Down to Earth

6

Gorppet liked Baghdad no more than he’d liked Basra. If anything, he liked it less than he’d liked Basra, because it was a bigger city with more Big Uglies in it. And all of those Big Uglies were united in their hatred of the Race.

His squad always moved together. That was a standard order in Baghdad. Males could not travel these narrow, winding streets by ones and twos. They simply disappeared when they did, disappeared or were ambushed and slain. Whole squads had perished that way, too. Gorppet didn’t like to dwell on that.

“How do we tell what is a street and what is not?” Betvoss asked peevishly-he could always find something to complain about. “With so much rubble strewn everywhere, what used to be streets and what used to be houses look the same.”

“Just follow me,” Gorppet answered, and pressed on. He had trouble telling streets from houses, too, but wasn’t about to admit it. He picked what looked like the easiest route through the cratered landscape. His eye turrets tried to look every which way at once. The rubble showed that the Big Uglies had fought hard hereabouts. Enough was left standing to give their diehards lots of hiding places, too. And there were plenty of diehards.

Someone had scrawled something in the sinuous local script on a whitewashed stretch of mud-brick wall that hadn’t been knocked down. “What does that say, superior sir?” one of Gorppet’s troopers asked.

“Spirits of Emperors past turn their backs on me if I know,” he answered. “I’ve learned to speak some of this miserable language-Arabic, they call it-but I can’t read a word. Each sound has one character if it is at the beginning of a word, another one in the middle, and still another if it is at the end. More trouble than it is worth.”

“It probably just says, ‘Allahu akbar!’ anyhow,” Betvoss said. “I do not think these Tosevites know how to say anything else.”

Shouts-Tosevite shouts-came from ahead. Gorppet swung his rifle toward them. “We advance-cautiously,” he said. He envisioned all sorts of dire possibilities as he took advantage of piled rubble to climb up and see what was going on without exposing most of himself to gunfire.

“What is it, superior sir?” Even Betvoss sounded anxious. Anyone who wanted another fight with the Big Uglies was addled, or so Gorppet thought. He reckoned Betvoss addled, all right, but not so addled as that.

And then, when he could see what was going on, he laughed in relief. “Nothing but a pack of Tosevites kicking a ball around a flat stretch of ground,” he said. “We can go on.”

Kicking a ball around was the Big Uglies’ favorite sport hereabouts. It was, from what Gorppet had heard, the Big Uglies’ favorite sport in almost all the lands the Race ruled. Gorppet couldn’t see much point to it himself, but then-the Emperor be praised! — he was no Big Ugly.

The Tosevites looked up warily as he and his comrades approached. “Go on,” he said in the guttural local language. “Play. We do not trouble you if you do not trouble us.”

If the Big Uglies did feel like causing trouble… But one of them spoke in the language of the Race: “It is good.” He said the same thing in Arabic, so his fellow Tosevites would understand. They started kicking the ball again, their robes flapping as they ran after it.

Still wary, Gorppet led his males past the Big Uglies. But they were intent on their sport, and paid the squad little attention. Gorppet wondered how many of them had been fighting hereabouts till the Race brought in enough soldiers to reduce the latest uprising from boil to sizzle. Quite a few, unless he missed his guess.

As if getting by the pack of Tosevites were a good omen, the rest of the patrol also went smoothly. Gorppet brought his squad through the perimeter of razor wire and back to the barracks without any untoward incidents. “If only it were this easy all the time,” he said.

“It probably means the Big Uglies are plotting something,” Betvoss said. Gorppet wished he could quarrel with that, but he couldn’t.

As things turned out, the Race was plotting something. An officer harangued the patrol leaders: “One of our experts on the Big Uglies has come up with a way to bring them round toward reverencing the spirits of Emperors past-making them pay if they do anything else. We are ordered to collect coins outside the houses of their superstition. If they do not pay, they are not to be admitted.”

Gorppet stuck out his tongue, calling for attention. When the officer granted him leave to speak, he said, “Superior sir, do you mean to say that we are becoming tax collectors rather than soldiers?”

“We are becoming tax collectors and soldiers,” the officer replied, and Gorppet realized the fellow’s fancy body paint didn’t keep him from being very unhappy about the orders he’d received. “I do not say this will be easy, for I do not believe that for a moment. But it is what we are required to do, and so it shall be done.”

“Superior sir, have you any idea what the Big Uglies are likely to do if we try to make them pay before we let them enter the houses of their superstition?” Gorppet demanded. He had such an idea, and did not care for it at all.

“We are also going to move a landcruiser or mechanized combat vehicle up before each of the said houses by tomorrow morning,” the officer answered, which proved he did indeed have some idea. The way he ignored the nearly insubordinate tone of Gorppet’s questioning proved the same thing. He went on, “This policy, you must understand, is not regional in scope. It shall be done over all the areas of Tosev 3 under the Race’s rule. The sooner the Big Uglies begin venerating the spirits of Emperors past as we do, the sooner they will become contented citizens of the Empire.”

Gorppet supposed that made sense, at least in the long run. The Race habitually thought in terms of the long run, and had succeeded by pursuing long-term strategies… until Tosev 3. Such strategies might yet succeed here, too, but they were apt to end up unpleasant for the poor males who had to put them into motion right at the moment.

Another squad leader had to be thinking along those same lines, for he said, “I expect we can count on Khomeini and the other fanatics to exploit our policy to the greatest possible degree.”

“I think that is likely to be truth,” the officer agreed unhappily. “We shall have to see whether the results of the policy justify the difficulties it will bring with it. We are all veterans here, every single male from the conquest fleet. We know our dealings with the Tosevites are full of experiments and improvisations. Maybe this one will work. Maybe it will not. We shall have to wait and see.” He made a peremptory gesture. “You males are dismissed.”

So much for being veterans together, Gorppet thought. He went back to the barracks and told the males of his squad what the new plan was. None of them had much to say about it. Betvoss was too startled-perhaps too appalled-even to complain. An orderly came by with the locale of the house of superstition to which the squad was assigned. That confirmed Gorppet’s words and left everyone glummer than ever.

When morning came, all the males made sure they were carrying plenty of ammunition. They also made sure their body armor did the best possible job of covering their vitals. It might not hold out a high-powered bullet, but it was the best hope they had.

To Gorppet’s relief, the house of superstition where his squad had to collect fees wasn’t far from the barracks. The troopers got there just before sunrise. A landcruiser had already arrived, which made the squad leader feel better. He devoutly hoped its immense bulk and formidable gun would make the Big Uglies think twice about any trouble.

A Tosevite in wrappings and head cloth was expostulating at the landcruiser commander, who stood up in his cupola watching and waiting. That male either spoke no Arabic or preferred to pretend he didn’t. The Big Ugly rounded on Gorppet. “What are you doing here?” he demanded.

“Collecting money,” Gorppet answered. “If your males and females do not pay half a dinar each, they do not go in.”

“Half a dinar?” the Big Ugly howled. “Half a dinar at each of five daily prayers? You will make beggars of us!”

“I have my orders,” Gorppet said stolidly. He gestured with his rifle barrel toward the landcruiser. “I have the power to make orders good.”

