Both of Pshing’s eye turrets swung sharply toward him. “Exalted Fleetlord?” he said, as if wondering whether he’d heard correctly.
Atvar understood that. The Race had not used capital punishment since long before Home was unified. But he said, “This is a barbarous world, and ruling it—or ruling our portion of it—requires barbarous measures. During the fighting, did we not match the Big Uglies city for city with explosive-metal bombs?”
“But that was during the fighting,” Pshing answered.
“So it was,” Atvar agreed. “But the fighting on Tosev 3 has never truly stopped; it has only slowed.” He sighed. “Unless it comes to a boil again and destroys this world, it is liable to continue at this low level for generations to come. If we do not adopt our methods to the ones widely used and understood here, we will suffer more as a result.”
“But what shall we become if we do adapt our methods to those the Big Uglies use and understand?” Pshing asked.
“Barbarized.” Atvar did not flinch from the answer. “Different from the males and females on the other worlds of the Empire. Ginger contributes to such differences, too, as we know all too well.” He sighed once more. “Perhaps, over hundreds and over thousands of years, we will become more like those we have left behind.” After a moment, he sighed yet again, even less happily. “And perhaps not, too.”
The frontier between Lizard-occupied Poland and the Greater German Reich was less than a hundred kilometers west of Lodz. Mordechai Anielewicz used bicycle trips to the frontier region to keep himself strong—and to keep an eye on what the Nazis might be up to.
As he neared the border, he swung off the bicycle to rest and to try to rub the stiffness out of his legs. He wasn’t too sore; the poison gas he’d breathed all those years before sometimes dug its claws into him much harder than this. It was hot, but not too muggy; sweat didn’t cling as it might have on a lot of summer days. He stood on top of a small hill, from which he could peer west into Germany.
Even with field glasses, which he didn’t have, he couldn’t have seen a great deal. No tanks rumbled toward the border from the west, as they had in 1939. The only visible German soldiers were a couple of sentries pacing their routes. One of them was smoking a cigarette; a plume of smoke drifted after him.
In a way, the calm was reassuring: the Wehrmacht didn’t look ready to come charging toward Lodz. In another way, though, this land was war’s home. It was low and flat and green—ideal country for panzers. In front of the smoking sentry lay barbed wire thicker than either side had put down in the First World War. Concrete antitank obstacles stood among the thickets of barbed wire like great gray teeth. More of them farther from the frontier worked to channel armored fighting vehicles to a handful of routes, at which the German troops no doubt had heavy weapons aimed.
This side of the frontier, the Polish side, was less ostentatiously fortified. The Nazis went in for large, intimidating displays; the Race didn’t. More of the Lizards’ installations were camouflaged or underground. But Mordechai knew how the Race could fight, and also knew both the Poles and the Jews would fight at the Lizards’ side to keep the Reich from returning to Poland.
He raised his eyes and looked farther west, past the immediate border region. Mist and distance blocked his gaze. He wouldn’t have been able to see the German rockets aimed at Poland anyhow—rockets tipped with explosive-metal bombs. The Jews and Poles couldn’t do anything about them. Anielewicz hoped the Lizards could, either by knocking down the German rockets or by sending so many into the Reich as to leave it a lifeless wasteland.
With such gloomy thoughts in his mind, he didn’t hear the mechanized combat vehicle coming up behind him till it got very close. It was much quieter than a human-made machine of the same type would have been; the Lizards had had not a couple of decades but tens of thousands of years to refine their designs. They were splendid engineers. An engineering student himself back in the days before the world went mad, Anielewicz understood that. But they moved in little steps, not the great leaps people sometimes took.
The combat vehicle stopped at the top of the hill. A Lizard—an officer, by his body paint—got out and peered west as Mordechai had been doing. He had field glasses, of odd design by human standards but perfectly adapted to the shape of his head and to his eye turrets.
After lowering the binoculars, he turned one eye toward Anielewicz. “What are you doing here?” he asked in fair Polish.
“Looking at what the enemy may be up to—the same as you, I suspect,” Anielewicz answered in the language of the Race.
