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“That shall not happen,” Molotov declared.
“Perhaps you speak truth,” the Lizard told him. “I do not deny the possibility. But, as I said at a previous meeting, this is not necessarily to your advantage. If you become a threat to the Empire as a whole, rather than merely to peace and good order here on Tosev 3, we shall be as ruthless as circumstances require. Do not doubt that I mean this with complete sincerity.”
However much Molotov wanted to, he didn’t doubt that. “We must also be able to protect ourselves from you,” he warned. “You want us to abandon technical progress. As I have said before, that is impossible.” The USSR didn’t just have to protect itself from the Race, either. The Reich and the USA remained potential enemies. So did Japan, in a more limited way. Molotov had been a boy during the Russo-Japanese War, but he still remembered his country’s humiliation. One day, the Soviet Union would settle scores, against all its neighbors, human and otherwise.
Queek said, “It appears, then, that we are on a collision course. In that case, squabbles over domestic animals suddenly become less important, would you not agree?”
Molotov shrugged. “Since we are not in combat, my view is that we had best behave as if we were at peace.”
“Ah,” the Lizard said. “Yes, that is a sensible attitude, I must admit. I would not have expected it of you.” The Polish interpreter’s eyes gleamed as he turned that into Russian.
“Life is full of surprises,” Molotov said. “Have we anything further to discuss?”
“I think not,” Queek replied. “I have delivered the statement required of me by my superiors, I have heard your complaint and suggested a possible resolution, and I have listened to your bluster pertaining to your not-empire’s technical prowess. Nothing more remains that I can see.”
“Bluster travels on both sides of the street,” Molotov said icily, and rose from his desk. “This meeting is at an end. The guards will escort you back to your limousine. Good day.” He didn’t say good riddance, but his manner suggested it.
After the Lizards’ ambassador and his interpreter had left, Molotov went into the antechamber to one side of the office. There he changed all his clothes, down to socks and underwear. If Queek or his human stooge had smuggled electronic eavesdropping devices into the office, they would go no farther than the antechamber. Molotov wondered if the Race knew he entertained human visitors in another office. He wouldn’t have been surprised. He didn’t mind offending the Lizards-or anyone else-but didn’t care to do so inadvertently.
Once back in clothes sure to be uncontaminated, Molotov returned to the regular office. No sooner had he got there than the telephone rang. He picked it up. “Marshal Zhukov on the line,” his secretary said.
Molotov’s expression did not change, but he grimaced inside. Zhukov knew altogether too much about his comings and goings. No doubt the marshal had a spy among Molotov’s aides. “Put him through,” Molotov said, suppressing a sigh, and then, “Good day, Georgi Konstantinovich. And how are you?”
“Fine, thank you, Comrade General Secretary,” Zhukov replied, outwardly deferential. But, a blunt soldier, he had little patience with small talk. “What did the Lizard want?”
“To brag that the Race has suppressed the uprising in China,” Molotov said. “He labored under the delusion that we did not already know.”
“Ah,” Zhukov said; Molotov could imagine his nod even if he couldn’t see it. The marshal went on, “When the Chinese are ready themselves or when we can stir them up, they will rise again, of course. You had a countercomplaint ready, I assume?”
“Oh, yes-the matter of these animals from Home on our soil,” Molotov said. Zhukov would hear it from someone else, if not from him. “They do threaten to become a nuisance in our border regions, but Queek proved conciliatory on the matter of compensation.”
“I wish you had found something stronger,” Zhukov grumbled, “but I suppose foreign affairs is your bailiwick.” For as long as I feel like letting it be your bailiwick. Marshal Zhukov didn’t always say everything he thought, either. But then, he didn’t always have to. That was what holding power meant.
Felless felt isolated and useless and frustrated at the Race’s embassy to the Reich. With Ttomalss gone, she had no one there with whom she could really have a conversation grounded in her professional expertise. Most of the males and females at the embassy dealt with the Deutsch Tosevites in a purely pragmatic way, caring nothing for the theoretical underpinnings of interspecies relations.
