Second Contact (63 page)

Nesseref glanced north and west toward Glowno, then south and east in the direction of Jezow, the other nearby Tosevite town. On the map, in fact, Jezow was closer to the site she’d chosen than was Glowno. Her eye turrets kept twisting back toward the latter town, though. The Big Ugly called Anielewicz had said he had an explosive-metal bomb there. She still didn’t know whether he’d been telling the truth. She hoped she—and the shuttlecraft port that would eventually come into being here despite the delays the ghastly weather caused—would never have to find out.

She swung her eye turrets in the direction of the Big Uglies who labored for her. Anielewicz had joked—she hoped he’d joked—about moving the bomb he might or might not have so that it could destroy her shuttlecraft port. Were any of these Tosevites his spies? She could hardly come out and ask them.

Almost all the workers, she knew, were of the larger subgroup called Poles, not the smaller subgroup called Jews. By what Nesseref had learned from both Bunim and Anielewicz, the two subgroups disliked and distrusted each other. That made it less likely the Poles were spying for Anielewicz.

Whatever reassurance that thought brought her did not last long. That the Poles weren’t spying for Anielewicz didn’t mean they weren’t spying for someone. She wished she could have had males and females of the Race laboring here, but, even after the arrival of the colonization fleet, there weren’t enough to go around. There wasn’t enough heavy equipment to go around, either, not with so much of it in use building housing for the colonists.

She glared up at the gray, gloomy sky. She’d decided to use Tosevite labor because, with it, she could have had the shuttlecraft port finished before her turn came for the heavy equipment the Race had hereabouts. But the weather wasn’t cooperating. She’d been through an interminable winter here. She’d talked with veterans from the conquest fleet. Tosev 3’s weather was not in the habit of cooperating with anyone.

As if to prove the point, a drop of rain fell on her snout, and then another and another. This wasn’t going to be the sort of cloudburst that had halted the concrete pouring, but it wasn’t weather in which her laborers could do much, either. They seemed anything but unhappy about that. Some pulled cloth caps down lower over their eyes. Others stood in whatever shelter they could find and inhaled the smoke from the burning leaves of some Tosevite plant. That struck Nesseref as a nasty habit, but they enjoyed it.

After a while, Casimir came over to her and said, “Not can working in weather like these.”

“I know,” Nesseref said resignedly.

“You dismissing we?” the foremale asked. “With pay? Weather not ours fault.”

“Yes, with pay,” Nesseref said, more resignedly still. She would have done the same for workers of the Race, and her instructions were to treat the Big Uglies like workers of the Race, or at least like Rabotevs and Hallessi. She doubted these Tosevites deserved to be treated in such a fashion, but was willing—less willing than she had been, but still willing—to believe the males who’d come with the conquest fleet knew more about the situation than she did.

Now Casimir took off his cap and bent from the waist in her direction. “You is good to working for, superior female.”

“I thank you,” Nesseref said. To be perfectly polite, she should have given the foremale a compliment in return, praising him for the hard work he and the other Big Uglies had done. She could not bring herself to say the words. From everything she’d seen, the Polish males worked no harder than they had to.

They did not seem to miss the reciprocal compliment. After Casimir had shouted to them in their own language, they let out the cries that meant they were happy. Some of them bowed to Nesseref, as the foreman had done. Some waved: a friendly gesture she had seen them use among themselves. And some simply headed off toward Jezow without a backwards glance. A lot of those, she knew from experience, would overindulge in alcohol during their free time and return to work in the morning a good deal the worse for wear.

A raindrop hit her in the eye. Her nictitating membrane flashed across the eyeball, flicking away the moisture. She wondered how long the rain would go on. Too long, without a doubt. She sighed. She couldn’t do anything about that. She couldn’t do anything about far too many things on Tosev 3.

She pulled a telephone from her belt pouch and punched in Bunim’s code. The regional subadministrator took longer to answer than she thought he should have. Nor was his voice particularly gleeful as he asked, “Well, Shuttlecraft Pilot, what has gone wrong now? I assume something has, or you would not be calling me.”

