Down to Earth

14

Felless looked down from a third-story window at the crowd that had gathered in front of the Race’s consulate in Marseille. The male who stood beside her was a researcher from the conquest fleet named Kazzop. “Save that these Big Uglies have black hair, this puts me in mind of a Tosevite work of fiction called ‘The Red-headed League,’ ”he said.

“Tosevite literary allusions leave me uninterested,” Felless said. “The question is, will this accomplish what we desire?”

“We have certainly stimulated the Big Uglies, superior female,” Kazzop said. “I do not think the Deutsche or the Francais have the least idea how to control this swarm of Tosevites.”

“In that case, they will start brutalizing them soon,” Felless predicted. “It is not what you had in mind for this experiment, but does seem to be the standard Tosevite procedure in case of insecurity.”

“Truth,” Kazzop said. “Of course, the Deutsch Tosevites need little excuse for brutalizing the Francais in any case. They rule them more through forcing fear than through promoting affection.”

“I suppose it is because they only conquered this province of their not-empire shortly before the conquest fleet arrived,” Felless said. “It strikes me as counterproductive, but a great deal the Deutsche do strikes me as counterproductive, so this would be nothing out of the ordinary there.”

“Indeed it would not,” Kazzop said. “We had better go down there and get things under way, or else the Deutsche will disperse that crowd before we can get any use out of it.”

“I suppose so,” Felless said unhappily. This wasn’t her project; she’d been brought here at the bidding of others, just as she’d been sent to Nuremberg. She remained inside the borders of the Greater German Reich. Here, though, she had at least a chance to escape the disgrace that had hovered over her in the capital. That should have made her more enthusiastic about cooperating.

To a point, it did. But only to a point. She had to keep coming out of her office and working not only with Big Uglies but also with females and males of the Race. Working with Big Uglies was merely annoying, though less so than it had been in Nuremberg. Working with females of her own kind was innocuous. Working with males of her own kind she hated, because it meant she dared not taste ginger.

She wanted a taste. How she wanted a taste! As she never had before, she understood what addiction meant. She would crave ginger even on her deathbed, regardless of whether she had another taste between now and then. She knew that. If only she could get a couple of days doing research and data correlation inside the cubicle they’d given her. Maybe that would be long enough to let her taste and to let her raging pheromones subside afterwards.

And maybe she would taste and taste and then humiliate herself with the males who coupled with her after she emerged from the cubicle. She’d done that before. She’d done it more than once, in fact. She was all too likely to do it again.

She still wanted a taste.

Down on the ground floor, males had cordoned off all the passages leading away, from the front entrance. Others stood in front of those cordoned-off passages with weapons in hand, to make sure no snoopy Big Uglies went down them in spite of the barricades.

Boxes full of prizes stood in back of tables just behind the closed front doors. Felless sighed. “I am not ideally suited for this task,” she said, “because I speak neither the Deutsch language nor that of the local Francais, which I understand is different.”

“Quite different,” Kazzop said. “But do not let it worry you. Most of us have at least some knowledge of one or both of these languages. While you are part of the project proper, your most important role will be data analysis. It is simply that we lack the personnel to restrict you to analysis alone, Senior Researcher.”

With a martyred sigh, Felless said, “I understand.” Had she been doing only analysis, she could have tasted to her heart’s content. Nothing on Tosev 3 except ginger came close to contenting her heart.

Kazzop, now, Kazzop sounded happy and excited about what he was doing. Felless envied him his enthusiasm. They took seats side by side, then turned on the card readers in front of them. She set a sheet of paper by hers. When amber lights showed the machines were ready, Kazzop turned to the males at the door and said, “Let them in. Tell them they must stay in two neat lines or we cannot proceed.”

“It shall be done, superior sir,” one of the males answered, and swung the doors open. The Big Uglies outside roared. He and his comrades shouted in the local language. In came the Tosevites, more or less in two lines.

The first of them came up to thrust his card at Felless-she knew he was a male, for he let the hair on his upper lip grow. She took the card from him and stuck it into the reader. A number showed on the screen: a zero. She touched the message printed beside the zero on the sheet of paper she’d set next to the reader. In the local language, it read, Sorry, you did not win anything today. Please try again.

By the way the Big Ugly stared, she wondered for a moment if he could read at all. Then he let loose a torrent of what sounded like abuse. Felless was suddenly glad she knew no Francais. The Tosevite stomped away, still loudly complaining.

Up came another Big Ugly, a female. Her card showed a one on the reader. Felless turned and grabbed a skelkwank — light disk player, which she handed to the Tosevite. She got a wave in return as the Big Ugly carried away her prize.

More Tosevites trooped up, one after another. Those who won nothing complained loudly about it, even though none of the cards had promised anyone a prize. Males and females of the Race would have done better at remembering that.

Most of the Big Uglies who did win got disk players. Some got portable computers. A few got good-sized cash awards-half a year’s pay for the average Tosevite. Just as those who’d failed were more abusive than members of the Race would have been, so the winners were more excited. Hidden cameras recorded all their responses.

And then a female Big Ugly gave Felless her card. It showed a four, the only four among the cards the Race had given out. Felless turned to Kazzop. “Here is the biggest winner of them all,” she said.

“Oh, good,” he answered. “Now I get to play with my bells and whistles, as if I were a Tosevite advertiser.” He turned on a raucous recording full of truly appalling noises. Felless winced. Kazzop laughed at her, remarking, “I have come to like the Big Uglies and the noises they enjoy.”

“So I gather,” Felless said coldly. “You have come to like them altogether too well, if you want my view of the matter.”

“It could be, superior female; it could be.” Kazzop sounded cheerful. “But look-all the Big Uglies in line and all the Big Uglies still waiting outside know she is the biggest winner. See how excited and envious they are?”

Felless still had trouble reading Tosevite expressions. She was willing to believe Kazzop, though. “Interpret for me, if you will,” she said, and he made the affirmative gesture. “Tell the Tosevite congratulations, and ask her name.”

Kazzop spoke in the language of the Francais. The Big Ugly answered in what sounded like the same tongue “She says thank you, and that her name is Monique,” he told Felless.

“Just Monique?” Felless was puzzled. “Do they not usually have two names?”

After more conversation, Kazzop said, “She seems reluctant to give her family name. She also seems reluctant to give reasons for her reluctance. She is more curious about what she has won.”

That, for once, was a reaction Felless completely understood. “Well, go ahead and tell her,” Felless said. “Seeing how a couple of them have reacted to money, she will probably come to pieces when she learns she was won a home here with as many modern conveniences as we can include in it-something worth far more than our cash awards.”

“Oh, without a doubt,” Kazzop said. “The recording of her reaction should be both instructive and entertaining.” He shifted from the language of the Race to that of the local Big Uglies.

Felless waited for the Tosevite to shriek and burst into hysterics. One of the males who’d won money had tried to caress her with his lips. She understood it was a gesture of affection among Big Uglies, but the idea almost left her physically ill. She hoped this Tosevite would not try anything like that.

To her relief, the female Big Ugly didn’t. Indeed, the Tosevite hardly showed any emotion at all for a moment. When she did speak, it was in quiet, measured tones. Kazzop was the one who jerked in astonishment. “What is going on?” Felless asked him.

“She-the female-says she cannot accept the prize.” Kazzop sounded as if he couldn’t believe the sounds impinging on his hearing diaphragms. “She asks if we can make a substitution for it.”

