Aftershocks

1

As the jet aircraft descended toward the airport outside the still slightly radioactive ruins of Nuremberg, Pshing asked Atvar, “Exalted Fleetlord, is this visit really necessary?”

“I believe it,” the commander of the Race’s conquest fleet told his adjutant. “My briefings state that a Tosevite wise in the political affairs of his kind recommended that a conqueror visit the region he conquered as soon as he could, to make those he had defeated aware of their new masters.”

“Technically, the Greater German Reich remains independent,” Pshing pointed out.

“So it does-technically. But that will remain a technicality, I assure you.” Atvar used an emphatic cough to show how strongly he felt about that. “The Deutsche did us far too much harm in this exchange of explosive-metal weapons to let their madness ever break free again.”

“A pity we had to concede them even so limited an independence,” Pshing said.

“And that is also a truth,” Atvar agreed with a sigh. He swiveled one eye turret toward the window to get another look at the glassy crater that filled the center of the former capital of the Greater German Reich. Beyond it lay a slagged wilderness of what remained of homes and factories and public buildings. Conventional bombs had devastated the airport, too, but it was back in service.

Pshing said, “If only we had some means of detecting their missile-carrying boats that can stay submerged indefinitely. Without those, we could have forced unconditional surrender out of them.”

“Truth,” Atvar repeated. “With them, though, they could have inflicted a good deal more damage to our colonies here on Tosev 3. They will be surrendering the submarines they have left. We shall not allow them to build more. We shall not allow them to have anything to do with atomic power or explosive-metal weapons henceforward.”

“That is excellent. That is as it should be,” Pshing said. “If only we could arrange to confiscate the submersible boats of the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics as well, we would truly be on our way toward a definitive conquest of this miserable planet.”

“I merely thank the spirits of Emperors past”-Atvar cast both his eye turrets down to the floor of the aircraft that carried him-“that neither of the other powerful not-empires chose to join the Deutsche against us. Together, they could have hurt us much worse than the Reich alone did.”

“And now we also have the Nipponese to worry about,” Pshing added. “Who knows what they will do, now that they have learned the art of constructing explosive-metal weapons? They already have submarines, and they already have missiles.”

“We never did pay enough attention to islands and their inhabitants,” Atvar said fretfully. “Small chunks of land surrounded by sea were never important back on Home, so we have always assumed the same would hold true here. Unfortunately, it does not seem to be so.”

Before Pshing could answer, the aircraft’s landing gear touched down on the runway outside Nuremberg. The Race’s engineering, slowly refined through a hundred thousand years of planetary unity, was very fine, but not fine enough to keep Atvar from feeling some bumps as the aircraft slowed to a stop.

“My apologies, Exalted Fleetlord.” The pilot’s voice came back to him on the intercom. “I was given to understand repairs to the landing surface were better than is in fact the case.”

Peering out the window, Atvar saw Deutsch males in the cloth wrappings that singled out their military drawn up in neat ranks to greet and honor him. They carried rifles. His security males had flabbled about that, but the Reich remained nominally independent. If some fanatic sought to assassinate him, his second-in-command in Cairo would do… well enough. “What was the name of the sly Big Ugly who suggested this course?” he asked Pshing.

“Machiavelli.” His adjutant pronounced the alien name with care, one syllable at a time. “He lived and wrote about nine hundred years ago. Nine hundred of our years, I should say-half as many of Tosev 3’s.”

“So he came after our probe, then?” Atvar said, and Pshing made the affirmative gesture. The Race had studied Tosev 3 sixteen hundred years before: again, half that many in Tosevite terms. The fleetlord went on, “Remember the sword-swinging savage mounted on an animal the probe showed us? He was the height of Tosevite military technology in those days.”

“A pity he did not remain the height of Tosevite military technology, as we were so confident he would,” Pshing said. “When we understand how the Big Uglies are able to change so rapidly, we will be able to prevent them from doing so in the future. That will help bind them to the Empire.”

“So it will… if we can do it,” Atvar replied. “If not, we will wreck them one not-empire at a time. Or, if necessary, we will destroy this whole world, even our colonies on it. That will cauterize it once for all.”

One other possibility remained, a possibility that had never entered his mind when the conquest fleet first reached Tosev 3: the Big Uglies might conquer the Race. If they did, they would next mount an attack on Home. Atvar was as sure of it as of the fact that he’d hatched from an egg. Wrecking the world would prevent it, as a surgeon sometimes had to prevent death by cutting out a tumor.

With the Reich prostrate, the Big Uglies would have a much harder time of it. Atvar knew that. But the worry never went away. The locals were quicker, more adaptable, than the Race. He knew that, too; close to fifty of his years of experience on Tosev 3 had burned the lesson into him again and again.

Clunks and bangings from up ahead came to his hearing diaphragm: the aircraft’s door opening. He did not go forward at once; his security males would disembark ahead of him to form what was termed a ceremonial guard and amounted to a defensive perimeter. It would not hold against concerted attack; it might keep a single crazed Big Ugly from murdering him. Atvar hoped it would.

One of those security males came back to his seat and bent into the posture of respect. “All is in readiness, Exalted Fleetlord,” he reported. “And the radioactivity level is acceptably low.”

“I thank you, Diffal,” Atvar said. The male had headed Security since midway through the fighting. He wasn’t so good as his predecessor, Drefsab, but Drefsab had fallen victim to Big Uglies with even more nasty talents-or perhaps just more luck-than he’d had. Atvar turned an eye turret toward Pshing. “Come with me.”

“It shall be done, Exalted Fleetlord,” his adjutant said.

Atvar let out a hiss of disgust at the weather outside, which was chilly and damp. Cairo, whence he’d come, had a reasonably decent climate. Nuremberg didn’t come close. And this was spring, heading toward summer. Winter would have been much worse. Atvar shivered at the very idea.

As he emerged from his aircraft, a Deutsch military band began braying away. The Big Uglies meant it as an honor, not an insult, and so he endured the unmusical-at least to his hearing diaphragms-racket. The security officials parted to let a Big Ugly through: not the Fuhrer of the Deutsche, but a protocol aide. “If you advance to the end of the carpet, Exalted Fleetlord, the Fuhrer will meet you there,” he said, using the language of the Race about as well as a Tosevite could.

Making the gesture of agreement, Atvar advanced to the edge of the strip of red cloth and stopped. His security males kept him covered and kept themselves between him and the ranks of the Deutsche. The Tosevite soldiers looked fierce and barbaric, and had proved themselves formidable in battle. They are beaten now, Atvar reminded himself. They didn’t seem beaten, though. By their bearing, they were ready to go right back to war.

Their ranks parted slightly. Out from among them came a relatively short, rather stout Big Ugly in wrappings related to those of the soldiers but fancier. He wore a cap on his head. The hair Atvar could see below it was white, which meant he was not young. When he took off the cap for a moment, he showed that most of his scalp was bare, another sign of an aging male Tosevite.

As the Deutsche had parted, so, rather more reluctantly, did Atvar’s security males. The Big Ugly walked up to Atvar and shot out his arm in salute. Being still formally independent, he did not have to assume the posture of respect. “I greet you, Exalted Fleetlord,” he said. He was less fluent in Atvar’s language than his protocol officer, but he made himself understood. “I am Walter Dornberger, Fuhrer and Chancellor of the Greater German Reich.”

