“Water?” Auerbach asked as he limped back to the kitchen. She wasn’t young any more. She wasn’t sweet any more. Neither was he, but that had nothing to do with anything. He knew what he was. She’d just ruined some of his memories.

“Just ice,” she said. The couch creaked as she sat down. He carried the glass out to her, with one of his own in his other hand. Her skirt was short and tight and had ridden up quite a ways. She still had good legs, long and smooth and muscular.

“Mud in your eye,” he said, and drank. She knocked back her whiskey at a gulp. He looked at her. “What’s going on? And what do you think I can do about it? I can’t do much about anything.”

“You know people in the RAF.” It wasn’t a question; she spoke with assurance. “I got involved in a… business deal that didn’t quite turn out the way it was supposed to. Some folks are mad at me.” She gave an emphatic cough. Maybe some of the folks she meant had scales, not hair.

“What am I supposed to do about it?” But that wasn’t really what Auerbach wanted to ask. He wasn’t shy about coming out with it. He wasn’t shy about anything these days. “Come on, Penny-why should I give a damn? You walked out on me a long time ago, remember?”

“Maybe I wasn’t as smart as I should have been,” she said. Maybe she was buttering him up now, too, but he didn’t say anything. He just waited. She went on, “Once I did, though, I couldn’t make it like it never happened. So-will you let a couple of your friends over in England know I’m trying to make things right? And will you let me stay here for a little while, till the heat in Detroit dies down?”

He hadn’t known she’d been in Detroit. “You know who you want me to write to?” he asked, and wasn’t surprised when she nodded. She knew about him, whether he knew about her or not. “Okay, I can write the letters,” he said, “if you’re not lying to me, and you really will fix this up.” He stuck his tongue in the palm of his hand, as if he were a Lizard tasting ginger.

“Good guess,” Penny said. “All I need is a little time to straighten it out. I swear to God that’s the truth.”

Once upon a time, she’d read the Bible a lot. Now… now he judged she’d swear whatever was convenient, same as most people. He shrugged, which hurt a little, then came to the point again: “Only one bed in the bedroom.”

“That’s all right,” she said. “That’s what I’m paying for, isn’t it? — room and broad, I mean?” Her smile was a lot harder, a lot more knowing, than it had been in the old days. Auerbach laughed even so.

“I hate this,” Fotsev said. “How are we supposed to find one male Big Ugly among all the ones who live here? For all we know, the miserable fanatic does not live here any more. If he has any sense, he does not.”

“If he had any sense, he would not be a miserable fanatic,” his friend Gorppet pointed out, a point with which Fotsev could hardly disagree. “For that matter, if he had any sense, he would not be a Tosevite.”

Fotsev couldn’t disagree with that, either, and didn’t. His eye turrets swept the Basra street along which he and his small group were advancing-a narrow, stinking, muddy track between two rows of buildings, some whitewashed, more not, made from mud themselves. They showed only slits for windows, and had the look, though not really the strength, of fortresses.

“He is a crazy Big Ugly for preaching the way he does,” Fotsev said, “and the rest of the Big Uglies are just as crazy for listening to him. And I can tell you somebody else who is crazy, too.”

“Who is that?” Gorppet asked.

Before Fotsev could answer, sudden movement from around a corner made him swing the muzzle of his personal weapon to cover it. A moment later, he relaxed. It was only one of the four-legged hairy creatures, part scavenger, part companion, that the Big Uglies kept as symbionts. It sat back on its haunches and yapped at him and his comrades.

“Miserable creature,” Gorppet said. “I do not like dogs at all. Up in the SSSR, they used to train them to run under landcruisers with explosives on their backs. Nasty to use animals that way. They do not know what they are doing.” He paused. “But you were going to tell me who else is crazy. That is always worth hearing.”

“Truth,” one of their comrades said. “Who else is crazy, Fotsev?”

“The shiplord of the colonization fleet,” Fotsev answered. “With the Big Uglies on this part of the planet all stirred to a boil, why does he think he needs to bring any ships from the colonization fleet down here?”

“To keep the Big Uglies who know what they are doing from blowing up any more of them?” Gorppet suggested.

“Because the weather here is better than it is in most places on Tosev 3?” another male added.

Fotsev hissed in annoyance; those were both good answers. In his mind, though, they weren’t good enough. He said, “That madmale Khomeini is still stirring up the local Big Uglies. How much do you want to bet that they manage to wreck a colonization ship or two? They are so addled, a lot of them do not care whether they live or die.”

“It is that business of thinking they will get a happy afterlife if they die fighting us,” Gorppet said. “We have given enough of them the chance to find out whether they are right or wrong lately, and that is truth.”

A male Tosevite came out of his house. Speaking the language of the Race with a rasping, guttural accent, he said, “He is not here. Go away.”

“You do not tell us what to do,” Fotsev said. “We tell you what to do.” The Big Uglies had had many years to figure that out. That they hadn’t was, in Fotsev’s view, a telling proof of their stupidity.

“He is not here,” the Big Ugly repeated. Swathed in his robes, he looked as much like a ragpile as an intelligent being.

“If a Big Ugly says something is not so, that makes it more likely to be so,” Gorppet said.

“You are right, of course,” Fotsev said. “We had better search that house.”

The Big Ugly let out a howl of protest. Fotsev and the other males of the Race ignored it. Fotsev, as orders required, radioed back to the barracks that he and his comrades were entering a building. If they needed help, they would get it in a hurry. If they needed help, they would, very likely, get it too late no matter how fast it arrived. Fotsev chose not to dwell on that.

He pointed his personal weapon at the Tosevite. “Open the door and go in ahead of us,” he ordered-if the local spoke his language, he was going to take advantage of it. “If you have friends in there with guns, you had better tell them not to shoot, or they and we will surely shoot you.”

Against the Race, that would have been a perfect threat. Against a Big Ugly, it was a good one, but not, Fotsev knew, perfect. Too many Big Uglies all over Tosev 3 had proved themselves ready to die for what they reckoned important.

Without another word, the Tosevite turned and threw the door wide. Only after he had gone inside did he turn back and say, “Here, do you see? There is no danger. And the male you seek is not here, as I told you before.”

Fotsev’s mouth fell open in bitter laughter. No danger? He had been in danger every moment since coming down to the surface of Tosev 3-and he had not been in the worst of the fighting. But he never expected to know another instant in which he was not looking now this way, now that, always anxious lest trouble see him before he saw it. The Emperor had called for a Soldiers’ Time, and soldiers he had got. Fotsev did not think even the Emperor had the power to make soldiers back into ordinary males of the Race. He and his fellows had seen too much, done too much, had too much done to them, for that.

Such gloomy reflections did not keep him from doing his job. As he searched the house, he turned one eye turret back toward Gorppet and asked, “Can you imagine living like this?”

“I would rather not,” his friend replied.