Second Contact

9

“Where will it be today, superior sir?” Straha’s Tosevite driver asked him after closing the door to the motorcar. The ex-shiplord had learned to rely on the machine even though it broke down more often than the Race would have tolerated. Los Angeles was not a city wherein it was convenient for even a Big Ugly without a motorcar to travel, let alone a male of the Race.

He gave the driver the address. Like his own residence, it was in the district called the Valley-a place-name that, unlike a lot of the ones the Tosevites used, made perfect sense to him. This part of the city was warmer in summer than the rest, and so endeared itself to the Race. It was also colder in winter, but winter anywhere in Los Angeles was chilly enough to be unpleasant.

Even hereabouts, the air tasted wet and green to Straha on warm days and cold alike. That had amused Sam Yeager, who probably would have failed to be comfortable on the coolest, dampest days Home had to offer. The mere idea that Straha would consider the comfort of a Big Ugly was a telling measure of how far he had fallen since defecting from the conquest fleet.

“May I ask you something, superior sir?” the driver asked.

“Ask,” Straha said resignedly. The Big Uglies never stopped trying to learn this, that, and the other thing from him. He didn’t suppose he could blame them-were he still with the conquest fleet, he would have done the same with any prominent Tosevite defector-but it grew wearisome at times.

“You usually refuse invitations from other males of the Race to functions such as the one tonight,” the driver said. “Why did you choose to accept this one?”

The Tosevite spoke Straha’s language about as well as a Big Ugly could. In terms of grammar and pronunciation, he probably spoke it as well as Yeager, who was Straha’s touchstone in such matters. But he did not think like a male of the Race, as Yeager was able to do.

Straha tried to explain: “Why did I accept? First of all, because I usually decline: I have learned from you Tosevites that being too predictable does not pay. And, second, the males who sent me this invitation are old acquaintances. I have known them since not long after my arrival in the United States, when I was being concealed and interrogated at the place called Hot Springs.” That was another sensible, descriptive place-name, of the sort common back on Home.

“I understand now,” the driver said. “You are visiting old friends.”

“In a manner of speaking, yes,” Straha said. But he had recently found an English word that came closer to what he was doing tonight: slumming. During his days as shiplord, he would never have associated with ordinary males like these two, and they would never have presumed to ask him to associate with them. Association at Hot Springs was surely one of the reasons they did so presume now, but the pervasive and corrosive American doctrine of equality was as surely another.

He did not hold to the doctrine of equality. What was civilization itself, if not a graduated structure of inequalities? But many prisoners who had elected to stay among the American Tosevites had become infected by their foolish politics. That made sense to Straha. They had been low, so naturally they wanted to consider themselves on the same plane as those who had been above them.

“Here we are, superior sir,” the driver said as the motorcar squeaked to a stop just past a rather garish yellow house with a low hedge out in front of it. Decorative plants were used back on Home, too, but not in such profusion. The driver nodded to Straha. “I shall stay out here and keep an eye on things.” He was not just a driver, of course. He carried a considerable assortment of lethal hardware, and knew how to use all of it.

“If you must smoke cigarettes while you wait for me, have the courtesy to step out of the motorcar before you do so,” Straha said. He and the Big Ugly had had previous disagreements on that subject.

Now, though, the driver yipped out Tosevite laughter. “It shall be done, Shiplord,” he said. “And do enjoy the ginger I am sure a lot of the males there will be tasting.” He laughed again. Straha headed for the house, feeling oddly punctured.

One of the two males who shared the house folded himself into the posture of respect in the doorway. “I greet you, Shiplord,” he said. “You honor our home by your presence.”

“I greet you, Ristin,” Straha replied. Ristin wore red-white-and-blue body paint of no pattern authorized by the Race. Sam Yeager had devised it in Hot Springs to designate prisoners of the United States. It still scandalized Straha, even after so many years. To Ristin, though, it symbolized his abandonment of the Race and entrance into the world of the Tosevites.

“I trust all is well with you, Shiplord?” Ristin asked with perhaps a tenth of the deference an infantrymale should have given an officer of Straha’s rank.

“As well as it can be, yes,” Straha said.

“Come in, then, and use our house as your own,” Ristin told him. “We have food. We have alcohol, in several flavors. We have ginger, for those who care for it.” He and the male with whom he shared the house had never got the habit. Straha did not know whether to feel scorn or pity or envy at that.

“I thank you,” Straha said, and went inside. As in many houses built by Tosevites, he felt a little too small. The ceiling was too high, as were the counters in the kitchen. Even the light switches-aside from being a strange shape-were set higher in the wall than he would have had to reach back on Home.

Music blared out of a playing machine in the front room. It was not the music of the Race, but some Tosevite tune. When Straha turned an eye turret toward the player, he discovered it was also of Tosevite manufacture. Instead of using a skelkwank light to release the information digitally stored on a small disk, the player had a stylus that rode the grooves of a large platter-and, with every playing, degraded them a little, so the platter eventually became unusable. That was like the Big Uglies, Straha thought-they had no consideration for the long term.

Straha had no use for most Tosevite music, though the Big Ugly called Bach sometimes created patterns he found interesting. This was not Bach. It was, in his view, hardly music at all, even by Tosevite standards. It was full of crashes and horns-not the horns with which the Big Uglies made music, but the ones they used as warning devices on motorcars-and other absurdities.

Through the cacophonous din, a singer howled in English:

“When the fleetlord say, ‘We’ll rule this world from space,’

We-hiss, hiss-right in the fleetlord’s face.

The fleetlord thinks the Earth is for the Race.

We-hiss, hiss-right in the fleetlord’s face.”

The hisses did not come from a Big Ugly’s throat. They sounded more as if they were made by pouring water onto red-hot metal. That would have fit in well with the other strange noises coming out of the playing machine.

Several males stood in front of the player. Their mouths hung wide open. They thought the recording was the funniest thing they’d ever heard. Straha considered. It was barbaric, it was crude, it was rude-and it was aimed at Atvar. That made up Straha’s mind for him: he decided the recording was pretty funny, too.

“I greet you, Shiplord.” That was Ullhass, the male with whom Ristin shared his home. Like his comrade, he wore U.S. prisoner-of-war body paint. Maybe he found that funny, in the same sort of way the Tosevite song was funny. That was as close as Straha had ever come to understanding why these two males preferred U.S. body paint to that of the Race.

“I greet you, Ullhass.” Straha took pride in keeping his own ornate body paint touched up, even though he would never again command the 206th Emperor Yower or any other ship of the Race. He had made sure of that.

“Help yourself to anything that suits you, Shiplord,” Ullhass said, much as Ristin had at the entrance. “Plenty to eat, plenty to drink, plenty to taste. Plenty of gossip, too. I am glad you decided to join us. We are pleased to see you. You do not come among your own kind often enough.”

“I am here.” Straha let it go at that. These former captives who had happily settled into Tosevite society and who had one another for company were hardly more his own kind than were the Big Uglies. Because they had been captured, the Race readily forgave them. Many of them had traveled back and forth between the United States and areas of Tosev 3 the Race ruled.

Straha had not. He would not. He could not. The Race had made it very plain that he was liable to arrest if he ever left the USA. The leaders of the local not-empire had also made it very plain they did not want him to leave. Just as he knew too much about the Race, so he also knew too much about them.

