Follow him Veffani and Felless did, down corridors that dwarfed Big Uglies, let alone the two of them. Deutsch functionaries, some in the business clothes the Tosevites favored, more in the uniform wrappings the Deutsche used to show status in place of body paint (and, Felless realized, to overawe Tosevites not similarly wrapped), bustled here and there. As with the Race, they seemed to feel that the busier they looked, the more important they actually were.
Minister Dietrich had a doorway even larger and higher than any of the others. A Tosevite miscreant hauled before him would surely feel he had committed some crime for which he could never atone. Felless felt the Big Ugly architect had committed a breach of taste for which he could never atone. A great deal of Deutsch monumental architecture inspired the same feeling in her.
The guard escorting Felless and Veffani spoke back and forth with Dietrich’s secretary in the Deutsch language. Felless had picked up a few words of it, but could not follow a conversation. “It is all formality, of no great consequence,” Veffani whispered to her.
She made the hand gesture of agreement. The secretary spoke the language of the Race about as well as a Tosevite could: “Come with me, Ambassador, Senior Researcher. Minister Dietrich will be pleased to hear whatever you may have to say, although, of course, he cannot promise to fulfill all your desires.”
“I understand,” Veffani said. “As always, I look forward to seeing him.”
Veffani is a hypocrite, too, Felless thought. The ambassador’s hypocrisy, luckily for him, had nothing to do with the herb. He merely had to pretend the Big Uglies with whom he dealt not only were but deserved to be his equals. Felless still found that concept outrageous. She had come to Tosev 3 assuming the world would be altogether conquered, subservient to the will of the Race. That hadn’t happened, but she remained convinced it should have.
After more formal pleasantries, the secretary-who would also serve as translator-escorted the male and female of the Race into the presence of Justice Minister Dietrich. His gray hair and flabby face showed him to be an elderly male. “I greet you, Veffani,” he said in the language of the Race. His accent was far thicker than that of his secretary.
“I greet you, Sepp,” Veffani replied. Sepp, he had given Felless to understand, was a nickname for Josef. The Big Uglies, already possessed of too many names from the standpoint of the Race, added to the confusion by using informal versions of them whenever they felt like it. One more piece of Tosevite inefficiency, Felless thought. Veffani went on, “I present to you Senior Researcher Felless, who is also concerned with the problem ginger poses for the Race.”
“I greet you, Senior Researcher,” Dietrich said.
“I greet you, Justice Minister,” Felless answered; using his title let her avoid calling him superior sir, an honorific she did not care to give to any Tosevite.
Dietrich spoke in the Deutsch language. The secretary translated: “And are you intimately concerned with the problem of ginger, Senior Researcher?” He put undue stress on the word intimately. Both he and his superior let out the yips the Big Uglies used for laughter.
Failing to see any joke, Felless answered, “Yes, I am,” which seemed to amuse the Tosevites all over again.
“Shall we begin?” Veffani asked, and Sepp Dietrich, seeming to recall his manners, waved him and Felless to chairs. They were built for Tosevites, and so not comfortable to the male and female of the Race, but refusing would have been most impolite.
“So,” Minister Dietrich said, “we come again to the matter of this Dutourd, do we? The Foreign Ministry has already told the fleetlord that he shall not be surrendered.”
“So it has,” Veffani said. To Felless, his tone indicated strong disapproval. Whether Dietrich and his secretary understood that, she could not tell. The ambassador resumed, “That you seek to use him for your own purposes and against the interests of the Race is, however, not acceptable to us.”
“How can you say such a thing?” Dietrich asked. “We have him in prison. We are keeping him in prison for the time being. If he can do anything against you while in prison, he is a formidable character indeed, not so?”
“You are not keeping him in prison because of what he has done against the Race,” Veffani said. “You are keeping him in prison because he wanted to go on doing it on his own, and not for you.”
“He is in prison,” Dietrich said, not bothering to deny the assertion. “You cannot ask for more, since dealing in ginger is not a crime under the laws of the Reich.”
“Superior sir, may I speak?” Felless asked. When Veffani used the affirmative hand gesture, she turned both her eye turrets toward Sepp Dietrich. “Justice Minister, if under your laws it is not a crime to deal in ginger, we can and will revise our laws to make it no crime to deal in narcotics that appeal to Tosevites, and to make it legal and indeed encouraged to smuggle those narcotics into the independent Tosevite not-empires.”
As one of the ornaments on the wrapping around his torso, Dietrich wore a small silvery pin showing a Big Ugly’s skull with a couple of crossed bones behind it. His own features froze into an expression no more lively than that skull’s. “If you wish to play that game, we can play it,” he said through his interpreter. “No drug you can bring into the Reich will do as much to us as ginger does to you.”
“Truth.” Felless admitted what she could scarcely deny. “But you are already doing all you can to us with ginger.” She knew the truth in that to a degree Dietrich did not realize. “If you keep trying to do all you can to us with ginger, why should we do anything less to you?”
She waited until the interpreter put that into the language of the Deutsche. Sepp Dietrich’s jaw worked as he chewed on it both literally and metaphorically. He said, “This is not far from a threat of war.”
Veffani’s eye turrets slewed rapidly toward Felless. The ambassador was undoubtedly wondering what sort of trouble she’d got herself into. So was she, but she went ahead regardless: “Why is it a threat of war when we do it to you, but nothing of the sort when you do it to us?”
Dietrich grunted. “Perhaps you should be talking with the foreign minister and not with me.”
“Perhaps you should not evade your responsibilities,” Felless shot back. “This male Tosevite is in a Deutsch prison. An official from the Foreign Ministry has already refused to turn him over to the Race, as Ambassador Veffani said. That leaves him in your hands.”
“It also constitutes an act unfriendly to the Race,” Veffani put in. “From the actions of the Reich, someone might conclude that peace between your not-empire and the Empire does not matter to you. I think that would be an unfortunate and dangerous conclusion for anyone to reach. Do you not agree?”
Watching the Big Ugly squirm gave Felless pleasure approaching that of a taste of ginger. After coughing and wiping metabolic cooling water away from his forehead (a sign of distress among Tosevites, the experts agreed), Dietrich said, “I am not unfriendly to anyone. The Reich is not unfriendly to anyone except Jews and other racial inferiors, and Dutourd, whatever else you may say of him, is not a Jew.”
“He is an enemy of the Race,” Veffani said. “Keeping him in prison for a long time would be an act of courtesy to the Race.”
“I shall take what you say under advisement,” Sepp Dietrich replied. “The matter may have to be decided at a level higher than mine, though.”
“Who is higher than you, Justice Minister Dietrich?” Felless demanded. “If you cannot decide here, who can?”
“Why, Reichs Chancellor Himmler, of course.” Dietrich seemed surprised she needed to ask. She was surprised the head of the Deutsch not-empire would concern himself about the fate of a ginger smuggler. Dietrich proceeded to explain why: “The Reichs Chancellor yielded to the Race when he let you destroy an air base after the attack on your colonization fleet, though the Reich, he has insisted, was not guilty of that attack. To yield to you again might be taken as a sign of weakness, and we Deutsche are not weak. We are strong, and we grow stronger day by day.”