Aftershocks

8

By now, Nesseref had flown into Los Angeles several times. It was, in her view, one of the better Tosevite facilities for receiving shuttlecraft. For that matter, she would rather have landed there than at Cairo. No one had ever shot at her when she descended toward the Los Angeles airport that also did duty as a shuttlecraft port.

“Shuttlecraft, your descent is nominal in all respects,” a Big Ugly at the local control center radioed to her. “Continue on trajectory and land in the usual area.”

“It shall be done,” Nesseref answered. “I hope the ambulance is waiting to bring the sick male directly to the shuttlecraft.” Had she been dealing with her own kind, she would have assumed that to be the case. With Big Uglies, you never could tell.

But the Tosevite on the other end of the radio link said, “Shuttlecraft Pilot, that ambulance is waiting at the terminal here. So are the hydrogen and oxygen for your next burn. As soon as you are refueled, you are cleared for launch, so you can get that male to proper medical facilities for your kind. I hope he makes a full recovery.”

“I thank you,” Nesseref said, “both for your kind wishes and for the well-organized preparations you have made to assist one of my species.”

Braking rockets fired. Deceleration pressed Nesseref into her seat. She eyed the radar and her velocity. The Race’s engineering was good, very good. Most shuttlecraft pilots-almost all, in fact-went through their whole careers without ever coming close to using a manual override. But the pilot who wasn’t alert to the possibility was the one who might come to grief.

Not this time. Electronics and rocket motor functioned with their usual perfection. Landing legs deployed. The shuttlecraft gently touched down on the concrete of the Los Angeles airport. Three vehicles immediately rolled toward it: the hydrogen and oxygen trucks, and another one with flashing lights and with red crosses painted on it in several places. Nesseref had seen vehicles with such symbols in Poland, and recognized this one as a Tosevite ambulance.

“Will the male require aid to board the shuttlecraft?” she asked, releasing the landing ladder so that its extensible segment reached the concrete.

“I am given to understand that he will not,” replied the Tosevite in the control tower. “He is said to be weak but capable of moving on his own.”

“Very well,” Nesseref said. “I await him.” She didn’t have to wait long. Her external camera showed the male leaving the ambulance by the rear doors and moving toward the landing ladder at a startlingly brisk clip. Noting his body paint, she let out a small hiss of surprise as he scrambled up toward the cabin-nobody had bothered to tell her he was a shuttlecraft pilot, too.

“I greet you,” he said as he slid down into the compartment with her. He got into his seat and fastened the safety harness with a practiced ease that showed he was indeed familiar with shuttlecraft.

“And I greet you, comrade,” Nesseref answered. “Are you in pain? I have analgesics in the first-aid kit, and will be happy to give you whatever you may need.”

“I thank you, but I am not suffering in the least, except from anxiety,” the male said. “When this shuttlecraft lifts off, I shall be the happiest male on-or rather, above-the surface of Tosev 3.”

He certainly didn’t seem infirm. Nesseref wondered why she’d been summoned halfway around the planet to take him to Cairo. For that matter, she wondered why she wasn’t taking him to the nearby city of Jerusalem, which boasted more specialized medical facilities. What sort of pull did he have? She was astonished to discover a shuttlecraft pilot with any pull at all.

She said, “We cannot go anywhere till the Big Uglies give us hydrogen and oxygen.”

“I understand that,” he said, a touch of asperity in his voice.

Who do you think you are? Nesseref thought in some annoyance. Before she could call him on it, the Tosevite in the tower radioed, “Please open the port to your hydrogen tank. I say again, to your hydrogen tank.”

“It shall be done,” Nesseref said. “I am opening the port to my hydrogen tank. I repeat, to my hydrogen tank.” The Tosevites had sensibly adopted the Race’s refueling procedures, which minimized the possibility of error. Nesseref’s fingerclaws entered the proper control slot. The hydrogen tank rolled forward and delivered its liquefied contents. As soon as Nesseref said, “I am full,” the hose uncoupled and the truck withdrew.

“Now open the port to your oxygen tank. I say again, to your oxygen tank,” the Big Ugly in the control tower told her.

“It shall be done,” Nesseref repeated. She went through the ritual once more. The control activating that port was nowhere near the one for the hydrogen port, again to make sure the two were not mistaken for each other. After the oxygen truck finished refilling her tank, it also disengaged and drove away from the shuttlecraft.

“Am I now cleared for takeoff?” Nesseref asked. “I want to get this male to treatment as quickly as possible.”

“I understand, Shuttlecraft Pilot,” replied the Big Ugly in the control tower. “There will be a five-minute delay. Do you understand five minutes, or shall I convert it to your time system?”

“I understand,” Nesseref said, as the male beside her let out a loud hiss of dismay. “What is the difficulty?”

“We have an airliner coming in for a landing a little low on fuel,” the Tosevite answered. “Due to the short notice given for your arrival, we could not divert it to another airport. As soon as it is down, you will be cleared.”

“Very well. I understand.” Nesseref didn’t see what else she could say. The other shuttlecraft pilot, the male, was twisting and wriggling as if he had the purple itch. Nesseref turned an anxious eye turret toward him. She hoped he didn’t. The purple itch was highly infectious; she didn’t want to have to have the cabin here sterilized.

“Hurry,” the male kept muttering under his breath. “Please hurry.”

After what wasn’t a very long delay for Nesseref-but one that must have seemed an eternity to that male-the Big Ugly in the control tower radioed, “Shuttlecraft, you are cleared for takeoff. Again, apologies for the delay, and I hope your patient makes a full recovery.”

“I thank you, Los Angeles Control.” Nesseref’s eye turrets swiveled as she gave the instruments one last check. After satisfying herself that everything read as it should, she said, “Control, I am beginning my countdown from one hundred. I shall launch at zero.”

The countdown, of course, was electronic. As it neared the zero mark, her fingerclaw hovered over the ignition control. If the computer didn’t trigger the shuttlecraft’s motor, she would. But, again, everything went as it should. Ignition began precisely on schedule. Acceleration squashed her.

It squashed the other shuttlecraft pilot, too. Even so, he let out an exultant shout through the roar of the rocket: “Praise the Emperor and spirits of Emperors past, I am finally free!”

Nesseref asked him no questions till acceleration cut off and left them weightless and the shuttlecraft quiet. Then she said, “Can you tell me how you can sound so delighted in spite of an illness?”

“Shuttlecraft Pilot, I have no illness,” the male answered, which, by then, wasn’t the greatest surprise Nesseref had ever had. He went on, “Changes in my appearance are from makeup, which makes me look infirm and also disguises me. Nor, I must confess, do I share your rank. My name is Straha. Perhaps you will have heard of me.”

Had Nesseref not kept her harness on, her startled jerk would have sent her floating around the cabin. “Straha the traitor?” she blurted.

“So they call me,” the male replied. No, he was no shuttlecraft pilot; he’d been a shiplord, and a high-ranking one, before going over to the Big Uglies. He continued, “No-so, they called me. I have redeemed myself now.”

“How?” Nesseref asked in genuine astonishment, wondering what could have made the Race welcome Straha once more. Something must have, or she wouldn’t have been ordered to Los Angeles, and no one there would have helped him disguise himself to get to the shuttlecraft.

He answered, “I am sorry, but I had better not tell you that. Until the authorities decide what to do with this information, it should not be widely spread about.”

