The result must have satisfied him, for he handed the card back to Russie when the machine spat it out. “Pass on,” he said, gesturing with the rifle.

“I thank you,” Reuven answered. The medical college had come under heavy attack during the fighting. He was glad the Race thought the school important enough not to be endangered so again.

He certainly thought it was that important, though he would have admitted he was biased. Nowhere else on earth did the Lizards teach people what they knew of medicine, and their knowledge was generations ahead of what humanity had understood about the art before the Race came.

Learning some of what the Lizards knew had been Moishe Russie’s goal ever since the fighting stopped. Reuven was proud he’d been accepted to follow in his father’s footsteps. If he hadn’t passed the qualifying examinations, the name above the entrance to the block Lizard building wouldn’t have meant a thing.

He went inside. The Race had built doors and ceilings high enough to suit humans, and the seats in the halls fit Tosevite fundaments. Other than that, the Race had made few concessions. Reuven carried artificial fingerclaws in a little plastic case in his back pocket. Without them, he would have had a devil of a time using the computer terminals here.

More people than Lizards bustled through the halls on the way to one class or another. The people-most of them in their mid- to late twenties, like Reuven-were students, the Lizards instructors: physicians from the conquest fleet, now joined by a few from the colonization fleet as well.

Reuven and another student got to the door of their lecture hall at the same time. “I greet you, Ibrahim,” Reuven said in the language of the Race-the language of instruction at the college and the only one all the human students had in common.

“I greet you,” Ibrahim Nuqrashi replied. He was lean and dark, with a perpetually worried expression. Since he came from Baghdad, which was even more convulsed than Jerusalem, Reuven had a hard time blaming him.

They went in together, talking about biochemistry and gene-splicing. When they got inside, their eyes went in the same direction: to see if any seats were empty near Jane Archibald. Jane was blond and shapely, easily the prettiest girl at the college. No wonder, then, that she was already surrounded by male students this morning.

She smiled at Reuven and called “Good day!” in English-she was from Australia, though heaven only knew if she’d go back there once her studies were done. The Lizards were colonizing the island continent more thoroughly than anywhere else, except perhaps the deserts of Arabia and North Africa.

Nuqrashi sighed as he and Reuven sat down. “Maybe I should learn English,” he said, still in the language of the Race. English was the human language most widely shared among the students, but Reuven didn’t think that was why the Arab wanted to acquire it.

He didn’t get much of a chance to worry about it. Into the lecture hall came Shpaaka, the instructor. Along with the other students, Reuven sprang to his feet and folded himself into the best imitation of the Race’s posture of respect his human frame could manage. “I greet you, superior sir,” he chorused with his comrades.

“I greet you, students,” Shpaaka replied. “You may be seated.” Anyone who sat without permission landed in hot water; even more than most Lizards, Shpaaka was a stickler for protocol. His eye turrets swiveled this way and that as he surveyed the class. “I must say that, until I read through this latest set of examination papers, I had no idea there were so many ways to write my language incorrectly.”

Jane Archibald raised her hand. When Shpaaka recognized her, she asked, “Superior sir, is that not because we are all used to our own languages rather than to yours, so that our native grammar persists even when we use your vocabulary?”

“I think you may well be correct,” Shpaaka replied. “The Race has done some research on grammatical substrates, work occasioned by our conquests of the Rabotevs and Hallessi. Our ongoing experience with the multiplicity of languages here on Tosev 3 clearly shows more investigation will be needed.” His eye turrets surveyed the class once more. “Any further questions or comments? No? Very well: I begin.”

He lectured as if his human students were males and females of the Race, diluting nothing, slowing down not at all. Those who couldn’t stand the pace had to leave the medical college and pursue their training, if they pursued it, at a merely human university. Reuven scribbled frantically. He was lucky in that he’d already known Hebrew, English, Yiddish, and childhood pieces of Polish before tackling the Race’s language; after four tongues, adding a fifth wasn’t so bad. Students who’d spoken only their native language before tackling that of the Race were likelier to have a hard time.

After lecture, laboratory. After laboratory, more lecture. After that, more lab work, now concentrating on enzyme synthesis and suppression rather than genetic analysis. By the end of the day, Reuven felt as if his brain were a sponge soaked to the saturation point. By tomorrow morning, he would have to be ready to soak up just as much again.

Wringing his hand as he stuck his pen back in its case, he asked Jane, “Would you like to come to my house for supper tonight?”

She cocked her head to one side as she considered. “It’s bound to be better than the food in the dormitories-though your mother’s cooking deserves something nicer than that said about it,” she answered. “Your father is always interesting, and your sisters are cute…”

Reuven thought of the twins as unmitigated-well, occasionally mitigated-nuisances. “What about me?” he asked plaintively-she’d mentioned everyone else in the Russie household.

“Oh. You.” Her blue eyes twinkled. “I suppose I’ll come anyway.” She laughed at the look on his face, then went on, “If the riots start up again, I can always sleep on your sofa.”

“You could always sleep in my bed,” he suggested.

She shook her head. “You didn’t sleep in mine when you spent that night in the dormitory while the fighting in the city was so bad.” She wasn’t offended; she reached out and took his hand. “Come on. Let’s go. I’m getting hungry standing here talking.”

Several students gave Reuven jealous looks as he and Jane left the campus hand in hand. They made him feel three meters tall. In fact, he was a thoroughly ordinary one meter seventy-three centimeters-in absent moments, he thought of it as five feet eight-so when he and Jane looked into each other’s eyes, they did so on a level. Three or four Arab men whooped when they saw Jane. They approved of big blondes. She took no notice of them, which worked better than telling them where to go and how to get there. That only encouraged them.

“I’ve brought Jane home for supper,” Reuven called in Yiddish as he came inside.

“That’s fine, his mother answered from the kitchen in the same language. “There will be plenty.” Rivka Russie, Reuven was convinced, could feed an invading army as long as it gave her fifteen minutes’ notice.

His sisters came out and greeted Jane in halting English and in the language of the Race, which they were studying at school. Judith and Esther had just entered their teens; next to Jane’s ripe curves, they definitely seemed works in progress. She answered them in the bits and pieces of Hebrew she’d picked up since coming to Jerusalem. Reuven smiled to himself. Like most native English speakers, she couldn’t come out with a proper guttural to save her life.

Judith-he was pretty sure it was Judith, though the twins were identical and wore their hair the same way, not least for the sake of the confusion it caused-turned to him and said, “Cousin David’s having more troubles. Father’s doing what he can to fix things, but…” She shrugged.