Second Contact

16

Vyacheslav Molotov woke with a head pounding like a mechanical hammer in the biggest steel mill in Magnitogorsk. By the devil’s grandmother, he thought blurrily, I haven’t had a hangover like that since I was a student before the Revolution.

Only gradually, as full awareness seeped back into him, did he realize how long ago the Revolution had been. For some reason, he remembered that before remembering he’d had nothing stronger than fizzy mineral water the night before. That alarmed him.

He sat up in bed, which forcibly brought his attention to its not being his bed, not being the one in which he’d fallen asleep. It was a cheap cot on which a newly conscripted recruit would have had trouble getting any rest. He looked around. He was not in his bedroom, either. Somehow, that didn’t hit him too hard. By then, it was scarcely a surprise.

He tried to figure out where he was and how he’d got there. Where quickly became obvious. If this wasn’t a cell, he’d never seen one. As cells went, it was fairly luxurious; most would have had straw on the floor rather than a cot of any sort, no matter how unsatisfactory. Watery sunlight dodged past the bars over the narrow windows.

Who would put me in a cell? Molotov’s mind was still slower than it should have been (someone’s drugged me, he realized, which should have been obvious from the start), but only two candidates presented themselves. Beria or Zhukov? Zhukov or Beria? The lady or the tiger? The drug-chloroform? — had to be what let that fragment of foolishness float up into the light of day.

“Guard!” he called, his voice hoarse, his throat raspy and sore. “Guard!” How many counterrevolutionaries had called out to their gaolers during the great days? How few had got even the slightest particle of what they wanted? How little Molotov had expected to find himself in the position in which he’d put so many others, both during the Revolution and throughout the endless rounds of purges that followed.

He wondered why he wasn’t simply dead. Had he been staging a coup, he would not have let his opponents survive. Lenin had thought the same way, and disposed of Tsar Nicholas and his family. With wry amusement, Molotov remembered how shocked the Lizards had been to learn that bit of Soviet history.

To his surprise, a guard did come peer into the cell through the little barred window set into the door. “Awake, are you?” he grunted, his accent White Russian.

“No, I always shout for guards in my sleep,” Molotov snapped.

He might have known the fellow would prove imperturbable. “Good thing you’re with it again. You have some papers to sign. Or maybe you could have done that in your sleep, too.”

“I am not going to sign anything,” Molotov declared. He wondered if he meant it. He’d dished out a lot of pain, but he’d never had to try to take much. People who weren’t on the business end of torture talked about withstanding it. People who were knew how rare an ability that was. Most men, once the anguish started, would do anything to make it stop. He dared a question: “Where am I?”

Beria or Zhukov? Zhukov or Beria? Zhukov, he judged, would not have left him alive if he ever decided to strike for the top. But he didn’t think Beria would have, either. Beria, though, might be inclined to gloat, and…

He didn’t get much chance to think about it. The guard answered, “You’re right where you belong, that’s where.” He laughed at his own cleverness, rocking back on his heels to do it. Then he shoved his face up close to the window again. “And you’ll do what you’re told, or you’ll never do anything else again.” He went on his way, whistling a song that had been popular a few years before.

Molotov’s stomach growled. It was ravenous, no matter how his head felt. He wondered how long he’d been drugged asleep. One more thing they wouldn’t tell him, of course. He looked at the window. Was the stripe of sunlight it admitted higher or lower than before? That would eventually tell him whether this was morning or afternoon. But even if he knew, what could he do with the knowledge? Nothing he could see.

Knowing in whose prison he sat… That could be all-important. And he didn’t need long to figure it out, either, once the cell took on a little more immediate reality for him. Here and there, previous occupants had scrawled or scratched their opinions on the walls. Quite a few were uncomplimentary toward the NKVD. None said a word about the Red Army.

“Beria,” Molotov said softly. So. The Mingrelian wanted to go where the Georgian had blazed the trail, did he? With cold political horse sense behind his judgment, Molotov didn’t think Beria could get away with it for long. The Soviet Union had had one ruler from the Caucasus, and that was plenty for a long time. But horse sense, unfortunately, said nothing about Molotov’s personal chances for escape.

And here came the guard again. He shoved papers between the bars of the window set into the door. A cheap pen followed the papers. “Sign here. Don’t take all day about it, either, not if you know what’s good for you.”

“I will remember your face and learn your name,” Molotov said. The guard walked off again, laughing.

Molotov read the papers. According to them, he had resigned as General Secretary because of failing health. They maintained he looked forward to retirement in some place with a warm climate-perhaps the Caucasus, so Beria could make sure he didn’t get into mischief, perhaps the hell in which, as a good Marxist-Leninist, he wasn’t supposed to believe.

If he signed those papers, how long would Beria let him live? He had the idea he was still breathing for no other reason than to put his name on the requisite lines. But if he didn’t, what would Lavrenti Pavlovich do to him? Did he want to find out? Did he have the nerve to find out?

Whatever it was, it couldn’t be worse than killing him. So he told himself, at any rate. A few minutes later, the guard opened the door. He was big and beefy. So were his three pals. When he checked the papers, he scowled. “You forget how to write?” he demanded, his voice scratchy from too many cigarettes.

“No,” Molotov said. It was the last coherent sound he made for the next several minutes. The goons set on him with a gusto that showed they enjoyed their work. They also showed a certain amount of skill, inflicting a maximum of pain with a minimum of actual damage. The one who wrapped Molotov’s fingers around a pencil in a particular way and then squeezed his hand had especially nasty talents along those lines. Molotov howled like a dog baying at the moon.

After a bit, the guard shoved the papers in front of his face again. “Remember your name yet, old man?” Yes leapt into Molotov’s throat. But then he thought, If I yield, I am likely to die. He made himself shake his head. The guard sighed, as if at a bad run of cards. The beating went on.

Feigning unconsciousness came easy for Molotov, though lying still when one of the bastards kicked him in the ribs was anything but. Grumbling, the guards stamped out of the cell. But they would be back. Molotov knew too well they would be back. Maybe the next round of torment would break him. Maybe they wouldn’t bother with another round. Maybe they would just kill him and get it over with.

He gathered his strength, such as it was. He’d sent a lot of men to executions without wondering what went through their minds while they awaited death. What went through his mind was surprisingly banal: he didn’t want things to end this way. But no one, now, cared what he wanted.

Sooner than he’d expected, the door opened again. He braced himself, not that that would do any good. Only one NKVD man this time, with a silenced pistol in his hand. It is the end, Molotov thought. Then the fellow spoke: “Comrade General Secretary?” His Russian had a rhythmic Polish accent.

And, suddenly, hope lived in Molotov’s narrow, heaving chest. “Nussboym,” he said, pleased and proud he’d remembered the name. He spoke with desperate urgency: “Get me out of here and you can name your own price.”

David Nussboym nodded. “Come along, then,” he said. “Keep your head down-make yourself hard to recognize. If anyone does figure out who you are, look abused.”

“It will not be hard.” Molotov heaved himself to his feet. Nussboym aimed the pistol at him. He shambled out of the cell, looking down at the cheap linoleum of the floor as he’d been ordered.

