Down to Earth (53 page)

“Everybody does a little,” Pierre echoed, laughing still. “But you never
approved
, did you, little sister? And now, whether you approve or not, you’re part of it. Is it really so bad?”

Looking at the flat in which he lived, the flat in which she occupied a spare room these days, Monique had a hard time saying no. The flat was far larger and far airier than the one from which she’d escaped. And it held every sort of electronic gadget, mostly Lizard-made, under the sun: more modern conveniences than people could even imagine. Still . . .

“How do you stand living like a hunted animal all the time?” she burst out.

Her brother looked back at her, for once without a hint of irony on his plump, pouchy features. “I’d sooner live as a hunted animal than as one in a cage, where the keeper could reach in and pet me—or do anything else he wanted—whenever he chose.”

That held enough truth to sting. But Monique said, “I’m still in a cage, only now it’s yours and not the SS man’s.”

“You can go back any time you please,” Pierre said easily. “If you would rather do what he wants than what I want, go right ahead.”

“I’d sooner do what
I
want,” Monique said. She’d said that a good many times, to anyone who might listen. It hadn’t done her much good, and didn’t seem likely to do her much good this time, either.

And so it didn’t. Her brother, at least, didn’t laugh at her any more. Voice serious now, he answered, “If that is what you would rather have, you need to make yourself strong enough to be able to get it. No one will give it to you. You have to take it.”

Monique clenched her fists till her nails bit into her flesh. “You talk like you just came back from the revival of
The Triumph of the Will
.”

“I saw it,” he said, which made her glare harder than ever. Since he’d come back into her life, she’d never been able to faze him. He went on, “It’s marvelous propaganda. Even the Lizards say so. They study it to see how to make people do what they want. If it’s good enough for them, why shouldn’t it be good enough for me?”

Before Monique could answer, someone knocked on the front door. Pierre didn’t just open it. Instead, he checked a little television screen connected to an even littler camera hooked up to look out on the front hall. He nodded to himself. “Yes, those are the Lizards I’m expecting.” Turning to Monique, he said, “Why don’t you go shopping for a couple of hours? Spend as much of my money as you want. I’ve got some business to take care of here.”

By his tone, he was as convinced he had the right to send her away as Dieter Kuhn was that
he
had the right to tell her to take off her clothes and lie down on the bed. One fine day, and it wouldn’t be long, she’d have something pointed to say about that. But it wouldn’t be today. She grabbed her handbag and left the flat as soon as the Lizards outside had come in.

Except for the clothes the people wore, Porte d’Aix always made her think of Algiers as much as France. It reminded her of the unity the Mediterranean had known during Roman times and even later; Professor Pirenne’s famous thesis said the rise of first Muhammad and then Charlemagne had set the two sides of the sea moving in different directions. Scholars of Monique’s generation worked to refute Pirenne, but she, not a medievalist herself, thought he made good points.

A walk through this part of Marseille certainly supported his views of the way history worked. Streets here were short and winding and narrow—most too narrow for automobiles, quite a few too narrow for anyone but a madman to try on a bicycle. But plenty of madmen were loose; Monique had to flatten herself against brick or stone walls every few steps to keep from getting flattened as they whizzed past.

Shops and taverns and eateries were tiny, and most of them did as much business out on the street as back in the buildings that supposedly housed them. A tinker sat on a chair, a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, as he soldered a patch onto a cracked iron pot that might almost have dated back to Roman days. His legs stuck out into the street, so that Monique had to step over them.

He moved the pot and patted his lap. “Here, sweetheart, you can have a seat if you care to.”

“You can solder your fly shut, if you care to,” Monique told him, “and your mouth to go with it.” Bristling, she strode on. Behind her, the tinker laughed and, without any undue haste, went back to work.