“You are wicked. The great Satan will burn you in the fires of hell forever!” the Big Ugly said. “Why do you torment us? Why do you persecute us?”

As far as Gorppet was concerned, Tosevites tormented the Race far more than the other way round. Before he could say as much, amplified screeches from the towers at the corners of the house of superstitions summoned the local Big Uglies to the day’s first petitions to the imaginary all-powerful Big Ugly beyond the sky.

Gorppet positioned his males in the entranceway. Since he knew more Arabic than the others, he made the announcement: “Half a dinar to go inside. If you do not pay, go home and venerate the spirits of Emperors past.”

His fellow males backed him up with rifles aimed at the Big Uglies coming to worship. The landcruiser backed him up with its cannon and machine gun and intimidating massiveness. Despite all that, he thought he would have to start firing into the building crowd. The Tosevites screamed and cursed and waved their arms in the air and jumped up and down. But they had been taken by surprise, and had not thought to bring firearms to the house of superstition.

Some of them threw down coins or fluttering pieces of paper also in circulation as money. Gorppet wasn’t sure all of those payments were half-dinars. He didn’t check very closely. Any payment was enough to satisfy him. He used the barrel of his rifle to beckon into the house of superstition those who gave money of any sort.

Some of the others kept angrily milling about. Others headed back toward their homes. He hoped they were relieved to have an excuse to go away, and were not going to return later with weapons.

Rather to his surprise, the Big Uglies didn’t start shooting. Betvoss said, “Well, we got away with it. I would not have believed that we could.”

“We got away with it this time,” Gorppet said. “These Tosevites come here to pray five times a day, remember. We are going to have to charge them this fee every time they come. Who knows how long they will tolerate it?” He sighed. “If only they would venerate the spirits of Emperors past, life would be easier for us.”

“Truth,” Betvoss said. “But they have all these houses for their own superstition, and none for the truth. How can we expect them to venerate the Emperors if they have nowhere to do it?”

Gorppet stared at the other male in surprise. Like any malcontent, Betvoss was full of ideas. As with any malcontent, most of them were bad. But this one struck Gorppet as quite good. He said, “You ought to pass that along to the authorities, Betvoss. It might get you a bonus or a promotion.”

If it got Betvoss a bonus, that might improve his sour attitude. Stranger things had happened-on Tosev 3, plenty of stranger things had happened. And if it got Betvoss a promotion, Gorppet wouldn’t have to worry about him any more. Gorppet swiveled his eye turrets this way and that. He wouldn’t have to worry about much of anything-not till the next call for worship at this house of superstition, anyhow.

Along with his family, Reuven Russie walked toward the synagogue a few blocks away for Friday evening services. He was less devout than his parents, and sometimes felt guilty about it. They’d suffered because of their Judaism even before the Nazis invaded Poland. For him, being a Jew had been pretty easy through most of his life: the Lizards generally preferred Jews to Muslims. He wondered if his faith needed strengthening in the fire of persecution.

On the other hand, Judith and Esther took their belief more seriously than he did his, and they’d never been persecuted at all. They chattered with their mother as the family rounded the last corner on the way to the synagogue. Maybe they just hadn’t yet been exposed to the flood of secular knowledge he’d acquired.

But his father was full of secular knowledge, too, and still believed. Reuven scratched his head. Plainly, he didn’t understand everything that was going on.

Moishe Russie pointed toward a crowd of Jews gathered in front of the synagogue. That was unusual. “Hello,” he said. “I wonder what’s going on.”

Whatever it was, a lot of people were excited. Angry shouts in Yiddish and Hebrew reached Reuven’s ears. Rivka Russie pointed, too. “Look,” she said. “There’s a Lizard standing in front of the entrance. What’s he doing there?”

“Maybe he wants to convert,” Esther said. Judith giggled.

Reuven leaned toward his father and murmured, “How would we circumcise him?” Moishe Russie let out a strangled snort. He waggled a reproachful finger at Reuven, but his heart wasn’t in the gesture. It was the sort of joke any doctor or medical student might have made.

As Reuven got closer to the synagogue, the shouting began turning into intelligible words. “An outrage!” someone cried. “An imposition!” someone else exclaimed. “We won’t put up with this!” a woman warned shrilly. Reproach filled a man’s voice: “After all we’ve done for you!”

The Lizard-who was armed and wearing body armor-kept speaking hissing Hebrew: “I have my orders. I cannot go against my orders.”

“What are your orders?” Reuven asked in the language of the Race, pushing through the crowd toward the doorway.

As he’d hoped, the male responded to hearing his own tongue. “Perhaps you will explain it to these Tosevites better than I can,” he replied. “My orders are that no one may enter this house of superstition without first paying five hundred mills.”

“Half a pound?” Reuven exclaimed. “Why? What is the purpose of this order? How can I explain it if I do not understand it?”

“It is to reduce superstition,” the Lizard told him. “If you Tosevites have to pay a tax to gather together to celebrate what is not true, the hope is that you will turn toward the veneration of the spirits of Emperors past, which is true.”

A woman grabbed at Reuven’s arm. “What’s he saying?” she demanded.

Reuven translated the male’s words. They brought a fresh storm of protest. Some of the language in which the protest was couched made Esther and Judith exclaim, whether in horror or in admiration, Reuven couldn’t quite tell. “A tax on religion?” someone said. “Who ever heard of a tax on religion?”

But an old man with a white beard answered, “I came to Palestine when the Turks still ruled here. They used to tax Jews, and Christians, too. Only Muslims got off without paying.”

Understanding that, the Lizard said, “We tax Muslims, too. We tax all who do not venerate the Emperors.”

“They’re trying to convert us!” a woman said indignantly.

The Lizard understood that, too, and made the negative hand gesture. “You may follow your superstition,” he said. “If you do, though, you have to pay.”

Moishe Russie took out his wallet. “I am going to pay,” he said, and gave the male a two-pound note and another worth five hundred mills. “This is for all my family.”

“Pass on,” the Lizard said, and stood aside to let the Russies into the synagogue. Reuven discovered they were not the first to go in. He and his father sat on the right side of the aisle, his mother and sisters on the left. All the conversation, among men on the one side and women on the other, was about the tax.

“How will poor Jews pay it?” a fat man asked. “It is not a small fee.”

“Maybe we can get the Race to lower it,” Reuven’s father said. “If we can’t, the rest of the congregation will have to pay for the Jews who can’t pay for themselves. How could we spend money in a way more pleasing to God?”

The fat man didn’t look as if he wanted to spend money at all, whether it pleased God or not. Reuven set a hand on his father’s arm. “I’m proud of you,” he said.

Moishe Russie shrugged. “If we don’t help one another, who’s going to help us? The answer is, nobody. We’ve seen that too many times, over too many hundreds of years. We have to take care of our own.”

A couple of rows in front of the Russies, a scholarly looking man with a fuzzy gray beard was saying, “The Romans worshiped their Emperors, too. They didn’t try to make the Jews do it.”

“The Lizards aren’t trying to make us worship their Emperors, either,” somebody else answered. “They’re just trying to make it expensive for us if we don’t.”

“True enough.” The man who looked like a scholar nodded. “But that wasn’t quite my point. Who worships dead Roman Emperors nowadays?”