“If there is any trouble, we will defend Poland,” the Lizard said, also in his own language. “You need not concern yourself about it.”
Anielewicz laughed in the arrogant male’s face. The Lizard, plainly startled, drew back a pace. Anielewicz said, “We Tosevites fought alongside you to expel the Deutsche from this region.” They’d also helped the Germans against the Race in a nasty balancing act Mordechai hoped never to have to try again. Not mentioning that, he went on, “We will fight alongside you if the Deutsche attack now. If you do not understand that, you must be very new to the region.”
He almost laughed at the Lizard again. Had the male been a human being, he would have looked flabbergasted. The Race had less mobile features, but the way the officer held himself proclaimed his astonishment. He asked, “Who are you, to speak to me so?”
“My name is Mordechai Anielewicz,” Anielewicz answered, wondering if the Lizard was so new to Poland that that wouldn’t mean anything to him. But how could he be, if he spoke Polish?
And he wasn’t. “Ah, the Tosevite fighting leader!” he exclaimed. “No wonder you have an interest in the Deutsche, then.”
“No wonder at all,” Anielewicz agreed dryly. “What I do wonder about is your foolish insistence before that Tosevites were not fighters. I hope you know better. I hope your superiors know better.”
“I am sorry,” the Lizard said, a rare admission from his kind. Then he spoiled it: “I took you for an ordinary, lazy Big Ugly, not one of the less common sort.”
“Thank you so much,” Mordechai said. “Are you sure you are a male of the Race and not a male of the Deutsche?” Few Germans could have been more open in their scorn for Polish and Jewish Untermenschen—but the Lizard applied his scorn to the whole human race. Remember, he’s an ally, Anielewicz reminded himself.
“Of course I am sure,” the male said; whatever he was, he had no sense of humor and no sense of irony. “I am also sure that the Deutsche will not dare attack us, not after the warnings we have given them. You may take this to your fighters and tell them to rest easy.”
“There have been warnings, then?” Mordechai asked, and the Lizard made the affirmative hand gesture. That was news Anielewicz hadn’t heard before—and, as far as he was concerned, good news. He said, “The one thing I will tell you is that the Deutsche can be treacherous.”
“All Big Uglies can be treacherous,” the male answered. “We have learned this, to our sorrow, ever since the conquest fleet came to Tosev 3.”
To him, that obviously included Anielewicz. He had some reason for his suspicions, too: with luck, he didn’t know how much. Mordechai said, “We Jews will fight with the Race against the Deutsche.”
“I know this. This is good. You will fight harder against the Reich than you would against the SSSR,” the Lizard officer said. “But the Poles, while they will also fight for us against the Reich, might well fight harder against the SSSR. Is this not a truth? You will know your fellow Tosevites better than I can.”
“You know them well enough, or so it seems,” Anielewicz said—the Lizard had a good grasp of local politics. “Some of us reckon one side a worse enemy, some the other. We all have reasons we think good.”
“I know that.” The male let out a hiss of discontent. “This trying to deal with every tiny grouping of Tosevites as if it were an empire has addled a good many of us. It is but one way in which you are such a troublesome
species.”
“I thank you,” Anielewicz said, straight-faced.
“You thank me?” After his interrogative cough, the Lizard spread his hands to show more perplexity. “I do not understand.”
“Never mind,” Mordechai said resignedly.
“Is it a joke?” No, the Lizard wasn’t able to tell. He went on, “If it is, I warn you to be careful. Otherwise, one day the joke will be on you.” Before Anielewicz could come up with an answer for that, the officer continued, “Since you are who you are, I suppose you have come to the border here to spy on the Deutsche.”
“Yes, as a matter of fact, I have.” Mordechai saw no point in denying the obvious. “You may tell your superiors that you met me here, and you may tell them that we Jews are in the highest state of readiness with all our weapons. We will resist the Deutsche with every means at our disposal—every means.”
As he’d intended, the male got his drift—this was indeed an alert, clever Lizard, even if one without a sense of humor. “Does that include explosive-metal weapons?” he asked.
