Colonization_ Down To Earth Part 41

He was about to call Marshal Zhukov when the telephone rang. He was something less than astonished when his secretary told him the marshal waited on the other end of the line. "Put him through, Pyotr Maksimovich," he said, and then, a moment later, "Good day, Comrade Marshal." Best to remind Zhukov he was still supposed to be subservient to the Party. Molotov wished theory and practice coincided more closely.

Sure enough, all Zhukov said was, "Well?"

Suppressing a sigh, Molotov summarized the conversation with Queek. He added, "This means, of course, that we cannot even think about Operation Proletarian Vengeance for some time. It would not be safe."

"No. It was always risky." Zhukov agreed. "We would have had to blame the bomb on the n.a.z.is or the Americans, and we might well not have been believed. Now we can only hope the Germans don't give Mao a bomb and blame it on us." That was a horrifying thought. Before Molotov could do more than note it, Zhukov went on, "The west is more important. We are prepared for anything, Vyacheslav Mikhailovich, as best we can be."

"Good. Very good," Molotov said. "Now we hope the preparations are needless." He hung up. Zhukov let him get away with it. Why not? If things went wrong, who would get the blame? Molotov would, and he knew it.

Reuven Russie was examining the cyst on the back of a stocky old lady's calf when the air-raid sirens began to howl. "Gevalt!" "Gevalt!" the woman exclaimed, startled back into Yiddish from the Hebrew they'd been using. "Is it starting all over again, G.o.d forbid?" the woman exclaimed, startled back into Yiddish from the Hebrew they'd been using. "Is it starting all over again, G.o.d forbid?"

"It's probably just a drill, Mrs. Zylbring," Reuven answered the rea.s.suring tones that came in so handy in medicine were useful in other ways, too. "We've been having a lot of them lately, you know, just in case."

"And would we have them if we didn't need them?" Mrs. Zylbring retorted, to which he lacked such a rea.s.suring comeback.

Yetta the receptionist said, "No matter what it is, we'd better head for the bas.e.m.e.nt." She'd stayed in the examining room to make sure Reuven didn't get fresh with Mrs. Zylbring. He couldn't imagine himself that desperate, but protocol was protocol. He also had no comeback for her.

His father and the fat, middle-aged man Moishe Russie'd been looking at came out of the other examination room. They too headed for the bas.e.m.e.nt. As Reuven went down the steps, he wondered if hiding down there would save him from an explosive-metal bomb. He doubted it. He'd been a little boy on a freighter outside of Rome when the Germans smuggled in a bomb and blew the Eternal City's Lizard occupiers-and, incidentally, the papacy-to radioactive dust. That had been a horror from a lot of kilometers away. Close up? He didn't like to think about it.

He'd just gone into the shelter when the all-clear sounded. His father's patient said several pungent things in Arabic, from which the Jews of Palestine had borrowed most of their swear words: as a language used mostly in prayer for two thousand years, Hebrew had lost much of its own nastiness.

"It could be worse," Reuven told him. "It might have been the real thing."

"If they keep having alarms when no one's there, though, n.o.body will take shelter when it is the real thing:" the man answered, which was also true.

He kept on grumbling as they all went back upstairs. Once they'd returned to the examination room, Mrs. Zylbring asked Reuven, "Well, what can you do about my leg?"

"You have two choices," he answered. "We can take out the cyst, which will hurt for a while, or we can leave it in there. It's not malignant; it won't get worse. It'll just stay the way it is."

"But it's an ugly lump!" Mrs. Zylbring said.

"Getting rid of it is a minor surgical procedure," Reuven said. "We'd do it under local anesthetic. It wouldn't hurt at all while it was happening."

"But it would hurt afterwards. You said so." Mrs. Zylbring made a sour face. "And it would be expensive, too."

Reuven nodded politely. The training he'd had at the Lizards' medical college hadn't prepared him for dealing with dilemmas like this. He suspected he was a good deal more highly trained than he needed to be to join his father's practice. No, he didn't suspect it: he knew it. But he was also trained in some of the wrong things.

