Aftershocks c-3 Read online

  “Some,” Drucker answered in English. Then he shifted: “I must tell you, though, I am better in the language of the Race.”

  “That suits me fine,” the American said, also in the Lizards’ tongue. He’s very young, Drucker realized-the shaved head had disguised his age. He went on, “My name is Jonathan Yeager. I greet you.”

  “And I greet you.” Drucker shook the proffered hand and gave his own name. Then he eyed the American. “Yeager? It is a German name. It means ‘hunter.’ ” The last word was in English.

  “Yes, my father’s father’s father came from Germany,” Jonathan Yeager said.

  In musing tones, Drucker said, “I knew an officer named Jager, Heinrich Jager. He was a landcruiser commander. One of the best officers I ever served under-I named my oldest hatchling for him. I wonder if there is a relationship. From what part of Germany did your ancestor come?”

  “I am sorry, but I do not know,” the young American answered. “Maybe my father does, but I am not sure of that. Many, when they came to America, tried to forget where they came from so they could become Americans.”

  “I have this heard,” Drucker said. “It strikes me as strange.” Maybe that made him a reactionary European. Even if it did, though, he was a wild-eyed radical when measured against the Lizards. He asked, “What sort of research are you engaged in here?” The unspoken question behind that one was, Why would the Americans send a puppy instead of a seasoned man?

  To Drucker’s surprise, Jonathan Yeager blushed all the way to the top of his shaved crown. He coughed and spluttered a couple of times before answering, “I guess you could call it a sociological project.”

  “That sounds interesting,” Drucker said, hoping Yeager would go on and tell him more about it.

  Instead, the American pointed an accusing finger his way and said, “And I know why you are here.”

  “I have no doubt that you do,” Drucker said. “If my attack had been a little more fortunate, we would not be having this talk now.”

  “That is a truth.” Jonathan Yeager sounded surprisingly calm. Maybe he was too young to take seriously the possibility of his own demise. Or maybe not; he went on, “My father is an officer in the U.S. Army. He would talk that way, too, I think.”

  “Professionals do.” Drucker started to say something else, but checked himself. “Is your father by any chance the male who understands the Race so well? If he is, I have some of his work in translation read. I should have of him thought when I heard the name.”

  “Yes, that is my father,” Jonathan Yeager said with what sounded like pardonable pride.

  “He does good work,” Drucker said. “He is the only Tosevite who ever made me believe he could think like a male of the Race. Why are you here instead of him?”

  “He has been here,” the younger Yeager answered. “I first came here with him, as his assistant-I still wear the body paint of an assistant psychological researcher. But I am… better suited to the research for this part of the project than he is.”

  “Can you tell me why?” Drucker asked. Jonathan Yeager shook his head. Seeing that gesture instead of one from a scaly hand made Drucker feel at home, even though the American had told him no.

  Yeager said, “I am told you will be able to go home soon.”

  “Yes, if I have any home left,” Drucker answered. “I do not know whether my kin are alive or dead.”

  “I hope they are well,” Jonathan Yeager said. “I look forward to going home myself. I have been up here since the war began. The Race judged it was not safe for me to leave.”

  “I would say that was likely to be true,” Drucker agreed. “We fought hard.”

  “I know,” Yeager said. “But did you really think you could win?”

  “Did I think so?” Drucker shook his head. “I did not think we had a chance. But what could I do? When your leaders tell you to go to war, you go to war. They must have thought we could win, or they would not have started fighting.”

  “They were-” Jonathan Yeager broke off, shaking his head.

  He’d been about to say something like, They were pretty stupid if they did. Drucker would have argued with him if he hadn’t felt the same way. The crisis had started while Himmler was Fuhrer, and Kaltenbrunner hadn’t done anything to make it go away. On the contrary-he’d charged right ahead. Fools rush in, Drucker thought. He wondered how General Dornberger would shape up as the new leader of the Reich. He also wondered how much trouble the SS would give the new Fuhrer. Dornberger hadn’t come up through the ranks of the blackshirts; he’d been soldiering since the First World War. The secret policemen might not like him very well.