“And I greet you, Fuhrer.” Atvar knew he made a hash of the Deutsch word, but it didn’t matter. “Your males fought bravely. Now the fighting is over. You shall have to learn that fighting bravely and fighting wisely are not the same.”

“Had I led the Reich when this war began, it would not have begun,” Dornberger replied. “But my superiors thought differently. Now they are dead, and I have to pick up the pieces they left behind.”

That was Tosevite idiom; the Race would have spoken of putting an eggshell back together. But Atvar understood. “You shall have fewer pieces with which to work henceforward. We intend to make certain of that. You did too much harm to us to be trusted any longer.”

“I understand,” Dornberger said. “The terms you have forced me to accept are harsh. But you and the Race have left me no other choice.”

“Your predecessors had a choice,” Atvar said coldly. “They chose the wrong path. You are obliged to live with their decision, and with what it has left you.”

“I also understand that,” the Tosevite replied. “But you can hardly deny that you are wringing all possible advantages from your victory.”

“Of course we are,” Atvar said. “That is what victory is for. Or do you believe it has some other purpose?”

“By no means,” Dornberger said. In tones of professional admiration, he added, “You were clever to set France up again as an independent not-empire. I did not expect that of you.”

“I thank you.” The fleetlord had not imagined he might know a certain amount of sympathy for the Big Ugly who now led the not-empire that had done the Race so much harm. “Little by little, through continual contact with you Tosevites, we do learn how to play your games. You should be thankful we left you any fragments of your independence.”

“I am thankful to you for that,” Dornberger answered. “I suspect I should also be thankful to the Americans and Russians, who would not have taken it kindly to see the Greater German Reich disappear from the map.”

The Tosevite was indeed professionally competent. Both the USA and the Soviet Union had made it very clear to Atvar that their fear of the Race would increase if the Reich were treated as an outright conquest. After what he had suffered fighting Germany, he did not want the other not-empires excessively afraid; it might make them do something foolish. He hated having to take their fears into account, but they were too strong to let him do anything else. His tailstump quivered in irritation.

Pointing at Dornberger with his tongue, he said, “We no longer need to worry so much about the opinion of the Reich. And we shall do everything possible-everything necessary-to make sure we never have to worry about it again. Do you understand?”

“Of course, Exalted Fleetlord,” Dornberger answered, and Atvar wondered how-and how soon-the Deutsche would start trying to cheat him.

Sweat ran down Colonel Johannes Drucker’s face. Everyone knew the Lizards preferred their weather hot as the Sahara. As the German sat, a prisoner of war, in a cubicle aboard one of their starships, he scratched his bare chest. The Lizards were scrupulous. They’d returned to him the coveralls he’d worn aboard the upper stage of the A-45 that had lifted him into Earth orbit. They’d even washed them. But he couldn’t bear the thought of putting them on, not when he felt about ready to have an apple stuck in his mouth even naked.

He sighed, longing for the fogs and chill of Peenemunde, the Reich’s rocket base on the Baltic. But Peenemunde was radioactive rubble now. His family lived in Greifswald, not far to the west. He sighed again, on a different, grimmer note. He prayed that they weren’t radioactive dust, but he had no way of knowing.

The chair on which he sat was too small for him, and shaped for a backside proportioned differently from his. The sleeping mat on the floor was also too small, and too hard to boot. The Lizards fed him canned goods imported from the lands they ruled and from the USA, most of which were not to his taste.

It could have been worse. He’d tried to blow up this starship. Its anti-missiles had knocked out one of the warheads he’d launched from his upper stage, its close-in weapons system the other. The Race had still accepted his surrender afterwards. Few humans would have been so generous.

He got up and used the head. Every so often, Lizard technicians came in and fiddled with the plumbing. It wasn’t made for liquid waste; the Race, like real lizards, excreted only solids. From trying to blow the starship to a cloud of radioactive gas, he’d been reduced to causing problems in its pipes. That was funny, if you looked at it the right way.

Without warning, the door to his cubicle slid open. He was glad he’d finished pissing; getting caught in the act would have embarrassed him, even if it wouldn’t have flustered the Lizard who caught him. He’d seen this fellow before: he recognized the body paint. “I greet you, superior sir,” he said. Anyone who flew in space had to know the Lizards’ language.

“I greet you, Johannes Drucker,” the Lizard named Ttomalss answered. “I am here to inform you that you will soon be released.”

“That is good news. I thank you, superior sir,” Drucker said. But then his mouth twisted. “It would be better news if it did not mean my not-empire had been defeated.”

“I understand. I sympathize,” Ttomalss said. Perhaps he even did; he showed more knowledge of the way people worked that any other Lizard the German had met. Drucker wondered how he’d acquired it. Ttomalss continued, “But you will have the opportunity to help repair the damage.”

I’ll have the opportunity to see the damage, Drucker thought. He could have done without that opportunity. He’d been a panzer driver, not a spaceman, when the Reich detonated an explosive-metal bomb to derail a Lizard attack on Breslau. He’d cheered then. He wouldn’t be cheering now.

“Can you drop me near Peenemunde land?” he asked. “That is where my… mate and my hatchlings live-if they live anywhere at all.”

But Ttomalss made the Race’s negative hand gesture. “Captives are being exchanged outside Nuremberg, nowhere else.”

“Very well,” Drucker said, since he couldn’t say anything else. From Bavaria to Pomerania through a war-ravaged landscape? Not a journey to look forward to, but one he would have to make.

“Eventually, a shuttlecraft will take you back to the surface of Tosev 3,” the Lizard told him. “In the meantime, now that hostilities have concluded, I have gained permission to inform you that you are not the only Tosevite presently aboard this starship. Are you interested in meeting another member of your species?”

After weeks with nobody but Lizards to talk to? What do you think? Aloud, Drucker said, “Yes, superior sir, I would very interested be.” He used an emphatic cough, then added, “I thank you.” Did the Lizards have a beautiful spy waiting to try to charm secrets out of him? Not likely-not that he’d be much interested anyhow, not when he hadn’t the faintest idea whether Kathe was alive or dead. Had he watched too many bad films and read too many trashy novels? That struck him as very likely indeed.

Ttomalss said, “The other male is from the not-empire of the United States. He is here on a… research mission, I suppose you would describe it.”

Something in the way he hesitated didn’t quite ring true to Drucker, but the German was hardly in a position to call him on it. And the Lizard had used the masculine pronoun. So much for beautiful spies. Drucker laughed at himself. “All right,” he said. “No matter who he is or where he is from, I look forward to meeting him.”

“Wait here,” Ttomalss told him, as if he were liable to wait somewhere else. The Lizard left the cubicle. Ttomalss could leave. Drucker couldn’t.

After about forty-five minutes-his captors had let him keep his watch-the door slid open. In came a young man with a shaved head and with body paint on his chest. He nodded to Drucker, ignoring his nakedness (he wore only denim shorts himself), and stuck out his hand. “Hello. Do you speak English?” he said in that language.

“Some,” Drucker answered in English. Then he shifted: “I must tell you, though, I am better in the language of the Race.”