He went into the kitchen, took some ham and some potato chips-as long as he was here, he would enjoy himself-and poured some clear spirits. The Big Uglies flavored a lot of their alcohol with things most males of the Race found highly unpleasant-burnt wood and tree berries were a couple of their favorites-but they also distilled it without flavorings. That Straha could drink without qualms, and he did.

A ginger jar sat on the high counter. Anyone who wanted a taste could have one, or more than one. Later, Straha told himself. Had he told himself no, he would have known he was lying. Later was easier to deal with.

Skittering in, a male almost bumped into Straha. “Sorry, friend,” he said as he spooned some ginger out into the palm of his hand. Then one of his eye turrets swung toward Straha, taking in his complex swirls of paint. The other male gave him respect. “Uh, sorry, Shiplord.”

“It is all right,” Straha said, and the other male tasted the ginger he’d taken. Seeing his pleasure made Straha abruptly decide later had become now. After a good-sized taste of his own, even exile seemed more palatable than it had. But, through the exaltation, he knew it would not last.

“Did I hear true, Shiplord?” the other male asked. “Did you tell one of those Big Uglies you thought this not-empire had shot up the colonization fleet?” Without waiting for an answer, he opened his mouth to laugh. “That is even funnier than Spike Jones.” Seeing Straha’s incomprehension, he added, “The Tosevite with the silly song.”

“Oh,” Straha said, and then, wary as usual, asked, “How did you hear of that? I know it never appeared in a newspaper.”

“That Big Ugly male who interviewed you-Herter, is that the name? — spoke with me a little later,” the other male replied. “He talked about the way you yanked his tailstump. He thought it was funny, too, once he realized you did not mean it.”

“What I did not realize was that he was ready to print it,” Straha said. “The Big Uglies in this not-empire carry freedom to the point of license.”

Several other males had heard the story of Straha’s misadventure with the reporter, too. That let him have a more entertaining time at the gathering than he’d expected. Even males who used English as readily as their own original speech would laugh at the follies of Tosevites.

But, when Straha related the tale to his driver on the way back to his own home, the Big Ugly was anything but amused. “Do not ever tell that story again, Shiplord,” he said with an emphatic cough. “The Reich and the USSR can gain too much benefit if you do.” He remained polite, even deferential, but he was giving an order just the same.

To this I have been reduced: to taking orders from Big Uglies. Straha sighed. He had been reduced to worse circumstances than that, but few more humiliating. He sighed again, a long, mournful hiss. “It shall be done.”

The Liberty Explorer had been a long time crossing the Pacific from Shanghai to San Pedro, with stops in Japanese-held Manila and in Honolulu. Even though the paperwork for her daughter and her was in good order, Liu Han had stayed in her cabin aboard the U.S. freighter all through the stop in Manila, and had made sure Liu Mei did the same. Liu Han still felt lucky to have survived the Japanese attack on her village north of Hankow. She did not want to give the eastern dwarfs a chance to finish the job, not when she had to put out a bowl for alms-and arms-in the USA.

Liu Mei had wanted at least to go out on deck and see more of Manila than she could from the cabin’s porthole. When Liu Han vetoed that, her daughter had protested, “The Japanese are not going to bomb this ship.”

“Not openly-they cannot afford to anger the USA,” Liu Han had answered. “But they do not want the progressive forces in China gaining strength in the United States. If they know we are aboard-and they have spies, and so does the Kuomintang-they may try to make us or the ship suffer a misfortune. Best take no chances.”

Neither the Liberty Explorer nor its handful of passengers had suffered any undue misfortune on the long passage across the ocean. Liu Han had taken advantage of the slow voyage to study English as best she could, and to work with Liu Mei on it. She would never be fluent. She hoped she would be able to make herself understood, and to understand some of what people said to her.

Now, standing at the bow of the old freighter, she looked ahead and spoke in Chinese to her daughter: “There it is. Now we will have to convince the Americans to give arms and money to us as well as to the Kuomintang.”

“We could have done this in Hawaii,” Liu Mei said.

Liu Han shook her head. “No. It is not part of the mainland, so what happens there does not always reach the rest of the country. And Honolulu is not the port it was before the little scaly devils dropped one of their big, horrid bombs on it. We had to finish this journey, to come to the province-no, the state-of California.”

She did not mention her biggest fear: that the Americans would have forgotten she was coming. All that was supposed to be arranged. Liu Han knew how often things that were supposed to be arranged went wrong in China, and the Chinese, it went without saying, were the best people in the world. Relying on these round-eyed foreign devils to do as they should tested her nerves.

San Pedro looked to be about as busy a port as Shanghai, though all the boats and ships, as far as she could tell, had engines. She saw no sail-powered junks hauling freight from one harbor to another, as she would have in Chinese waters. As the Liberty Explorer drew closer to land, she did spot a few tiny sailboats, too tiny for any use she could find.

She went up to a sailor and pointed at one. “That boat, what for?” she asked, learning and practicing her English at the same time.

“Ma’am, that’s a pleasure boat,” the American foreign devil answered. “Whoever’s in it is just sailing to have a good time, maybe do a little fishing, too.”

“Boat for good time?” Liu Han wasn’t sure she’d understood, but the sailor nodded, so she had. “Eee!” she said. “Fellow sail boat, he very rich.” In her mind, she pictured the unknown man ruthlessly exploiting foreign devils so he could gain the wealth he needed to buy his own boat.

But the sailor shook his head. “Don’t have to be all that rich, ma’am. My brother makes parts for clocks here in L.A, and he’s got himself a little sailboat. He likes it. I spend enough time on the water as is, so I don’t go out with him all that often, but he has a fine old time.”

Liu Han didn’t follow all of that, but she got most of it. Either boats here were much cheaper than she’d imagined, or American proletarians made far more money than she’d thought possible.

A tugboat came out to help nudge the Liberty Explorer up against a pier. Liu Han looked at the men working on the pier. They had no basic similarity, one to another, as Chinese did. Some of the white men she saw had yellow hair, some had black, and one, astonishingly, had hair the color of a newly minted copper coin. Along with the whites, there were also black men and brown men who did look a little like Chinese, save that they were stockier and hairier.

Liu Mei stared at the various workers. “So many different kinds, all together,” she murmured. She’d seen a few Russians, but not many others who were something besides Chinese. “How can they live together and make a nation?”

“It is a good question,” Liu Han said. “I do not know the answer.” Looking at the Americans, she kept trying to spot ones who looked like Bobby Fiore. In a way, that was foolishness, and she knew it. But, in another way, it made sense. Liu Mei’s father was the only American she’d ever known. What could be more natural than looking for others like him?

Liu Mei pointed. “And look! There is a man holding up a sign in Chinese. That must be for you, Mother.” She beamed with pride. “See. It says, ‘The American people welcome Liu Han.’ Oh!”

Before she could finish reading the sign, her mother did it for her. “It also says, ‘The American people welcome Liu Mei.’ And the last line reads, ‘Two heroes in the fight for freedom.’ ”

“I am not a hero,” Liu Mei said with becoming modesty. “I am only your comrade, your fellow traveler.”

“You are young yet,” Liu Han said. “With the world as it is, you will have your chances to become a hero.” She prayed to the gods and spirits in whom, as a good Communist, she was not supposed to believe to protect her daughter. Bobby Fiore had been a hero, giving his life in the revolutionary struggle against the imperialism of the little scaly devils. Liu Han hoped with all her heart that her daughter would never be called upon to make the same sacrifice.

