Next morning, Russie presented himself at Shepheard’s Hotel. “I greet you, Exalted Fleetlord,” he said when Pshing escorted him into Atvar’s presence. “How may I assist you?” He spoke the language of the Race well if pedantically.
Atvar remembered there had been a time when Russie was unwilling to assist the Race in anything. He had, to some degree, mellowed. If he could help the Race without hurting his own kind, he would. The situation was not ideal from the fleetlord’s point of view, but it was acceptable. On Tosev 3, that ranked as something of a triumph.
“I shall explain,” Atvar said, and he did.
Russie listened intently. Atvar had studied Tosevite expressions-far more varied and less subtle than those of the Race-but saw nothing on the Big Ugly’s face save polite interest. When the fleetlord finished, Russie said, “I have already heard something of this. There was an incident in Jerusalem the other day that shocked both Jews and Muslims, but no one knew its likely cause till now.”
An incident that shocked the Muslims was the last thing the fleetlord wanted; that Tosevite faction was already far too restive. He said, “How are we to prevent further such incidents?”
“As you surely know, it is our strong custom to mate privately,” Russie said. “A ban on public mating by the Race would help keep order in areas of the planet you rule.”
“Our custom is the opposite,” Atvar said. “We are in the habit of mating wherever we chance to be when the urge strikes us. Still, for the sake of good order among the Tosevites, a ban such as you suggest might be worthwhile.” It would be a palliative, as would tighter controls on ginger-smuggling, but Tosev 3 had taught him palliatives were not always to be despised.
“If your females, or some of them, are to be in season all the time, you will also need rules about with whom they can mate, and perhaps about what happens when a male mates with a female against her will,” Russie said.
“If a female is in season, mating is not against her will,” Atvar answered.
Russie shrugged. “You know better than I.”
“Not necessarily,” Atvar said. “This is unfamiliar territory for the Race, as unfamiliar as Tosev 3 was before our probe landed here-and as unfamiliar as Tosev 3 was after the probe landed here, too.”
“Why exactly, then, have you summoned me?” the Tosevite asked.
Atvar turned both eye turrets toward him. “For your suggestions,” the fleetlord replied. “You have already given some. I hope you will give more. The Race will have to cope, as we have had to cope with so much on your world.”
“If you had thought of it as our world from the beginning, you would not have these problems now.” Moishe Russie’s face twisted into a peculiar grimace. “And I, very likely, would be dead. I will do what I can for you, Exalted Fleetlord.”
“I thank you.” Atvar sounded more sincere than he had expected. With luck, Russie would not notice.
Monique Dutourd kept noticing Lizards on the streets of Marseille as she bicycled to work. She hadn’t seen so many since the Race ruled the south of France back in the days when she was a girl. Normally, she would not have taken much notice of them. After learning how her brother made his living-after learning Pierre was alive to make a living-she paid more attention to them. She couldn’t help wondering whether they were here to smuggle things into and out of the city.
Semester break had come and gone. Now she was teaching about the later Roman Empire, all the way through the sixth-century era of Justinian. Sure as the devil-in more ways than one, she supposed-Dieter Kuhn was enrolled in the class, still under the name of Laforce.
She wished he weren’t. She wished he weren’t for a couple of reasons, in fact. For one thing, of course, he still wanted to use her to do something dreadful to Pierre. And, for another, she had to teach about the Germanic invasions of the Roman Empire in this part of the course. She knew by his examinations that he took meticulous notes. Having meticulous notes on a Frenchwoman’s opinions about the Germanic invasions of the Empire in Gestapo hands might not have been the last thing she wanted, but it came close.
On she pedaled, threading her way through the traffic with nearly automatic ease. She was glad trousers were more acceptable on women than they had been when she was a girl. They helped preserve modesty on a bicycle and, in winter, they also kept her legs warm-not that Marseille winter was all that cold.
Just south of Rue Grignan, traffic came to a halt. Even on a bicycle, Monique could barely squeeze forward. She tilted her left wrist to look at her watch. When she saw the time, she muttered a curse. She was liable to be late to her lecture, which meant she was liable to be in trouble with the university authorities.
Up ahead, someone in a motorcar blew his horn, and then someone else and someone else again. But, curiously, she heard none of the ripe oaths she would have expected motorists and bicyclists caught in a traffic jam to loose. Instead, what floated back to her ears was laughter, laughter and rude suggestions: “Turn a hose on them!” “In the name of God, find them a hotel room!” “Yes, for heaven’s sake-one with a bidet!” That brought more coarse laughter.
“What is going on up there?” Monique exclaimed, picking her way between a fat man on a bicycle too small for him and a German soldier in a field-gray Volkswagen utility vehicle. The soldier blew her a kiss. The fat man winked at her. She ignored them both. Standing on tiptoe while straddling the bicycle, she tried to see what was going on up ahead. People couldn’t have been so shameless as to prove their affection for each other in the middle of a crosswalk… could they?
A man who should have shaved the day before yesterday looked back over his shoulder and said, “There’s a couple of Lizards up ahead there, fucking their brains out.”
“No,” Monique said, not so much contradiction as simple disbelief.
But, as she edged up even with the man with the stubbled cheeks and chin, she discovered he was telling the truth. There in the middle of the road, a couple of Lizards were going at it for all they were worth. She’d never seen, never imagined seeing, such a thing. In an abstract way, she admired the male’s stamina and enthusiasm, though she wouldn’t have wanted to stand so long with her head down by her toes, as the female was doing.
Aesthetic considerations here were very much by the way. What mattered to her was that the Lizards, by blocking traffic, were going to make her late. “Yes, turn a fire hose on them!” she shouted.
After what seemed like forever but was about five minutes, she got past them. They were still mating as enthusiastically as ever. Half a block down, she spied a policeman. “Why don’t you arrest them?” she shouted, still furious at the delay.
With a shrug, the flic replied, “My dear mademoiselle, I do not know whether it is against the law for Lizards to fornicate in public. So far as I am aware, no statute covers such an eventuality.” He shrugged again and took a bite from a sandwich he carried in place of his billy club, which swung on his belt.
“Arrest them for blocking traffic if you can’t arrest them for screwing,” Monique snapped. The policeman only shrugged again. Monique had no time to argue with him. She pedaled furiously-in every sense of the word-toward the south.
When she strode into the lecture hall, sweat stained her blouse. But she was on time, with about fifteen seconds to spare. She began to talk about the Gothic incursions into the Roman Empire in the middle of the third century, incursions that had cost the Emperor Decius his life, as dispassionately-or so she hoped-as if no such people as the Germans had troubled the world in the seventeen hundred years since Decius’ unfortunate and untimely demise.