Second Contact

17

Kassquit pondered the computer screen in front of her. She often kept one eye turret turned toward discussions about objects in orbit around Tosev 3 (so she thought of it, though she, of course, had no eye turrets and usually had to turn her whole head to see something). This was, after all, the environment in which she’d spent her whole life. It was the environment in which she would likely spend the rest of her life. Tracking what went on here mattered to her.

After the disaster that befell the colonization fleet, Kassquit paid more attention than she had to discussions about Tosevite space objects. Before that attack, she’d wanted nothing to do with the species of which she was biologically a part. She still didn’t, not really, but she’d had to realize the wild Tosevites were dangerous to her. Their missiles could have vaporized her ship as easily as one from the colonization fleet. Only chance had put her on the opposite side of the planet from the ships that were destroyed. Chance, to a member of the Race (or even to a Tosevite trained to act like a member of the Race), did not seem protection enough.

Little by little and then more and more, the messages of a male named Regeya drew her notice. They stood out for a couple of reasons: Regeya seemed quite well informed about the doings of the not-empire called the United States, and he wrote oddly. Most males and females sounded very much alike, but he spiced his messages with peculiar turns of phrase and hardly seemed to notice he was doing it.

Those qualities finally prompted her to send him a private message. Who are you? she wrote. What is your rank? How have you become so knowledgeable about these Big Uglies? She did not ask him why he wrote strangely. She was strange herself, in ways more intimate than writing quirks. But, in writing, her strangeness didn’t show. That was another reason she cherished computer discussions: males and females who couldn’t see her assumed she was normal.

Regeya took his time about answering. Just when Kassquit began to wonder if he would answer at all-he would have been within his rights, though on the abrupt side, to ignore her-he did send a reply: I am a senior tube technician. The American Big Uglies taught me, and were so interesting, I got hooked on them. She admired the phrase for a moment before reading his last sentence: Other than that, I am an ordinary male. What about you?

“What about me?” Kassquit asked rhetorically. She wrote, I am a junior researcher in Tosevite psychology, which comes close to addling me. That was all true, and proved truth could be the best deception. She added, You have an interesting way of writing, and sent the message.

Wondering just what a senior tube technician did and what his body paint looked like, she checked a data store. The answer came back in moments: there was no such classification as senior tube technician. As usual, her face showed little expression, but she found that puzzling. She checked the computer to see how many Regeyas had come to Tosev 3 with the conquest fleet: the male showed too much knowledge of American Tosevites to belong to the colonization fleet, or so it seemed to her.

In short order, the answer came back. Unless the computer was mistaken, only one male bearing that name had belonged to the conquest fleet, and he had been killed in the early days of the invasion. Kassquit checked the records for the colonization fleet. They showed two Regeyas. One had been a bureaucrat aboard a ship destroyed in the attack on the fleet. The other, a graphic designer, was newly revived. Kassquit checked past messages in the discussion section. Regeya, whoever he was, had sent messages while the graphic designer remained in cold sleep.

“That is very strange,” Kassquit said, a considerable understatement. She wondered what to do next.

While she was wondering, a message from Regeya-from the mysterious Regeya, she thought-reached her. Tosevites are strange creatures, but not so bad once you get to know them, he wrote, and then, I write with my fingerclaws, the same as everybody else.

Kassquit would have forgiven him a good deal for his kind words about Big Uglies. He, of course, whoever he was, could have no way of knowing she’d been hatched (no, born: a thoroughly disgusting process) one herself. And she liked his strange slant on the world. But he was not who and what he pretended to be. Such deceptions, she had gathered, were common among the Tosevites, but rarely practiced by members of the Race.

What does a senior tube technician do? she wrote, hoping that in answering he would betray himself.

But his reply was altogether matter-of-fact: I tell intermediate and junior tube technicians what to do. What would you expect?

She stared at the screen. Her mouth fell open. That was laughter in the style of the Race. In the privacy of her chamber, she also laughed aloud, as Big Uglies did. Whoever this Regeya was, he had both wit and nerve.

But who was he? Why was he using a name not his own? She could find no good reason. Nothing in the discussions in which he took part could gain him any profit, only, at most, a little information. Unable to solve the problem herself, she mentioned it to Ttomalss the next time they spoke.

“I can think of two possibilities,” the senior researcher said. “One is that he is indeed a male of the Race using a false name for deceptive purposes of his own. The other is that he is a Tosevite who has partially penetrated our computer system.”

“A Tosevite!” Kassquit exclaimed. That had not occurred to her-nor would it have. “Could a Big Ugly seem like a male of the Race in discussion groups and electronic messages?”

“Why not?” Ttomalss asked. “You certainly seem like a female of the Race whenever your physiognomy is not visible.”

“But that is different,” Kassquit said. “This Regeya, by your hypothesis, would be a wild Big Ugly, not one civilized from birth, as I have been.” She heard the pride in her voice.

“We have been studying the Tosevites since our arrival here,” Ttomalss said. “Indeed, thanks to our probe, we studied them before we arrived here-although, as events proved, not well enough. And they have been studying us, too. Some of them, I suppose, will have learned a good deal about us by now.”

“Learned enough to imitate us that well?” Kassquit had trouble believing it. She’d not only taken this Regeya for a male of the Race, she’d taken him for a clever one. He had an unusual way of looking at the world, one that made her see things in a new light. But perhaps that sprang not from cleverness but from an alienness he couldn’t fully conceal. She said as much to Ttomalss.

“It could be so,” he answered. “I will not say that it is, but it could be. I fear you will have to conduct that investigation for yourself. I am too occupied with matters here to lend you much assistance. Felless will soon be laying her pair of eggs-she stubbornly refuses to leave Deutschland, despite possible health hazards-and will not be able to do as much work as usual for a little while before she finally does. That means I will have to do some of hers as well as my own.”

“Very well, superior sir,” Kassquit said coolly. To her, Felless remained an unscratchable itch deep under the scales she did not have. “I shall attempt to draw out this Regeya, whoever and whatever he may be, and to see exactly what information he is seeking. Armed with that knowledge, I may be able to convince the authorities to take me seriously.”

“I approve of this course,” Ttomalss said, and broke the connection. Kassquit wasn’t sure she approved of it. Being a Tosevite, would she be able to convince the authorities to take her seriously no matter what she did? She was not looking forward to the experiment, but saw no alternative.

Meanwhile, she had the chance to converse with Regeya and monitor his messages to learn what interested him. He knew where he wanted to sink his claws, that was plain: he aimed to learn all he could about whatever the Race knew of the American space station. That puzzled Kassquit. If he was a Big Ugly himself, why wouldn’t he know such things?

Her first assumption had been that, if he was a Tosevite, he was an American-how else would he know so much about the United States? Then she began to wonder. She supposed the Big Uglies spied on one another as well as on the Race. Was Regeya from the Reich or the SSSR, seeking what the Race knew about a rival?

She couldn’t ask him that, not in so many words. She did ask, How and why do you know so much about these particular Big Uglies?

In due course, Regeya answered, I have followed their doings since they freed me after the fighting stopped. The Race and the Big Uglies will be sharing this planet for a long time. Sooner or later, Tosevites will travel to other worlds of the Empire, as Rabotevs and Hallessi will come here. We and the Big Uglies had better get to know each other, do you not think? After the interrogative character, he used the Race’s conventional symbol for an emphatic cough.

