Second Contact

14

“Sorry, Lieutenant Colonel.” The first lieutenant with whom Glen Johnson was speaking couldn’t have been much more than half his age, but the fellow’s voice held brisk assurance. “No can do. Personally, I’d say yes, but I have my orders, and they leave me no discretion.”

“Pretty funny orders,” Johnson said. “All I want to do is pilot one cargo flight up to the space station and have a look around. I’m cleared for the controls-I’d better be; they’re a lot simpler than Peregrine ’s. So what’s the trouble about putting me into the rotation during a stretch when I’m not patrolling? It’s not like I charge overtime.”

“Of course not, sir.” The lieutenant smiled to show what a good, patient, understanding fellow he was. “But you must know rotations are made up some time in advance, and are not casually revised.”

“What I know is, I’m getting the runaround,” Johnson said. The immovable young lieutenant looked hurt. Johnson didn’t care. He went on, “What I don’t know is why.”

He didn’t find out, either. The lieutenant sat there, prim and proper as a nineteenth-century Midwestern schoolmarm. Johnson muttered something about his ancestry, just loud enough to let him hear. He turned red, but otherwise did not change expression. Johnson muttered again, louder this time, and stalked out of the air-conditioned office.

Even early in spring, even so close to the coast, humidity made his shirt cling to him like a hooker who’d just spotted a C-note. Something bit him on the wrist: one of the nasty little gnats the locals called no-see-ums. He slapped and cursed. He sure hadn’t seen this one.

“When the going gets tough,” he muttered, “the tough get… plastered.” He wasn’t so sure about getting plastered, but damned if he couldn’t use a drink. Getting one seemed a far better idea than going off to his sterile little cubicle in the bachelor officers’ quarters and brooding.

In the bar, he spotted Gus Wilhelm. After snagging a scotch on the rocks, he sat down next to his friend. “What are you doing here?” Wilhelm said.

“I might ask you the same question, especially since you were here first,” Johnson answered.

“Sun’s got to be over the yardarm somewhere,” Wilhelm said. “And besides, it’s air-conditioned in here.” He eyed Johnson. “Looks like you could use the cool even more than me. If that’s not steam coming out of your ears, I’ve never seen any.”

“Bastards,” Johnson muttered, and gulped down half his drink.

“Well, yeah, a lot of people are,” Wilhelm said reasonably. He let very little faze him. “Which bastards are you talking about in particular?”

“The ones who don’t want to let me go up there and have a look at our space station,” Johnson answered. He could feel the scotch; he didn’t usually drink before noon. “I’m a taxpayer, dammit. Christ, I’m even a taxpayer with a security clearance. So why won’t they let me fly a load up there?”

“Ah,” Gus Wilhelm said, and nodded wisely. “I tried that not so long ago. They wouldn’t let me go, either.”

“Why the hell not?” Johnson demanded.

Wilhelm shrugged. “They wouldn’t say. C’mon, sir-if they started telling people why, what kind of service would this be?”

Before Johnson could respond to that, another officer came into the bar: a large, good-looking, easygoing fellow who wore his brown hair as long as regulations allowed, and then maybe half an inch longer. He was one of the pilots who regularly took loads up to the space station. Johnson waved to him, half friendly, half peremptory. “Over here!” he called.

Captain Alan Stahl peered his way, then grinned and nodded. “Let me grab myself a beer, sir,” he said, his accent balanced between Midwest and South: he was from St. Louis. After corralling the Budweiser, he ambled over to the table where Johnson and Wilhelm were sitting. “What can I do for you gents?”

“Leave me out of it,” Wilhelm said. “I’m just here to drag the bodies away.”

Stahl gave him a quizzical look. “How much of a start have you got on me?”

Instead of answering that, Johnson asked a question of his own: “What are you bus drivers hauling up to the space station, anyhow, that makes it so precious ordinary working stiffs like me can’t get a peek come hell or high water?”

Stahl’s open, friendly face closed like a slamming door. “Now, sir, you know I’m not supposed to talk about that,” he said. “I don’t ask you how you run your business. Isn’t polite to ask me how I run mine, especially when you’ve got to know I can’t answer.”

“Why the devil can’t you?” Johnson snarled. He didn’t like being balked. Nobody who had the temperament to climb into the cockpit of a fighter plane took well to frustration. But Alan Stahl didn’t give him anything else; he just sipped his Bud and kept his mouth shut.

Gus Wilhelm put a hand on Johnson’s arm. “You may as well give it up. You aren’t going to get anywhere.”

“Well, what the hell are people hiding up there?” Johnson said.

“Sir, if more people know, the Lizards are likelier to know, too,” Stahl said. “And now I’m talking too much, so if you’ll excuse me-” He gulped down his beer, nodded-he was always polite-and hurried out of the bar.

“Well, you spooked him,” Wilhelm remarked.

“I already said once, I’m a taxpayer with a security clearance,” Johnson said. “What am I going to do, step into a telephone booth and call the fleetlord? Radio whatever the hell I find out down to a Lizard ground station next time I ride Peregrine? Not too damn likely, I don’t think.”

“Oh, a lot of security’s nothing but nonsense-I know that as well as the next guy,” Wilhelm answered. “But you might say some little thing to somebody, and he might say something to somebody, and on down the chain, and somewhere down there whatever you said might bounce off a Lizard’s hearing diaphragm. And you’re sure as hell a taxpayer, but maybe your security clearance isn’t high enough for whatever’s going on upstairs.”

“A bus driver like Stahl knows, and I don’t?” That wasn’t fair to the other pilot, but Johnson was in no mood to be fair.

“Give it up,” Wilhelm said again. “That’s the best advice I’ve got for you. Give it up. If you don’t, you’re going to end up in more trouble than you can shake a stick at. If Stahl reports you, you may be there already.”

“Screw him,” Johnson muttered, but he did his best to calm down; he knew it was good advice, too. He thought about buying himself another drink, then decided not to. If he got smashed now, or even high, he would end up in trouble. He could feel it, the way fellows with old wounds or broken bones could feel bad weather before it happened.

When Johnson got to his feet without another word and without waving to the bartender, Gus Wilhelm let out a not quite silent sigh of relief. Wilhelm misunderstood. Johnson hadn’t given up-far from it. But, plainly, he couldn’t do any more here and now. His friend knew no more than he did, and wasn’t curious. The bird who did know something had flown the coop.

Deciding he ought to do something useful with his time, Johnson went over to the big hangar where Peregrine was being fixed up between flights. He shot the breeze with the technicians, examined the latest pieces of modified equipment they were installing, and shot the breeze some more. Some of the modifications were undoubted improvements; others looked to be change for change’s sake.

“All right,” he said, “it’s a digital clock, not one with hands. Is it more accurate?”

“Not so you’d notice,” the fellow who’d installed it answered cheerfully. “But the numbers are supposed to be easier to read.” Johnson wasn’t convinced, but didn’t see how the new clock would do any lasting harm, either. He held his peace.

