Second Contact

4

Suave as a Frenchman, the Gestapo officer smiled at Johannes Drucker. “You must understand, my dear Lieutenant Colonel, this is only an inquiry into your loyalty, not a denial that you are loyal,” he said.

“You have an easier time telling the difference than I do,” Drucker snapped. “All I know is, I’m grounded for no good reason. I want to go back into space, where I can best serve the Reich.” And where I can put hundreds-sometimes thousands-of kilometers between me and you.

“I would not call the security of the Reich ‘no good reason,’ ” the Gestapo man said, his voice silky. “We must always be on guard, lest the Volk be polluted by alien, inferior blood.”

“That’s my wife you’re talking about, you-” Drucker checked himself. Telling the son of a bitch he was a son of a bitch wouldn’t do him any good, and wouldn’t do Kathe any good, either.

“We have worked diligently to make and keep the Reich free of Jews,” the Gestapo man said with what he no doubt intended for a friendly smile. “We shall continue until the great task is complete.”

Drucker didn’t say anything. Nothing he could have said would have been any use. Anything he said would have got him into more trouble than he was in already. He had no great love for Jews. Back in the days when there were still a lot of Jews in the Greater German Reich, he hadn’t known many people with any great love for Jews.

Slaughtering them like cattle, though… He didn’t see how that had helped the Reich. If the Jews hadn’t risen up in Poland when the Lizards came, it might still belong to Germany. And, when the Lizards included in their propaganda details of what the Germans were doing, relations between the Reich and other human powers stayed delicate for a long time.

Would the Gestapo officer heed him if he pointed that out? It was to laugh. And then the sardonic laugh choked off. Most Germans had no great love for Jews. Kathe’s grandfather must have loved a Jewess, if what the Gestapo was saying held any truth. And, had he not loved that Jewess, Kathe would never have been born.

Think about it later, Drucker told himself. For now, he kept on hoping it wasn’t true. If it was true, his career wasn’t the only thing that would go up in smoke. So would dear, sweet Kathe, out through the stack of a crematorium. His stomach lurched, worse than it ever did when he went weightless out in space. He’d known for twenty years what the Reich did to Jews, known and not thought much about it. Now it hit home. It occurred to him that he should have thought more and sooner. Too late now.

As calmly as he could, he said, “I want to see her.”

He’d said that before, and been refused. He got refused again. “You must know it is impossible,” the Gestapo man said. “She is in detention, pending adjudication of the case. She is comfortable; please accept my personal assurances on that score. If the charges prove unfounded, all will be as it had been.”

He sounded as if he really meant it. Drucker had all he could do not to laugh in his face. Kathe was in detention-a polite word for jail or a camp. She was on trial for her life, and she couldn’t even defend herself. In the Reich, choosing the wrong grandparents could be a capital crime.

Drucker did dare hope she was comfortable. If they decided her grandmother hadn’t been a Jew after all, they would let her go. It did happen-not too often (Drucker wished he hadn’t chosen to remember that), but it did. And he, by virtue of his rank and his skill, was valuable in the machinery of the Reich. If they did let her go, they wouldn’t want him disaffected.

He wished he’d known her grandparents. All he’d seen of them were a few fading photographs in an old album. He didn’t remember ever thinking her grandmother looked Jewish. She’d had light hair and light eyes. When she was young, she’d been very pretty. She’d looked a lot like Kathe, in fact.

The officer, now, the officer had brown eyes and dark stubble he probably had to shave twice a day. Fixing him with a cold stare, Drucker said, “My wife’s grandmother was a better Aryan than you are.”

“I may not be pretty,” the Gestapo man said evenly, “but I have an impeccable German pedigree. If they started putting all the homely people in camps, we’d run out of laborers in a hurry.”

Damn, thought Drucker, who’d wanted to anger him. The Gestapo man probably had something, too. There were too many homely people to get rid of them; it would leave a great hole in the fabric of society. Getting rid of the Jews had left no such hole. They’d made perfect scapegoats: they were few, they’d stood out, and people had already disliked them.

The officer might have been thinking along with him. He said, “That’s why the Americans just hate their niggers and don’t really do anything about it. If they did, it would be inconvenient for them.”

“Inconvenient.” The word was sickly sweet in Drucker’s mouth, like the rotten horsemeat he’d eaten on the retreat from Moscow before the Lizards came. He’d been glad to have it, too. After muttering darkly under his breath, he said, “This business of not knowing is inconvenient for me, you know.”

“Yes, of course I do.” The Gestapo man kept right on being smooth. “Whatever happens, your children will not be severely affected. One Jewish great-grandparent is not a legal impediment.”

“You don’t think losing their mother might affect them?” Drucker snapped. And yet, in a horrid kind of way, his interrogator had a point. Severely affected was a euphemism for taken out and killed.

“We must have pure blood.” However smooth, however suave he was, the Gestapo man had not a gram of compromise in him. In that, he made a good representative for the state he served. Doing his best to seem conciliatory even when he wasn’t, he added, “You have permission to leave for the time being. Your actual knowledge of your wife’s grandmother appears small.”

“I’ve been telling anyone who would listen to me as much since you people took me away from Peenemunde,” Drucker said. “The only thing wrong with that is, nobody would listen to me.”

Had he expected the Gestapo officer to start listening to him, he would have been disappointed. Since he didn’t, he wasn’t-or not disappointed on account of that, anyhow. He stood to stiff attention, shot out his arm, did a smart about-turn, and stalked off to his own quarters.

Those weren’t much different from the ones he’d had back at the rocket base. The Gestapo wasn’t treating him badly, on the off chance he might be returning to duty after all. He hoped it was rather more than an off chance, but no one cared what he hoped. He understood that only too well.

He lay back on his bunk and scratched his head. His eye fell on the telephone. He couldn’t call his wife; he didn’t know where to call. He couldn’t call his children; he’d tried, but the operator hadn’t let him. After one impossibility and one failure, he hadn’t seen much point to using the phone. Maybe he’d been wrong, though, or at least shortsighted.

He picked up the instrument. Elsewhere in the Reich, he would have heard a tone that told him it was all right to dial. Here, as if he’d fallen back in time, an operator inquired, “Number, please?”

He gave the number of the commandant back at Peenemunde. He didn’t know if the operator would let that call go through, either. But it was, or might have been, in the line of duty, and the Gestapo was no more immune to that siren song than any other German organization. After some clicks and pops, Drucker heard the telephone ring.

Fear filled him, fear that the commandant would be out having a drink or in the sack with his girlfriend (Drucker didn’t know whether he had a girlfriend, but found imagining the worst only too easy) or just encamped on a porcelain throne with a book in his hand and his pants around his ankles. Anything that kept him from Drucker would be disaster enough.

But a brisk, no-nonsense voice said, “Dornberger here.”

“Will you speak with Lieutenant Colonel Drucker, sir?” the Gestapo operator asked. By his tone, he found it highly unlikely.

“Of course I will,” Major General Walter Dornberger said, his own voice sharp. “Hans, are you there?”

“I’m here, General,” Drucker answered gratefully. The operator would still listen to everything he said, but he couldn’t do anything about that. “I don’t known how long I’ll have to stay off duty. They’re still trying to decide whether Kathe had a Jewish grandmother.”

