Her boss was a fellow named Charles Boileau. After she’d been working at the dress shop for a couple of weeks, he said, “I had my doubts about hiring you, Mademoiselle Dutourd. I thought you would either be too educated to work with the customers, or that you wouldn’t be able to learn the business. I was wrong both ways, and I’m not too proud to admit it.”
“Thank you very much.” Monique was pleased and, again, surprised to admit it to herself. “I’m glad you think I fit in.”
Boileau nodded. “I knew you knew what you were doing when you talked Madame du Cange out of that green dress without insulting her or making her ashamed of her own judgment.”
“I had to, sir, even though the sale we got was for a little less,” Monique said. “Madame du Cange is a woman of . . . formidable contours.” Her gesture said what she wouldn’t: that the customer in question was grossly fat. “If she’d bought that dress, she would have looked like nothing so much as an enormous lime with legs.”
Her boss was a sobersided man. He fought—and lost—a battle against laughter. “I wouldn’t have put it that way,” he said, “but I won’t tell you that you’re wrong.”
“And if she did that,” Monique said earnestly, “it would have reflected badly on her, and it would have reflected badly on us. People would have said, ‘Where did you get that dress?’ She would have told them, too—she would have thought it a compliment. And none of the people she told would have come here ever again.”
“It wouldn’t have been quite so bad as that, I don’t think,” Boileau said, “but your attitude does you credit.”
Her attitude turned out to do rather more than that. When she got her paycheck at the end of the week, it had an extra fifty francs in it. That wasn’t enough to make her rich. It wasn’t even enough to make her anything but very dubiously middle-class. But every one of those francs was welcome and more than welcome.
She’d found herself a tiny walk-up furnished room a couple of blocks from the dress shop. It had a hot plate and a sink. No stove, no toilet, no bathtub, no telephone. The toilet and tub were down at the end of the hall. In the whole building, only the landlady had a phone and a stove.
After cooking in the tent, Monique had no trouble cooking on a hot plate. And she discovered she didn’t miss a telephone. Dieter Kuhn couldn’t call her, assuming he was still in Marseille. Lucie couldn’t get hold of her, either. Neither could Rance Auerbach, but she could always reach him on a public telephone whenever she needed to.
She kept waiting for news that Felless had managed to persuade a university to give her a position. The news didn’t come. Once when she telephoned, Auerbach asked, “Shall we turn her in now?”
But Monique, not without regret, said, “No. She helped me out of prison. I do not wish to betray her unless it is very plain she is betraying us.”
“Okay,” Auerbach said—they were speaking English. “I still think you’re too damn nice for your own good, but okay.”
Monique had to work out exactly what that meant in French. When she did, she decided it was a compliment. “Things could be worse,” she said. Remembering Dieter Kuhn, she shivered a little. “Yes, things could be much worse. Believe me, I know.”
“Okay,” Rance Auerbach said again. “You know best what you want. I’m just trying to help.”
“I know. I thank you.” Monique hung up then, scratching her head. She’d seen that Auerbach was partial to such gestures. He’d given David Goldfarb a hand, even if that meant going to the Nazis to put pressure on the Englishman who was giving Goldfarb a hard time. So no wonder the American would squeeze a vulnerable Lizard to help her.
Did he have an ulterior motive? With most men, that added up to, did he want to go to bed with her? She wouldn’t have been surprised, but he wasn’t obnoxious about it if he did. He wasn’t making it a quid pro quo, as so many men would have. Kuhn certainly had, damn him—if she gave him her body, he kept his fellow SS goons from interrogating her. The worst of that was, she still felt she’d made the best possible bargain there, no matter how she loathed the Sturmbann führer.
Maybe she shouldn’t have thought of Kuhn on the way back to her roominghouse. Maybe if she hadn’t, he wouldn’t have been sitting on the front steps waiting for her. Monique stopped so short, she might have seen a poisonous snake there. As far as she was concerned, she had.
“Hello, sweetheart,” he said in his German-accented French. “How are you today?”
