by neetha Napew
"I was thinking the Americans," Mordechai answered. "They've lost Washington, so they know in their bellies this thing is real. For all we know, they were working on it already. They have enough scientists there— plenty who fled to America away from you fascists, by all accounts. And it's big, like Russia; they'd have plenty of places to hide from the Lizards while they figured things out."
Jager thought about that. He had an instinctive reluctance to hand over strategic material to the enemy— but compared to the Lizards, the Americans were allies. And even in terms of purely human politics, the more counterbalances to Moscow, the better. But one large question remained: "How do you
propose to get this stuff across the Atlantic?"
He'd expected Mordechai to blanch, but the Jew was unperturbed "That we can manage easier than you'd think. The Lizards don't trust us as far as they used to, but we can still move pretty freely through the countryside— and we can get to the sea."
"Then what?" lager said. "Put your saddlebag on a freighter and sail for New York?"
"You say it as a joke, but I think we could do it," Mordechai answered. "There's a surpnsing lot of water traffic going on; the Lizards don't automatically attack it the way they do trains and lorries. But no, I hadn't intended to put it on a freighter. We have ways of getting a submarine here without the Lizards' noticing. We've done it a couple of times already, and it ought to be good for one more run."
"A submarine?" American? Ja'ger thought. No,
more likely British. The Baltic had been a German lake; a few months earlier, a British U-boat captain would have been suicidal to poke his periscope into it. Now, though, Germany had more urgent worries than British subs. "A submarine." This time, Ja'ger made it a statement. "You know, that might be crazy enough to work."
"Oh, we're crazy, all right," Mordechai said. "If we weren't crazy before the war, you Nazis made us that way." His laugh was full of self-mockery. "And now I must be crazier than ever, dickering to help Nazis make something that might be the end of the world. Only some ends are worse than others, eh?"
"Yes." Ja'ger felt just as strange, dickering with Communists and now Jews. Now that he was close to Germany again, he suddenly wondered how his superiors— and the Gestapo— would view his dealings since the Lizards blew his Panzer III out from under
him. But unless the world had turned completely insane, what was in the lead-lined saddlebag would redeem almost any amount of ideological contamination. Almost.
"We are agreed?" Mordechai asked.
"We are agreed," Ja'ger said. Afterward, he was never sure which of them first stuck out a hand. They both squeezed, hard.
Atvar was busy checking the latest reports on how the Race was coping with the insane winter weather of Tosev 3 when a musical note from his computer reminded him of an appointment. He spoke into the intercom mike: "Drefsab, are you there?"
"Exalted Fleetlord, I am," came the reply from an antechamber. Of course no one would presume to make the commander of the
Race's force wait, but formality persisted nonetheless.
"Enter, Drefsab," Atvar declared, and pressed a button on his desk that made it possible for the operative to enter.
The fleetlord hissed in shocked dismay when Drefsab came into the office. The investigator had been one of his brightest males, infiltrating Straha's staff to try to learn how the shiplord was spying on him and also dueling with Big Ugly intelligence agents who lacked his tools but made up for that with deceit unmatched even around the Emperor's court. He'd always been dapper and crisp. Now his body paint was smeared, his scales dull, his pupils dilated.
"By the Emperor, what's happened to you?" Atvar exclaimed.
"By the Emperor, Exalted Fleetlord, I find I
must report myself unfit for duty," Drefsab answered, casting down his eyes. Even his voice sounded as if he had rust in the works somewhere.
"I can see that," Atvar said. "But what's wrong? How have you become unfit?"
"I took it in my mind, Exalted Fleetlord, to investigate how traffic in the Tosevite herb called ginger was affecting our males. I realize I did so without orders, but I judged the problem to be of sufficient importance to justify the breach in conduct."
"Go on," Atvar said. Males who did things without orders were vanishingly rare in the Race, though that kind of initiative seemed all too common among the Big Uglies. If this was what happened when the Race tried to match the Tosevites for sheer energy, the fleetlord wished his starships had never left Home.
Drefsab said, "Exalted Fleetlord, to evaluate both the traffic in ginger and the reasons for its spreading use, I deemed it necessary to seek out and sample the herb for myself. I regret to have to inform the fleetlord that I myself have fallen victim to its addictive properties."
Males of the Race's primitive ancestors had been hunters, carnivores. Atvar bent his fingers into the position that gave his claws the best opportunity to rend and tear. He did not need more bad news, not now. Tosev 3, and especially winter on Tosev 3's northern hemisphere, were giving him plenty of bad news by themselves.
He had to say something. He didn't know what. At last he tried, "How could you do such a stupid thing, knowing your value to the Race?"
Drefsab hung his head in shame. "Exalted
Fleetlord, in my arrogance I assumed I could investigate, could even sample the illicit herb, with no ill effects. I was, unfortunately, mistaken. Even now the craving burns in me."
"What is it like, to be under the influence of this ginger substance?" The fleetlord had read reports, but his confidence in reports was not what it had been back Home. The report on Tosev 3, for instance, had made it sound like an easy conquest.