A few men passed them in the halls, but a guard leading a prisoner excited no special comment. Molotov was nearing the doorway and realizing Nussboym would have to shoot the guards there when something outside emitted a rumbling roar and the door came crashing in. One of the guards cursed and grabbed for his pistol. A burst of machine-gun fire cut him down.

An immensely amplified voice bellowed: “Surrender in there! Resistance is hopeless! The Red Army has this prison surrounded! Come out with your hands up!”

Molotov wasted no time whatever in obeying. Only later did he wonder if the tank machine-gunner might have shot him down for rushing forward so quickly. David Nussboym threw down his pistol and followed a heartbeat later.

A Red Army infantry lieutenant with a clipboard stood behind the tank. The fellow looked too young to shave, let alone serve the Soviet Union. “Give me your name, old-timer, and make it snappy,” he barked.

“Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov,” Molotov said in tones like a Murmansk winter. “Now give me yours.”

The lieutenant visibly started to call him a liar, but then took another look. He stiffened, as if suddenly afflicted with rigor mortis. Then he bawled for a superior. In something under fifteen minutes, Molotov was whisked into the presence of Marshal Zhukov back at the Kremlin. “Well, well,” Zhukov said. “So Beria didn’t do you in, eh?”

“No, Georgi Konstantinovich,” Molotov answered. “I remain at the helm, as you see, and not badly the worse for wear. And tell me, where is Lavrenti Pavlovich now?”

“Deceased,” Zhukov answered. “Your office carpet will need changing; it has stains on it.” The Red Army officer didn’t say anything for a while. Molotov didn’t care for the way Zhukov was studying him. If he had an unfortunate accident about now, who would stop Zhukov from seizing the reins of the Soviet Union? No one at all, Molotov thought bleakly. Zhukov lit a cigarette, inhaled, coughed a couple of times, and said, “Well, well, good to have you back.”

Molotov breathed again, and didn’t even notice how his ribs twinged. He’d known the habit of subordination was deeply ingrained in Zhukov, but he hadn’t known how deeply. Maybe Zhukov himself hadn’t known, either, not till the test came. “Good to be back,” Molotov said, no more emotionally than he said anything else. He raised an eyebrow. “And how did you become involved in the drama?”

“Beria announced your indisposition over Radio Moscow this morning,” Zhukov answered. “He also announced mine. Mine would have been fatal, except that my bodyguards shot faster and straighter than his assassins. I suspect he had a puppet waiting to take over the Army, but the rank and file are fond of me, even if some officers and apparatchiks aren’t. And, while the NKVD is strong, the Red Army is stronger. I have made very sure of this. We suppress the Chekists everywhere.”

“Good,” Molotov said. Beria had aimed to kill Zhukov at once, but had been willing to keep Molotov himself alive for a while. That spoke volumes about whom the NKVD chief had thought more dangerous. The way things had turned out proved he’d had a point. Molotov chose not to dwell on it. He said, “The NKVD man who came out with me-his name is Nussboym-deserves reward, not punishment. He got me out of my cell. Without him, Beria’s men might have liquidated me even with Red Army troops filling Dzerzhinsky Square.”

“So they might have,” Zhukov said-wistfully? Molotov chose not to dwell on that, either. Zhukov went on, “I leave it to you to tend to that, then, Comrade General Secretary. Meanwhile, we have retaken the Radio Moscow transmitter and announced that all is well, but you might want to think about broadcasting a message yourself, to show that you are well and in control.”

“Yes, I will do that,” Molotov agreed at once. Chloroform? Beatings? He shrugged them off. That he hadn’t eaten since before Beria’s thugs seized him? He shrugged that off, too. “Take me to a broadcast studio.” Only after he was on his way did he realize he hadn’t asked about his wife. He shrugged once more. That could wait, too.

As she set a boiled brisket of beef on the table, Bertha Anielewicz said, “I wonder what really happened in Moscow the other day.”

“So do I,” Mordechai Anielewicz answered, picking up the serving fork and carving knife. While he cut portions for his wife, his children, and himself, he went on, “I ran into Ludmila this morning. She doesn’t know any more than we do, but she was almost dancing in the street to hear that Beria’s dead.”

“She ought to know,” Bertha said.

“That’s what I thought,” Mordechai agreed. “She said the only thing she was really sorry about was that Molotov didn’t go with him.”

“Can’t have everything,” his wife said. “The way things are, sometimes you can’t have anything.”

“And isn’t that the truth?” After a moment’s gloom, Anielewicz brightened. “David Nussboym ended up in the NKVD, remember. He ought to be sinking like a stone about now. Nu, can you tell that that breaks my heart?”

“Oh, of course,” Bertha answered. “Twenty years ago, he would have sunk you like a stone, too, if we hadn’t beaten him to the punch.”

Their children listened with wide eyes. Anielewicz wasn’t in the habit of hashing over things that had happened before they were born. He didn’t do it now, either, contenting himself with a nod. “We’ll have to see what goes on in Russia,” he said in an effort to pull matters back toward the present. “They say Molotov is on top again, but they say all sorts of things that turn out not to be true.”

Before Bertha could answer, the telephone rang. She got up and went into the parlor to answer it. After a moment, she called, “It’s for you, Mordechai.”

“I’m coming. At least it waited till I was almost finished with supper.” Anielewicz equated telephone calls with trouble. A lot of years had burned that equation into his mind. He took the handset from his wife, who returned to the table. “Hello?”

“Anielewicz? This is Yitzkhak, up in Glowno. We’re going to take the sheep to market tomorrow. Do you want a last look at them before they go?”

“No, you can send them without me,” Anielewicz said, to confuse anyone who might be listening despite the Germanand Lizard-made gadgets he’d had installed on his phone line to defeat would-be snoops. He operated on the assumption that, whatever the Reich and the Race could manufacture, they could also find a way to defeat. If he’d admitted wanting to go up to Glowno, Yitzkhak would have known something was badly wrong. To make things sound as normal as they could, he went on, “How’s your cousin doing?”

“Pretty well, thanks,” Yitzkhak answered. “She’s up on crutches now, and the cast will come off her leg in another month. Then it’s just a matter of getting the strength back into the muscles. It’ll take time, but she’ll do it.”

“Of course she will,” Mordechai said. “That’s good news.” He’d seen enough wounded men during the fighting to know it might not be so easy as Yitzkhak was saying, but only time would tell. After stepping in front of a bus, the other Jew’s cousin was lucky to have got off with only a broken leg.

After a little inconsequential talk, Yitzkhak got off the line. Anielewicz went back to the supper table. When he sat down, his wife raised a questioning eyebrow.

“That miserable flock of sheep,” he said; he couldn’t be quite sure who was listening to what he said inside his flat, either. “Yitzkhak wanted to know if I needed to check them before he got rid of them. I told him to go ahead; I’m sick of the foolish things.”

