In answer to that, Reuven shouted loud enough to make himself heard through the din from his fellow students: “Are you more attached to teaching your knowledge or to teaching your superstitions?”

Shpaaka drew back behind his lectern, plainly affronted. “We teach the truth in all matters,” he declared.

“How many spirits of Emperors past have returned to tell you so?” Reuven shot back. “Have you ever seen one? Has anybody ever seen one?”

“You are impertinent,” Shpaaka said. He was right, too, and Reuven wasn’t the only one being impertinent, either-far from it. The Lizard went on, “Anyone refusing to give reverence to the spirits of Emperors past shall not continue at this college. I dismiss you all. Think on that.”

He left the lecture hall, but the clamor didn’t die down behind him. Some of the students, the ones without much religion of their own, didn’t care one way or the other. Others did care, but cared more about what would happen to them if they were forced from the medical college.

Reuven and the Muslim students seemed most upset. “My father will kill me if I go home to Baghdad without finishing my medical studies,” Ibrahim Nuqrashi said. “But if I bow before idols, he will torture me and then kill me-and I would not blame him for doing it. There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is His prophet.”

No one would kill Reuven, or torture him, either, if he went to the shrine the Lizards had built here in Jerusalem. Even so, he couldn’t imagine such a thing, not for himself. The Nazis had wanted to kill his family and him for being Jews. He couldn’t slough that off like a snake shedding its skin.

He made his way over toward Jane Archibald. She nodded to him. “What are you going to do?” she asked, seeming to understand his dilemma.

Except it wasn’t a dilemma, not really. “I’m coming to say goodbye,” he answered. “I’m not going to stay. I can’t stay.”

“Why not?” she asked-no, she didn’t understand everything that was on his mind. “I mean, it’s not as if you believe everything that’s in the Bible, is it?”

“No, of course not,” he answered. He bit his lip; he didn’t know how to explain it, not so it made rational sense. It didn’t make rational sense to him, either, not altogether. He tried his best: “If I went to the Lizards’ shrine, I’d be letting down all the Jews who came before me, that’s all.”

Jane cocked her head to one side, studying him. “I almost feel I ought to be jealous. I can’t imagine taking the Church of England so seriously.”

“So you’ll go to the shrine, then?” Reuven asked.

“Why not?” she said with a shrug. “If I don’t believe in what I grew up with and I don’t believe in this, either, where’s the difference?”

That was perfectly logical. Part of Reuven wished he could see things the same way. Part of him was relieved he hadn’t got intimately involved with Jane. And part of him-a bigger part-wished he had. He said, “Good luck to you.”

When he said no more, she nodded as if he’d passed a test, or perhaps as if he’d failed one. She found another question for him: “What will your father say when be finds out about this?”

“I don’t know,” he answered. “I’ll find out when he gets home tonight. But I don’t see how I can do it. And even if I don’t finish here, I know more about medicine than anyone who just went to a human university.”

Jane nodded again, then hugged him and kissed him, which had to drive every male student in the class wild with envy. “I’ll miss you,” she said. “I’ll miss you a lot. We might have-” Now she shook her head. “Oh, what’s the use?”

“None,” Reuven said. “None at all.” He left the lecture hall, he left the cube of a building that housed the medical college named for his father, and he left the razor-wire perimeter around the building.

One of the Lizard sentries at the perimeter said, “It is not time for you Tosevites to be leaving your classes.”

“Oh, yes, it is,” Reuven answered in the language of the Race. “It is time for me; in fact, it is past time for me.” The sentry started to say something to that, then shrugged and waved Reuven out into the world beyond the perimeter-the real world, he thought as he headed home.

His mother exclaimed in surprise when he walked in. “What are you doing here?” she demanded. “You should be in class.” He laughed a little at how much she sounded like the Lizard. But then he explained. His mother’s face got longer and longer as she listened. After he finished, she let out a long sigh. “You did the right thing.”

“I hope so.” He went into the kitchen, took a bottle of plum brandy off a pantry shelf, and poured himself a good dose. He didn’t usually do that in the middle of the day, but it wasn’t a usual day, either.

“Your father will be proud of you,” Rivka Russie said.

“I hope so,” Reuven repeated. He hefted the bottle of slivovitz. His father wouldn’t be proud of him if he drank himself blind, which was what he felt like doing. Instead, with a sigh, he put the bottle away.

The twins also exclaimed when they got home from their school and discovered Reuven there ahead of them. He made his explanations all over again. Judith and Esther’s faces grew unwontedly serious by the time he was through.

And he explained one more time when, his father came home. “No, you can’t do that,” Moishe Russie said gravely. “Or you could, but I’m glad you didn’t. Till we see what else we can arrange, how would you like to help me in my practice?”

“Thank you, Father!” Reuven let out a long sigh of relief. “That would be very good.” As good as staying at the college? He didn’t know. He had his doubts, in fact. But it would do.

“Dammit, I want another chance at him!” Monique Dutourd said in a savage whisper as she examined tomatoes in the greengrocer’s.

“Not right now,” Lucie answered, choosing one for herself. “If things change, then yes, certainly. But we don’t want to draw too much heat from the Nazis down on our heads, not for a bit.”

“Easy for you to say. You don’t have to sleep with him.” Monique knew she sounded bitter. Why not? She damn well was.

“No, I’m sleeping with your brother.” Lucie’s voice made the prospect sound extraordinarily nasty, even though she and Pierre Dutourd were both on the dumpy side. “And getting the Lizards to do things isn’t so easy, whether you know it or not. They were very unhappy when they rubbed out that fishmonger.”

“Not half so unhappy as I was,” Monique said mournfully. “I had my hopes up-and then the miserable fool started shooting too soon. And I’m still stuck with Kuhn.”

Lucie shrugged. “If you want to put arsenic in his wine, I won’t tell you not to do it, but you’re liable to get caught. The advantage of the Lizards is, if they do the job, you get away scot free.”

“So do you. So does Pierre.” Monique put a tomato into her string bag. “The only reason Kuhn started bothering me was to get at Pierre-and I didn’t even know Pierre was alive then.”

“Only an American would expect life to be fair all the time,” Lucie said. “It isn’t as though the Boches gave us no trouble.”

That was undoubtedly true. It didn’t make Monique feel any better. It didn’t keep Dieter Kuhn out of her bedroom, either. “Maybe I will put arsenic in his wine,” she said. “And after they arrest me for it and start working me over, I’ll tell them it was your idea.”

“They already want to get their hands on me,” Lucie said with a shrug. “Giving them one more reason isn’t so much of a much.”

Monique was tempted to throw a tomato at her. But if she angered Lucie, her own brother might stop having anything to do with her. What would she do then? Stay an SS man’s unwilling mistress till the end of time? That was intolerable. “I want to get away!” she cried, loud enough to make the greengrocer look up from what he was reading-a girlie magazine, by the cover.