The Road Continues

An unofficial continuation of “The Road Not Taken” by Harry Turtledove

Noncommercial fan fiction

Author’s Note: This is an unofficial, noncommercial continuation of Harry Turtledove’s short story “The Road Not Taken.” I always wanted to know what happened immediately after humanity acquired the Roxolani hyperdrive and contragravity technology, so this is my attempt to follow that road.

Chapter 1

Togram opened his eyes blearily and looked around the darkened room. For a few moments, he had forgotten where he was. Then the realization came flooding back. He wasn't aboard the ship. The familiar smells were gone. He was on the human world.

He reached toward the lamp beside his bed. There was no candle to light, no glowworm jar to shake. He simply turned the switch. Instantly, the room was flooded with light. Togram sat there for several moments, staring at it. Such a simple thing, yet even after all this time it still amazed him. Light, bright and steady, summoned with the movement of a finger.

He settled back for another moment, enjoying the remarkable comfort of the bed. It was not quite a human bed. The humans had modified it to accommodate the shape of a Roxolani body. It was soft, warm, clean, and completely free of pests.

The buzzer sounded again. That was what had awakened him. Someone was at the door.

Reluctantly, Togram extracted himself from his comfortable sleeping position and waddled across the room. He took hold of the door handle and pulled. Even that still fascinated him. The door swung open smoothly and silently, without the slightest scrape or resistance.

Ransisc stood on the other side, looking more excited than Togram had seen him in some time.

"Togram, we finally get to get out of here for a while."

Togram stared at him.

"What?"

"They're letting us go. They're taking us out of here for a while."

Togram glanced back into the room.

The humans insisted that this was a hotel, not a prison. They said he was kept here for his own comfort and protection. And, in truth, they had treated him well.

He was free to open his door and wander the hallways. He had learned to operate the device he had originally thought must be demonic, something the humans called a television. He had even used the telephone several times and had gradually stopped being astonished that a voice could travel across enormous distances as clearly as if its owner were standing in the next room.

But he had never been permitted to leave.

Whatever the humans chose to call this place, Togram knew what it was. It was a cage. And no matter how comfortable, no matter how clean, no matter how brightly lit, a cage was still a cage.

"They're letting us go?" Togram asked.

"Well, I was excited," Ransisc replied. "We are getting out of here for a while, though."

"Why? What's happened?"

"They want us to observe a test of one of their first vehicles adapted to use our contragravity."

Togram stepped back, his eyes widening. "They've already built a ship?"

"I don't know," Ransisc replied. "All I know is that they've sent for us. They want you and me, the two of us, to go where they're conducting their first test. First flight. Something like that. I don't know the details. Apparently, they want us there."

Togram's head swam as he considered what his friend had just told him.

It had been scarcely a single season. Sixty human days. And already they had constructed a vessel using contragravity and were ready to test it?

"Why?" Togram asked. "Do they want to demonstrate how much more powerful they are than we are? Are they trying to frighten us?"

Ransisc leaned back slightly, tilted his head, and regarded his old friend.

"Wouldn't you agree they already did that the day we landed?"

Togram lowered his eyes. "Yes," he said quietly. "Yes, they did." He looked back at Ransisc. "But I cannot imagine why they would want us present for something like this."

"Why us?" asked Togram.

"Well, I suppose because you were the commander, for one thing. You were in a position of leadership," Ransisc replied. "They asked me to come and tell you. I don't know why they didn't tell you themselves, but Hilda Chester called my room this morning and asked me to inform you. We're supposed to be in the conference room at nine o'clock, their time."

Togram still felt uncomfortable with how easily these humans communicated across distances instead of meeting face to face. And the conference room. The humans called it that, anyway. The Roxolani had long since adopted another name for it.

The interrogation room.

Togram turned and looked at the digital clock hanging on the wall of his room. Originally, a human round clock had hung there, but he had trouble reading it at first. Although he was sure he could have learned, Hilda had suggested replacing it with a digital clock. Togram had felt a little insulted by the suggestion, but he had to admit that it made understanding human time much easier.

One thing still confused him. Why did some humans divide their day into twelve hours twice, while others simply counted twenty-four hours once? He hadn't worked that out yet. It seemed that the less military a human was, the more likely he was to use the twelve-hour convention, while military personnel almost invariably used twenty-four. Togram couldn't understand why.

Then again, there was very little about human society that he understood. It was simply one more thing to confuse him about humans.

"Okay," he said, turning back to Ransisc. "Give me a few minutes to get ready, and I'll meet you in the day room."

He paused.

