Second Contact

by Harry Turtledove

  “Truth,” Gorppet said. His eye turrets were moving unnaturally fast, too. That he thought something wasn’t the way it should be helped ease Fotsev’s mind. With the combat Gorppet had seen, he ought to have a knack for recognizing trouble before it became obvious.

  “Everything seems quiet to me,” Betvoss said.

  “I wish you seemed quiet to me,” Gorppet told him.

  Betvoss liked to contradict for the fun of contradicting. Fotsev had seen that before. But, this time, the other male’s words helped Fotsev see where the trouble lay. “Everything does seem quiet,” he said. Gorppet gave him a reproachful look till he went on, “Everything seems too quiet.”

  “Yes, it does.” Gorppet used an emphatic cough. “That is it exactly! Not many Big Uglies on the street, not even many of the cursed yapping creatures they use for pets.”

  “Not many weapons, either.” Betvoss kept right on contradicting. “Usually the local Tosevites have about as much firepower as we do. If anyone thinks I am sorry to see something different for once, he is an addled egg.”

  “If something is different, that is likely to mean something is wrong,” Fotsev said. His opinion sprang partly from the innate conservatism of the Race, partly from his own experience on Tosev 3.

  Gorppet made the affirmative hand gesture. “If things go quiet all of a sudden, you always wonder what the Big Uglies are hiding. Or you should.”

  “And it could be anything,” Fotsev said gloomily. “It could be anything at all. Remember the riots we had to put down when the colonization fleet started landing? If I never hear one more Big Ugly wrapped in rags screaming ‘Allahu akbar!’ I will be the happiest male on the face of this planet.”

  Betvoss didn’t argue with that. Fotsev didn’t see how even Betvoss could have argued with that. Another male on patrol said, “Hardly any of the little half-grown beggars around today. And if that does not prove something is wrong, what would?”

  “Truth,” Fotsev said. “They act like parasites—or they do most of the time. But where are they this morning?”

  “Not at their lessons, that is certain,” Gorppet said with a nasty laugh. Most of the local Tosevite hatchlings had no lessons to attend. The ones who did receive what the locals considered an education learned to add and subtract a little, to write in their language, and to read from the manual of the superstition dominant hereabouts. Maybe that was better than nothing. Fotsev would not have bet anything he cared to lose on it.

  When the patrol came into the central market square, he saw for himself that things were not right. On almost every day, the pandemonium in the market square outdid the rest of Basra put together. Not today. Today, hardly any merchants displayed food or cloth or brasswork or the other things they made. Today, males and females of the Race from the new towns out in the desert outnumbered Tosevites as customers.

  “Too quiet,” Gorppet said.

  “Much too quiet,” Fotsev agreed. He waited for Betvoss to weigh in on the opposite side, but the other male said not a word.

  Horrible electrified squawkings burst from the towers attached to the buildings where the local Big Uglies practiced their superstition. “The call to prayer,” Gorppet said, and Fotsev made the affirmative gesture. “Now we shall see how many of them come out,” Gorppet went on. “If they stay home for this . . . well, they never have, not in all the time I have been here.”

  Sure enough, robed Big Uglies emerged from houses and shops and streamed toward the mosques of Basra. “Praying is not the only thing they do in those buildings,” Fotsev said worriedly. “The males who lead them in prayer are also known to lead them in rebellion against the Empire.”

  “We ought to go in there and make sure they say only things that have to do with their foolish beliefs,” Betvoss said. “Those males have no business meddling in politics. They should be punished if they try.”

  “We have punished some of them,” Fotsev said. “Others keep popping up.”

  “The other fork of the tongue is, they have no notion where their superstition ends and politics begins,” Gorppet added. “For them, the two are not to be separated.”

  “We should instruct them, then.” Betvoss flourished his rifle to show what kind of instruction he had in mind. “We should go into those houses of superstition and kill the Big Uglies who preach against us, kill them or at least take them away and imprison them so they cannot inflame the others.”

