Second Contact

18

“I remain of the opinion that you are making too much of this,” Ttomalss said.

Kassquit glared at him out of his computer screen. “My investigation shows otherwise, superior sir,” she replied, deferential but unyielding, “and I remain of the opinion that you make too little of it. It is a serious matter.”

“It may be,” Ttomalss said. “You have no real proof.”

“Superior sir, are you being deliberately blind?” Kassquit asked. “There is no such title as senior tube specialist. This Regeya, whoever he may be, does not write like any member of the Race whose words are familiar to me. I think-as you yourself suggested-he really must be a Big Ugly.”

Hearing that come from one Tosevite’s mouth to describe another amused Ttomalss. He didn’t let that show, not wanting to offend Kassquit. He did say, “I have done a little investigating of my own.” And he had-a very little. “It would not be easy for a Tosevite to gain access to our network from the outside, so to speak.”

“You have always told me how the wild Big Uglies succeed in doing what seems most difficult to us,” Kassquit said. “If we can gain access to their computers-and I assume we can and do-they may be able to do the same to us.”

Ttomalss knew the Race did just that; his conversation with the embassy’s science officer would have told him as much had he been naive enough to believe otherwise. But he did not fancy having his own words thrown back in his snout. “We can do things to them that they cannot do to us in return.”

“Can you be sure computer spying is one of those things?” Kassquit asked. “If I were a Big Ugly”-she paused in momentary confusion, for in biological terms she was a Big Ugly-“I would try my best to reach the Race’s computers.”

“Well, so would I,” Ttomalss agreed, “but I have since spoken with Slomikk, the science officer here”-his research, a casual conversation-“and he does not think the Tosevites have this ability regardless of what they may desire.”

“No one will listen to me!” Kassquit said angrily. “I have tried and tried to persuade males and females involved in computer security to investigate this Regeya, and they ignore me, because to them I am nothing but a Big Ugly myself. I had hoped they would take me seriously, but now I discover that even you do not take me seriously. Farewell, then.” She broke the connection.

“Foolishness,” Ttomalss muttered. Kassquit was surely seeing things that were not there. Big Uglies seemed far more susceptible to wild imaginings than did males and females of the Race.

And yet, as the senior researcher had to admit, his Tosevite ward did make a sort of circumstantial case. He could not imagine what sort of body paint a senior tube technician would wear. Checking a data store, he found Kassquit was right: no such classification existed. And Regeya was an unusual name. But not all males and females used their true names under all circumstances. When aiming criticism at a superior, for instance, anonymity came in handy.

With a sigh, Ttomalss began sifting through computer records in search of the elusive Regeya, whoever he might be. Because the fellow had that unusual name, his messages were easy to track, even without knowing his pay number. And, Ttomalss discovered, Kassquit was right: Regeya did have an unusual turn of phrase. But did that make him a Big Ugly, or just a male with a mind of his own?

The more Ttomalss read of Regeya’s messages, the more he doubted the fellow whose phosphors he followed was a Tosevite. He did not believe any Big Ugly could have such insight into the way the Race thought and felt. No, Regeya might be eccentric, but Ttomalss felt nearly certain he was a male of the Race.

Being in Nuremberg and concerned with the Deutsche, Ttomalss had paid no attention to the American space station and to whatever the Big Uglies from the lesser continental mass were doing to it. Whatever it was, it struck him as suspicious. He did not seem to be the only one who thought it was, either. By all the signs, this Regeya did, too.

Because of that more than because of Regeya, whoever the individual behind the messages under the name might be, Ttomalss did send a message of his own to Security, asking what was known about the American space station.

Nothing that can be released to unauthorized personnel. The answer, sharp and stinging, came back almost at once.

It infuriated Ttomalss, who, unlike Kassquit, wasn’t used to being ignored. He did what he almost certainly would not have done otherwise: he wrote back, saying, Are you aware that a possible Tosevite under an assumed identity as a male of the Race is also seeking information about this space station?

Again, the response was very prompt. A Tosevite? Impossible.

To his bemusement, Ttomalss found himself using with Security all the arguments Kassquit had used with him. And Security was little more impressed with them than he had been. Tell me the individual named Regeya is demonstrably a male of the Race, and I will be convinced there is no need for concern here, he wrote.

This time, he waited a long time for an answer. He waited, and waited, and waited, and no answer came. At last, when he’d almost given up, he did get one last message. Your continued interest in the security of the Race is appreciated, it said: only that, and nothing more.

He stared at the screen. “Well, what does that mean?” he asked. “Did I make them think of something that had not occurred to them before, or are they just trying to get rid of me?” The words displayed gave him no answer.

He did not get long to wonder, for he had just turned away to try to do some other work when Felless telephoned. He guessed that meant she’d been tasting ginger; otherwise, she would have come to his office. “Those idiots!” she exclaimed. “Those treacherous, lying, double-dealing idiots!”

“What have the Deutsche done now?” Ttomalss asked. He did not think the Race could have infuriated her so.

He turned out to be right. “They have released from imprisonment the ginger smuggler Dutourd,” she blazed. That incensed reply almost made him laugh, considering how fond of the Tosevite herb she was. She went on, “They promised he would stay imprisoned for a long time. They promised, and they lied.”

“This is unfortunate, but hardly unique in our experience on Tosev 3,” Ttomalss said. “Big Uglies, I sometimes think, lie for the sport of it.”

“So I gather,” Felless answered. “Rather more than the sport of it is involved here, however. The Deutsch minister of justice, a male named Dietrich, all but said-I thought he did say-to Ambassador Veffani that this Dutourd would remain imprisoned for a long time to come. I was there. I heard him.”

“Ah,” Ttomalss said. “That does put things in a different light.”

“I should say so!” Felless said. “The ambassador is furious. He has already begun composing a memorandum of protest to the justice minister and another one to the ruler of this not-empire: to Himmler, whatever his title may be.”

“Reichs Chancellor,” Ttomalss supplied.

“Reichs Chancellor, General Secretary, President-what difference does it make?” Felless said impatiently. “All these titles are only fancy names pasted over emptiness. But this one has the nerve to defy the Race. I cannot believe his duplicity will stand.”

“Is making Himmler and, ah, Dietrich change their minds worth a possible nuclear exchange with the Reich?” Ttomalss asked. “That is the question the fleetlord will have to answer for himself before proceeding.”

“If we do not persuade the Big Uglies that they must keep their word, they will promise us peace one day and then begin a nuclear exchange themselves the next,” Felless said.

“This is likely to be truth,” Ttomalss agreed. “It is also my point: we should not let their lies take us by surprise.”

“They yielded on all other matters pertaining to this incident,” Felless said. “They released the American Tosevites who were acting as our agents. Despite protests, they even released a Tosevite in some way related to a Big Ugly who advises the fleetlord of the conquest fleet. And then they defy us about this smuggler-defy us after saying they would not.”

“As I said, they are known to be devious. Competing against one another has made them so,” Ttomalss said. He wondered whether the Big Uglies really were devious enough to impersonate a male of the Race on the computer network. As he’d told Kassquit, it was possible, but he still had trouble believing it.

