Down to Earth (35 page)

Behind the corrective lenses, Himmler’s eyes swung her way. She had dealt with him before, but not often. Only now did she get the strong impression that his stare said he wished she were dead, and also that he wished he could arrange her death. Considering the policies of the
Reich
, he doubtless meant that literally. Had she been subject to his whimsy, she would have been terrified. Even as things were, that measuring gaze disturbed her.

“I repeat: I deny it,” Himmler said. “And I speak the truth when I tell you this.” His features moved very little as he spoke; for a Big Ugly, he showed scant visible expression.

“Do you also deny troop movements toward the frontier between the
Reich
and Poland have taken place?” Veffani demanded.

“I do not deny that there have been such movements, no,” Himmler said. “I deny that there is anything in the least aggressive about them, however. The
Wehrmacht
and the
Waffen-SS
conduct exercises as best suits them.”

“They would be well advised—very well advised—to conduct them elsewhere in the
Reich
,” Veffani said.

“You cannot give me orders,” Himmler said. “The
Reich
is a sovereign and independent not-empire.”

“I am not giving you orders. I am giving you a warning,” Veffani said. “Here is another one: if you attack Poland, the Race will destroy you.”

“If you attack the
Reich
, we will also destroy you,” Himmler said. “We can wreck this world, and we will do it.”

“He means what he says, superior sir,” Felless whispered to Veffani. “The ideology of this faction—perhaps of all the Deutsche—is full of images of battle destroying both sides.”

“I also mean what I say,” Veffani answered. He swung his eye turrets back toward the Tosevite leader. “That does not matter. If we are destroyed to ensure your destruction, we shall pay the price.”

“It would be the end for you. Do you not understand that?” Himmler said.

“No, it would not,” Veffani made the negative hand gesture. “It would be a setback for us. It would be an end for us on this world. But the Empire would continue on its other three worlds. For you Tosevites, though, it would indeed be the end. Please carry that thought in your mind at all times.”

“If we could reach your other worlds, you would regret this arrogance and insolence,” Himmler said. “That time may come, and sooner than you think.”

“The better the chance you have of reaching our other worlds, the likelier it is that we will find it necessary to destroy you first,” Felless said.

Indeed, Himmler wished her dead. He said, “We are the master race, and not to be trifled with.”

“We crossed the space between the stars to come to Tosev 3,” Veffani said. “You cannot match that. Who then are the masters?”

Felless thought—hoped—that would make Himmler lose his temper. She had read of the spectacular rages that would seize the not-emperor’s predecessor, and had viewed video of a couple of them. Even across species lines, they were appalling in their intensity and ferocity.

But the present
Reichs
Chancellor seldom seemed to get very excited about anything. Through his interpreter, he answered, “You have a much longer history than we do. We had almost caught you by the time you came here. We are closer now than we were then. Before long, we shall surpass you. If this is not the mark of the master race, what is?”

His certainty was in its way as frightening as his predecessor’s volcanic wrath. And he raised good points, alarming points. Where
would
the Tosevites be in a few hundred years?
All over the Empire,
was the thought that sprang into Felless’ mind. And if they came to Home or to Rabotev 2 or Halless 1, they would come as conquerors. The thought chilled her worse than the weather on Tosev 3.

But Veffani said, “Have you not listened to a word I told you? If you are on the point of becoming a menace to the Empire as a whole rather than merely to this planet, we will destroy you and ourselves here rather than allowing that to happen.”

To Felless’ dismay, Himmler yawned. “By the time you perceive the threat, you will not be able to destroy it. We will have gone too far ahead of you by then. You of the Race had best bear that in mind and behave accordingly. Your time is passing away. Ours is coming.”

Before Veffani could speak, Felless did: “Then the best thing we could do would be to destroy you now, while you cannot hope to prevent us from doing it.”

That got through to the Big Ugly. Himmler fixed her with a glare that warned he did know rages like his predecessor’s, even if he didn’t show them on the outside. He said, “If you try, we shall have our vengeance on you.”