His children stared; they knew he owned no sheep and had no interest in owning any. He held up a hand to keep them from asking questions. They understood the signal, and refrained. Bertha knew what he was talking about. “Well, we have some leftovers here,” she remarked, by which Mordechai knew he’d be taking them with him for lunch when he went up to Glowno.

Sure enough, his wife had a sack waiting for him when he headed off early the next morning. He took it with a word of thanks, kissed her, and climbed aboard his bicycle. He could have ridden the bus and arrived faster and fresher, but he and his colleagues had been talking over their plans ever since the Polish nationalists tried to abscond with the explosive-metal bomb. The Jews hadn’t intended to sneak it out of Glowno in the dead of night. Anielewicz grinned-very much the opposite.

And he always liked to measure himself by exercise. His legs began to ache dully before he’d got very far outside of Lodz, but he settled into a kilometer-eating rhythm and the pain got no worse. After a while, it even receded. That marked the day as a good one. He hoped it would prove an omen.

He was not the only Jew on the road with a rifle or a submachine gun on his back. That would have been true any day, but was more true today than most. And motorcars and even lorries full of armed Jews rolled past him. Some of the men in those cars and lorries, recognizing him as one of their own, waved when they went by. Every now and then, he would take a hand off the handlebars and wave back.

By the time he got to Glowno, Jewish fighters filled the town. Signs in the windows of shops owned by Jews welcomed the militia to town and invited the fighters to come in and spend money on food or drink or soap or clothes or any of two dozen other different things.

The Poles on the streets of Glowno eyed the armed Jews with expressions ranging from resignation to alarm. A generation earlier, such a gathering of Jews would have been impossible, and would have been broken up with bloodshed if attempted. Now… Now, here in Glowno, the Jews would have won any fighting that started.

A crackle of rifle fire began outside of town. Anielewicz cocked his head to make sure just where it was coming from, then relaxed. The fighters had a marksmanship contest planned, and that was what he heard. A few minutes later, on the other side of Glowno, a machine gun came to deadly, raucous life. Mordechai knew the fellow handling it. He’d fought against the Germans in a machine-gun company in 1939, and had specialized in the weapons ever since. Thanks to the Lizards, the Jews had plenty of machine guns of German, Polish, and Soviet manufacture (along with a few oddities such as Austro-Hungarian Schwarzloses left over from the First World War), but not all the fighters knew how to keep them in top working order.

Loud blasts announced grenades tearing up a meadow. The man giving lessons in how to throw them was a rarity in football-mad Poland: he’d spent his childhood in the United States, and had played a lot of baseball there. Anielewicz knew next to nothing about baseball, but did understand it involved plenty of throwing.

His own role at the gathering was more theoretical. He closeted himself with leaders of Jewish militias from all around Lizardoccupied Poland and gave them the best advice he could on how to get along with the Race. “Never let the Lizards forget how badly the Poles outnumber us,” he said. “The more reason they think we have to be loyal to them, the likelier they are to give us all the toys we want and to back us if we do have trouble with the goyim.”

His listeners nodded sagely. A lot of them had used the same tactics over the years. Like Anielewicz, a lot of them had also intrigued with the Reich or the Soviet Union to keep the Lizards from gaining too dominant a position. The trick in playing that game was so simple, Mordechai didn’t bother mentioning it: don’t get caught.

He was drinking a stein of beer in the tavern where he’d overheard the Polish nationalists plotting to hijack the bomb when Yitzkhak found him. Yitzkhak looked like a clerk: he was short and slight and had a pinched-up face that didn’t approve of anything. Like Mordechai, he was from Warsaw. He’d fought like a madman against the Nazis, and later against the Lizards.

When he spoke, he sounded faintly accusing: “On the telephone, you said you weren’t coming up.”

“I changed my mind-is this against the law?” Anielewicz returned. Even here, they were careful of what they said and how they said it.

“Well, you can’t see your sheep,” Yitzkhak said petulantly. “The mob here, they all got sold, and I don’t know where the devil they’ve gone now. I don’t much care, either, if you want to know the truth.”

The bomb had gone, then. Mordechai let out a sigh of relief and ordered another mug of beer. The hubbub the Jewish fighters had raised in and around Glowno had let Yitzkhak and his friends get the weapon out of town with no one the wiser. Anielewicz had counted on that-and had counted on the fighters to bail Yitzkhak and his friends out of trouble if they got into any.

Aloud, he said, “Well, let me buy you a shot for all the trouble you’ve gone through on account of those damn sheep.”

“A shot doesn’t begin to do it,” Yitzkhak said, sour still, but that didn’t mean he refused the vodka. Anielewicz bought himself another beer, too. All things considered, he was of the opinion he’d earned it.

After he’d drunk it, he went out to see if anyone had stolen his bicycle. Unlike the bomb, it was still there. As he started to climb aboard it for the ride back to Lodz, he saw a couple of Lizards coming along the street. Judging what they were thinking wasn’t easy, but to him they looked horrified at seeing so many humans swaggering around with guns.

That-and the steins of beer he’d drunk-made him smile. If they weren’t used to the idea that people weren’t their slaves by now, too bad. With more than a little bravado, he waved to them, calling, “I greet you, males of the Race.”

“I greet you,” one of the Lizards said… cautiously. His eye turrets swung this way and that. “What is the purpose of this, ah, gathering?”

Camouflage, Mordechai thought. Aloud, he said, “To make sure we Jews can strongly oppose anyone who tries to trouble us: Germans, Russians, Poles-or anyone else.” By that last, he could only have meant the Race.

“They are barbarians,” one of the Lizards said to the other. Anielewicz didn’t think he was supposed to hear, but he did.

“Barbarians, truth,” the other Lizard agreed, “but if these are the Jews, they are the barbarians who are useful to us.”

“Ah,” the first Lizard said. Ah, Mordechai thought. Hearing that from the Lizard was no great surprise. He knew the Race found the Jews useful. Jews found the Lizards useful, too. And so the world goes round. He waved to the males again, then started pedaling south and west, back toward Lodz. His legs hardly pained him at all, and, once he’d got out of town, he could go quite fast. And so the wheels go round. He bent his back to the work.

Nesseref felt like hissing at her Tosevite workmen in the tones of an alarm signal. “Why have you not poured the concrete, as we discussed the other day?” she demanded indignantly.

The Big Ugly foremale peered down at her from his preposterous height. He did not speak the language of the Race with any great grammatical precision, but he made himself understood: “Rain too hard,” he said, and added an emphatic cough. “Ground all muddily. Pour now, not set good. Pour now, not hardly set at all.” He placed hands on his hips. The shuttlecraft pilot had never seen the gesture before, but it had to be one of defiance.

And the Big Ugly-Casimir, his name was-had a point, or she supposed he did. She’d never seen it rain so hard back on Home as it had rained here near Glowno these past couple of days. Males from the conquest fleet, the ones who didn’t keep trying to ply her with ginger, told her such things weren’t rare on this part of Tosev 3, and were even more common elsewhere.

“Very well, Casimir,” she said, yielding ground. “How long do you think it will be before we can pour the concrete for the shuttlecraft field?”