  Drucker had no sympathy for the SS, not after they’d tried to get rid of his wife on the grounds that she had a Jewish grandmother. If all the black-shirts suffered unfortunate accidents, he wouldn’t shed a tear. With SS men in charge of things, his country had suffered an unfortunate accident-except it hadn’t been an accident. Kaltenbrunner had started the war on purpose.

  Something else occurred to him: “Is it true what some males of the Race have told me? That France is to be made independent again, I mean?”

  “Yes, that is true,” Jonathan Yeager told him. “From the news reports I have seen, the French are happy about it, too.” He sounded pretty happy himself. He was, after all, an American, and the USA and Germany had been at war when the Lizards came. They still didn’t get along very well, and gloating at a rival’s misfortune was a constant all over the world, and probably among the Race as well.

  “I do not care whether they are happy or not,” Drucker said. “It will mean a weaker Germany, and a weaker Germany means a stronger Race.” He was sure the Lizards were recording every word he said. He didn’t much care. They’d captured him. They’d beaten his country. If they thought he loved them because of it, they were crazy.

  Back in the cubicle Jonathan Yeager shared with Kassquit, he said, “Strange to think I was just talking with a male who could have killed both of us.”

  When Kassquit made the affirmative gesture, she almost poked him in the nose. As far as Jonathan was concerned, the cubicle would have been cramped for her alone; being smaller than people, Lizards built smaller, too. But she was used to it. She’d lived in a cubicle like this her whole life. She said, “You can take off those foolish wrappings now. You do not need them any more.”

  “No, I suppose not. I certainly do not need them to keep me warm.” Jonathan used an emphatic cough as he kicked off the shorts. The Lizards kept the starship at a temperature comfortable for them, one that matched a hot summer’s day in Los Angeles. Even shorts made him sweat more than he would have without them.

  Kassquit was naked, too. She’d never worn clothes, not after she’d got out of diapers. The Lizards-Ttomalss in particular-had raised her ever since she was a newborn. They’d wanted to see how close they could come to turning a human into a female of the Race.

  Jonathan shaved his head. Plenty of kids of his generation-girls as well as boys, though not so many-did that, aping the Lizards and incidentally annoying their parents. Kassquit shaved not only her head-including her eyebrows-but all the hair on her body in an effort to make herself as much like a Lizard as she could. She’d told him once that she’d thought about having her ears removed to make her head look more like a Lizard’s, and had decided against it only because she didn’t think it would help enough.

  She said, “I wonder if I will be allowed to meet him before he returns to the surface of Tosev 3. I should learn more about wild Tosevites.”

  With a chuckle, Jonathan said, “I think he would be glad to meet you, especially without wrappings.” The Lizards’ language had no specific term for clothes, which the Race didn’t use, but could and did go into enormous detail about body paint.

  “What do you mean?” By Earthly standards, Kassquit had a remorselessly literal mind. “Do you mean he might want to mate with me? Would he find me attractive enough to want to mate with?”

  “Of cours
e he would. I certainly do.” Jonathan used another emphatic cough. He always praised Kassquit as extravagantly as he could. She unfolded like a flower when he did. He got the idea the Lizards hadn’t bothered-or maybe they just hadn’t known people needed such things. Whenever he thought Kassquit acted strangely, he had to step back and remind himself it was a wonder she got even to within shouting distance of sanity.

  And he hadn’t been lying. She was of Oriental descent; living in Gardena, California, which had a large Japanese-American population, he’d got used to Asian standards of beauty. And by them she was more than pretty enough. Her shaved head didn’t put him off, either; he knew plenty of girls at UCLA who shaved theirs. The only thing truly odd about her was her expression, or lack of expression. Her face was almost masklike. She hadn’t learned to smile when she was a baby-Lizards could hardly smile back at her-and it was evidently too late after that.

