Second Contact

by Harry Turtledove

  “If your females, or some of them, are to be in season all the time, you will also need rules about with whom they can mate, and perhaps about what happens when a male mates with a female against her will,” Russie said.

  “If a female is in season, mating is not against her will,” Atvar answered.

  Russie shrugged. “You know better than I.”

  “Not necessarily,” Atvar said. “This is unfamiliar territory for the Race, as unfamiliar as Tosev 3 was before our probe landed here—and as unfamiliar as Tosev 3 was after the probe landed here, too.”

  “Why exactly, then, have you summoned me?” the Tosevite asked.

  Atvar turned both eye turrets toward him. “For your suggestions,” the fleetlord replied. “You have already given some. I hope you will give more. The Race will have to cope, as we have had to cope with so much on your world.”

  “If you had thought of it as our world from the beginning, you would not have these problems now.” Moishe Russie’s face twisted into a peculiar grimace. “And I, very likely, would be dead. I will do what I can for you, Exalted Fleetlord.”

  “I thank you.” Atvar sounded more sincere than he had expected. With luck, Russie would not notice.

  Monique Dutourd kept noticing Lizards on the streets of Marseille as she bicycled to work. She hadn’t seen so many since the Race ruled the south of France back in the days when she was a girl. Normally, she would not have taken much notice of them. After learning how her brother made his living—after learning Pierre was alive to make a living—she paid more attention to them. She couldn’t help wondering whether they were here to smuggle things into and out of the city.

  Semester break had come and gone. Now she was teaching about the later Roman Empire, all the way through the sixth-century era of Justinian. Sure as the devil—in more ways than one, she supposed—Dieter Kuhn was enrolled in the class, still under the name of Laforce.

  She wished he weren’t. She wished he weren’t for a couple of reasons, in fact. For one thing, of course, he still wanted to use her to do something dreadful to Pierre. And, for another, she had to teach about the Germanic invasions of the Roman Empire in this part of the course. She knew by his examinations that he took meticulous notes. Having meticulous notes on a Frenchwoman’s opinions about the Germanic invasions of the Empire in Gestapo hands might not have been the last thing she wanted, but it came close.

  On she pedaled, threading her way through the traffic with nearly automatic ease. She was glad trousers were more acceptable on women than they had been when she was a girl. They helped preserve modesty on a bicycle and, in winter, they also kept her legs warm—not that Marseille winter was all that cold.

  Just south of Rue Grignan, traffic came to a halt. Even on a bicycle, Monique could barely squeeze forward. She tilted her left wrist to look at her watch. When she saw the time, she muttered a curse. She was liable to be late to her lecture, which meant she was liable to be in trouble with the university authorities.

  Up ahead, someone in a motorcar blew his horn, and then someone else and someone else again. But, curiously, she heard none of the ripe oaths she would have expected motorists and bicyclists caught in a traffic jam to loose. Instead, what floated back to her ears was laughter, laughter and rude suggestions: “Turn a hose on them!” “In the name of God, find them a hotel room!” “Yes, for heaven’s sake—one with a bidet!” That brought more coarse laughter.

  “What is going on up there?” Monique exclaimed, picking her way between a fat man on a bicycle too small for him and a German soldier in a field-gray Volkswagen utility vehicle. The soldier blew her a kiss. The fat man winked at her. She ignored them both. Standing on tiptoe while straddling the bicycle, she tried to see what was going on up ahead. People couldn’t have been so shameless as to prove their affection for each other in the middle of a crosswalk . . . could they?

  A man who should have shaved the day before yesterday looked back over his shoulder and said, “There’s a couple of Lizards up ahead there, fucking their brains out.”

  “No,” Monique said, not so much contradiction as simple disbelief.

  But, as she edged up even with the man with the stubbled cheeks and chin, she discovered he was telling the truth. There in the middle of the road, a couple of Lizards were going at it for all they were worth. She’d never seen, never imagined seeing, such a thing. In an abstract way, she admired the male’s stamina and enthusiasm, though she wouldn’t have wanted to stand so long with her head down by her toes, as the female was doing.