“That suits me fine,” the American said, also in the Lizards’ tongue. He’s very young, Drucker realized-the shaved head had disguised his age. He went on, “My name is Jonathan Yeager. I greet you.”

“And I greet you.” Drucker shook the proffered hand and gave his own name. Then he eyed the American. “Yeager? It is a German name. It means ‘hunter.’ ” The last word was in English.

“Yes, my father’s father’s father came from Germany,” Jonathan Yeager said.

In musing tones, Drucker said, “I knew an officer named Jager, Heinrich Jager. He was a landcruiser commander. One of the best officers I ever served under-I named my oldest hatchling for him. I wonder if there is a relationship. From what part of Germany did your ancestor come?”

“I am sorry, but I do not know,” the young American answered. “Maybe my father does, but I am not sure of that. Many, when they came to America, tried to forget where they came from so they could become Americans.”

“I have this heard,” Drucker said. “It strikes me as strange.” Maybe that made him a reactionary European. Even if it did, though, he was a wild-eyed radical when measured against the Lizards. He asked, “What sort of research are you engaged in here?” The unspoken question behind that one was, Why would the Americans send a puppy instead of a seasoned man?

To Drucker’s surprise, Jonathan Yeager blushed all the way to the top of his shaved crown. He coughed and spluttered a couple of times before answering, “I guess you could call it a sociological project.”

“That sounds interesting,” Drucker said, hoping Yeager would go on and tell him more about it.

Instead, the American pointed an accusing finger his way and said, “And I know why you are here.”

“I have no doubt that you do,” Drucker said. “If my attack had been a little more fortunate, we would not be having this talk now.”

“That is a truth.” Jonathan Yeager sounded surprisingly calm. Maybe he was too young to take seriously the possibility of his own demise. Or maybe not; he went on, “My father is an officer in the U.S. Army. He would talk that way, too, I think.”

“Professionals do.” Drucker started to say something else, but checked himself. “Is your father by any chance the male who understands the Race so well? If he is, I have some of his work in translation read. I should have of him thought when I heard the name.”

“Yes, that is my father,” Jonathan Yeager said with what sounded like pardonable pride.

“He does good work,” Drucker said. “He is the only Tosevite who ever made me believe he could think like a male of the Race. Why are you here instead of him?”

“He has been here,” the younger Yeager answered. “I first came here with him, as his assistant-I still wear the body paint of an assistant psychological researcher. But I am… better suited to the research for this part of the project than he is.”

“Can you tell me why?” Drucker asked. Jonathan Yeager shook his head. Seeing that gesture instead of one from a scaly hand made Drucker feel at home, even though the American had told him no.

Yeager said, “I am told you will be able to go home soon.”

“Yes, if I have any home left,” Drucker answered. “I do not know whether my kin are alive or dead.”

“I hope they are well,” Jonathan Yeager said. “I look forward to going home myself. I have been up here since the war began. The Race judged it was not safe for me to leave.”

“I would say that was likely to be true,” Drucker agreed. “We fought hard.”

“I know,” Yeager said. “But did you really think you could win?”

“Did I think so?” Drucker shook his head. “I did not think we had a chance. But what could I do? When your leaders tell you to go to war, you go to war. They must have thought we could win, or they would not have started fighting.”

“They were-” Jonathan Yeager broke off, shaking his head.

He’d been about to say something like, They were pretty stupid if they did. Drucker would have argued with him if he hadn’t felt the same way. The crisis had started while Himmler was Fuhrer, and Kaltenbrunner hadn’t done anything to make it go away. On the contrary-he’d charged right ahead. Fools rush in, Drucker thought. He wondered how General Dornberger would shape up as the new leader of the Reich. He also wondered how much trouble the SS would give the new Fuhrer. Dornberger hadn’t come up through the ranks of the blackshirts; he’d been soldiering since the First World War. The secret policemen might not like him very well.

Drucker had no sympathy for the SS, not after they’d tried to get rid of his wife on the grounds that she had a Jewish grandmother. If all the black-shirts suffered unfortunate accidents, he wouldn’t shed a tear. With SS men in charge of things, his country had suffered an unfortunate accident-except it hadn’t been an accident. Kaltenbrunner had started the war on purpose.

Something else occurred to him: “Is it true what some males of the Race have told me? That France is to be made independent again, I mean?”

“Yes, that is true,” Jonathan Yeager told him. “From the news reports I have seen, the French are happy about it, too.” He sounded pretty happy himself. He was, after all, an American, and the USA and Germany had been at war when the Lizards came. They still didn’t get along very well, and gloating at a rival’s misfortune was a constant all over the world, and probably among the Race as well.

“I do not care whether they are happy or not,” Drucker said. “It will mean a weaker Germany, and a weaker Germany means a stronger Race.” He was sure the Lizards were recording every word he said. He didn’t much care. They’d captured him. They’d beaten his country. If they thought he loved them because of it, they were crazy.

Back in the cubicle Jonathan Yeager shared with Kassquit, he said, “Strange to think I was just talking with a male who could have killed both of us.”

When Kassquit made the affirmative gesture, she almost poked him in the nose. As far as Jonathan was concerned, the cubicle would have been cramped for her alone; being smaller than people, Lizards built smaller, too. But she was used to it. She’d lived in a cubicle like this her whole life. She said, “You can take off those foolish wrappings now. You do not need them any more.”

“No, I suppose not. I certainly do not need them to keep me warm.” Jonathan used an emphatic cough as he kicked off the shorts. The Lizards kept the starship at a temperature comfortable for them, one that matched a hot summer’s day in Los Angeles. Even shorts made him sweat more than he would have without them.

Kassquit was naked, too. She’d never worn clothes, not after she’d got out of diapers. The Lizards-Ttomalss in particular-had raised her ever since she was a newborn. They’d wanted to see how close they could come to turning a human into a female of the Race.

Jonathan shaved his head. Plenty of kids of his generation-girls as well as boys, though not so many-did that, aping the Lizards and incidentally annoying their parents. Kassquit shaved not only her head-including her eyebrows-but all the hair on her body in an effort to make herself as much like a Lizard as she could. She’d told him once that she’d thought about having her ears removed to make her head look more like a Lizard’s, and had decided against it only because she didn’t think it would help enough.

She said, “I wonder if I will be allowed to meet him before he returns to the surface of Tosev 3. I should learn more about wild Tosevites.”

With a chuckle, Jonathan said, “I think he would be glad to meet you, especially without wrappings.” The Lizards’ language had no specific term for clothes, which the Race didn’t use, but could and did go into enormous detail about body paint.

“What do you mean?” By Earthly standards, Kassquit had a remorselessly literal mind. “Do you mean he might want to mate with me? Would he find me attractive enough to want to mate with?”

“Of course he would. I certainly do.” Jonathan used another emphatic cough. He always praised Kassquit as extravagantly as he could. She unfolded like a flower when he did. He got the idea the Lizards hadn’t bothered-or maybe they just hadn’t known people needed such things. Whenever he thought Kassquit acted strangely, he had to step back and remind himself it was a wonder she got even to within shouting distance of sanity.

