back!” he shouted. “I am the fleetlord!” He showed his claws in a threatening gesture.

The other male also displayed his claws. “I do not care who you are!” he shouted back, a shocking lack of decorum at any time but the season. Then, it was every male for himself. “I am going to mate with this female.”

“No!” Atvar hurled himself at the male from the colonization fleet. He was older, but he also knew how to fight, not only as a commander but also as an individual. Before long, the other male fled, hissing and wailing in dismay.

The female over whom they’d fought turned an eye turret back toward Atvar. “Hurry!” she said. “This is uncomfortable.”

He did his best to oblige. It wasn’t uncomfortable while it went on: very much the reverse. As soon as he’d finished, the female skittered away. But he, like the other males in the city, kept right on smelling the pheromones from other females that announced they were still receptive.

It was, in fact, very much the way a day during the season would have gone back on Home. In other words, not a cursed thing got done. Males sought females and brawled among themselves. Females stopped and waited where they stood for males. Sometimes a single mating was enough to satisfy them. Sometimes, perhaps depending on how much ginger they’d inhaled and tasted, they wanted more.

Only slowly did the difference between here and Home sink into Atvar’s mind: what with ginger and pheromones, he was far more distracted than he should have been. Back on Home, everyone expected the season. It was part of the rhythm of the year, not a disruption.

Here in Australia, the reverse was true. This city had just hatched from its egg. Much of it, in fact, still remained inside the shell. Males and females had plenty to do without worrying about the distraction of mating as if they were so many Big Uglies. Some of that work would get done wrong now. Some of it would not get done at all. Out across the city, more males and females were liable to be hurt by the sudden onset of the season than from debris falling out of the sky.

Clever, Atvar thought after a while. The Big Uglies who had done this were liable to be more clever than he was at the moment. His wits working far less clearly than they should have, he wondered whether inciting the Race to mate could be construed as an act of war. Was it not closer to what the Tosevites called, for no obvious reason, a practical joke?

And yet, if they chose to do it again, would they not disrupt life here once more? If, after disrupting life, they followed with an attack that did include nuclear weapons or poisonous gas, what then? We would be in trouble then, Atvar thought.

He’d never imagined he might wish he had not had the joy of mating.

[detectivechmilewsky]

Waking Up the Researcher Felles

Felless had not expected to wake in weightlessness. For a moment, staring up at the fluorescent lights overhead, she wondered if something had gone wrong with the ship. Then, thinking more slowly than she should have because of the lingering effects of cold sleep, she realized how foolish that was. Had something gone wrong with the ship, she would never have awakened at all.

Two people floated into view. One, by her body paint, was a physician. The other... Weak and scatterbrained as Felless was, she gave a startled hiss. “Exalted Fleetlord!” she exclaimed. She heard her own voice as if from far away.

Fleetlord Reffet spoke not to her but to the physician: “She recognizes me, I see. Is she capable of real work?”

“We would not have summoned you here, Exalted Fleetlord, were she incapable,” the physician replied. “We understand the value of your time.”

“Exalted Fleetlord, I am,” Felless replied. Now the voice her hearing diaphragms caught seemed more like her own. Antidotes and restoratives were routing the drugs that had kept her just this side of death on the journey from Home to Tosev 3. Curiosity grew along with bodily well-being. “May I ask why I have been awakened prematurely?”

“You may,” Reffet said, and then, in an aside to the physician, “You were right. Her wits are clear.” He gave his attention back to Felless. “You have been awakened because conditions on Tosev 3 are not as we anticipated they would be when we set out from Home.”

That was almost as great a surprise as waking prematurely. “In what way, Exalted Fleetlord?” Felless tried to make her wits work harder. “Does this planet harbor some bacterium or virus for which we have had difficulty in finding a cure?” Such a thing hadn’t happened on either Rabotev 2 or Halless 1, but remained a theoretical possibility.

“No,” Reffet replied. “The difficulty lies in the natives themselves. They are more technically advanced than our probe indicated. You being the colonization fleet’s leading expert on relations between the Race and other species, I judged it expedient to rouse you and put you to work before we make planetfall. If you need assistance, give us names, and we shall also wake as many of your subordinates and colleagues as you may require.”

