“Why?” Nesseref asked. “They must have known we were coming.”
“Oh, they did,” the landcruiser commander said. “They knew, but they did not fret or plan much. They are not forethoughtful, not the way we are.”
“I guess not,” Nesseref said. After a moment, she brightened. “Then we should not have much trouble figuring out which Big Uglies gave these Big Uglies the cannon they used to shoot at me.”
“No,” the male said regretfully. “That is not right. The Tosevites are not forethoughtful, but they have their own kind of cleverness. Each not-empire will often give away guns it does not manufacture, to make it harder for us to blame outrages on any one group.”
Before Nesseref could answer, something clanged off the metal-and-ceramic hide of the landcruiser. “What was that?” she asked nervously.
“Only a stone,” the male said. “I ignore those. The Tosevites really pitch fits when we shoot them up for anything as small as a thrown stone. These Egyptian Big Uglies are very touchy that way.”
Nesseref asked, “If this is what the Big Uglies give you, how did you stand the time between when you got here and when the colonization fleet finally came?”
“As I told you, we did not have too much to do after the fighting stopped, not until your fleet arrived.” The landcruiser commander paused to peer out through the periscopes mounted inside his cupola, then resumed: “Besides, we would have been even more bored if Tosev 3 had been the sort of place we thought it was when we came here. Then the Big Uglies would not have been able to do anything but throw stones at us.”
“You enjoy fighting?” Nesseref said in some surprise.
“I am a soldier. I was chosen in a Soldiers’ Time.” Sure enough, the voice of the male from the conquest fleet held pride. “I have the honor of serving the Emperor by adding a new world to those he rules.”
“So you do.” As far as Nesseref was concerned, the landcruiser commander and his comrades were welcome to that honor. The Race had no standing army, only documentation on how to create one in time of need. Everything had gone as planned when the Rabotevs were conquered, and then again when the Hallessi became part of the Empire. On Tosev 3, not everything had gone as planned. On Tosev 3, as far as Nesseref could see, nothing had gone as planned. As if to underscore that, another rock crashed against the landcruiser’s armored skin.
“It is a good thing we did not wait another few hundred years to start this conquest,” the landcruiser commander said, taking the conversation in a new direction, “or the Big Uglies might have come to Home instead. We talk about that a lot here. It would have been very bad. It would mean all the time would become a Soldiers’ Time.”
“That would be a change,” Nesseref said-to a male or female of the Race, sufficient condemnation in and of itself.
The landcruiser clanked to a halt. Over the intercom, the driver announced, “Superior sir, superior female, we are here.”
“Good.” The commander opened the turret hatch, turning one eye turret toward Nesseref as he did. “You should be fairly safe inside this compound. Once you are inside the building itself, you will be as safe as you can be in Cairo. I will await you and your passenger and return you to the shuttlecraft.”
“I thank you,” Nesseref said, and got out of the landcruiser. She hurried toward the building. If she had to be anywhere in Cairo, the safest place in the city struck her as a good choice. She was no soldier. She had no desire to make a Soldiers’ Time-by its very nature, a temporary part of the Race’s history-into a permanent condition. Idly, she wondered if the Big Uglies had permanent Soldiers’ Times. Could even they be so foolishly wasteful of resources?
When she got inside, a male at a desk read her body paint and asked, “What do you require, Shuttlecraft Pilot?”
“I seek Pshing, adjutant to Atvar, fleetlord of the conquest fleet,” she replied. “I am ordered to bring him into the presence of Reffet, fleetlord of the colonization fleet.” Her opinion was that Pshing and Reffet could have conferred perfectly well by radio or video link. No one, however, had asked her opinion.
“I will inform him that you have arrived,” the male said, and spoke into a microphone in front of his snout. He turned an eye in Nesseref’s direction. “He tells me to tell you he will be here directly.”
Maybe directly meant something different for Pshing from what it meant to Nesseref. In her view, he took his time. She could not tell him so, not when a word from him whispered onto Atvar or Reffet’s hearing diaphragm might blight her chances to advance. Such things were not supposed to happen, but they did. “Let us go,” she said crisply when he did arrive, “assuming, that is, that the shuttlecraft remains intact.”
She thought that might faze him, but it didn’t. “The odds favor us,” he said. “Even with smuggled weapons, the local Big Uglies are not outstanding soldiers. Some of them are suicidally courageous, which can make them difficult to defend against, but raw ferocity has its limits.”
“I suppose so,” she said, and then vented a little more exasperation: “Is this travel truly necessary, superior sir?”
“It is,” Pshing declared. “The Tosevites have grown altogether too good at intercepting and decrypting our communications.” Nesseref sighed silently; they’d used the same excuse in Warsaw. Pshing went on, “Details as to when and where ships from the colonization fleet are to land must for obvious reasons remain secure until the last possible moment.”
“Truth,” Nesseref said, however little she wanted to. “Very well, then-we had best be off, to take advantage of the next launch window.”
The landcruiser was even more crowded with two passengers than with one. The gunner kept bumping into Nesseref, which did nothing to improve her temper. More stones thudded into the machine as it made its slow way through Cairo.
Nothing had happened to the shuttlecraft while Nesseref was gone. Praising Emperors past, she lifted on schedule and delivered Pshing to his meeting with Reffet.
When she opened her belt pouch in her own quarters aboard the 13th Emperor Makkakap later that day, she found a small vial that hadn’t been in there before. It was half full of finely ground brownish powder, and had a tiny note stuck to it. A couple of tastes for when you get bored, the note said.
Ginger, Nesseref thought. It has to be more ginger. She supposed the landcruiser driver had slipped the Tosevite spice in there. It hadn’t got in there by itself, that was certain. It was, she knew, very much against regulations, even if males of the conquest fleet kept giving it to her. But she wasn’t bored right now. She thought about throwing it away, then didn’t. She hadn’t thrown away the first vial, either. She might get bored one of these days. Who could say?
Rance Auerbach wondered whether he hated the Lizards worse for wrecking his life or for patching him up after they’d shot him as full of holes as a colander. People said both shooting the enemy and caring for him if you captured him were the right ways to go about making war. He wondered if any of those people had ever gone through close to twenty years of continuous pain. Better he should have bled out on the Colorado prairie southeast of Denver than put up with this.
But he hadn’t bled out, which meant he still had the chance to pay the Lizards back for the unfavor they’d done by saving his life. “And I will get even with them, if it’s the last thing I ever do,” he muttered. Getting even with them as the last thing he ever did struck him as poetic justice. He would die happy if he could die knowing he’d hit them a good lick.