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As she’d feared, Veffani’s image was the one that appeared on her monitor. “And I greet you, Senior Researcher,” he replied. “Welcome home. I trust your journey from Cairo went well?”
“I thank you, superior sir. Yes, it went well enough.” Felless was delighted to stick to polite commonplaces. “It went well enough till I landed here at Marseille, at any rate.” She had no trouble working up indignation while recounting the antics of her driver.
And Veffani was sympathetic there, when he’d proved much less so elsewhere. “This is a problem here, and it is a problem in many parts of Tosev 3 where we rule directly,” he said. “Before we came to Tosev 3, the Big Uglies did not even build their motorcars with safety belts. They kill one another by the tens of thousands, and seem utterly indifferent to the carnage.”
“I count myself lucky that I was not among the slain earlier today,” Felless said.
“I am glad you were not,” Veffani said. “I have had nothing but fine reports of your work in Cairo, and I take no small pleasure in telling you so.”
“That is very good news, superior sir,” Felless replied. You have no idea how good it is. If you did have any such idea, you would be telling me something altogether different. And you would take no small pleasure in that, either. “It was a very interesting experience, and one where I learned a good deal.”
“Do I understand that your commission concluded the Tosevite Warren acted as he did from reasons of policy rather than on a whim or out of despair after being discovered in his efforts against us?” Veffani asked.
“That is the consensus, yes,” Felless answered. “Thanks to data Straha obtained from private Tosevite sources, no other conclusion seemed possible.”
“Too bad,” Veffani said. “I would rather have been able to reckon him a fool, but he served his not-empire well.”
“He was a murderous barbarian, and I am glad to know that he is dead and no longer a danger to the Race,” Felless said.
“I agree with every word of what you have said,” Veffani answered. “None of that, however, in any way contradicts what I said.”
“No, I suppose not.” Felless paused and thought about the ambassador’s tone of voice. “You admire him, superior sir. Is that not a truth?” She knew she sounded accusing. She enjoyed sounded accusing, as a matter of fact. She’d spent a lot of time listening to Veffani’s accusations, which were usually all too well justified. Now she could get some of her own back.
“Maybe I do,” Veffani admitted. “Have you never admired some particularly skillful opponent in a game?”
“Of course I have.” Felless made her voice stiff with disapproval. “But I would hardly call our continuing struggle against the Big Uglies a game.”
“No? Would you not, Senior Researcher?” Veffani said. “Then what else is it? To me, it is the largest, most complex game ever played, and also the game with the highest stakes. One can hardly help respecting the Big Uglies who played it well.”
“They play it with our lives,” Felless said angrily.
“Well, so they do,” Veffani said. “We play it with their lives, too. And if you are going to look at methods, they have done few things to us that we have not also done to them. They save their worst horrors for their own kind.”
“And I suppose you will be excusing those next,” Felless said.
The ambassador made the negative gesture. “I excuse nothing. But neither do I diminish the Tosevites and their accomplishments. That is a failing too much encountered among the males and females of the colonization fleet. The Big Uglies are barbarians, yes. They are not fools.” He used an emphatic cough. “Treat them as fools and you will regret it.” That rated another emphatic cough.
“I understand, superior sir,” Felless said, which was a long way from saying that she agreed.
With maddening patience, Veffani said, “Experience will eventually teach you the same thing, Senior Researcher.” Felless thought he would say farewell then. Instead, he added, “Experience should also teach you to be wary of which males you choose as your acquaintances. Good day.” His image did disappear then.
Felless stared at the monitor even after Veffani was gone. He knows. She shuddered. He may not know quite enough to charge me, but he knows. What do I do now?
Penny Summers set hands on hips and glared at Rance Auerbach across their hotel room. She was wearing a beige dress with a flowery print. That almost made her disappear into the wallpaper, which was also beige and floral. She said, “I didn’t know we were setting ourselves up as a charity. I reckoned we got into this business to make money, not to save the poor and the downtrodden.”
“Oh, we might make some money off this,” Rance answered. He’d known Penny would be angry. He hadn’t thought she’d be quite so angry as she was.