Felless said, “I will be laying my eggs soon. I would like to think my hatchlings will become adults on a world where the Race is able to hold the natives in check, if nothing more.”

“Will all be well for the hatchlings if you stay here?” Ttomalss asked. “I know Slomikk was considering sending females away, to reduce the risk of radiation damage to their eggs.”

“The risk is relatively small, and my work is important to me and to the Race,” Felless replied. “I have considered, and have decided to stay.”

“Very well,” Ttomalss said. Few Tosevite females, he judged, would have made the same choice. Because of their biology and the unique helplessness of their hatchlings, their females developed stronger attachments for them than was usual among the Race. Ttomalss had discovered that after taking the female Liu Han’s hatchling and beginning the attempt to raise it as a female of the Race. Her revenge still made him shudder after all these years. Perhaps most frightening of all was the knowledge that she could have done worse.

Felless came back to what was uppermost in her mind: “How can we properly punish these Big Uglies when they flout our wishes?”

“If I knew that, I would deserve to be the fleetlord,” Ttomalss answered. “No-I would deserve to be above the fleetlord, for no one has yet found any sure answer to that question.”

“There must be one,” Felless said. “Perhaps we should start smuggling large quantities of drugs into the Reich and let the Deutsche see how they like that. I know Ambassador Veffani is considering the scheme.”

“I hope he decides wisely,” Ttomalss said, which let him avoid stating an opinion of the idea. Thinking of opinions made him ask one of Felless: “Do you believe, Senior Researcher, that a Big Ugly could impersonate a male of the Race well enough to deceive other males and females on our computer network?”

Felless considered. “I would doubt it,” she said at last. “Surely a Tosevite in close electronic contact with the Race would betray himself before long.”

“This is my belief also,” Ttomalss said with considerable relief. “I am glad to hear you confirm it.”

“Why do you ask?” Felless inquired. “Have you any evidence such impersonation may be occurring?”

“Kassquit has found enough to be thought-provoking, at least,” Ttomalss replied.

“Oh, Kassquit,” Felless said dismissively. “Being a Big Ugly herself, she doubtless looks to discover others, even if they are not there.”

“You could be right,” Ttomalss said. “That had not occurred to me, but it may hold much truth.” For all his efforts to make Kassquit as much a part of the Race as he could, biology dictated that she remained in some part a Tosevite, too. Would it be any wonder if she thought she found other Big Uglies on the computer network whether or not they were actually there? Yes, Felless’ words must indeed hold a good deal of truth-he was sure of it. He assumed the posture of respect. “I thank you, superior female. You have done much to ease my mind.”

Monique Dutourd wished with all her heart that the world would simply return to normal once more. The British Jew who’d been after her brother on behalf of his ginger-smuggling pals was gone. So were the Americans who’d been after Pierre on behalf of the Lizards.

And Pierre himself was out of the German jail and doing his best to set up his business again, even if he could no longer operate independent of the Reich. So far as Monique knew, the Gestapo wasn’t particularly aggrieved with him at the moment. Everything should have been fine, or as fine as it could get in a France under the Germans’ control for so long.

But Dieter Kuhn remained enrolled in her classes. As far as she was concerned, that in and of itself meant trouble hadn’t yet disappeared. Monique wished the SS man gave her an excuse to fail him; that might have got him out of her hair. But he was-he would be, she thought with resigned anger-a good student, easily in the top quarter of the class.

Every so often, something inside her would snap. Once, she barked, “Damn you, why can’t you leave me alone?”

“Because, my dear, you know such… interesting people,” he answered. His grin might have been attractive, had she been able to stand him. “You know smugglers, you know Jews, you know me.”

“My inscriptions are more interesting than you are,” Monique snapped, “and they’re dead.”

Too late to recall the words, she remembered that, at a nod from Sturmbannfuhrer Kuhn, she could become as dead as any inscription praising Isis. He didn’t order her arrested and tormented. But he could have. She knew he could have. These days, a lot of fear of the Nazis was based on what they had done and might do, not on what they usually did. That fear sufficed.

“You are still a key to your brother’s good behavior,” Dieter Kuhn said imperturbably. Then something in his face changed. “And you are also an intelligent, good-looking woman. If you think I do not find you attractive, you are mistaken.”

Monique looked around the empty lecture hall as if seeking a place to hide. She found none, of course. She hadn’t been sure whether Kuhn was interested in her that way or not; she’d wondered if he preferred his own sex. Now that she knew the answer, she wished she didn’t.

“It is not mutual,” she said sharply. “And you could keep a perfectly good eye on me without my ever knowing you were doing it. I wish you would keep an eye on me without my knowing it. Then I wouldn’t have to worry about you all the time.”

She hoped she hurt him. She wanted to hurt him. But if she did, he gave no sign. “I do not suggest how you should conduct your research,” he said. “In your area, you are the expert. Leave mine to me.”

She said something venomous in the Marseille dialect. It rocketed over Kuhn’s head: the French he spoke was purely Parisian. Having vented her spleen, she asked, “May I please go now?”

He looked innocent-not easy for an SS man. “But of course,” he said. “I am not holding you here by force. We are only having a conversation here, you and I.”

He wasn’t holding her, but he could. He could do anything he wanted. Yes, the knowledge of his unlimited power was what made him fearsome. Monique said something else she hoped he would not understand before stalking past him. He didn’t interfere. He didn’t follow her as she rode home. But, again, he could have.

A crane with a wrecking ball was demolishing the synagogue on Rue Breteuil. Monique wondered what sort of Teutonic thoroughness that implied. Had the Germans decided to knock the place down because it was on their list of Jewish monuments or to keep any other would-be independent ginger smugglers from meeting behind it? Only they would know, and they would assume it was no one else’s business.

Monique carried her bicycle upstairs and sauteed some mullet in white wine-the Romans would surely have approved-for supper. She kept eyeing the telephone as she did the dishes afterwards, and then as she got to work on her inscriptions. It stayed quiet. She gave it a suspicious look. Why wasn’t Dieter Kuhn calling her to complain about this, that, or the other thing? Or why wasn’t her brother on the line to complain about whatever made Kuhn happy?

The telephone did not ring for four days, which, lately, came close to being a record. When at last it did, it was neither Kuhn nor Monique’s brother, but Lucie, Pierre’s friend with the boudoir voice. The rest of her, Monique knew, was dumpy, and she was acquiring a mustache, but on the phone she might have been Aphrodite.

“He’s back,” she said happily. “He’s made it all up with them.”

“Back where?” Monique asked. By the way Lucie sounded, she meant back in her arms, but she always sounded that way. And it didn’t fit the rest of what she’d said. “Made it up with whom? The Germans?”

“No, no, no,” Lucie said, and Monique could almost see her wagging a forefinger. “With the Lizards, of course.”

“He has?” Monique exclaimed. The Nazis were sure to be listening. She wondered what they’d make of that. She wondered what to make of it herself. “I thought they wanted something bad to happen to him.”

