In the Balance

8

The hologram of Tosev 3 hung in space above its projector, just as it had before the Race began to add a fourth world to the Empire. Today, though, Atvar did not urge Kirel to project the image of the ferocious Tosevite warrior with his sword and chain mail that the Race’s probes had brought Home. Like everyone else in the fleet, Atvar had found out more about Tosevite warriors than he’d ever wanted to learn.

The fleetlord turned to the assembled shiplords. “We are met here, today, valiant males, to evaluate the results of the first half-year’s fighting”-he used the Race’s chronology, of course; sluggish Tosev 3 had completed only a fourth of its orbit-“and to discuss our plans for the combat yet to come.”

The shiplords accepted the introduction better than he’d dared hope. When the schedule for the conquest of Tosev 3 was drawn up back on Home, the half-year meeting was the last one included. After half a year, everyone was certain, Tosev 3 would be firmly attached to the Empire. The Race lived by schedules and plans drawn up long before they were carried out. That Atvar’s chief underlings recognized the need for much more work was a measure of how much the Tosevites had shaken them.

“We make progress,” Atvar insisted. “Large parts of Tosev 3 are under our virtually complete control.” On the hologram, portions of the planet’s land area changed color from their natural greens and browns to a bright golden hue: the southern half of the smaller continental mass, much of the southwestern part of the main continental mass. “The natives in these areas, while not as primitive as previously available data led us to believe, have been unable to offer resistance much above the nuisance level.”

“May it please the exalted fleetlord,” Shiplord Straha of the 206th Emperor Yower said, “but much of this territory strikes me as being that on Tosev 3 least worth the having. True, it’s warm enough to suit our kind, but much of it is so beastly wet that our fighting males break out in molds and rots.”

“Molds and rots are a small price to pay for victory,” Atvar answered. More of the hologram turned gold, so that Tosev 3 itself looked blotched and diseased. “Here are our holdings in the regions where the Big Uglies are most technologically advanced. As you can see for yourselves, valiant males, these have expanded considerably since last we gathered together.” The hologram rotated to give the shiplords a view of the entire planet.

Brash as usual, Straha said, “Certainly we have made great gains. How could it be otherwise, when we are the Race? The question that arises, however, Exalted Fleetlord, is why our gains have not been greater still, why Tosevite forces yet remain in arms against us.”

“May I speak, Exalted Fleetlord?” Kirel asked. At Atvar’s assent, the shiplord of the 127th Emperor Hetto went on, “The principal reason for our delays, Shiplord Straha, strikes me as obvious to a hatchling still wet from the egg: the Big Uglies’ capabilities are far greater than we imagined while readying the expeditionary force.”

“Oh, indeed, as we have discovered to our sorrow,” Straha said sarcastically, eager to score points off his rival. “But why is this so? How did our probes fail us so badly? How did the Tosevites become a technological species while the Race turned its eye turrets in the other direction?”

Kirel turned to Atvar in protest. “Exalted Fleetlord, the blame for that must surely rest with the Big Uglies themselves, not on the Race. We merely applied procedures which had proved themselves eminently successful on our two previous conquests. We could not know in advance that they would be less effective here.”

“That is so.” Atvar glanced down to check some data on a computer screen. Before Kirel could look too smug at having his commander’s support, the fleetlord added, “Nevertheless, Straha poses a legitimate question, even if impolitely: why are the Tosevites so different from us and our two previous subject races?”

Now Straha brightened up. Atvar needed to keep his rivalry with Kirel active; that way both powerful shiplords, and the lesser leaders who inclined to one of them or the other, would continue to labor zealously to seek the fleetlord’s support.

After reviewing his electronic notes once more, Atvar said, “Our savants have isolated several factors which, they feel, cause the Tosevites to be as they are.” A muffled hiss ran through the shiplords as they gave their commander full attention. Some of these speculations had already gone out in bulletins and announcements, but bulletins and announcements flowed from the fleetlord’s ship in such an unending stream that no one, no matter how diligent, could pay attention to them all. Words straight from the fleetlord’s jaws, though, were something else again.

He said, “One element contributing to the Tosevites’ anomalous nature is surely the anomalous nature of Tosev 3.” Now all at once the planet’s immense, innumerable oceans and seas and lakes and rivers glowed bright blue. “The excessive amount of free water serves, along with mountains and deserts, to wall off groups of Big Uglies from one another and allow them to go their own separate ways. This is obvious from one eye’s glance at the globe, and is not too different from our own most ancient days back on Home.”

“But, Exalted Fleetlord-” Kirel began. Not only had he read all the bulletins and announcements, he’d discussed them with Atvar-the advantage of being shiplord to the bannership of the fleet.

“But indeed.” Atvar wanted to lay out this exposition himself, without interruptions. “What follows is more subtle. Because land dominates water on the worlds of the Empire, we have little experience with boats and other aquatic conveyances. That is not the case among the Tosevites, who lavish endless ingenuity upon them. When some Big Uglies stumbled upon technology, they were quickly able to spread its influence-and theirs-by sea to most of the planet.”

“Then why do we not face one unified Tosevite empire, Exalted Fleetlord?” asked Feneress, a shiplord of Straha’s faction.

“Because the Tosevites in the area where the breakthrough took place were already divided among several competing groups,” Atvar answered “Travel by sea let them all expand their influence outward without consolidating into a single empire.”

The assembled shiplords hissed again, more quietly this time, as implications began to sink in. Back on Home, the ancestral Empire had grown step by small step. That was the only way it could grow, on a normal world where there were no great oceans to let its influence suddenly metastasize in a hundred directions at once. Atvar hissed himself as that word crossed his mind; it seemed the perfect metaphor for the Tosevites’ malignantly rapid technological growth.

“You must also bear in mind the constantly competitive nature of the Big Uglies themselves,” he went on. “As we have recently discovered, they are sexually competitive throughout the year, and remain, in a state permitting sexual excitement even in the long-term absence of any breeding partner.”

Atvar knew he sounded faintly disgusted. Without pheromones from females in heat, his own sexual urge remained latent. He didn’t miss it. On a mission like this, it would have been a distraction. The Rabotevs and Hallessi were like the Race in that regard, which had led its savants to believe all intelligent species followed the same pattern. There as elsewhere, Tosev 3 was proving a theorist’s crematorium.

Straha said, “Exalted Fleetlord, I recently received a shiplord’s-eyes-only report noting that the Tosevite empires opposing us are in fact not empires at all. I find this a contradiction. Granted that the scale of area ruled may vary, but how can there be government without empire?”

“Before I came here, Shiplord, I assure you I found that concept as unimaginable as you do now,” Atvar answered. “Tosev 3, unfortunately, has taught us all a variety of unpleasant new ideas. Of the lot, government without empire may be the most repugnant, but it does exist and must be dealt with.”