“Go away,” she snarled. “Get out. I never want to see you again. If you don’t leave right now, I’m going to scream for the police.”
“Go ahead,” Kuhn answered. “I’m just a tourist, and I’ve got the papers to prove it.”
“You’re a damned SS man, no matter what your papers say,” Monique retorted. Her mouth twisted in a bitter quirk that was not a smile. “You’ve got the little tattoo to prove it. I ought to know. I’ve seen it too often.”
His smile was a long way from charming. “Go ahead. Tell them you were fucking an SS man. If you don’t, I will—and then see how much fun you have.”
Laughing in his face gave Monique almost as much pleasure as she’d ever had in bed—certainly far more than she’d ever had with him. “Go ahead. See how much good it does you. I’ve already been to jail for that, and I got out again, too. I proved you made me do it. Go away right now and don’t come back, or I will yell for the police.”
“You’d sooner screw that American, the cripple,” Kuhn said scornfully.
“Any day,” she answered at once. “Twice on Sundays. Go away.” She took a deep breath. She really did intend to scream her head off.
Dieter Kuhn must have seen that, for he got to his feet with the smooth grace of an athlete. “All right,” he said. “I’ll go. Sleep with the American. Sleep with the Lizards, for all I care. But I tell you this: the Reich isn’t done. The Lizards haven’t heard the last of us. Neither have you.” Off he went, arrogant as ever.
Monique took hold of the iron banister and sagged against it with relief. Up till this second round of fighting, she’d lived her whole adult life in a country under the Nazis’ thumb, a country where the Gestapo could do whatever it pleased. She’d lived that way so long, she’d come to take it for granted. Now, for the first time, she saw what living in her own country, an independent country, meant. If she yelled for the police, they could arrest Kuhn instead of having to knuckle under to him.
She went up the stairs and into the roominghouse. As she walked up to her own room, she realized things weren’t quite so simple. The purification squad from her own independent country had arrested her and thrown her into prison, too. Her brother hadn’t got her out because her case was good or her cause just. He’d got her out because he’d pulled wires with the Lizards. France was almost as much obliged to do what they wanted as it had been to do what the Germans wanted.
“Almost,” Monique murmured. The difference was enormous, as far as she was concerned. For one thing, the Lizards did formally respect French freedom. And, for another, they weren’t Nazis. That alone made all the difference in the world.
She was sauteeing liver and onions on the hot plate when she realized she ought to be doing more to help get Pierre out of the Lizards’ jail. He’d pulled wires for her, after all. But she didn’t have any wires to pull, not really. Rance Auerbach might, but he was already pulling them on her behalf. How could she ask him to do more? The answer, unfortunately, was plain: she couldn’t.
If she bribed him with her body, would he help her with Pierre? Angrily, she flipped the liver over with a spatula and slammed it down into the pan. She never would have started thinking like that if it hadn’t been for Dieter Kuhn. And she never would have had to worry about Kuhn if she hadn’t been Pierre’s sister. That struck her as a good reason to let her brother stay right where he was.
A couple of evenings later, she was writing yet another letter of application—who could guess whether or not Felless would come through?—when someone knocked on t
he door. She didn’t hesitate about answering it, as she would have before the Nazis had to leave France. The only thing she worried about was robbers, and robbers, she reasoned, had to know there were more lucrative targets than an upper-floor room in a cheap boardinghouse.
When she opened the door, she stared in astonishment. Her brother nodded to her. “Aren’t you going to ask me if I want to come in?” Pierre Dutourd asked.
“Come in,” Monique said automatically. As automatically, she shut the door behind him. Then, a little at a time, her wits started to work. She asked the first question that popped into them: “What are you doing here?”
“I came to say thank you,” Pierre answered, as seriously as she’d ever heard him speak. “I’m not going to ask you what you had to do to get Dieter Kuhn to help me get out of that damned cell. I probably don’t want to know. You probably don’t want to tell me. I’m sure it wasn’t anything you wanted to do—I know what Kuhn is. But you did it anyway, even though you’ve got to think I’m more a nuisance than a brother. So thank you, from the bottom of my heart.” His nod was almost a bow.