Kassquit studied that. No matter who-or what sort of being-had written it, it made good sense. Truth, she replied.

Some in the discussion group reported that the Americans were again increasing the number of shipments up to their station. No one can tell what they are shipping, though, the male who sent the message said. Whatever it is, it stays crated until inside the station. This is inefficient even by Tosevite standards.

What are the Big Uglies hiding? Regeya asked on noting that message.

If they were not hiding it, we would know, the male who had sent the earlier message replied. Kassquit laughed to see that. The message continued, Whatever it is, we know enough always to keep an eye turret on that station.

A good thing, too, Regeya replied.

Kassquit made a small, exasperated sound. Would an American Big Ugly have said such a thing? Would any Big Ugly have said such a thing? Didn’t the Big Uglies know enough to show solidarity against the Race, as the Race showed solidarity against them? She knew the Big Uglies did not show solidarity among themselves, but still…

Finally, curiosity got the better of her. Are you a Tosevite? she sent to Regeya.

If he was, she thought that had a decent chance of scaring him out of the Race’s computer network. But she did not have to wait long for his reply. Of course I am, he answered. Just as much as you are.

She stared at that. Her heart fluttered. Did Regeya, could Regeya, know who and what she was? He would have to have excellent connections indeed to gain even a hint of that. And Kassquit, unlike Regeya, was a fairly common name. Or was he just making a joke? She had gathered he was fond of joking.

What do I tell him? she wondered. By the Emperor- dutifully, she cast down her eyes-what do I tell him?

What if I am? she wrote back.

We would both be surprised, Regeya replied, again very quickly. He had to be waiting at the computer for her messages. What is your telephone code? he asked. Perhaps we need to discuss this in person. Kassquit was appalled. Even if she left the vision blank, Regeya would be able to hear that she did not fully belong to the Race.

I would rather leave things as they are, she wrote. She knew that was rude, but better to be rude than to betray herself.

As you wish, Regeya answered promptly. We may be more alike than you think. Kassquit made the negative hand gesture. Whether Regeya belonged to the Race or to the Tosevites, she would not be much like him. She was sure of that.

Getting back into space felt good to Glen Johnson. After his run-in with Lieutenant General Curtis LeMay, he’d wondered if his superiors would let him ride Peregrine again. But nobody else at the Kitty Hawk launch site had said boo to him about LeMay’s appalling visit to the BOQ. It was as if the general had delivered his tongue-lashing and then cleared out without mentioning it to anybody, which was possible but not in accord with the usual habits of general officers. Johnson had feared his career would be blighted for good.

His orbit was lower and therefore faster than that of the American space station. Whenever he passed below it, he paid close attention to the radio chatter coming from it. The traffic told him the station was getting yet another new load of surprises, which didn’t surprise him. So many bus drivers were going up there, the Greyhound lines probably had to shut down half their routes.

He couldn’t tell what the supplies were. That didn’t surprise him, either. If he heard exactly what was going on up there, the Lizards and the Germans and the Russians would, too. He didn’t want that. But he did want to know what was going on.

One thing he could tell, both by radar and by spotting scope: whatever those supplies were, the crew aboard the space station wasn’t letting them go to waste. Sometimes he thought it looked bigger than it had on his previous pass each time he caught up with it. It was as big as one of the Lizards’ starships these days, and showed no signs of slowing its growth.

“What the hell are they doing up there?” he asked a universe that did not answer. Construction in vacuum and weightlessness wasn’t easy, but the station kept shifts going around the clock.

He couldn’t ignore everything else in space, much as he would have liked to. During his tour, Peenemunde launched a couple of A-45s and brought the manned upper stages back to Earth quite a bit faster than was their usual practice. Anything out of the ordinary was suspicious, as far as Johnson was concerned-and as far as his superiors were concerned, too, even if they didn’t seem suspicious about what was going on at the American space station.

He tried pumping the Nazi spacemen about what their bosses were up to. That was doctrine. The Germans didn’t tell him doodly-squat, which was doubtless part of their doctrine. They tried pumping him about the U.S. space station, too.

“Dammit, Drucker, I don’t know what’s going on up there,” he told one of his German opposite numbers when the fellow got not just nosy but pushy to boot. “And if I did, I wouldn’t tell you anyway.”

Drucker laughed. “And you so angry with me got when I told you the same thing. I do not know what we are here with these test launches doing.”

Listening to the Germans, Johnson had discovered, was a matter of staying patient till they got around to the verb. He laughed, too, but sourly. “Yeah, but the difference between us is that I know I’m telling the truth, but I’ve got the nasty feeling you’re lying to me.”

“I speak truth,” Drucker declared, with a burst of static warning that they were drifting out of radio range of each other. “It is you Americans who are liars.” More static gave him the last word in the argument.

“Screw him,” Johnson muttered, and then, “On second thought, no thanks. I didn’t come up here to be Mata Hari.” Spying with his eyes and ears and instruments was one thing. Using his fair white body… Again, his laugh was less than wholehearted. Nobody, Nazi pilot or good old American waitress or secretary or schoolteacher, had shown much interest in his fair white body lately.

He brought the Peregrine down to a good landing-about as smooth as he’d ever managed-at Kitty Hawk and then went through debriefing. He remarked that the Germans were curious about what was going on up at the space station. The major taking notes just nodded and waited for him to say something else. If the fellow knew anything, he wasn’t talking.

After a while, Johnson ran dry about the Germans and Russians and Lizards in space. The first debriefer left. His replacement came in and started grilling the spaceman about the changes the mechanics and technicians had made in Peregrine since his last flight. He had answers and opinions, some of them strong ones, about those modifications.

When they finally let him go, he thought about heading for the bar for a bit of high-proof tension relief. Instead, he went back to the BOQ. He was shaking his head as he did it-Christ, don’t I even have the energy to go buy myself a drink? — but the direction in which he kept walking argued that he didn’t.

He took a shower, then went back to his room and flopped down on the bed. Instead of falling asleep, which he’d thought he would do, he lay there for a bit, then pulled a Hornblower novel out of the GI nightstand by the bed and started to read. Things had been simple back in Hornblower’s day, with only people to worry about.

The telephone on the nightstand rang, making him jump. He didn’t like jumping, especially not when he was just back in full gravity. He picked up the phone and said, “Johnson.”

“Lieutenant Colonel, I’m Major Sam Yeager, calling from Los Angeles,” the voice on the other end of the line said. He sounded as if he was calling from the other end of the country; there weren’t so many hisses and pops on the line as there would have been before the Lizards came, but enough to notice remained.

“What can I do for you, Major?” Johnson asked. Yeager’s name seemed vaguely familiar. After a moment, he placed it: a hotshot expert on the Lizards.

He expected Yeager to ask him about dealing with the Race in space. Instead, the fellow came straight out of left field: “Lieutenant Colonel, if you don’t mind my asking, did you by any chance get your ass chewed by General LeMay not so long ago?”

“How the hell did you know that?” Johnson sat up so suddenly, he knocked the Hornblower novel onto the floor.