“Truth, superior sir—something has,” Nesseref said. “Because of this rain, the concrete pouring cannot commence as scheduled.”

She was glad the portable telephone had no vision link; though the Race’s features were less mobile than those of the Big Uglies, she did not think Bunim would look happy. But all he said, after a sigh of his own, was, “Very few things on Tosev 3 move in exact accord with prearranged schedules. This is naturally distressing to our kind, but it is a truth of its own here. Better the schedule should become somewhat addled than those trying to fulfill it.”

“I thank you, superior sir,” Nesseref said in some surprise. “That is generous of you.” It was more generous than she’d expected him to be.

“Anyone who tries to hurry things on Tosev 3 is doomed to disappointment, just as anyone with the purple itch is doomed to scratching,” Bunim replied. “I am given to understand the problem is worse elsewhere on Tosev 3 than here.”

“Emperor preserve me from those regions, then,” the shuttlecraft pilot said.

“Indeed,” Bunim said. “But you must also remember that the Big Uglies, when moving to their own purposes rather than to ours, are capable of bursts of speed we could not hope to match. Thus their acquisition of industrial technology in a mere handful of years. Thus also their extremely rapid growth in technical ability both while fighting the conquest fleet and since the fighting stopped.”

“I do remember this,” Nesseref said. “I do not understand it, but I remember it. My opinion, for whatever it may be worth to you, is that they have more technical ability than they know what to do with. If they had more social stability, they might not advance so fast, but they would be better off.”

“I agree with you,” Bunim said. “They were already working on explosive-metal weapons when the conquest fleet arrived. By now, the Deutsche and the Americans, say, might already have fought a nuclear war. Had we come in the aftermath of such a fight, we would only have had to pick up the pieces.” He sighed. “It would have been much easier.”

“For the conquest fleet, certainly,” Nesseref said. “The colonization fleet would have had a harder time dealing with a wrecked planet, though.”

“Truth.” Bunim sighed again. “That is one reason we did not use many explosive-metal bombs. Even so, however, there are times when I think it would have been worth it.” He broke the connection, leaving Nesseref standing alone in the chilly rain.

The science officer at the Race’s embassy in Nuremberg was a male named Slomikk. Ttomalss had had occasional questions for him since coming down to the surface of Tosev 3, and had generally been pleased with his replies. He seemed to have more insight into the way the Tosevites thought than was common among the Race.

Today, though, Ttomalss came to him with a query of a different sort: “How much danger am I in from the abnormal amount of background radiation in this part of Deutschland?”

Slomikk swung both eye turrets toward the researcher into Tosevite psychology. “How did you learn of this increase in radiation?” he inquired. “You are correct—it does exist—but we do not go out of our way to advertise it.”

“I can see that you would not,” Ttomalss said with considerable warmth. “I stumbled upon it by accident; I was investigating the effects of local climate on agriculture, and the next map to leap onto the screen was one of radiation distribution as related to wind patterns.”

“I . . . see,” Slomikk said slowly. “Well, that is one link I shall have to remove from the computer system.”

“Is that all you have to say about it?” Ttomalss demanded, more indignantly than before. “Can you do nothing more than conceal the evidence from those who are compelled to serve here?”

“What else would you recommend, Senior Researcher?” the science officer said. “I cannot make the radiation disappear, and the Deutsche insist on placing their center here. Their former center, Berlin, was during an early stage of the fighting a great deal more radioactive than this.”

“I am aware of that, of course,” Ttomalss said, “as I am aware that we also bombed the Deutsch city of München, south of here. But both those events took place during the fighting; the radioactivity from them should have subsided by now, should it not?”

“Indeed it should have, were that the only radioactivity we were discussing,” Slomikk said. “But the Deutsche, back in the days when they were first experimenting with explosive metals, built a pile with inadequate moderators, or perhaps with no moderators at all. As you would expect, it melted down, and its radioactivity has not declined to any great degree in the years since. It is still too strong for anyone, even condemned criminals, to go in and clean it out, and it is the source of the increased radioactivity you noticed in this area.”

