by neetha Napew
later when the Lizards came to complicate the situation yet again.
Molotov went on, "Partisan movements against both the invaders and the governments collaborating with them should also be organized and armed as expeditiously as possible. Leaders who favor submission must be removed by whatever means prove necessary." He said the last with a hard look at Joachim von Ribbentrop.
The German foreign minister was dense, but not too dense to miss that message. "The Fuhrer still feels a personal fondness for Mussolini," he said, sounding more than a little embarrassed.
"No accounting for taste," Churchill rumbled. "Still, Minister Molotov is correct: we are past the stage where personal likes and dislikes ought to influence policy. The sooner Mussolini is dead and buried, the better for all
of us. Some German forces remain in Italy. They might well be the ones to give him the boot, or rather take him from it for good."
The interpreter stumbled over the idioms in the last sentence, but Molotov got the gist. He added, "Having the Pope join Mussolini in the grave would also be a progressive development. Since the Lizards do not interfere with his bleating preachments, he fawns on them like a cur."
"But would a successor prove any better?" Shigenori Togo asked. "Along with this, we must also ask ourselves whether making the Pope into a martyr would in the long run prove harmful by generating hatred for our cause among Catholics all over the world."
"This may perhaps need to be considered," Molotov admitted at last. His own instinct was to strike at organized religion wherever and however he could. But the Japanese foreign
minister had a point—the political repercussions might be severe. The Pope had no divisions, but many more followed him than had backed Leon Trotsky, now dead with an ice ax in his brain. Not one to yield ground lightly, Molotov added, "Perhaps the Pope could be eliminated in a way which makes the Lizards appear responsible."
Cordell Hull screwed up his face. "This talk of assassination is repugnant to me."
Soft, Molotov thought again. The United States, large, rich, powerful, and shielded by broad oceans east and west, had long enjoyed the historical luxury of softness. Not even two world wars had made Americans feel in their guts how dangerous a place the world was. But if they could not awake to reality with the Lizards in their own back yard, they would never have another chance.
"In war, one does what one must," Churchill
said, as if gently reproving the secretary of state. The British prime minister could see past his button of a nose.
The all-clear sirens began to wail. Molotov listened to the long sigh of relief that came from the Foreign Office workers all around. They'd got through to the far side of another raid. None of them thought that only meant they'd have the dubious privilege effacing another soon.
The office staff formed a neat queue to leave the shelter and get back to work. Molotov had seen endless queues in the Soviet Union, but this one seemed somehow different. He needed a few seconds to put his finger on why Soviet citizens queued up with a mixture of anger and resignation, because they had no other way to get what they needed, (and because they suspected even queuing up often did no good). The English were more polite about it, as if they'd silently decided it
was the one proper thing to do.
Their revolution is coming, too, Molotov thought, to sweep away such bourgeois affectations. Meanwhile, affected bourgeois though they were, they seemed likely to stay in the fight against the Lizards. So did the other three powers, though Molotov still had his doubts about Germany: any nation that let a nonentity like Ribbentrop become foreign minister had something inherently wrong with it. But the chief capitalist states were not giving up yet, even if Italy had stabbed them in the back. That was what he'd needed to learn, and that was the word he would take back to Stalin.
Sam Yeager shepherded two Lizards down the corridor of the Zoology Building of the Hull Biological Laboratories. He still carried his
rifle and wore a tin hat, but that was more because he'd grown used to them than because he thought he'd need them. The Lizards made docile prisoners— more docile than he'd have been if they'd caught him, he thought.
He stopped in front of room 227A. The Lizards stopped, too. "In here, Samyeager?" one of them asked in hissing English. All the Lizard POWs pronounced his own name as if it were one word; what their mouths did to Sam Finkelstein was purely a caution.
Yeager got the idea his command of their tongue was as villainous as their English. He was doing his best with it, though, and answered, "Yes, in here, Ullhass, Ristin, brave males." He opened the door with the frosted-glass window, gestured with the barrel of the rifle for them to precede him.
In the outer office, a girl was clattering away
on a noisy old Underwood. She stopped when the door opened. Her smile of greeting froze when she saw the two Lizards. "It's all right, ma'm," Yeager said quickly. "They're here to see Dr. Burkett. You must be new, or else you'd know about them."
"Yes, it's my first day on the job," answered the girl— actually, Yeager saw with a second look, she was probably in her late twenties, maybe even early thirties. His eyes flicked automatically to the third finger of her left hand. It had a ring. Too bad.
Dr. Burkett came out of his sanctum. He greeted Ullhass and Ristin in their own language; he was more fluent than Yeager, though he hadn't been learning for nearly as long. 77?af's why he's a fancy-pants professor and I'm a bush-league outfielder. Yeager thought without much resentment. Besides, the Lizards liked him better than they did Burkett; they said so every time they went
back to their own quarters.
Now, though, Burkett waved them into his office, shut the door behind them. "Isn't that dangerous?" the girl asked nervously.
