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“You had better get used to the idea, then,” Yeager said. “How do you suppose it will change your society?”
“I do not know. In the absence of data, I would sooner not try to guess,” Straha replied. “My kind is not so given to reckless speculation as is yours.” He pointed to the Tosevite. “I will tell you this, however: life for you independent Big Uglies has also grown more complicated than it used to be.”
“How do you mean?” Yeager asked, and then checked himself. “Oh. Of course. The attack against the colonization fleet.”
“Yes, the attack against the colonization fleet,” Straha agreed. “You Big Uglies learn quickly, but you also forget quickly. The Race is different. If, two hundred years from now, the Race learns which not-empire is guilty of that attack, we will punish that not-empire. And we will be searching for the truth through all those two hundred years.”
“I understand,” Yeager said, but Straha wondered if he really did. He was, after all, a Tosevite himself, even if he had unusual insight into the way the Race thought.
“Is there anything else?” Straha asked him. Yeager shook his head again, this time in negation. Typical Tosevite inefficiency, Straha thought, to have one gesture do duty for two separate meanings. The exile shiplord got to his feet. “Then I shall depart. I now have much to think about, and so, I would imagine, have you.”
“Truth,” said Yeager. He walked with Straha to the front door, and stood watching till the male had got into the Tosevite vehicle in which he was conveyed from one point to another in this city-which was not small even by the standards of the Race.
“Take me back to my home,” he told the Big Ugly who was his driver and guard.
“It shall be done, Shiplord.” The fellow started the vehicle’s motor. As he did so, he remarked, “That was an attractive female who went into Major Yeager’s house.” He appended an emphatic cough.
“If you say so,” Straha answered. “I am glad you found something to amuse you while I was talking with the major. On me, I assure you, the attractiveness, if any, of the female was wasted. I did note, however, that she made a most improbable mine-clearance underofficer.”
His driver laughed. “I believe it!” He glanced back at Straha, a habit the shiplord wished he would forget while the motorcar was moving. “How do you judge if a female of the Race is attractive?”
“By scent more than by sight,” Straha answered absently. He wondered if he should have told Yeager he wanted to mate with a female after all. If he was lucky, his eggs would join in the new society the Race was building here, even if he could not. He shrugged. Mating simply was not the urgent matter with him that it was for Tosevites. He missed it not at all. Getting home to his ginger struck him as much more urgent. “Do not dawdle,” he told the driver, and the motorcar went faster.
11
Rance Auerbach’s laugh, a harsh rasp, sounded almost as much like a death rattle as like honest mirth. “You think it’s true?” he asked Penny Summers. “You reckon ginger really does make those scaly bastards come into heat like it was springtime?”
“Too many people saying it for it to be a lie,” Penny answered. “I think it’s funny as hell, too, matter of fact. Sort of pays them back for all the nasty things they’ve thought about us, you know what I mean?” She lit a Raleigh.
“Give me one of those, will you?” Auerbach said. After he got it going and helped take one more step in wrecking his already damaged lungs, he went on, “Yeah, turnabout’s fair play, all right.”
That made him look out the bedroom window of his Fort Worth apartment, just to see if he noticed anything out of the ordinary. He didn’t. The people whose money Penny had walked off with had promised some turnabout, too. They hadn’t delivered. He was beginning to hope that meant they wouldn’t.
Penny said, “Ought to get some more ginger and smuggle it down into Mexico. Lots of females there, I hear.”
“Think you can?” If Rance didn’t sound dubious, it wasn’t from lack of effort. “There’s some people who aren’t real fond of you, remember?”
“It doesn’t take a whole lot of work to get ginger,” Penny said with a curl to her lip. “Hell, I can buy some down at the grocery store. But I’d want to lime-cure it, make it so the Lizards get all hot and bothered for it, before I took it down. The really tricky part is selling in someone else’s territory. You’re not careful about that, someday somebody’ll find you floating in an irrigation ditch.”
“Why take the chance, then?” Auerbach asked. Ever since the Lizards filled him full of holes, he’d been a lot less enthusiastic about taking chances than back in his Army days.