  She asked, “Would you be upset if I decided to mate with him?” She didn’t have much in the way of tact, either.

  To keep from examining his own feelings right away, Jonathan answered, “Even if he finds you attractive, I am not sure he would want to mate with you. He is concerned with his own mate down in the Reich, and does not know her fate.”

  “I see,” Kassquit said slowly.

  Jonathan wondered if she really did. She hadn’t known anything about the emotional attachments men and women could form… till she started making love with me, he thought. He hadn’t wanted to explain to the German spaceman the sort of sociological research project in which he was engaged. It was really more the Lizards’ project, not his. He was just along for the ride.

  He chuckled. They brought me up here and put me out to stud. He wondered how much they’d learned. He’d certainly learned a lot.

  He went over to Kassquit and put a hand on her shoulder. She squeezed him. She liked being touched. He got the idea she hadn’t been touched a whole lot before he came up to the starship. Touching was a human trait, not one the Race shared to anywhere near the same degree.

  “He will be going down to his not-empire before long,” Kassquit said.

  “Truth,” Jonathan agreed.

  “And you will be going down to your not-empire before long,” Kassquit said.

  “You knew I would,” Jonathan told her. “I cannot stay up here. This is your place, but it is not mine.”

  “I understand that,” Kassquit answered. She spoke the language of the Race as well as someone with a human mouth possibly could. And why not? It was the only language she knew. She went on, “Intellectually, I understand that. But you must understand, Jonathan, that I will be sorry when you go. I will be sad.”

  Jonathan sighed and squeezed her, though he didn’t know whether that made things better or worse. “I am sorry,” he said. “I do not know what to do about that. I wish there were something I could do.”

  “You also have a female waiting for you on the surface of Tosev 3, even if she is not a female with whom you have arranged for permanent exclusive mating,” Kassquit said.

  “Yes, I do,” Jonathan admitted. “You have known that all along. I never tried to keep it a secret from you.”

  He wondered if Karen Culpepper would still be his girl when he came home. They’d been dating since high school. When he’d come up to the starship, he hadn’t expected to stay, and he hadn’t thought he would have that much explaining to do once he got back. He hadn’t really believed the Nazis would be crazy enough to attack the Lizards over Poland. But they had, and he’d been here for weeks-and he’d almost died a couple of times, too. Karen would have an excellent notion of where he was and why he’d come up here. He didn’t think she’d be very happy about it.

  “You will go back to her. You will mate with her. You will forget about me,” Kassquit said.

  She didn’t know it, but she was reinventing the lines everyone who’d ever lost a lover used. “I will never forget you,” Jonathan said, which was the truth. But even if it was, he doubted it consoled her much. Had someone told him the same thing, it wouldn’t have consoled him, either.

  “Can that really be so?” she asked. “You know many other Tosevites. To you, I am only one of many. To me, you are the most important Tosevite I have ever known.” She let her mouth fall open, mimicking the way Lizards laughed. “The size of the sample is small, I admit, but it is not likely to increase to any great degree soon. Why, if I meet the Deutsch male before he leaves the ship, it will go up from two to three.”

  She wasn’t trying to make him feel sorry for her. He was sure of that. She didn’t have the guile to do any such thing. No doubt because of the way she’d been raised, she was devastatingly frank. He said, “You could make it larger if you came down to visit the United States. You would be most welcome in my… city.”

  He’d started to say in my house. But Kassquit wouldn’t be welcome in his house. His father and mother-and he, too, when he was there-were raising a couple of Lizard hatchlings who were Kassquit’s exact inverses: Mickey and Donald were being brought up as much like human beings as possible. The Race wouldn’t be delighted to learn about that, and Kassquit’s first loyalty was inevitably to the Lizards.

  “I may do that,” she said. “On the other fork of the tongue, I may not, too. Is it not a truth that there are Tosevite diseases for which your physicians have as yet developed no vaccines?”

