Harry Turtledove - Down to Earth

For the moment, they were quiet. An Arab woman in a long black dress with a black scarf on her head walked past Reuven. He nodded politely. So did she, though his clothes and his fair skin clearly said he was a Jew. Did something nasty gleam in her eyes despite the polite nod? Maybe, maybe not. The Arabs’ riots were aimed first and foremost at the Lizards, with the Jews being secondary targets because they got on with the Race better than their Arab neighbors did.

Reuven wondered if that woman had been screeching “Allahu akbar!” and breaking windows or throwing rocks or setting fires during the latest round of turmoil. He wouldn’t have been a bit surprised. The sour smell of old burning still clung to Jerusalem, even after a late-winter rainstorm. The rain hadn’t been able to wash away all the soot streaking the golden sandstone that was the most common local building material, either.

A razor-wire security perimeter surrounded the Moishe Russie Medical College. As Reuven approached, a Lizard in a sandbagged strongpoint waved an automatic rifle at him. “Show me your authorization for entry,” the Lizard snapped in his own language. No one who didn’t understand that language was likely to have authorization to pass through the perimeter.

“It shall be done,” Reuven said, also in the language of the Race. He handed the Lizard a plastic card with his photograph. The Lizard didn’t compare the photograph to his appearance. Even after more than twenty years on Earth, many males of the Race had trouble telling one human being from another. Instead, the soldier fed the card into an electronic gadget and waited to see what colored lights came on.

The result must have satisfied him, for he handed the card back to Russie when the machine spat it out. “Pass on,” he said, gesturing with the rifle.

“I thank you,” Reuven answered. The medical college had come under heavy attack during the fighting. He was glad the Race thought the school important enough not to be endangered so again.

He certainly thought it was that important, though he would have admitted he was biased. Nowhere else on earth did the Lizards teach people what they knew of medicine, and their knowledge was generations ahead of what humanity had understood about the art before the Race came.

Learning some of what the Lizards knew had been Moishe Russie’s goal ever since the fighting stopped. Reuven was proud he’d been accepted to follow in his father’s footsteps. If he hadn’t passed the qualifying examinations, the name above the entrance to the block Lizard building wouldn’t have meant a thing.

He went inside. The Race had built doors and ceilings high enough to suit humans, and the seats in the halls fit Tosevite fundaments. Other than that, the Race had made few concessions. Reuven carried artificial fingerclaws in a little plastic case in his back pocket. Without them, he would have had a devil of a time using the computer terminals here.

More people than Lizards bustled through the halls on the way to one class or another. The people-most of them in their mid- to late twenties, like Reuven-were students, the Lizards instructors: physicians from the conquest fleet, now joined by a few from the colonization fleet as well.

Reuven and another student got to the door of their lecture hall at the same time. “I greet you, Ibrahim,” Reuven said in the language of the Race-the language of instruction at the college and the only one all the human students had in common.

“I greet you,” Ibrahim Nuqrashi replied. He was lean and dark, with a perpetually worried expression. Since he came from Baghdad, which was even more convulsed than Jerusalem, Reuven had a hard time blaming him.

They went in together, talking about biochemistry and gene-splicing. When they got inside, their eyes went in the same direction: to see if any seats were empty near Jane Archibald. Jane was blond and shapely, easily the prettiest girl at the college. No wonder, then, that she was already surrounded by male students this morning.

She smiled at Reuven and called “Good day!” in English-she was from Australia, though heaven only knew if she’d go back there once her studies were done. The Lizards were colonizing the island continent more thoroughly than anywhere else, except perhaps the deserts of Arabia and North Africa.

Nuqrashi sighed as he and Reuven sat down. “Maybe I should learn English,” he said, still in the language of the Race. English was the human language most widely shared among the students, but Reuven didn’t think that was why the Arab wanted to acquire it.

He didn’t get much of a chance to worry about it. Into the lecture hall came Shpaaka, the instructor. Along with the other students, Reuven sprang to his feet and folded himself into the best imitation of the Race’s posture of respect his human frame could manage. “I greet you, superior sir,” he chorused with his comrades.

“I greet you, students,” Shpaaka replied. “You may be seated.” Anyone who sat without permission landed in hot water; even more than most Lizards, Shpaaka was a stickler for protocol. His eye turrets swiveled this way and that as he surveyed the class. “I must say that, until I read through this latest set of examination papers, I had no idea there were so many ways to write my language incorrectly.”

Jane Archibald raised her hand. When Shpaaka recognized her, she asked, “Superior sir, is that not because we are all used to our own languages rather than to yours, so that our native grammar persists even when we use your vocabulary?”

“I think you may well be correct,” Shpaaka replied. “The Race has done some research on grammatical substrates, work occasioned by our conquests of the Rabotevs and Hallessi. Our ongoing experience with the multiplicity of languages here on Tosev 3 clearly shows more investigation will be needed.” His eye turrets surveyed the class once more. “Any further questions or comments? No? Very well: I begin.”

He lectured as if his human students were males and females of the Race, diluting nothing, slowing down not at all. Those who couldn’t stand the pace had to leave the medical college and pursue their training, if they pursued it, at a merely human university. Reuven scribbled frantically. He was lucky in that he’d already known Hebrew, English, Yiddish, and childhood pieces of Polish before tackling the Race’s language; after four tongues, adding a fifth wasn’t so bad. Students who’d spoken only their native language before tackling that of the Race were likelier to have a hard time.

After lecture, laboratory. After laboratory, more lecture. After that, more lab work, now concentrating on enzyme synthesis and suppression rather than genetic analysis. By the end of the day, Reuven felt as if his brain were a sponge soaked to the saturation point. By tomorrow morning, he would have to be ready to soak up just as much again.

Wringing his hand as he stuck his pen back in its case, he asked Jane, “Would you like to come to my house for supper tonight?”

She cocked her head to one side as she considered. “It’s bound to be better than the food in the dormitories-though your mother’s cooking deserves something nicer than that said about it,” she answered. “Your father is always interesting, and your sisters are cute…”

Reuven thought of the twins as unmitigated-well, occasionally mitigated-nuisances. “What about me?” he asked plaintively-she’d mentioned everyone else in the Russie household.

“Oh. You.” Her blue eyes twinkled. “I suppose I’ll come anyway.” She laughed at the look on his face, then went on, “If the riots start up again, I can always sleep on your sofa.”

“You could always sleep in my bed,” he suggested.