Second Contact

by Harry Turtledove

  He was looking her over, too, with a smile she thought she remembered. “You look like me,” he said, his voice almost accusing, “but on you it looks good.” He glanced around the flat. “So many books! And have you read them all?”

  “Almost all,” she answered. A lot of people who saw the crowded bookshelves asked the same question. But then she gathered herself and asked a question of her own: “What are you doing here? When we talked on the telephone, you wanted nothing to do with me.”

  “Times change,” he answered, resolutely imperturbable. He had, no doubt, seen a lot of changes. With a shrug, he went on, “You must know what ginger does to female Lizards, n’est-ce pas?”

  “Yes, I know that,” Monique said. “If you will recall”—she could not resist letting her voice take on a sardonic edge—“I was here when the SS man warned you the Lizards in authority would be more upset about your trade than you thought.”

  “So you were.” No, Pierre was not easy to unsettle. In that, though Monique did not think of it so, he was very much like her. He went on, “Kuhn is not stupid. If the Nazis were stupid, they would be much less dangerous than they are. If they were stupid, we would have beaten them in 1940. Instead, we were stupid, France was stupid, and see what it got us.” Almost as an aside, he added, “The trouble with the Nazis is not that they are stupid. The trouble with the Nazis is that they are crazy.”

  “And what,” Monique inquired, “if you would be so kind as to inform me, is the trouble with the Lizards?”

  “The trouble with the Lizards, my dear little sister?” Pierre Dutourd finished his wine and set the glass on the table in front of him. “I should think that would be obvious. The trouble with the Lizards is that they are here.”

  Startled, Monique laughed. “So they are. But would we be better off if they were not? The Nazis—the crazy Nazis—could have conquered the whole world by now, and then where would we be?”

  “Trying to get along, one way or another,” Pierre answered. “That is all I ever wanted to do. I did not intend to become a smuggler. Who grows up saying, ‘I, I shall become a smuggler when I am a man’? I was working in a café in Avignon when it became clear the male Lizards were mad for ginger. I helped them get it and”—a classic Gallic shrug—“one thing led to another.”

  “What do you want from me?” Monique asked. “You still have not told me that.”

  “If I go home . . . if I go to any of the places I might call home, I believe I will end up slightly dead,” her brother answered with what was, under the circumstances, commendable aplomb. “As you will have gathered, the Lizards are less than happy with me and others in my trade right now. If they get their tongues on what I sell, then they are happy, but that is a different matter.”

  “Do you want help from the Germans, then?” Monique asked. “I don’t know how much I can do. I don’t know if I can do anything.”

  “Even though you are so fond of this Kuhn?” Pierre said. He sounded serious, damn him.

  Monique was serious, too, and seriously furious. “If you weren’t my brother, I’d throw you out of here on your arse,” she snapped. “I ought to do it anyway. Of all the things you could have said—”

  “It could be that I do not have reason here,” Pierre said. “If I am mistaken, I can only apologize.”

  Before Monique could answer, someone else knocked on her door. This knock was soft and casual. It could have come from a friend, even a lover. Monique didn’t think it did. By the way he stiffened, neither did Pierre. His hand darted into a trouser pocket and stayed there. Monique said, “For what may be the first time in the history of the Reich, I hope that is the SS out there.”

  “Yes, that is a curiosity, isn’t it?” her brother agreed. “Well, you had better find out, hadn’t you?”

  She went to the door and opened it. Sure as sure, there stood Dieter Kuhn, bold as the devil. Behind him were three uniformed SS men, all carrying submachine guns. “May I come in?” he asked mildly. “I know who your company is. I assure you, I shall not be jealous.”

  Too much was happening too fast. Monique stood aside. The SS men tramped into her flat and closed the door behind them. One spoke in German to Kuhn: “Now we do not have to look as if we captured you, Herr Sturmbannführer.” Monique’s spoken German was rusty but functional.

