Aftershocks

12

David Goldfarb looked up from his work as Hal Walsh sauntered back into the Saskatchewan River Widget Works after going out for lunch. Goldfarb scratched his head. His boss was a high-pressure type if ever there was one. Up till the past couple of weeks, David had never seen him saunter; he’d moved everywhere as if he needed to get there day before yesterday. That dreamy look on his face was new, too.

Seeing it made a light bulb come on above Goldfarb’s head. “You went out to lunch with my doctor again.”

To his amazement, Walsh blushed like a schoolgirl. “Well, yes, as a matter of fact, I did,” he said. “Jane’s… quite something.”

“Can’t argue with you there,” Goldfarb said, most sincerely. “If I were ten, fifteen years younger and single, I’d give you a run for your money. Maybe even if I weren’t ten, fifteen years younger.”

“Next time I see Naomi, I’ll tell her you said that,” Walsh said.

“I’m allowed to look,” Goldfarb answered. “I’m allowed to think. I’m also allowed to keep my hands to myself if I want to keep them on the ends of my arms.”

“Sounds like a sensible arrangement,” his boss said. “Oh, and speaking of your hands, Jane asked me to ask you how your finger’s doing since she took out the stitches.”

After flexing the digit in question, David said, “It’s not half bad. Still a little sore, but not half bad.” He eyed Hal Walsh. “I gather she thinks you’ll have the chance to pass this on to her some time fairly soon?”

Sure as the devil, Walsh blushed again. “That’s right.” He coughed a couple of times, then went on, “You know, cutting that finger may have been the best thing you ever did for me.”

“I like that!” Goldfarb said in mock high dudgeon. “I like that quite a lot. Here I give you the phone-number reader, and what do I get credit for?” He grinned. “For working my finger to the bone, that’s what.” He held it up again.

Walsh groaned and held up a different finger. They both laughed. Jack Devereaux came into the office just then. He saw his boss’ upraised digit. “Same to you, Hal,” he said, and used the same gesture.

“You don’t even know why you did that,” Walsh said.

“Any excuse in a storm,” Devereaux answered.

“The RAF was never like this,” Goldfarb said. The only time he’d known anything even close to such informality in the RAF had been in the days when he was working under Group Captain Fred Hipple, desperately trying to learn all he could about Lizard radars and jet engines. He’d looked back fondly on those days-till Basil Roundbush, who’d worked with him then, came back into his life.

He hadn’t heard anything from Roundbush lately, or from any of Roundbush’s Canadian associates, either. Nor had anybody tried to kill him lately. He approved of that. He would have been hard pressed to think of anything he approved of more than not getting killed, in fact. He would have been happier still had he known Roundbush had given up for good. Unfortunately, he knew nothing of the sort. And Roundbush was not the sort to give up easily.

But every day without trouble was one more day won. He’d thought that way during the war, first during the Battle of Britain when nobody’d known if the Nazis would invade, and then after the Lizards came till they did invade. With the return of peacetime, he’d been able to look further ahead again. But trouble brought him back to counting the days one at a time.

Walsh said, “Shall we see if we can get something more useful than the odd obscene gesture done today?”

“Mine wasn’t odd,” Devereaux said. “I did it right.”

“By dint of long practice, I have no doubt,” his boss replied. Goldfarb expected the French-Canadian engineer to demonstrate the gesture again, but Devereaux refrained. Walsh looked faintly disappointed. Devereaux caught David’s eye and winked. Goldfarb grinned, then coughed to give himself an excuse to put a hand in front of his face so Hal Walsh wouldn’t notice.

Eventually, they did get down to work. David had the feeling it was going to be one of those afternoons where nothing much got accomplished. He turned out to be right, too. He’d had a lot of those afternoons in the RAF, far fewer since coming to Canada. The reason for that wasn’t hard to figure out: the British government could afford them a lot more easily than the Saskatchewan River Widget Works could. But they did happen now and again.

He was, as always these days, wary when he walked home. Nothing like almost getting killed to make you pay attention to the maniacs on the highway, he thought. But nobody tried to run him down. All the maniacs in the big American cars were maniacal because of their native stupidity, not because they wanted to rub out one David Goldfarb.

“Something smells good,” he said when he opened the door.

From the kitchen, Naomi answered, “It’s a roasting chicken. It’ll be ready in about half an hour. Do you feel like a bottle of beer first?”

“Can’t think of anything I’d like more,” he answered. She popped the tops off a couple of Mooseheads and brought them out to the front room. “Thanks,” Goldfarb said, and kissed her. The kiss went on for a while. When it broke, he said, “Well, maybe I can think of something I’d like more. What are the children doing right now?”

“Homework.” Naomi gave him a sidelong look and doled out another word: “Optimist.”

“We made it here to Edmonton, didn’t we?” David said, and then, in what wasn’t quite a non sequitur, “The children are bound to go to bed sooner or later.” As big as they were getting, that marked him as an optimist, too.

He sat down on the sofa and sipped the beer. “That’s not bad,” he said. “It doesn’t match what a proper pub would give you, right from the barrel, but it’s not bad. You can drink it.” He took another sip, as if to prove as much.

“What’s new?” his wife asked.

“I’ll tell you what: my boss is seeing the doctor who sewed up my finger,” he said. “She’s worth seeing, too, I will say.” Smiling sweetly, Naomi put an elbow in his ribs. “Careful, there,” he exclaimed. “You almost made me spill my beer. Now I have to figure out whether to say anything about it the next time I write to Moishe in Jerusalem.”

“Why wouldn’t you say-? Oh,” Naomi said. “This is the doctor who was going with Reuven Russie, isn’t it?”

David nodded. “That’s right. She didn’t want to stay in a country the Lizards ruled, and he didn’t feel like emigrating, and so…” He shrugged. He suspected that, had he been close to marrying Jane Archibald and she told him she wanted to move to Siam, he would have started learning Siamese. Having already got one elbow in the ribs, he didn’t tell that to Naomi.

Instead of another elbow, he got a raised eyebrow. They’d been married twenty years. Sometimes he could get in trouble without saying a word. This looked to be one of those times.

“I’m going to check the chicken,” she said. He’d never heard that sound like a threat before, but it did now.

She’d just opened the oven door when the telephone rang. “I’ll get it,” David said. “Whoever it is, he’s messed it up-he was bound to be trying to call us at suppertime.” He picked up the handset. “Hullo?”

“Hello, Goldfarb.” Ice and fire ran up David’s back: it was Basil Roundbush. Goldfarb looked to the phone-number reader. It showed the call’s origin as the United Kingdom, but no more than that: Roundbush’s blocking device was still on the job.

“What the devil do you want?” Goldfarb snarled.

“I rang to tell you that you can call off your dogs, that’s what,” Roundbush answered. He sounded ten years older than he had the last time he’d blithely threatened Goldfarb’s destruction, or maybe it was just that, for once, his voice had lost its jauntiness.

“What the hell are you talking about?” David asked. He kept his voice low so as not to alarm Naomi. That, of course, was plenty to bring her out of the kitchen to find out what was going on. He mouthed Roundbush’s name. Her eyes widened.

“I told you-call off your dogs,” the RAF officer and ginger dealer said. “I’ve got the message, believe you me I do. I shan’t be troubling you any more, so you need no longer be concerned on that score.”