“Oh, they did,” Lucie said airily, “but not any more. Now they’re glad he’s free. Some of them are glad because he’ll deal in ginger again, others because they can use him to smuggle drugs for people into the Reich. Many important Lizards want him to do just that.”

Lucie was no fool. She had to know the Germans were listening to Monique’s telephone. That meant she wanted them to hear what she was saying. If she wasn’t thumbing her nose at the Nazis, Monique didn’t know what she was doing.

Monique also didn’t know how she felt about the news Lucie gave her. She had taken Pierre’s ginger-smuggling more or less in stride. She didn’t mind his selling drugs to the Lizards, no matter what those drugs ended up doing to them. In principle, then, she didn’t suppose she ought to mind if the shoe went on the other foot. Principle, she discovered, went only so far.

“What will the Germans do when they find out Pierre is working for the Lizards again?” she asked, and then answered her own question: “They will kill him, that’s what.”

“They can try,” Lucie said airily-yes, she had to be expecting, and hoping, the Gestapo was tapping the telephone line. “They have been trying for a long time. They haven’t done it yet. I don’t think they can, not with the Lizards helping us. Your brother will call you soon.” With a last breathy chuckle, Lucie hung up.

My brother, Monique thought. The brother I thought was dead. The brother who smuggles drugs. If Pierre didn’t care about the difference between selling drugs to Lizards and selling them to human beings… what did that prove? That he was generous enough to treat everyone alike? Or that he simply didn’t care where he made his money, so long as he made it? After growing reacquainted with him, Monique feared she knew the answer.

She returned to her inscriptions with a heavy heart. Aside from everything else, this had to mean the Nazis would stay on her brother’s tail. And it had to mean Dieter Kuhn would stay on her tail. Not for the first time, she wished her tail were the main thing he was after. Even if he’d ended up in bed with her, she wouldn’t have felt so oppressed as she did now.

When the telephone rang again a few minutes later, she ignored it. She had the feeling she knew who it would be, and she didn’t want to talk to him. But he, or whoever was on the other end, wanted to talk to her. The telephone rang and rang and rang. At last, its endless clanging wore her down. Cursing under her breath, she picked it up. “Allo?”

“Good evening, Monique.” Sure enough, it was Kuhn. “I suppose you know why I’m calling you.”

“No, I haven’t the faintest idea,” she answered.

The SS officer ignored her. “You may tell your brother that the Reich showed him mercy once by not turning him over to the Lizards when they demanded that we do so. Instead, we released him from prison-”

“So he could do exactly what you told him,” Monique broke in.

Kuhn went on ignoring her, except that he had to repeat, “We released him from prison. And how does he repay us? By going back to his old ways, as a dog returns to its vomit.” Monique hadn’t expected him to allude to Scripture. If he knew any verse, though, she supposed that would be the one. He went on, “You are to tell him that, when we take him again, we will give him justice, not mercy.”

“I don’t think he would expect mercy from you,” Monique said. “I don’t suppose he expected it from you the first time.” That was a dangerous comment, but she knew Kuhn was short on irony.

“And if the Lizards call you,” he went on, “you can tell them what we have told them before: if they want to have a war of drugs, we will fight it. We can hurt them worse than they can hurt us.”

“No Lizard has ever called me,” Monique exclaimed. “I hope to heaven no Lizard ever does call.”

“Your brother is conspiring with them against the Greater German Reich,” Kuhn said, sounding every centimeter the Sturmbannfuhrer. “Therefore, we must also believe you may be conspiring against the Reich. You are on thin ice, Professor Dutourd. If you break it and fall in, you will be sorry afterwards-but that will be too late to do you much good.”

Monique had thought she’d been alarmed when the SS man said he found her attractive. This inhuman drone of warning was infinitely worse. “Why can’t you just leave me alone?” she demanded. “If you hadn’t told me Pierre was alive, I never would have known it. I–I wish I didn’t.” She wasn’t sure that was true, but she wasn’t sure it wasn’t, either.

“I have said what I have to say,” Kuhn told her. “I will see you in class tomorrow. And if I ask you out with me, you would be wise to say yes. Believe me, you would find other watchers less desirable than me-and you may take that however you like. Good night.” He hung up.

“Damn you,” Monique snarled. She wasn’t sure if she meant Kuhn or Pierre or both at once. Both at once, probably.

She returned to the inscriptions-a forlorn hope, and she knew it. Latin seemed spectacularly meaningless tonight. She almost screamed when the telephone rang again. “Hello, little sister,” Pierre Dutourd said in her ear. “By God, it feels good to be on my own again.”

“I’m glad you think so,” Monique said, sounding anything but glad. “I’m on my own, too, but not the way you mean.”

As Dieter Kuhn had, her brother ignored her. “I had to play both ends against the middle,” he boasted, “but I pulled it off.”

“How lucky for you.” This time, Monique got the last word and hung up. But it did her little good. Thanks to Pierre, she was stuck between the Nazis and the Lizards, too, and the only thing to which she could look forward was getting crushed when they collided.

Vyacheslav Molotov wished for eyes in the back of his head. They might not have done him any good; plotters were generally too subtle to show up under even the most vigilant inspection. But that didn’t mean the plotters weren’t there. On the contrary. He’d found that out, and counted himself lucky to have survived the lesson.

Stalin, now, Stalin had seen plotters everywhere, whether they were really there or not. He’d killed a lot of people on the off chance they were plotters, or in the hope that their deaths would frighten others out of plotting. At the time, Molotov had thought him not just wasteful but more than a little crazy.

Now he wasn’t so sure. Stalin had died in bed, without anyone having seriously tried to overthrow him. That was no mean achievement. Molotov admired it much more now that he’d weathered an attempted coup.

His secretary poked his head into the office. “Comrade General Secretary, Comrade Nussboym is here to see you.”

“Yes, I was expecting him,” Molotov said. “Send him in.”

In came David Nussboym: Jewish, skinny, nondescript-except for the golden star of the Order of Lenin pinned to his breast pocket. He nodded to Molotov. “Good morning, Comrade General Secretary.”

“Good morning, David Aronovich,” Molotov answered. “What can I do for you today? You have asked for so little since the day of the coup, it rather makes me nervous.” From another man, that might have been a joke, or at least sounded like one. From Molotov, it sounded like what it was: a statement of curiosity tinged with suspicion.

“Comrade General Secretary, I can tell you what I want,” Nussboym said. “I want revenge.”

“Ah.” Molotov nodded; Nussboym had picked a motivation he understood. “Revenge against whom? Whoever it is, you shall have it.” He made a sour face, then had to amend his words: “Unless it is Marshal Zhukov. I am also in his debt.” And if I try to move against him, he will move against me, and the outcome of that would be… unfortunate.

“I have nothing against the marshal,” Nussboym said. “He could have quietly disposed of me after we came out of NKVD headquarters, but he didn’t.”

He could have quietly disposed of me, too, Molotov thought. Maybe it is that he is like a German general-too well trained to meddle in politics. In the USSR, that made Zhukov a rarity. “All right, then,” Molotov said. “I asked you once; now I ask you again: revenge against whom?”

He thought he knew what Nussboym would say, and the Polish Jew proved him right: “Against the people who sent me to the Soviet Union against my will twenty years ago.”