Felless tried to lever herself off the table on which she lay. Straps restrained her: a sensible precaution on the physician’s part. As she fumbled with the catches, she asked, “How much more advanced were they than we expected? Enough to make the conquest significantly harder, I gather.”

“Indeed.” Reffet added an emphatic cough. “When the conquest fleet arrived, they were engaged in active research on jet aircraft, on guided missiles, and on nuclear fission.”

“That is impossible!” Felless blurted. Then, realizing what she’d said, she added, “I beg the Exalted Fleetlord’s pardon.”

“Senior Researcher, I freely give it to you,” Reffet replied. “When the colonization fleet began receiving data from Tosev 3, my first belief was that Atvar, the fleetlord on the conquest fleet, was playing an elaborate joke on us—jerking our tailstumps, as the saying has it. I have since been disabused of this belief. I wish I had not been, for it strikes me as far more palatable than the truth.”

“But—But—” Felless knew she was stuttering, and made herself pause to gather her thoughts. “If that is true, Exalted Fleetlord, I count it something of a marvel that... that the conquest did not fail.” Such a thought would have been unimaginable back on Home. It should have been unimaginable here, too. That she’d imagined it proved it wasn’t.

Reffet said, “In part, Senior Researcher, the conquest did fail. There are still unsubdued Tosevite empires—actually, the term the conquest fleet consistently uses is not-empires, which I do not altogether understand—on the surface of Tosev 3, along with areas the Race has in fact conquered. Nor have the Tosevites ceased their technical progress in the eyeblink of time since the conquest fleet arrived. I am warned that only a threat of retaliatory violence from the conquest fleet has kept them from mounting attacks on this colonization fleet.”

Felless felt far dizzier than she would have from weightlessness and sudden revival from cold sleep alone. She finally managed to free herself from the restraining straps and gently push off from the table. “Take me to a terminal at once, if you would be so kind. Have you an edited summary of the data thus far transmitted from the conquest fleet?”

“We have,” Reffet said. “I hope you will find it adequate, Senior Researcher. It was prepared by fleet officers who are not specialists in your area of expertise. We have, of course, provided links to the fuller documentation sent up from Tosev 3.”

“If you will come with me, superior female...” the physician said. She swung rapidly from one handhold to another. Felless followed.

She had to strap herself into the chair in front of the terminal to keep the ventilating current from blowing her off it. Getting back to work felt good. She wished she could have waited till reaching the surface of Tosev 3 for reawakening; that would have been as planned back on Home, and plans were made to be followed. But she would do the best she could here.

And, as she called up the summary, a curious blend of anticipation and dread coursed through her. Wild Tosevites... What would dealing with wild Tosevites be like? She’d expected the locals to be well on their way toward assimilation into the Empire by now. Even then, they would have been different from the Hallessi and the Rabotevs, who but for their looks were as much subjects of the Emperor (even thinking of her sovereign made Felless cast down her eyes) as were the males and females of the Race.

A male in body paint like Reffet’s appeared on the screen in front of her. “Welcome to Tosev 3,” he said in tones anything but welcoming. “This is a world of paradox. If you were expecting anything here to be as it was back on Home, you will be disappointed. You may very well be dead. The only thing you may safely expect on Tosev 3 is the unexpected. I daresay you who listen to this will not believe me. Were I new-come from Home, I would not believe such words, either. Before rejecting them out of claw, examine the evidence.”

A slowly spinning globe of Tosev 3 appeared on the screen. Something over half the land area was red, the rest a variety of other colors. The red, the legend by the globe explained, showed that area of the planet the Race controlled. The other colors, which dominated the northern hemisphere, showed areas where the natives still ruled themselves.

After Felless had just long enough to soak in the significance of that, the colors faded, leaving the land areas in more or less their natural colors. Glowing dots, some red, some blue, appeared here and there. “Red dots show explosive-metal weapons detonated by the Race, blue dots those detonated by the Tosevites,” a voice said.

