Down to Earth c-2

by Harry Turtledove

  Out here, though, he could look around and imagine himself somewhere on Home, somewhere a long way from his native city. Few Big Uglies cared for the effect, any more than he was enamored of the boring green lawns they so admired.

  The dog next door started barking. It often did when he came outside; it probably disliked his odor. For that matter, he wasn’t fond of the scent of its droppings, which the breeze sometimes wafted to his scent receptors. He didn’t like the noise it made, either. Nothing on Home sounded remotely like a dog, and its yaps and growls spoiled the illusion the yard gave him.

  A small bird with a bright green back and an even brighter red head buzzed among the flowers; red ones particularly attracted it. It too reminded him he wasn’t on Home any more. Flying creatures there had bare, leathery wings, and none of them came close to matching the aerial gymnastics of a hummingbird. But, even though the flying creature was alien, it didn’t irk him the way the dog did. It was small and quiet and attractive, not loud and annoying.

  Suddenly the hummingbird, which had been swooping low, darted away as if something had startled it. Straha strode closer, and saw a scaly, four-legged creature a little longer than the distance between his wrist and the end of his middle fingerclaw. It was a brown not much different from the color of the dirt, with darker stripes to break up its outline. Like the succulents among which it crawled, it looked familiar without being identical to anything on Home.

  It stuck out a short, dark tongue. Then, as if nervous about coming out into the open, it scuttled back under some of the plants and disappeared. Straha started to root around after it, but decided not to bother. It was living where it belonged and doing what it was supposed to do. He wished he could say the same.

  Maybe he could return to the society of the Race… if he betrayed Sam Yeager. Maybe. His mouth fell open in a laugh that held little in the way of real mirth. He’d just warned his friend of danger from other Big Uglies, but he hadn’t warned of danger from himself.

  Of course, Yeager understood the Race about as well as any Tosevite could. He would have to understand that Straha might be able to buy his way back into Atvar’s good graces by passing on the story of the hatchlings… wouldn’t he?

  From the exile that wasn’t quite comfortable, from the garden that wasn’t quite Home, Straha made the negative gesture. “If I have to buy my way back into Atvar’s good graces, they are not worth having,” the ex-shiplord said aloud. “Spirits of Emperors past turn their backs on him.” He feared those spirits would reject him when he came before them, but he’d feared that ever since ordering his shuttlecraft pilot to take him down to the USA. Yet those spirits wouldn’t approve of him if he betrayed a friend, either, not even if that friend was a Big Ugly. Now he made the affirmative gesture. He would stay quiet, and stay here.

  “Okay, let’s give it a try,” Hal Walsh said. “David, would you like to do the honors?”

  “As a matter of fact, no,” David Goldfarb said. “I want to get the bloody call. I don’t want to make it. I want to see the numbers light up on the gadget here. You don’t know how much I want that.”

  His boss at the Saskatchewan River Widget Works eyed him. “Oh, maybe I do,” he said. He dug in his pocket and tossed a dime to Jack Devereaux. “Go find a phone booth and call David.”

  “All right,” Devereaux said. He put on his overcoat before leaving the office. The calendar said spring had come to Edmonton, but the weather paid no attention. “I’ll even note the phone number, so we can see if it works the way it’s supposed to.”

  “It had better.” Walsh spoke as if a failed widget were a personal affront. That was how he thought, too, which probably went a long way toward making him such a good engineer.

  Devereaux slammed the door behind him. David Goldfarb knew a phone booth-a far flimsier phone booth than the solid, red-painted British sort-stood around the corner. With this ghastly weather, he didn’t understand why booths in Canada were so flimsy, but they were. It helped remind him he was in a foreign country. Waiting for Devereaux to call reminded him of the same thing. On the other side of the Atlantic, he’d be waiting for his colleague to ring.

  The telephone rang. It did the same thing regardless of where it was. He picked it up. “Hullo-Goldfarb here.” Numbers appeared on the screen of the widget hooked up to the phone, a widget that sent electronic tendrils through the telephone lines to the instrument the person on the other end of the connection was using.