"Shouldn't be," Yeager answered. "The Lizards aren't troublemakers. Besides, Burkett's window, is barred, so they can't get away. And besides one more time"— he pulled out a chair—"I sit here until they come out, and I go in and get 'em if they don't come out inside of a couple of hours." He reached into his shirt pocket, drew out a pack of Chesterfields (not his brand, but you took what you could get these days) and a Zippo. "Would you like a cigarette, uh—?"
"I'm sorry. I'm Barbara Larssen. Yes, I'd love one, thanks." She tapped it against the desk, put it in her mouth, leaned forward to let him light it. Her cheeks hollowed as she sucked in smoke. She held it, then blew a long plume at
the ceiling. "Oh, that's nice. I haven't had one in a couple of days." She took another long drag.
Yeager introduced himself before he lit his own smoke. "Don't let me get in your way if you're busy," he said. "Just pretend I'm part of the furniture."
"I've been typing nonstop since half past seven this morning, so I could use a break," Barbara said, smiling again.
"Okay," Yeager said agreeably. He leaned back in his chair, watched her. She was worth watching: not a movie-star beauty or anything like that, but pretty all the same, with a round, smiling face, green eyes, and dark blond hair that was growing out straight though its ends still showed permanent waves. To make conversation, he said, "Your husband off fighting?"
"No." That should have been good news, but her smile faded anyhow. She went on: "He was working here at the university— at the Metallurgical Laboratory, as a matter of fact. But he drove to Washington a few weeks ago. He should have been back long since, but—" She finished the cigarette with three quick savage puffs, ground it out in a square glass ashtray that sat by her typewriter.
"I hope he's all right." Yeager meant it. If the fellow needed to travel bad enough to do it with the Lizards on the loose, he was up to something important. For that matter, Yeager wasn't the sort to wish bad luck on anybody.
"So do I." Barbara Larssen did a game best to hold fear out of her voice, but he heard it all the same. She pointed to the pack of Chesterfields. "I hope you won't think I'm just scrounging off you, but could I have another one of those?"
"Sure."
"Thanks." She
nodded to herself as she started to smoke the second cigarette. "That is good." She tapped ash into the ashtray. When she saw Yeager's eyes follow the motion of her hand, she let out a rueful laugh. "Typing is hell on my nails; I've already broken one and chipped the polish on three others. But after a while I got to the point where I couldn't stand just sitting around cooped up in my apartment any more, so I thought I'd try to do something useful instead."
"Makes sense to me." Yeager got up, stubbed out his own smoke. He didn't light another for himself; he wasn't sure where his next pack was coming from. He said, "I suppose keeping busy helps take your mind off things, too."
"It does, some, but not as much as I hoped it would." Barbara pointed to the door behind
which Dr. Burkett was studying the Lizards. "How did you end up standing guard over those—things?"
"I was part of the unit that captured them, out west of here," he answered.
"Good for you. But how did you get picked to stay with them, I mean? Did you draw the short straw, or what?"
Yeager chuckled. "Nope. Matter of fact, I broke an old Army rule— I volunteered."
"You did?" Her eyebrows shot upward. "Why, for heaven's sake?"
Rather sheepishly, he explained about his fondness for science fiction. Her eyebrows moved again; this time, their inner ends came together in a tight little knot above her nose. He'd seen that expression before, more times than he could easily count. "You don't care for
the stuff," he said.
"No, not really," Barbara said. "I was doing graduate work in medieval English literature before Jens had to move here from Berkeley, so it's not my cup of tea." But then she paused and looked thoughtful. "Still, I suppose it's done a better job of preparing you for what's happening here than Chaucer has for me."
"Mmm— maybe so." Sam had been ready with his usual hot defense of what he read for pleasure; finding out he didn't need it left him feeling like a portable phonograph that had been wound up and forgotten without a record on its turntable.
Barbara said, "As for me, if I couldn't type, I'd still be stuck in that Bronzeville flat."
"Bronzeville?" Now Yeager's eyebrows went up. "I don't know a lot about Chicago"— If I'd ever played here. I would (the thought was
there and gone fast as a Lizard jet)—"but I do know that's not the real good part of town."
"Nobody's ever bothered me," Barbara said. "With the Lizards here, the differences between whites and Negroes look pretty small all of a sudden, don't they?"
"I suppose so," Yeager said, though he didn't sound convinced even to himself. "But whatever color they are, you'll find more than its share of crooks in Bronzeville. Hmm— tell you what. What time do you get off here?"
"Whenever Dr. Burkett feels like turning me loose, it sounds like," she answered. "I already told you, I'm new on the job. Why?"
"I'd walk you home, if you like... Hey, what's so darn funny?"
Laughing still, Barbara Larssen threw back her head and made a noise that might have
been a wolfs howl. Yeager's cheeks turned hot. Barbara said, "I think my husband might approve of that idea in the abstract, but not walking along the concrete, if you know what I mean."
