“No,” Reuven said. “All you can do is your best.” Miriam’s mother nodded again, then sent him a sharp look. Is she noticing me and not just the man in the white coat? he wondered, and hoped she was.
9
“Queek and his interpreter are here, Comrade General Secretary,” Molotov’s secretary told him.
“Very well, Pyotr Maksimovich. I am coming.” It wasn’t very well, and Molotov knew it. He’d hated the Reich, but he missed it now that it was reduced to a battered shadow of itself. And the United States was in trouble. If the Race found an excuse for smashing the USA, how long could the USSR last after that? No matter what the dialectic said about inevitable socialist victory, Molotov didn’t want to have to find out for himself.
He hurried into the office reserved for visits from the Race’s ambassador. A couple of minutes later, his secretary led in Queek and the Pole who translated his words into Russian. “Good day,” Molotov told the human. “Please convey my warm greetings to your principal.” His words were as warm as a Murmansk blizzard, but he’d observed the forms.
The Pole spoke to the Lizard. The Lizard hissed and popped back at him. “He conveys similar greetings to you, Comrade General Secretary.”
Queek’s greetings were probably as friendly as Molotov’s, but the Soviet leader couldn’t do anything about that. He said, “I thank you for agreeing to see me on such short notice.”
“That is my duty,” Queek replied. “Now that I am here, I will ask why you have summoned me.” His interpreter made it sound as if Molotov would find himself in trouble if he didn’t have a good reason.
He thought he did. “If at all possible, I want to use my good offices to help the Race and the United States come to a peaceful resolution of the dispute that has arisen between them.” He didn’t know why the dispute had arisen, which frustrated him no end, but that didn’t matter.
Queek gestured. The interpreter said, “That means he rejects your offer.”
Molotov hadn’t expected anything so blunt. “Why?” he asked, fighting to keep astonishment from his voice.
“Because this dispute is between the Race and the United States,” Queek replied. “Do you truly wish to include your not-empire and suffer the consequences of doing so?”
“That depends on the circumstances,” Molotov said. “If the Soviet Union were to include itself on the side of the United States, do you doubt that the Race would also suffer certain consequences?”
When the interpreter translated that, Queek made the boiling and bubbling noises he used to show he was an unhappy Lizard. The interpreter didn’t translate them, which might have been just as well. After half a minute or so, the Race’s ambassador started spluttering less. Now the Pole turned his words into Russian: “You would destroy yourselves if you were mad enough to attempt such a thing.”
“Possibly.” Even for Molotov, sounding dispassionate while speaking of his country’s ruin didn’t come easy, but he managed. “If, however, the Race attacked first the United States and then the peace-loving peasants and workers of the Soviet Union, our destruction would be even more certain. If you think the Germans hurt you, you had better think very hard on what the United States and the Soviet Union could do together.”
“Do you threaten me, Comrade General Secretary?” Queek asked.
“By no means, Ambassador,” Molotov replied. “I warn you. If you leave the Soviet Union out of your calculations, you make a serious mistake. This government cannot be, is not, and will not be blind to the danger the Race poses to the other chief independent human power, and thus to all of mankind.”
“I assure you that, whatever the danger in which the United States finds itself, it is a danger that that not-empire has abundantly earned,” Queek said. “I also assure you that it is none of your business.”
“If you assure me it is none of my business, I have no way to examine your other assurances,” Molotov said. “Therefore, I must assume them to be worthless.”
“Assume whatever you please,” Queek said. “We are not interested in your efforts to mediate. If we ever do seek mediation, we shall inquire of you. And as for your threats, you will find that you cannot intimidate us.”
“I have no intention of intimidating you,” Molotov said, glad he had the knack of lying with a straight face. “You will follow your interests, and we shall follow ours. But I did want to make sure you understood what the Soviet Union considers to be in its interest.”
“The Soviet Union does not understand what is in its interest, not if it courts destruction like-” The interpreter broke off and went back and forth with Queek in the Lizards’ language. Then he returned to Russian: “The expression people would use is ‘like a moth flying into a flame.’ ”
“It is possible that we might be defeated.” Molotov knew it was as near certain as made no difference that the Soviet Union would be defeated. Sometimes, though, a demonstrated willingness to fight made fighting unnecessary. Switzerland had never become a part of the Greater German Reich. “Think carefully, Ambassador, on whether you and the Race care to pay the price.”
