Down to Earth

17

Mordechai Anielewicz had just sat down to supper when air-raid sirens began to wail in the streets of Lodz. Bertha exclaimed in dismay and set the roast chicken she was bringing in from the kitchen down on the table. Mordechai sprang to his feet. “Grab your masks, everyone!” he said. “Then down to the cellar as fast as we can go.”

His own gas mask was right behind him. He pulled it on, wondering how much good it would do. He’d already made the acquaintance of German poison gas once. He’d been lucky then; Heinrich Jager had had syringes of the antidote. Even so, he’d almost died. A second exposure… He didn’t want to think about it.

Bertha had her mask on. So did Miriam and David. Heinrich… Where was Heinrich? Anielewicz shouted his younger son’s name.

“I’ve got my mask, Father!” Heinrich Anielewicz shouted back from the bedroom. “But I can’t find Pancer!”

“Leave the beffel!” Mordechai exclaimed. “We’ve got to get down to the cellar!”

“I can’t leave him,” Heinrich said. “Oh-here he is, under the bed. I’ve got him.” He came out with the beffel in his arms. “All right-we can go now.”

The sirens were shrieking like lost souls. Mordechai whacked Heinrich on the backside as his son hurried past him. “You put yourself in danger and your whole family with you, on account of your pet,” he snapped.

“I’m sorry,” Heinrich said. “But Pancer saved us once, you know, so I thought I ought to save him, too, if I could.”

That wasn’t the sort of response to which Anielewicz could find an easy comeback. Heinrich didn’t see his life as more important than the beffel’s. “Come on,” Mordechai said. Bertha carefully shut the door behind them as they hurried down the hall, down the stairs, and into the cellar below the block of flats. Everyone else in the building hurried with them, men, women, and children all wearing masks that turned them from people into pig-snouted aliens.

“There, you see!” From behind his mask, Heinrich’s still-piping voice rose in triumph. “They’ve got a dog, and they’ve got a cat?”

“I see.” Anielewicz said. “The other thing I see is, they took chances they shouldn’t have, and so did you?”

Heinrich’s older brother had a more urgent, more important question: “If an explosive-metal bomb goes off in Lodz, how much good will hiding in the cellar do us?”

“It depends on just where the bomb goes off, David,” Mordechai answered. “I don’t know for sure how much good it will do. I do know we’ve got a better chance in the cellar than upstairs.”

By the time he and his family got in, the cellar was already packed. People talked in high, excited voices. Mordechai didn’t talk. He did worry. The cellar didn’t hold enough food and water to let people last very long before being forced to go out. He’d complained to the manager, who’d nodded politely and not done a thing. If the worst came…

It didn’t, not this evening. Instead, the all-clear blew, a long, steady blast of sound. “Thank God,” Bertha said quietly.

“Just another drill,” Mordechai agreed. “But with things the way they are, we can’t know ahead of time, so we have to treat every one like the real thing. Let’s go upstairs. Supper won’t even be cold.” He took off his mask. Breathing unfiltered air, even in the cramped quarters of the cellar, felt far better than the seemingly lifeless stuff he got through the rubber and charcoal of the mask.

After supper, Bertha was washing dishes with Miriam helping her when the telephone rang. Mordechai picked it up. “Hello?”

“Just another drill.” David Nussboym sounded wryly amused with the world.

“Yes, just another drill,” Mordechai agreed. “Nu?” He didn’t know how to respond to the man whose hirelings had come unpleasantly close to killing him a couple of times.

“When do you suppose the real thing will come along?” Nussboym asked. He didn’t seem to feel the least bit guilty about what he’d done.

“What, Molotov didn’t tell you before he sent you out here?” Anielewicz jeered.

“No, as a matter of fact, he didn’t,” replied the Jew from Lodz who’d become an NKVD man. “He told me I would be the best man on the spot because of my old connections here, but that was all.”

Anielewicz wondered how to take that. “You know Molotov personally?” he said. “Sure you do, just like I know the Pope.”

“Say hello to him for me next time you see him,” Nussboym answered imperturbably. “Know Molotov personally? I don’t think anyone does, except maybe his wife. But I deal with him, if that’s what you mean. I’m the one who got him out of his cell in the middle of Beria’s coup.”

He spoke matter-of-factly enough. If he was lying, Anielewicz couldn’t prove it by his tone. “If he sent you here thinking there’d be a war, he didn’t do you any favors,” he observed.

“This thought also occurred to me,” Nussboym said. “But I serve the Soviet Union.” He spoke without self-consciousness. He’d been a Red before Anielewicz and some of the other Jewish fighters in Lodz spirited him off to the USSR because he was also too friendly with the Lizards. They’d been playing a double game with the Race and the Germans. They’d got away with it, too, but Mordechai didn’t ever want to have to take such chances again.

He said, “And what does serving the Soviet Union mean about your being here now?”

“I volunteered for this, because I know Lodz and because your interests and the Soviet Union’s coincide for the time being,” David Nussboym answered. “We both want to stop the war any way we can. This is what you get for going to bed with the fascists during the fighting.” No, he hadn’t forgotten what had happened all those years ago, either.

With a sigh, Anielewicz answered, “If the Race had beaten the Nazis then, odds are they’d have beaten the Russians, too. And what Soviet Union would you be serving these days if that had happened?”

“I don’t deal in might-have-beens,” Nussboym said, as if Mordechai had accused him of a particularly unsavory vice. “I deal in what’s real.”

“All right,” Anielewicz said amiably. “What’s real here? If the Germans come over the border, what do we do about it? Do we start yelling for Soviet soldiers to help drive them away?”

He chuckled under his breath, figuring that would get a rise out of his former colleague if anything could. And it did. “No!” Nussboym exclaimed. Had he been a Lizard, he would have used an emphatic cough. “Formally, the USSR is and will stay neutral in case of conflict.”

“Molotov doesn’t want the Germans and the Race landing on Russia with both feet, eh?” Behind that cynical tone, Mordechai felt a certain amount of sympathy for the Soviet leader’s position.

“Would you?” Nussboym returned, which showed he was thinking along similar lines.

“Maybe yes, maybe no.” Anielewicz was damned if he’d admit anything. “And that brings me back to what the devil you’re doing here. If Russia’s neutral, why aren’t you back in Moscow twiddling your thumbs?”

“Formally, the Soviet Union is neutral,” David Nussboym repeated. “Informally…”

“Informally, what?” Mordechai demanded. “Do you want to split Poland with the Germans again, the way you did in 1939?”

“That was proposed, I am given to understand,” Nussboym answered. “General Secretary Molotov rejected the proposal out of hand.”

“Was it? Did he?” Mordechai thought about what that was likely to mean. “He’s more afraid of the Race than of the Nazis, then. Fair enough. If I were living in the Kremlin, I would be, too.” He thought a little more. “If Russia gives informal help here, you might even end up on the Lizards’ good side. Nobody ever said Molotov was a fool. Anybody who stayed alive all the way through Stalin’s time couldn’t be a fool.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Nussboym said softly. “You haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about. And if you still believe in God, you can thank Him you don’t.”

Mordechai’s voice went harsh: “All right, then. Tukhus afen tish, Nussboym. What will you do? What won’t you do? How much can we count on you?” Privately, he didn’t intend to count on Nussboym at all. Counting on the USSR, though, was, or at least might be, something else again.