Reuven burst out laughing. He couldn’t help himself. “There we go!” he exclaimed. “We’ll convert all the Lizards to Judaism, and then we won’t have to worry about paying the tax any more.”

That got a laugh, even from his father. But the gray-bearded man said, “And why not? ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.’ That doesn’t say what He looks like; He doesn’t look like anything. He is as much the Lizards’ God as He is ours. Nothing holds them back from becoming Jews: we don’t talk about God having a human son.”

Reuven almost repeated the crack about circumcising Lizards, but held his tongue; it didn’t seem to fit, not inside the synagogue. Thoughtfully, his father said, “They could become Muslims as easily as Jews.” That brought on a glum silence. No one liked the idea at all.

The scholarly looking man said, “They could, but they won’t, not as long as the Muslims keep rising against them. And, pretty plainly, they want us to forget our own religions and worship their Emperors. That would make it easier for them to rule us.”

“Politics and religion,” Moishe Russie said. “Religion and politics. They shouldn’t mix. Trouble is, too often they do.” He sighed. “For a while here, we just got to worship as we pleased. I suppose it was too good to last.”

Before anyone could say anything to that, the rabbi and the cantor took their places at the front of the congregation. Singing in the welcome for the Sabbath made Reuven forget about the tax his father had paid to enter the synagogue… for a little while, anyhow.

But, after the service was over, after Reuven and his father rejoined his mother and twin sisters, he said, “If the Muslims have to pay half a pound five times a day, all the rioting we’ve been through so far is going to look like nothing in particular. This town will go up like a rocket.”

“We have enough groceries to last a while,” his mother said. “We’ve been through this before. We can do it again, even if the riots will be worse. Whatever the Arabs do, they can’t be worse than the Nazis were in Warsaw.”

“That’s true,” Reuven’s father agreed, and added an emphatic cough for good measure. “I thought the Reich would have fallen apart from its own wickedness by now, but I was wrong. Back when we were living in London, that fellow named Eric Blair who used to broadcast with me called the Nazis and the Russians a boot in the face of mankind forever. I used to think he was too gloomy, but I’m not so sure any more.”

“You mention him every now and then,” Reuven said. “Do you know what happened to him after we left England?”

“He’s dead-ten or fifteen years now,” Moishe Russie answered, which took Reuven by surprise. His father went on, “Tuberculosis. He had that particular soft cough even back when I knew him-but as far as I know, he never let it get in the way of his broadcasting.” He sighed. “It’s too bad. He would still have been a young man, and he was one of the most honest people I ever met.”

They walked on through the quiet streets back toward their house. Moths fluttered around street lamps. The day’s heat had faded; the night air made Reuven glad he had on a sweater. A mosquito landed on his hand. He slapped at it, but it buzzed away before he could squash it.

“When the muezzins call for prayer tomorrow morning…” he began.

“We’ll find out what happens,” his father said. “No point to borrowing trouble. We get enough of it anyhow.”

Because the next morning was Saturday, Reuven didn’t have classes. The Race thought humanity’s seven-day cycle absurd, but had given up trying to impose their own ten-day rhythm on the medical college. Weekend was an English word the Lizards had had to borrow. Their custom was to rotate rest days through the week, so ninety percent of them were busy at any given time. They reckoned the Muslim Friday day of rest, the Jewish Saturday, and the Christian Sunday equally inefficient.

Reuven slept through the amplified sunrise calls to prayer from mosques in the Muslim districts of Jerusalem, and no gunfire awakened him, either. He ate bread and honey for breakfast, and washed it down with a glass of milk. The relief he felt at the silence in the city was sweeter than the honey, though.

It didn’t last. He’d hoped it would, but hadn’t expected it to, not down deep. He and his family were heading toward Saturday morning services when, as the call to prayer drifted in from the Muslim districts, gunfire rang out: not just rifles but automatic weapons and, a moment later, cannon.

Moishe Russie stopped in his tracks. “We go back,” he said, and his tone brooked no contradiction. “God only knows what the streets will be like when services are done, and I don’t care to find out by experiment.”

“God will also know why we didn’t go to shul this morning,” Rivka Russie agreed. She set a hand on each twin’s shoulder. “Come on, girls. Back to the house.” The gunfire started up anew, this time much closer. Esther and Judith’s mother gave them a shove. “And hurry.”

By the time they got home, emergency vehicles were racing along the streets, those of human make clanging bells and those with Lizards inside hissing urgently to clear the right of way. Reuven hurried toward the telephone. Before he could pick it up, it rang. He grabbed it. “Hello?”

“Are you all right?” Jane Archibald asked.

“Yes, we’re fine here,” he answered, adding, “I was just about to call you. Is the dormitory safe?”

“So far, yes,” she answered. “No trouble here yet. This is all aimed at the Lizards, not at us. But everyone is worried about you and your family.”

That deflated Reuven; he’d hoped Jane had called only because she was worried about him. But he repeated, “We’re fine. I hope there’ll be something left of the city when all this dies down again.”

“If it ever does,” Jane said. “And I’m not half sure the Lizards hope the same thing. They may be looking for another excuse to slaughter the people who don’t like them and have the nerve to stand up to them.” Because of what the Race had done to Australia, she naturally thought the worst of them. But, as a helicopter flew low over the house and began pouring rockets into a target bare blocks away, Reuven had a hard time telling her she was bound to be wrong.

Liu Han, Liu Mei, and Nieh Ho-T’ing peered north from a four-story building the little scaly devils somehow hadn’t yet managed to knock down. Through smoke and dust, Liu Han spied the column of tanks advancing on Peking. Another column was coming up from the south. The People’s Liberation Army had done everything it could to throw back the scaly devils. In the end, everything it could do hadn’t been enough.

“What now?” Liu Han asked Nieh.

“Now?” the People’s Liberation Army officer echoed, his face grim. “Now we try to escape to the countryside and carry on the revolutionary struggle there. We cannot hold this city, and there will surely be a great bloodbath of a purge after the little devils retake it.”

“Truth,” Liu Han said in the scaly devils’ language. After their uprising succeeded, the Communists had meted out summary punishment to every collaborator they could catch. Liu Han was sure the enemy would not be so foolish as to fail to return the favor.

One of the advancing tanks started pumping rounds into the city from its big gun. Every explosion wrecked a little more of Peking-and drove home to the people left inside that they could not hope to halt the little scaly devils’ advance.

But the People’s Liberation Army kept fighting. Peking’s defenders had no real artillery with which to oppose the little devils’ tanks. They did have mortars; the tubes were hardly more than sheet metal, and artisans could make the bombs they fired. Those bombs began bursting among the tanks.

Liu Han cheered. So did Liu Mei, though she didn’t change expression. Nieh looked as sour as if he were sucking on a lemon. “That will do no good,” he said, “and it will tell the enemy where our weapons are positioned.”

Sure enough, the little scaly devils, who had been shooting more or less at random, began concentrating their fire on the places from which the mortars had opened up. One after another, the mortars fell silent. Liu Han hoped at least some of them were shamming, but she had no way to know.

