Aftershocks

19

In the encampment outside the little town of Kanth, Gorppet waited and worried. Every day that went by without the explosive-metal bomb’s going off was something of a triumph, but no guarantee the accursed thing wouldn’t detonate the next day-or, for that matter, the next instant. And one of the things he worried about was that the encampment might not be far enough outside Kanth. If the bomb went up, he was too likely to go up with it.

“Can we do nothing to rout out these Tosevites?” Nesseref asked him. “Can we do nothing to make them release my friend?”

Gorppet had asked her to come to Kanth precisely because she was Mordechai Anielewicz’s friend. Now he wondered if that didn’t make her more annoyance than asset. Trying to keep sarcasm out of his voice, he said, “I am open to suggestions, Shuttlecraft Pilot.”

“Have we yet tried negotiating with these Jewish Big Uglies?” the female said. Before Gorppet could speak, she answered her own question: “We have not.”

“That is a truth,” Gorppet agreed. “The next sign of willingness they show for negotiations will be the first.”

“Perhaps we should not wait for them to show signs. Perhaps we should seek negotiations ourselves.” Nesseref waggled an eye turret at him. “Perhaps you should seek negotiations yourself. You can afford failure here even less than the Race can.”

With deliberate rudeness, Gorppet turned both eye turrets away from her. Unfortunately, that he was rude didn’t mean she was wrong. If the Race succeeded here-and especially if the Race succeeded because of his efforts-Hozzanet might have enough pull to set that in the balance against his ginger dealings down in South Africa. If not…If not, he was going to spend the rest of his days in some very unpleasant places.

Nesseref said, “Maybe you could use that Deutsch Big Ugly, that Drucker, as a go-between. I know he is acquainted with Anielewicz, and Tosevites know one another better than we can hope to know them.”

“No.” Gorppet not only used the negative gesture, he added an emphatic cough. “Remember, the Big Uglies with the bomb are Jews. They would be more inclined to listen to one of us than to a Deutsch male.”

“Ah. Well, no doubt you are right. In that case, maybe one of us ought to go and talk with them,” Nesseref said. “As things stand, I do not see how that could hurt.”

“Do you not?” Gorppet said in hollow tones. He could see all too well how it might hurt: bullets, knives, blunt instruments, whatever other tools for torture Tosevite ingenuity-always too fertile in such areas-might devise.

But Nesseref also had a point. Something needed doing. The longer the Race and the Deutsche waited, the more things that could go wrong. Even more to the point, as far as Gorppet was concerned, the longer the Race waited, the more likely the disciplinarians were to seize him and take him away, concluding he was not helping in the present situation.

And so, without enthusiasm but also without anything he saw as choice, he approached Hozzanet the next morning and said, “Superior sir, if you need someone to approach the house where the Tosevite terrorists are staying, I volunteer for the duty.”

“I am not sure we need anything of the sort,” Hozzanet replied. “Anyone we offer to these Big Uglies would likely be seized as a hostage, as Mordechai Anielewicz was.”

“I understand that, superior sir,” Gorppet said. “I am willing to take the chance. You will understand why I am willing to take the chance. More than any other male of the Race here at the moment, I am expendable.”

“No male is expendable,” Hozzanet said. “Do you hope that you will be a hero if you succeed where few males would even have tried, and that that will be weighed against your present difficulties?”

“Yes, superior sir. That is exactly what I hope,” Gorppet answered.

“Well, it could be that you are right,” Hozzanet admitted. “Of course, it could also be that the Big Uglies will torment you or kill you, in which case you will gain nothing and lose that which is irreplaceable.”

“Believe me, superior sir, I understand this is a gamble,” Gorppet said. “It is, I repeat, one I am willing to make.”

“I cannot give you permission for such a rash act myself,” Hozzanet said. “I shall have to consult with my superiors.”

Gorppet made the affirmative gesture. “Go ahead, superior sir. I hope they decide quickly. Would you not agree that we may not have much time?”

Hozzanet didn’t say whether he agreed or disagreed. He just waved Gorppet away and began making telephone calls. Later that day, he summoned Gorppet back into his presence. Not sounding particularly happy, he spoke formally: “Very well, Small-Unit Group Leader. You are authorized to pursue negotiations with the Big Uglies at whatever level of intimacy proves necessary.” He twisted an eye turret in a particular way. “Try not to get killed while you are doing all this.”

“I thank you, superior sir,” Gorppet said. “It shall be done.”

“Wait,” Hozzanet told him. “It shall not be done quite yet. We are going to make you a little more useful first.”

And so, when Gorppet approached the house in Kanth from which Mordechai Anielewicz hadn’t returned, he wore several small listening devices glued to his scales. They were covered with false skin, to make them as difficult as possible for the Big Uglies to detect.

Of course, he thought as he walked up to the house, they could just shoot me now, in which case my superiors back at the encampment will hear nothing useful. But no shots rang out. He looked for a speaker by the door with which he could announce himself. The house boasted no such amenity. Few Tosevite houses did. Lacking anything better to do, he knocked on the door.

