“Here is an assertion that is altogether reliable,” Molotov said: “If you presume to violate our territory again, we shall move in our own interest. This may include combat with the Race. It may include rethinking our position on your imperialist aspirations in China. And it may include rethinking our relationship with the Greater German Reich.”
After the interpreter translated that, Queek spoke one word. Again, the interpreter smiled as he turned it into Russian: “Bluff.”
“You know better,” Molotov said, addressing the fellow directly. “Remind your principal that the USSR and the Reich enjoyed a nonaggression pact for almost two years before coming to blows. We cooperated to some degree against the Race during the fighting. If we both see ourselves threatened, we can cooperate again.”
Not smiling any more, the Pole spoke in the Lizards’ language. Queek listened intently, then said, “It is precisely the instability of your species that makes you so dangerous.”
“We are not unstable,” Molotov said. “We are progressive.”
“I cannot translate that,” the interpreter told him. “The language of the Race has no such word, no such concept.”
“I believe it,” Molotov said, and then regretted wasting his time on a cut the interpreter would feel but the Lizard, even were it translated for him, would not. Reactionary that he was, he would take it for praise. Sighing, Molotov went on, “I reiterate: we have tolerated one blow because we are a peace-loving nation and are, in the words of the old superstition, willing to turn our cheek. Once. We are willing once. If you also strike at the cheek we have turned, only the devil’s grandfather knows where things will end.”
Whenever Russians brought the devil’s kin into a conversation, they meant something had gone or would go dreadfully wrong somewhere. Molotov wondered how Queek’s interpreter was getting that across in the language of the Lizards. The ambassador said, “I have delivered my message. You have delivered yours, which I shall transmit to my superiors for their evaluation. Have we any further business?”
“I think not,” Molotov answered. “We have threatened each other enough for a summer afternoon.” The interpreter gave him an odd look. He stared back, imperturbable as always. With a shrug that said the Pole couldn’t believe what he’d heard, the fellow translated for Queek.
“Truth,” the ambassador said, one of the few words in his language Molotov understood. He and the interpreter left together.
Molotov went into the chamber behind the office and changed clothes, then went into the other office onto which that chamber opened, the one no Lizard was allowed to enter. He spoke to the secretary there: “Summon Lavrenti Pavlovich, Andrei Andreyevich, and Georgi Konstantinovich to meet me here in an hour’s time.”
“Yes, Comrade General Secretary,” the man said.
What will they be thinking? Molotov wondered. What will be going through Beria’s mind? Through Gromyko’s? Through Zhukov’s? Molotov had always trembled inside when Stalin summoned him to a meeting-often in the wee hours of the morning. Did his summons make his chief lieutenants shiver? He doubted it. He was as ruthless as Stalin had ever been, but less showy about it. And Stalin had enjoyed, and let people know he enjoyed, issuing death sentences. Molotov did it as routinely as Stalin ever had, but got no great pleasure from it. Maybe that made him less frightening than his great predecessor. So long as he held plots at bay, he didn’t care.
Marshal Zhukov arrived first, fifty-eight minutes after Molotov told the secretary to call him. Gromyko was a minute behind him. This time, Beria was late: he strolled into the office ten minutes after Gromyko. He did not excuse himself, but simply sat down. Molotov did not think he was making a display of his power-just an uncultured lout from the Caucasus with no sense of time.
He did not make an issue of it. It would keep. Heading the NKVD did make Beria immensely powerful. But no chief of the secret police was ever loved. If Molotov decided to get rid of him, he would have the Party and the Red Army behind him, and a faction within the NKVD as well. So he did not worry about Beria… too much.
Of course, no one in the Reich had worried about Himmler too much, either. Molotov wished he hadn’t had that thought.
Shoving it aside, he said, “Now that we are all here”-as much of a dig at Beria as he would take-“let us discuss latest developments with the Lizards.” He summarized his conversation with Queek.
“Comrade General Secretary, I want you to know we could have inflicted severe losses on the Lizards when they attacked our air base,” Zhukov said. “Only at your orders did we refrain from punishing the bandits.”
“It is as well you did,” Molotov said. He did not glance over to Zhukov. He did not need to see the man who looked like a peasant and fought the way Wehrmacht field marshals wished they could to worry about him. Like Beria, Zhukov was able. Unlike Beria, the marshal was also popular. But he had had many chances to stage a coup, and had taken none of them. Molotov trusted him as far as he trusted any man, which was not far. He went on, “I do not know how harshly the Lizards would have retaliated had we struck at them, and I did not wish to discover this by expensive experiment.”
“They are sons of bitches, nothing but sons of bitches,” said Zhukov, who could affect a peasant’s crudity to cloak his keen wits.
“They are powerful sons of bitches,” Gromyko said, another self-evident truth. “Powerful sons of bitches have to be handled carefully.” He did glance over at Beria.
Beria either did not notice or affected not to. He said, “The foreign commissar is right. And I can also tell you, Vyacheslav Mikhailovich, that the Lizards think we are powerful sons of bitches. Signals intercepts and reconnaissance satellite photos”-both provinces of the NKVD-“show their colonists are not settling close to the southern borders of the USSR. You told them they did not have our leave to do so, and they are taking your word seriously.”
“That is good news,” Molotov said, and Zhukov and Gromyko both nodded. Molotov continued, “That the colonists are continuing to land anywhere on the surface of the world is not good news, however.”
“From all I have learned, they will have a hard time making the colonists into soldiers,” Zhukov said, “a much harder time than we have in turning conscripts into fighting men. This works in our favor.”
“So it does, Georgi Konstantinovich, but only so far,” Molotov replied. “They are landing many workers and many machines. Their industrial output will increase with more factories and more workers who do not seek to sabotage production. What soldiers they have will be better equipped.”
“They will also be able to exploit the resources of the territory they control more effectively than has been true up till now,” Gromyko added. In many ways, he thought very much like Molotov. Unlike Molotov, though, he seemed content with a subordinate role in affairs.
Zhukov said, “If they train no more soldiers, they will run out sooner or later. How many weapons they make will not matter if they have no one who can fire them.”
“Interesting,” Molotov murmured. “Perhaps very interesting.” Now he glanced over at Beria. “Inquire among our prisoners as to how rapidly Lizards reproduce and how long they need to be trained to become proper parts of their society.”
“I will do that, Vyacheslav Mikhailovich,” the NKVD chief said. “This is not information we needed before, and so we never tried to pull it out. Now that we see it might be useful, I expect we can get it.”
“Good,” Molotov said. “Without the captives we took in the fighting, we would never have been able to move ahead in so many fields so fast. We have learned a great deal from them. And now that a new kind of knowledge becomes more valuable, as you say, we shall learn more.”