“You had not planned to do anything of the sort,” Felless said. “I realize that dealing with Big Uglies takes unusual flexibility, but still… Find out why she does not want the prize as offered.”

“Yes. That is worth knowing. It shall be done.” Kazzop spoke in the local language. The Big Ugly’s reply sounded hesitant. To Felless, Kazzop said, “She is not altogether forthcoming. I gather that such a prize might draw too much notice from the Deutsch authorities.”

“Ah. If I were a local Big Ugly, I would not want the Deutsch authorities noticing me, either.” Felless shuddered at some of the things the Deutsche had done. “Does she perhaps follow the-what is it called? — the Jewish superstition, that is it?”

“I will not even ask her that,” Kazzop said. “If she follows it, she will lie. In any case, the Deutsche have exterminated most of their Jews by now. More likely she is a smuggler or other criminal-but she would be unlikely to admit anything of that sort, either.”

“I wonder if she smuggles ginger.” Felless spoke in musing tones, so musing that Kazzop sent her a sharp look. She wished she’d kept quiet. Sure enough, her reputation had preceded her to Marseille.

The Big Ugly female spoke again, this time without waiting for anyone to speak to her. “She is angry that we have something grand to give her that she cannot take,” Kazzop said. “She wants to know if we can substitute the cash value for the house.”

“This is your project,” Felless said. “Were it mine, though, I would tell her no.”

“I intend to,” Kazzop said. “Doing anything else would exceed my budget.” He paused, then stuck out his tongue to show he’d had an idea. “I will offer her a second prize instead.” He spoke in the language of the Francais. The Tosevite female replied with considerable warmth.

“What does she say?” Felless asked.

“That we are cheats, but that she has no choice but to let herself be cheated,” Kazzop said. “She accepts with bitterness and anger.”

Felless felt a certain sympathy toward the female. That was the way she’d gone to work in Nuremberg after disgracing herself. She handed the Big Ugly the sheaf of printed papers that passed for currency in the Greater German Reich. The Tosevite stuffed them into her carrying pouch and hurried away.

Kazzop sighed. “That was not what I expected, but the unexpected also offers valuable insights.”

“Truth,” Felless said.

A little scaly devil came up to Liu Han’s hut in the prison camp and spoke to her in bad Chinese: “You come. Now.”

For the most part, the little devils had ignored her since capturing her in the village not far from Peking. She wished they would have gone on ignoring her. Since they hadn’t, she sighed and got to her feet. “It shall be done,” she said.

“Where are you taking her?” Liu Mei asked from atop the kang, on which she huddled to get a little warmth.

“Not for you to know.” The scaly devil spoke in Chinese, even though she’d used his language. He gestured with his rifle at Liu Han. “You come.”

“I am coming,” she said wearily. “Where are you taking me?”

“You come, you see.” The scaly devil jerked the business end of his rifle again. Liu Han sighed and left the hut.

Even though she was wearing a quilted cotton jacket, the cold the kang held at bay smote with full force when she went outside. The little scaly devil let out an unhappy hiss; he liked the winter weather even less than she did. Old, dirty snow crunched under her feet-and under his. He plainly wanted to skitter ahead. To annoy him, Liu Han walked as slowly as he would let her. Maybe he would get frostbitten or catch chest fever. She didn’t know if little scaly devils could catch chest fever, but she hoped so.

The camp was depressingly large. The scaly devils were doing their best to hold China down. Some of the people they’d scooped up were Communists like Liu Han, others Kuomintang reactionaries, still others men and women of no particular party whom they’d seized more or less at random. They didn’t even try to keep the Communists and Kuomintang followers from one another’s throats-their theory seemed to be that, if the humans quarreled among themselves, they wouldn’t have to do so much work. Partly because of that, the Party and the Kuomintang did their best to keep a truce going.

“Here. This building.” The scaly devil pointed again, this time not with his rifle but with his tongue. The building toward which he directed Liu Han stood near the prison camp’s razor-wire perimeter. It was not the building where most interrogations were conducted; that one lay closer to the center of the camp. Some of the interrogators were the little devils’ human running dogs; that building had an attached infirmary and a sinister reputation.

Liu Han had been there a couple of times. No one had done anything too dreadful to her, but she was relieved to be going somewhere else. Even though this building had machine guns mounted on it, she thought it was only an administrative center. She’d never heard of anyone being tortured there.

When she went inside, she opened her jacket and then took it off; the place was heated to the scaly devils’ standard of comfort, which meant she’d gone from winter to hottest summer in a couple of steps. The scaly devil who’d fetched her from her hut sighed with pleasure.

Another little devil took charge of her. “You are the Tosevite Liu Han?” he asked in his own language, knowing she could use it.

“Yes, superior sir,” she answered.

“Good. You will come with me,” he said. Liu Han did, to a chamber that contained nothing but a stool, a television camera, and a monitor; another scaly devil looked out of the monitor, presumably seeing her televised image. “You may sit on the stool,” her guide told her. The little devil with the rifle positioned himself in the doorway to make sure she didn’t do anything else. Her guide folded himself into the posture of respect before the little devil in the monitor, saying, “Here is the Tosevite female called Liu Han, Senior Researcher.”

“Yes, I see her,” that little devil replied. He raised his eye turrets, so that he seemed to look right at Liu Han. When he spoke again, it was in halting Chinese: “You remember me, Liu Han?”

“I’m sorry, but I don’t,” she replied in the same language. As far as she was concerned, one little scaly devil looked very much like another.

He shrugged just as if he were a person and returned to his own tongue: “I would not have recognized you, either, but we spent a lot of time making each other unhappy during the fighting. My name is Ttomalss.”

“I greet you,” she said, not wanting to acknowledge the pang of fear that ran through her. “The advantage is yours now. I did not kill you when I had the chance.” That was as close as she would come to begging for mercy. She bit down on the inside of her lower lip. She hoped that was as close as she would come to begging for mercy. If Ttomalss wanted vengeance for being captured and imprisoned and threatened, what could she do to stop him?

At the moment, he seemed mild enough. He asked, “Is your hatchling-Liu Mei was the name you gave her, not so? — well?”

“Yes,” Liu Han answered. Then she returned to Chinese for a sentence she couldn’t say in the scaly devils’ language: “She never did learn how to smile, though. You had her too long for that.”

“I suppose I did,” Ttomalss said. “I encountered this same problem with a Tosevite hatching I succeeded in raising after you released me. I believe it lacks a solution, at least for Tosevites raised by the Race. Our faces are not mobile enough to give your hatchlings the cues they need to form expressions.”

“So you did finally manage to steal another Tosevite hatchling?” Liu Han said. “Too bad. I had hoped I frightened you enough when I captured you to keep you from trying that again. Somewhere, a Tosevite female mourns, as I mourned when you took Liu Mei away from me.”

“The Race needs to conduct this research,” Ttomalss said. “We must learn how Tosevites and the Race can get along. We must learn what Tosevites raised as citizens of the Empire are like. I know you disapprove, but the work is important to us-and to everyone on Tosev 3.”

“How would you like it if some of us stole your hatchlings from you and tried to raise them as Tosevites?” Liu Han asked. “That is what you have done to us.”

“You could never do such a thing,” Ttomalss told her. “You would never do such a thing. A project like the one I have undertaken requires far more patience than the usual Big Ugly has in him.”