The old lady waggled a finger at him. "If it were your leg, Doctor, what would you do?"

He almost burst out laughing. The Lizards had never asked him a question like that. But it wasn't a bad question, not really. Mrs. Zylbring a.s.sumed he had all the answers. That was what a doctor was for, wasn't it-having answers? Answering what kind of condition she had was easy. Knowing what to do about it was a different question, a different kind of question, one Shpaaka and the other physicians from the Race hadn't got him ready to handle.

He temporized: "If the fact that it doesn't disturb function satisfies you, leave it alone. If the way it looks bothers you, I can get rid of it inside half an hour."

"Of course the way it looks bothers me," she said. "If it weren't for that, I wouldn't have come here. But I don't like the idea of you cutting on me, and I don't have a whole lot of money, either. I don't know what to do."

In the hope Yetta would have a good idea, Reuven glanced over to her. She rolled her eyes in a way suggesting she'd seen patients like Mrs. Zylbring a million times before but didn't know what to do about them, either. In the end, the old woman went home with her cyst. Reuven wished he'd tried harder to talk her into getting rid of it; his urge was always to do something, to intervene. If he hadn't had that urge, he probably wouldn't have wanted to follow in his father's footsteps.

But when he said as much to his father, Moishe Russie shook his head. "If it's not really hurting the woman, it doesn't matter one way or another. She'd have been unhappy at the pain afterwards, too, mark my words. If she'd wanted you to do it, that would have been different."

"The pain would be the same either way," Reuven said.

"Yes-but at the same time no, too," his father said. "The difference is, she'd have accepted it better if she'd been the one urging you to have the thing out. She wouldn't blame you for it, if you know what I mean."

"I suppose so," Reuven said. "Things aren't so cut-and-dried here as they were back in the medical college. You were always supposed to come up with the one right answer there, and you got into trouble if you didn't."

His father's chuckle had a reminiscent feel to it. "Oh, yes. But the real world is more complicated than school, and you'd better believe it." He got up from behind his desk, came around it, and clapped Reuven on the shoulder. "Come on. Let's go home. You haven't got homework any more, anyhow."

"That's true." Reuven grinned. "I knew I must have had some good reason for getting out of there."

Moishe Russie laughed, but soon sobered. "You did have a good reason, a very good one. And I'm proud of you."

"Can't you get the fleet lord to do anything about that?" Reuven asked as they left the office-Moishe Russie locked up behind them-and started for home.

Late-afternoon sunlight gleamed off Moishe Russie's bald crown as he shook his head. "I've tried. He won't listen. He wants everybody to reverence the spirits of Emperors past"-he said the phrase in the Lizards' language-"so we'll get used to bowing down to the Race."

"He'd better not hold his breath, or he'll be the bluest Lizard ever hatched," Reuven said.

"I hope you're right. With all my heart, I hope you're right," his father said. "But the Race is stubborn, and the Race is very patient, too. That worries me."

"How much is patience worth if we all blow up tomorrow?" Reuven asked. "That's what worries me."

Moishe Russie started to step off the curb, then jumped back in a hurry to avoid an Arab hurtling past on a bicycle. "It worries me, too," he said quietly, and then switched to Yiddish to add, "G.o.d d.a.m.n the stupid n.a.z.is."

"Everyone's been saying that for the past thirty years," Reuven said. "If He's going to do it, He's taking His own sweet time about it."

"He works at His speed, not ours," Moishe Russie answered.

"If He's there at all," Reuven said. There were days-commonly days when people were more stupid or vicious than usual-when belief came hard.

His father sighed. "The night the Lizards came to Earth, I was-we all were-starving to death in the Warsaw ghetto. Your sister Sarah already had. I'd gone out to trade some of the family silver for a pork bone. I threw a candlestick over the wall around the ghetto, and the Pole threw me the bone. He could have just cheated me, but he didn't. As I was walking back to our flat, I prayed to G.o.d for a sign, and an explosive-metal bomb went off high in the sky. I thought I was a prophet, and other people did, too, for a while."