And he hadn’t been lying. She was of Oriental descent; living in Gardena, California, which had a large Japanese-American population, he’d got used to Asian standards of beauty. And by them she was more than pretty enough. Her shaved head didn’t put him off, either; he knew plenty of girls at UCLA who shaved theirs. The only thing truly odd about her was her expression, or lack of expression. Her face was almost masklike. She hadn’t learned to smile when she was a baby-Lizards could hardly smile back at her-and it was evidently too late after that.

She asked, “Would you be upset if I decided to mate with him?” She didn’t have much in the way of tact, either.

To keep from examining his own feelings right away, Jonathan answered, “Even if he finds you attractive, I am not sure he would want to mate with you. He is concerned with his own mate down in the Reich, and does not know her fate.”

“I see,” Kassquit said slowly.

Jonathan wondered if she really did. She hadn’t known anything about the emotional attachments men and women could form… till she started making love with me, he thought. He hadn’t wanted to explain to the German spaceman the sort of sociological research project in which he was engaged. It was really more the Lizards’ project, not his. He was just along for the ride.

He chuckled. They brought me up here and put me out to stud. He wondered how much they’d learned. He’d certainly learned a lot.

He went over to Kassquit and put a hand on her shoulder. She squeezed him. She liked being touched. He got the idea she hadn’t been touched a whole lot before he came up to the starship. Touching was a human trait, not one the Race shared to anywhere near the same degree.

“He will be going down to his not-empire before long,” Kassquit said.

“Truth,” Jonathan agreed.

“And you will be going down to your not-empire before long,” Kassquit said.

“You knew I would,” Jonathan told her. “I cannot stay up here. This is your place, but it is not mine.”

“I understand that,” Kassquit answered. She spoke the language of the Race as well as someone with a human mouth possibly could. And why not? It was the only language she knew. She went on, “Intellectually, I understand that. But you must understand, Jonathan, that I will be sorry when you go. I will be sad.”

Jonathan sighed and squeezed her, though he didn’t know whether that made things better or worse. “I am sorry,” he said. “I do not know what to do about that. I wish there were something I could do.”

“You also have a female waiting for you on the surface of Tosev 3, even if she is not a female with whom you have arranged for permanent exclusive mating,” Kassquit said.

“Yes, I do,” Jonathan admitted. “You have known that all along. I never tried to keep it a secret from you.”

He wondered if Karen Culpepper would still be his girl when he came home. They’d been dating since high school. When he’d come up to the starship, he hadn’t expected to stay, and he hadn’t thought he would have that much explaining to do once he got back. He hadn’t really believed the Nazis would be crazy enough to attack the Lizards over Poland. But they had, and he’d been here for weeks-and he’d almost died a couple of times, too. Karen would have an excellent notion of where he was and why he’d come up here. He didn’t think she’d be very happy about it.

“You will go back to her. You will mate with her. You will forget about me,” Kassquit said.

She didn’t know it, but she was reinventing the lines everyone who’d ever lost a lover used. “I will never forget you,” Jonathan said, which was the truth. But even if it was, he doubted it consoled her much. Had someone told him the same thing, it wouldn’t have consoled him, either.

“Can that really be so?” she asked. “You know many other Tosevites. To you, I am only one of many. To me, you are the most important Tosevite I have ever known.” She let her mouth fall open, mimicking the way Lizards laughed. “The size of the sample is small, I admit, but it is not likely to increase to any great degree soon. Why, if I meet the Deutsch male before he leaves the ship, it will go up from two to three.”

She wasn’t trying to make him feel sorry for her. He was sure of that. She didn’t have the guile to do any such thing. No doubt because of the way she’d been raised, she was devastatingly frank. He said, “You could make it larger if you came down to visit the United States. You would be most welcome in my… city.”

He’d started to say in my house. But Kassquit wouldn’t be welcome in his house. His father and mother-and he, too, when he was there-were raising a couple of Lizard hatchlings who were Kassquit’s exact inverses: Mickey and Donald were being brought up as much like human beings as possible. The Race wouldn’t be delighted to learn about that, and Kassquit’s first loyalty was inevitably to the Lizards.

“I may do that,” she said. “On the other fork of the tongue, I may not, too. Is it not a truth that there are Tosevite diseases for which your physicians have as yet developed no vaccines?”

“Yes, that is a truth,” Jonathan admitted.

Kassquit continued, “From the Race’s research, it appears that some of these diseases are more severe for an adult than they would be for a hatchling. I do not wish to risk my health-my life-for the sake of a visit to Tosev 3, interesting as it might otherwise be.”

“Well, I understand that.” Jonathan made the affirmative gesture. “But surely other Tosevites will be coming here to the starship.” Getting away from the personal, getting away from guilt he couldn’t help feeling at leaving someone with whom he’d been making love as often as he could, was something of a relief.

“I suppose so,” Kassquit answered. “But still, you must understand, you will be the standard of comparison. I will judge every other Tosevite I meet, every other male with whom I mate, by what I have learned from and about you.”

So he couldn’t get away from the personal after all. Stammering a little, he said, “That is a large responsibility for me.”

“I think you set a high standard,” Kassquit told him. “If I thought otherwise, I would not want to share this compartment with you and I would not want to go on mating with you, would I? And I do.”

She put her arms around him. She was as frank about what she liked as about what she didn’t. He kissed the top of her head. An American girl would have tilted her face up for a kiss. Kassquit didn’t. Kisses on the mouth, and especially French kisses, alarmed rather than exciting her.

They made love on the sleeping mat. It was harder than a bed would have been, but far softer than the metal flooring. Afterwards, Jonathan peeled off the rubber he’d worn and tossed it in the trash. He didn’t flush such things; he had no idea what latex would do to the Lizards’ plumbing, and didn’t care to find out the hard way.

Kassquit said, “I think I begin to understand something of Tosevite sexual jealousy. It must be close to what I felt when, after the colonization fleet arrived, Ttomalss began paying much less attention to me because he was paying much more attention to Felless, a researcher newly revived from cold sleep.”

“Maybe,” Jonathan said. He didn’t know what Kassquit had felt then. He supposed it was something strong, though, because Ttomalss had been-still was-as close to a mother and a father as Kassquit had.

“I think it must be,” Kassquit said earnestly, “for I know much of that same feeling when I think of you mating with that other female down on the surface of Tosev 3. I understand that this is not rational, but it does not appear to be anything I can help, either.”

Jonathan wasn’t nearly sure Karen would want to mate with him after he got back to Gardena. But if she didn’t, some other girl-some other girl who not only was but wanted to be a human being-would. He had no doubt of that. While Kassquit… Now she knew more of what being human was all about, and she would go back to hiving among the Lizards.

“I am sorry,” Jonathan said. “I never meant to cause you pain or jealousy. You were the one who wanted to know what Tosevite sexuality was like, and all I ever wanted to do was please you while I showed you.”

“I understand that. And you have pleased me.” Kassquit used an emphatic cough. But then she went on, “You have also shown me that there are times when the pleasure cannot come unmixed with pain and jealousy. From everything I gather about the behavior of wild Tosevites, this is not uncommon among you.”

However alien her background and viewpoint, she wasn’t a fool. She was anything but a fool. Jonathan had discovered that before, and now got his nose rubbed in it. She’d just told him something about the way love worked that he’d never quite figured out for himself. He assumed the posture of respect before her, and then had a devil of a time explaining why.