"That's not what I had in mind at all," Yeager protested. Not until the words were out of his mouth did he realize he wasn't telling the whole truth. The front of his mind had made the offer innocently enough, but some deeper part knew he might have kept quiet if he hadn't found her attractive. He was embarrassed that she'd seen through him faster than he saw through himself.
"No harm in your asking, and I'm sure it was kindly meant," she said, giving him the benefit of the doubt. "Men only turn really annoying when they can't hear 'no thank you' or don't believe it, and I see you're not like that."
"Okay," he said, as noncommittal a noise as
he could come up with.
Barbara put out her second cigarette, looked at her wristwatch (the electric clock on the wall wasn't running), and said, "I'd better get back to work." She bent over the typewriter. Her fingers flew; the keys made machine-gun bursts of noise. Yeager had known a few reporters who could crank more words a minute than Barbara was putting out now, but not many.
He leaned back in his chair. He couldn't imagine an easier duty: unless something went wrong inside Dr. Burkett's office, or unless Burkett needed to ask him something (not likely, since the scientist seemed convinced he already knew everything himself), he had nothing to do but sit around and wait.
A lot of people would have got bored in a hurry. Being a veteran of long hours on trains
and buses, Yeager was made of tougher stuff than that. He thought about baseball, about the science fiction he read to kill time between one town and the next, about the Lizards, about his small taste of combat (plenty to last him a lifetime if he got his way, which he probably wouldn't).
And he thought about Barbara Larssen. There she sat in front of him, after all. She wasn't ignoring him, either; every so often, she'd look up from her work and smile. Some of his thoughts were the pleasant but meaningless ones with which any man will while away the time in the presence of a pretty girl. Others had a bitter edge to them: he wished his former wife had cared about him while he was traveling the way Barbara obviously cared about her husband. What was his name? Jens, that was it. Whether he knew it or not, Jens Larssen was one lucky fellow.
After a while, the door to Dr. Burkett's office
opened. Out came Burkett, looking plump and pleased with himself. Out came Ristin and Ullhass. Yeager wasn't so good at figuring out what their expressions meant, but they weren't in any obvious distress. Burkett said, "I'll want to see them again same time tomorrow, soldier."
"I'm sorry, sir," said Yeager, who was not sorry at all, "but they're scheduled to spend all day tomorrow with a Doctor, uh, Fermi. You'll have to try another time."
"I know Dr. Fermi!" Barbara Larssen exclaimed. "Jens works with him."
"This is most inconvenient," Dr. Burkett said. "I shall complain to the appropriate military authorities. How is one to conduct a proper experimental program when one's subjects are snatched away at inconvenient and arbitrary times?"
What that meant, Sam thought, was that Burkett hadn't bothered to check the schedule before he made his list of experiments. Too bad for him. Aloud, Yeager said, "I'm sorry, sir, but since we have a lot more experts than we do Lizards, we have to spread the Lizards around as best we can."
"Bah!" Burkett said. "Fermi is just a physicist. What can they possibly have to teach him?"
He plainly meant it as a rhetorical question, but Yeager answered it anyhow: "Don't you think he might be a little interested in how they came to Earth in the first place, sir?" Burkett stared at, him; maybe he'd assumed joining the Army precluded a man from having a mind of his own.
Barbara said, "Shall I schedule you for another session with the Lizards as soon as they're available, Dr. Burkett?"
"Yes, do that," he answered, as if she were part of the furniture. He stamped back into his private chamber, slamming the door behind him. Barbara Larssen and Yeager looked at each other. He grinned; she started to giggle.
"I hope your husband comes home safe, Barbara," he said quietly.
Her laughter stopped as abruptly as if cut by a knife. "So do I," she answered. "I'm worried. He's been gone longer than he said he would." Her gaze settled on the two Lizards, who stood waiting for Yeager to tell them what to do next. He nodded. Everyone's life would have been simpler without the Lizards.
"Anybody gives you a bad time because he's not around, you let me know," he said. He'd never had a reputation for being a hard case while he was playing ball, but he hadn't carried around a bayonet-tipped rifle then, either.
"Thanks, Sam; I may do that," she said. Her tone was just cool enough to let him know again that he shouldn't be the one who gave her a bad time. He answered with a sober expression that let her know he got the message.
He turned to the Lizards, gestured with his gun
. "Come on, you lugs." He stood aside to let them precede him out of the office. Barbara Larssen picked up the telephone on her desk, made a face, put it down. No dial tone, Yeager guessed— everything was erratic these days. Burkett's next go-round with the Lizards would have to wait a while.
The Plymouth's engine made a sudden, dreadful racket, as if it had just been hit by machine-gun fire. Jens Larssen knew a mechanical death rattle when he heard one. On the dashboard panel in front of him, the
battery and temperature lights both glowed red. He wasn't overheated and he knew he still had juice. What he didn't have any more was a car. It rolled forward another couple of hundred yards, until he pulled off onto the shoulder to keep from blocking Highway 250 for anyone else.