“How do I know I can believe a word of that?” Goldfarb still hadn’t the faintest idea what Basil Roundbush was talking about, but he liked the way it sounded. Letting on that he was ignorant didn’t strike him as a good idea.

“Because I bloody well don’t want to get my sodding head blown off, that’s how,” Roundbush burst out. “Your little friends have come too close twice, and I know they’ll manage it properly sooner or later. Enough is enough. In my book, we’re quits.”

If he wasn’t telling the truth, he should have been a cinema actor. Goldfarb knew he was good, but hadn’t thought he was that good. “We’ll see,” he said, in what he hoped were suitably menacing tones.

“I’ve said everything I’m going to say,” Roundbush told him. “As far as I’m concerned, the quarrel is over.”

“Don’t like it so well when the shoe is on the other foot, eh?” Goldfarb asked, still trying to find out what the devil was going on. A conciliatory Basil Roundbush was as unlikely an item as a giggling polar bear.

“Bloody Nazis haven’t got enough to do now that the Reich has gone down the loo,” Roundbush said bitterly. “I really hadn’t thought you of all people would be able to pull those wires, but one never can tell these days, can one?” He hung up before David could find another word to say.

“Nu?” Naomi demanded as Goldfarb slowly hung up the phone, too.

“I don’t know,” he answered. “I really don’t know. He said he was going to leave me alone, and that I should call my dogs off him. He said they’d almost killed him twice. He said they were Nazis, too.”

“He’s meshuggeh,” Naomi exclaimed. She added one of the Lizards’ emphatic coughs for good measure.

“I think so, too,” David said. “He must have fallen foul of the Germans somehow, and he thinks I’m behind it. And do you know what? If he wants to think so, it’s fine by me.”

“But what happens if these people, whoever they are, keep going after Roundbush?” Naomi asked. “Won’t he blame you and get his friends over here to come after you again?”

“He might,” Goldfarb admitted. “I don’t know what I can do about it, though. Whoever’s going after that mamzer, I haven’t got anything to do with it.” He rolled his eyes. “Nazis. The only Nazis I ever knew were the ones I saw with radar during the fighting.”

“What do you think we ought to do?” Naomi asked.

Goldfarb shrugged. “I don’t know what we can do, except go on the way we’ve been going. As long as we’re careful, dear Basil’s goons won’t have an easy time getting us, anyhow.” One eyebrow climbed toward his hairline. “And who knows. Maybe those blokes, whoever they are, will put paid to him after all. I wouldn’t shed a tear, I’ll tell you that.”

“Neither would I,” Naomi said.

Warm Mediterranean sunshine poured down from a brilliant blue sky. The water was every bit as blue, only two shades darker. Gulls and terns wheeled overhead. Every so often, one of them would plunge into the sea. Sometimes it would come out with a fish in its beak. Sometimes-more often, Rance Auerbach thought-it wouldn’t.

He lit a cigarette. It was a French brand, and pretty vile, but American tobacco, even when you could get it, was impossibly expensive over here. Of course, American tobacco would have set him coughing, too, so he couldn’t blame that on the frogs. He sipped some wine. He’d never been much for the stuff, but French beer tasted like mule piss. Raising the glass, he grinned at Penny Summers. “Mud in your eye.” Then he turned to Sturmbannfuhrer Dieter Kuhn, who was sharing the table at the seaside cafe with them. “Prost!”

They all drank. The SS man spoke much better French than either Rance or Penny. In that good French, he said, “I regret that Group Captain Roundbush unfortunately survived another encounter with my friends.”

“Quelle dommage,” Rance said, though he didn’t really think it was a pity. “It will be necessary to try again.” For again, he said wieder, because he could come up with the German word but not its French equivalent. He’d taken French and German both at West Point. Because he’d been using his French here in Marseille, it had less rust on it than his German did, but neither was what anybody would call fluent.

“Life is strange.” Penny’s French, like Auerbach’s, relied on cliches. She went on, “In Canada, we tried to deal with Roundbush. Now we try to kill him.”

“Strange indeed,” Kuhn said with a smile he probably thought was a real ladykiller. “The last time we were all in Marseille, it was part of the Reich, and it was my duty to arrest the two of you. Now the Republique Francaise is reborn, and we are all here as simple tourists.”

Nobody laughed too loudly. That might have drawn more notice than they wanted. Penny said, “Now we are on the same side.”

“We have the same enemies, anyhow,” Rance said. He didn’t want to think of the SS man as being on his side, even if that was how things stood.

“The same enemies, yes, but different reasons,” Dieter Kuhn said. Maybe he wasn’t happy about lining up with a couple of Americans, either. “We want to make Pierre Dutourd want to work with us and not with Roundbush and his associates, while you want to help your friend in Canada.”

“Reasons are not important,” Penny said. “Results are important.”

“Truth.” Auerbach and Kuhn said it at the same time, both in the Lizards’ language. They gave each other suspicious looks. Neither of them used an emphatic cough. Auerbach drank some more wine, then asked the German, “Will you tell your superiors in Flensburg you work with us to help a Jew?”

“Of course not,” Kuhn answered at once. “But I do not think they would care much, not as things are now. I break no secrets in saying that. To rebuild, the Reich needs money. We can get money through selling ginger to the Lizards. If Dutourd works with us, works through us, that helps bring in money. And so, for now, I do not much care about Jews. Getting rid of the Englishman and bringing Dutourd to heel is more important for the time being.”

As things are now. For the time being. Rance eyed the Sturmbannfuhrer as he would have eyed a rattlesnake. Kuhn-and, presumably, Kuhn’s bosses-hadn’t given up. Taking it on the chin-hell, getting knocked out of the ring-had made them change their priorities, but Auerbach didn’t think it had made them change their minds.

He asked, “How goes the rebuilding? How closely do the Lizards watch you?”

“Merde alors!” Kuhn exclaimed in fine pseudo-Gallic disgust. “Their eye turrets are everywhere. Their snouts are everywhere. A man cannot go into a pissoir and unbutton his fly without having a Lizard see how he is hung.”

“Too bad,” Rance said. About half of him meant it. The balance of power between the Lizards and mankind had swung toward the Race when Germany went down in flames. The other half of Auerbach, the part that remembered the days before the Lizards came, the days when Hitler’s goons were the worst enemies around, hoped the Nazis would never get back on their feet.

Maybe a little of that showed on his face. Or maybe Dieter Kuhn was a pretty fair needler in his own right. Deadpan, he asked, “And how is it with Indianapolis these days?”

Auerbach shrugged. “All I know is what I read in the newspapers. Newspapers here say what the Lizards want.”

“The French are whores.” Kuhn didn’t bother keeping his voice down. “They gave to the Reich. Now they give to the Race.” He rose, threw down enough jingly aluminum coins to cover the tab, and strode away.

Penny went back to English: “That’s one unhappy fellow, even if he hides it pretty good.”

“You bet,” Rance agreed. “I’ll tell you, I like him a hell of a lot better by his lonesome than in front of a bunch of soldiers toting submachine guns.”

“Amen!” Penny said fervently. “You know something, Rance? I’m goddamn tired of having people point guns at me, is what I am.”