Nieh Ho-T’ing said, “And if we are going to leave, we had better leave now. If we wait till the little devils are in the city, it will be too late. They will set up checkpoints, and they will have collaborators with them, people who are liable to recognize us no matter what stories we tell.”

Again, he assumed the scaly devils would follow the pattern the Party had used. Again, Liu Han found no reason to disagree with him. But Liu Mei asked, “Can we do anything more here before we have to leave?”

“No,” Nieh answered. “If we had a radio, we might direct fire-for a little while, till the scaly devils triangulated our position and flattened this building. That would not take long, and it would not help the cause. The best thing we can do is survive and escape and fight on.”

“He’s right,” Liu Han told her daughter. To prove she thought so, she started down the stairs. Nieh Ho-T’ing followed without hesitation. Liu Han looked back over her shoulder, fearful lest Liu Mei, in a fit of revolutionary fervor, stay behind to court martyrdom. But her daughter was following, though shaking her head in regret. Seeing Liu Mei made Liu Han go faster. When they got to the ground, she asked, “Which way out?”

“The scaly devils are coining from the north and south,” Nieh answered. “We would be wise to go east or west.”

“West,” Liu Mei said at once. “We’re closer to the western gates.”

“As good a reason as any, and better than most,” Nieh Ho T’ing said, while Liu Han nodded. Nieh went on, “The last thing we want is to get stuck in the city when it falls. That can be very bad.”

“Oh, yes. It can be bad in a village, too,” Liu Han said, remembering what had happened to her village at the hands of first the Japanese and then the little scaly devils. “It would be even worse in a big city, though.”

“So it would,” Nieh agreed. “It would indeed.”

A couple of youths ran past, both with shaved heads and wearing tight-fitting shirts with the patterns of body paint printed on them. They looked and sounded frightened, not of the people around them but of the little scaly devils whom they aped. Now they were discovering where their loyalties truly lay.

Some of their number, though, would be joining the collaborators who’d escaped the purges in welcoming the little scaly devils back into Peking. Liu Han was sure of that. Some of them, before too long, would be marked down for liquidation. She was sure of that, too.

Liu Mei said, “I’m afraid I don’t really know how to live in the countryside. I haven’t gone out there very often.”

“It’s not like the city-that’s true,” Liu Han said, and this time Nieh nodded in response to her words. “But we’ll get along. One way or another, we will.” She set a hand on her daughter’s shoulder. “You’re not afraid to work. As long as you keep that in mind, you’ll do all right.”

The walls that in earlier years had shielded Peking from the world around it were now battered by the little scaly devils’ bombardment. People weren’t fleeing only at the gates; they were also scrambling out through breaches in the wall. Thousands-tens of thousands-of men and women would be descending on the villages around the city.

“Eee!” Liu Han said unhappily. “They will be like so many locusts-they will eat the countryside bare. There will be famine.”

That word, heard too often in China, was enough to make two women also hurrying toward the gate whip their heads around in alarm. Liu Mei said, “Would we do better trying to stay, then?”

“No.” Nieh Ho-T’ing and Liu Han spoke at the same time. Nieh continued, “Once we get among people who know who and what we are, we will not starve. They will set food aside for the leaders of the struggle against the little devils’ imperialism.”

“That is not as fair as it might be.” Had Liu Mei been able, she would have frowned. Her revolutionary fire burned very bright, very pure.

Nieh Ho-T’ing shrugged. “I could justify it dialectically. Maybe I will, when we have more time. For now, all I’ll do is say I don’t feel like starving, and I don’t intend to. When your belly cries for noodles or rice, you won’t feel like starving, either.”

That quelled Liu Mei till she and Liu Han and Nieh hurried out through the Hsi Chih Men, the West Straight Gate. It led to the great park called the Summer Palace, a few miles northwest of Peking, but the fugitives did not go in that direction. Instead, they fled through suburbs almost as battered as the interior of the city until, at last, buildings began to thin out and open fields became more common.

By then, the sun was sinking ahead of them. The moon, nearly full, rose blood red through the smoke and haze above Peking. Nieh said, “I think we had better sleep under trees tonight. Any building will already have snakes in it-two-legged snakes. We’d better keep a watch through the night, too.” He wore a pistol on his hip, and tapped it with his right hand.

“Good idea,” Liu Han said. They weren’t really in the countryside, not yet, but the very air around her felt different from the way it had back in Peking. She couldn’t have told how, but it did. She cocked her head to one side. “Come on,” she said, pointing. “There will be water over there.”

“You’re right,” Nieh said. “I can tell by the way the bushes grow.” Liu Mei looked from one of them to the other as if they’d started speaking some foreign language she didn’t understand.

Unlike Nieh Ho-T’ing, Liu Han hadn’t consciously known why she was so sure they would find water in that direction. She’d spent half her life in Peking. So much she’d taken for granted when she was young would seen strange now, to say nothing of unpleasant. But she hadn’t forgotten everything. She might not have known how she knew water was there, but she had.

“It tastes funny,” Liu Mei said after they drank.

“You’re not used to drinking it when it hasn’t come out of pipes,” Liu Han said. For her, water straight from a little stream was a taste out of childhood. Nieh took it for granted, too. But for Liu Mei, it was new and different. Liu Han hoped it wouldn’t make her daughter sick.

They found a place where pine trees screened them from the road, and settled down to rest there. Liu Han took the first watch. Nieh Ho-T’ing handed her the pistol, lay down among the pine needles, twisted a few times like a dog getting comfortable, and fell asleep. Liu Mei had never tried sleeping on bare ground before, but exhaustion soon caught up with her.

The late spring night was mild. Explosions kept rocking Peking. Careless of them, owls hooted and crickets chirped. Flashes on the eastern horizon reminded Liu Han of heat lightning. Fugitives streamed away from the doomed city, even in darkness. Liu Han hung on to the pistol. She hoped nobody else would try to rest here among the trees.

No one did, not while she was on watch. In due course, she woke Nieh, gave him back the automatic, and went to sleep herself. She didn’t think she’d been asleep very long when three gunshots hammered her out of unconsciousness. Screams and the sound of pounding feet running away followed those thunderclaps.

“Somebody who thought he’d try being a bandit, to see what it was like,” Nieh said lightly. “I don’t think he cared for it as well as he expected to. Bandits never think victims are supposed to have guns of their own.”

“Did you hit him?” Liu Mei asked-she was sitting up, too.

“I hope so,” Nieh Ho-T’ing answered. “I’m not sure, though. I know I scared him off, and that’s what matters. Go back to sleep, both of you.”

Liu Han doubted she could, but she did. When she woke, birds were chirping and the sun was rising through the smoke above Peking. Her belly was a vast chasm, deeper than the gorges of the Yangtze. She went back to the little stream and drank as much water as she could hold, but that didn’t help much. “We have to have food,” she said.

“We’ll get some.” Nieh sounded confident. Liu Han hoped his confidence had some basis. Had she been a peasant villager, she wouldn’t have wanted anything to do with refugees from the city.

When they came to a village, the peasants greeted them with rifles in hand. “Keep moving!” one of them shouted. “We have nothing for you. We haven’t got enough for ourselves.”

