Second Contact

He tried to make himself stop. “It is a trap!” he shouted. The realization came just too late for him. Big Uglies concealed in houses on either side of the alley had already opened up with rifles and automatic weapons. Males fell as if scythed down. Fotsev screamed for help into his telephone. Then something struck him a heavy blow in the flank. He found himself on the ground without knowing how he’d got there. It didn’t hurt-yet.

The Tosevites swarmed out of their hiding places to try to finish off the patrol. “Allahu akbar!” they shouted. A male fired at them, and some fell. The rest kept shouting, “Allahu akbar!” It was the last thing Fotsev ever heard.

“Allahu akbar!” The cry echoed through Jerusalem once more. Reuven Russie hated it. It meant horror and terror and death. He’d seen that before. Now he and the city he loved-the only city he’d ever loved-were seeing it again.

In the most hackneyed, cliched fashion possible, he wished he’d listened to his mother. If he hadn’t gone in to the Russie Medical College this morning, he wouldn’t be worrying now about how he was going to get home in one piece. Things hadn’t been so bad this morning. He hadn’t wanted to miss the day’s lectures or the biochemistry lab-especially not the latter, whose equipment and techniques far outdid anything human technology could offer.

And so he’d come, and he hadn’t had too hard a time doing it. People had been shouting “Allahu akbar!” even then, and there were occasional spatters of gunfire, the pop-pop-pop s sounding like fireworks. But Reuven had gone through the empty market square without so much as seeing a man with a rifle or a submachine gun. The shopkeepers who’d stayed home and merchants who hadn’t set up their stalls, though, had known something he hadn’t.

The Race, as a matter of course, efficiently soundproofed the buildings it put up. Reuven approved; distractions were the last thing he needed when trying to keep up with a Lizard physician lecturing as quickly as he would have for students of his own species. He and his fellows never heard Jerusalem’s ordinary street noise, which could be pretty raucous.

But the noise outside today was anything but ordinary. Nearby small-arms fire and helicopters roaring low overhead provided constant background racket, now louder, now softer. Even the most efficient soundproofing in the world couldn’t keep out the deep, thunderous roars of exploding bombs. And some of those bombs burst close enough to shake the whole building, as if from an earthquake. Reuven had been through a few quakes. The shaking here wasn’t so strong as in a bad one, but he kept wondering what would happen if a bomb happened to hit the medical college square. It wasn’t the sort of thought that helped him pay attention to Shpaaka, the male of the Race who went on lecturing as if it were an ordinary day.

After a miss that sounded and felt nearer than any of the others, Jane Archibald leaned toward him and whispered, “This is bloody awful.”

“Oh, good,” he whispered back. “I thought I was the only one scared out of my wits.”

Blond curls flipped back and forth as she shook her head. “I don’t know how anybody stands it,” she said. “It takes me back to the days when I was a tiny little girl and the Lizards were mopping up Australia after they’d bombed Sydney and Melbourne.”

Reuven nodded. “I remember the fighting in Poland and in England and here, too.”

He might have known that Shpaaka would notice he wasn’t paying so much attention as he should. “Student Russie,” the Lizard said, “are you prepared to repeat back to me my remarks on hormonal function?”

Before Reuven could answer, another bomb burst even closer to the building. It almost threw him out of his seat. He had to fight the urge to dive for cover. In a shaky voice, he answered, “No, superior sir. I am sorry.”

He waited for Shpaaka to read him the riot act about insolence and insubordination. Instead, the male let out a very human-sounding sigh and said, “Perhaps, under the circumstances, this is forgivable. I must note, I find these circumstances unfortunate.”

No one argued with him. People who were liable to stand up and scream “Allahu akbar!” or even “Lizards go home!” were unlikely to enroll in the Moishe Russie Medical College. As far as Reuven was concerned, the Race did a better job of ruling its territory than the Reich or the Soviet Union did theirs. He glanced over toward Jane, which he enjoyed doing every so often any day of the week. She had a different opinion of the Lizards’ rule, but she couldn’t enjoy watching-or rather, listening to-Jerusalem going up in flames.

Shpaaka said, “I hope you will forgive me, but I really feel I must speak on something other than the assigned lecture topic for a little while. I trust I hear no objections?” His eye turrets swiveled so he could look at all of his students. Again, no one said anything. “I thank you,” he told them. “I merely wanted to state my opinion that, in view of the factional strife so prevalent among you Tosevites, the coming of the Race to Tosev 3 may well prove a boon to you, not the disaster so many of your kind perceive it to be.”

Reuven started to nod, then checked himself. It wasn’t so much that he didn’t agree: much more that he didn’t want Jane seeing him agree. He knew she wouldn’t, no matter how eloquently Shpaaka spoke. He didn’t blame her for having a view different from his, but wished she wouldn’t.

“I say this even if the Race should eventually incorporate all Tosevites into the Empire,” Shpaaka continued. “You value independence very highly: more so than any other species we know. But unity and security also have their value, and in the long run-a concept I admit seems alien to Tosev 3-that value may well prove greater. We have found it so, at any rate.”

Now Reuven wasn’t so sure he agreed. He was content to live under the Lizards’ rule because all other choices for Palestine looked worse. He didn’t think that was true all over the world, nor even in all parts of the world where the Race presently ruled.

He glanced over toward Jane again. She surely didn’t think that was true all over the world, either.

“Let us live in peace together, as far as we can,” Shpaaka said. “Let us learn in settings like this one to extend the boundaries of peaceful living, and let us-” He had to break off, for the lights flickered and the floor shook from another near miss.

“So much for peaceful living,” somebody behind Reuven said.

A telephone on the wall behind Shpaaka hissed for attention. He answered it, spoke briefly, and then hung up. Turning back to the class, he said, “I am told to dismiss you early. Armored vehicles are on the way to take you all back to the dormitory, which has a strong perimeter around it.”

Reuven threw up his hand. When Shpaaka recognized him, he said, “But, superior sir, I do not live in the dormitory.”

“You might be well advised to go there in any case,” the Lizard said. “Doing so will be far safer for you than attempting to traverse the city while it is in such a state of disarray. Assuming the telephone system is still operational, you may contact whomever you require from there.” He paused, then went on, “I do not have so many students as to be able to contemplate with equanimity the loss of any of them.”

“But my family…” Reuven began.

“Don’t be silly,” Jane hissed at him. “Your father advises the fleetlord. Do you think the Race will let anything happen to him?”

He started to answer that, then realized he couldn’t-she was right. The Lizards took such obligations far more seriously than most people did. And so, instead, he spoke to Shpaaka: “I thank you, superior sir. I will go to the dormitory with my fellow students.”

“It is good,” the male said. “And now, until the vehicles arrive, I resume my remarks on hormone functions…”