The shiplords stirred uncomfortably. Talking about government without empire was worse than talking about sexual interest in the absence of females in heat. For the Race, the latter was just an intellectual exercise, a study in abstraction. Government without empire, though, tore at the underpinnings of a thousand millennia of civilized life.

Feneress said, “Without emperors, Exalted Fleetlord, how can the Big Uglies administer their affairs? I too saw the report to which the senior shiplord Straha refers, but I confess I dismissed it as just another flight of fancy from savants drawing broad conclusions without enough data. You are saying this is not the case?”

“It is not, Shiplord. For my own peace of mind, I wish it were, but the data are irrefutable,” Atvar replied. “Moreover, revolting as it surely seems to us, the Big Uglies in many cases seem proud of their success at ruling themselves without emperors.” The Big Ugly named Molotov had seemed proud of belonging to a band that had slaughtered his empire’s emperor. The very idea still gave Atvar the horrors.

“But how do they administer their affairs?” Feneress persisted. Several other shiplords, males from both Straha’s faction and Kirel’s, made gestures of agreement. Here the whole Race united in finding the Tosevites baffling.

Atvar found them baffling, too, but he had been working hard to understand. He said, “I will summarize as best I can. In some Tosevite, uh, non-empires-the two most powerful examples are Deutschland and the SSSR-the ruler has full imperial power but draws on no hereditary loyalty and affection from his subjects. This may be one reason these two Tosevite areas are ruled with more brutality than most: obedience out of affection being unavailable to them, they force obedience out of fear.”

That made a certain amount of logical sense, anyway, no matter how much it appalled the fleetlord. Since logical sense was hard enough to come by on Tosev 3, he cherished it when he found it Deutschland and the SSSR were models of comprehensibility when set beside some of the other-maybe lands was a good word for them, Atvar thought-on Tosev 3.

He went on, “Italia, Nippon, and Britain are empires in our sense of the word. Or so they claim, at any rate; nothing the Big Uglies do can be trusted to be what it appears. In the first two empires I mentioned, the emperor serves as a false front for other Tosevites who hold the actual power in their regimes.”

“This phenomenon was also known among the Rabotevs before we integrated them into the Empire,” Kirel noted. “In fact, some of our own ancient records may be interpreted to imply that it occurred among the Race as well, in the long-ago days when the Empire was limited, not merely to one planet, but to a portion of that planet.”

The shiplords muttered among themselves. Atvar did not blame them. Anything that cast doubt on the sovereignty of the Emperor had to be intensely disturbing. The Emperor was the rock to which their souls were tethered, the central focus of all their lives. Without him, they could only wander through existence alone and afraid, no better than the Big Uglies or any other beasts of the field.

Yet this briefing held more that would disquiet them. As the mutters died away, Atvar spoke again: “The case of Britain is more obscure. Again, though it is an empire, its emperor holds no real power. Some of you will have noticed the name of the male, uh, Churchill, as appearing repeatedly among those who urge the Tosevites to continue their futile and foredoomed resistance to the Race. This Churchill, it seems (admittedly from the limited data we have and our own imperfect-the Emperor be praised! — understanding of Tosevite customs), is but the leader of the Britainish faction which currently musters more support than any other. If the factions shift, their leaders meeting together may at any time choose for themselves a different chief.”

Straha’s jaws gaped in amusement. “And when they do, Exalted Fleetlord, how will this war leader, this-Churchill, did you say? — respond? By abandoning the power he has seized? Isn’t he more likely to set soldiers on them to cure their presumption? Isn’t that what you or I or any sane male would do?”

“We have reason to believe he would abandon power,” Atvar answered, and had the satisfaction of seeing Straha’s mouth close with a snap. “Intercepted radio signals indicated such-how best to put it? — resignation to factional shifts is a commonplace of government (or lack of government) among the Britainish.”

“Madness,” Straha said.

“What else would you expect from the Big Uglies?” Atvar said. “And if you think the Britainish mad, how do you account for the Tosevite land called the United States?”

Straha did not answer. Atvar had not expected him to answer. The rest of the shiplords also fell silent. Without a doubt the most prosperous land on Tosev 3, the United States was by any rational standard an anarchy. It had no emperor; as far as any of the Race’s savants could tell, it had never had an emperor. But it also had few of the trappings of a land ruled by force like the SSSR or Deutschland.

Atvar summed up the Race’s view of the United States in one scornful word: “Snoutcounters! How do they have the hubris to imagine they can build a land that amounts to anything by counting one another’s snouts?”

“And yet they have,” Kirel said, as usual soberly sticking to observable truth. “Analysis suggests they acquired the snout-counting habit from the Britainish, with whom they share a language, and then extended it further than even the Britainish countenance.”

“They even count snouts in the prison camps we have established on their soil,” Atvar said. “When we needed Big Ugly representatives through whom to deal with their kind, that’s how they chose them-instead of picking ones known to be wise or brave, they let several vie for the jobs and counted snouts to see which had the most in favor.”

“How are these representatives working out?” asked Hassov, who was rather a cautious male and thus inclined to Kirel’s faction. “How much worse are they than those selected by some rational means?”

“Our officers have noted no great differences between them and similar representatives elsewhere on Tosev 3,” Atvar said. “Some are better and more obedient than others, but that is the case all around the planet”

The, admission bothered him. It was as if he were confessing that the manifest anarchy of the United States worked as well as a system that made sense. As a matter of fact, it did seem to work well, by Tosevite standards anyhow. And the American Big Uglies (he did not understand how they derived American from United States, but he did not pretend to be a linguist, either) fought as hard for the sake of their anarchy as other Big Uglies battled for their emperors or non-imperial rulers.

Straha said, “Very well, Exalted Fleetlord, the Tosevites rule themselves in ways we find incomprehensible or revolting or both How does this affect our campaign against them?

“A relevant question,” Atvar said approvingly. He did not trust Straha; the male had enough ambition to be-why, he had almost enough ambition to be one of those freewheeling American Big Uglies himself, Atvar thought with the new perspective he’d gained from half a year on Tosev 3. But no denying his ability.

The fleetlord resumed: “The Tosevites, with these ramshackle, temporary governments of theirs, have shown themselves to be more versatile, more flexible, than we are. No doubt those back on Home would be shocked at the improvisations we have been forced to make in the course of our conquest here.”

No doubt a good many of you are, too, Atvar added silently to himself. From lack of practice or need, the Race did not improvise well. When change came in the Empire (which was’ seldom), it came in slow, carefully planned steps, with likely results and plans to meet them mapped out beforehand. The Emperor and his servants thought in terms of millennia. That was good for the Race as a whole, but did not promote quick reflexes. Here on Tosev 3, situations had a way of changing even as you looked at them; yesterday’s perfect plan, if applied day after tomorrow, was as apt to yield fiasco as triumph.