  “We tried that, not long after we occupied these parts,” Gorppet said. “It did not work: it created more turbulence than it suppressed. And so many of these Tosevites are experts in the fine points of their foolish belief that new leaders arose almost at once to replace the ones we captured.”

  “Too bad,” Betvoss said, and there, for once, Fotsev couldn’t disagree with him.

  With most of the Big Uglies worshiping, the patrol prowled down streets even more deserted than before. “Too easy,” Fotsev muttered under his breath. “Too easy, too quiet.”

  His eye turrets kept on sliding now this way, now that, looking for places from which the Tosevites might ambush the patrol, and also for good defensive positions in case of trouble. That there was no sign of trouble except for things being calmer than usual did nothing to deter him. He felt like a hatchling still in the egg that trembled when it heard a predator’s footsteps. It could not see danger, but knew danger was there nonetheless. Fotsev thought it was here, too.

  His telephone hissed. The sound, designed to get his attention, made him start with alarm, though danger on Tosev 3 was likelier to start with angry shouts from Big Uglies or with the frightened yappings of their animals. He put the phone to a hearing diaphragm, listened, said, “It shall be done, superior sir,” and set the instrument back on his belt.

  “What shall be done?” Gorppet asked.

  “I knew trouble was stirring somewhere,” Fotsev answered. “The Big Uglies have captured a bus on its way into Basra from one of the new towns and kidnapped all the females who were riding in it. The suspicion is that they intend to hold them for ransom.”

  “Clever of the authorities to figure that out,” Gorppet said with heavy sarcasm. “Lesser minds would have been incapable of it.”

  “Why kidnap only females?” Betvoss said. “Males are more dangerous to them, for there are no female soldiers.”

  “That is not how the Big Uglies think,” Gorppet said. “Females matter more to them, because they are always in season. And besides, females do not know how to fight back. If they captured males, they might capture a trained soldier, one who could harm them.”

  “That makes sense,” Betvoss said—he was being unusually reasonable today. “If we can find them, we can probably earn promotions.”

  “If we see some evidence that we are near these kidnapped females, of course we shall try to rescue them,” Fotsev said. “But we must not forget everything else while we search for them.”

  “Truth,” Gorppet said. “Otherwise, the Tosevites will make us regret it.”

  “Onward, then,” Fotsev said.

  Onward they went, through the narrow, winding streets of Basra. A breeze sprang up, sending new and different stinks onto their scent receptors. After a while, the Big Uglies came out of their houses of worship. Gorppet, who spoke their language, called out to some of them. A few—only a few—answered. “They deny knowing anything about these females,” he said.

  “Did you expect anything different?” Fotsev asked.

  “Expect? No,” Gorppet answered. “But you never can tell. I might have been lucky. The Tosevites have feuds among themselves. Had I found a male at feud with the kidnappers, he might have told us what we need to know.”

  For a small stretch of time, the Big Uglies returning from their worship filled the streets. Then they might have disappeared off the face of Tosev 3. Everything grew quiet again—much too quiet, as far as Fotsev was concerned. Something simmered under the surface, though he couldn’t tell what. That sense of walking on uncertain ground gnawed at
him.

  The breeze picked up and swirled dust into his face. His nictitating membranes flicked back and forth, back and forth, protecting his eyes from the grit. “Weather reminds me of a windy day back on Home,” he remarked, and a couple of the other males made the affirmative hand gesture.

  Then, all at once, the breeze blew him a scent that also reminded him of Home. “By the Emperor!” he said softly. He was not the only male in the patrol to smell those pheromones, of course. Everyone else started standing more nearly erect, too.

  “She’s close,” Betvoss said hoarsely. “She’s very close.”

  “She . . . maybe they,” Gorppet said. “The scent is strong.” His voice was hot and hungry, and he added an emphatic cough.

  “I wonder if these are the kidnapped females.” Fotsev reluctantly reached for his telephone to report the possibility.

  “Investigate with caution,” a male back at the barracks told him.

  “It shall be done,” Fotsev replied. But that other male, that distant male, did not have a cloud of pheromones blowing into his face. When Fotsev relayed the order to the rest of the patrol, what he said was, “We have permission to go forward.”

