Second Contact Read online

  Judith and Esther were less philosophical about being left in the dark. “I think all those funny noises are just an excuse so they can talk mushy to each other,” one of them said to the other in Hebrew. They both giggled. Reuven hoped Jane hadn’t understood. By the way she raised an eyebrow, she had.

  Reuven took a deep breath, preparatory to reading his little sisters the riot act. Before he could, his father looked up from the newspaper he was reading. “They aren’t doing anything of the sort,” Moishe Russie told the twins. “Kindly keep quiet and let them work, or you can go to bed right now.”

  He rarely made such dire threats. When he did make them, he meant them. Esther and Judith got very quiet very fast. They didn’t stay quiet long, but they didn’t bother Reuven and Jane any more, either. After a while, Moishe did send them to bed. Jane looked at her watch and said, “I’d better get back to the dorm.”

  “Do you want me to walk you back?” Reuven asked. “I know things have quieted down some, but still—” He waited to see what she would say. Last time, she’d turned him down, and she’d got back without trouble.

  She thought it over. “All right,” she said at last. “Thanks.”

  The night was cool, heading toward chilly. Next to no one was on the streets, for which Reuven was heartily glad. Talking about being a protector was one thing, actually having to do the job something else again. When they got to the dorm—about a fifteen-minute walk from the Russie house—Reuven put his arms around Jane and again waited to see what would happen. She moved toward him instead of away. They kissed for a long time. Then, looking back over her shoulder, she went inside.

  Reuven didn’t remember a single step he took all the way home.

  Glen Johnson walked into the bar at the Kitty Hawk officers’ club and said, “Scotch over ice, Julius.”

  “Yes, suh, Lieutenant Colonel,” said the colored man behind the bar. He was about Johnson’s age, or maybe a few years older, and walked with a limp. He built the drink with casual skill—not that there was anything fancy about scotch on the rocks—and slid it across the polished bar to Johnson. He plied a rag to get rid of the little wet trail the glass left, and contrived to make a couple of quarters disappear as if they’d never been there.

  “Mud in your eye,” Johnson said, and sipped the drink. He reached into his pocket, pulled out an FDR half dollar, and set it on the bar by his glass. “Go on, Julius—have one on me. Have a real one, not the phony drinks bartenders usually take. I’m wise to those tricks, I am.”

  Julius looked at the big silver coin. He held out his white-jacketed arm to Johnson. “You got to give it a twist.” Chuckling, the Marine pilot did. The barkeep let out a mock yelp for mercy, and Johnson released him. He scooped up the half dollar, then made himself a bourbon and water. “Much obliged, suh.”

  “You deserve it,” Johnson said. “Why the hell not? Besides”—he looked around the otherwise empty bar—“I don’t much feel like drinking by my lonesome.”

  “You got troubles, suh?” Julius raised the drink—by its color, not a very strong one—to his lips. The liquid in the glass went down hardly at all. No doubt he had practice at nursing a drink all night long. A bartender who drank too much of what he dispensed wouldn’t last long in the business. One who asked sympathetic questions, on the other hand . . .

  “Troubles?” Johnson said thoughtfully. “You know a man without ’em? Christ on His cross, Julius, do you know a Lizard without ’em?”

  “Don’t know any man without troubles, no, suh,” the Negro said. “Lizards? I found out more’n I ever wanted to about Lizards during the fighting, and that there’s the God’s truth.” He took another small sip from his bourbon and water, then stared down into the glass, as if wondering whether to go on.

  Johnson started to ask him what was on his mind. A glance at Julius told him that, if he ever wanted to find out, he had better keep his mouth shut. He took a few salted peanuts from the bowl on the bar and munched on those instead. Maybe a bartender needed to talk to somebody every once in a while, too.

  At last, still not looking up from the glass in front of him, Julius quietly asked, “I ever tell you before, Lieutenant Colonel, that I was born and raised in Florida?”

  “No, as a matter of fact, you never did,” Johnson said. If he’d let it go at that, he never would have found out anything more. But, as he put together Julius’ color, his age, his limp, and now his place of birth . . . The pilot’s eyes widened. “You don’t mean to tell me you were one of those—?” He stopped in some confusion. He didn’t know how to say it, not in a way that wouldn’t put the bartender’s back up.