After lighting another foul-smelling French cigarette, Auerbach eyed her through the smoke he puffed out. “You know, kid, you might have picked the wrong line of work in that case.”

She laughed. “Now why the hell didn’t I think of that?”

“We’re not doing too bad here this time around,” Rance said. “Better than I expected we would, I’ll say that.”

Instead of laughing again, Penny pretended to faint. That made Auerbach laugh, which made him start coughing, which made him feel as if his chest were coming to pieces. Penny thumped him on the back. It didn’t help much. She said, “Don’t tell me things like that. My heart won’t stand it.”

“Don’t worry. I’m not going to make a habit of it.” Auerbach filled his glass from the carafe of red wine that sat on the table. “This is a complicated deal, you know? We’ve got to stay on Dutourd’s good side on account of we’re doing business with him, and we’ve got to stay on Kuhn’s good side on account of we’re doing business with him, too, and they don’t like each other for beans.”

“It’d be a lot easier if you didn’t have anything to do with that damn Nazi,” Penny said. “We don’t need to, not as far as money’s concerned.”

“Oh, I know,” Rance answered. “But I told that Roundbush son of a bitch that I was going to tie a tin can to his tail, and I damn well meant it. He laughed at me. Nobody laughs at me and gets away with it. Nobody, you hear?”

Penny didn’t say anything right away. She lit a cigarette of her own, took a puff, made a face, and took a sip of wine to help get rid of the taste. She studied him through her smoke screen. At last, words did come from her: “Anybody took a look at you or listened to you for just a little while, he’d figure you were a wreck.”

“He’d be right, too,” Rance said at once, with a certain perverse pride.

But Penny shook her head. She drew on the cigarette again. “Goddamn, I don’t know why I smoke these things, except I get so jumpy when I don’t.” She paused. “Where was I? Oh, yeah. You’re like an old crowbar all covered with rust. Anybody looks at it, he figures he can break it over his knee. But it’s solid iron in the middle. You can smash somebody’s head in with it as easy as not.”

Auerbach grunted. He wasn’t used to praise-even ambiguous praise like that-from her. And he enjoyed feeling decrepit; whenever he failed at something, he had a built-in excuse. He said, “Hell, my own crowbar doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to half the time these days.”

Penny snorted. Then she said, “You’re sandbagging,” which held an uncomfortable amount of truth. “You want to head back to the hotel, or you want to come shopping with me?”

“I’ll head back to the hotel,” he said without the least hesitation. “You go shopping the way a big-game hunter goes on safari.” That was also a compliment of sorts.

Penny headed off to pit her bad French and her air of Midwestern naivete against the merchants of Marseille. Rance took a taxi over to La Residence Bompard. He hadn’t been there long before somebody knocked on the door. The Luger he’d acquired wasn’t legal, but a lot of the things he’d been doing in France weren’t legal. “Who is it?” he asked, his raspy voice sharp with suspicion-he wasn’t expecting company.

To his surprise, the answer came back in English: “It is I-Monique Dutourd.”

“Oh.” He slid the pistol into a pocket before opening the door. “Hello,” he said, also in English. “Come in. Make yourself at home.”

“Thank you.” She looked around the room, then slowly nodded. “Yes. This is what it is like to be civilized. I remember. It has been a while.”

“Sit down,” Auerbach said. “Can I get you some wine?” She shook her head. He asked, “What can I do for you, then?”

“I wish to know”-her English was slow and precise; she had to think between words, as he did for French, though she spoke a little better-“why it is that you are friendly with that SS man, that Dieter Kuhn.” She said several words after that in incandescent French, French nothing like what he’d studied at West Point. He didn’t know exactly what they meant, but the tone was unmistakable.

“Why?” he said. “Because he and I have an enemy who is the same. Do you remember Goldfarb, the Jew that English ginger dealer sent here when this was still part of the Reich?” He waited for her to nod, then went on, “I am using the Nazi to take revenge on the Englishman.”

“I see,” she said. “If it were me, I would use the Englishman to take revenge on the Nazi, who made me into his harlot. Is that a proper English word, harlot?”

“I understand it, yes,” Rance said uncomfortably. “I’m sorry, Miss Dutourd, but what it looks like to me is, a lot of the people in the ginger business are bastards, and you have to pick the one who will help you the most at any one time. For me right now, that’s Kuhn. Like I say, I’m sorry.”

“You are…” She groped for a word again. “Forthright.” Rance smiled. He couldn’t help himself. He’d never heard anybody actually say forthright before. He waved for her to go on, and she did: “In this, you are like my brother. He makes no apology for what it is that he does, either.”

“I’m not sorry to do the Lizards a bad turn any way I can,” Rance said. “Turning them into ginger addicts isn’t as good as shooting them, but it will do.”

“I do not love the Lizards, but I feel about the Boches as you feel about they-about them.” Monique Dutourd corrected herself.

“And how does your brother feel?” Auerbach wasn’t about to waste a chance to gather information on the people with whom he was dealing.

He got more than he bargained for. “Pierre?” Monique Dutourd’s lip curled in fine contempt. “As long as he can get his money, he does not care whence it comes.” Auerbach hadn’t heard whence very often, either. He got the idea she’d learned English from books. She added, “And if he does not get his money when he should, then unfortunate things, it could be, would happen.”

Sure as hell, that was worth knowing. All the same, Rance might have been happier not hearing it. He and Penny remained small fish in a tank full of sharks.

Peking was home. Liu Han hadn’t been sure, not when she first came back to the city, but it was. To her real astonishment, she even found herself glad to be eating noodles more often than rice.

“This is very strange,” she said to Liu Mei, using her chopsticks to grab a mouthful of buckwheat noodles from their bowl of broth and slurping them up. “Noodles felt like foreign food to me when I first came here.”

“They’re good.” Liu Mei took noodles for granted. Why not? She’d been eating them all her life.

Talking about noodles was safe. This little eatery wasn’t one where Party members gathered. The scrawny man at the next table might have been a Kuomintang operative. The fat fellow on the other side, the one who looked as if he’d bring in a good sum if rendered into grease, might have worked for the little scaly devils. That was, in fact, pretty likely. Men who worked for the scaly devils made enough to let them eat well.

“Hard times,” Liu Han said with a sigh.

Her daughter nodded. “But better days are coming. I’m sure of it.” Saying that was safe, too. All sides-even the little devils-thought their triumph meant better times ahead for China. Liu Han raised the bowl of noodles to her face and took another mouthful. She hoped that would cover the outrage she might show when thinking of what a triumph by the little scaly devils would mean.

They finished eating and got up to go. They’d already paid-this wasn’t the sort of place where the proprietor would trust people to leave money on the counter. As they went out onto the hutung- the alley-in front of the little food shop, Liu Han said, “We finally have enough tea in the city.”

“Do we?” Liu Mei said as men and women, all intent on their own affairs, hurried past. The hutung was in shadow; it was so narrow that the sun had to be at just the right angle to slide down into it. A man leading a donkey loaded with sacks of millet had people flattening themselves against the walls to either side to let him by. Liu Mei didn’t smile-she couldn’t-but her eyes brightened at what her mother said. “That’s good. It took us long enough.”