After lunch, he did go back to his cubicle. He was rereading The War of the Worlds and reflecting, not for the first time, that Wells’ Martians would have been a hell of a lot easier to lick than the Lizards when somebody knocked on his door. He stuck a three-by-five card in the book to keep his place and got up off the bed to see who it was.

His visitor had three stars on his shoulder straps. Johnson stiffened to attention; the Kitty Hawk base commandant was only a major general. He hadn’t known any higher-ranking officer was on the base. He couldn’t imagine why a lieutenant general wanted to see him.

The officer in question, a bulldog-faced fellow whose name tag read LeMAY, didn’t keep him in suspense for long. He stabbed out a stubby forefinger and tapped Johnson in the chest, forcing him back a pace. “You have been asking questions,” he growled in a voice raspy from too many years of too many cigarettes.

“Sir! Yes, sir!” Johnson replied, as if back in Parris Island boot camp. Gus Wilhelm had warned he might get into trouble. Gus hadn’t dreamt how much trouble he might get into, or how fast. Neither had Johnson.

“You have been asking questions about things that are none of your business,” Lieutenant General Curtis LeMay said. “People whose business they are told you they were none of yours, but you kept on asking questions.” That forefinger probed again. Johnson gave back another pace. One more and he’d be backed up against the bed. LeMay strode after him. “That’s not smart, Lieutenant Colonel. Do you understand me?”

“Sir! Yes, sir!” Johnson had to work to keep from shouting it out, as he would have to a drill instructor. Rather desperately, he said, “Permission to ask a question, sir?”

“No.” The lieutenant general turned even redder than he had been. “You’ve already asked too goddamn many questions, Johnson. That’s what I came here for: to tell you to button your lip and keep it buttoned. And you will do it, or you will regret it. Have you got that?”

For a moment, Johnson thought LeMay was going to haul off and belt him. If the lieutenant general tried that, he resolved, the lieutenant general would get a hell of a surprise. But LeMay mastered himself and waited for an answer. Johnson gave him the one he wanted: “Sir! Yes, sir!”

Still breathing hard, LeMay rumbled, “You’d damn well better.” He turned and stomped out of the BOQ.

“Jesus.” Glen Johnson’s legs didn’t want to hold him up. Facing his furious superior was harder than going into battle had ever been. It was as if one of his own wingmen had started shooting at him along with the Lizards. “What the hell have I stumbled over?” he muttered as he sank down onto the bed.

Whatever it was, Gus Wilhelm had been dead right: it was a lot more secret than his security clearance could handle. The United States trusted him to fly a spacecraft armed with explosive-metal missiles. What didn’t his own government trust him to know? If he tried to find out, he was history. Curtis LeMay had made that more than perfectly clear. Crazy, he thought. Absolutely goddamn crazy.

“Where to, Shiplord?” Straha’s Tosevite driver asked him as he got into the motorcar.

“Major Yeager’s, as you no doubt know already,” the ex-shiplord replied. “I have had the appointment for several days.” The driver said nothing, but started the motorcar’s engine. He put the machine in gear and rolled away from Straha’s house in the Valley.

Yeager lived in Gardena, a toponym presumably derived from the English word garden. The place did not look like a garden to Straha, though Yeager had told him fruit trees grew there before houses went up. It looked like most other sections of Los Angeles and the surrounding suburbs. As for the toponym Los Angeles… Straha did not believe in angels, even in Spanish, and never would. When he imagined winged Big Uglies, he imagined them flying through the air and voiding on the heads of the Race down below. Tosevites would find that sort of thing very funny. That he might find it funny himself only meant he’d been associating with Tosevites too long.

“Wait for me,” he told the driver as the motorcar pulled to a stop in front of Major Yeager’s home. He knew it was an unnecessary order as soon as he gave it, but, though he commanded no one any more, he still liked to see things clawed down tight.

“It shall be done,” the driver said, and took out a paperbound book. The cover showed an intelligent being unlike any with which Straha was familiar. Seeing Straha’s eye turrets turn toward it, the driver remarked, “Science fiction.” In the language of the Race, it would have been a contradiction in terms. But Straha remembered that Yeager was also addicted to the stuff, and claimed it had helped give him his unmatched insight into the way the Race thought. Straha reckoned that one more proof of how strange the Big Uglies were.

“I greet you, Shiplord,” Yeager said as Straha came to the door. “The two emissaries from the Chinese People’s Liberation Army will be coming in an hour or so. I hope you do not mind.”

“Would it matter if I did?” Straha asked before remembering his manners: “I greet you, Major Yeager.”

Not directly answering the exile’s bitter question, Yeager said, “I hoped you might be able to tell them useful things about how the Race conducts itself, things they could take back to their homeland with them. They will be returning soon.”

“It is possible,” Straha said. “I do not claim it is likely, but it is possible. And what shall we discuss before these other Big Uglies arrive?”

“Come into the study,” Yeager said obliquely. “Make yourself comfortable. Can I get you alcohol? Can I get you ginger?”

“Alcohol, please-rum.” Straha used an English word. “Ginger later, perhaps. I have been trying to cut back on my tasting lately.” He hadn’t succeeded, but he had been trying.

“Rum. It shall be done.” Yeager attended to it. He had some himself, with cubes of ice in it. Straha did not care for drinks so cold. After they had both sipped, the Tosevite asked, “And have you heard anything new about who might have attacked the ships of the colonization fleet?”

“I have not,” Straha answered, “and, I admit, this perplexes me. You Big Uglies are not usually so astute in such matters. The incentive here, of course, is larger than it would be in other cases.”

“Yes, I would say so,” Yeager agreed. “Whoever did it, the Race will punish-and whoever did it deserves to be punished, too. I wonder if your contacts with males-maybe even with females now, for all I know-in the occupied parts of Tosev 3 had brought you any new information.”

“As far as who the culprit may be, no,” Straha said. “I have learned that one of the ships destroyed carried most of the specialists in imperial administration. Whether the guilty party knew this in advance or not, I cannot say. My sources cannot say, either. I would be inclined to doubt it, but am without strong evidence for my doubt.”

“I think you are right. The attack came too soon for Tosevites to have known such details about the colonization fleet-I believe,” Major Yeager said. “But it is an interesting datum, and not one I had met before. I thank you, Shiplord.”

“You are welcome.” Straha drank more rum. Another minor treachery to his kind. After so many larger acts of treason, one more was hardly noticeable.

Yeager did not scorn him as a traitor, not where it showed. He did not think Yeager scorned him at any deeper level. The Big Ugly was too interested in the Race in general to do anything of that sort: one more part of his character that made him so unusual.

Before too long, the Chinese Tosevites came. Yeager introduced them as Liu Han and Liu Mei. They spoke the language of the Race fairly well, with an accent different from the American’s. Straha noted that Yeager’s son, who had paid little attention to his own arrival despite fascination with the Race, joined the group and made polite conversation for a time after the new Big Uglies arrived.

From their voices, both of them were female. Did Jonathan Yeager find one of them sexually attractive? If so, which? After a while, Straha remembered that Liu Mei was Liu Han’s daughter. Since Jonathan was younger than Sam Yeager, that made him more likely to be interested in Liu Mei-or so Straha thought. The subtleties of Tosevite behavior patterns were lost on him, and he knew it.

