“You’ve talked about my family too much,” Goldfarb answered. “Now I’m going to say something about them: If any harm-any harm at all, mind you-comes to them, something will happen to you, too. Have you got that?”

“Your spirit does you credit,” Basil Roundbush said. “You would be better off if your good sense did, too.” He nodded to Goldfarb, then turned and walked away, shaking his head as if washing his hands of the other RAF officer.

Goldfarb watched him go. As if after combat, reaction began to set in. Goldfarb’s knees wobbled. His hands shook. He was panting as if he’d run a long way. He began to think he’d been a fool after all.

If he ran after Roundbush and begged forgiveness, he was sure he would get it. Why not? He remained useful to the group captain and his ginger-smuggling pals. They were, and prided themselves on being, businessmen. Personal animosity? They’d wave it aside.

He stayed where he was. He didn’t want Roundbush and his associates to forgive him. He wanted them to leave him alone. Maybe, if he wasn’t useful to them, they’d do just that. Maybe they wouldn’t, too. Again, his hand glided toward his holster. If Group Captain Roundbush thought he’d been kidding when he made his warning, the much-decorated officer was badly mistaken.

The motorcar in which Roundbush would have taken him to the pub rolled away. Goldfarb sighed and headed for his bicycle. It was the sort of transportation he was more used to, anyhow.

When he got back to the quarters he shared with his family, his first words were, “Pour me a whiskey, darling, would you please?”

“Of course,” Naomi said, and did. The request was unusual from him, but not unheard of. The way he knocked back the smoky amber liquid, though, made her raise an eyebrow. “You had a bad day?”

“I had about the worst day a man could have, as a matter of fact.” He held out the glass to her. “Fill me up again. I’m going to get drunk and beat you, the way my father said the Poles would do to their wives.”

His wife got him another drink. When he sipped it instead of gulping it down, she nodded in approval and relief; maybe, even after all these years of marriage, she’d taken him literally when she shouldn’t have. She let him get about halfway down the glass before she said, “Don’t you think you should tell me about it? The children are all out doing one thing or another. You don’t have to be shy.”

“Good,” he answered. “I told Basil Roundbush to go fly a kite in a thunderstorm, is what I did.” As best he could, bowdlerizing only slightly, he recounted the conversation he’d had with the group captain. When he was finished, he sighed and said, “I should have played along, shouldn’t I?”

Naomi took the glass out of his hand and set it on the counter by the icebox. Then she wrapped her arms around him and squeezed the breath out of him. “I’m proud of you,” she said.

“You are?” He reached for his drink again. “Why? I’m not particularly proud of myself, and you’re liable to suffer for what I did.”

“I don’t think so,” Naomi said. “They will not get you to help them like that-and I think Roundbush knows you were not joking.”

“I’ll tell you what I think.” Goldfarb spoke more positively than usual: the whiskey talking through him, no doubt. “I think we ought to emigrate as fast as we can… if they’ll let us out.”

“The United States?” Naomi asked. “I would not mind going to the United States at all.” By her voice, that was an understatement.

But Goldfarb shook his head. “Canada, I think. Fewer formalities getting into Canada.” Seeing how disappointed his wife looked, he added, “We could go to the States later, you know.”

“I suppose so.” Naomi brightened. “That wouldn’t be bad. And you’re right-Canada wouldn’t be bad, either. If you think it’s easier to go to Canada than to the USA, that’s what we ought to do. If my family had waited till they could get into the United States in 1938, we’d still be waiting.”

“Except you wouldn’t be waiting,” Goldfarb said, “not when you were trying to get out of Germany. You’d be…” He let his voice trail off. He was very glad when Naomi took the point and nodded. He went on, “Sometimes, the idea is to be able to get out when you have to; you can worry about where you end up later.”

“All right,” she said. “See the Canadian consul tomorrow. If you want to see the American consul, too, that’s all right.”

“Fair enough.” David finished the second whiskey. It was a hefty tot; he could feel it. “If I went out now, they could nick me for drunken cycling.” Naomi laughed, but he remembered how many times over the years he’d pedaled back to his bed somewhat, or more than somewhat, the worse for wear.

He was sober when he cycled over to the Canadian consulate after his next tour in front of the radar. When he explained what he wanted, a clerk there said, “I’m sorry, sir, but we can’t accept serving officers.”

“If you accept me, I won’t be a serving officer,” David answered. “If you accept me, I’ll resign my commission like that.” He snapped his fingers. “Will you give me the forms on that basis?” The clerk nodded and handed him a set. He filled them out on the spot and gave them back. They seemed straightforward enough.

The clerk glanced at them. He looked up at Goldfarb. “Your government would be idiotic to let you go.”

“Perhaps you didn’t notice I’m a Jew,” Goldfarb said. Then, seeing the surprise on the clerk’s face, he realized the fellow hadn’t noticed. Such indifference was rare in the United Kingdom of 1963. He hoped it was common in Canada.

He rode to the American consulate a few blocks away. The clerk there was female and pretty. The forms, however, were much longer and uglier than the ones the Canadians used. Goldfarb slogged through them, too, and turned them in.

“Thank you, Flight Lieutenant,” the clerk said. She, too, looked over the papers. “The USA can pick and choose whom we let in, you know, but by these I’d say-unofficially, of course-you have a fair chance. Better than fair, in fact.”

He grinned all the way back to his flat. The Canadians wanted him. So did the Americans. He wasn’t used to that, not in Britain these days he wasn’t. “I ought to be,” he said, careless of the looks he might get for talking to himself. “By God, I bloody well ought to be.”

18

“I remain of the opinion that you are making too much of this,” Ttomalss said.

Kassquit glared at him out of his computer screen. “My investigation shows otherwise, superior sir,” she replied, deferential but unyielding, “and I remain of the opinion that you make too little of it. It is a serious matter.”

“It may be,” Ttomalss said. “You have no real proof.”

“Superior sir, are you being deliberately blind?” Kassquit asked. “There is no such title as senior tube specialist. This Regeya, whoever he may be, does not write like any member of the Race whose words are familiar to me. I think-as you yourself suggested-he really must be a Big Ugly.”

Hearing that come from one Tosevite’s mouth to describe another amused Ttomalss. He didn’t let that show, not wanting to offend Kassquit. He did say, “I have done a little investigating of my own.” And he had-a very little. “It would not be easy for a Tosevite to gain access to our network from the outside, so to speak.”

“You have always told me how the wild Big Uglies succeed in doing what seems most difficult to us,” Kassquit said. “If we can gain access to their computers-and I assume we can and do-they may be able to do the same to us.”

Ttomalss knew the Race did just that; his conversation with the embassy’s science officer would have told him as much had he been naive enough to believe otherwise. But he did not fancy having his own words thrown back in his snout. “We can do things to them that they cannot do to us in return.”