Penny Summers set hands on hips and glared at Rance Auerbach across their hotel room. She was wearing a beige dress with a flowery print. That almost made her disappear into the wallpaper, which was also beige and floral. She said, “I didn’t know we were setting ourselves up as a charity. I reckoned we got into this business to make money, not to save the poor and the downtrodden.”
“Oh, we might make some money off this,” Rance answered. He’d known Penny would be angry. He hadn’t thought she’d be quite so angry as she was.
“That’s not why you’re doing it, though,” she snapped. “You’re doing it because you think that little French gal is cute.”
Oho, he thought. So that’s it. As a matter of fact, he did think Monique Dutourd was cute, but letting Penny know that didn’t strike him as the smartest idea he’d ever had. He said, “Yeah, and I gave David Goldfarb a hand on account of he was just the prettiest thing I ever did see.” He rolled his eyes and sighed as if he meant it.
Penny did her best to stay mad, but she couldn’t quite manage. “God damn you,” she said affectionately. “You are a piece of work, aren’t you?”
“Have to be, to keep up with you,” he said. That was flattery, but flattery with a good deal of underlying truth. He went on, “Besides, with Pierre the Turd in the Lizard hoosegow, doing our regular sort of business isn’t as easy as it used to be. We ought to thank God he hasn’t ratted on us. So we’ll try something different for a while, okay? And his sister did warn us the Lizards caught him.”
Penny still didn’t look happy. “I know when I’m being sweet-talked, Rance Auerbach. I know when I’m being conned, too. And if this ain’t one of those times…”
“Then it’s something else,” Auerbach said. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you, if you’d only listen to me.”
“You’ve been trying to tell me all kinds of things,” Penny said sourly. “I haven’t heard a whole lot of what I’d call truth. But you’re bound and determined to try this, aren’t you?” She waited for Rance to nod, then nodded herself. “Okay. If it works out, great. If it doesn’t, or if you start fooling around behind my back, there’s not going to be any place far enough away for you to hide.”
Rance nodded again. “I like lost causes. I must. I took you in a while ago, didn’t I? Or did you manage to forget about that?”
Astonishment spread over her face as she raised a hand to her cheek. “Now you’ve gone and made me blush, and I don’t know when the hell the last time I did that was. Okay, Rance, go do it, and we’ll see what happens. But you better remember what I said about that French gal, too.”
“I’m not likely to forget,” he said. “You want to come along and hold my hand?”
“I oughta say yes,” Penny answered. “But you’re the one who speaks French, and I’m the one Pierre’s likelier to have fingered to the Lizards, if he went and fingered anybody. Go on. Just be careful, that’s all.”
“I will.” Auerbach wondered how much help he’d get from Penny if something did go wrong. One more thing I don’t want to have to find out, he thought.
He met Monique Dutourd in a little cafe not far from the dress shop where she’d found work after her brother was arrested. “Bonjour,” he said, and then, in English, “Are you ready?”
“I think so,” she said. “I hope so.” She rose, draining the wineglass in front of her.
“Then let’s go,” he said. “Allons-y. I have the taxi waiting outside.”
The taxi, inevitably, was a Volkswagen. Rance hated getting into and out of the buggy little holdovers from the Reich. Being knee to knee with Monique in the back seat made up for some of that, as it had with Penny, but not enough. Monique was the one who spoke to the driver: “The consulate of the Race, if you please.”
“It shall be done,” he said in the Lizards’ language, and got the VW going with a horrible clash of gears.
Getting out of the taxi, as usual, was even harder for Auerbach than getting into it had been. He paid off the driver; from what he’d seen, Monique wasn’t rolling in loot. They went into the consulate together. A Lizard looked up from whatever he-or maybe she-had been doing and spoke in hissing French: “Oui? Qu’est-ce que vous desirez?”
“We want to see the female named Felless,” Rance answered in the language of the Race. He didn’t speak it well, but judged it would be useful here.
It got the receptionist’s attention, at any rate. “I will ask,” the Lizard said. “Give me your names.”