Across three thousand miles, Major Yeager chuckled. “Because I’m in the same boat-and I think it’s the Titanic. General LeMay gets ants in his pants when people start asking about the space station, doesn’t he?”

“He sure does. He-” Johnson shut up with a snap. He suddenly realized he had only Yeager’s assurance that he was who and what he said he was. For all he knew, Yeager-or somebody claiming to be Yeager-might be one of LeMay’s spies, trying to catch him in an indiscretion and sink him like a battleship. In a tight voice, he said, “I don’t think I’d better talk about that.”

“I’m not after your scalp, Lieutenant Colonel,” Yeager said. Johnson went right on saying nothing. With a sigh, Yeager went on, “I don’t like this any better than you do. Whatever’s going on up there smells fishy to me. The Lizards have it on their minds, too, and I don’t like that for beans. We could end up in big trouble on account of this.”

That matched perfectly with what Glen Johnson thought: so perfectly that it made him suspicious. He picked his words with care: “Major, I don’t know you. I’m not going to talk about this business with somebody who’s only a voice.”

After a pause, Yeager answered, “Well, I don’t suppose I can blame you. The general is convincing, isn’t he?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Johnson said, which might as well have meant, Hell, yes!

Another pause. Then Yeager said, “Okay, sir, you don’t trust me, and you don’t have any reason to trust me. But I’m going to lay it on the line. The way it looks to me now, whatever the hell we’re doing up there, it’s something real big. It’s something so big, whoever’s in charge-which may be General LeMay and may be whoever his boss is-doesn’t want anybody, and I mean anybody, finding out about it. How does that sound to you?”

Yeager might have been echoing Johnson’s thoughts. But Johnson was damned if he’d admit it. He’d trusted Stella, and that hadn’t got him anything but pain and lawyers’ bills. If he trusted Yeager, he was liable to get his tit in a worse wringer yet. So all he said was, “This is your nickel, Major. I’m still listening.” If by some chance this wasn’t Yeager, or if it was and he was trying to get Johnson in Dutch, maybe he’d end up hanging himself instead.

“You think I’m setting you up, don’t you?” Yeager asked, which couldn’t have been a better echo of what was going on in Glen Johnson’s mind.

“It did occur to me, yeah,” Johnson said dryly.

“I wonder why.” Yeager could be dry, too. That made Johnson more inclined to believe him, not less. Maybe he’d known it would. He went on, “Listen. This isn’t how you keep a secret. The way you do that is to pretend you don’t have one, not to make a big hairy thing out of yourself and go around yelling, ‘I’ve got a secret and I won’t tell you what it is, so you’d better not ask-or else!’ Come on, Lieutenant Colonel. You’re a big boy. Am I right or am I wrong?”

Johnson laughed. He didn’t want to-he knew he was handing Yeager an edge-but he couldn’t help himself. “I tell you what,” he said. “That’s how I’d play it, anyway.”

“Me, too,” Yeager said. “Some of the big shots don’t understand anything but killing a mosquito with a tank, though. All that does is get a secret noticed. You noticed it-”

“Yeah,” Johnson broke in. Again, he couldn’t help himself. If they’d let him go up to the space station, they could have shown him around, kept him from seeing anything he wasn’t supposed to see, and sent him home. Yeager was right. They hadn’t played it smart, not even a little.

“I noticed, too,” Yeager said. “I’m not the only one, either. The Lizards have noticed something funny’s going on up there. There’s this one female of the Race named Kassquit-at least I think she’s a female of the Race; that’s a little strange-who’s real curious about things that have to do with the space station. And we don’t want the Lizards curious that way, not after what happened to the colonization fleet we don’t.”

“Amen,” Johnson said. “The next time anything goes wrong, they’re going to shoot first and ask questions later.” He listened to himself with no small surprise. Somehow or other, Major Yeager had convinced him while he wasn’t looking.

“That’s what I think, too,” Yeager said. “If you ask me, that’s what anybody with an ounce of sense would think. But that’s probably too much to ask of some people with a lot of stars on their shoulders.”

“Yeah,” Johnson said again. He’d spent a lot of time fishing for bluegill when he was a kid. He knew what setting a hook was like. Yeager had set a hook in him, all right. “Next question is, what can we do about it? Can we do anything about it?”

“I don’t know,” Yeager answered. “Part of that depends on just what they really are doing at the space station. I haven’t been able to find out, and I’ve got better and stranger connections than you might think. I got in big trouble the first time, but I didn’t know I would, so I went in straight up and didn’t bother sliding, if you follow me. I’m not playing it like that any more.”

Johnson pondered. Yeager was still taking chances, or he wouldn’t have got on the phone. But there were a lot of different ways to be sneaky. A slow grin spread over Johnson’s face. “Maybe, Major, just maybe, I can get a close-up look at that critter after all.”

Fotsev hated Basra. His reasons for hating Basra were easy to understand. The place stank. It was full of Big Uglies, and not only Big Uglies, but Big Uglies fanatically devoted to their superstition who might at any moment rise in rebellion against the Race. Patrols in Basra were never routine; any cloth-shrouded Tosevite might be an assassin, and some, expecting a happy afterlife from their preposterous outsized Big Ugly beyond the sky if they sacrificed themselves to his cause on Tosev 3, were willing, even eager, to slay themselves if only they could take males of the Race with them.

So Fotsev hated Basra. As far as he was concerned, the only decent thing about it was the weather. Compared to that of Buenos Aires, where he’d been stationed before, it seemed a delightful reminder of Home.

He let out a small, discontented hiss as he and his squad tramped through Basra’s central market square. “What is itching your tailstump?” Gorppet asked him. The male’s mouth fell open in amusement. “This place, I should not wonder. More filth and disease right here-I mean this miserable square, not the whole city: spirits of Emperors past, I don’t want to think about the whole city-than on all of Home put together.”

“You need leave again,” another male told Fotsev. “Go on out to one of the new towns and you will see how things ought to be.”

And that made Fotsev realize why he was so discontented. “I went out to the first one a while ago,” he said. “Once was enough. I have not been back. I do not want to go back. I hated the new town just about as much as I hate this place.”

“You are mad, as addled as any Tosevite ever hatched,” said the other male, a fellow named Betvoss. Only astonishment could have prompted him to come out with such a thing, for Fotsev outranked him.

A couple of males on the patrol hissed in alarm. A couple of more gestured to show they agreed with Betvoss. Fotsev could have taken offense, but he didn’t. When he spoke, he sounded more weary than anything else: “Home is an egg I have hatched out of. I am something different now. It may not be something better-I do not think it is something better. But I do not fit inside that shell any more. The males and females who live in the new towns know little of Tosev 3, and do not wish to learn. They still dwell inside the old shell. I have learned too much of Tosev 3, which I suppose is why I do not.”

Betvoss twisted his eye turrets in a way that suggested he did not understand and that there was nothing for him to understand. Fotsev had expected as much. Betvoss said, “If you hate the new town and you also hate Basra, what is left for you?”

“Nothing, probably,” Fotsev answered. “I think that will be the fate of many of us from the conquest fleet: caught betwixt and between, belonging nowhere.”

“Not me,” Betvoss said. “I like the new towns. They remind me of how things were and how they will be again.”