“Don’t know.” Where the Big Ugly’s hands-on-hips gesture had been alien, his shrug could almost have come from a male of the Race. “Ground dry in four, five, six days-if no more rain before then.” He shrugged again. “Don’t know nothing about rain then now. Nobody don’t know nothing about rain then now.”

That wasn’t strictly true-the Race’s meteorologists were better at forecasting Tosev 3’s weather than they had been when the conquest fleet arrived. Then, from the reports Nesseref had read, they’d wanted nothing more than to crawl back into their eggshells and hide. Their models had not been built for this world’s extremes of climate. They had improved, but remained a long way from perfect.

Casimir said, “Taste some ginger, Shuttlecraft Pilot. You feel better then.” He used another emphatic cough.

“No,” Nesseref said with an emphatic cough of her own. “Do not suggest that to me again, or this crew will have a new foremale the next instant.”

She glared at the Big Ugly. He was taller and bulkier, but she was fiercer. He turned away, mumbling, “It shall be done, superior female.” The pat phrase, unlike most of his speech, he brought out correctly.

“It had better be done,” Nesseref snapped.

She still craved ginger, craved the way it made her feel, even craved the way it brought her into her season. The more she craved, the more strongly she resisted the craving. She was, and was determined to remain, her own person, bending her will to those of others only when she had to and to a Tosevite herb not at all, not if she could help it. No matter how good it made her feel, ginger turned her into an animal. Worse, it turned the males around her into animals, too.

When she strode off, her feet squelched in the offending mud. She hissed again, wishing someone more familiar than she with conditions on this planet had got the job of laying out the shuttlecraft port.

“At least I found some land we could use,” she muttered. It was up to Bunim or his superiors to compensate the Big Uglies who had formerly owned the land. By all the signs, the Tosevites were holding the Race for ransom, or thought they were. But the Race had more resources than these peasants thought, and paying them what they thought they deserved was a tolerable expense.

The idea of having to pay them still offended Nesseref. This wasn’t one of the independent not-empires whose existence had once astonished her; the Race really had conquered this stretch of Tosev 3. But the local administrators seemed to be doing their best to deny they’d accomplished any such thing. No matter how often Bunim explained it, it still seemed wrong.

Nesseref glanced north and west toward Glowno, then south and east in the direction of Jezow, the other nearby Tosevite town. On the map, in fact, Jezow was closer to the site she’d chosen than was Glowno. Her eye turrets kept twisting back toward the latter town, though. The Big Ugly called Anielewicz had said he had an explosive-metal bomb there. She still didn’t know whether he’d been telling the truth. She hoped she-and the shuttlecraft port that would eventually come into being here despite the delays the ghastly weather caused-would never have to find out.

She swung her eye turrets in the direction of the Big Uglies who labored for her. Anielewicz had joked-she hoped he’d joked-about moving the bomb he might or might not have so that it could destroy her shuttlecraft port. Were any of these Tosevites his spies? She could hardly come out and ask them.

Almost all the workers, she knew, were of the larger subgroup called Poles, not the smaller subgroup called Jews. By what Nesseref had learned from both Bunim and Anielewicz, the two subgroups disliked and distrusted each other. That made it less likely the Poles were spying for Anielewicz.

Whatever reassurance that thought brought her did not last long. That the Poles weren’t spying for Anielewicz didn’t mean they weren’t spying for someone. She wished she could have had males and females of the Race laboring here, but, even after the arrival of the colonization fleet, there weren’t enough to go around. There wasn’t enough heavy equipment to go around, either, not with so much of it in use building housing for the colonists.

She glared up at the gray, gloomy sky. She’d decided to use Tosevite labor because, with it, she could have had the shuttlecraft port finished before her turn came for the heavy equipment the Race had hereabouts. But the weather wasn’t cooperating. She’d been through an interminable winter here. She’d talked with veterans from the conquest fleet. Tosev 3’s weather was not in the habit of cooperating with anyone.

As if to prove the point, a drop of rain fell on her snout, and then another and another. This wasn’t going to be the sort of cloudburst that had halted the concrete pouring, but it wasn’t weather in which her laborers could do much, either. They seemed anything but unhappy about that. Some pulled cloth caps down lower over their eyes. Others stood in whatever shelter they could find and inhaled the smoke from the burning leaves of some Tosevite plant. That struck Nesseref as a nasty habit, but they enjoyed it.

After a while, Casimir came over to her and said, “Not can working in weather like these.”

“I know,” Nesseref said resignedly.

“You dismissing we?” the foremale asked. “With pay? Weather not ours fault.”

“Yes, with pay,” Nesseref said, more resignedly still. She would have done the same for workers of the Race, and her instructions were to treat the Big Uglies like workers of the Race, or at least like Rabotevs and Hallessi. She doubted these Tosevites deserved to be treated in such a fashion, but was willing-less willing than she had been, but still willing-to believe the males who’d come with the conquest fleet knew more about the situation than she did.

Now Casimir took off his cap and bent from the waist in her direction. “You is good to working for, superior female.”

“I thank you,” Nesseref said. To be perfectly polite, she should have given the foremale a compliment in return, praising him for the hard work he and the other Big Uglies had done. She could not bring herself to say the words. From everything she’d seen, the Polish males worked no harder than they had to.

They did not seem to miss the reciprocal compliment. After Casimir had shouted to them in their own language, they let out the cries that meant they were happy. Some of them bowed to Nesseref, as the foreman had done. Some waved: a friendly gesture she had seen them use among themselves. And some simply headed off toward Jezow without a backwards glance. A lot of those, she knew from experience, would overindulge in alcohol during their free time and return to work in the morning a good deal the worse for wear.

A raindrop hit her in the eye. Her nictitating membrane flashed across the eyeball, flicking away the moisture. She wondered how long the rain would go on. Too long, without a doubt. She sighed. She couldn’t do anything about that. She couldn’t do anything about far too many things on Tosev 3.

She pulled a telephone from her belt pouch and punched in Bunim’s code. The regional subadministrator took longer to answer than she thought he should have. Nor was his voice particularly gleeful as he asked, “Well, Shuttlecraft Pilot, what has gone wrong now? I assume something has, or you would not be calling me.”

“Truth, superior sir-something has,” Nesseref said. “Because of this rain, the concrete pouring cannot commence as scheduled.”

She was glad the portable telephone had no vision link; though the Race’s features were less mobile than those of the Big Uglies, she did not think Bunim would look happy. But all he said, after a sigh of his own, was, “Very few things on Tosev 3 move in exact accord with prearranged schedules. This is naturally distressing to our kind, but it is a truth of its own here. Better the schedule should become somewhat addled than those trying to fulfill it.”

“I thank you, superior sir,” Nesseref said in some surprise. “That is generous of you.” It was more generous than she’d expected him to be.

“Anyone who tries to hurry things on Tosev 3 is doomed to disappointment, just as anyone with the purple itch is doomed to scratching,” Bunim replied. “I am given to understand the problem is worse elsewhere on Tosev 3 than here.”

“Emperor preserve me from those regions, then,” the shuttlecraft pilot said.