Dornberger was reasonably quick on the uptake. Once Drucker had given him his cue, he played along with it, booming, “Yes, I know about that-I was there, remember? They’re taking so stinking long, it sounds like a pack of nonsense to me. Maybe you made an enemy who’s telling lies about you. Whatever’s going on, we need you back here.”

Drucker hoped the operator was getting an earful. He said, “Thank you, sir. Till this mess clears up, though, I can’t go anywhere.”

“Good thing you called me,” Major General Dornberger said. “Should have done it sooner, even. A lot of times, as I said, these accusations get started because somebody’s jealous of you and hasn’t got the nerve to show it out in the open. So the Schweinhund starts a filthy rumor. We’ll get to the bottom of it, don’t you worry about that. And when we do, some big-mouthed bastard is going to be sorry he was ever born.”

“From the bottom of my heart, I thank you, sir,” Drucker said. “I want to be up and out again. With the colonization fleet here, I need to be up and out.”

“Damned right you do,” Dornberger agreed. “We’ll see what we can do from this end, Hans. I wish you all the best.” He hung up.

Drucker sat there, grinning at the telephone. Yes, he hoped the SS operator had got an earful. The Wehrmacht was also a power in the land. If Dornberger badly wanted him back, he would come back. Without the Reich Rocket Force, Europe lay open, defenseless, to whatever the Lizards might choose to do.

Not quite out of a clear blue sky, Drucker wondered how many cases high-ranking officers had taken care of, regardless of whether or not the wife in question truly did have a Jewish grandparent. He wondered how many cases they’d taken care of where a man they liked had a Jewish grandmother… or perhaps even a Jewish mother. Once he’d started wondering, he wondered how many out-and-out Jews, quietly protected, went on serving the Reich because they were too useful to do without.

Before the Gestapo arrested Kathe and grounded him, he would have pounded a fist on the nearest table and demanded-demanded at the top of his lungs, especially if he’d had a couple of steins of beer-that each Jew be rooted out. Now… Now, in a cell that was comfortable but remained a cell, he laughed out loud.

“I hope they do just fine,” he said. The Gestapo men surely listening to his every word would think he meant Major General Dornberger and his friends. And so, in a way, he did-but only in a way.

Felless looked around Cairo with something approaching horror. “This,” she said, “this is the capital from which the Race has ruled something like half of Tosev 3 since not long after the arrival of the conquest fleet?” She added an interrogative cough, wishing the Race had something stronger along those lines: a cough of incredulous disbelief, perhaps.

“Senior Researcher, it is,” Pshing replied.

“But-” Felless struggled to put her feelings into words. It wasn’t easy. For one thing, rank relationships were ambiguous here. Her body paint was fancier than half of Pshing’s, but the other half of the male’s matched that of Atvar, the fleetlord of the conquest fleet. Pshing surely made up in influence what he lacked in formal status. For another… Felless blurted, “But it is still a Tosevite city, not one of ours!”

“So it is,” Pshing answered. “You will have studied the conquests of Rabotev 2 and Halless 1, I take it?”

“Of course,” Felless said indignantly. “How else was I to prepare myself for this mission?”

“You had no better way, superior female; I am sure of that,” Pshing replied. “But have you not yet learned that what the Race experienced on the previous two planets we added to the Empire has very little to do with conditions here on Tosev 3?”

He’d granted her the title of superiority so he could rub her snout in the fact of her inadequate preparation without offending her. And, in fact, he hadn’t offended her… too much. Felless let one eye turret glide appraisingly in his direction. He was a clever male, no doubt about it. Any male who served as several digits of a fleetlord’s hand would have to be clever.

Felless took a deep breath before saying something. She regretted it, for it meant she sent a great lungful of air past her scent receptors. Cairo was full of an astounding cacophony of stinks. The odor of droppings was not quite the same as it would have been back on Home, but she had no trouble recognizing it. Piled on top of that solid foundation were other organic odors she had more trouble classifying. They probably came from the Big Uglies and their animals, who were certainly present in great profusion. A thin stream in the mix was odors of cookery, again different from but similar to those back on Home.

Pshing said, “All things considered, I think we have done reasonably well. We are spread far thinner than we expected to be. Not only have our casualties been much worse than anticipated, but this world was and is far more heavily populated than we had believed it would be. And we cannot be so hard on the Tosevites as we should prefer under other circumstances.”

“And why not?” Felless demanded indignantly. Too late, she realized she’d been foolish. “Oh. The autonomous not-empires.”

“They are not autonomous. They are independent. You must bear this in mind at all times, superior female.” Again, Pshing used the honorific to let her down easy after slapping her across the snout.

“I do try to bear it in mind,” she said, embarrassed. “But it is alien to everything the Race has known these past hundred thousand years.”

“Remember this, then: the USA, the SSSR, and the Reich can wreck this planet if they decide to do so,” Pshing said. “This is without our help in the process, you understand. I think any one of those not-empires could do it. With our help, Britain and Nippon might also manage. And is it not so that he who can destroy a thing holds great power over it?”

“Truth.” Felless heard the reluctance in her own voice.

If Atvar’s adjutant also heard it, he was too polite to give any sign. He said, “And so, when these not-empires exhort us to treat the Big Uglies of a certain area in a certain way, we are constrained to take such exhortations seriously.”

“Treating with those who know not the Emperor as equals…” Felless looked down at the grimy shingles, an automatic token of respect for her sovereign. “It knocks every standard of civilized conduct we have imbibed since hatchlinghood-since the hatchlinghood of the Race-onto its tailstump. How did things come to such a pass?”

She waved to show what she meant. From the roof of the building from which the Race administered the planet (it still kept its Tosevite name, Shepheard’s Hotel), she stared out at the swarming streets. Tosevites swaddled in their absurd mantlings-some white, some black, some various shades of brown and tan, with a few bright colors mixed in-went about their noisy business, crowding among beasts of burden and motorized vehicles that mostly belched smoke from burning petroleum distillates, not clean hydrogen, and so added one more note to the reek of the place.

And then, as if her outstretched arm were a cue, a shout began to rise in those narrow, winding, insanely crowded streets: “Allahu akbar! Allahu akbar! Allahu akbar!” It got louder at every repetition, as if more and more Tosevites were shouting it.

Felless turned to Pshing. “What does that mean?”

“It means trouble,” he answered in grim tones.

She did not fully grasp that grimness, not at first. “Why would a swarm of Big Uglies all start shouting ‘Trouble!’ at the same time?”

Pshing made an exasperated noise. “It means trouble for us, is what it means. Tosevites who shout that think we are evil spirits and have no business ruling them. They think that, if they die trying to kill us, they go straight to a happy afterlife.”

“That’s absurd,” Felless said. “How can their spirits rejoice when they are ignorant of the Emperors?”

“They have always been ignorant of the Emperors,” Pshing reminded her. “They are mistaken, of course, and misguided, but what they believe, they believe very strongly. This is true of most Tosevites most of the time. It is one of the things that makes them so delightful to administer.”

As she had not before, Felless did recognize sarcasm now. Before she could remark on it, gunfire broke out, somewhere not far enough away. Wincing, she said, “It sounds as if the war for the conquest of Tosev 3 is not yet over.”

