Second Contact

Of all the Lizards Rance Auerbach had hoped never to see again, Hesskett topped the list. The interrogator had threatened to lock him and Pe

He still didn’t think that was his fault. Hesskett took a different view of things, though, and his would be the one that counted. He turned one eye turret toward Rance, the other toward Pe

Pe

“It does not,” Hesskett said, and Auerbach imagined he heard more slamming doors. “The Deutsche released him some time ago. No doubt he will soon be selling the Race ginger again.”

“That’s not our fault, dammit!” Rance said. “Now that you flew us back here to Mexico, we can’t do anything about what happens on the other side of the ocean, and you can’t hold it against us.”

“Who says I ca

“The agreement was to reward us if we did that,” Pe

“That’s right,” Auerbach said. Whether it was right or not, though, he didn’t expect it to do him a plugged nickel’s worth of good.

Hesskett took him by surprise, then, by saying, “Perhaps. This Big Ugly will now also be selling drugs we supply to the Tosevites of the Reich. So your mission may have accomplished something, even if it was something small.”

“In that case, why are you saying we failed?” Pe

“Your efforts did not bring Dutourd over to the side of the Race,” Hesskett answered. “The Deutsche released him to continue his role as a destructive menace. They did not know we would be able to turn him-to turn him to some partial degree-to our own purposes.”

“Well, what are you going to do with us, then?” Auerbach asked. “This teasing gets stale.”

“What to do with you is a puzzlement,” the Lizard said. “You did not completely fail, but you were far from complete success. And, if you are set at liberty, you are only too likely to return to your own noxious habit of ginger-smuggling.”

I wouldn’t! Rance almost shouted it. He hadn’t had anything to do with smuggling ginger for years till Pe

Without turning his head to look at her, he felt Pe

He asked himself the same question. Just how big a son of a bitch are you, Rance? How low have you fallen? The clean-cut West Point cavalry officer he’d been once upon a time wouldn’t have let a pal down for anything. But he hadn’t been that fellow for a lot of years. A couple of Lizard bullets had made sure he’d never be that fellow again. And afterwards, he hadn’t even been able to make a go of it as a ginger smuggler after Pe

He sat quietly. Over in the other chair in the interrogation chamber, too far away to touch, Pe

Pe

“This is a perspective with which I have some sympathy,” Hesskett said. “It is also, you realize, an argument for keeping you imprisoned.”

“If that’s what you want to do, go ahead-go ahead for both of us.” Now Auerbach spoke before Pe

Against a human being, he wouldn’t have had a prayer. Had he been stupid enough to try that argument on his Nazi interrogators, they might have burst a blood vessel laughing. But Lizards, whatever else you said about them, were more honest than people. They didn’t always make bargains in a hurry. When they did make them, they commonly kept them.

Hesskett didn’t show what he was thinking. Lizards rarely did, at least not in ways people could recognize. “Not spending all your lives in prison would be a reward, thinking of how much ginger the two of you had when we caught you,” he said.

Rance tried not to show what he was thinking, either, but couldn’t help leaning forward a little. He knew the start of a dicker when he heard one. “Hey, we did the best we could for you,” he said.

“That’s right,” Pe

“They must not have been using electronics to monitor their surroundings,” Hesskett said. “Had they been using electronics, you would have been warned.”

“Well, they weren’t, and we weren’t, and now you’re trying to blame us for it,” Auerbach said. If he had the Lizard on the defensive, and he thought he did, he’d push him hard.

“What do you think a fitting reward would be?” Hesskett asked.

“Letting us go free, that’s what,” Pe

“Let us go free someplace where they speak English,” Rance added. He didn’t want to get turned loose in Mexico, not when he knew maybe a dozen words of Spanish, and most of them swear words. He wasn’t jumping up and down at the idea of going back to the USA, either, not after he’d ventilated those goons. Their bosses wouldn’t remember him fondly.

“We do not want you going back to your friends. That would mean going back to smuggling ginger,” Hesskett said. “Where in the lands the Race rules do Big Uglies speak English? I ca

“Austr-” Pe

Hesskett was checking a computer screen. Turning one eye turret away from it and toward Rance and Pe

“Can we think about it?” Auerbach asked. “Can we talk it over, just the two of us?”

Hesskett used the hand gesture that was his equivalent of a headshake. “No. We do not have to give you anything at all. You may say that you tried to aid us, but you failed. You may have South Africa, or you may have a cell each.”