“I think Fotsev speaks truth,” Gorppet said, which astonished Fotsev; the dour veteran seldom took his part. Gorppet had seen much worse action during the fighting than Fotsev had, and Fotsev often thought the other male resented him for coming through so easily. But now Gorppet went on, “I went into the new town a couple of times, maybe three. I do not bother going any more, either.”

“I enjoy it,” Betvoss said. “I would sooner be there than here. I would sooner be anywhere than here.”

“They do not understand the males of the Soldiers’ Time in the new town,” Fotsev said. “They did not go through what we went through, and they cannot see why we did not deliver Tosev 3 to them as we would have if all the Big Uglies truly had ridden animals and swung swords, as the probe made us think they would.”

Betvoss seized the first part of that. “You say the colonists do not understand us? What of the Tosevites?” His wave encompassed the Big Ugly males in their wrappings of brown or white and the females in black with only their eyes showing and sometimes even those veiled away behind cloth.

Fotsev shrugged. “I do not expect Big Uglies to understand-they are Big Uglies. But the folk of the new town are my own kind-or they look like me, at any rate. I expected more than I got, and I was disappointed.”

“And I as well,” Gorppet agreed. “Only we who have been through it can understand what we endured. Some of the Tosevites who fought against us come closer than the males and females of the Race who did not.” He sighed. “When the males of the conquest fleet die, no one will understand.” After a couple of strides, he swung an eye turret toward Betvoss. “Some males do not understand now.”

“Truth,” Betvoss said. “And you are one of them.”

“Enough,” Fotsev said with a slow, tired, emphatic cough. “Are we Big Uglies, to brawl among ourselves?”

By the Emperor, I need a taste of ginger, he thought. However much he might need one, though, he was not so sure where he might come by it. The herb was in shorter supply than he could ever remember. Those above him had always fumed and grumbled about ginger, and every so often made examples of males caught tasting or dealing in it. But there had always been plenty-till females from the colonization fleet showed what the herb did to them. Now the authorities were serious about keeping it off everyone’s tongue.

One of Fotsev’s eye turrets slid toward Gorppet. If anyone could still get ginger, he was the male. And if he understood why Fotsev stayed away from the new towns, maybe he would be more willing to share some of what he had, if he had any.

The breeze shifted, changing the notes in the symphony of stinks that played over Fotsev’s scent receptors. One odor cut through the usual array of Tosevite stenches, though: the pheromones of a female in her season. Somebody is getting ginger, Fotsev thought. He wasn’t the only male to note that scent, of course. His whole squad suddenly seemed more alert. A couple of troopers began to take on the erect posture associated with mating. Betvoss started away from his comrades, toward that wonderful scent.

“Back!” Fotsev said sharply, relishing the chance to rebuke the male who’d thought he was addled. “She is a long way off. We just have to go on about our business and pretend she is not there.”

“I smell her. I want to mate with her,” Betvoss whined. Fotsev wanted to mate with her, too, wherever she was, but not to the point where he forgot himself and forgot his duty. Even as he kept eyeing the market square, the urge remained, an itch inside his head-and inside his cloaca-he couldn’t scratch. It made him irritable; he was ever so ready to leap down Betvoss’ throat if the other male got more unruly than he had already proved.

But Betvoss, though he stayed sulky, obeyed: obedience was nearly as ingrained in the Race as was desire when presented with the proper stimuli.

Small male Tosevites came running up to the patrol, jabbering in their own language. Gorppet gestured with his rifle. He did not want them to get too close. Fotsev didn’t blame him. The Race had learned from painful experience that stopping suicide attackers wasn’t easy.

So far, the fanatical Tosevites had not begun using hatchlings as suicide warriors. That did not mean they would not do such a thing, though. In all truth, Gorppet was right to be cautious.

Caution came hard, though, when the small Big Uglies (a notion that made Fotsev laugh, but that was true: he overtopped almost all of them) came up in spite of Gorppet’s warning. They’d learned a few words from the language of the Race. “Food!” they shouted. “Want food!” Others shouted, “Want money!”

“No money,” Gorppet said, gesturing with the rifle again. The Race’s credit would have been useless to these ragamuffins, and handing out the metal disks the Tosevites used as their medium of exchange went against orders.

Food was something else. Fotsev had never seen hunger till he came to Tosev 3. He’d thought hunger was the feeling he knew just before it was time for a meal. Maybe that was hunger, of a sort. But it was not the kind of hunger that came from having no food at all, from having to do without meals. Fotsev knew such conditions had existed back on Home in ancient history, before the Empire unified his planet. But those days were more than a hundred thousand years in the past, a very long time ago even by the standards of the Race. Seeing that kind of hunger had jolted him, and he was far from the only male it had jolted.

So now he took little cubes of pressed meat and concentrated nutrients and tossed a handful of them to the Big Ugly hatchlings. So did three or four other males from the squad. The Tosevites squalled in delight and squabbled with one another over the food. They had no trouble eating the Race’s rations, as Fotsev and his fellows had no trouble except occasional disgust with Tosevite foods. And some Tosevite food products were even more delectable to the Race than to Big Uglies… and so Fotsev’s mind, almost inevitably, came back to ginger.

The one problem with feeding some Tosevite beggars was that their success drew more, sure as carrion drew scavengers. After a while, Fotsev and his fellows ran low on ration cubes and started saying, “Enough! All gone!” The hatchlings cursed them in the language of the Race and, Fotsev was sure, even more hotly in their own tongue.

Gorppet said something in that language that made them stop cursing and bark out the laughter of their kind. After that, the patrol had less trouble getting rid of them. When Fotsev asked Gorppet what he’d said, the other veteran replied, “I wished that predators would find the eggs of all their descendants.” It seemed a fine strong curse to Fotsev till he remembered the Big Uglies did not lay eggs. Then he understood why the hatchlings laughed. But anything that avoided trouble suited him fine.

After what seemed forever, the patrol returned to barracks. Fotsev made his report, not that he had anything much to report. And then, for a little while, his time was his own. As he’d been sure he would, he hunted up Gorppet. “Come for a walk with me,” he said. Rumor had it that the barracks held listening devices. Fotsev neither knew whether rumor was true nor cared to learn.

Out in the open, he hadn’t even broached the subject before Gorppet said, “You look like a male who could use a taste-maybe even a couple of tastes.”

“Truth,” Fotsev said, with an emphatic cough. After a couple of tastes, Tosev 3 improved-and would stay improved till the ginger left his system. He asked, “How did you come by the herb? I am empty.”

“Your friend”-a common euphemism for a ginger dealer-“must be one of the males who got his from a Big Ugly west of here who’s out of business-for the time being, anyhow,” Gorppet answered. “I have lots of friends. That is why I never go dry.”

“I never thought I would,” Fotsev said ruefully, or as ruefully as he could with the herb exulting through him, “but I did.”

“The males with the fancy body paint want to get their teeth into this, all right,” Gorppet said. “They do not want females coming into season any old time.” He laughed; he’d had a couple of tastes, too. “You smelled how well it works while we were out on patrol. They can slow the trade down, but they can’t stop it.”

“I think you are right,” Fotsev said. “Hard to try to do other things, normal things, while on the edge of my own season. I understand why our superiors are fighting ginger so hard-but I still want one more taste.”