  “Ja,” Kuhn agreed. “But if I came here in uniform, Professor Dutourd’s reputation among her neighbors would suffer.” He shifted back to French as he turned toward Pierre Dutourd: “We meet at last. Your scaly friends are less friendly now than they used to be. Did I not predict this?”

  “Sometimes anyone can be right,” Pierre replied. “But yes, there are leading Lizards who want me out of the business I have been in.”

  “We do not want you out of business,” Kuhn said. “We want you to go right on doing what you have been doing. Is this not agreeable to you?”

  “Doing it under your auspices,” Pierre said glumly.

  “But of course.” The SS man was cordial, genial.

  “It must be that you don’t understand,” Monique’s brother said. “I had grown used to being free. I am one of the few people in the Reich who was.”

  “You were one of the few people who was,” Kuhn returned, genial still. “But there is a difference between what you call unfreedom and what the Reich can call unfreedom. If you care to experience that, I assure you I can arrange it.” He nodded to his tough-looking henchmen. Monique’s heart leapt into her throat.

  But Pierre sighed. “One does what one can do. One does only what one can do. Without you and without the Lizards, I cannot go on. Since the Lizards seem in a bit of a temper for the time being, I must place myself in your hands.” He sounded anything but overjoyed.

  With the airtight door to his quarters shut, Ttomalss felt safe and secure. The Race had included such doors to the embassy in Nuremberg because the Deutsche were so proficient at manufacturing poisonous gases. But, when closed, the doors also kept out the females’ pheromones that had cast the Race into so much confusion.

  Ttomalss wished he could stay in there and never come out. He had psychological training; he understood the concept of wanting to return to the egg. Most of the time, such desires were pathological. Here, though, he had solid practical reasons for viewing the outside world as a source of peril.

  Had he so desired, he could have gone to the computer to find out how many of the workers at the embassy were females. The computer, unfortunately, could not tell him how many of those females tasted ginger. More did so every day, though; he was sure of that. And when they tasted, and for a while after they tasted, they went into their season.

  And the pheromones they released stayed in the air, and excited any male who smelled them. Ttomalss, having almost fought the Race’s ambassador to the Reich, did not care to brawl again. Nor did he care for the half addled feeling even a thin dose of pheromones gave him. His eye turrets kept swinging this way and that, searching for ripe females who, frustratingly, were not there. And he had trouble thinking straight; the desire for mating kept clouding his mind, distracting him, teasing him.

  His mouth fell open in a bitter laugh. Veffani had said the mating season would be sweet, back there at the start when Ttomalss and the ambassador both coupled with Felless for the first time. Veffani was a clever, cultured male, but seldom had any member of the Race made a greater blunder on Tosev 3.

  At the computer, Ttomalss struggled once more with the problem the Deutsche posed the Race: not so much in the sense of physically endangering it, although this not-empire was dangerous, but in ideological terms. He could not grasp how and why intelligent, capable individuals would subscribe to what appeared to him to be such obvious nonsense. The Race had been grappling with that since the arrival of the conquest fleet, and grappling in vain.

  He examined Felless’ notes on her talk with Eichmann and his own interview with the Big Ugly called Höss. They were consistent with other data the Race had compiled on the Reich. The Deut
sche, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, remained convinced they were genetically superior to other Tosevites; that the Deutsch word Herrenvolk translated as Master Race hatched endless sardonic mirth among Ttomalss and his fellows.

  That the Deutsche put their theory into practice by attempting to exterminate those they judged genetically inferior had puzzled and horrified the Race ever since it came to Tosev 3. The government of the Reich had not changed its policy in all that time, either. The only reason its exterminations had slowed was the increasing scarcity within its borders of members of the proscribed groups.

  Ttomalss dictated a note for the computer to record: “Recent interviews confirm that one reason the Deutsche have been able to succeed with their policy of extermination is the equally relentless policy of euphemism they use in connection with it. Big Uglies tend to focus on words as opposed to actions to a greater degree than is common among the Race. If they conceive themselves to be ‘carrying out a final solution’ rather than ‘killing fellow Tosevites of all ages and sexes,’ they do so without worrying about the truth behind the screen of words. A male or female of the Race, if faced with such a prospect, would be likelier to go mad.”

