Presently, Sam Yeager spoke in English: “Enough chitchat-time to talk turkey.” Straha didn’t follow the idiom, but Jonathan evidently did, for he left. Liu Mei stayed. Maybe that meant she didn’t find him attractive. Maybe it meant she put duty above desire, which Straha found admirable. Or maybe it just meant the exiled shiplord didn’t fully grasp the situation.

Liu Han said, “Shiplord, how do we best use ginger against the Race?”

“Give it to females, obviously,” Straha answered. “The more females in season, the more addled males become.”

“I understand this,” the Chinese female said-was that impatience in her voice? “How to give ginger to females over and over to keep males addled all the time?”

“Ah,” Straha said. Liu Han did see the obvious, then; the ex-shiplord hadn’t been sure. He went on, “Introducing it into food or drink would do the job, I think. They might not even know they were tasting… No, they would, because they would come into their season.”

“Truth,” Liu Han said. “This endangers those who prepare food for the Race; they would naturally be suspect.”

“Ah,” Straha said again. “Yes, that is so.” He hadn’t thought the Big Uglies would care; they hadn’t seemed to worry much about spending lives during the fighting.

“If we could get enough females and males excited at the same time, it might be worth the risk,” Liu Mei said: maybe the Tosevites, or some of them, retained their ruthlessness after all.

Jonathan Yeager came back into the study. Did the younger female’s voice draw him, as pheromones would have drawn a male of the Race? “That could get a lot of people hurt,” he observed. He might be interested in Liu Mei, but was not addled by her; Straha heard reproof in his voice.

“It is war,” Liu Mei said simply. “Here, the fighting is over. You Americans have won your freedom. In China, the struggle against the imperialism of the Race goes on. The People’s Liberation Army shall free my not-empire, too.”

“And make it as free as the SSSR?” Straha inquired with sarcasm he thoroughly enjoyed. “That is the model the People’s Liberation Army uses, is it not?”

Sam Yeager whistled softly. Straha had learned Big Uglies sometimes did that when they thought someone had made a good point. But Liu Han said, “We would be freer under our own kind at their worst than the Race at their best, for we did not choose to have the Race come here and try to set itself over us.”

Straha leaned forward. “Now there is a topic on which we could have considerable debate,” he said, anticipating that debate. “If you believe that-”

Several loud pops resounded outside, followed by a fierce, ripping roar. Straha was slower to recognize the noise than he should have been; as shiplord, he’d had no experience with close combat. Before he could react, Sam Yeager spoke in English: “That’s gunfire. Everybody down!”

Straha dove for the floor. Yeager did not follow his own order. He grabbed a pistol from a desk drawer in the study and hurried out toward the front of the house. “Be careful, Sam,” his wife called from the next room.

More gunfire sounded from the direction of the street. A window-or maybe more than one-shattered. Yeager’s pistol resounded, the noise shockingly loud indoors. Liu Han came as close to taking the shots calmly as anyone could-closer than Straha was doing, for that matter. Liu Mei never seemed to get excited about anything. And Jonathan Yeager, though he had no weapon, hurried to his father’s aid.

“It’s over,” Sam Yeager called from the front room. “I think it’s over, anyhow. Barbara, call the cops, not that half the neighborhood hasn’t already. Jesus, I can’t afford new window glass, but we sure as hell need it.”

Barbara Yeager came in and picked up the telephone. Straha went out into the front room to see what had happened. His driver was coming toward the house, an automatic weapon in his hand. “Is the shiplord all right?” he shouted.

“I am well,” Straha answered.

“He’s fine,” Yeager said at the same time. “What the devil happened out there?”

“I was sitting in the car, reading my book,” the driver answered. “The guy who drives for the Chinese women was in the car behind me, doing whatever he was doing. A car came by. A couple of guys leaned out the window and started blazing away. Lousy technique. I think I may have nailed one of them. Thanks for the backup, Yeager.”

“Any time,” Sam Yeager said. “You okay?”

“Right as rain,” Straha’s driver answered. “The Chinese guy, though, he took one right in the ear, poor bastard. Never knew what hit him, anyway.”

Through the howls that Tosevite constabulary vehicles used to warn others out of their way, Yeager said, “Whom were they after? The shiplord? The Chinese women? Could have been either one.”

Someone trying to kill me? Straha thought. He hadn’t imagined Atvar could sink so low. Assassination was a Tosevite ploy, not one the Race used. No, he thought. Not one the Race had used. Maybe Atvar was able to learn some unpleasant things from the Tosevites after all.

“Either one’s possible,” his driver said. “And how about you, Major? Got any people who aren’t fond of you?”

“I didn’t think so,” Yeager said slowly. “It’d be a real kick in the teeth finding out I was wrong. The shiplord and the Red Chinese are a lot more important targets than I’ll ever be, though.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” Straha’s driver agreed, adding, “No offense.”

While Sam Yeager yipped Tosevite laughter, Straha stared out at the dead Big Ugly in the motorcar behind his own. That could have been me, he thought, with a chill worse than any Tosevite winter. By the Emperor whom I betrayed, that could have been me.

Back at the Biltmore Hotel after endless questioning by American policemen and others from the FBI (which Liu Han thought of as the American NKVD), her daughter asked, “Were those bullets meant for us or for the scaly devil?”

“I am not sure. How can I be sure?” Liu Han answered. “But I think they were meant for the little devil. Can you guess why?” She sent Liu Mei an appraising glance.

Her daughter considered that with her usual seriousness. “If the NKVD had sent assassins after us, they would not have made such a poor attack.”

“Exactly so,” Liu Han answered, pleased. “The Russians do not attempt assassinations. They assassinate.”

“But”-Liu Mei sounded abashed at disagreeing, as a good daughter should, but disagreed nonetheless-“what about the Kuomintang or the Japanese? They might have sent killers after us, too, and theirs would not be so good as the ones Beria could hire.”

“I had not thought of them for a while,” Liu Han admitted in a small voice. “Next to the Russians, everything else seemed such a small worry, I forgot about it. But that was a mistake, and you are right to remind me of it.” She grimaced. “No one will remind Frankie Wong of it, not now.”

“No,” Liu Mei said. “He helped us.”

“Yes, he did,” Liu Han said. “He did not do it out of the goodness of his heart-I am certain of that. But he did help us, even if he was helping himself and maybe others at the same time. But his wife is a widow tonight, and his children are orphans. And now they have reason to hate us, too. A bad business, oh, a very bad business.”

“The Americans were brave when the shooting started,” Liu Mei said. “They knew just what to do.”

“Major Yeager is a soldier,” Liu Han replied, a little tartly. “His job is to know what to do when shooting starts.” She glanced over at her daughter out of the corner of her eye. “Or were you thinking of his son?”

Liu Mei did not look flustered. Liu Mei’s face had trouble holding any expression. But she sounded troubled as she answered, “The father had a gun. The son had none, but went forward anyhow.”

“He went to aid his father,” Liu Han said. “That is what a son should do. It is what a daughter should do for a mother, too.”