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One of the locals said, “You could have stayed in Marseille. That, at least, would have shut you up when a bomb burst there.”
“Who addled your egg?” Felless retorted. “A bomb bursting here would have been the best thing that could happen to this place.”
That made all the locals in the luggage shop where Felless was trying to find something she liked hiss with derision. She didn’t care. As far as she was concerned, the new town was nothing but a small town back on Home dropped onto the surface of Tosev 3. Its males and females certainly struck her as provincial and clannish. They shouldn’t have; they’d come from all over the homeworld of the Race. But only a few years on Tosev 3 had united them against the world outside the borders of their settlement.
One of them said, “You do not know what you are talking about. Several bombs have burst not far from here. My friend was right. One of those bombs should have burst on you.” His tailstump quivered in fury.
His friend, a female, added, “Look at her body paint. She does research on the Big Uglies. That must mean she likes them. And if liking Big Uglies does not prove she is addled, what would?”
Males and females spoke up in loud agreement. Familiarity with the Tosevites had bred only contempt for them in Felless. To these members of the Race, though, she didn’t want to admit that. She said, “They are here. There are more of them than we thought there would be, and they know more than we thought they would. We have to deal with them as they are, worse luck.”
“We ought to get rid of all of them, as we got rid of the Deutsche,” a male said. “Then we could make this world into something worth having.”
“Not all the Deutsche are destroyed,” Felless said. “And they got rid of too many of us. How long did you fear this town would be under attack from explosive-metal bombs, as your neighbors were?”
“If you like Big Uglies so much, you are welcome to them,” a female said angrily.
There they were, again accusing Felless of something of which she was emphatically not guilty. With such dignity as she could muster, she said, “Since you will not listen to me, what point is there to my even talking to you?” Out she went, accompanied by the jeers of the locals.
The building in which she’d been housed was so overcrowded, it boasted only a few computer terminals rather than one for every male and female of the Race. She had to line up to get her own electronic messages and to send any to the rest of the Race on Tosev 3. And, having stood in line, she discovered that the messages waiting for her were not worth having.
She’d just turned away in disappointment when a ceiling-mounted loudspeaker called her name: “Senior Researcher Felless! Senior Researcher Felless! Report to the unit manager’s office immediately!”
Fuming, Felless went. If one of the idiot locals had complained about her because of the argument, someone was going to hear about it. She had every intention of being loud and obnoxious in her rebuttal. When she buzzed the door, the manager opened it. “What now?” Felless snapped.
“Superior female, you have a telephone call here. The caller did not want to route it into the dormitory, but sent it here for the sake of privacy,” the manager replied.
“Oh.” Some of Felless’ anger evaporated. Grudgingly, she said, “I thank you.”
“Here is the telephone.” The unit manager pointed. “I hope the news is good for you, superior female.”
When Felless saw who waited for her on the screen, her eye turrets twitched in surprise. “Ambassador Veffani!” she exclaimed. “I greet you, superior sir. I had no idea you-” She broke off.
“Were not communing in person with the spirits of Emperors past?” Veffani suggested. “When the Race bombed Nuremberg, I thought I would be, but the shelter we built proved better than that of the Deutsch not-emperor. If you think this disappointed me, you are mistaken. Of course, we were also trying harder to dispose of him than of me-or I hope we were, at any rate.”
“I am glad to see you well, superior sir,” Felless said, though she would not have been too sad to learn Veffani had perished in the war. He was a strict male, and had punished her severely for using ginger. Still, hypocrisy lubricated the wheels of social interaction. “What are your present duties? Are you still ambassador to the Reich? ”
Veffani made the negative hand gesture. “A military commissioner will deal with the Deutsche for the indefinite future. Since, however, I have considerable experience in the northwestern region of the main continental mass, I have been assigned as ambassador to the newly reconstituted not-empire of France.”
“Congratulations, superior sir,” Felless said with fulsome insincerity.
“I thank you. You are gracious.” Veffani knew a good deal about fulsome insincerity himself. He went on, “And, with your own experience in the Reich and in France, you would make a valuable addition to my team here. I have put in a requisition for your services, and it has been accepted.”
Felless knew she should have been furious at such high-handed treatment. Somehow, she wasn’t. If anything, she was relieved. “I thank you, superior sir,” she said. “Doing something useful to the Race will be a relief, especially after confinement in this refugee center and among the provincials who make up the bulk of the local population.”
“Do you know, Senior Researcher, I hoped you would say something like that,” Veffani told her. “You are a talented female. You have done good work. I am going to give you only one warning.”
“I think I already know what it is,” Felless said.
“I am going to give it to you anyhow,” the ambassador replied. “Plainly, you need to have it repeated again and again. Here it is: keep your tongue out of the ginger vial. The trouble you cause through your sexual pheromones outweighs any good you can do with your research. Do you understand me?”
“I do, superior sir.” Felless added an emphatic cough.
Veffani, however, had known her since not long after she came out of cold sleep. “Since you understand, will you obey?”
Not likely, Felless thought. Even here, even now, with no chance whatever for privacy, she ached for a taste. But Veffani would surely make her rot here if she told him the truth. And so, with next to no hesitation, she lied:
“It shall be done.”
She was not at all sure the diplomat believed her. By the way he said, “I shall hold you to that,” he might have been warning her he didn’t. But he continued, “You shall report to Marseille, where you were previously posted.”
“Marseille?” Now Felless was startled all over again. “I thought an explosive-metal bomb destroyed the city.”
“And so one did,” Veffani answered. “But rebuilding is under way. You will use your expertise in Tosevite psychology to guide the Big Uglies toward increased acceptance of the Race.”
“Will I?” Felless said tonelessly. “Superior sir, is this assignment not just a continuation of the punishment you have been inflicting on me for the unfortunate activity that occurred in your office in Nuremberg?”
“Unfortunate activity, indeed,” Veffani said. “You committed a criminal offense by tasting ginger, Senior Researcher, and you cannot delete that offense by means of a euphemism. You also created an enormous scandal when your pheromones disrupted my meeting and caused the males who had come from Cairo and me to couple with you. Only because of your skills have you escaped getting green bands painted on your upper arms and punishment much harsher than being forced to practice your profession where I order you to do so. If you complain further, you will assuredly learn what real punishment entails. Do you understand that?”
“Yes, superior sir.” What Felless really understood was that she wanted revenge on Veffani. She had no way to get it, or none she knew of, but she wanted it.
The Race’s ambassador to the Reich — no, to France now-said, “I do not ask you to be fond of me, Senior Researcher. I merely ask-indeed, I require-that you carry out your assignment to the best of your ability.”
“It shall be done,
superior sir.” Felless even believed Veffani. That made her no less eager for vengeance.
Veffani said, “A transportation aircraft is scheduled to leave your vicinity for Marseille tomorrow evening. I expect you to be on it.”
“It shall be done,” Felless said again, whereupon Veffani broke the connection.
And Felless was aboard that transport aircraft, though getting to it proved harder than she’d expected. It departed not from the new town in which she was a refugee, but from one that looked close on the map but was a long, boring ground journey away. Even getting her ground transportation proved difficult; local officials were anything but sympathetic to the problems refugees faced.