“We will not do anything that makes it look as though the Soviet Union is interfering in Poland,” replied the NKVD man who’d grown up in Lodz. “Short of that… Well, there’s always been a lot of smuggling along the border between White Russia and Poland. We can get you weapons. We can even get you a cadre of Polish-speaking soldiers to train new recruits.”

“Oh, I’ll bet you can,” Anielewicz said. “And you’d train them to be just the finest little Marxist-Leninists anybody could want, wouldn’t you?” He hadn’t used the jargon much since the fighting stopped, but he still remembered it.

“One of these days, the revolution will come to Poland,” Nussboym said. “One of these days, the revolution will come to Home.” He might not believe in God any more, but he still had a strong and vibrant faith.

Arguing with him struck Anielewicz as more trouble than it was worth. Instead, he asked, “How much good is all this likely to do if the Reich hits us with explosive-metal bombs and poison gas?”

“They won’t kill everyone.” Nussboym spoke with a peculiar cold-blooded confidence. German generals doubtless sounded much the same way. “Soldiers will have to come into Poland and seize the land. When they do, the survivors from among your forces can make life difficult for them.”

“You’re leaving the Lizards out of your calculations,” Anielewicz said. “Whatever else they do, they won’t sit quietly.”

“I know that,” Nussboym said. “My assumption is that they will give the Reich exactly what it deserves. That ought to make the fight in Poland easier, don’t you think? The Nazis won’t be able to support their troops the way they could in 1939.”

Again, cold calculation weighing the probable result of thousands-no, millions-of deaths. Again, that calculation, however horrific, struck Mordechai as reasonable. And wasn’t making reasonable calculations about millions of deaths perhaps the most horrific thing of all?

“The next question, of course, is what happens after the Race finishes destroying the Reich, ” Mordechai said.

“Then the Soviet Union picks up the pieces-provided there are any pieces left to pick up,” Nussboym answered. “The other half of the question is, how much damage can the Nazis do to the Lizards before going down?”

“However much it is, too much of it will be in Poland,” Mordechai predicted gloomily. “So, from my point of view, that leads to a different question: can we do anything to keep the war from starting? You’d better think about that, too, Nussboym, as long as you’re here.”

“I have been thinking about it,” David Nussboym answered. “What I haven’t been able to do is come up with anything to stop the war. And neither, I gather, have you.” He hung up before Mordechai could either curse him or tell him he was right.

Tahiti wasn’t what Rance Auerbach had expected. Oh, the weather was gorgeous: always warm and mild and just a little muggy. And he could walk along the beach under the palm trees and watch the gentle surf roll in off the blue, blue Pacific. That was all terrific, even if he did get a hellacious sunburn the first time he tried it. He’d had to slather zinc-oxide ointment all over his poor medium-rare carcass. As far as setting went, he’d had everything straight.

Papeete, now, where he and Penny were renting an apartment even more crowded and cramped than the one they’d had in Cape Town, Papeete was something else. The town didn’t quite know what to make of itself. Parts of it were still the sleepy, even languorous, backwater the place must have been back before the fighting started a generation earlier. The rest was what had come since: the place’s role as the capital of Free France, such as Free France was.

The tricolor flew everywhere in Papeete, the same way the Stars and Stripes did back in the USA on the Fourth of July. But the Stars and Stripes flew out of honest pride and strength. Rance didn’t think that was why the Free French draped their banner over everything that didn’t move. Rather, they seemed to be saying, Hey, look at us! We really are a country! Honest! No kidding! See? We’ve got a flag and everything!

Stick tapping on the sidewalk, Auerbach made his way toward his apartment building. Tahitian girls were all around, some walking like him, some on bicycles, some on the little motorbikes that turned people into more or less guided missiles. A lot of them were very pretty. Even so, Rance’s fantasy life wasn’t what it had been before a series of battered freighters brought him and Penny here from South Africa. What he hadn’t considered was that a lot of those pretty Tahitian girls had hulking, bad-tempered Tahitian boyfriends, some of whom carried knives and some of whom were a lot more heavily armed than that.

One such massive Tahitian, wearing nothing but a pair of dungarees and a gun belt with a pistol on his right hip, loomed up in front of Auerbach as he walked into his building. When the fellow grinned, he showed very white teeth-and a hole where one in front had been till he lost it in a brawl. “Allo, Rance. How you are today?” he asked in English flavored by both French and Tahitian.

“Not too bad, Jean-Claude,” Auerbach answered-about as much as he’d ever say these days. “You take care of that leaky toilet in our bathroom yet?”

“I do it soon,” the handyman promised. “Very, very soon.” He’d been saying that ever since Rance and Penny moved in a couple of weeks before. Sometimes it was hard to tell tropical languor from being a lazy bum, but Rance didn’t feel easy about leaning on a guy half his age who outweighed him almost two to one and packed a pistol to boot.

A fan buzzed inside the apartment. Penny Summers sat in a chair, letting the stream of moving air play on her face and neck. She turned her head when Rance came in. “We ever gonna get that toilet fixed?” she asked.

“Doesn’t look likely,” Rance said. “Maybe the son of a bitch’ll do it if we pay him off. If we don’t, you can forget about it.”

“It’ll just have to stay leaky, then.” Penny said. She made a weary, unhappy gesture. “We took a hundred pounds of gold away from Cape Town, near enough. Who would’ve figured that wouldn’t do the job?”

“Comes to something a little over forty thousand bucks,” Rance said. “That’s a pretty fair piece of change.”

But Penny shook her head. A lock of blond hair escaped a hairpin and fell down in front of one eye. She brushed it back with an impatient gesture. “We had to spend like it was going out of style just to get here, and more to keep from getting handed over to the Lizards. And everything here costs more than anybody in his right mind’d believe.”

“Of course it does,” Auerbach said. “This is the boondocks, the ass end of nowhere. Nobody makes anything here; everything gets shipped in from places where they really do make stuff. No wonder we pay through the nose.”

“Hey, they do make one thing here,” Penny said.

Rance raised a dubious eyebrow. “Yeah? What’s that, sweetheart?”

“Trouble,” Penny answered with a grin. “And they make it in great big carload lots, too. Why else would we be here?”

“But we don’t have enough money to make all the trouble we want,” Auerbach said. “If we’d brought a hundred pounds of hundred-dollar bills-”

“Where was Gorppet going to get his hands on hundred-dollar bills in Cape Town?” Penny broke in. “Don’t make me laugh. We’ve got a stake; we just can’t afford to get fancy till we run it up some.”

“I know, I know,” Rance said.

“If we don’t run it up, we’re ruined when what we’ve got runs out,” Penny said flatly. “If there’s one thing this place runs on, it’s cold, hard cash. They don’t give a damn about whose cash it’s supposed to be, either.”

“I know that, too?’ Auerbach paused and lit a cigarette. He coughed as he sucked in smoke, which made his ruined chest hurt. And that wasn’t the only ache the coffin nails gave him here. Holding up the pack, he said, “You know how much these goddamn things cost?”

“You bet I do,” Penny answered. “Give me one, will you?” He took one out and handed it to her, then awkwardly bent forward, putting a lot of weight on his stick, so she could start it on his. Her cheeks hollowed as she inhaled. “Listen, I’ve got a line on a guy who’ll sell us some ginger. Now all we need to do is get a Lizard to buy and we’re in business for a while longer.”

