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“For all I know, Francois may be doing just that,” Pierre Dutourd replied. “You will understand, I do not ask him a great many questions about such things, just as he does not ask me a great many questions about my occupation.”
“Yes, I can see that this might be so.” Monique studied the new card. It really did seem perfect: not just the printing but also the rubber stamps and official signatures were exactly as they should have been. “Himmler himself would not suspect anything was wrong with it.”
“Of course not.” Pierre rolled his eyes. “He’s dead, and good riddance, too.” He paused, then after a moment shook his head. “No, it could be that I am wrong. We may be sorry he is gone, for these fools all trying to steal his seat may set the Reich on fire to show how manly they are.” He made a sour face. “Some of my best customers are very worried about that.”
“Some of the Lizards, you mean?” Monique asked.
“But of course,” Pierre Dutourd replied. “And they do not care-they hardly even know, except as far as the language goes-we here are French, not Germans. As far as they are concerned, one part of the Reich is the same as another. To them, it is all ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuhrer.” He looked disgusted now. “Merde alors!”
Monique almost laughed out loud. From everything she’d seen, her brother was far more mercenary than patriotic. She’d never heard him say much about the Reich till living under Nazi rule seemed likely to land him in trouble-he certainly hadn’t cared a great deal when she got slapped around at the Palais de Justice. But hearing that he and the Race worried about war ahead did make her sit up and take notice. “Can we do anything?”
“Run for the hills,” he suggested. “It could be I would not bring you back to the city, as I did before. It could be that I would also run. The best defense against an explosive-metal bomb is not to be there when it goes off. This is, I believe, an American saying. It is also, I believe, a true saying.”
“Yes, I believe it could be,” Monique said. She sat thoughtfully at the breakfast table. If she couldn’t get a passport-if, even with a passport, she couldn’t get out of Marseille-running into the hills didn’t seem the worst idea in the world. “Will your friends among the Race know the war is on the point of breaking out before it does?”
“If anyone among the Race knows, they will know,” Pierre answered. “But whether anyone will know, that I cannot say. All the Germans have to do is launch their rockets, and voila- war!”
“No, it’s not that simple,” Monique said. “They have to move soldiers into position, and tanks, and airplanes. These things must be noticeable.”
“Less than you’d think,” her brother told her. “From what my friends say, the Boches move forces all the time, so it becomes difficult to be sure which movements are intended to confuse and which are intended to deploy. And the Germans are better at keeping things secret than they used to be, too.”
That, unfortunately, seemed altogether too probable to Monique. Thanks to Dieter Kuhn, she knew the Nazis were getting better at unscrambling the Lizards’ security devices. It seemed logical they should also be getting better with their own.
The conversation helped make up her mind for her. Leaving the Porte d’Aix made her nervous; she expected every SS man in France to descend on her with cocked submachine gun and possibly with unbuttoned fly. Only after she was already on the way to the Prefecture on Rue St. Ferreol did she pause to wonder whether Pierre’s clever printer could forge passports as readily as ID cards. After pedaling on for another half a block, she shook her head. She didn’t want Pierre to know she intended fleeing, because she wanted to flee from him, too. That meant she had to get the passport on her own, and that meant she had to get a real one; except through her brother, she had no illicit connections.
And so, the Prefecture. It was larger and more massive than the Palais de Justice, with a small square on the north side and a park over to the east. She set her bicycle in a rack in front of the building and chained it into place: even here, with gendarmes strolling about keeping an eye on things, thieves might thrive. But at least the policemen were gendarmes and not the Germans who gave the Palais de Justice its sinister reputation: how well deserved that reputation was, she knew better than she’d ever wanted to.
Inside, languid ceiling fans did a halfhearted job of stirring the air. FILL OUT ALL FORMS BEFORE ENTERING LINE, a prominent sign warned. From everything Monique had heard, French bureaucracy had been bad before the Reich overran the country. From everything she’d seen, it was worse now, having added German thoroughness without the slightest trace of German efficiency.
As she’d expected, the forms for obtaining a passport were formidable. So were the fees required-officials wanted to know everything about anyone who might want to leave the Reich, and also wanted to soak would-be travelers for the privilege. Monique filled out page after page, much of the information being fictitious. If the bureaucrats did any careful checking, she was in trouble. But her assumption was that no one would have any reason to check on Madeleine Didier, who couldn’t very well have fallen foul of the authorities because she’d existed for only a few days.
Do you really want to do this? she wondered. If you’re wrong, and if you get caught, you’re back in Dieter Kuhn’s hands-and probably back in his arms, too. She didn’t have to worry about that in Porte d’Aix, anyhow. But her brother wanted to use her, too, even if in a different way. If she could get away, she’d also be free of Pierre. She nodded briskly. The game was worth the candle.