“Indeed,” Bunim said. “But you must also remember that the Big Uglies, when moving to their own purposes rather than to ours, are capable of bursts of speed we could not hope to match. Thus their acquisition of industrial technology in a mere handful of years. Thus also their extremely rapid growth in technical ability both while fighting the conquest fleet and since the fighting stopped.”

“I do remember this,” Nesseref said. “I do not understand it, but I remember it. My opinion, for whatever it may be worth to you, is that they have more technical ability than they know what to do with. If they had more social stability, they might not advance so fast, but they would be better off.”

“I agree with you,” Bunim said. “They were already working on explosive-metal weapons when the conquest fleet arrived. By now, the Deutsche and the Americans, say, might already have fought a nuclear war. Had we come in the aftermath of such a fight, we would only have had to pick up the pieces.” He sighed. “It would have been much easier.”

“For the conquest fleet, certainly,” Nesseref said. “The colonization fleet would have had a harder time dealing with a wrecked planet, though.”

“Truth.” Bunim sighed again. “That is one reason we did not use many explosive-metal bombs. Even so, however, there are times when I think it would have been worth it.” He broke the connection, leaving Nesseref standing alone in the chilly rain.

The science officer at the Race’s embassy in Nuremberg was a male named Slomikk. Ttomalss had had occasional questions for him since coming down to the surface of Tosev 3, and had generally been pleased with his replies. He seemed to have more insight into the way the Tosevites thought than was common among the Race.

Today, though, Ttomalss came to him with a query of a different sort: “How much danger am I in from the abnormal amount of background radiation in this part of Deutschland?”

Slomikk swung both eye turrets toward the researcher into Tosevite psychology. “How did you learn of this increase in radiation?” he inquired. “You are correct-it does exist-but we do not go out of our way to advertise it.”

“I can see that you would not,” Ttomalss said with considerable warmth. “I stumbled upon it by accident; I was investigating the effects of local climate on agriculture, and the next map to leap onto the screen was one of radiation distribution as related to wind patterns.”

“I… see,” Slomikk said slowly. “Well, that is one link I shall have to remove from the computer system.”

“Is that all you have to say about it?” Ttomalss demanded, more indignantly than before. “Can you do nothing more than conceal the evidence from those who are compelled to serve here?”

“What else would you recommend, Senior Researcher?” the science officer said. “I cannot make the radiation disappear, and the Deutsche insist on placing their center here. Their former center, Berlin, was during an early stage of the fighting a great deal more radioactive than this.”

“I am aware of that, of course,” Ttomalss said, “as I am aware that we also bombed the Deutsch city of Munchen, south of here. But both those events took place during the fighting; the radioactivity from them should have subsided by now, should it not?”

“Indeed it should have, were that the only radioactivity we were discussing,” Slomikk said. “But the Deutsche, back in the days when they were first experimenting with explosive metals, built a pile with inadequate moderators, or perhaps with no moderators at all. As you would expect, it melted down, and its radioactivity has not declined to any great degree in the years since. It is still too strong for anyone, even condemned criminals, to go in and clean it out, and it is the source of the increased radioactivity you noticed in this area.”

“A pile without moderators?” Ttomalss shuddered at the mere idea. “Big Uglies are mad. What prompted them to do such a thing?”

“As best I can gather-you will understand, the Deutsche are not forthcoming about this-the answers are, desperate haste and complete inexperience,” Slomikk replied. “From our point of view, it is unfortunate that they acquired technical proficiency so fast.”

“Yes.” Ttomalss used the affirmative hand gesture. “Better by far for us had they succeeded in rendering a good stretch of their not-empire completely uninhabitable rather than…” He returned to the question that had brought him to Slomikk in the first place: “How dangerous is this environment, anyhow?”

“Risk of malignancy is certainly higher than it would be had the Deutsche not acted with such flagrant stupidity,” Slomikk said. “That does not mean it is extremely high. Among the Deutsche of Nuremberg, the incidence of neoplasms is about thirty percent higher than it is in areas with lower radiation levels. Closer to the site of the meltdown, that increases considerably.”

“How do you know this?” Ttomalss answered his own question: “You have access to Deutsch records, then?”

“Some of them,” Slomikk said. “Frustratingly, only some. Many of their records remain handwritten or produced on machines that are not electronic. We have to examine them physically, which is not easy for us to do without revealing ourselves. And working through Tosevite intermediaries to gain access to what these records contain is not everything it might be, either, for there is always the question of whom a Big Ugly truly works for.”

“So there is,” Ttomalss agreed. “Tosevites have played us false so many times in the past, we have every reason to be alert to treachery now.”

Slomikk was the sort of methodical male who, once he got started on an explanation, kept right on no matter what the male to whom he was explaining said: “And not all the Deutsch security systems for the data they do have in electronic format are easy to penetrate. Big Uglies worry about espionage far more than the Race has done since the formative days of our species.”

“With all the competing sovereignties among the Big Uglies, they have needed such fears,” Ttomalss observed. “This is an area where unity has not given us strength.”

“They have even entrapped us a few times,” Slomikk said, “defending data with all their strength, making us exert great effort and ingenuity to win them. Then, when we had done so, we eventually discovered the data were thoroughly falsified.” He let out an irate hiss.

“I have had firsthand experience of Tosevite treachery,” Ttomalss said. “I can well believe these Big Uglies could be as devious as you say. Do you suppose they could have penetrated any of our data networks without our knowing it?”

“That is not my area of expertise, but I would doubt it very much,” Slomikk said. “You would be better advised seeking such answers from the head of Security here. But I, for my part, am certain the Deutsche are too ignorant to attempt, let alone succeed at, electronic espionage of their own.”

“I hope you are right,” Ttomalss said, “but one of the things I have seen again and again is that the Tosevites encourage us to underestimate them, which enables them to prepare for and carry out outrageous deeds under our snouts. They have given us so many large, unpleasant surprises that successful espionage here would be only a small, unpleasant surprise.”

“Surprises from espionage are not always small.” Slomikk paused thoughtfully. “Perhaps it would be wise if one of us did mention this matter to the head of Security here. I will take care of it, if you like.”

The science officer’s voice was casual-too casual. I will take the credit if you turn out to be right was what he meant. Ttomalss should have got angry. He knew that. He couldn’t make himself do it. The embassy to the Reich was not his permanent station. He didn’t much care what the males and females here thought of him, and their opinions would have no large effect on his career.

“Go ahead,” he said, as if it were a small matter. To him, it was. If it wasn’t to Slomikk, fine.

“I thank you.” Slomikk scribbled a note to himself.

“You are wise not to note this problem electronically,” Ttomalss observed. Slomikk did his best to look wise. What he did look like was a male who had reached for a pen without the least concern for security, with only the thought that it would be the quickest way to set down the idea and make sure he did not forget it.

“If you are right,” he said, “it will be good that we find out about it.”

“Truth,” Ttomalss said. If he was right, the embassy’s security officer would end up wishing he’d never been hatched. Thinking about hatchlings put Ttomalss on a new line of thought: “Is increased background radiation more likely to affect eggs and hatchlings than adults? We have several gravid females here in the embassy, you know.”