Felless let out a slow, horrified hiss. About as many dots glowed blue as red. Atvar’s head and torso reappeared on the screen. “Judging that continuing the war for total conquest might well render this planet useless to the colonization fleet, we entered into negotiations with the Tosevite not-empires possessing explosive-metal weapons, conceding their independence in exchange for a cessation of hostilities,” the leader of the conquest fleet said. “On the whole—there have been certain unpleasant exceptions—peace between the Race and the Tosevites and among the Tosevite factions has prevailed for the past thirty-four years—seventeen of this planet’s revolutions, which are just over twice as long as ours. I freely admit it is not the sort of peace I would have desired. There were, however, many times when I thought it was more than I would ever get. See for yourself what we faced even at the beginning of our struggle against the Tosevites.”

His image faded, to be replaced by those of landcruisers of obviously alien manufacture. The tracked and armored fortresses were not a match for those of the Race, but the barbarous inhabitants of Tosev 3, by everything Felless knew, should not have been able to build landcruisers at all.

“Three years later, we were facing these,” Atvar said.

New landcruisers replaced those formerly on the screen. They looked more formidable. Their specifications said they were more formidable. They carried more armor and bigger guns and had more powerful engines. They still didn’t match the machines the Race used, but they were getting closer.

“Three years,” Felless said in almost disbelieving wonder—one and a half of Tosev 3’s years. The later-model landcruisers looked to be separated from the earlier ones by a couple of hundred years of slow development. On Home, they would have been.

Tosevite aircraft showed the same astonishing leap in technical prowess. The natives had gone from machines propelled by rotating airfoils to jets and rocket-powered killercraft in what amounted to the flick of a nictitating membrane across an eye.

“How?” Felless murmured. “How could they have done such a thing?”

As if answering her, Atvar said, “Explanations for the Tosevites’ extraordinary proficiency fall into two main areas, which may or may not be mutually exclusive: the geographical and the biological. Oceans and mountains break up Tosevite land masses in ways unknown on other worlds of the Empire, fostering the formation of small, competitive groups.” The globe reappeared, this time splotched in ways that struck Felless as absurdly complex. “These were the political divisions on Tosev 3 at the time the conquest fleet arrived.”

Atvar continued, “Reproductive biology among the Tosevites is unlike that of any other intelligent race we know, and has profound effects on their society. Females are, or can be, continually receptive; males are, or can be, continually active. This leads to pair-bondings and...” He went on for some time.

Long before he’d finished, Felless hissed out a single word: “Disgusting.” She wondered how so aberrant a species had ever developed intelligence, let alone a technology that let it challenge the Race.

At last, and very much to her relief, the fleetlord of the conquest fleet chose another topic. She listened until Atvar finished, “This conquest, if it is to be accomplished, will be a matter for generations, not days as was anticipated when we left Home. The landing of the colonization fleet and settlement of the colonists will greatly aid in integrating the independent not-empires into the larger structure of the Empire. Exposure to proper examples cannot help but lead the Big Uglies”—by then, Felless had gathered that was the conquest fleet’s nickname for the Tosevites—“to emulate the high example that will be placed before them.” His image vanished from the screen.

Felless turned to Reffet. “You were right to rouse me, Exalted Fleetlord. This will be a more challenging problem than anyone could have anticipated—and, no doubt, the conquest fleet has made its share of mistakes in dealing with these bizarre Tosevites.” She let out a hissing sigh. “I can see I shall have my work cut out for me.”

[detectivechmilewsky]

Twenty Years Later, and the Second Series Begins

Atvar, the commander of the Race’s conquest fleet, poked a control with a fingerclaw. A holographic image sprang into being above the projector in the fleetlord’s office. In the forty years since the conquest fleet came to Tosev 3 (half that many local years), he had grown all too intimately familiar with that particular image.

So had Kirel, shiplord of the 127th Emperor Hetto, the bannership of the conquest fleet. The body paint on his scaly, green-brown hide was more ornate than every other male’s save only Atvar’s. His mouth fell open in amusement, revealing a great many small, sharp teeth. A slight waggle to his lower jaw gave his laughter a sardonic twist.

“Once more we behold the mighty Tosevite warrior, eh, Exalted Fleetlord?” he said. He ended the sentence with an interrogative cough.