“It is not,” Atvar’s adjutant replied. Then he said one of the saddest, gloomiest things Felless had ever heard: “It may never be over. Even after this world is colonized, it may never be over.”

“We are the Race,” she answered. “We have not failed yet. We shall not fail here. What would your fleetlord say if he heard you speak thus?”

“He would probably say I might be right,” Pshing answered. “We were lucky to gain a stalemate on this world. Had the conquest fleet delayed its departure another hundred years, the Tosevites would have been more than a match for us-unless they destroyed themselves before we arrived.”

Felless started to say that that was absurd, that the Race would surely have prevailed regardless of the fight the Big Uglies put up. A hundred thousand years of history and more argued that was true. Logic, though, argued against it. If the Big Uglies had come so far so fast, how far would they have advanced in another hundred years? Unpleasantly far, she thought.

A bullet cracked past her head. She needed a moment to realize what had happened. She was no soldier; she was a student of alien psychology. Save in those times when it chose to go conquering, the Race had no soldiers, only police. Till this moment, she had never heard gunfire.

Pshing said, “We would be wise to leave the roof now. This building is armored against small-arms fire. It is armored against a good deal more than small-arms fire, as a matter of fact. Almost any building the Race uses on Tosev 3 needs to be armored against more than small-arms fire.”

He spoke altogether matter-of-factly, though speaking of horror. Felless stared at him; his psychology was almost as alien to her as that of the Tosevites she’d been sent to study. Then another bullet zipped by, and another. Realization smote: she could die up here. She had all she could do to follow Pshing to the head of the stairs at a steady walk. She wanted to skitter as if pursued by a bagana or some other fearsome beast of prey.

Helicopters flew low, pouring gunfire into the Big Uglies. Above the racket, Pshing said, “I hope the Tosevites here have not managed to smuggle any rockets into Cairo, as they have in some other places. Helicopter crews are vulnerable to that kind of fire.”

Again, he spoke as he might have of a factory accident. Maybe that helped him deal with the dangers that accompanied his trade, dangers different from any Felless had ever known. Thoughtfully, she said, “I begin to understand why some of the males on this world turn to the local herb called ginger to escape its rigors.”

“Ginger will be a problem for the colonists, too,” Pshing said. “It creates too much pleasure for it to be anything else: so much, in fact, that it is severely destructive of order and discipline. We believe the worst mutinies on this planet were instigated by ginger-tasters.”

“Mutinies.” Felless shivered, though the stairwell, like the rest of the building, was comfortably warm. She had heard males from the conquest fleet complain endlessly about Tosev 3’s climate; much of the video she’d seen tended to bear them out. But Cairo seemed comfortable enough. She went on, “I cannot imagine males of the Race turning on duly constituted authority. I believe it happened- I have seen the records proving it happened-but I cannot imagine it.”

“You were not here to see for yourself the fighting that took place after the conquest fleet landed.” Pshing shivered, too, at bad memories Felless did not, could not, share. “We came closer than you can imagine to losing the war altogether. We almost had”-he swiveled his eye turrets, to make sure no one was close enough to overhear him-“we almost had our fleetlord cast down from his office as a result of shiplords’ dissatisfaction with the conduct of the war.”

“What?” Felless hadn’t seen anything about that-or had she? Pieces that hadn’t fit together now suddenly did. “That would explain why one of the shiplords defected to the Tosevites.” She’d seen that mentioned, but the data she’d seen made the shiplord out to be a treacherous idiot. Had he been a treacherous idiot, how had he managed to become a shiplord?

“Indeed it would.” Pshing sighed. “This world has had a corrosive effect on us, even after the fighting stopped. We have been too few, and have slowly begun to dissolve in the sea of Big Uglies all around us. Now that you folk have come, I hope we shall be able to reverse that trend, so that the Tosevites shall begin to be assimilated into the larger Empire, as should have begun from the outset. I hope we shall be able to do that.”

He did not sound sure the Race would be able to do that. “Of course they will be assimilated,” Felless declared. “That is why we have come. That is why I am here: to learn how best to integrate the Tosevites into the structure of the Empire. We did it with the Rabotevs and Hallessi. We shall do it here.”

“One difference, superior female,” Pshing said, which meant he was going to contradict her.

“And that is?” She gave him the chance.

“You must always remember that the Tosevites, unlike the Rabotevs or Hallessi, are also trying to learn how to integrate us into their structures,” Pshing said. “They are skilled at the art, having practiced it so much among themselves. We have more strength-we will have more still, now that the colonization fleet is here. They, however, may well have more skill.”

Felless shivered again. Maybe the building wasn’t so warm after all.

Atvar studied the latest set of reports scrolling across his computer screen. “This is not satisfactory,” he said, and paused a moment to wonder how many times he had said that since coming to Tosev 3. Too many was the answer that immediately sprang to mind.

“Exalted Fleetlord?” Pshing inquired.

“Unsatisfactory,” Atvar repeated. Saying it gave him a certain amount of pleasure. Doing something about it gave him more. He got that larger pleasure less often than he would have liked. “The Tosevites have been doing altogether too much maneuvering with their accursed satellites lately.”

“To which not-empire shall we protest, Exalted Fleetlord?” his adjutant asked.

“They are all doing it,” Atvar said peevishly. “I think they are doing it deliberately, to confuse us. Whether they are trying to confuse us or not, they have certainly succeeded. By now, we are not altogether certain whose satellites are in which orbits. This distresses me.”

“It could be worse,” Pshing said. “The more fuel they use up in these maneuvers, the sooner they will have none left.”

“Truth.” Atvar hissed sadly. “The other truth, worse luck, is that the Big Uglies will either refuel them or send new ones up to take their place. Maybe we would have been wiser to forbid them from going into space at all.” He hissed again. “They made it all too plain that they were ready to resume fighting if we enforced that prohibition. They meant it. Indeed, they meant it.”

“Yes, Exalted Fleetlord.” Pshing’s job was not to disagree with Atvar.

Before the fleetlord could say anything else, something hit the building a thunderous blow. The floor shook under Atvar’s feet; little bits of plaster and plaster dust floated down from the ceiling. Atvar snatched up a telephone and clawed in the code he needed.

“Security,” the male on the other end said.

“Not enough of it, evidently,” Atvar said, acid in his voice. “What was it that just impacted on us?”

The male in Security paused a moment, no doubt to check his caller’s code. When he realized to whom he was speaking, he got deferential in a hurry. “Exalted Fleetlord, that was a small, I would say locally made, rocket detonating against our armored facade here. No casualties, minimal damage. A lot of smoke, a lot of noise. Maybe the Big Uglies will think they really did something. They did not, and I will take an oath by the Emperor’s name on it.”

“Very well. Thank you.” Atvar broke the connection. He turned an eye turret toward Pshing. “The fanatics, as you could have guessed for yourself. I wonder which of the Deutsche or the Russkis or the British stirred them up to this latest round of madness.”

“Exalted Fleetlord, did anyone necessarily stir them up?” Pshing asked. “They are Tosevites, and so quite able to stir themselves up.”