“Is it as sensitive as that?” Nesseref asked, and Straha made the affirmative gesture. Once more, she wasn’t very surprised. If he hadn’t learned something important, the Race wouldn’t have done anything for him.

Cairo Control came on the radio then, to report that the shuttlecraft’s trajectory accorded with calculations. “But your departure was late,” the control officer said in some annoyance. “We have had to put two aircraft in a holding pattern to accommodate your landing.”

“My apologies,” Nesseref said. “The Big Uglies held me up, because one of their aircraft was landing at the facility and lacked the fuel to go into a holding pattern.”

“Inefficiency,” the control officer said. “It is the Tosevites’ besetting flaw. The only thing in which they are efficient is addling us.”

“Truth,” Nesseref said, while Straha’s mouth opened wide in amusement. Even though it hadn’t been her fault, Nesseref felt bad about inconveniencing the aircraft her landing was delaying. Since she couldn’t do anything about it, though, she put it out of her mind and concentrated on making sure the landing went perfectly. On her radar, she spotted not only those two aircraft but also helicopter gunships on patrol around the landing area.

Straha saw them, too, and understood what they meant. “I should be honored,” he said. “Atvar does not want this shuttlecraft shot out of the sky.”

“I too am thoroughly glad the fleetlord feels that way,” Nesseref replied. “I have taken gunfire from the Big Uglies a couple of times while landing here, and I do not wish to do it again. There are too many parts of this planet where our rule is far less secure than it should be.”

“If I had succeeded in overturning Atvar during the first round of fighting-” Straha began, but then he checked himself and laughed again, this time with a waggle in the lower jaw that showed wry amusement. He finished, “It is entirely possible that things might look no different, save that you would be flying Atvar here to see me and not the other way round. I like to think that would not be so, but I have no guarantee that what I like to think would be a truth.”

Braking rockets roared. The shuttlecraft approached the concrete landing area. To Nesseref’s vast relief, no fanatical Big Uglies opened fire on it. It settled to the surface of Tosev 3 as smoothly as it might have on a training video.

No mere mechanized combat vehicle came out to meet the shuttlecraft, but a clanking, slab-sided landcruiser. “The fleetlord takes your safety very seriously,” Nesseref said to Straha. “I have not been met by a landcruiser here since my first descent to this city.”

“Perhaps he worries about my security,” Straha replied, “and perhaps he just wants to secure me.” He sighed. “I have no choice but to find out. You, at least, Shuttlecraft Pilot, are sure to remain free.” Nesseref pondered that as she and the renegade shiplord left the shuttlecraft and headed for the massive armored vehicle awaiting them.

Inside the Race’s administrative center in what had once been known as Shepheard’s Hotel, Atvar awaited the arrival of the landcruiser coming through Cairo from the shuttlecraft with all the delighted anticipation with which he would have faced a trip to the hospital for major surgery. “I hoped Straha would stay in the United States forever,” he said to Kirel and Pshing. “As long as he remained out of my jurisdiction, I could pretend he did not exist. Believe me, such pretense left me not in the least unhappy.”

“That is understandable, Exalted Fleetlord,” Pshing answered. “Straha’s defection, his treason, hurt us far more than any of the mutinies ordinary soldiers raised during the first round of fighting against the Big Uglies.”

“Truth.” Atvar sent his adjutant a grateful look. “And now, with what he has given us, I am not altogether sure I can punish him at all, let alone as he deserves for that treachery.”

“What he has given us,” Kirel said, “is, in a word, trouble. I would not have been altogether dismayed had that knowledge, like Straha himself, stayed far, far away. We shall have to calculate our response most carefully.”

“We have always had to calculate our responses to Straha and everything that has to do with him most carefully,” Atvar replied, to which Kirel returned the affirmative gesture. The two of them had been the only males in the conquest fleet who outranked Straha. What would Straha’s rank be now? That, at the moment, was the least of Atvar’s worries. But it would not be shiplord again-so he vowed.

He peered out the window toward the west, the direction from which the landcruiser would come. And there it was, like a bad dream brought to life. The outer armored gate of the compound slid back to admit it. As soon as it had gone through, the outer gate closed and the inner gate opened. The two gates were never open at the same time; that would have invited the Big Uglies to fire a gun or launch a rocket through them. As if they need an invitation to make trouble, Atvar thought.

A voice came from the intercom: “Exalted Fleetlord, the passenger has entered the compound.”

“I thank you,” Atvar replied, one of the larger lies he’d ever hatched. No one felt easy about speaking Straha’s name in public. He’d been an object of reproach among the males of the conquest fleet since fleeing to the Americans, while males and females of the colonization fleet had trouble believing such a defection could have taken place; to them, it seemed like a melodrama set in the ancientest history of Home, back in the days before the Empire unified the planet. For a hundred thousand years, treason had been unimaginable-except to Straha.

“Exalted Fleetlord, ah, what shall we do with him now that he is here?” asked one of the males at the gate.

Shoot him as soon as he comes out of the landcruiser, Atvar thought. But, however much he was tempted to imitate the savage and barbarous Big Uglies, he refrained. “Send him here, to my office,” he said. “No-escort him here. He will not know the way. The last time he had anything to do with the business of the conquest fleet, our headquarters were in space.”

“It shall be done, Exalted Fleetlord,” came the reply. The male down there was properly obedient, properly subordinate. Atvar wished he hadn’t been.

Kirel spoke in musing tones: “I wonder what he will have to say for himself. Something clever, something sneaky-of that I have no doubt.”

“Straha knows everything,” Atvar said. “If you do not believe me, you have but to ask him.”

Both Kirel and Pshing laughed. Then, as the door to the fleetlord’s office opened, their mouths snapped shut. In strode Straha, two armed infantry-males flanking him. The first thing Atvar noticed was that he wouldn’t have recognized Straha in a crowd. The next thing he noticed was that Straha’s body paint was not as it should have been. Irony in his voice, the fleetlord said, “I greet you, Shuttlecraft Pilot.”

Straha shrugged. “I needed the makeup and the false body paint to get away from the American Big Uglies. They worked.” Only then did he bend into the posture of respect. “And I greet you, Exalted Fleetlord, even if neither of us much wants to see the other.”

“Well, that is a truth, and I will not try to deny it,” Atvar said. “You relieve me in one way, Straha: you are not claiming friendship, or even comradeship, as I feared you might.”

“Not likely,” Straha said, and appended an emphatic cough. “As I told you, I did not do what I did for your sake. I did it for the sake of my friend, the Big Ugly. Having done it, though, I thought I might get a warmer reception here than among the American Tosevites.” He waggled an eye turret at Atvar. “Or was I wrong?”

“As a matter of fact, I truly am not sure,” Atvar replied. “You know the harm you did the Race when you defected.”

Straha made the affirmative gesture. “And I also know the service I just did the Race with those documents I sent you.”

“Is it a service? I wonder.” Straha spoke in musing tones.

“Fleetlord Reffet would reckon it one,” Straha said slyly.

“Fleetlord Reffet’s opinion…” Atvar checked himself. He did not care to advertise his long-running feud with the head of the colonization fleet. Picking his words with some care, he went on, “Fleetlord Reffet has had a bit of difficulty adapting to the unanticipated conditions existing on Tosev 3.”

