He started another letter, this one in German. He’d learned the language at West Point, then promptly forgotten it. Over the years, though, he’d brought it out of mothballs again, at least as far as reading and writing went. He knew a lot of people-classmates, men with whom he’d served when he could serve-and they knew people, too, people all over the world.

“Krauts better not hear me tryin’ to talk their lingo, though,” he said with a raspy chuckle. German and a Texas twang hadn’t gone together back at the Military Academy. They still didn’t: even less so now.

But he understood how the grammar worked, and he knew what he wanted to say. He also knew his correspondent would agree with him when he said the same sorts of things he had to his English friend. Yeah, the Nazis were bastards, but they had the right idea about the Lizards.

“Kick ’em in the balls,” he said aloud. “They don’t even have balls to kick.”

The colonization fleet would be bringing lady Lizards. You couldn’t very well have a colony-even the Lizards couldn’t-without both sexes being there. Rance imagined a Lizard in a frilly bra and fishnet stockings held up by a garter belt. He laughed like a loon, so hard that he had trouble getting enough air into his poor, battered chest cavity. He knew the Lizards didn’t really work that way; when the females weren’t in season, the males didn’t care. But it made a hell of a funny picture just the same.

He was addressing the envelope to his German associate when the telephone rang. It was back in the bedroom; getting to it took a while. Sometimes it would stop ringing just before he made it to the nightstand. He hated that. Even more, though, he hated making the long, painful trip-any trip for him was long and painful-to have a salesman try to get him to buy a new electric razor or a set of encyclopedias. He cussed those bastards up one side and down the other.

This time, the phone kept ringing long enough for him to answer it. “Hello?”

“Rance?” A woman’s voice. He raised an eyebrow. He didn’t get that many calls from women. “That you, Rance?”

“Who is this?” Whoever she was, she didn’t come from Texas. Her voice held the flat, harsh tones of the Midwestern farm belt. And then, even though he hadn’t heard it in more than fifteen years, he recognized it, or thought he did. “Christ!” he said, and sweat sprang out on his forehead that had nothing to do with either heat or pain-not physical pain, anyhow. “Penny?”

“It’s not the Easter Bunny, Rance; I’ll tell you that right now,” she answered. Now that Auerbach heard more than four words from her, he wondered how he’d known who she was by her voice. It spoke of a lot of cigarettes, a lot of booze, and probably a lot of hard times. She asked, “How are you doing, Rance?”

“Not too goddamn well,” he answered. The telephone trembled in his hand. If it hadn’t been for Penny Summers, he might not have lived after the Lizards shot him up. They’d known each other before the Lizards’ last big push toward Denver. The Race had scooped her up in Lamar, Colorado, before they wounded and captured him. Along with helping to keep him alive, she’d found ways to improve his morale no male nurse could have used. They’d stayed together for a while after the fighting ended, and then… “How much trouble are you in, Penny?”

Her breath caught. “How in God’s name did you know I’m in trouble?”

He laughed again, pulling pain and mirth from his chest at the same time. “If you weren’t, darling, you sure as hell wouldn’t be calling me.”

That should have struck her funny, too, but it didn’t. “Well, I’d be a liar if I said you was wrong.” Every word she spoke seemed chiseled from stone. Auerbach had grown very used to the lazy sounds of Texas English. Hearing those Kansas r’s again made the hair prickle up at the back of his neck.

He knew he had to say something. “Where are you calling from?” he asked. The question was innocuous enough that he didn’t have to deal with the larger one of whether he hated her for helping to keep him alive.

“I’m in Fort Worth,” she answered.

“Thought so,” he said. “The connection’s too good for a longdistance call. What do you want me to do?”

“I don’t know.” She sounded harried and worn. “I don’t know if anybody can do anything. But I didn’t know who else to call.”

“That’s too bad,” Rance said. If, after so much time, she hadn’t been able to find anybody on whom she could rely… “You’re as big a loser as I am,” he blurted. He wouldn’t have said that to many people, no matter how down-and-out they might have seemed, not after he’d made the acquaintance of the Lizard machine gun. But the Lizards had blasted her father to red rags right before her eyes, and she didn’t sound as if she’d gone uphill since.

“Maybe I am,” she said. “Can I see you? I didn’t want to just knock on your door, but-” She broke off, then resumed: “Christ, I hate this.” She’d come a long way from the farm girl she’d been before the Lizards swept through western Kansas, and most of it down roads she wouldn’t have dreamt of traveling then.

More than anything else, that bitterness decided Auerbach. “Yeah, come on ahead,” he said: like called to like. “You know where I’m staying?”

“You’re in the phone book-if I found your number, I found your address, too,” Penny answered, which left him feeling foolish. “Thanks, Rance. I’ll be there in a little bit.” The line went dead.

Auerbach listened to the dial tone for a few seconds, then hung up the phone. “Jesus Christ,” he said, with more reverence than he was accustomed to using. In similar tones, he went on, “What the hell have I gone and done?”

He made his slow, creaky way out into the living room, where he stopped and looked around. The place wasn’t in the worst shape in the world. It wasn’t in the best, though, nor anywhere close. He shrugged. Penny didn’t sound as if she was in the best shape, either. And if she didn’t like the way he kept house, she could damn well leave.

Hobbling into the kitchen, he checked there, too. Bread on the counter, cold cuts in the refrigerator. He could make Penny sandwiches. If it meant he lived on oatmeal for a bit, till he had a hot day at the poker table or his next pension check came, then it did, that was all. And he had whiskey. He had plenty of whiskey. He didn’t need to check to be sure of that.

He waited. “Hurry up and wait,” he murmured, a phrase from his Army days. It still held truth. His heart thudded in his chest: more in the way of nerves than he’d known in years. He sat down. Maybe she wouldn’t come. Maybe she’d get lost. Maybe she’d change her mind, or maybe she was playing some sort of practical joke.

Footsteps in the hall: sharp, quick, authoritative. The whole building shook slightly; it had been run up after the fighting stopped, and run up as quickly and cheaply as possible. He doubted they were her footsteps. She hadn’t walked that way when he’d known her. But he hadn’t known her for a long time. The footsteps stopped in front of his door. The knock that followed had the same abrupt, staccato quality to it.

Auerbach heaved himself up and opened the door. Sure enough, Penny Summers stood in the hall, impatiently tapping her foot on the worn linoleum and sucking on a cigarette. He stared at her with a surprise that he realized was completely absurd. Of course she wouldn’t be the fresh-faced farm girl he’d more or less loved when he was young.

Her hair was cut short and dyed a brassy version of the blond it had been. Her skin stretched tight across her cheekbones and over her forehead. Powder didn’t hide crow’s-feet at the corners of her eyes and couldn’t cover the harsh lines that ran like gullies from beside her nose to the corners of her mouth. The flesh under her chin sagged. Her pale eyes were faded and wary.

She took a last drag on the cigarette, threw it down, and ground it out under the sole of her shoe. Then she leaned forward and pecked Rance on the lips. Her mouth tasted of smoke. “For God’s sake, darling, get me a drink,” she said.