“In fact, Shiplord, some of our best males and females for dealing with your folk were science-fiction readers before the conquest fleet came,” Yeager replied, the key term necessarily being in English. “But I count myself lucky. I could not have stayed a paid athlete much longer, and I do not know what I would have done after that. When the conquest fleet came, it let me discover I was good at something I had not known I could do at all. Is that not strange?”
“For the Race, it would be surpassingly strange,” Straha answered. “For you Tosevites? I doubt it. So much of everything you do seems built around lucky accidents. But not all accidents are lucky. If we had come two hundred years later-a hundred of your years, I mean-we might have found this planet dead because of nuclear war.”
“It could be so, Shiplord,” Yeager said. “We can never know, but it could be so. But if you had waited a little longer than that, we might have come to Home before you ever got to Tosev 3.”
Straha hissed in horror. Big Uglies played the game of what-might-have-been far more naturally, far more fluidly, than did the Race. Straha tried to imagine a conquest fleet full of bloodthirsty Tosevites descending on calm, peaceful Home. Save for conquests of other species, the Race had not fought a war in more than a hundred thousand years. Except when a conquest fleet was abuilding, no military hardware above the level the police needed even existed. The Big Uglies would have had an easy time of it.
He did not say that, for fear of giving Yeager ideas-not that any Big Ugly needed help coming up with ideas. What the exiled shiplord did say was, “One day, Big Uglies will visit Home. One day, Big Uglies will bow before the Emperor.” In spite of having abandoned the Race, Straha cast down his eyes at speaking of his sovereign.
“I wish I could visit your planet,” Yeager said. “We Tosevites aren’t very good at bowing to anyone, though. You may have noticed that.”
“Snoutcounting,” Straha said disparagingly. “How you think to rule yourselves through snoutcounting…” Nictitating membranes slid across his eyes, a sure sign he was growing sleepy. “I thank you for your time, Major Yeager. I shall rest now.”
“Rest well, Shiplord,” the Tosevite said.
“I shall.” Straha hung up. But even if he did rest well, tomorrow would be another day alone.
3
Under the summer sun, Jerusalem glowed golden. The local sandstone from which so much of the city was built looked far more impressive than the world’s usual run of gray rocks-so Reuven Russie thought, at any rate. Even marble would only have been silver to sandstone’s gold. Jerusalem was Reuven’s city, and he loved it with the uncritical, unquestioning adoration he’d lavished-for a little while-on the first girl with whom he’d become infatuated.
His childhood memories of other towns-Warsaw, London-were filled with fear and hunger and cold. His eyes went to the Temple Mount, with the Dome of the Rock and the Western Wall. When had snow last fallen there? Not for many years, nor was it likely to fall again for many more. He did not miss it. He had almost a Lizard’s love for heat.
But thinking of the Lizards made him think of the marvelous antiquities on the Temple Mount in a different light. The Dome of the Rock dated from the seventh century of the Common Era. The Western Wall, of course, was far older, having gone up before Jesus strode along the streets on which Reuven walked now.
Archaeologists would be working in Jerusalem for centuries to come, piecing together the distant past. But that past seemed less distant to Reuven Russie than it did to his father Moishe, and far less distant than it would have to the grandfather he did not remember. His grandfather had never known the Lizards. His father had been a grown man when they came, and thought of the earlier days as the normal state of mankind. To those Reuven’s age and younger, especially in lands where the Lizards ruled, they were simply part of the landscape.
One of them skittered past him, intent on some business of its own. “I greet you,” he called in its language.
“I greet you,” the male answered. By the Lizard’s body paint, he served with the radar unit on the hills outside of town. The Nazis had never tried lobbing a rocket in this direction. Russie wasn’t sure what would happen if they did. Having a little warning struck him as a good idea.
He glanced toward the Temple Mount again. Antiquities, he thought once more. So they were, by his father’s standards or his grandfather’s. Two thousand years was a long time, as the Earth had measured such things in the days before the Lizards came. Now…
Now two thousand years felt like merely the blink of an eye. The Lizards’ Empire had been a going concern for more than fifty thousand years, since the days when people lived in caves and quarreled with bears who wanted to do the same. The Lizards had added the Rabotevs and Hallessi to their Empire before people figured out how to read and how to grow crops. Two thousand years ago, they’d already been thinking for some time about conquering Earth.
Set against the vast sweep of Lizardly history, what were a couple of thousand years? Why had God decided to pay attention to Earth during a restricted stretch of time and ignored the worlds of the Empire? Those were questions to make rabbis tear their own hair and pull one another’s beards.
Reuven chuckled. “The Lizards should have moved faster, for once in their scaly lives,” he murmured. Had they simply sent out a conquest fleet without bothering to think and scout and plan, they would have smashed the Roman Empire flat, and Earth would have gone into the Empire without a fight.
But it hadn’t happened. And so, although the Lizards occupied Palestine, they had less control here than they would have liked. Freedom kept spreading almost under their snouts. Not enough males prowled the countryside for it to be otherwise. Jews intrigued with the Soviet Union. Arabs intrigued with the Soviet Union and the Reich. Both Jews and Arabs intrigued with the British and Americans. And, for good measure, Jews and Arabs intrigued with each other-and with the Lizards.
With more than a little pride, Reuven strode through the entranceway to the Russie Medical College, which sat in a square, Lizard-built building a little west of the base of the Temple Mount. The college was named for his father, the first human who’d asked the Lizards for the privilege of studying what they knew and what the finest Earthly physicians hadn’t begun to suspect.
For most of a generation now, bright medical students had flocked here from all over the world to learn what they could acquire in fullness nowhere else. Reuven also knew more than a little pride that he had been allowed to study here, for the Lizards played no favorites, picking those they would accept through grueling examinations. Jews and Arabs studied side by side, along with men and a few women from India, South America, South Africa, and other lands the Lizards ruled-and from the independent nations of the world as well.
As he slid into his seat in the genetics class, Reuven nodded to his fellow students. “Good morning, Thorkil,” he whispered. “Morning, Pablo. Good morning, Jane. Hullo, Ibrahim.” Among themselves, the students spoke English more than any other human language.
In came the instructor, a Lizard military physician named Shpaaka. Along with the rest of the humans, Reuven got to his feet, bent himself into as good an approximation of the Lizards’ posture of respect as his frame would permit, and chorused, “I greet you, superior sir.”
“I greet you,” Shpaaka said. He understood enough English to make sardonic comments when he caught his human students whispering in it. But the Lizards’ tongue was the language of instruction. It had the technical terms he needed to get his point across; English and other Earthly languages had borrowed a lot of them. His eye turrets swiveled back and forth. “Have you any questions on what we covered yesterday before we commence?” He pointed. “Jane Archibald?”