But Penny’s eyes glittered. “To get a really big stake, why else? I’ve got a good start on one, after I went and stiffed the boys back in Detroit. But I want more. I want enough so I can just go somewhere, get away from everything, and not have to worry about where my next dime is coming from for the rest of my days.”
“Like where?” Rance said, dubious again. “The Big Rock Candy Mountain?”
Penny shook her head. “No, I really mean it. How’s Tahiti sound? About as far away from Kansas as you can get, this side of Oz, anyway.”
Rance grunted thoughtfully. The outfit calling itself Free France still ran Tahiti and the neighboring islands. Neither the USA nor Japan had bothered gobbling them up, partly because that would have set the two at loggerheads, partly because the Free French made themselves very useful: they did business with everybody, people and Lizards alike, and didn’t ask questions of anybody.
“How would you like that?” Penny asked. “You could lay on the beach all day, suck up rum like it was going out of style, and smile at the native girls when they go by without their shirts on. And if you do anything more than smile at ’em, I’ll kick you right in the nuts.”
“You’re a sweetheart,” Auerbach said, and Penny laughed. Before he could say anything else, somebody knocked on the door. “Who the hell’s that?” he muttered, and made his slow way toward it. “It’s not like I get a whole lot of company.”
When he opened the door, he found two men standing in the hallway. One of them, a broad-shouldered, meaty fellow, put a big hand in the center of his chest and pushed, hard. With one bad leg under him, he went over backwards as if he’d been shot. As he fell, the muscular guy’s skinny pal said, “Don’t fuck with us, gimpy, and you’ll keep breathing. We’ve got some business to finish up with your lady friend. I bet you even know what we’re talking about, don’t you?”
Both bruisers started past him, certain Penny was there and also certain he was no danger to them. They’d likely been casing the joint, so their first certainty was accurate. Their second certainty, however, had some flaws. Rance had got used to wearing that.45 in the waistband of his trousers, and the reflexes he’d honed in the Army still worked. Even though both his leg and his shoulder bellowed at him when he hit, he had the heavy pistol in his hand less than a heartbeat later.
He fired without a word of warning. The.45 bucked in his grip. A hole appeared in the back of the heavy man’s jacket. Gore and guts blew out a much bigger hole in the front of his belly-the sort of hole, Auerbach knew from experience, you could throw a dog through.
The bruiser let out a hoarse scream and crumpled. His friend whirled, hand darting for a trouser pocket. He had commendably quick reflexes, but not quick enough to let him outdraw a gun already aimed at him. Auerbach’s first bullet caught him in the chest. He looked very surprised as he stood there swaying. Auerbach shot him again, this time in the face, and the back of his head exploded. He fell on top of the other thug, who was still writhing and shrieking. Auerbach smelled blood and shit and smokeless powder.
Penny came around the corner from the bedroom, pistol in her hand. She didn’t scream or puke or faint. She aimed the pistol at the head of the heavyset ruffian, the one Auerbach had shot from behind, plainly intending to finish him off.
“Don’t,” Rance told her. “Put your piece away. Go back into th
e bedroom and call the cops. If half a dozen people haven’t done it already, I’m a Chinaman. These two bastards broke in here intending to rob us or whatever the hell, and I plugged ’em. We don’t have to say a word about ginger.”
“Okay, Rance.” She nodded. The broad-shouldered goon had stopped moaning, anyhow; with a wound like that, he wouldn’t last long. “Keep an eye on ’em anyhow, just in case.”
“I will.” With his usual slow, painful movements, Auerbach levered himself up into a chair. He took a look at the carnage, then shook his head. “What do you want to bet the goddamn landlord tries to stick me with the bill for cleaning this up?”
Penny didn’t answer; she’d already gone back into the bedroom to use the telephone. One of Rance’s neighbors stuck her head into his apartment through the open doorway. She saw him before noticing anything else, and started to talk: “Howdy, Rance. Lucille said there was gunshots somewheres, but I told her it wasn’t nothin’ but firecra-” That was when she noticed the two blood-drenched corpses at the back of the living room. She turned white. “Oh, sweet, suffering Jesus!” she blurted, and got the hell out of there.