  But the Tosevites are mad to begin with, he thought. Nevertheless, he left the note unrevised. No one—certainly no one among the Race—could argue against the madness of the Deutsch notempire. Unfortunately, no one could argue against the success of the Deutsch not-empire during the time just before and after the arrival of the Race, either.

  What did that combination of success and madness mean? The most obvious answer was, a quick end to success. Pundits among the Race had been predicting that for the Greater German Reich ever since its noxious nature became obvious. So far, they’d been wrong. Anyone who chose anything obvious pertaining to Tosev 3 seemed doomed to disappointment.

  He had just thought of something new to add to the note when the door hissed for attention. Whatever the thought was, it fled for good. He cursed in mild annoyance, then turned on the exterior microphone to ask, “Who is it?”

  “I: Felless,” came the reply from the corridor.

  Ttomalss felt like jumping out the window. Unfortunately, he would have bounced off it instead; it was made from an armored glass substitute. “Superior female, have you tasted ginger during the past day?”

  “I have not,” Felless said. “I swear by the Emperor.”

  “Very well.” Ttomalss cast down his eyes in automatic respect undimmed by living so long on Tosev 3. “You may enter.” He hit the control that opened the door. “If you are lying, we shall both regret it.”

  As soon as Felless had come into the room, Ttomalss closed the door behind her. Not much air from the corridor could have come in with her, but he still got a whiff of pheromones. For a bad moment, he thought they were hers, and that she had lied to him. Then he realized he did not smell them strongly enough to send him into the full frenzy of the season, only enough to make him jumpy and edgy and acutely aware she was a female, where in normal times he would have ignored the sex difference.

  “I greet you, superior female,” he said, as dispassionately as he could.

  “I greet you,” Felless returned. Then she pointed. “The scales of your crest are trying to rise. I am not in my season now.”

  With an effort of will, Ttomalss was able to make the offending scales lie flat. He did his best to quell the turmoil he could not help feeling. “No doubt it is someone else’s pheromones I smell, then, superior female,” he said. “And how may I help you today?”

  Part of what he meant was, Could you have sent me a message and not disturbed me by coming in person? The pheromones had not—quite—addled him enough to make him say that out loud.

  If Felless understood the subtext of the question, she gave no sign of it, which was probably just as well. She said, “I want to discuss with you the ideology of the Deutsch Big Uglies as it relates to their policy of massacring other groups of Tosevites of whom, for whatever obscure reasons, they fail to approve.”

  “Ah,” Ttomalss said. “As it happens, I was just recording a few notes on that very topic.” She’d made him forget what he was going to say next, too, but he was not so pheromone-addled as to tell her that, either.

  “I should be grateful for your insights,” Felless said, sounding more like a working member of the Race and less like a female in heat than she had for some time. Maybe she really was fighting the urge to taste ginger.

  “Insights?” Ttomalss shrugged. “I am far from sure I have any of significance. I do not pretend to be an expert on the Deutsche, only a student of Tosevites in general who is attempting with limited success to apply that general knowledge to a particular situation more unusual than most.”

  “You do yourself too little credit,” Felless said. “I have heard males speak of Tosevites with unusual insight into the Race. I think your experience in rearing Big Ugly hatchlings makes you the converse to these.”

  “It could be so. I had hoped it would be so,” Ttomalss answered. “But I must confess, I am still puzzled by Kassquit’s reaction on learning you and I had mated.” He’d spent a good deal of the time since that unfortunate telephone conversation trying to repair the bond he had formerly established with the Tosevite fosterling. He remained unsure how far he had succeeded.

  Felless said, “Mating, as I have been forcibly reminded of late, is not a rational behavior among us. Things relating to it must be even less subject to rational control among the Big Uglies.”

