“Let me grab my handbag, and we can go.” Barbara put the strap on her shoulder. “This should be fun.”

Jonathan muttered something, his voce just sotto enough to keep him out of trouble. Sam had his doubts, too, but kept them to himself. He’d been to enough official functions over the years to know that a few were interesting, most weren’t much of anything one way or the other, and a few made him wish he’d stayed far, far away. He even understood how he’d got ordered to attend this one: he was an expert on Lizards, this Liu Han came from a country oppressed by Lizards, and so… To the brass’ minds, no doubt it all seemed perfectly logical.

Barbara found one more inducement for her son as the three of them headed out to the Buick: “The food will probably be good.”

“Yeah?” Jonathan weighed that. He’d been to a few of these affairs himself. After a moment, he nodded. “Okay, that’s pretty hot.” To show how hot it was, he gave an emphatic cough.

“Some Lizards will be there, I expect-some of the ones living here, I mean,” Sam said, unlocking the driver’s-side door. “If you want to talk to them in their language, that’s fine. It’ll be good practice for you.” That proved an even better incentive than food. However much the Lizards fascinated Jonathan and his set, he didn’t find all that many chances to meet them.

Sam got on the Harbor Freeway at Rosecrans. The freeway had pushed that far south only a couple of years earlier; it made getting to downtown L.A. a snap-except when an accident addled things, as one did this evening. Yeager muttered and fumed till they were past it, then stepped on the gas as hard as he could.

“Good thing we left a little early,” Barbara remarked.

“Have to build in some extra time,” he answered, passing a car that wasn’t going fast enough to suit him. He laughed. “The Lizards think we’re out of our minds for driving without seat belts. But they’d never sell, never in a million years. The only thing people care about is going fast.” As if to prove his point, he zoomed past a gasoline-burning machine that couldn’t get out of its own way.

He left the freeway at Sixth and went east a few blocks to Olive, on which the Biltmore stood, across from Pershing Square. He parked in a lot north of the hotel. U.S. flags, the red banners of the People’s Liberation Army, and national flags of China-Kuomintang flags, in other words-all flew outside the twelve-story, E-shaped building. Pointing to those last, Barbara said, “She probably wishes they weren’t there.”

“You’re right. She probably does,” said Sam, who’d spent the couple of days he’d known about the reception boning up on China. He nodded toward the hotel as they came up to the entrance. “Pretty fancy place, eh, Jonathan?” He didn’t say hot; that wasn’t his slang, any more than swell was his son’s.

“It’s all right, I guess,” Jonathan answered, determined to be unimpressed.

Inside, Sam was asked to show identification. He did so without hesitation. He might have been a Lizard stooge, a Kuomintang supporter, or even a Japanese agent, none of whom had any reason to love the People’s Liberation Army. He might even have worked for the NKVD; Molotov wouldn’t want the Chinese Communists shopping anywhere but at his store. When he’d satisfied the guards that he was none of those things, they checked off his name and those of his wife and son and let them go into the reception hall.

Jonathan made a beeline for the buffet. As soon as he’d filled his plate, he stood around looking to see if any other fogies had brought along people-with luck, good-looking female people-his own age. Sam and Barbara looked at each other with identical amused expressions. At Jonathan’s age, Sam would have behaved the same way. At Jonathan’s age, though, barn dances were about the biggest social events Sam had ever seen. Even the small towns of Class D ball had seemed sophisticated to him. He shook his head. The world was a different place, a faster place, these days.

He looked around, too, not for pretty girls but to see what kind of crowd it was. When he spotted Straha, an eyebrow shot up. The shiplord raised a hand in greeting. Sam nodded back. If the chief Lizard defector was here, that put a seal of approval on the event, all right.

And there was the guest of honor, a Chinese woman who would have had to stand on her toes to make five feet. Her daughter was several inches taller-and if Jonathan hadn’t noticed her, he wasn’t paying attention, because she was a very pretty girl. Yeager got a drink, then drifted toward them to do his ceremonial duty.

Listening to Liu Han and Liu Mei, he realized they had only a little English. A Chinese man in a suit snappier than any civvies Sam owned was translating for them. Having done a good deal of translating himself, Yeager recognized its limits. The only Chinese he understood was chop suey. Still… Where there’s a will, there’s a lawyer, he thought.

When he came up to the two women, he nodded to them-he’d seen they didn’t shake hands as if they were used to doing it-and spoke in the language of the Race: “I greet you, females from a distant land.”

They both exclaimed in Chinese, then both started talking at the same time in the Lizards’ language. After a moment, Liu Mei fell silent and let her mother go ahead: “I greet you, Tosevite soldier, American soldier.” She was less fluent than Sam, but he had no trouble understanding her.

He gave her his name and his rank, and explained that his specialty was dealing with the Race. While he spoke, he noticed the Chinese man-he wore a button giving his name as Frank Wong-looking more and more unhappy. Liu Han noticed, too; Sam saw at once she had no flies on her. She spoke to Wong in Chinese. He relaxed and went off to get a drink.

Liu Han let out a sly chuckle. “I persuaded him that he was working too hard. Now he has a chance to recover.”

“Clever.” Yeager used an emphatic cough. He and Liu Han traded sly grins. He asked, “And what do you think of Americans, now that you are meeting us for the first time?”

“This is not my first meeting with Americans. Liu Mei’s father is an American,” Liu Han said. “He was a captive, as was I. We were part of the Race’s experiments on Tosevite mating habits. You know of these things?”

“I know of them, yes.” For a moment, Sam wondered why she was so openly admitting something so shameful. Then he gave himself a mental kick in the pants. She wanted to paint the Lizards black, so she could gain as much sympathy for her cause as she could.

She went on, “He was a good man. He was far and away the best man I met in these experiments. When I knew I would have a baby”-that came out as, When I knew I would lay an egg, but Sam understood-“he came down to China with me. He used to play your not-empire’s game, and he made money in China throwing and catching a ball as a show.”

“Baseball?” Sam said in English, and Liu Han nodded. Liu Mei turned away; Yeager wondered how often she’d heard this story. Laughing a little, he told Liu Han, “Before I was a soldier, I used to play baseball myself.”

“Truth?” she said, and he nodded. She cocked her head to one side. “Maybe you knew him.” He started to say it wasn’t likely, considering how many people played baseball in the United States. Before he could, she went on, “His name was Bobby Fiore.” She pronounced it very clearly.

“Jesus Christ!” He knocked back his scotch-and-soda at a gulp. “Bobby Fiore?” Liu Han’s head went up and down. Yeager stared. “Bobby Fiore? We played on the same team. We shared a room when we traveled. We were on the train together when the Race came down and shot it up. I got out before their helicopters landed. I never found out what happened to him.”

He stared over at Liu Mei. Now that he knew, he could see the Italian second baseman in her, in her chin, in her nose, in her hair. On her, though, it all looked good. Across twenty years, he could hear his old roomie laughing at the friendly insult.