  “Yes, I’d like to order some pirogis to go.” That was Devereaux’s voice, even if he was trying to get Ukrainian dumplings.

  “Bravo-you just wasted Hal’s dime,” Goldfarb said. Devereaux laughed and hung up on him.

  Walsh came over and looked at the numbers, which remained on the screen. “I think we’ve got something here. Police, fire departments-this beats the hell out of having an operator try to trace a call.”

  “Businesses will use it, too,” Goldfarb said. “If you have customers ringing you, you’ll be able to ring back whenever you’ve got something on special.” Walsh understood ring, just as Goldfarb understood call; he didn’t bother using the North American term instead of the one he’d grown up with.

  Jack Devereaux came back into the office. He was waving a scrap of paper. Goldfarb snatched it out of his hand. He compared it to the number he’d written down. They matched. Solemnly, Goldfarb, Walsh, and Devereaux shook hands. “We’re in business,” Hal Walsh said.

  Devereaux said. “Not yet, we’re not,” he said. “We have a useful widget. Now we’ve got to convince people they really want to use it.”

  Walsh beamed at him. “You’d be handy to have around if you didn’t know a slide rule from a skelkwank light,” he said. “You’ve always got your eye on the main chance.”

  “I should hope so,” Devereaux replied with dignity. “As for slide rules, another five years and they’ll be nothing but antiques. Why get eyestrain trying to read a third significant figure when an electronic calculator will give you eight or ten just as fast?” He turned to Goldfarb. “Isn’t that right, David?” he asked, as if Hal Walsh had challenged him.

  “I expect it is,” Goldfarb said in what he feared was a hollow voice. “I’ll miss ’em, though.” He felt very much an antique himself, remembering how proud he’d been when he learned to multiply and divide on a slide rule and how he’d been even prouder after he’d found a couple of tricks for keeping track of the decimal point-unlike a calculator, the slide rule wouldn’t do it for him. He also knew he had no great head for business. That didn’t make him a stereotypical Jew, but it did make him a man who’d spent his entire adult life in the RAF. He hadn’t had to worry about what things cost, or about the best ways to sell them to a public that didn’t know what it was missing by doing without them.

  “So will I,” Walsh said. “And you never have to worry about the batteries going dead with a slide rule, either. But if the calculator gives better results, you’d have to be a fool to want to use anything else, eh?”

  Devereaux grinned a sassy grin. “David doesn’t think like that. He’s an Englishman, remember. They hang on to things because they’re old, not because they’re any good. Isn’t that right?” he said again.

  “Something to it, I shouldn’t wonder,” Goldfarb said. To the Canadians, he was an Englishman. To most of the Englishmen he’d known, he’d been nothing but a Jew. Perspective changed things, sure enough. Before he could say as much, the telephone rang. He picked it up. “Goldfarb here,” he answered, as he had before.

  “Hello, Goldfarb.” That was his wife calling. “Can you pick up a loaf of bread on the way home tonight?”

  “No, not a chance,” he said, just to hear Naomi snort. “See you when I see you, sweetheart.” He hung up. Even before he did that, he craned his neck to see the number displayed on the small screen of the Widget Works’ latest widget.

  His boss and Jack Devereaux were doing the same thing. “Is that your home number?” Hal Walsh asked, which somewhat surp
rised David-his working assumption was that, if it had to do with numbers in any way, Walsh already knew it without needing to check.

  “Yes, that’s it,” Goldfarb agreed. “And I’d say we’re really on to something here.”

  “I’d say you’re right.” Walsh looked as if he wanted to blow canary feathers off his chin. The Saskatchewan River Widget Works was his company; even though the phone-number-reading gadget hadn’t been altogether his idea, the greater share of the profits from it would end up in his pocket. He might have picked that thought out of Goldfarb’s mind, for he said, “Nobody will be poor on account of this, I promise you all. I think it’ll be a big enough pie for everybody to have a big slice.”