  “Now that, superior female, is an insight worth having,” Ttomalss said enthusiastically. “It shows why you were chosen for your present position.” It was, in fact, the first thing he’d noted that showed why Felless was chosen for her present position, but that was one more thing he did not mention.

  “You flatter me,” Felless said. As a matter of fact, Ttomalss did flatter her, but she offered the sentence as a conversational commonplace, and so he did not have to rise to it.

  He had just finished recording Felless’ remark when the computer announced he had a telephone call. He started to instruct it to record a message, but Felless motioned for him to accept it. With a shrug, he did. The computer screen showed a familiar face. Kassquit said, “I greet you, superior sir.”

  “I greet you, Kassquit,” Ttomalss said, and waited for the sky to fall: she would be seeing not only his image but also Felless’.

  To make matters worse, Felless added, “And I greet you, Kassquit.”

  “I greet you, superior female,” Kassquit said in tones indicating she would sooner have greeted the female researcher as pilot of a killercraft equipped with tactical explosive-metal missiles.

  “What do you want, Kassquit?” Ttomalss asked, hoping he could keep the conversation short and peaceful.

  “It was nothing of great importance, superior sir,” the Tosevite he’d raised from a hatchling replied. “I see that you are busy with more important matters, and so will call back another time.”

  Had he taught her to flay him with guilt in that fashion? If he hadn’t, where had she learned it? She reached for the switch that would break the connection. “Wait!” Ttomalss said. “Tell me what you want.” Only later, much later, would he wonder if she had moved more slowly than she might have, to make him beg her to stay on the line.

  “It shall be done, superior sir,” she said now, and even her obedience wounded. “I was wondering if you, in the capital of the Deutsch not-empire, could hope to have any influence over the smuggling of the illegal herb ginger through the territory of the Greater German Reich.”

  “I do not know,” Ttomalss said. “The Deutsche, like other Tosevites, have a habit of ignoring such requests. They would doubtless want something from us in exchange for acting otherwise, and might well want something we do not care to yield to them.”

  “Still, the notion might be worth considering,” Felless said. Ttomalss had studied Kassquit for a long time. He knew her expressions as well as anyone of a different speci
es could. This was, he thought, the first approval Felless had won from her.

  Lieutenant Colonel Johannes Drucker looked from his fitness report to Major General Walter Dornberger’s face. “Sir, if you can explain to me why my marks have slipped from ‘excellent’ to ‘adequate’ in the past year, I would appreciate it.”

  That that was all he said, that he didn’t scream at Dornberger about highway robbery struck him as restraint above and beyond the call of duty. He was, he knew perfectly well, one of the best and most experienced pilots at Peenemünde. A fitness report like this said he’d stay a lieutenant colonel till age ninety-two, no matter how good he was.

  Dornberger didn’t answer at once, pausing instead to light a cigar. When the base commandant leaned back in his chair, it squeaked. Unlike some—unlike many—in high authority in the Reich, he hadn’t used his position to aggrandize himself. That chair, his desk, and the chair in front of it in which Drucker sat were all ordinary service issue. The only ornaments on the walls were photographs of Hitler and Himmler and of the A-10, the A-45’s great-grandfather, ascending to the heavens on a pillar of fire, soon to come down on the Lizards’ heads.

  After a couple of puffs and a sharp cough, Major General Dornberger said, “You should know, Lieutenant Colonel, that I was strongly urged to rate you as ‘inadequate’ straight down the line and drum you out of the Wehrmacht.”

  “Sir?” Drucker coughed, too, without the excuse of tobacco smoke in his lungs. “For the love of God, why, sir?”

  “Yes, for the love of God,” Dornberger said, as if in a story by Edgar Allan Poe. “If you think along those lines for a moment, a possible explanation will come to you.”

  A moment was all Drucker needed. “Käthe,” he said grimly, and Dornberger nodded. Drucker threw his hands in the air. “But she was cleared of those ridiculous charges!” They weren’t so ridiculous, as he knew better than he would have liked. He chose a different avenue of attack: “And it was thanks to your good offices that she was cleared, too.”