  Aesthetic considerations here were very much by the way. What mattered to her was that the Lizards, by blocking traffic, were going to make her late. “Yes, turn a fire hose on them!” she shouted.

  After what seemed like forever but was about five minutes, she got past them. They were still mating as enthusiastically as ever. Half a block down, she spied a policeman. “Why don’t you arrest them?” she shouted, still furious at the delay.

  With a shrug, the flic replied, “My dear mademoiselle, I do not know whether it is against the law for Lizards to fornicate in public. So far as I am aware, no statute covers such an eventuality.” He shrugged again and took a bite from a sandwich he carried in place of his billy club, which swung on his belt.

  “Arrest them for blocking traffic if you can’t arrest them for screwing,” Monique snapped. The policeman only shrugged again. Monique had no time to argue with him. She pedaled furiously—in every sense of the word—toward the south.

  When she strode into the lecture hall, sweat stained her blouse. But she was on time, with about fifteen seconds to spare. She began to talk about the Gothic incursions into the Roman Empire in the middle of the third century, incursions that had cost the Emperor Decius his life, as dispassionately—or so she hoped—as if no such people as the Germans had troubled the world in the seventeen hundred years since Decius’ unfortunate and untimely demise.

  At least I don’t publish anything touching on this period, she thought. A lecture could be thought of as written on the wind. A scholarly article left a record as permanent as the inscriptions she pursued. The Gestapo could, if it so chose, do all sorts of unpleasant things with that.

  The Gestapo, in the person of Sturmbannführer Dieter Kuhn, came up to her after the lecture and said, “Another stimulating discussion of the issues. You have my compliments, for whatever you think they may be worth.”

  “Thank you,” Monique said, and turned away to answer a genuine student’s question about where the Goths had landed along the coast of Asia Minor. It was the last real question she had. When she finished dealing with it, Dieter Kuhn still stood waiting. Her temper flared. “Damn you. What do you want?”

  “If it is all right with you, we will ride back to your flat together,” Kuhn said.

  “And if it is not all right with me?” Monique set her hands on her hips.

  Kuhn shrugged, not quite as a Frenchman would have done. “Then we will ride back to your flat together anyhow.” He had never been anything but polite to her, but he made it very plain he did not intend to take no for an answer.

  “Why?” she asked, playing for time.

  She did not really expect an answer, but the SS officer gave her one: “Because something strange is happening in your brother’s dealings with the Lizards. It could be that, before too long, he will see us as friends, or at least as professional colleagues, rather than as foes.”

  It did not sound like a lie. But then, if it was, it wouldn’t. Still, Monique started to dismiss it . . . till she remembered the morning traffic snarl. “Does it have to do with Lizards screwing?” she asked.

  His eyes, brown as hers, widened slightly. “You are very clever,” he said, as if wondering whether she was too clever for her own good. “How did you figure that out? The situation has made itself plain only in the past few weeks. There has been no talk of it in the newspapers or on the wireless. We have made certain of that.”

  “I wish I could take more cr
edit for intelligence, but I saw a pair of them, ah, enjoying themselves as I rode down to the university this morning,” Monique answered.

  “Ah,” Kuhn said. “I see. And now, shall we go?”

  Monique considered. The only other choice she saw was screaming and hoping enough Frenchmen came running to give the SS man a good beating. But that would be dangerous not only for her but also for anyone who came to her aid. She sighed. “Very well,” she said, though it wasn’t.

  Kuhn had, as usual, come prepared. The bicycle he rode was almost as old and disreputable as hers. She rode every day. So far as she knew, he didn’t. He had no trouble staying with her even so. She got the feeling he was, if anything, holding back. She sped up till she might have been racing. Kuhn stuck like a burr. He glanced over to her and nodded, plainly enjoying himself. Damn him, he wasn’t even breathing hard.

  As she let him into her flat, she wished, not for the first time, that she only had to worry about him tearing off his trousers. She suspected she wouldn’t be able to stop him if he tried—and a Frenchwoman who dared lodge a complaint against the all-powerful SS would be lucky if she just got ignored. But Kuhn wasn’t interested in her body—or not interested enough to do anything along those lines. To him, she was a tool, a key, not an object of desire.