“Obviously, there is more concern where cell growth is rapid,” Slomikk said. “We have few data to suggest how urgent that concern should be. We, unlike the Big Uglies, have been sensible enough to minimize exposure of the vulnerable to radiation.” He hesitated. “Or we have until now, at any rate. I may have to discuss with Veffani the wisdom of moving gravid females out of this area until such time as they have laid their eggs.”

One more notion you did not think of, but for which you are willing to take the credit, Ttomalss thought. Again, he had trouble being as angry as he might have. The only gravid female he knew well was Felless. He wondered whether he or Veffani had fertilized the eggs she bore.

Had he been a Tosevite, the question would have been of enormous importance to him. All his own research and most of the Tosevite literature he’d studied convinced him of the truth of that. Back on Home, the question of paternity would scarcely have arisen. During her season, Felless would have mated with any number of males. Here on Tosev 3, Ttomalss found himself in the middle: more than curious, less than concerned.

“You seem to have a knack for posing stimulating questions, Senior Researcher,” Slomikk said. “You are to be congratulated.”

“I thank you,” Ttomalss said, in what he feared were abstracted tones. He’d asked himself an interesting question, and one for which he had as yet no good answer. Ginger seemed certain to make more females here on Tosev 3 become gravid after mating with a smaller number of males, or perhaps with only one, than happened back on Home. There were more circumstances in which that could make important who the father was: if he’d given the female ginger to induce her to mate with him, for instance, or if she’d taken credit from his account in exchange for tasting ginger and becoming sexually receptive.

Ttomalss sighed. “This world is doing its best to change us, no matter how much we are in the habit of resisting change.”

“I agree. You are not the first to raise this notion, of course,” Slomikk said. “Even creating embassies and reviving the title of ambassador was new and strange, for the Race has needed neither embassies nor ambassadors these past tens of thousands of years.”

“Forcing us to revive the old is one thing,” Ttomalss said. “It is, in itself, not a small thing. But we have had to respond to so much that is new both from the Tosevites and among ourselves, that the revivals pale to insignificance by comparison.”

“Again, I agree. I wish I could disagree. Too much change is not good for a male, or for a female, either,” the science officer said. “Change swift enough to be perceptible in the course of an individual’s lifetime is too much. This is one of the reasons the Race so seldom goes conquering: to spare the large majority of individuals from ever experiencing the stress of drastic change. It is not the only reason, but it is not the least of reasons. Indeed, we have endured such stress here on Tosev 3 better than I thought we could.”

“Now there is an interesting observation,” Ttomalss said. “The Big Uglies have been in the throes of drastic change for generations. Do you suppose that is one of the reasons they are so strange?”

“I do not know, but it strikes me as something worth investigating,” Slomikk said. “You would, I suppose, have to compare their present behavior with the way they acted before change was a daily occurrence in their lives.”

“So I would,” Ttomalss said. “As best I can tell, they have always behaved badly. Whether they have behaved badly in different ways of late… may be worth learning.”

Thanks to his Army security clearance and his connections with Lizard expatriates and exiles, Sam Yeager had access to as much sensitive computer data as any but a handful of men. Some of those data were on the USA’s computers, others on those that belonged to the Race. The only place where the separate streams flowed together was inside his head. That suited him fine.

Every time he had to switch from a computer built by the Race to one made in the USA, he was reminded of the gap in both technology and engineering that still existed. Apples and oranges, he thought. The Lizards have had a lot more practice at this than we have.

He shrugged. Back before the Lizards came, he’d never imagined one computer would fit on his desk, let alone two. Back before the Lizards came, he’d scarcely imagined computing machines at all. If he had, he’d imagined them the size of a building and half mechanical, half electronic. That was about as far as science-fiction writers had seen by 1942.

Putting on artificial fingerclaws to deal with the keyboard of the Lizard machine, he grinned. He could see a lot further now. Had he really been a Lizard, he could have done most of his work on their machine by talking to it rather than typing. Its voice-recognition system, though, wasn’t set up to deal with a human’s accent. Voice commands sometimes went spectacularly wrong, so he avoided them. The computer didn’t care who typed into it.

Because he was an expert on the Race, he was one of the few humans in the independent countries allowed even limited access to the Lizards’ vast data network; in his case, the connection was wired through the Race’s consulate in downtown Los Angeles. He admired that network tremendously, but sometimes-often-felt going through it for information made looking for a needle in a haystack seem simple by comparison.

That was especially true because he had access to more of the data network than the Lizards at the consulate or back in Cairo thought he did. Some of his friends among the former prisoners who’d decided to stay in the United States after the fighting ended were clever with computers. They’d forked-their idiom-the programs the consulate had given him to let him range more widely than Lizard officialdom thought it was permitting. They reckoned that a good joke on their own kind. Yeager reckoned it highly useful.

The Lizards had never stopped discussing the attack on the colonization fleet. The topic filled several fora-the best translation Sam could make. He wasn’t supposed to be able to read what was said in those fora, but he could. That topic interested him, too. If he could pin the crime on the Greater German Reich or the Soviet Union, the Lizards would punish the guilty party-preferably with a two-by-four-and life could finally get back to normal.

A name-Vesstil-caught his notice. “I knew a Vesstil once upon a time,” he muttered, and noted down the number that accompanied the Lizard’s name. Then he had to take off the fingerclaw so he could use the American-made computer that took up twice as much desk space as its Lizardly counterpart. It didn’t run as well, either, despite using technology borrowed-or, more accurately, stolen-from the Race. But one of the things that computer stored was a list of all the Lizard prisoners the United States had captured.

Sure enough, there was Vesstil’s name. And, sure enough, the number attached to it matched that of the Lizard now holding forth about the attack on the colonization fleet. This was the shuttlecraft pilot who’d flown Straha down to the USA when the shiplord decided to defect. Yeager remembered that he had repatriated himself not long after the fighting ended.

It is unlike the Big Uglies to keep secrets so well, Vesstil had written. Even with their safety hanging in the balance, it is unlike them. This argues something unusual even for Tosevites went on in relation to this attack.

Another Lizard had answered, Interesting speculation, but useless to us, and the discussion had drifted on to other things.

“I’m not sure it is useless,” Sam muttered, deliberately using English to get himself out of the chattering among the Lizards in which he’d been immersed. In fact, he’d been collecting examples of unusual actions by the Germans and Russians in the hope that one of them would lead to more clues he could use to pin down the guilty party. It hadn’t happened yet, and didn’t look as if it would happen any time soon, but that didn’t mean he’d abandoned hope.

Yeager also collected examples of strange American behavior: those were easier for him to come by and let him hone his analytical skills, though they had nothing to do with the colonization fleet. He wondered why one of the spacemen who flew out of Kitty Hawk had got a black mark by his name for getting too curious about the growing U.S. space station.