“I cannot order the Jews of Warsaw punished, you know, as I could with citizens of the Soviet Union,” Molotov reminded him.

“I understand that, Comrade General Secretary,” Nussboym said. “I have in mind the Jews of Lodz, not Warsaw.”

“That will make it harder still: Lodz is closer to the borders of the Reich than it is to us,” Molotov said. “Had you said Minsk, life would be simple. Infiltrating Minsk is child’s play.”

“I know. I have done it,” David Nussboym replied. “But I come from the western part of Poland, and that is where my enemies live.”

“As you wish. I keep my promises,” Molotov said, conveniently forgetting how many he had broken. “I give you a free hand against your enemies there in Lodz. Whatever resources you require, you have my authorization to utilize. The only thing you may not do is embarrass the Soviet Union’s relations with the Lizards. If you do that, I will throw you to the wolves. Is it agreeable? Do we have a bargain?”

“It is agreeable, and we do have a bargain,” Nussboym said. “Thank you, Comrade General Secretary.” Despite having saved Molotov’s life, he did not presume to address him by first name and patronymic. The USSR was officially a classless society, but that did not change who was on top and who below.

“Good enough, then, David Aronovich,” Molotov said. “So long as you do not embroil us with the Race, do what you will.” He realized he sounded rather like God sending Satan out to afflict Job. The conceit amused him-not enough for him to let it show on the outside, true, but he found very few things that amusing.

Nussboym also knew better than to linger. Having got what he wanted from Molotov, he rose, nodded, and took his leave. After he was gone-but only after he was gone-Molotov nodded approval.

Half an hour till his next appointment. Those thirty minutes might stretch, too; Khrushchev had the time sense of the Ukrainian peasant he’d been born, not of the West. He came and went when he thought it right and fitting, not according to the bidding of any clock. Molotov pulled a report from the pile awaiting his attention, donned his spectacles, and began to read.

He remembered memoranda wondering what the United States was doing with its space station. From the report in his hands, it appeared that the Reich and the Lizards were wondering, too. He scratched his head. Such aggressive work seemed more likely the province of the Reich than of the USA. President Warren had always struck him as a cautious and capable reactionary. He hoped the man would be reelected in 1964.

But what were the Americans doing up there? From the report in front of him, even some of them were wondering-wondering and not finding out. Molotov frowned. Secrecy was unlike the Americans, too, at least for anything less vital than their nuclearexplosives project.

He scribbled a note to spur further investigation. Most of that would have to be on the ground. The Soviet Union had forced itself into space along with the Germans and the Americans, but it was not the player there that the other two independent human powers were.

On the ground… “Damn you, Lavrenti Pavlovich,” Molotov murmured. In the wake of Beria’s failed coup, the NKVD was being purged. That had to happen; the fallen chief’s backers had to go. But Molotov wished they didn’t have to go now. With the NKVD in disarray, he had to rely more on the GRU, the Red Army’s intelligence operation, which-again-made him more dependent on Georgi Zhukov. With two agencies doing the same job, he could play one off against the other. For the time being, he’d lost that option.

Muttering balefully under his breath, he reached out for the next report. It gave him good news: several caravans of arms had crossed the border into Lizard-occupied China and reached the People’s Liberation Army. Mao would keep the Race hopping like fleas on a griddle; Molotov was confident of that.

He worked his way through the whole report instead of contenting himself with the one-page summary stapled to the front. An eyebrow rose-with him, a sign of considerable emotion. Someone had tried to sneak something past him. The report mentioned that a shipment of U.S. arms had reached the People’s Liberation Army despite the best efforts of the Kuomintang, the Lizards, and, ever so secretly, the GRU. The report mentioned that-but the summary didn’t.

In future, he wrote, I expect summaries to conform more closely to the documents they are supposed to summarize. Failure in this regard will not be tolerated. If that didn’t make some apparatchik ’s ulcer twinge, he didn’t know what would.

Before he could reach for the next report in the stack, his secretary said, “Comrade Khrushchev is here to see you.”

Molotov glanced at his watch. Khrushchev was fifteen minutes late-not bad at all, by his standards. “Send him in,” Molotov said.

“Good day, Comrade General Secretary,” Khrushchev said, shaking hands with Molotov. He spoke Russian with a strong Ukrainian accent, turning g’s into h’s, and had a peasant drawl to boot.

“Good day, Comrade General Secretary,” Molotov echoed with a wintry smile. The rank he held in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Khrushchev held in the Communist Party of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. “And how are the pacification efforts progressing?”

Khrushchev made a remarkably sour face. He was ugly as sin to begin with: squat, bullet-headed, snaggle-toothed, with a couple of prominent warts. When he got angry, he got uglier. “Not so good,” he answered. “The Reich keeps shipping the robbers arms across the Romanian border. You ought to call the sons of bitches on it.”

“I have done so, Nikita Sergeyevich,” Molotov answered. “The Reich states that Romania is an independent nation pursuing an independent foreign policy.” He held up a hand. “And I have protested to the Romanians, who say they are helpless to keep the Germans from shipping arms through their territory.”

“Fuck ’em,” Khrushchev said. “Fuck ’em all. The Lizards are sneaking shit in from Poland, too. We hold things down, but it’s a damn pain in the arse.”

“So long as you do hold things down,” Molotov said. “That is why you have your job, after all.”

“Don’t I know it,” Khrushchev said. “Stinking nationalist bandits. As soon as we pull one band up by the roots, another one sprouts.” He raised an eyebrow. “Anybody would think they didn’t fancy taking orders from Moscow.”

“Too bad,” Molotov said coldly. Khrushchev laughed out loud. They didn’t always agree on means, but they stood together on keeping the Ukraine a part of the USSR. Molotov asked, “You can document the fact that some of the bandits’ weapons come from the Lizards and not the fascists?”

“Oh, hell, yes, Vyacheslav Mikhailovich,” Khrushchev exclaimed.

“Good. Give me your evidence, and I will protest to the Lizards,” Molotov said. Khrushchev nodded. Molotov went on, “When confronted with evidence, the Lizards often draw back-unlike the fascists, who are strangers to shame.”

“Unlike us, too,” Khrushchev said with a grin. “But we have the dialectic on our side, and the goddamn Nazis don’t.”

“Neither do the Lizards,” Molotov said. And a good thing, too, or they would surely beat us, he thought somewhere down deep.

Khrushchev departed in due course, loudly and profanely promising to give Molotov the evidence he needed to protest to the Lizards. Based on his previous performance, Molotov figured the chances he would were a little better than even money. Molotov was reaching for another report when the telephone rang. His secretary said, “Comrade General Secretary, Marshal Zhukov wishes to speak with you.”

“Put him through,” Molotov said at once, and then, “Good day, Georgi Konstantinovich.”

“Good day, Comrade General Secretary,” Zhukov said politely. “I wonder if you might be able to stop by my office some time today, to review the revised projections for the military budget in the upcoming Five-Year Plan.”

