Down to Earth (68 page)

“Yes, I believe it could be,” Monique said. She sat thoughtfully at the breakfast table. If she couldn’t get a passport—if, even with a passport, she couldn’t get out of Marseille—running into the hills didn’t seem the worst idea in the world. “Will your friends among the Race know the war is on the point of breaking out before it does?”

“If anyone among the Race knows, they will know,” Pierre answered. “But whether anyone will know, that I cannot say. All the Germans have to do is launch their rockets, and
voilà—
war!”

“No, it’s not that simple,” Monique said. “They have to move soldiers into position, and tanks, and airplanes. These things must be noticeable.”

“Less than you’d think,” her brother told her. “From what my friends say, the
Boches
move forces all the time, so it becomes difficult to be sure which movements are intended to confuse and which are intended to deploy. And the Germans are better at keeping things secret than they used to be, too.”

That, unfortunately, seemed altogether too probable to Monique. Thanks to Dieter Kuhn, she knew the Nazis were getting better at unscrambling the Lizards’ security devices. It seemed logical they should also be getting better with their own.

The conversation helped make up her mind for her. Leaving the Porte d’Aix made her nervous; she expected every SS man in France to descend on her with cocked submachine gun and possibly with unbuttoned fly. Only after she was already on the way to the
Préfecture
on Rue St. Ferréol did she pause to wonder whether Pierre’s clever printer could forge passports as readily as ID cards. After pedaling on for another half a block, she shook her head. She didn’t want Pierre to know she intended fleeing, because she wanted to flee from him, too. That meant she had to get the passport on her own, and
that
meant she had to get a real one; except through her brother, she had no illicit connections.

And so, the
Préfecture.
It was larger and more massive than the
Palais de Justice,
with a small square on the north side and a park over to the east. She set her bicycle in a rack in front of the building and chained it into place: even here, with gendarmes strolling about keeping an eye on things, thieves might thrive. But at least the policemen were gendarmes and not the Germans who gave the
Palais de Justice
its sinister reputation: how well deserved that reputation was, she knew better than she’d ever wanted to.

Inside, languid ceiling fans did a halfhearted job of stirring the air. FILL OUT ALL FORMS BEFORE ENTERING LINE, a prominent sign warned. From everything Monique had heard, French bureaucracy had been bad before the
Reich
overran the country. From everything she’d seen, it was worse now, having added German thoroughness without the slightest trace of German efficiency.

As she’d expected, the forms for obtaining a passport were formidable. So were the fees required—officials wanted to know everything about anyone who might want to leave the
Reich,
and also wanted to soak would-be travelers for the privilege. Monique filled out page after page, much of the information being fictitious. If the bureaucrats did any careful checking, she was in trouble. But her assumption was that no one would have any reason to check on Madeleine Didier, who couldn’t very well have fallen foul of the authorities because she’d existed for only a few days.

Do you really want to do this?
she wondered.
If you’re wrong, and if you get caught, you’re back in Dieter Kuhn’s hands—and probably back in his arms, too.
She didn’t have to worry about that in Porte d’Aix, anyhow. But her brother wanted to use her, too, even if in a different way. If she could get away, she’d also be free of Pierre. She nodded briskly. The game was worth the candle.

The line moved forward a centimeter at a time. At last, though, she stood before a bored-looking functionary. He gave the forms a desultory glance, then said, “Your fee?” She pushed Reichsmarks across the counter. He riffled through them, nodded, and said, “Your identification card?” Heart thuttering, Monique passed that to him, too. He examined it more carefully than the forms, less carefully than the money, and pushed it back to her. “Very good. All appears to be in order. You may return in four weeks’ time to pick up your passport. It must be done in person, you understand.”

“Yes, of course,” Monique answered. “Thank you.” She turned away, thinking,
Either I get the passport—or the SS gets me.
She’d find out, if she still had the nerve . . . and if the world hadn’t blown up in the meantime.