“That’s not why you’re doing it, though,” she snapped. “You’re doing it because you think that little French gal is cute.”
Oho, he thought. So that’s it. As a matter of fact, he did think Monique Dutourd was cute, but letting Penny know that didn’t strike him as the smartest idea he’d ever had. He said, “Yeah, and I gave David Goldfarb a hand on account of he was just the prettiest thing I ever did see.” He rolled his eyes and sighed as if he meant it.
Penny did her best to stay mad, but she couldn’t quite manage. “God damn you,” she said affectionately. “You are a piece of work, aren’t you?”
“Have to be, to keep up with you,” he said. That was flattery, but flattery with a good deal of underlying truth. He went on, “Besides, with Pierre the Turd in the Lizard hoosegow, doing our regular sort of business isn’t as easy as it used to be. We ought to thank God he hasn’t ratted on us. So we’ll try something different for a while, okay? And his sister did warn us the Lizards caught him.”
Penny still didn’t look happy. “I know when I’m being sweet-talked, Rance Auerbach. I know when I’m being conned, too. And if this ain’t one of those times…”
“Then it’s something else,” Auerbach said. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you, if you’d only listen to me.”
“You’ve been trying to tell me all kinds of things,” Penny said sourly. “I haven’t heard a whole lot of what I’d call truth. But you’re bound and determined to try this, aren’t you?” She waited for Rance to nod, then nodded herself. “Okay. If it works out, great. If it doesn’t, or if you start fooling around behind my back, there’s not going to be any place far enough away for you to hide.”
Rance nodded again. “I like lost causes. I must. I took you in a while ago, didn’t I? Or did you manage to forget about that?”
Astonishment spread over her face as she raised a hand to her cheek. “Now you’ve gone and made me blush, and I don’t know when the hell the last time I did that was. Okay, Rance, go do it, and we’ll see what happens. But you better remember what I said about that French gal, too.”
“I’m not likely to forget,” he said. “You want to come along and hold my hand?”
“I oughta say yes,” Penny answered. “But you’re the one who speaks French, and I’m the one Pierre’s likelier to have fingered to the Lizards, if he went and fingered anybody. Go on. Just be careful, that’s all.”
“I will.” Auerbach wondered how much help he’d get from Penny if something did go wrong. One more thing I don’t want to have to find out, he thought.
He met Monique Dutourd in a little cafe not far from the dress shop where she’d found work after her brother was arrested. “Bonjour,” he said, and then, in English, “Are you ready?”
“I think so,” she said. “I hope so.” She rose, draining the wineglass in front of her.
“Then let’s go,” he said. “Allons-y. I have the taxi waiting outside.”
The taxi, inevitably, was a Volkswagen. Rance hated getting into and out of the buggy little holdovers from the Reich. Being knee to knee with Monique in the back seat made up for some of that, as it had with Penny, but not enough. Monique was the one who sp
oke to the driver: “The consulate of the Race, if you please.”
“It shall be done,” he said in the Lizards’ language, and got the VW going with a horrible clash of gears.
Getting out of the taxi, as usual, was even harder for Auerbach than getting into it had been. He paid off the driver; from what he’d seen, Monique wasn’t rolling in loot. They went into the consulate together. A Lizard looked up from whatever he-or maybe she-had been doing and spoke in hissing French: “Oui? Qu’est-ce que vous desirez?”
“We want to see the female named Felless,” Rance answered in the language of the Race. He didn’t speak it well, but judged it would be useful here.
It got the receptionist’s attention, at any rate. “I will ask,” the Lizard said. “Give me your names.”
“It shall be done,” Rance said, as the taxi driver had before him. Once he’d named himself and Monique, he added, “I thank you.” When dealing with Lizard officialdom, he made a point of being polite.
“You are welcome,” this Lizard said, so it must have done some good. “Now please wait.” After talking on the telephone, the Lizard swung an eye turret back toward Auerbach and Monique. “Senior Researcher Felless will be here shortly.”