Revised upwards, he meant-revised sharply upwards. Zhukov might not want to rule the USSR, but he was taking his pound of flesh for suppressing Beria. And Molotov could not-did not dare-do anything about it. Things could have been worse, and he knew as much, but they also could have been a great deal better. With the resigned sigh of an animal in a cage too small, he answered, “I will be there directly, Marshal,” and took a petty revenge by hanging up the phone very hard.

Of all the Lizards Rance Auerbach had hoped never to see again, Hesskett topped the list. The interrogator had threatened to lock him and Penny Summers in jail and lose the key if they didn’t put that French ginger smuggler out of business for good. Rance would have liked his trip to the south of France a hell of a lot better if it hadn’t ended up in a Nazi jail.

He still didn’t think that was his fault. Hesskett took a different view of things, though, and his would be the one that counted. He turned one eye turret toward Rance, the other toward Penny. “You failed,” he said in a voice that somehow held echoes of slamming metal doors.

Penny spoke quickly: “We didn’t fail all the way, superior sir. The Germans still have that Dutourd in jail, or they did when they let us go. That puts him out of business, doesn’t it?”

“It does not,” Hesskett said, and Auerbach imagined he heard more slamming doors. “The Deutsche released him some time ago. No doubt he will soon be selling the Race ginger again.”

“That’s not our fault, dammit!” Rance said. “Now that you flew us back here to Mexico, we can’t do anything about what happens on the other side of the ocean, and you can’t hold it against us.”

“Who says I cannot?” Hesskett returned. His English wasn’t usually idiomatic. He probably didn’t intend it to be idiomatic here. “Who says I cannot?” he repeated. “The agreement was to reduce your punishment if you acted to further the interests of the Race. Can you say you have furthered the interests of the Race?”

“The agreement was to reward us if we did that,” Penny said. “You told us we’d get a big reward if we did it. Well, we did some of it-maybe not as much as you wanted, but some. So we deserve some reward, anyway.”

“That’s right,” Auerbach said. Whether it was right or not, though, he didn’t expect it to do him a plugged nickel’s worth of good.

Hesskett took him by surprise, then, by saying, “Perhaps. This Big Ugly will now also be selling drugs we supply to the Tosevites of the Reich. So your mission may have accomplished something, even if it was something small.”

“In that case, why are you saying we failed?” Penny demanded. “Okay, we don’t deserve the whole great big reward, but you’ve got no business keeping us locked up like this.”

“Your efforts did not bring Dutourd over to the side of the Race,” Hesskett answered. “The Deutsche released him to continue his role as a destructive menace. They did not know we would be able to turn him-to turn him to some partial degree-to our own purposes.”

“Well, what are you going to do with us, then?” Auerbach asked. “This teasing gets stale.”

“What to do with you is a puzzlement,” the Lizard said. “You did not completely fail, but you were far from complete success. And, if you are set at liberty, you are only too likely to return to your own noxious habit of ginger-smuggling.”

I wouldn’t! Rance almost shouted it. He hadn’t had anything to do with smuggling ginger for years till Penny came back into his life. If they let him go and kept her in the calaboose, they wouldn’t hurt themselves one bit.

Without turning his head to look at her, he felt Penny’s eyes on him. She had to know what was going through his mind. She also had to know he hadn’t asked her to come back to him. She’d done it on her own, because she couldn’t find any other choice. If he walked away and sold her down the river, how much guilt would he have on his conscience?

He asked himself the same question. Just how big a son of a bitch are you, Rance? How low have you fallen? The clean-cut West Point cavalry officer he’d been once upon a time wouldn’t have let a pal down for anything. But he hadn’t been that fellow for a lot of years. A couple of Lizard bullets had made sure he’d never be that fellow again. And afterwards, he hadn’t even been able to make a go of it as a ginger smuggler after Penny left him the first time, even if some of his buddies had stayed in touch with him on the off chance he might be able to do something for them. He’d turned into a petty grifter, a loser, a drunk. Christ, what else had he turned into on the way down? A Judas?

He sat quietly. Over in the other chair in the interrogation chamber, too far away to touch, Penny let out a soft sigh of relief. He wondered what she would have done had their positions been reversed. Odds were he was better off not knowing.

Penny said, “Superior sir, if you do let me go, I don’t want to go back to the United States. Too many people there want me dead.”

“This is a perspective with which I have some sympathy,” Hesskett said. “It is also, you realize, an argument for keeping you imprisoned.”

“If that’s what you want to do, go ahead-go ahead for both of us.” Now Auerbach spoke before Penny could. “If you don’t care about going back on the bargain you made, go ahead and do that.”

Against a human being, he wouldn’t have had a prayer. Had he been stupid enough to try that argument on his Nazi interrogators, they might have burst a blood vessel laughing. But Lizards, whatever else you said about them, were more honest than people. They didn’t always make bargains in a hurry. When they did make them, they commonly kept them.

Hesskett didn’t show what he was thinking. Lizards rarely did, at least not in ways people could recognize. “Not spending all your lives in prison would be a reward, thinking of how much ginger the two of you had when we caught you,” he said.

Rance tried not to show what he was thinking, either, but couldn’t help leaning forward a little. He knew the start of a dicker when he heard one. “Hey, we did the best we could for you,” he said.

“That’s right,” Penny said. “It’s not our fault all the Nazis in the goddamn world came busting out of that building. And how come your fancy gadgets didn’t tell us they were there?”

“They must not have been using electronics to monitor their surroundings,” Hesskett said. “Had they been using electronics, you would have been warned.”

“Well, they weren’t, and we weren’t, and now you’re trying to blame us for it,” Auerbach said. If he had the Lizard on the defensive, and he thought he did, he’d push him hard.

“What do you think a fitting reward would be?” Hesskett asked.

“Letting us go free, that’s what,” Penny said at once.

“Let us go free someplace where they speak English,” Rance added. He didn’t want to get turned loose in Mexico, not when he knew maybe a dozen words of Spanish, and most of them swear words. He wasn’t jumping up and down at the idea of going back to the USA, either, not after he’d ventilated those goons. Their bosses wouldn’t remember him fondly.

“We do not want you going back to your friends. That would mean going back to smuggling ginger,” Hesskett said. “Where in the lands the Race rules do Big Uglies speak English? I cannot be bothered keeping track of your languages. You should have only one, like us.”

“Austr-” Penny began, but Auerbach gave her such a sharp look, she didn’t finish. Australia was going to be a place where Lizards outnumbered people, if it wasn’t already. Rance didn’t want that.

Hesskett was checking a computer screen. Turning one eye turret away from it and toward Rance and Penny, he said, “Your choices are fewer than I thought. Most of the Tosevites who speak your language are not under the rule of the Race. I do not want to add more Big Uglies to the population of Australia. That is to be our land, in particular.” Auerbach gave Penny a told-you-so look. The Lizard went on, “Perhaps South Africa. It is isolated. You would have a hard time causing the Race great trouble there-and we would be able to keep an eye turret aimed in your direction.”

“Can we think about it?” Auerbach asked. “Can we talk it over, just the two of us?”

