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“You got that one right, Dracula,” Daniels answered the BAR man. Szabo’s nickname was used as universally as his own; nobody ever called him Pete, the handle he’d been born with. The cigarettes were also courtesy of Dracula, the most inspired scrounger Mutt had ever known.
The limit of vision in the ruined packing plant was about fifty feet; past that, girders, walls, and rubble obscured sight as effectively as leaves, branches, and vines in a jungle. Daniels jumped when a white rag on a stick poked out of a bullet-pocked doorway. He swore at himself, realizing he should have made a flag of truce, too. He jammed a hand in a pants pocket, pulled out a handkerchief he hadn’t been sure he still owned, and waved it over his head. It wasn’t very white, but it would have to do.
When nobody shot at him, he cautiously stood up. Just as cautiously, a Lizard came out of the doorway. They walked toward each other, both of them picking their way around and over chunks of concrete, pieces of pipe, and, in Mutt’s case, an overturned, half-burned file cabinet. The Lizard’s eyes swiveled this way and that, watching not only the floor but also for any sign of danger. That looked weird, but Mutt wished he could pull the same stunt.
He saluted and said, “Lieutenant Daniels, U.S. Army. I hear tell you want a truce.” He hoped the Lizards were smart enough to send out somebody who spoke English, because he sure as hell didn’t know their lingo.Sam Yeager might understand it by now, if he’s still alive, Mutt thought. He hadn’t seen Yeager since his ex-outfielder took some Lizard prisoners into Chicago a year before.
However strange the Lizards were, they weren’t stupid. The one in front of Mutt drew himself up to his full diminutive height and said, “I am Wuppah”-he pronounced eachp separately-“smallgroup commander of the Race.” His English was strange to the ear, but Mutt had no trouble following it. “It is as you say. We would like to arrange to be able to gather up our wounded in this building without your males shooting at us. We will let you do the same and not shoot at your males.”
“No spying out the other side’s positions, now,” Daniels said, “and no moving up your troops to new ones under cover of the truce.” He’d never arranged a truce before, but he’d gathered up wounded in France under terms like those.
“It is agreed,” Wuppah said at once. “Your males also will not take new positions while we are not shooting at each other.”
Mutt started to answer that that went without saying, but shut his mouth with a snap. Nothing went without saying when the fellow on the other side had claws and scales and eyes like a chameleon’s (just for a moment, Mutt wondered how funny he looked to Wuppah). If the Lizards wanted everything spelled out, that was probably a good idea. “We agree,” Daniels said.
“I am to propose that this time of not shooting will last for one tenth of a day of Tosev 3,” Wuppah said.
“I’m authorized to agree to anything up to three hours,” Daniels answered.
They looked at each other in some confusion. “How many of these ‘hours’ have you in your day?” Wuppah asked. “Twenty-six?”
“Twenty-four,” Mutt answered. Everybody knew that-everybody human, anyhow, which left Wuppah out.
The Lizard made hissing and popping noises. “This three hours is an eighth part of the day,” he said. “It is acceptable to us that this be so: my superiors have given me so much discretion. For an eighth part of a day we and you will do no shooting in this big and ruined building, but will recover our hurt males and take them back inside our lines. By the Emperor I swear the Race will keep these terms.” He looked down at the ground with both eyes when he said that.
Truces with theBoches hadn’t required anybody to do any swearing, but the Germans and Americans had had a lot more in common than the Lizards and Americans did. “We’ll keep ’em, too, so help me God,” he said formally.
“It is agreed, then,” Wuppah said. He drew himself up straight again, though the rounded crown of his head didn’t even come up to Mutt’s Adam’s apple. “I have dealt with you as I would with a male of the Race.”
That sounded as if it was meant to be a compliment. Mutt decided to take it as one. “I’ve treated you like a human being, too, Wuppah,” he said, and impulsively stuck out his right hand.
Wuppah took it. His grip was warm, almost hot, and, though his hand was small and bony, surprisingly strong. As they broke the clasp, the Lizard asked, “You have been injured in your hand?”
Mutt looked down at the member in question. He’d forgotten how battered and gnarled it was: a catcher’s meat hand took a lot of abuse from foul tips and other mischances of the game. How many split fingers, dislocated fingers, broken fingers had he had? More than he could remember. Wuppah was still waiting for an answer. Daniels said, “A long time ago, before you folks got here.”
“Ah,” the Lizard said, “I go to tell my superiors the truce is made.”
“Okay.” Mutt turned and shouted, “Three-hour ceasefire! No shootin’ till”-he glanced at his watch-“quarter of five.”
Warily, men and Lizards emerged from cover and went through the ruins, sometimes guided by the cries of their wounded, sometimes just searching through wreckage to see if soldiers lay unconscious behind or beneath it. Searchers from both sides still carried their weapons; one gunshot would have turned the Swift plant back into a slaughterhouse. But the shot did not come.
The terms of the truce forbade either side from moving troops forward. Mutt had every intention of abiding by that: if you broke the terms of an agreement, you’d have-and you’d deserve to have-a devil of a time getting another one. All the same, he carefully noted the hiding places from which the Lizards came. If Wuppah wasn’t doing the same with the Americans, he was dumber than Mutt figured.
Here and there, Lizards and Americans who came across one another in their searches cautiously fraternized. Some officers would have stopped it Mutt had grown up listening to his grandfathers’ stories of swapping tobacco for coffee during the War Between the States. He kept an eye on things, but didn’t speak up.
He was anything but surprised to see Dracula Szabo head-to-head with a couple of Lizards. Dracula was grinning as he came back to the American lines. “What you got?” Mutt asked.
“Don’t quite know, Lieutenant,” Szabo answered, “but the brass is always after us to bring in Lizard gadgets, and the scaly boys, they traded me some.”
He showed them to Mutt, who didn’t know what they were good for, either. But maybe some of the boys with the thick glasses would, or could find out. “What did you give for ’em?”
Dracula’s smile was somewhere between mysterious and predatory. “Ginger snaps.”
A blast of chatter greeted David Goldfarb when he walked into A Friend In Need. The air in t
he pub was thick with smoke. The only trouble was, it all came from the fireplace, not from cigarettes and pipes. Goldfarb couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a smoke.
He worked his way toward the bar. A Friend In Need was full of dark blue RAF uniforms, most of them with officers’ braid on the cuffs of their jacket sleeves. Just a radarman himself, Goldfarb had to be circumspect in his quest for bitter.
If it hadn’t been for the RAF uniforms, A Friend In Need couldn’t have stayed in business. Bruntingthorpe was a tiny village a few miles south of Leicester a greengrocer’s shop, a chemist’s, a few houses, the pub, and damn little else. But the RAF experimental station just outside the place brought hundreds of thirsty men almost to the door of A Friend In Need. The place not only survived, it flourished.
“Goldfarb!” somebody bawled in a loud, beery voice.
The radarman’s head whipped around. There at a table, waving enthusiastically, sat Flight Officer Basil Roundbush, who, along with Goldfarb, was part of Group Captain Fred Hipple’s team that labored to incorporate Lizard knowledge into British jet engines and radars. Goldfarb often thought that was the equivalent of trying to incorporate the technology of smokeless powder into the Duke of Wellington’s infantry squares, but carried on regardless.
Roundbush, by some miracle, had an empty chair next to him. Goldfarb made for it with mixed feelings. On the one hand, sitting down would be nice. On the other, if he sat next to the flight lieutenant, not a barmaid in the world, let alone the ones in Bruntingthorpe, would look at him. Besides being an officer, Roundbush was tall and blond and ruddy and handsome, with a soup-strainer mustache, a winning attitude, and a chestful of medals.