And now Monique’s stare was one of complete bewilderment. “But I didn’t do anything,” she blurted. “He came around here the other day—sniffing after me, nothing to do with you—and I told him to go to hell.”
“He has connections, even now,” Pierre said. “He used them. I thought it was on account of you. If I’m wrong . . .” He shrugged, his face a frozen mask now. “If I’m wrong, I won’t trouble you any more. That would probably suit you best anyhow. Au revoir.” Before Monique could find anything to say, he went out the door. He didn’t even bother slamming it after him.
Monique sank into one of the two ratty chairs in the room. She couldn’t believe Dieter Kuhn had done that to gain her favor. He had to have some motive of his own, and what it might be seemed pretty obvious. The more trouble the Lizards had with ginger, the less trouble they would be able to give the Reich. Even so, she wondered if the Sturmbann führer would come around seeking the hero’s reward. If he does, she thought, he isn’t going to get it.
But the one who came around, a few days later, was Rance Auerbach. He was waiting outside her dress shop when she left for home. Monique’s heart started to pound. She couldn’t help it. “Well?” she demanded.
He grinned. He knew she was impatient. He wasn’t angry, either. “How does the University of Tours sound?” he asked.
“Tours?” she said. It was in the north, southwest of Paris but still unquestionably the north—more an Atlantic than a Mediterranean town. She’d sent a letter there—she’d sent letters everywhere. She’d got no answer. Now she had one. “They want me?” she whispered.
“They’ll take you,” he answered.
That wasn’t quite the same thing, but it would do. “Thank you!” she said. “Oh, thank you!” She kissed him. If he’d wanted something more, she probably would have gone up to her room with him right that minute. But all he did was grin wider than ever. Dear God in heaven, she thought. I have my life back again. Now what do I do with it?
Atvar was studying the daily news reports when he came upon something of a new and different sort. He called in his adjutant for a look. “Here is something you will not see every day, Pshing,” he said.
“What is it, Exalted Fleetlord?” Pshing asked.
“Turn an eye turret this way,” Atvar answered. “Photographs—necessarily, long-distance, highly magnified photographs—of a major meteoric impact on the worthless fourth planet.”
“It looks as if a large explosive-metal bomb had hit there,” Pshing said.
“From what the astronomers say, the impact was a good deal more energetic than that,” Atvar said.
“Tosev’s solar system is an untidy place, especially compared to the one in which Home orbits,” Pshing said. “Imagine if such a rock had struck Tosev 3 instead of the worthless Tosev 4. It would have been most unfortunate, especially in or near a populated area.”
“Such bombardment is a fact of life in this solar system,” Atvar said. “Look at any of the bodies here. The only one without immediately obvious evidence of these impacts is Tosev 3, and that because it is so geologically active.”
“The atmosphere must protect this world to some degree,” Pshing said.
“No doubt. But one that size would have got through,” the fleetlord said. “And, as you remarked, the results would have been unfortunate.”
“Indeed.” Pshing made the affirmative gesture. “And now, Exalted Fleetlord, if you will excuse me. . .” He went back to his own desk.
After one last look at the new crater on Tosev 4, Atvar went on to other matters his staff thought worthy of his notice. Northern India was facing more and more riots as plants from Home spread through the fields there. That subregion’s climate was ideal for their propagation, and they were cutting into the Big Uglies’ food supplies—which, in that part of Tosev 3, were no better than marginal at the best of times.
It is of course necessary to make Tosev 3 as Homelike as possible, an ecologist wrote. In doing so, however, we may cause as many casualties among the Big Uglies from environmental change as we did in the course of the fighting. This is unfortunate, but appears unavoidable.