Atvar studied the latest reports from the subregion known as Poland, as well as those from the Race’s spy satellites. He turned one eye turret from the monitor on which the reports were displayed to Kirel. “I begin to be optimistic,” he told the second-highest-ranking male in the conquest fleet. “If the Deutsche had truly been on the point of launching an attack against us, I believe they would have done so by now. Every day they delay is another day in which they can have second thoughts.”

“No doubt the Big Uglies are impetuous, Exalted Fleetlord,” Kirel replied. “I agree, delay is likely to be advantageous to us. But they have not backed away from their preparations, either: see how many spacecraft they continue to keep in orbit around Tosev 3. If they truly intended relaxing into a peaceful posture, they would not be making such an effort—in my opinion, of course.” Even the shiplord of the conquest fleet’s bannership had to be careful when disagreeing with the fleetlord.

But Atvar did not have all his claws sunk deeply into his view of things here, as sometimes happened. “Indeed, that is a truth, Shiplord,” he admitted. “But I wonder how much damage these crewed craft can do, as opposed to the many orbiting explosive-metal bombs and missiles that require only an electronic command for activation.”

“I also wonder,” Kirel said, “but I hope we do not have to find out. The Tosevites themselves have a nastier imagination than their mechanisms. Even with inferior means, they might find a way to do us more harm than we would expect.”

“They have a knack for doing that, and I would be the last to deny it,” Atvar said. “But they also must know what we would do to them. If they did not understand that, I believe they would already have gone to war.”

“That is undoubtedly a truth,” Kirel said. He swung one of his eye turrets toward the display. “Do we have any certain knowledge of where their submersible craft carrying missiles are presently located?”

“No.” That didn’t make Atvar happy, either. “And I must say I wish we did. But, on the other fork of the tongue, we rarely do. They and the Americans and the Russkis make a point of keeping the whereabouts of those vessels secret. In their position, I would do the same: we cannot target the submersibles, as we can their land-based missiles.”

Pshing came into Atvar’s office and waited to be noticed. When Atvar slid an eye turret toward him, he said, “Exalted Fleetlord, we have received replies from four Tosevite not-empires in regard to our request to open shrines dedicated to reverencing the spirits of Emperors past in their territories.”

“Four at once?” Kirel said. “They must be acting in concert, then.”

Atvar thought the same thing, but Pshing made the negative hand gesture. “No, Shiplord. Three of the replies are negative. The Nipponese say they strongly prefer to reverence their own emperors. The SSSR and the
Reich
simply refuse the request; the SSSR’s rejection implies that we made it for purposes of espionage rather than reverence.”

That was in some measure true. Atvar said, “And the fourth reply?”

“Exalted Fleetlord, it is from the United States, and gives us permission to do as we will there,” Pshing replied. “The American Tosevites cite a doctrine of theirs called ‘freedom of reverence’ or something of the sort. I confess that I do not fully understand this doctrine.”

“I often wonder if even the American Tosevites understand their own doctrines,” Atvar replied. “This probably stems from their passion for snoutcounting. Most of their peculiar institutions do.”

“Since they are not bellicose at the moment, I am inclined to forgive them their doctrines,” Kirel said as Pshing left the office.

“No doubt some truth will hatch from that eggshell, Shiplord,” Atvar said. “And we still await the reply from Britain. But the Americans do cause me some concern for the simple reason that they have prospered rather than falling to pieces in the interval since the fighting stopped. None of our analysts seems to understand why they have prospered, either. By all logic, government through snoutcounting should have failed almost immediately—should never have been attempted, in fact.”

Kirel made the affirmative gesture. “I see what you are saying, Exalted Fleetlord. Nippon and Britain have systems similar to ours, though the British also use some of this snoutcounting silliness. And the
Reich
and the SSSR have rulers with the power of emperors, though they gain that power by murder or intrigue, not by inheritance. But the Americans truly are anomalous.”

“And they are technically proficient,” Atvar said discontentedly. “They are the ones with a spacecraft in the asteroid belt. They are the ones sending representatives to meet with the Big Ugly our researcher has raised as if she were a female of the Race.”

“I have been keeping track of that, yes,” Kirel said. “Truly a worthwhile project on the researcher’s part. Do you think some of the wild Big Uglies are beginning to become acculturated? Video of one of the wild ones meeting with our specimen suggests he is one of that sort.”