“It shall be done,” Rance said, as the taxi driver had before him. Once he’d named himself and Monique, he added, “I thank you.” When dealing with Lizard officialdom, he made a point of being polite.
“You are welcome,” this Lizard said, so it must have done some good. “Now please wait.” After talking on the telephone, the Lizard swung an eye turret back toward Auerbach and Monique. “Senior Researcher Felless will be here shortly.”
“I thank you,” Rance said again. Monique nodded. He switched to French for her: “It could be that this will work.”
“It could be,” she echoed. Then, just for a moment, she set a hand on his arm. “Thank you very much for trying. No one else has cared at all.”
“We’ll see what we can do, that’s all,” he said in English. “If you don’t bet, you can’t win.” He wasn’t sure he could have put that into French. She nodded again to show she understood.
Auerbach started to say something more, but a Lizard came up the hallway from the back part of the consulate. The receptionist pointed with his-her? — tongue. The newly arrived Lizard walked over to him and Monique and said, “I greet you. I am Felless. Which of you is which?”
“I am Auerbach,” Rance said in the Lizards’ language. Then he introduced Monique, adding, “And we greet you.” He wanted to laugh about Felless’ inability to tell them apart at a glance, but he didn’t. If Monique hadn’t told him, he wouldn’t have known Felless was a female, so why wouldn’t it work the other way?
“What is it that you want with me?” Felless asked. Did she recognize Monique’s name? Rance couldn’t tell. He didn’t think she would have heard his before. That was probably just as well.
He said, “Can we find some private space to speak?” That was probably a warning-it was certainly a warning if she had any brains-but he didn’t see what else he could do. He sure didn’t want to talk business out here in the foyer.
Felless drew back and hesitated before she spoke. She had brains, all right; she knew something was fishy, even if she didn’t know what. After that momentary hesitation, she said, “Very well. Come with me.” Brusquely, she turned away and went down the hallway from which she’d come. Rance and Monique followed.
He didn’t know what he’d expected: that she would take the two humans back to her own quarters, perhaps. She didn’t. The room into which she led them was the obvious Lizard equivalent of an Earthly conference room. Rance didn’t much like the Lizards’ chairs, which were too small and shaped for beings without much in the way of buttocks. With his bad leg, though, he liked standing even less. He sat. So did Monique.
Felless, for her part, paced back and forth. When she spoke, he thought he heard bitterness in her voice: “Now you will tell me what you want. It will be something to do with ginger, I do not doubt.”
“Not directly,” Auerbach said. “My friend here is a scholar. She is grateful that you saved her from the prison of the Francais.” He delivered a running translation for Monique, mostly in English, some in French.
“She is welcome,” Felless said. “What is the point of this? It is not directly connected to ginger, you said. How is it indirectly connected?”
“When the explosive-metal bomb destroyed much of Marseille, it destroyed Monique’s university, too,” Rance answered. “Now she has no position. She wants work in what she knows about, not in selling wrappings to other Tosevites.”
“How nice,” Felless said with polite insincerity. “But I do not see how that has anything to do with me.”
“We hoped you could use your connections and your high rank as a female of the Race to help her gain a position somewhere in France,” Auerbach said. “When a female of the Race, especially a high-ranking female of the Race, speaks, Tosevites have to pay attention.”
“Tosevites, from all I have seen, do not ‘have to’ do anything,” Felless answered. “And why should I help her again in any case?”
Before answering her, Rance spoke in English to Monique: “Now we see what we see.” He went back to the language of the Race: “Because you helped her before because of Business Administrator Keffesh.”
Felless flinched. Auerbach hid his smile. The female said, “What do you know of Business Administrator Keffesh?”
“I know he is in trouble for ginger,” Rance said. “I know you do not want authorities of the Race to know you did favors for him.”
“That is-” Felless used a word he didn’t know. He assumed it meant blackmail. She went on, “Why should I do anything like that, and how do I know you will not betray me even if I do?”
Now Rance did smile. When she put it like that, he knew he had her. He said, “I do not ask for money.” Yet, he thought. “I ask help for a friend, nothing more. She deserves help. She is a good scholar. She should have the chance to work at what she was trained to work at.”