“It shall be done,” Gorppet said, and it was. He had another taste himself. They spent the rest of their free time enjoyably cutting Betvoss into little strips.

The Americans had a phrase: a slow boat to China. Liu Han and Liu Mei heard that phrase any number of times on their journey west across the Pacific, so often that they got good and sick of it. It was, if anything, an understatement for their homeward voyage aboard the Liberty Princess, a ship whose self-contradictory name never failed to amuse Liu Han.

Everything went fine from Los Angeles to Hawaii, but Hawaii, of course, still belonged to the United States. Past Hawaii, from the island of Midway (which the Japanese had seized, almost unnoticed, during the time of fighting against the little scaly devils) on, every stop the Liberty Princess made before Shanghai was in the Empire of Japan.

And the Japanese were suspicious. Now Liu Han wished her visit to the United States had drawn less public notice. Whenever Japanese inspectors came aboard the ship, they naturally tried to prove she and Liu Mei were, in fact, just who they were, despite papers purporting to prove them to be other people altogether.

They never quite managed. Liu Han thanked the gods and spirits in whom she was not supposed to believe for the English Liu Mei and she had picked up getting ready to visit the USA and improved while there. They used it as much as they could, baffling the Japanese who did not speak it and holding their own with the ones who did. Even in the Philippines, where many puppets of the eastern dwarfs were fluent in English, Liu Han and Liu Mei kept steadfastly insisting they were people other than their true selves, and got by with it. Without absolute proof-which they could not get-the Japanese did not care to embroil themselves with the United States.

After the last Japanese official gave up in frustration, after the Liberty Princess was finally cleared to sail for Shanghai with the two Chinese women aboard, Liu Han turned to her daughter and said, “Do you see? This is what the power of a strong country is worth. The United States protects its people and protects its ships. One day, China will be able to do the same.”

Liu Mei did not try to hide her bitterness. “Before we become a strong country, Mother, we have to become a country of any sort. As far as the little scaly imperialist devils are concerned, we are nothing but part of their Empire.”

“That is why we have traveled so far,” Liu Han answered. “We did everything we could in the United States, I think. Weapons are coming. I do not know just when they will reach us: the Japanese and the Kuomintang and the little devils will all make that as hard as they can. But the weapons will come sooner or later. The People’s Liberation Army will take advantage of them sooner or later. And, sooner or later, the scaly devils will pay for their aggression and oppression. How long that takes doesn’t matter. Sooner or later, it will happen. The dialectic demands it.”

Except for mentioning the dialectic, she might have been a little scaly devil talking. One of the things that made them so dangerous was their habit of thinking in the long term. Mao had coined a good term to describe them: he called them incrementalists. They never retreated, and kept moving forward half an inch here, a quarter of an inch there. If they needed a hundred years or a thousand years to reach their goals, they didn’t care. Sooner or later, they would get there-or so they thought.

But then Liu Mei said, “If the little scaly devils had come here sooner, they could have easily conquered us. We also have to worry about whether we can afford to wait.”

“We have the dialectic on our side. They did not,” Liu Han said. But her daughter’s words worried her. The dialectic said nothing about when victory would come. She could only hope it would come in her lifetime. Most of the time, she didn’t worry about not knowing. Every once in a while, as today, it ate at her.

The Liberty Princess sailed up the Yangtze to Shanghai. The city had more Western-style buildings than any other in China, having been the center of the round-eyed devils’ imperialist ambitions before the coming of first the eastern dwarfs from Japan and then the little scaly devils. Liu Han had known that, of course, but it had meant little to her because she’d seen few Western-style buildings before coming to the United States. Now she’d spent months in a city of nothing but Western-style buildings. She studied the ones in Shanghai with new eyes.

The city meant something different to Liu Mei. “So this is where my father died,” she said in musing tones. “That did not mean so much to me before I learned about him from the American who knows so much about the little devils.”

“Nieh Ho-T’ing always said he died very bravely,” Liu Han said, which was true. “He helped men of the People’s Liberation Army escape after they struck the little devils a stinging blow.” She looked at Shanghai with new eyes herself. Memories of Bobby Fiore came flooding into her mind-and a little jealousy at how interested Liu Mei had been in the American half of her family.

Again, her daughter might have picked the thought from her mind. “In everything that matters, I am Chinese,” Liu Mei said. “You were the one who raised me. We are going home.” Liu Han smiled and nodded. Liu Mei wasn’t as right as she thought, thanks to the little scaly devil named Ttomalss. Liu Han’s daughter did not smile, because the little devil had not-could not-smile at her while trying to raise her after stealing her as a newborn from Liu Han. Liu Mei knew that had happened to her, but remembered none of it. It had marked her just the same.

“Now we have only to get off this ship, get onto the train, and go home to Peking,” Liu Han said. “And, I think, before we do that, we have to stop somewhere and get something to eat. It will be good to eat proper food again.”

“Truth,” Liu Mei said, and used an emphatic cough. “The Americans eat some very strange things indeed. Fried potatoes are not bad once you get used to them, but cheese-how do they eat cheese?”

“I don’t know.” Liu Han shuddered. “What else is it but rotten milk? They should throw it away or feed it to pigs.”

Shortly thereafter, she conceived the identical opinion of the Chinese customs officials who manned the Shanghai customs office for the little scaly devils. She had hoped-she had, in fact, been assured-officials who sympathized with the Party and the People’s Liberation Army would ease her passage back into China. Hopes and assurances or not, it didn’t happen. The customs men who dealt with her daughter and her might have been working for the Kuomintang, or they might have completely prostituted themselves to the little devils. Liu Han never was sure of that. She was sure they thought her false papers were false papers, no matter how artfully they’d been forged.

“Stupid women!” one of the customs men shouted. “We know who you are! You are Reds! Do not deny it. You cannot deceive us.”

Liu Mei said nothing. Her face stayed expressionless, as it usually did, but her eyes blazed. She got angry at being called a Red, even though she was one. When Liu Han had time, she would laugh about that. She didn’t have time now.

“We are the people our papers say we are,” she said, over and over and over again.

“You are liars!” the boss customs man said. “I will haul you up in front of the little scaly devils. Let us see you tell your lies to them. They will know your papers are as false as a dragon’s wings on a duck.”

The threat worried Liu Han to some degree: the little scaly devils might be able to tell the papers were false where human beings could not. Underestimating their technical skill was always dangerous. But they were disastrously bad at interrogation; next to them, the Americans were paragons. And so, with a sneer, Liu Han said, “Yes, take us to the little scaly devils. I can tell them the truth and hope they will listen.” She could tell them a pack of lies and hope they believed her.

But her willingness to go before them rocked the customs man, as she’d thought it would. To most Chinese, the little devils remained objects of superstitious dread. Surely no one with anything to hide would want to talk to them. The customs man took a somewhat more conciliatory tone: “If you are not the people we think you are, how is it that you come off the American ship?”

“We got aboard in Manila,” Liu Han said for about the tenth time. The false papers said the same thing; a good many Chinese merchants lived in the Philippines. “Maybe, while you have been badgering us, the people you want, whoever they are, have gotten away. They are probably halfway to Harbin by now.”