“And yet, despite your knowledge of the ruin that would fall on your not-empire, you planned an attack against the Race,” Veffani said. “You need to consider very carefully the likely consequences of your actions.”

“I have already denied your allegations,” Himmler said. “I deny them again.” But his tone when he spoke his own language carried no conviction, and neither did the interpreter’s in the language of the Race.

“See that your denial becomes and remains a truth,” Veffani said, rising from the uncomfortable Tosevite chair. He assumed the posture of respect, then straightened. “I bid you farewell.” He left the
Reichs
Chancellor’s office, Felless following him.

“Will he listen?” Felless asked when they had returned to the comfortably heated motorcar and begun the return journey to the Race’s embassy.

“Who can say? You are the expert on Big Uglies,” Veffani replied, which was disingenuous; having come to this world with the conquest fleet, he had more experience with Tosevites than she did. But then he went on, “You did well there, Senior Researcher. Your remarks to me were germane, and, while you irked Himmler, you did so without attempting to be deliberately inflammatory.”

“I thank you, superior sir,” Felless answered. “What point to being inflammatory? You would not let me leave even if I were.”

“High time you begin to realize such things,” Veffani said in what sounded more like approval than anything she’d heard from him since disgracing herself with him and the visiting males from Cairo. Maybe his measured praise should have made her pleased at doing her duties well. To a degree, it did. But thinking about her disgrace also made her think about how much she wanted another taste of ginger.

“I greet you.” Gorppet waved to a female walking down a Baghdad street toward one of the markets that had recently been declared safe for the Race once more. “How would you like a taste of ginger?”

He felt like mating, even though it wasn’t the proper season. Here and there in Baghdad, females had been tasting ginger. He could smell the pheromones: not strongly enough to drive him into a frenzy, but enough to leave an itch at the back of his mind, almost like the itch he had for ginger. Maybe that was the way Big Uglies worked all the time.

Whether it was or not, though, it wasn’t the way the female worked. “I do not use that illegal herb,” she declared, and went on her way with her tailstump quivering in indignation.

“A pestilence take her,” Betvoss muttered. He raised his voice and called, “Your pheromones probably stink, anyhow!” The female’s tailstump quivered harder, but she did not turn back.

Gorppet laughed. “There you go.” This time, he was glad to see Betvoss disagreeable, because the other male’s venom wasn’t aimed at him.

Betvoss said, “I hope the Big Uglies in the marketplace cheat her out of all her money.”

“So do I,” Gorppet said. His eye turrets hadn’t once stopped their wary swiveling, even while he was talking to the female. He wasn’t sure how much good it would do; swaddled in robes as they were, the local Big Uglies had little trouble concealing weapons. Still . . . “I would rather patrol the marketplace than collect coins at a house of superstition.” He used an emphatic cough.

“Truth!” Betvoss used another one. “That is one duty I too am just as well pleased to escape. Here in the marketplace, at least, I am a moving target.”

That made Gorppet laugh again. Then he wondered why he was laughing. Betvoss had probably spoken a truth. Gorppet said, “The other thing being on the edge of wanting to mate all the time does to me is, it makes me mean. I want to claw something or bite something or shoot something.”

“Plenty of Big Uglies around,” Betvoss said. “Go ahead. I will not mind. None of your other squadmales will mind.” He lowered his voice a little. “Of course, that could be ginger talking, too.”

And he was right again.
Twice in one day,
Gorppet thought
Who would have imagined it?
Wanting to taste ginger made a male—or a female—jumpy. And when a male tasted ginger, he did things before he finished thinking about them, which also led to trouble.

Biting a Big Ugly, or even shooting one, felt tempting right now. After the riots and uprisings he’d helped quell, after the hatred the local Tosevites showed whenever they had to pay to enter their houses of superstition, he wished he could go off somewhere that had no Tosevites for a little while—say, for the next couple of hundred years.

A mechanized combat vehicle moved slowly and carefully through the market square. It had speakers mounted above it. Through the speakers came the recorded voice of a Tosevite. His voice boomed forth in the local language: “Come reverence the spirits of Emperors past! Next offering of reverence in one hour’s time. Come reverence the spirits . . .”

