He did know what wouldn’t happen next. Lodz wouldn’t go up in a fireball like a new sun. The Lizards wouldn’t aim their concentrated wrath at Germany-not on account of that, anyhow. He wouldn’t go back to theWehrmacht, nor Ludmila to the Red Air Force. Whatever future they had, whether hours or decades, was here.
He smiled at her. Her eyes were almost closed, but she saw him and smiled back. He saw that, very clearly.
Atvar had heard the buzzing racket of Tosevite aircraft a great many times through sound recordings, but only rarely in person. He turned one eye turret toward the window of his suite. Sure enough, he could see the clumsy, yellow-painted machine climbing slowly into the sky. “That is the last of them, is it not?” he said.
“Yes, Exalted Fleetlord, that one bears away Marshall, the negotiator from the not-empire of the United States,” Zolraag replied.
“The talks are complete,” Atvar said, sounding disbelieving even to himself. “We are at peace with large portions of Tosev 3.”No wonder I sound disbelieving, he thought.We have peace here, but peace without conquest. Who would have imagined that when we set out from Home?
“Now we await the arrival of the colonization fleet, Exalted Fleetlord,” Zolraag said. “With its coming, with the permanent establishment of the Race on Tosev 3, begins the incorporation of this whole world into the Empire. It will be slower and more difficult than we anticipated before we came here, but it shall be done.”
“That is also my view, and why I agreed to halt large-scale hostilities for the time being,” Atvar said. He turned one eye turret toward Moishe Russie, who still stood watching the Big Ugly aircraft shrink in the distance. To Zolraag, he went on, “Translate for him what you just said, and ask his opinion on the matter.”
“It shall be done,” Zolraag said before shifting from the language of the Race to the ugly, guttural grunts he used when speaking to the Tosevite.
Russie made more grunts by way of reply. Zolraag turned them into words a person could understand: “His answer is not altogether germane, Exalted Fleetlord. He expresses relief that the negotiator from Deutschland departed without embroiling the Race and the Tosevites in fresh warfare.”
“I confess to a certain amount of relief on this score myself,” Atvar said. “After that pompous pronouncement the Big Ugly issued which proved to be either a bluff or a spectacular example of Deutsch incompetence-our analysis there is still incomplete-I did indeed anticipate renewed combat. But the Tosevites apparently decided to be rational instead.”
Zolraag translated for Russie, whose reply made his mouth fall open in amusement. “He says expecting the Deutsche to be rational is like expecting good weather in the middle of winter: you may get it, yes, for a day or two, but most of the time you will be disappointed.”
“Expect anything from either Tosevites or Tosevite weather and most of the time you will be disappointed-though you need not translate that,” the fleetlord answered. Russie was looking at him with what he thought was alertness; he remembered the Big Ugly did know some of the language of the Race. Atvar shrugged mentally; Russie already had a good notion of his opinion of Tosevites. He said, “Tell him that, sooner or later, his people will be subjects of the Emperor.”
Zolraag dutifully told him. Russie did not answer, not directly. Instead, he went back to the window and stared out once more. Atvar felt only annoyance: the Tosevite aircraft was long gone by now. But Russie still kept looking out through the glass without saying anything.
“What is he doing?” Atvar snapped at last, patience deserting him.
Zolraag put the question. Through him, Moishe Russie replied, “I am looking across the Nile at the Pyramids.”
“Why?” Atvar said, irritated still. “What do you care about these-what were they? — these large funerary monuments, is that it? They are massive, yes, but barbarous even by Tosevite standards.”
“My ancestors were slaves in this country three, maybe four thousand years ago,” Russie told him. “Maybe they helped build the Pyramids. That’s what our legends say, though I don’t know if it’s true. Who cares about the ancient Egyptians now? They were mighty, but they are gone. We Jews were slaves, but we’re still here. How can you know what will happen from what is now?”
Now Atvar’s mouth fell open. “Tosevite pretensions to antiquity always make me laugh,” he said to Zolraag. “Hear how the Big Ugly speaks of three or four thousand years-six or eight thousand of ours-as if it were a long time in historic terms. We had already absorbed both the Rabotevs and the Hallessi by then, and some of us were beginning to think about the planets of the star Tosev: day before yesterday, in the history of the Race.”
“Truth, Exalted Fleetlord,” Zolraag said.
“Of course it is truth,” Atvar said, “and it is why in the end we shall triumph, our setbacks because of the Big Uglies’ unexpected technological sophistication notwithstanding. We are content to progress one small step at a time. There are whole Tosevite civilizations, as Russie just said, which moved forward at the usual Big Ugly breakneck clip-and then failed utterly. We do not have this difficulty, nor shall we ever. We are established, even if on only part of the world. With the arrival of the colonization fleet, our presence shall become unassailably permanent. We then have only to wait for another Tosevite cultural collapse, extend our influence over the area where it occurs, and repeat the process until no section of the planet remains outside the Empire’s control.”
“Truth,” Zolraag repeated. “Because of Tosevite surprises, the conquest fleet might not have accomplished quite everything the plan back on Home called for.” Kirel could not have been more cautious and diplomatic than that. Zolraag continued, “The conquest, however, does go on, just as you said. What, in the end, does it matter if it takes generations rather than days?”
“In the end, it matters not at all,” Atvar replied. “History is on our side.”
Vyacheslav Molotov coughed. The last T-34 had rumbled through Red Square a good while before, but the air was still thick with diesel fumes. If Stalin noticed them, he gave no sign. He chuckled in high good humor. “Well, Vyacheslav Mikhailovich, it wasn’t quite a victory parade, not the sort I would have wanted after we’d finished crushing the Hitlerites, for instance, but it will do, it will do.”
“Indeed, Comrade General Secretary,” Molotov said. Stalin, for once, had been guilty of understatement. Molotov had gone to Cairo expecting to have nothing but trouble because of the intransigent stand Stalin required him to take. But if Stalin had disastrously misread Hitler’s intentions, he’d gauged the Lizards aright.
“The Lizards have adhered in every particular to the agreement you forged with them,” Stalin said: displays of martial might such as the one just past made him happy as a boy playing with lead soldiers. “They have everywhere removed themselves from Soviet soiclass="underline" with the exception of the formerly Polish territory they elected to retain. And there, Comrade Foreign Commissar, I have no fault to find with you.”
“For which I thank you, Iosef Vissarionovich,” Molotov answered. “Better to have borders with those who keep agreements than with those who break them.”
“Exactly so,” Stalin said. “And our mopping up of German remnants on Soviet soil continues most satisfactorily. Some areas in the southern Ukraine and near the Finnish border remain troublesome, but, on the whole, the Hitlerite invasion, like that of the Lizards, can be reckoned a thing of the past. We move forward once more, toward true socialism.”
He dug in a trouser pocket and took out his pipe, a box of matches, and a leather tobacco pouch. Opening the pouch, he filled the pipe from it, then lighted a match and held it to the bowl of the pipe. His cheeks hollowed as he sucked in breath to get the pipe going. Smoke rose from the bowl; more leaked from his nostrils and one corner of his mouth.