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“And I greet you, Ambassador,” Atvar replied. “Please be seated.” He waved the Big Ugly to a chair made for his kind.
“I thank you.” After Bieberback had sat down, he said, “Exalted Fleetlord, I am here to protest the arrogant and highhanded way in which the Race’s ambassador to the Reich presumed to pass judgment on our movements of soldiers within our own territory.”
“He did so at my express order,” Atvar said; he had learned from painful experience that rudeness worked better with the Deutsche than tact, which they took for weakness. “If you try to attack Poland, we will smash you flat. Is that plain enough for you to understand?”
“We deny that the Reich intended to do any such thing,” Ludwig Bieberback said. “We have a legitimate right of self-defense, and we were exercising it in a nonprovocative manner.”
“No, you were not, or I would not have had my warning delivered to you,” Atvar said. “And we do not find your denials credible. The Reich has carried on a covert conflict with the Race since the fighting stopped. To have that break into open war would not surprise us in the least, and you would not find us unprepared to take the harshest measures against your not-empire.”
“This presumption of yours is intolerable,” Bieberback said. “Is it any wonder so many Tosevites seek to be free of your rule?”
“Nothing Tosevites do is much of a wonder,” Atvar said. “Is it any wonder that the Race has to keep both eye turrets toward all Tosevite not-empires at all times, to make sure we are not treacherously assailed?”
“That is not how the Race operates in practice,” Bieberback answered, a whine coming into his mushy voice. “In practice, you persecute the Reich more than all others put together.”
“You have spoken an untruth,” the fleetlord told him. “And if we do keep a particularly close watch on the Reich, it is because the Reich has shown itself to be particularly untrustworthy.”
“Now you have spoken an untruth,” Ludwig Bieberback said, a discourtesy no one from the Race except Reffet would have presumed to offer Atvar. “If we cannot live in peace, we will have to see how else the Deutsche can obtain their legitimate rights from you.”
“If you try to take what you imagine to be your legitimate rights by force, you will discover how easy your not-empire is to devastate,” Atvar said.
“What gives you the right to make such threats?” Bieberback demanded.
“The power to make them good,” Atvar replied. “You and your not-emperor would be wise to remember it.”
Bieberback rose and bowed, the Tosevite equivalent of assuming the posture of respect. “I think there is little point to continuing these discussions,” he said. “The Reich will act in accordance to its interests.”
“Yes, the Reich would be wise to do that,” Atvar agreed. “It would also be wise to bear in mind that antagonizing the Race is not in its interest. Antagonize the Race enough and the Reich will abruptly cease to be.”
With another bow, the Big Ugly said, “We shall defend ourselves against your aggression to the best of our ability. Good day.” Without waiting for the fleetlord’s leave, he walked out of the office.
Atvar let out a long sigh. Pshing came in a moment later. The fleetlord said, “We shall have to keep ourselves at increased alert against the Reich. Plainly, the Deutsche have belligerent intentions.”
“Shall I prepare orders to that effect?” Pshing asked.
“Yes, do so,” Atvar answered. “So long as these Big Uglies see they cannot take us by surprise, they are unlikely to attack us. If we ignore them, we put ourselves in danger.”
“Truth,” Exalted Fleetlord,” Pshing said. “I shall draft the orders for your approval.”
“Very good.” Atvar made the affirmative hand gesture. “And when you transmit them to the males of the conquest fleet in Poland and in space, do not do so over the channels with the greatest security.”
His adjutant let out a startled hiss. “Exalted Fleetlord? If I follow that order, the Deutsche are only too likely to intercept our transmission. Much as I hate to say it, they are beginning to gain the technology required to defeat some of our less sophisticated scrambler circuits.”
“Yes, so I understand from some of the reports reaching us from the part of the Reich known as France,” Atvar replied. “In most circumstances, this is a nuisance-worse than a nuisance, in fact. But here, I want them to intercept the order. I want them to know we are alerted to the possibility of unprovoked attack from them. I want them to know that they will pay dearly if they make such an attack.”