Presently, Sam Yeager spoke in English: “Enough chitchat-time to talk turkey.” Straha didn’t follow the idiom, but Jonathan evidently did, for he left. Liu Mei stayed. Maybe that meant she didn’t find him attractive. Maybe it meant she put duty above desire, which Straha found admirable. Or maybe it just meant the exiled shiplord didn’t fully grasp the situation.

Liu Han said, “Shiplord, how do we best use ginger against the Race?”

“Give it to females, obviously,” Straha answered. “The more females in season, the more addled males become.”

“I understand this,” the Chinese female said-was that impatience in her voice? “How to give ginger to females over and over to keep males addled all the time?”

“Ah,” Straha said. Liu Han did see the obvious, then; the ex-shiplord hadn’t been sure. He went on, “Introducing it into food or drink would do the job, I think. They might not even know they were tasting… No, they would, because they would come into their season.”

“Truth,” Liu Han said. “This endangers those who prepare food for the Race; they would naturally be suspect.”

“Ah,” Straha said again. “Yes, that is so.” He hadn’t thought the Big Uglies would care; they hadn’t seemed to worry much about spending lives during the fighting.

“If we could get enough females and males excited at the same time, it might be worth the risk,” Liu Mei said: maybe the Tosevites, or some of them, retained their ruthlessness after all.

Jonathan Yeager came back into the study. Did the younger female’s voice draw him, as pheromones would have drawn a male of the Race? “That could get a lot of people hurt,” he observed. He might be interested in Liu Mei, but was not addled by her; Straha heard reproof in his voice.

“It is war,” Liu Mei said simply. “Here, the fighting is over. You Americans have won your freedom. In China, the struggle against the imperialism of the Race goes on. The People’s Liberation Army shall free my not-empire, too.”

“And make it as free as the SSSR?” Straha inquired with sarcasm he thoroughly enjoyed. “That is the model the People’s Liberation Army uses, is it not?”

Sam Yeager whistled softly. Straha had learned Big Uglies sometimes did that when they thought someone had made a good point. But Liu Han said, “We would be freer under our own kind at their worst than the Race at their best, for we did not choose to have the Race come here and try to set itself over us.”

Straha leaned forward. “Now there is a topic on which we could have considerable debate,” he said, anticipating that debate. “If you believe that-”

Several loud pops resounded outside, followed by a fierce, ripping roar. Straha was slower to recognize the noise than he should have been; as shiplord, he’d had no experience with close combat. Before he could react, Sam Yeager spoke in English: “That’s gunfire. Everybody down!”

Straha dove for the floor. Yeager did not follow his own order. He grabbed a pistol from a desk drawer in the study and hurried out toward the front of the house. “Be careful, Sam,” his wife called from the next room.

More gunfire sounded from the direction of the street. A window-or maybe more than one-shattered. Yeager’s pistol resounded, the noise shockingly loud indoors. Liu Han came as close to taking the shots calmly as anyone could-closer than Straha was doing, for that matter. Liu Mei never seemed to get excited about anything. And Jonathan Yeager, though he had no weapon, hurried to his father’s aid.

“It’s over,” Sam Yeager called from the front room. “I think it’s over, anyhow. Barbara, call the cops, not that half the neighborhood hasn’t already. Jesus, I can’t afford new window glass, but we sure as hell need it.”

Barbara Yeager came in and picked up the telephone. Straha went out into the front room to see what had happened. His driver was coming toward the house, an automatic weapon in his hand. “Is the shiplord all right?” he shouted.

“I am well,” Straha answered.

“He’s fine,” Yeager said at the same time. “What the devil happened out there?”

“I was sitting in the car, reading my book,” the driver answered. “The guy who drives for the Chinese women was in the car behind me, doing whatever he was doing. A car came by. A couple of guys leaned out the window and started blazing away. Lousy technique. I think I may have nailed one of them. Thanks for the backup, Yeager.”

“Any time,” Sam Yeager said. “You okay?”

“Right as rain,” Straha’s driver answered. “The Chinese guy, though, he took one right in the ear, poor bastard. Never knew what hit him, anyway.”

Through the howls that Tosevite constabulary vehicles used to warn others out of their way, Yeager said, “Whom were they after? The shiplord? The Chinese women? Could have been either one.”

Someone trying to kill me? Straha thought. He hadn’t imagined Atvar could sink so low. Assassination was a Tosevite ploy, not one the Race used. No, he thought. Not one the Race had used. Maybe Atvar was able to learn some unpleasant things from the Tosevites after all.

“Either one’s possible,” his driver said. “And how about you, Major? Got any people who aren’t fond of you?”

“I didn’t think so,” Yeager said slowly. “It’d be a real kick in the teeth finding out I was wrong. The shiplord and the Red Chinese are a lot more important targets than I’ll ever be, though.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” Straha’s driver agreed, adding, “No offense.”

While Sam Yeager yipped Tosevite laughter, Straha stared out at the dead Big Ugly in the motorcar behind his own. That could have been me, he thought, with a chill worse than any Tosevite winter. By the Emperor whom I betrayed, that could have been me.

Back at the Biltmore Hotel after endless questioning by American policemen and others from the FBI (which Liu Han thought of as the American NKVD), her daughter asked, “Were those bullets meant for us or for the scaly devil?”

“I am not sure. How can I be sure?” Liu Han answered. “But I think they were meant for the little devil. Can you guess why?” She sent Liu Mei an appraising glance.

Her daughter considered that with her usual seriousness. “If the NKVD had sent assassins after us, they would not have made such a poor attack.”

“Exactly so,” Liu Han answered, pleased. “The Russians do not attempt assassinations. They assassinate.”

“But”-Liu Mei sounded abashed at disagreeing, as a good daughter should, but disagreed nonetheless-“what about the Kuomintang or the Japanese? They might have sent killers after us, too, and theirs would not be so good as the ones Beria could hire.”

“I had not thought of them for a while,” Liu Han admitted in a small voice. “Next to the Russians, everything else seemed such a small worry, I forgot about it. But that was a mistake, and you are right to remind me of it.” She grimaced. “No one will remind Frankie Wong of it, not now.”

“No,” Liu Mei said. “He helped us.”

“Yes, he did,” Liu Han said. “He did not do it out of the goodness of his heart-I am certain of that. But he did help us, even if he was helping himself and maybe others at the same time. But his wife is a widow tonight, and his children are orphans. And now they have reason to hate us, too. A bad business, oh, a very bad business.”

“The Americans were brave when the shooting started,” Liu Mei said. “They knew just what to do.”

“Major Yeager is a soldier,” Liu Han replied, a little tartly. “His job is to know what to do when shooting starts.” She glanced over at her daughter out of the corner of her eye. “Or were you thinking of his son?”

Liu Mei did not look flustered. Liu Mei’s face had trouble holding any expression. But she sounded troubled as she answered, “The father had a gun. The son had none, but went forward anyhow.”

“He went to aid his father,” Liu Han said. “That is what a son should do. It is what a daughter should do for a mother, too.”