Armed guards stood outside the compartment housing the Deutsch captive. Kassquit hoped the males would never have to use their weapons; the thought of bullets tearing through walls, through electronics, through hydraulics, through spirits of Emperors past only knew what all, was genuinely terrifying.

She used an artificial fingerclaw to press the recessed button in the wall that opened the door. After it slid aside, she stepped into the cubicle. “I greet you, Johannes Drucker,” she said, pronouncing the alien name as carefully as she could.

“And I greet you, superior female.” The wild Big Ugly stood very straight and shot out his right arm. From what Jonathan Yeager had told her, that was his equivalent of the Race’s posture of respect.

The strange gesture made him seem wilder than Jonathan Yeager. He looked wilder, too. He was hairy all over, with short, thick, brown hair streaked with gray growing on his cheeks and chin as well as the top of his head. No one had given him a razor. And he spoke the Race’s language with an accent different from, and thicker than, Jonathan Yeager’s.

He seemed to be trying not to study her body, which was covered only by the body paint of a psychological researcher’s assistant. Kassquit remembered both Jonathan and Sam Yeager behaving the same way at their first meeting. Coming right out and staring was evidently impolite but difficult to avoid.

He said, “They told me I would another Tosevite visitor be having. They did not bother telling me you would a female be.”

“Tosevite sexes and sexuality are matters of amusement and alarm to the Race, but seldom matters of importance,” Kassquit answered. “And, though I am of Tosevite ancestry, I am not precisely a Tosevite myself. I am a citizen of the Empire.” Pride rang in her voice.

Johannes Drucker said, “I understand the words, but I do not think I understand the meaning behind them.”

“I have been raised in this starship by the Race from earliest hatchlinghood,” Kassquit said. “Until quite recently, I never so much as met wild Big Uglies.” She hardly ever said Big Uglies around Jonathan Yeager. When speaking to this much wilder Tosevite, it came out naturally.

“I… see,” the captive said. His mouth twisted up at the corners: the Tosevite expression of amusement. “Now that you have started us meeting, what do you think?”

Kassquit couldn’t imitate that expression, try as she would. She answered, “The ones I have met are somewhat less barbarous than I would have expected.”

With a loud, barking laugh, the Deutsch captive said, “Danke schon.” Seeing that Kassquit didn’t understand, he returned to the language of the Race: “That means, I thank you very much.”

“You are welcome,” Kassquit answered. Only after the words were out of her mouth did she stop and wonder whether he’d been sarcastic. To cover her confusion, she changed the subject, saying, “I am told you came close to destroying this starship.”

“Yes, that is a truth, superior female,” he agreed.

“Why?” she asked. War, whether carried on by the Race or by Big Uglies, still seemed very strange to her. “No one aboard this ship was trying to do the Reich any particular harm. Most males and females here are researchers, not combatants.”

She thought that a paralyzingly effective comment. The wild Big Ugly only shrugged. “Do you think all of the Tosevites in the Deutsch cities on which you dropped explosive-metal bombs were doing nothing but fighting the Race?”

Kassquit hadn’t really thought about that at all. To her, the Deutsche had been nothing but the enemy. Now that Johannes Drucker pointed it out, though, she supposed most of them had just been going on with their lives. That made her examine her own side in a way she hadn’t before. “Why?” she said again.

“Anything that the enemy serves a fair target is,” Johannes Drucker replied. “That is how we fight wars. And we have seen that the Race is not very different. No one invited the Race to come here and try to conquer Tosev 3. Do you think it is any wonder that we as hard as we could fought back?”

“I suppose not,” admitted Kassquit, who hadn’t tried to look at things from the Tosevite point of view. “Do you not think that you would be using explosive-metal bombs on one another if we had not come?”

“We?” The wild Big Ugly raised an eyebrow in what she’d come to recognize as a gesture of irony. “Superior female, you have no scales that I can see.”

“I am still a citizen of the Empire,” Kassquit replied with dignity. “I would rather be a citizen of the Empire than a Tosevite peasant, which I surely would have been had the Race not chosen me.”

“How do you know?” Johannes Drucker asked. “Are you happy here aboard this starship, living with nothing but males and females of the Race? Would you not be happier among your own kind, even as a peasant?”

Kassquit wished he hadn’t asked the question that particular way. The older and the more conscious of her alienness she’d become, the less happy she’d grown. Some of the males and females of the Race were only too willing to rub her snout in that alienness, too. She answered, “How can I know? How does one find an answer to a counterfactual question?”

“Carefully,” the wild Tosevite said. For a moment, Kassquit thought he hadn’t understood. Then she realized he was making a joke. She let her mouth drop open for a moment to show she’d got it. He went on, “Everyone’s life is full of counterfactuals. Suppose I this had done. Suppose I that had not done. What would I be now? Dealing with the things that are real is hard enough.”

That was also a truth. Kassquit made the affirmative gesture. She said, “I am told you do not know what has happened to your mate and your hatchlings. I hope they are well.”

“I thank you,” Johannes Drucker answered. “I wish I knew, one way or the other. Then I would also how to go ahead know. Now I can only at the same time hope and worry.”

“What will you do if they are dead?” Kassquit asked. Not until the question was out did she think to wonder whether she should have asked it. By then, of course, it was too late.

Though still imperfectly familiar with the facial expressions wild Big Uglies used, she was sure Johannes Drucker’s did not show delight. He said, “The only thing I can do then is try to put my life back together one piece at a time. It is not easy, but it happens all the time. It is certainly all the time in the Reich happening now.”

“Males and females of the Race are also having to rebuild their lives,” Kassquit pointed out. “And the Race did not start this war. The Reich did.”

“No matter who started it, it is over now,” the wild Big Ugly said. “The Race won. The Reich lost. Putting the pieces back together is always easier for the winners.”

Was that a truth or only an opinion? Since Kassquit wasn’t sure, she didn’t challenge it. She asked, “If your mate is dead, will you seek another one?”

“You have all sorts of awkward questions, is it not so?” Johannes Drucker laughed a loud Tosevite laugh, but still did not seem amused. Kassquit did not think he would answer, but he did: “I cannot tell you that now. It depends on how I feel, and it also depends on whether I meet a female I find interesting.”

“And what makes a female interesting?” Kassquit asked.

The wild Big Ugly laughed again. “Not only awkward questions, but questions different from the ones the males of the Race, the military males, have asked. What makes a female interesting? Ask a thousand male Tosevites and you will have a thousand answers. Maybe two thousand.”

“I did not ask a thousand male Tosevites. I asked you,” Kassquit said.

“So you did.” Instead of mocking her, Johannes Drucker paused and thought. “What makes a female interesting? Partly the way she looks, partly the way she acts. And part of it, of course, depends on whether she me interesting finds, too. Sometimes a male will find a female interesting, but not the other way round. And sometimes a female will want a male who does not want her.”

“I think the Race’s mating season is a much tidier, much less stressful way of handling reproduction,” Kassquit said.

“I am sure it is-for the Race,” the wild Big Ugly said. “But it is not how Tosevites do things. We can only what we are be.”