“I wish I could say you were wrong,” Atvar said mournfully. “But you are correct, as we have seen again and again to our sorrow. And the male in Security believes it to have been a locally made rocket. Perhaps that is just as well. One of the independent not-empires might well have furnished the fanatics with something more lethal.”

He wished Tosev 3 had been as the Race fondly believed it would be. Had that been so, he would now have been turning over his duties to the fleetlord of the colonization fleet. He would have gone down in the records of four worlds as Atvar the Conqueror. For tens of thousands of years to come, hatchlings of four races would have learned of him in their lessons. Conquerors were rarer by far than Emperors, and more likely to stay in a student’s memory.

He hissed softly. He would go down in history, all right. He would go down as the first male the Emperor had designated a Conqueror to succeed incompletely. He hoped the landing of the colonization fleet would succeed in bringing Tosev 3 firmly within the Empire. On good days, he had some confidence that that would happen. On bad days, he wondered if the Big Uglies wouldn’t end up overwhelming the Race instead.

Today was a very bad day.

Pshing said, “Might it not perhaps be best to transfer our administrative center to the island continent called Australia, where the Tosevite survivors are relatively few and easy to control?”

“Security would be simpler,” Atvar admitted. “But to retreat from a long-established center like this one would be to confess weakness. The Tosevites have excellent scent receptors for weakness. They would only press us harder than ever. Firmness they grasp. Firmness they respect. Anything less, and you are theirs.”

“No doubt you are right, Exalted Fleetlord,” Pshing said, resignation in his voice. “Our experience on this world certainly suggests as much, at any rate.”

Somewhere in the broad, empty reaches of the Indian Ocean, far, far from any land, a long, lean shark shape drew very near the surface of the sea. But it was vaster than any shark, vaster than any whale-and neither sharks nor whales evolved with conning towers on their backs.

This conning tower never broke the surface. No satellite, no airplane that chanced to be peering down on that particular stretch of sea, could have found a name or a nation to attach to the submarine. All cats are gray in the dark. All submarines look very much alike, seen underwater from above.

A radio mast rose. Ever so briefly, it plowed a tiny white wake in warm, blue-green water. Then it slid down again, down into silence, down into anonymity. The submarine dove deep.

Glen Johnson was harassing one of his Soviet opposite numbers on the radio: something to pass the time on what he expected to be a long, boring mission. “Why did they even bother putting you in the craft, Yuri Alekseyevich?” he asked. “All you are good for is pressing a couple of buttons. They could get a machine to do that. Soon, they probably will.”

“I can do what I have to do,” the Russian answered stolidly. “I am less likely to go wrong than a machine.”

“Cheaper, too,” Johnson suggested. He added an emphatic cough, to show how much cheaper. They were both speaking the Lizards’ language. It was the only one they had in common, which Johnson thought amusing. He didn’t know what the Russian spaceman-cosmonauts, they called themselves-thought of it. Somebody down on the ground was monitoring every word the Russian said. Somebody was monitoring every word Johnson said, too, but he didn’t have to worry about a grilling from the NKVD when he got home.

He was about to rib Yuri some more when a flash of light off to one side of them drew his notice. “What was that?” the Russian asked-he’d seen it, too, then, though his craft had only a couple of little windows, not a canopy with better all-around vision than Johnson had enjoyed in his first fighter plane.

“I don’t know,” he said, and asked a question of his own: “Whose is it?”

Yuri was silent for a little while: probably getting permission from downstairs to talk. “I do not know, either,” he said at last. “Orbits have been confused lately, even worse than usual.”

Johnson gave another emphatic cough-barbarous jargon by Lizard standards, for it modified no previous words, but something humans often did and had no trouble understanding. Then he spoke in English, not for the Russian’s benefit but for his own: “Jesus H. Christ! Somebody’s launched something. Somebody’s launched something big!”

Orbiting fortresses these days could carry a dozen separate rockets and weapons, which could be aimed at either other targets in space or at the ground below. They made Johnson’s blood run cold-they made a lot of people’s blood run cold-because they could start a really big war with bare minutes of warning.

He changed frequencies and spoke urgently into his microphone: “Ground, this is Peregrine. Emergency. Someone has launched. Repeat: someone has launched. I am unable to identify whose satellite it is. Over.”

A voice came back up from a ship in the South Pacific: “Roger that. We are going to alert. Over.”

“Roger.” Johnson knew that meant he would have to run another check on all of his craft’s weapons. He scratched an itch on his scalp. Close-cropped, sandy brown hair rasped against his fingers. He’d had a lot of training. He’d flown a lot of routine missions. Now things counted again. If the fighting started way up here, odds were he wouldn’t make it back down again.

He checked the radar. “Ground, all launches appear to be outbound. Repeat: all launches appear to be outbound.” Intuition leapt. The man broke through the Marine lieutenant colonel for a moment: “Christ, somebody’s gone and launched at the colonization fleet!” After that one shocked sentence, the officer resumed command: “Over.”

“That appears to be correct, Peregrine, ” the inhumanly calm voice on the ground said. Then the fellow’s calm cracked, as Johnson’s had: “What in God’s name are the Lizards going to do about that? Over.”

“I hope they can knock down some of those rockets,” Johnson said. During the Lizards’ invasion, he’d never imagined rooting for them. But he was. The colonization fleet was unarmed; the Lizards had never imagined its ships would need to carry weapons. Attacking them was murder, nothing else but. They couldn’t shoot back. They couldn’t even run.

And, if those ships did go up, what would the Lizards do? That was the wild card, one that made his stubbly hair try to stand on end. During the war, they’d played tit for tat. Every time the humans had touched off a nuclear bomb in a city they controlled, a human-held city went up in smoke immediately afterwards. How much was a ship from the colonization fleet worth?

“Ground,” he said urgently, “whose launch is that?”

“Peregrine, we don’t know,” replied the man at the other end of the radio link.

“Do the Lizards know?” Johnson demanded. “What will they do if they know? What will they do if they don’t know?”

“Those are good questions, Peregrine. If you’ve got any other good questions, please save them for after class.”

After class was coming fast. Johnson would have launched his own missiles, but they couldn’t match the acceleration of the ones already under way. And, had he launched, the Lizards might have thought he was aiming at them. They knew who he was. Would that make them drop the hammer on the USA?

He didn’t dare find out. All he could do was watch his radar. The Lizards, even counting the ones from the conquest fleet alone, had a lot more stuff in space than mankind did. Surely they would be able to do something. But, from what Johnson could read, none of their installations was close enough to have much chance of knocking out those missiles.

Sitting ducks, he thought. They weren’t sitting, of course; they were orbiting the Earth at several miles per second, as he was. But they had no chance of matching the acceleration of the missiles bearing down on them, and so they might as well have been sitting. A couple of them did start to change their orbits. Several, Johnson was convinced, hadn’t the faintest notion they were under attack.

One after another, fireballs blossomed in space. Johnson squeezed his eyes shut against the intolerable glare of atomic explosions. He wondered how much radiation he was picking up. Peregrine orbited a couple of hundred miles below the ships of the colonization fleet, but he had no atmosphere to shield him from whatever he got.