  “Yes, that is a truth,” Jonathan admitted.

  Kassquit continued, “From the Race’s research, it appears that some of these diseases are more severe for an adult than they would be for a hatchling. I do not wish to risk my health-my life-for the sake of a visit to Tosev 3, interesting as it might otherwise be.”

  “Well, I understand that.” Jonathan made the affirmative gesture. “But surely other Tosevites will be coming here to the starship.” Getting away from the personal, getting away from guilt he couldn’t help feeling at leaving someone with whom he’d been making love as often as he could, was something of a relief.

  “I suppose so,” Kassquit answered. “But still, you must understand, you will be the standard of comparison. I will judge every other Tosevite I meet, every other male with whom I mate, by what I have learned from and about you.”

  So he couldn’t get away from the personal after all. Stammering a little, he said, “That is a large responsibility for me.”

  “I think you set a high standard,” Kassquit told him. “If I thought otherwise, I would not want to share this compartment with you and I would not want to go on mating with you, would I? And I do.”

  She put her arms around him. She was as frank about what she liked as about what she didn’t. He kissed the top of her head. An American girl would have tilted her face up for a kiss. Kassquit didn’t. Kisses on the mouth, and especially French kisses, alarmed rather than exciting her.

  They made love on the sleeping mat. It was harder than a bed would have been, but far softer than the metal flooring. Afterwards, Jonathan peeled off the rubber he’d worn and tossed it in the trash. He didn’t flush such things; he had no idea what latex would do to the Lizards’ plumbing, and didn’t care to find out the hard way.

  Kassquit said, “I think I begin to understand something of Tosevite sexual jealousy. It must be close to what I felt when, after the colonization fleet arrived, Ttomalss began paying much less attention to me because he was paying much more attention to Felless, a researcher newly revived from cold sleep.”

  “Maybe,” Jonathan said. He didn’t know what Kassquit had felt then. He supposed it was something strong, though, because Ttomalss had been-still was-as close to a mother and a father as Kassquit had.

  “I think it must be,” Kassquit said earnestly, “for I know much of that same feeling when I think of you mating with that other female down on the surface of Tosev 3. I understand that this is not rational, but it does not appear to be anything I can help, either.”

  Jonathan wasn’t nearly sure Karen would want to mate with him after he got back to Garde
na. But if she didn’t, some other girl-some other girl who not only was but wanted to be a human being-would. He had no doubt of that. While Kassquit… Now she knew more of what being human was all about, and she would go back to hiving among the Lizards.

  “I am sorry,” Jonathan said. “I never meant to cause you pain or jealousy. You were the one who wanted to know what Tosevite sexuality was like, and all I ever wanted to do was please you while I showed you.”

  “I understand that. And you have pleased me.” Kassquit used an emphatic cough. But then she went on, “You have also shown me that there are times when the pleasure cannot come unmixed with pain and jealousy. From everything I gather about the behavior of wild Tosevites, this is not uncommon among you.”

  However alien her background and viewpoint, she wasn’t a fool. She was anything but a fool. Jonathan had discovered that before, and now got his nose rubbed in it. She’d just told him something about the way love worked that he’d never quite figured out for himself. He assumed the posture of respect before her, and then had a devil of a time explaining why.

  Armed guards stood outside the compartment housing the Deutsch captive. Kassquit hoped the males would never have to use their weapons; the thought of bullets tearing through walls, through electronics, through hydraulics, through spirits of Emperors past only knew what all, was genuinely terrifying.

  She used an artificial fingerclaw to press the recessed button in the wall that opened the door. After it slid aside, she stepped into the cubicle. “I greet you, Johannes Drucker,” she said, pronouncing the alien name as carefully as she could.

  “And I greet you, superior female.” The wild Big Ugly stood very straight and shot out his right arm. From what Jonathan Yeager had told her, that was his equivalent of the Race’s posture of respect.