Down to Earth (59 page)

“They also would not be Americans if they did not seek to profit from others’ misfortunes,” Molotov said. “Before the Lizards came, they were happy enough to send us aid against the Nazis, but how many soldiers in American uniform did you see? None. We did the dying for them.” As Stalin had, he remembered that, remembered and resented it. Like Stalin, he’d been unable to avenge it.

Gromyko said, “If the Americans will not act, if the Nazis will not heed us, what about the Lizards themselves? Have they not warned the
Reich
of the dangers inherent in its provocative course?”

“I am given to understand that they have,” Molotov said. “But telling a German something and getting him to listen are two quite different things.” He drummed his fingers on the polished wood desktop in front of him. “Do you suppose we might be able to suggest ways in which the Race might gain the Nazis’ attention?”

“I don’t know,” Gromyko answered. “But at this point, what have we got to lose?”

Molotov considered. “Nothing whatever. We might even worm our way into the good graces of the Race. A good suggestion, if I say so myself. I shall arrange a meeting with Queek.”

The ease with which he arranged the meeting told him the Lizards were grasping at straws, too. And the Polish interpreter for the Race’s ambassador to the Soviet Union showed none of his usual toploftiness. Plainly, he was worried about what might happen to his homeland.

Queek gave forth with a series of hisses and pops and coughs. The interpreter turned them into rhythmic, Polish-accented Russian: “The ambassador says he is grateful for your good offices, Comrade General Secretary, and welcomes any suggestions you have on how to keep this crisis from hatching into full-scale conflict.”

“Tell him that the best way to make sure the Germans do not attack is to convince them they have no hope of winning,” Molotov answered. “They do respect strength, if nothing else.”

“That is not apparent in the present situation,” Queek said. “We have repeatedly warned them what will happen if they attack Poland. They cannot help but know the strength at our command. And yet, to all appearances, they continue preparations to attack. I am baffled. The Race is baffled. If the
Reich
breaks the truce that has held so long, we shall not be gentle.”

“I understand.” Had Molotov been in Queek’s position, he would have said the same thing. But he wasn’t, and he didn’t like the position he was in. He went on, “My own concern is not least related to the damage a conflict over Poland will cause to the peace-loving people of the Soviet Union, who do not deserve to be sacrificed because of the folly of others.”

Queek shrugged as if he were a man. “I am not responsible for the geography of Tosev 3,” he said. “If your not-empire does not provoke us, we shall do it no direct harm. What we need to do to defeat and punish the
Reich
, however, that, I assure you, we shall do.”

Again, Molotov might have said the same thing in the same position. Again, he didn’t like hearing it. He cast about for ways to head off the catastrophe he saw looming ahead. Here, he did not feel the dialectic was operating on his side. The dialectic . . . He didn’t smile, but he felt like it. “Your ambassador in Nuremberg might tell the Germans that we hope they do attack Poland, because we expect to profit from their overthrow at your hands.”

“Why do you say this?” Even in his own language, which Molotov couldn’t understand, Queek sounded suspicious. The translation proved the Soviet leader had gauged the Lizard’s tone aright. The ambassador went on, “I know that you and your not-empire love neither the Race nor the
Reich
.”

“No, we do not,” Molotov agreed, glad he didn’t have to bother with hypocrisy here. “But a war would be almost as disastrous for us as for either side fighting, even if we are not directly involved. The Germans will not pay any attention to what we tell them, for they do not love us, either. But if they think we want them to do one thing, they might do the opposite to annoy us.”

Before answering Molotov, Queek spoke back and forth with his interpreter in the language of the Race. Again, Molotov didn’t understand, but he could guess what was going on: the ambassador wanted to know if the interpreter thought what he’d said was true. The Pole could damage the Soviet Union by saying no, but he would damage his own homeland worse.

Queek said, “Perhaps we shall try this. It cannot make things worse, and it may make them better. I thank you for the suggestion.”

“I do it in my self-interest, not yours,” Molotov said.

“I understand that,” the Lizard replied. “Against the
Reich,
your self-interest and that of the Race coincide. You may rest assured, I also understand this is not the case in other areas where we impinge.”

“I have no idea what you are talking about,” Molotov said, lying through his teeth. “Our relations with the Race are correct in all regards.”