Before Liu Han could answer, a fly lit on the end of her nose. Looking at it cross-eyed, she fanned her hand in front of her face. The fly flew off. It was, of course, only one of thousands, millions, billions. They flourished in Peking as they did in peasant villages. Another would probably land on her somewhere in a minute.

She said, “Well, this is special tea, you know, not just the ordinary sort. It took a long time to pick the very best and bring it up from the south.”

“Too long.” Liu Mei was in one of those moods where she disapproved of everything. Liu Han understood that. Staying patient wasn’t easy, not when every day saw the little scaly devils sinking their claws ever deeper into the flesh of China. Liu Mei went on, “We’ll have to boil the fire up really hot.”

“Can’t make good tea any other way,” Liu Han agreed.

They came out of the alley onto Hsia Hsieh Chieh, Lower Slanting Street, in the western part of the Chinese City, not far from the Temple of Everlasting Spring. Bicycles, rickshaws, wagons, foot traffic, motorcars, buses, trucks-Lower Slanting Street was wide enough for all of them. Because it was, and because everyone used it, traffic moved at the speed of the slowest.

More often than not, that was an annoyance. The little scaly devils in a mechanized fighting vehicle must have thought so; they had to crawl along with everyone else. Scaly devils were impatient creatures. They hated having to wait. They ran their own lives so waiting was only rarely necessary. Moving along jammed Chinese streets, though, what choice did they have?

When Liu Han said that aloud, Liu Mei said, “They could just drive over people or start shooting. Who would stop them? Who could stop them? They are the imperialist occupiers. They can do as they please.”

“They can, yes, but they would touch off riots if they did,” Liu Han said. “They are, most of them, smart enough to know that. They don’t want us to get stirred up. They just want us to be good and to be quiet and to let them rule us and not to cause them any trouble. And so they’ll sit in traffic just as if they were people.”

“But they have the power to start running people over or to start shooting,” Liu Mei said. “They think they have the right to do those things, whether they choose to do them or not. There’s the evil: that they think they have the right.”

“Of course it is,” Liu Han agreed. “I don’t suppose people can do anything about having the little scaly devils here on Earth with us-it’s too late for that. But having them think they have the right to rule us-that’s a different business. We should be free. If they can’t see that, they need reeducating.” She smiled. “Maybe we could all sit down together over tea.”

No, her daughter couldn’t smile: one more score to lay at the feet of the little devils. But Liu Mei nodded and said, “I think that would be very good.”

The little scaly devils’ machine tried to slide into a space just ahead. But a man on an oxcart squeezed in first. He had to lash the ox to make it move fast enough to get ahead of the armored vehicle. As soon as he found himself in front of it, he set down the whip and let the ox amble along at its own plodding pace. That did infuriate the scaly devils. Their machine let out a loud, horrible hiss, as if to cry, Get out of the way! The man on the oxcart might have been deaf, for all the good that did them.

People-Liu Han among them-laughed and cheered. The fellow on the oxcart took off his broad straw hat and waved it, acknowledging the applause. If the little scaly devils understood that, it probably made them angrier than ever. Unless they chose to get violent, they could do nothing about it.

Then more laughter rose. It started a couple of blocks up Lower Slanting Street and quickly spread toward Liu Han and Liu Mei. Liu Han stood on tip-toe, but couldn’t see over the heads of the people around her. “What is it?” she asked her daughter, who was several inches taller.

Liu Mei said, “It’s a troop of devil-boys, cutting up capers and acting like fools.” Disapproval filled her voice. The young men and-sometimes-young women who imitated the little scaly devils and adopted their ways were anathema to the Communist Party. They learned the little devils’ language; they wore tight clothes decorated with markings that looked like body paint; some of them even shaved their heads so as to look more like the alien imperialists. There were such young people in the United States, too, but the United States was still free. Perhaps people there could afford the luxury of fascination with the scaly devils and their ways. China couldn’t.

But then Liu Mei gasped in surprise. “Oh!” she said. “These are not ordinary devil-boys.”

“What are they doing?” Liu Han asked irritably. “I still can’t see.” She stood on tiptoe again. It still didn’t help.

Annoying her further, all her daughter said was, “Wait a bit. They’re coming this way. You’ll be able to see for yourself in a minute.”

Luckily for Liu Mei, she was right. And, by the time Liu Han could see, shouts and cheers from the crowd had given her some idea of what was going on. Then, peering over her daughter’s shoulder and through a gap in the crowd in front of them, she did indeed see-and, like everyone around her, she started laughing and cheering herself.

Liu Mei had also been right in saying this was no ordinary troop of devil-boys. Instead of slavishly imitating the little scaly devils, they burlesqued them. They pretended to be a mixed group of males and females, all taking ginger and all mating frenetically.

“Throw water on them!” shouted one would-be wit near Liu Han.

“No! Give them more ginger!” someone else yelled. That got a bigger laugh.

And then Liu Han started shouting, too: “Tao Sheng-Ming! You come here this instant!”

One of the devil-boys looked up in surprise at hearing his name called. Liu Han waved to him. She wondered how well he could see her. She also wondered whether he’d recognize her even if he could see her. They hadn’t met in more than three years, and she didn’t think he knew her name.

Whether he knew it or not, he hurried over when she called. And he did recognize her; she could see that in his eyes. Or maybe he just recognized Liu Mei, who, being much closer to his own age and much prettier, was likelier to have stuck in his mind. No-when he spoke, it was to Liu Han: “Hello, lady. I greet you.” The last three words were in the language of the Race.

“And I greet you,” she answered in the same tongue. Then she returned to Chinese: “I am glad to see you came through safe, after all the troubles Peking has seen since the last time we ran into each other.”

“I managed.” From his tone, he was used to managing such things. His grin was wry, amused, older than his years. “And I’m glad to see you’re all right, too, you and your pretty daughter.” Yes, he remembered Liu Mei, all right. He sent that grin her way.

She looked back as if he were something nasty she’d found on the sole of her shoe. That only made his grin wider, which annoyed Liu Mei and amused Liu Han. She asked the question that needed asking: “Did you ever go and visit Old Lin at Ma’s brocade shop?”

If Tao Sheng-Ming had visited Old Lin, he’d have been recruited into the Communist Party. If he hadn’t, it was just as well that he didn’t know Liu Han’s name. But he nodded. His eyes glowed. “Oh, yes, I did that,” he said. “I know more about comradeship now than I ever did before. Shall I tell you what”-he lowered his voice-“Mao says about the four characteristics of China’s revolutionary war?”

“Never mind,” Liu Han said. “So long as you know them.” He wouldn’t, unless he was a Communist himself. Or unless he’s bait for a trap, Liu Han thought. But she shook her head. Had the little scaly devils known she was coming into Peking, they would have seized her. They wouldn’t have bothered with traps.

Tao’s grin came back. “Oh, yes. I know them. I know all sorts of things I never thought I would know. I have many things to blame you for-I mean, to thank you for.”

He might be a Communist. But he was still a devil-boy, too. He enjoyed being outrageous. The foolish skit that he and his fellows had been performing proved that. “Did you have fun there, making the little devils look ridiculous to the masses?” Liu Han asked him.

He nodded. “Of course I did. That was the point of the antics. Good propaganda, don’t you think?”