The line moved forward a centimeter at a time. At last, though, she stood before a bored-looking functionary. He gave the forms a desultory glance, then said, “Your fee?” She pushed Reichsmarks across the counter. He riffled through them, nodded, and said, “Your identification card?” Heart thuttering, Monique passed that to him, too. He examined it more carefully than the forms, less carefully than the money, and pushed it back to her. “Very good. All appears to be in order. You may return in four weeks’ time to pick up your passport. It must be done in person, you understand.”
“Yes, of course,” Monique answered. “Thank you.” She turned away, thinking, Either I get the passport-or the SS gets me. She’d find out, if she still had the nerve… and if the world hadn’t blown up in the meantime.
Atvar studied the latest reports from the subregion known as Poland, as well as those from the Race’s spy satellites. He turned one eye turret from the monitor on which the reports were displayed to Kirel. “I begin to be optimistic,” he told the second-highest-ranking male in the conquest fleet. “If the Deutsche had truly been on the point of launching an attack against us, I believe they would have done so by now. Every day they delay is another day in which they can have second thoughts.”
“No doubt the Big Uglies are impetuous, Exalted Fleetlord,” Kirel replied. “I agree, delay is likely to be advantageous to us. But they have not backed away from their preparations, either: see how many spacecraft they continue to keep in orbit around Tosev 3. If they truly intended relaxing into a peaceful posture, they would not be making such an effort-in my opinion, of course.” Even the shiplord of the conquest fleet’s bannership had to be careful when disagreeing with the fleetlord.
But Atvar did not have all his claws sunk deeply into his view of things here, as sometimes happened. “Indeed, that is a truth, Shiplord,” he admitted. “But I wonder how much damage these crewed craft can do, as opposed to the many orbiting explosive-metal bombs and missiles that require only an electronic command for activation.”
“I also wonder,” Kirel said, “but I hope we do not have to find out. The Tosevites themselves have a nastier imagination than their mechanisms. Even with inferior means, they might find a way to do us more harm than we would expect.”
“They have a knack for doing that, and I would be the last to deny it,” Atvar said. “But they also must know what we would do to them. If they did not understand that, I believe they would already have gone to war.”
; “That is undoubtedly a truth,” Kirel said. He swung one of his eye turrets toward the display. “Do we have any certain knowledge of where their submersible craft carrying missiles are presently located?”
“No.” That didn’t make Atvar happy, either. “And I must say I wish we did. But, on the other fork of the tongue, we rarely do. They and the Americans and the Russkis make a point of keeping the whereabouts of those vessels secret. In their position, I would do the same: we cannot target the submersibles, as we can their land-based missiles.”
Pshing came into Atvar’s office and waited to be noticed. When Atvar slid an eye turret toward him, he said, “Exalted Fleetlord, we have received replies from four Tosevite not-empires in regard to our request to open shrines dedicated to reverencing the spirits of Emperors past in their territories.”
“Four at once?” Kirel said. “They must be acting in concert, then.”
Atvar thought the same thing, but Pshing made the negative hand gesture. “No, Shiplord. Three of the replies are negative. The Nipponese say they strongly prefer to reverence their own emperors. The SSSR and the Reich simply refuse the request; the SSSR’s rejection implies that we made it for purposes of espionage rather than reverence.”
That was in some measure true. Atvar said, “And the fourth reply?”
“Exalted Fleetlord, it is from the United States, and gives us permission to do as we will there,” Pshing replied. “The American Tosevites cite a doctrine of theirs called ‘freedom of reverence’ or something of the sort. I confess that I do not fully understand this doctrine.”
“I often wonder if even the American Tosevites understand their own doctrines,” Atvar replied. “This probably stems from their passion for snoutcounting. Most of their peculiar institutions do.”
“Since they are not bellicose at the moment, I am inclined to forgive them their doctrines,” Kirel said as Pshing left the office.
“No doubt some truth will hatch from that eggshell, Shiplord,” Atvar said. “And we still await the reply from Britain. But the Americans do cause me some concern for the simple reason that they have prospered rather than falling to pieces in the interval since the fighting stopped. None of our analysts seems to understand why they have prospered, either. By all logic, government through snoutcounting should have failed almost immediately-should never have been attempted, in fact.”
Kirel made the affirmative gesture. “I see what you are saying, Exalted Fleetlord. Nippon and Britain have systems similar to ours, though the British also use some of this snoutcounting silliness. And the Reich and the SSSR have rulers with the power of emperors, though they gain that power by murder or intrigue, not by inheritance. But the Americans truly are anomalous.”