“Ah.” Pshing assumed the posture of respect. “Exalted Fleetlord, I congratulate you. That is deviousness worthy of a Big Ugly.”
“I thank you,” Atvar said, even if the form of the compliment was not what he might have liked. “The Deutsche will feel they have genuinely important information if they think they are stealing it from us. If we give it to them, on the other fork of the tongue, they will think we want them to have it, and so will discount it.”
“Ah,” Pshing repeated. He turned an eye turret toward the fleetlord. “No one from the colonization fleet could possibly have such a deep understanding of the way Big Uglies think.”
That was a compliment Atvar could appreciate in full. “And I thank you once more,” he said. “By now, we of the conquest fleet have more experience of the Tosevites than anyone could want.”
“Even so,” Pshing said with an emphatic cough. “In aid of which, have you yet decided what we ought to do with the rabble-rouser named Khomeini now that he is finally in our hands?”
“Not yet,” Atvar said. “By the Emperor, though, having his hateful voice silenced is a relief. He is far from the only fanatical agitator in this part of the main continental mass, but he was among the most virulent and the most effective.”
“His followers are among the most virulent, too, even among those who follow the Muslim superstition,” Pshing said. “If he remains imprisoned, they are liable to stop at nothing in their efforts to free him.”
“I am painfully aware of this,” Atvar said. “We have, to our sorrow, seen too many such efforts-and too many of them have succeeded. I have made matters more difficult for the Big Uglies by ordering Khomeini transferred to a prison in the southern region of the lesser continental mass. The Big Uglies there speak a different language and follow the Christian superstition, so his influence among them should be much less than it would were we to have kept him incarcerated locally.”
“This also shows considerable understanding of Tosevite psychology,” his adjutant remarked.
“So it does, but I cannot take full credit for it,” Atvar said. “Moishe Russie suggested it to me. This Khomeini is almost as antithetical to the Big Uglies of the Jewish superstition as he is to us, so, as against the Deutsche, Russie wa
s able to make the suggestion in good conscience.”
“Excellent,” Pshing said. “We do our best when we can turn the Tosevites’ differences among themselves to our advantage.”
“The only trouble being, too often they abandon those differences to unite against us,” Atvar said. “They might even do that in the case of Khomeini, which is the main reason why I am considering ordering his execution.”
Both of Pshing’s eye turrets swung sharply toward him. “Exalted Fleetlord?” he said, as if wondering whether he’d heard correctly.
Atvar understood that. The Race had not used capital punishment since long before Home was unified. But he said, “This is a barbarous world, and ruling it-or ruling our portion of it-requires barbarous measures. During the fighting, did we not match the Big Uglies city for city with explosive-metal bombs?”
“But that was during the fighting,” Pshing answered.
“So it was,” Atvar agreed. “But the fighting on Tosev 3 has never truly stopped; it has only slowed.” He sighed. “Unless it comes to a boil again and destroys this world, it is liable to continue at this low level for generations to come. If we do not adopt our methods to the ones widely used and understood here, we will suffer more as a result.”
“But what shall we become if we do adapt our methods to those the Big Uglies use and understand?” Pshing asked.
“Barbarized.” Atvar did not flinch from the answer. “Different from the males and females on the other worlds of the Empire. Ginger contributes to such differences, too, as we know all too well.” He sighed once more. “Perhaps, over hundreds and over thousands of years, we will become more like those we have left behind.” After a moment, he sighed yet again, even less happily. “And perhaps not, too.”
The frontier between Lizard-occupied Poland and the Greater German Reich was less than a hundred kilometers west of Lodz. Mordechai Anielewicz used bicycle trips to the frontier region to keep himself strong-and to keep an eye on what the Nazis might be up to.
As he neared the border, he swung off the bicycle to rest and to try to rub the stiffness out of his legs. He wasn’t too sore; the poison gas he’d breathed all those years before sometimes dug its claws into him much harder than this. It was hot, but not too muggy; sweat didn’t cling as it might have on a lot of summer days. He stood on top of a small hill, from which he could peer west into Germany.