But Nieh Ho-T’ing said, “Comrade, is that the proper revolutionary spirit?” He went up to the peasant leader and spoke to him in a low voice. Several other peasants joined the discussion. So did a couple of their womenfolk. At one point, Nieh pointed to Liu Han and spoke her name. The women exclaimed.

That seemed to turn the argument. A few minutes later, Liu Han and Liu Mei and Nieh Ho-T’ing were slurping up noodles and vegetables. A woman came up to them. “Are you really the famous Liu Han?” she asked.

“I really am,” Liu Han answered. “Now I am also the hungry Liu Han.”

But the woman didn’t want to take the hint. “How did you get to be the way you are?” she persisted.

Liu Han thought about that. “Never give up,” she said at last. “Never, ever, give up.” She bent her head to the noodles once more.

Straha made the negative hand gesture even though Sam Yeager couldn’t see it, not with the primitive Tosevite telephone he was using. “No,” the ex-shiplord said, and added an emphatic cough. “I was not aware of this. It did not come to my attention before I, ah, decided to leave the conquest fleet and come to the United States.”

“Okay,” Yeager answered, an English word he sometimes threw into conversations even in the language of the Race, just as he sometimes used emphatic and interrogative coughs while speaking English. “I did wonder, and thought you might know.”

“I did not,” Straha said. “That we should attempt to rear Tosevite hatchlings makes sense to me, however. How better to learn to what degree your species can come to conform to our usages?”

He waited for the Big Ugly to wax indignant. Tosevites-especially American Tosevites-often got very shrill about the rights of their kind, especially when they thought the Race was violating those rights. If they or their fellow Big Uglies violated them, though, they were much less strident.

To Straha’s surprise, all Yeager said was, “Yes, I can see how that would make sense from your point of view. But I have the feeling it is liable to be hard on the hatchling you are rearing.”

“That is part of the nature of experiments-do you not agree?” Straha said. “It is unfortunate when the experiments involve intelligent beings, but I do not see how it is avoidable. Sometimes such things are necessary.”

Again, he expected Sam Yeager to get angry. Again, Yeager failed to do so. “You may have something there, Shiplord,” he replied. Straha had to fight down a small, puzzled hiss. He’d known this Big Ugly longer than almost any other, and thought he knew him better than any other save perhaps his own driver. Now Yeager wasn’t responding as he should have. Straha knew the Tosevites were a highly variable species, but Yeager usually thought so much like a male of the Race that the ex-shiplord had expected him to maintain a respectable consistence.

“How did you happen to make the acquaintance of this Tosevite reared under the tutelage of the Race?” Straha asked, trying to find what lay behind Yeager’s curious indifference to the experiment.

“She identified me as a Big Ugly by the way I wrote,” Yeager answered. “I had no idea she was one till I heard her speak. You know we have trouble with some sounds in your language because of the way our mouths are made.”

“Yes, just as we do in Tosevite tongues,” Straha agreed. Yeager didn’t seem inclined to be very forthcoming, for which Straha could hardly blame him. That being so… “Have you anything else?”

“No, Shiplord. I thank you for your time,” the Big Ugly said, and broke the connection.

Straha also hung up the Tosevite-style telephone. He did let out the discontented hiss he’d held in before. Something was going on under his snout, and he didn’t know what it was. That annoyed him. He walked from the kitchen into the front room, where his driver sat leafing through a Tosevite news magazine.

“I greet you, Shiplord,” the Big Ugly said. As far as grammar and pronunciation went, he spoke the language of the Race as well as Yeager. He didn’t think like a male of the Race, though. His next question was sharp, not deferential. “What was that all about on the telephone?”

“That was Sam Yeager, the soldier and student of the Race,” Straha answered. His driver was not just an aide; the Tosevite was charged with monitoring what Straha did. The English description for such a male, which Straha found expressive, was watchdog.

“Ah,” the driver said. “Sam Yeager has a gift for sticking his snout where it does not belong. What was he trying to learn from you that is none of his business?”

“Nothing, as a matter of fact,” Straha said tartly. “In my humble opinion”-a bit of sarcasm all too likely to sail past the Tosevite-“a female of your kind who has been raised by the Race from hatchlinghood to maturity is very much within Yeager’s area of responsibility.”

“Oh-that. Yes. Truth, Shiplord,” the driver said. Then he let out several barks of Big Ugly laughter. “More truth than you know about, as a matter of fact.”

“Suppose you enlighten me, then,” Straha suggested.

To a male of the Race, such a suggestion would have been as good as an order. The driver shook his head, and then, for good measure, also used the Race’s negative hand gesture. “Suppose I do not, Shiplord.” His tone was so emphatic, he didn’t bother with a cough. “You do not need to know that.”

Straha understood security without having a Big Ugly explain it to him. He also understood the driver had slipped. “Then you should not have alluded to such a thing,” he said. “Now my curiosity is aroused.”

“You speak truth, Shiplord-I should not have mentioned it,” the Tosevite admitted. “Since I did, I must ask you to pretend I did not.”

“Next I suppose you will ask a female to unlay an egg,” Straha snapped. “What would happen if I went back to the telephone and asked Sam Yeager to tell me what you will not?”

“He might do it. He has a way of talking too much,” the driver said. “But, Shiplord, I very strongly ask you not to do that.” Now he did use an emphatic cough.

He was not simply asking, Straha realized. He was giving an order, and expected to be obeyed. That the driver presumed to do such a thing spoke of who had power here and who had none. With an emphatic cough of his own, Straha said, “I am not your servant. Nor am I going to betray whatever I may learn to the Race. Nor is the Race likely to try to kidnap me, not after all these years.”

“Perhaps not,” the driver replied. “But the Race may well be monitoring your telephone line, and Yeager’s. I would be, were I a male from the conquest fleet’s intelligence service.” Straha hissed unhappily; his driver made a good point. The Big Ugly went on, “And we still do not know at whom the miscreants were shooting when you visited Yeager’s house while the Chinese females were also there. It could have been them. It could have been Yeager. But it could also have been you, Shiplord.”

“Me?” Straha swung both eye turrets sharply toward the driver: such was his surprise. “I assumed those females were the targets. The Race is not in the habit of using assassination as a weapon.”

“The Race has picked up all sorts of bad habits since coming to Tosev 3,” his driver answered. To compound his insolence, the Tosevite bent his head over one hand and pretended to taste ginger.

But what he said, while it held enough truth to be infuriating, did not hold enough to be convincing. “I am not involved in the ginger trade, except as one more male who tastes,” Straha said. “And, since you are giving forth with nonsense, who would want to murder Yeager, and why?”

“Who would want to kill Yeager?” Straha’s driver echoed. “Someone who got tired of his habit of sticking his snout where it does not belong, that is who. I assure you, he has made enemies doing so.”

“And are you one of those enemies?” the ex-shiplord asked. “You certainly speak as if you have considerable knowledge of them.”

I shall have to find some way to warn Sam Yeager, Straha thought. Yeager had always behaved in a proper manner toward him. Like any well-trained male of the Race, Straha understood that loyalty from below created obligations in those above. Yeager had left Straha in his debt, and debt required repayment.

