abstract
| - Kassquit (b. 1943) was a human infant purchased by the Race's researcher Ttomalss from her mother in China. She was raised in the 127th Emperor Hetto, a starship orbiting the Earth so that Ttomlss could learn how well humans could assimilate culturally into the Empire. Because the Race had no facial expressions, she never learned to smile or laugh. She clipped her hair frequently and considered surgically removing her ears to more closely resemble a female of the Race. Also, she didn't wear any clothes given that body clothing was rarely used in Race culture who came from a desert, heated environment. Alone and frequently harassed by members of the Race, she became curious about "wild Big Uglies," as the Race referred to unconquered humans. In the early 1960s, her curiosity bore fruit as the consequence of her discovery of Sam Yeager impersonating a male of the Race on the Race's computer network. Unable to visit Earth because of a lack of immunity to Tosevite diseases, she was visited first by Sam Yeager and then his son Jonathan Yeager, the latter of whom became her lover when his brief visit to the starship was prolonged by the outbreak of the Race-German War of 1965. Upon Jonathan Yeager's departure Kassquit was deeply depressed and very jealous at Jonathan entering an "exclusive mating arrangement" with his girlfriend Karen Culpepper. Adding to her misery was the fact that in terms of the Race's social behavior, such feelings were an aberration - and she did not know enough about Tosevite society to realize it was very normal for Tosevites to feel this way under such circumstances. Upon her recovery she stopped shaving her head, having developed the maturity to realize the futility of a Tosevite trying to physically imitate the Race. Despite this increasing independence, she remained completely loyal to the Empire. When cold sleep was adapted to human use in the 1970s and 80s, she jumped at the chance to be the first human to visit Home; she entered cold sleep in 1982 and was kept in that state until just before the arrival of the Admiral Peary in Home orbit in 2031. She later met and fell in love with Frank Coffey, giving birth to Julia Yendys.
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