Liu Han wanted to set up a project to steal eggs from the little scaly devils and raise the chicks-or whatever one called newly hatched little devils-as if they were human beings. She had no idea how to go about it, and the little devils had learned a good deal about security since their early days in China, so she couldn’t get in touch with anyone outside the prison camp anyhow. But the urge to take Ttomalss down a peg burned in her anyhow. As things were, she could only say, “I think you are mistaken.”

“I do not,” Ttomalss said calmly. Liu Han glared at him. Despite what she’d done to him years before, he had the little devils’ arrogance in full measure.

Still, things could have been worse. As long as he was talking with her about hatchlings, he wasn’t interrogating her about the Party. Of themselves, the scaly devils did not go in for painful questioning, but now they had Chinese stooges who did. If they gave her to them…

“When I first studied you, I did not think you would rise to become a power in the resistance against the Race hereabouts,” Ttomalss said. “Your goals are not admirable, but you have shown great strength of character in trying to achieve them.”

“I think freedom is admirable,” Liu Han said. “If you do not, that is your misfortune, not mine.”

“There is only one proper place for all the subregions of this planet: under the administration of the Race,” Ttomalss said. “In the course of time, those subregions will take their proper place.”

“Freedom is good for the Race, but not for the Big Uglies,” Liu Han jeered. “That is what you are saying.”

But Ttomalss made the negative hand gesture. “You misunderstand. You Tosevites always misunderstand. When the conquest is complete, Tosev 3 will be as free as Home, as free as Rabotev 2, as free as Halless 1. You will be contented subjects of the Emperor, as we are.” He swung his eye turrets down toward the surface of the desk at which he sat, a gesture of respect for the ruler among the little scaly devils.

“I take it back,” Liu Han said. “You do not think freedom is good for anyone, even your own kind.”

“Too much freedom is not good for anyone,” Ttomalss said. “Even your own faction would agree with that, seeing how it punishes Tosevites who disagree with it in any way.”

“This is a revolutionary situation,” Liu Han said. “The Communist Party is at war with you. Of course we have to weed out traitors.”

Ttomalss let his mouth fall open: he was laughing at her. “I do not believe you. I do not even think you believe yourself. Your faction rules the not-empire called the SSSR, and kills off members regardless of whether they show allegiance to any other power or not.”

“You do not understand,” Liu Han said, but Ttomalss understood too well. He was, Liu Han recalled, a student of the human race in his own fashion. Liu Han had seen purges were sometimes necessary, not only to get rid of traitors but also to keep up the energy, enthusiasm, and alertness of people who didn’t get purged.

“Do I not?” the little scaly devil said. “Perhaps you will enlighten me, then.” In his own language, he had a fine, sarcastic turn of phrase.

Nettled, Liu Han started to answer him in great detail. But she bit down on the words before they passed her lips. She had seen many years before that Ttomalss was a clever little devil. He wasn’t arguing abstracts with her here. He was trying to anger her, to make her say things before she thought about them. And he’d come within a hairsbreadth of succeeding.

What she did say after checking herself was, “I have nothing to tell you.”

“No? Too bad,” the little scaly devil said. “Shall we see whether you have anything to tell me after you watch your hatchling tormented in front of you? Your strong feelings for your blood kin can be a source of weakness for you, you see, as well as a source of strength. Or perhaps the hatchling should watch your interrogation. Which do you think would produce the better results?”

“I have nothing to tell you,” Liu Han repeated, though she had to force the words out through lips numb with fear. One of the things the little scaly devils had learned from mankind was frightfulness. Just after coming to China, they would never have made such a threat.

“And yet,” Ttomalss said in musing tones, “you did not physically torment me when I was in your power, though you could have done so. And, whether you believe me or not, I tried to do my best by your hatching: the best I could do, at any rate, given my limitations. Because of that, ordering the two of you subjected to torment would be unpleasant.”

A little scaly devil with a conscience? Liu Han would not have counted on finding such a bourgeois affectation among the scaly devils. But, having found it, she was more than willing to take advantage of it. “You are an honorable opponent,” she said, though what was honor but another bourgeois affectation?

“I wish I could say the same of your faction,” Ttomalss replied. “Since acquiring a hatchling to raise, I have not been involved with affairs in this subregion, you will understand, but I did review the record before making arrangements for this interview. Assassinations, sabotage…”

“They are the weapons of the weak against the strong,” Liu Han said. “The Race is strong. If we had landcruisers and explosive-metal bombs, we would use them instead-believe me, we would.”

“Oh, I do believe you,” Ttomalss said. “You need have no doubt about that. The question now remaining is how to make sure you and your hatchling and your male companion can do the Race no further harm.”

No matter how hot the chamber was, a chill ran through Liu Han. She knew what the Party would do under such circumstances. Liquidation was the word that sprang to mind. The little scaly devils had not been in the habit of executing their opponents, but they grew more ruthless as time went by. That was the dialectic in action, too, though not in a way that worked to Liu Han’s advantage. She stood mute, waiting to hear her fate.

In the end, she didn’t. Ttomalss said, “Those who administer the subregion will make the decision there. They can take their time; no point in haste as long as you are securely confined. If I am asked for my input, I will tell them that you could have done worse to me than you did.”

“Thank you for that much,” Liu Han said. Instead of answering, Ttomalss broke the connection; the screen Liu Han was facing went dark. Her hopes were dark, too. The guard gestured with his rifle. She pulled on her jacket once more as she followed him out of the building. It would be cold out there in the camp. She wondered if she would spend the rest of her life behind razor wire.

“Find Polaris,” Sam Yeager muttered, peering into the northern sky. When he did find the North Star, he aimed the polar axis of the, little refractor Barbara had bought him for Christmas toward it. That would let the equatorial mount follow the stars with only one slow-motion control.

Loosening the tension screws on the right-ascension and declination axes, he swung the scope itself toward Jupiter, which glowed yellow-white in the southwestern sky. He sighted along the tube, then peered through the finder scope attached to it. When he spotted the planet in the finder’s field, he grunted in satisfaction and, fumbling a little in the dark, tightened the screws so the gears in the slow-motion controls would mesh. The knob for the right-ascension control was by the telescope’s focusing mechanism, that for the declination control on a flexible cable. Using them both, he brought Jupiter to the meeting point of the finder’s crosshairs. That done, he peered into the eyepiece of the main telescope-and there was Jupiter, fifty times life size.

He fiddled with the focus. He could see three of the four Galilean satellites, and could also see the cloud bands girdling the planet. He thought about switching to an eyepiece with a shorter focal length for a closer look, but decided not to bother. With only a 2.4-inch objective lens, he wouldn’t see that much more. He’d learned that light grasp was really more important than magnifying power.

Instead, he swung the scope toward Mars, a bloodred star in the east. When he found it, it looked like a tiny copper coin-only about a third as wide as Jupiter-in the low-power eyepiece. Now he did choose the 6mm orthoscopic instead of the 18mm Kellner-he wanted to see everything he possibly could. Mars got bigger and brighter day by day. It was nearing opposition, when it would be closest to Earth and best suited for observing.

Even at 150 power, he couldn’t see much: the bright polar cap, and a dark patch on the red he thought was Syrtis Major. He couldn’t see the craters that pocked the planet’s surface. They weren’t beyond just the reach of his little amateur’s instrument; no Earth-based telescope could make them out.

