“No, I will speak to him,” Atvar answered. “The situation in India remains too muddled to offer any easy or quick solution. I am willing to put aside consideration of it for the time being.” He was, in fact, eager to put aside consideration of it for the time being, but Pshing did not have to know that. “Transfer the call to my terminal,” he told his adjutant.
“It shall be done,” Pshing said, and went out to do it.
Moishe Russie’s image appeared on the screen in front of Atvar. “I greet you, Exalted Fleetlord,” the Tosevite said. “I thank you for agreeing to hear of my troubles.”
“I greet you,” Atvar said. “Do note that I have agreed to nothing of the sort. If you prove wearisome, I shall return to the work in which I was previously engaged. Keeping that warning in mind at all times, you may proceed.”
“For your generosity, I thank you,” Russie said. Was that irony? Would the Big Ugly be so presumptuous while seeking a favor? Atvar could not be sure, even after long acquaintance with him. With a sigh that might have come from the throat of a male of the Race, Russie went on, “I have just learned that a relative of mine, a certain David Goldfarb, is a prisoner in the Greater German Reich. If you can use your good offices to help obtain his release, I shall be forever in your debt.”
“You are already in my debt,” Atvar pointed out, in case the Tosevite had forgotten. “And how did this relative of yours become a prisoner inside the Reich?”
While asking the question, he checked the computer. As he’d thought, Russie had no relatives living inside the Reich: only in Palestine and Poland, both of which the Race held, and in Britain, which retained a tenuous independence from both the Race and the Reich. Meanwhile, he turned his other eye turret toward the part of the screen on which Russie was saying, “The Germans arrested him in the company of two Americans named Auerbach and Summers. You will please recall, Exalted Fleetlord, that my cousin is also a Jew.”
“Then he was unwise to enter the Reich,” Atvar said. Yet Moishe Russie’s shot struck home. The Race remained appalled at the savage campaign the Deutsche waged against the Jews. And any opportunity to irritate this particular lot of Big Uglies was sweet to Atvar.
Furthermore, the names of the other two Big Uglies Russie had mentioned were somehow familiar. Not wanting to say them aloud, the fleetlord keyed them into the computer. Sure enough, a report about those two had come to his notice not long before. Officials over on the lesser continental mass had recruited them to help suppress the trade in smuggled ginger coming out of the Reich.
“Your relative was cooperating with these Tosevites, then?” Atvar asked. That would give him another reason for demanding this Goldfarb’s release and infuriating whatever Deutsch officials had to arrange it.
“He was caught with them, so how could he have been doing anything different?” Russie asked reasonably. “But they are not Jews, and so do not face the immediate danger in which he finds himself.”
“I understand,” Atvar said. “Very welclass="underline" I will see what can be done. And what can be done, Dr. Russie, shall be done.”
“I thank you, Exalted Fleetlord,” Moishe Russie said. “These Tosevites, for your information, were seized in the city of Marseille.”
“Yes, yes,” Atvar said impatiently. Russie didn’t know he already knew that: it was, at any rate, the city in which Summers and Auerbach (he gathered the female was more important, or at least more deeply involved in the ginger trade, than the male) had been sent. “I shall investigate, and I shall do what I think best in this regard.”
Russie thanked him again, then broke the connection. Atvar looked at the square on the screen, now blank, where the Big Ugly’s image had appeared. He hissed in slow, almost reluctant approval. A male of the Race could not have begged for a favor any more effectively than Russie had done. And Russie had known Atvar would be likely to give him what he wanted for the sake of irking the Deutsche.
After replaying his conversation with Moishe Russie to remind himself of the name of the doctor’s relatives, Atvar telephoned the Deutsch Foreign Ministry in Nuremberg. The image of the Big Ugly on the screen was less sharp than Moishe Russie’s had been; Tosevite video equipment did not measure up to that which the Race manufactured.
Despite the poor quality of the image, Atvar thought he saw surprise on the Big Ugly’s mobile features when the fellow got a good look at his body paint. “Are you familiar with the matter of David Goldfarb?” the fleetlord demanded, as if to a subordinate he knew to be none too bright.
Rather to his surprise, the Tosevite answered, “I am. In what way does this case interest the Race?”
“I want this Tosevite released-and,” Atvar added, “the other two Tosevites, the Americans, seized with him.”
“Three other Tosevites were seized with him,” the Deutsch male replied. “One of them was Pierre Dutourd, the notorious ginger smuggler. Do you want him released, too? He and the other three were, I repeat, all seized together.”
Moishe Russie hadn’t said anything about that. Atvar suddenly wondered whether this Goldfarb had been helping Auerbach and Summers or whether he’d been on the smuggler’s side. Still, the Tosevite’s question had an obvious answer: “Yes, give us this Pierre Dutourd, too. Ginger-smuggling is a wicked business; we will punish him.”
“Ginger-smuggling is not a crime under the laws of the Reich,” the Deutsch functionary observed.
“If it is not a crime, why is this Dutourd”-Atvar pronounced the Big Ugly’s name as best he could-“in a Deutsch prison?”
“Why?” The official’s face twisted into the expression that showed amusement. “He is in our prison because we say he ought to be there. We need no more reason than that. The Reich does not propose to let anyone who might be dangerous to it run around loose causing trouble.”
That made a certain amount of sense to Atvar: more sense than the bizarre and self-destructive policies of the snoutcounting Americans, at any rate. The fleetlord let out an angry hiss, anger directed at himself. If a Deutsch policy made sense to him, something had to be wrong with the policy or with him or with both.
He said, “I assure you, the Race will punish this smuggler as he deserves. You need have no doubts on that score.”
“You of the Race hardly know what punishment is,” the Big Ugly replied. “We will keep this male for ourselves. We do know these things. We know them in detail.” Though he spoke the language of the Race, gloating anticipation that seemed unique to the Tosevites filled his voice.
Atvar suppressed a shudder. The Big Uglies, and especially the Deutsch Big Uglies, exulted in the ferocity of the punishments they meted out. The fleetlord forced himself not to dwell on that, but to concentrate on the business at hand. This male had refused to release Dutourd, but had not said a word about the other prisoners. “Very well, then-you may keep this smuggler,” Atvar said. “But turn over to us the two American Tosevites, and also the British Jew, Goldfarb. They did not come to your territory with the intent of harming you.”
He hoped that wasn’t true of Auerbach and Summers, but could not be sure, and it made a good bargaining point. He hated having to try to get a Tosevite’s leave to obtain his desires. He hated even more the idea of having to admit that a Tosevite not-empire had territory to which it was entitled. And he hoped mentioning that Goldfarb was a Jew wouldn’t get Moishe Russie’s relative liquidated out of hand. He thought as well of Russie as he did of any Tosevite.
“If you want the Americans, Exalted Fleetlord, you are welcome to them,” the Deutsch official said. “We have no use for them, and giving them to you will help embarrass the United States. As for the Jew… You know that we aim to keep the Reich free of his kind.”