In the course of the three blocks that lay between Pierre’s flat and the local market square, she heard several dialects of French, German, Spanish (or was it Catalan?), Italian, English, and the language of the Race spoken by both men and Lizards. People changed tongues more readily than they changed trousers. As a scholar—
as a former scholar
, she reminded herself—she wished she could go back and forth from one language to another as readily as did some of these traders and tapmen and smugglers.

As always, the market was packed. Some merchants had stalls their families had held for generations. Others guided pushcarts through the crowds, shouting abuse and lashing out to keep people from getting too many free samples of their cooked squid or lemon tarts or brass rings polished till they looked like gold but sure to start a finger turning green in a week if you were rash enough to buy one.

Monique hung on to her purse with both hands. Plenty of thieves in the market square were a lot less subtle than the ones who sold rings. No sooner had that thought crossed her mind than a German soldier in field-gray let out a guttural bellow of fury at discovering his pocket picked. The fingersmith was sure to be long gone. Even if he hadn’t been, Monique saw no police, French or German, anywhere.

Some of the Lizards who skittered through the largely human crowd were as much at home here as any people. Monique would have guessed they were males from the conquest fleet, veterans who understood people as well as any Lizard could and were liable to be up to something shady themselves.

Then there were the Lizard tourists. They were as obvious and as obnoxious as any travelers from an English-speaking land. They all carried video cameras and photographed everything that moved and everything that didn’t. Monique kept her head down. She was wearing a new bouffant hairdo and makeup far more garish than she would have dared—or even wanted—to use while teaching at the university, but she didn’t care to be recognized if she showed up on some Lizard’s pictures.

She wondered how many of the hissing tourists were spies for the Race. A moment later, she wondered how many were spies for the Nazis. Ginger, from what she’d seen, was a great corrupter. She wished her brother had never got into the trade, even if it had made him rich. If he hadn’t, she wouldn’t have needed to have anything to do with the Nazis, either.

One of the Lizards, one with fairly fancy body paint, bumped up against her. It spoke in its own language. “I’m sorry, but I don’t understand,” Monique said in French. Along with her own tongue, she had Latin. She had Greek. She had German and English and some Italian. But very little classical scholarship was conducted in the language of the Race.

To her surprise, the Lizard handed her a card printed in pretty good French. It read,
You may already be a winner. To find out if you are, come to the consulate of the Race, 21 Rue de Trois Rois. Many valuable prizes.

“What kind of winner?” she asked. “What kind of prizes?”

The Lizard tapped the card with a fingerclaw and said something else in its own language. Evidently it knew no more French than she did of its language. It reached out and tapped the card again, as if certain the little rectangle held all the answers.

“I don’t have the faintest idea what you’re trying to tell me,” Monique said with a shrug. The Lizard shrugged, too, in what seemed to her a sad way. Then it vanished into the crowd.

Monique stared at the card. Her first impulse was to crumple it up and let it fall to the ground, to be trampled underfoot. The Lizards’ consulate was bound to be the most intently spied-upon building in Marseille. If she ever wanted to remake the acquaintance of Dieter Kuhn, that struck her as the way to go about it. All she wanted for Kuhn was a horrible death far away from her.

But, from somewhere, that miserable Lizard had come up with magic words.
You may already be a winner.
Was the Race running a contest, the way rival laundry-soap makers did when business got slow? Laundry-soap makers sold soap. What were the Lizards selling? She had no idea, but the very notion of the Lizards selling anything piqued her curiosity.

Many valuable prizes.
It sounded more like something Americans would say than anything the Lizards were likely to do. What would a Lizard think a valuable prize was? Just how valuable a prize would it be? Valuable enough to let her get away from her brother as she’d got away from Dieter Kuhn? Were there any prizes that valuable?

She didn’t know. But she wanted to find out. She wondered if she could manage it. She started to let the card drop—she knew where the consulate was—but then hesitated. Maybe she would need it. She looked at it again. By what she could see, any French printing house could have done up such cards by the tens of thousands. But she didn’t know what she couldn’t see.

