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“I’ve been telling anyone who would listen to me as much since you people took me away from Peenemunde,” Drucker said. “The only thing wrong with that is, nobody would listen to me.”
Had he expected the Gestapo officer to start listening to him, he would have been disappointed. Since he didn’t, he wasn’t-or not disappointed on account of that, anyhow. He stood to stiff attention, shot out his arm, did a smart about-turn, and stalked off to his own quarters.
Those weren’t much different from the ones he’d had back at the rocket base. The Gestapo wasn’t treating him badly, on the off chance he might be returning to duty after all. He hoped it was rather more than an off chance, but no one cared what he hoped. He understood that only too well.
He lay back on his bunk and scratched his head. His eye fell on the telephone. He couldn’t call his wife; he didn’t know where to call. He couldn’t call his children; he’d tried, but the operator hadn’t let him. After one impossibility and one failure, he hadn’t seen much point to using the phone. Maybe he’d been wrong, though, or at least shortsighted.
He picked up the instrument. Elsewhere in the Reich, he would have heard a tone that told him it was all right to dial. Here, as if he’d fallen back in time, an operator inquired, “Number, please?”
He gave the number of the commandant back at Peenemunde. He didn’t know if the operator would let that call go through, either. But it was, or might have been, in the line of duty, and the Gestapo was no more immune to that siren song than any other German organization. After some clicks and pops, Drucker heard the telephone ring.
Fear filled him, fear that the commandant would be out having a drink or in the sack with his girlfriend (Drucker didn’t know whether he had a girlfriend, but found imagining the worst only too easy) or just encamped on a porcelain throne with a book in his hand and his pants around his ankles. Anything that kept him from Drucker would be disaster enough.
But a brisk, no-nonsense voice said, “Dornberger here.”
“Will you speak with Lieutenant Colonel Drucker, sir?” the Gestapo operator asked. By his tone, he found it highly unlikely.
“Of course I will,” Major General Walter Dornberger said, his own voice sharp. “Hans, are you there?”
“I’m here, General,” Drucker answered gratefully. The operator would still listen to everything he said, but he couldn’t do anything about that. “I don’t known how long I’ll have to stay off duty. They’re still trying to decide whether Kathe had a Jewish grandmother.”
Dornberger was reasonably quick on the uptake. Once Drucker had given him his cue, he played along with it, booming, “Yes, I know about that-I was there, remember? They’re taking so stinking long, it sounds like a pack of nonsense to me. Maybe you made an enemy who’s telling lies about you. Whatever’s going on, we need you back here.”
Drucker hoped the operator was getting an earful. He said, “Thank you, sir. Till this mess clears up, though, I can’t go anywhere.”
“Good thing you called me,” Major General Dornberger said. “Should have done it sooner, even. A lot of times, as I said, these accusations get started because somebody’s jealous of you and hasn’t got the nerve to show it out in the open. So the Schweinhund starts a filthy rumor. We’ll get to the bottom of it, don’t you worry about that. And when we do, some big-mouthed bastard is going to be sorry he was ever born.”
“From the bottom of my heart, I thank you, sir,” Drucker said. “I want to be up and out again. With the colonization fleet here, I need to be up and out.”
“Damned right you do,” Dornberger agreed. “We’ll see what we can do from this end, Hans. I wish you all the best.” He hung up.
Drucker sat there, grinning at the telephone. Yes, he hoped the SS operator had got an earful. The Wehrmacht was also a power in the land. If Dornberger badly wanted him back, he would come back. Without the Reich Rocket Force, Europe lay open, defenseless, to whatever the Lizards might choose to do.
Not quite out of a clear blue sky, Drucker wondered how many cases high-ranking officers had taken care of, regardless of whether or not the wife in question truly did have a Jewish grandparent. He wondered how many cases they’d taken care of where a man they liked had a Jewish grandmother… or perhaps even a Jewish mother. Once he’d started wondering, he wondered how many out-and-out Jews, quietly protected, went on serving the Reich because they were too useful to do without.
Before the Gestapo arrested Kathe and grounded him, he would have pounded a fist on the nearest table and demanded-demanded at the top of his lungs, especially if he’d had a couple of steins of beer-that each Jew be rooted out. Now… Now, in a cell that was comfortable but remained a cell, he laughed out loud.