"Sarah..." Reuven felt a sudden rush of shame. He hadn't thought about his dead sister in years. "I hardly remember her." He couldn't have been more than three when she died. All he really had was a confused recollection of not being the only child in the family. Unlike his parents, he brought little in the way of memories with him from Poland.

"She was very sweet and very mischievous, and I think she would have been beautiful," Moishe Russie said, which was about as much as he'd ever talked about the girl who'd died before the Lizards came.

"She sounds like the twins," Reuven said. He walked on again.

"Nu? Why not?" his father said. "There's something to this genetics business, you know. But maybe G.o.d really was giving me a sign, there in Warsaw that night. If the Lizards hadn't come, we'd surely be dead now. So would all the Jews in Poland-all the Jews in Europe, come to that." Why not?" his father said. "There's something to this genetics business, you know. But maybe G.o.d really was giving me a sign, there in Warsaw that night. If the Lizards hadn't come, we'd surely be dead now. So would all the Jews in Poland-all the Jews in Europe, come to that."

"Instead, it's only a big chunk that are, and the rest who are liable to be," Reuven said. "Maybe that's better, but it's a long way from good."

Moishe Russie raised an eyebrow. "So what you're accusing G.o.d of, then, is sloppy workmanship?"

Reuven thought about it. "Well, when you get right down to it, yes. If I do a sloppy job of something, I'm only human. I make mistakes. I know I'll make mistakes. But I expect better from G.o.d, somehow."

"Maybe He expects better from you, too." His father didn't sound reproachful. He just sounded thoughtful, thoughtful and a little sad.

"I don't like riddles." Reuven, now, Reuven sounded reproachful.

"No?" Moishe Russie's laugh came out sad, too. "What is life, then? You won't find the answer to that one till you can't tell anybody." He quoted from the Psalms: " 'What is man, that Thou art mindful of him?' G.o.d has riddles, too."

"Words," Reuven fleered, sounding even more secular than he felt. "Nothing but words. Where's the reality behind them? When I work with patients, I know what is and what isn't." He scowled, remembering Mrs. Zylbring. Things weren't always simple with patients, either.

From the Bible, his father swung to Kipling, whom he quoted in Yiddish translation: " 'You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din.' " He laughed again. "Or more likely you're just a younger man. We're almost home. I wonder what your mother's making for supper." He set a hand on Reuven's shoulder, hurrying him along as if he were a little boy. Reuven started to shrug it off, but in the end let it stay.

When they got home, the odor of roasting lamb filled their nostrils. So did the excitement of the twins, who, like Jacob with the angel of the Lord, were wrestling with algebra. "It's fun," Judith said.

"It's fun after you figure out what's going on, anyhow," Esther amended.

"Till then, your head wants to fall off," Judith agreed. "But we've got it now."

"Good," Reuven said; he hadn't liked mathematics that much himself. "Will you still have it next week, when they show you something new?"

"Of course we will," Esther declared, and Judith nodded confidently. He started to laugh at them, then caught himself. All at once, he understood why his father had trouble taking his c.o.c.ksure certainty seriously.

As Einstein had been, the Race was convinced nothing could travel faster than light. The crew of the Lewis and Clark, Lewis and Clark, though, had discovered something that did: rumor. And so, having caught the news from someone who knew someone who knew a radio operator, Glen Johnson felt no hesitation in asking Mickey Flynn, "Do you think it's true?" though, had discovered something that did: rumor. And so, having caught the news from someone who knew someone who knew a radio operator, Glen Johnson felt no hesitation in asking Mickey Flynn, "Do you think it's true?"

"Oh, probably," the number-two pilot answered. "But I'd have a better notion if I knew what we were talking about."

"That the Germans have sent Hermann Goring Hermann Goring out this way," Johnson said. out this way," Johnson said.

"Last I heard, he was dead," Flynn remarked.

