“Supper’s ready,” Rivka Russie called a few minutes later. She made sure Jane got a couple of marrow bones in her bowl. The Australian girl didn’t waste them; she worked the marrow free with her knife and spooned it up. “That’s good,” she said. “Takes me back, it does. My mum would make a soup not a whole lot different to this.” She frowned. “I do wonder, I truly do, if the Lizards will let me go home after I finish here.”

“Why wouldn’t they?” Esther asked-or maybe it was Judith.

“Because they want Australia all to themselves,” Jane answered. “It never did have very many people in it. They killed a lot of them, and they aren’t worrying very hard about whether the others are sick or well.”

“Humanfrei, not Judenfrei,” Reuven murmured in Yiddish. His father winced. His mother scowled at him. His sisters and Jane, perhaps fortunately, didn’t get it.

After supper, Jane helped Rivka and Esther and Judith with the dishes. Moishe Russie lit a cigar. Reuven gave him a reproachful look. His father flushed, but didn’t stub it out. Between puffs, he said, “I got the tobacco habit before I knew-before anybody knew-how dangerous it was. Now people do know-but I still have the habit.”

With the ready intolerance of youth, Reuven remarked, “Well, now that you do know, why don’t you quit?”

“Ask a Lizard ginger-taster why he doesn’t quit, too,” Moishe answered. “He’ll tell you the same thing I do: he can’t.” Reuven raised an eyebrow. He was convinced anyone could do anything if only he applied enough willpower. He had never had to test this theory himself, which helped explain why he remained convinced of it. His father said, “Of course, one of the reasons we didn’t know how dangerous tobacco was is that most people used to die of something else before it killed them.”

“It’s a slow poison, certainly,” Reuven said. “That doesn’t mean it’s not a poison. If the Lizards made us use it, we’d scream bloody murder-and we’d have a right to.”

“Scream bloody murder about what?” Jane asked, returning from the kitchen.

“Tobacco,” Reuven answered.

“Oh, of course,” she agreed-she didn’t smoke, either. “Nasty stuff.” Only then did she notice Moishe’s cigar. A little defensively, she said, “Well, it is.”

“Do you hear me quarreling with you?” Reuven’s father asked. “I know what it is. I keep smoking anyhow.”

“Speaking of nasty stuff…” Reuven pulled out his biochemistry text. “Did you understand one word of today’s lecture? He might as well have been speaking Hindustani for all the sense it made to me.”

“I got some of it, anyhow,” Jane said. “Here, look…” From then on, most of the conversation was in the Lizards’ language. That effectively excluded Reuven’s mother, but she didn’t let it bother her. She sat down in the front room and embroidered for a while and then, blowing a kiss to Reuven and nodding to Jane, headed for the bedroom.

Judith and Esther were less philosophical about being left in the dark. “I think all those funny noises are just an excuse so they can talk mushy to each other,” one of them said to the other in Hebrew. They both giggled. Reuven hoped Jane hadn’t understood. By the way she raised an eyebrow, she had.

Reuven took a deep breath, preparatory to reading his little sisters the riot act. Before he could, his father looked up from the newspaper he was reading. “They aren’t doing anything of the sort,” Moishe Russie told the twins. “Kindly keep quiet and let them work, or you can go to bed right now.”

He rarely made such dire threats. When he did make them, he meant them. Esther and Judith got very quiet very fast. They didn’t stay quiet long, but they didn’t bother Reuven and Jane any more, either. After a while, Moishe did send them to bed. Jane looked at her watch and said, “I’d better get back to the dorm.”

“Do you want me to walk you back?” Reuven asked. “I know things have quieted down some, but still-” He waited to see what she would say. Last time, she’d turned him down, and she’d got back without trouble.

She thought it over. “All right,” she said at last. “Thanks.”

The night was cool, heading toward chilly. Next to no one was on the streets, for which Reuven was heartily glad. Talking about being a protector was one thing, actually having to do the job something else again. When they got to the dorm-about a fifteen-minute walk from the Russie house-Reuven put his arms around Jane and again waited to see what would happen. She moved toward him instead of away. They kissed for a long time. Then, looking back over her shoulder, she went inside.

Reuven didn’t remember a single step he took all the way home.

Glen Johnson walked into the bar at the Kitty Hawk officers’ club and said, “Scotch over ice, Julius.”

“Yes, suh, Lieutenant Colonel,” said the colored man behind the bar. He was about Johnson’s age, or maybe a few years older, and walked with a limp. He built the drink with casual skill-not that there was anything fancy about scotch on the rocks-and slid it across the polished bar to Johnson. He plied a rag to get rid of the little wet trail the glass left, and contrived to make a couple of quarters disappear as if they’d never been there.

“Mud in your eye,” Johnson said, and sipped the drink. He reached into his pocket, pulled out an FDR half dollar, and set it on the bar by his glass. “Go on, Julius-have one on me. Have a real one, not the phony drinks bartenders usually take. I’m wise to those tricks, I am.”

Julius looked at the big silver coin. He held out his white-jacketed arm to Johnson. “You got to give it a twist.” Chuckling, the Marine pilot did. The barkeep let out a mock yelp for mercy, and Johnson released him. He scooped up the half dollar, then made himself a bourbon and water. “Much obliged, suh.”

“You deserve it,” Johnson said. “Why the hell not? Besides”-he looked around the otherwise empty bar-“I don’t much feel like drinking by my lonesome.”

“You got troubles, suh?” Julius raised the drink-by its color, not a very strong one-to his lips. The liquid in the glass went down hardly at all. No doubt he had practice at nursing a drink all night long. A bartender who drank too much of what he dispensed wouldn’t last long in the business. One who asked sympathetic questions, on the other hand…

“Troubles?” Johnson said thoughtfully. “You know a man without ’em? Christ on His cross, Julius, do you know a Lizard without ’em?”

“Don’t know any man without troubles, no, suh,” the Negro said. “Lizards? I found out more’n I ever wanted to about Lizards during the fighting, and that there’s the God’s truth.” He took another small sip from his bourbon and water, then stared down into the glass, as if wondering whether to go on.

Johnson started to ask him what was on his mind. A glance at Julius told him that, if he ever wanted to find out, he had better keep his mouth shut. He took a few salted peanuts from the bowl on the bar and munched on those instead. Maybe a bartender needed to talk to somebody every once in a while, too.

At last, still not looking up from the glass in front of him, Julius quietly asked, “I ever tell you before, Lieutenant Colonel, that I was born and raised in Florida?”

“No, as a matter of fact, you never did,” Johnson said. If he’d let it go at that, he never would have found out anything more. But, as he put together Julius’ color, his age, his limp, and now his place of birth… The pilot’s eyes widened. “You don’t mean to tell me you were one of those-?” He stopped in some confusion. He didn’t know how to say it, not in a way that wouldn’t put the bartender’s back up.

“One o’ those colored boys that fought for the Lizards? Is that what you was gonna say, suh?” Julius asked.

“Well, yeah.” Johnson knocked back his drink. He laid more money on the bar. “Give me another one of those, would you? Christ, how did you end up doing something like that? I mean, I know your unit mutinied against the scaly bastards, but how did you get sucked in in the first place?”