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“One of the most practical things you and your practical friends could do would be to help my family and me emigrate to Canada or the United States,” Goldfarb said, his voice bitter. “My kin and my wife’s have been lucky to get out of places where the trouble was bad before it got as bad as it could. It’s looking more and more like things will just keep getting worse here.”
“I hope not,” Roundbush said. “I do hope not.” He even sounded as if he meant it. “But if that’s what you want, old boy, I daresay it could be arranged.”
He didn’t even blink. Goldfarb thought he might have deserved some token surprise, something like, Wouldn’t you sooner stay, in view of your service to the country? But no. If he wanted to go, Roundbush would wave bye-bye.
Or maybe he wouldn’t even do that. He said, “One thing you must bear in mind, though, wherever you turn up, is that people may still ask you to do things for them from time to time. You’ve helped once. Easier to unscramble an egg than to stop helping now.”
Goldfarb looked him straight in the eye. “I took the King’s shilling, sir. I never took yours.”
Roundbush rummaged in his pockets till he found a silver coin. He set it in front of David Goldfarb. “Now you have.”
And Goldfarb did not have the nerve to send the shilling flying across the pub. “Damn you,” he said quietly. He was trapped, and he knew it.
“Don’t fret about it,” Roundbush advised him. “We shall do our best not to make our requests”-he didn’t even say demands — “too onerous.” Oh, the trap had velvet jaws. That did not mean it bit any the less.
Tossing back the last of his Guinness, Goldfarb got to his feet. “I’d better head on home, sir. My wife will be wondering what’s become of me.” Naomi knew he was going to have this meeting with Roundbush, but Roundbush didn’t need to know she knew. Roundbush already knew altogether too much about Goldfarb’s affairs.
He didn’t argue now, saying, “Give her my best. You are a lucky dog; if you must stay with one woman, you couldn’t have picked a finer one. One of these days before too long, I may have another small bit of business on which you can lend a hand. Until then-” He gave Goldfarb an affable nod.
Goldfarb stalked out of Robinsons and retrieved his bicycle from the rack in front of the pub. He couldn’t even be properly angry at Roundbush; getting angry at him was like beating the air with your fists. It accomplished nothing.
He pedaled away from the pub at a slow, deliberate pace. With several pints of Guinness in him, it was the best pace he could manage. He didn’t particularly notice the pack of punks on bicycles till they’d surrounded him. “All right, buddy, which is it? Protestant or Catholic?” one of them snarled.
If he guessed wrong, they’d stomp him for the pleasure of putting down heresy. If he guessed right, they might stomp him even so, just for the hell of it. If he laughed in their faces-what would they do then? He tried it.
They looked astonished. That made him laugh harder than ever. “Sorry, boys,” he said when he got some of his breath back. “You can’t have me. The goddamn Nazis have first claim.”
“Bloody hebe,” one of the punks muttered. They all looked disgusted. He realized he wasn’t out of the woods yet. They might decide to stomp him for spoiling their fun. But they didn’t. They rode off. Some of them threw curses over their shoulders as they went, but he’d heard worse in London.
When he got home, he spoke of that first with Naomi. She laughed. “It is better here than in England,” she said. “In England, you would have got into trouble anyhow. Here, they let you go.”
“I wasn’t what they were after, that’s all,” he answered. “That doesn’t mean they weren’t after somebody. And besides, I’ve got more important people after me.” He told his wife of what had passed with Basil Roundbush.
“They will help us emigrate if we must?” Naomi asked. “This could be very important.” Her family had got out of Germany just before the Kristallnacht. She knew everything she needed to know about leaving and not looking back.
“They’ll help me if I keep helping them,” Goldfarb said. “If I keep helping them, the Nazis are going to give it to some poor Frenchman in the neck.”
Naomi spoke with ruthless practicality. “If he is a ginger smuggler, he is not a poor Frenchman. He is much more likely to be a rich Frenchman. No one who trades with the Lizards stays poor long.”
“Truth,” Goldfarb said in the language of the Race. He returned to English: “But I still don’t want to be the one who put the Gestapo on his tail.”