But, as those sunbursts swelled and faded and dropped behind him, his eyes filled with tears that had nothing to do with mere glare. He’d just watched mass murder committed, watched it without being able to do a thing about it. He checked the radar. If any of the missiles had failed, they would still be outward bound. Someone, Lizards or humans, might be able to track them down and find out who had made them. Whoever had made them, he deserved whatever the Lizards chose to dish out.

Discipline held. He had to report. No doubt the people back at Kitty Hawk already knew what had happened. No doubt the whole world, by now, knew what had happened. He had to report anyhow. “Ground,” he said, “the targets are destroyed. All the targets are destroyed.”

Vyacheslav Molotov did his best to calm the agitated Lizard who had been ushered into his presence. “I assure you, the missiles that destroyed your colonization ships were not of Soviet manufacture.”

Queek, the Lizards’ ambassador to the USSR, made a noise that reminded Molotov of lard sizzling in a hot pan. His translator turned the hisses and splutters into Polish-accented Russian: “Reich ’s Chancellor Himmler has assured the Race of the same thing. President Warren has assured the Race of the same thing. One of you is lying. If we find out who that is, we shall punish his not-empire and not the others. If we do not, we will punish all three not-empires, as we warned we would do. Do you understand?”

“I understand,” Molotov told the interpreter. “Please convey to Queek my sympathy at the Race’s tragic loss. Please also convey to him that any harm coming to our territory will be viewed as an act of war. We did not, we will not, begin the fight: the peasants and workers of the Soviet Union are and have always been peace-loving. But if war comes to us, we shall not shrink from it.”

The translator did his job. Queek made more hot-grease noises. He jumped up into the air. His mouth came open. His teeth were not very large, but they were sharp enough to remind Molotov that Lizards were descended from beasts that hunted for meat. “If you Big Uglies think you can confuse the issue of which of you is guilty and escape all punishment, you are mistaken,” Queek declared.

Molotov had read of an American carnival game where a pea was hidden under one of three nutshells, which were then interchanged rapidly. Anyone who could guess which shell hid the pea won his bet. No-he would have won his bet, save that the fellow with the shells commonly palmed the pea and put it wherever his own economic interests lay.

A typical capitalist system if ever there was one, Molotov thought. It was also one that applied to the present situation. “We did not begin maneuvering with our satellites,” he said. “We joined in to maintain our own security. You also joined in to maintain your security. You were as capable of launching an unprovoked attack as any human nation. You have already launched an unprovoked attack against this entire planet.”

He didn’t think Queek liked that. He didn’t care what Queek liked. Homegrown reactionaries and foreign imperialists had tried to strangle the infant Soviet Union in its cradle. A generation later, the Hitlerites had made peace and war in the space of two years. And, with the Lizards’ invasion piled on top of that of the Nazis, Molotov did not think he could be blamed for doubting their good intentions.

He did not care whether Queek blamed him or not. “In the name of the workers and peasants of the Soviet Union, I repeat to you that we are not responsible for the crime committed against your people,” he said. “I also repeat to you that we shall defend ourselves against any crimes committed against our people.”

“Punishing a crime is not committing a crime,” Queek said. “If you have evidence of who did commit the crime, I suggest you turn it over to us, to escape such punishment.”

Fabricate evidence against the Greater German Reich, was the first thought that went through Molotov’s mind. Fabricate evidence against the USA, was the second. Himmler, he was certain, would be fabricating evidence against the USSR and the USA. And Warren? Like so many Americans, he was self-righteous, but not, Molotov judged, too self-righteous to fabricate evidence against the Reich and the Soviet Union.

His face showed none of what he thought. His face never showed any of what he thought. What he thought was none of his face’s business.

Both of Queek’s eye turrets were aimed at him. The translator studied him, too. He did not worry that they would see behind his mask. The only one who had ever been able to do that was Stalin, and it hadn’t been easy for him.

Queek said, “When the conquest fleet came to Tosev 3, we reckoned you barbarians, fit only to be subdued. Since the fighting ended, have we not treated with the great Tosevite powers as if with equals?”

“More or less,” Molotov admitted. “We had the strength to require you to do this.” One of the reasons the USSR had had that strength was technical help from the USA. Molotov had never let gratitude interfere with doing what seemed most expedient for his own nation.

“Equals do not stage sneak attacks. They do not stage unprovoked massacres,” Queek declared. “These are the actions of barbarians, of savages.”

Now Molotov had to work hard to keep from laughing at the poor, naive Lizard. He thought of Pearl Harbor, of the German invasion of the USSR, of the Siberian divisions thrown into the fight in front of Moscow when the fascists thought his country on the ropes, of a thousand other surprise attacks in the blood-spattered history of the world. Every once in a while, the Lizards showed how alien they were.

“You do not respond,” Queek said.

“You have given me nothing to which to respond,” Molotov replied. “I have told you, we did not attack. If you try to punish us when we are innocent, we will fight back. I have nothing more to say.”

“This is unsatisfactory,” Queek said. “I shall tell the fleetlord it is unsatisfactory.”

“A great many things in life are unsatisfactory,” Molotov said. “The Race has not learned this lesson so well as it might have.”

“I did not come here to discuss philosophy with you,” Queek said. “You have been warned. You would do well to conduct yourself accordingly.” He skittered out of Molotov’s office, the translator in his wake.

Molotov waited till a guard outside reported that they had left the Kremlin. Then he went into a room behind his office and changed his suit. The Lizards were far more adept than humans at making and concealing tiny espionage devices. He had shaken hands with the interpreter. He did not believe in taking chances.

Once changed, he went into another room off the chamber where he kept spare clothes. Another secretary awaited him there. “Tell Lavrenti Pavlovich I wish to speak with him,” Molotov said.

“Of course, Comrade General Secretary.” The secretary made the connection, spoke briefly, and nodded to Molotov. “He will be here directly.”

Molotov nodded, as if he had expected nothing less. In truth, he hadn’t; small shows of insubordination were not Lavrenti Beria’s way of showing his own strength. The longtime head of the NKVD did nothing on a small scale.

Bald as a Lizard, Beria walked in about fifteen minutes later. “Good day, Vyacheslav Mikhailovich,” he said. His Mingrelian accent was close to the Georgian that had flavored Stalin’s Russian: one more thing to unsettle Molotov. But what Molotov would not show to Queek, he would not show to Beria, either.

“Did we do this, Lavrenti Pavlovich?” he asked quietly. “I did not order it. I think it most unwise. Did we do it?”

“Not on my order, Comrade General Secretary,” Beria answered.

“That is not responsive,” Molotov said. He did not think Beria could realistically aim for the top spot in the Soviet hierarchy; too many Russians would have resented having a second man from the Caucasus set above them. But the NKVD was a tail that could wag the dog. Without the name, without the formal position of power, Beria held the thing itself. He had held it for many years. If Molotov ever decided to purge him, state security would suffer. But if he ever decided he could not afford to or did not dare to purge Beria, then Beria had more power than he. “Answer the question.”

“If we did this, I do not know of it,” Beria said. Molotov was not sure that was responsive, either. Then the NKVD chief amplified it: “If we did this, no one in my ministry knows of it. Whether anyone in the Ministry of Defense knows of it, I cannot say with certainty.”