He chuckled under his breath. “No canals, either. No thoats. No four-armed green men swinging swords. No nothing.” The Lizards thought hysterically funny the Mars that people like Percival Lowell and Edgar Rice Burroughs had imagined. So did Yeager-now. When he was a kid, though, he’d devoured Burroughs’ tales of Barsoom.

After he’d looked at Mars long enough to suit him, he turned on a flashlight whose plastic bulb cover he’d painted red with Barbara’s nail polish-red light didn’t hurt night vision. He chuckled again, thinking of all the things he’d learned in the couple of months since he’d got the scope for a present.

“Who would have thought I’d’ve found myself a hobby at my age?” he said. He’d bought himself a Norton’s Star Atlas to find out what he could see now that he had the telescope. He ran his finger down the listing of double stars. “Gamma Leonis,” he muttered, and then nodded. The star was bright enough to be easy to spot-not very far from Mars at the moment, in fact-and its components were far enough apart for his little refractor to be able to split them.

A couple of minutes later, he softly clapped his hands together. There they were, the brighter of the pair golden, the somewhat dimmer companion a dull red. A handsome one, he thought. Taking a pen from his breast pocket, he put a check by ?Leonis in the Norton’s. Little by little, he was learning the Greek alphabet, one more thing he’d never thought he’d do.

That bright, moving light in the northern sky was a plane coming in for a landing at Los Angeles International Airport. Airplane lights coming straight at him had once tricked him into thinking he’d discovered a couple of supernovas. He knew better now.

He glanced toward the back of the house. The room Mickey and Donald used was quiet and dark; they’d gone to sleep. Jonathan was still up studying. He had had the courtesy to pull down the shade. That golden glow didn’t bother Sam’s night vision much, where raw light from the overhead lamp would have.

Yeager sighed. He’d hoped Jonathan might get interested in astronomy, too, but no such luck. Oh, the kid had come out and peered through the telescope a couple of times, but what he saw didn’t excite him. Sam could tell. When Jonathan thought of heavenly bodies, he didn’t think of Jupiter or Gamma Leonis-he thought of Karen, or possibly Kassquit.

I was like that myself once upon a time, Sam thought. He remembered some of the cheap sporting houses he’d visited in his minor-league days-cheap because a guy in the bush leagues couldn’t afford any better and because a lot of the towns he went through didn’t boast any better. If he ever found out Jonathan was doing anything along those lines, he’d tan the kid’s hide for him. He recognized his own hypocrisy, and didn’t feel like doing anything about it. Do as I say, not as I do.

He clicked on the red light again to check what other double stars he could look for as long as he was out here. N Hydrae-a pair of stars of just about sixth magnitude, separated by a bit more than nine seconds of arc-was easily within the capacity of his telescope. He swung it south from Leo.

Splitting N Hydrae wouldn’t particularly challenge the scope. Finding it, though, would challenge him. Together, its stars added up to one fifth-magnitude object. In other words, it was invisible to the naked eye in the streetlight-saturated sky of Los Angeles. He would have to find a brighter nearby star he could see and then either starhop with the finder or use his setting circles to bring N Hydrae into view.

He decided to starhop; setting circles still seemed like black magic to him. Taking the telescope out to the middle of the back yard so he could see over the eucalyptus tree next door that helped spoil the view to the southeast, he realigned the polar axis on Polaris, then found the battered rectangle of stars that formed the main part of the constellation Corvus, and then went south and east from the Crow toward his target, checking his path with the star atlas each step of the way.

And there, by God, was the star that had to be N Hydrae. He turned off the flashlight and worked the slow-motion controls to center it on the finder’s crosshairs. He’d just turned away from the finder and bent his head toward the main telescope’s eyepiece when a noise from off to one side made him look up.

Someone was scrambling over the fence that separated Yeager’s yard from the one behind it. Sam straightened. He wished he had his . 45, but it was back in the house. The intruder-a man-dropped down into the yard and trotted toward the house.

He didn’t see Sam, who was partly screened by a lemon tree he’d planted a few years before. And, plainly, the intruder wasn’t looking for trouble. He came past the tree as if he had business to take care of and wanted to get it over with as fast as he could. Something that wasn’t a gun glistened in his right hand.

“Hello, there,” Yeager said. The other fellow stopped as dead as if he’d been turned to stone. Sam’s dark-adapted eyes had no trouble seeing how astonished he looked. Yeager didn’t waste more than an instant on his expression, though. He took advantage of the frozen surprise he’d created and jumped the intruder.

He got in a left to the face and a right to the belly that made the stranger double up. The other fellow tried to fight back after that, but never got the chance. One of the things the Army had taught Sam was that fighting fair wasted time and was liable to get you into trouble. As soon as he saw the opening, he kicked the intruder in the crotch.

The fellow let out a horrible shriek and dropped the thing he’d been holding. It was a bottle, and it smashed when it hit the grass. The stink of gasoline filled Yeager’s nostrils. “Christ!” he burst out. “That’s a fucking Molotov cocktail!”

Just winning the fight suddenly wasn’t enough any more. The intruder was down on the grass, writhing and clutching at himself. Sam kicked him again, this time in the face. He groaned and went limp.

“Jonathan!” Yeager shouted. He stood there in the back yard, his heart pounding. I’m too old for this, he thought. Mutt Daniels had said that when they went into combat against the Lizards. Sam was as old now as Mutt had been then. He understood how his ex-manager had felt. “Jonathan!” he yelled again.

A moment later, the back door opened. The porch light came on. “What’s up, Dad?” Jonathan asked.

Blinking against the glare, Sam pointed to the man he’d beaten. “This son of a bitch was going to try and burn our house down,” he said. Barbara would have wanted him to say try to burn. Right this second, he didn’t care what his wife would have wanted. “Don’t just stand there, goddammit. Throw me some twine so I can tie him, and then call the cops.”

“Right.” The porch light gleamed off Jonathan’s shaved scalp. He went back into the kitchen, found a ball of twine-good, solid stuff, not kite string-and threw it to Sam. Then he disappeared again. Yeager heard him talking on the phone and to Barbara. They both came out to see what was going on. By then, Sam had the intruder’s hands tied behind him and his ankles bound together.

The man’s eyes were open when the police got there. “Jesus Christ, Yeager,” a cop said, looking at the fragments of glass and sniffing the gasoline. “Somebody out there doesn’t like you much, does he?”

“Doesn’t look that way,” Sam answered. “Now that you’ve got this guy, maybe you can find out who.”

“Hope so,” the Gardena policeman said. “Let’s get him into proper handcuffs-gotta look right when we take him to the station, you know.”

“Okay by me,” Yeager said. “Give me a call when you know something, will you? I want to get to the bottom of this.” He shook his head. “I don’t know why anybody’d have it in for me, but somebody sure does.”

“Yeah.” While his partner covered him, the cop cut the twine with which Sam had bound the intruder and handcuffed him instead. Then he hauled him to his feet. “Come on, pal. We’ve got some talking to do.” He led him out to the squad car.

Yeager collapsed the legs to the telescope tripod and brought the instrument inside. “It’s a good thing you were out there,” Barbara said, shivering even though she was wearing a warm housecoat. “Otherwise…”

“Don’t remind me.” Sam stowed the scope on the service porch-the same spot Mickey and Donald’s incubator had once occupied. Then he poured himself a stiff belt of bourbon. After he’d downed it, he poured another one. That let him get some sleep.