Confronting her own differences from the Race, Kassquit had seen that, too. Culture went a long way toward minimizing those differences, but could not delete them. She wondered whether to ask Johannes Drucker if he found her attractive, and whether to use an affirmative answer, if she got one, to initiate mating. In the end, she decided not to ask. None of his words showed he might be interested. Neither did his reproductive organ, which was liable to be a more accurate-or at least less deceitful-indicator. As she left the compartment, she wondered if her decision would please Jonathan Yeager.

He was quiet when she returned to the compartment. He did not ask her whether she’d mated with the Deutsch captive. It was as if he did not want to know. He did not have much to say about anything else, either. Kassquit didn’t care for that. She’d grown used to talking with the wild-but not too wild-Tosevite about almost everything. She felt empty, alone, when he responded so little.

At last, she decided to confront things directly. “I did not mate with Johannes Drucker,” she said.

“All right,” Jonathan Yeager answered, still not showing much animation. But then he asked, “Why not?”

“He did not show much interest,” Kassquit replied, “and I did not want to make you unhappy.”

“I thank you for that,” he said. “I thank you for thinking of me.” He hesitated, then went on, “You ought to think of yourself, too, you know.”

Kassquit had thought of herself-as a member of the Race, or as close an approximation to a member of the Race as she could be. She’d given little thought to herself as an individual. She hadn’t been encouraged to give much thought to herself as an individual. She said, “Does it not seem that wild Tosevites-especially wild American Tosevites-concern themselves too much with their individual concerns and not enough with the concerns of their society?”

He shrugged. “I do not know anything about that. But if the individuals are happy, how can the society be unhappy?”

Big Uglies had a knack for turning things on their head. The Race always thought of society first: if society was well ordered, then individuals would be happy. To look at individuals first… was probably the mark of American Tosevites, with their mania for snoutcounting. “Do you know that you are subversive?” she asked Jonathan Yeager.

When his eyes narrowed and the corners of his mouth turned up, she responded to his amusement, even if she couldn’t duplicate the expression. Genetic programming, she thought. It couldn’t be anything else.

He said, “I hope so. As far as we Tosevites are concerned, a lot about the Race could use subverting.”

Had he said that when he first came up to the starship, she would have been furious. But now she had seen that he had his own way of looking at things, different from hers. From his sense of perspective, she was beginning to get one of her own. She said, “Well, you are halfway to subverting me.” They both laughed.

As a senior researcher, Ttomalss stayed busy on a wide variety of projects, some his own, others assigned him by his superiors. Staying busy was what he got for being an expert on the Big Uglies. Of course, his research on Kassquit remained an important part of his work. Now that she was an adult, though, he did not have to give her constant attention, as he had when she was a hatchling.

He still recorded everything that went on in her compartment. He would do that as long as she lived (unless she chanced to outlive him, in which case whoever succeeded him would continue the recording). She was far too valuable a specimen to let any data go to waste. Even if Ttomalss couldn’t evaluate all of it, some other analyst would in years or generations to come. The Race would be a long time figuring out what made the Tosevites respond as they did.

Because he had been involved in her life so long and so closely, Ttomalss still evaluated as much of the raw data as he could. Kassquit’s interactions with Jonathan Yeager had taught him as much about the Big Uglies’ sexual dynamics as he’d learned anywhere else. Those interactions had also taught him a great deal about the limits of cultural indoctrination for Tosevites.

“Well, you are halfway to subverting me,” Kassquit had told the wild Big Ugly a couple of days before Ttomalss reviewed the audio and video. Both Tosevites had used their barking laughter, so Ttomalss presumed she was making a joke.

Hearing it hurt even so, because he feared truth lay beneath it. You cannot hatch a beffel out of a tsiongi’s egg was a proverb older than the unification of Home. He’d done his best with Kassquit, and had improved his chances of turning her into something close to a female of the Race by not allowing her any contact with wild Big Uglies till she was an adult.

As he pondered, the recording kept playing in his monitor. Before long, Kassquit and Jonathan Yeager were mating. Watching them, Ttomalss let out a small, irritated hiss. He’d known how corrosive a force Tosevite sexuality was. Now he was seeing it again.

He moved the recording back to Kassquit’s telling Jonathan Yeager she had not mated with the other Big Ugly aboard the starship. Ttomalss had wondered whether she would; he’d made a point of not mentioning the subject so he could avoid influencing her actions. Since she’d become acquainted with the pleasures of mating, he had rather expected that she would indulge herself. But no.

“Pair bonding,” he said, and his computer recorded the words. “Because Kassquit is presently satisfied with Jonathan Yeager as a sexual partner, she seeks no other. These bonds of sexual attraction, and the bonds of kinship that spring from them, create the passionate attachments so characteristic of Big Uglies-and so dangerous to the Race.”

The trouble is, he thought, that Big Uglies calculate less than we do. If they are outraged because of harm that has come to individuals for whom they have conceived one of these passionate attachments, they will seek revenge without regard for their own safety. Preventing damage from Big Uglies willing, even eager, to die if they can also hurt us is very difficult.

Ttomalss wondered if that hadn’t been the motivation behind the Reich’s attack on the Race. More than any of the Big Uglies’ other independent not-empires, the Greater German Reich struck him as a Tosevite family writ large. The not-emperors of the Reich had always stressed the ties of kinship existing among their males and females. They had also stressed the innate superiority of the Deutsche over all other varieties of Tosevites. Ttomalss, like other researchers from the Race-and like non-Deutsch Big Uglies-was convinced that was drivel, but the Deutsche really believed it.

And, believing in their own superiority, believing in the wisdom of their not-emperors because those leaders were perceived as kin, the Deutsche had charged off to war against the Race without so much as a second thought. Ttomalss wondered if they-the survivors, a decided minority-still relied so blindly on the wisdom of those leaders.

But he did not have to wonder, not with a Deutsch Tosevite aboard this very starship. He paid another visit to the compartment where Johannes Drucker was housed. The Big Ugly who had almost destroyed the ship saluted him and said, “I greet you, superior sir.” He did not make a difficult captive, much to the relief of every male and female of the Race aboard the starship.

“And I greet you,” Ttomalss said. “Tell me, how do you feel about the leaders of your not-empire who took you into a losing war?”

“I always thought anyone who wanted the Race to attack was a fool,” the Big Ugly replied at once, his syntax strange but understandable. “I have in space been, after all. I know, and always did know, the Race is stronger than the Reich. I blame my leaders for their ignorance.”

That was a sensible answer; a member of the Race might have said much the same thing. “If you believed them to be fools,” Ttomalss asked, “why did you and the other Deutsche obey them without question?”

“I do not know,” Johannes Drucker said. “Why did the males of your conquest fleet, when they saw Tosev 3 was so different from what they had expected, keep on saying, ‘It shall be done,’ to your leaders, even after those leaders ordered them to do many foolish things?”

“That is different,” Ttomalss said testily.

“How, superior sir?” the Deutsch male asked.

“The answer should be obvious,” Ttomalss said, and changed the subject: “What will you and your fellow Deutsche do if your new not-emperor tries to lead you into further misadventures?”

“I do not believe he will,” Johannes Drucker said. “I have known him for some time. He is an able, sensible male.”

Ttomalss doubted Drucker’s objectivity. In any case, the Big Ugly had been too literal-minded to suit him. “Let me rephrase that,” the psychological researcher said. “What will you Deutsche do if some future leader seeks to lead you into misadventures?”

