She said, “You may be sure that, when the chance comes, I will take it.” Each word might have been chipped from ice.
“Meanwhile, though, you would be wise not to bite the hand that feeds you,” her brother went on, almost as if she hadn’t spoken. “You would also be wise to become useful to someone in some way.”
“Useful!” Monique made it a swear word. “Aren’t you glad you’re useful to the Lizards?”
“Of course I am,” he answered. “If I weren’t, I would have had to work much harder for most of my life. People I don’t like would have told me what to do much more than they do now. Things could have been better, yes, but they also could have been much worse.”
He was impervious. Monique stormed out of the tent. She’d been doing that more and more often these days. This time, she almost ran into a Lizard who was about to come in. “Excusez-moi,” he said in hissing French. Monique strode past him without a word.
She’d just got to the edge of the tent city when a double handful of Lizards hurried past her. They were all carrying weapons. She was no great expert on the many patterns of body paint the Race used, but she thought theirs-which were all similar to one another-had to do with law enforcement.
Uh-oh, she thought. She turned and looked back. Sure enough, they too were heading for the tent she’d just left. And she couldn’t do anything about it. They were moving faster than she could. She was too far away to scream out a warning to her brother. And, after this latest blowup, she wasn’t much inclined to scream out a warning anyway.
She waited. Sure enough, the Lizards emerged with not only the one who’d gone before them but also with her brother in custody. They marched their prisoners out of the camp-marched them right past Monique, though Pierre didn’t notice her-hustled them into a waiting motorcar with flashing orange lights, and drove them away.
Well, Monique thought, what do I do now? She hadn’t wanted to look for work in a shop. That would have been as much as admitting that she’d never find another academic position. As long as she could live with Pierre and Lucie, she’d been able to indulge those hopes. When you couldn’t indulge your hopes any more, what did you do? If you had any sense, you buckled down and got on with your life.
With her brother a captive of the Race, she was going to have to get on with her life if she wanted to keep eating. Shop girl, scullery maid… anything this side of selling herself on the street. Dieter Kuhn had made her do something all too close to that. Never again, she vowed to herself. Better to jump off a cliff and hope she landed on her head. Everything would be over in a hurry then.
Hitting bottom here, realizing she’d have to look for work that had nothing to do with her degree, might have felt like that. It might have, but it didn’t. Instead, it was oddly liberating. All right, she couldn’t be a professor-or, at least, she couldn’t be a professor right now. She’d be something else, then.
She started out of the camp and toward the rebuilding city of Marseille. She hadn’t gone very far before she ran into Lucie coming back from the city. Unlike her own brother, Lucie recognized her. Of course, the Lizards hadn’t just seized Lucie, either.
Monique was tempted to let her go back to the tent. Maybe the Lizards had left some sort of alarm behind so they could swoop down again when she did return. But Pierre’s mistress hadn’t given Monique a bad time. Lucie had, in fact, been easier to get along with than her own brother.
And so she said, “Be careful. The Lizards just grabbed Pierre.”
“Oh, for the love of God!” Lucie said. “Was that the car I saw going downhill toward town?”
“That’s right.” Monique nodded. “Pierre and I had another fight. I’d just gone out when a Lizard-a customer, I mean-went in. And I hadn’t gone a whole lot farther before a whole squad of Lizard flics came in and grabbed Pierre and the Lizard customer, too.”
Lucie said something considerably more pungent than, Oh, for the love of God! She went on, “Keffesh was afraid they were shadowing him. Pierre was a fool to let him come to the tent.”
“What are you going to do?” Monique asked.
Lucie grimaced. “I’ll need to find somewhere to stay. I’d be an idiot to go back there now. Then I’ll have to make some phone calls. I need to warn some people and some Lizards, and I have to ask a few questions. If I like the answers I get, I’ll set up in business for myself. I’ve been Pierre’s right hand and a couple of fingers of his left for a long time. My connections are as good as his, and I daresay I’m a lot better at being careful than he ever was.”
All that took Monique by surprise. She didn’t know why it should have. She knew Roman history. What did Lucie know? Selling ginger. Ruefully, Monique admitted to herself that the demand for ginger dealers seemed to be stronger than that for Romanists.
Her brother’s mistress might have been thinking along with her. “What about you, Monique?” she asked. “What will you do?”
“Look for work,” Monique answered. “I mean any kind of work, not a university position. I have to eat. And”-she sighed-“I suppose I’ll see what I can do about getting Pierre out of jail.” She noticed Lucie hadn’t said anything about that.
Pierre’s mistress also sighed. “Yes, I guess we will have to see about that, won’t we? But it won’t be easy. The Lizards’ officials are death on ginger. You need connections to be able to get anywhere with them. Have you got any?”
“I may,” Monique answered, which seemed to take Lucie by surprise. “And I’m sure that you do.”
“Maybe.” Yes, Lucie sounded grudging. If Pierre got out of jail, she would have more trouble going into business for herself.
Bleakly, Monique said, “One of the connections we both may have is Dieter Kuhn. If we decide we need to use him, you’ll have to be the one who makes the approach. I can’t do it, not even for my brother.”
“I don’t think we’ll have to worry about that,” Lucie said. “When the Lizards question Pierre, he’ll sing. He’ll sing like a nightingale. That’s about the only thing I can think of that might make them go easy on him. Don’t you think they’d be pleased if he could hand them a nice, juicy Nazi? That might let them squeeze some fresh concessions out of the Germans.”
Monique eyed her with sudden respect. Lucie wasn’t a fool. No, she wasn’t a fool at all. And ginger smuggling was a network that tied the whole world together. No wonder Pierre’s mistress was so quick to think in terms of geopolitics.
“If Pierre sings,” Monique said slowly, “he’ll sing about the Americans, too.”
“But of course,” Lucie said. “And so what? I never did see the point of dealing with them. Americans.” Her lip curled. “They deserved to have a city blown up. Up till now, they’ve had it easy. Most of them still do.”
“They’re people,” Monique said. “I don’t want to give them to the Lizards.”
“I’m sure I don’t know why not.” Lucie shrugged. “Have it your way. I’m not going to lose any sleep about them, I tell you that, or lift a finger for them, either. They wouldn’t do it for me.” However wide her world view could be, Lucie still came first in her own eyes.
Monique went on into Marseille. She didn’t dare go back to the tent even to get her bicycle. The Lizards might return for her, too. Keffesh had seen her with Pierre and Lucie, and she’d interpreted for Pierre when he talked with the Americans. In the eyes of the Race, that was probably more than enough to convict her.
When she got to the edge of the city, she found a public telephone and fed a couple of francs into it. She called the hotel where Rance Auerbach and Penny Summers were staying. The phone rang several times. She was on the point of giving up when a man answered: “Allo?”