“Who’s the guy?” Rance asked. “Somebody new, or do you know him from before?”

“From before-I dealt with him back when I was working with those people in Detroit,” Penny said. “His name’s Richard.” She pronounced it Ree-shard, which meant the fellow was a Frenchman.

“Is he pals with the guys you used to work for?” Rance asked. “If he is, he’s liable to want you dead after the way you stuffed them.”

“Nobody’s really pals with anybody in the ginger racket,” Penny said; from what Auerbach had seen of it, she wasn’t far wrong. “I didn’t stiff Richard, so him and me won’t be anything but business.”

“Here’s hoping you’re right.” Auerbach limped into the kitchen, poured himself a drink of the nasty local brandy, and cut it with a little water; the stuff was too harsh and too potent for anybody in his right mind to want to drink it straight. He poured a knock for Penny, too.

She grinned and blew him a kiss when she saw the drinks in his hands. When he gave her one, she raised the glass and said, “Mud in your eye.”

“Yeah.” Rance sipped, wheezed, and, for a wonder, managed not to cough. “Jesus, that stuff kicks like a mule.” As Penny also drank, he studied her. If he were this Richard, how far would he trust her? About as far as I can throw her, he decided. The fellow selling the ginger would have to be wondering where she’d got the cash this time, and whether she’d try to cheat him. He’d be a jerk if he didn’t come loaded for bear.

For once, Penny didn’t seem to know where his thoughts were going. She said, “We get ourselves a discount on the herb for paying in gold.”

“Do we?” Auerbach thought about that, too. Not all his thoughts were pleasant. “We’d better talk with Jean-Claude, then, or with somebody. We’ll want some firepower along so your pal doesn’t try redistributing the wealth.”

He watched Penny. She took a deep breath. He knew exactly what she was going to say: something along the lines of, Oh, he wouldn ‘t do anything like that. Rance intended to land on her with both feet if she did. But she didn’t; instead, she looked sheepish and answered, “Yeah, we’d better do something about that, hadn’t we?”

He let out a rasping sigh of relief. “Oh, good. You remember Frederick after all.”

“Yeah.” Her mouth twisted. “That stupid, greedy son of a bitch. You even told him there was plenty for everybody, and you were dead right, too. But would he listen? Hell, no. Of course, Frederick was an amateur; and Richard’s a pro. He’s been doing this for a long time.”

“Anybody can get greedy?’ Rance spoke with great conviction. “Best way to make him think twice is to show he’d pay for it if he tried.”

“Well, I won’t try and tell you you’re wrong, because I think you’re right,” Penny said. “You want to talk to Jean-Claude, or would you rather I did it?”

“Go ahead. Bat your baby blues. You’ll get a better deal out of him than I could.” Rance wasn’t particularly worried about Penny fooling around with the Tahitian muscleman. For one thing, Jean-Claude was only in his mid-twenties, so he wasn’t all that likely to find her appealing. And, for another, Jean-Claude had a girlfriend of formidable proportions and equally formidable temper. Auerbach wouldn’t have wanted to cross her, and he didn’t think Jean-Claude did, either.

Now Penny was following his thoughts, for she stuck out her tongue at him. He laughed and said, “You don’t want to do that at a native; it’s sort of like asking for a fight. Now, the next question is, once we’ve got the ginger, how much trouble will we have selling it to a Lizard?”

“We should manage,” Penny said. “There’s always plenty of ’em around. This place draws shady characters the way honey draws flies.” She took another sip from her brandy. “We’re here, aren’t we?”

“Uh-huh. I wondered when you’d mention that,” Rance said.

But she was right. The Free French ran a wide-open outfit. They stayed in business by skimming a little off the top of the deals that got made in their territory, by not asking a whole lot of inconvenient questions, and by keeping the Japanese, the Americans, and the Lizards all too busy eyeing one another for any of them to kill the goose that laid the golden eggs.

And so, even as Penny and he went to meet Richard along with Jean-Claude and several other large, beefy pieces of hired muscle, Auerbach saw half a dozen Lizards on the streets of Papeete, all of them in conversation with humans who looked shady. Takes one to know one, he thought.

Richard was small and lithe and surrounded by bodyguards who looked a lot nastier than the ones Rance and Penny had along. He spoke English with an accent partly French, partly southwestern, as if he’d learned the language by watching a lot of horse operas. “You got the goods?” he asked-the subject under discussion might have been wagon wheels, not gold.

“Sure do,” Penny answered. “Do you?”

“You bet,” Richard said, and gestured to one of his henchmen. The burly Tahitian held up a parcel wrapped in twine. At Richard’s gesture, he opened it. The spicy tang of ginger tickled Rance’s nose. Richard gestured again, this time to Penny. “Check it-go right ahead. No false weight. No false measure. I’m a straight dealer.”

Had he said he was a straight shooter, Auerbach would have believed that, too. Penny did check, tasting the herb and probing to make sure the package held nothing but ginger. When satisfied, she turned to Auerbach. “Pay him, Rance.”

With a nod, he passed a little case-it didn’t have to be a big one-holding ten pounds of gold to Richard. This was the nasty moment. As soon as the case was out of his hand, that hand slid down toward his own pistol. The temptation to keep the ginger and grab the gold had to be there-had to be there on both sides, in fact, for Richard and his bodyguards were awfully intent themselves.

But here, unlike the Cape Town park, everything went smoothly. The Frenchman examined the gold as carefully as Penny had checked the ginger. When he said, “C’est bon,” his bully boys visibly relaxed. Then he returned to English: “Good luck unloading that stuff. Enjoyed doing business with you.” And off he went.

“We’d better unload it,” Rance muttered. They’d just traded away a lot of what they were living on. They couldn’t buy groceries with ginger, not directly. If things went wrong…

“Relax,” Penny said. “We’re in business again.” She sounded confident. But then, she always sounded confident. Rance sighed. He had to hope she was right.

“Two, please,” Reuven Russie said in Hebrew to the ticket-seller at the cinema. The man gave him a blank stare. He repeated the request in Arabic and handed the fellow a banknote. The ticket-seller’s face lit up. He passed Reuven two tickets, then quickly and accurately made change. “Thanks,” Reuven told him, again in Arabic. He switched to English: “Come on, Jane. Still should be plenty of good seats.”

“Right,” Jane Archibald said, also in English. She went on, “That bloke should know more Hebrew.”

“He’s probably just come from some little country village in the middle of nowhere,” Reuven answered. “He’ll learn, I expect.”

He paused at the snack counter inside the building to buy a couple of rolled papers full of fried chickpeas and two glasses of Coca-Cola. Nibbling and drinking, he and Jane went through the curtains and into the theater itself. They did get good seats, but it was filling faster than Reuben had expected. The crowd was about two-thirds Jews, one-third Arabs. And…

“Will you look at that?” Reuven pointed to three or four Lizards who sat in the front row so they wouldn’t have to peer over and around taller people in seats in front of them. “Why do you suppose they want to watch The Battle of Chicago? Their side lost, after all.”

“Maybe they think it’s funny. But them losing is good enough reason for me to want to see it.” Jane’s voice took on the grim edge it always held when she talked about the Lizards. She sighed. “I only wish they could make that kind of film about the fighting in Australia.”