Straha laughed at that. “You think he is as stodgy as I always thought you were.”

Atvar sighed. Evidently, he didn’t need to advertise the feud. “There is some truth to that,” he admitted. “But we have just fought one war that was harder and far more expensive than anyone thought it would be. There was, I am told, a Big Ugly who exclaimed, ‘One more such victory and I am ruined,’ after a fight of that sort. I understand the sentiment. I not only understand it, I agree with it. And so I am something less than delighted to receive these documents, though I cannot and do not deny their importance.”

“Tosev 3 has changed you, too,” Straha said in surprised tones. “It took longer to change you than it did me, but it managed.”

“Perhaps,” Atvar answered, knowing the renegade shiplord was right. “Tosev 3 changes everyone and everything it touches.”

Straha made the affirmative gesture. “We discovered that even before we made planetfall,” he said. “Now, if this were up to me, what I would do is-”

Atvar let out an angry hiss. Before he could turn that hiss into coherent speech, Kirel said, “I see there is one way in which Tosev 3 has not changed you at all, Straha: you still want to give orders, even when you are not entitled to do so.”

“Truth,” Pshing put in.

Straha ignored Pshing. He did not ignore Kirel. “You have not changed, either: you hatched out of Atvar’s eggshell right behind him.”

“And something else has not changed,” Atvar said: “We are taking up the quarrels that preoccupied us before your defection as if you had never left. It is, if you like, a tribute to the power of your personality.”

“For which I thank you.” Yes, Straha sounded smug. Atvar had been sure he would.

The fleetlord went on, “But Shiplord Kirel is correct. You do continue to seek to take command where you have no authority. It is possible”-the words tasted bad on Atvar’s tongue-“it is possible, I say, that by providing these documents to the Race you have made it unnecessary for us to punish you for defecting.”

Straha’s hissing sigh held nothing but relief. “You are stodgy, Atvar, even yet. But you do have integrity. I thought you would. I counted on it, in fact.”

“Do not waste praise too soon,” Atvar warned. “You may perhaps be allowed to live once more in lands the Race rules, to rejoin the society of your kind. But, Straha, I am going to tell you something that is not only possible but certain: you will live here as an ordinary citizen, as a civilian. If you think for an instant that your past rank will be restored to you, you are completely and utterly addled. Do you understand me?”

He watched the male who had come so close to overthrowing him, watched with the greatest and closest attention. Ever so slowly, ever so reluctantly, Straha made the affirmative gesture. But then, still full of self-importance, the ex-shiplord said, “A civilian, yes, but not, I hope, an ordinary one. When I went over to the Americans, they interrogated me most thoroughly on matters pertaining to the Race. Now that I have lived so long in the United States, do you not believe I will know things about these Big Uglies you could not learn elsewhere?”

“Well, that is undoubtedly a truth,” Atvar agreed. “We will indeed debrief you, and no doubt you will provide us with some valuable insights. Perhaps we will even use you as a consultant, should the need arise.” He gave his old rival such salve for his pride as he could before going on, “But I repeat: under no circumstances will you ever return to the chain of command.”

“Count yourself lucky that you enjoy the fleetlord’s mercy,” Kirel added. “Were his body paint on my torso, you would not be so fortunate.”

“Were the fleetlord’s body paint on your torso, Kirel, the Big Uglies would be ruling all of Tosev 3,” Straha said.

Unadulterated fury filled Kirel’s hiss. “Enough!” Atvar said loudly, and tucked on an emphatic cough. “Too much, in fact. Straha, you would do well to remember that your continued wellbeing depends on our goodwill. For example, you are known to be a ginger addict. Perhaps, in gratitude for the services you have performed, a supply of the herb will quietly be granted you. On the other fork of the tongue, perhaps it will not.”

Straha shot him a baleful glare. “Maybe I spoke too soon when I praised your integrity.”

“Maybe you did.” Atvar gestured to the guards who had accompanied the returned renegade into his office. “Take him to Security. Let his interrogation begin now. Tell the staff there that I will want him questioned by particular experts in Tosevite affairs. I do not wish to lose any possible information we might gain from him.”

“It shall be done, Exalted Fleetlord,” the more senior of the two guards said. He and his comrades led Straha away.

The door had hardly closed behind them before Kirel said, “As far as I am concerned, the Americans were welcome to him.”

“I agree,” Atvar said. “But he is here, and he has given us valuable information.” He paused for a moment. “And oh, by the Emperor and by the spirits of Emperors past, how I wish he had not!”

“Exalted Fleetlord, we have sought this information for years,” Pshing said.

“Yes, and now, having obtained it, we are going to have to act upon it, one way or another,” Atvar said. “I was not lying when I told Straha this war would be harder than the one we fought against the Reich. The American Big Uglies have a larger land mass, more industrial capacity, a larger presence in space, and, if reports are correct, more missile-carrying submarines full of explosive-metal bombs. I do not relish the prospect of fighting them.”

“Given all this, how can we possibly avoid fighting them?” Kirel asked.

“I do not know the answer to that, either,” Atvar said unhappily. “And I blame Straha for putting me in this predicament.” As long as the renegade had returned, Atvar intended to blame him for everything he could.

Ttomalss had not wanted to go down to the surface of Tosev 3 again. His visit to China had found him a prisoner of the Big Uglies. His visit to the Greater German Reich hadn’t involved him in any physical danger, but had been acutely frustrating, leaving him wondering whether the Deutsche truly were rational beings. The hopeless war they’d launched against the Race had shown him he’d had good reason to wonder, too.

But, when the fleetlord of the conquest fleet personally commanded him to report to the Race’s administrative center in Cairo, what choice had he? None whatever, and he knew it. And, he had to admit, the prospect of talking about the Big Uglies with a returned expatriate was intriguing.

Traveling from the shuttlecraft port to Shepheard’s Hotel-for some reason, the Tosevite name had stuck-was almost enough to give him a panic attack. Cairo reminded him too much of Peking, where he’d been kidnapped, in its astonishing crowding and equally astonishing medley of stinks. Oh, the Big Uglies here wore different kinds of wrappings and spoke a different language-the bits of Chinese he remembered did him no good at all-but those, he thought, were incidentals. The essences of the two places struck him as being all too similar.

When he got his first look at the administrative center, he exclaimed, “This was once a place where Big Uglies came for pleasure? I know Tosevites are addled, but the notion strikes me as improbable even so.”

With a laugh, the male who was driving him replied, “We have somewhat improved the defensive perimeter, superior sir.”

“Somewhat, yes,” Ttomalss replied with what he thought of as commendable understatement. “I note a double wall, machine-gun emplacements, and rocket emplacements. I am sure there are also many other things I do not note.”

“That would be an accurate assumption, yes, superior sir,” the driver said as the first armored gate opened for his vehicle.

When the second gate closed behind it, Ttomalss said, “I must admit, I feel a good deal more secure now. This may be an illusion-I know such things often are on Tosev 3-but the feeling is not to be despised anyhow.”

The chamber to which he was assigned had plainly been built with Big Uglies in mind. Its proportions-especially the high ceiling-and the plumbing fixtures proclaimed as much. But the sleeping mat, the furniture, the computer in its little alcove, and the heating system that made sure Tosevite chill did not creep into the room made it tolerable, perhaps even better than tolerable.