Lines fore and aft moored the Liberty Explorer fast to the pier. The gangplank thudded down. “Come on, Mother,” Liu Mei said when Liu Han didn’t move right away. “We have to get the arms for the People’s Liberation Army.”

“You are right, of course,” Liu Han said. “Just let me make sure these stupid turtles don’t lose our baggage or run off with it.” Actually, she did not think the sailors would. They struck her as being unusually honest. Maybe they were just unusually well paid. She had heard that Americans were, but hadn’t taken it seriously till that one sailor spoke of his brother the factory worker owning a sailboat.

When she was satisfied the few belongings she and Liu Mei had brought from China would accompany them off the freighter, she went down the gangplank, her daughter following. The man holding the Chinese sign came up to them. “You are Miss Liu Han?” he asked, speaking Mandarin with an accent that said he was more at home in Cantonese.

“I am Comrade Liu Han, yes,” Liu Han answered in English. “This is my daughter, Comrade Liu Mei. Who are you?” She was wary of traps. She would be wary of traps as long as she lived.

The Chinese man grinned, set down the sign, and clapped his hands together. “Nobody told me you spoke English,” he said in that language, using it rapidly and slangily. “My name’s Frankie Wong. I’m supposed to be your helper-your driver, your translator, whatever you need. You follow me?”

“I understand most, yes,” Liu Han said, and took more than a little pleasure in disconcerting him. Still in English, she went on, “You with Kuomintang?”

“I’m not with anybody,” Frankie Wong said. He dropped back into Chinese: “Why would I want to be with any faction over there? My grandfather was a peasant when he came here to help build the railroads. All the round-eyes hated him and called him filthy names. But he was a laborer, and I am a lawyer. If he’d stayed in China, he would have stayed a peasant all his life, and I would be a peasant, too.”

“That does not have to be true,” Liu Mei said. “Look at my mother. She was born a peasant, and now she is on the Central Committee.”

Frankie Wong looked from mother to daughter and back again. “I think maybe Mao did a better job of picking people to come to the United States for him than anyone over here thought he did,” he said slowly. A sailor with a dolly brought a crate down the gangplank and rolled it toward the Chinese women. Wong eyed it. “Is that your stuff?” At Liu Han’s nod, he spoke to the sailor in rapid-fire English, now faster than she could keep up with. He turned back to her. “Okay. It’ll follow us to the hotel. Come on; I’ll take you to my car.”

That a lawyer would own an automobile did not surprise Liu Han. Lawyers were important people in China; she had no reason to believe they wouldn’t be important people here. But a lot of the people who drove automobiles here were plainly not important. Liu Han could judge that by the way they dressed, and by the battered, rusty cars some of them had. She could also judge it by how many automobiles were on the streets: hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, enough to clog them the way people on foot and on bicycles clogged the streets of Peking.

Liu Mei noticed that, and noticed something else as well. “Look how wide all the streets are, Mother,” she said. “They hold the automobiles so well, I think they were made to hold them.”

“You are right,” Frankie Wong said. “You are right, and you are clever. A hundred years ago, Los Angeles was only a village. These streets were made with cars in mind.”

Liu Han thought about that as he drove them past the buildings and houses of the city, which also seemed to her to be set very far apart from one another. A large city growing from a village in only a hundred years? All of China’s great cities had been great for many centuries. She laughed a little. Los Angeles struck her the same way Earth as a whole struck the little scaly devils: it had grown too great too fast to seem quite natural.

In front of the hotel, a crowd of people had gathered. Some waved U.S. flags. Some waved red flags. Some waved Kuomintang flags, too, with their twelve-pointed stars. “Don’t worry about that,” Frankie Wong said. “It just means they know you’re from China.”

Warily, Liu Han let herself be reassured. “When will we see officials who can help us?” she asked. “Will they come to this”-she read the letters slowly and carefully-“Biltmore Hotel, or will we have to travel to them?”

Now Wong looked at her with frank respect. “From what I heard, you didn’t have any English before you got ready to come to the USA.”

“A little. A very little, from a long time ago,” Liu Han answered with a glance over toward Liu Mei. “But I could not read it then. Learning this alphabet is easier than learning Chinese characters, I think. It would be easier still if the letters sounded the same way all the time.” Her daughter, who had studied with her, nodded agreement to that.

Frankie Wong laughed. “A lot of people who grow up speaking English would agree with you there. I’m one of them, as a matter of fact. But let’s get you settled in here first before we worry about reforming English. How does that sound?”

“It will have to do,” Liu Han said. Wong laughed again, though she didn’t think she’d been joking.

Sam Yeager knotted his khaki tie, then checked the result in the mirror on the sliding door to the bedroom closet. “You look very handsome, dear,” Barbara said.

“Take more than a uniform to do that for me,” Yeager answered. His wife snorted. He eyed her. “You now, babe, you look good.”

Barbara examined herself. Her azure dress played up her eyes. She tapped a curl back into place. “If you like middle-aged women, I may possibly do,” she said. “Possibly.”

He slid an arm around her waist and brushed her lips with his, not hard enough to disturb her lipstick. “I don’t know about middle-aged women in general, but I can think of one in particular I like.” His hand closed on her hipbone. “And I like what you do, too. I just wish I could do it more often. But I’m middle-aged, too.”

“Middle-aged going on seventeen, by the way you’re pawing me,” Barbara said as she twisted away. But she had a smile on her face and a smile in her voice. “Now-is our son ready?”

“He’d better be,” Sam said. Both as a ballplayer and as a soldier, his life had run by the clock. That was second nature to him. It wasn’t yet second nature to Jonathan, which produced friction every now and then, or sometimes more often than every now and then. Sam raised his voice: “You ready to go, Jonathan?”

“Just about,” Jonathan answered, something less than a smile in his voice. “Do I really have to come to this thing, Dad?”

“Yes, you do.” Yeager held on to his temper with both hands. “We’ve been over this before, you know. This is officially an informal reception, which means family and all. What would you do if we weren’t here-call Karen and see if she could come over?” He made it seem as if being alone in the house with her didn’t sound like fun.

“Well, yeah, I might do that.” Jonathan made it seem as if his father were the one who’d put that thought in his mind, as if he never would have had it without Sam’s help. They were both lying through their teeth, and they both knew it.

“You’ll have to find another time, that’s all,” Sam said. “But cheer up. I hear this emissary has a daughter about your age. Maybe she’ll be cute.”

“Fat chance,” Jonathan said.

Sam shook his head. He hadn’t been so cynical at that age. He was sure he hadn’t. And if anybody had offered him a chance to meet a girl who might be cute, he’d have been off like a shot. He was sure of that, too. After another glance at his watch, he said, “Come on, let’s have a look at you. We’ve got to get going, you know.”

“I’m coming, I’m coming.” When Jonathan came into the bedroom, he did pass muster. He couldn’t do anything about his shaved head, but that was far from unique among kids his age. His suit wasn’t of flashy cut or color, and, if his tie bore a pattern that looked like body paint, it wasn’t gaudy body paint.

“Let me grab my handbag, and we can go.” Barbara put the strap on her shoulder. “This should be fun.”

Jonathan muttered something, his voce just sotto enough to keep him out of trouble. Sam had his doubts, too, but kept them to himself. He’d been to enough official functions over the years to know that a few were interesting, most weren’t much of anything one way or the other, and a few made him wish he’d stayed far, far away. He even understood how he’d got ordered to attend this one: he was an expert on Lizards, this Liu Han came from a country oppressed by Lizards, and so… To the brass’ minds, no doubt it all seemed perfectly logical.