“Very good,” Liu Han agreed. “I will have to do some talking with the Central Committee”-that made Tao Sheng-Ming’s eyes widen, as she’d hoped it would-“but I think you and your devil-boys may prove even more useful in the continuing revolutionary struggle.”

“How?” Tao was pantingly eager.

Liu Han smiled at Liu Mei. “Why, in the matter of the special tea that’s come up from the south, of course.” Liu Han laughed. Liu Mei didn’t, but she nodded. Tao Sheng-Ming looked most intrigued. Liu Han laughed again. Sure enough, she knew how to get devil-boy wildness to serve the Party.

“There is no justice.” Monique Dutourd spoke with great assurance and equally great bitterness.

Her brother was shaving with a straight razor, a little soap, and a handheld mirror. Pierre paused with the right side of his face scraped clean and the left still full of lather and whiskers. All he said was, “Now tell me something I did not know.”

“Oh, shut up,” she snarled. “You don’t mind working with that Nazi again, no matter what he did to me.”

Pierre Dutourd sighed and raised his chin so he could shave under it. Some small part of Monique hoped he’d cut his throat. He didn’t, of course. He guided the razor with effortless, practiced skill. He didn’t talk while shaving around his larynx. But when he started on his left cheek, he said, “Nobody in this business is a saint, little sister. The Nazi was screwing you. The Englishmen were screwing somebody else-that Jew, the American said.”

“Nobody is a saint?” Monique rolled her eyes. “Well, if I didn’t already know that, you would prove it.”

“Merci beaucoup.” Pierre was hard to infuriate, which was one of the most infuriating things about him. He finished shaving, rinsed and dried his razor, then washed his face with the water left in the enameled basin. He toweled himself dry and examined himself in the mirror. Only after a self-satisfied nod did he continue, “You know that, if you grow too unhappy here, you are always free to go elsewhere. There are times when I would say you were welcome to go elsewhere.”

Ha! Monique thought. I did hit a nerve there, even if he doesn’t want to let it show. But Pierre had hit a nerve, too, and painfully. Monique still had nowhere else to go, and she knew it. She had received a couple of more letters from universities that had survived the fighting. Nobody seemed to need a Roman historian whose university was now nothing but rubble that made a Geiger counter click.

She said, “You may be sure that, when the chance comes, I will take it.” Each word might have been chipped from ice.

“Meanwhile, though, you would be wise not to bite the hand that feeds you,” her brother went on, almost as if she hadn’t spoken. “You would also be wise to become useful to someone in some way.”

“Useful!” Monique made it a swear word. “Aren’t you glad you’re useful to the Lizards?”

“Of course I am,” he answered. “If I weren’t, I would have had to work much harder for most of my life. People I don’t like would have told me what to do much more than they do now. Things could have been better, yes, but they also could have been much worse.”

He was impervious. Monique stormed out of the tent. She’d been doing that more and more often these days. This time, she almost ran into a Lizard who was about to come in. “Excusez-moi,” he said in hissing French. Monique strode past him without a word.

She’d just got to the edge of the tent city when a double handful of Lizards hurried past her. They were all carrying weapons. She was no great expert on the many patterns of body paint the Race used, but she thought theirs-which were all similar to one another-had to do with law enforcement.

Uh-oh, she thought. She turned and looked back. Sure enough, they too were heading for the tent she’d just left. And she couldn’t do anything about it. They were moving faster than she could. She was too far away to scream out a warning to her brother. And, after this latest blowup, she wasn’t much inclined to scream out a warning anyway.

She waited. Sure enough, the Lizards emerged with not only the one who’d gone before them but also with her brother in custody. They marched their prisoners out of the camp-marched them right past Monique, though Pierre didn’t notice her-hustled them into a waiting motorcar with flashing orange lights, and drove them away.

Well, Monique thought, what do I do now? She hadn’t wanted to look for work in a shop. That would have been as much as admitting that she’d never find another academic position. As long as she could live with Pierre and Lucie, she’d been able to indulge those hopes. When you couldn’t indulge your hopes any more, what did you do? If you had any sense, you buckled down and got on with your life.

With her brother a captive of the Race, she was going to have to get on with her life if she wanted to keep eating. Shop girl, scullery maid… anything this side of selling herself on the street. Dieter Kuhn had made her do something all too close to that. Never again, she vowed to herself. Better to jump off a cliff and hope she landed on her head. Everything would be over in a hurry then.

Hitting bottom here, realizing she’d have to look for work that had nothing to do with her degree, might have felt like that. It might have, but it didn’t. Instead, it was oddly liberating. All right, she couldn’t be a professor-or, at least, she couldn’t be a professor right now. She’d be something else, then.

She started out of the camp and toward the rebuilding city of Marseille. She hadn’t gone very far before she ran into Lucie coming back from the city. Unlike her own brother, Lucie recognized her. Of course, the Lizards hadn’t just seized Lucie, either.

Monique was tempted to let her go back to the tent. Maybe the Lizards had left some sort of alarm behind so they could swoop down again when she did return. But Pierre’s mistress hadn’t given Monique a bad time. Lucie had, in fact, been easier to get along with than her own brother.

And so she said, “Be careful. The Lizards just grabbed Pierre.”

“Oh, for the love of God!” Lucie said. “Was that the car I saw going downhill toward town?”

“That’s right.” Monique nodded. “Pierre and I had another fight. I’d just gone out when a Lizard-a customer, I mean-went in. And I hadn’t gone a whole lot farther before a whole squad of Lizard flics came in and grabbed Pierre and the Lizard customer, too.”

Lucie said something considerably more pungent than, Oh, for the love of God! She went on, “Keffesh was afraid they were shadowing him. Pierre was a fool to let him come to the tent.”

“What are you going to do?” Monique asked.

Lucie grimaced. “I’ll need to find somewhere to stay. I’d be an idiot to go back there now. Then I’ll have to make some phone calls. I need to warn some people and some Lizards, and I have to ask a few questions. If I like the answers I get, I’ll set up in business for myself. I’ve been Pierre’s right hand and a couple of fingers of his left for a long time. My connections are as good as his, and I daresay I’m a lot better at being careful than he ever was.”

All that took Monique by surprise. She didn’t know why it should have. She knew Roman history. What did Lucie know? Selling ginger. Ruefully, Monique admitted to herself that the demand for ginger dealers seemed to be stronger than that for Romanists.

Her brother’s mistress might have been thinking along with her. “What about you, Monique?” she asked. “What will you do?”

“Look for work,” Monique answered. “I mean any kind of work, not a university position. I have to eat. And”-she sighed-“I suppose I’ll see what I can do about getting Pierre out of jail.” She noticed Lucie hadn’t said anything about that.

Pierre’s mistress also sighed. “Yes, I guess we will have to see about that, won’t we? But it won’t be easy. The Lizards’ officials are death on ginger. You need connections to be able to get anywhere with them. Have you got any?”

“I may,” Monique answered, which seemed to take Lucie by surprise. “And I’m sure that you do.”

“Maybe.” Yes, Lucie sounded grudging. If Pierre got out of jail, she would have more trouble going into business for herself.

Bleakly, Monique said, “One of the connections we both may have is Dieter Kuhn. If we decide we need to use him, you’ll have to be the one who makes the approach. I can’t do it, not even for my brother.”