When the Gardena police didn’t call him for two days, he called them. “Sorry, sir,” said the lieutenant to whom his call was passed. “I can only tell you two things. That fellow didn’t tell us anything much, but we didn’t have him long. The FBI took charge of him yesterday morning.”

“Did they?” Sam said. “Nobody tells me anything-they haven’t called me for a statement yet, either. Give me their number, will you?”

“Yes, sir,” the police lieutenant said. “It’s KLondike 5-3971.”

“Thanks.” Yeager wrote it down, hung up, and dialed it. When he got the Los Angeles FBI headquarters, he explained who he was and what he wanted to know.

“I’m sorry, sir.” The fellow on the other end of the line didn’t sound sorry; he sounded bored. “I’m not allowed to release any information on the phone. I’m sure you understand why.”

“Okay.” Sam suppressed a sigh. Bureaucrats, he thought. He’d complained about them to Kassquit. “If I come down there and show you who I am, will somebody please tell me what the hell’s going on?”

“I don’t know anything about that, sir,” the FBI man said, and hung up on him.

When Yeager drove downtown, he did it in full uniform, hoping to overawe the flunkies. That worked-to a point. He got kicked up to a senior inspector named O’Donohue. The Irishman looked him over, inspected his ID, and said, “All I can tell you, Lieutenant Colonel, is that we’ve flown this fellow to Little Rock for more questioning.”

“Christ,” Sam said. “Who the hell is he, anyway, and why won’t anybody tell me anything?”

“We’re still trying to find out, sir,” O’Donohue answered. “When we do, I’m sure you’ll be contacted?”

“Are you? I wish I were.” Yeager got to his feet. “All I see is that I’m getting the runaround, and I wish to hell I knew why.”

O’Donohue just looked at him and didn’t say a word. After perhaps half a minute, Yeager put on his hat and walked out. He wondered if anyone would call him. Nobody did.

“Would you believe,” Ttomalss said, “there are actually times when I wish I were a Big Ugly?”

In the monitor on his desk, Felless’ image drew back in surprise and alarm. “No, I would not believe that,” she said, and used an emphatic cough to show how strongly she disbelieved it. “By the Emperor, why would you entertain such a mad desire?”

“Because our society has trained us for many thousands of years to treat vengeance as undesirable,” he answered, “and because I wish I could enjoy taking my vengeance on the Tosevite female who kidnapped and imprisoned me during the fighting. Big Uglies still see nothing unfitting in revenge.”

“Ah,” Felless said. “That, at least, I can understand. What I would like is vengeance on the male from the conquest fleet who first discovered ginger.”

“And I can understand that,” Ttomalss said. “At least you finally managed to escape from Nuremberg.”

“This Marseille place is not much of an improvement,” Felless said with another emphatic cough. “And the Big Uglies here, I think, may be even more addled than those in Nuremberg. I even had one female refuse what would be a great reward for a Tosevite. Addled, I tell you.”

“Most likely a criminal, or someone else with a good reason not to stick her snout in the air,” Ttomalss said.

“It could be,” Felless said. “I had wondered about that myself. Having someone of your experience confirm it is valuable.”

“I thank you,” Ttomalss said. But he didn’t want to talk about things that concerned Felless; he wanted to go on with his own train of thought. “Revenge is not unknown among us, or else Shiplord Straha would not still be living the life of an exile in the not-empire called the United States. I doubt Fleetlord Atvar will ever forgive him.”

“I have heard something of this scandal,” Felless said. “Did Straha not try to raise a mutiny against the fleetlord?”

“Not exactly-he tried to relieve Atvar, but proved not to have quite enough support among the other fleetlords,” Ttomalss answered. “But Atvar would have punished him as if it were a mutiny. I, though, cannot escape the belief that such efforts at vengeance are wrong.”

“I have long been of the opinion that you males of the conquest fleet, from continual association with Big Uglies over so many years, have become more like them than is healthy,” Felless said.

“It could be so,” Ttomalss said. “The converse is that you of the colonization fleet sometimes seem to have no understanding whatever of the realities of life on Tosev 3 and the need for certain accommodations with the Tosevites.”

“We understand more than you think,” Felless replied. “But you of the conquest fleet do not seem to grasp the difference between understanding and approval. Approving of what goes on is in many cases impossible; we intend to change it.”

“Good luck,” Ttomalss said.

“And the continual sarcasm of the males of the conquest fleet is not appreciated, either,” Felless snapped. “I bid you farewell.” She broke the connection.

Ttomalss glared at the blank monitor screen. As far as he was concerned, Felless represented a good part of what had gone wrong with the colonization fleet. Finding he represented what she thought was wrong with the conquest fleet did nothing to increase his fondness for her.

He turned to more productive matters, calling up a recording of Kassquit’s meeting with the two Big Uglies from the United States. Neither the SSSR nor the Reich had requested similar meetings. Of course not, Ttomalss thought, annoyed at his own foolishness. They do not realize we have a Tosevite here reared as if she were part of the Race. Even the Big Ugly called Sam Yeager, who knew as much about the Race as any wild Tosevite, had discovered that only by listening to Kassquit’s speech.

But Sam Yeager interested Ttomalss less than Jonathan Yeager did. The expert’s hatchling might almost have come from the same egg as Kassquit. True, he wore Tosevite wrappings, but only of a minimal sort. He also wore body paint and removed most, though not all, of his unsightly hair. By the way he spoke, by the way he acted, he did not understand the Race quite so well as his father. But Jonathan Yeager was far more acculturated than Sam Yeager ever would be.

“And what will Jonathan Yeager’s hatchlings be like?” Ttomalss said, trusting the computer to record and transcribe his words. “What will their hatchlings be like? Little by little, the Tosevites will come to accept our culture and to prefer it to their own. This is the slow route to conquest, but it also strikes me as offering far more certainty and security than force, given the force the Big Uglies can use in return. The key will be making sure they never wish to use that force, and using cultural dominance to gain political dominance.”

He read the transcription of what he’d said, then made the affirmative gesture. Yes, that made excellent sense. He was proud of himself for thinking like a male of the Race, for remembering the importance of the long term.

And then, rereading his words, he was suddenly less pleased. The trouble was that, on Tosev 3, the short term had a way of making the long term obsolete. If the Big Uglies looked as if they were on the point of overtaking the Race technologically, the planet would go into the fire. It might go into the fire anyway, if the Deutsche or the other not-empires acted under the delusion they were stronger than they were. And the fire would swallow up the new, hopeful colonies, too. How to keep it from happening?

Slowing the Tosevites’ acquisition of technology would do the job. The only problem with that was its impossibility. The Big Uglies either came up with new inventions of their own or started using ideas pirated from the Race almost everyday. They were transforming their societies at a rate that struck Ttomalss as insanely rapid.

The only other choice he could see was making them not want to use whatever technology they ended up developing. That meant making them contented living side by side with the Race and, eventually, making them contented living under the rule of the Race. And that, he thought, meant encouraging them to produce more and more acculturated individuals like Jonathan Yeager.

Ttomalss didn’t suppose Sam Yeager’s hatchling gave reverence to the spirits of Emperors past. But maybe his hatchlings would, or their hatchlings. We have to find ways to encourage that, Ttomalss thought. The Race couldn’t use economic incentives in the independent not-empires, as it could in the territory it presently ruled. Cultural incentives?