“Even so, Shiplord,” Atvar answered. “Even so. He does not look as if he would cause us much trouble, does he?”

As Atvar had done so many times before, he walked around the hologram to view it from all sides. The Tosevite male was mounted on a hairy local quadruped. He wore a tunic of rather rusty chain armor, and over it a light cloth coat. A pointed iron helmet protected his braincase. Tufts of yellowish hair grew like dry grass on his scaleless, pinkish cheeks and jaw. For armament, he had a spear, a sword, a knife, and a shield with a cross painted in red on it.

A long, hissing sigh escaped Atvar. “If only it had been as easy as we thought it would be.”

“Truth, Exalted Fleetlord,” Kirel said. “Who would have thought the Big Uglies”—the nickname the Race used for its Tosevite subjects and neighbors—“could have changed so much in a mere sixteen hundred years?”

“No one,” Atvar said. “No one at all.” He used a different cough this time, one that emphasized the words preceding it. They deserved emphasis. The Race—and the Hallessi and Rabotevs, whose planets the Empire had ruled for thousands of years—changed only very slowly, only very cautiously. For the Race, one millennium was like another. After sending a probe to Tosev 3, everyone back on Home had blithely assumed the barbarians there would not have changed much by the time the conquest fleet arrived.

Never in its hundred thousand years of unified imperial history—and never in the chaotic times before, for that matter—had the Race got a larger and more unpleasant surprise. When the conquest fleet did reach Tosev 3, it found not sword-swinging savages but a highly industrialized world with several empires and not-empires battling one another for dominance.

“Even after all these years, there are times when I still feel rage that we did not completely conquer this planet,” Atvar said. “But, on the other fork of the tongue, there are also times when I feel nothing but relief that we still maintain control over any part of its surface.”

“I understand, Exalted Fleetlord,” Kirel said.

“I know you do, Shiplord. I am glad you do,” Atvar said. “But I do wonder if anyone back on Home truly understands. I have the dubious distinction of commanding the first interstellar conquest fleet in the history of the Race that did not conquer completely. That is not how I intended hatchlings to remember me.”

“Conditions here were not as we anticipated them,” Kirel said loyally. He’d had his chances to be disloyal, had them and not taken them. By now, Atvar was willing to believe he wouldn’t. He went on, “Do you not agree that there is a certain amount of irony in the profit we have made off the Tosevites by selling them this image and others from the probe? Their own scholars desire those photographs because they have none of their own from what seems to them to be a distant and uncivilized time.”

“Irony? Yes, that is one of the words I might apply to the situation—one of the politer words,” Atvar said. He went back to his desk and prodded the control again. The Tosevite warrior vanished. He wished he could make all the Tosevites vanish that easily, but no such luck. He replaced the warrior’s image with a map of the surface of Tosev 3.

By his standards, it was a chilly world, with too much water and not enough land. Of what land there was, the Race did not rule enough. Only the southern half of the lesser continental mass, the southwest and south of the main continental mass, and the island continent to the southeast of the main continental mass were reassuringly red on the map. The not-empires of the Americans, the Russkis, and the Deutsche all remained independent, and needed colors of their own. So did the island empires of Britain and Nippon, though both of them were shrunken remnants of what they had been when the conquest fleet came to Tosev 3.

Kirel also turned one eye toward the map, while keeping the other on Atvar. “Truly, Exalted Fleetlord, it could be worse.”

“So it could,” Atvar said with another sigh. “But it could also be a great deal better. It would be a great deal better if these areas here on the eastern part of the main continental mass, especially this one called China, acknowledged our rule as they should.”

“I have long since concluded that the Big Uglies never do things as they should,” Kirel said.

“I agree completely,” the fleetlord replied. His little tailstump twitched in agitation. “But how are we to convince the fleetlord of the colonization fleet that this is the case?”

Now Kirel sighed. “I do not know. He lacks our experience with this world. Once he acquires it, he will, I am sure, come round to our way of thinking. But we must expect him to be rigid for a time.”