If he didn't have the deadest pan on the ship, Johnson was d.a.m.ned if he knew who did. He restrained himself from any of several obvious comments, and contented himself with saying, "No, the s.p.a.ceship."

"Oh, the s.p.a.ceship s.p.a.ceship," Flynn said in artfully sudden enlightenment. "No, I hadn't heard that. I hadn't heard that it's not heading for this stretch of the asteroid belt, either, so you'd better tell me that, too."

Johnson snorted. That propelled him ever so slowly away from Flynn as they hung weightless just outside the control room. "I didn't think they could get it moving so soon," he said, reaching for a handhold.

"Life is full of surprises," Flynn said. "So is Look, Look, but but Life Life has more of them in color." has more of them in color."

"You're impossible," Johnson said. Flynn regally inclined his head, acknowledging the compliment. Johnson went on, "What do you think it means that they pushed their schedule so hard? Do you think they think the hammer's going to drop back home, and they're sending the ship out so they don't have all their eggs in one basket?"

Maybe the number-two pilot considered launching another joke. Johnson couldn't tell, not with his poker face. If Flynn was considering it, he didn't do it. Some things were too big to joke about. After a few seconds, Flynn said, "If they do think that way, they're fools. The Lizards can go after them out here, too."

"Sure they can," Johnson agreed. "But we have defenses. The n.a.z.is'll have 'em, too. They might even have better ones than ours-the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds are awfully d.a.m.n good with rockets."

Flynn nodded. "Okay, say they're twice as good as we are at knocking down whatever the Race sends after 'em. How often are you taking out the Lizards' missiles in our drills?"

"A little more than half the time."

"Sounds about right." Flynn nodded again. "Suppose they're getting eighty percent, then. I don't think they can do that well myself, but suppose. Now suppose the Lizards send ten pursuit missiles after them. How many are the Aryan supermen likely to stop?" He looked around, as if at an imaginary audience. "Come on, come on, don't everybody speak up at once. Did I make the statistics too hard?"

Fighting back laughter, Johnson said, "Odds are they'll knock down eight."

"That's true. Which leaves how many likely to get through?" Mickey Flynn held up two fingers, giving a broad hint. Before Johnson could suggest what he might do with those fingers, he went on, "And how many of those missiles need to get through to give everybody an unhappy afternoon?" Johnson wondered if he'd fold down his index finger to give the answer, but he decorously lowered his middle finger instead, getting the message across by implication rather than overtly.

"And even if they knock down all ten-" Johnson began.

"Chances of that are a little better than ten percent, on the a.s.sumptions we're using," Flynn broke in.

"If you say so. Remind me not to shoot c.r.a.ps with you, if we ever get somewhere we can shoot c.r.a.ps." Johnson tried to remember where he'd been going. "Oh, yeah. Even if the Germans knockdown all ten, the Lizards have a lot more than ten to send after 'em. And they only have to screw up once. They don't get a second chance."

"That's about the size of it, I'd say. The Germans can run, but it'll be a long time before they can hide." Flynn paused meditatively, then added, "And the Germans are liable to be looking over their shoulders all the way out here, anyhow. We took the Race by surprise. They had to be pretty sure of what the master race was up to."

"If the Lizards were human, I'd stand up and cheer if they whaled the stuffing out of the n.a.z.is, you know what I mean?" Johnson said. "Even though they aren't, I don't think my heart would break."

Flynn pondered that. "The two questions are, how badly do we-people, I mean-get hurt if everything west of Poland goes up in smoke, and how badly can the Germans hurt the Lizards before they go down swinging?"

"Bombs in orbit." Johnson spoke with authority there; he'd kept an eye on the n.a.z.is and Reds as well as the Lizards. Idly, he wondered how Hans Drucker was doing; he hadn't been a bad fellow, even if he did have a tendency to paw the air with his hooves and whinny whenever they played Deutschland uber Alles. Deutschland uber Alles. "Missiles inside the "Missiles inside the Reich. Reich. Submarines in the Mediterranean and prowling off Arabia and Australia, and every one of 'em loaded for bear. Not all the missiles would get through..." Submarines in the Mediterranean and prowling off Arabia and Australia, and every one of 'em loaded for bear. Not all the missiles would get through..."

