Striking the Balance

Zolraag spoke a single word into what looked like a microphone at the front of the troop compartment: “Go.”

The combat vehicle clattered through the streets. Moishe got only a limited view through the machine’s firing ports. It was one of the least pleasurable journeys of his life in any number of ways. The seat on which he awkwardly tried to perch was made for a male of the Race, not someone his size; his backside didn’t fit it, while his knees came up under his chin. It was hot in there, too, hotter even than outside. The Lizards basked in the heat. Russie wondered if he’d pass out before they got where they were going.

He glimpsed a marketplace that dwarfed any he’d seen in Palestine. Through the fighting vehicle’s armor plate, he heard people jeering and cursing at the Lizards-that, at least, is what he thought they were doing, though he knew not a word of Arabic. But if anything so gutturally incandescent wasn’t cursing, it should have been. Whatever it was, Zolraag ignored it.

A few minutes later, the vehicle stopped. One of Moishe’s guards opened the doors at the rear.“Jude heraus,”

Zolraag said, which made the hair stand up on the back of Russie’s neck.

They’d brought him to another hotel. The Lizards had fortified this one like the Maginot Line; when Moishe looked around, he saw enough razor wire, aliens with automatic weapons, and panzers and combat vehicles to hold off Rommel’sAfrika Korps and the British who’d fought him… not that the Nazis or the British were going concerns in North Africa these days.

He didn’t get much time for sightseeing. Zolraag said, “Come,” the guards pointed their weapons at him, and he perforce came. The hotel lobby had ceiling fans. They weren’t turning. The electric lights were on, so Moishe decided the fans were off because the Lizards wanted them off.

The lift worked, too. In fact, it purred upward more silently and smoothly than any on which Moishe had ever ridden. He didn’t know whether it had always been like that or the Lizards had improved it after they conquered Cairo. It was, at the moment, the least of his worries.

When the lift doors opened, he found himself on the sixth floor, the topmost one. “Out,” Zolraag said, and Moishe obeyed again. Zolraag led him along the hallway to a suite of rooms that made the one where the Russies were confined seem prisonlike indeed. A Lizard who wore strange body paint-the right side fairly plain, the left fancier than any Moishe had seen till now-spoke with Zolraag at the doorway, then ducked back into the suite.

He returned a moment later. “Bring in the Big Ugly,” he said.

“It shall be done, adjutant to the fleetlord,” Zolraag answered.

They spoke their own language, but Moishe managed to follow it. “The fleetlord?” he said, and was proud that, despite his surprise, he’d remembered to add an interrogative cough. The Lizards ignored him even so. He hadn’t even thought the fleetlord was on the face of the Earth.

Atvar’s body paint was like that of Pshing’s left side, only all over. Other than that, he looked like a Lizard to Russie. He was able to tell one of the aliens from another, but only after he’d known him for a while.

Zolraag said, “Exalted Fleetlord, I present to you the Tosevite Moishe Russie, who is at last returned to our custody.”

“I greet you, superior sir,” Moishe said, as politely as he could: no point in insulting the chief Lizard over anything inconsequential.

He turned out to be wrong even so. “ ‘I greet you,Exalted Fleetlord,” Zolraag said sharply. Moishe repeated the phrase, this time with the right honorific. “That is better,” Zolraag told him.

Atvar, meanwhile, was studying him from head to toe, eye turrets swinging up and down independently of each other in the unnerving way Lizards had. The fleetlord spoke in his own language, too fast for Moishe to stay with him. Seeing that, Zolraag translated his words into German: “The exalted fleetlord wants to know if you are now satisfied as to the overwhelming power of the Race.”

The word he used to translateRace into German wasVolk. That raised Moishe’s hackles all over again: the Nazis had usedVolk for their own ends. He had to bring himself back under conscious control before answering, “Tell the fleetlord I am not. If the Race had overwhelming power, this war would have been over a long time ago.”

He wondered if that would anger Atvar. He hoped not. He had to be careful about what he said, much less for his own sake than for Rivka’s and Reuven’s. To his relief, Atvar’s mouth fell open. The Lizard’s sharp little teeth and long, forked tongue were not delightful sights in and of themselves, but they meant the fleetlord was amused rather than annoyed.