“Be ready,” Gorppet warned the males in his squad.

The warning was hardly necessary. Whenever the Big Uglies heard the recording, they pelted the combat vehicle with rocks and fruit and rotten eggs. Sometimes they did worse than that: sometimes they started shooting. That didn’t happen so often as it had, though, not when the Race hit back so hard.

“I wonder where the Big Ugly who made that recording is hiding,” Gorppet said. “If his fellow Tosevites ever find out who he is, his life expectancy is about as long as an azwaca rib’s at a feast.”

“What I wonder is why we bother with the combat vehicle,” Betvoss said. “How many Big Uglies come to reverence the spirits of Emperors past in this part of the world? How many of them live to come give reverence more than once?”

“Some,” Gorppet said. “Not many. Not enough. But our superiors say we have to keep trying.”

No sooner were the words out of his mouth than the radio on his belt hissed for attention. “Report to the shrine to the spirits of Emperors past,” said the male on the other end of the line. “We have heard there may be disturbances above and beyond the ordinary there today.”

“It shall be done, superior sir,” Gorppet said resignedly, and passed the order on to his squad. “We have to keep trying,” he repeated.

“Waste of time,” Betvoss grumbled. “Liable to be a waste of us, too.” But he obeyed Gorppet, as Gorppet had obeyed the dispatching officer. Gorppet wondered what would have happened had he told that officer he was sick of Big Uglies and would sooner go to Australia. He sighed. Either he needed another taste of ginger or his wits were addling from all the tastes he’d already had.

The shrine for giving reverence to the spirits of Emperors past was a bit of Home dropped down not far from the center of Baghdad: a plain cube of a building, looking achingly familiar against the masonry and mud brick of local Tosevite architecture. But the razor-wire perimeter around the building did not come from Home; it was an effort to keep hostile Big Uglies far enough away so they couldn’t use truly large weapons against the building.

Despite what Betvoss had said, a few Tosevites had passed through the perimeter and were heading toward the shrine when the squad got there. Many more, though, crowded up against the wire, aiming curses and abuse and occasional bits of offal at those who presumed to follow the ways of the Empire instead of their own preposterous superstition. It was, in fact, a pretty typical day.

“I wonder what the males heard to make them think there would be extra trouble here,” Gorppet said.

“For all we know, it may be a drill,” Betvoss said. “They like to keep us half addled all the time.”

“It could be,” Gorppet agreed. But, though he didn’t waste time arguing with Betvoss, he doubted it. A lot of males had come from all over Baghdad and were prowling along the perimeter. It didn’t have the feeling of a drill, though Gorppet supposed that could have been intentional on the part of the officers who’d called it.

He watched not only the males from the conquest fleet but also the Big Uglies. He wanted to have every chance he could of shooting first if this wasn’t a drill—or even if it was and things got out of hand.

His squadmales were doing the same. “All these cursed Tosevites look alike,” Betvoss complained.

“Not alike, exactly,” Gorppet said. “But certainly similar.” Males of the Race had always had trouble telling one Tosevite from another. That male with the gray hair growing out of his face, for instance, looked a good deal like the badly wanted preacher named Khomeini, but how likely was he to be the fearsome Big Ugly male in fact?

Gorppet stopped. That male looked very much indeed like Khomeini. Gorppet had a photograph of Khomeini with him. He examined it, then turned an eye turret toward the male.
No
, he thought.
Impossible
. But the higher-ups had had a warning of trouble, and so.

He hissed to his squadmales—not a hiss with words in it, in case any nearby Big Uglies understood the Race’s language, but one to draw their attention. Once he had it, he gathered the males together so he could speak in a low voice: “By the Emperor, I think that fellow there in the black robe with the white head rag is the accursed Khomeini. We are going to seize him. We are going to hustle him into the shrine. We are going to shoot any Tosevite who tries to stop us. Have you got that?”

“What if that is not the fearsome Khomeini?” Betvoss asked.

“Then our superiors will turn him loose,” Gorppet answered. “But if it is, we are all heroes, every one of us, and we do the Race a great service by stopping his poison. Now come on. Back me.”