As soon as Ttomalss had stowed his effects (which didn’t take long; he wasn’t a Tosevite, to have to worry about endless suitcases full of wrappings), he telephoned Straha. The computer in the ex-shiplord’s chamber said he was out and could not be immediately reached, which annoyed Ttomalss till he realized he couldn’t be the only member of the Race questioning Straha. He recorded a message and settled down at the computer to find out what had happened in space and around Tosev 3 while he was traveling down from the starship and making his way through Cairo.

None of the news channels mentioned Straha’s return to the eggshell of the Race or the inflammatory information that had made the return possible. That struck Ttomalss as wise; things would only be worse if a public clamor made coming to a wise decision more difficult. The lead story was consolidation of the Race’s informal control over the subregion called France. Ttomalss heartily approved of that. Informal control did not seem to raise the Big Uglies’ ire, and had a good chance of leading to formal control some time in the future.

Ttomalss was still getting the details of the story about France when the computer’s telephone attachment hissed. “I greet you,” he said.

“And I greet you, Senior Researcher.” The male a screen window showed was wearing the body paint of a shuttlecraft pilot, not a shiplord.

That presented Ttomalss with a problem. After giving his own name, he asked, “How shall I address you?”

“Superior Nuisance seems to fit,” Straha answered, and Ttomalss’ mouth fell open in startled laughter. The renegade went on, “The Big Ugly named Sam Yeager respects your work, Senior Researcher, for whatever that may be worth to you.”

“Praise from one who does good work himself is praise indeed,” Ttomalss said. “I have met Sam Yeager only briefly, but I know his hatchling, Jonathan Yeager, a good deal better. He shows considerable promise. And I am familiar with the older Tosevite’s work. He is perceptive.”

“He is more than perceptive. There are times when I wonder if he somehow had the spirit of a male of the Race hatched by mistake into a Big Ugly’s body,” Straha said. “When I was in exile, he was the best friend I had, regardless of species.”

“I see.” Ttomalss wondered what that said about Straha and about the expatriates from the Race in the United States.

“Do you?” Straha said. “I doubt it. Did anyone tell you that I did what I did not for the sake of the Race but for the sake of Sam Yeager, to try to save him from the difficulties into which he seems to have fallen with officials of the government of his own not-empire?”

“Yes, I was informed of that,” Ttomalss said. “It does not particularly surprise me. Ties of kinship are stronger among the Big Uglies than they are among us. Ties of friendship are stronger among us than among them. This bespeaks our higher degree of civilization: an individual chooses his friends, but has no control over who his kinsfolk are. Still, a friendship across species lines is somewhat out of the ordinary.”

“Sam Yeager is no ordinary Big Ugly, as you have already admitted,” Straha said. “I hope he is safe and unharmed; the Tosevites play political games more violently than we do.” The renegade paused. “The other thing I will note, Senior Researcher, is that I am no ordinary male of the Race.”

“You could not have made yourself so difficult if you were,” Ttomalss replied.

“Truth.” Straha used an emphatic cough. Fortunately, he took the comment as praise rather than the reverse. “And I am proud to note that I have proved as difficult for the Tosevites as I have for the Race.” He waggled one eye turret at Ttomalss. “And now, I have no doubt, you will want to put me under the microscope, the way all these other snoops have done.”

“It is my duty.” But Ttomalss wondered how much Straha cared about duty. He had abandoned first the Race and then the American Big Uglies when expedience seemed to dictate such a course. That sort of untrammeled individualism was more typical of Tosevites than of his kind.

“Well, go ahead, then.” Straha suddenly sounded amiable-so amiable, it made Ttomalss suspicious.

But he had the invitation, and would do his best to make the most of it. “Very well. How is it that you put the Tosevite Yeager’s welfare above that of any male of the Race?”

“Why should I not?” When Straha returned a question for a question, Ttomalss’ certainty that he was in for a difficult time hardened. But then the ex-shiplord condescended to explain: “I have become more intimately acquainted with him than with any male of the Race on Tosev 3. I like him better, too. He is both intelligent and reliable. And he obtained the information I sent on to Atvar at considerable risk to himself. I do not even know if he is presently living. If he is not, I am more certain the spirits of Emperors past will cherish his spirit than those of a good many males of the Race I could name.”

That was a more detailed answer than Ttomalss had expected. Straha showed a good deal of hostility toward the Race, but a defector could hardly be expected to show anything else. Ttomalss tried a related question: “Do you believe Yeager’s virtues, as you describe them, reflect him as an individual or the not-empire from which he comes?”

“Now that is an interesting question,” Straha said. “One can tell you are a true psychological researcher and not one of those males from Security, whose vision is so narrowly focused, they might as well have no eye turrets at all.”

“I thank you,” Ttomalss said, his voice dry. “Now, instead of praising the question, would you be so kind as to answer it?”

Straha laughed. “If I happen to feel like it,” he said. “Do you enjoy this chance to be rude to a male whose proper rank is so much higher than your own?”

That was a well-aimed claw. Ttomalss had to look inside himself before replying, “Yes, perhaps I do.” After a heartbeat’s pause, he added, “And you still have not answered the question.”

“Since you show a certain basic honesty, perhaps I will.” Straha still sounded amused. “I fear the answer will be more ambiguous than you might prefer, however.”

“Life is full of ambiguities,” Ttomalss said.

“Well, well. My congratulations,” Straha told him. “You are not a hatch-ling any more. You have become an adult.”

More than half mockingly, Ttomalss bent into the posture of respect. “Once more, I thank you,” he said. “And, once more, you have not answered.”

He wondered if Straha would keep on playing word games with him, but the ex-shiplord just said, “Oh, very well. Part of it is Yeager as Yeager, and part is Yeager as an American. That not-empire stresses individualism to a degree the Race finds incomprehensible. Good Big Uglies can be very fine indeed under that system, and Yeager is. Bad Big Uglies have full scope for their evil, inept ones for their incompetence. There are many great successes in the United States, and as many dreadful failures.”

“Yes, I have heard something of this,” Ttomalss said. “In my view, it is freedom turned to license.”

“I think the same thing,” Straha said. “Do you know that, not long after the ships of the colonization fleet were attacked, I told an American reporter I believed his not-empire had made the assault? He was fully prepared to print the story in a leading periodical until I explained I was merely yanking his tailstump.”

“The government of the United States would never have permitted such a story to appear,” Ttomalss said.

“So I thought as well, Senior Researcher, but he assured me I was wrong. Other American Big Uglies have told me the same thing,” Straha said. “The Americans insist that an altogether untrammeled flow of information produces the most rapid progress-their preferred word for change. If progress is seen as desirable, one would be hard pressed to disagree with them.”

“Amazing,” Ttomalss said. Even he was unsure whether he meant the American Tosevites’ preposterous lack of concern for security or their astonishing pace of technological change.

“There is, I trust you will agree, a certain irony to my present situation,” Straha said.

“Oh, indeed,” Ttomalss replied. “But then, your situation in the United States was full of irony almost from the beginning, was it not? Most of what has changed lately is the scope of things.”

“I like the way you put that: the scope of things,” Straha said. “Before, the Big Uglies used me without much trusting me because I had betrayed the Race. Now the Race will use me without much trusting me because I am betraying the Americans. This leaves me nowhere to go, no one to turn to.”

Ttomalss had wondered if Straha fully understood his own situation. Hearing that, the psychological researcher decided he had one less thing to worry about.