“I assure you, Comrade General Secretary, that our discussions shall revolve around that very subject,” Queek replied. “I think we have now said everything that needs saying, one of us to the other. Is that not a truth?”
“It is,” Molotov said.
Queek rose. So did the interpreter-like a well-trained hound, Molotov thought scornfully. “Perhaps I shall see you again,” the ambassador said. “Then again, perhaps not. Perhaps this ugly building will cease to exist in the not too distant future. It would be no enormous loss if that came to pass.”
“I care nothing for your views on architecture,” Molotov said. “And if this building should cease to exist, if many buildings throughout the Soviet Union should cease to exist, the Race and the buildings it cherishes would not come through unscathed.”
The Lizard’s tailstump quivered, a sign of anger. But Queek left without making any more cracks, which was probably just as well.
As soon as the door closed behind the Race’s envoy and his interpreter, Molotov rose from his chair and went into a chamber off to the side of the office. There he changed his clothes, including socks, shoes, and underwear. The Race could make extraordinarily tiny mobile surveillance devices; he did not want to take the chance of carrying them through the Kremlin.
Marshal Zhukov waited in Molotov’s own office. “You heard, Georgi Konstantinovich?” Molotov asked.
“Oh, yes.” Zhukov patted the intercom speaker that had relayed the conversation to him. “I heard. You did about as well as anyone could have, Comrade General Secretary. Now we wait and see what happens.”
“Is everything in readiness to defend the rodina?” Molotov asked.
Zhukov nodded. “Strategic Rocket Forces are ready to defend the motherland. Admiral Gorshkov tells me our submarines are ready. Our ground forces are dispersed; the Lizards will not find it easy to smash large armies with single weapons. Our forces in space will do everything they can.”
“And our antimissiles?” Molotov suppressed hope from his voice as efficiently as he had suppressed fear.
With a big peasant shrug, Zhukov answered, “They will also do everything they can. How much that is likely to be, I’ve got no idea. We may knock some down. We will not knock down enough to make any serious difference in the fighting.”
“How many of ours will they knock down?” Molotov asked.
“More,” Zhukov said. “You spoke accurately. We can hurt them. Together with the United States, we can hurt them badly. They can do to us what they did to the Reich. I wish you could have learned how this trouble with the USA blew up so fast.”
“So do I.” Molotov’s smile was Moscow winter. “Do you suppose President Warren would tell me?”
“You never can tell with Americans, but I wouldn’t hold my breath,” the leader of the Red Army replied. Molotov nodded; that was also his assessment. Zhukov cursed. “I don’t want to fight the damned Lizards blind. I don’t want to fight them at all, with or without the Americans on my side.”
“Would you rather they came and fought us after beating the Americans? That looks to be our other choice,” Molotov said.
“You were right. That’s worse,” Zhukov said. “But this is not good. I wish the Lizards would have let you mediate.”
“Queek did not want mediation,” Molotov said gloomily. “Queek, unless I am very much mistaken, wanted the Americans’ blood.”
“That is not good, not good at all.” Zhukov slammed his fist down onto Molotov’s desk. “Again, I think you were right.”
The telephone rang. Molotov quickly picked it up, not least to make sure Zhukov wouldn’t. Andrei Gromyko was on the other end of the line. “Well?” the foreign commissar asked, one word that said everything necessary.
Molotov gave back one word: “Bad.”
“What are we going to do, Comrade General Secretary?” Gromyko sounded worried. When Gromyko sounded like anything, matters were serious if not worse. “The threat the Lizards present makes that of the Hitlerites in 1941 seem as nothing beside it.”
“I am painfully aware of that, Andrei Andreyevich,” Molotov answered. “I judge that the threat from the Race will not decrease if the Lizards are allowed to ride roughshod over the United States and then come after us. Marshal Zhukov, who is here with me, concurs. Do you disagree?”