Wrench laid the letter down as though it were a bomb itself. “A fait accompli, then? Copley sent you two to Lessing to smooth the way for his declaration of war.”
“It’s more’n a declaration,” Rose said defensively. “We already done it. The Jews in Russia’re gone… finished… fungled… croaked… as of 1200 hours today, your time. Whoever’s left’ll be taken care of by week’s end.”
“You’re sure? They… they won’t unzip Copley instead?”
“No bleedin’ way! Copley’s an experienced mere, and he don’t take chances! We sent in a three-pronged mechanized ground attack; we got us heavy air support… ours ‘n’ the Turks’… and we got nerve-gas canisters planted under Ufa’s city hall just in case. The Turks’ll find it harder goin,’ down at Kharkov, but they’ll make it.”
“God!” Wrench muttered. “Why couldn’t the Jews have let well enough alone?”
Lessing began to gather up the papers and photographs. He pinched the bridge of his nose, then dragged his fingers away. “A preemptive, surgical first strike, just like the Izzies pulled on the Arabs a few times.” He picked up a sheaf of documents. “We keep this stuff, right? It’s evidence of their intentions. I’ll give it to Liese’s publicity people right away, and we’ll have it on Home-Net before nightfall. I think we can promise you support.”
“They deserved it!” Kenow growled. “We didn’t do nothin’ to ‘em.’*
“Even if you did, I doubt if our ethnos group’ll make more than token objections. The world’s had it. Anybody as unpopular as the Jews have always been… Egypt, Babylon, Rome, Spain, every country in Europe during the Middle Ages, Russia, America, the Third Reich… must be doing something wrong! We’d have preferred peaceful… and separate… and distant… coexistence, but they never got the message. Now we don’t care anymore.”
“It’s too bad ” Wrench began.
“Don’t waste your pity!” Lessing snapped. “They wouldn’t waste any on you. Sure, it’s sad that innocent people have to suffer, but it can’t be helped. That’s reality! That’s Nature! You can’t save the dodo, the condors, and the other losers in the battle for survival. Species-extinction happens over and over, like rain in the summer-time. Forget ethics and morality and ‘do-unto-others.’ The Izzies said ‘never again!’ about the ‘Holocaust,’ but then they turned around and did to the Palestinians everything they claimed the Germans had done to them! They called it ‘self-defense’: war under the pretext of peace, oppression in the name of justice and stability! The Arabs were weak and went under, but we’re a different story. We’re going to make it, no matter who gets in our way.”
“I hear Bill Goddard again,” Wrench murmured.
“No, you hear me, Alan Lessing! There was a time when I’d have waffled and gone for ‘turn the other cheek,’ but not anymore! Now you hear me, and you hear our Party, our ethnos, our majority… our First Führer! You hear the past, you hear the present, and you hear the future! We are the future!”
Rose reached for Copley’s letter. “Uh… there was one more point, Lessing.”
“I saw it. Copley wants to bring New Sverdlovsk into the American union. He says you people already belong to our ethnos-group… Americans, Frenchmen, English, Germans mostly… and he wants statehood.”
Kenow blinked his close-set eyes. “Y ‘might say we’re payin’ our dues by unzippin’ the Izzies. That little service oughta get us inta yer club!”
“Fine by me,” Lessing answered. “I’ll put it to Grant, who’ll put it to the rest of the Party high command. Then it goes to Congress.
That’s all I can promise…. Oh, I assume Copley will export any minorities living in New Sverdlovsk?”
“Most’re already gone. We did have a coupla dozen Jewish meres when we started, but they all went over to Ufa, and now they ‘re opfoes… and likely thumbed.” He put down his glass. “And the Izzies caught poor old Casimir last month V thumbed him too, so we ain’t got no ‘Jewish problem’ at all, y ‘might say. We still got a few Asians, but they’re lookin’ at Manchuria or them little republics in China. Japs won’t let ‘em in… too pure ‘n* racially homogencyous. The fifty or sixty Blacks we had headed out for the Khalifa’s place in Africa last month, too. He wouldn’t take a couple of ‘em, though, ‘cause they was coffee-‘n’-creams.”
“We heard the Khalifa’s refusing racial mixes and interracial couples,” Wrench told Lessing. “He doesn’t want mongrels any more than we do. Only pure-blood Blacks in his Islamic paradise.”
“Still plenty of places for the poor suckers to go.” Lessing tucked the portfolio under his arm and moved toward the door. “Let ‘em go to Brazil, or the Caribbean, or any other place that’ll take ‘em. They are not coming here!”
“I’m glad to see Bill Goddard back,” Wrench whispered to Lessing. “I did sort of miss him “
Lessing answered him with a wry grin. He shookhands with Rose and Kenow and started down the stairs.
“Wonder if I c’n git me one of them black uniforms?” Kenow asked plaintively of Rose. “Sure’d look good in it! Mebbe git me a job in Lessing’s Treasury Department, too. Or Fort Knox…?”
“Not if he bloody-well knows about it…!” The door closed on her final words.
The serpent looked longingly across the last gulf at the towering palisades and snow-tipped parapets of mighty Mount Kailas. The descent into the abyss would be fraught with peril, and the far side appeared well-nigh unclimbable. He sighed. “We can only try.
The mongoose smiled for the first time in many long, weary days. “It is impossible, brother. Turn back! Look you, down there!”
“I do not surrender my goal so easily.” The serpent approached the edge of the precipice and peered into its depths.
The mongoose had long planned for this opportunity. He hurled himself upon the serpent and sank his sharp, pointed teeth into his neck. They rolled over and over upon the lip of the abyss.
“I knew you would betray me!” the serpent cried. “Thus was I wary!
“I betray no one!” gasped the other. “I am true to my goal, which is the same as yours: to stand before Lord Siva! I will take your place before him, and he will reward me well!”
“Wicked mongoose! I shall bite you and cast your corpse into the pit!”
“Wicked serpent! You cannot gain purchase upon me. My sleek coat foils your fangs, and your poison has no effect upon my blood!”
Thus they fought and scuffled and snarled and hissed. The sun’s bright eye shone down, and the day grew hot. It was as the mongoose had said: his smooth, brown fur and his lithe, wriggling limbs kept the serpent’s fangs at bay; yet the mongoose, too, could not penetrate his opponent’s hard scales or master his muscular coils. At length the mongoose grew warm, and he drew back. He cast off his furry robe That he might fight the better. Too late he remembered the protection it gave him. The serpent seized him and bit him, but in truth his venom was harmless.
“You cannot slay me!” panted the mongoose.
“Is it so?” wheezed the serpent. “I have seen you in your true form, and that knowledge is power! Now I know how to deal with you!”
He seized the mongoose in his coils and lifted him up. The mongoose could not wriggle free, for he no longer wore his slippery pelt. The serpent bore him to the edge of the cliff, and there he let him go. Unable to gain a hold upon the serpent or upon the stones of the precipice, the mongoose plunged down and away, and thus did he perish.