Hesskett used the hand gesture that was his equivalent of a headshake. “No. We do not have to give you anything at all. You may say that you tried to aid us, but you failed. You may have South Africa, or you may have a cell each.”

“Not much choice there,” Penny said, and Rance nodded. She looked a question at him. He nodded again. She spoke for both of them: “We’ll take South Africa.”

“You shall be sent there,” Hesskett said. “You shall live out the rest of your days there. You shall not leave, unless by order of the Race. Do you understand this?”

“Exile,” Auerbach said.

“Exile, yes,” Hesskett agreed. “I have heard this word in your language before, but I did not remember it. Now I shall.”

Auerbach tried to remember what he knew of South Africa. Not much, he discovered. Gold and diamonds came to mind. So did the Boer War. Before the Lizards arrived, the South Africans had been on the Allies’ side, but a good many of them wished they’d lined up with the Nazis instead. Whites lorded it over blacks who enormously outnumbered them. It was sort of like the American South, only more so.

He looked down at his arm. Sure as hell, he was the right color to go there. He hadn’t heard much about the place since the fighting ended. Every now and then, there’d been stories about a low-grade guerrilla war. Those had mostly disappeared from the newspapers in the past few years. That probably meant most of the guerrillas had gone to their heavenly reward.

Still, it didn’t seem too bad, especially for a white man-and a white woman. “South Africa,” he said in musing tones. “I think we can make the best of it.”

“Me, too,” Penny said. Auerbach wasn’t altogether comfortable with her expression. What it seemed to say was, If I find something good, I can always dump this guy. She’d done it before.

Of course, he would have been better off if she’d stayed out of his life once she dumped him. Still, getting laid regularly had its points.

Hesskett said, “Once you are there, we do not provide for you. You will have to make your own way.”

How the hell am I supposed to do that, crippled up like I am? Rance wondered. If the other choice was a cell, though, he supposed he could try. The Lizards’ jail hadn’t been so bad as he’d expected, but he didn’t want to live there the rest of his life.

Penny said, “You can’t just drop us there without a dime in our pockets. We need enough money to keep us going till we can get on our feet.”

That started the haggling again. Auerbach wondered if he could arrange to have his government pension sent to him in Cape Town or wherever the hell he ended up. He didn’t mention that to Hesskett. He did point out his injuries, adding, “These are your fault, too.”

Hesskett wasn’t the best bargainer who ever came down the pike. Few Lizards were good bargainers, not by human standards. By the time Rance and Penny got done with him, he’d promised the Race would support them for six months, with another six months’ help forthcoming if they were still having trouble after that.

“Beats the hell out of jail,” Penny said as the Lizard airplane on which they would fly took off from Mexico City.

“Jail, nothing-beats the hell out of whatever we could think of,” Auerbach said. “Talk about coming up smelling like a rose.” He leaned over and gave Penny a kiss. Maybe she’d dump him, maybe she wouldn’t. Meanwhile, he’d enjoy what he had while it lasted.

Straha would never have got interested in the U.S. space station if it hadn’t been for Sam Yeager. The ex-shiplord knew as much. He’d agreed to stick out his tongue in the station’s direction not so much because he thought anything about it was particularly odd as because his Tosevite friend-a notion he was still getting used to-had asked it of him.

He’d always known Yeager was a clever Big Ugly. Now he was seeing just how good the American officer’s instincts were. He still hadn’t the faintest idea what the USA was doing with its station. As far as he could tell, not a male or female of the Race knew the answer to that. But something strange-which presumably meant something illicit-was going on up there.

He wondered how many American Big Uglies knew what was going on at the space station. Not many, surely, or Yeager would have been one of them. That he wasn’t anyhow puzzled Straha. He’d been entrusted with important secrets before. Straha knew of some of them. For that matter, Straha was one of the important secrets with which Yeager had been entrusted. That a secret should be so much more important than he had been during the fighting wounded his vanity.

He would have asked more questions among the humans of his acquaintance had it not been for his driver. He feared that, whatever the formidable male heard, the U.S. government would hear in short order. His driver no doubt knew a good many secrets of his own. He might even know what the Americans were doing up at the space station. Straha did not have the nerve to ask him.

At the moment, Straha was catching up on the Race’s computer discussion about the station. A female named Kassquit kept asking leading questions, good ones. She showed unusual understanding of the Big Uglies. The experience Straha had gained in twenty long Tosevite years of living among them made him able to see that.

“Psychologist’s apprentice,” he muttered, looking at the way she described herself. “She ought to be an intermediate researcher by now, heading toward senior. By the Emperor, she would if I were in charge. But those fools up there are dim themselves, so they think everyone else must be, too.”

If I were in charge. Even now, after all these years of exile, the words still leapt to his mind. Atvar had bumbled along, doing the safe, doing the cautious, occasionally doing the stupid. And the Race had got by, as it had got by on Home for a hundred thousand years. Even snout-to-snout with the Big Uglies, the Race had got by. Atvar had made his share-more than his share-of mistakes, but the Tosevites had made their share, too, and disaster hadn’t come. Quite.

“Still,” Straha said, “I would have done better.” His pride was enormous. If only a few more males had gone with him at that climactic meeting after the Soviet Union touched off its first explosive-metal bomb. He would have ousted Atvar, and Tosev 3 would have looked… different.

The telephone rang, distracting him. Tosevite telephones were simple-minded machines, without screens and with only the most limited facilities for anything but voice transmission. Straha often missed the versatile phone he’d had before he defected. So many things he’d taken for granted…

“Hello?” he said in English, and then gave his name.

“I greet you, Shiplord,” a male said. “Ristin speaking. Ullhass and I will be holding another party on Saturday night”-the name of the day was in English-“and hoped you might join us.”

Straha started to decline; he hadn’t had that good a time at Ristin’s earlier gathering. Then he thought that he might meet interesting males there-former prisoners who had thrown in their lot with the American Big Uglies, perhaps even visitors from areas of Tosev 3 the Race ruled. Who could tell what he might learn from them?

And so he said, “I thank you. I believe I will come, yes.”

“I thank you, Shiplord.” Ristin sounded surprised and pleased. “I look forward to seeing you there.”

“I will see you then,” Straha said, and hung up. He didn’t particularly look forward to it. Having committed himself, though, he would go.

His driver greeted the news with something less than rapture. “A party?” the Tosevite said when Straha told him. “I was hoping to watch television that night.”

“You Tosevites did not even have television when you were a hatchling,” Straha told him. “You cannot find it as necessary as the Race does.”

“Who said anything about necessary?” the driver returned. “I enjoy it.” Straha said nothing. He stood and waited and looked at the driver with both eye turrets. The Big Ugly sighed. “It shall be done, Shiplord.”

“Of course it shall,” Straha said smugly. The driver gave him more trouble than a male of the Race with a similar job would have done. Big Uglies-especially American Big Uglies-did not understand the first thing about subordination. But the driver, having made his complaints, would now do what was required of him.

Body paint perfect-he had spent considerable time touching it up-Straha went off to the gathering with something approaching eagerness. Ristin and Ullhass had had good ginger at their house. If nothing else came of the evening, he could always taste till he’d sated himself. He could do that here, too, but the experience was different in company.