Back on Home, rigid was a term of praise. It had been a term of praise when the conquest fleet came to Tosev 3, too. No more. Males of the Race who stayed too rigid stood not a chance of understanding the Big Uglies. By the standards of Home, the males of the conquest fleet—those who still survived—had grown dreadfully flighty.

Males... Atvar said, “It will be good to have females in range of the scent receptors on my tongue once more. When they come into season and I smell their pheromones, I will have an excuse for not thinking about this accursed world for a while. I look forward to having the excuse, you understand, not to the breeding itself.”

“Of course, Exalted Fleetlord,” Kirel said primly. “You are no Big Ugly, to have such matters always on your mind.”

“I should hope not!” Atvar exclaimed. Like any other member of the Race, he viewed Tosevite sexuality with a sort of horrified fascination. Intellectually, he grasped how the Big Uglies’ year-round interest in mating colored every aspect of their behavior. But he had no feel for the subtleties, or indeed for what the Big Uglies no doubt viewed as broad strokes. Despite intensive research, few males of the Race did, any more than the Tosevites could understand the Race’s dispassionate view of such matters.

Pshing, Atvar’s adjutant, came into the chamber. One side of his body was painted in a pattern that matched the fleetlord’s; the other showed his own, far lower, rank. He bent his forward-sloping torso into the posture of respect and waited to be noticed.

“Speak,” Atvar said. “Give forth.”

“I thank you, Exalted Fleetlord,” Pshing said. “I beg leave to report that the lead ships of the colonization fleet have passed within the orbit of Tosev 4, the planet the Big Uglies call Mars. Very soon now, those ships will seek to circle and land on this world.”

“I am aware of this, yes.” Atvar’s voice was even drier than the desert surrounding the riverside city—Cairo, the local name for it was—where he made his headquarters. “Is my distinguished colleague in the colonization fleet aware that the Tosevites, for all their protestations of peaceful intent, may seek to harm his ships when they do reach Tosev 3?”

“Fleetlord Reffet continues to assure me that he is,” Pshing replied. “He was quite taken aback to receive radio transmissions from the various Tosevite not-empires.”

“He should not have been,” Atvar said. “We have been warning him for some time of the Big Uglies’ ever-increasing capacities.”

Kirel said, “Exalted Fleetlord, he will have to learn by experience, as we also had to do. Let us hope his experience proves less painful than ours.”

“Indeed.” Atvar let out a worried hiss. His voice grew grim: “And let us hope all the Tosevites take seriously our warning to them that an attack on the colonization fleet by any of them will be construed as an attack by all of them, and that we shall do our utmost to punish all of them should any such attack occur.”

“I wish we had not had to issue such a warning,” Kirel said.

“So do I,” Atvar replied. “But at least four and perhaps five of their realms possess missile-firing undersea ships—who back on Home would have dreamt of such things?”

“Oh, I understand the problem,” Kirel said. “But the general warning all but invites the Tosevites to combine against us and to reduce their conflicts among themselves.”

“Diplomacy.” Atvar made the word into a curse. Manuals on the subject, their data gleaned from the Race’s ancient history and early conquests, suggested playing the locals against one another. But, to Atvar and his colleagues, such concerns were but theory, and musty theory at that. The Big Uglies, divided among themselves, were expert practitioners of the art. After a negotiating session with them, Atvar always wanted to count his fingers and toes to make sure he hadn’t inadvertently traded them away.

Pshing said, “When the colonists are revived from cold sleep, when they come down to Tosev 3, we will begin to turn this into a proper world of the Empire.”

“I admire your confidence, Adjutant,” Kirel said. Pshing crouched respectfully. Kirel went on, “I wonder what the colonists will make of us. We are hardly proper males of the Race ourselves any more—dealing with the Tosevites for so long has left us as addled as bad eggs.”

“We have changed,” Atvar agreed. Back on Home, that would have been a curse. Not here, though he had taken a long time to realize it. “Had we not changed, our war with the Big Uglies would have wrecked this planet, and what would the colonization fleet have done then?”

Not a single male on Tosev 3 had found an answer to that question. Atvar was sure Reffet would have no answer for it, either. But he was also sure the fleetlord of the colonization fleet would have questions of his own. Would he himself, would any male on Tosev 3, be able to find answers for them?