“I know.” Reuven didn’t have the same attitude about the coming of the Race. But then, the Lizards had conquered Jane’s homeland, while they’d freed his people from almost certain death when they drove the Nazis out of Poland. He reached out and took her hand. She smiled at him and squeezed his. He went on, “What surprises me is that the Lizards are letting people here see the film.”

Jane shrugged. “If the Americans ever conquer the world, it’ll be on account of their cinema, not their guns.”

Before Reuven could find a good answer for that, the house lights dimmed and the cartoon started. It too was American, with Donald Duck rampaging across the screen. He spoke-spluttered, rather-in English, with Hebrew and Arabic subtitles. Children obviously too young to read, who obviously didn’t speak English, giggled at his antics. So did Reuven. Anybody who couldn’t laugh at Donald Duck had to have something wrong with him somewhere.

He also kept glancing over at Jane, her elegant profile illuminated by the flickering light from the screen. She was laughing, too. But after the cartoon ended and the main feature started, her features grew solemn, intent. As far as Reuven was concerned, The Battle of Chicago was just another shoot-’em-up, with tanks and airplanes instead of galloping horses and six-shooters. He paid more attention to the pretty blond French actress who played a nurse in an improbably tight, improbably skimpy uniform than he did to rattling machine guns and spectacular explosions.

Not so Jane. Whenever the Lizards looked as if they were on the point of breaking through, she squeezed his hand hard enough to hurt. And she whooped and cheered every time the Americans rallied. When the explosive-metal bomb went off and blew the Lizards’ army to kingdom come, she leaned over and kissed him. For that, he would have put up with a much longer, much duller film.

“If only we could have done it to them in a lot more places,” she said with another sigh as the credits rolled across the screen.

“Well, the Germans may try it again,” Reuven answered. “Do you really like the notion of air-raid drills and more nuclear explosions and poison gas and who can guess what all else? I don’t, not very much.”

Jane thought for several seconds before saying, “If another war would get rid of the Lizards once and for all, I’d be for it no matter what else it might do. But I don’t think that will happen, no matter how much I wish it would. And the bloody Nazis wouldn’t be any better than the Race as top dogs, would they?”

“Worse, if you ask me,” Reuven said. “Of course, they’d throw me in an oven first and ask questions later.”

Jane got up and started for the exit. “Hard to believe they really did that to people-that it’s not just Lizard propaganda, I mean.”

“I wish it were.” Reuven said. “But if you don’t believe me, talk to my father. He saw a couple of their murder factories with his own eyes.” This was, he knew, not the ideal sort of conversation when out for a good time with a very pretty girl. But The Battle of Chicago and the present world situation had put such thoughts in both their minds. He went on, “If the Lizards hadn’t come, there probably wouldn’t be any Jews left in Poland.” I wouldn’t be alive, was what that meant, though he shied away from thinking of it in those terms. “If the Germans had won the war, there probably wouldn’t be any Jews left anywhere.”

They walked out into the night, past people coming in for the next show. Slowly, Jane said, “When I was a little girl, we used to think Jews were traitors because they got on so well with the Lizards. I never really understood why you did till I came here to Palestine to study at the medical college.”

Reuven shrugged. “If the only choices you’ve got are the Reich and the Race, you’re caught between-between…” He snapped his fingers in annoyance. “What are you caught between in English? I can’t remember.”

“The devil and the deep blue sea?” Jane suggested.

“That’s it. Thanks,” Reuven said. “What would you like to do now? Shall I walk you back to the dormitory?”

“No,” Jane said, and used one of the Race’s emphatic coughs. “Between the dorm and the college, I feel like I’m in gaol half the time. This is your city; you get to go out and about in it. I don’t, not nearly enough.”

“All right, then,” Reuven said. “Let’s go to Makarios’ coffeehouse. It’s only a couple of blocks away.” Jane nodded eagerly. Smiling, Reuven slid his arm around her waist. She snuggled against him. His smile got broader.

Run by a Greek from Cyprus, Makarios’ was as close to neutral ground as Jerusalem had. Jews and Muslims and Christians all drank coffee-and sometimes stronger things-there, and ate stuffed grape leaves, and chatted and argued and dickered far into the night. Lizards showed up there, too, every now and again. Rumor was that Makarios sold ginger out the back door of the coffeehouse; Reuven didn’t know if that was true, but it wouldn’t have surprised him.

He and Jane found a quiet little table off in a corner. The coffee was Turkish style, thick and sweet and strong, served in small cups. Jane said, “Well, I won’t have to worry about sleeping any more tonight.” She opened her eyes very wide to show what she meant.

Reuven laughed. He drained his own demitasse and waved to the waiter for a refill. “Evkharisto,” he said when it arrived. He’d learned a few words of Greek from children he’d played with in London during the fighting. Thank you was one of the handful of clean phrases he remembered.

He and Jane didn’t leave Makarios’ till after midnight. The streets of Jerusalem were quiet, almost deserted; it wasn’t a town that hummed around the clock. Reuven put his arm around Jane again. When she moved toward him instead of pulling back, he kissed her. Her arms went around him, too. She was as tall as he was and very nearly as strong-she all but squeezed the breath out of him.

His hands cupped her bottom, pulling her against him. She had to know what was going through his mind-and through his endocrine system. And she did. When at last the kiss broke, she murmured, “I wish there were somewhere we could go.”

If they went back to the medical students’ dormitory, they’d hatch gossip, maybe even scandal. Reuven didn’t know which hotels turned a blind eye to couples who wanted to check in without baggage. He imagined making love to Jane in the parlor of his family’s house and having the twins interrupt at the worst possible moment.

And then, instead of despair, inspiration struck. “There is!” he exclaimed, and kissed her again, as much from delight at his own cleverness as from desire-although desire was there, too: oh, indeed it was.

“Where?” Jane asked.

“You’ll see,” Reuven answered. “Come along with me.”

He feared she’d said what she said because she thought they really didn’t have anywhere to go, and that she would balk when she found they did. But she held his hand till he got out his keys and used one he’d certainly never thought he would need at this time of night. She gurgled laughter then. In a small, arch voice, she said, “I’m not your patient, Dr. Russie.”

“And a good thing, too, Dr. Archibald,” he answered, closing the outer door to the office behind them and locking it again. “If you were, this would be unethical.”

It wasn’t a perfect place; neither high, hard, narrow examining couches nor chairs made an adequate substitute for a bed. But it was quiet and private, and they managed well enough. Better than well enough, Reuven thought dizzily as Jane crouched in front of him as he sat in one of the chairs, then rose from her knees, sat down on his lap, and impaled herself upon him.

It was as good as he’d thought it would be. Considering all his imaginings about Jane, that made it very fine indeed. He did his best to please her, too, letting his mouth glide from hers to the tips of her breasts and stroking between her legs as she rode him. She threw back her head and let out a couple of sharp, explosive gasps of pleasure. A moment later, he groaned as he too spent himself.

She leaned forward and kissed him on the end of the nose. With one arm round her back and his other hand resting on her smooth, bare thigh, he thought of something he realized should have crossed his mind sooner. “I should have worn a rubber,” he blurted. He had stayed hard inside her; that was alarming enough to make him lose his ardor and slide out.

“Not too much to worry about,” Jane said. “My period’s due in a couple of days. I’d have fretted a good deal more a week or ten days ago.”