“I don’t want a lot of the things that have happened to have happened,” his wife answered. “That does not mean I can do anything about them.”
Goldfarb considered. “I’ll tell you what,” he said at last. “I’ll stay home and tend to things here, and you go on out into the world. You’re obviously better suited to it than I am.” Naomi laughed, just as if he’d been joking.
Ttomalss did not care to leave space, to come to the surface of Tosev 3. He especially did not care to visit the independent Tosevite not-empires. Having been kidnapped in China, he did not want to risk falling into the hands of hostile Big Uglies again.
But, when Felless asked him to assist her down in the Greater German Reich, he did not see how he could refuse. And the Reich, he noted after checking a map, was a long way from China.
He watched with more than a little interest as the shuttlecraft descended to the landing field outside Nuremberg, the capital of the Reich. He had landed but seldom since taking Kassquit up from China. The former capital of the Reich, he remembered, had been vaporized. Were Tosevites sensible beings, that would have taught the Deutsche respect for the Race. But very little taught the Big Uglies respect for anything, and the Deutsche, by all evidence, were among the more stubborn Big Uglies.
After disembarking from the shuttlecraft, he endured the formalities with the Tosevite male from the Deutsch Foreign Ministry on the broad expanse of concrete. The conversation, fortunately, was in the language of the Race. Ttomalss understood and still spoke some Chinese, but he very much doubted whether this Eberlein creature did. The language in which the official addressed the armed Big Uglies on the landing field sounded nothing like Chinese, at any rate.
Getting into a motorized vehicle of Tosevite manufacture also made Ttomalss nervous, although he was glad to see a male of the Race driving. “Have no great fear, superior sir,” the driver said. “For Big Uglies, the firm of Daimler-Benz is quite capable, and builds relatively reliable machines.”
“How long have they been building them?” Ttomalss asked.
“Longer than almost any other Tosevite firm engaged in such work,” the driver answered, “about seventy-five of the years of Tosev 3. Twice as many of ours,” he added helpfully.
“If it is all the same to you,” Ttomalss said with dignity, “I shall go right on being nervous.”
Having seen a great deal-more than he ever wanted-of the architecture of China, Ttomalss was struck by how different Nuremberg looked. That held true not only for the outsized Nazi ceremonial buildings the driver pointed out to him but also for the smaller structures that held businesses or Deutsch sexual groupings-families, the Big Uglies called them. What struck him was how unhomogenized a world Tosev 3 was. Home, after a hundred thousand years of Empire, had no real regional differences left. One city was much like another. That wasn’t so here.
“Ah, there it is,” he said with no small relief when he saw the familiar-looking cube of the Race’s embassy to the Reich. “A touch of Home on Tosev 3.”
“Only when you’re indoors, superior sir, only when you’re indoors,” the driver said. “And we’re coming into the cold season of the year, too. You’ll want to muffle yourself up good and snug when you stick your snout outdoors, that you will.”
“I will not want to muffle myself,” Ttomalss said. “I may do it, but I will not want to.”
“Better than freezing your scales off,” the driver told him, and wi
th that Ttomalss could not disagree. The motorcar, which had run well enough-if more noisily than a vehicle manufactured back on Home-pulled to a halt in front of the embassy.
Veffani, the Race’s ambassador to the Deutsche, greeted Ttomalss just inside the entrance. Even the hallway that led back to the main chambers of the embassy was heated exactly to the temperature the Race found most comfortable. Ttomalss hissed with pleasure. “We shall try to make your stay here as pleasant as we can, Senior Researcher,” Veffani said. “Felless impressed me strongly with how important she thinks your contribution can be.”
“Of course, I will do everything in my power to serve the Race,” Ttomalss replied. “I am not quite certain about what sort of aid Felless seeks from me. Whatever it is, I shall do my best to give it.”
“Spoken like the sensible male you have proved yourself to be,” the ambassador said. “And, even though this is a city of Big Uglies, there are certain worthwhile aspects to life here. You must try the bratwurste, for instance.”
“Why must I?” Ttomalss asked suspiciously, and then, “What are they?”