“In some ways, at some time, I may be an enemy of Yeager’s,” the driver answered evenly. “I had nothing to do with the shots fired at his home, however. Indeed, if you will recall, I shot at the shooters.”

“Yes, I do recall,” Straha said, wondering if the driver had opened fire to make himself appear innocent.

“All things considered, I still believe the attack was most likely aimed at the Chinese females,” the Big Ugly said. “An assault on you or on Yeager would have been better planned and would also have been more likely to succeed.”

“You so relieve my mind.” Straha’s voice was dry.

“I am so happy to hear it.” So was his driver’s. Straha would have taken most Tosevites literally. With this one, he knew better. The driver continued, “It is, however, one more reason for you not to telephone Yeager.”

“It may be, if what you say is truth,” Straha said. “You have not proved that; you have only mentioned it as a possibility.”

The driver sighed. “Shiplord, is this your day to be particularly difficult?”

“Perhaps it is,” Straha answered. “And perhaps we can compromise. At a time convenient to Sam Yeager, will you drive me to his house, so we can discuss these things without fretting over insecure telephone lines?”

“It shall be done,” the Tosevite said, and sighed again. He was not happy about Straha’s request, but evidently saw no way to evade it. Gradually, over the long years of his exile, the ex-shiplord had come to learn the subtleties of the Big Uglies’ responses. When setting out for Tosev 3, he hadn’t imagined such knowledge would be useful-but then, the Race hadn’t imagined a great many things about Tosev 3.

Since his driver was also in some measure his keeper, and was his link to the Tosevite authorities of the United States, Straha decided conciliation might be a wise course. “Will you eat with me?” he asked: that was an amicable gesture among the Big Uglies, as it was among the Race. “I have some zisuili chops defrosting in the kitchen.”

“Will they poison me?” the driver asked.

“I doubt it,” Straha answered. “Few Tosevite foods have proved poisonous to us.” He thought of ginger. “And sometimes, when they do poison us, we enjoy it.”

“Even so, Shiplord, I think I will decline,” the Tosevite said. “I have not found appetizing the odors that come from your meats.”

“No?” Straha shrugged, then thought on how best to manipulate Big Uglies, particularly the males of the species. “If you have not the courage to try new things, I will enjoy a larger meal of my own.”

In due course, he and the driver sat down at the table together. The Tosevite ate a small bite of zisuili meat, then paused in thought of his own. “Not so bad,” he said at last. “Are all your meats as salty as this, though?”

“Yes,” Straha answered. “To us, as you well know, uncured Tosevite meats seem unpleasantly bland. More potato chips?”

“I thank you, but no,” the driver said. “I will make do with what I have here.” He did dutifully finish the portion Straha had given him. When he was through, he gathered up his dishes and Straha’s and began to wash them.

Having an intelligent being perform such a service for Straha took him back to the most ancient days of the Race. Most of the time, he would have reckoned it a reversion to barbarism. This once, he found it no less than his due.

Vyacheslav Molotov’s secretary stuck his head into the Kremlin office Molotov most commonly used. “Comrade General Secretary, the ambassador from the Race has arrived,” the fellow said.

“Thank you for informing me, Pytor Maksimovich,” Molotov answered. He had no great desire to see Queek, but could hardly refuse his request for an interview. “Tell him I shall be there directly.” The secretary hurried away. Molotov nodded to himself as he rose. If he found an interview with Queek unpleasant, he was determined that the Lizard should not enjoy it, either.

Having promised to come at once, he deliberately took his time in walking to the office where the ambassador and his interpreter waited. Queek sat impassively, but the Pole who did his talking for him sent Molotov a dirty look. The general secretary savored that, as he would have savored a particularly delicate tea.

“To business,” he said, as if he had not delayed at all. “I must tell you that the peace-loving peasants and workers of the Soviet Union again reject out of hand the invidious assertions the Race has made in regard to our alleged collaboration with the freedom-loving peoples of those parts of the world you now occupy.”

Queek spoke at some length. The interpreter summed up his first couple of hissing sentences in one word: “Nichevo.”

“It doesn’t matter, eh?” Molotov said. “In that case, why did your principal demand this meeting?”

After the interpreter had done his job, Queek spoke again. The Pole turned his words into Russian: “I wanted to inform you personally that Peking is once more in the hands of the Race. This effectively brings to an end the rebellion the Soviet Union fomented and abetted.”

“I deny fomenting the rebellion of the freedom-loving Chinese people and their People’s Liberation Army,” Molotov answered-truthfully, for Mao would have risen up against the Lizards without any encouragement from Moscow. “And I also deny assisting the rebellion in any way.” That was a great thumping lie, but the Race had never-quite-been able to prove it.

Unusually, Queek didn’t try to prove it now. He just said, “Your claims are noted. They are also, as I say, irrelevant. China is ours. China will remain ours. The same applies farther west on the main continental mass. Our cities in that region do not suffer to any great degree despite the damage inflicted on the seaside desalination plants thereabouts.”

“We had nothing to do with that damage, either,” Molotov said. That wasn’t the whole truth, but it wasn’t a lie, either. The Soviet Union did smuggle arms down into the Middle East, but the locals there used them as they saw fit, not as the USSR desired. Mao was a nationalist, but he was also a Communist. The Arabs and Persians hated Moscow’s ideology almost as much as they hated the Race.

“Your rockets called Katyushas were among the weapons employed against the desalination plants,” Queek said.

“Katyushas have been in production for more than twenty years,” Molotov said blandly. “Many were captured by the fascists in their invasion of the Soviet Union, and others by the Race. These weapons are also widely imitated.”

“You always have excuses and denials,” Queek said. “Do you wonder that the Race has trouble taking them seriously?”

“What I have is a complaint, and the Race had better take it seriously,” Molotov said-he was indeed intent on making sure Queek went away unhappy.

“We shall treat it with the seriousness it deserves, whatever that proves to be,” the Lizard answered. “I do find it intriguing that this not-empire, the cause of so many complaints, is now issuing one. Say on. I hope you intend no frivolity.”

“None whatsoever,” said Molotov, to whom frivolity was as alien as satyriasis. The ironic style Queek affected was also the one he preferred; he flattered himself that he was better at it than the Lizard. He went on, “My complaint-the Soviet Union’s complaint-is that your alien domestic animals have begun straying from the border regions of the territory you occupy into land unquestionably under the jurisdiction of the Soviet Union. I demand that the Race do everything in its power to curb these incursions, and that you pay compensation for damage to our crops and livestock.”

“Animals, unfortunately, know nothing of political borders. They go where they can find food,” Queek said. “We shall have no complaints if you drive them back over the frontier. We shall also have no complaints if you slay them when you find them on your territory. Compensation for damages does not strike me as unreasonable, provided your claims are not exorbitant.”

It was a softer answer than Molotov had expected, and so one that left him disappointed. He said, “Some of your beasts are devouring the crops that will yield the bread that feeds the Soviet people. Others kill chickens and ducks, and have even been known to kill cats and dogs as well.”

The translation took a little while; Molotov guessed that the interpreter had to explain to the Lizard what sort of animals he was talking about. Finally, Queek said, “You would be referring to befflem, I suppose, in the matter of your livestock, befflem and possibly tsiongyu.”

