“This seems rather different in your species from mine,” the lecturer replied, “and it also leads into today’s subject. Perhaps it would be best if I simply went on.” He proceeded to do just that.
Back when Reuven’s father studied under the Lizards, they hadn’t wanted to stop for questions at all; that wasn’t their style among themselves. Over the years, they’d adapted to some degree, and so had people. No one had ever had the nerve to thank them for adapting; had they consciously realized they were doing so, they might have stopped. They did not approve of change of any sort.
Reuven scrawled notes. Shpaaka was a clear, well-organized lecturer; clarity and organization were Lizardly virtues. The male knew his material backwards and forwards. He also had, in the large vision screen behind him, a teaching tool that would have made any human instructor jealous. It showed what he was talking about in color and in three dimensions. Seeing wasn’t just believing. It was understanding, too.
Laboratory work meant shifting back and forth between the metric system and the one the Lizards used, which was also based on powers of ten but used different basic quantities for everything but temperature. More lectures followed, on pharmacology and biochemistry. The Lizards did not teach surgery, not having had enough experience with humans to be confident of the result.
By the end of the day, Reuven’s brain felt pounded flat, as it did by the end of almost every day. He shook his hand to work the writer’s cramp out of it. “Now I get to go home and study,” he said. “I’m so glad to live the exciting life of a student-a party every night.” He rolled his eyes to show how seriously he expected everyone to take that.
He got a few tired groans from his classmates. Jane Archibald rolled her eyes, too, and said, “At least you have a home to go to, Reuven. Better than the bleeding dormitory, and that’s a fact.”
“Come along and have supper with me, if you like,” Reuven said-a not altogether disinterested offer, as she was easily the best-looking girl at the medical college, being blond and pink and emphatically shaped. Had she come from the Reich, she would have been the perfect Aryan princess… and would, no doubt, have been horrified to get such an invitation from a Jew.
As things were, she shook her head, but said, “Maybe another time. I’ve got too much swotting tonight to spare even a minute.”
He nodded sympathetically; every student could sing that song almost every night. “See you in the morning,” he said, and turned to head back to his parents’ house. But then he paused-Jane was biting her lip. “Is something wrong?” he asked, hastily adding, “I don’t mean to pry.”
“You’re not,” she said. “It’s only that, every now and then, the idea of having a home where you’re comfortable strikes me as very strange. Over and above the dormitories, I mean.”
“I understood what you meant,” he said, his voice quiet. “Australia had a hard time of it.”
“A hard time of it? You might say so.” Jane’s nod sent golden curls bouncing up and down. “An atomic bomb on top of Sydney, another one on Melbourne-and we’d hardly even been in the fight against the Lizards till then. They just took us out and took us over.”
“That’s what happened here, too, more or less,” Russie said, “though without the bombs.”
He might as well have kept quiet. Jane Archibald went on as if he had, saying, “And now, with the colonization fleet here at last, they’re going to build cities from one end of the desert to the other. Bloody Lizards like it there-they say it’s almost as nice and warm as Home.” She shuddered. “They don’t care-they don’t care at all-that we were there first.”
Reuven wondered how much her ancestors had cared that the aborigines were there first. About as much as his own ancestors had cared that the Canaanites were in Palestine first, he supposed. Mentioning the subject struck him as unwise even so. Instead, he asked, “If you hate the Lizards so much, what are you doing here?”
Jane shrugged and grimaced. “Not a hope in hell of fighting them, not down in Australia there isn’t. Next best thing I can do is learn from them. The more I know, the more use I’ll be to the poor downtrodden human race.” Her grin was wry. “And now I’ll get down from my soapbox, thank you very much.”
“It’s all right,” Reuven said. He didn’t feel particularly downtrodden. Jews did better under the Lizards than anywhere in the independent lands except possibly the United States. That they did so well made them objects of suspicion to the rest of mankind-not that we weren’t objects of suspicion to the rest of mankind before the Lizards came, he thought.
“I didn’t intend to use your shoulder to cry on,” Jane Archibald said. “It’s not like you can do anything about the way things are.”
“It’s all right,” Reuven repeated. “Any time.” He made as if to grab her and forcibly pull her to the aforesaid shoulder. She made as if to clout him over the head with her notebook, which was thick enough to have lethal potential. They both laughed. Maybe the world wasn’t perfect, but it didn’t seem so bad, either.
Rance Auerbach awoke in pain. He’d awakened in pain every day for almost all the past twenty years, ever since a burst from a Lizard machine gun wrecked his leg and his chest and shoulder outside of Denver. The Lizards had captured him afterwards, and taken care of him as best they knew how. He had both legs, which proved as much. But he still woke in pain every morning.
He reached for his stick, which lay beside him on the bed like a lover and was far more faithful than any lover he’d ever had. Then, moving slowly and carefully-the only way he could move these days-he first sat and finally stood.
Limping into the kitchen of his small, grubby Fort Worth apartment, he poured water into a pot and spooned instant coffee and sugar into a cup. The coffee jar was getting close to empty. If he bought a new one the next time he went to the store, he’d have to figure out what else to do without. “Damn the Lizards anyway,” he muttered. His own voice held a Texas twang; he’d come home after the fighting stopped. “Damn them to hell and gone.” The Lizards ruled just about all the lands where coffee grew, and made sure it wasn’t cheap when it got to the free people who drank it.
He burned a couple of slices of toast, scraped some of the charcoal off them, and spread them with grape jelly. He left the knife, the plate, and the coffee cup in the sink. They had company from the day before, and some more from the day before that. He’d been neat as a pin in his Army days. He wasn’t neat as a pin any more.
Getting dressed meant going through another ordeal. It also meant looking at the scars that seamed his body. Not for the first time, he wished the Lizards had killed him outright instead of reminding him for the rest of his life how close they’d come. He dragged on khaki pants that had seen better days and slowly buttoned a chambray shirt he didn’t bother tucking in.
Slipping his feet into thong-style sandals was pretty easy. As he headed for the door, he passed the mirror on the dresser from which he hadn’t taken clean underwear. He hadn’t shaved, either, which meant graying stubble fuzzed his cheeks and jaw.
“You know what you look like?” he told his reflection. “You look like a goddamn wino.” Was that misery in his voice or a sort of twisted pride? For the life of him, he couldn’t tell.
He made sure the door was locked when he went outside, then turned the key in the dead bolt he’d installed himself. This wasn’t the best part of town. He didn’t have much to tempt a burglar, but what he did have, by God, was his.
His bad leg made him wish he could afford either a ground-floor apartment or a building that boasted an elevator. Going down two flights of stairs left him sweating and cursing. Going upstairs when he came home tonight would be worse. To celebrate making it to the sidewalk, he lit a cigarette.