“Have a good time,” the driver said as he halted the motorcar in front of the house Ristin and Ullhass shared. “I will keep an eye turret on things out here.” The Race’s idiom sounded grotesque in his mouth, but keep an eye on things, the English usage, would have been equally strange in Straha’s language.

As at the last gathering, Ristin met him in front of the door. The ex-infantrymale’s red-white-and-blue prisoner-of-war body paint was as carefully tended as Straha’s official coat. (Straha chose not to dwell on the fact that, having deserted, he wasn’t entitled to the fancy body paint he still wore.) “I greet you, Shiplord,” Ristin said. “Alcohol and ginger in the kitchen, as before. Help yourself to anything you fancy. Plenty of food, too. Make yourself at home; you are one of the first ones here.”

“I thank you.” Straha went into the kitchen and poured himself a small glass of vodka. Ginger could wait for the time being. He also took some thinly sliced ham, some potato chips, and some of the little, highly salted fish the Big Uglies used to spice up dishes. Like most males of the Race, Straha found them delicious by themselves. And Ullhass and Ristin had laid in another delicacy he did not see often enough: Greek olives. He let out a small, happy hiss. Regardless of what sort of company the night yielded, the food was good.

He carried his plate and glass out into the main room, where Ullhass, who’d been talking with a couple of other males, greeted him. Like Ristin, Ullhass wore American-style body paint instead of what the Race authorized. The other guests were more conventional. They also seemed astonished to see a shiplord there. Then they realized which shiplord Straha had to be, and were astonished again in a different way. Straha had seen that before. He’d heard the whispered, “There is the traitor,” before, too. He sat down and relaxed. In a while, with alcohol and ginger in them, they’d grow less shy of him.

His eye turrets scanned the shelves of books and videos along the walls of the main room. “Some of these are new, are they not?” he asked Ullhass. “New since the conquest fleet left Home, I mean?”

“Yes, Shiplord,” the male answered. “We have had visitors from the colonization fleet here before. We expect some tonight, in fact.”

“I thought you might,” Straha said. “I wonder if, some time or another, I might borrow some of these, to see what they were doing on Home after we went into cold sleep.”

“I would be pleased if you did,” Ullhass told him. That might be more polite than sincere, but Straha intended to take him up on it.

Sure enough, some males and a couple of females from the colonization fleet, in Los Angeles on a trade mission, joined the gathering. They exclaimed in pleasure at the delicacies. Seeing Straha’s body paint, they began to fawn on him till Ristin took one of them aside and spoke quietly. After that, they didn’t seem to know what to make of the self-exiled shiplord.

After a while, he did get into a conversation with one of them, a male whose body paint proclaimed him a foods dealer. “It must be strange living here,” the fellow remarked.

“It is,” Straha agreed. “At times, I feel as out of place as the American space station in orbit not far from the ships of the colonization fleet.”

He threw out the comparison to see if the foods dealer would rise to it. “That thing!” the male said with an indignant hiss. “A big, ugly construction from the Big Uglies.” His mouth fell open in appreciation of his own wit. He went on, “I hear they are building a separate section onto it, well removed from the main body. It will be even uglier than it is now.”

“That is difficult to imagine,” Straha said. It was also something he had not heard before. He wondered if Sam Yeager knew about it. He would have to remember to pass it on to the Tosevite. Maybe Yeager would have some better idea of what it meant than he did.

After drinking some more vodka, he went back into the kitchen to get his first taste of ginger. One of the females from the trade delegation was in there. She had an almost empty glass of vodka or rum in her hand, and was laughing a wide-mouthed, foolish laugh. Pointing to the bowl of ginger on the counter, she said, “In any proper land”-by which she meant any land the Race ruled-“I would be punished for standing even this close to that herb.”

“It is not against the law in this not-empire,” Ristin said. “If you want to taste, go ahead.” He gestured invitingly.

“It smells good.” The female laughed again, even more foolishly than before. “I think I will.” She scooped up about four tastes’ worth. Her tongue flicked in and out, in and out, till the herb was gone. “Oh.” Her voice went soft with wonder. “I did not think it would be like this.”

Remembering his own first taste of ginger, Straha empathized with her-and his hadn’t been nearly so monumental as this one. But then, a moment later, he almost stopped thinking altogether as his scent receptors caught the pheromones the ginger released in the female. Sam Yeager had offered to get him a female who’d tasted ginger. He’d turned the Big Ugly down. What an addled egg he’d been! The long scales of his crest rose.

He straightened into his mating posture as the female bent into hers. Ristin started for her, too, but Straha’s display of crest, outspread fingerclaws, and colorful body paint made the other male yield to him. He took his place behind the female. Their bodies joined. Not much later, he let out a loud, ecstatic hiss.

When he stepped back from the female, Ristin took his place. Other males crowded the kitchen, drawn by the female’s pheromones as surely as Tosevite flying pests were drawn by light. A couple of males got clawed; one got bitten badly enough to draw blood. Straha, satiated, withdrew. He knew he was supposed to tell Sam Yeager something, but for the life of him couldn’t remember what.

Felless was glad she was in the Race’s embassy in Nuremberg when the urge to lay her eggs became overwhelming. She and the Race would have been embarrassed if the urge had struck her while she was interviewing some Deutsch functionary with preposterous ideas. And she might not have-she probably would not have-found a proper place in which to lay had she been out among the Big Uglies.

Inside the embassy, though, Slomikk the science officer had prepared a chamber to which gravid females could go when their time came. It had a deep layer of sand on the floor, and plenty of rocks and dry branches the females could use to conceal their clutches. In the chamber, of course, such concealment didn’t matter. But it would have mattered very much to the Race’s primitive ancestors, and the urge to conceal remained strong.

Slomikk had also given the chamber extra shielding against local background radiation. That wouldn’t have mattered to Felless’ primitive ancestors, but she was glad of it.

When she went inside, she looked around warily to make sure she was alone-another triumph of instinct over reason. The door to the laying chamber clicked shut behind her. She was, as far as she knew, the first female to use it. Few others, here or anywhere, had tasted ginger as early as she had. Few others had mated as early as she had. And few others had become gravid as early as she had.

She scurried over to a corner of the chamber half screened from the doorway by branches and rocks. All her instincts shouted This is the place! to her. She could not have found anywhere better to lay her eggs. She was sure of it, sure in a way that transcended reason. This place felt right.

Splaying her legs apart, she bent forward and scooped a hollow in the sand. No one had ever told her how deep to make the hollow, but she knew: the knowledge was printed on her genes. Had the sand been warmer, she would have dug deeper; had it been cooler, the hole would have been shallower. Again, she knew that at a level far below the conscious.

With an effort, Felless straightened up enough to take a couple of short, spraddle-legged steps. That positioned her cloaca just above the hollow she’d dug. She bore down hard-and in absolute silence. At any other time, in any other place, she would have grunted and hissed with the effort she was making. Not here, not now. Grunts and hisses might have drawn predators to her, and to her clutch.