Barbara found one more inducement for her son as the three of them headed out to the Buick: “The food will probably be good.”

“Yeah?” Jonathan weighed that. He’d been to a few of these affairs himself. After a moment, he nodded. “Okay, that’s pretty hot.” To show how hot it was, he gave an emphatic cough.

“Some Lizards will be there, I expect-some of the ones living here, I mean,” Sam said, unlocking the driver’s-side door. “If you want to talk to them in their language, that’s fine. It’ll be good practice for you.” That proved an even better incentive than food. However much the Lizards fascinated Jonathan and his set, he didn’t find all that many chances to meet them.

Sam got on the Harbor Freeway at Rosecrans. The freeway had pushed that far south only a couple of years earlier; it made getting to downtown L.A. a snap-except when an accident addled things, as one did this evening. Yeager muttered and fumed till they were past it, then stepped on the gas as hard as he could.

“Good thing we left a little early,” Barbara remarked.

“Have to build in some extra time,” he answered, passing a car that wasn’t going fast enough to suit him. He laughed. “The Lizards think we’re out of our minds for driving without seat belts. But they’d never sell, never in a million years. The only thing people care about is going fast.” As if to prove his point, he zoomed past a gasoline-burning machine that couldn’t get out of its own way.

He left the freeway at Sixth and went east a few blocks to Olive, on which the Biltmore stood, across from Pershing Square. He parked in a lot north of the hotel. U.S. flags, the red banners of the People’s Liberation Army, and national flags of China-Kuomintang flags, in other words-all flew outside the twelve-story, E-shaped building. Pointing to those last, Barbara said, “She probably wishes they weren’t there.”

“You’re right. She probably does,” said Sam, who’d spent the couple of days he’d known about the reception boning up on China. He nodded toward the hotel as they came up to the entrance. “Pretty fancy place, eh, Jonathan?” He didn’t say hot; that wasn’t his slang, any more than swell was his son’s.

“It’s all right, I guess,” Jonathan answered, determined to be unimpressed.

Inside, Sam was asked to show identification. He did so without hesitation. He might have been a Lizard stooge, a Kuomintang supporter, or even a Japanese agent, none of whom had any reason to love the People’s Liberation Army. He might even have worked for the NKVD; Molotov wouldn’t want the Chinese Communists shopping anywhere but at his store. When he’d satisfied the guards that he was none of those things, they checked off his name and those of his wife and son and let them go into the reception hall.

Jonathan made a beeline for the buffet. As soon as he’d filled his plate, he stood around looking to see if any other fogies had brought along people-with luck, good-looking female people-his own age. Sam and Barbara looked at each other with identical amused expressions. At Jonathan’s age, Sam would have behaved the same way. At Jonathan’s age, though, barn dances were about the biggest social events Sam had ever seen. Even the small towns of Class D ball had seemed sophisticated to him. He shook his head. The world was a different place, a faster place, these days.

He looked around, too, not for pretty girls but to see what kind of crowd it was. When he spotted Straha, an eyebrow shot up. The shiplord raised a hand in greeting. Sam nodded back. If the chief Lizard defector was here, that put a seal of approval on the event, all right.

And there was the guest of honor, a Chinese woman who would have had to stand on her toes to make five feet. Her daughter was several inches taller-and if Jonathan hadn’t noticed her, he wasn’t paying attention, because she was a very pretty girl. Yeager got a drink, then drifted toward them to do his ceremonial duty.

Listening to Liu Han and Liu Mei, he realized they had only a little English. A Chinese man in a suit snappier than any civvies Sam owned was translating for them. Having done a good deal of translating himself, Yeager recognized its limits. The only Chinese he understood was chop suey. Still… Where there’s a will, there’s a lawyer, he thought.

When he came up to the two women, he nodded to them-he’d seen they didn’t shake hands as if they were used to doing it-and spoke in the language of the Race: “I greet you, females from a distant land.”

They both exclaimed in Chinese, then both started talking at the same time in the Lizards’ language. After a moment, Liu Mei fell silent and let her mother go ahead: “I greet you, Tosevite soldier, American soldier.” She was less fluent than Sam, but he had no trouble understanding her.

He gave her his name and his rank, and explained that his specialty was dealing with the Race. While he spoke, he noticed the Chinese man-he wore a button giving his name as Frank Wong-looking more and more unhappy. Liu Han noticed, too; Sam saw at once she had no flies on her. She spoke to Wong in Chinese. He relaxed and went off to get a drink.

Liu Han let out a sly chuckle. “I persuaded him that he was working too hard. Now he has a chance to recover.”

“Clever.” Yeager used an emphatic cough. He and Liu Han traded sly grins. He asked, “And what do you think of Americans, now that you are meeting us for the first time?”

“This is not my first meeting with Americans. Liu Mei’s father is an American,” Liu Han said. “He was a captive, as was I. We were part of the Race’s experiments on Tosevite mating habits. You know of these things?”

“I know of them, yes.” For a moment, Sam wondered why she was so openly admitting something so shameful. Then he gave himself a mental kick in the pants. She wanted to paint the Lizards black, so she could gain as much sympathy for her cause as she could.

She went on, “He was a good man. He was far and away the best man I met in these experiments. When I knew I would have a baby”-that came out as, When I knew I would lay an egg, but Sam understood-“he came down to China with me. He used to play your not-empire’s game, and he made money in China throwing and catching a ball as a show.”

“Baseball?” Sam said in English, and Liu Han nodded. Liu Mei turned away; Yeager wondered how often she’d heard this story. Laughing a little, he told Liu Han, “Before I was a soldier, I used to play baseball myself.”

“Truth?” she said, and he nodded. She cocked her head to one side. “Maybe you knew him.” He started to say it wasn’t likely, considering how many people played baseball in the United States. Before he could, she went on, “His name was Bobby Fiore.” She pronounced it very clearly.

“Jesus Christ!” He knocked back his scotch-and-soda at a gulp. “Bobby Fiore?” Liu Han’s head went up and down. Yeager stared. “Bobby Fiore? We played on the same team. We shared a room when we traveled. We were on the train together when the Race came down and shot it up. I got out before their helicopters landed. I never found out what happened to him.”

He stared over at Liu Mei. Now that he knew, he could see the Italian second baseman in her, in her chin, in her nose, in her hair. On her, though, it all looked good. Across twenty years, he could hear his old roomie laughing at the friendly insult.

Liu Han said, “He is dead. He died in Shanghai, fighting the Race. I was not there. But I have heard he died very bravely.”

“Bobby Fiore. My God.” Sam wished his glass weren’t empty. He wanted another slug of scotch, but he didn’t want to go away. “May I introduce my son”-he pointed toward Jonathan, and then waved for him to come over-“to your daughter, who is also the daughter of my old friend?”

“You may.” Liu Han looked in Jonathan’s direction. She must have fixed on his shaved head, for she asked, “Is he one of those who try to act like the Race?”

“He is.” Sam saw no point in beating around the bush or lying. “There are those who go further with it than he does.” That was also true, thank heaven.

“We have young males and young females like that in China, too,” Liu Han said. “I used to hate the very idea. I do not hate it so much now. The Race is here. We have to learn to live with its males and now its females. This is one way to do so.”