  A couple of males exclaimed in delight. Betvoss said, “It will probably be a couple of ginger-addled females from the new towns. But if they are ginger-addled, they will want to mate, and smelling them certainly makes me want to mate. And so . . .” He hurried in the direction the delicious scent led him. So did Fotsev. So did the whole patrol. They were investigating, but had forgotten all about caution.

  Rounding a corner, Fotsev saw a couple of females at the dark dead end of an alleyway. The pheromones came off them in waves. He and his comrades rushed toward them. Only when he got very near did his lust-impaired senses note they were bound and gagged.

  He tried to make himself stop. “It is a trap!” he shouted. The realization came just too late for him. Big Uglies concealed in houses on either side of the alley had already opened up with rifles and automatic weapons. Males fell as if scythed down. Fotsev screamed for help into his telephone. Then something struck him a heavy blow in the flank. He found himself on the ground without knowing how he’d got there. It didn’t hurt—yet.

  The Tosevites swarmed out of their hiding places to try to finish off the patrol. “Allahu akbar!” they shouted. A male fired at them, and some fell. The rest kept shouting, “Allahu akbar!” It was the last thing Fotsev ever heard.

  “Allahu akbar!” The cry echoed through Jerusalem once more. Reuven Russie hated it. It meant horror and terror and death. He’d seen that before. Now he and the city he loved—the only city he’d ever loved—were seeing it again.

  In the most hackneyed, clichéd fashion possible, he wished he’d listened to his mother. If he hadn’t gone in to the Russie Medical College this morning, he wouldn’t be worrying now about how he was going to get home in one piece. Things hadn’t been so bad this morning. He hadn’t wanted to miss the day’s lectures or the biochemistry lab—especially not the latter, whose equipment and techniques far outdid anything human technology could offer.

  And so he’d come, and he hadn’t had too hard a time doing it. People had been shouting “Allahu akbar!” even then, and there were occasional spatters of gunfire, the pop-pop-pops sounding like fireworks. But Reuven had gone through the empty market square without so much as seeing a man with a rifle or a submachine gun. The shopkeepers who’d stayed home and merchants who hadn’t set up their stalls, though, had known something he hadn’t.

  The Race, as a matter of course, efficiently soundproofed the buildings it put up. Reuven approved; distractions were the last thing he needed when trying to keep up with a Lizard physician lecturing as quickly as he would have for students of his own species. He and his fellows never heard Jerusalem’s ordinary street noise, which could be pretty raucous.

  But the noise outside today was anything but ordinary. Nearby small-arms fire and helicopters roaring low overhead provided constant background racket, now louder, now softer. Even the most efficient soundproofing in the world couldn’t keep out the deep, thunderous roars of exploding bombs. And some of those bombs burst close enough to shake the whole building, as if from an earthquake. Reuven had been through a few quakes. The shaking here wasn’t so strong as in a bad one, but he kept wondering what would happen if a bomb happened to hit the medical college square. It wasn’t the sort of thought that helped him pay attention to Shpaaka, the male of the Race who went on lecturing as if it were an ordinary day.

  After a miss that sounded and felt nearer than any of the others, Jane Archibald leaned toward him and whispered, “This is bloody awful.”

  “Oh, good,” he whispered back. “I thought I was the only one scared out of my wits.”

  Blond curls flipped back and forth as she shook her head. “I don’t know how anybody stands it,” she said. “It takes me back to the days when I was a tiny little girl and the Lizards were mopping up Australia after they’d bombed Sydney and Melbourne.”

  Reuven nodded. “I remember the fighting in Poland and in England and here, too.”

  He might have known that Shpaaka would notice he wasn’t paying so much attention as he should. “Student Russie,” the Lizard said, “are you prepared to repeat back to me my remarks on hormonal function?”

  Before Reuven could answer, another bomb burst even closer to the building. It almost threw him out of his seat. He had to fight the urge to dive for cover. In a shaky voice, he answered, “No, superior sir. I am sorry.”

