“I see,” Ttomalss said. Ancientest history back on Home was full of stories like that, some true, others legendary, with scholars disagreeing over which was which. He asked, “What benefits did the Romans give to keep conquered subregions from rebelling?”
“Security from outside invasion,” Monique Dutourd answered. “Security from feuds with their neighbors also within Roman territory. Local self-government, as I said before. A large area unified culturally, and also unified economically.”
“I see,” Ttomalss repeated. “These are, of course, advantages you Tosevites would receive on becoming subjects of the Empire.”
“Ah, subjects,” the Tosevite historian said. “One thing the Romans did that made them unusual among our empires was to grant full citizenship to more and more groups that had formerly been subjects.”
“You could expect the same from us,” Ttomalss said. “Why, already there is one Tosevite with full citizenship in the Empire.”
“How interesting,” Monique Dutourd replied. “Why only one? Who is he?”
“She,” Ttomalss corrected. “That is a complicated story. It has to do with the unusual circumstances of her hatching.” He said not a word about the continuing dispute with Kassquit over whether he kept the right to monitor her activities if she was a full citizen of the Empire. That was also complicated, and none of Monique Dutourd’s business. Instead, Ttomalss asked, “If these Romans were such successful rulers of their empire, why did it fail?”
“Scholars have been arguing over that ever since it happened,” the Tosevite female answered. “There is no one answer. There were diseases that reduced the population. The economy suffered as a result of this. Rulers grew more harsh, and their bureaucracy grew more stifling. And there were foreign invasions, most importantly from the Deutsche, who lived to the north of the Roman Empire.”
“The Deutsche?” Ttomalss exclaimed in surprise. “The same Deutsche whom the Race knows only too well?”
“Their ancestors, rather,” Monique Dutourd said.
“Yes, of course,” Ttomalss said impatiently. “How interesting. That strikes me as an example of true historical continuity. I have not seen many on Tosev 3.”
“They are here,” Monique Dutourd said. “If you have not seen them, it is because you have not looked for them-or perhaps you have not known where to look.”
“Yes, I suppose that could be,” Ttomalss admitted. “Would you be willing to teach me more Tosevite history?”
“It could be,” the female Big Ugly said. “There would be the question of payment, of course.”
“Of course,” Ttomalss said. “I am sure we can come to some sort of equitable arrangement about that.”
“Payment might not necessarily involve money,” Monique Dutourd said, “or not money alone. I would want my kinsmale fully pardoned, now that I am cooperating with the Race.”
“Regardless of his unpleasant and unsavory dealings,” Ttomalss said.
“Yes. Regardless of them.” Ttomalss noted that the Tosevite female did not deny them. She wanted the ginger smuggler forgiven in spite of them. He sighed. Kinship, not friendship, he thought. That showed historical continuity among the Big Uglies, sure enough. He sighed. He could wish-he did wish-it didn’t.
Monique Dutourd wished she hadn’t come to Tours with fall heading toward winter. The city did not show itself to her at best advantage. She was a child of the warm Mediterranean; winter in Marseille was almost always mild, with snow a rarity. Not here. Sure enough, the Atlantic drove Tours’ climate, and frost came to the city early and often. After Caesar’s conquest of Gaul, Roman colonists in ancient Caesarodunum would have been as appalled at the weather as she was now.
The climate at the university was also a good deal less than warm. Monique knew she wouldn’t have gained a position had Felless not pulled wires for her. By all the signs, every colleague in the history department knew as much, too. Her welcome ranged from unenthusiastic to downright hostile.
“Let me teach,” she told her department chairman, a white-haired fellow named Michel Casson who’d been at the university since recovering from a wound he’d received defending Verdun in 1916. “Let me publish. I’ll show you that I belong in this place.”
“You will have the opportunity,” Casson replied, peering at her through reading glasses that magnified his eyes tremendously. “We cannot prevent you from having the opportunity. It is to be hoped that you will not damage the reputation of the university too badly by what you do with it.”