“A pile without moderators?” Ttomalss shuddered at the mere idea. “Big Uglies are mad. What prompted them to do such a thing?”

“As best I can gather—you will understand, the Deutsche are not forthcoming about this—the answers are, desperate haste and complete inexperience,” Slomikk replied. “From our point of view, it is unfortunate that they acquired technical proficiency so fast.”

“Yes.” Ttomalss used the affirmative hand gesture. “Better by far for us had they succeeded in rendering a good stretch of their not-empire completely uninhabitable rather than . . .” He returned to the question that had brought him to Slomikk in the first place: “How dangerous is this environment, anyhow?”

“Risk of malignancy is certainly higher than it would be had the Deutsche not acted with such flagrant stupidity,” Slomikk said. “That does not mean it is extremely high. Among the Deutsche of Nuremberg, the incidence of neoplasms is about thirty percent higher than it is in areas with lower radiation levels. Closer to the site of the meltdown, that increases considerably.”

“How do you know this?” Ttomalss answered his own question: “You have access to Deutsch records, then?”

“Some of them,” Slomikk said. “Frustratingly, only some. Many of their records remain handwritten or produced on machines that are not electronic. We have to examine them physically, which is not easy for us to do without revealing ourselves. And working through Tosevite intermediaries to gain access to what these records contain is not everything it might be, either, for there is always the question of whom a Big Ugly truly works for.”

“So there is,” Ttomalss agreed. “Tosevites have played us false so many times in the past, we have every reason to be alert to treachery now.”

Slomikk was the sort of methodical male who, once he got started on an explanation, kept right on no matter what the male to whom he was explaining said: “And not all the Deutsch security systems for the data they do have in electronic format are easy to penetrate. Big Uglies worry about espionage far more than the Race has done since the formative days of our species.”

“With all the competing sovereignties among the Big Uglies, they have needed such fears,” Ttomalss observed. “This is an area where unity has not given us strength.”

“They have even entrapped us a few times,” Slomikk said, “defending data with all their strength, making us exert great effort and ingenuity to win them. Then, when we had done so, we eventually discovered the data were thoroughly falsified.” He let out an irate hiss.

“I have had firsthand experience of Tosevite treachery,” Ttomalss said. “I can well believe these Big Uglies could be as devious as you say. Do you suppose they could have penetrated any of our data networks without our knowing it?”

“That is not my area of expertise, but I would doubt it very much,” Slomikk said. “You would be better advised seeking such answers from the head of Security here. But I, for my part, am certain the Deutsche are too ignorant to attempt, let alone succeed at, electronic espionage of their own.”

“I hope you are right,” Ttomalss said, “but one of the things I have seen again and again is that the Tosevites encourage us to underestimate them, which enables them to prepare for and carry out outrageous deeds under our snouts. They have given us so many large, unpleasant surprises that successful espionage here would be only a small, unpleasant surprise.”

“Surprises from espionage are not always small.” Slomikk paused thoughtfully. “Perhaps it would be wise if one of us did mention this matter to the head of Security here. I will take care of it, if you like.”

The science officer’s voice was casual—too casual.
I will take the credit if you turn out to be right
was what he meant. Ttomalss should have got angry. He knew that. He couldn’t make himself do it. The embassy to the
Reich
was not his permanent station. He didn’t much care what the males and females here thought of him, and their opinions would have no large effect on his career.

“Go ahead,” he said, as if it were a small matter. To him, it was. If it wasn’t to Slomikk, fine.

“I thank you.” Slomikk scribbled a note to himself.

“You are wise not to note this problem electronically,” Ttomalss observed. Slomikk did his best to look wise. What he did look like was a male who had reached for a pen without the least concern for security, with only the thought that it would be the quickest way to set down the idea and make sure he did not forget it.

“If you are right,” he said, “it will be good that we find out about it.”

“Truth,” Ttomalss said. If he was right, the embassy’s security officer would end up wishing he’d never been hatched. Thinking about hatchlings put Ttomalss on a new line of thought: “Is increased background radiation more likely to affect eggs and hatchlings than adults? We have several gravid females here in the embassy, you know.”