Atvar sighed. If the conquest did finally succeed, he feared historians would not look kindly upon him. If he didn’t get a sobriquet like Atvar the Brutal, he would be surprised. But he didn’t know what to do about the Tosevites in India, past suppressing their riots. He couldn’t get rid of the plants from Home now even if he wanted to. They would flourish in that subregion; it was reasonably warm and reasonably dry, and they had no natural enemies there. The local ecosystem would be transformed, and not to the Tosevites’ advantage.
He wondered if he could move some of the Big Uglies from the affected areas to those where Tosevite ecologies remained more or less intact. But no sooner had the thought crossed his mind than certain difficulties became obvious. The Tosevites of northern India might not want to be moved; Big Uglies were reactionary that way. Wherever he moved them, the current inhabitants were all too likely to prove less than welcoming. They might not have excess food, either; Tosevite agriculture was at best imperfectly efficient. And ecological change would come to many more areas of the planet, even if it hadn’t yet.
He sighed again. Some problems simply had no neat, tidy solutions. That would have been an unacceptable notion back on Home. A hundred thousand years of unified imperial history argued that the Race could solve anything. But the Big Uglies and their world presented challenges different from, and worse than, any the Race had known since the days of its ancientest history—and maybe worse than any it had known then, too.
The fleetlord went on to the next item in the daily briefing. It made him hiss in alarm. Superstitious fanatics from the main continental mass had traveled to the lesser continental mass and mounted an attack on the fortress where that maniac of a Khomeini was imprisoned.
“By the Emperor!” Atvar exclaimed, and let out yet another sigh, this one of relief, when he discovered the attack had failed. “Would that not have been a disaster—Khomeini on the loose again!” There would surely have been uprisings throughout the areas were the Muslim superstition predominated . . . including Cairo itself. Atvar had seen enough such disturbances—too many, in fact.
I commend the males who prevented Khomeini’s escape, he wrote. I also commend the Tosevite constabulary officials who fought side by side with our males. And I particularly commend the individual who thought to incarcerate Khomeini in a region inhabited by Big Uglies of a superstition different from his. That helped to insure the loyalty of local protective officials.
Next on the agenda was a note that, with two spaceships in the belt of minor planets, the American Tosevites were spreading rapidly and were busy at so many sites that the Race’s surveillance probes could not keep track of everything they were doing. Shall we let them continue unobserved, being more or less sure they can find no way to harm us from
such a distance? the head of the surveillance effort asked. Or shall we expend the resources to continue keeping an eye turret turned in their direction?
Atvar did not hesitate. If we need more probes, we must send more probes, he wrote. The Americans sacrificed a city in preference to withdrawing from space. It follows that they expect to reap some benefit from their continued presence among these minor planets. Perhaps that benefit will be only economic. Perhaps it will be military, or they think it will. We dare not take the chance that they will prove mistaken.
His tailstump quivered with agitation he could not hide. The commission he’d appointed to study Earl Warren’s motivation had concluded that the Big Ugly had known exactly what he was doing, and had just had the misfortune—from his point of view, though not from the Race’s—to get caught. That was what Atvar had least wanted to hear. He would much rather have believed the Tosevite leader addled. That would have made Warren less dangerous. But the evidence, Atvar had to admit, was on the commission’s side.
He read on, and found more complaints from occupation officials in the Reich that the Deutsche were not turning in their surviving weapons, but were doing their best to conceal arms against a possible future uprising. That made his tailstump quiver again, this time from raw fury.
Still in the grip of that fury, he wrote, Convey to their not-emperor that their cities remain hostage to their good behavior. If they refuse to turn over weapons as they promised on their surrender, one of those cities shall cease to be as abruptly as did Indianapolis. If that fails to gain their attention, another city shall vanish. They have already hit us too hard and too often. They shall get no further chances.
An order like that would get him remembered as Atvar the Brutal, too. Back on Home, it would have been impossible. Anyone who tried to issue such an order there would be reckoned a bloodthirsty barbarian, and immediately sacked. Here on Tosev 3 . . . Atvar didn’t even feel guilty, not after everything the Deutsche had done to the Race. Here on Tosev 3, the order was simply common sense.
Colonization: Aftershocks Page 47