Thoughtfully, she dropped the card into her handbag.
If I get the chance, maybe I will go over there.
She wondered how many cards the Lizard was giving out, and how many Lizards were giving out cards. If she did go to the Rue de Trois Rois, would she find half of Marseille there ahead of her? And would the valuable prize turn out to be aluminum pans or something else every bit as banal?

She knew she shouldn’t leave the Porte d’Aix for any reason. If she was safe anywhere in Marseille, this was the place. The Germans came in here, yes, but they came in to buy and sell, not to raid and plunder. They didn’t know a half, or even a quarter, of what went on under their noses. And the Lizard authorities didn’t know half of what went on under their snouts, either, or Pierre wouldn’t have thrown her out so he could meet with those two shady, scaly characters.

“Lady, you going to stand there till you grow roots?” somebody demanded in loud, irritable tones.

“I’m sorry,” Monique said, though she wasn’t, not really. She moved, and the annoyed man pushed past her. Then she sank into abstracted study once more. What
were
the Lizards doing? Did she dare to find out? On the other hand, did she dare not to find out?

 
14

Felless looked down from a third-story window at the crowd that had gathered in front of the Race’s consulate in Marseille. The male who stood beside her was a researcher from the conquest fleet named Kazzop. “Save that these Big Uglies have black hair, this puts me in mind of a Tosevite work of fiction called ‘The Red-headed League,’ ”he said.

“Tosevite literary allusions leave me uninterested,” Felless said. “The question is, will this accomplish what we desire?”

“We have certainly stimulated the Big Uglies, superior female,” Kazzop said. “I do not think the Deutsche or the Français have the least idea how to control this swarm of Tosevites.”

“In that case, they will start brutalizing them soon,” Felless predicted. “It is not what you had in mind for this experiment, but does seem to be the standard Tosevite procedure in case of insecurity.”

“Truth,” Kazzop said. “Of course, the Deutsch Tosevites need little excuse for brutalizing the Français in any case. They rule them more through forcing fear than through promoting affection.”

“I suppose it is because they only conquered this province of their not-empire shortly before the conquest fleet arrived,” Felless said. “It strikes me as counterproductive, but a great deal the Deutsche do strikes me as counterproductive, so this would be nothing out of the ordinary there.”

“Indeed it would not,” Kazzop said. “We had better go down there and get things under way, or else the Deutsche will disperse that crowd before we can get any use out of it.”

“I suppose so,” Felless said unhappily. This wasn’t her project; she’d been brought here at the bidding of others, just as she’d been sent to Nuremberg. She remained inside the borders of the Greater German
Reich.
Here, though, she had at least a chance to escape the disgrace that had hovered over her in the capital. That should have made her more enthusiastic about cooperating.

To a point, it did. But only to a point. She had to keep coming out of her office and working not only with Big Uglies but also with females and males of the Race. Working with Big Uglies was merely annoying, though less so than it had been in Nuremberg. Working with females of her own kind was innocuous. Working with males of her own kind she hated, because it meant she dared not taste ginger.

She wanted a taste. How she wanted a taste! As she never had before, she understood what addiction meant. She would crave ginger even on her deathbed, regardless of whether she had another taste between now and then. She knew that. If only she could get a couple of days doing research and data correlation inside the cubicle they’d given her. Maybe that would be long enough to let her taste and to let her raging pheromones subside afterwards.

And maybe she would taste and taste and then humiliate herself with the males who coupled with her after she emerged from the cubicle. She’d done that before. She’d done it more than once, in fact. She was all too likely to do it again.

She still wanted a taste.

Down on the ground floor, males had cordoned off all the passages leading away, from the front entrance. Others stood in front of those cordoned-off passages with weapons in hand, to make sure no snoopy Big Uglies went down them in spite of the barricades.

Boxes full of prizes stood in back of tables just behind the closed front doors. Felless sighed. “I am not ideally suited for this task,” she said, “because I speak neither the Deutsch language nor that of the local Français, which I understand is different.”