“Harbin!” the customs man shouted. “Stupid woman! Foolish woman! Ignorant woman! The Reds are not strong in Harbin.”

“I do not know anything about that,” answered Liu Han, who knew quite a bit about it. “I have been telling you for a long, long time now, I do not know anything about that. And neither does my niece here, either.”

“You do not know anything about anything,” the customs man said. “Go on, get out of here, and your stupid turtle of a niece, too.”

“He is the stupid turtle,” Liu Mei said once they were well out of the boss customs man’s hearing.

Liu Han shook her head. “No, he did his job well-he was right to be suspicious of us, and I had to work hard to make him let us go. If he were stupid, I would have had an easier time. That was not the trouble. The trouble was that he serves the imperialist little devils-or maybe our enemies in the Kuomintang-with too much zeal.”

“Something should happen to him, then,” Liu Mei said.

“And maybe something will,” Liu Han said. “The Party here in Shanghai must know about him. And if they do not, we can pass the word from Peking. Yes, maybe something will happen to the running dog.”

The Shanghai train station stood not far from the docks: a large gray stone pile of a building, again in the Western style. Because it was not far, Liu Han and Liu Mei walked. To go with their assumption of the role of Chinese from the Philippines, they now had less baggage than they’d taken aboard the Liberty Princess in Los Angeles. Liu Han was glad not to have to exploit the labor of a rickshaw puller or a pedicab driver. Such work might be necessary, but it was degrading. Now that she had seen the United States, she felt that more strongly than ever.

Lines in front of the ticket sellers were not neat and orderly, as they would have been back in the USA. They were hardly lines at all. People jostled and shouted and cursed one another, all shoving forward to wave money in the faces of the clerks. Liu Han felt swamped, smothered in humanity. Shanghai was no more crowded than Peking, but her most recent standard of comparison was Los Angeles, a town far more spread out than either Chinese city. Liu Mei at her back, she elbowed her way forward.

After much bad blood, she managed to buy two second-class tickets north to Peking. The platform on which she and her daughter had to wait was as crowded as the cramped space in front of the ticket sellers. She’d expected that. The train came into the station three hours late. She’d expected that, too.

But, after she and Liu Mei fought their way to seats on the hard benches of a second-class car, she relaxed. In spite of all inconveniences, they were going home.

Johannes Drucker muttered something unpleasant under his breath as he floated weightless in Kathe, the upper stage of his A-45. The radio wasn’t set to transmit, so nobody down on the ground could hear him. That was doubtless just as well.

He checked himself. He hoped nobody down on the ground could hear him. He remained politically suspect, and knew it. He wouldn’t have put it past the SS to sneak a secret microphone and transmitter into Kathe, in the hope he would say something damning when he thought no one was listening. If he had any opinions about Heinrich Himmler and sheep, he’d be smart to pull the wool over them.

“Baah!” he said, softly and derisively. Let the boys in the black coats figure out what that meant, if they were listening. He had more important things to worry about. Had he been wearing a hat, he would have tipped it in the direction of General Dornberger. The commandant at Peenemunde had been able to keep him in space. As far as he was concerned, this was the most fun he could have with his clothes on.

A radar ping almost bright enough to make him blink appeared on his screen. “Du lieber Gott,” he said, not caring at all whether anyone was listening to him. “I think the Americans are building New York City up here.” The station was noticeably bigger than it had been on his last trip up into orbit, and it had been enormous even then. Its German equivalent could not compete.

He turned his radio receiver to the bands the Americans favored. They got careless with their signals traffic every so often. Not often enough. They were up to Wehrmacht standards-or perhaps a little beyond-when they talked with one another. His best hope was catching them in the middle of an accident, so he could hear what they said when they weren’t thinking so much of whether he was listening.

Thinking that way made him feel a little guilty. Wishing an accident on anybody in space probably meant wishing death on him, too. Very few minor accidents happened out beyond the atmosphere-everything worked fine, or else you were dead. Drucker didn’t want anybody wishing that kind of misfortune on him.

He listened to the chatter that went on around the space station. The workers expanding it complained more than their German counterparts would have done. “I’m so damn tired, I’d be grateful to be dead,” one of them said.

That proved too much even for the other Americans. “Oh, shut up, Jerry,” one of them said, a sentiment with which Drucker heartily agreed.

After a little while, Drucker decided not to wait and see if something would happen, but to try to make something happen instead. “You certainly are getting large there,” he radioed to the American space station. “When do you intend to attack the colonization fleet again?”

That again made him particularly proud. If it didn’t make any listening Lizard sit up and take notice, he didn’t know what would. He must have struck a nerve inside the station, too, for the answer came back in a tearing hurry: “Go peddle your papers, you Nazi bastard! If you guys didn’t blow up the Lizards, Molotov’s boys sure as hell did, on account of it wasn’t us.”

“Ha!” Drucker said. “You Americans the crazy ones are, making this great huge… thing up here.” He’d done his duty by his country. Anybody who didn’t think the SS was crazy, though, didn’t know the current Fuhrer ’s precious pets.

And the American radio operator kept jeering at him: “You’re just jealous ’cause you don’t have a big one yourself.”

Only belatedly did Drucker realize the American might not be talking about space stations. “I have never on that score any complaints had,” he said smugly.

“Another Nazi superman, eh?” the radio operator said. “Listen up, pal-what do you think your wife is doing while you’re up here?”

“The laundry,” Drucker said. “Now your mother, I cannot for her answer.”

He smiled, listening to the American curse him. Before long, the curses faded as he went out of range and the bulge of the Earth hid the space station. He nodded to himself. He had given at least as good as he got. But then his satisfaction dribbled away. He hadn’t learned anything, which was what he’d hoped for. Like everybody else, the Wehrmacht paid for what you did, not for how good you looked when you didn’t do much.

Or had he learned something after all, something he would sooner not have known? When the Reich began fighting Poland, when the Reich began fighting the Bolsheviks, it had termed both campaigns counterattacks. Drucker couldn’t prove those statements were lies, but he knew few foreigners believed them. Could Himmler be lying here, too?

If Germany had launched the missiles of an orbiting weapon against the Race, she was wise to lie about it. Even bestriding Europe like a colossus, the Greater German Reich was the smallest independent human power, its population fearsomely concentrated. The Lizards could take a terrible revenge.

He reported his conversation with the American to a German radio relay ship in the Indian Ocean. “That is good, Lieutenant Colonel,” the radioman told him. “The Lizards do not pay enough attention to the United States. Perhaps we can persuade them to do so. For some reason, they always suspect us and accuse us instead.” His voice took on a faint whining tone. “I do not understand why.”

“I can’t imagine,” Drucker said, and then hoped the fellow down there on the ship didn’t notice how dry he sounded. But his own hope for promotion had slammed into a stone wall not for anything he’d done, but because of suspicions about his wife’s ancestry. And a lot worse than that would have happened to Kathe had the SS been able to nail their suspicions down tight.

The Lizards had to know such things. Was it any wonder they suspected the Reich on account of them?

“See if you can learn more still on your next pass under the space station,” the radio operator told Drucker.

“I’ll try,” he answered, and broke the connection. The signal for the attack on the colonization fleet, he remembered, had come from the Indian Ocean. It was supposed to have come from a U-boat, but was everyone dead certain of that?