Because of whom she knew, Kassquit found herself sitting on several secrets that, when they hatched from their eggs, might go up like explosive-metal bombs. The first electronic message from Jonathan Yeager asking for the Race’s help in locating his father had come some days before.

I shall do what I can, she’d written back. I do not know how much that will be.

She had liked Sam Yeager well enough in their couple of meetings, and rather better than well enough in their electronic correspondence. But her feelings for Jonathan Yeager were the main factor in her seeking to help his father.

She had telephoned Reffet’s office first of all. Because she’d discovered that Sam Yeager, wild Tosevite, was roaming the Race’s electronic network, she thought she might get prompt attention from the fleetlord. And, in fact, she did; he returned her call quite quickly. When she explained what she wanted and why, he said, “As a matter of fact, that matter is already under investigation. No decision has yet been made as to whether to raise it with the relevant Tosevite authorities.”

“I… see,” Kassquit said, not seeing at all. “There is some concern for this Big Ugly’s safety.”

“I understand that,” Reffet said. “There is concern for more than the safety of this one Big Ugly, I assure you.”

That was all he would say. Kassquit tried calling Fleetlord Atvar, but his adjutant would not forward her call. She reported the curious and not altogether satisfactory conversations to Jonathan Yeager.

And then, almost without warning, Ttomalss departed for the surface of Tosev 3. “I must aid in the interrogation of a returned defector, a shiplord who has spent almost all of his time on Tosev 3 in the not-empire of the United States,” he said.

“The infamous Straha?” Kassquit asked, and Ttomalss made the affirmative gesture. Kassquit’s mind leaped. “Does his arrival have anything to do with the disappearance of the Big Ugly called Sam Yeager?”

She succeeded in astonishing her mentor. “How could you possibly know that?” Ttomalss demanded.

“I am, you will remember, still in touch with Jonathan Yeager,” Kassquit replied, “and I know that Sam Yeager and Straha are acquaintances. The connection struck me as logical.”

“I… see,” Kassquit said, much as Kassquit had to Reffet. “That is very perceptive of you. My data indicate that Sam Yeager and Straha are not merely acquaintances but friends. I hope to confirm this in discussion with Straha.” He paused. “That remark, in fact, was perceptive enough to make me believe you deserve to wear your junior researcher’s body paint not merely to show you are my ward and my apprentice, but with all appropriate rights and privileges. Would you like me to initiate the approval process when I find the time?”

“I thank you, superior sir,” Kassquit exclaimed. “That would be very generous of you.” It would also give her a secure place of her own in the Race’s hierarchy, which was not to be despised. And… “How your colleagues who disliked you for undertaking to raise a Big Ugly hatchling will be discomfited to see that hatchling taking a place in their profession.”

“I have not even the faintest notion of what you are talking about,” Ttomalss said, so matter-of-factly that Kassquit almost failed to notice the irony.

Then he’d gone down to the surface of Tosev 3. He kept in touch with Kassquit through electronic messages and telephone calls. Jonathan Yeager also kept in touch with her through electronic messages. The wild Big Ugly, she gradually realized, was frantic with concern over his father’s safety. Kassquit wondered if anyone would ever feel that much concern for her. She doubted it; such things were not in the style of the Race. Noting his intensity made her wish they were.

Do you know why your father has disappeared? she wrote him.

Of course I do, he wrote back. He disappeared because he knew too much. He added the Race’s conventional symbol for an emphatic cough.

Too much about what? Kassquit asked.

About things it was dangerous to know about, Jonathan Yeager replied.

“Well, of course,” Kassquit said with a snort when she saw that. She wrote, What sorts of things?

I told you: the sorts of things that are dangerous to know, the wild Big Ugly answered.

That made Kassquit hiss in annoyance. Jonathan Yeager was being deliberately obscure. His father had played the same sorts of games with electronic messages. After a moment, though, her annoyance subsided. Are you not being more specific for reasons related to security? she inquired.

Exactly so, he replied. I am sorry, but that is how things are. If you knew everything, it might put you in danger, and it might put me in more danger than I am already in, too.

Kassquit hadn’t thought about danger to Jonathan Yeager. Once she did think about it, though, it made sense. If Sam Yeager had disappeared because of something he knew, and if Jonathan Yeager knew the same thing, logic dictated that he too might disappear. Kassquit did make one attempt to learn more, writing, If this knowledge is dangerous, perhaps you should pass it on so that it is not lost if something unfortunate happens to you.

I thank you, but I think I had better not, wrote the wild Big Ugly who had been her lover-an English word he used to describe a relationship with which the Race was not familiar. I also think my father took care of this matter, to make sure the data would not disappear with him.

Puzzle pieces that hadn’t quite fit together now suddenly did. He passed the data on to the Shiplord Straha, who brought them to Cairo with him, Kassquit wrote. She did not include the conventional symbol for an interrogative cough.

Jonathan Yeager waited longer before replying this time, as if thinking through just what his response ought to be. When it finally came, it was cautious: I believe that to be a truth, yes. He broke off the electronic conversation a little later, perhaps from concern that he might reveal too much.

What he’d already said was enough-much more than enough-to stimulate Kassquit’s always active curiosity. Straha had been a stench in the scent receptors of the Race ever since his spectacular defection. He had been favorably received on his return to Cairo. Kassquit knew that from Ttomalss. He had to have learned something important to get a favorable reception from Atvar. That reinforced the notion that Sam Yeager had known something vital and passed it on to the renegade shiplord.

The next time she spoke with Ttomalss, she asked him, “What spectacular piece of information did Straha learn from Sam Yeager?”

She was pleased when Ttomalss did not bother pretending he had no idea of what she was talking about. What he did say was, “I had better not tell you. The information is inflammatory enough that I am lucky-if that is the word I want, which I doubt-to have been entrusted with it myself.”

“Whom would I tell?” Kassquit asked. “Who among the Race would want to learn anything from me? Please remember, superior sir, I am nothing but a Big Ugly from an orphaned clutch.” The metaphor fit imperfectly, but it was the only one the Race had. “Few take me seriously. What you tell me would stay safe and secure.”

Ttomalss laughed. “You are ingenious. I cannot deny that. In fact, I applaud it. Few in the Race would have thought to use outcast status as a justification for receiving sensitive data. Even so, I am afraid I must tell you no. The secrecy classification for this data is too red for me to have any other choice.”

“By the Emperor!” Kassquit exclaimed, irked that her ploy had failed. “By the way you make things sound, we might be at war with another Tosevite not-empire by this time tomorrow.”

“Truth,” Ttomalss said. “We might be.” And then, as Jonathan Yeager had before him, he ended his conversation with Kassquit as fast as he could.

“By the Emperor!” she said again, and again looked down at the floor of her cubicle to show reverence for a male she’d never seen and never would see. “Is it as bad as that?” It almost surely was; Ttomalss, as she knew from a lifetime of experience, was not the sort to panic over nothing.

What could Straha know? The question tormented her, like an itch under the scales. She laughed when the simile crossed her mind, laughed and ran a hand along her smooth, scaleless skin. No, the language of the Race and its images did not always fit her well. That she could laugh instead of mourning said she was in a better mood than usual.