“Quite different,” Kazzop said. “But do not let it worry you. Most of us have at least some knowledge of one or both of these languages. While you are part of the project proper, your most important role will be data analysis. It is simply that we lack the personnel to restrict you to analysis alone, Senior Researcher.”

With a martyred sigh, Felless said, “I understand.” Had she been doing only analysis, she could have tasted to her heart’s content. Nothing on Tosev 3 except ginger came close to contenting her heart.

Kazzop, now, Kazzop sounded happy and excited about what he was doing. Felless envied him his enthusiasm. They took seats side by side, then turned on the card readers in front of them. She set a sheet of paper by hers. When amber lights showed the machines were ready, Kazzop turned to the males at the door and said, “Let them in. Tell them they must stay in two neat lines or we cannot proceed.”

“It shall be done, superior sir,” one of the males answered, and swung the doors open. The Big Uglies outside roared. He and his comrades shouted in the local language. In came the Tosevites, more or less in two lines.

The first of them came up to thrust his card at Felless—she knew he was a male, for he let the hair on his upper lip grow. She took the card from him and stuck it into the reader. A number showed on the screen: a zero. She touched the message printed beside the zero on the sheet of paper she’d set next to the reader. In the local language, it read,
Sorry, you did not win anything today. Please try again.

By the way the Big Ugly stared, she wondered for a moment if he could read at all. Then he let loose a torrent of what sounded like abuse. Felless was suddenly glad she knew no Français. The Tosevite stomped away, still loudly complaining.

Up came another Big Ugly, a female. Her card showed a one on the reader. Felless turned and grabbed a
skelkwank
-light disk player, which she handed to the Tosevite. She got a wave in return as the Big Ugly carried away her prize.

More Tosevites trooped up, one after another. Those who won nothing complained loudly about it, even though none of the cards had promised anyone a prize. Males and females of the Race would have done better at remembering that.

Most of the Big Uglies who did win got disk players. Some got portable computers. A few got good-sized cash awards—half a year’s pay for the average Tosevite. Just as those who’d failed were more abusive than members of the Race would have been, so the winners were more excited. Hidden cameras recorded all their responses.

And then a female Big Ugly gave Felless her card. It showed a four, the only four among the cards the Race had given out. Felless turned to Kazzop. “Here is the biggest winner of them all,” she said.

“Oh, good,” he answered. “Now I get to play with my bells and whistles, as if I were a Tosevite advertiser.” He turned on a raucous recording full of truly appalling noises. Felless winced. Kazzop laughed at her, remarking, “I have come to like the Big Uglies and the noises they enjoy.”

“So I gather,” Felless said coldly. “You have come to like them altogether too well, if you want my view of the matter.”

“It could be, superior female; it could be.” Kazzop sounded cheerful. “But look—all the Big Uglies in line and all the Big Uglies still waiting outside know she is the biggest winner. See how excited and envious they are?”

Felless still had trouble reading Tosevite expressions. She was willing to believe Kazzop, though. “Interpret for me, if you will,” she said, and he made the affirmative gesture. “Tell the Tosevite congratulations, and ask her name.”

Kazzop spoke in the language of the Français. The Big Ugly answered in what sounded like the same tongue “She says thank you, and that her name is Monique,” he told Felless.

“Just Monique?” Felless was puzzled. “Do they not usually have two names?”

After more conversation, Kazzop said, “She seems reluctant to give her family name. She also seems reluctant to give reasons for her reluctance. She is more curious about what she has won.”

That, for once, was a reaction Felless completely understood. “Well, go ahead and tell her,” Felless said. “Seeing how a couple of them have reacted to money, she will probably come to pieces when she learns she was won a home here with as many modern conveniences as we can include in it—something worth far more than our cash awards.”

“Oh, without a doubt,” Kazzop said. “The recording of her reaction should be both instructive and entertaining.” He shifted from the language of the Race to that of the local Big Uglies.