  “Call your brother,” he said now. He must have seen the mulish resistance on her face, for he went on, “You may tell him I am forcing you to do it. You may, if you like, tell him I wish to speak with him, for I do.”

  “Why don’t you just call him yourself, then, and leave me out of it?” Monique demanded. More than anything else, she wanted not to be stuck between the brother she didn’t know and the SS she knew too well.

  “He is more likely to pay attention to his sister than to someone who has been hunting him for some time,” Dieter Kuhn answered.

  “He hasn’t paid any attention to me for more than twenty years,” Monique said. Kuhn looked at her. The look said, Get on with it. Hating herself, she picked up the telephone and dialed the number she’d worked so hard to learn.

  “Allô?” It was the woman with the sexy voice. Pierre’s wife? His mistress? Only his secretary? Did smugglers have secretaries? Monique didn’t know.

  “Hello,” she said back. “This is Pierre’s sister. There is an SS man in my flat who needs to speak with him.”

  That got her a few seconds of silence, and then Pierre’s voice, as full of suspicion as the woman’s had been the first time Monique spoke to her: “Hello, little sister. What nonsense is this about an SS man? Is it the fellow who wanted to be your boyfriend?”

  “Yes.” Monique’s face heated. She thrust the handset at Kuhn. “Here.”

  “Thank you.” He took it with complete aplomb. “Bonjour, Dutourd. I just thought you ought to know that ginger is a genuine aphrodisiac for female Lizards. They didn’t like the trade before. Now they have an even bigger reason to hate it. If they come after you—when they come after you—we won’t lift a finger to stop them, not unless we get some cooperation on your end.”

  He played the game well. Monique already knew that. Now she saw it again. She wondered how much difference it would make to her brother. Not much, she hoped. If Pierre didn’t play this game well, he wouldn’t have been able to stay in business so long himself.

  He said something. Monique could hear his voice coming out of the telephone, but not the words. Dieter Kuhn obviously heard the words. “I think you are being an optimist,” he replied. “I think, in fact, you are being a fool. As I said, if you do not cooperate with us, we shall not cooperate with you. Au revoir.” He hung up, then turned to Monique. “Your brother is stubborn. He will live to regret it—for how long, I cannot say.”

  Monique burst into tears. Through them, she pointed to the door. “Get out.” Rather to her surprise, Kuhn left. She cried for a long time even so.

  Straha turned one eye up from the documents and photographs Major Sam Yeager had given him toward the Tosevite himself. “You are confirming what my sources in lands ruled by the Race have already reported to me,” he said. “I find it highly amusing. Would you not agree?”

  “I just might, Shiplord,” Yeager answered. “For the past twenty years, the Race has been calling us sexually wild, and now your males and females are mating whenever they get the chance. Yes, that is pretty funny, all right.”

  “Atvar will be shedding his skin in patches,” Straha said with a certain morbid relish. “Females coming into heat outside the proper mating season will be something new and unexpected. The Race is not at its best dealing with the new and unexpected.” He added an emphatic cough. “And Atvar is not good at dealing with the new and unexpected even for a male of the Race.”

  Yeager said, “If you already knew this, Shiplord, I am sorry I had you come down to my house to look at these things.”

  “Do not concern yourself,” Straha answered. “I know that one of the things I am is a Tosevite tool. I chose the role myself, if you will recall.” He laughed a small laugh. “How strange that the herb which gives males so much pleasure turns out to give females and males even more.”

  “Shiplord, that is one of the things I wanted to ask you,” Yeager said. “There are a couple of females of the Race in Los Angeles now. If we were to arrange to give them some ginger while you were around . . . if you want us to do that, we can take care of it for you. You have done a lot for us over the years.”

  Straha thought about it, then made the negative hand gesture. “You mean this generously, I have no doubt. I believe a Big Ugly who had gone without a female for as long as I have would be inclined to accept. But a male of the Race, you must understand, has no desire until his scent receptors catch the odor of a female in her season.”