  “One o’ those colored boys that fought for the Lizards? Is that what you was gonna say, suh?” Julius asked.

  “Well, yeah.” Johnson knocked back his drink. He laid more money on the bar. “Give me another one of those, would you? Christ, how did you end up doing something like that? I mean, I know your unit mutinied against the scaly bastards, but how did you get sucked in in the first place?”

  “I was hungry,” Julius answered simply. “Everybody was hungry back then, you know—colored folks worse’n most, I reckon, an’ the fighting killed all my livestock and knocked my farm all to hell. So when the Lizards came around an’ promised they’d feed everybody who joined up good, I went.”

  The pilot raised his glass. “That wasn’t the only thing they promised you, was it? The way I remember, they promised black men a chance to take it out on whites, too.” He grimaced. “I hate to say it, but that wasn’t the stupidest thing they ever did.”

  Julius studied him. Here in North Carolina, things were still anything but easy for Negroes in spite of Martin Luther King and his preaching. Johnson saw him weighing how much he could say. After a long, long silence, the barman said, “Well, I’d be lyin’ if I told you there wasn’t some who wanted that. Like you said, suh, the Lizards sort of knew what they was doin’ there. But most o’ the fellas who signed up did it on account of their bellies was rubbin’ up against their backbones, same as me.”

  He chuckled, looking back across a good many years. “They had this one drill sergeant, Lieutenant Colonel, he scare the shell off a snappin’ turtle. Lord, was that man mean! But he was a good sergeant, I reckon. He’d been in the Army in the First World War, so he knew what he was doin’. An’ anybody who wasn’t more scared o’ him than whoever we was gonna fight was a natural-born damn fool.”

  “I’ve known drill sergeants like that,” Johnson said. “I have indeed. But was this fellow for the Lizards, or was he just in it for three squares a day like you?”

  “I truly don’t know, on account of nobody ever had the nerve to find out,” Julius answered. “When the Lizards reckoned we was ready, they took some o’ their soldiers out of the line they was holdin’ against the U.S. Army and put us in. First time we went into action—Lord! You should have seen how fast we threw down them guns an’ threw up our hands.”

  “All of you?” Johnson asked.

  The bartender hesitated again. Johnson didn’t suppose he could blame him. He wouldn’t have wanted to admit anything that brought his race discredit, either. “Hell, it don’t matter none now,” Julius said, more than half to himself. He looked over at Johnson. “No, not all of us, God damn it. Like I said, some o’ those boys flat hated white folks, hated ’em worse’n they hated the Lizards. What they said was, the Lizards was honest—to them, everybody was a nigger. And they fought. They fought like sons of bitches. Don’t reckon there’s one of ’em came out of that battle alive. So what do you think of that, Lieutenant Colonel?”

  Johnson shrugged. “It was a long time ago, and they’re all dead, like you say, so it doesn’t make a hell of a lot of difference what I think. Was that when you got wounded?”

  “Noticed I ain’t so spry, did you?” Julius said. “Yeah, I was tryin’ to surrender and this damnfool kid—he couldn’t have been seventeen, even—shot me on account of he reckoned I was foolin’. Hurt like hell.”
/>   “Oh, yes,” Johnson said. “It’s not a picnic out there, is it? And the crazy thing is, the politicians who send the soldiers out have fought in wars themselves, or a lot of them have. But they go ahead and give the orders that send out the kids every single time.”

  “Sort of different with the Lizards,” Julius observed. “We didn’t have no choice when they went and hit us, and I don’t reckon their Emperor ever did any fighting hisself. From what folks say, the Lizards hadn’t done no fighting for a hell of a long time before they decided to come on over here and take away what’s ours.”

  “That’s what I’ve heard, too,” Johnson agreed. “It’s what the Lizards say themselves, as a matter of fact. I don’t swear it’s true, mind you, but I don’t think they’d lie about something like that, something where it’s not to their advantage to lie, if you know what I mean.”