  “Hal, you’ve played straight with us right from the start,” Devereaux said. “I don’t think anybody’s worried you’re going to pull a fast one this time.”

  “That’s right,” David Goldfarb said, though he hadn’t been with the Widget Works right from the start. Walsh was the sort of boss who inspired confidence.

  He laughed at his employees now. “In the old days, the days before the Race came, I could have turned everything into cash and headed down to Rio. Well, I still could, if I felt like living under the Lizards for the rest of my days. Since I don’t, I suppose I’d have to go to Los Angeles instead.”

  “They’d ship you back from the USA,” Devereaux pointed out.

  “But at least you’d have decent weather while you were there,” Goldfarb said with undisguised longing. By what he was used to, Los Angeles was liable to be beastly hot, but he preferred that to too bloody cold, which was how Canadian weather struck him.

  Jack Devereaux said, “I wonder where the jet stream is this year, and where it’ll take the fallout.”

  “Not that much from the Japanese test,” Hal Walsh said. “Of course, they may set off some more.”

  “I wasn’t thinking of that,” Devereaux said. “I was thinking of the big dose, when the Nazis and the Race start going after each other.”

  “God forbid,” Goldfarb said. “I’ve got family in Poland.” The others wouldn’t think of him as an Englishman anymore, but too bad. He tried to look on the bright side of things: “Maybe the war won’t happen after all. The Germans have been thumping their chests for a while now, but that’s all they’ve been doing.”

  “There’s a big part of me that would love to see Germany smashed to smithereens,” Devereaux said, and Goldfarb could no more help nodding than he could help breathing. His colleague went on, “All the same, though, I hope you’re right. There’d be too much damage to the rest of the world to make the war worthwhile.”

  “I think they’re going to fight,” Hal Walsh said. “I think they’ve done too much posturing to back down without looking yellow, and they don’t dare do that. It’d be asking half the countries they’re sitting on to rise up against ’em.”

  “That makes sense,” Goldfarb said. “I wish it didn’t.” Before he could go on, his telephone rang yet again. He picked up the handset. “Hullo-Goldfarb here.”

  “You lousy, stinking kike,” the voice on the other end of the line replied. “You think you’re too goddamn good to play with us, do you? You’ll pay for that, and so will your whole family. The Nazis have the right idea.” Slam! The phone went dead.

  “Who was that?” Walsh asked.

  “Nobody I know,” Goldfarb answered. “Nobody I want to know, either.” He glanced over at the little screen attached to the telephone and jotted down the number it displayed. “But the police may be interested in doing something about it.”

  “Oh, really?” That was Jack Devereaux. “One of your charming friends?”

  “As a matter of fact, yes.” David Goldfarb held up the telephone number he’d just noted. “And I have an excellent notion of how to go about helping myself and getting some publicity for the Widget Works, both at the same time.”

  He called the Edmonton police and reported the threat he’d just received. “You got this by telephone, sir?” the policeman asked. “I’m afraid we can’t do much about that-you do understand the difficulty.”

  “Not in this case, no,” Goldfarb answered, and gave the number from which the threatening call had been placed.

  After a long pause, the policeman asked, “How could you possibly know the call came from that number, sir?”

  And Goldfarb spent the next ten minutes explaining who he was, for whom he worked, and exactly how he knew what he knew. He finished, “I assume you can find out which numbers go with which houses? If you can, you might find it worth your while to pay a visit to that particular one. Do be careful, though. These are not nice people.”

  “I make no promises,” the policeman said, and hung up.

  After David reported the other end of the conversation to his boss, Hal Walsh grinned from ear to ear. “If they go, and if they find things worth finding, we’ve just made our mark in big letters,” he said, and held up an imaginary advertising signboard. “ ‘As endorsed by the Edmonton Police Department.’ ”

  “Unless that number turns out to be another phone booth, of course,” Goldfarb said. Walsh crossed his forefingers, as if to avert a vampire. David laughed. “That doesn’t work. I’m Jewish, remember?”