“Cultural incentives.” Ttomalss spoke into the computer. “Up until now, we have observed young Tosevites imitating us. They have done this on their own, without encouragement from us. We might-we should-be able to encourage them. The more they are like us, the less interest they will have in assailing us.”

He hoped that was true. It struck him as logical. It was the basis on which he’d urged the authorities to promote reverence to the spirits of Emperors past in those areas the Race did rule. That had drawn more resistance than he’d expected, but everything on Tosev 3 proved more difficult than the Race expected.

When the telephone hissed for attention, he hissed, too, in annoyance-the noise had frightened a thought out of his head. Kassquit’s image appeared on the monitor. “I greet you, superior sir,” she said.

“I greet you, Kassquit,” he replied. “I hope you are well?”

“I am, thank you.” Kassquit touched one of her arms. “I am certainly better now that I am not being immunized. That was a distinctly unpleasant process.”

“Falling ill and possibly dying would have been even more unpleasant,” Ttomalss pointed out. “You were vulnerable to illnesses the visiting Yeagers might have brought with them.”

“I understand that. Understanding it and liking it are not the same.” Kassquit had become a far more sardonic adult than Ttomalss would have expected. She went on, “And the Yeagers appear to have brought no illness with them, for I have not fallen sick since their visit.”

“But you do not know whether you would have fallen sick had you not been immunized,” Ttomalss said.

He gave Kassquit credit; after a moment’s thought, his Tosevite ward used the affirmative gesture. She said, “No doubt you are right, superior sir. Still, now that I have proved I can safely meet them, would it be possible for them to come up here again?”

“Possible? Certainly, though we would have to make arrangements for their transport with the American Tosevites.”

“I know that.” Kassquit used the affirmative gesture again. “I hope you will begin making those arrangements, whatever they are.”

“Very well,” Ttomalss said, not without a certain pang. “May I ask why you are so eager for me to do this?” He tried not to show the worry he could hardly help feeling. Did blood call to blood more strongly than he had imagined possible? Did Kassquit wish she were an ordinary Big Ugly? On the face of it, the notion was absurd. But judging anything pertaining to Tosevites by first appearances could be deadly dangerous. The Race had learned that time and again.

Kassquit said, “Their visit will be something out of the ordinary. One day here is very much like another. This will give me something new to remember, something new to think about.”

“I see,” Ttomalss said, and Kassquit’s explanation was sensible enough. It also relieved his mind. “All right, I will see what I can do. You understand, of course, that I cannot do this without approval from my superiors.”

“Oh, yes, superior sir, that goes without saying,” Kassquit agreed. “And perhaps, if this second meeting proves a success, I might eventually visit these Big Uglies down on the surface of Tosev 3. That would truly be an adventure for me.”

“Would you like to do that?” Now Kassquit knew he sounded alarmed. He couldn’t help himself. Day by day, Kassquit became a more autonomous individual. Ttomalss supposed that was inevitable; it happened with hatchlings of the Race, too. But watching it happen was acutely disconcerting.

“I would,” Kassquit said with an emphatic cough. “I have been thinking about this. How can I be a bridge between the Empire and the independent Big Uglies if I do not reach to them as they reach to me?”

“Up until now, they have done the accommodating,” Ttomalss reminded her. “If you went down there, you would have to do some of your own. They would probably require you to wear cloth wrappings, for instance, to conform to their customs.”

“That would also be something new for me,” Kassquit said, sounding as enamored of novelty as any American Big Ugly. She added, “And wrappings would help keep me warm, would they not? The surface of Tosev 3 is supposed to be a chilly place.”

“You have all the answers, I see,” Ttomalss said wryly. “Let us discover how a second meeting goes before planning a third, if that suits you.” To his relief, Kassquit didn’t argue.

Nesseref was very pleased with how smoothly she’d brought her shuttlecraft out of its suborbital trajectory; it took much less atmospheric buffeting than usual on the way down toward the port outside Cairo. As the braking rockets ignited, she was thinking about how she could enjoy the layover at the Race’s administrative center. From what she remembered of the transient barracks, she might have trouble enjoying it at all.

Her passenger, a regional subadministrator from China named Ppevel, was looking forward to the arrival. “By the spirits of Emperors past,” he said, “it will be good to come to a place where the climate is close to decent. I have been cold for what seems like forever.”

“So have I, superior sir,” Nesseref replied. “Poland in winter reminds me of nothing so much as an enormous open-air freezer.”

Ppevel started insisting China had to be colder. Before Nesseref could argue with him-and she intended to, because she had trouble imagining any place colder than Poland-a puff of black smoke and a loud bang outside the shuttlecraft distracted her. Another puff and bang, closer, were followed by metallic clatters as shell fragments struck the shuttlecraft. A warning light on the instrument panel came on.

“What is that noise?” Ppevel asked.

Ignoring him, Nesseref shouted into the radio microphone: “Cairo base! Cairo base! We are under attack, Cairo base!” She felt like a perfect target hanging up there, too; she couldn’t interrupt the computer-controlled descent sequence, not unless she wanted to try to land manually, by eye turret and by guess. She wondered if she ought to. She might pilot the shuttlecraft right into the ground. But she might also make it harder to shoot down.

Before she could hit the override switch, a voice came out of the radio speaker: “Shuttlecraft Pilot, we have the Tosevite terrorists under assault. Maintain your present trajectory.”

“It shall be done,” Nesseref said as another shell burst all too close to the shuttlecraft. More fragments struck the machine. Another hit like that and I disobey orders, she thought.

But only one more antiaircraft shell exploded, this one farther away. The descent after that went as well as if no one had been shooting at her. She spied helicopters racing toward the spot from which, she presumed, the antiaircraft gun was firing.

Ppevel said, “I have also been under fire in China. The more often one endures it, the easier it is to bear.”

“I have been under fire, too,” Nesseref answered. “I do not think I will ever come to enjoy it.”

She-and the computer-put the shuttlecraft down in the middle of the landing port. A vehicle hurried across the wide concrete expanse to meet the shuttlecraft. It was not the usual motorcar, but a mechanized combat vehicle. “The Big Uglies will have to work hard to destroy that machine,” Ppevel observed.

“Truth,” Nesseref said. But seeing the combat vehicle did not reassure her. If the Race sent it out to bring Ppevel-and, incidentally, herself-into Cairo, that meant there was some risk to them both.

“I thank you for a job well done,” the regional subadministrator told her.

“You are welcome, superior sir.” Nesseref didn’t say the computer had done the work, with her along as little more than an organic emergency backup. She’d almost had to take over the controls of the shuttlecraft-this was as close as she’d ever come to doing just that. Had her luck been a little worse… but she didn’t care to think about that. “If you like, I will go first, and attract whatever gunfire may be waiting for us.”

“That will not be necessary, though I do appreciate the thought behind it,” Ppevel said. He unstrapped himself and went down the ladder with easy haste that showed he’d flown in a good many shuttlecraft before. No one shot at him; the helicopters now buzzing around the port must have suppressed that Tosevite gun.

Nesseref followed him out of the shuttlecraft. A male in helmet and body armor said, “Into the vehicle! Do not waste time.”

“I was not wasting time,” Nesseref said indignantly. “Make sure this shuttlecraft is well repaired. It took damage from the shells that exploded nearby. Had they cut a fuel or oxygen line, the craft-and my passenger, and I-would be scattered all over this port.”