  “Yes, suh, I do.” The bartender nodded. “From what I seen of ’em, they don’t lie as much as people any which way. Oh, they will—don’t get me wrong, they will—but they’re a little more honest than just plain people, I reckon. Don’t suppose that did ’em a whole lot o’ good when they come up against the likes of us.”

  “We’re a sinful lot, all right,” Johnson said, and Julius nodded. The pilot went on, “Good thing we are, too. We tricked the Lizards as often as we beat ’em fair and square—more often than we beat ’em fair and square, I shouldn’t wonder.” He pointed to the black man. “That’s what your unit did, or most of them, anyway.”

  “Yeah, most of ’em.” Julius took another small sip from the drink Johnson had bought him. “Some o’ those boys, they didn’t care how the Lizards treated them, long as they treated white folks the same way.”

  Johnson thought it was a good time to finish his own drink. Negroes still didn’t get treated like white men in the United States. He said the most he could say: “It’s better than it used to be.” He didn’t know that from his own experience before the war; up till then, he’d seen only a handful of Negroes. He waited to see how the bartender would respond.

  Julius chose his words with care; Johnson got the idea that Julius always chose his words with care. “Yeah, it’s better than it used to be,” the bartender said at last. “But it ain’t as good as it ought to be, you don’t mind my sayin’ so. Doctor King say that, too, an’ he’s right.”

  “Nothing here is as good as it ought to be,” Glen Johnson said at once. “That’s what the USA is about—making things better, I mean. The Lizards think what they’ve got is perfect. We know better. We aren’t at the top, but we’re trying to get there.”

  The bartender ran his rag over the already-gleaming surface of the bar. “I think you’re right, Lieutenant Colonel, suh, but you got to remember, some of us is closer to the top than the rest.”

  Since he didn’t have a good comeback to that one, Johnson asked for another drink instead. He looked around at the empty stools and the empty chairs around the tables. “Slow tonight,” he remarked. “Real slow tonight, as a matter of fact.”

  “Yes, suh,” Julius said, giving him another glass of scotch. “You’re about all that’s keepin’ me in business. Otherwise I’d just pack up and go home and see if there was anything good on the TV.”

  “Yeah,” Johnson said. He got partway through his third drink before realizing a colored man who’d had some pointed things to say—and with justice—about the inequalities of life in the United States owned a television set. Ten years earlier, that would have been unlikely. Twenty years earlier, it would have been unimaginable, even if the Lizards hadn’t come.

  Johnson was about to finish the scotch and head on over to the barracks when Captain Gus Wilhelm came in, spotted him, waved, and sat down beside him. “Looks like you’re ahead of me,” he remarked. “Have to do something about that. Martini might help.” He set coins on the bar. Julius made them disappear.

  “I said things were slow tonight,” Johnson told his fellow pilot. “Now they just went and got slower.”

  “Heh,” Wilhelm said, and then, remembering protocol, “Heh—sir.” He was in his mid-thirties, and had just got into the Army when the fighting stopped. He raised his glass in salute. “Confusion to the Lizards.”

  “I’ll drink to that,” Johnson said, and did. “That’s what this whole planet is—confusion to the Lizards, I mean.”

  “Good thing, too,” Wilhelm said. “If they understood us a little better, they would have kicked the crap out of us, and where would we be then? ‘It shall be done, superior sir’ ”—he used the Lizards’ language for the phrase—“that’s where. No way in hell we’d be out in space yet.”

  “I won’t argue with that,” said Johnson, who wasn’t inclined to argue with much of anything. He lifted his own glass on high. “Confusion to the Lizards, yeah—and a big thank-you to ’em, too, for making us want to get ourselves off the ground.” Solemnly, both men drank.

  “Sir,” Flight Lieutenant David Goldfarb said, “I’ve just had a letter back from my cousin in Palestine.”

  “Ah, that’s first-rate, Goldfarb,” Basil Roundbush answered. “There. Do you see? I knew you could do it.” He waved to the Robinsons barmaid. “Another round here, darling.” She smiled and nodded and swayed away to draw two more pints of Guinness. The group captain watched her with the innocent pleasure of a tot in a toy shop.