“I hope both you and the Deutsche never have to find out,” Anielewicz answered. “You may tell that to your superiors, too.” After more than twenty years, he didn’t know whether the bomb the Nazis had meant for Lodz would work, either. He too hoped he would never have to find out.
Most Lizards would have kept on grilling him about the explosive-metal bomb. This one didn’t. Instead of pounding away at an area where he wouldn’t get any answers, he adroitly changed the subject. Pointing west, he asked, “Do you observe anything that, in your opinion, requires special vigilance on our part?”
“No,” Mordechai admitted, not altogether happily. He laughed at himself. “I am not altogether sure whether coming to the border was a waste of time, but I did it anyhow. Still, you of the Race can observe from high over the heads of the Deutsche.” He pointed up into space. “You can see far more than I could hope to from this little hill.”
“But if you saw something, you would be more likely to do so with full understanding,” the officer said. “We have been deceived before. No doubt we shall be deceived again and again, until such time as this world at last fully becomes part of the Empire.”
Just when Anielewicz began to think this Lizard did understand people after all, the male came out with something like that. “Do you really believe the Race will conquer the independent not-empires?”
“Yes,” the Lizard answered. “For you Tosevites, a few years seem a long time. Over hundreds of years, over thousands of years, we are bound to prevail.”
He spoke of the Race’s triumph with the certainty a Communist would have used to proclaim the victory of the proletariat or a Nazi the dominance of the Herrenvolk. Anielewicz said, “We may not think in the long terms as well as the Race does, but we also change more readily than the Race does. What will happen if, before hundreds or thousands of years pass, we go ahead of you?”
“You had better not,” the Lizard replied. “This is under discussion among us, and you had better not.”
He sounded as if he were warning Anielewicz in person. “Why not?” the Jewish fighting leader asked. “What will happen if we do?”
“The consensus among our leaders is, we will destroy this entire planet,” the male said matter-of-factly. “If you Tosevites are a danger to the Race here on Tosev 3, you are an annoyance—a large annoyance, but an annoyance nonetheless. If you seem likely to be able to trouble the other worlds of the Empire, you are no longer an annoyance. You are a danger, a deadly danger. We do not intend to let that happen.” He added an emphatic cough.
“What about your colonists?” Mordechai asked, ice running through him. Not even the Germans spoke so calmly of destruction.
He’d seen before that Lizards shrugged much as men did. “That would be most unfortunate. We might have done very well on this world. But the Empire as a whole is more important.”
Humans would have had a hard time thinking so dispassionately. Anielewicz stared after the officer, who got back into his vehicle. As it clattered off, Mordechai looked east after it, and then into the Reich once more. He shivered. He’d suddenly got a brand-new reason to worry about the Germans.
Gorppet bent into the posture of respect. “After so many years as a simple infantrymale, superior sir, I never expected to be promoted to officer’s rank.”
“You have earned it,” answered the officer sitting across the table from him. “By capturing Khomeini, you have earned not only the promotion, not only the stated reward, but almost anything else you desire.”
“For which I thank you, superior sir.” Gorppet knew he’d have a harder time collecting on the promise than the officer did making it. But he was going to try, anyhow. “I have served in this region of the main continental mass since what is called the end of the fighting, and I fought in the SSSR before that.”
“I know your record,” the officer—the other officer, Gorppet thought—said. “It does you credit.”
“And I thank you once more, superior sir.” As far as Gorppet was concerned, his record showed he remained alive and intact only by a miracle. “Having served in such hazardous posts, what I would like most of all is a transfer to an area where the conditions are less intense.”
“I understand why you say this, but could I not persuade you to ask for a different boon?” the officer said. I knew it, Gorppet thought. The other male went on, “Your experience makes you extremely valuable here. Without it, in fact, you would hardly have been able to recognize and capture the wily Khomeini.”
“No doubt that is a truth, superior sir, but I am beginning to feel I have used up about all the luck I ever had,” Gorppet answered. “You asked what I wanted. I told you. Are you telling me I may not have it?”
