Down to Earth (39 page)

“If you try to take what you imagine to be your legitimate rights by force, you will discover how easy your not-empire is to devastate,” Atvar said.

“What gives you the right to make such threats?” Bieberback demanded.

“The power to make them good,” Atvar replied. “You and your not-emperor would be wise to remember it.”

Bieberback rose and bowed, the Tosevite equivalent of assuming the posture of respect. “I think there is little point to continuing these discussions,” he said. “The
Reich
will act in accordance to its interests.”

“Yes, the
Reich
would be wise to do that,” Atvar agreed. “It would also be wise to bear in mind that antagonizing the Race is not in its interest. Antagonize the Race enough and the
Reich
will abruptly cease to be.”

With another bow, the Big Ugly said, “We shall defend ourselves against your aggression to the best of our ability. Good day.” Without waiting for the fleetlord’s leave, he walked out of the office.

Atvar let out a long sigh. Pshing came in a moment later. The fleetlord said, “We shall have to keep ourselves at increased alert against the
Reich.
Plainly, the Deutsche have belligerent intentions.”

“Shall I prepare orders to that effect?” Pshing asked.

“Yes, do so,” Atvar answered. “So long as these Big Uglies see they cannot take us by surprise, they are unlikely to attack us. If we ignore them, we put ourselves in danger.”

“Truth,” Exalted Fleetlord,” Pshing said. “I shall draft the orders for your approval.”

“Very good.” Atvar made the affirmative hand gesture. “And when you transmit them to the males of the conquest fleet in Poland and in space, do not do so over the channels with the greatest security.”

His adjutant let out a startled hiss. “Exalted Fleetlord? If I follow that order, the Deutsche are only too likely to intercept our transmission. Much as I hate to say it, they are beginning to gain the technology required to defeat some of our less sophisticated scrambler circuits.”

“Yes, so I understand from some of the reports reaching us from the part of the
Reich
known as France,” Atvar replied. “In most circumstances, this is a nuisance—worse than a nuisance, in fact. But here, I want them to intercept the order. I want them to know we are alerted to the possibility of unprovoked attack from them. I want them to know that they will pay dearly if they make such an attack.”

“Ah.” Pshing assumed the posture of respect. “Exalted Fleetlord, I congratulate you. That is deviousness worthy of a Big Ugly.”

“I thank you,” Atvar said, even if the form of the compliment was not what he might have liked. “The Deutsche will feel they have genuinely important information if they think they are stealing it from us. If we give it to them, on the other fork of the tongue, they will think we want them to have it, and so will discount it.”

“Ah,” Pshing repeated. He turned an eye turret toward the fleetlord. “No one from the colonization fleet could possibly have such a deep understanding of the way Big Uglies think.”

That was a compliment Atvar could appreciate in full. “And I thank you once more,” he said. “By now, we of the conquest fleet have more experience of the Tosevites than anyone could want.”

“Even so,” Pshing said with an emphatic cough. “In aid of which, have you yet decided what we ought to do with the rabble-rouser named Khomeini now that he is finally in our hands?”

“Not yet,” Atvar said. “By the Emperor, though, having his hateful voice silenced is a relief. He is far from the only fanatical agitator in this part of the main continental mass, but he was among the most virulent and the most effective.”

“His followers are among the most virulent, too, even among those who follow the Muslim superstition,” Pshing said. “If he remains imprisoned, they are liable to stop at nothing in their efforts to free him.”

“I am painfully aware of this,” Atvar said. “We have, to our sorrow, seen too many such efforts—and too many of them have succeeded. I have made matters more difficult for the Big Uglies by ordering Khomeini transferred to a prison in the southern region of the lesser continental mass. The Big Uglies there speak a different language and follow the Christian superstition, so his influence among them should be much less than it would were we to have kept him incarcerated locally.”

“This also shows considerable understanding of Tosevite psychology,” his adjutant remarked.

“So it does, but I cannot take full credit for it,” Atvar said. “Moishe Russie suggested it to me. This Khomeini is almost as antithetical to the Big Uglies of the Jewish superstition as he is to us, so, as against the Deutsche, Russie was able to make the suggestion in good conscience.”

“Excellent,” Pshing said. “We do our best when we can turn the Tosevites’ differences among themselves to our advantage.”

“The only trouble being, too often they abandon those differences to unite against us,” Atvar said. “They might even do that in the case of Khomeini, which is the main reason why I am considering ordering his execution.”

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.