“Improvising, though, seems a way of life for the Big Uglies,” Atvar said. “Witness the antilandcruiser mines they mounted on animals’ backs. Would any of us have imagined such a ploy? Bizarre as it is, though, it has hurt us more than once. And the supply of munitions available to us, as compared to that which the Tosevites continue to produce, remains a source of some concern.”

“By the Emperor, we rule the skies on this world,” Straha said angrily. “How is it that we’ve failed to smash the factories down below?” Just too late, he added, “Exalted Fleetlord.” Several shiplords stirred uneasily at the implied criticism of Atvar.

The fleetlord did not let his own anger show. “The answer to your question, Shiplord Straha, has two parts. First, Tosev 3 has a great many factories, scattered through several areas of the planet’s surface. Destroying them all, or even most of them, is no easy task. Besides which, the Tosevites are adept at quickly repairing damage. This, I suppose, is another result of their having been at war among themselves when we arrived. They cannot match our technology, but are extremely effective within the limits of their own.”

“We should have had more resources before we undertook the conquest of an industrialized planet,” Feneress complained.

Now Atvar did project the image of the mail-clad Tosevite warrior captured by the earlier probe from Home. “Shiplord, let me remind you that this is the opposition we expected to face. Do you think our forces adequate to defeat such foes?” Feneress sensibly stood silent-what reply could he hope to make? Against sword-swinging primitives, the fight would have been over in days, probably without the loss of a single male of the Race.

Atvar touched the controls again. New images replaced the familiar one of the Tosevite fighting male: a gun-camera hologram of a swept-wing fighter with two jet engines and the hooked-cross emblem of Deutschland; a landcruiser from the SSSR, underpowered and undergunned by the standards of the Race, certainly, but needing only scaling up to become a truly formidable weapon; a bombed-out factory complex in the United States that had been turning out several bombing planes every day; and, finally, the satellite picture of the unsuccessful Deutsch missile launch.

Into the shiplords’ sudden silence, Atvar said, “Considering the unexpectedly strong struggle the Big Uglies have been able to maintain, we can be proud of our successes thus far. As we gradually continue to cripple their industrial base, we may find future victories coming more easily.”

“Simply because we did not have the walkover we expected, we need not twitch our tailstumps and yield to despair or pessimism,” Kirel added. “Instead, we should give thanks that the Emperor in his wisdom sent us forth with force overwhelming for our anticipated task, thus allowing us to accomplish the far more difficult one that awaited us here.”

The fleetlord sent him a grateful look. He could not imagine a more encouraging note on which to close the gathering. But before he had the chance to dismiss the shiplords, Straha asked, “Exalted Fleetlord, in view of the technological base the Tosevites do have, could they be working toward nuclear weapons of their own and, if so, how can we prevent this development short of sterilizing the planet’s surface?”

Some of the lesser shiplords, and those less given to paying attention to their briefings, twitched in alarm. In a way, Atvar did not blame them; he had trouble thinking of anything more horrid than Tosevites armed with fission bombs. But they also annoyed him, for they should have been able to envision the potential problem for themselves, without Straha’s prodding. The more Atvar had to deal with Tosevites, the more he thought his own people lacked imagination.

“We have no evidence that they are,” he said. “How much this. extrapolation from a negative means, however, is uncertain. If one of their warring empires were involved in such research, I doubt it would trumpet the fact over the radio, lest it encourage its enemies to do the same.”

“You have spoken truth, Exalted Fleetlord,” Straha agreed. “Let me ask the question another way: do the Big Uglies know enough about the inner workings of the atom to envision nuclear weapons?”

“After our initial bombardment to disrupt their communications, and especially after we smashed the capital of Deutschland, they need not envision nuclear weapons,” Kirel said. “They have seen them.”

“They have seen them, yes.” Straha would not let his rival distract him from the point he was trying to make. “But can they understand what they have seen?”

Atvar hadn’t thought of the question in quite those terms. Finding out just what the Tosevites knew wasn’t easy. Even if they were reticent on the radio, their books surely revealed a great deal. But in only half a year (half of half a year, by Tosevite reckoning), who among the Race had had the chance to find and translate the relevant texts? The fleetlord knew the answer perfectly well: no one. The war of conquest left no leisure for such fripperies as translation.

Except that now it was not a frippery. Straha had a point: finding out exactly what the Big Uglies knew about the inner workings of the atom could prove as important as anything else in this campaign. With hope, but without too much, Atvar put a hushmike to his mouth and asked the bannership’s computer what it knew.

He’d expected it to report back that it had no information. Instead, though, it gave him a translated radio intercept of a news item from the United States. “X-rays reveal the Cincinnati Reds outfielder Mike McCormick suffered a fractured leg in yesterday’s contest. He is expected to be out for the season.”

Like a lot of translated intercepts, this one didn’t tell Atvar everything he might have wanted to know. He wondered what sort of contest an outfielder (whatever an outfielder was) took part in, and for what season he was lost. Spring? Summer? Harvest? The fleetlord also wondered whether Cincinnati (whose name he did recognize) had Greens and Blues and Yellows to go with its Reds.

But all that was by the bye. The important thing about the intercept was that it showed this Mike McCormick’s leg fracture had been diagnosed by X-rays. Atvar presumed that meant X-rays were in common use down on Tosev 3: if they weren’t, then the Big Uglies wouldn’t have freely talked about them on the radio during wartime. And if X-rays were in common use…

“They know something about the inner workings of the atom,” he said, and explained his reasoning. Dismay spread through the ranks of the shiplords.

Straha spelled out the reason for that dismay: “Then they may indeed be covertly seeking a means of producing nuclear weapons.”

“So they may,” Atvar admitted. Oddly, the notion appalled him less than he would have guessed. He’d been appalled so many times already by the Tosevites and the unexpected things they did that he was getting hard to shock. He just let out a long, hissing sigh and said, “One more thing to worry about.”

The White Horse Inn smelled of beer and sweat and the tobacco smoke that made the air nearly as thick as a London peasoup fog. The barmaid named Daphne set pints of what was misleadingly called best bitter in front of David Goldfarb and Jerome Jones. She scooped up the shillings they’d laid on the bar, slapped Jones’s wrist when he tried to slip an arm around her waist, and spun away, laughing. Her skirt swirled high on her shapely legs.

Sighing, Jones followed her with his eyes. “It’s no use, old man,” Goldfarb said. “I told you that weeks ago-she only goes with fliers.”

“Can’t shoot a man for trying,” Jones answered. He tried every time they came to the White Horse Inn, and as consistently crashed in flames. He took a moody pull at his beer. “I do wish she wouldn’t giggle that way, though. Under other circumstances, it might discourage me.”

Goldfarb drank, too, then made a face. “This beer discourages me. Bloody war.” Thin and sour, the yellow liquid in his glass bore only the faintest resemblance to what he fondly recalled from the days before rationing. He sipped again. “Pah! I wonder if it’s saltpeter they’re putting in it, the way they do in schools to keep the boys from getting randy.”