  He waited for Shpaaka to read him the riot act about insolence and insubordination. Instead, the male let out a very human-sounding sigh and said, “Perhaps, under the circumstances, this is forgivable. I must note, I find these circumstances unfortunate.”

  No one argued with him. People who were liable to stand up and scream “Allahu akbar!” or even “Lizards go home!” were unlikely to enroll in the Moishe Russie Medical College. As far as Reuven was concerned, the Race did a better job of ruling its territory than the Reich or the Soviet Union did theirs. He glanced over toward Jane, which he enjoyed doing every so often any day of the week. She had a different opinion of the Lizards’ rule, but she couldn’t enjoy watching—or rather, listening to—Jerusalem going up in flames.

  Shpaaka said, “I hope you will forgive me, but I really feel I must speak on something other than the assigned lecture topic for a little while. I trust I hear no objections?” His eye turrets swiveled so he could look at all of his students. Again, no one said anything. “I thank you,” he told them. “I merely wanted to state my opinion that, in view of the factional strife so prevalent among you Tosevites, the coming of the Race to Tosev 3 may well prove a boon to you, not the disaster so many of your kind perceive it to be.”

  Reuven started to nod, then checked himself. It wasn’t so much that he didn’t agree: much more that he didn’t want Jane seeing him agree. He knew she wouldn’t, no matter how eloquently Shpaaka spoke. He didn’t blame her for having a view different from his, but wished she wouldn’t.

  “I say this even if the Race should eventually incorporate all Tosevites into the Empire,” Shpaaka continued. “You value independence very highly: more so than any other species we know. But unity and security also have their value, and in the long run—a concept I admit seems alien to Tosev 3—that value may well prove greater. We have found it so, at any rate.”

  Now Reuven wasn’t so sure he agreed. He was content to live under the Lizards’ rule because all other choices for Palestine looked worse. He didn’t think that was true all over the world, nor even in all parts of the world where the Race presently ruled.

  He glanced over toward Jane again. She surely didn’t think that was true all over the world, either.

  “Let us live in peace together, as far as we can,” Shpaaka said. “Let us learn in settings like this one to extend the boundaries of peaceful living, and let us—” He had to break off, for the lights flickered and the floor shook from another
near miss.

  “So much for peaceful living,” somebody behind Reuven said.

  A telephone on the wall behind Shpaaka hissed for attention. He answered it, spoke briefly, and then hung up. Turning back to the class, he said, “I am told to dismiss you early. Armored vehicles are on the way to take you all back to the dormitory, which has a strong perimeter around it.”

  Reuven threw up his hand. When Shpaaka recognized him, he said, “But, superior sir, I do not live in the dormitory.”

  “You might be well advised to go there in any case,” the Lizard said. “Doing so will be far safer for you than attempting to traverse the city while it is in such a state of disarray. Assuming the telephone system is still operational, you may contact whomever you require from there.” He paused, then went on, “I do not have so many students as to be able to contemplate with equanimity the loss of any of them.”

  “But my family . . .” Reuven began.

  “Don’t be silly,” Jane hissed at him. “Your father advises the fleetlord. Do you think the Race will let anything happen to him?”

  He started to answer that, then realized he couldn’t—she was right. The Lizards took such obligations far more seriously than most people did. And so, instead, he spoke to Shpaaka: “I thank you, superior sir. I will go to the dormitory with my fellow students.”

  “It is good,” the male said. “And now, until the vehicles arrive, I resume my remarks on hormone functions . . .”

  He did not get to lecture long. A male wearing the body paint of a mechanized combat vehicle commander burst into the chamber and called, “You Tosevites going to the dormitory, come with me at once.”

  Along with everyone else, Reuven rose and hurried out to the entranceway. The air outside was thick with smoke, smoke nasty with the scents of burning paint and burning rubber and burning meat. He plunged into one of the waiting combat vehicles—not altogether by accident, the one Jane Archibald also chose. The seats in the back were made for Lizards, which meant they were cramped for humans. He didn’t mind being knee to knee with her, not at all.