  Nobody at the Widget Works got much work done till Goldfarb’s telephone rang again a couple of hours later. When he answered it, the Edmonton copper said, “Mr. Goldfarb, my hat’s off to you. Thanks to your call and your device, we have four very nasty fellows in custody. We also have several illegal firearms, some illegal drugs, and a large quantity of ginger, which is, of course, not illegal-here. Now, if you would be so kind as to let me speak to Mr.-Welsh, was it? — about the possibility of acquiring this device for ourselves…”

  “Walsh,” Goldfarb corrected happily. “Hal Walsh.” He gave his boss the phone. With his hand over the mouthpiece, he said, “We are in business.”

  Felless said, “I think it is extremely unfortunate that we should have to prepare to evacuate this area as a result of threats from these Tosevite savages.”

  Kazzop, the science officer at the Race’s consulate in Marseille, waggled his eye turrets ever so slightly to show his bemusement. “Correct me if I am wrong, superior female,” he said, “but is this evacuation not the only way in which you are likely to be able to return to territory ruled by the Race? Without it, would you not remain indefinitely in the Greater German Reich?”

  “Well, yes, so I would,” she admitted. “Ambassador Veffani holds a grudge against me.” She preferred not to dwell on whether her disgrace had given the ambassador good reason to hold a grudge against her, but continued, “Still, I would sooner the Race were strong enough to make it safe for me to stay here than to have to go.”

  “We are strong. We are stronger than we were when the conquest fleet arrived,” Kazzop said. As he was a male from that fleet, he knew whereof he spoke. He went on, “The trouble lies not in ourselves or in our strength, but in the Big Uglies. They are far stronger now than they were when we first came here, too, and infinitely stronger than we imagined they could be when we left Home.”

  “It is humiliating that the males of the conquest fleet cannot guarantee our safety here,” Felless said. “Humiliating and disgraceful.”

  “Superior female, we are not being evacuated from Marseille because we are in any particular danger from the Deutsche,” Kazzop said. “The Big Uglies will not harm us even in the event of war. They know we could retaliate against their males and females serving as diplomats or otherwise living in parts of Tosev 3 ruled by the Race. The Tosevites have developed elaborate and surprisingly sophisticated rules for exchanging individuals under these circumstances. Because of their own frequent conflicts, they have needed such rules.”

  “What then?” Felless said. “Perhaps you are correct. Perhaps I truly do not understand why we are being evacuated.”

  “I will make the eggshell clear, so you may see the hatching truth within.” Kazzop sounded as if he was taking an almost To
sevite glee in explaining things to a superior as if she were a hatchling. “We are being evacuated because Marseille will make an important target for the Race if war breaks out. Explosive-metal bombs, unfortunately, are not very selective.”

  “Oh,” Felless said in a small voice. “Please understand that I am new to the idea of war and to everything involved with it. I expected the conquest would have been completed before I woke from cold sleep.”

  “Life on Tosev 3 is full of surprises,” the science officer said dryly.

  “That is also a truth-and how I wish it weren’t,” Felless said. “Of course, Veffani also gets to leave the Reich. Since he has been stuck here much longer than I have, I am sure he will welcome the opportunity to escape.”

  But Kazzop made the negative gesture. “Veffani will not leave, any more than the Deutsche will call their ambassador back from Cairo. By Tosevite custom, ambassadors do not leave other lands until war breaks out.”

  Of all the things Felless had never imagined, a reason to feel sympathy toward Veffani certainly ranked high on the list. “Poor fellow,” she said, and then, “But the only announcement of the war is liable to be the launch of missiles tipped with explosive-metal bombs. How can he be sure of safe evacuation?”

  “He cannot,” Kazzop answered, which surprised Felless all over again.

  She said, “You males of the conquest fleet cannot always have had an easy time of it.” She could hear the surprise in her own voice. She spent most of the time resenting the males of the conquest fleet because they hadn’t given the colonization fleet so completely subdued a world as the newcomers had anticipated. Only rarely, as now, did she stop to think about the difficulties the males had faced and continued to face.