“No, I know that taste, by God.”

“That’s right, you went to a public school.”

“So what? Back before the Lizards smashed our radar, you were better with it than I ever was.”

To cover his thoughts, Goldfarb drained his glass, raised a finger for another. Eventually, even bad beer numbed the tongue. Jerome could say So what? sincerely enough, but after the war was done-if it ever ended-he’d go back to Cambridge and end up a barrister or a professor or a business executive. Goldfarb would go back, too, back to repairing wireless sets behind the counter of a dingy little store on a dingy little street. To him, his friend’s egalitarianism rang hollow.

Blithely oblivious, Jones went on, “Besides, if there is saltpeter in this bitter, it’s not working worth a damn. I’d really fancy a go right now-but it’s the sods with wings on their shirtfronts who’ll get one. Look at that, will you?” He pointed. “Disgraceful, I call it”

Now you know what it’s like, down in the lower classes, Goldfarb thought But Jerome didn’t, not really. Just seeing Daphne perched on a flight engineer’s knee over by the electric fire wasn’t enough to take away his ingrained advantages in society. All it did was make him jealous.

It made Goldfarb jealous, too, especially when Sylvia, the other barmaid, also went over to the table full of aircrew. She quickly ended up in the bomb-aimer’s lap. It wasn’t fair. Goldfarb tried to remember the pithy phrase he’d heard in an American film not long before. Them as has, gits, that was it. No grammar there, but a lot of truth.

As for himself, he didn’t even seem able to git his pint refilled. That struck him as excessive. He got up, started over to the table where the fliers were monopolizing the barmaids. Jerome Jones put a hand on his arm. “Are you bloody daft, David? There’s seven of them there; they’ll wipe the floor with you.”

“What?” Goldfarb stared, then realized what Jones was talking about. “Oh. I don’t want a fight, I just want a fresh pint. Maybe they’ll stop feeling up the girls long enough to let one of them draw me another.”

“Maybe they won’t, too,” Jerome said. But Goldfarb ignored him and walked across the pub to the aircrew and the barmaids.

Nobody there took any notice of him for a few seconds. The fellow who had Daphne on his knee was saying, “… worst thing I saw there, or at least the nastiest, was that old fellow walking down the street with a yellow Star of David on his chest” He looked up from his comrades, saw Goldfarb standing there. “You want something, friend?” His tone was neither hostile nor the reverse; he waited to hear what Goldfarb had to say.

“I came over to see if I could borrow Daphne just for a moment.” Goldfarb held up his empty pint glass. “But what you were just talking about-I hope I’m not prying, but you’re newly back from France?”

“That’s right. Who wants to know?” The flight engineer was a pint or two ahead of Goldfarb, but still alert enough. One of his eyebrows rose. “I hope I’m not prying in turn, radarman, but are you by any chance of the Jewish faith?”

“Yes, I am.” Goldfarb knew he didn’t look quite English; his hair was too wavy, and the wrong color brown, while no Anglo-Saxon-or even Celt-wore a nose like his. “I have relatives in Warsaw, you see, and I thought I’d ask someone who’d seen with his own eyes how Jews are faring under the Germans. If I’m interrupting your party, I do apologize. Perhaps if I gave you my name, you could look me up at the station when it’s convenient for you.”

“No, that’s all right. Pull up a chair,” the flight engineer said after a quick eyecheck of the rest of the aircrew. He’ straightened his leg, so Daphne started to slide down it. She squeaked indignantly as she sprang to her feet. The flight engineer said, “Hush, love. Bring this lad his new pint, will you?”

Pert nose in the air, Daphne snatched Goldfarb’s glass out of his hand and marched behind the bar. “That’s very kind of you,” Goldfarb said. He pointed back at Jerome Jones. “May my friend join you as well?” On receiving a nod, he waved Jones over.

“I suppose he’ll want another pint, too,” Daphne said darkly as she returned with the filled glass. “The one he has is empty now, that’s bloody sure.” Without waiting for an answer, she carried Jones’ dead soldier away to be revivified.

The newly enlarged group exchanged names. The pilot of the aircrew, Ken Embry, said, “You have to remember two things, Goldfarb: Warsaw isn’t likely to be just like Paris by any means, and it isn’t under the Germans any more.”

“I understand all that,” Goldfarb said. “But anything I can find out will be of value to me.”

“Fair enough,” said the flight engineer, whose name was George Bagnall. “Aside from the six-pointed stars, I saw shops and even telephone booths with signs saying things like ‘No Jews allowed’ and ‘Patronage by Jews prohibited.’ Other shops had special late-afternoon hours for Jews, so they could only pick over what other people had left.”

“Bastards,” Goldfarb muttered.

“Who, the Jerries? Too right they are,” Embry said. “We didn’t see anything, though, like the photos the Lizards have released from Warsaw, or like what the people who live there talk about on the Lizards’ wireless programs. If even a tenth part of that’s true, by God, I’m damned if I blame those poor devils for rising up against the Nazis, not a bit of it.”

The rest of the aircrew spoke up in agreement, all save Douglas Bell; the bomb-aimer and Sylvia were so wrapped up in each other that Goldfarb half expected them to consummate their friendship on the table or the floor. If Bell aimed his bombs as well as he did his hands, he’d done some useful work.

Embry said, “Even with pictures, I have trouble believing the Jerries built a slaughterhouse for people at whatever the name of that place was.”

“Treblinka,” Goldfarb said. He had trouble believing it, too, but less trouble, he guessed, than Embry. To a young Englishman whose accent said he came from the comfortable classes, organized murder like that might really be unthinkable. To Goldfarb, whose father had fled less organized but no less sincere persecution, the notion of a place like Treblinka was merely dreadful Where Embry couldn’t imagine it, Goldfarb could, and had to hope he was wrong.

“How has it been back here, day by day?” Bagnall asked. “Until Jerry shipped us home from Calais, we’ve been in the air so much all we did on the ground was sleep and eat.”

Goldfarb and Jones looked at each other. “It’s not been the push-button war we had during the Blitz,” Goldfarb said at last “The Lizards are smarter than Jerry; they took out our radar straightaway and send more rockets after it whenever we try to light it up again. So we’ve been reduced to field glasses and telephones, like in the old days.”

Daphne came back with Jerome Jones’ new pint. He leered at her. “David’s been using his field glasses to peer in your window.”

“Really?” she said coolly, setting the pint down. “And all the time I thought it was you.”

Jones’ fair English skin made his flush visible even by the light of the, fireplace. Goldfarb and the aircrew howled laughter. Even Douglas Bell untangled himself from Sylvia long enough to say, “There’s a fair hit, by God!” Jones buried his nose in the pint.

“Do you know what I hear has worked well, though?” Goldfarb valiantly tried to get back to George Bagnall’s question. “Barrage balloons have cost the Lizards some of their aircraft. They fly so low and so fast they haven’t a prayer of evading if the balloon’s wire happens to lie in their path.”