  “No, I do understand that,” Yeager answered. “If we gave one of these females ginger, you would smell that odor. I wondered if you wanted to, is all.”

  “Again, I say thank you, but no,” Straha said. “I am content to remain as I am. If I could join fully in the colonies now forming, it might be something else, but I know it will never be permitted.”

  Exile. Once more, the word beat at him. It was what he was. He would never be anything else. He could never be anything else. If Atvar died tomorrow, his replacement would be Kirel, who might as well have hatched from the same egg. And Reffet, the fleetlord of the colonization fleet, was too new-come to Tosev 3 to understand what had driven Straha to do as he did.

  Suppose he had succeeded in overthrowing Atvar, after the Big Uglies set off their first explosive-metal bomb. Suppose he had gone on to conquer the whole chilly, miserable planet. What would he do now?—for surely some females would taste ginger under his regime. He longed for a taste himself right now, as he sat here talking with Yeager.

  He truly did not know what he would do. He did know Atvar was welcome to the problem. Whatever Atvar did would probably be a half measure, too little and too late. That was Atvar’s way. Straha said as much.

  “It is not easy to figure out what he might do,” Yeager said, echoing Straha’s thought. “A lot of ginger goes into the parts of Tosev 3 the Race occupies, and a lot gets grown there, too. I do not see how the Race will be able to stop females from tasting it. And when they do . . .”

  “Indeed, Sam Yeager,” Straha said. “Preventing that will be difficult. And I have heard that females continue to give off the pheromones for some time after first being stimulated to do so by the herb.”

  “I had not heard that. I had better write it down.” Yeager did. The chimes at his front door pealed. He got to his feet. “Excuse me.” He hurried out to see who was there; he had no intercom to check from back here in his study.

  After the door opened, Straha heard Yeager speaking English: “Oh, hello, Karen. Come on in. Jonathan’s back in his bedroom. Chemistry tonight, isn’t it?”

  “That’s right, Mr. Yeager. He’s got to help me on this one—he’s better at it than I am.” This voice was higher and thinner than Yeager’s: it came, St
raha judged, from a female Big Ugly. And, sure enough, the Tosevite who walked past the doorway wore her coppery hair long and possessed—and, indeed, displayed—prominent mammary glands. She also displayed a lot of skin, which was painted in a good imitation of the pattern a mine-clearance underofficer wore.

  Straha did not know what to make of young Big Uglies imitating the Race like that. The first time he’d seen it, a couple of years before, he’d been offended. Now he was more nearly resigned, and hoped it meant assimilation in action. Even Sam Yeager’s offspring decorated himself so.

  “Oh,” the young Tosevite said, seeing him. She assumed the posture of respect about as well as a Big Ugly could and shifted from English to the language of the Race: “I greet you, superior sir.”

  “I greet you, Mine-Clearance Underofficer,” Straha replied with wry amusement. “My proper title is Shiplord.”

  “Ship—?” The female’s small eyes went as wide as they could. Still in the posture of respect, she said, “I meant no offense.”

  “I do not reckon myself insulted.” Straha watched her staring at his ornate body paint, and wondered if she would be sporting something like it soon. “You speak and understand my language well,” he said. “Now go and study your chemistry. It may prove useful to you later in life.”

  From behind the young female, Sam Yeager spoke again in English: “Yeah, run along, Karen. I’m talking shop here, I’m afraid.” On she went, that bright hair shining. Yeager came back into the study. “I hope she did not disturb you too much, Shiplord.”

  “By her presence? No,” Straha replied. “I spoke truth when I said she spoke well. But I hope you will not be insulted when I say I would sooner have a more experienced underofficer in charge of securing a mined area.”

  “As a matter of fact, I agree with you.” Yeager shook his head, a gesture of bemusement Straha understood. “But I sometimes think a lot of young males and females would sooner belong to the Race than to their own kind.” He laughed a loud Tosevite laugh. “Even the ones who imitate the Race most closely, though, forget how different your mating habits are from ours. Imitating those would not be easy for them.”