“Yes, Mother,” Liu Mei said dutifully. Less dutifully, she went on, “Will we be able to go outside this hotel again, now that assassins are loose?”

“I do not know the answer to that,” Liu Han said. “In part, it will be up to the Americans. I do not know if they will want to take the chance.”

“Why should they worry?” Liu Mei’s voice was expressive, even if her face was not. She sounded bitter now. “China cannot harm the United States. The People’s Liberation Army cannot conquer America-the People’s Liberation Army cannot even conquer China. We are not the little scaly devils, or even the Russian or German foreign devils. The Americans will not be very worried about letting us go into danger.”

She was probably right. That did not make her words any more pleasant for Liu Han to hear. “Mao would think well of you,” Liu Han said at last. “You see things in terms of power.”

“How else?” Liu Mei sounded surprised. Liu Han was surprised to hear that in her daughter’s voice, but realized she shouldn’t have been. She herself had been involved in the revolutionary struggle since before she’d managed to liberate Liu Mei from the scaly devils. That meant Liu Mei had been involved in the revolutionary struggle for as long as she could remember. No wonder she thought in those terms.

“I hope the assassins were after the little scaly devil,” Liu Han said, tacitly yielding the earlier point to her daughter. “I also hope the Americans can catch them and get answers out of them. That should not be too hard; this country does not have so many people among whom they could disappear.”

“No, but they were in a motorcar-the American who serves the little devil said so,” Liu Mei countered. “With a motorcar, they could go a long way from Major Yeager’s house, to a place where no one was looking for them.”

“You are right again.” Now Liu Han eyed her daughter with respectful curiosity. Liu Mei was getting the hang of the way the USA worked faster than her mother did. Maybe that was just because she was younger. Maybe it was because she was smarter, too. Liu Han didn’t like to admit the possibility even to herself, but she was too much a realist to be blind to it.

And Liu Mei, no matter how clever she was, still had certain blind spots of her own. In musing tones, she repeated, “The Americans were very brave when the shooting started.”

Liu Han didn’t know whether to laugh or to go over to her and shake her. “When you say ‘the Americans,’ you are talking about the younger one, the one called Jonathan, aren’t you?”

Liu Mei flushed. Her skin was slightly fairer than it would have been were she of pure Chinese blood, which let Liu Han more easily see the flush rise and spread. Her daughter lifted her head, which also made her stick out her chin. “What if I am?” she asked defiantly. She was bigger and heavier-boned than Liu Han; if they quarreled, she might do some shaking of her own.

“He is an American, a foreign devil.” Liu Han pointed out the obvious.

“He is the son of my father’s friend,” Liu Mei answered. Liu Han hadn’t realized how much that meant to her daughter till Liu Mei started learning about Bobby Fiore. Liu Han had known the American, known his virtues and his flaws-and he’d had plenty of each. He hadn’t-he couldn’t have-seemed quite real to Liu Mei, not till chance let her meet his friend. Jonathan Yeager drew especially favorable notice in her eyes because he was associated with Bobby Fiore.

Picking her words with care, Liu Han said, “He is one who likes the scaly devils a great deal, you know.” If her daughter was infatuated with Major Yeager’s son, she did not want to push too hard. That would only make Liu Mei cling to him and cling to everything he represented harder than she would have otherwise. Liu Han remembered the paradox from her own girlhood.

“So what?” Liu Mei tossed her head. Her hair bounced, as Liu Han’s would not have; Bobby Fiore had had wavy hair. Liu Mei went on, “Is it not so that having more people who better understood the little scaly devils would be useful for the People’s Liberation Army?”

“Yes, that is always so,” Liu Han admitted. She pointed a finger at her daughter. “What? Are you thinking of showing him your body to lure him back to China to help us against the scaly devils? Not even a maker of bad films would think such a plan could work.” And so much for being careful of what I say, she thought.

Liu Mei blushed again. “I would not do such a thing!” she exclaimed. “I would never do such a thing!” Liu Han believed her, though some young girls would have lied in such a situation. She remembered the scandal surrounding one in her home village… But the village was gone, and the girl who’d had a bulging belly very likely dead. Liu Mei went on, in more thoughtful tones, “But he is a nice young man, even if he is a foreign devil.”

And Liu Han could not even disagree with that, not when she’d thought the same thing herself. She did say, “Remember, he may have a foreign devil for a sweetheart.”

“I know that,” her daughter answered. “In fact, he does, or he did. He has spoken of her to me. She has hair the color of a new copper coin, he says. I have seen a few people like that here. They look even stranger to me than black people and blonds.”

“There is a fable,” Liu Han said. “When the gods first made the world, they did not bake the first men they made long enough, so they came out pale. Those are the usual foreign devils. They left the second batch of men in too long, and that is how blacks came to be. The third time, they baked them perfectly, and made Chinese. It is only a fable, because there are no gods, but we look the way people are supposed to look.”

“I understand,” Liu Mei said. “But I have got used to pale skins, because I see them around me all the time these days. Red hair, though, still seems strange.”

“And to me, too,” Liu Han agreed, remembering the redheaded man she’d seen the day the Liberty Explorer came into the harbor at San Pedro.

Before she could say anything more, someone knocked on the door to the suite the two Chinese women shared. Liu Han went to open it without hesitation; the U.S. government had posted armed guards in the hallway, and so she did not fear another attempt at murder.

Indeed, the fellow standing in the hallway could not have looked less like an assassin. He was pudgy and wore dark-rimmed spectacles. To her surprise, he spoke fairly good Mandarin, even though he was a white man: “Comrade Liu Han, I am Calvin Gordon, aide to the Undersecretary of State for the Occupied Territories. I am pleased to be able to tell you that the first shipments of arms for the People’s Liberation Army left San Francisco and San Pedro harbors, bound for China. I hope they will reach your country safely, and that your comrades use them well and wisely against the little scaly devils.”

“I thank you very much,” Liu Han said. “I did not expect anyone to tell me, especially in person.” She glanced toward the telephone that sat on a table by one end of the overstuffed sofa in the suite. Americans seemed to think talking on it was as good as actually being with a person.

But Calvin Gordon said, “President Warren ordered me to fly out from Little Rock and let you know. He wants you to understand that China is important to the United States, and we will do everything we can to help free your country.”

“That is good,” Liu Han said. “That is very good. But, of course, we do not know if these arms will actually reach the People’s Liberation Army.”

“No, we do not know that,” Gordon agreed. “The world is an uncertain place. If the weapons get past the Japanese and the little devils and the Kuomintang, the People’s Liberation Army will use them. And if they do not get past the Japanese and the little devils and the Kuomintang, we will send some more, and we will keep sending them until the People’s Liberation Army has them. Does that satisfy you?”

“How could I ask for anything better?” Liu Han said. “I thank you, and I thank President Warren, and I thank the United States. Now that you have done this, I have done what I came here to do.”

She exchanged polite pleasantries with Gordon for a few minutes. Then he gave her what was almost a bow and left. As she turned in triumph to Liu Mei, she realized she had told the American diplomat the exact truth. Nothing held her daughter and her in the United States any more. She could go home.