“It shall be done, superior female?” The trooper lowered his voice as he went on, “Would you like a taste of ginger? That would make you feel better.”

“No!” Nesseref used an emphatic cough. “If I had a taste of ginger, you would feel better, which is what you have in mind.”

“Pheromones are in the air,” the male admitted, “but I did not mean it like that.”

“Of course you did,” Nesseref told him. “If you do not mention the herb again, I will not have to learn your name and report you.” She pushed past the male and into the mechanized combat vehicle. Glumly, he followed. She repeated her warning about the damage the shuttlecraft had taken to the driver, who relayed it by radio to the ground crew males and females at the shuttlecraft port. Nesseref relaxed a little after hearing him do that.

A couple of-rocks and a glass bottle hit the combat vehicle as it rolled through the insanely crowded streets of Cairo. Ppevel took that in stride. “The same thing happens in China.”

“Well, it does not happen in cities in Poland,” Nesseref said. “The Big Uglies there are much better behaved. Why, I even invited one of them and his hatchling to supper at my apartment, and the evening proved quite pleasant.”

“I have heard about Poland,” Ppevel answered. “I must say I believe it to be a special case. The Big Uglies in that subregion find their Tosevite neighbors more unpleasant than they find us, and so look to us to protect them against those neighbors. That does not hold true either in China or here. I wish it did. It would make our rule much easier.”

Remembering conversations with veteran administrators in Poland, Nesseref realized she had to yield the point, and did: “You are probably right, superior sir.”

Right or wrong, Ppevel got better accommodations than she did. The mechanized combat vehicle took him to the Race’s administrative center, which had been a luxurious Tosevite hotel before the conquest fleet arrived and had since been thoroughly modernized. After he went inside, the vehicle took Nesseref to the barracks for visiting males and females, some little distance away.

“You will be quartered in the hall to the left, the females’ hall,” the officer in charge of the barracks said, pointing with his tongue.

“Barracks separated by sex?” Nesseref exclaimed. “I never heard of such a thing.”

“You will hear more of it in the future, superior female,” the officer said. “Because of the Tosevite herb, we have had enough unfortunate incidents to reckon such segregation the wiser policy.”

Nesseref thought about that. If a female who tasted ginger was liable to come into season at any time, and if a male inflamed by some other female’s pheromones was liable to give a female ginger to provoke mating behavior in her… Nesseref made the affirmative gesture. “I see the need.”

The barracks were as depressing as such places usually were. None of the females with whom she spoke knew anyone she knew. None of them was from the same region of Home as she was. Most of them appeared more interested in watching the video on a large wall monitor than in any sort of conversation.

One who did feel like talking had a definite goal in mind: “Do you have any ginger?” she asked Nesseref.

“I do not,” Nesseref answered sharply. “I do not want any, either. Ginger is more trouble than it is worth.”

“Nonsense,” the other female said, and tacked on an emphatic cough. “Ginger is the only thing that makes this miserable, accursed planet worth inhabiting. Without it, I would just as soon have stayed in cold sleep.”

“I think your wits did stay in cold sleep,” Nesseref said. “How much trouble have you caused by broadcasting your pheromones far and wide? How many clutches of eggs have you laid because of the nasty herb?”

“Only one,” the female said, sounding altogether unconcerned. “And I placed no burden whatever on the Race in doing so.”

“Of course you did,” Nesseref told her. “Someone is now raising the hatchlings who came from those eggs.”

“No one from the Race.” The other female remained blithe. “As soon as I laid my clutch, I sold the eggs to some Big Uglies who wanted them. Those hatchlings are their worry, not the Race’s.”

“You did what?” Nesseref could imagine depravity, but such utter indifference was beyond her comprehension. “By the Emperor, what would Tosevites do with hatchlings? What would they do to hatchlings?”

“I do not know, and I do not much care,” the other female said. “I do know that I got enough ginger for the eggs to keep me happy for a long time. But now I have gone through it all, and I wish I had some more.”

“Disgraceful,” Nesseref said. “I ought to report you to the authorities.”

“Go ahead,” the female said. “Go right ahead. I will deny everything. How do you propose to prove any of this whatsoever?”

Nesseref had no good answer for that, however much she wanted one. She turned both eye turrets away from the other female, as if denying her the right to exist. The direct insult did what she wanted; the other female’s toeclaws clicked on the hard floor as she went away. The almost equally hard cot on which Nesseref slept wasn’t the only reason she passed a restless, uncomfortable night.

She had an uncomfortable flight back to Poland, too. She’d expected the local Big Uglies to stone the vehicle that took her to the airfield, and they did. Had that been all, she would have accepted it as an ordinary nuisance and thought little more about it. But it wasn’t all-far from it.

As soon as her aircraft entered the Reich’s air space, a Deutsch killercraft met it and kept pace with it, so close that Nesseref could seethe Big Ugly in the cockpit of the lean, deadly looking machine. Had he chosen to launch missiles or use his cannon, he could have shot down the aircraft in which she flew as easily as he pleased.

He didn’t. When the aircraft left the Reich and flew into Polish air space, the Deutsch Tosevite peeled off and went back to one of his own airbases. But even the Deutsche had not offered such provocations for a long time. Nesseref was very happy indeed when her machine rolled to a stop outside of Warsaw and she got off.

Living in Lodz, not far from the eastern border of the Greater German Reich, meant Mordechai Anielewicz could receive German television programming. Speaking Yiddish, and having studied German in school, he understood the language well enough. That didn’t mean he turned his receiver to the channels coming from the Reich very often. Football games were worth watching; the Germans and the nations subject to them fielded some fine clubs. But the interminable Nazi propaganda shows ranged from boring to savagely offensive.

Since Himmler’s death, though, Mordechai had started paying more attention to German propaganda. He’d never imagined he would miss the SS chief and Fuhrer who’d done the Jews so much harm. With something approaching horror, he realized he did. Himmler had been a known quantity-a known mamzer much of the time, certainly, but not someone who was likely to go off half-cocked. The Committee of Eight, on the other hand…

“Look at this!” Anielewicz exclaimed. His wife came over to the sofa in front of the television and dutifully looked. Mordechai pointed at the clumsy-looking panzers with crosses painted on them rolling across the screen. “Do you see what they’re doing, Bertha?”

“Looks like another war film to me,” she answered with a yawn. “May I go back and finish the dishes now?”

“Well, it is.” Anielewicz clicked his tongue between his teeth. “But I don’t like it when they start showing films about invading Poland. It’s liable to mean they’re gearing up to try it again.”

“They wouldn’t!” Bertha said. “They have to know they’ll get smashed if they try.”

“If they’ve got any sense, they have to know that,” Mordechai answered. “But who says they’ve got any sense? When they start going on about provocations and insults, what are they doing but getting their people ready for trouble? That’s what they did in 1939, after all.”

On the screen, the German panzers mowed down charging Polish lancers wearing square hats. Bertha said, “It won’t be that easy this time, if they’re meshuggeh enough to try again.”

“You know that. I know that. I think even Himmler knew that,” Anielewicz said. “From what I’ve heard, the Lizards warned him off not so long ago, and he listened to them. But these fools?” He shook his head.

“What can we do?” Bertha asked.

That was more easily asked than answered. “I don’t know,” Mordechai said unhappily. “I know what I’d like to do-I’d like to put Jewish fighters on alert, and I’d like to get in touch with the Poles, too, so I know they’ll be ready to move in case the Nazis really do intend to go after us here.”