“Nice to know something does a bit of good,” Bagnall said. “But that wasn’t quite what I meant-not the war, I mean. Just-life.”

“Radarmen don’t have lives,” Jones said. “It’s against His Majesty’s articles of war, or something like that.” He shoved his reemptied pint toward Daphne. “Try not to put so much arsenic in this one, my darling.”

“Why? You’d likely thrive on it.” But the barmaid went to fill the pint again.

“She’s sweet, Daphne is. I can tell that already,” Bagnall said.

“Ah, but you got her on your knee,” Goldfarb said morosely. “Do you know how many months Jerome and I have been trying to do that?”

“Quite a few, by your long face. Aren’t there any other women in Dover?”

“I expect there may be. Have we looked, Jerome?”

“Under every flat stone we could find,” Jones answered. He was watching Douglas Bell and Sylvia. If he’d had a pad in front of him, he’d have taken notes, too.

“I’m going to pour this over your head, dearie,” Daphne told him.

“They say it makes a good hair-set,” he said, adding, “Not that I’d know,” just in time to keep the barmaid from making good on her threat.

Goldfarb finished his second pint, but wasn’t quite in his friend’s hurry to get another one. Everything the Lancaster aircrew had told him about life for the Jews in France made him worry more about what had been happening to them in Warsaw, where traditions of persecution ran, back centuries and where the Nazis had no one within hundreds of miles to keep an eye on what they did. German radio could scream all it liked about “traitors to mankind”; he feared the Jews in Warsaw had been so desperate that even alien invaders looked better to them than the benign and humane rule of Hans Frank.

He wondered how his uncles and aunts and cousins were doing in Poland. Thinking about the broadcasts in Yiddish and German over the Warsaw shortwave station the Lizards had set up, he wondered how many-or how few-of his uncles and aunts and cousins were still alive.

He stared down at his empty pint. Would another help him forget his fears or bring them more strongly to the surface? The latter, he suspected. He held out the glass to Daphne anyhow. “Since you’re still on your feet, dear, would you bring me one more?” Enough bitter and he’d stop caring about anything at all-if not this pint, then the next one or the one after that.

Then Jerome asked the aircrew, “And what happens to you lads next?”

Ken Embry said, “I expect we’ll be going up again in another day or two. By all they’ve said, experienced aircrew are getting rather thin on the ground, if you’ll forgive something of a mixed metaphor.”

“How can you be so bloody calm about it?” Jones burst out. “Flying against the Jerries was one thing, but against the Lizards…”

Embry shrugged. “It’s what we do. It’s what we have to do. What else is there for anyone to do, but do what he has to do the best he can for as long as he can do it?”

Goldfarb studied the pilot and the rest of the aircrew. While he worried about his relatives-and from all he’d heard, with reason-they carried on in the face of their own nearly certain deaths. He looked at Sylvia, who might have been trying to squeeze Douglas Bell to death, and suddenly understood, on a level deeper than words, why she and Daphne would sleep with fliers but not with men who stayed on the ground. He remained rueful about that, but his jealousy disappeared.

When Daphne came back with his bitter, he stood up, dug in his pocket, came out with a handful of silver. “Fetch these lads a round, would you?”

Jerome Jones stared at him. “Such largess! Did your rich grandfather just cork off, or have you forgotten you’re a Jew?”

He would have gone for anyone else’s throat, especially with a couple of pints in him. Bagnall and a couple of the other members of the aircrew shifted in their seats to get ready to grab him if he tried. Instead, he started to laugh. “Bloody hell, Daphne, I’ll buy one for this big-mouthed sod, too.”

The aircrew relaxed. Jones’ eyes got even bigger than they had been. “If I’d known calling you names was the way to pry beer out of you, I’d’ve tried it long ago.”

“Geh kak afen yam,” Goldfarb said, and then disgusted everybody by refusing to translate.

Moishe Russie felt his heart pound in his chest. Meeting the Lizard governor whose forces had driven the Nazis out of Warsaw always frightened him, though Zolraag had treated him well enough-certainly better than he would have fared had he fallen under the eye of Hans Frank. He did not know whether Frank was dead or fled. Hoping him dead was sinful. Russie knew that He was willing to make the wish even so.

Tadeusz Bor-Komorowski, the leader of the Home Army, came out of Zolraag’s office. He did not look happy. He looked even less happy on seeing Russie. “What are you going to pry out of him now, Jew?” he growled. “They will give you anything you like, it seems.”

“That is not so,” Russie said. Bor-Komorowski frightened him, too. He hated Germans, yes, but he also hated Jews. The Germans were gone now. That left him only one target.

Scowling still, Bor-Komorowski stamped out, his boot heels ringing on the marble floor. Russie hurried into Zolraag’s office; keeping his people’s protector waiting would not do.

“Your Excellency,” he said in German. He could speak to a Lizard easily enough now. A couple of weeks before, when the Nazis fled, beset from within and attacked from without at the same time, the first of the little, scampering creatures had seemed like demons to him. Though they were allies, they were weird almost beyond his power to take in. There the German propaganda had not lied.

But dealing with Zolraag day by day had begun to make strangeness familiar-and also brought the suspicion that the Lizard found him in particular and humanity in general at least as peculiar as he thought the governor.

“Herr Russie.” Zolraag spoke slowly and with an accent that almost swallowed r’s and turned the middle sound in Russie’s name into a long hiss. “You are well, I hope?”

“Yes, Your Excellency, thank you.” Russie hissed himself, and made a gargling sound: he’d learned how to say “thank you” in Zolraag’s language. He was doing his best to pick up words of the Lizards’ speech; as he was already fluent in Yiddish, Hebrew, German, and Polish, acquiring a new tongue held no terror for him. He got the idea that Zolraag found the idea of there being many languages as alien as anything else about the Earth.

The Lizard was working hard with German, though. While his accent remained (Russie thought part of it due to the shape of his mouth), he’d picked up new words every time he spoke with the Jew, and his grammar, if less than good, was better than it had been. Now he said, “The German prisoners, Herr Russie, what do you think we do with them?”

“They are prisoners, Your Excellency; they ought to be treated like any other prisoners of war.” Russie had walked out to the camp in the ruins of the Rakowiec district, just to see Germans behind the razor strips the Lizards used in place of barbed wire. He wished he hadn’t. Looking at the crowds of dirty, battered, hungry men milling around reminded him overpoweringly of looking down any street when the ghetto was packed tight.

“Not all your people so think, Herr Russie. Who is your emperor here?”

“Our ruler, you mean?”

“Your emperor-he who decides for you,” Zolraag said. He seemed to think it was very simple. Maybe it was, among the Lizards. Russie gathered that their supreme commander-the fleetlord, Zolraag called him-had chosen Zolraag governor of Warsaw, and that was that.