"I feel— bigger than myself, better than myself, as if I am capable of undertaking anything," Drefsab said. "When I don't have that feeling, I long for it with every scale of my skin."
"Does this drug-induced feeling have any basis in reality?" Atvar asked. "That is, viewed objectively, do you in fact perform better while taking ginger than without it?" He had a moment of hope. If the noxious powder turned
out to be a valuable pharmaceutical, some good might yet spring from Drefsab's initiative.
But the agent only let out a long, whistling sigh. "I fear not, Exalted Fleetlord. I have examined work I produced shortly after tasting ginger. It contains more errors than I would normally find acceptable. I made them, but simply failed to notice them because of the euphoria the drug induces. And when I have not tasted ginger in some time... Exalted Fleetlord, it is very bad then."
"Very bad," Atvar echoed in a hollow voice. "How do you respond to this craving, Drefsab? Do you indulge it at every opportunity, or do you resist as best you can?"
"The latter," Drefsab answered with a certain melancholy pride. "I go as long as I can between tastes, but that period seems to decrease as time passes. And I am also at less than maximum effectiveness in the black
interval between tastes."
"Yes." Although with regret, Atvar's thoughts now turned purely pragmatic: how could he get the best use out of this irrevocably damaged male? Decision came quickly. "If you find yourself more valuable to the Race than without taking it, use it at whatever level you find necessary for your continued function. Ignore all else. I so order you, for the good of the Race."
"It shall be done, Exalted Fleetlord," Drefsab whispered.
Atvar went on, "I further order you to record in diary form all your reactions to this ginger. Physicians' views of the problem are necessarily external; your analysis from the ginger user's perspective will furnish them valuable data."
"It shall be done," Drefsab repeated, more
heartily now.
"Further, continue your investigation into the trafficking in this drug. Bring down as many of those involved in the foul trade as you can."
"It shall be done, Exalted Fleetlord," Drefsab said for the third time. For a moment, he sounded like the keen young male, the hunting solmek, he had always been for Atvar
. But then he wilted before the fleetlord's eyes, asking piteously, "Exalted Fleetlord, if I bring them all down, whence shall my further supply of ginger come?"
Atvar hid his disgust. "Seize all you need to ensure your own stock for as long as you wish to continue your habit," he said, reasoning that Drefsab on ginger was likely to make a better agent than he would pining for the herb, and was also likely to remain a better agent than any male, no matter how sober, he appointed in his place. To salve his
conscience, Atvar added, "Our physicians will continue to seek a cure for this Tosevite herb. Spirits of dead Emperors grant they find it soon."
"Aye, Exalted Fleetlord. Even now, I crave—" With a shudder, Drefsab broke off in the middle of the sentence. "Have I the Exalted Fleetlord's gracious leave to depart?"
"Yes, go on, Drefsab, and may Emperors past look kindly on you."
Drefsab's salute was ragged, but the male seemed to pull himself together as he left the fleetlord's office. If nothing else, Atvar bad imbued him with fresh purpose. The fleetlord himself was depressed as he returned to his paperwork. / hate this cursed world, he thought. One way or anothei it is made only for driving the Race mad.
His treatment of Drefsab left him no happier. Subordinate males owed their superiors obedience; superiors, in turn, were bound to grant those males under them support and consideralion. Instead, he'd treated Drefsab exactly as he would have handled a useful but inexpensive tool: he'd seen the cracks, but he'd go on using it till it broke, then worry about acquiring another one.
Back Home, he'd not have used a male so. Back Home, he had luxuries long forgotten on Tosev 3, not least among them time to think. The Race made it a point never to do anything without due reflection. When you planned in terms of millennia, what was a day— or a year— more or less? But the Big Uglies did not work that way, and forced haste and change on him because they were so cursedly mutable themselves.
"They've corrupted me along with Drefsab," he said mournfully, and went back to work.
"What is this thing, anyway?" Sam Yeager asked as he lifted a piece of lab apparatus off a table and stuck it in a cardboard box.
"A centrifuge," Enrico Fermi answered, which left Yeager little wiser than he had been before. The Nobel laureate crumpled old newspaper— not much in the way of new newspaper around these days— and padded the box with it.
"Don't they have, uh, centrifuges where we're going?" Yeager said.
Fermi threw his hands in the air in a gesture that reminded Yeager of Bobby Fiore. "Who knows what they have? The more we are able to bring, the less we shall have to rely on that which is and remains uncertain."
"That's true, Professor, but the more we bring,
the slower we're liable to move and the bigger the target we make for the Lizards."
"What you say is so, but it is also a chance we must take. If, having relocated, we cannot perform the work required of us, we might as well have stayed here in Chicago. We flee not just as individuals, but as an operating laboratory," Fermi said.
"You're the boss." Yeager closed the box, sealed it with masking tape, pulled a grease pencil out of his shirt pocket. "How do you spell 'centrifuge?'" When Fermi told him, he wrote it on the top and two sides of the box in big black letters.