“Will the Poles listen to you?” his wife asked.

Anielewicz shrugged. “I don’t know that, either. As far as they’re concerned, what am I? Just a damned Jew, that’s all. But they certainly won’t listen to me if I don’t get in touch with them.” His smile looked cheerful, but wasn’t. “Gottenyu, I don’t even know if the Jews in Warsaw will pay any attention to me. As far as they’re concerned, Poland is Warsaw, and the rest of the country can geh in drerd.”

“But you came from Warsaw!” Bertha’s voice quivered with indignation.

“I’ve been away a long time-plenty long enough for them to forget where I came from,” Mordechai replied. His laugh didn’t sound amused, either. “Of course, with some of those people you can walk around the corner for a loaf of bread and they’ll forget about you by the time you get back.”

“Ingrates, that’s what they are?” Bertha made a wife as loyal as any man could want. She was also a long way from a fool, asking, “Do you suppose they’ve forgotten about the explosive-metal bomb?”

“No, they’ll remember that,” Mordechai admitted. “I’m the one who wishes he could forget about it.” He went into the kitchen and came back with a couple of glasses of slivovitz. Sipping from one, he handed Bertha the other. “I don’t know if it will work, and God forbid I should ever have to find out.”

“If you do, it won’t be the only explosive-metal bomb going off, will it?” Bertha asked. When Anielewicz shook his head, she knocked back her plum brandy like a farm laborer. She said, “That won’t be all that happens, either.”

“Oh, no. Poison gas and panzers and who can say what all else?” Anielewicz poured down his brandy, too. “The other thing I’d better do is, I’d better talk with Bunim. I’m about as happy with that as I am with a trip to the dentist, and that Lizard loves me every bit as much as I love him. But if we’re going to fight on the same side, we’d better have some notion of what we’ll be trying to do.”

“That makes good sense.” His wife’s mouth twisted. “Of course, if the whole world goes mad, whether or not anything makes sense stops mattering very much, doesn’t it?”

Before Mordechai could answer her, the telephone rang. He walked over to the shabby end table on which it sat and picked it up. Everything in the flat was shabby: other people’s hand-me-downs, charity after the arson fire that had forced the Anielewiczes from the building where they’d lived so long. “Hello?” he said, and then spent the next ten minutes in intense conversation, some in Yiddish, some in Polish.

When he hung up, his wife asked, “Was that Warsaw? Have they decided they need to worry about the Reich after all?”

He shook his head in some bemusement. “No. You would have thought so from the way I was talking, wouldn’t you? That was the Armia Krajowa, the Polish Home Army. They want to cooperate with us, even if the learned fellows back in Warsaw haven’t figured out there’s anybody to cooperate against.”

“The Poles want to cooperate with us?” Bertha sounded astonished. Mordechai didn’t blame her; he was astonished himself. Her gaze sharpened. “You’d better go see Bunim-do it first thing tomorrow morning, too. If you don’t get there ahead of the Home Army, who knows how much mischief the Poles may be able to stir up?”

“You’re right,” Mordechai said at once. “You always were the best politician we ever had in Lodz.”

“Feh!” Bertha tossed her head, a most dismissive gesture. “You don’t need to be a politician to see this. As long as you’re not blind, it’s there.”

With tea warm inside him, with his greatcoat pulled tight around him, Anielewicz strode through snow-clogged streets to the Race’s administrative offices overlooking the Bialut Market Square. As soon as the Lizards let him in, he shed the coat, folded it, and carried it over his arm: the Race kept their buildings heated not only to but past the point humans found pleasantly warm.

That Bunim was willing to see him with essentially no advance notice told him the Lizards were worried about the Greater German Reich, too. “I greet you, Regional Subadministrator,” Mordechai said in the language of the Race.

“Good day,” Bunim answered in fair Polish. The human language he spoke best was German. Neither he nor Anielewicz seemed to want to use it now. Having politely used a human language, the Lizard went back to his own: “And what is it you want to see me about?”

“What do you suppose?” Mordechai answered. “The increasing threat from the Reich, of course. Do you not agree that we will be better off if we prepare joint action well in advance of any certain need?”

More often than not, Bunim looked down his snout at the idea of cooperating with humans. Now, though, he said only, “Yes, that might be wise. What sort of notions do you have for unifying your forces, those of the Armia Krajowa, and our own to withstand whatever attacks may come from the west and south?”

Mordechai Anielewicz stared at him. “You do take these threats seriously,” he blurted.

“Yes,” Bunim said, and underscored that with an emphatic cough. “You know as well as I that the Deutsche can destroy this region. We cannot prevent it. We can only make it unpleasantly expensive.”

“You are blunt about it,” Mordechai said.

“Truth is what truth is,” the regional subadministrator answered. “We do not change it by turning our eye turrets away from it. Tosevites sometimes seem to have trouble understanding this. The Deutsche, for example, see that they can overrun and wreck Poland. They refuse to see the price they will pay for doing so. If you have any suggestions for getting the point across to them, I would be grateful.”

“I am the wrong Tosevite to ask, I fear,” Anielewicz said. “As you know, the only thing that would delight the Deutsche is my death. I do not know how to dissuade them, or if anyone or anything can dissuade them. What I wanted to plan with you was how best to fight them.”

“I understand,” Bunim said. “Talks are also ongoing with your colleagues in Warsaw, and with the various Polish Tosevite factions. Had you not come to me, I would have called you in a few days.”

“Would you?” That surprised Anielewicz, too. “After all the time you have spent saying that Big Uglies have no place in the defense of Poland?”

Bunim made the affirmative gesture. “You too are a leader, Mordechai Anielewicz. Have you never had to hold a position with which you did not personally agree? Have circumstances never forced you to change a position?”

“Many times,” Mordechai admitted. “But I did not think it would also be so for the Race.”

“Strange things hatch from strange eggs,” Bunim said, which sounded as if it ought to be a proverb among the Race, something on the order of, Politics make strange bedfellows. The regional subadministrator went on, “If you can bring the forces under your control to full alert, I will be in touch with you on ways in which we can integrate them into the defense of this region. Is it agreed?”

“It is agreed,” Anielewicz said, but then he held up a forefinger. “It is agreed, with the exception of our explosive-metal bomb. That stays under our control, no one else’s.”

“As you wish,” Bunim said, which, more than anything else, told Mordechai how worried the Lizards were. “If you have this weapon, I trust you will use it against the Deutsche, who are your most important foes. I bid you good day.”

“Good day,” Mordechai said, accepting the dismissal more meekly than he’d dreamt he would. Still almost dazed, he went outside. A nondescript little man fell into step beside him. Somehow, that left him unsurprised, too. He nodded, almost as if to an old friend. “Hello, Nussboym. What brings you back to Lodz?”

“Trouble with the Nazis-what else?” David Nussboym answered, his Yiddish flavored these days by all the years he’d spent in the Soviet Union. He looked up at Mordechai, who was perhaps ten centimeters taller. “And I’m not so sorry as I was that we didn’t quite manage to knock you off, either.”

“That you-?” Anielewicz stopped in his tracks. “I ought to-”

“But you won’t,” Nussboym said. “You know damned well you won’t. We’ve got the Germans to worry about first, right?” The worst of it was, Mordechai had to nod.