Ears burning, Monique left his office in a hurry. That she might prove an asset to the university had plainly never entered his mind. Her nails bit into her palms. I’ll show you, by God, she thought. Having lost all her notes for the paper on the cult of Isis in Gallia Narbonensis that had occupied her before Marseille went up in nuclear fire, she was doing her best to reconstruct it despite a research library that wasn’t nearly so good as the snooty professors and librarians believed.
Back in Marseille, having to deal with her brother and the unwelcome attentions of Dieter Kuhn had made her neglect the monograph. Here in Tours, Kuhn was gone from her life, for which she heartily thanked the Lord, the Virgin, and all the saints. Instead, though, she had to deal with the Lizard named Ttomalss. He wanted nothing from her in bed. He even paid. But guiding him through Roman history stole time from the paper, no less than submitting to the German’s less intellectual pursuits had done.
And she still had to deal with Pierre. Technically, she supposed he was a paroled prisoner. She tried not to have anything to do with him when he wasn’t translating for Ttomalss. She sometimes wished she hadn’t got him out of the Race’s prison to interpret for her. Her life would have been simpler if she’d left him there to rot.
But he is my brother. Blood was thicker than water. She wondered if Pierre would go to a tenth the trouble for her that she’d gone through for him. She had her doubts. Pierre was for Pierre, first, last, and always.
One day, after they’d got off the telephone with Ttomalss, he said, “It’s a pity that Lizard is such a straight arrow. If he weren’t, I could have a fine new ginger network going already.”
“Do you mean you don’t have one?” Monique asked with what she hoped was withering sarcasm.
Predictably, her brother refused to wither. “Of course I do,” he said. “I meant a new one, one that reached right up into his starship. That would be worth arranging, if only I could.”
“Don’t you ever think of anything but ginger and Lizards?” she demanded.
“Ginger is what I do for a living,” Pierre said imperturbably. “The Lizards are my customers. Don’t you ever think of anything else but those old Romans who’ve been dead forever?”
“Occasionally,” Monique answered, acid in her voice. “Every now and then, for instance, I have to think about how to get you out of prison or whatever other trouble you wind up in on account of ginger.”
Her brother didn’t even have the grace to look shamefaced. “Took you long enough this time, too,” he grumbled. “I thought I was going to rot in that damned cell forever. I got you out of the French jail faster than you sprang me.”
Had he not added that last, reminding her he had helped her now and again, she thought she would have tried to hit him over the head with an ashtray. As things were, she said, “I never would have been carted off to jail if it weren’t for Dieter Kuhn, and he wouldn’t have cared about me at all if it weren’t for you.” One way or another, she was going to pin the blame on Pierre.
He said, “Would you rather have them take me back to jail?”
“What have I got to do with that?” Monique said. “You’re selling ginger again. You don’t bother hiding it from me. You hardly bother hiding it from anybody. Of course the Lizards will notice. They’re not stupid. Do you think they’re not watching you? Sooner or later, you’ll annoy them enough that they’ll scoop you up and throw you into another cell. I probably won’t be able to get you out then, either.”
“Somebody will.” Pierre spoke with maddening confidence. “That’s what connections are for. The more people you know, the more people you’ve got to do you a good turn when you really need one.”
“And the more people you’ve got to betray you when they need something from the Lizards or the flics.”
Pierre stared at her in some surprise. “Where’d you learn to think like that?”
Monique laughed at him. “And people say that studying history never does anybody any good!” she exclaimed, and swept out of the room before he could come up with an answer.
Somewhere south of the city of Tours, the Franks had hurled the previously invincible Arabs back in defeat more than twelve hundred years before. Monique knew that, but she had no interest in finding the battlefield. For one thing, nobody knew exactly where it was. For another, she had no motorcar to go gallivanting over the landscape. And, for a third, that battlefield didn’t much interest her: it was several hundred years too modern. That amused her.
When she happened to mention it to Ttomalss, it amused him, too. “This is a difference in viewpoint between the Race and human beings,” he said through her brother. “To us, a difference of a few hundred years would not matter much.”
“That’s strange,” Monique said. “I would think that a chronological framework was important for your historians as well as for ours.”