“They would not dare,” Molotov said. The Red Army, the Red Air and Space Forces, and the Red Navy were firmly subordinated to Communist Party control. The NKVD, being an arm of the Party, was less so. He scratched at his graying mustache. “I am sure they would not dare.”

“I think you are right.” Beria nodded; the golden gleam of the electric lights above him reflected from his bald pate. “Still… you want to be sure you are right, eh?”

“Oh, yes,” Molotov said. “I have to be sure I am right.” That sentence would eventually stir the armed forces the way a babushka stirred shchi, to make sure all the cabbage and sausage in the soup cooked evenly. Molotov went on, “Who is likelier to have done it, the Reich or the United States?”

Behind gold-rimmed spectacles, Beria’s eyes glinted. “The Reich is always more likely,” he replied. “The Americans are capitalist reactionaries, but they are, by their standards, sane. The Hitlerites?” He shook his head. “They are children, children with atomic bombs. Because they want a thing, they reach out and grab it, never worrying or caring what might happen because of that.”

“And Himmler is more sensible than Hitler was,” Molotov said.

“Indeed,” Beria said. Molotov suspected he was jealous of the German Fuhrer. Himmler was a master of secret policemen and spies, too, and he had reached the top in the Reich.

Molotov exhaled deeply, a sign of strong emotion in him. “Even for the Germans, this is madness. They struck one blow, but it would take a great many to destroy the colonization fleet. And the Lizards will not permit many blows to be struck against them. They can still strike harder than we, and they will.”

“Indeed,” Beria said again. His eyes glinted once more, this time in anticipation. “Shall I begin an investigation of the Ministry of Defense and the armed forces?”

“Not yet,” Molotov told him. “Soon, but not yet. The soldiers scream when the NKVD encroaches on them. I will tell you when I require your services. Until I tell such a thing, you are to keep your hands in your pockets. Do you understand me, Lavrenti Pavlovich? I mean this most particularly.”

“Very well,” Beria said in sulky tones. No, he did not like following orders. He would sooner have been giving them, as he did in the building on Dzerzhinsky Square.

“Another thing,” Molotov said, to make him attend: “Cut back on arms shipments to the People’s Liberation Army in China. We must soothe the Lizards wherever we can.”

“Yes, this is sensible,” Beria agreed, as if to say the other hadn’t been. He held up a forefinger. “But will it not make the Lizards think we have a guilty conscience?”

“Now that is an interesting question,” Molotov said. “Yes, a very interesting question.” He considered it. “I think we had better cut back, Lavrenti Pavlovich. We have always denied supplying the Chinese for their insurrection against the Lizards. How can we possibly cut back on what we have denied doing at all?”

Beria laughed. “A nice point. We shall do that, then. Shall we do it gradually, so that even the Chinese do not realize at once what is happening to them?”

“Yes, that would be very good.” Molotov nodded. “Very good indeed. Mao has complained from time to time that we are not Marxist-Leninist enough to suit him. Let us see how going without aid suits him, and how much he criticizes us after that.” Had he been another man, he might have chortled. Being the man he was, he allowed himself another nod, this one of anticipation.

Reffet’s furious face stared out of the screen at Atvar. “Destroy them!” the fleetlord of the colonization fleet shouted. “Destroy all the nasty Tosevites, that we may take this world for ourselves and do something worthwhile with it.”

“Could I have destroyed the Tosevites, or at least their capacity for making war, do you not think I would have done so?” Atvar returned. “In this case, the destruction would be mutual.”

“Incompetence,” Reffet hissed, careless of his opposite number’s feelings.

“Incompetence,” Atvar agreed, which startled Reffet into momentary silence. Atvar went on, “Incompetence reaching back more than sixteen hundred years. We misjudged what the probe told us, and we failed to send another one to see if the situation had changed in the interim before dispatching the conquest fleet. As a result, very little has gone as it should on Tosev 3.”

“As a result, twelve of my ships are blown to radioactive dust, and all the males and females in them,” Reffet replied. “And you have not yet punished the creatures responsible for this outrage.”

“We do not yet know which of the creatures are responsible for the outrage,” Atvar pointed out. “If we knew that, punishment would be swift and certain.”

“You told the Big Uglies that, if you could not find out which of their ridiculous groupings committed this crime, you would punish them all,” Reffet reminded him. “I have yet to see you do this, however eagerly I await it.”

“The Tosevites’ groupings would be more ridiculous were they not armed with nuclear weapons and poison gas,” Atvar said.

“Your warning will be more ridiculous if you issue it and then fail to carry it out,” Reffet retorted.

That was true; Atvar knew as much, and the knowledge pained him. “Much of the blame for this disaster is mine,” he said. “We have been at peace-or at an approximation of peace-with the leading Tosevite not-empires for too long. We examine what they do less minutely than we did in the days just after the fighting ended-and they are better able to conceal what they do, too. So many of their satellites were shifting orbit lately, we still cannot determine which not-empire activated one of its machines. For that matter, the machine might have been disguised as something other than what it was, and lain quietly in wait for a moment of opportunity-a moment of treachery.”

“That is why you said you would punish them all,” Reffet said.

“It is also why they all said they would consider punishment for deeds I could not prove they committed an act of war,” Atvar answered unhappily. “Big Uglies enjoy fighting to a degree we have trouble understanding. They are always fighting among themselves. I believe they would fight us.”

“I believe they are bluffing,” Reffet said. With his lack of experience with Tosevites, that was not helpful. His next comment was: “And one group of them is bound to be lying.”

“But which?” Atvar asked. “Mass punishment is something they would be more likely to use than we. We care more for justice.”

“Where is the justice for my colonists?” Reffet asked. “Where is the justice in making a threat and then forgetting it?”

“I was hasty,” Atvar said. “In my haste, I may have behaved like a Big Ugly-the Tosevites are hasty by nature.”

“This world has corrupted you,” Reffet said in the tones of a judge passing sentence. “Instead of the Tosevites’ becoming more like proper subjects of the Emperor, you act like a Big Ugly.”

“This world will change the colonists, too,” Atvar said, admitting most of Reffet’s charge without acknowledging the word corrupted. “If you think it will not, you live in a ginger-taster’s dream.”

Perhaps he should not have mentioned ginger. With a fine mocking waggle of the eye turrets, Reffet said, “One more delight Tosev 3 has produced. I tell you this, Atvar”-alone among males and females of the Race on Tosev 3, he addressed Atvar as an equal-“if you do not keep your promise to punish the Big Uglies, I shall report you to the Emperor.”

Fury and scorn ripped through Atvar. “Go ahead, Reffet,” he hissed, using the other fleetlord’s name with savage relish. “By the time your grumbling reaches him, and by the time he composes a reply and it gets back to us, as many years will have gone by as passed between your departure from Home and your arrival here. Have you forgotten where you are? For better or worse, we are the males on the spot. Whatever answers the Race finds for Tosev 3, we are the ones who will have to find them.”

Reffet looked as if he hated Atvar, hated Tosev 3, hated everything except the idea of tucking down his tailstump and fleeing back Home. He had probably been ready to refer any hard problems he found to bureaucrats back on Home, confident conditions would not have changed much while light sped from Tosev to Home and back again. Slow change, incremental change, was the hallmark of life in the Empire.