“I do not know,” Johannes Drucker answered. “How can I know, until a thing happens?”

Seeing he wasn’t going to get anywhere on that line of questioning, Ttomalss tried another: “What do you think of the female, Kassquit?”

Johannes Drucker let out several yips of Tosevite laughter. “I never expected a female Tosevite aboard your starship to meet, especially one without any… wrappings?” He had to cast about to find the term the Race used. “It made life here more entertaining than I thought it would be.”

“Entertaining.” That was hardly the word Ttomalss would have used. “Did you find yourself interested in mating with her?”

The Big Ugly shook his head, then used the Race’s negative hand gesture. “For one thing, I hope my own mate is still alive down in the Reich. For another, I did not think Kassquit was interested in mating with me.” Ttomalss wasn’t so sure Johannes Drucker was right about that, but gave no sign of what he thought. The Tosevite continued, “And I did not her attractive find, or not very. I like females with”-he gestured to show he meant hair-“and with faces that move more.”

“Kassquit cannot help the way her face behaves,” Ttomalss said. “That seems to happen when the Race raises Tosevites from hatchlinghood.”

“You have it with others tried?” Drucker sounded accusing. Ttomalss hoped he was misreading the Big Ugly, but didn’t think so. Before he could answer, Drucker added, “I suppose it is a wonder that she is not more nearly insane than she is in fact.”

In a way, that casual comment infuriated Ttomalss. In another way, he understood it. Judged by Tosevite standards, he couldn’t have done a perfect job of raising Kassquit, despite his years of effort. He said, “She is satisfied with her life here.”

“But naturally. She knows no other,” Johannes Drucker said.

“If she did know another life, it would be as a Chinese peasant,” Ttomalss said. “Do you think that would be preferable to what she has now?”

Johannes Drucker started to say something, then hesitated. At last, he answered, “I asked her this myself. She could not judge. I do not find it easy to decide, either. If you raise an animal in a laboratory, is that preferable to the life the animal would in the wild have led? The animal may live longer and be better fed, but it is not free.”

“You Big Uglies value freedom more than the Race does,” Ttomalss said.

“That is because we more of it have known,” the Big Ugly said. “Your males of the conquest fleet have seen far more freedom than the males and females of the colonization fleet. Do they not prefer it more, too?”

“How could you know that?” Ttomalss asked in surprise.

With another loud, barking laugh, Drucker answered, “I listen to the conversations you of the Race among yourselves have. Radio intercepts are an important part of the business. You, now, you know us Tosevites pretty well, so I would guess you are from the conquest fleet. Is that a truth, or not a truth?”

“It is a truth,” Ttomalss admitted.

“I thought so,” the Deutsch Tosevite said. “You have a good-sized piece of your life here spent. It is natural that we have changed because the Race came to Tosev 3. Is it so surprising that coming to Tosev 3 has changed the Race, too?”

“Surprising? Yes, it is surprising,” Ttomalss answered. “The Race does not change easily. The Race has never changed easily. We changed very little when we conquered the Rabotevs and the Hallessi.”

“Were those conquests easy or difficult?” Johannes Drucker asked.

“Easy. Much, much easier than the conquest of Tosev 3.”

The Big Ugly nodded again, then remembered the Race’s affirmative gesture. “You did not need to learn anything from them. When fighting against us, you have had no choice.” He paused. His face assumed an expression even Ttomalss, with his experience in reading Tosevite physiognomy, had trouble interpreting. Was it amusement? The look of a Big Ugly with a secret? Contempt? He couldn’t tell. Johannes Drucker went on, “You may end up finding that freedom causes you even more trouble than ginger.”

“I doubt that would be possible,” Ttomalss said tartly. Johannes Drucker laughed yet again. Ignorant Big Ugly, Ttomalss thought. Aloud, he continued, “Anyone would think you were a Tosevite from the snoutcounting not-empire of the United States, not from the Reich, where your not-emperor has more power than the true Emperor.” He cast down his eye turrets at the mention of his revered sovereign.

“We still have more freedom than you do,” the Deutsch Tosevite insisted.

“Nonsense,” Ttomalss said. “Think of what your not-empire does to those of the Jewish superstition. How can you claim you are more free? We do not do anything like that to members of the Race.”

That hit home on Johannes Drucker harder than Ttomalss had expected. The Big Ugly turned a darker shade of pinkish beige and looked down at the metal floor of the compartment: not in reverence, Ttomalss judged, but in embarrassment. Still not looking at Ttomalss, Drucker mumbled, “The rest of us have more freedom.”

“How can you say that?” Ttomalss asked. “How can any be free when some are not free?”

“How can you say you are free when you tried to conquer our whole world and enslave us?” the Tosevite returned.

“It is not the same,” Ttomalss said. “After the conquest is complete, Tosevites will have the same rights as all other citizens of the Empire, regardless of species.”

“Whether we wanted to join the Empire or not? Where is the freedom in that?”

“You do not understand. You willfully refuse to understand,” Ttomalss said, and gave up on his interview with the obstreperous Big Ugly.

Sam Yeager called out to his wife: “Hey, hon, c’mere. We’ve got an electronic message from Jonathan.”

“What has he got to say for himself this time?” Barbara asked, but she was waving a hand when she hurried into the study. “No, don’t tell me-let me read it for myself.” She adjusted her bifocals on her nose so she could more readily see the screen. “He’ll be home pretty soon, will he?” She let out a long sigh of relief. “Well, thank heaven for that.”

“You said it,” Sam agreed. He’d been sighing with relief every day since the Germans surrendered. He hadn’t thought the Nazis would start their war against the Lizards. He knew the Reich was fighting out of its weight against the Race, and so he assumed the Nazi bigwigs knew the same thing. That hadn’t proved such a good assumption. Jonathan had been up in space when the war started. If a German missile had hit his starship…

Barbara said, “I don’t know how we could have gone on if anything had happened to Jonathan.”

“I didn’t think anything would,” Sam answered. If anything had happened to his only son after he’d encouraged Jonathan to go into space, he didn’t know how he’d be able to go on living with Barbara, either. For that matter, he didn’t know how he’d be able to go on living with himself. “It’s all right now, anyhow.” He said that as much to convince himself as to remind his wife.

And Barbara did something she’d never done in all the weeks since the war between the Reich and the Race broke out and endangered their son: she put a hand on Sam’s shoulder and said, “Yes, I guess it is.”

He leaned back in his swivel chair and reached up to set his hand on hers. If she was going to forgive him, he’d make the most of it. “I love you, hon,” he said. “Looks as if we’re together for the long haul after all.”

That as if was a tribute to the long haul they’d already put in. Barbara had done graduate work in Middle English before the fighting, and was as precise a grammarian as any schoolmarm ever born. And, over more than twenty years, her precision had rubbed off on Sam. He wondered if they did have as long a haul ahead as behind. He’d just turned fifty-eight. Would they still be married when he was eighty? Would he still be around when he was eighty? He had his hopes.

“So it does.” She smiled down at him as he was grinning up at her. “I like the idea,” she said.

“You’d better, by now,” he said, which made her smile broader. But his own grin slipped. “On the other hand, you know, I’m liable to softly and suddenly vanish away, because the Snark I found damn well is a Boojum.”