But laughing brought her no closer to the truth, whatever that was, wherever it lay. What could Straha know? What could Sam Yeager have known? How was she supposed to figure that out when she’d never set foot on the surface of Tosev 3? Whatever it was, though, it had to be something that had to do with the Race. Maybe her not setting foot on Tosev 3 didn’t matter after all.

I should not be guessing, she thought. I should know. The data are all in front of me. Some of the Race’s games, played either in groups or against a computer, involved solving elaborate puzzles where all the relevant pieces and many that were not were displayed together. This was like one of those games, except she wasn’t sure she could see all the pieces.

As in those games, she could pause and review the evidence. She didn’t have access to the conversations she and Sam Yeager had had when he visited the starship; Ttomalss and other psychological researchers endlessly studied those recordings for what they revealed about how Big Uglies thought. But she could go over all the electronic conversations she’d had with the wild Tosevite-those where he admitted his species and also those in which he appeared as Regeya and Maargyees-fictitious members of the Race under whose names he’d managed to sneak onto the electronic network.

Kassquit discovered she enjoyed reviewing those messages. Sam Yeager had an odd and interesting slant on the world. Part of that, of course, was because he wasn’t really a male of the Race. His perspectives were alien. But part, she’d gathered from meeting Jonathan Yeager and the Deutsch pilot Johannes Drucker, was Sam Yeager himself. He had an odd and interesting slant on the world even compared to other Big Uglies.

He also had wide-ranging interests, wide-ranging curiosity. That, Kassquit knew, was more common among Tosevites than among the Race. But, even for a Tosevite, Sam Yeager had a sense of what was interesting that swooped and darted and landed in unpredictable places.

Among them… Kassquit paused and reread a few of the things Sam Yeager had said in the guise of Regeya. She let out a soft, speculative hiss, very much as if she were in truth the female of the Race she wished herself to be. She didn’t know. She couldn’t know, not without asking some questions to which she wouldn’t get answers: Ttomalss had already told her that those answers, whatever they were, were too secret for her to be allowed to learn them.

No, she didn’t, couldn’t, know. But she had what she thought was a pretty good idea. She almost wished she didn’t. The Deutsche had come much too close to destroying this starship, and had destroyed too much that was the Race’s. Now, she feared, the Americans might get their chance.

Glen Johnson was sleeping when alarms inside the Lewis and Clark started screaming. He jerked and thrashed and tried to get out of his sleep sack without undoing the straps that secured him in it. That didn’t work. He had to wait till his brain fully engaged before his hands could reach for and open the fastening.

“Screw you, Brigadier General Healey,” he muttered as the sirens howled insistently. He understood the need for periodic drills. He just resented having this one wake him up. Anything he resented, he blamed on the spaceship’s short-tempered commandant. That seemed fair. Whenever Healey found something he didn’t like, he blamed Johnson.

The number-three pilot had just pushed off toward the doorway to his cubicle when he realized what sort of drill it was. The ones the Lewis and Clark ran most often were pressure-loss drills, because that was the sort of misfortune likeliest to strike. Not this time. This set of sirens was summoning the spaceship’s crew to battle stations.

“Jesus!” Johnson muttered as he swung hand over hand to the control room. He couldn’t remember the last time the ship had run a battle-stations drill. He couldn’t remember any battle-stations drills. That made him wonder if it was a drill.

If it’s not, we go down swinging, he thought. That wasn’t a good thought to have, not when they wouldn’t even take out any Lizards while they fought. The Race’s machines would do the dirty work.

He almost bumped into Mickey Flynn at the entrance to the control room. They did an Alphonse and Gaston act-after you; no, after you- before Flynn preceded him into the Lewis and Clark’s nerve center. Walter Stone was already there; it was his shift.

“Well?” Flynn asked. “Are we radioactive dust?”

“Gas,” Stone answered. “Radioactive gas.”

“I am wounded,” Flynn declared. Wounded or not, he strapped himself into his chair.

Johnson got into the seat behind those of the two men senior to him. “What the hell’s going on?” he asked. “This is a drill, isn’t it?” Please, God, tell me it’s a drill.

“We’re not under attack,” Stone said. “All the Lizard spy ships we’ve identified are sitting there quietly. If there are any we haven’t identified, they’re sitting there quietly, too.”

Even before Johnson had finished his sigh of relief, Flynn said, “The assumption here, of course, is that they may not necessarily keep on sitting there quietly. I’ve heard assumptions I liked better.”

“Now that you mention it, so have I,” Johnson said. “They haven’t shown hostility since we first spotted them. Why are we worried all of a sudden?”

From behind him, a rough voice said, “You always were a nosy son of a bitch, weren’t you, Johnson?”

“Yes, sir, General Healey,” Johnson answered. As far as he was concerned, Brigadier General Charles Healey won the SOB prize hands down. He turned around and smiled into the commandant’s hard, blunt-featured face. “It’s made me what I am today, sir.”

Healey didn’t like taking sarcasm; he preferred dishing it out. After muttering under his breath, he said, “You’re plainly supernumerary here. Perhaps your station ought to be out in the scooter, engaging targets from the flank.”

“If you say so, sir.” Johnson shrugged. It wasn’t even a bad idea. He didn’t think it would help much-he didn’t think anything would help much against a determined Lizard attack-but it wouldn’t hurt, either. Of course, if things went wrong, as they were bound to do, he’d have the loneliest death in the solar system. “Tell me where to go, and I’ll go there.”

He knew Healey would rise to the line like a trout rising to a fly. But before Healey could say anything, Walter Stone asked, “Sir, what the devil is going on?”

Stone could get away with questions like that; the commandant approved of him. Brigadier General Healey scowled and sighed and answered, “Things are heating up between Cairo and Little Rock. I don’t know why, exactly”-the scowl got deeper; he didn’t like not knowing-“but they are. We need to be ready for whatever happens.”

“I’ve heard news I liked better,” Mickey Flynn observed.

“Me, too,” Stone agreed. “What touched this off, sir? President Warren’s not crazy, the way the Nazis were. He couldn’t be threatening the Lizards.”

“He’s not,” Healey said. “They’re angry at us, and I don’t know just why. I told you that.” He shook his head, annoyed at having to repeat himself.

“If they want to bad enough, they can wipe us right out of the asteroid belt, and that’s with the ship full of johnny-come-latelies,” Johnson said. Healey gave him another venomous look, presumably for seeing the truth and presuming to tell it.

“If they want to bad enough, they can wipe us off the face of the Earth,” Flynn said.

“We’d hurt ’em if they tried it.” Healey’s voice was savage. “We’d hurt ’em a lot worse than the Germans did. We’re stronger to begin with, and the Nazis already gave their defenses one good pounding.”

Johnson nodded at that. Every word the commandant said was true. And yet… He didn’t have to put and yet into words. Walter Stone did it for him:

“Mickey’s right, sir. I’m not saying you’re wrong. We’d hurt ’em. We’d hurt ’em plenty. But if they wanted to, they could smash us back to the Stone Age.”

“They’d really have to want to,” Johnson said. “That’s the point of all the bombs and rockets and submarines. They’d know they were in a fight.”

“Another few years,” Healey muttered. “Maybe just another couple of years. Another couple of years and the goddamn Lizards would have been talking out of the other side of their snouts. You boys all know it. That’s why we’re here.”

“One of the reasons, anyhow,” Flynn said.