He suspected he could have found out with a couple of phone calls, but playing detective through the American computer network gave him more practice at manipulating such creations, so he went at it that way. Back in the bush leagues, he’d always asked for curves from the batting-practice pitchers because he’d had more trouble hitting them than fastballs.

He grumbled as he waited for the human-made computer to spit out the information he needed. It was slower than the one the Lizards made, and the U.S. computer network, a creation of the past five years, far smaller and more fragmented than the one the Lizards took for granted.

As things turned out, he had to make the phone calls anyhow, because the network let him down. He really did have U.S. security clearances-unlike the ones the Lizards had flanged up for him for a lark-but they didn’t seem to be high enough to take him where he needed to go. They should have been, or so he thought, but they weren’t.

He wondered what that meant. Whatever it was, it couldn’t have anything to do with the attack on the colonization fleet. The space station hadn’t been involved in that; the Lizards had detected a signal from a submarine that promptly submerged, and then somebody’s nasty chunk of hardware had gone into action. Somebody’s. Whose? He had no more proof than the Lizards did.

Then he stopped worrying about it for a while, because Barbara came home with the trunk of the car full of groceries, and he had to help haul them into the house. She put away the food that went into the refrigerator, he what went into the pantries. About halfway through the job, Barbara looked over to him and said, “This is all for Jonathan, you know. There wasn’t enough room in the car for a week’s worth of groceries for him and us both. As soon as we’re done here, I’ll have to go back to the store for some food for us.”

“You expect me to laugh and think that’s a joke,” Sam said. “Trouble is, I’ve seen the way the kid eats. I believe you, or close enough, anyhow.” He put a couple of cans of tomatoes on a shelf, then said, “Karen seems happier when she comes around here these days.”

“Of course she does,” his wife answered at once. “Liu Mei is five thousand miles away now. I hope she and her mother have made it back to China all right, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Karen hoped their ship sank. Hand me that sack of oranges, would you? They’re nice and ripe.”

They were just finishing when the telephone rang. Barbara answered it, then called out for Sam. He took the handpiece from her and spoke: “Yeager.”

“Good morning, Major.” The crisp voice on the other end of the line belonged to Colonel Edwin Webster, Sam’s immediate superior. “You are to report in tomorrow at 0800: no working out of the house. We have a visiting fireman who wants to see you. He’s asked for you by name, and he’s not somebody who’ll take no for an answer. Have you got that?”

“Yes, sir: report in at 0800,” Yeager said in martyred tones. He much preferred working from his home, which, thanks to his personal library and his computer connection, he got to do most of the time. “Who is this fellow, anyway?” he asked, but Webster had hung up on hearing him acknowledge the order.

Barbara was properly sympathetic. Jonathan, when he got home from classes, wasn’t. “I have to go in at eight o’clock three mornings a week this term,” he said.

“That’s because you’re young-and if you don’t watch the way you talk, you won’t get much older,” Sam told him. With the heartlessness of youth, Jonathan laughed.

Fortified by two cups of coffee, Yeager drove downtown the next morning. He poured himself another cup as soon as he’d reported to Colonel Webster, who looked disgustingly wide awake himself. Sam repeated the question he’d asked the day before. Webster didn’t answer it this time, either.

Before long, though, Sam found out. Colonel Webster’s adjutant, a harried-looking captain named Markowitz, came into his cubicle and said, “Sir, if you’ll come with me…?” Yeager put down his pen and forgot about the meaningless piece of busywork he was doing. He got up and followed Captain Markowitz.

In the office to which the adjutant led him sat a three-star general smoking a cigarette with sharp, savage puffs. The general waited till Markowitz had gone and closed the door behind him, then stubbed out the butt and impaled Yeager with a glare that held him in place as a specimen pin held a preserved butterfly to a collecting board. “You have been poking your nose into places where it has no business going, Major,” he rasped. “That will cease, or your military career will, forthwith. Have you got that?”

“Sir?” Sam said in astonishment. He’d expected a visiting fireman who wanted to know something special about the Lizards, not one who aimed to carve chunks off him and roast them over the fire. And he didn’t even know what he was supposed to have done.

Lieutenant General Curtis LeMay didn’t keep him in suspense for long: “You have been snooping about the space station. Whatever may be going on there, it is none of your goddamn business. You are not authorized to have that information. If you try to get it from us again, you will regret it for the rest of your days. Do you understand what I am saying to you, Major Yeager?”

“Sir, I understand what you’re saying,” Yeager answered carefully, “but I don’t understand why you’re saying it.”

“Why is not your business, Major,” LeMay said. “I’ve come a long way to give you that order, and I expect to have it obeyed. Is there any danger I am laboring under a misapprehension?” His tone warned that there had better not be. He lit another cigarette and started smoking it down to a nub.

“No, sir,” Sam said, the only thing he could say under the circumstances. If LeMay didn’t want him taking a look at the space station, he wouldn’t… or he wouldn’t get caught again, anyhow. Why Lieutenant General LeMay was so vehement about the matter, he couldn’t guess-but LeMay wasn’t in the mood to answer questions.

“You had better not,” the general growled, and seemed to notice Yeager still standing at attention in front of him. “Dismissed. Get the hell out of here.” Yeager saluted, then frankly fled.

Straha had the best computer equipment money could buy. It wasn’t his money, either, but that of the Tosevites with whom he had chosen to make his home. The equipment, though, was regulation issue for the Race. How the Americans had got it for him, he found it wiser not to ask. But get it they had. They had also managed, in some highly unofficial fashion, to connect it to the Race’s network by way of the consulate in downtown Los Angeles. That gave Straha one more window on the way of life he had deliberately abandoned.

It was, necessarily, a one-way window. He could observe, but did not interact. If he did interact-if he sent messages for placement on the network-he might reveal and forfeit his highly unofficial connection. In the American phrase, he stayed on the outside looking in.

And so, when he turned on the computer and discovered he had a message waiting, his first reaction was alarm. If the Race discovered his connection on its own, he was liable to lose that window.

But the message, he discovered, was not from any male of the Race, or even from some new and snoopy female. It was from Major Sam Yeager, who had connections of his own. It asked nothing more dangerous than whether Yeager could come and visit the exiled shiplord at his home one day before too long.

“Of course you may visit,” Straha said on the telephone, still not eager to send a message and make the system notice him. “I do not understand why you did not simply call, as I am doing now.”

“I like the message system the Race uses,” replied the Tosevite, whose access to that system was somewhat-but only somewhat-more official than Straha’s. It did not seem a good enough reason to the ex-shiplord, but Straha chose not to pursue the point. He proposed a time at which Yeager might come, the Big Ugly agreed, and they both hung up.

Yeager was punctual, as Straha had expected him to be. “I do not see your driver here,” the Tosevite remarked after he had exchanged greetings with Straha.

“No, he is not here; I gave him the morning off, knowing I would not be going anywhere because you would be coming here,” Straha answered. “I can quickly summon him by radio link, if that is what you require.”

“No,” Yeager said, and used an emphatic cough. “Perhaps we could go out into the back yard and talk there.”