Things in human Warsaw, and especially inside the Jewish quarter, were less simple. The old German-backed ghetto administration still functioned after a fashion, doling out rations from the Lizards now rather than from the Nazis. Russie himself held moral authority because of the night the Lizards came. How that translated varied from day to day, sometimes from minute to minute.

And there was Mordechai Anielewicz. He’d taken a bullet through the left hand during the attack on the Germans, but it hadn’t slowed him down. If anything, the fat white bandage seemed to mark him as a hero. His men swaggered through the streets of the Jewish quarter with captured German rifles on their shoulders. They walked boldly when they went into the rest of Warsaw, too: they were men whose comrades could avenge slights, and they knew it For Jews, the feeling was rich and heady, like a fine new brandy.

The Armja Krajowa hated them. Many of the Mausers they bore had come to them from the Lizards: more arms than the new conquerors gave the Polish Home Army. Of course, the Poles had had far more guns at the start of the Warsaw rebellion than the Jews. Maybe the Lizards were working to balance the two groups in the newly conquered territory.

Maybe too, Russie admitted to himself, Zolraag and the rest of the Lizards were using the Jews and their plight under the Nazi regime as a tool against the rest of mankind. He listened to shortwave radio, just as he’d spoken on it from a studio for the Lizards. Though he’d told no more than the truth-and much less than all the truth-human broadcasters dismissed his reports as obvious propaganda. Even the dreadful pictures that came out of the ghetto brought little belief.

Because of that, Russie said, “Your Excellency, you will hurt yourself if you treat these captured Germans different from any other prisoners of war. People will only say you are cruel and ruthless.”

“This you say, Herr Russie?” Unnervingly, Zolraag looked at Moishe with one eye and down at the papers on his desk with the other. “You, a Jew, a-how do you say it? — a sufferer, no, a victim of these Germans? Not treat them as killers? Why? Killers they are.”

“You asked what I wanted done, Your Excellency,” Russie answered. “Now I’ve told you. Revenge is a meal better eaten hot than cold.” He spent the next few minutes explaining that, and reminded himself not to use figurative language with the Lizard governor again any time soon.

Zolraag turned both eyes on him. That was almost as unnerving as being examined with just one, for his stare was steadier than any man’s could be. “You are emperor for your people when you so say? You-decide?”

“This is what I say for myself,” Russie answered. He knew that if he lied, Zolraag’s backing of his policy would transmute the lie to truth. But if he started lying, where would he stop? He didn’t want to find out; he’d discovered too many horrors, in both himself and the world around him, over the past few years. After a moment, he added, “I am fairly sure I can bring my people with me.” That wasn’t a lie: more in the way of an exaggeration.

The governor studied him a while longer, then looked away in two directions at once. “Maybe you do this, Herr Russie; maybe you bring people with you. Maybe this end up by being good. Maybe we say, look at Jews, see how Germans do to them, see how Jews not want-what was word you use? — revenge, yes, revenge. Kind Jews, gentle Jews, better than Germans, yes?”

“Yes,” Russie said in a hollow voice. More clearly than ever, he saw that Zolraag cared nothing for the Jews as Jews, and little for them as victims of the Nazis. He himself remained as much a thing to the Lizards as he had been to Hans Frank. The only difference was, to Zolraag he was a useful rather than an abhorrent thing. That marked an improvement, surely; a little while longer under the German Generalgouvernement and he would have been a dead thing. All the same, the realization tasted bitter as the bitter, herbs of the Seder.

Zolraag said, “Maybe we make picture, Jew give German prisoner food. Maybe we do that, Herr Russie, yes? Make picture make men think.”

“Any Jew who let himself be used for that sort of picture would find himself hated by other Jews,” Russie answered. Despair tinged his thoughts: propaganda, that’s all they want us for. They rescued us for their own purposes, not out of any special kindness.

A moment later, the Lizard echoed his worries. “We help you then, Herr Russie. You help us now. You owe us-what is word? — debt, yes. You owe us.”

“I know, but after what we went through, this is a hard way to repay the debt.”

“What else you Jews good for, Herr Russie, now to us?”

Russie flinched, as from a blow. Never before had Zolraag been so brutally frank with him. Change the subject a little, before you get in deeper, he thought. The ploy had served him well in medical school, letting him use his strengths and minimize weakness. He said, “Your Excellency, how can Jews think of giving Germans food when we still haven’t enough for ourselves?”

“Have as much as anyone else now,” Zolraag said.

“Yes, but we were starving before. Even what we have now is none too good.” The Poles resented having their rations cut to help feed the Jews, and the Jews were angry at the Poles for not understanding-or for approving of-their plight under the Nazis. Fair rations meant everyone ate too little. Russie said, “With all your power, Your Excellency, can’t you bring in more food for everyone in Warsaw? Then we would worry less about sharing it with the Germans.”

“Where we get food, Herr Russie? No food here, not by Warsaw, no. This place where fight happen, not farming. Fight ruin farming. You tell me where food is, I get. Otherwise…” Zolraag spread clawed hands in a very human seeming gesture of frustration.

“But-” Russie stared at the Lizard in dismay. He knew only God was omnipotent, but the Lizards, aside from seeming like manifestations of His will when they drove the Germans out of Warsaw and saved the Jews from certain destruction, were able to do so many other things with so little effort that Moishe had assumed their abilities were for all practical purposes unlimited. Discovering that was not so rocked him. He faltered. “Could you not, uh, bring food in from other parts of the world where you are not fighting hard?”

Zolraag let his mouth hang open. Russie glowered at rows of little, sharp-pointed teeth and the unnerving snakelike tongue; he knew the governor was laughing at him. Zolraag said, “Can do that, when you people give up stupid fight, join Empire. Now, no. Need all we have in fight. Tosev 3-this world-big place. Need all we have.”

“I see,” Russie said slowly. Here was news he would have to pass on to Anielewicz. Maybe the combat leader would have a better feel for what it meant than he did. What it sounded like was that the Lizards were stretched thinner than they wanted to be.

A world was indeed a big place. Till the war started, Russie hadn’t really worried about anything outside Poland. The Germans’ crushing triumph taught him the folly of that Afterward, his hope against the Germans rested first on England and then on the even more distant United States.

But when Zolraag spoke of this world, he implied the presence of others. That should have been obvious; the Lizards plainly were from nowhere on Earth. Till now, though, what all that meant hadn’t got through to Russie. He wondered how many worlds the aliens knew, and if any besides Earth and their own home held thinking beings.

Having gained a secular education-indispensable in medicine-Russie believed in Darwin alongside of Genesis. They coexisted uneasily in his mind, one dominant when he thought, the other when he felt. In the ghetto, God gained the upper hand, for prayer seemed likelier to do some good than anything merely rational. And when the Lizards came, prayer was answered.

