Down to Earth (52 page)

Somebody ran toward him—or maybe just toward the gold. Everyone human would be making a beeline for that. All the Lizards would be rushing toward the ginger, either to taste it or to grab it as evidence. Getting himself in deeper was the last thing he wanted to do, but Penny was there somewhere, and he’d been trained never to let the folks on his side down.

The running figure was about to run over him. He rose up onto his elbows and fired a round from his .38. With a soft grunt, the man toppled. His weapon clattered to the ground right in front of Rance, who grabbed it. His hands told him at once what he had: a Sten gun, about as cheap a way to kill lots of people in a hurry as humanity had ever made. He stuffed the pistol into a trouser pocket for a backup weapon; the submachine gun suited him a lot better now.

“Rance!” That was Penny, not very far away. He crawled toward her. One of his hands went into a pool of something warm and sticky. He exclaimed in disgust and jerked the hand away. “Rance!”

“I’m here,” he answered, and then, “Get down, goddammit!” What was she doing still breathing if she didn’t have the sense to hit the deck when bullets started flying? Another burst of gunfire from off to the right underscored his words. That was the direction from which Gorppet and his pals had come. They were making their getaway now, and doing a good, professional job of it. He wondered if they’d been able to nab the ginger before they started out of the fighting.

“Jesus Christ,” Penny said, this time sounding as if she was on the ground. “You still alive, hon?”

“Yeah, I think so,” Auerbach answered. “Where’s the gold? Where’s Frederick?” The African worried him more than the Lizards did. The Lizards played by their own rules. Frederick was liable to do anything to anybody.

“Fred’s dead, or I think so, anyway,” Penny said. “I sure to God shot him—I know that. Double-crossing son of a . . . You told him, Rance, but he didn’t want to listen. Gorppet’s worth a dozen of the likes of him.”

“Yeah.” But Auerbach remembered Penny had got herself in trouble by double-crossing her pals in a ginger deal. And . . . “Where’s the gold?” he repeated, more urgently this time.

“Oh. The gold?’ Penny laughed, then switched to the language of the Race: “I have it here, or some of it. How much can you carry?”

“I do not know,” Rance said in the same language—good security. “But I can find out, and that is a truth.”

“Suits me fine,” Penny said, reverting to English. “Here.”

She pushed something at Rance. It wasn’t a very big package, but it weighed as much as a child. He grinned. “Let’s see if we can slide out of here,” he said. “Without getting killed, I mean.”

“Yeah, that’s the best way.” Penny surprised him with a kiss. He wondered if they could make it. As long as Frederick’s pals and the Lizards kept a no-man’s-land between them, they had a chance. He also wondered how he would lug the gold and his cane and the Sten gun. Wishing for another pair of hands, he set off to do his best.

Atvar turned one eye turret from the computer screen toward his adjutant. “Well,
this
is a shame and a disgrace and a first-class botch,” he remarked.

“To what do you refer, Exalted Fleetlord?” Pshing asked. He approached the computer terminal. “Oh. The report on the unfortunate incident down at the southern end of the main continental mass.”

“Yes, the unfortunate incident.” Atvar’s emphatic cough said just how unfortunate an incident he thought it was. “When we discover a deal for ginger in progress, it is generally desirable to capture the guilty parties, the herb, and whatever was being exchanged for it. Would you not agree?”

His tone warned Pshing he had better agree. “Truth, Exalted Fleetlord,” he said.

Atvar pointed to the screen. “By this report, did we do any of those things in this incident? Did we accomplish even one of them?”

“No, Exalted Fleetlord,” Pshing said unhappily.

“No,” Atvar agreed. “No.
No
is the operative word indeed it is. No suspects, or none to speak of—only hired guns. No ginger. No gold—it was supposed to be gold, I gather. Two males killed, three wounded, and who can say how many Big Uglies? We have had a great many fiascoes in the fight against ginger, but this one is worse than most.”

“What can we do?” Pshing asked.

That was indeed the question. It had been the question ever since the Race discovered what ginger did to males, and had even more urgently been the question since the Race discovered what ginger did to females. No one had found an answer yet. Atvar wondered if anyone ever would. Not about to admit that to his adjutant, he said, “One thing we can do is make sure we do not disgrace ourselves in this fashion again.”