“It is warmer inside,” Straha said unhappily. Yeager stood quiet, not saying anything more. Straha’s eye turrets swung sharply toward him. “You think my house may be-” He broke off even before Yeager began to raise a warning hand. “Yes, let us go out into the back yard.”

By local standards, it was not much of a yard, being dirt and rocks and sand and a few cacti rather than the green grass and gaudy flowers customary in the United States. But in essence if not in detail, it put Straha in mind of Home. Yeager said, “Shiplord, what do you know and what can you find out about the American space station?”

“Rather less than you can, I suspect,” Straha answered. “I have access only to what the Race knows about it. Your own people, the builders, will surely have whatever detailed knowledge you may require.”

Yeager shook his head. “I have been ordered not to inquire into it, and American computers are closed against me-indeed, are warned against me.”

Straha needed no elaborate calculation to understand what that was liable to mean. “You have in some way triggered a security alert?” he asked.

“Oh, you might say so,” the Big Ugly answered in English. Before Straha could grow too confused, he shifted back to the language of the Race: “That is an idiom of agreement.”

“Is it? I thank you; I had not encountered it before,” Straha said. “But you are a military officer, and one who, because of your dealings with the Race, is privy to many secrets. Why would questions about your space station be closed to you?”

“That is also my question,” Yeager said. “I have not found an answer for it. I have been discouraged from seeking an answer for it.”

“Something most highly secret must be going on in connection with the space station, then,” Straha said. All at once, he wondered whether his wisecrack to the Tosevite reporter who’d questioned him held truth after all. But no. “It cannot be connected to the attack on the colonization fleet.”

“My thoughts also ran in that direction,” Yeager said. “I agree; there can be no possible connection. And that there can be no possible connection gives me great relief. But I cannot imagine what else would be so secret as to keep me from inquiring about the station: indeed, would lead to my being discouraged from making any further inquiries along those lines.”

Straha knew he was no expert in reading the tones in which Tosevites spoke, but he would have placed a fair-sized bet that Yeager had been strongly discouraged from making such inquiries. The exiled shiplord asked, “Are you disobeying orders in asking these questions of me?”

“No, or not precisely,” Yeager replied. “I have been ordered not to seek more information from American sources. I do not think it occurred to anyone above me that I might seek information from other sources.”

“Ah,” Straha said. “You are what we call in the language of the Race a beam-deflector-you twist your orders to your own purposes.”

“I’m obeying the letter, we would say in English,” Yeager said. “As for the spirit…” He shrugged.

“We would have a good deal to say to an officer who played so fast and loose with his orders,” Straha observed. “I know you Big Uglies are looser than we, but in your military, I had always believed, less so than in other areas.”

“That is truth,” Yeager admitted. “I am at-or perhaps over-the limit of my discretion. But this is something that is kept secret when it should not be. I want to know why it is. Sometimes things are made secret for no reason at all, other times to conceal bad mistakes. My not-empire needs to know of that last, should it be true.”

Straha studied Yeager. He spoke the Race’s language well. He could think like a male of the Race. But he was, at bottom, alien, as was the society that had hatched him.

A large bird with a blue back and wings and a gray belly landed near one of the cacti. It turned its head toward Straha and Yeager. “Jeep!” it screeched. “Jeep! Jeep!” It hopped a couple of paces, then pecked at something in the dirt.

“Scrub jay,” Yeager remarked in English.

“Is that what you call it?” Straha said in the same language. Birds were alien to him, too. Back on Home, flying creatures-of which there were fewer than on Tosev 3-had membranous wings, something like Tosevite bats. But their bodies were scaly like the Race’s, not hairy like the Big Uglies’. No beasts back on Home had hair or feathers; they needed less insulation than Tosevite creatures.

Another bird, a smaller one with a glistening green back and purple-red throat and crown, buzzed into the yard and hovered above the scrub jay, letting out a series of small, squeaky, indignant chirps. Its wings beat so fast, they were only a blur. Straha could hear the buzz they made. The jay paid no attention to the smaller bird, but went on looking for seeds and crawling things.

“Hummingbirds don’t like jays,” Yeager said, again in English. “I suppose jays will eat their eggs and babies if they get a chance. Jays will eat just about anything if they get a chance.”

The hummingbird finished cursing the jay and darted away. One instant it was there, the next it was gone, or so it seemed to Straha. The scrub jay pecked for a little longer, then flew off at a much more sedate pace.

“You Big Uglies are hummingbirds, now here, now there, moving faster than the eye turret can follow,” Straha said. “We of the Race are more like the jay. We are steady. We are sure. If you know where we are at one moment, you may predict where we will be for some time to come.”

Yeager’s mouth corners twisted upward in the expression Tosevites used to show amusement. Still speaking English, he said, “And you of the Race will eat just about any planet if you get a chance. We didn’t give you as much of a chance as you thought you’d have.”

“That I can scarcely deny,” Straha said. He swung his eye turrets away from the jay, which had perched in a tree in a neighbor’s yard and was screeching again. Giving Yeager his full attention, he went on, “You realize my investigations, if I make them, will have to be indirect? You also realize I may alert not only your not-empire to wrongdoing, but also the Race? I ask you these things before proceeding as you requested. If you like, I will forget the request you have made.” He could not think of another Tosevite to whom he would have made that offer.

“No, go ahead,” Yeager said. “I cannot imagine anything at the space station that would endanger your ships more than other, more secret, installations we already have in space.”

“Indeed,” Straha said. “Since you put it in those terms, neither can I. It would be easier if I could safely have a more active presence on our computer network, but I will do what I can by scanning and searching out messages pertaining to this subject, and by using surrogates to plant questions that may lead to interesting and informative answers.”

“I thank you,” Yeager said. “More than that I cannot ask. Very likely, you understand, all of this will prove to be of no consequence.”

“Of course,” Straha replied. “But then, most of my life since defecting to the United States has proved to be of no consequence, so this is not of any great concern to me.” He could not think of another Tosevite-for that matter, he could not think of a male of the Race-to whom he would have exposed his bitterness thus. He longed for a taste of ginger.

Yeager said, “Shiplord, that is not true. Your presence here has meant a great deal to my not-empire and to all Tosevites. Thanks in no small part to you and to what we learned from you, we were able to make and for the most part to keep our armistice with the Race.” He held up a hand. “I know this may only make you think of yourself as a tremendous traitor, but that is not so. You have helped save everyone on Tosev 3: males of the conquest fleet, males and females of the colonization fleet, and Big Uglies.” He used the Race’s nickname for his kind without self-consciousness.

“I wish I could believe everything you tell me,” Straha said slowly. “I also try to tell it to myself, but I do not believe it from my own mouth, either.”

“Well, you should,” Yeager said, like one male encouraging another to go forward in combat. “You should, for it is truth.”

Straha had never imagined he could be so preposterously grateful to a Big Ugly. He wondered if Yeager understood his own kind as well as he understood the Race. “You are a friend,” he said, and sounded surprised after the words came out: the idea of a Tosevite friend seemed very strange to him. But that he had one was also truth. “You are a friend,” he repeated, “and I will help you as one friend helps another.”