The Deutsche cared nothing for those underpinnings, either, so far as Felless could tell. As time went on, they grew less and less willing to discuss with her the rationale behind their strange not-empire. She had had trouble enough grasping even what they were willing to discuss. Now that new information came in more slowly than it had before, she despaired of ever making sense of their system.
She’d thought about insulting some Deutsch official to the point where his government would expel her from the not-empire, as Ttomalss had been lucky enough to manage. She’d not only thought about it, she’d tried to do it a couple of times. That had involved her in shouting matches with Big Uglies, but no expulsion order came, worse luck. She remained stuck here in Nuremberg, stuck without escape and hating every moment of it.
Her office was her refuge. She could analyze such data as she had, and she could reach out to the wider world of the Race through the computer network. And…
Sometimes she would stay in her office for days at a time, bringing food back from the refectory, storing it in a little refrigerator, and reheating it in an even more compact radar oven. The locked door there was a shield against a world far more unpleasant than she had imagined on waking from cold sleep. Behind that shield, she could do her best to make the world go away.
After finishing the first of several meals she had waiting in the refrigerator, she went over to her desk, opened one of the drawers, reached behind several file folders, and took out a small plastic vial half full of brownish powder. “By the Emperor,” she said softly, “ginger is the only thing that makes Tosev 3 even close to being a world worth living on.”
Her fingers trembled in anticipation as she took off the stopper. She couldn’t taste as often as she craved the herb, not with the punishments to which males and females-especially females-were liable these days. Only when she was sure no one would disturb her till she no longer reeked of pheromones did she dare shake powdered ginger into the palm of her hand, bend her head low over it, and flick out her tongue.
Ginger’s hot, spicy flavor was marvelous enough, but what the herb did when it coursed through her blood and set her brain afire made the flavor seem a small thing. When she tasted ginger, she was as near omnipotent as made no difference. Somewhere back inside her mind, she knew both the omnipotence and the delight that came with it were illusions. She knew, but she didn’t care.
She also knew the euphoria she got from ginger wouldn’t last long enough to suit her. It never did. The only way it could have lasted long enough to suit her was never to end. But the herb didn’t work that way, however much she wished it did.
All too soon, she began to slide down into the depression that was the price she paid for the euphoria. She hissed in despair and walked over to the desk. She knew that if she tasted again, the depression would only be worse and deeper after that second taste. Again, she knew but she didn’t care. That would be later. She fel
t bad enough now to want to escape.
And escape wasn’t far away. She didn’t have to think to yank the top off the vial of ginger, pour some more of the herb into the palm of her hand, and lap it up. She sighed and shuddered with pleasure. Again she was brilliant, strong, invincible. Again she could-
The telephone hissed. She strode over to it as if she were the Emperor at a ceremonial function. She didn’t mind talking on the telephone while ginger lifted her; it made her feel more clever than the caller, whoever he might be. This time, she saw as she turned an eye turret toward the screen, it was Ambassador Veffani. “I greet you, superior sir,” she said, and assumed the posture of respect.
“And I greet you, Senior Researcher,” Veffani answered. “Please come to my office immediately. Several males and females have come from Cairo to discuss our present relations with the Reich, and your contributions would be valuable.”
Felless stared at him. “But, superior sir-” she began, and discovered the difference between feeling brilliant and actually being brilliant. If she went out of her office now, she would turn the whole embassy topsy-turvy, let alone that chamber full of males and females with fancy body paint. But what sort of excuse could she find for not coming when the ambassador required her presence? The ginger didn’t give her any marvelous ideas. She tried her best: “Superior sir, could I not participate by telephone? I am in the midst of an exacting report, and-”
“No,” Veffani broke in. “Conference calls with too many participants quickly grow confusing. Please come and give your insights in person.”
He said please, but he meant it as an order. “But, superior sir…” Felless repeated. “That might not be the best idea right now.” Veffani knew she had a ginger habit-or rather, he knew she had had one. She hoped he would be able to hear what she wasn’t saying.
If he could, he didn’t choose to. He said, “Senior Researcher, your presence is required here. I will see you directly.”