Again, Queek and his interpreter conferred. “ ‘Correct,’ I am given to understand, is a euphemism for ‘chilly,’ ” the Lizard said at last. “This strikes me as an accurate summation. Before I go, I shall repay you for your assistance, however self-interested it may have been, by strongly suggesting that you should under no circumstances give the Chinese rebels an explosive-metal bomb. If they use one against us, you will be held responsible. Do you understand?”

“I do,” Molotov said. “Since I had no intention of doing any such thing, the warning is pointless, but I accept it in the spirit in which it was offered.” That sounded polite, and committed him to nothing.

After Queek and the interpreter left, Molotov stepped out of the office, too, by the side door that led to the changing room. There he took off his clothes and put on fresh ones brought in for the purpose. Only after he was sure he wasn’t bringing along any electronic hangers-on did he return to the office where he handled everything except meetings with the Race.

He was about to call Marshal Zhukov when the telephone rang. He was something less than astonished when his secretary told him the marshal waited on the other end of the line. “Put him through, Pyotr Maksimovich,” he said, and then, a moment later, “Good day, Comrade Marshal.” Best to remind Zhukov he was still supposed to be subservient to the Party. Molotov wished theory and practice coincided more closely.

Sure enough, all Zhukov said was, “Well?”

Suppressing a sigh, Molotov summarized the conversation with Queek. He added, “This means, of course, that we cannot even think about Operation Proletarian Vengeance for some time. It would not be safe.”

“No. It was always risky.” Zhukov agreed. “We would have had to blame the bomb on the Nazis or the Americans, and we might well not have been believed. Now we can only hope the Germans don’t give Mao a bomb and blame it on us.” That was a horrifying thought. Before Molotov could do more than note it, Zhukov went on, “The west is more important. We are prepared for anything, Vyacheslav Mikhailovich, as best we can be.”

“Good. Very good,” Molotov said. “Now we hope the preparations are needless.” He hung up. Zhukov let him get away with it. Why not? If things went wrong, who would get the blame? Molotov would, and he knew it.

Reuven Russie was examining the cyst on the back of a stocky old lady’s calf when the air-raid sirens began to howl.
“Gevalt!”
the woman exclaimed, startled back into Yiddish from the Hebrew they’d been using. “Is it starting all over again, God forbid?”

“It’s probably just a drill, Mrs. Zylbring,” Reuven answered the reassuring tones that came in so handy in medicine were useful in other ways, too. “We’ve been having a lot of them lately, you know, just in case.”

“And would we have them if we didn’t need them?” Mrs. Zylbring retorted, to which he lacked such a reassuring comeback.

Yetta the receptionist said, “No matter what it is, we’d better head for the basement.” She’d stayed in the examining room to make sure Reuven didn’t get fresh with Mrs. Zylbring. He couldn’t imagine himself that desperate, but protocol was protocol. He also had no comeback for her.

His father and the fat, middle-aged man Moishe Russie’d been looking at came out of the other examination room. They too headed for the basement. As Reuven went down the steps, he wondered if hiding down there would save him from an explosive-metal bomb. He doubted it. He’d been a little boy on a freighter outside of Rome when the Germans smuggled in a bomb and blew the Eternal City’s Lizard occupiers—and, incidentally, the papacy—to radioactive dust. That had been a horror from a lot of kilometers away. Close up? He didn’t like to think about it.

He’d just gone into the shelter when the all-clear sounded. His father’s patient said several pungent things in Arabic, from which the Jews of Palestine had borrowed most of their swear words: as a language used mostly in prayer for two thousand years, Hebrew had lost much of its own nastiness.

“It could be worse,” Reuven told him. “It might have been the real thing.”

“If they keep having alarms when no one’s there, though, nobody will take shelter when it is the real thing:” the man answered, which was also true.

He kept on grumbling as they all went back upstairs. Once they’d returned to the examination room, Mrs. Zylbring asked Reuven, “Well, what can you do about my leg?”

“You have two choices,” he answered. “We can take out the cyst, which will hurt for a while, or we can leave it in there. It’s not malignant; it won’t get worse. It’ll just stay the way it is.”

“But it’s an ugly lump!” Mrs. Zylbring said.

