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“I thank you,” Rance said again. Monique nodded. He switched to French for her: “It could be that this will work.”
“It could be,” she echoed. Then, just for a moment, she set a hand on his arm. “Thank you very much for trying. No one else has cared at all.”
“We’ll see what we can do, that’s all,” he said in English. “If you don’t bet, you can’t win.” He wasn’t sure he could have put that into French. She nodded again to show she understood.
Auerbach started to say something more, but a Lizard came up the hallway from the back part of the consulate. The receptionist pointed with his-her? — tongue. The newly arrived Lizard walked over to him and Monique and said, “I greet you. I am Felless. Which of you is which?”
“I am Auerbach,” Rance said in the Lizards’ language. Then he introduced Monique, adding, “And we greet you.” He wanted to laugh about Felless’ inability to tell them apart at a glance, but he didn’t. If Monique hadn’t told him, he wouldn’t have known Felless was a female, so why wouldn’t it work the other way?
“What is it that you want with me?” Felless asked. Did she recognize Monique’s name? Rance couldn’t tell. He didn’t think she would have heard his before. That was probably just as well.
He said, “Can we find some private space to speak?” That was probably a warning-it was certainly a warning if she had any brains-but he didn’t see what else he could do. He sure didn’t want to talk business out here in the foyer.
Felless drew back and hesitated before she spoke. She had brains, all right; she knew something was fishy, even if she didn’t know what. After that momentary hesitation, she said, “Very well. Come with me.” Brusquely, she turned away and went down the hallway from which she’d come. Rance and Monique followed.
He didn’t know what he’d expected: that she would take the two humans back to her own quarters, perhaps. She didn’t. The room into which she led them was the obvious Lizard equivalent of an Earthly conference room. Rance didn’t much like the Lizards’ chairs, which were too small and shaped for beings without much in the way of buttocks. With his bad leg, though, he liked standing even less. He sat. So did Monique.
Felless, for her part, paced back and forth. When she spoke, he thought he heard bitterness in her voice: “Now you will tell me what you want. It will be something to do with ginger, I do not doubt.”
“Not directly,” Auerbach said. “My friend here is a scholar. She is grateful that you saved her from the prison of the Francais.” He delivered a running translation for Monique, mostly in English, some in French.
“She is welcome,” Felless said. “What is the point of this? It is not directly connected to ginger, you said. How is it indirectly connected?”
“When the explosive-metal bomb destroyed much of Marseille, it destroyed Monique’s university, too,” Rance answered. “Now she has no position. She wants work in what she knows about, not in selling wrappings to other Tosevites.”
“How nice,” Felless said with polite insincerity. “But I do not see how that has anything to do with me.”
“We hoped you could use your connections and your high rank as a female of the Race to help her gain a position somewhere in France,” Auerbach said. “When a female of the Race, especially a high-ranking female of the Race, speaks, Tosevites have to pay attention.”
“Tosevites, from all I have seen, do not ‘have to’ do anything,” Felless answered. “And why should I help her again in any case?”
Before answering her, Rance spoke in English to Monique: “Now we see what we see.” He went back to the language of the Race: “Because you helped her before because of Business Administrator Keffesh.”
Felless flinched. Auerbach hid his smile. The female said, “What do you know of Business Administrator Keffesh?”
“I know he is in trouble for ginger,” Rance said. “I know you do not want authorities of the Race to know you did favors for him.”
“That is-” Felless used a word he didn’t know. He assumed it meant blackmail. She went on, “Why should I do anything like that, and how do I know you will not betray me even if I do?”
Now Rance did smile. When she put it like that, he knew he had her. He said, “I do not ask for money.” Yet, he thought. “I ask help for a friend, nothing more. She deserves help. She is a good scholar. She should have the chance to work at what she was trained to work at.”
“And what were you trained to work at, Rance Auerbach?” Felless demanded.
He smiled again, even if she might not understand exactly what the expression meant. “War,” he said.
“Were you?” Felless said. “Why am I not surprised? And if I refuse you, you will inform my superiors of my unfortunate connections.”
“We do not want to do that,” Rance said. “We want you to help us.”
“But if I do not help you, you will do this,” Felless said.
Rance shrugged. “I hope it is not needed. You are a scholar. Do you not want to help another scholar?”
“What sort of scholar is this Tosevite female?” Felless asked.
When Auerbach asked Monique just how she wanted to answer that, she said, “Tell her I studied-and want to go on studying-the history of the Roman Empire.” He translated her words into the language of the Race.
Felless sniffed. “I find it strange that you Tosevites should speak of empires. You do not really know the meaning of the word. There is only one true Empire, that of the Race.”
“Very interesting,” Rance said, “but it has nothing to do with what we are talking about here. Will you help my friend, or is it necessary for us to embarrass you?”
“ ‘Embarrass’ is not the word.” Felless sighed. “Very well. I will help. As you say, this is a relatively small matter.” She sounded as if she was trying to convince herself of that.
After Auerbach translated that for Monique, he said, “What do you think?”
“I think it is wonderful, if it is true,” she answered in English. “I will believe it is true when I see it, however.”
“If it’s not true, we’ll just have to talk to the Lizards’ authorities,” Rance said, also in English. Then he translated that into the language of the Race for Felless’ benefit. By the way she winced, she didn’t think she was particularly benefited. Rance’s smile got bigger. That wasn’t his worry. It was all hers.
To her astonishment, Monique Dutourd found that she enjoyed selling dresses. In her academic days, she’d learned how to deal with people without panicking. That served her in good stead now. She’d also learned to dress reasonably well without spending an arm and a leg: on a professor’s salary, she could barely afford to spend fingernail clippings. And so she could help other women look as good as they could without helping them to go brok
e doing it.
Her boss was a fellow named Charles Boileau. After she’d been working at the dress shop for a couple of weeks, he said, “I had my doubts about hiring you, Mademoiselle Dutourd. I thought you would either be too educated to work with the customers, or that you wouldn’t be able to learn the business. I was wrong both ways, and I’m not too proud to admit it.”
“Thank you very much.” Monique was pleased and, again, surprised to admit it to herself. “I’m glad you think I fit in.”
Boileau nodded. “I knew you knew what you were doing when you talked Madame du Cange out of that green dress without insulting her or making her ashamed of her own judgment.”
“I had to, sir, even though the sale we got was for a little less,” Monique said. “Madame du Cange is a woman of… formidable contours.” Her gesture said what she wouldn’t: that the customer in question was grossly fat. “If she’d bought that dress, she would have looked like nothing so much as an enormous lime with legs.”
Her boss was a sobersided man. He fought-and lost-a battle against laughter. “I wouldn’t have put it that way,” he said, “but I won’t tell you that you’re wrong.”
“And if she did that,” Monique said earnestly, “it would have reflected badly on her, and it would have reflected badly on us. People would have said, ‘Where did you get that dress?’ She would have told them, too-she would have thought it a compliment. And none of the people she told would have come here ever again.”
“It wouldn’t have been quite so bad as that, I don’t think,” Boileau said, “but your attitude does you credit.”
Her attitude turned out to do rather more than that. When she got her paycheck at the end of the week, it had an extra fifty francs in it. That wasn’t enough to make her rich. It wasn’t even enough to make her anything but very dubiously middle-class. But every one of those francs was welcome and more than welcome.