He spoke elliptically. Whenever he spoke of what he’d found with the help of some computer coding from a Lizard expatriate named Sorviss, he spoke elliptically. He didn’t know who might be listening. He didn’t know how much good speaking elliptically would do him, either.

Barbara said, “They wouldn’t,” but her voice lacked conviction.

Sam said, “They might. We know too well, they might. If they do, though, they’ll be sorry, because if anything happens to me the word will get out one way or another.” He chuckled. “Of course, that might be too late to do me a whole lot of good. The story of Samson in the temple never was my favorite, but it’s the best hope I have these days.”

“That we should need such things,” Barbara said, and shook her head.

“I just wish you hadn’t squeezed it out of me,” Yeager said. “Now you’re liable to be in danger, too, on account of it.”

“Think of me as one of your life-insurance policies,” Barbara said. “That’s what I am, because I’ll start shouting from the housetops if anything happens to you. That’s the best way I know of to get you out of a jam, if you should get into one. They can’t stand the light of day-or maybe I should say, the light of publicity.”

“That’s true enough,” Sam agreed. And so it was… to a point. If he and Barbara both softly and suddenly vanished away, she wouldn’t have the chance to start shouting from the housetops. Presumably, those who might be interested in silence could figure that out, too. Yeager didn’t mention it to his wife. Anybody could foul up; he’d seen that. A foul-up on the other side’s part could well give her the chance to play the role she’d talked about. He said, “We’re liable to be worrying over nothing. I hope we are. I’m even starting to think we are. If they’d found out where I’ve been, I’d think they would have dropped on me by now.”

“Probably.” Barbara looked poised to say something else on the same subject, but a crash from the kitchen distracted her. “Oh, God!” she exclaimed. “What have those two gone and done now?” She hurried away to find out.

“Something where we’ll need to sweep up the pieces,” Sam answered, not that that counted for much in the way of prophecy. He got up from his chair and followed Barbara.

He was in the living room, halfway between the study and the kitchen, when he heard a door slam in the back part of the house. He started to laugh. So did Barbara, though he wasn’t sure she was actually amused. “Those little scamps,” she said. “There they’ll be, pretending as hard as they can that they’re innocent.”

“They’re learning,” Yeager said. “Any kid will do that kind of thing, till his folks put a stop to it. And we’re the only folks Mickey and Donald have.”

The shattered remains of what had been a serving bowl lay all over the linoleum of the kitchen floor. Barbara clucked in dismay at the size of the mess. Then she clucked again. “That bowl was in the dish drainer,” she said. “They’re growing like weeds, but I don’t think they’re big enough to reach it, not since I shoved it back sideways against the wall there.”

Sam examined the scene of the crime. “No chair pushed up against the counter,” he said musingly. “I wonder if one of them stood on the other one’s back. That would be interesting-it would show they’re really starting to cooperate with each other.”

“Now if only they’d start cooperating to clean up the messes they make. But that would be too much to ask for, wouldn’t it?” Barbara rolled her eyes. “Sometimes it’s too much to ask for from Jonathan, or even from someone else I might mention.”

“I haven’t got the faintest idea who-whom-you’re talking about,” Sam said. Barbara rolled her eyes again, more extravagantly than before. But when she started for the broom closet, Sam shook his head. “That’ll wait for a couple of minutes, hon. We can’t let Mickey and Donald think they got away with it, or else they’ll try the same thing again tomorrow.”

“You’re right,” Barbara said. “If we read them the riot act, they may wait till day after tomorrow-if we’re lucky, they may.” Sam laughed, though he knew perfectly well she hadn’t been kidding.

Side by side, they walked to the bedroom the two Lizard hatchlings they were raising called their own. Up till a few months before, the door to that bedroom had been latched on the outside almost all the time: the baby Lizards, essentially little wild animals, would have torn up the house without even knowing what they were doing. Now they know some of what they’re doing, and they still tear up the house, Sam thought. Is that an improvement?

He opened the door. Mickey and Donald stood against the far wall. If they could have disappeared altogether, they looked as if they would have done it. Even Donald, bigger and more rambunctious than his (her?) brother (sister?), seemed abashed, which didn’t happen very often.

Yeager held up a piece of the broken bowl. By the way the hatchlings cringed, he might have been showing a couple of vampires a crucifix. “No, no!” he said in a loud, ostentatiously angry voice. “Don’t play with dishes! Are you ever going to play with dishes again?”

Both baby Lizards shook their heads. They’d learned the gesture from Barbara and Jonathan and him; they didn’t know the one the Race used. Neither one of them said anything. They didn’t talk much, though they understood a startling amount. Human babies picked up language much faster. The Lizards would have been amazed that the hatchlings were talking at all. Yeager chuckled under his breath. Barbara and I, we’re bad influences, he thought.

Though behind in language, Mickey and Donald were miles ahead of human toddlers in every aspect of physical development. They’d hatched able to run around and catch food for themselves, and they’d grown like weeds since: evolution making sure not so many things were able to catch them. They were already well on their way toward their full adult size.

Sam remained a towering figure, though, and used his height and deep, booming voice to good advantage. “You’d better not go messing with Mommy Barbara’s china,” he roared, “or you’ll be in big, big trouble. Have you got that?” The young Lizards nodded. They had a pretty good notion of what trouble meant, or at least that it was a good thing to avoid. Yeager nodded at them. “All right, then,” he said. “You behave yourselves, you hear?”

Mickey and Donald both nodded some more. Satisfied he’d put the fear of God in them-at least till the next time-Sam let it go at that. He didn’t spank them save as a very last resort. He hadn’t spanked Jonathan much, either… and Jonathan hadn’t had such formidable teeth with which to defend himself.

“Maybe the Lizards have the right idea about bringing up their babies,” Barbara said as she and Sam went up the hall.

“What? Except for making sure they don’t kill themselves or one another, leaving them pretty much alone till they’re three or four years old?” Sam said. “It’d be less work, yeah, but we’ve got a big head start on civilizing them.”

“We’ve got a big head start on exhaustion, is what we’ve got,” Barbara said. “We were a lot younger when we did this with Jonathan, and there was only one of him, and he’s human.”

“Pretty much so,” Sam agreed, and his wife snorted. He went on, “The one I take off my hat to is the Lizard who raised Kassquit. He had to be mommy and daddy both, give her attention all the time, clean up her messes-for years. That’s dedication to your research.”

“It wasn’t fair to her, though,” Barbara said. “You’ve talked a lot about how strange she is.”

“Well, she is strange,” Yeager said, “and no two ways about it. But I don’t think she’s nearly as strange as she might have been, if you know what I mean. In the scheme of things, she might have been a lot squirrellier than just wishing she were a Lizard. And”-he lowered his voice; his own conscience was far from clear-“God only knows we’re going to raise a couple of squirrelly hatchlings.”

“We’ll learn from them.” Barbara had a lot of pure scholar left in her. “The Lizards have learned a lot from Kassquit,” Sam answered. “I wonder if she thanks them for it.” But he didn’t wonder. He knew she did. If Mickey and Donald ended up thanking him, maybe he’d be able to look at himself in a mirror. Maybe.