“Getting rid of it is a minor surgical procedure,” Reuven said. “We’d do it under local anesthetic. It wouldn’t hurt at all while it was happening.”

“But it would hurt afterwards. You said so.” Mrs. Zylbring made a sour face. “And it would be expensive, too.”

Reuven nodded politely. The training he’d had at the Lizards’ medical college hadn’t prepared him for dealing with dilemmas like this. He suspected he was a good deal more highly trained than he needed to be to join his father’s practice. No, he didn’t suspect it: he knew it. But he was also trained in some of the wrong things.

The old lady waggled a finger at him. “If it were your leg, Doctor, what would you do?”

He almost burst out laughing. The Lizards had never asked him a question like that. But it wasn’t a bad question, not really. Mrs. Zylbring assumed he had all the answers. That was what a doctor was for, wasn’t it—having answers? Answering what kind of condition she had was easy. Knowing what to do about it was a different question, a different kind of question, one Shpaaka and the other physicians from the Race hadn’t got him ready to handle.

He temporized: “If the fact that it doesn’t disturb function satisfies you, leave it alone. If the way it looks bothers you, I can get rid of it inside half an hour.”

“Of course the way it looks bothers me,” she said. “If it weren’t for that, I wouldn’t have come here. But I don’t like the idea of you cutting on me, and I don’t have a whole lot of money, either. I don’t know what to do.”

In the hope Yetta would have a good idea, Reuven glanced over to her. She rolled her eyes in a way suggesting she’d seen patients like Mrs. Zylbring a million times before but didn’t know what to do about them, either. In the end, the old woman went home with her cyst. Reuven wished he’d tried harder to talk her into getting rid of it; his urge was always to do something, to intervene. If he hadn’t had that urge, he probably wouldn’t have wanted to follow in his father’s footsteps.

But when he said as much to his father, Moishe Russie shook his head. “If it’s not really hurting the woman, it doesn’t matter one way or another. She’d have been unhappy at the pain afterwards, too, mark my words. If she’d wanted you to do it, that would have been different.”

“The pain would be the same either way,” Reuven said.

“Yes—but at the same time no, too,” his father said. “The difference is, she’d have accepted it better if she’d been the one urging you to have the thing out. She wouldn’t blame you for it, if you know what I mean.”

“I suppose so,” Reuven said. “Things aren’t so cut-and-dried here as they were back in the medical college. You were always supposed to come up with the one right answer there, and you got into trouble if you didn’t.”

His father’s chuckle had a reminiscent feel to it. “Oh, yes. But the real world is more complicated than school, and you’d better believe it.” He got up from behind his desk, came around it, and clapped Reuven on the shoulder. “Come on. Let’s go home. You haven’t got homework any more, anyhow.”

“That’s true.” Reuven grinned. “I knew I must have had some good reason for getting out of there.”

Moishe Russie laughed, but soon sobered. “You did have a good reason, a very good one. And I’m proud of you.”

“Can’t you get the fleet lord to do anything about that?” Reuven asked as they left the office—Moishe Russie locked up behind them—and started for home.

Late-afternoon sunlight gleamed off Moishe Russie’s bald crown as he shook his head. “I’ve tried. He won’t listen. He wants everybody to reverence the spirits of Emperors past”—he said the phrase in the Lizards’ language—“so we’ll get used to bowing down to the Race.”

“He’d better not hold his breath, or he’ll be the bluest Lizard ever hatched,” Reuven said.

“I hope you’re right. With all my heart, I hope you’re right,” his father said. “But the Race is stubborn, and the Race is very patient, too. That worries me.”

“How much is patience worth if we all blow up tomorrow?” Reuven asked. “That’s what worries me.”

Moishe Russie started to step off the curb, then jumped back in a hurry to avoid an Arab hurtling past on a bicycle. “It worries me, too,” he said quietly, and then switched to Yiddish to add, “God damn the stupid Nazis.”

“Everyone’s been saying that for the past thirty years,” Reuven said. “If He’s going to do it, He’s taking His own sweet time about it.”

“He works at His speed, not ours,” Moishe Russie answered.

“If He’s there at all,” Reuven said. There were days—commonly days when people were more stupid or vicious than usual—when belief came hard.