“All right.” Reuven ran a hand along the curves of her flank and hip. He didn’t want to let go of her-but at the same time he began to wonder what would, or what ought to, happen next. “Not just friends anymore,” he said.

“No.” Jane chuckled, then kissed him again. “Your family won’t approve. Oh, your sisters might, but your mother and father won’t. What are you going to do about that?”

It was a good question, and one Reuven heard with a certain amount of relief. She might have said, Now are you going to ask me to marry you? He was a long way from sure he wanted to marry Jane; that was a notion very different from wanting to lay her. And, even though she’d made love with him, he wasn’t at all sure she wanted to marry him, either.

“Right now, I just don’t know,” he answered slowly. “We have to figure out what we want to do after this before we worry about my family, I think.”

He hoped that wouldn’t anger her. It didn’t; she nodded and got off him. “Fair enough,” she answered. “I didn’t know if you wanted to play it by ear, but that suits me well enough for now. And,” she added with brisk practicality, “we’d better make sure we don’t leave any spots on the chair or the carpet, or else your father will know a lot sooner than we want him to.”

Money of my own, Monique Dutourd thought. It was less money than it would have been had she been able to take the grand prize the Lizards tried to press on her. That still rankled. They should have been willing to give her the full cash value of the house she couldn’t accept. Who would have thought there were cheapskates among the Race?

She had a fine mental picture of herself accepting the house and moving in. She might have stayed there by herself for five minutes before Standartenfuhrer Dieter Kuhn started pounding on the door and demanding that she take him back to the bedroom. On the other hand, she might not have, too.

But twenty thousand Reichsmarks was a tidy little sum. And, best of all, Pierre didn’t know she had the money-or she didn’t think he did, anyhow. As far as she could tell, her brother didn’t search her room. I can do what I want with it, she thought. What I want, not what anybody else wants. If I can get a passport under a name that’s not my own, I can even get out of the Reich altogether.

From the bellicose rantings in the newspapers, that struck her as a better idea every day. The Germans seemed as intent on attacking Poland as they had when she was a girl. She thought they were insane, but she’d seen a lot of German insanity over the past generation. More wouldn’t surprise her.

The only trouble was, if the Germans got into a war with the Lizards, the Lizards wouldn’t care that Marseille was properly a part of France. To them, it would be just another city in the Greater German Reich — in other words, a target.

That cheerful thought made her more blunt with her brother than she might have been otherwise. Over breakfast one morning, she came right out and said, “I want an identity card with a false name on it.”

Pierre Dutourd looked up from his croissant and cafe au lait. “And why do you want this?” he inquired, his tone one of mild curiosity.

“Because it’s safer if I have one,” Monique answered. She knew he’d be suspicious, not just curious, no matter how he sounded. He hadn’t stayed in business all these years by virtue of a trusting disposition. She went on, “It’s safer for me, and it’s safer for you, too. In case I ever get picked up, the Boches won’t have such an easy time learning who I am, and they won’t squeeze me so hard.”

Lucie took a drag on her cigarette, then stubbed it out. “Why do you think we can get you anything like that?” she asked.

Especially coming in the sexy-little-girl voice of Pierre’s girlfriend, the question infuriated Monique. “Why? Because I’m not an idiot, that’s why,” she snapped. “How many false cards do the two of you have?”

“It could be that I have one or two,” Pierre said mildly. “It could even be that Lucie has one or two. I do not say that it is, mind you, but it could be.”

Acid still in her voice, Monique asked, “Well, could it be that I might have one? You would think I were asking for a diamond necklace.”

“It would be less risky for me to get you a diamond necklace,” her brother replied. “Let me think, and let me see what I can do.” No matter how much she squawked, he would say no more than that.

She didn’t know she’d won her point till she got summoned to a dingy photographic studio a couple of days later. Flashbulbs made her see glowing purple spots. “Those should do the job,” the photographer told her. He didn’t say what kind of job they were supposed to do, but she figured that out for herself.

A few days later, Pierre handed her a card that told the world, or at least the German and French officials therein, that she was Madeleine Didier. The photograph was one the fellow at the little hole-in-the-wall studio had taken. As for the rest of the document… She compared it to her old ID card, which she knew was genuine. “I can’t see any difference.”

Pierre looked smug. “There isn’t any difference, not unless you chance to have a high-powered microscope. My friend the printer does these with great success.”

“He’d better,” Monique exclaimed. “No quicker way to commit suicide than an identification card that doesn’t pass muster.”

“I had not finished.” Her brother looked annoyed at the interruption; he liked to hear himself talk. “He has a Lizard machine that makes an image of whatever document he requires and stores it so he can alter it as he pleases on one of their computing devices. This, he assures me, is far easier and more convenient than working from photographs ever was.”

“So the Lizards have brought us a golden age of forgery?” Monique said, amused. “And how long will it be before he finds it easier to print money in his shop than to earn it by honest work there?”

“For all I know, Francois may be doing just that,” Pierre Dutourd replied. “You will understand, I do not ask him a great many questions about such things, just as he does not ask me a great many questions about my occupation.”

“Yes, I can see that this might be so.” Monique studied the new card. It really did seem perfect: not just the printing but also the rubber stamps and official signatures were exactly as they should have been. “Himmler himself would not suspect anything was wrong with it.”

“Of course not.” Pierre rolled his eyes. “He’s dead, and good riddance, too.” He paused, then after a moment shook his head. “No, it could be that I am wrong. We may be sorry he is gone, for these fools all trying to steal his seat may set the Reich on fire to show how manly they are.” He made a sour face. “Some of my best customers are very worried about that.”

“Some of the Lizards, you mean?” Monique asked.

“But of course,” Pierre Dutourd replied. “And they do not care-they hardly even know, except as far as the language goes-we here are French, not Germans. As far as they are concerned, one part of the Reich is the same as another. To them, it is all ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuhrer.” He looked disgusted now. “Merde alors!”

Monique almost laughed out loud. From everything she’d seen, her brother was far more mercenary than patriotic. She’d never heard him say much about the Reich till living under Nazi rule seemed likely to land him in trouble-he certainly hadn’t cared a great deal when she got slapped around at the Palais de Justice. But hearing that he and the Race worried about war ahead did make her sit up and take notice. “Can we do anything?”

“Run for the hills,” he suggested. “It could be I would not bring you back to the city, as I did before. It could be that I would also run. The best defense against an explosive-metal bomb is not to be there when it goes off. This is, I believe, an American saying. It is also, I believe, a true saying.”

“Yes, I believe it could be,” Monique said. She sat thoughtfully at the breakfast table. If she couldn’t get a passport-if, even with a passport, she couldn’t get out of Marseille-running into the hills didn’t seem the worst idea in the world. “Will your friends among the Race know the war is on the point of breaking out before it does?”

“If anyone among the Race knows, they will know,” Pierre answered. “But whether anyone will know, that I cannot say. All the Germans have to do is launch their rockets, and voila- war!”

“No, it’s not that simple,” Monique said. “They have to move soldiers into position, and tanks, and airplanes. These things must be noticeable.”

“Less than you’d think,” her brother told her. “From what my friends say, the Boches move forces all the time, so it becomes difficult to be sure which movements are intended to confuse and which are intended to deploy. And the Germans are better at keeping things secret than they used to be, too.”

