Hayward Smithson and Penny held the tent flaps open so he could come out and look around. He advanced slowly. When he got out into the sunshine, he stood blinking for a moment, dazzled by its brilliance. And some of the tears that came to his eyes had nothing to do with the sun, but with his own delight at being unconfined. If only for a little while.
“Come along,” Smithson said, positioning himself to Auerbach’s left. Penny Summers immediately put Rance between her and the doctor. A slow procession, they made their way along the open track the Lizards had left between the rows of tents sheltering wounded men.
Maybe there weren’tthat many wounded men, but it still made for a pretty fair tent city. Every so often, Auerbach heard a man moaning inside one of those domes of the bright orange slick stuff the Lizards used. Once, a doctor and nurse hurried into one a good ways away on the dead run. That didn’t look good, not even slightly. Smithson clicked his tongue between his teeth.
The way he’d been talking, though, half of Denver might have been here, and that didn’t look to be so. Auerbach was puzzled till he came to the intersection of his lane with one that ran perpendicular to it. He hadn’t come so far before. When you looked down that crossroad in one direction, you saw what was left of the tiny town of Karvaclass="underline" in two words, not much. When you looked the other way, you got a different picture.
He couldn’t guess how many refugees inhabited the shantytown out beyond the Lizards’ neat rows of tents. “It’s like a brand-new Hooverville,” he said, staring in disbelief.
“It’s worse than a Hooverville,” Smithson said grimly. “Most Hoovervilles, they had boxes and boards and sheet metal and what have you to build shacks with. Not much of that kind of stuff here in the middle of nowhere. But people have come anyhow, from miles and miles around.”
“I’ve watched that happen,” Penny said, nodding. “There’s food and water here for prisoners, so people come and try to get some. When the Lizards have anything left over, they give a little. That’s more’n people can get anywheres else, so they keep comin’.”
“Lord,” Auerbach said in his ruined voice. “It’s a wonder they haven’t tried coming into the tents and stealing what the Lizards wouldn’t give ’em.”
“Remember that gunfire the other night?” Penny asked. “A couple of ’em was tryin’ just that. The Lizards shot ’em down like they was dogs. I don’t reckon any more folks’ll try sneakin’ in where the Lizards don’t want ’em to.”
“Sneaking up on the Lizards isn’t easy anyhow,” Dr. Smithson said.
Auerbach looked down at himself, at the much-battered excuse for a carcass he’d be dragging around for the rest of his life.
“Matter of fact, I found out about that. Sneaking away from ’em’s not so easy, either.”
“They have Lizard doctors in Denver, looking out for their people that we caught?” Penny asked.
“Yes-it’s all part of the cease-fire,” Smithson answered. “I almost wish I could have stayed in town to watch them work, too. If we don’t keep fighting them, they’re going to push our medicine forward a hundred years in the next ten or fifteen, we have so much to learn.” He sighed. “But this is important work, too. We may even be able to set up a large-scale prisoner exchange, wounded men for wounded Lizards.”
“That would be good,” Auerbach said. Then he looked over at Penny, whose face bore a stricken expression. She wasn’t a wounded prisoner. He turned his head back toward Smithson. “Would the Lizards let noncombatants out?”
“I don’t know,” the doctor answered. “I can understand why you’d want to find out, though. If this comes off-and there are no guarantees-I’ll see what I can do for you. How’s that?”
“Thank you, sir,” Auerbach said, and Penny nodded. Auerbach’s gaze went toward the canvas tents and old wagons and shelters of brush housing the Americans who’d come to Karval to beg for crumbs of the Lizards’ largesse. Thinking about that brought home like a kick in the teeth what the war had done to the country. He looked down at himself. “You know something? I’m not so bad off after all.”
The buzz of a human-built airplane over Cairo sent Moishe Russie hurrying to the windows of his hotel-room cell for a glimpse. Sure enough, there it was, painted lemon yellow as a mark of truce. “I wonder who’s in that one,” he said to Rivka.
“You’ve said Molotov is already here,” she answered, “so that leaves von Ribbentrop”-she and her husband both donned expressions redolent of distaste-“and the American foreign minister, whatever his name is.”
“Marshall,” Moishe said. “And they call him Secretary of State, for some reason.” He soaked up trivia, valuable or not, like a sponge; the book-learning in medical school had come easy for him because of that. Had his interest lain elsewhere, he would have made a formidableyeshiva-bucher. He turned back to the window. The yellow airplane was lower now, coming in for a landing at the airfield east of town. “That’s not a Dakota. Marshall would fly in one of those, I think. So it’s probably a German plane.”
Rivka sighed. “If you see Ribbentrop, tell him every Jew in the world wished akholeriyeh on him.”
“If he doesn’t know that by now, he’s pretty stupid,” Moishe said.
“Tell him anyway,” his wife said. “You get a chance like that, you shouldn’t waste it.” The drone of the motors faded out of hearing. Rivka laughed, a little uneasily. “That used to be a sound you took for granted. Hearing it here, hearing it now-it’s very strange.”
Moishe nodded. “When the truce talks started, the Lizards tried to insist on flying everyone here in their own planes. I suppose they didn’t want the Nazis-or anyone else-sending a plane full of bombs instead of diplomats. Atvar was very confused when the Germans and the Russians and the U.S.A. all said no. The Lizards haven’t really figured out what all negotiating as equals means. They’ve never had to do it before; they’re used to dictating.”
“It shall be done,” Rivka said in the aliens’ hissing language. Anyone who was around them long learned that phrase. She dropped back into Yiddish: “That’s the way they think. It’s about the only way they think.”
“I know,” Moishe answered. He made as if to pound his head against the wall.“Oy, do I know.”
Through loudspeakers, the muezzins called the faithful to prayer. Cairo slowed down for a little while. Another bright yellow airplane flew low over the city, making for the airport. “That is a Dakota,” Rivka said, coming up to stand by Moishe. “So-Marshall? — is here, too, now.”
“So he is,” Moishe answered. He felt as if he were setting up a game of chess with a friend back in Warsaw, and had just put the last couple of pieces where they belonged. “Now we see what happens next.”
“What will you tell Atvar if he summons you to ask what you think of these people?” Rivka asked.
Moishe used a few clicks and pops himself. “The exalted fleetlord? You mean, besidesgeh in drerd?” Rivka gave him a dangerous look, one that meant,Stop trying to be funny. He sighed and went on, “I don’t know. I’m not even sure why he keeps bringing me in to question me. I wasn’t-”
Rivka made urgent shushing motions. Moishe shut up. He’d started to say something like,I wasn’t anywhere near the caliber of those people. Rivka was right. The Lizards surely monitored everything he said. If they hadn’t figured out for themselves how small a fish he was, no point telling them. Being thought more important than he was might improve both his treatment and his life expectancy.