Molotov cared very little about the Race’s names for its annoying creatures. He was about to say as much, but checked himself. Queek would surely respond that the names of proper Earthly animals did not matter to him, either. Forestalling an opponent could be as important as counterattacking after a sally. The Soviet leader contented himself with observing, “Whatever else these creatures may be, they are pests, and they will be exterminated from Soviet soil.”

“I wish you good fortune in your efforts along those lines,” Queek said: yes, he did have a sardonic turn of phrase. “The Race has been making similar efforts since long before the establishment of the Empire. Some few have been partially successful. Most, however, were undoubted failures.”

Molotov studied the Lizard. He reluctantly concluded Queek, despite the sarcasm, was not joking. He thought about feral cats that lived off pigeons and mice and squirrels and such, and about packs of wild dogs that scavenged in the cities and sometimes killed cattle and sheep out in the countryside. “You have released a new plague on us, you are telling me,” he said.

Queek shrugged after that was translated. “You have your domestic animals, and we have ours. They have accompanied us as the Empire has grown. We see no reason why Tosev 3 should be different from any other world in this regard.”

“You have not conquered us, as you conquered these other worlds,” Molotov said. “Your animals have no business on our soil.”

“I repeat: we are willing to discuss reasonable compensation,” the ambassador from the Race said. “But I also repeat that you are unreasonable if you expect us to keep perfect control over all our animals at all times. I am certain your own not-empire is unable to do this, so why do you assume we can?”

For that, Molotov found no good answer. He shifted his ground: “It appears to me that you are seeking to win through environmental change what you could not win at the battlefield or at the negotiating table.”

“Our intention is to colonize this world. We have never said otherwise,” Queek replied. “We are not at war with the Soviet Union or with any other independent Tosevite not-empire, but we do hope and expect to bring all of Tosev 3 into the Empire in the fullness of time.”

“That shall not happen,” Molotov declared.

“Perhaps you speak truth,” the Lizard told him. “I do not deny the possibility. But, as I said at a previous meeting, this is not necessarily to your advantage. If you become a threat to the Empire as a whole, rather than merely to peace and good order here on Tosev 3, we shall be as ruthless as circumstances require. Do not doubt that I mean this with complete sincerity.”

However much Molotov wanted to, he didn’t doubt that. “We must also be able to protect ourselves from you,” he warned. “You want us to abandon technical progress. As I have said before, that is impossible.” The USSR didn’t just have to protect itself from the Race, either. The Reich and the USA remained potential enemies. So did Japan, in a more limited way. Molotov had been a boy during the Russo-Japanese War, but he still remembered his country’s humiliation. One day, the Soviet Union would settle scores, against all its neighbors, human and otherwise.

Queek said, “It appears, then, that we are on a collision course. In that case, squabbles over domestic animals suddenly become less important, would you not agree?”

Molotov shrugged. “Since we are not in combat, my view is that we had best behave as if we were at peace.”

“Ah,” the Lizard said. “Yes, that is a sensible attitude, I must admit. I would not have expected it of you.” The Polish interpreter’s eyes gleamed as he turned that into Russian.

“Life is full of surprises,” Molotov said. “Have we anything further to discuss?”

“I think not,” Queek replied. “I have delivered the statement required of me by my superiors, I have heard your complaint and suggested a possible resolution, and I have listened to your bluster pertaining to your not-empire’s technical prowess. Nothing more remains that I can see.”

“Bluster travels on both sides of the street,” Molotov said icily, and rose from his desk. “This meeting is at an end. The guards will escort you back to your limousine. Good day.” He didn’t say good riddance, but his manner suggested it.

After the Lizards’ ambassador and his interpreter had left, Molotov went into the antechamber to one side of the office. There he changed all his clothes, down to socks and underwear. If Queek or his human stooge had smuggled electronic eavesdropping devices into the office, they would go no farther than the antechamber. Molotov wondered if the Race knew he entertained human visitors in another office. He wouldn’t have been surprised. He didn’t mind offending the Lizards-or anyone else-but didn’t care to do so inadvertently.

Once back in clothes sure to be uncontaminated, Molotov returned to the regular office. No sooner had he got there than the telephone rang. He picked it up. “Marshal Zhukov on the line,” his secretary said.

Molotov’s expression did not change, but he grimaced inside. Zhukov knew altogether too much about his comings and goings. No doubt the marshal had a spy among Molotov’s aides. “Put him through,” Molotov said, suppressing a sigh, and then, “Good day, Georgi Konstantinovich. And how are you?”

“Fine, thank you, Comrade General Secretary,” Zhukov replied, outwardly deferential. But, a blunt soldier, he had little patience with small talk. “What did the Lizard want?”

“To brag that the Race has suppressed the uprising in China,” Molotov said. “He labored under the delusion that we did not already know.”

“Ah,” Zhukov said; Molotov could imagine his nod even if he couldn’t see it. The marshal went on, “When the Chinese are ready themselves or when we can stir them up, they will rise again, of course. You had a countercomplaint ready, I assume?”

“Oh, yes-the matter of these animals from Home on our soil,” Molotov said. Zhukov would hear it from someone else, if not from him. “They do threaten to become a nuisance in our border regions, but Queek proved conciliatory on the matter of compensation.”

“I wish you had found something stronger,” Zhukov grumbled, “but I suppose foreign affairs is your bailiwick.” For as long as I feel like letting it be your bailiwick. Marshal Zhukov didn’t always say everything he thought, either. But then, he didn’t always have to. That was what holding power meant.

Felless felt isolated and useless and frustrated at the Race’s embassy to the Reich. With Ttomalss gone, she had no one there with whom she could really have a conversation grounded in her professional expertise. Most of the males and females at the embassy dealt with the Deutsch Tosevites in a purely pragmatic way, caring nothing for the theoretical underpinnings of interspecies relations.

The Deutsche cared nothing for those underpinnings, either, so far as Felless could tell. As time went on, they grew less and less willing to discuss with her the rationale behind their strange not-empire. She had had trouble enough grasping even what they were willing to discuss. Now that new information came in more slowly than it had before, she despaired of ever making sense of their system.

She’d thought about insulting some Deutsch official to the point where his government would expel her from the not-empire, as Ttomalss had been lucky enough to manage. She’d not only thought about it, she’d tried to do it a couple of times. That had involved her in shouting matches with Big Uglies, but no expulsion order came, worse luck. She remained stuck here in Nuremberg, stuck without escape and hating every moment of it.

Her office was her refuge. She could analyze such data as she had, and she could reach out to the wider world of the Race through the computer network. And…

Sometimes she would stay in her office for days at a time, bringing food back from the refectory, storing it in a little refrigerator, and reheating it in an even more compact radar oven. The locked door there was a shield against a world far more unpleasant than she had imagined on waking from cold sleep. Behind that shield, she could do her best to make the world go away.

After finishing the first of several meals she had waiting in the refrigerator, she went over to her desk, opened one of the drawers, reached behind several file folders, and took out a small plastic vial half full of brownish powder. “By the Emperor,” she said softly, “ginger is the only thing that makes Tosev 3 even close to being a world worth living on.”