That, unfortunately, seemed altogether too probable to Monique. Thanks to Dieter Kuhn, she knew the Nazis were getting better at unscrambling the Lizards’ security devices. It seemed logical they should also be getting better with their own.

The conversation helped make up her mind for her. Leaving the Porte d’Aix made her nervous; she expected every SS man in France to descend on her with cocked submachine gun and possibly with unbuttoned fly. Only after she was already on the way to the Prefecture on Rue St. Ferreol did she pause to wonder whether Pierre’s clever printer could forge passports as readily as ID cards. After pedaling on for another half a block, she shook her head. She didn’t want Pierre to know she intended fleeing, because she wanted to flee from him, too. That meant she had to get the passport on her own, and that meant she had to get a real one; except through her brother, she had no illicit connections.

And so, the Prefecture. It was larger and more massive than the Palais de Justice, with a small square on the north side and a park over to the east. She set her bicycle in a rack in front of the building and chained it into place: even here, with gendarmes strolling about keeping an eye on things, thieves might thrive. But at least the policemen were gendarmes and not the Germans who gave the Palais de Justice its sinister reputation: how well deserved that reputation was, she knew better than she’d ever wanted to.

Inside, languid ceiling fans did a halfhearted job of stirring the air. FILL OUT ALL FORMS BEFORE ENTERING LINE, a prominent sign warned. From everything Monique had heard, French bureaucracy had been bad before the Reich overran the country. From everything she’d seen, it was worse now, having added German thoroughness without the slightest trace of German efficiency.

As she’d expected, the forms for obtaining a passport were formidable. So were the fees required-officials wanted to know everything about anyone who might want to leave the Reich, and also wanted to soak would-be travelers for the privilege. Monique filled out page after page, much of the information being fictitious. If the bureaucrats did any careful checking, she was in trouble. But her assumption was that no one would have any reason to check on Madeleine Didier, who couldn’t very well have fallen foul of the authorities because she’d existed for only a few days.

Do you really want to do this? she wondered. If you’re wrong, and if you get caught, you’re back in Dieter Kuhn’s hands-and probably back in his arms, too. She didn’t have to worry about that in Porte d’Aix, anyhow. But her brother wanted to use her, too, even if in a different way. If she could get away, she’d also be free of Pierre. She nodded briskly. The game was worth the candle.

The line moved forward a centimeter at a time. At last, though, she stood before a bored-looking functionary. He gave the forms a desultory glance, then said, “Your fee?” She pushed Reichsmarks across the counter. He riffled through them, nodded, and said, “Your identification card?” Heart thuttering, Monique passed that to him, too. He examined it more carefully than the forms, less carefully than the money, and pushed it back to her. “Very good. All appears to be in order. You may return in four weeks’ time to pick up your passport. It must be done in person, you understand.”

“Yes, of course,” Monique answered. “Thank you.” She turned away, thinking, Either I get the passport-or the SS gets me. She’d find out, if she still had the nerve… and if the world hadn’t blown up in the meantime.

Atvar studied the latest reports from the subregion known as Poland, as well as those from the Race’s spy satellites. He turned one eye turret from the monitor on which the reports were displayed to Kirel. “I begin to be optimistic,” he told the second-highest-ranking male in the conquest fleet. “If the Deutsche had truly been on the point of launching an attack against us, I believe they would have done so by now. Every day they delay is another day in which they can have second thoughts.”

“No doubt the Big Uglies are impetuous, Exalted Fleetlord,” Kirel replied. “I agree, delay is likely to be advantageous to us. But they have not backed away from their preparations, either: see how many spacecraft they continue to keep in orbit around Tosev 3. If they truly intended relaxing into a peaceful posture, they would not be making such an effort-in my opinion, of course.” Even the shiplord of the conquest fleet’s bannership had to be careful when disagreeing with the fleetlord.

But Atvar did not have all his claws sunk deeply into his view of things here, as sometimes happened. “Indeed, that is a truth, Shiplord,” he admitted. “But I wonder how much damage these crewed craft can do, as opposed to the many orbiting explosive-metal bombs and missiles that require only an electronic command for activation.”

“I also wonder,” Kirel said, “but I hope we do not have to find out. The Tosevites themselves have a nastier imagination than their mechanisms. Even with inferior means, they might find a way to do us more harm than we would expect.”

“They have a knack for doing that, and I would be the last to deny it,” Atvar said. “But they also must know what we would do to them. If they did not understand that, I believe they would already have gone to war.”

“That is undoubtedly a truth,” Kirel said. He swung one of his eye turrets toward the display. “Do we have any certain knowledge of where their submersible craft carrying missiles are presently located?”

“No.” That didn’t make Atvar happy, either. “And I must say I wish we did. But, on the other fork of the tongue, we rarely do. They and the Americans and the Russkis make a point of keeping the whereabouts of those vessels secret. In their position, I would do the same: we cannot target the submersibles, as we can their land-based missiles.”

Pshing came into Atvar’s office and waited to be noticed. When Atvar slid an eye turret toward him, he said, “Exalted Fleetlord, we have received replies from four Tosevite not-empires in regard to our request to open shrines dedicated to reverencing the spirits of Emperors past in their territories.”

“Four at once?” Kirel said. “They must be acting in concert, then.”

Atvar thought the same thing, but Pshing made the negative hand gesture. “No, Shiplord. Three of the replies are negative. The Nipponese say they strongly prefer to reverence their own emperors. The SSSR and the Reich simply refuse the request; the SSSR’s rejection implies that we made it for purposes of espionage rather than reverence.”

That was in some measure true. Atvar said, “And the fourth reply?”

“Exalted Fleetlord, it is from the United States, and gives us permission to do as we will there,” Pshing replied. “The American Tosevites cite a doctrine of theirs called ‘freedom of reverence’ or something of the sort. I confess that I do not fully understand this doctrine.”

“I often wonder if even the American Tosevites understand their own doctrines,” Atvar replied. “This probably stems from their passion for snoutcounting. Most of their peculiar institutions do.”

“Since they are not bellicose at the moment, I am inclined to forgive them their doctrines,” Kirel said as Pshing left the office.

“No doubt some truth will hatch from that eggshell, Shiplord,” Atvar said. “And we still await the reply from Britain. But the Americans do cause me some concern for the simple reason that they have prospered rather than falling to pieces in the interval since the fighting stopped. None of our analysts seems to understand why they have prospered, either. By all logic, government through snoutcounting should have failed almost immediately-should never have been attempted, in fact.”

Kirel made the affirmative gesture. “I see what you are saying, Exalted Fleetlord. Nippon and Britain have systems similar to ours, though the British also use some of this snoutcounting silliness. And the Reich and the SSSR have rulers with the power of emperors, though they gain that power by murder or intrigue, not by inheritance. But the Americans truly are anomalous.”

“And they are technically proficient,” Atvar said discontentedly. “They are the ones with a spacecraft in the asteroid belt. They are the ones sending representatives to meet with the Big Ugly our researcher has raised as if she were a female of the Race.”

“I have been keeping track of that, yes,” Kirel said. “Truly a worthwhile project on the researcher’s part. Do you think some of the wild Big Uglies are beginning to become acculturated? Video of one of the wild ones meeting with our specimen suggests he is one of that sort.”