“I don’t think we’ll have to worry about that,” Lucie said. “When the Lizards question Pierre, he’ll sing. He’ll sing like a nightingale. That’s about the only thing I can think of that might make them go easy on him. Don’t you think they’d be pleased if he could hand them a nice, juicy Nazi? That might let them squeeze some fresh concessions out of the Germans.”

Monique eyed her with sudden respect. Lucie wasn’t a fool. No, she wasn’t a fool at all. And ginger smuggling was a network that tied the whole world together. No wonder Pierre’s mistress was so quick to think in terms of geopolitics.

“If Pierre sings,” Monique said slowly, “he’ll sing about the Americans, too.”

“But of course,” Lucie said. “And so what? I never did see the point of dealing with them. Americans.” Her lip curled. “They deserved to have a city blown up. Up till now, they’ve had it easy. Most of them still do.”

“They’re people,” Monique said. “I don’t want to give them to the Lizards.”

“I’m sure I don’t know why not.” Lucie shrugged. “Have it your way. I’m not going to lose any sleep about them, I tell you that, or lift a finger for them, either. They wouldn’t do it for me.” However wide her world view could be, Lucie still came first in her own eyes.

Monique went on into Marseille. She didn’t dare go back to the tent even to get her bicycle. The Lizards might return for her, too. Keffesh had seen her with Pierre and Lucie, and she’d interpreted for Pierre when he talked with the Americans. In the eyes of the Race, that was probably more than enough to convict her.

When she got to the edge of the city, she found a public telephone and fed a couple of francs into it. She called the hotel where Rance Auerbach and Penny Summers were staying. The phone rang several times. She was on the point of giving up when a man answered: “Allo?”

Auerbach’s accent was ludicrously bad. Monique chose English to make sure he wouldn’t misunderstand her: “The Lizards have Pierre. Do you know what that means?”

“You bet I do,” he answered, which she took for an affirmative. “It means I’m in a hell of a lot of trouble. Merci.” He hung up.

For good measure, Monique wiped the telephone clean of fingerprints with her sleeve after she hung up, too. She assumed the Lizards would be listening to Auerbach’s phone, and that they could trace the call back to this one. But let them try proving she’d been the one who made it.

And, having done one of the things she’d needed to do, she could get on with taking care of the rest. She walked into a dress shop, strode up to a man who looked like the manager, and asked, “Excuse me, but could you use another salesgirl?”

Nesseref was glad she could finally take Orbit for walks again without worrying much about residual radioactivity. The tsiongi was glad, too. He’d used the exercise wheel in her apartment, but it hadn’t been the same. Now he could go out, see new sights, smell new smells, and get frustrated all over again when Tosevite birds flew away just as he was on the point of catching them.

He still looked absurdly indignant every time the feathered creatures eluded him. He seemed to think they were cheating by fluttering off. This world had a much larger variety of flying beasts than Home did. Local predators probably took such escapes for granted. As far as Orbit was concerned, they broke the rules.

Befflem running around without leashes broke the rules, too. As on Home, there were regulations in the new towns on Tosev 3 against letting befflem run free. As on Home, those regulations weren’t worth much here. Befflem were much more inclined to do what they wanted than what the Race wanted them to do. If they’d had more brains, they might have served as models for Big Uglies.

Had Orbit been able to get his mouth and claws on a beffel, he would have made short work of it. But the befflem seemed smart enough to understand he was on a leash and they weren’t. They would squeak as infuriatingly as they could, inviting him to chase them. And he would, just as he went after birds. The leash in Nesseref’s hand brought him up short every time.

“No,” she told him for the third time on the walk. Inside the apartment, he knew what the word meant. He obeyed it most of the time. Out in the fresh air, he did his best to forget.

“Beep!” said a beffel half a block away. Once more, Orbit tried to charge after it. Once more, Nesseref wouldn’t let him. Orbit turned an eye turret toward her in what had to be reproach. The other turret he kept fixed on the beffel, which sat there scratching itself and then said, “Beep!” again.

“No!” Nesseref repeated as the tsiongi again tried to go after it. She used an emphatic cough. That meant nothing to Orbit, even if it gave her some small satisfaction.

Still beeping, the beffel trotted off long before Orbit got close enough to be dangerous. By then, Nesseref was starting to wonder whether her pet had pulled her arm out of its socket. Who is getting the exercise here? she thought, glaring at the tsiongi.

Shortly thereafter, neither of them got any exercise. Orbit sat down on the sidewalk and refused to move. His attitude seemed to be, If I am not allowed to do what I want, I have no intention of doing what you want. Tsiongyu were proud beasts. Offend their dignity and you had trouble.

But Nesseref knew tsiongyu, and knew how to coax them out of their sulks. She reached into a pouch she wore on a belt around her middle and pulled out a treat. She tossed it a little in front of Orbit. Sure enough, he forgot he was sulking. He trotted over and grabbed it. After that, he was walking again. Nesseref gave him another treat to keep him moving.

Some tsiongyu eventually figured out that staging sulks every so often would get them more than their share of treats. Orbit was still young, and hadn’t acquired such duplicity. As tsiongyu went, he was a good-tempered beast, too, and not in the habit of sitting down on the job.

He tried to catch a couple of birds on the way back to the apartment, but no more befflem appeared to torment him, for which small favor Nesseref cast down her eye turrets and muttered a few words of thanks to spirits of Emperors past. As it always did, the elevator that took her and Orbit up to the story on which her apartment stood fascinated the tsiongi. Orbit’s eye turrets went every which way before settling on Nesseref once more. She wondered what was going through his mind-perhaps that she’d just performed a particularly good conjuring trick.

Once inside the apartment, Orbit jumped into his wheel and started running as if a beffel as big as a bus were hot on his heels. “You are a very foolish beast,” Nesseref said severely. Orbit paid no attention whatever. Nesseref hadn’t expected him to, and so wasn’t disappointed.

She went into her bedchamber and checked to see if she had any electronic messages. She found none that needed answering right away, and a couple that she immediately deleted. Why males and females she’d never met thought she would shift credit to their account for services she didn’t want and they seemed unlikely to perform was beyond her. She supposed they found customers here and there on the electronic network; to her, that only proved that a hundred thousand years of civilization weren’t long enough to produce sophistication.

Into the electronic garbage heap those messages went. Nesseref had just seen them vanish when the telephone hissed. “Shuttlecraft Pilot Nesseref-I greet you,” she said crisply, wondering if it were a new assignment.

But the image that appeared on the screen was not a superior with or-dens, but a Big Ugly. “I greet you, Shuttlecraft Pilot,” he said. “I know males and females of the Race have trouble telling one Tosevite from another, so I will tell you that I am Mordechai Anielewicz.”

“And I greet you, my friend,” Nesseref replied. “I will tell you that you are the only Tosevite likely to call me at my home. How are you? Was your search for your mate and hatchlings successful?”

Too late, she wished she hadn’t said that. The answer was too likely to be no. If it were no, she would have saddened the Big Ugly. Friends had no business saddening friends.

But Anielewicz answered, “Yes!” and used an emphatic cough. He went on, “And do you know what? Pancer the beffel, my hatchling Heinrich’s pet, helped lead me to them.”