“I think you have good sense,” Yeager answered as Jonathan and Liu Mei exchanged polite greetings in the language of the Race. Ain’t that something? he thought. Barbara, could she have seen into his mind, would have disapproved of the grammar. He shrugged and went off to get that fresh drink after all. Ain’t that something? he thought again.

Vyacheslav Molotov examined the report from the Soviet consul in Los Angeles. He shoved the telexed sheet across his desk at Andrei Gromyko. “Have you seen this?” he asked the foreign commissar.

“I have, Vyacheslav Mikhailovich,” Gromyko answered. “Mao shows more imagination than we believed he had.”

“Mao shows himself a nationalist first and a Marxist-Leninist second,” Molotov said. “This is, of course, one of the sins for which he so noisily condemned Stalin.”

“He could afford to be noisy in condemning Stalin,” Gromyko said. “He lives well beyond the frontier.”

Both men warily looked around. Stalin had been dead for most of a decade, but his spirit lingered in the Kremlin. Molotov had to remind himself his predecessor could not harm him. Even after reminding himself, he said, “Living beyond the frontier did not always make a difference, Andrei Andreyevich. Remember what happened to Trotsky.”

“An ice axe in the brain?” Gromyko considered. “I can think of ways I would sooner leave the world, yes.” He glanced at Molotov. “Are you suggesting that Mao should worry about such a thing? If you are, you would do better to whisper it in Lavrenti Pavlovich’s ear than in mine.”

“No.” Not without some regret, Molotov shook his head. “Trotsky was an annoyance, a loose end. Mao leads a formidable force in the fight against the Lizards’ imperialism. I can think of no one else in the Chinese party who could take his place.”

“And we did provoke him, too,” Gromyko said musingly.

“What has that to do with anything?” Molotov asked in genuine curiosity. “He is useful to us, so we have to put up with him for the time being. But we do not want him getting too friendly with the Americans. Having their influence on the Siberian frontier would be even more of a nuisance than having the Lizards there, because the Americans are less likely to keep whatever agreements they make.”

Gromyko paused to light a cigarette: a Russian one, a little tobacco in a tube like a holder. After taking a puff, he said, “If we want to bring Mao back into the fold, we will have to start moving weapons into China again.”

“I think we can do that,” Molotov said. “The fuss the Lizards put up over the attack on the colonization fleet has died down. Whoever did that planned with great wisdom. My only qualm is that I do not care to believe either Himmler or Warren is so wise. But yes, I think we can safely resume shipments.”

“Very well,” Gromyko said. “I think you are right. If we are caught, the usual denials will serve in a case like that.”

Molotov looked at him with something as close to affection as he gave anyone but his wife. If Gromyko’s cynicism did not match his own, it came close. A man without cynicism had no business running a great country, as far as the General Secretary was concerned. That was one reason Earl Warren made him nervous.

Gromyko said, “I have also learned, Vyacheslav Mikhailovich, that there is some derangement in the networks of officials and other criminals who smuggle ginger into the Lizards’ territory. The Germans, the British, and the Americans are all in full cry. I hope their internal struggles do not disrupt the trade.”

“Indeed,” Molotov said indifferently. “I have heard something of this from Beria. He will be watching it, too.”

Gromyko did not flinch, for which Molotov admired him. Molotov had not actually heard anything from the NKVD chief. But keeping his followers eyeing each other was one way to keep them from eyeing the top spot in the hierarchy.

“I hope,” Gromyko said slowly, “that whatever ginger-smuggling channels the NKVD has set up will not be deranged by this fuss among the capitalists. We have made considerable profit from ginger.”

“And what could be more important to good Marxist-Leninists than profit?” Molotov returned. His wintry sense of humor was a good match for Gromyko’s. He went on, “Now that you know the line we are to take in regard to Mao, can I rely on Lavrenti Pavlovich and you to implement it?”

“One never knows how far one may rely on Beria,” Gromyko answered, which Molotov found most unfortunate, but which was also true. “On me, and on the Foreign Commissariat, you may of course rely.”

Beria, had he been there, would have claimed he was loyal and the Foreign Commissariat riddled with spies for the Nazis and the Americans and the Lizards. Beria was loyal to himself and the Soviet Union, in that order. He had been loyal to Stalin, a countryman of his, or as near as made no difference. Molotov eyed Gromyko. Was Gromyko loyal to him in particular? In a struggle against Beria, yes, he judged. Otherwise? Maybe, maybe not. But Gromyko was not the sort to head a coup d’etat. That would do. It would have to do.

“See to it, then,” Molotov said. Gromyko nodded and left. Molotov’s dismissals were brusque, but they weren’t brutal, as Stalin’s had been.

Molotov’s secretary stuck his head into the office. “Comrade General Secretary, your next appointment is here.”

“Send him in, Pyotr Maksimovich,” Molotov said. The secretary bobbed his head in a gesture of respect that went back to the days of the Tsars, then went out and murmured to the man in the waiting room.

The fellow came in a moment later. He was thin and middle-aged, with an intelligent face that clearly showed he was a Jew. He carried a topcoat and a fur hat against the nasty weather outside. Here in the Kremlin, sweat beaded his face. Also going back to the days of the Tsars, and to long before the days of the Tsars, was the Russian habit of heating buildings very warm to fight the winter cold. Molotov waved the man to the chair Gromyko had just vacated.

“Thank you, Comrade General Secretary,” the fellow said. His Polish accent put Molotov in mind of that of the Lizard ambassador’s interpreter.

“You are welcome, David Aronovich,” Molotov replied. “And what is the latest news from Poland?”

“Colonization by the Lizards is proceeding more rapidly than either the Poles or the Jews expected,” David Nussboym answered. “This suits the Jews better than the Poles. The Jews know they could not rule on their own. Many Poles still harbor nationalist fantasies.”

“Polish delusions, for the time being, are the Lizards’ problem and not mine,” Molotov said. “The Lizards are welcome to the Poles, too. If we cannot embroil the Lizards against the Reich, next best is to use them as a buffer against the Nazis and, as you say, as an object for the Poles’ nationalist desires. Russians have filled that role in the past; I am content to leave it to the Race now.”

“That strikes me as wise, Comrade General Secretary,” Nussboym said.

Molotov gave him a hooded stare. He had not asked for any such endorsement. Nussboym plainly had not grown to manhood in the USSR, else he would not have been so quick to speak his mind. Even years in the gulag, evidently, had not taught him that lesson. Then Molotov gave a mental shrug. If Nussboym proved a nuisance, he could go back to the gulag. He wasn’t so important that Beria would lift a finger to protect him.

“And I have another piece of information you need to know,” Nussboym said, doing his best to make himself out to be more important than he was.

“Tell me the information,” Molotov said icily. “Then I will tell you whether I need to know it. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” Nussboym said, flinching: he understood some things, anyhow. “The information is, I have located the hiding place the Jews use for the atomic bomb they stole from the Nazis in Lodz.”

“Have you?” Molotov rubbed his chin. “I do not know yet whether that is information I need to know, but it is certainly interesting.” He eyed Nussboym. “You would sell out your coreligionists and former countrymen to tell me this?”

“Why not?” the Polish Jew now serving in the NKVD replied. “They sold me out. Why should I not repay them? I owe the Party more loyalty than I owe them, anyhow.”