Her fingers trembled in anticipation as she took off the stopper. She couldn’t taste as often as she craved the herb, not with the punishments to which males and females-especially females-were liable these days. Only when she was sure no one would disturb her till she no longer reeked of pheromones did she dare shake powdered ginger into the palm of her hand, bend her head low over it, and flick out her tongue.

Ginger’s hot, spicy flavor was marvelous enough, but what the herb did when it coursed through her blood and set her brain afire made the flavor seem a small thing. When she tasted ginger, she was as near omnipotent as made no difference. Somewhere back inside her mind, she knew both the omnipotence and the delight that came with it were illusions. She knew, but she didn’t care.

She also knew the euphoria she got from ginger wouldn’t last long enough to suit her. It never did. The only way it could have lasted long enough to suit her was never to end. But the herb didn’t work that way, however much she wished it did.

All too soon, she began to slide down into the depression that was the price she paid for the euphoria. She hissed in despair and walked over to the desk. She knew that if she tasted again, the depression would only be worse and deeper after that second taste. Again, she knew but she didn’t care. That would be later. She felt bad enough now to want to escape.

And escape wasn’t far away. She didn’t have to think to yank the top off the vial of ginger, pour some more of the herb into the palm of her hand, and lap it up. She sighed and shuddered with pleasure. Again she was brilliant, strong, invincible. Again she could-

The telephone hissed. She strode over to it as if she were the Emperor at a ceremonial function. She didn’t mind talking on the telephone while ginger lifted her; it made her feel more clever than the caller, whoever he might be. This time, she saw as she turned an eye turret toward the screen, it was Ambassador Veffani. “I greet you, superior sir,” she said, and assumed the posture of respect.

“And I greet you, Senior Researcher,” Veffani answered. “Please come to my office immediately. Several males and females have come from Cairo to discuss our present relations with the Reich, and your contributions would be valuable.”

Felless stared at him. “But, superior sir-” she began, and discovered the difference between feeling brilliant and actually being brilliant. If she went out of her office now, she would turn the whole embassy topsy-turvy, let alone that chamber full of males and females with fancy body paint. But what sort of excuse could she find for not coming when the ambassador required her presence? The ginger didn’t give her any marvelous ideas. She tried her best: “Superior sir, could I not participate by telephone? I am in the midst of an exacting report, and-”

“No,” Veffani broke in. “Conference calls with too many participants quickly grow confusing. Please come and give your insights in person.”

He said please, but he meant it as an order. “But, superior sir…” Felless repeated. “That might not be the best idea right now.” Veffani knew she had a ginger habit-or rather, he knew she had had one. She hoped he would be able to hear what she wasn’t saying.

If he could, he didn’t choose to. He said, “Senior Researcher, your presence is required here. I will see you directly.”

Felless let out along, hissing sigh. Had he forgotten about the herb, or was he going to use this opportunity to show her up and expose her to punishment? It didn’t really matter. He’d left her no choice. She sighed again. “It shall be done, superior sir,” she said, and broke the connection.

She knew what would happen when she stepped out into the corridor and headed for Veffani’s office. The only question was where and with whom. As things happened, she hadn’t gone more than half a dozen steps before she saw Slomikk, the science officer.

He saw her, too. “I greet you, Senior Researcher. How are you tod…?” His voice trailed away as the pheromones she couldn’t help emitting reached his scent receptors. Almost at once, he straightened till he stood nearly as erect as a Big Ugly. The scales of his crest rose along the crown of his head, too, as they did at no other time than during a mating display.

And his visual cues affected Felless just as her scent cues affected him. She bent down till her snout all but touched the floor the mating posture was not so far removed from the posture of respect. “Hurry,” she said with the small part of her rational mind that still functioned. “I must see the ambassador.”

Slomikk wasn’t listening. She hadn’t expected that he would be. He took his place behind her. Of itself, her tailstump moved up and out of the way. The science officer thrust his mating organ into her cloaca. The pleasure she felt was different from what she got with ginger, though she couldn’t have said how.

She remembered from earlier matings that the pleasure would ease the slide down from the heights of ginger. Slomikk hissed in delight as he finished. Felless straightened up and hurried on toward Veffani’s office.

Another male mated with her on the way there. Veffani’s secretary was a female, and so did not notice the pheromones coming off Felless in waves. All she said was, “Go right into the conference chamber, superior female. The ambassador is expecting you.”

“So he is,” Felless said. But not like this. She sighed, wondering if she would lay another clutch of eggs. Matings after ginger seemed less likely to lead to gravidity than those of the normal mating season, but they easily could. She knew that from experience.

Bracing herself for what she knew would happen, she went into the conference chamber. Veffani turned an eye turret toward the opening door. “An, here she is now,” he said. “Senior Researcher, I was just telling the males and females here from Cairo of the strides you have made in unraveling the…”

As Slomikk’s had, his voice trailed away. The ventilation system swept her pheromones toward him and toward the other males and females of the Race. The females didn’t notice. The males did. Almost in unison, they sprang from their seats and stood straight up. Their crests rose. This time, they were displaying to warn off one another as well as to make Felless assume the mating posture.

Assume it she did. One of the females from Cairo exclaimed, “Oh, by the Emperor, she has been tasting ginger!”

Felless cast her eyes down to the ground on hearing the Emperor’s name. Since the carpet was very close to the tip of her snout, she got an excellent view of it. A male-she couldn’t tell if it was Veffani or one of the visitors from Cairo-stepped up behind her and began to mate. Two other males brawled, sending chairs flying every which way. And yet another male, inflamed by her pheromones, went into a mating display in front of a female who was not in her season. The female exclaimed in disgust.

Felless thought every male in the chamber had coupled with her by the time the ginger ebbed from her system. Even as she straightened out of the mating posture, one of the males from Cairo was sidling around behind her to try to mate again. “Enough,” she said, and hoped she sounded as if she meant it.

“Yes, enough.” That was Veffani, who sounded shaken to the core. Looking round the conference chamber, Felless could hardly blame him. One chair lay on top of the table. A male was rubbing at clawmarks that scored his flank, another nursing a bitten arm that dripped blood.

Turning to Veffani, Felless assumed the posture of respect-carefully, so none of the males would take it for the mating posture. “I apologize, superior sir,” she said. “I knew something like this would happen when I came here, but you required it of me, and I had no choice but to obey.”

“You have been tasting ginger,” Veffani said.

“Truth.” Felless admitted what she could hardly deny. Now the after-tasting depression was on her. Whatever the ambassador chose to do to her, at the moment she felt she deserved every bit of it and more besides.

“We depend on high-ranking females to set an example for those below them,” Veffani said. “Senior Researcher, you have failed in this fundamental obligation.”

“Truth,” Felless repeated. Veffani was making her feel even worse than she would have anyhow. “Do with me as you will, superior sir. I do not seek to evade my responsibility.”

Veffani swung both eye turrets toward her. “I know you have not been happy here, Senior Researcher. Accordingly, the most severe punishment I can mete out to you is that requirement that you continue your duties and your investigation of the Deutsche exactly as before.”

“It shall be done, superior sir,” Felless said dully. Even in the depths of her depression, she had trouble believing she deserved to be punished that harshly.