Felless waited for the Tosevite to shriek and burst into hysterics. One of the males who’d won money had tried to caress her with his lips. She understood it was a gesture of affection among Big Uglies, but the idea almost left her physically ill. She hoped this Tosevite would not try anything like that.

To her relief, the female Big Ugly didn’t. Indeed, the Tosevite hardly showed any emotion at all for a moment. When she did speak, it was in quiet, measured tones. Kazzop was the one who jerked in astonishment. “What is going on?” Felless asked him.

“She—the female—says she cannot accept the prize.” Kazzop sounded as if he couldn’t believe the sounds impinging on his hearing diaphragms. “She asks if we can make a substitution for it.”

“You had not planned to do anything of the sort,” Felless said. “I realize that dealing with Big Uglies takes unusual flexibility, but still . . . Find out why she does not want the prize as offered.”

“Yes. That is worth knowing. It shall be done.” Kazzop spoke in the local language. The Big Ugly’s reply sounded hesitant. To Felless, Kazzop said, “She is not altogether forthcoming. I gather that such a prize might draw too much notice from the Deutsch authorities.”

“Ah. If I were a local Big Ugly, I would not want the Deutsch authorities noticing me, either.” Felless shuddered at some of the things the Deutsche had done. “Does she perhaps follow the—what is it called?—the Jewish superstition, that is it?”

“I will not even ask her that,” Kazzop said. “If she follows it, she will lie. In any case, the Deutsche have exterminated most of their Jews by now. More likely she is a smuggler or other criminal—but she would be unlikely to admit anything of that sort, either.”

“I wonder if she smuggles ginger.” Felless spoke in musing tones, so musing that Kazzop sent her a sharp look. She wished she’d kept quiet. Sure enough, her reputation had preceded her to Marseille.

The Big Ugly female spoke again, this time without waiting for anyone to speak to her. “She is angry that we have something grand to give her that she cannot take,” Kazzop said. “She wants to know if we can substitute the cash value for the house.”

“This is your project,” Felless said. “Were it mine, though, I would tell her no.”

“I intend to,” Kazzop said. “Doing anything else would exceed my budget.” He paused, then stuck out his tongue to show he’d had an idea. “I will offer her a second prize instead.” He spoke in the language of the Français. The Tosevite female replied with considerable warmth.

“What does she say?” Felless asked.

“That we are cheats, but that she has no choice but to let herself be cheated,” Kazzop said. “She accepts with bitterness and anger.”

Felless felt a certain sympathy toward the female. That was the way she’d gone to work in Nuremberg after disgracing herself. She handed the Big Ugly the sheaf of printed papers that passed for currency in the Greater German
Reich.
The Tosevite stuffed them into her carrying pouch and hurried away.

Kazzop sighed. “That was not what I expected, but the unexpected also offers valuable insights.”

“Truth,” Felless said.

A little scaly devil came up to Liu Han’s hut in the prison camp and spoke to her in bad Chinese: “You come. Now.”

For the most part, the little devils had ignored her since capturing her in the village not far from Peking. She wished they would have gone on ignoring her. Since they hadn’t, she sighed and got to her feet. “It shall be done,” she said.

“Where are you taking her?” Liu Mei asked from atop the
kang,
on which she huddled to get a little warmth.

“Not for you to know.” The scaly devil spoke in Chinese, even though she’d used his language. He gestured with his rifle at Liu Han. “You come.”

“I am coming,” she said wearily. “Where are you taking me?”

“You come, you see.” The scaly devil jerked the business end of his rifle again. Liu Han sighed and left the hut.

Even though she was wearing a quilted cotton jacket, the cold the
kang
held at bay smote with full force when she went outside. The little scaly devil let out an unhappy hiss; he liked the winter weather even less than she did. Old, dirty snow crunched under her feet—and under his. He plainly wanted to skitter ahead. To annoy him, Liu Han walked as slowly as he would let her. Maybe he would get frostbitten or catch chest fever. She didn’t know if little scaly devils could catch chest fever, but she hoped so.