Atvar’s mouth fell open in a bitter laugh. Incessant, maddening change was the hallmark of life on Tosev 3. If Reffet couldn’t figure that out, couldn’t adapt to it as Atvar had had to adapt… too bad, Atvar thought. “Out,” he said aloud, and broke his connection with the other fleetlord.

Ttomalss looked on his summons from the fleetlord of the colonization fleet as an honor he could have done without. Not only did it take him away from his work, it also involved him in high-level controversies that might end up causing him trouble later. But Reffet had not asked his opinion: Reffet was a male new-come from Home, not a snoutcounting Big Ugly. Reffet had simply summoned him. What choice had he but to obey?

None, he thought as he folded himself into the posture of respect and said, “How may I serve you, Exalted Fleetlord?”

“Computer searches and a conversation with Senior Researcher Felless identify you as the leading expert from the conquest fleet on the natives of this chilly ball of mud,” Reffet said. “I presume this is accurate?”

“I am one of the leading students of the Tosevites, yes, Exalted Fleetlord,” Ttomalss said. He hid his amusement at that. His gains in knowledge had got under the scales of a good many of his colleagues. As far as he was concerned, they had no imagination. As far as they were concerned, he had too much. Maybe he was able to learn about the Big Uglies because he could come closer to thinking like them than other males of the Race could do.

“Explain to me, then, Senior Researcher, why any group of these Tosevites should have sought to perpetrate the atrocity my fleet has suffered,” Reffet said.

“First obvious point: for the purpose of doing us harm,” Ttomalss said. “Second obvious point: because the guilty Tosevites thought they could do us harm and at the same time escape punishment.”

“In that, they may even have been correct,” Reffet said discontentedly.

“As may be, Exalted Fleetlord.” Ttomalss was not a male in a position to set policy. “Third, less obvious point: because the guilty Tosevites may have sought revenge against us for wrongs suffered during the period of fighting. The Big Uglies are far more given to elaborate vengeance than we are.” He remembered the captivity he had endured at the hands of the Chinese female Liu Han after taking her hatchling to use in his researches-and he had suffered that captivity despite returning the hatchling.

“I see that this is true,” Reffet said. “Senior Researcher Felless confirms it and, as I noted, speaks well of your insight into the subject. I must confess, though, that I fail to grasp the reasons behind it.”

“In my view, they are related to the reproductive behavior of the Big Uglies, which, you will have gathered, is different from our own and different from that of any other intelligent race with which we are familiar.”

“I have gathered this, yes.” Reffet made a noise redolent of disgust. “They are sexually available to one another at all seasons of the year. They form pairs and nurture the hatchlings to which the female of each pair gives birth by a process that revolted me when I read of it and revolted me even more when I viewed a video of it. It strikes me as astounding that any survive.”

“It strikes me the same way, Exalted Fleetlord,” Ttomalss said. “The difficulty of the method, the helplessness of the hatchling over a startling period of time”-he recalled his own difficulties coping with the needs of first Liu Mei and then Kassquit-“and the sexual bond between specific males and females create emotional attachments among the Tosevites we can understand only intellectually. A Big Ugly whose sexual partner or hatchling has come to harm may well seek revenge for that harm without concern for its own survival.”

Reffet pondered that. “I have seen as much in the reports,” he said slowly. “It did not make sense to me before. Now it does, at least to a certain degree. But it also leaves me with an unanswered question, one on which I hope you will shed more light: which Tosevite not-empire do you reckon most likely to think it owes us such vicious, elaborate vengeance?”

“I fear I must disappoint you, Exalted Fleetlord, for I can offer no certain answer there,” Ttomalss said. “By the standards the Big Uglies use to judge such things, we have inflicted grievous harm on all their leading not-empires, and on the lesser ones as well. I wish I could be of more assistance.”

“So do I,” Reffet muttered. “All three of these leading notempires have said they will war against us if we punish them for the deed without proof of their guilt. One has had the effrontery to say this knowing it is in fact guilty, but never mind that. Do they speak the truth?”

“There, I fear they do,” Ttomalss replied, knowing he was again disappointing the fleetlord of the colonization fleet. “If a Big Ugly says he will not fight, he may well be lying. If he says he will fight, he is sure to be telling the truth.”

“These are not the answers I sought from you,” Reffet said.

“If you wanted answers that pleased you, Exalted Fleetlord, you could have had them from many others, and without interrupting me at my work,” Ttomalss said. “I thought you summoned me because you wanted the truth.”

“You sound rather like a Big Ugly yourself,” Reffet remarked.

He did not mean it as a compliment, but it was the first perceptive thing Ttomalss had heard him say. “Inevitably, that which is observed and the observer interact,” the researcher said. “Over these past years, we have influenced the Tosevites and they have influenced us.”

“Not for the better, in my view,” Reffet said. “Can you offer no advice on how to learn which group of Tosevites is lying?”

“Very little, I fear,” Ttomalss said. “The Big Uglies are far more practiced liars than we-as is natural, since they lie to one another so often.”

“I have heard you,” Reffet said heavily. “I have heard you and I dismiss you. Go back and learn more.”

“It shall be done, Exalted Fleetlord.” Inside, Ttomalss was laughing as he left Reffet’s presence. Reffet might despise Tosev 3 and all the Big Uglies on it, but they were influencing him, too, whether he wanted them to or not. Otherwise, he would have been more interested in hearing the truth and less in hearing only what he wanted to hear-a Tosevite characteristic if ever there was one.

“Sir,” Major Sam Yeager asked, “are you looking to hear the truth, or only what you want to hear?”

President Earl Warren blinked. With his long, jowly, wrinkled face, pink skin, and white hair, he looked like everyone’s favorite grandfather. “Major, the day I don’t want to hear the truth is the day I should no longer be president of the United States.”

Yeager wondered how sincere Warren was. Well, he’d find out in a minute. “Okay, Mr. President,” he said. “Truth is, I don’t know how we’re going to keep the Lizards from hitting us a lick. They said they would. By their way of thinking, that means they have to, whether they want to or not.”

“That is unjust,” Warren said unhappily. “If I permit it, I show cowardice in the face of the enemy.”

“Yes, sir,” Yeager agreed. “But if you go and hit them another lick afterwards-well, where does it stop?”

Warren eyed him. “A good question. The only question, as far as I can see: certainly the one on which a president earns his salary. Seeing that it is the question is not so hard. I mean no offense when I say any reasonably intelligent man could frame it. Answering it, though-ay, there’s the rub.”

Yeager wasn’t insulted when the president called him a reasonably intelligent man. He was, if anything, flattered. He wouldn’t have had a chance to meet a president if the Lizards hadn’t come. The most he could have hoped for was big-league coach, if one of his buddies got lucky and made manager. Part-time scout or high-school coach somewhere struck him as a lot more likely.

He said, “Mr. President, sir, if the Lizards wanted to blow up one of our cities, the way they kept doing during the fighting, they could have done it by now. Seems to me that Atvar wants to do something that would let him save face with his own people but doesn’t want to touch off a war with us.”

Earl Warren rubbed his chin as he pondered that. “You’re saying he might be satisfied with a symbolic act of destruction, Major, and would be willing to forgo something so brutal as to force us to respond in kind?”