The officer sighed and waggled his eye turrets in a way that suggested Gorppet was asking for more than he had any right to expect. The newly promoted trooper held his ground. The officer sighed again. He had not expected Gorppet to request a transfer or to insist on getting it. Gorppet didn’t care what the officer had expected. He knew what he wanted. If he had a chance for it, he would grab with both hands.
With one more sigh, the officer turned his swiveling chair half away from Gorppet to use the computer. Gorppet turned his eye turrets toward the screen, but he was too far away and at too bad an angle to be able to read anything on it. And the officer did not speak to the machine, but used the keyboard. Gorppet’s suspicions rose. If the other male told him no posts elsewhere were available, he would raise as big a fuss as he could. He wished he’d been wise enough to record this conversation. He might well need the evidence to support his claims of promises denied.
But, at last, the officer turned back to him. “There is a position available in the extreme south of the main continental mass,” the male said unwillingly.
“I will take it, superior sir,” Gorppet said at once. “Get my acceptance into the computer, if you would be so kind.”
“Very well.” No, the officer did not sound happy. “How much do you know about this place called South Africa?” he asked as he clicked keys.
“Nothing whatsoever,” Gorppet answered cheerfully. “But I am sure it cannot possibly be worse than Basra and Baghdad.”
“The climate is worse,” the officer warned. “As far as climate goes, this is one of the best parts of Tosev 3.”
“No doubt you are right, superior sir,” Gorppet said—openly disagreeing with a superior did not do . . . and the other male was right. This area of Tosev 3 did have good weather. Still, Gorppet continued, “As far as the Big Uglies go, though, this is one of the worst parts of the planet. I have had more than enough of them.”
“I doubt you will find the Big Uglies in South Africa much of an improvement,” the officer said. “The ones with light skins hate and resent us for making the ones with dark skins, who outnumber them, their equals. The ones with the dark skins hate and resent us because we do not let them massacre the ones with the light skins
.”
“I am willing to take my chances with them, dark and light,” Gorppet said. “As long as they are not so fanatical as to kill themselves so they can harm us, they are an improvement on the Tosevites hereabouts.” He pushed things a little: “I very much look forward to receiving my transfer orders.”
With a snorted hiss full of angry resignation, the officer turned back to the computer, although he kept one eye turret on Gorppet, as if afraid Gorppet would steal something if he gave the machine all his attention. After a little while, a sheet of paper came out of the printer by the computer. The officer thrust it at Gorppet. “There is a flight from Baghdad to Cairo tomorrow. You will be on it. There is a flight from Cairo to Cape Town the day after. You will be on it, too.”
Gorppet read the travel document to make sure it said what the officer told him it did. He’d stopped taking officers’ words on trust shortly after he started fighting in the SSSR. That was one of the reasons the spirits of Emperors past hadn’t yet greeted his spirit. These orders, however, read as they were supposed to.
“I thank you for your help, superior sir,” he said, though the officer had done everything he could to thwart him. “I will be on that flight tomorrow.”
“See that you are,” the other male said distantly, as if he were doing his best to forget Gorppet had ever stood before him. “I dismiss you.”
Gorppet went back to the barracks and packed his belongings. That wasn’t a hard job; everything he owned—except for his new and much improved credit balance—he could sling on his back. Just for a moment, he wondered if that was a fitting reward for having gone through so much danger. He shrugged. That wasn’t the sort of question a soldier’s training made him fit to answer.
He said his goodbyes to his squad. He would miss some of them, though not all: if he ever thought of Betvoss again, it would be with annoyance.
He was at the airfield long before his aircraft would leave. Nothing must go wrong, he thought, and nothing did. The flight took off on time, had little turbulence, and landed in Cairo on time. He got ground transport to a transient barracks to wait for his next flight. The Big Uglies on the streets of this city might have come from Baghdad. A couple of them, concealed by the crowd, threw stones at the vehicle in which Gorppet was riding.
Down to Earth Page 36
