Again, Mutt needed a moment to understand the Lizard. “A born leader, you mean?” Now he laughed, loud and long. “I grew up on a Mississippi farm my own self. There was nigger sharecroppers workin’ bigger plots o’ land than the one my pappy had. I got to be a manager on account of I didn’t want to keep walkin’ behind the ass end of a mule forever, so I ran off an’ played ball instead. I was never great, but I was pretty damn good.”
“I have heard before these stories of defiance of authority from Tosevites,” Chook said. “They are to me very strange. We have not any like them among the Race.”
Mutt thought about that: a whole planet full of Lizards, all doing their jobs and going on about their lives for no better reason than that somebody above them told them that was what they were supposed to do. When you looked at it that way, it was like what the Reds and the Nazis wanted to do to people, only more so. But to Chook, it seemed like water to a fish. He didn’t think about the bad parts, just about how it gave his life order and meaning.
“How about you, Small-Unit Group Leader?” Daniels asked Chook. “After you Lizards pull out of the U.S. of A, what do you do next?”
“I go on being a soldier,” the Lizard answered. “After this cease-fire with your not-empire, I go on to some part of Tosev 3 where no truce is, I fight more Big Uglies, till, soon or late, the Race wins there. Then I go to a new place again and do the same. All this for years, till colonization fleet comes.”
“So you were a soldier from the git-go, then?” Mutt said. “You weren’t doin’ somethin’ else when your big bosses decided to invade Earth and just happened to scoop you up so as you could help?”
“That would be madness,” Chook exclaimed. Maybe he was taking Mutt too literally-and maybe he wasn’t. He went on, “A hundred and five tens of years ago, the 63rd Emperor Fatuz, who reigned then and now helps watch spirits of our dead, he set forth a Soldier’s Time.”
Mutt could hear the capital letters thudding into place, but didn’t know what exactly they meant. “A Soldier’s Time?” he echoed.
“Yes, a Soldier’s Time,” the Lizard said. “A time when the Race needed soldiers, at first to train the males who would go with the conquest fleet, and then, in my own age group and that just before mine, the males who would make up the fleet.”
“Wait a minute.” Mutt held up a stubby, bent forefinger. “Are you tryin’ to tell me that when it’s not a Soldier’s Time, you Lizards, you don’t have any soldiers?”
“If we are not building a conquest fleet to bring a new world into the Empire, what need do we have for soldiers?” Chook returned. “We do not fight among us. The Rabotevs and Hallessi are sensible subjects. They are not Tosevites, to revolt whenever they like. We have the data to make males into soldiers when the Emperor”-he looked down at the ground-“decides we need them. For thousands of years at a time, we do not need. Is it different with you Big Uglies? You fought your own war when we came. Did you have soldiers in a time between wars?”
He sounded as if he were asking whether they picked their noses and then wiped their hands on their pants. Mutt looked at Muldoon. Muldoon was already looking at him. “Yeah, we’ve been known to keep a soldier or two around while we’re not fightin’,” Mutt said.
“Just in case we might need ’em,” Muldoon added, his voice dry.
“This is wasteful of resources,” Chook said.
“It’s even more wasteful not to keep soldiers around,” Mutt said, “on account of if you don’t and the country next door does, they’re gonna whale the stuffing out of you, take what used to be yours, an’ use it for their own selves.”
The Lizard’s tongue flicked out, wiggled around, and flipped back into his mouth. “Ah,” he said. “Now I have understanding. You are always in possession of an enemy next door. With us of the Race, it is a thing of difference. After the Emperors”-he looked down again-“made all Home one under their rule, what need had we of soldiers? We had need only in conquest time. Then the reigning Emperor”-and again-“declared a Soldier’s Time. After the ending of the conquest, we needed soldiers no more. We pensioned them, let them die, and trained no new ones till the next time of need.”
Mutt let out a low, soft, wondering whistle. In a surprisingly good Cockney accent, Herman Muldoon sang out, “Old soldiers never die. They only fade away.” He turned to Chook, explaining, “With us, that’s just a song. I heard it Over There during the last big war. You Lizards, though, sounds like you really mean it. Ain’t that a hell of a thing?”
“We mean it on Home. We mean it on Rabotev 2. We mean it on Halless 1,” Chook said. “Here on Tosev 3, who knows what we mean? Here on Tosev 3, who knows what anything means? Maybe one day, Second Lieutenant Daniels, we fight again.”
“Not with me, you don’t,” Mutt said at once. “They let me out of the Army, they ain’t never gettin’ me back in. An’ if they do, they wouldn’t want what they got. I done had all the fightin’ that’s in me squeezed out. You want to mix it up down line, Small-Unit Group Leader Chook, you got to pick yourself a younger man.”
“Two younger men,” Sergeant Muldoon agreed.
“I wish to both of you good fortune,” Chook said. “We fighted each other. Now we do not fight and we are not enemies. Let it stay so.” He turned and skittered out of the circle of yellow light the campfire threw.
“Ain’t that somethin’?” Muldoon said in wondering tones. “I mean, ain’t that just somethin’?”
“Yeah,” Mutt answered, understanding exactly what he was talking about. “If they ain’t got a war goin’ on, they don’t have any soldiers, neither. Wish we could be like that, don’t you?” He didn’t wait for Muldoon’s nod, which came as automatically as breathing. Instead, he went on, voice dreamy, “No soldiers a-tall, not for hundreds-shitfire, maybe thousands, all I know-of years at a time.” He let out a long sigh, wishing for a cigarette.
“Almost makes you wish they won the war, don’t it?” Muldoon said.
“Yeah,” Mutt said. “Almost.”
Whatever Mordechai Anielewicz was lying on, it wasn’t a feather bed. He pulled himself to his feet. Something wet was running down his cheek. When he put his hand against it, the palm came away red.
Bertha Fleishman sprawled in the street, in amongst the tumbled bricks from which he had just arisen. She had a cut on her leg and another one, a nasty one, on the side of her head that left her scalp matted with blood. She moaned: not words, just sound. Her eyes didn’t quite track.
Fear running through him, Mordechai stooped and hauled her upright. His head was filled with a hissing roar, as if a giant high-pressure air hose had sprung a leak right between his ears. Through that roar, he heard not only Bertha’s moan but the screams and cries and groans of dozens, scores, maybe hundreds of injured people.
If he’d walked another fifty meters closer to the fire station, he wouldn’t have been injured. He would have been dead. The realization oozed slowly through his stunned brain. “If I hadn’t stopped to chat with you-” he told Bertha.
She nodded, though her expression was still faraway. “What happened?” Her lips shaped the words, but they had no breath behind them-or maybe Anielewicz was even deafer than he thought.
“Some kind of explosion,” he said. Then, later than he should have, he figured out what kind of explosion: “A bomb.” Again, he seemed to be thinking with mud rather than brains, because he needed several more seconds before he burst out, “Skorzeny!”
The name reached Bertha Fleishman, where nothing had before it“Gottenyu!” she said, loud enough for Anielewicz to hear and understand. “We have to stop him!”
That was true. They had to stop him-if they could. The Lizards had never managed it. Anielewicz wondered if anyone could. One way or the other, he was going to find out.
He looked around. There in the chaos, using a bandage from the aid kit he wore on his belt, squatted Heinrich Jager. The old Jew who held out a mangled hand to him didn’t know he’d been aWehrmacht panzer colonel, or care. And Jager, by the practiced, careful way he worked, didn’t worry about the religion of the man he was helping. Beside him, his Russian girlfriend-another story about which Anielewicz knew less than he would have liked-was tying what looked like an old wool sock around a little boy’s bloody knee.