When Ussmak declined to answer, Nussboym left the barracks. “Any luck?” one of the guards called to him in Russian. He shook his head. He did not like the scowl on the guard’s face. He also did not like going back to the hodgepodge of Polish, Russian, and Yiddish he used to communicate with his fellow humans here in the camp. Making himself understood was sometimes easier in the Lizards’ language.
The leader of the guards who surrounded the barracks was a gloomy captain named Marchenko. “Comrade Captain, I need to speak with Colonel Skriabin,” Nussboym said.
“Maybe you do.” Marchenko had some kind of accent-Ukrainian, Nussboym thought-that made him even harder to understand than most Russians. “But does he need to speak to you?” From him, that passed for wit. After a moment, scowling still, he nodded. “All right. Pass back into the old camp.”
The camp administrative offices were better built, better heated, and far less crowded than thezeks’ barracks. Half the people working there werezeks, though: clerks and orderlies and what have you. It was far softer work than knocking down pines and birches in the woods, that was certain. His fellow prisoners eyed Nussboym with glances half conspiratorial, half suspicious: in a way, he was one of them, but his precise status wasn’t yet clear and might prove too high to suit a lot of them. The speed with which he won access to Skriabin prompted mutters among the file cabinets.
“What news, Nussboym?” the NKVD colonel asked. Nussboym was not important enough to rate first name and patronymic from the short, dapper little man. On the other hand, Skriabin understood Polish, which meant Nussboym didn’t have to mumble along in his ugly makeshift jargon.
“Comrade Colonel, the Lizards remain stubborn,” he said in Polish. As long as Skriabin called him by his surname, he couldn’t address the colonel as Gleb Nikolaievich. “May I state an opinion as to why this is so?”
“Go ahead,” Skriabin said. Nussboym wasn’t sure just how smart he was. Shrewd, yes; of that there could be no doubt. But how much real Intelligence underlay that mental agility was a different question. Now he leaned back in his chair, steepled his fingers, and gave Nussboym either his complete attention or a good facsimile of it.
“Their reasons, I think, are essentially religious and irrational,” Nussboym said, “and for that reason all the more likely to be deeply and sincerely held.” He explained about the Emperor-worship that suffused the Race, finishing, “They may be willing to martyr themselves to join with Emperors gone by.”
Skriabin closed his eyes for a little while. Nussboym wondered if the NKVD man had listened at all, or if he would start to snore at any moment. Then, all at once, Skriabin laughed, startling him. “You are wrong,” he said. “We can get them back to work-and with ease.”
“I am sorry, Comrade Colonel, but I do not see how.” Nussboym didn’t like having to admit incapacity of any sort. The NKVD was only too likely to assume that. If he didn’t know one thing, he didn’t know anything, and so to dispense with his services. He knew things like that happened.
But Colonel Skriabin seemed amused, not angry. “Perhaps you are naive and innocent. Perhaps you are merely ignorant. Either one would account for your blindness. Here is what you will tell this Ussmak who thinks we cannot persuade him to do what the workers and peasants of the Soviet Union require of him-” He spoke for some little while, then asked, “Now do you see?”
“I do,” Nussboym said with respect grudging but nonetheless real. Either Skriabin was very shrewd or genuinely clever.
He got no chance to think about which, for the NKVD man said, “Now march back there this instant and show that Lizard he cannot set his naked will against the historical dialectic impelling the Soviet Union ahead to victory.”
“I shall go, Comrade Colonel,” Nussboym said. He had his own opinions about the historical dialectic, but Skriabin hadn’t asked him about them. With luck, Skriabin wouldn’t.
Captain Marchenko glowered at Nussboym when he returned. It didn’t faze him; Marchenko glowered at everyone all the time. Nussboym went into the barracks full of striking Lizards. “If you do not go back to work, some of you will be killed,” he warned. “Colonel Skriabin is fierce and determined.”
“We are not afraid,” Ussmak said. “If you kill us, the spirits of Emperors past will watch over us.”
“Will they?” David Nussboym asked. “Colonel Skriabin tells me many of you males here are mutineers who murdered your own officers. Even those who did not, have surely given secrets of the Race to the Soviet Union. Why would the Emperors want anything to do with your spirits?”
Appalled silence crashed down inside the rebellious barracks. Then the Lizards started talking among themselves in low voices, mostly too fast for Nussboym to follow. He got the drift, though: that was something the Lizards might have thought privately but bad never dared speak aloud. He gave Skriabin credit for understanding the way the aliens’ minds worked.
At last, Ussmak said, “You Big Uglies go straight for the killing shot, don’t you? I have not abandoned the Empire, not in my spirit, but the Emperors may have abandoned me. This is truth. Dare I take the chance of finding out? Darewe take the chance of finding out?” He turned to the prisoners and put the question to them.
In Poland, the Lizards had derisively called democracysnoutcounting. Here they were using something uncommonly like it to hash the matter out for themselves. Nussboym didn’t say anything about that. He stood waiting till they were done arguing, and tried to follow the debate as best he could.
“We will work,” Ussmak said. He sounded dull and defeated. “We do need more food, though. And-” He hesitated, then decided to go on: “If you can get us the herb ginger, it would help us through these long, boring days.”
“I will put your requests to Colonel Skriabin,” Nussboym promised. He didn’t think the Lizards were likely to get more food. Nobody except the NKVD men, their trusties, and the cooks got enough to eat. Ginger was another story. If it drugged them effectively, they might get it.
He walked out of the barracks. “Well?” Captain Marchenko barked at him.
“The strike is over,” he answered in Polish, then added a German word to make sure the NKVD man got it:“Kaputt.” Marchenko nodded. He still looked unhappy with the world, but he didn’t look like a man about to hose down the neighborhood with his submachine gun, as he often did. He waved Nussboym back toward the original camp.
As he returned, he saw Ivan Fyodorov limping back into camp, accompanied by a guard. The right leg of Fyodorov’s trousers was red with blood; his axe must have slipped, out there in the woods.
“Ivan, are you all right?” Nussboym called.
Fyodorov looked at him, shrugged, then looked away. Nussboym’s cheeks flamed. This wasn’t the first time since he’d become interpreter for the Lizards that he’d got the cold shoulder from the men of his former work gang. They made it all too clear he wasn’t one of them any more. He hadn’t been asked to rat on them or anything of the sort, but they treated him with the same mistrustful respect they gave any of the otherzeks who went out of their way to work with the camp administration.
I’m just being realistic,he told himself. In Poland, the Lizards had been the power to propitiate, and he’d propitiated them. Only a fool would have thought the Germans a better choice. Well, God had never been shy about turning out fools in carload lots. That was how he’d ended up here, after all. No matter where a man was, he had to land on his feet. He was even serving mankind by helping the NKVD get the most from the Lizards. He reported what they wanted to Colonel Skriabin. Skriabin only grunted.