“Yes.” Pshing used the affirmative gesture. “Have you any specific orders to achieve that end, Exalted Fleetlord?”

“Specific orders?” Atvar glared at Pshing, wondering how to reply to that. He’d been giving very specific orders against ginger ever since it became a problem. It remained a problem, and was a worse problem now that the colonization fleet was here. Even in Cairo, even at this administrative center that had once been a Tosevite hotel, females sometimes tasted ginger. Atvar would get a distant whiff—or sometimes a not-so-distant whiff—of pheromones, and thoughts of mating would go through his mind, addling him and rendering him all but useless as far as work went for annoyingly long stretches of time.

He wondered if that was what Big Uglies were like all the time, forever distracted by their own sexuality. If it was, how did they ever manage to get anything done? Mating was good enough in the proper season, but thinking about it all the time was definitely more trouble than it was worth.

He also realized he hadn’t answered Pshing’s question. “Specific orders?” he repeated. “For this case, yes: every effort is to be made to track down the members of the Race and the Big Uglies responsible for this horrendous crime, and all are to be punished with maximum severity when apprehended.”

“It shall be done,” Pshing said. “It would have been done in any case, but it shall be done with all the more vigor now.”

“It had better be,” Atvar snarled. He went back to the report. After a moment, he snarled again, this time in raw fury. “The Tosevites involved in this crime, or some of them, are believed to be the ones we resettled in that area after their failure to help us as fully as they should have in Marseille? This is how they repay our forbearance? They must be punished—oh, indeed they must.”

“Their involvement is not proved,” Pshing said. “It is only that they have not been seen or overheard by monitoring devices in their apartment since the gun battle took place.”

“Where have they gone? Where could they have gone?” Atvar raged. “They are pale-skinned Big Uglies; they cannot find it easy to hide in a land where most have dark skins. That is one reason we sent them to this particular portion of the territory we control.”

His adjutant spoke consolingly: “We are bound to find them soon.”

“We had better,” Atvar said. “And our own males, involved in gun battles against each other? Disgraceful!”

“The criminals could even have been females,” Pshing said.

“Why, so they could,” Atvar said. “That had not occurred to me. But they handled weapons as if they were familiar with them, which makes it more likely they were males from the conquest fleet.”

“Were you not due to discuss with Fleetlord Reffet plans for the training of the colonists to aid the conquest fleet?” Pshing asked.

“Yes, I was.” Had Atvar been a Big Ugly, his face would have assumed some preposterous expression. He was sure of that. Fortunately, though, he didn’t have to show so much of what he thought. What he did show was bad enough; Pshing drew back a pace. But Atvar knew it needed doing, however little he relished it. “I had better take care of it,” he said, though he would sooner have faced a surgeon’s scalpel without anesthesia.

He made the call, consoled by the thought that Reffet would be as unhappy to talk with him as he was to talk with the fleetlord from the colonization fleet. In a matter of moments, Reffet’s image stared at him out of the screen. “What is it now, Atvar?” the other fleetlord demanded.

“I think you know,” Atvar replied.

“I know what you will ask for, yes,” Reffet said. “What I do not know is how I can hope to build a successful colony here on Tosev 3 if you take my males and females from their productive tasks and turn them into soldiers.”

By his tone, he had nothing but contempt for the males of them Soldiers’ Time. Atvar’s tailstump quivered with fury. “I do not know how you can hope to build a successful colony if the Big Uglies kill your males and females.”

“They should not be able to,” Reffet snapped.

“Well, they can. They can do a great many things we did not anticipate,” Atvar said. “High time you finally figured that out. In fact . . .” He paused, all at once much more cheerful. “Is it not a truth that we obtain many more manufactured goods from Tosevite factories than we anticipated?”

“Of course it is a truth,” Reffet said. “We did not anticipate the Big Uglies’ having any factories at all.”

“Does this not mean, then, that there are surplus workers from the colonization fleet who could be turned into soldiers without greatly disrupting the colonization effort?” Had Atvar been a beffel, he would have squeaked with joy.