He said that, and said it with evident sincerity, even though the first thing the Party had done when it got its hands on him was throw him in a gulag for some years. Molotov believed him. For one thing, he was far from the only man to come out of the gulag and serve the Soviet Union well. Every time Molotov flew in a Tupolev passenger plane, he remembered how Stalin had plucked the designer out of the camps and set him to work at his proper job when the Germans invaded. General Rokossovsky was another such case. Either of them was worth a hundred of the likes of David Nussboym.

But that did not make Nussboym worthless. Molotov considered how best to use him. Subtlety seemed wasted here. “Very well, then,” Molotov said. “Where is this bomb hidden away? Somewhere not far from Lodz, I am sure.”

“Yes.” Nussboym nodded. “In or near the town of Glowno, to the northeast.”

“In or near?” Molotov raised an eyebrow. “Can you not be more precise than that, David Aronovich? Those first bombs were huge things, weighing tonnes apiece. You cannot hide them under the mattress.”

“Up till now, the Jews have kept this one hidden for close to twenty years,” Nussboym retorted, which held enough truth to keep Molotov from getting angry at the sardonic relish the NKVD man took in saying it.

“Did you also find out whether the bomb could still function?” Molotov asked. “Scientists tell me these weapons must have periodic maintenance if they are to go off.”

“Comrade General Secretary, that I do not know,” Nussboym said. “The Jews have done their best to keep the bomb working, but I do not know how good their best is. From everything I have been able to learn, neither they nor the Poles nor the Lizards know whether the bomb would work.”

“And no one, I suppose, is anxious to find out,” Molotov said. Nussboym nodded. Molotov studied him. “And you have told Comrade Beria the same.”

“He will hear the same from me, yes,” Nussboym said.

Molotov studied him again. Would he report here before he went to Dzerzhinsky Square? Maybe. Molotov dared hope so, but dared not be sure.

What to do about the bomb? Let the Lizards know it was there? He shook his head. They were clever enough to sit tight. Let the nationalist Poles know it was there? That was a happy thought. The Poles were headstrong, foolish, and frustrated. They could almost be relied upon to do something everyone else around them would regret.

Mordechai Anielewicz chuckled as he rode his bicycle toward Glowno. His legs were behaving very well, almost as if he’d never breathed in too much nerve gas. That wasn’t why he chuckled, though. The name of the town never failed to remind him of gowno, the Polish word for shit.

No Lizard starships had landed close enough to Glowno to go up if the Jews ever had to set off their atomic bomb-if it could be set off, which Anielewicz did not know. He was a little sorry the Race hadn’t offered him such a hostage to fortune. Samson never would have made it into the Bible if he hadn’t had the Philistines’ temple to pull down.

“Now politicians can kill millions with their jawbones of asses, not just a thousand,” Anielewicz murmured. He grunted. That held true for him, too-if the bomb still worked.

Every now and then, he wished he’d been able to figure out a way to smuggle the bomb into the Reich and set it off there. It would have been fitting vengeance for everything the Nazis had done to the Jews. But it might have set the world afire-and the bomb wasn’t easy to smuggle, anyhow. He ordered it moved every so often to keep the Lizards from getting their hands on it, and that wasn’t easy, either, not when the damn thing weighed close to ten tonnes.

Cars and lorries zoomed past him as he pedaled along at the edge of the highway. A lot more of the lorries, these days, were Lizard models with Lizards driving them: males and females from the colonization fleet, no doubt. He wondered how they liked the weather. It was a bright, sunny day, with the temperature only a little below freezing-otherwise, Anielewicz would have taken a car himself instead of bicycling. For a Polish winter, it was good weather indeed. Once he’d gone far enough to warm himself up, Mordechai actively enjoyed it.

But the Lizards didn’t like the cold, not even a little. They didn’t have cold weather on their home planet, and they didn’t know how to deal with it. That thought had hardly crossed Anielewicz’s mind when he came upon a Lizard lorry in the ditch by the side of the road. The driver kept turning his eye turrets from the truck to the road and back again, as if he hadn’t the faintest notion of how he’d come to grief.

Mordechai applied the brake-with care, for the road was icy in places-and stopped alongside the lorry, which was canted at an odd angle in the mud. “What happened?” he asked in the language of the Race.

“I will tell you what happened,” the Lizard said angrily. “I will be glad to tell you what happened. A Big Ugly in a stinking motorcar cut in front of me. I do not think the stupid creature had the faintest notion I was there.” He had to be a newly revived colonist; he had no idea that one human being might find his comments about another offensive. “I hit the brake to keep from colliding with the worthless Tosevite, and the next thing I knew, I was here.”

“You must have hit a patch of ice and skidded,” Mordechai said. “That can happen to anybody. You have to be careful at this season of the year.”

“Ice?” the Lizard echoed, as if it had never heard the word in its own speech before. It was, no doubt, used far less often in the Lizards’ language than in Polish or Yiddish. “Why is ice permitted on the surface of a road?” The poor creature sounded bewildered, as if Anielewicz had started talking about a rain of frogs.

“Ice,” Mordechai repeated patiently. The sooner the Lizard learned the facts of life about weather here, the less likely it was to kill itself-and perhaps several people with it. “The temperature on this part of Tosev 3 is often below freezing, as it is now. Rain will freeze. So will dew. And ice, as you have discovered, is very slippery. Your tires cannot hold their grip on it.”

“Why isn’t it scraped off the road as soon as it forms?” the Lizard demanded. “Your practices here strike me as most unsafe. The Race has held this part of the planet for some time, and should have done a better job of preparing it for colonization.”

Anielewicz didn’t laugh out loud, though holding back wasn’t easy. But he didn’t want to make the poor, ignorant, indignant Lizard any more indignant than it already was. Patiently, he said, “Sometimes there are only patches of ice, as today. Sometimes all the roads are icy, and there is no equipment for all the scraping it would take to keep them clear. Sometimes, when…” He hesitated. He didn’t know how to say snow in the Lizards’ language. Circumlocution, then: “When powdery frozen water falls from the sky, it covers the roads higher than a male. In this season of the year, that could happen at any time.”

“When I was awakened, I was warned of this kind of frozen water,” the Lizard said. “I still find it hard to believe any planet could have such an absurd form of precipitation.”

“You will find out how absurd it is,” Mordechai said. “And now, I must be on my way.” Off he went, slowly building up speed.

The Lizard looked as if it wanted to order him to stop and help. But, as usual, he had a rifle on his back. Maybe the briefing the Lizard had got included the idea that it wasn’t a good idea to give orders to Tosevites who might open fire instead of obeying. For the colonists’ sake, Mordechai hoped it included that thought. If it didn’t, they’d learn some expensive lessons in a hurry.

When he got into Glowno, he was alarmed to discover a Lizard prowling the streets. He didn’t dare approach the shed where the bomb was kept till he found out why the alien was going around. Glowno wasn’t much more than a wide spot on the highway between Lodz and Warsaw. Lizards came through the place, but they rarely stopped.

He went up to the Lizard and asked his question straight out: “What are you doing here?”

“Freezing,” the Lizard answered, which wasn’t what he’d expected but was perfectly reasonable. As an afterthought, the Lizard went on, “And looking for a place to put a shuttlecraft port.”

“Ah,” Anielewicz said. “I heard you were in Lodz, my home city, not long ago. You did not find any place that suited you there?”

“Would I be here if I had?” the Lizard retorted, again catching him off guard.

He tried to rally: “You are the female Nesseref, not so? That is the name of the shuttlecraft pilot I heard.”