Her two eggs were far bigger than the waste that usually passed through her cloaca. At first, she did not think they wanted to come at all. She was sure the leading one had got stuck inside her body, and would obstruct everything behind it till she perished. Logically, she knew that was unlikely, but she wasn’t thinking logically at the moment.

Still silent, she bore down again. The pain of making that first egg move inside her threatened to tear her in two from the inside out. And the egg would not move. Maybe it really was impacted. After every mating season back on Home, a handful of females needed surgery to remove impacted eggs. Wouldn’t that be just her luck, to have a medical emergency here in the middle of the Reich? They’d have to take her away then.

I’ll try once more, she thought, and then I’ll shout for a physician. Unlike the arid plains on which the Race had evolved, the laying chamber was equipped with a telephone on the far wall. If Felless needed help, she could get it.

She took a deep, deep breath, as if filling her lung with air could somehow help force the egg out of her and into the sand. And maybe it did, for she felt the accursed thing shift inside her. That made her redouble her effort to force it out. It also redoubled her pain, but somehow she hardly noticed.

The egg came forth and dropped into the sand. With it came a sense of relief and determination that surely sprang from some hormonal source, not the reason on which she usually relied. Still straddling the hollow in the sand, she bore down again.

She had an easier time with the second egg than she’d had with the first. Maybe the first had helped stretch the way for the one that came after it. Before long, two yellowish, speckled eggs-colored to match the sand in which her ancestors laid them-rested in the hollow.

She covered them with the sand she’d scooped aside. Her motions were sure and deft; her body knew how much sand to put over them. Then, on top of the sand, she voided a little. That was as instinctive as the rest of her laying behavior.

As soon as she’d done it, she took several quick steps away from the place where her eggs rested. Any other female of the Race who sought to lay in that spot would be similarly repulsed by the pheromones in the dropping. So would the females of several species of predators back on Home. Females of the Race rarely had to worry about them these days, but evolution didn’t know that.

Felless made her way out toward the door of the laying chamber. Those first few voluntary steps told her how worn she was: her legs didn’t want to bear her weight. She felt empty inside; the eggs growing within her had compressed the rest of the innards, which now seemed to have more room than they knew what to do with.

She wanted to hurry to the refectory, but could not-she couldn’t hurry anywhere. She could only walk slowly, her legs still wide apart. Her cloaca smarted-worse than smarted-from having been stretched far more than it had to open at any other time in her life.

There was ham in the refectory. Felless approved of ham. It was one of the few Tosevite foods of which she did approve. She ate several slices, went back, and ate several more. It seemed to give her ballast. When she came back again for a third helping, the server gave her a dubious look. Voice sardonic, he inquired, “What did you do, just lay four eggs?”

“No, only two,” Felless answered, which made the would-be wit retreat in as much embarrassment as the Race had known in retreating from England.

After she’d eaten, Felless went to her quarters. She knew what she wanted to do there, and she did it: she lay down and fell asleep. When at last she woke, she was ravenously hungry. A glance at the chronometer showed why: she’d been asleep for a day and a half.

Still feeling logy and slow, she checked her messages. Only one mattered enough to answer right away. Since I am a male, I had to do my best in preparing the laying chamber, Slomikk had written. Was it satisfactory?

In every respect, she wrote back, and sent the message. The science officer had done as well as any female might have.

After the message went out, one of Felless’ eye turrets slid down to a locked drawer in her desk. In that drawer, Veffani’s warnings notwithstanding, rested a vial with several tastes of ginger. She wanted a taste. She was sure the herb would help ease her post-laying exhaustion. As far as she was concerned, ginger eased everything.

But, with a small hiss of regret, she made herself move away from her desk. She couldn’t be tasting ginger if she was going out in public-and she was going out in public, because she was starving again. She didn’t want to have to pause to mate on the way to the refectory. She didn’t want to pause at all on the way to the refectory, and she didn’t want to get in trouble for using ginger. Most of all, she didn’t want anything, even something so small as a male’s reproductive organ, entering her cloaca.

She hissed again. No matter what common sense told her, she still craved ginger. She had far fewer chances to taste these days than she would have liked. For a while, she’d hoped her craving would ebb because she could safely taste but seldom. That hadn’t happened. If anything, her desire for the herb grew stronger because she had so few chances to satisfy it.

Out into the uncaring world of the embassy she went. Ttomalss was just coming out of his quarters, too-as well she hadn’t tasted. “I greet you, superior female,” he said.

“I greet you, Senior Researcher.” Felless’ voice was a scratchy parody of the way she usually sounded.

Ttomalss noticed. His eyes turrets went up and down her, noting the way she stood. “You have laid!” he exclaimed.

“Truth,” Felless said. “It is over. It is done.” She amended that: “Until the hatchlings break out of their shells, it is done. Then begins the task of civilizing them, which is never easy.”

“Yes, I know of this, although with a hatchling of a different sort,” Ttomalss said.

“Why, so you do,” Felless said. “In that, you are an unusual male. But now, if you want to keep talking with me, come along to the refectory.” She started that way herself.

“It shall be done.” Ttomalss fell into stride beside her.

“How does it feel to bear the burden of rearing a hatchling?” Felless asked. “Even if Kassquit is a hatchling of a very different sort, you are to be commended for your diligence. On Home, that is the work of females.”

“Kassquit is indeed a hatchling of a different sort,” Ttomalss said, “and she truly may have discovered a male of the Race of a different sort.” He told her more about Regeya, and about the cryptic message he’d had from Security.

“She still thinks he may be a Big Ugly masquerading as a male of the Race?” Felless said. “As I told you before, I find that very hard to believe.”

“The more I think about it, the more plausible I find it,” Ttomalss said. “Underestimating the Tosevites’ cleverness has hurt us countless times before.”

Felless said, “They are what they are. They cannot be what we are. They cannot.” She added an emphatic cough, then continued, “Can you imagine one of these Deutsch males with whom we have to deal carrying off such an imposture for even the time light takes to cross an atomic nucleus? The Reichs minister of justice, for instance-this Sepp Dietrich. I doubt he can even use a computer, let alone pretend he belongs to the Race on one.”

She snorted at the absurdity of the notion. But then she remembered Dietrich’s secretary. That male had spoken the language of the Race well, for a Tosevite. If he could somehow sneak onto the computer network, could he pass himself off as a male of the Race? She made the negative hand gesture. She couldn’t believe it.

Ttomalss said, “Kassquit has had trouble making anyone in authority think Regeya might be a Big Ugly. Investigators believe him more likely to be some sort of swindler, but analysis of his messages shows no attempt to defraud. Real interest in the question is minimal.”

“If the authorities do not believe Regeya is a Tosevite, how can Kassquit persist in opposing them?” Felless said. She was typical of the Race in that she trusted and followed those above her till they gave her some overwhelming reason not to.

“Perhaps, as you said, like calls to like,” Ttomalss suggested.

“I said she wished like called to like,” Felless pointed out.

He thought about it. “Truth: you did,” he admitted.

“Yes, I did,” Felless said. “And now, very loudly, food calls to me.” She hurried on toward the refectory, not caring in the least whether Ttomalss came along.