Reffet paused before answering, from which Atvar concluded the other fleetlord hadn’t thought about that, and neither had his advisors. Maybe they hadn’t wanted to think about it, since doing so would have made them reexamine the way they looked at the colonists and at life on Tosev 3. Refusing to look at the unpleasant was a more common failing of Big Uglies than of the Race, but males and females from Home were not altogether immune.

At last, Reffet said, “This proposal may have some merit, if you think you can shape what is liable to be unpromising material into soldiers.”

“We can do that,” Atvar said. “We shall have to do that, since it is the material we have available. I guarantee we can. Send us the males—send us the females, too—and we shall make soldiers of them. We have been through the training of a Soldiers’ Time. We can duplicate it here.”

“You guarantee it? On the strength of no evidence?” Reffet said. “Merely on your unsupported word, you expect me to turn over to you males and females by the thousands? You have been dealing with Big Uglies too long, Atvar; you think like one yourself.”

Somehow, Atvar kept his temper under his command. Voice tight with the rage he was holding in, he said, “Well, if you will not turn them over, what brilliant idea for their use do you have?”

“Your notion may perhaps have some merit.” Reffet spoke with the air of a male granting a large concession. “I propose establishing a committee to study the matter and see how—and if—that notion might be implemented. Once we examine all possible factors impacting the proposal, we can make an informed decision on whether to go forward. Such is the way of the Race.” He sounded as if he thought Atvar needed reminding.

He was probably right about that. Atvar had got used to the headlong pace of life on Tosev 3. “Splendid, Reffet—splendid indeed,” he said, letting out the sarcasm he’d held in its eggshell till then. “And your magnificent committee will, no doubt, bring in its recommendations about the time the last male of the conquest fleet dies of old age. I am afraid that will be rather late, especially given the recent threats from the Deutsche. How long do you think our colonies can stay safe without soldiers to defend them?”

“I will tell you what I think,” Reffet snapped. “I think you see the males of the conquest fleet dying out and hope to gain power over some part of the colonization fleet so you will not fade into obscurity with their passing.”

“Eventually,” Atvar said, “you will review this conversation and realize what an addled cloaca you have been through the whole of it. When that time comes, I shall be glad to speak to you. Until then, however, I have no such desire.” He broke the connection, and felt like breaking the monitor, too.

“He does not understand,” Pshing said.

Up in Reffet’s spaceship, the other fleetlord’s adjutant was doubtless saying the same thing about Atvar. Atvar didn’t care what males or females from the colonization fleet thought. “Of course he does not. We do not fully understand the Big Uglies or the entire situation on Tosev 3, and we have been here a great deal longer than the colonists. But they know everything—and if for some reason you do not believe me, you have only to ask them.”

“What will you do about recruiting soldiers from the colonization fleet?” Pshing asked. “I think you are correct that a committee would be impossibly slow.”

“I know I am correct about that,” Atvar said. “What shall I do?” He thought, then began to laugh. “One thing I shall do at once is begin to accept volunteers for training. Reffet cannot possibly object, and I think there may be a fair number of colonists who would sooner do something with themselves than sit around in their apartments watching videos all day.”

“I hope you are right, Exalted Fleetlord,” Pshing said. “I think that a reasonable calculation myself. Will you truly include females as well as males among these new soldiers?”

“Why not?” Atvar said. “Females and males mix in almost every aspect of the Race’s life; it was only for the convenience of avoiding mating issues that the conquest fleet was made all-male. Those will arise now—and will be worse, thanks to the accursed Tosevite herb—but I think we will manage quite well. Accepting females also means we have a larger group of potential recruits. We need them, and we shall get them. It is as simple as that.” Atvar hadn’t the slightest doubt he was right.

As day followed day, Monique Dutourd discovered she had lived her whole life in Marseille without knowing half her city, maybe more. When she told that to Pierre, her older brother laughed at her. “You kept up the family’s
petit bourgeois
respectability too well,” he said. “You wouldn’t have wanted to have much to do with the black market or anything of that sort.”

“Everybody does a little,” Monique said. “One has to, to live; without the black market, especially in the days not long after the fighting, the whole city would have starved, the way the
Boches
stole everything in sight.”