Existence crawled past for Kassquit. She had never had nor wanted a great deal of contact with males of the Race other than Ttomalss. She would undoubtedly have spent much of her time in her chamber while he was in Nuremberg even without the confusion females and ginger brought to her ship. With it, she felt even more alone than she had before.

Penalties for tasting ginger-especially for females-kept getting harsher. Males and females kept on tasting, though. Kassquit hadn’t found herself in the middle of any more mating brawls since that first one, but she knew she could at any time. That made her even less interested in coming out of her chamber than she would have been otherwise.

But, as always, she had to come out to eat. Although she avoided the busiest times at the refectory, she still did need to deal with occasional males and females of the Race. Sometimes they would be eating when she came in. More often, she would encounter them in the corridors on her way to and from eating.

She met Tessrek more often than she wanted. For one thing, the researcher’s compartment was close to her own. For another, he had enjoyed baiting her for as long as she could remember, and perhaps for longer than that.

“What is that sour smell?” he said one day as she was returning to her compartment. “It must be the reek of a Big Ugly.”

Of themselves, Kassquit’s lips drew back, displaying her teeth in an expression that was anything but a smile. “Not the smell you want, is it, superior sir?” she said, sardonic and polite at the same time. “You would sooner sniff a female of your own kind drugged into her season, would you not? Then you can behave like an animal without shame, truth?”

Tessrek recoiled. He was not used to counterattacks from Kassquit. “You are only a Tosevite,” he snapped. “How dare you presume to question a male of the Race on what he does?”

“I am an intelligent being,” Kassquit returned. “When I see a male of the Race acting like an animal, I am intelligent enough to recognize it, which is more than can be said for the male in question.”

“Your tongue is abominable, not only in its shape but also in the uses to which you put it,” Tessrek said.

Kassquit stuck out the organ in question. She thought it abominable, too, but she would not admit that to Tessrek. Nor would she tell him that she had thought of having it surgically split to make her more like a proper member of the Race. What she did say was, “The things my tongue describes are abominable. The things you do are abominable, worse than any for which the Race has mocked the Tosevites.”

And Tessrek recoiled again. When not in his season, he, like any other male or female of the Race, found reproductive behavior of any sort repugnant. Being reminded of his own had to flay him. “What a little monster Ttomalss raised up among us!” he said angrily.

“I have only told the truth,” Kassquit said. “You are the one who tells lies about me. You have got away with it up till now, but I will not tolerate it any more. Do you understand me, Tessrek?” It was, as best she could remember, the first time she had used his name instead of an honorific.

He noticed, too, and took offense. “Do you presume to use me as an equal?” he demanded.

“I beg your pardon,” Kassquit said sweetly. Tessrek started to relax. Kassquit sank the dart with double enjoyment because of that: “No doubt I gave you too much credit.”

For a moment, she thought Tessrek would physically assail her. He displayed his sharp teeth in a threat gesture more fearsome than hers, and also spread his fingerclaws. Kassquit made herself stand her ground. If he attacks, she told herself, I will kick him as hard as I can.

Tessrek took a step toward her. Feeling as curious as she was frightened, she took a step toward him, as if answering his challenge. And he, with a hiss both furious and frustrated, turned and skittered down the corridor in retreat that rapidly turned into rout. Still hissing, he rounded a corridor and disappeared.

“By the Emperor,” Kassquit said softly. Never in her life had she faced down a male of the Race. Never in her life had she tried to do that. As soon as she stopped assuming she was inferior, she stopped being inferior. Astonished, she murmured, “I can match myself against them. I truly can.”

For the first time, she had an insight into how ginger made males and females of the Race feel. The power surging through her was sweet. It was not the satisfaction or release she got from touching herself, but in a certain way it was even more enjoyable. I overcame him, she thought. I never overcame anyone before. A moment later, another thought struck her: I wonder why I never tried to overcome anyone before.

She saw Tessrek again later that day. The male left her alone, as he had not done since Ttomalss went down to the surface of Tosev 3. Nor did he seek to quarrel with her again after that.

When Ttomalss next telephoned her, a day later, she gave him a quick summary of her triumph. “I congratulate you, Kassquit,” he said. “You have routed a bully. May you have many further such successes, though I know Tessrek was your most difficult and annoying tormentor. With him defeated, you should have less trouble from now on.”

“I thank you, superior sir,” Kassquit said. “May you prove correct.” Then, having pressed Tessrek, she decided to press Ttomalss as well: “Have you had any luck in getting the Deutsche to revise their policy concerning ginger-smuggling?”

“I have not,” Ttomalss said. “I do not know if I have any hope of success there. Smuggling ginger is in the interest of the Deutsche because of the disruption it causes the Race.”

“Perhaps you should recruit Senior Researcher Felless to this cause,” Kassquit said, only a little acid in her voice. “It would surely be in her interest to see that ginger-smuggling was curtailed.”

“Er, yes-a clever notion,” Ttomalss said. Kassquit did not smile, because she’d lost that response in hatchlinghood: Ttomalss had not been able to smile back at her when she began smiling then. Had she been able to, though, she would have smiled now. She’d embarrassed him by reminding him he’d coupled with Felless. He deserves to be embarrassed, she thought. He will pay for that as long as I can make him do it.

Logically, her anger at Ttomalss made no sense. Felless had not even known what ginger would do to her when she tasted. Once he smelled her pheromones, Ttomalss could hardly have helped mating with her. But logic had very little to do with it. Kassquit still felt betrayed, and was still taking her vengeance.

Ttomalss said, “Perhaps another male, one more experienced in the ways of Tosev 3 than Felless, would be a more suitable partner in this endeavor.”

“Perhaps,” Kassquit said, making it plain she truly believed no such thing. “But was not Felless specially chosen for her expertise in aliens? Surely she would have more insight into the Deutsche than most males from the conquest fleet.”

“I do not believe it is possible to have insight into the Deutsche and to stay sane,” Ttomalss said. “A member of the Race may do one or the other, but not both.”

“They are Tosevites,” Kassquit said with a sniff, altogether forgetting her own blood. “Of course they are addled. What could you give them that would make them keep ginger to themselves?”

“Something else that would be disadvantageous to the Race,” Ttomalss answered. “I can conceive of the Deutsche making no other demand. They may be mad, but they are not such fools as to throw away something that hurts us without getting something else in return.”

“A pity,” Kassquit remarked. “Perhaps you can arrange to give them something that seems to be to their advantage but is not.”

“And what happens when they discover this?” Ttomalss asked. “They begin smuggling ginger again, no longer having any disincentive to restrain them.”

“Oh,” Kassquit said in a small voice. “I had not thought of that. It is truth, superior sir.” Regardless of whether she’d prevailed over Tessrek, she wasn’t going to be right all the time.

“Have general conditions on the ship grown more stable since last we talked?” Ttomalss asked. “I hope so. Being in Nuremberg is a trial, but, despite appearances, I do not expect to stay here forever.”

“Somewhat, but only somewhat,” Kassquit answered. “As I told you, I fear I was rude to Tessrek not long ago.” She did not fear that; she took an almost feral joy in it. The language of the Race, though, lent itself more readily to polite phrases.

