Harry Turtledove - Aftershocks

Their ranks parted slightly. Out from among them came a relatively short, rather stout Big Ugly in wrappings related to those of the soldiers but fancier. He wore a cap on his head. The hair Atvar could see below it was white, which meant he was not young. When he took off the cap for a moment, he showed that most of his scalp was bare, another sign of an aging male Tosevite.

As the Deutsche had parted, so, rather more reluctantly, did Atvar’s security males. The Big Ugly walked up to Atvar and shot out his arm in salute. Being still formally independent, he did not have to assume the posture of respect. “I greet you, Exalted Fleetlord,” he said. He was less fluent in Atvar’s language than his protocol officer, but he made himself understood. “I am Walter Dornberger, Fuhrer and Chancellor of the Greater German Reich .”

“And I greet you, Fuhrer .” Atvar knew he made a hash of the Deutsch word, but it didn’t matter. “Your males fought bravely. Now the fighting is over. You shall have to learn that fighting bravely and fighting wisely are not the same.”

“Had I led the Reich when this war began, it would not have begun,” Dornberger replied. “But my superiors thought differently. Now they are dead, and I have to pick up the pieces they left behind.”

That was Tosevite idiom; the Race would have spoken of putting an eggshell back together. But Atvar understood. “You shall have fewer pieces with which to work henceforward. We intend to make certain of that. You did too much harm to us to be trusted any longer.”

“I understand,” Dornberger said. “The terms you have forced me to accept are harsh. But you and the Race have left me no other choice.”

“Your predecessors had a choice,” Atvar said coldly. “They chose the wrong path. You are obliged to live with their decision, and with what it has left you.”

“I also understand that,” the Tosevite replied. “But you can hardly deny that you are wringing all possible advantages from your victory.”

“Of course we are,” Atvar said. “That is what victory is for. Or do you believe it has some other purpose?”

“By no means,” Dornberger said. In tones of professional admiration, he added, “You were clever to set France up again as an independent not-empire. I did not expect that of you.”

“I thank you.” The fleetlord had not imagined he might know a certain amount of sympathy for the Big Ugly who now led the not-empire that had done the Race so much harm. “Little by little, through continual contact with you Tosevites, we do learn how to play your games. You should be thankful we left you any fragments of your independence.”

“I am thankful to you for that,” Dornberger answered. “I suspect I should also be thankful to the Americans and Russians, who would not have taken it kindly to see the Greater German Reich disappear from the map.”

The Tosevite was indeed professionally competent. Both the USA and the Soviet Union had made it very clear to Atvar that their fear of the Race would increase if the Reich were treated as an outright conquest. After what he had suffered fighting Germany, he did not want the other not-empires excessively afraid; it might make them do something foolish. He hated having to take their fears into account, but they were too strong to let him do anything else. His tailstump quivered in irritation.

Pointing at Dornberger with his tongue, he said, “We no longer need to worry so much about the opinion of the Reich. And we shall do everything possible-everything necessary-to make sure we never have to worry about it again. Do you understand?”

“Of course, Exalted Fleetlord,” Dornberger answered, and Atvar wondered how-and how soon-the Deutsche would start trying to cheat him.

Sweat ran down Colonel Johannes Drucker’s face. Everyone knew the Lizards preferred their weather hot as the Sahara. As the German sat, a prisoner of war, in a cubicle aboard one of their starships, he scratched his bare chest. The Lizards were scrupulous. They’d returned to him the coveralls he’d worn aboard the upper stage of the A-45 that had lifted him into Earth orbit. They’d even washed them. But he couldn’t bear the thought of putting them on, not when he felt about ready to have an apple stuck in his mouth even naked.

He sighed, longing for the fogs and chill of Peenemunde, the Reich’s rocket base on the Baltic. But Peenemunde was radioactive rubble now. His family lived in Greifswald, not far to the west. He sighed again, on a different, grimmer note. He prayed that they weren’t radioactive dust, but he had no way of knowing.

The chair on which he sat was too small for him, and shaped for a backside proportioned differently from his. The sleeping mat on the floor was also too small, and too hard to boot. The Lizards fed him canned goods imported from the lands they ruled and from the USA, most of which were not to his taste.

It could have been worse. He’d tried to blow up this starship. Its anti-missiles had knocked out one of the warheads he’d launched from his upper stage, its close-in weapons system the other. The Race had still accepted his surrender afterwards. Few humans would have been so generous.

He got up and used the head. Every so often, Lizard technicians came in and fiddled with the plumbing. It wasn’t made for liquid waste; the Race, like real lizards, excreted only solids. From trying to blow the starship to a cloud of radioactive gas, he’d been reduced to causing problems in its pipes. That was funny, if you looked at it the right way.

Without warning, the door to his cubicle slid open. He was glad he’d finished pissing; getting caught in the act would have embarrassed him, even if it wouldn’t have flustered the Lizard who caught him. He’d seen this fellow before: he recognized the body paint. “I greet you, superior sir,” he said. Anyone who flew in space had to know the Lizards’ language.

“I greet you, Johannes Drucker,” the Lizard named Ttomalss answered. “I am here to inform you that you will soon be released.”

“That is good news. I thank you, superior sir,” Drucker said. But then his mouth twisted. “It would be better news if it did not mean my not-empire had been defeated.”

“I understand. I sympathize,” Ttomalss said. Perhaps he even did; he showed more knowledge of the way people worked that any other Lizard the German had met. Drucker wondered how he’d acquired it. Ttomalss continued, “But you will have the opportunity to help repair the damage.”

I’ll have the opportunity to see the damage, Drucker thought. He could have done without that opportunity. He’d been a panzer driver, not a spaceman, when the Reich detonated an explosive-metal bomb to derail a Lizard attack on Breslau. He’d cheered then. He wouldn’t be cheering now.

“Can you drop me near Peenemunde land?” he asked. “That is where my… mate and my hatchlings live-if they live anywhere at all.”

But Ttomalss made the Race’s negative hand gesture. “Captives are being exchanged outside Nuremberg, nowhere else.”

“Very well,” Drucker said, since he couldn’t say anything else. From Bavaria to Pomerania through a war-ravaged landscape? Not a journey to look forward to, but one he would have to make.

“Eventually, a shuttlecraft will take you back to the surface of Tosev 3,” the Lizard told him. “In the meantime, now that hostilities have concluded, I have gained permission to inform you that you are not the only Tosevite presently aboard this starship. Are you interested in meeting another member of your species?”

After weeks with nobody but Lizards to talk to? What do you think? Aloud, Drucker said, “Yes, superior sir, I would very interested be.” He used an emphatic cough, then added, “I thank you.” Did the Lizards have a beautiful spy waiting to try to charm secrets out of him? Not likely-not that he’d be much interested anyhow, not when he hadn’t the faintest idea whether Kathe was alive or dead. Had he watched too many bad films and read too many trashy novels? That struck him as very likely indeed.