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“Maybe you’re right,” Moishe Russie said. “In a strictly scientific sense, I suppose you are. But if someone asks a question like ‘Why not slaughter all the Jews we can reach?’-what kind of answer do science and technology have to give him?”
“That Jews don’t deserve to be slaughtered because we aren’t really any different from anybody else,” Reuven said.
It wasn’t the strongest reply, and he knew it. In case he hadn’t known it, his father drove the point home: “We’re different enough to tell apart, and that’s all the Germans care about. And we aren’t the only ones. They know they can do it, and they don’t know why they shouldn’t. How and why should they know that?”
Reuven glared at him. “You’re waiting for me to say God should tell them. You were talking about the Middle Ages. In the Middle Ages, God told the goyim to go out and slaughter all the Jews they could catch. That’s what they thought, anyhow. How do you go about proving they were wrong?”
His father grimaced. “We’re not going to get anywhere. I should have known we wouldn’t get anywhere. If you won’t believe, there’s nothing I can do to make you believe. I’m not a goy, to convert you by force.”
“And a good thing, too,” Reuven said.
His twin sisters looked at each other. He didn’t believe in telepathy. The Lizards thought the idea was laughable. But if they weren’t passing a message back and forth without using words, he didn’t know what they were doing. They both spoke at the same time: “Maybe you should convert Jane instead, Father.”
Moishe Russie raised an eyebrow. “How about that, Reuven?” he asked.
Glaring at Esther and Judith failed to help. They laughed at Reuven, their eyes wide and shining. He couldn’t strangle them, not with his parents watching. In a choked voice, he said, “I don’t think that would be a good idea.” It wasn’t quite true, but he wouldn’t admit as much. He went on, “Maybe I’ll bother you two when you have boyfriends.” It didn’t do a bit of good. The twins just laughed.
15
Living in Texas since the fighting stopped, Rance Auerbach had heard a lot of horror stories about Mexican jails. The one in which the Lizards kept him didn’t live up to any of them, much to his surprise. It was, in fact, not a great deal less comfortable than his apartment, if a lot more cramped. The Lizards even let him have cigarettes.
Every so often, they’d take him out and question him. He sang like a canary. Why not? The only person he could implicate was Penny, and he couldn’t get her in any deeper than she was already, not when they’d caught her with lime-cured ginger in her fists.
One day-he’d lost track of time, lost track and stopped worrying about it-a pair of Lizard guards with automatic rifles opened the door to his cell and spoke in the language of the Race: “You will come with us at once.”
“It shall be done,” Auerbach said, and slowly rose from his cot. The Lizards backed away so he couldn’t grab their weapons. That was standard procedure, but he still found it pretty funny. However much he might have wanted to, he couldn’t have leapt at them to save his life.
They took him to the interrogation chamber, as he’d expected. Like the rest of the jail, it was well-lighted and clean. Unlike the rest, it boasted a chair built for human beings. Unlike people, the Lizards didn’t seem to go in for the third degree. That did nothing but relieve Rance; had they felt like working him over, what could he have done about it?
Today, he noticed, the interrogation chamber held two human-made chairs. That gave him hope of seeing Penny, which the Lizards hadn’t let him do since capturing the two of them. She wasn’t there now, though. Only the guards and his chief interrogator, a male named Hesskett, were. With Rance’s bad leg and shoulder, assuming the posture of respect was painful for him. He did it anyway, then nodded to Hesskett human-style and said, “I greet you, superior sir.” Politeness didn’t hurt, not in the jam he was in.
“I greet you, Prisoner Auerbach.” Hesskett knew enough to keep reminding him he was in a jam. Having done so, the Lizard pointed to a chair. “You have leave to sit.”
“I thank you,” Auerbach said. Once, he’d sat without leave. The next time, he hadn’t had a chair. Standing through a grilling came closer to torture than his captors perhaps realized. He’d minded his manners ever since.
As he sank into the chair now, two more guards escorted Penny into the chamber. She looked tired-and, without any makeup, older than she had-but damn good. He grinned at her. She blew him a kiss before going through the greeting ritual with Hesskett.
Once she was in the other chair-too far away to let Auerbach touch her, dammit-Hesskett started speaking pretty fluent English: “You are both found guilty of trafficking in ginger with the Race.”
