Striking the Balance

When it did that, it annoyed everyone up and down the corridor of the starship orbiting above Tosev 3. When the other males researching the Big Uglies got annoyed, they grew more likely to side against Ttomalss in his struggle to keep the hatchling and keep studying it rather than returning it to the female from whose body it had emerged.

“Be silent, foolish thing,” he hissed at it. The hatchling, of course, took no notice of him, but continued to make the air hideous with its howls. He knew what he had to do: he stooped and, being careful not to prick its thin, scaleless skin with his claws, held it against his torso.

After a little while, the alarming noise eased. The hatchling liked physical contact. Young of the Race, when newly out of the eggshell, fled from anything larger than they were, instinctively convinced it would catch and eat them. For the first part of their lives, Big Uglies were as immobile as some of the limestone-shelled creatures of Home’s small seas. If they got into trouble, the females who’d ejected them (and a hideous processthat

was, too) had to save them and comfort them. With no such female available here, the job fell to Ttomalss.

The hatchling’s cheek rubbed against his chest. That touched off its sucking reflex. It turned its head and pressed its soft, wet mouth against his hide. Unlike a Tosevite female, he did not secrete nutritive fluid. Little by little, the hatchling was realizing that faster than it had.

“A good thing, too,” Ttomalss muttered, and tacked on an emphatic cough. The little Tosevite’s saliva did unpleasant things to his body paint. He swung down an eye turret so he could look at himself. Sure enough, he’d have to touch up a spot before he was properly presentable. He hadn’t intended to demonstrate experimentally that body paint was not toxic to Big Uglies, but he’d done it.

He turned the other eye turret down, studied the hatchling with both eyes. It looked up at him. Its own eyes were small and flat and dark. He wondered what went on behind them. The hatching had never seen itself, nor its own kind. Did it think it looked like him? No way to know, not until its verbal skills developed further. But its perceptions would have changed by then, too.

He watched the corners of its absurdly mobile mouth curl upwards. Among the Tosevites, that was an expression of amiability, so he had succeeded in making it forget about its hurt. Then he noticed the cloth he kept around its middle was wet. The Tosevite had no control over its bodily function. Interrogations suggested Big Uglies did not learn such control for two or three of their years-four to six of those by which Ttomalss reckoned. As he carried the hatchling over to a table to clean it off and set a new protective cloth in place, he found that a very depressing prospect.

“Youare a nuisance,” he said, adding another emphatic cough.

The hatchling squealed, then made a noise of its own that sounded like an emphatic cough. It had been imitating the sounds Ttomalss made more and more lately, not just emphatic and interrogative coughs but sometimes real words. Sometimes he thought it was making those noises with deliberate intent. Tosevites could and did talk, often to excess-no doubt about that.

When the hatchling was clean and dry and content, he set it back down on the floor. He tossed the soaked cloth into an airtight plastic bin to prevent its ammoniacal reek from spreading, then squirted cleansing foam on his hands. He found the Tosevites’ liquid wastes particularly disgusting; the Race excreted neat, tidy solids.

The hatchling got up on all fours and crawled toward the cabinets again. Its quadrupedal gait was much more confident than it had been at the beginning; for a couple of days, the only way it had been able to get anywhere was backwards. It tried pulling itself erect-and promptly fell down once more.

The communicator chimed for attention. Ttomalss hurried over to it. The screen lit, showing him the image of Ppevel, assistant administrator for the eastern region of the main continental mass. “I greet you, superior sir,” Ttomalss said, doing his best to hide nervousness.

“I greet you, Research Analyst,” Ppevel replied. “I trust the Tosevite hatchling whose fate is now under discussion with the Chinese faction known as the People’s Liberation Army remains healthy?”

“Yes, superior sir,” Ttomalss said. He turned one eye turret away from the screen for a moment, trying to spot the hatchling. He couldn’t. That worried him. The little creature was much more mobile than it had been, which meant it was much more able to get into mischief, too… He’d missed some of what Ppevel was saying. “I’m sorry, superior sir?”

Ppevel waggled his eye turrets ever so slightly, a sign of irritation. “I said, are you prepared to give up the hatchling on short notice?”