“The wild ones? My judgment is that acculturation is still superficial,” Atvar said. “If they do begin to reverence the spirits of Emperors past, that would be a more significant turn toward the Empire’s way of life than removing their hair and wearing body paint in place of their cloth wrappings.”

“Indeed. I completely agree,” Kirel said. “But the American Big Uglies, as you have pointed out, are not fools, even if they are barbarians. They too must realize the likely result of permitting such reverence, and yet they do so. Why?”

“Again, analysis is incomplete. We really do need to study the Americans more,” Atvar said, and scribbled a note to that effect for himself. “Their ideology seems to be almost evolutionary in nature: they let individuals compete in snoutcounting contests, and they let ideas compete through ‘freedom of reverence’ and ‘freedom of discussion.’ Their assumption seems to be that the best will prevail as a result of this untrammeled competition.”

“Now that is interesting, Exalted Fleetlord,” Kirel said. “I had not seen their ideology expressed in quite those terms before.” His mouth fell open in a laugh. “They certainly are optimists, are they not?”

“I think so. Every male of the Race I know thinks so. By all I can tell, most other Big Uglies think so, too,” Atvar said. “And yet the Americans continue to do well. They continue to steal and adapt and build on our technology even more aggressively than the
Reich
or the SSSR. Puzzling, is it not?”

“Very much so,” Kirel answered. “And their relations with us are less shrill and warlike than are those of the other two leading independent not-empires. They might almost be civilized.”

“Almost,” Atvar said. But then he realized the shiplord had a point. “We do seem to make more allowances for them than for the other not-empires, do we not? I wonder if the American Big Uglies are devious enough to take advantage of that.”

“We have not suspected them of attacking the ships of the colonization fleet, at least not seriously suspected them,” Kirel said. “Do you believe we should begin a more intensive investigation along those lines?”

After some thought, Atvar made the negative gesture. “We have no evidence that would lead us to suspect their guilt, and their behavior otherwise has been as near exemplary as Big Uglies come.”

“We have no evidence to lead us to the
Reich
or to the SSSR, either, though each has tried to implicate the other,” Kirel pointed out.

Before the fleetlord could respond to that, Pshing hurried into his office once more. Atvar saw his agitation even before he spoke: “Exalted Fleetlord!”

“By the Emperor, what now?” Atvar asked, casting down his eyes in respect for the sovereign so many light-years away.

“Exalted Fleetlord, I have just received a written communication from the ambassador of the Nipponese Empire.”

“What now?” Atvar repeated in some irritation. Like Britain, Nippon had retained its independence when the fighting stopped. The Nipponese thought that entitled them to equality of status with the USA, the SSSR, and the
Reich.
The Race didn’t, for the simple reason that Nippon, being without explosive-metal weapons, could not do them nearly so much harm as the three more prominent Tosevite powers.

Pshing said, “Exalted Fleetlord, the ambassador reports that Nippon has detonated an explosive-metal weapon of its own manufacture on an isolated island called”—he looked down at the paper he held—“Bikini, that is the name.”

Atvar let out a furious hiss and turned to the computer monitor. When he chose a reconnaissance and intelligence channel, he saw the explosion was just being reported. “The Nipponese must have timed the delivery of that note most precisely,” he said, and then, dreading the answer, “Is there more?”

“There is, Exalted Fleetlord,” Pshing said unhappily. “The note goes on to demand all privileges previously accorded only to Tosevite powers with explosive-metal weapons. It warns that Nippon has submersible craft of its own, and knows how to use them to its own best advantage.”

“Even for Big Uglies, the Nipponese are arrogant,” Kirel said.

“And now they have some good reason for arrogance.” Atvar knew he sounded even more unhappy than his adjutant, but he had cause to sound that way. He turned an eye turret toward Pshing. “Do the Nipponese demand that we evacuate all territory that they occupied when the conquest fleet arrived?”

“Not in this note, no, Exalted Fleetlord,” Pshing said. “What they may do in the future, however, is anyone’s guess.”