“I am glad to hear it,” said the interviewer, who was as gooey with a microphone in his hand as any human ever born. “And now-”
But the colonist interrupted: “It still seems pretty strange, though: waking up and finding out the Race only owns half this planet, I mean. We ought to do something about that. It is not the way things were supposed to be in the plan, and the plan has to work.”
“Well, of course it does,” the interviewer said, “and of course it will, even if it takes a while longer than we thought it would. Now I shall turn things over to Kekkefu in Australia, who will…”
Sam listened for a while longer, now and then jotting a note. He wondered if the notion that the plan from Home would work but needed more time, which was repeated several times, was intended to get the colonists used to the way things really were by easy stages, or if it reflected the Lizard brass’ true beliefs. If the former, well and good. If the latter, there’d be more trouble ahead. He scribbled a new note.
Karen stuck her head in the door. “Good night, Mr. Yeager.”
He looked up, then looked at his watch. How had it got so late? “Oh. Good night, Karen. I hope you and Jonathan ace that test.”
Had she acted as if she didn’t know what he was talking about, he would have figured she and Jonathan had been studying something other than German-biology, most likely. But she grinned and nodded and headed for the door, so he gave them the benefit of the doubt.
As the pilot opened the hatch to the shuttlecraft, Felless said, “I never imagined my dealings with Tosevites would include dealings with those who have not yet submitted to the Race.”
“If you want to get along with the Deutsche, you will not even think about that yet, superior female,” said the pilot, who was a veteran of the conquest fleet. “As far as they are concerned, they are the biggest and best around. They even call themselves the Master Race sometimes.”
Felless’ mouth opened in a great chortle of mirth. “The impudence!” she exclaimed. “The arrogance!”
But, after she got down out of the shuttlecraft, the Deutsche seemed less impudent, even if she still got a strong impression of how arrogant they were. Their males, wrapped in gray cloth, steel helmets on their heads, automatic rifles in their hands, towered over her, so much so that she wondered if they were specially chosen for height. A couple of Deutsch landcruisers aimed their weapons at the shuttlecraft. They were recognizably the descendants of the machines the Reich had used during the fighting. They were also recognizably more formidable. Not being a soldier, she could not tell if they were a match for those the Race built. If they weren’t, though, they couldn’t have missed by much.
A male in civilian costume-white and black cloth, with a cloth headgear-came up and spoke in the language of the Race: “You are Senior Researcher Felless?”
“I am,” she answered: her first words with a wild Big Ugly.
“I am Franz Eberlein, of the Foreign Ministry,” he said. “You are to present your credentials to me before you may be permitted to enter Nuremberg.”
She had been briefed to expect such a demand. “It shall be done,” she said, knowing it was for form’s sake only. The sheet she gave him was written in both the language of the Race and in the odd, angular characters the Deutsche used to write their language. “Is all in order?” Felless asked, also for form’s sake.
Eberlein seemed to have been reading the document in her tongue, not in his own. “Alles gut,” he said, and then, in the language of the Race, “Everything is good.” He nodded to the soldiers, who, without moving, contrived to look less menacing. Then he turned and waved to the edge of the great concrete slab on which the shuttlecraft had landed. A motor vehicle of Tosevite manufacture approached. “Here is your transport to the embassy of the Race.”
It had, she was glad to see, a male of the Race steering. The Big Ugly from the Foreign Ministry opened the rear door when the vehicle stopped. As Felless went past him, he clicked his heels together and bent at the waist. That was, she had learned, a Tosevite equivalent to the posture of respect.
“Welcome to Nuremberg, Senior Researcher,” the driver said. “I hope you will forgive me for a lack of conversation as we go. This vehicle has no automatic control, so I must pay attention to the road and to the Big Uglies using it. If I cause a crash, the Race is liable for damages.”
“Which Tosevites are liable for damages from the destruction of the ships from the colonization fleet?” Felless asked. The male did not answer, perhaps because he was minding the road, perhaps because the question, as yet, had no good answer.
Big Uglies stared at Felless and her driver as they went into the capital of the Greater German Reich. She stared, too, at what had to be the most bombastic architecture she’d ever seen. The Race, for the most part, built for reasons purely practical. It had not always been so, not quite, but even the very slow change the Empire knew had long since made other styles extinct.
Not here. When the Deutsche put up buildings, they seemed to want to boast about how splendid they were. The driver explained what some of the buildings were: “That is the congress hall of the leading political faction here, the Nazis. It can hold fifty thousand. That sports palace holds four hundred thousand, though few are close enough to see well. This open area with the stands on either side is for ritualistic rallies. The Nazis have turned their ideology almost into a sort of emperor-worship. And now, as we go farther north, we come to the grand avenue, where our embassy and those of other Tosevite not-empires are located.”
Felless was not sure what made the avenue so grand. It was much wider than it needed to be, which sparked a thought. “These Big Uglies seem to equate size and grandeur,” she said.
“Truth,” the driver agreed. Looking ahead, Felless saw a familiar, functional cube of a building in the middle of the absurdly ornate structures all around. The male pointed to it. “There is our embassy. By the Tosevites’ usages, it is reckoned part of the Empire. Our males guard it, not Big Uglies.”
“This is a surprisingly sophisticated concept,” Felless said.
“They insist on reciprocity, however,” the driver said in disparaging tones as he pulled to a halt in front of the building. “The soldiers of the independent not-empires protect their embassies in Cairo.”
As far as Felless was concerned, that showed almost intolerable arrogance on the Big Uglies’ part. She got out of the motorcar, which was heated to a level she found comfortable, and hurried inside the embassy. The males of the conquest fleet had dusted off a most archaic word there: the Race had had no need for embassies since the Empire unified Home.
Ambassador was a similarly obsolete term that turned out to be useful on Tosev 3. The Race’s ambassador to the Reich, a male named Veffani, soon summoned Felless to his office. “I greet you, Senior Researcher,” he said politely.
“I greet you.” Felless eyed him with no small curiosity. “Tell me, superior sir, if you will-is that the body paint ambassadors wore in ancient days, or were you compelled to devise something new?”
Pride rang in Veffani’s voice: “It is authentic. Research provided an image of an ambassador from long, long ago, and my body paint matches his in every particular.”
“Excellent! I am glad to hear it,” Felless said. With some reluctance, she pulled her mind away from the distant past of Home and toward here and now on Tosev 3. “My thanks for giving me this opportunity to sit in on your meeting with the not-emperor of the Deutsche tomorrow. The experience I gain should be valuable.”