But Russie suddenly wondered what part God had had in creating the Lizards and whatever other thinking races there might be. If He had shaped them all, what was man that He should notice him especially? If Lizards and any others were not His creatures, what was His place in the universe? Had He any place in the universe? Posing the question in those terms was even more frightening than coming to meet with Zolraag.

The governor said, “We have more food, we give you more. Maybe soon.” Russie nodded. That meant he wasn’t supposed to hold his breath. Zolraag went on, “You find out who is emperor of Jews about German prisoners, Herr Russie, tell what you think to do. Not wait-must know.”

“Your Excellency, it shall be done.” Russie repeated the phrase in the Lizards’ language. To them, it was one to conjure with, one almost as important as the Sh’ma, yisroayl for an observant Jew. They built their lives around elaborate patterns of obedience, in the same way people did around families. It shall be done was the most potent promise they had.

When Zolraag seemed to have nothing further to say, Russie got to his feet, bowed to the Lizard governor, and started to leave. Then the Lizard said, “A moment, please.” Moishe obediently turned back. Zolraag continued, “Is always so… not cold-how do you say, a little cold? — in Warsaw?”

“Cool?” Russie asked.

“Cool, yes that is word, thank you. Is always so cool in Warsaw?”

“It will be cooler yet later in the year, Your Excellency,” Russie answered, puzzled. It was still summer in Warsaw, not a hot summer, but summer nonetheless. He remembered the winter before, when heat of any sort-electricity, coal, even wood-had been next to impossible to come by. He remembered huddling with his whole family under all the bedclothes they had, and his teeth chattering like castanets even so. He remembered the endless sound of coughing that had filled the ghetto, and picking out by ear the soft tubercular coughs from those brought on by pneumonia or influenza. He remembered scrawny corpses lying in the snow, and his relief that they might not start to stink until they were picked up.

If Zolraag thought this August day cool, how could he explain to the Lizard what winter really meant? He saw no way: as well explain the Talmud to a five-year-old, and a goyishe five-year-old at that What he’d already said would have to do.

Zolraag hissed something in his own language. Russie caught a word or two: “-inside a refrigerator.” Then the governor switched back to German. “Thank you, Herr Russie, for saying beforehand what may be bad about what comes, for, ah…”

“For warning you?” Russie said.

“Warning, yes, that is word. Thank you. Good day, Herr Russie.”

“Good day, Your Excellency.” Russie bowed again; this time Zolraag did not detain him with more questions. In the waiting room outside the governor’s office sat a handsome, strikingly masculine-looking young Catholic priest. His pale eyes went icy for a moment when they met the Jew’s, but he managed a civil nod.

Russie nodded back; civility was not to be despised. Asking Poles to love Jews was asking for a miracle. Having asked for one miracle and received it, Moishe did not aim to push his luck with God. But asking for civility-that was within the realm of the possible.

Zolraag’s headquarters lay in a block of two and three-story office buildings on Grojecka Street in southwestern Warsaw. A couple of the buildings had taken shell hits, but most were intact save for such details as bullet holes and broken-out windows. That made the block close to unique in the city, Russie thought as he scrunched through shards of glass.

Nazi artillery and unending, unchallenged streams of Luftwaffe bombers had torn gaping holes in Warsaw when the city stood siege after the Germans invaded Poland. Most of that rubble still remained: the Germans did not seem to care what sort of Warsaw they ruled, so long as it was theirs. The buildings smashed in 1939 now had a weathered look to them, as if they’d always been part of the landscape.

More ruins, though, were fresh, sharp-edged. The Germans had fought like men possessed to hold the Lizards out of Warsaw. Russie walked by the burnt shell of a Nazi panzer. It still exhaled the dead-meat stench of man’s final corruption. Shaking his head, Russie marveled that so many Germans, here as elsewhere, had expended so much courage for so bad a cause. God had given mankind that particular lesson at least since the days of the Assyrians, but its meaning remained obscure.

A Lizard fighting vehicle purred past the wrecked German tank. When the Nazis entered Warsaw, their roaming, smoke-belching panzers, all hard lines and angles as if the faces of SS men were somehow turned to armor plate, seemed dropped into 1939 straight from a malign future. The Lizards’ smoother, faster, nearly silent machines showed that the Germans were not quite the masters of creation they fancied themselves to be.

It was a couple of kilometers back to the edge of the, Jewish quarter Russie wore his long black coat unbuttoned, but he d started to sweat by the time he drew near the ruined walls that marked off the former (God be praised!) ghetto. If Zolraag thinks this is cool weather, let him wait until January, he thought.

“Reb Moishe!” A peddler pushing a cart full of turnips paused to doff his cloth cap.

“Reb Moishe!” A very pretty girl, no more than thirteen or fourteen, smiled. She was gaunt, but not visibly starving.

“Reb Moishe!” One of Anielewicz’s fighters came to a fair approximation of attention. He wore an old Polish helmet, a peasant blouse, and baggy trousers tucked into German army boots. Twin bandoliers full of gleaming brass cartridges crisscrossed his chest.

The salutes pleased Russie, and reminded him he’d become an important man here. He gravely gave back each in turn. But as he did so, he wondered whether any of the people he’d greeted would still have been alive had the Lizards not come and, if so, how much longer they would have survived. He wondered how much longer he would have survived himself.

And so I decided to help the Lizards, in the hope that they would then help my people, he thought. And they did, and we were saved. And what have I gained from this? Only to be branded a liar and a traitor and a renegade by those who will not believe their fellow men capable of what the Germans did here.

He tried to tell himself he did not care, that the recognition of those inside Warsaw, those who knew the truth, counted for more than anything anyone else could say. That was true and not true at the same time. Given a choice, he would sooner have worked with any human beings-save only the Germans-against the invaders from another world.

But what choice had he had? When the Lizards came the Russians were far away and themselves reeling under German attack. The British were beleaguered, the Americans so distant they might as well have been on the dark side of the moon. Set beside the Nazis, the Lizards looked like a good bargain. No, they were a good bargain.

All the same, he sometimes wished he’d not had to make it. Such thoughts flew away when he turned a corner and saw Mordechai Anielewicz coming toward him. The young leader of the Jewish fighters was surrounded by several of his men, all of them heavily armed, all in the ragged mishmash of military gear and ordinary clothes Russie had seen on the other warrior.

Anielewicz himself carried no weapons. Though he dressed as shabbily as his followers, his firm stride and the space the others kept clear around him proclaimed him to be cock o’ the walk here.

He nodded, cautiously, to Russie. Allies and rivals at the same time, they drew their power from different sources: Anielewicz straight from the barrels of his fighters’ guns, Russie from the confidence the Jews of Warsaw placed in him. Because of that, neither was as confident with the other as he would have been with one of his own kind.

Anielewicz spoke first: “Good day to you, Reb Moishe. How did your meeting with the Lizard governor go?”

“Well enough,” Russie answered. “He complained the weather was too cool to suit him, though.”

