With a bark of Tosevite laughter, the Deutsch soldier said, “How can you make us sorrier, after what the Race has done to the Reich? How can you make this not-empire sorrier, after all you have done to it?”

“If you attack us, you cannot kill us all before we radio the situation to our superiors,” Gorppet replied, trying to hold his voice steady. “Helicopter gunships will punish you for fighting, and the Race will take further vengeance on the Reich for violating the surrender. Is this a truth, or is it not?”

“It is a truth,” the Big Ugly admitted. “It is a truth about which few of my males care right now. Many of them have lost their mates and hatchlings. Do you understand what this means? It means they do not greatly care if they live or die.”

“I do understand, yes,” Gorppet said, though he knew he did so only in theory. Tosevite kinship ties, and Tosevites willing to kill without thought for their own lives once those ties were broken, had complicated life for the Race since the conquest fleet landed. Gorppet tried the only real direction in which he thought he could go: “What they want to do now, they may regret later. Is this a truth, or is it not? Do you command them?”

“Yes, I command them,” the Deutsch soldier replied. “You make good sense. I almost wish you did not, for I am as ready as any of my males to seek revenge against the Race. But I will tell the soldiers what you have said. After that… we shall have to see. With the war over and lost, my hold over them is weaker than it was.”

“We shall stay alert,” Gorppet said. “We shall not attack you-the war is over. But if we are attacked, we shall fight back with all our strength.”

“I understand.” The Big Ugly walked back toward his own males, calling out in their guttural language. Some of the Deutsche shouted at him. They did not sound happy, nor anything close to it.

“Be ready for anything,” Gorppet warned the males he led. “Do not open fire on them unless they fire on us, but be ready.”

He was willing to let the Deutsche use the crossroads first, and held up his males so they could. The Tosevite officer led his Big Uglies forward. They towered over the males of the Race. Some of them shouted things. Some shook their fists. But, to Gorppet’s vast relief, they didn’t start shooting.

“Forward,” he called after the Deutsche had passed. Forward his own small group went. He kept one eye turret on the terrain, the other on the map he’d been given. Unlike the maps he’d had in the SSSR, this one seemed to know what it was talking about. When, toward evening, his males reached a town, he stopped a local and asked, “Greifswald?”

He made himself understood. The local nodded a Big Ugly affirmative and said, “Greifswald, ja .”

Gorppet turned back to his males. “We have reached our assigned station. Dismal-looking dump, isn’t it?”