Ttomalss said, “Tessrek is the only male I know whose central nervous system connects directly to his cloaca.” He waited for Kassquit to use the hand gesture that showed she thought he was right, then went on, “I hope you were thoroughly rude to the obnoxious obscurantist.”

“I believe so, yes.” Kassquit took a new pleasure in recounting in greater detail the exchange between the researcher and her, and yet another in watching Ttomalss laugh.

After he’d closed his mouth again, Ttomalss said, “Good for you. He has been insolent for too long. High time he truly learned he can no longer sharpen his claws on your hide with impunity.”

“I do thank you for your support, superior sir,” Kassquit said. “Lately, I have not had so much of that support as I might have liked. I am glad to see it return.”

“You need less support than you did at one time,” the male who had fostered her from hatchlinghood replied. “Your adolescence is nearly completed. Soon you will be an adult, as independent as any other.”

“Yes, superior sir,” Kassquit said dutifully, but she could not help adding, “An adult what? For I am not a Tosevite, not in any sense except my biology, but I cannot fully be a female of the Race, for that same biology prevents me from doing so.”

She did not think Ttomalss would have an answer for her; he never had before when she’d asked similar questions. But now he did: “An adult citizen of the Empire, Kassquit. Rabotevs and Hallessi are not members of the Race, either, but they reverence the Emperor, and spirits of Emperors past watch over them when they die. The same will be true for you in all respects.”

She tasted the words. “An adult citizen of the Empire,” she repeated. “I would be the first Tosevite citizen of the Empire, would I not?”

“You would indeed,” Ttomalss agreed. “By your actions-even by your standing up to a male who unjustly abused you-you have proved you deserve the designation. Eventually, all Tosevites will be citizens of the Empire. You will be remembered as the one who showed the way, as one who made a bridge between Tosevites on the one fork of the tongue and the Empire on the other.”

Kassquit’s tongue, as Tessrek had reminded her, had no fork. For the first time since she’d realized how different she was from everyone around her, she didn’t care. “It is good, superior sir,” she said to Ttomalss. She meant every word of it. For the first time since she’d realized how different she was, she knew her place again.

The telephone in David Goldfarb’s flat rang. Naomi, who was closer, went and answered it: “Hullo?” She paused, listening, then turned to her husband. “It’s for you, David.”

He got off the sofa. “Who is it?”

“I don’t know,” Naomi answered, a hand cupped over the mouthpiece. “Not a familiar voice… I don’t think.” She sounded a little doubtful.

With a shrug, he took the telephone. “Goldfarb here.”

“And I’m glad of it, old man,” the fellow on the other end of the line replied. “How are you and your lovely wife this evening?”

“Fine, thank you, Group Captain Roundbush,” Goldfarb answered tightly. He’d recognized that upper-crust accent at once, though Naomi would have heard it only a few times over the years. “What can I do for you, sir?” He knew, with a grim and mournful certainty, that Basil Roundbush had not rung him up to pass a few pleasant minutes.

“Funny you should ask that,” Roundbush said, though Goldfarb didn’t think it was funny at all. “There is a spot of work you could do for me, if you happen to feel like it.”

He made it sound as if he were truly asking a favor rather than giving a thinly veiled order. Maybe that amused him. It didn’t amuse David Goldfarb. “What have you got in mind, sir?” he asked. “Canvassing for Mosley’s bill, perhaps? A bit late for that, I’m afraid; it seems dead for this session of Parliament.” Naomi’s eyes got round.

“Why, so it does, and, if you want my opinion, a good thing, too,” Roundbush said. “Tell me the truth, Goldfarb: have I ever denigrated you on account of your faith? Ever in all the years we’ve known each other?”

“You’ve used me on account of my faith,” Goldfarb said. “Isn’t that enough?”

“Oh, but my dear fellow, that’s business. It’s not personal.” Roundbush sounded hurt that Goldfarb couldn’t make the distinction.

“It’s not just business when I’m so vulnerable to it.” Goldfarb wondered if he should have said that, but it couldn’t be anything Roundbush didn’t know. “You still haven’t told me what you want from me tonight.”

“Quite,” Roundbush said, which wasn’t an answer. “Perhaps we could meet tomorrow afternoon at that pub with the excellent Guinness-what was the name of the place again? — and discuss it there.”

“Robinsons,” Goldfarb said automatically.

“Right. See you at Robinsons, then, at half past five tomorrow.” The line went dead.

“What was that in aid of?” Naomi asked after David hung up, too.

“I don’t precisely know,” he answered. “Whatever it was, it was something the distinguished group captain”-he laced the words with as much sarcasm as he could-“didn’t care to discuss over the telephone wires. Which means, all too likely, it’s something that won’t stand the light of day.”

“Something to do with ginger,” Naomi said.

“I can’t think of any other business Roundbush is involved in that he doesn’t care to discuss over the telephone,” David said. “Of course, I don’t know all the business he’s involved in, either.”

“Can’t you stay away, then?” she asked.

He shook his head. “I wish I could, but you know it’s impossible as well as I do. I have to see what he wants-and see if I can talk him out of it.”

He got his chance the next evening, pulling up in front of Robinsons on his bicycle at exactly the appointed time in spite of a cold, nasty drizzle. When he went inside, he bought himself a whiskey-it didn’t seem a night for stout-and sat as close to the fire as he could get. He’d beaten Roundbush to the pub, which left him glowing with virtue-and hoping his superior wouldn’t show up.

But in Group Captain Roundbush came, dapper as ever, and sat down at the table with Goldfarb. “That’s not the worst idea anyone ever had,” he said, pointing to the whiskey, and ordered one for himself. When it came, he raised the glass high. “Here’s to you, old man.”

“You don’t need to butter me up, sir,” Goldfarb said. “Whatever it is you’ve got in mind, I’m probably stuck with it.”

“Now that’s a fine attitude!” Basil Roundbush said. “I’m about to offer the man an expense-paid holiday on the French Riviera-sounds all the better, doesn’t it, with the drips and trickles outside? — and he says he’s stuck with it. Plenty of chaps’d be happy to pay to go there, believe you me they would.”

“The German-occupied French Riviera?” Goldfarb’s shudder had nothing to do with the weather. “Yes, sir, that’s a splendid place to send a Jew. Why not pick one of your other chaps instead?”

“You’ll have a British passport,” Roundbush said patiently. “Or, if you’d rather, you can have an American one. Might even be better: plenty of gentiles in the States who look the way you do, so to speak. And you’re the right man for this job. You speak the Lizards’ language and you can get along in German with your Yiddish.”

“There is the small matter of French,” Goldfarb remarked.

“Small matter is right.” Roundbush remained imperturbable. “Anyone you need to talk to will speak German or the Lizards’ language or both. As I may have mentioned once or twice, we have a spot of trouble down there. Seems as if the Germans have got their claws into a chap who was a freelance operator who did a deal of business for us. Anything you can do to set things right will be greatly appreciated, on that you may rest assured.”