“Did he?” Anielewicz said. A couple of the Jewish fighters laughed. Anielewicz’s smile was broad, but never quite reached his eyes. “He’ll complain more in a few months, and that’s a fact. What else did he have to say?”

“It doesn’t sound as though there’s much hope for more rations any time soon.” Russie explained Zolraag’s supply problems. They were something the Jews’ military leader needed to know.

“Too bad.” Anielewicz scowled. “We really need more than the Poles, because we had so much less for so long. But if he can’t, he can’t I don’t want to start a war with the Armja Krajowa over this; they outnumber us too badly.”

“Bor-Komorowski was in to see Zolraag just before me. He isn’t too happy about how much we’re getting now.”

“Too bad,” Anielewicz said again. “Still, it’s worth finding out, and it’s not what you’d call a surprise.” His gaze sharpened; he peered at Russie as if over a gunsight. “And what did His Lizardy Excellency have to say about the Nazi bastards and SS swine who couldn’t run fast enough when they got thrown out, of here? Has he figured out what he’s going to do with them yet?”

“He asked me what I thought, as a matter of fact,” Russie said.

“And what was your answer?” Anielewicz asked softly.

Russie took a deep breath before he answered: “I told him that, if it were up to me, I would treat them as prisoners of war.” Almost all the fighters growled at that. Ignoring them, Moishe went on: “Doing so would pull the teeth from the propaganda the Germans are putting out against us. And besides if we treat them as they treated us, how are we any better than they?”

“They did it to us for sport. When we do it to them, it’s for vengeance,” Anielewicz said with the same exaggerated patience he would have used in explaining to a child of four. “Do you want to be the perfect ghetto Jew, Reb Moishe, the one who never hits back no matter what the goyim do to you? We’ve come too far for that.” He slapped one of his men on the shoulder. The fellow’s slung Mauser bounced up and down.

Standing up to armed ruffians, Russie discovered, was hardly easier when they were Jews than it had been when they were Germans. He said, “You know what I am. Was I not with you when we rose? But if murder in cold blood was wrong for the Germans, I tell you again that it does not magically become right for us.”

“What did Zolraag think when you said this to him?”

“If I understand him rightly, he thought I was out of my mind,” Russie adimitted, which jerked a few startled laughs from the fighters around Anielewicz.

“He may well have a point.” The smile Anielewicz gave Russie was far from pleasant; it reminded him of a wolf curling back its lip to show its teeth. He studied the young Jewish fighting leader. Anielewicz was different from the Germans who had until lately been his models in matters military. Most of them were professionals, going about their business no matter how horrific that business might be. Anielewicz, by contrast, gave the impression that he loved what he was doing.

Did that make him better or worse? Russie couldn’t decide. He said, “As may be. He wants some sort of consensus from us before he acts-you’ll have noticed that the Lizards think we must have someone who can make binding decisions for our whole community.”

Now Mordechai Anielewicz let out a snort of genuine amusement. “Has he ever watched anyone trying to get three Jews to agree about anything?”

“I would say not. But I would also say something else: we used the Lizards to save our own lives, because nothing they did to us could be worse than what the Nazis were already doing. Well and good thus far, Mordechai. No one who knows the truth of what we suffered could blame us for that-a drowning man grabs any plank in the sea.”

One of the fighters growled, “What about the ones who won’t believe the truth even, when it’s shoved in their fat faces?”

“If you’d believed the Nazis would do all they said they’d do, would you have stayed in Poland?” Russie asked. Like a lot of Polish Jews, Russie had relatives in England and more distant ones in the United States. His parents had got letters after Hitler came to power, urging them to get out while they could. They hadn’t listened-and they were dead now.

The fighter grunted. He was in his late thirties; maybe he’d made the choice to stay himself instead of having his parents do it for him.

Anielewicz put the conversation back on track. “Were you coming to some sort of point about the Lizards, Reb Moishe? I do hope so, for you’ve said nothing to convince me thus far.”

“Think about this, then: we did what we had to do with the Lizards, I grant you that. But are we wise to do any more than we have to do? Telling them to shoot their German prisoners for us plays into their hands, and into the hands of the rest of the Germans as well. If you do not think well of mercy for mercy’s sake, look at that before you urge a slaughter.”

“Are you sure you intended to be a doctor? You argue like a reb, that’s certain.” But Anielewicz really did think about what Russie’d said; Russie could see it in his face. Slowly, the fighting leader said, “You’re telling me you don’t want us to be the Lizards’ cat’s-paws.”

“That’s it exactly.” Maybe Russie had found the key to reaching the fighting leader after all. “We have to be, to some extent, because we’re so much weaker than they are. But when we let them put our name on their wickedness, it becomes ours as well in the eyes of the world.”

The fighter who’d spoken before said, “He may have something there, boss.” He sounded reluctant to admit it; Moishe admired him the more for speaking.

“Yes, he just may.” The glance Anielewicz shot Russie was no more friendly for that. “By God, Reb Moishe, I want vengeance on those Nazi bastards. When the Lizards bombed Berlin, I cheered, do you know that? I cheered.”

“I would be lying if I said I was as sorry as I should have been,” Russie said.

“Well, there you are,” Anielewicz said, as if he’d proven something. Maybe he had.

If so, Russie did not care to concede it. “Cheering, though, was wrong, don’t you see? Most of those Germans had done nothing more to the Lizards than we’d done to the Germans. They just happened to be in Berlin when the Lizards dropped their bomb. The Lizards didn’t care that they weren’t soldiers; they went ahead and killed them anyhow. They aren’t angels, Mordechai.”

“This I know,” Anielewicz answered. “But better our devils than the devils on the other side.”

“No, that’s not the lesson.” Moishe stubbornly shook his head. “The lesson is, better that we not become devils ourselves.”

Anielewicz’s scowl was fearsome. Russie felt the fear. If the leader of the Jewish fighting forces chose to ignore him, what could he do about it? But before Anielewicz replied, he glanced at the fighters who accompanied him. A couple of them were nodding at Russie’s words. That seemed only to make Anielewicz angrier.

“All right!” He spat on the filthy cobblestones. “We’ll keep the stinking Germans alive, then, if you love them so well.”

“Love them? You must be out of your mind. But I hope I still know what justice is. And,” Russie added, “I hope I still know that what mankind thinks of me is more important than any Lizard’s good opinion-and that includes Zolraag’s.” His own vehemence surprised him, the more so because he got on well with the aliens’ governor.

Anielewicz also surprised him. “There for once we agree, Reb Moishe. There, in fact, we might even find common ground with General Bor-Komorowski, should the need ever arise.”

“Really?” Russie was not sure he wanted to find common ground with Bor-Komorowski on anything save the desirability of getting rid of the Germans. Bor-Komorowski was a good Polish patriot, which made him only a little less fascist-or perhaps just less efficiently fascist-than Heinrich Himmler. Still…” That may be useful, one of these days.”