"No. The Race has better defenses, and more of 'em, than we do," Flynn said. "But building missiles has been the German national sport for a long time."

"Heh," Johnson said, though it was anything but funny. "And the n.a.z.is aren't the sort to stop shooting as long as they've got any bullets in the gun, either. They'd just as soon go out in a blaze of glory."

"I wish I could say I thought you were wrong." Flynn answered. "Actually, I can say it, but it would sully my reputation for truthfulness. And now, if you'll excuse me, I am going to earn my paycheck." He pushed off from his own handhold and glided into the control room.

Gloomily, Johnson went in the opposite direction, into the bowels of the Lewis and Clark. Lewis and Clark. He hated war with the sincerity of a man who'd known it face-to-face. Even if it was a couple of hundred million miles away, even if it wouldn't directly involve the United States, he still hated it. And a war between the Lizards and the Germans would be big enough and nasty enough that the USA couldn't possibly be unaffected even if no American soldiers went into battle. He hated war with the sincerity of a man who'd known it face-to-face. Even if it was a couple of hundred million miles away, even if it wouldn't directly involve the United States, he still hated it. And a war between the Lizards and the Germans would be big enough and nasty enough that the USA couldn't possibly be unaffected even if no American soldiers went into battle.

And, if the Lizards decided to get rid of the Hermann Goring Hermann Goring, what would they do about the Lewis and Clark Lewis and Clark? Doing anything would get them into a war with the USA, but would they care if they were already fighting the Reich Reich? In for a penny, in for a pound.

He wished the Lewis and Clark Lewis and Clark had a bar. He would have liked to go and sit and have a couple of drinks. Things would have looked better after that. So far as he knew, n.o.body had rigged up a still yet. It was probably only a matter of time. Brigadier General Healey would pitch a fit, but not even he could stop human nature. had a bar. He would have liked to go and sit and have a couple of drinks. Things would have looked better after that. So far as he knew, n.o.body had rigged up a still yet. It was probably only a matter of time. Brigadier General Healey would pitch a fit, but not even he could stop human nature.

"Human nature," Johnson muttered. If that wasn't what was pushing the n.a.z.is into trouble, what was? Original sin? Was there any difference?

Human nature reared its head in a different way when Lucy Vegetti came swinging down an intersecting corridor. The Lewis and Clark Lewis and Clark's traffic rules had grown up from those back in the USA. Little octagonal STOP signs were painted on the walls at every corner, to warn people to be alert when crossing. Johnson always paid attention to them; you got going fast enough to hurt somebody when you barreled along without a care in the world-and some people did just that.

Lucy stopped, too. She smiled at Johnson. "Hi, Glen. How are you?" Before he could answer, she took a second look at him and said, "You don't seem very happy."

He shrugged. "I've been better-sort of wondering whether things would blow up back home."

"Doesn't sound good, does it?" she said soberly. "Maybe we're lucky to be way out here-unless the Lizards decide to clean us up as long as they're busy back on Earth. Sooner or later, we'll spread out too much to make that easy, but-"

"But we haven't done it yet," Johnson broke in. "Yeah." His chuckle was flat and harsh. "Can't even go out and get drunk. Nothing to do but sit tight and wait and see."

"I know what you mean." Lucy hesitated, then said, "When I came up from Earth, I brought along a quart of scotch. If you promise not to be a pig, you can have a sip with me. Once it's gone, it's gone for good."

Solemnly, Johnson crossed his heart "Hope to die," he said. He hadn't brought anything with him when he came up from Earth. Of course, he hadn't intended to stay aboard the Lewis and Clark, Lewis and Clark, and she had. and she had.

"Come on, then." She swung off toward her tiny cubicle. Johnson followed. He knew the way, even though they still weren't anything more than friends. But if she asks me in for a drink... I can hope, can't I? But if she asks me in for a drink... I can hope, can't I?