“You can’t do that! We haven’t had a trial,” Auerbach exclaimed.
“You were caught with much of the herb in your possession,” the Lizard said. “We can find you guilty without a trial. We have. You are.”
Rance didn’t think a lawyer, whether human or Lizard, would have done him much good, but he’d have liked a chance to find out. Penny asked the question uppermost in his mind, too: “What are you going to do with us?”
“With a crime this bad, we can do what we want,” Hesskett said. “We can leave you in jail for many years, many long Tosevite years. We can leave you in jail till you die. No one would miss you. No one of the Race would miss either one of you at all.”
That wasn’t true. A lot of customers, from Kahanass on down, would miss Penny quite a bit. Saying so didn’t strike Rance as likely to help his cause. But he didn’t think Hesskett had brought them here so he could gloat before locking them up and losing the key. The Lizard wasn’t talking that way, anyhow. Auerbach asked, “What do we have to do to keep you from throwing us in jail for life?”
Hesskett’s posture was already forward-sloping. Now he leaned even farther toward the two humans. “You are guilty of smuggling ginger,” he said. “You know other Big Uglies involved in this criminal traffic.”
“That’s right,” Penny agreed at once. She really did. Aside from her, the only ones Rance knew at the moment were the plug-uglies he’d plugged back in Fort Worth.
“Do you know the ginger smuggler and thief called Pierre Dutourd?” Hesskett said the name several times, pronouncing it as carefully as he could.
“Yeah, I do. The big-time dealer in the south of France, isn’t he?” Penny said. Auerbach nodded so Hesskett wouldn’t get the idea-the accurate idea-that he didn’t know Pierre the Turd or whatever the hell his name was from a hole in the ground.
“It is good,” the Lizard interrogator said. “We have tried to end his business with the Race, but we have not succeeded. We believe the Deutsche are protecting him from us. We need his trade stopped. If you help us stop it, we will reward you greatly. We will not put you in jail for long Tosevite years. If you refuse, we will do to you what we have the right to do to you. Do you understand? Is it agreed?”
“How are we going to do anything to this fellow in France?” Auerbach asked. “We’re here, not there.”
“We will fly you to Marseille, his city,” Hesskett answered. “We will give you documents that will satisfy the Reich. You will deal with our operatives already in Marseille and with this Pierre Dutourd. Is it agreed?”
“I?
??ve got one problem-I don’t speak French for beans,” Penny said. “Apart from that, I’ll do whatever you say. I don’t like jail.”
“That is the idea,” Hesskett said smugly.
“I’ve got a little French and a little German,” Rance said. “They’re rusty as hell, but they might still work some. I’ll be able to read some, anyway, even if I can’t do much talking.”
“You Tosevites would be better off with one language for all of you instead of languages in patches like fungus diseases on your planet,” Hesskett said. “But that is not to be changed today. Do you both agree to aid the Race in putting out of business the smuggler Pierre Dutourd?”
Penny nodded at once. Auerbach didn’t. Going into Nazi-occupied France after a smuggler the Reich was propping up wouldn’t be a walk in the park. He wanted some reassurance he’d come out again. Of course, if he went into jail, he had Hesskett’s reassurance he wouldn’t come out again. That made up his mind for him. With a rasping sigh, he said, “I’ll take a shot at it.”
Things moved very quickly after that. Hesskett put Rance and Penny in a Lizard airplane from the air base near Monterrey to Mexico City. When they got out of the plane a little more than an hour later (it seemed much longer to Auerbach; his seat was cramped and not made for the shape of his rear end), more Lizards who fought ginger-smuggling took charge of them. Only moments after their photographs were taken, they got handed copies of U.S. passports that Auerbach couldn’t have told from the real McCoy to save himself from the firing squad. Stamps showed visas issued by the Reich ’s consulate in Mexico City. Auerbach knew they had to be as phony as the passports, but didn’t ask questions.
The next morning, after a Lizard-paid shopping spree to get them more than the clothes they’d had on when they were captured, they boarded the small human-adapted section of an airplane bound from Mexico City to Marseille. “Well, now,” Penny said, glancing over to Rance beside her, “you can’t tell me this worked out so bad. We got caught, and what did we get? A trip to the Riviera, that’s what. Could be a heck of a lot worse, if anybody wants to know.”