“The A-number-one reason, and you know it as well as I do,” Healey ground out. He scowled at Mickey Flynn, challenging him to disagree. The Lewis and Clark’s number-two pilot maintained a discreet silence.

“There are a few other things going on,” Johnson said. “The mining, the colonies on every rock where we can run up a dome-we haven’t just come out here to fight a war. We’re here to stay, if we can do a little more spreading out before the Lizards try and drop the hammer on us.”

“All sorts of good things here,” Stone agreed. “The Race doesn’t have any real notion of how many goodies there are, either. From what they say, the solar systems in their Empire are tidier places than ours.”

“Smaller suns,” Mickey Flynn said. “Fewer leftover chunks of rock after their planets formed.” An eyebrow quirked. “They don’t know what they’re missing.”

“If they give us the time we need, it won’t be missing them,” Johnson said. Brigadier General Healey gave him a nasty look. “Don’t violate security,” he snapped.

And that did it. Johnson lost his temper. “Christ on a crutch, sir, give it a rest,” he said. “I’m not on the radio to the Race, and we all know what’s going on.”

“You’re insubordinate,” Healey said.

“Maybe I am-and maybe it’s about time, too,” Johnson retorted. “Somebody’s needed to tell you to go piss up a rope ever since before we left Earth orbit. If I’m the one stuck belling the cat, okay, I am, that’s all.”

“You have been nothing but trouble since you came aboard this spacecraft,” Healey said. “I should have put you out the air lock then.”

“Oh, he has his uses, sir,” Flynn said. “After all, whose money would we take in card games if he weren’t here?”

That was slander; Johnson more than held his own. But it distracted the commandant-and Johnson, too. Stone continued the work of changing the subject: “If the Lizards are angry enough at us now, what we might be able to do in a few years doesn’t matter. Remember the Hermann Goring.” The Reich’s imitation of the Lewis and Clark had been blown to atoms during the last round of fighting. Stone went on, “So why the devil are the Lizards ticked at us?”

Brigadier General Healey shook his head. “I do not have that information. I already told you I don’t have it. I wish to God I did.” Every inch of him screamed that he thought he was entitled to the information, and that he blamed people back on Earth for withholding it from him. “The Lizards are playing it close to their scales, too, dammit. You’d think they’d be screaming from the housetops if they caught us doing something we weren’t supposed to, but they aren’t.”

Thoughtfully, Stone said, “Sounds like they will fight if they’re pushed, but they don’t want to do it unless they decide they have to.”

“But they’re pushing us,” Healey said. “That’s what makes this such a confusing mess.”

“Have they given us any demands?” Flynn asked.

“Nothing I’ve heard.” The commandant sounded all the more frustrated. “And I should hear, God damn it to hell. How am I supposed to do my job if I don’t know what the devil is going on?”

“What it sounds like is, if anybody admitted what the fuss was about, everything would go up in smoke right then and there,” Johnson said.

Brigadier General Healey nodded as if he and Johnson hadn’t had words a few minutes before. The riddle facing him was a bigger source of irritation than even his number-three pilot. “You’re right-and that doesn’t make any sense, either.”

“Nothing makes sense if you don’t know the answers,” Mickey Flynn observed. “The people who do know the answers must have, or think they have, good reason to make sure nobody else finds out. We call them senseless. They call us ignorant. Odds are, we and they are both right.”

“They’d better not be senseless, or all of us-and an awful lot of people and Lizards back on Earth-are in a ton of trouble,” Johnson said.

“This is true,” Flynn agreed. “On the other hand, I could refer you to the late Doctor Ernst Kaltenbrunner-if he weren’t late, of course. He was senseless, and now he is and will remain permanently senseless.”

Johnson grimaced and protested, “Yeah, but the Nazis have been off the deep end ever since Hitler started slaughtering Jews. We aren’t like that. We’ve always played straight.” He hesitated. “We played straight with everything I know about except the Lewis and Clark, as a matter of fact.”

“It’s not us,” Healey said. “I have been assured of that. Had it been us, the Race has had plenty of chances to take us off the board.”

And that was also true. Then Johnson said, “What if we haven’t played straight with things nobody up here knows anything about?”

“Like what?” Walter Stone asked.

“How should I know?” Johnson answered. “If I did know, it wouldn’t be something nobody knew about.”

“Elementary, my dear Watson,” Flynn murmured.

“What if, what if, what if,” Brigadier General Healey snarled. “What we need are facts. The only fact we’ve got is that the Race is leaning on the United States. If it leans too hard, we’ve got to fight back or knuckle under. We’re not about to knuckle under.”

“Well, there’s one other fact, too,” Johnson said. “If the USA goes to war with the Lizards now, we lose. And no matter how many drills we hold, the Lewis and Clark is lunch.” He waited-he hoped for-Healey to argue with him. The commandant didn’t.

“Why on earth are the Lizards gearing up for war against the United States?” Reuven Russie asked his father over the supper table. “Has everybody in the whole world gone meshuggeh?”

Moishe Russie said, “I wouldn’t be surprised. It’s the only explanation that makes much sense.”

“Have you talked with the fleetlord?” Reuven’s sister Judith asked.

“I’ve called him several times,” Reuven’s father answered. “Most of them, he hasn’t wanted to talk to me. When he has been willing to talk on the phone, he hasn’t had anything much to say.”

“But what could the United States have done to get the Race so angry?” Reuven asked. “With the Germans, everybody else had plenty of good reasons to hate them. But the USA has just sat there and minded its own business. What’s wrong with that?”

“I don’t know,” his father said. “Since he won’t really talk to me, I’m having a devil of a time finding out, too. But I can tell you this-Straha is back in the Race’s territory, and that’s not anything I thought I’d see while I was alive.”

It was also something that meant very little to Reuven. “Straha?” He put the name into a question half a beat before his sisters could.

Moishe Russie’s smile was half amused, half wistful. “You were only a little boy when he defected to the Americans, Reuven,” he said. “Esther and Judith, you weren’t even imagined yet, let alone here. He was something like the third- or fourth-highest ranking male in the conquest fleet. He tried some sort of coup against Atvar, and it didn’t work, and he fled.”

“I don’t suppose you’re going to ask the fleetlord about the details now,” Reuven said.

His mother laughed. “See what your fancy education does for you?”

“Mother!” he said indignantly. His father made cracks like that all the time. His sisters made them whenever they thought they could get away with them. For Rivka Russie to make one, too, felt like a betrayal.

“But the point,” his father said, “the point is that he’s left the United States and come to Cairo-I think he’s in Cairo. He had to know something important, or else he’d be imprisoned somewhere, and he’s not.”

“And it’s probably something that has to do with the United States, since he lived there so long,” Reuven said.

“Very good, Sherlock.” That was Esther, who’d been reading a lot of Arthur Conan Doyle in Hebrew translation. “Now all you have to do is figure out what he knows.”

Reuven looked at his father. Moishe Russie shrugged and said, “I already told you, I don’t know. Maybe we’ll all find out one day before too long. I’m hoping we never find out, because that will mean the trouble’s gone away.”

“I hadn’t thought of it like that.” Reuven took another bite of beefsteak. He raised his wineglass. “Here’s to ignorance!”

Everyone drank the toast. Amid laughter, Reuven’s father said, “That’s probably the first time anyone has ever made that toast inside a Jewish house. Alevai, it’ll be the last time, too.” His face clouded. “Alevai, we won’t need to make that kind of toast again.”

