Second Contact by Harry Turtledove

had added the Rabotevs and Hallessi to their Empire before people figured out how to read and how to grow crops. Two thousand years ago, they’d already been thinking for some time about conquering Earth.
    Set against the vast sweep of Lizardly history, what were a couple of thousand years? Why had God decided to pay attention to Earth during a restricted stretch of time and ignored the worlds of the Empire? Those were questions to make rabbis tear their own hair and pull one another’s beards.
    Reuven chuckled. “The Lizards should have moved faster, for once in their scaly lives,” he murmured. Had they simply sent out a conquest fleet without bothering to think and scout and plan, they would have smashed the Roman Empire flat, and Earth would have gone into the Empire without a fight.
    But it hadn’t happened. And so, although the Lizards occupied Palestine, they had less control here than they would have liked. Freedom kept spreading almost under their snouts. Not enough males prowled the countryside for it to be otherwise. Jews intrigued with the Soviet Union. Arabs intrigued with the Soviet Union and the Reich . Both Jews and Arabs intrigued with the British and Americans. And, for good measure, Jews and Arabs intrigued with each other—and with the Lizards.
    With more than a little pride, Reuven strode through the entranceway to the Russie Medical College, which sat in a square, Lizard-built building a little west of the base of the Temple Mount. The college was named for his father, the first human who’d asked the Lizards for the privilege of studying what they knew and what the finest Earthly physicians hadn’t begun to suspect.
    For most of a generation now, bright medical students had flocked here from all over the world to learn what they could acquire in fullness nowhere else. Reuven also knew more than a little pride that he had been allowed to study here, for the Lizards played no favorites, picking those they would accept through grueling examinations. Jews and Arabs studied side by side, along with men and a few women from India, South America, South Africa, and other lands the Lizards ruled—and from the independent nations of the world as well.
    As he slid into his seat in the genetics class, Reuven nodded to his fellow students. “Good morning, Thorkil,” he whispered. “Morning, Pablo. Good morning, Jane. Hullo, Ibrahim.” Among themselves, the students spoke English more than any other human language.
    In came the instructor, a Lizard military physician named Shpaaka. Along with the rest of the humans, Reuven got to his feet, bent himself into as good an approximation of the Lizards’ posture of respect as his frame would permit, and chorused, “I greet you, superior sir.”
    “I greet you,” Shpaaka said. He understood enough English to make sardonic comments when he caught his human students whispering in it. But the Lizards’ tongue was the language of instruction. It had the technical terms he needed to get his point across; English and other Earthly languages had borrowed a lot of them. His eye turrets swiveled back and forth. “Have you any questions on what we covered yesterday before we commence?” He pointed. “Jane Archibald?”
    “I thank you, superior sir,” the Australian girl said. “When using a virus to bring an altered gene into a cell, what is the best way to suppress the body’s immune response to ensure that the gene does get to its intended destination?”
    “This seems rather different in your species from mine,” the lecturer replied, “and it also leads into today’s subject. Perhaps it would be best if I simply went on.” He proceeded to do just that.
    Back when Reuven’s father studied under the Lizards, they hadn’t wanted to stop for questions at all; that wasn’t their style among themselves. Over the years, they’d adapted to some degree, and so had people. No one had ever had the nerve to thank them for adapting; had they consciously