“The wild ones? My judgment is that acculturation is still superficial,” Atvar said. “If they do begin to reverence the spirits of Emperors past, that would be a more significant turn toward the Empire’s way of life than removing their hair and wearing body paint in place of their cloth wrappings.”

“Indeed. I completely agree,” Kirel said. “But the American Big Uglies, as you have pointed out, are not fools, even if they are barbarians. They too must realize the likely result of permitting such reverence, and yet they do so. Why?”

“Again, analysis is incomplete. We really do need to study the Americans more,” Atvar said, and scribbled a note to that effect for himself. “Their ideology seems to be almost evolutionary in nature: they let individuals compete in snoutcounting contests, and they let ideas compete through ‘freedom of reverence’ and ‘freedom of discussion.’ Their assumption seems to be that the best will prevail as a result of this untrammeled competition.”

“Now that is interesting, Exalted Fleetlord,” Kirel said. “I had not seen their ideology expressed in quite those terms before.” His mouth fell open in a laugh. “They certainly are optimists, are they not?”

“I think so. Every male of the Race I know thinks so. By all I can tell, most other Big Uglies think so, too,” Atvar said. “And yet the Americans continue to do well. They continue to steal and adapt and build on our technology even more aggressively than the Reich or the SSSR. Puzzling, is it not?”

“Very much so,” Kirel answered. “And their relations with us are less shrill and warlike than are those of the other two leading independent not-empires. They might almost be civilized.”

“Almost,” Atvar said. But then he realized the shiplord had a point. “We do seem to make more allowances for them than for the other not-empires, do we not? I wonder if the American Big Uglies are devious enough to take advantage of that.”

“We have not suspected them of attacking the ships of the colonization fleet, at least not seriously suspected them,” Kirel said. “Do you believe we should begin a more intensive investigation along those lines?”

After some thought, Atvar made the negative gesture. “We have no evidence that would lead us to suspect their guilt, and their behavior otherwise has been as near exemplary as Big Uglies come.”

“We have no evidence to lead us to the Reich or to the SSSR, either, though each has tried to implicate the other,” Kirel pointed out.

Before the fleetlord could respond to that, Pshing hurried into his office once more. Atvar saw his agitation even before he spoke: “Exalted Fleetlord!”

“By the Emperor, what now?” Atvar asked, casting down his eyes in respect for the sovereign so many light-years away.

“Exalted Fleetlord, I have just received a written communication from the ambassador of the Nipponese Empire.”

“What now?” Atvar repeated in some irritation. Like Britain, Nippon had retained its independence when the fighting stopped. The Nipponese thought that entitled them to equality of status with the USA, the SSSR, and the Reich. The Race didn’t, for the simple reason that Nippon, being without explosive-metal weapons, could not do them nearly so much harm as the three more prominent Tosevite powers.

Pshing said, “Exalted Fleetlord, the ambassador reports that Nippon has detonated an explosive-metal weapon of its own manufacture on an isolated island called”-he looked down at the paper he held-“Bikini, that is the name.”

Atvar let out a furious hiss and turned to the computer monitor. When he chose a reconnaissance and intelligence channel, he saw the explosion was just being reported. “The Nipponese must have timed the delivery of that note most precisely,” he said, and then, dreading the answer, “Is there more?”

“There is, Exalted Fleetlord,” Pshing said unhappily. “The note goes on to demand all privileges previously accorded only to Tosevite powers with explosive-metal weapons. It warns that Nippon has submersible craft of its own, and knows how to use them to its own best advantage.”

“Even for Big Uglies, the Nipponese are arrogant,” Kirel said.

“And now they have some good reason for arrogance.” Atvar knew he sounded even more unhappy than his adjutant, but he had cause to sound that way. He turned an eye turret toward Pshing. “Do the Nipponese demand that we evacuate all territory that they occupied when the conquest fleet arrived?”

“Not in this note, no, Exalted Fleetlord,” Pshing said. “What they may do in the future, however, is anyone’s guess.”

“That is a truth.” Kirel’s voice was mournful, too.

After calling up a map of Tosevite political conditions at the time of the conquest fleet’s arrival, Atvar examined it. “There are occasions when I would be tempted to return to the Nipponese the subregion known as China. Considering the difficulties its inhabitants have given us, some other Big Uglies might as well have the dubious privilege of trying to rule them.”

“You cannot mean that, Exalted Fleetlord!” Now Kirel sounded horrified.

And Atvar realized his chief subordinate was right. “No,” he said with a sigh, “I suppose I cannot. All the Tosevite not-empires would take it for a sign of weakness, and they leap on weakness the way befflem leap on meat.”

“What will you tell the Nipponese, then?” Pshing asked.

Atvar sighed once more. “Unfortunately, they have demonstrated strength. And they may be arrogant-or shortsighted-enough to use their new weapons without fear of punishment. Here, Pshing, tell them this: tell them we shall grant them all the diplomatic privileges they request. But tell them also that with privileges comes responsibility. Tell them we are now constrained to observe them more closely than ever before. Tell them we shall take a much more serious view of any potentially aggressive action they may prepare. Tell them they still are not powerful enough to seek any real test of strength against us, and that any attack on us will be crushed without mercy.”

“Very good, Exalted Fleetlord!” his adjutant said, and used an emphatic cough. “It shall be done, in every particular.”

“I thank you, Pshing. Oh-and one thing more,” Atvar said. Pshing and Kirel both looked curious. The fleetlord explained: “Now we hope they listen.”

As Liu Han paced through the prisoners’ camp, she kept shaking her head. “No,” she said. “I don’t believe it. I don’t want to believe it. It can’t possibly be true.”

Nieh Ho-T’ing gave her an amused look. “It can’t possibly be true because you don’t want to believe it? What kind of logic goes into a statement like that?”

“I don’t know,” she answered. “And I don’t care, either. What do you think of that? Tell me where you heard that the eastern dwarfs used an explosive-metal bomb. Did the little scaly devils tell you? I doubt it.” To show how much she doubted it, she used one of the little devils’ emphatic coughs.

But Nieh said, “You do not want to believe it of the Japanese because you hate them even more than you hate the scaly devils.”

“That…” Liu Han started to say that wasn’t true, but discovered she couldn’t. She did hate the Japanese, with a deep and abiding hatred. And why not, when they’d destroyed the village that had been her whole life and slaughtered the family she’d thought would be hers forever? She amended her words: “That doesn’t matter. What matters is what’s true and what isn’t. And you didn’t answer my question.”

“Well, so I didn’t,” the People’s Liberation Army officer admitted. He bowed to Liu Han, as if she were a noblewoman from the old days, the days of the Manchu Empire. “I will, then. No, the scaly devils didn’t tell me. But I heard the guards talking among themselves. I don’t think they knew I understood.”

“Oh,” Liu Han said unhappily. She knew the scaly devils often didn’t pay any attention to what their human captives might hear. Why should they? Even if the humans understood, what could they do about it? Nothing, as Liu Han also knew all too well. She scowled and kicked at the dirt. “Will the Japanese start using their bombs against the little devils here in China, then?”

“Who knows what the Japanese will do?” Nieh Ho-T’ing answered. “I often wonder if even they know ahead of time. But whether they use bombs or not, they’ve gained a lot of face by having them.”