“Omayn.” Reuven and his mother spoke together.

After supper, Reuven asked his father, “If the United States and the Lizards go to war, what do we do?”

“We here in Palestine, you mean?” Moishe Russie asked, and Reuven nodded. His father sighed. “About the same thing we did when the Race fought the Germans: sit tight and hope the Americans don’t manage to land a missile on Jerusalem. I think that would be less likely in this fight than in the war with the Nazis. The Americans don’t particularly hate Jews, so they don’t have any big reason for aiming a missile here-and most of their missiles are farther away than the ones the Germans fired at us.”

“How do you know that?” Reuven asked. “They may have three submarines sitting right off the coast. How would we know?”

“We wouldn’t, not until something either happened or didn’t,” his father said. “I told you what I thought was likely. If you don’t like that, come up with your own answers.”

“I like it fine. I hope you’re right,” Reuven said. “Actually, I hope we’re all worrying over nothing, and that there won’t be a war.”

This time, his father said, “Omayn!”

When they walked to work the next morning, someone had painted new black swastikas on several walls, and the phrase Allahu akbar! by them. Reuven laughed to keep from cursing. “Haven’t the Arabs noticed that that firm’s gone out of business?”

“Who can say?” Moishe Russie answered. “Maybe they wish it were still operating. Or maybe it is still operating, but being quiet about it. That wouldn’t surprise me. Once some things get loose, they’re hard to kill.”

“I thought Dornberger was supposed to be a relatively civilized man,” Reuven said.

“Compared to Hitler, compared to Himmler, compared to Kaltenbrunner-how much praise is that?” his father asked. “He’s still a German. He’s still a Nazi. If he can find some way to make the Lizards unhappy, don’t you think he’ll use it? Getting the Arabs to erupt is one easy way to do it.”

“And if he incites them against us, too, all the better,” Reuven said. His father didn’t contradict him. He wished Moishe Russie had.

Once they got to the office, Yetta showed them their appointments. Reuven sighed. When he’d been studying at the Moishe Russie Medical College, human physiology and biochemistry had looked like important subjects. And they’d looked like fascinating subjects. Seeing them exemplified in the persons of his patients was much less exciting. A lot of the answers he got were ambiguous. Sometimes he couldn’t find any answers at all. And even a lot of the ones that were perfectly clear weren’t very interesting. Yes, sir, that boil will respond to antibiotics. Yes, ma’am, that toe is broken. No, it doesn’t matter if we put a cast on it or not. It’ll do the same either way, and yes, it will hurt for a few weeks.

He gave a tetanus shot. He removed a splinter of metal that had got lodged in a construction worker’s leg. He took the cast off a broken wrist his father had set a few weeks before. He swabbed a four-year-old’s throat to see if the girl was coming down with a streptococcus infection. He injected local anesthetic and stitched up a cut arm. Every bit of that needed doing. He did it well. But it wasn’t what he’d imagined a physician’s career was like.

He was putting a clean dressing on the cut arm when Yetta stuck her head into the room and said, “Mrs. Radofsky just telephoned. Her daughter is screaming her head off-she thinks it’s an earache. Can you fit her in?”

A screaming toddler-just what I need, Reuven thought. But he nodded. “One way or another, I’ll manage.”

“That’s good,” the receptionist said. “I asked your father, but he said he was too busy and told me to go to you instead.” Yetta was plain to the point of frumpishness, but at the moment she looked almost comically amused. “I’ll tell her she can bring Miriam in to you in an hour, if that’s all right.”

“Fine,” Reuven said. He almost asked her what was so funny, but held off at the last minute because he saw a possible answer. She thinks my father is trying to fix me up with a pretty widow, he realized. That almost started him laughing. Then he wondered what was so laughable about it. With Jane gone to Canada, he wouldn’t have minded getting fixed up with anybody.

As if Mrs. Radofsky cares about you for anything but whether you can make her little girl feel better, he thought. That didn’t bother him. That was the way things were supposed to be.

Even back in his examination room, he could tell when the widow Radofsky brought her daughter into the office. The racket Miriam was making left no possible doubt. Reuven was looking at another widow, a little old lady named Goldblatt whose varicose veins were troubling her. “Gevalt!” she said. “That one’s not very happy.”

“No, she’s not,” Reuven agreed. “I’m going to recommend an elastic bandage on that leg to help keep those veins under control for you. I don’t think they’re bad enough to need surgery now. If they bother you more, though, come back in and we’ll have another look at them.”

“All right, Doctor, thank you,” Mrs. Goldblatt said. Reuven hid his smile. I’m learning, he thought. If he’d told her straight out that she was fussing over very little, she’d have left in a huff. As things were, she seemed well enough pleased, even though all he’d done was sugarcoat essentially the same message.

“Can you see Mrs. Radofsky and Miriam now?” Yetta asked.

“Why not?” Reuven raised an eyebrow. “I’ve been hearing them-or Miriam, anyhow-for a while now.” The receptionist sniffed. No, she didn’t care for anyone’s jokes but her own.

A moment later, the young widow carried her daughter into the examination room. Miriam was still howling at the top of her lungs, and was tugging at the lobe of her left ear and trying to stick her finger into it. That would have been diagnostic all by itself. Mrs. Radofsky gave Reuven a wan smile and tried to talk through the din: “Thank you for seeing me on such short notice. She woke up like this at four in the morning.” No wonder her smile was wan.

Reuven grabbed his otoscope. “We’ll see what we can do.”

Miriam didn’t want to let him examine her, not for beans she didn’t. She screeched, “No!”-a two-year-old’s favorite word anyway, as Reuven remembered from his sisters-and tried to grab the otoscope and keep it away from her ear.

“Can you hold her, please?” Reuven asked her mother.

“All right,” the widow Radofsky said. Even in his brief time in practice, Reuven had discovered that almost no mother would hold her precious darling tight enough to do a doctor one damn bit of good. He’d thought about investing in pediatric straitjackets, or even manufacturing them and making his fortune from grateful physicians the world around. He expected to do half the holding himself this time, too.

But he got a surprise. Mrs. Radofsky battled Miriam to a standstill. Reuven got a good look inside a red, swollen ear canal. “She’s got it, sure enough,” he said. “I’m going to give her a shot of penicillin, and I’m going to prescribe a liquid for her. You have an icebox to keep it cold?” Most people did, but not everybody.

To his relief, Miriam’s mother nodded. She rolled her daughter onto her stomach on the examining table so Reuven could give her the shot in the right cheek. That produced a new set of screams, almost supersonically shrill. When they subsided, the widow Radofsky said, “Thank you very much.”

“You’re welcome.” Reuven felt like sticking a finger in his ear, too. “She should start getting relief in twenty-four hours. If she doesn’t, bring her back. Make sure she takes all the liquid. It’s nasty, but she needs it.”

“I understand.” Mrs. Radofsky didn’t have to shout, for Miriam, finally exhausted, hiccuped a couple of times and fell asleep. Her mother sighed and said, “Life is never as simple as we wish it would be, is it?” She brushed back a lock of dark hair that had come loose.

“No,” Reuven said. “All you can do is your best.” Miriam’s mother nodded again, then sent him a sharp look. Is she noticing me and not just the man in the white coat? he wondered, and hoped she was.