“Did he?” Nesseref exclaimed. “Tell me how-and I promise not to tell my tsiongi.” By the concise way Anielewicz gave her the story, she guessed he’d already told it several times. When he’d finished, she said, “You were very fortunate.”

“Truth,” he agreed. “I will thank God”-a word not in the language of the Race-“for the rest of my life.” He paused. “You would call this my superstition, and thank the spirits of Emperors past instead.”

“I understand.” Nesseref paused, too, then offered a cautious comment: “You Tosevites take your superstitions very seriously. When we opened shrines to the spirits of Emperors past here in Poland, hardly any Tosevites-either of your superstition or that of the Poles-entered them.” After the latest round of fighting, few of those shrines still stood. She suspected they would be rebuilt one day, but more urgent concerns preoccupied the Race.

Mordechai Anielewicz laughed loud Tosevite laughter. “How many males and females of the Race give reverence to God at Tosevite shrines?”

“Why, none, of course,” Nesseref said. A moment later, she added, “Oh. I see.” Big Uglies kept thinking of themselves as equal and equivalent to members of the Race. Such thought patterns didn’t come naturally to Nesseref. She might reckon Mordechai Anielewicz a friend, but most Big Uglies were to her nothing but barbarians-dangerous barbarians, but barbarians even so.

“Maybe you do,” Anielewicz said, laughing again. “But I did not call you to discuss superstition. I hope I am not troubling you, but I called to ask another favor, if you would be so kind.”

“Friends may ask favors of friends,” Nesseref said. “That is one of the things that defines friendship. Ask. If it is in my power, you shall have it.”

“I thank you.” Anielewicz added another emphatic cough. “Friends are all I have now. Except for my mate and hatchlings, I believe all my relations died in the bombings of Lodz and Warsaw.”

“I am sorry to hear it,” Nesseref said. “I understand that, among Tosevites, relations take the place good friends hold among the Race.” She understood that in her mind, not her liver, but she assumed Anielewicz realized as much. “As I said before, ask. If I can help you, I will.”

“Very well.” Anielewicz paused, then said, “We are, for now, staying in a refugee center. We lived in Lodz, and Lodz, of course, is no longer a city. Can you suggest some officials in Pinsk with whom we might talk to help arrange housing, real housing, for us?”

“Of course. Please wait while I check to see who would be most likely to help you quickly.” She used the computer’s keyboard to access the Race’s table of organization in Pinsk. After giving Anielewicz three or four names, she said, “If you like, wait a day or two before calling them. I will speak to them first and let them know who you are and what you need.”

“That would be wonderful,” the Tosevite told her. “Many of your administrators are also new in Poland, replacing males and females who perished in the fighting and who were more familiar with me.”

“Exactly why I made the suggestion,” Nesseref said. “Let me do that now, then.”

“Fine.” Anielewicz even understood she meant the conversation was over. A good many members of the Race would have gone right on chattering after such a hint, but he broke the connection.

The first call Nesseref made to Pinsk was to the officer in charge of liaison between the Race’s military forces and those of the Big Uglies in Poland. Nowhere else on Tosev 3 would the Race have had such a liaison officer. That it had one here still struck Nesseref as unnatural, but she made use of the male.

And he, to her relief, knew who Mordechai Anielewicz was. “Yes,” he said. “I have received reports of his search for his blood kin from a male in Security in the Reich. Everyone seems to be astonished that he succeeded in finding them, especially with the Deutsche so inimical to those of his superstition.”

“I certainly was, when he telephoned me just now,” Nesseref said. “I was also surprised to learn that a male who has done the Race so many important services should have to inhabit a refugee center because he is unable to find housing for himself, his mate, and his hatchlings.”

“That is unfortunate,” the liaison officer agreed. “I thank you for bringing it to my attention. Perhaps I should speak to someone in the housing authority.”

“I wish you would,” Nesseref said. “I intended to do the same thing myself, but they are likelier to listen to a male from the conquest fleet than to a shuttlecraft pilot without any great connections.”

“Sometimes I think the bureaucrats, especially the ones from the colonization fleet, pay no attention to anyone except themselves,” the liaison officer said. “But what I can do, I shall do: I assure you of that.”

“I thank you,” Nesseref said. “I think I will also make those phone calls myself. Perhaps I can reinforce you. I count Mordechai Anielewicz as a friend, and I am pleased to do whatever I can for him.”

“Well, of course, if he is a friend,” replied the male from the conquest fleet. “I have Tosevite friends myself, so I understand how you feel.”

“Oh, good. I am very glad to hear that,” Nesseref said. “It gives me hope that, in spite of everything, we may yet be able to live alongside the Big Uglies on a long-term basis.” She hesitated. Rather defensively, she added, “We may.” The liaison officer didn’t laugh at her. She feared that was more likely to mean he was polite, though, than that he agreed with her.

“Reuven!” Moishe Russie called from the Lizards’ computer-and-telephone unit. “Come here for a minute, would you? You may be able to give me some help. I hope you can, anyway-I could use some.”

“I’m coming, Father.” Reuven hurried into the front room. “What’s up?” he asked, and then stopped in surprise when he saw Shpaaka, one of the leading Lizard physicians at the Russie Medical College, looking out of the monitor screen at him. He shifted into the language of the Race: “I greet you, superior sir.”

“And I greet you, Reuven Russie,” Shpaaka answered. “It is good to see you again, even if you decided that your superstition precluded you from finishing your studies with us.”

“I thank you. It is good to see you, too.” Seeing Shpaaka reminded Reuven how much he missed the medical college, something he tried not to think about most of the time. Trying not to think about it now, he asked, “How can I help?”

His father coughed a couple of times. “I think I will let Shpaaka explain it to you, as he had begun to explain it to me.”

“Very well,” Shpaaka said, though by his tone it was anything but very well. He looked about as uncomfortable as Reuven had ever seen a male of the Race. It’s something to do with sex, he thought. It has to be. And, sure enough, the Lizard physician said, “I called your father, Reuven Russie, to discuss a case of perversion.”

That made Moishe Russie speak up: “It would be better, Doctor, if you discussed the case itself and let us draw the value judgments, if any.”

“Very well, though I find it difficult to be dispassionate here,” Shpaaka said. “The problem concerns a pair from the colonization fleet, a female named Ppurrin and a male called Waxxa. They were best friends back on Home, and they resumed that close friendship after coming to Tosev 3. Unfortunately, after coming to Tosev 3, both of them also became addicted to ginger, that most pernicious of all herbs.”

“Uh-oh,” Reuven said to his father. “Do I know what’s coming next?”

“Half of it, maybe,” Moishe Russie answered. “That’s about how much I guessed.”

Shpaaka said, “May I continue?” as if they’d talked out of turn during one of his lectures. When they looked back toward the monitor, he went on, “As you might imagine, the two of them began to mate with each other when Ppurrin tasted ginger. And, due to these repeated matings, they have conceived a passion for each other altogether inappropriate for members of the Race. After all, during a proper mating season, how is one partner much different from another?”

“You understand, superior sir, that we Tosevites feel rather differently about such things.” Reuven did his best not to sound anything but dispassionate himself. He didn’t use an emphatic cough. He didn’t burst into laughter, either.