"Or the council room. Or the interrogation room. Whatever we're calling it today."

Togram opened the door to the conference room. Ransisc was already seated at the table, looking considerably more comfortable in one of the new chairs the humans had provided. Unlike the original human chairs, these had been modified to better accommodate the Roxolani body.

Hilda Chester was seated at the table as well, along with Charlie Ebbets and several other humans whose names Togram and Ransisc had learned during the past two months. David Cummings was there, as was John Wilder. At least two other humans were present whom Togram did not recognize.

"Good morning, Captain Togram, and how are we feeling this morning?"

Togram still didn't understand why certain human professionals loved to refer to the people they were speaking to in the plural, as though they somehow shared whatever condition was being discussed. He had quickly grasped the difference between singular and plural usage in the human language, but humans never ceased to surprise and confuse him.

"I am feeling very well this morning. Thank you, Hilda."

Togram pulled out a chair and seated himself, assuming the upright position at the table that humans seemed to prefer.

"Captain Togram, this is Mr. Orlando Sanchez Jr. and Mr. Tim Cahill from Lockheed Martin," Hilda said. "They've been in charge of adapting your contragravity to our construction techniques."

The two humans stood and extended their hands across the table in what Togram now recognized as a conventional human greeting. Togram stood as well and reached across the table, shaking hands with each of the two men.

"Honored to meet you," he said. His English was considerably better than it had been only a few weeks before. In fact, much of his time had been spent learning English, as the humans called this particular language.

It had surprised him to discover that there were literally hundreds of different, mutually unintelligible languages spoken on this one planet. Such linguistic fragmentation was extremely rare among the other worlds he knew.

"Captain Togram," Orlando Sanchez began after returning to his chair, "Lockheed Martin was one of the companies placed in charge of adapting contragravity for human use. We have dedicated every resource available to us to that end. Your arrival has made a great many people on this world nervous, so we were determined to have an operating prototype as soon as possible. The first free-flight test of that prototype is today, and we would like you to be present."

Togram regarded him curiously.

"First, we'd like you to examine the prototype, particularly our control mechanism and how it works, and point out anything we may have done wrong or anything that could cause problems before we find ourselves high in the atmosphere and not knowing what to do."

Togram paused. "You want me to ride along on the first flight of your human-designed contragravity craft?"

"Oh, no, no," Sanchez said quickly. "I'm sorry, Captain Togram. We don't expect you to ride along. We would simply like you to look it over and be present during the flight, if you wouldn't mind."

"And how do you know I will be honest? How do you know I will not sabotage it, or deliberately tell you something that will cause it to fail? We did invade you. We are enemies."

Sanchez looked at him for a moment. "Are we, Captain Togram?"

Togram said nothing.

"Yes, you invaded us, and technically you're still an enemy. You're still a soldier from a distant world whose purpose was to conquer us. At the same time, Hilda tells us that you're extremely intelligent and have adapted remarkably well to life on Earth. We're asking you to do this today primarily because of her recommendation."

Togram leaned back in his chair, surprised that he would receive such a recommendation from someone he still considered one of his captors. He looked toward Hilda. She smiled and nodded.

Togram felt something he had not felt in a long time.

He felt alive again.

Perhaps there really could be a life beyond these four walls and this gilded cage.

No, he would not betray the humans or attempt to sabotage what they were doing. If he did, they would simply try again without him and, without a doubt, eventually succeed. He had already seen what they were capable of. In truth, he seriously doubted that they needed him at all.

Perhaps they were manipulating him. Perhaps they had ulterior motives. But if this was an opportunity for him and Ransisc to get out of this place and see more of this extraordinary world, he was going to seize it. He certainly wasn't going to do anything that might endanger that opportunity.

"Oh, yes. Absolutely, Mr. Sanchez. Ransisc and I will be more than happy to look over your ship."

Sanchez smiled. "I wouldn't exactly call it a ship. It's more of a small prototype. But we're looking forward to seeing how it behaves in flight."

"Thank you very much, Captain Togram."

Ransisc leaned toward Togram and lowered his voice. "Are you sure you want to do this?"

"Ransisc, we've already discussed this many times. These people are so far advanced, this entire world is so far advanced, that the rest of the galaxy doesn't have any hope of defeating them if they decide to embark upon a campaign of conquest."

Togram glanced around the table at the humans before continuing.

"The galaxy has already lost. We can only hope that we can appeal to their better nature."

Ransisc stared at him.

"Listen, Ransisc. I've had a great deal of time to think about this. There is no way we can beat them in a fight, especially now that we've given them contragravity. We have to find another way."