“I hope they do just fine,” he said. The Gestapo men surely listening to his every word would think he meant Major General Dornberger and his friends. And so, in a way, he did-but only in a way.
Felless looked around Cairo with something approaching horror. “This,” she said, “this is the capital from which the Race has ruled something like half of Tosev 3 since not long after the arrival of the conquest fleet?” She added an interrogative cough, wishing the Race had something stronger along those lines: a cough of incredulous disbelief, perhaps.
“Senior Researcher, it is,” Pshing replied.
“But-” Felless struggled to put her feelings into words. It wasn’t easy. For one thing, rank relationships were ambiguous here. Her body paint was fancier than half of Pshing’s, but the other half of the male’s matched that of Atvar, the fleetlord of the conquest fleet. Pshing surely made up in influence what he lacked in formal status. For another… Felless blurted, “But it is still a Tosevite city, not one of ours!”
“So it is,” Pshing answered. “You will have studied the conquests of Rabotev 2 and Halless 1, I take it?”
“Of course,” Felless said indignantly. “How else was I to prepare myself for this mission?”
“You had no better way, superior female; I am sure of that,” Pshing replied. “But have you not yet learned that what the Race experienced on the previous two planets we added to the Empire has very little to do with conditions here on Tosev 3?”
He’d granted her the title of superiority so he could rub her snout in the fact of her inadequate preparation without offending her. And, in fact, he hadn’t offended her… too much. Felless let one eye turret glide appraisingly in his direction. He was a clever male, no doubt about it. Any male who served as several digits of a fleetlord’s hand would have to be clever.
Felless took a deep breath before saying something. She regretted it, for it meant she sent a great lungful of air past her scent receptors. Cairo was full of an astounding cacophony of stinks. The odor of droppings was not quite the same as it would have been back on Home, but she had no trouble recognizing it. Piled on top of that solid foundation were other organic odors she had more trouble classifying. They probably came from the Big Uglies and their animals, who were certainly present in great profusion. A thin stream in the mix was odors of cookery, again different from but similar to those back on Home.
Pshing said, “All things considered, I think we have done reasonably well. We are spread far thinner than we expected to be. Not only have our casualties been much worse than anticipated, but this world was and is far more heavily populated than we had believed it would be. And we cannot be so hard on the Tosevites as we should prefer under other circumstances.”
“And why not?” Felless demanded indignantly. Too late, she realized she’d been foolish. “Oh. The autonomous not-empires.”
“They are not autonomous. They are independent. You must bear this in mind at all times, superior female.” Again, Pshing used the honorific to let her down easy after slapping her across the snout.
“I do try to bear it in mind,” she said, embarrassed. “But it is alien to everything the Race has known these past hundred thousand years.”
“Remember this, then: the USA, the SSSR, and the Reich
can wreck this planet if they decide to do so,” Pshing said. “This is without our help in the process, you understand. I think any one of those not-empires could do it. With our help, Britain and Nippon might also manage. And is it not so that he who can destroy a thing holds great power over it?”
“Truth.” Felless heard the reluctance in her own voice.
If Atvar’s adjutant also heard it, he was too polite to give any sign. He said, “And so, when these not-empires exhort us to treat the Big Uglies of a certain area in a certain way, we are constrained to take such exhortations seriously.”
“Treating with those who know not the Emperor as equals…” Felless looked down at the grimy shingles, an automatic token of respect for her sovereign. “It knocks every standard of civilized conduct we have imbibed since hatchlinghood-since the hatchlinghood of the Race-onto its tailstump. How did things come to such a pass?”
She waved to show what she meant. From the roof of the building from which the Race administered the planet (it still kept its Tosevite name, Shepheard’s Hotel), she stared out at the swarming streets. Tosevites swaddled in their absurd mantlings-some white, some black, some various shades of brown and tan, with a few bright colors mixed in-went about their noisy business, crowding among beasts of burden and motorized vehicles that mostly belched smoke from burning petroleum distillates, not clean hydrogen, and so added one more note to the reek of the place.