“I said the same thing,” his father remarked.

“Of course I understand that,” Shpaaka said impatiently. “It is exactly why I am consulting with you. You see, Ppurrin and Waxxa are so blatant in their perverse behavior that they seek a formal, exclusive mating arrangement, such as is the custom among your species.”

“They want to get married?” Reuven exclaimed. He said it first in Hebrew, which Shpaaka didn’t follow. Then he translated it into English, a tongue the Lizard physician did know fairly well.

And, sure enough, Shpaaka made the affirmative gesture. “That is exactly what they want to do. Can you imagine anything more disgusting?”

Before answering him, Reuven spoke quickly to his father: “Well, you were right. I didn’t think of that.” Then he returned to the language of the Race and said, “Superior sir, I gather you are not simply punishing them because they use ginger.”

“We could do that,” Shpaaka admitted, “but both of them, aside from this sexual perversion, perform their jobs very well. Still, sanctioning permanent unions of this sort would surely prove destructive of good order. Why, next thing you know, they would probably want to rear their hatchlings themselves and teach them the same sort of revolting behavior.”

This time, Reuven did laugh. He couldn’t help it. He made himself grow serious again, saying, “We Tosevites do not consider any of the behavior you have mentioned to be disgusting, you know.”

“I would agree. It is not disgusting-for Tosevites,” Shpaaka said. “We of the Race found it disgusting in you when we first learned of it, but that was some time ago now. We have come to see that it is normal for your kind. But we do not want our males and females imitating it, any more than you would want your males and females imitating our normal practices.”

“Some of our males might enjoy your mating seasons, while their stamina lasted,” Moishe Russie said. “Most of our females, I agree, would not approve.”

“You are being irrelevant,” Shpaaka said severely. “I had hoped for assistance, not mockery and sarcasm. Except for their drug addiction and perverse attraction to each other, Ppurrin and Waxxa, as I say, are excellent members of the Race.”

“Why not just ignore what they do in private, then?” Reuven asked.

“Because they refuse to keep it private,” Shpaaka answered. “As I told you, they have requested formal recognition of their status. They are proud of what they do, and predict that, on account of ginger, most males and females of the Race on Tosev 3 will eventually find permanent, exclusive sexual partners.”

“Missionaries for monogamy, “Moishe Russie murmured.

Reuven nodded. “What if they are right?” he asked Shpaaka.

His former mentor recoiled in horror. “In that case, the colonists on Tosev 3 will become the pariahs of the Empire when the truth is learned back on Home,” he answered. “I think it altogether likely that the spirits of Emperors past would turn their backs on this whole world as a result.”

He means it, Reuven realized. The Lizards dismissed his religion as a superstition. He sometimes did the same with theirs. Here, that would be a mistake.

He said, “If you do not wish to punish them and you do wish to silence them, why not suggest that they emigrate to one of the independent not-empires? — to the United States, perhaps. Ginger is legal there and”-of necessity, he dropped into English-“they could get married, too.”

“That is a good idea.” Moishe Russie used an emphatic cough. “That is a very good idea. It would get this couple out from under your scales, too, Shpaaka, so they cannot agitate among the colonists any more.”

“Perhaps.” Shpaaka turned an eye turret toward Reuven. “I thank you, Reuven Russie. It is, at any rate, an idea we had not thought of for ourselves. We shall consider it. Farewell.” His image disappeared from the screen.

“Lizards who want to get married!” Reuven turned to his father. Now he could laugh as much as he wanted to, and he did. “I never would have believed that.”

“They’ve made people change a lot since they got to Earth,” Moishe Russie said. “They’re just starting to find out how much they’ve changed, too. As far as they’re concerned, changing us is fine. But they don’t like it so well when the shoe is on the other foot. Nobody does.”

“If they could stamp out ginger, they’d do it in a minute,” Reuven said.

“If we could stamp out alcohol and opium and a lot of other things, a lot of us would do it, too,” his father said. “We’ve never managed it. I don’t think they’ll have an easy time getting rid of ginger, either.”

“You’re probably right, especially since we use it so much in food,” Reuven answered. “One of these days, though, they may try-try seriously, I mean. That will be interesting.”

“There’s one word for it.” Moishe Russie winked. “If these Lizards do get married, who’d give the bride away?”

Before Reuven could reply, the ordinary telephone rang. He went over and picked it up. “Hello?”

“Dr. Russie?” A woman’s voice, one with pain in it. “This is Deborah Radofsky. I’m sorry to bother you, but I just kicked the wall by accident, and I’m afraid I’ve broken my toe.”

Reuven started to tell her that a doctor couldn’t do much for a broken toe no matter what-news that always delighted his patients. He started to tell her to come to the office in the morning if she really wanted to get it examined. Instead, he heard himself saying, “Remind me of your address, and I’ll come over and have a look at it.” His father blinked.

“Are you sure?” the widow Radofsky asked. Reuven nodded, a useless thing to do over a phone without a video attachment. After he gave her assurances she could hear, she gave him an address. It wasn’t more than fifteen minutes’ walk away; Jerusalem was an important city, but not on account of its size.

“A house call?” Moishe Russie asked when Reuven hung up. “I admire your energy, but you don’t do that very often.”

“It’s Mrs. Radofsky,” Reuven answered. “She thinks she’s broken her toe.”

“Even if she has, you won’t be able to give her much help, and you know it perfectly well,” his father said. “I don’t see why you didn’t just tell her to come to the office tomorrow morn…” His voice trailed off as he made the pieces fit together. “Oh. Mrs. Radofsky. The widow Radofsky. Well, go on, then.”

After grabbing his doctor’s bag, Reuven was glad to get out of the house. His father didn’t mind his paying a professional call on a nice-looking widow. His mother probably wouldn’t mind when his father told her, either. What the twins would say-no, he didn’t want to contemplate that. At romantic fifteen, they thought he was a fool for not having gone to Canada with Jane Archibald. About three days a week, he thought he was a fool, too.

He had no trouble finding the widow Radofsky’s little house. When he knocked on the door, he had to wait a bit before she opened it. The way she limped after he came inside showed why. “Sit down,” he told her. “Let me have a look at that.”

She did, in an overstuffed chair under a lamp, and held up her right foot. She winced when he slid the slipper off it. Her fourth toe was swollen up to twice its size, and purple from base to tip. She hissed when he touched it, and hissed again and shook her head when he asked her if she could move it. “I have broken it, haven’t I?” she said.

“I’m afraid so,” Reuven answered. “I can put a splint on it, or I can leave it alone. It’ll heal the same either way.”

“Oh,” she said unhappily. “It’s like that, is it?”

“I’m afraid so,” he repeated, and tried to make her think about something besides his inability to help: “What’s your daughter doing?”

“She’s gone to sleep,” the widow Radofsky answered. She wasn’t easily distracted. “Why did you bother coming here, if you knew you wouldn’t be able to do much? You could have told me to wait till morning.”

“It’s all right-it might have been just a nasty bruise. It’s not, but it might have been.” Reuven hesitated, then added, “And-I hope you don’t mind my saying so-I was glad for the chance to see you, too.”

“Were you?” After a pause of her own, she said, “No, I don’t mind.”