He ran out of tape while sealing another centrifuge, so he went down the hall to see if he could snag another roll. The supply room had plenty; these days, the Metallurgical Laboratory got the best of whatever was left in Chicago. He was heading back to give Fermi
more help when Barbara Larssen came out of a nearby room. The frosted glass window in the door from which she emerged was striped with tape to keep splinters from flying if a bomb hit nearby.
"Hi, Sam," Barbara said. "How's it going?"
"Not bad," he answered, pausing for a moment. "Tired. How about you?"
"About the same." She looked tired. From somewhere, she'd got hold of some face powder, but it couldn't hide the dark circles under her eyes. The slump in her shoulders had nothing to do with the stack of file folders she carried. It spoke more of not enough sleep, too much work, too much fear.
Yeager hesitated, then asked, "Any good news?"
"About Jens, you mean?" Barbara shook her
head. "I've just about given up. Oh, I still go through the motions: I just now left a note with Andy Reilly— do you know Andy?— saying where we were going to give to Jens in case he ever does come back."
"The janitor, you mean? Sure. I know Andy. That's a good idea; he's reliable," Yeager said. "Where are we going? Nobody's bothered to tell me. Of course, I'm just a cook and bottle-washer around here, so it's not surprising."
"Denver," Barbara said, "if we can get there."
"Denver," Sam repeated. "Yeah, I played there. I was with Omaha, I think." That had been in the days before he broke his ankle, when the Class A Western League was a step up on a road he hoped would lead to the big leagues. Somehow he'd stayed even when he knew the road went nowhere. He shook his head, forcing his thoughts back to the here-
and-now. "Why Denver? We'll have the devil's own time getting there from here."
"I think that's part of the idea," Barbara said. "The Lizards haven't bothered it much, especially since winter started. We'll be safer there, with a better chance to work... if, as I said, we can get there."
Yeager noticed that as / said. From his lips, it would have come out like I said. But then, he hadn't done graduate work in English. They probably ran you out of the university on a rail if you used bad grammar; it had to be a sin on the order of trying to go from second to third on a ball hit to short-stop. He snorted.
He still had baseball on the brain. Barbara said, "Listen, I'd better take these downstairs." She hefted the folders.
"I've got to get back to it, too," Yeager said. "You take care of yourself, you hear? I'll see
you on the convoy."
"Okay, Sam. Thanks." She walked down the corridor toward the stairway. Sam's eyes followed her. Too bad about her husband, he thought. Now even she'd started admitting to herself that he wasn't coming back. But even worn as she was, she remained too pretty, and too nice, to stay a widow forever. Yeager told himself he'd do something about that, if and when he got the chance.
Not now. Back to work. He taped up the second centrifuge box, then, grunting, piled both of them onto a dolly. He set the sole of his Army boot against the bar in the back, tilted the dolly into the carrying position. He'd learned the trick as a moving man one offseason. He'd learned how to get a loaded dolly downstairs, too: backward was slower, but a lot safer. And from what Fermi said, every gadget here had to be treated as irreplaceable.
He was sweating from effort and concentration both by the time he got down to ground level. Camouflage netting covered a large expanse of lawn in front of Eckhart Hall. Under it, with luck concealed from Lizard fighter-bombers, huddled a motley collection of Army trucks, moving vans, stakebed pickups, buses and private cars. Uniformed guards with loaded rifles and fixed bayonets surrounded them, not so much to keep them from being stolen as from having their gas tanks siphoned dry. They were all full up, and in war-ravaged Chicago gasoline was more precious than rubies.
He didn't begin to understand all the things people were stowing in them. One olive-drab Studebaker truck was full of nothing but blocks of black, smeary stuff, each with a number neatly stenciled onto the end. It was as if somebody had taken apart a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle and planned on putting it back together once he got to
Colorado. But what was the thing for?
He turned and asked one of the men who'd got stuck behind him in a stairway traffic jam. The fellow said, "It's graphite, to moderate the pile, slow down neutrons so uranium atoms have a better chance of capturing them."
"Oh." The answer left Yeager less than enlightened. He clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. Not for the first time, he found that reading science fiction, while it put him ahead of where he would have been without it, didn't magically turn
him into a physicist. Too bad.
Barbara came outside with another load of file folders. Yeager went back and gave the graphite blocks another look so he could walk back upstairs with her. If she noticed what he was doing, she didn't complain, but let him fall into step beside her.
They'd just got to the doorway when antiaircraft guns began to pound off to the west. In moments, the noise spread through the city. Above it, through it, came the scream of Lizard planes' jet engines, and then the flat, hard cruump! of bombs going off. Barbara bit her lip. "Those are close," she said.
"Mile, maybe two, north," Yeager said. Like everyone else in Chicago, he'd become a connoisseur of explosions. He put a hand on Barbara's shoulder, happy for the excuse to touch her. "You get under a roof. Shrapnel'll start falling any minute, and you aren't wearing a tin hat." He rapped his own helmet with his knuckles.