Centimeter by centimeter, he made himself relax. The USA had a relay ship down there in the waters between Africa and Australia, and so did the USSR. Anyone could have done it.

As his orbit carried him over Australia, he chuckled to himself. Undoubtedly a U-boat had lobbed ginger bombs at the Lizards’ cities going up in the desert there. Nobody knew whose U-boat had done it. Drucker chuckled again, thinking of the orgy the Lizards must have had. “Killing them with kindness,” he said, and then came right out and laughed, because kindness didn’t begin to describe it.

Up over the long stretch of the Pacific Ocean he flew, passing not far from the island the self-styled Free French still ruled. That notion made him laugh, too, in a different way. If petty criminals and gambling lords wanted to call their little bailiwick a country, he couldn’t stop them, but that didn’t mean he had to take them seriously.

Eventually, he caught up with the space station again. When he called to report his presence in the neighborhood (not that the station wouldn’t know unless its radar was out), the same radio operator as before answered him: “Your mouth is so big, pal, I figured you’d have sucked all the air out of your cabin by now.”

“You talk about big,” Drucker said, laughing once more. “When do you take that big boat of yours onto the sea instead of leaving it in orbit docked?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” the American answered.

Drucker started to make another gibe, but then he really listened to what the radioman had said. “What was that?” he asked, wanting to make sure he’d heard what he thought he had.

But the American didn’t repeat himself. Instead, he replied, “I said, you don’t know what you’re doing.”

He hadn’t said that. Drucker’s English wasn’t perfect, but he was sure the American hadn’t said that or anything like it. What did that mean? Drucker could think of only one thing: the American had slipped and was trying to cover it up. “You will never get that ugly beast moving,” he jeered, trying to rattle the radioman into another mistake.

To his sorrow, it didn’t work. “We’re doing five miles a second now,” the American said. “Eight kilometers a second for you, buddy. That’s fast enough, don’t you figure?”

“Whatever you say,” Drucker answered. “You are the one who likes to brag.”

This time, he got no answer. He hadn’t gone out of range of the space station. It still glowed like a Christmas-tree ornament on his radar screen. That had to mean the American was clamming up on purpose. And that had to mean the fellow had put his foot in it, and knew he had, too.

No more questions, Drucker thought. Let the radioman think he hadn’t noticed a thing out of the ordinary. The American would be hoping he hadn’t, anyhow. Drucker sped on in delicious, thoughtful silence.

He started to radio what he’d learned-no, what he’d heard, because he wasn’t sure what he’d learned-down to the next German relay ship over which he crossed. He stopped with his index finger already on the transmit button. Someone, no doubt, would be monitoring his traffic with the relay ship. With a little luck, nobody’d noticed his unusual exchange with the space station. He decided to hang onto it and what it might mean till he got down.

Earth unrolled below, going now into darkness, now into light. Blue ocean, white and gray swirls of cloud, land in shades of green and brown-it was all very beautiful. Drucker wondered whether Lizard pilots with this view felt the same. From what they said, Home held more land and less water. If they thought the Sahara and the Australian outback were comfortable, their opinion of both forests and oceans was liable to be a lot lower than his.

When he was up here, he usually wanted to stay in orbit as long as he could. He liked spaceflight. And, when he was up here, he didn’t have to worry about things going wrong down below. They couldn’t do anything to him up here no matter what went wrong down below.

A moment after that comforting thought, he had one less comforting: they could, if they wanted to badly enough. Another pilot in the upper stage of an A-45 could come after him and shoot him down, just as if he were in a fighter plane.

He patted the control panel. He’d do his best to make anybody who tried that very unhappy. He thought he could manage it, too. Radar made sneaking up to shoot somebody in the back much harder.

And if anyone did come gunning for him… He patted the control panel again. With her two explosive-metal-tipped missiles, Kathe carried a lot of death. If anyone came after him and didn’t get him, he would be in a position to exact the greatest revenge in the history of the world.

Well, maybe he would be in position. Part of that would depend on how close he was to Nuremberg and Peenemunde, and whether he could get to either one as he came out of orbit.

“Still, the Fuhrer wouldn’t want to find out the hard way,” Drucker murmured, “not if he’s smart, he wouldn’t.”

The transmitter was off. He almost wished it weren’t. The Reich trusted him to fly with atomic weapons. He wouldn’t have minded putting a flea in the ear of some Party bigwigs: a man who flew with atomic weapons was probably not a good man to annoy. Anyone with any brains should have been able to figure that out for himself. Drucker wasn’t so sure how many Party bigwigs had any brains.

Once upon a time, he’d read somewhere, the Americans had flown a rattlesnake flag with the legend don’t tread on me. Drucker slowly nodded. He had two fangs of his own. If people pushed him too hard, he might use them.

Flight Lieutenant David Goldfarb felt as if he were moving back through time. He’d flown from Jerusalem to London in one of the Lizards’ jets, a machine as modern as next year. Then he’d taken the train from London to Liverpool, a technology less than a century and a half old-on Earth, anyhow. And then he’d traveled from Liverpool to Belfast on a ferry, and the waves of the Irish Sea had made him as miserably sick as any passenger in any boat since the dawn of time.

Back on solid ground, he’d recovered fast. Seeing Naomi and his children again hadn’t hurt, either. Nor had returning to work. He even seemed to have won some small amount of respect for going into Germany and coming out in one piece.

None of that, though, made him feel as if he’d put the dreadful time behind him. He knew what would. Only a matter of waiting, he thought, and didn’t expect he’d have to wait long.

And he was right. When he came off duty after his second day back at the radar installation, a familiar voice called, “Welcome home, old chap!” There came Group Captain Roundbush, a broad smile on his handsome face, his right hand extended.

Instead of clasping it, Goldfarb came to attention and saluted. “Sir,” he said.

“Oh, my dear fellow,” Roundbush said. “You’re not going to take it that way, I hope?”

“Sir-” Goldfarb looked around before going on. No, no one else was close enough to hear what he had to say to Basil Roundbush. He took a deep breath. “Fuck you, sir.”

Roundbush blinked, but didn’t quite lose his smile. “I can understand why you might feel that way, old man, but really, you mustn’t.” He sounded as cheerful, as ingratiating, as ever. “Here, I’ve got a motorcar laid on. Come along with me to Robinsons. We’ll put down some Guinness, and then the world will seem a happier place.” He turned to go, confident Goldfarb would follow.

Goldfarb didn’t. After a couple of steps, Group Captain Roundbush noticed. He turned back, puzzlement on his features. Goldfarb said, “Sir, from now on I’m not having one bloody thing to do with you that isn’t strictly required by duty. So no, I’m bloody well not going to Robinsons with you, or anywhere else, either.”

Now Roundbush looked grave. “I’m afraid you don’t know what you’re saying.”

“I’m afraid I do-so sod off,” Goldfarb answered. “Excuse me. Sod off-sir.” His right hand slipped to the holster of his pistol. “The way I feel right now, for half a crown I’d blow your fucking head off.”

He didn’t think he could put Roundbush in fear. The medals on the group captain’s chest said he didn’t frighten easily, if at all. But bravery and goodness didn’t necessarily go hand in hand. If the Nazis didn’t prove that, the Russians did. Still, Goldfarb wanted him to know he meant what he was saying.

