Colonization: Down to Earth

Atvar, the fleetlord of the Race's conquest fleet, and Reffet, the fleetlord of the colonization fleet, were having a disagreement. They had agreed on very little since Reffet brought the colonization fleet to Tosev 3. Atvar was convinced Reffet still had no real understanding of the way things worked on this miserable planet. He didn't know what Reffet was convinced of--probably that things on Tosev 3 were in fact the way the Race had fondly imagined them to be before sending out the conquest fleet. "I do not know what you wish me to do, Reffet," he said. They were equals; neither of them was Exalted Fleetlord to the other. They could be, and often were, equally impolite to each other. "No matter what you may believe, I cannot work miracles." He swiveled his eye turrets this way and that to show exasperation. Reffet swiveled his eye turrets, too, and hissed for good measure. "I do not see that it is so difficult. The ship the Big Uglies have launched is under very low acceleration. You have plenty of time to send a reconnaissance probe after it and keep it under close, secret observation." "And you brought starships across the light-years between Home and here!" Atvar exclaimed. "You must have had good officers and good computers, for you surely were not up to the job unaided." He paced across his office, which had been a suite in Shepheard's Hotel before the Race occupied Cairo. It gave him plenty of room to pace; Tosevites were larger than males and females of the Race, and, naturally, built in proportion to their own size. "Leave off your insults," Reffet replied with another hiss, an angry one. His tailstump switched back and forth, back and forth. "I repeat, I do not see that what I have asked is so very difficult. As I said, that ship, that Clewis and Lark, is under acceleration of no more than a hundredth of the force of gravity." "Lewis and Clark." Atvar took no small relish in correcting his colleague and rival over even minute details that shouldn't have mattered to anyone save a Big Ugly. "That it is under tiny acceleration does not matter. That it is under continuous acceleration does. If we are to observe it closely and continually, our reconnaissance must be under acceleration, too. And how, I ask, do you propose to keep that secret? A spacecraft with a working engine is by the nature of things anything but secret." "By the Emperor!" Reffet burst out. He lowered his eyes to the floor when naming his sovereign. So did Atvar, on hearing the title. From training since hatchlinghood, any member of the Race would have done the same. Still furious, Reffet went on, "These accursed Tosevites have no business flying in space." He used an emphatic cough to underline his words. "They have no business having instruments that let them detect what we do when we fly in space, either." Atvar let his mouth fall open in amusement. "Come here, Reffet," he said, walking over to the window. "Come here--it is safe enough. I intend no tricks, and the riots seem to have quieted down again, so no Big Ugly is likely to be aiming a sniper's rifle in this direction at the moment. I want to show you something." Suspicion manifest in every line of his forward-sloping body, Reffet came. "What is it?" The suspicion filled his voice, too. "There." Atvar pointed west across the great river that flowed past Cairo. "Do you see those three stone pyramids, there in the sand?" Reffet deigned to turn one eye turret in that direction. "I see them. What of it? They look massive, but weathered and primitive." "They are primitive--that is my point," Atvar said. "They are as old as any monuments on this world. They were built as memorials to local rulers eight tTurtledove, Harry is the author of 'Colonization: Down to Earth' with ISBN 9780345430205 and ISBN 0345430204.