“Yes, I am Nesseref,” she answered. “Who are you, to know who I am?”

He found himself in a trap of his own making. If he admitted who he was and his status, she would wonder why such a prominent personage had come to such an unprominent town as Glowno. After a moment’s thought, he said, “I am Mordechai Anielewicz,” and let it go at that. If she realized who he was, she did; if not, not. To keep her from having much time to think, he went on, “To me, you look much as a male of the Race would. How can a Tosevite tell a female from a male?”

Nesseref’s mouth fell open. She found the question funny. “We have the same trouble with you Big Uglies, you know. You all look the same to us, and you do not even use body paint to help us tell you apart. Some of the males from the conquest fleet can tell your males and females apart, but I cannot, not yet.”

“But you have not answered my question,” Anielewicz said.

“It is easy enough, for anyone with eyes in his head,” the Lizard said with another laugh. “My stance is somewhat wider than a male’s; I am the one who lays the eggs, and so need wider hips. My tailstump is a little longer, my snout is a little more pointed than a male’s would be. Do you understand now?”

“I do, yes. I thank you.” Armed with his new knowledge, Mordechai tried to pick out the things she said made her distinct from males of the Race. For the life of him, he couldn’t. She looked like a Lizard, and that was that. He laughed. “Now I understand why the Race has trouble with us.”

“But our differences are so obvious!” Nesseref exclaimed. “They are not subtle, like the differences between male and female Tosevites.”

“Obvious differences are the differences one is used to,” Anielewicz said. “Subtle differences are the differences someone else is used to.”

Nesseref thought about that. After a moment, she laughed again. “Truth!” she said, and added an emphatic cough. She turned both eye turrets toward Mordechai. “You are different from most Big Uglies I have met. You do not bluster and swagger, as so many of your kind seem to do.”

“I thank you,” Anielewicz said again. It would have been a compliment of a different sort from a female of his own species. In an odd way, he valued it more from the Lizard, who was disinterested-or, at least, uninterested. And he returned it: “Nor do you seem like most males of the Race I know. You are not so certain you know everything there is to know.”

“And I thank you,” Nesseref returned. “Perhaps we shall be friends.”

“Perhaps we shall,” Mordechai said in some surprise. Having a Lizard as a friend had not occurred to him till that moment. He had always dealt with Lizards because he had to, not because he wanted to. The Lizards he’d known had always made it clear they were dealing with him for the same reason. “Are all females like you?”

“By the Emperor, no,” Nesseref said. “Are all Tosevite males-I presume you are a male-like you?”

“No,” Anielewicz said. “All right. We are a couple of individuals who happen to get on well. That will do, I think.”

“Yes, I also think so,” Nesseref said. “From much of what I had heard and seen on this planet, I wondered if having a Tosevite friend was even possible. We of the Race have friendships with Rabotevs and Hallessi, but they are more like us in temperament-not in appearance, necessarily, but in temperament-than you Big Uglies.”

“I have heard that from other members of the Race,” Anielewicz said. “I notice you have not brought any of these peoples to Tosev 3.”

“No: both these expeditions were fitted out from Home,” Nesseref answered. “Once this world is brought fully into the Empire, though, Hallessi and Rabotevs will come here, as they have gone to each other’s worlds and to Home as well.”

“You will find many Tosevites who do not think this world will ever be fully brought into the Empire,” Anielewicz said. “As a matter of fact, I am one of them. I hope this does not offend you.”

“Offend me? No. Why should it?” Nesseref said. “But that is not to say I believe you are right. By all appearances, you Tosevites are an impatient species. The Race is a great many things. Impatient it is not. Time is on our side. In a few thousand years, you Tosevites will be contented subjects of the Emperor.”

Bunim, the regional subadministrator in Lodz, had said much the same thing. Such confidence was unnerving. Were the Lizards right? The only thing Mordechai knew was that he wouldn’t live long enough to find out. Seeking to shake the female’s calm confidence a bit, he said, “I do wish you the best of luck finding a spot for your shuttlecraft port.”

“I thank you,” Nesseref replied. “You are well-spoken indeed, for a Tosevite.”

“And I thank you,” Mordechai said. “And now, if you will excuse me, I have to check on the security of my explosive-metal bomb.”

Nesseref’s mouth fell open. “You are a funny Big Ugly, Mordechai Anielewicz,” she said, “but you cannot fool me so easily as that.” Anielewicz shrugged. Just as well-better than just as well-she hadn’t believed him.

As much as Johannes Drucker relished going into space, he also treasured leave time with his family. He treasured it more than ever these days; he’d come too close to losing Kathe. He didn’t know what he would have done without her. He didn’t know what his children would have done, either. Heinrich was fifteen now, Claudia twelve, and Adolf ten: old enough to get through better than they would have a few years before, perhaps, but losing a mother could never be easy. And losing a mother for the reason the Gestapo had put forward…

“Go on, Father,” Heinrich said from the back seat of the Volkswagen. “The light is green. That means you can.” He would be eligible to learn to drive next year. The thought made Drucker cringe, or at least want to go back behind the steering controls of a Panther or some other panzer the next time he needed to hit the road.

He put the car into gear. It was a 1960 model, and burned hydrogen rather than gasoline. The engine was a lot quieter than those of the older buggy VWs that helped clog the streets of Greifswald. Christmas candles and lamps burned in the windows of shops and taverns and houses. They did only so much to relieve the grayness the town shared with so many others near the Baltic.

“Maybe it’s the weather,” Drucker muttered under his breath. In wintertime this far north, the sun rose late and set early and never climbed very far above the southern horizon. Mists from the sea often obscured it even during the brief hours when it condescended to appear at all. Most days from November to February, streetlights shone around the clock. But they could not make up for the sun, any more than a distant cousin could make up for a missing mother.

Drucker wished that particular figure of speech had not occurred to him. He wished he’d had no cause to think of it. He glanced over to Kathe, who sat in the front seat beside him, with the children crowded into the back. She smiled. For once, evidently, she hadn’t guessed what he was thinking.

“When we go into the shops, you will not come with me,” she said, as much at home with giving orders as Major General Dornberger. “I want your present to be a surprise.”

“All right,” he agreed, so mildly that she gave him a suspicious stare. He returned it as blandly as he had turned aside the Gestapo interrogation earlier in the year. “After all, I want to get you a surprise or two myself.”

“Hans-” She shook her head. Light brown curls flew. “Hans, I am here. That is your doing. What greater present could you give me?”

“Greater? I don’t know.” Drucker shrugged, and then, steering the Volkswagen as precisely as if it were the upper stage of an A-45, took for his own a parking space into which it barely fit. That done, he gave his wife his attention once more. “I can go on giving you things if I want to, I think. And I do want to.”

Kathe leaned across the gearshift and kissed him on the cheek. In the back seat, Claudia giggled. She was at the age where public displays of affection amused, horrified, and fascinated her all at the same time. Drucker supposed he ought to count his blessings. All too soon, she’d likely put on public displays of affection that would horrify him without amusing him in the slightest.

“Heinrich, for whom will you shop?” Kathe asked.

Drucker’s older son said, “Why, for you and Father, of course. And for-” He broke off, two words too late, and turned red.

“For Ilse,” Claudia said; she was becoming an accomplished tease. “When are you going to give her your Hitler Youth pin, Heinrich?” Her voice was sweet and sticky as treacle.