  “Yes, sir.” Goldfarb suppressed a sigh. He hadn’t wanted to get involved in this whole highly unofficial business. Not for the first time in his military career, no one had cared whether he wanted to get involved. “It appears—my cousin had to be careful with the questions he asked, so he’s not perfectly sure—it appears, I say, that things got disarranged in Marseille.”

  “Disarranged, eh? That’s not bad.” Roundbush tugged at his mustache. “And Marseille? Why am I not surprised? Was it the bloody Frenchmen or the Nazis who made free with what doesn’t belong to them?”

  Goldfarb would have said the Frenchmen or the bloody Nazis. In 1940, Basil Roundbush would have, too. Not now. He would no doubt have said he’d changed with the times. Goldfarb hadn’t. He was glad he hadn’t.

  He said, “Moishe doesn’t know that, I’m afraid. Which means the Lizards he was talking to don’t know, either.”

  “Well, if they don’t know, they can’t get too upset with us for not knowing,” Roundbush said. The barmaid returned and set their pints of stout in front of them. “Ah, thank you, sweetheart.” He beamed up at her, then turned his attention back to Goldfarb. “You’ve been a good deal of help, old man. You will not find us ungrateful.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Goldfarb said, which was not at all what he was thinking. You won’t find us so ungrateful as to murder your wife, or maybe your children. You won’t find us so ungrateful as to trump up a charge to drum you out of the RAF and keep you from finding honest work anywhere else. Roundbush’s friends were generous men, all right. By the standards of today’s Britain, they were extraordinarily generous. Which says more about today’s Britain than it does about generosity.

  “Marseille.” Roundbush spoke the name as if it were an off-color word in a language he didn’t speak well. “All sorts of things can go wrong there, no doubt about it. I wonder which one has. I shouldn’t have thought Pierre would play such a shabby trick, but one never can tell.”

  “Pierre, sir?” Goldfarb asked. An instant later, he wished he’d kept his mouth shut. The less he knew about his former colleague’s business, the less risk he ran of being drawn into that business.

  “Pierre moves things hither and yon,” Roundbush explained. That much, Goldfarb had gathered for himself. The senior RAF officer went on, “He has a finger in every pie in Marseille—and that’s a good many fingers. If he’s taken up thievery, we may have to whisper in the ears of some chums we have there.”

  Some German chums we have there. Goldfarb had no trouble figuring out what he meant. He took a long pull at his Guinness to disguise what he was thinking. What had the world come to, if a couple of Jews w
ere helping Englishmen turn Germans loose on Frenchmen?

  No. What had come to the world? The Lizards had, and things would, could, never be the same.

  “It’s a rum old world,” he said, a sentiment fueled both by his thoughts of a moment before and by the Guinness he’d drunk.

  “Too right it is, old man,” Basil Roundbush agreed. Why he should agree, with his good looks, his rank, and his upper-crust accent, was beyond Goldfarb. He went on, “What we have to make sure of is that it’s even more of a rum old world for the Lizards than it is for us.”

  “Right,” Goldfarb said tightly. He shouldn’t have gone through the latest pint so fast, for he burst out, “And if we have to get into bed with the Nazi bastards who murdered all my kin they could catch, we just turn out the bloody lights and do it, because we have to pay the Lizards back first.”

  Well, that’s torn it, he thought. Whatever Roundbush and his friends decided to do, he hoped they’d do it to him and not to his family. If anything happened to his wife or his children, he didn’t know what he’d do. On second thought, that wasn’t true. He knew exactly what he’d do. He’d go hunting. He didn’t know how many he’d get, but it would be as many as he could.

  To his surprise, Group Captain Roundbush nodded in evident sympathy. “I can see how you would feel that way,” he said. “Can’t say that I blame you, even, not sitting where you sit. But can you see there are others who might push the Lizards up to the front of the queue and leave the Jerries behind them?”

  “Oh, yes, I can see that. I haven’t even got trouble with it,” Goldfarb answered. If he could speak his mind to Roundbush without the world’s ending, he damn well would: “But what I can’t see is the people who push the Lizards up to the front of the queue and then cozy up to the Jerries because they don’t like the Lizards, either. And there are too damned many of that lot.” He looked defiantly at Roundbush. If the other RAF officer wanted to make something of it, he was ready.