“Yes, sir, that’s exactly what I’m saying.” Yeager didn’t try to hide the relief in his voice. Having a boss who understood what he was talking about was liable to make life easier for the whole planet.

On the other hand, it might not, too. Warren said, “I regret permitting even a symbolic act of destruction on our soil if we have done nothing to deserve it. It sets a dangerous precedent.”

“Right now, sir, the shiplords in the colonization fleet-and in the conquest fleet, too-will be screaming their heads off at Atvar to get him to blow a city here and one in the Reich and one in Russia to kingdom come,” Sam said. He didn’t try to hide his desperation, either. “If Atvar settles for something symbolic, they’ll all be shouting that he’s set a dangerous precedent-and the Lizards take precedent a lot more seriously than we do.”

“A point,” the president said, “and one I’m glad you reminded me of. I tend to think of the Lizards as always seeing things in the same light and speaking with a single voice. I have the same trouble with the Germans and the Russians, probably for the same reason: because their politics are less open than ours, I need to remind myself they have politics at all.”

“I don’t know about the Nazis and the Reds, sir, but the Lizards sure have politics,” Yeager answered. “They had ’em even before the colonization fleet came. Now they’re worse, because the ones who’ve been here for twenty years have started to understand a little bit about us, but the new ones don’t believe half of what the old-timers tell ’em and don’t want to believe any of it.”

“Is that last your opinion, Major, or have you got data to back it up?” Warren asked sharply. He’d been a politician a long time, and a lawyer for a long time before that; he understood the difference between evidence and hearsay.

“Sir, it’s the unanimous opinion of all the defectors and prisoners I’ve talked to, from Straha on down,” Sam said, “and some of the communications intercepts we’ve picked up show the same thing. We don’t have as many as we’d like; the Lizards are still ahead of us when it comes to keeping signals secure.”

Warren sighed and looked weary. His wits remained keen; his body, now and then, forcibly reminded him it was past seventy. And, from the days of FDR on, the presidency had grown into a job of man-killing importance and complexity. “I will consult with officials from the Departments of State and the Interior,” Warren said at last. “If they concur in your view, Major, perhaps we’ll dicker with the Lizards over a suitable symbolic act. If your good offices are required there, I will call on you.”

“That’s fine, Mr. President. That’s better than fine, in fact,” Yeager said enthusiastically. He also realized he’d just been dismissed. Saluting, he turned to go.

Before he could leave, though, President Warren said, “Wait.” Sam did as smart an about-face as he had in him. Warren asked, “Whom do the Lizards believe to be the responsible party?”

“Sir, the way they handicap it is, the Nazis first, the Reds second, and us trailing but not out of the running.” Yeager hesitated, then risked a question of his own: “How does it look to you?”

“I know about us, of course, which the Lizards would, too, if they had an ounce of sense,” Warren answered. Sam waited, not sure whether the president would tell him anything more. After a few seconds, Warren went on, “If I were a gambling man, I would bet on the Reich ahead of the Soviet Union, too. Molotov is a very cool customer-or a cold fish, whichever you like. He holds his cards so close to his chest, they’re inside his shirt. He would never dare anything so wild. The Nazis…” He shook his head. “No one can tell what the Nazis will do till they do it. Half the time, I don’t think they know themselves.”

“That’s what the Lizards say about all of us,” Yeager said.

“So I’ve heard. But it happens to be true of the Germans. Less so now than when Hitler ran them, maybe, but still true.” The president sighed again. “And I wish Britain hadn’t started cozying up to the Greater German Reich after the Lizards took away her empire. I don’t know how much we could have done about that-the Reich is on the other side of the Channel, and we’re on the other side of the Atlantic-but I wish it hadn’t happened.”

“You get no argument from me, sir,” Yeager said. “For that matter, I don’t like the idea of propping up the Japs. I remember Pearl Harbor too well.”

“So do I, Major,” Warren said. “I was attorney general of California at the time. I helped get the Japs off the West Coast and into camps. But if we don’t prop them up now, they’ll look to the Russians, which would be bad, or else to the Lizards in China, which would be worse. And so-” He made an unhappy face.

“By what I’ve heard, sir, the Lizards aren’t having a very happy time in China,” Sam said.

“They’ve got the same problem the Japanese did before them: too many Chinese to try to hold down with not enough soldiers.” Warren looked up at the ceiling. “In a quiet sort of way, we try to keep the Lizards from having too happy a time in China. It’s easier for the Russians to do that than it is for us, but we manage.” He glanced toward Yeager. “Unofficially, of course.”

“Oh, of course, sir.” Sam saluted again. This time, President Warren let him go.

Before the Lizards came, what people called the White House these days had been the governor’s residence, not far from the State Capitol in Little Rock, Arkansas. People kept talking about rebuilding on the site of Washington, D.C., but they were more willing to talk than they were to spend money. Some people also said the Lizards had known just what they were doing when they dropped an explosive-metal bomb on Washington. Sam had been known to say that a time or two himself.

He rather liked Little Rock, even the larger, more hectic city that had sprung up around and in the midst of the town he’d known during and right after the fighting. It was larger and more hectic than it had been, but still small and staid alongside Los Angeles. It was also much greener than Los Angeles, and full of trees. Both the Californian he was and the farm boy from the prairie he had been appreciated that.

Down the block, only a few embassies stood: that of the Lizards, biggest of all; those of Germany and the USSR, rival concrete cubes; smaller structures from Britain and Japan; those of Canada and Ireland and New Zealand and Germany’s vassals: Switzerland, Finland, Sweden, Hungary, Italy, Romania, Bulgaria; and ones from the island nations of the Caribbean-Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Haiti. The Lizards had swallowed down the rest, with the exception of some the Germans had swallowed instead.

A man in a German uniform and a Lizard strolled down the street in earnest conversation. A colored fellow went past them the other way without even turning his head. Yeager chuckled to himself. Twenty years earlier, the local would either have tried to shoot both of them or run like hell. Sophistication had come to Little Rock, whether the Arkansans particularly wanted it or not.

Yeager stopped in a cafe for a hamburger. Endless years on the road had given him a connoisseur’s appreciation of the differences between burgers. This was a good one, better than he was likely to have found in his ballplaying days: meaty, on a fresh, tasty bun, with equally fresh pickle and lettuce and tomato. He enjoyed every bite.

He also enjoyed the beer with which he washed down the burger. It was a local brew, rich and hoppy. With their deliveries disrupted by the Lizard invasion, the national breweries had lost some of their hold on the country. When local beers were good, they made Schlitz and Miller High Life and the rest taste like dishwater. When they were bad, of course, they bore a strong resemblance to horse piss. Bad local beers didn’t last. Good ones seemed to be flourishing.

A lot of the signs on the table, Sam left air-conditioning and went out into the muggy heat again. His face was thoughtful. As far as he was concerned, whoever had attacked the ships of the colonization fleet was a cold-blooded murderer. Whatever the Lizards did when they found out who it was, he wouldn’t mind. He might have thought differently had there been any way to drive the Lizards out of the solar system and make sure they didn’t come back. Since there wasn’t…

“We’ve got to live with them,” he said, and then, more softly, “I hope to God they nail the bastards.” As far as he was concerned, Lizards were people, too.