“So they have,” Now Liu Han’s voice went savage. She kicked the dirt again, harder than before. “They learned imperialism from the round-eyed devils. All we ever learned was colonialist oppression. The little scaly devils threw them out of China, but they kept most of their empire and they kept their freedom. And what have we got from the little devils? More colonialist oppression. Where is the justice in that?”

Nieh shrugged. “Justice comes with power. The strong have it. And they give their version of it to the weak. We were unlucky, for we were found weak at the wrong time.”

When Liu Han looked out to the horizon, she did so through strands of razor wire the little scaly devils had set up around the perimeter of the camp. If that didn’t tell her everything she needed to know about strength and weakness, what would? She scowled. “How can we use the Japanese to our advantage?”

“Now that is a better thought.” Nieh Ho-T’ing set a hand on her shoulder for a moment, as if to remind her they’d been lovers once. “The Russians have always refused to give us explosive-metal bombs of our own. So have the Americans. Maybe the Japanese will be more reasonable.”

“Maybe they’ll hope the Russians get the blame,” Liu Han said, which made Nieh laugh and nod. “That might be a reasonable hope, too. I wonder if Mao has this news yet.”

“Mao always knows the news.” Nieh spoke with great assurance. “What he can do with it may be another question. I’m sure he’d be willing to deal with the Japanese to get an explosive-metal bomb. I’m not nearly so sure they’d be willing to deal with him.”

“If I were one of the eastern dwarfs, I’d be afraid of dealing with anyone Chinese,” Liu Han said. “They must know how much vengeance we owe them for what they did to us.”

“That’s true. No one would argue with it,” Nieh said. “But how much do we owe the scaly devils? If that is more, then the Japanese wouldn’t need to fear, for we would want to settle the bigger debt first.”

Though Liu Han knew how to make such cold-blooded calculations, they didn’t appeal to her. “I want to pay back the scaly devils, and I want to pay back the Japanese,” she said. “How can we be free till we punish all our enemies?”

Nieh sighed. “I’ve been fighting for our freedom since I was a young man, and it seems further away than ever. The struggle ahead won’t be any quicker or any easier than the one we’ve already made.”

That made sense, too, but it wasn’t what Liu Han wanted to hear. “I want Liu Mei to live in freedom,” she said, and then her lips twisted into a bitter smile. “I want to live in freedom myself. I don’t want either one of us to spend the rest of our days locked up in this prison camp.”

“I don’t want to spend the rest of my days here, either,” Nieh Ho-T’ing said. “I am not a young man any more. I do not have so many days to spend anywhere, and this isn’t the place I’d have chosen.” His own smile showed wry amusement. “But the little devils gave us no choice. Your daughter helped make sure they would give us no choice.”

Liu Han turned away. She didn’t want to hear that, either, even though she knew it was true. She started to explain that she understood why Liu Mei had done as she did, but what difference did it make? None. She kept walking.

A man she didn’t know came by her. He gave her a polite nod, so she returned one. Probably with the Kuomintang, she thought. Plenty of prisoners here were. The little devils didn’t care if they and the Communists went right on with their civil war here inside this razor-wire perimeter. That just made life easier for them.

The first time she’d been taken to a camp, things had been a lot easier. The little devils were newer at the game then-and she’d been only an experimental animal to them, not a dangerous political prisoner. The Reds had helped spirit her out of the camp through a tunnel, and no one had been the wiser for a long time. Things weren’t so simple here. No humans went into and out of this camp. People came in. They never went out.

Nothing seemed so tempting as giving way to despair. If she stopped caring about what happened to her, maybe she could accept the likelihood that she would never leave this place again. Then she could start shaping a life for herself within the razor-wire perimeter.

She shook her head. She wouldn’t give up. She couldn’t give up. She hadn’t given up after Ttomalss took her daughter away from her, and she’d got Liu Mei back. If she kept up the struggle, she might get her own life back one day, too. After all, who could guess what would happen? The Japanese might resume their war with the little scaly devils. Or the Germans might fight them. The Germans were strong, even if they were fascist reactionaries. If they caused the scaly devils enough trouble, maybe the little devils would have to loosen their grip on China. You never could tell.

She went back to the tent she shared with Liu Mei to tell her daughter the news she’d had from Nieh. But Liu Mei wasn’t in the tent. Liu Han’s carefully constructed bravado collapsed. If the little devils had taken her daughter off to do horrible things to her, what good was bravado?

A woman who lived in the tent next door said, “The scaly devils do not have her.” She had a southwestern accent that hardly seemed Mandarin at all to Liu Han, who had trouble following her.

When at last she did, she asked, “Well, where is she, then?”

The other woman, who was not a Communist, smiled unpleasantly. “She went out walking with a young man.”

“A young man!” Liu Han exclaimed. “Which young man?” The camp held a lot of them, far more than women.

“I have no idea.” The other woman was full of sour virtue. “My children would never do such a thing without my knowing.”

“You ugly old turtle, you must have had a blind husband if you have any children at all,” Liu Han said. That produced a splendid fight. Each of the women called the other everything she could think of. The other woman took a step toward Liu Han, who only smiled. “Come ahead. I will snatch you even balder than you are already.”

“Oh, shut up, you horrible, clapped-out whore!” the other woman screeched, but she backed away again.

Contemptuously, Liu Han turned her back. She listened for footsteps that would mean the other woman was rushing at her, but they didn’t come. She wondered if she ought to wait in her tent for her daughter or to go after her.

She decided to wait. Liu Mei came back about an hour later, alone. “What have you been doing?” Liu Han asked.

“Walking with a friend,” Liu Mei answered. Her face showed nothing, but then it never did-it never could.

“Who is this friend?” Liu Han persisted.

“Someone I met here,” her daughter said.

“And what other sort of person is it likely to be?” Liu Han said, full of sarcasm. “Someone you met in Peking, maybe? Or in the United States? I am going to ask you again, and I want a straight answer this time: who is this friend?”

“Someone I met here,” Liu Mei repeated.

“Is it a man or a woman? Is it a Communist or a Kuomintang reactionary?” Liu Han said. “Why do you beat around the bush?”

“Why do you hound me?” Liu Mei returned. If the nosy neighbor hadn’t told Liu Han her daughter was walking with a man, that would have. “I can walk with whomever I like. It’s not like there’s anything else to do.”

If she went walking with a man, they might soon find something else to do. Liu Han knew that perfectly well. If Liu Mei didn’t, it wasn’t because Liu Han hadn’t told her. “Who is he?” Liu Han snapped.

Liu Mei’s eyes blazed in her expressionless face. “Whoever he is, he’s none of your business,” she said. “Are you going to be a bourgeois mother worrying about a proper match? Or are you going to be an upper-class mother from the old days and bind up my feet till I walk like this?” She took several tiny, swaying, mocking steps. Her face might not show expression, but her body did.

“I am your mother, and I will thank you to remember it,” Liu Han said.

“Treat me like a comrade, if you please, and not the way the keeper in a traveling beast show treats his animals,” Liu Mei said.

“Is that what you think I do?” Liu Han demanded, and her daughter nodded. She threw her hands in the air. “All I want is for you to be happy and safe and sensible, and you always have-till now.”

“All you want is to keep me in a cage!” Liu Han shouted, and tears streamed down her face. She stormed off. Liu Han stared after her, then started to cry herself. Everything she’d worked for lay in ruins around her.