“What do you imagine I can do there that one of your other chaps couldn’t do a thousand times better?” Goldfarb asked.

“But, my dear fellow, you are one of our chaps,” Roundbush said. “You have a more personal interest in the success of your undertaking than anyone else we could send. Do you deny it?”

“I bloody well can’t deny it, not with you beggars soaring over my family and me like vultures over a dying sheep,” Goldfarb snarled. “You have the whip hand, and you’re not ashamed to use it.”

“You take things so personally,” Roundbush said. Unspoken but hanging in the air between them was, Just another excitable Jew.

“All right: I have an interest,” Goldfarb said. “What I haven’t got is any knowledge of your operation. How am I supposed to set it to rights if I can’t tell what’s right and what’s wrong?” That was a legitimate question. A not so legitimate thought tagged along behind it. If Roundbush gives me enough dirt about his pals, maybe I can bury them in it.

“I can tell you some of what you need to know,” Roundbush said. “I can also give you the names of people down there to ask. They’ll be able to tell you far more.” He signaled to a barmaid: “Two more whiskies, dear.” As soon as she’d gone off to fetch them, he turned back to Goldfarb. “So you’ll take it on, then?”

“What choice have I got?” David asked bitterly.

“A man always has choices,” Group Captain Roundbush replied. “Some may be better than others, but they’re always there.” Thanks so much, Goldfarb thought. Yes, I could stick a gun in my mouth and blow out my brains. That’s the sort you mean. Roundbush was going cheerfully along his own line of thought: “For instance, would you sooner carry a British passport or an American one?”

“With this accent?” Goldfarb shook his head. “No choice there. If I ever run into anyone who can tell the difference-and I might-I’d be made out a liar in less time than it takes to tell.”

“Not necessarily. You could be a recent immigrant,” Roundbush said.

“I wish I were a recent immigrant,” Goldfarb said. “Then you couldn’t be twisting my arm like this.”

“Not personally,” the senior RAF man agreed. “As I told you when we had our last discussion about your possibly leaving the country, though, I do have colleagues in the same line of work on the other side of the Atlantic. They might need your services from time to time. And, because they don’t know at first hand what a sterling fellow you are, they might be rather more importunate than I am in requiring your assistance.”

Goldfarb had no trouble figuring out what that meant. “They’re a pack of American gangsters, and they’ll shoot me if I talk back.”

Basil Roundbush didn’t admit that. On the other hand, he didn’t deny it, either. Instead, he turned the subject, saying, “Jolly good to have you on board again. I expect you’ll do splendidly.”

“I expect I’ll make a bloody hash of it-or I would make a bloody hash of it if I dared, if something dreadful wouldn’t happen to my family,” Goldfarb said. He knocked back his new whiskey, which the barmaid had brought while he and Roundbush were talking. She’d damn near plopped herself down in Roundbush’s lap afterwards, too. After coughing a couple of times, David asked, “Tell me something, sir: did you and your chums blow the ships from the colonization fleet out of the sky?”

He had, for once, succeeded in startling the normally imperturbable Roundbush. “Oh, good heavens, no!” the group captain exclaimed. “We can do a great many interesting things-far be it from me to deny that-but we have no satellites and no direct control over any explosive metal even here on Earth.”

Did he say no direct control because he wanted to imply indirect control? Very likely, Goldfarb judged. He wondered if the implication held any truth. He hoped not. “Do you know who did attack the colonization fleet?” If you do-especially if it’s the Reich, I can pass that on to the Lizards. Doing Heinrich Himmler a bad turn was reason enough and to spare for going down to Marseille.

But Roundbush disappointed him by shaking his head. “Haven’t the foggiest idea, I’m afraid. Whoever did manage that one isn’t letting on. He’d be a fool to let on, but that hasn’t always stopped people in the past.”

“True enough,” David said. The trouble was, too much of what Roundbush said made too much sense to dismiss him out of hand as just a bloke who’d gone bad. From the standpoint of mankind at large-as opposed to the standpoint of one particular British Jew-he might not even have gone bad at all. Something else occurred to Goldfarb: “Did you have anything to do with the ginger bombs that went off over Australia and made the Lizards have an orgy?”

“I haven’t got the faintest notion of what you’re talking about, old man,” Roundbush said, and laid a finger by the side of his nose. That was a denial far less ringing than the one he’d used in connection with the colonization fleet. Goldfarb noticed as much, as he was no doubt intended to. With a chuckle, Roundbush went on, “Only goes to show there really may be such a thing as killing them with kindness.”

“Yes, sir.” The whiskey mounted to Goldfarb’s head, making him add, “That’s not how the Reich kills its Jews.”

“I fought the Reich,” Roundbush said. “I have no love for it now. But it’s there. I can’t very well pretend it’s not-and neither can you.”

“No, sir,” David Goldfarb agreed mournfully. “But Gottenyu, how I wish I could.”

“Another letter from your cousin in England?” Reuven Russie said to his father. “That’s more often than you usually hear from him.”

“He has more tsuris than usual, too,” Dr. Moishe Russie answered. “Some of his friends-this is what he calls them, anyhow-are going to send him to Marseille, to help them in their ginger-trafficking.”

“Send a Jew to the Greater German Reich?” Reuven exclaimed. “If those are Cousin David’s friends, God forbid he should ever get enemies.”

“Omayn,” his father said. “But when all the other choices are worse…” Moishe Russie shook his head. “I know. It hardly seems possible. But he wants me to find out what I can from the Lizards about ginger-smuggling through Marseille, so he doesn’t go in completely blind.”

“How much of that can you do?” Reuven asked.

“There are males who will tell me some,” his father said. “I’ve spent a lot of time getting to know them. For something like that, they will give me answers, I think. And what I cannot learn from them, I may be able to find out from the Lizards’ computers.”

“Yes, that’s true,” Reuven agreed. “You can find out almost anything from them if you know where to look and which questions to ask.”

His father laughed, which irked him till Moishe remarked, “If you know where to look and which questions to ask, you can find out almost anything almost anywhere-you don’t need computers to do it.”

Reuven’s twin sisters came out of the kitchen to announce supper would be ready in a few minutes. Fixing Judith and Esther with a mild and speculative eye, he remarked, “You’re right, Father. They already know everything already.”

“What is he talking about now?” Esther asked, at the same time as Judith was saying, “He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

“If you’d listened carefully, he was paying you a compliment,” their father said.

They both sniffed. One of them said, “I’d sooner get a compliment where I don’t have to listen carefully.”

“I’ll give you one,” Reuven said. “You’re the most-” His father coughed before he could say anything more. That probably kept him out of trouble. Even so, he didn’t appreciate it. His sisters rarely gave him such a golden opportunity, and here he couldn’t even take advantage of it.

A moment later, his mother quelled the budding argument for the time being, calling, “Supper!” The ploy might not have been so subtle as Solomon’s, but it did the job. Next to boiled-beef-and-barley soup with carrots and onions and celery, squabbling with his sisters suddenly seemed less important.

His father approved, too, saying, “This is fine, Rivka. It takes me back to the days before the fighting all started, when we were living in Warsaw and things… weren’t so bad.”