Roundbush did know it. His eyes narrowed, which left him a little less handsome and a lot more dangerous-looking. “You do want to have a care about what you’re saying, you know,” he remarked.

“Why?” Goldfarb didn’t bother hiding his bitterness. “What kind of trouble can my big mouth get me into that’s worse than what my big nose has already done?”

“I’d say you were doing your best to find out,” Group Captain Roundbush answered. “I know you’ve been through a lot, but-”

“You don’t bloody know the tenth part of it,” David broke in.

“Perhaps I don’t,” Roundbush said. “If you like, I shall be happy to admit I don’t. But what I do know”-he fixed Goldfarb with a cool and menacing stare-“is that you will find yourself in more trouble than you ever dreamt of if you don’t button your lip this very minute.”

“I’ve already been in more trouble than I ever dreamt of,” David Goldfarb said. “I’ve been in more trouble than you and your pals could buy me in a thousand years. And so, sir, with all due respect, as far as I’m concerned, you can bend over and kiss my bleeding arse.”

“You will regret this foolish outburst,” Roundbush said. That, David thought, was very likely to be true. But he would have regretted going along with Roundbush and the ginger smugglers even more. The senior RAF officer went on, “And I am afraid your military career has just taken a large shell to the engine.”

“Go peddle your papers.” Goldfarb enjoyed defiance. It tingled through his veins, heady as good whiskey. He doubted the RAF could give him an assignment a great deal worse than the one he already had. He didn’t say that, though, as he was certain his former colleague and current oppressor would move heaven and earth to prove him wrong.

Roundbush said, “Do bear in mind that your family may suffer on account of your pigheadedness.”

“You’ve talked about my family too much,” Goldfarb answered. “Now I’m going to say something about them: If any harm-any harm at all, mind you-comes to them, something will happen to you, too. Have you got that?”

“Your spirit does you credit,” Basil Roundbush said. “You would be better off if your good sense did, too.” He nodded to Goldfarb, then turned and walked away, shaking his head as if washing his hands of the other RAF officer.

Goldfarb watched him go. As if after combat, reaction began to set in. Goldfarb’s knees wobbled. His hands shook. He was panting as if he’d run a long way. He began to think he’d been a fool after all.

If he ran after Roundbush and begged forgiveness, he was sure he would get it. Why not? He remained useful to the group captain and his ginger-smuggling pals. They were, and prided themselves on being, businessmen. Personal animosity? They’d wave it aside.

He stayed where he was. He didn’t want Roundbush and his associates to forgive him. He wanted them to leave him alone. Maybe, if he wasn’t useful to them, they’d do just that. Maybe they wouldn’t, too. Again, his hand glided toward his holster. If Group Captain Roundbush thought he’d been kidding when he made his warning, the much-decorated officer was badly mistaken.

The motorcar in which Roundbush would have taken him to the pub rolled away. Goldfarb sighed and headed for his bicycle. It was the sort of transportation he was more used to, anyhow.

When he got back to the quarters he shared with his family, his first words were, “Pour me a whiskey, darling, would you please?”

“Of course,” Naomi said, and did. The request was unusual from him, but not unheard of. The way he knocked back the smoky amber liquid, though, made her raise an eyebrow. “You had a bad day?”

“I had about the worst day a man could have, as a matter of fact.” He held out the glass to her. “Fill me up again. I’m going to get drunk and beat you, the way my father said the Poles would do to their wives.”

His wife got him another drink. When he sipped it instead of gulping it down, she nodded in approval and relief; maybe, even after all these years of marriage, she’d taken him literally when she shouldn’t have. She let him get about halfway down the glass before she said, “Don’t you think you should tell me about it? The children are all out doing one thing or another. You don’t have to be shy.”

“Good,” he answered. “I told Basil Roundbush to go fly a kite in a thunderstorm, is what I did.” As best he could, bowdlerizing only slightly, he recounted the conversation he’d had with the group captain. When he was finished, he sighed and said, “I should have played along, shouldn’t I?”

Naomi took the glass out of his hand and set it on the counter by the icebox. Then she wrapped her arms around him and squeezed the breath out of him. “I’m proud of you,” she said.

“You are?” He reached for his drink again. “Why? I’m not particularly proud of myself, and you’re liable to suffer for what I did.”

“I don’t think so,” Naomi said. “They will not get you to help them like that-and I think Roundbush knows you were not joking.”

“I’ll tell you what I think.” Goldfarb spoke more positively than usual: the whiskey talking through him, no doubt. “I think we ought to emigrate as fast as we can… if they’ll let us out.”

“The United States?” Naomi asked. “I would not mind going to the United States at all.” By her voice, that was an understatement.

But Goldfarb shook his head. “Canada, I think. Fewer formalities getting into Canada.” Seeing how disappointed his wife looked, he added, “We could go to the States later, you know.”

“I suppose so.” Naomi brightened. “That wouldn’t be bad. And you’re right-Canada wouldn’t be bad, either. If you think it’s easier to go to Canada than to the USA, that’s what we ought to do. If my family had waited till they could get into the United States in 1938, we’d still be waiting.”

“Except you wouldn’t be waiting,” Goldfarb said, “not when you were trying to get out of Germany. You’d be…” He let his voice trail off. He was very glad when Naomi took the point and nodded. He went on, “Sometimes, the idea is to be able to get out when you have to; you can worry about where you end up later.”

“All right,” she said. “See the Canadian consul tomorrow. If you want to see the American consul, too, that’s all right.”

“Fair enough.” David finished the second whiskey. It was a hefty tot; he could feel it. “If I went out now, they could nick me for drunken cycling.” Naomi laughed, but he remembered how many times over the years he’d pedaled back to his bed somewhat, or more than somewhat, the worse for wear.

He was sober when he cycled over to the Canadian consulate after his next tour in front of the radar. When he explained what he wanted, a clerk there said, “I’m sorry, sir, but we can’t accept serving officers.”

“If you accept me, I won’t be a serving officer,” David answered. “If you accept me, I’ll resign my commission like that.” He snapped his fingers. “Will you give me the forms on that basis?” The clerk nodded and handed him a set. He filled them out on the spot and gave them back. They seemed straightforward enough.

The clerk glanced at them. He looked up at Goldfarb. “Your government would be idiotic to let you go.”

“Perhaps you didn’t notice I’m a Jew,” Goldfarb said. Then, seeing the surprise on the clerk’s face, he realized the fellow hadn’t noticed. Such indifference was rare in the United Kingdom of 1963. He hoped it was common in Canada.

He rode to the American consulate a few blocks away. The clerk there was female and pretty. The forms, however, were much longer and uglier than the ones the Canadians used. Goldfarb slogged through them, too, and turned them in.

“Thank you, Flight Lieutenant,” the clerk said. She, too, looked over the papers. “The USA can pick and choose whom we let in, you know, but by these I’d say-unofficially, of course-you have a fair chance. Better than fair, in fact.”

He grinned all the way back to his flat. The Canadians wanted him. So did the Americans. He wasn’t used to that, not in Britain these days he wasn’t. “I ought to be,” he said, careless of the looks he might get for talking to himself. “By God, I bloody well ought to be.”