“Very nearly.” Hocker plucked seven copies of a form off the table in front of him, gave them to Embry to pass out to his crew. “You have but to sign this and we shall send you on your way.”
The form, hastily printed on the cheapest of paper, was headed parole. It had parallel columns of text, one German, the other English, The English version was florid legalese made worse by some remaining Germanic word order, but what it boiled down to was a promise not to fight Germany so long as either London or-no, not Berlin, but the country of which it had been the capital-remained at war with the Lizards.
“What happens if we don’t sign it?” Bagnall asked.
If the smile had got to Lieutenant Colonel Hocker’s eyes, it vanished from them now. “Then you will also go on a train this evening, but not one bound for Calais.”
Embry said, “What happens if we do sign and then end up flying against you anyhow?”
“Under those circumstances, you would be well-advised to avoid capture.” Hocker’s face was too round and mild to make him fit the film cliche of a German officer; he seemed more Bavarian peasant than Prussian aristocrat. But he packed enough menace into his voice for any three cinematic Huns.
“Have you received any communication from the RAF or His Majesty’s government permitting us to sign such a document?” Embry asked.
“I have not,” Hocker’s said. “Formally, we are still at war. I give you my word of honor, however, that I have learned of no punishment given to any who have so signed.”
“Please be so good as to put that assurance in writing, for us to present to our superiors. If it should prove false, we shall consider ourselves at liberty to deem our paroles null and void, nor should sanctions be applied against us in the event we are captured in arms against your country.”
“Jolly good, Ken,” Bagnall whispered admiringly.
Hacker inked a pen, wrote rapidly on the back of another parole form. He handed it to the pilot. “I trust this meets with your approval, Flight Lieutenant?” He pronounced it leftenant, as a native Englishman would have.
Embry read what be had written. Before he replied, he passed it to Bagnall. Hocker’s script, unlike his speech, was distinctly Germanic; the flight engineer had to puzzle it out word by word. But it seemed to set forth what Embry had demanded. Bagnall gave it to Alf Whyte.
The German lieutenant colonel waited patiently until the whole Lancaster crew had read it. “Well, gentlemen?” he asked when Embry had it back.
The pilot glanced from one flier to the next. No one said anything. Embry sighed, turned back to Hocker. “Give me the bloody pen.” He signed his parole with a few slashing strokes. “Here.”
Hocker raised an eyebrow. “You are not pleased with this arrangement?”
“No, I’m not pleased,” Embry said. “If it weren’t for the Lizards, we’d be fighting each other. But they’re here, so what can I do?”
“Believe me, Flight Lieutenant, my feelings are the same in every particular,” the German answered. “I had a sister in Berlin, however, and two nieces. So I shall adjourn my quarrel with you for the time being. Perhaps we shall take it up again at a more auspicious moment.”
“Coventry,” Embry said.
The lieutenant colonel answered, “Beside Berlin, Englander, Coventry is as a toddler’s scraped knee.” Hocker and Embry locked eyes with each other for most of a minute.
Bagnall took the pen, wrote his name on his parole form. “One enemy at a time,” he said. The rest of the aircrew also signed theirs. But even as Hocker called for an escort to take the Englishmen to the train station, Bagnall wondered how many nieces the old Jew with the yellow star had, and how they were faring.
A squadron of devils tramped down the main street of the prison camp. Like everyone else who saw them, Liu Han bowed low. No one knew what would happen if the little scaled devils were denied all the outward trappings of respect their captives could give. No one, least of all Liu Han, wanted to find out.
When the devils were gone, a man came up to Liu Han and said something. She shook her head. “I am sorry, but I do not understand your dialect,” she said. He must not have been able to follow hers, either, for he grinned, spread his hands, and walked away.
She sighed. Hardly anyone here spoke her dialect, save the few villagers taken with her. The scaly devils threw people from all over China together in their camps; they either did not know or did not care about the differences among them. For the educated few, those who could read and write, the lack of a common dialect mattered little. They spoke together with brush and paper, since they all used the same characters.
Such was the ignorance of the demons that they had even put Japanese in the camp. No Japanese were left any more. Some had slain themselves in despair at being captured. Those whose despair was less deep died anyhow, one by one. Liu Han did not know just how they’d met their ends. So long as they were dead, and the little devils none the wiser, she was satisfied.
Two streets over from the one the devils most regularly patrolled, a market had sprung up. People landed in camp with no more than what they had on their backs, but they soon started trading that-no reason for a man with a gold ring or a woman whose purse had been full of coins to do without. Inside days, too, chickens and even piglets had made their appearance, to supplement the rice the devils doled out.
A bald man with a wispy mustache sat on the ground, his straw hat upside down in front of him. In it nestled three fine eggs. Seeing Liu Han looking at them, he nodded and spoke to her. When he saw she did not follow him, he tried another dialect, then another. Finally he reached one she could also grasp: “What you give for these?”
Sometimes even understanding did not help. “I am sorry,” she said. “I have nothing to give.”
Back in her own village, it would have been the start of a haggle with which to while away most of a morning. Here, she thought, it was nothing but truth. Her husband, her child, dead at the hands of the Japanese. Her village, devastated first by the eastern barbarians and then by the devils in their dragonfly planes-and now gone forever.
The man with the eggs cocked his head to one side, smiled a bland merchant’s smile up at her. He said, “Pretty woman never have nothing to give. You want eggs, maybe you let me see your body for them?”
“No,” Liu Han said shortly, and walked away. The bald man laughed as she turned her back. He was not the first in the market who had asked her for that kind of payment.
She went back to the tent she shared with Yi Min. The apothecary was becoming an important man in the prison camp. Little scaly devils often visited him, to learn written Chinese and the dialects he spoke. Sometimes he made suggestions to them about the proper way to do things. They very often listened-that was what made him important. If he wanted eggs, he had influence to trade for them.
All the same, Liu Han sometimes wished she had moved in with the other prisoners from her village, or with people she’d never seen before. But she and he had come here in the belly of the same dragon plane, he had been a speck of the familiar in a vast strange ocean-and so she had agreed. He’d been diffident when he asked her. He wasn’t diffident anymore.
She lifted the tent flap. A startled hiss greeted her. She bowed almost double. “I am very sorry, lord devil, sir. I did not mean to disturb you,” she said rapidly.
Too rapidly. The demon turned back to Yi Min, from whose words she had distracted it. “She say-what?” it asked in abominably accented Chinese.
“She apologizes-says she is sorry-for bothering you.” Yi Min had to repeat it a couple of times before the little devil understood. Then he made a noise like a boiling pot. “Is that how to say the same thing in your language?” he asked, switching back to Chinese once more.