“Why would you want to remember Warsaw?” Reuven asked with a shudder. His own memories of the place, such as they were, began only after the Nazis had taken it. They were filled with cold and fear and hunger, endless gnawing hunger. He couldn’t imagine how a pleasant bowl of soup took anyone back there in memory.

But his mother’s smile also looked into the past. She said, “Don’t forget, your father and I fell in love in Warsaw.”

“And if we hadn’t,” Moishe Russie added, “you wouldn’t be here now.” He glanced over to the twins. “And neither would you.”

“Oh, yes, we would,” Esther said. Judith added, “Somehow or other, we would have found a way.” Reuven was about to blast the twins for logical inconsistency when he saw they were both holding in giggles. He went back to his soup, which evidently disappointed them.

“What did Cousin David say?” Rivka Russie asked. “I heard you talking about his letter out in the front room, but I couldn’t make out everything you were saying.” Moishe explained. Rivka frowned. “That’s very bad,” she said, shaking her head. “That such trouble should happen in England… Who would have dreamt such trouble could happen in England?”

Moishe Russie sighed. “When you and I were small, dear, who would have dreamt such trouble could happen in Germany? In Poland, yes. We always knew that. In Russia, yes. We always knew that, too. But Germany? David’s wife is from Germany. She and her family were lucky-they got out in time. But when she was small, Germany was a good place to be a Jew.”

“America, now,” Reuven said. “America, and here, and maybe South Africa and Argentina. But if you want to live under human beings and not the Race, America is about the only place left where you can breathe free.”

“Mosley’s bill failed, thank heaven,” his father said. “It’s not against the law to be a Jew in England, the way it is in the Reich. It’s only that you’d better not, or people will make you wish you weren’t.”

“Poland was like that,” Reuven’s mother said. “I don’t think England is as bad as Poland was, but it could be one of these days.”

Reuven watched his sisters stir. He waited for one of them to ask why gentiles persecuted Jews. He’d asked that himself, till finally deciding it wasn’t worth asking. That it was so mattered. Why it was so… Ask a thousand different anti-Semites and you’d get a thousand different answers. Which of them was true? Were any of them true? Why questions too often lost you in a maze of mirrors, each reflecting back on another till you weren’t sure where you stood, or if you stood anywhere.

And, sure enough, one of the twins did ask a why question, though not the one Reuven expected: “Why does it matter if anyone-especially anyone Jewish-lives under people or under the Race? It doesn’t look like Jews will ever live under other Jews, and the Lizards do a better job of keeping people from bothering us than just about any human beings do-you said so yourself.”

“That is an important question,” Moishe Russie said gravely. Reuven found himself nodding. It was a more important question than he’d thought his sisters had in them. His father went on, “Who the rulers are matters because they set the tone for the people who live under them. The Nazis didn’t make the Germans anti-Semites, but they let them be anti-Semites and helped them be anti-Semites. Do you see what I mean?”

Both twins nodded. Judith, who hadn’t asked the question, said, “The Lizards would never do anything like that.”

“Never is a long time,” Reuven said before his father could speak. “Jews are useful to them right now. One of the reasons we’re useful to them is that so many people treat us so badly-we haven’t got many other places to turn. But that could change, or the Lizards could decide they need to make the Arabs happy instead of us. If either one of those things happens, where are we? In trouble, that’s where.”

He waited for Esther and Judith to argue with him, not so much because of what he’d said as because he’d been the one who said it. But they both nodded solemnly. Either he’d made more sense than usual, or they were starting to grow up.

His father quoted the Psalm: “Put not your trust in princes.”

“Or even fleetlords,” Reuven added.

“If we don’t trust princes, if we don’t trust fleetlords, whom do we trust?” Esther asked.

“God,” Moishe Russie said. “That’s what the Psalm is talking about.”

“Nobody,” Reuven said. He’d been raised in the Holy Land, in the cradle of Judaism, but was far less observant than either of his parents. Maybe it was because he’d been persecuted less. Maybe it was because he had a better secular education, though his father had had a good one by the standards of his time. Maybe he just had a hard time believing in anything he couldn’t see.

“Reuven,” his mother said reprovingly.

And maybe he had reasons for doubt his parents hadn’t had when they were young. “What’s the use of believing in a God Who lets His chosen people go through what the Reich has put them through?”

“I’m sure men thought the same in the time of Philistines, and in the time of the Greeks, and in the time of the Romans, and in the Middle Ages, and in the time of the pogroms, too,” his father said. “Jews have gone on anyhow.”

“They didn’t have any other answers in the old days,” Reuven said defiantly. “We have science and technology now. God was a guess that did well enough when there wasn’t any competition. Today, there is.”

He waited for his parents to pitch a fit. His mother looked as if she were on the point of it. His father raised an eyebrow. “The Nazis have science and technology, too,” Dr. Moishe Russie observed. “Science and technology tell them how to build the extermination camps they like so well. But what tells them they shouldn’t like those camps and shouldn’t want to build them?”

Reuven said, “Wait a minute. You’re confusing things.”

“Am I?” his father asked. “I don’t think so. Science and technology talk about what and how. We know more about what and how than they did in the days of the Bible. I have to admit that-I could hardly deny it. But science and technology don’t say anything about why.”

“You can’t really answer questions about why,” Reuven protested: the same thought he’d had not long before. “There’s no evidence.”

“Maybe you’re right,” Moishe Russie said. “In a strictly scientific sense, I suppose you are. But if someone asks a question like ‘Why not slaughter all the Jews we can reach?’-what kind of answer do science and technology have to give him?”

“That Jews don’t deserve to be slaughtered because we aren’t really any different from anybody else,” Reuven said.

It wasn’t the strongest reply, and he knew it. In case he hadn’t known it, his father drove the point home: “We’re different enough to tell apart, and that’s all the Germans care about. And we aren’t the only ones. They know they can do it, and they don’t know why they shouldn’t. How and why should they know that?”

Reuven glared at him. “You’re waiting for me to say God should tell them. You were talking about the Middle Ages. In the Middle Ages, God told the goyim to go out and slaughter all the Jews they could catch. That’s what they thought, anyhow. How do you go about proving they were wrong?”

His father grimaced. “We’re not going to get anywhere. I should have known we wouldn’t get anywhere. If you won’t believe, there’s nothing I can do to make you believe. I’m not a goy, to convert you by force.”

“And a good thing, too,” Reuven said.

His twin sisters looked at each other. He didn’t believe in telepathy. The Lizards thought the idea was laughable. But if they weren’t passing a message back and forth without using words, he didn’t know what they were doing. They both spoke at the same time: “Maybe you should convert Jane instead, Father.”

Moishe Russie raised an eyebrow. “How about that, Reuven?” he asked.

Glaring at Esther and Judith failed to help. They laughed at Reuven, their eyes wide and shining. He couldn’t strangle them, not with his parents watching. In a choked voice, he said, “I don’t think that would be a good idea.” It wasn’t quite true, but he wouldn’t admit as much. He went on, “Maybe I’ll bother you two when you have boyfriends.” It didn’t do a bit of good. The twins just laughed.