Heinrich turned redder still. “That’s none of your business, you little snoop. You’re not the Gestapo.”

“Nobody should be the Gestapo,” Adolf said fiercely. “The Gestapo doesn’t do anything but cause trouble for people.”

Privately, Drucker agreed with that. Privately, he’d said much worse than that. But Adolf was only ten. He couldn’t be relied upon to keep private what absolutely had to be kept private. Drucker said, “The Gestapo does do more than that. They hunt down traitors to the Reich and rebels and spies for the Lizards and the Bolsheviks and the Americans.”

“They tried to hunt down Mother,” Adolf said. “They can-” The phrase he used would have made a Feldwebel with thirty years’ experience as a noncom blush.

“Keep a civil tongue in your head, young man,” Drucker told him, hoping he sounded severe. He’d never said anything like that about the Gestapo, even if he agreed with the sentiment expressed. “You must always keep a civil tongue in your head, for your family may not be the only people listening to you. What would happen to you, do you suppose, if the Gestapo had planted a microphone in our auto?”

Adolf looked appalled. Drucker had hoped he would. Drucker also hoped-devoutly-that the Gestapo hadn’t planted a microphone in the VW. Such a thing was far from impossible. The snoops might have planted one to see if they could catch Kathe admitting her grandmother was a Jew. Or they might have planted it in the hope of hearing some other seditious statement.

Adults-adults with a gram of sense, anyhow-watched what they said as automatically as they breathed. Children had to learn they couldn’t shout out the first thing that came into their heads. If they didn’t learn fast, they didn’t last long.

“Just remember,” Drucker told his son-told all three of his children, actually, “no matter what you think, no matter how good your reasons for thinking it may be, what you say is a different business. Nobody can hear what you think. You never can tell who might hear what you say.” He paused a moment to let the lesson sink in, then went on, “Now let’s not say any more about it. Let’s go shopping and see what sorts of nice things the stores have in them.”

He remembered the war years and the ones right after the fighting. In those days, the stores had had next to nothing in them. They’d tried to trick out the nothing with tinsel and candles, but hadn’t had much luck. Now, though, the lean times were over. The German people could enjoy themselves again.

Kathe went off in one direction, with Claudia and Adolf in tow. Heinrich made his own way down the street. Maybe he was shopping for Ilse. Had Drucker been his son’s age, he would have gone shopping for her; he was sure of that.

As things were, he went shopping for his wife. He found an excellent buy on Limoges porcelain at a shop not far from the town council hall. The shop stocked a wide variety of goods imported from France, all at very reasonable prices. He remarked on that as he made his purchase. “Yes, sir,” the clerk said, nodding. “In Paris itself, you could not buy these things so cheap.”

“I believe it,” Drucker said. Why that might be so never entered his mind. He took it for granted that Germany was entitled to first claim on whatever France produced. Germany, after all, was the beating heart of the Reich.

“Would you like me to do that up in gift-wrapping, sir?” the clerk asked.

“Yes, please.” Drucker hated wrapping presents himself. “Thank you very much. And put it in a plain bag afterwards, if you’d be so kind.” He left the shop well pleased with himself. The plate, which reproduced an eighteenth-century painting of a shaded grotto, would look splendid on the mantel, or perhaps mounted on the wall.

He didn’t bother heading back toward the Volkswagen, not yet. He knew he shopped more efficiently than Kathe and the children. Instead, he window-shopped as he wandered through the streets of Greifswald. He paused thoughtfully in front of a shop that stocked goods imported not from France but from Italy. A slow smile stole across his face. He went inside and made a purchase. He had that one gift-wrapped, too. The clerk, a pretty young woman, was most obliging. By the way she smiled, she might have been obliging if he’d been interested in something other than the shop’s stock in trade. But he had no great interest in anyone but Kathe, and so did not experiment.

When he went back to the car, he found the rest of the family there ahead of him, and had to endure their teasing all the way home. “You’ll get coal for Christmas, every one of you,” he growled in mock anger, “brown coal that won’t even burn without stinking and smoking.”

On Christmas morning, before sunup, he took his family outside. They looked toward the east, not toward Bethlehem but toward Peenemunde, about thirty kilometers away. To his disappointment, the fog lay too thick to let them see the latest A-45 ascend to the heavens, but the roar of the rocket reverberated inside their bones.

“Maybe you’ll ride it one of these days, Heinrich, Adolf,” he said.

His sons’ faces glowed with pride. Claudia said, “And what about me?” The best he could do to answer her was change the subject.

They went inside and opened presents, which provided plenty of distraction. Kathe exclaimed in delight at the plate from Limoges. She’d got Drucker a fancy meerschaum, and some Turkish tobacco to smoke in it. He puffed away in delight. Heinrich got a fancy one-liter beer stein. He proceeded to fill and then empty it, after which he got sleepy and red in the face.

“Maybe we should have bought the half-liter stein after all,” Drucker said. Kathe laughed. Heinrich looked offended and woozy at the same time.

Adolf got a battery-powered Leopard panzer with a control on the end of a long wire. He blitzkrieged through the living room and around the Christmas tree, till he wrapped the wire around the tree and couldn’t undo things by reversing. Claudia squealed ecstatically when she opened her present, a blond plastic doll with a spectacular wardrobe and even more spectacular figure. That one hadn’t been cheap, since it was imported from the USA, but it made her so happy, Drucker judged it well worth the cost.

“All my friends will be jealous,” Claudia chortled, “especially Eva. She’s wanted one for weeks-practically forever.”

“Maybe she got one, too,” Drucker said. A little of Claudia’s joy evaporated; she hadn’t thought of that. But then, because it was Christmas, she brightened and made the best of it.

After a Christmas supper of fat roast goose, all her resentment went away, and, for the evening, all of Drucker’s, too. Heinrich went out to take Ilse to a party. Adolf kept destroying the Reich ’s enemies till bedtime, while Claudia played with the American doll.

Heinrich had a key. After the younger children went to sleep, there was nothing to keep Kathe and Drucker from climbing the stairs to their own bedroom. With the air of a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat, Drucker took the second gift-wrapped package from under a spare pillow in the closet and handed it to her. She let out a small shriek of happy surprise. “Why didn’t you give this to me with everything else?” she asked.

“You’ll see,” he answered, and closed the bedroom door as she opened the package. She let out another small shriek: it held a pair of frilly garters and other bits of lace and near-transparency. He grinned. “Gift-wrapping for you.”

She looked at him sidelong. “And then, I suppose, you’ll expect to unwrap me.”

Before very long, he did just that. Some little while after she was unwrapped, they lay side by side, naked and happy. He toyed idly with her nipple. “Merry Christmas,” he said.

“I hope it was,” she told him, her voice arch.

“Jawohl!” he answered, as he might have to his commanding general. He wished he could have raised a different sort of salute, but that took longer in middle age.

She lay quiet for so long, he wondered if she’d fallen asleep. Then she said “Hans?” in tones altogether different from the ones she had been using. He made a wordless noise to show he was listening. She leaned over and whispered in his ear: “My father’s mother… I think she really was a Jew.”

He didn’t say anything right away. Whatever he said, he knew, would touch, would shape, the rest of their lives together. Silence, on the other hand, would only alarm her. He whispered back: “As long as the Gestapo doesn’t think so, who cares?” She hugged him, then burst into tears, and then, very quickly, did go to sleep. After a couple of hours, so did he.