The Big Uglies inside had to know he was there. They could surely see he carried no weapon (and they just as surely couldn’t see the little patches of false skin). Why wouldn’t they let him in? If nothing else, he gave them another hostage. They wouldn’t know that a good many members of the Race-everybody who particularly hated ginger-wouldn’t be sorry to see him dead.

But no one came to the door. Would he have to leave emptyhanded? He didn’t intend to do any such thing. He knocked again. “I come in peace!” he called in his own language. He could have said the same thing in Arabic, but no one in this part of Tosev 3 used that tongue. He knew none of the languages the Deutsche and the Jews spoke.

At last, the door did open, though not very wide. A Big Ugly gestured with an assault rifle-come inside. Gorppet obeyed. He’d come here to do nothing less. The door slammed shut behind him.

“I greet you,” he said, as if he’d come on a friendly visit. “Do you understand my language?”

“No, not a word,” the Big Ugly answered-in the language of the Race.

It could have been funny, had the Tosevite not been carrying that rifle and had he not been so plainly ready to use it. As things were, Gorppet said, “I thank you for letting me come in here.”

With a shrug, the Tosevite said, “You came to this house. We can hold you here. You cannot give us any trouble.”

“As you still hold Mordechai Anielewicz?” Gorppet pronounced the name, so alien to him, with great care: he did not want to be misunderstood.

And he was not. With a nod, the Jewish Big Ugly answered, “Yes, we hold him; that is a truth. But you will have nothing to do with him. Nothing, do you understand me? You two shall not plot together. I know you are our enemies.”

“I have fought side by side with males of your superstition, and-” Gorppet began.

“It is not a superstition,” the Tosevite snapped. “It is truth.”

“We disagree,” Gorppet said, wondering if that would get him shot the next instant. “But as I say, I have fought side by side with Jewish Tosevites against the Deutsche. Mordechai Anielewicz has led you. How can you say that we are your enemies?”

“Because it is a truth,” the Big Ugly said. “Now you of the Race and the Deutsche work together against us. You do not want us to have the vengeance we deserve.”

“We do not want another round of fighting under any circumstances,” Gorppet said. “What good could it do?”

“Go down these stairs,” the Jewish Tosevite said. Gorppet went. The Big Ugly stayed far enough behind him that he couldn’t hope to whirl and seize the rifle. He didn’t intend to try any such thing, but his captor couldn’t know that, and took no chances. The Big ugly resumed: “Destroying the Deutsche is worthwhile for its own sake.”

“If you set off this bomb, you will not only be destroying the Deutsche,” Gorppet said. “Do you not see that? You also put the Race at risk, and your fellow Jews in Poland.”

“Destroying the Deutsche is all that matters to us,” the Tosevite said implacably. He pointed to a door. “Go in there.”

Gorppet opened the door. The chamber inside was small and dark. Be-fore going in, he said, “You would also destroy yourselves, of course.”

“Of course,” his captor agreed with chilling calm. “Do you know the story of Masada?”

“No.” Gorppet made the negative gesture. “Who is Masada?”

“Masada is not a person. Masada is-was-a place, a fortress,” the Big Ugly answered. “Nineteen hundred years ago, we Jews rose up against the Romans, who oppressed us. They had more soldiers. They beat us. Masada was our last fortress. They put soldiers around it. They demanded that we surrender.”

“And?” Gorppet asked, as he was obviously intended to do.

A melancholy pride in his voice that Gorppet could not mistake, the Jew said, “All the soldiers in Masada-almost a thousand of them-killed themselves instead of giving up to the Romans. We can do that again here. We are proud to do that again here.”

Gorppet had seen plenty of Muslim Tosevites willing to die if in dying they could carry out their goal of harming the Race. Big Uglies who did not care whether they lived or died were the greatest problem the Race faced, because they were so hard to defend against. Gorppet said, “If you harm your own males and females more than you harm the Deutsche, what have you accomplished?”

“Harm to the Deutsche,” the Tosevite said. “Revenge for all they have done to us. We need nothing more.”

He was impervious to reason. That was the most frightening thing about him. Gorppet tried again nonetheless: “But harm will also come to those you care about.”

“We shall punish the Deutsche.” Yes, the Big Ugly was impenetrable. He gestured with his rifle. “Go inside.”

“You will not listen to me,” Gorppet protested.

“I did not ask you to come here. I did not say I would listen to you if you did. Why should I listen to you? You will only tell me lies.” The Tosevite gestured with the rifle barrel again. “Go inside, I tell you, or you will never go anywhere again.”

Despair in his liver, Gorppet went. The Big ugly closed the door. The lock clicked. Gorppet found himself in almost total blackness; only the tiniest bit of light leaked under the bottom of the door. He had to explore by touch. He found nothing but a pad that might do for a sleeping mat and a metal pot he presumed he was to use for his excrement.

I should have let myself go to prison, he thought. Anything would be better than this.

Oddly, Johannes Drucker hadn’t hated the Lizards while fighting two wars against them. He’d been a professional. They’d been professionals. Both sides had just been doing their jobs. Had the Lizards felt otherwise, they would have killed him after his attack on their starship.

Now, though, he hated them. He’d hated Gunther Grillparzer for trying to blackmail him, too. He’d been able to do something about Grillparzer, who he heartily hoped was dead. And he hated the Lizards for blackmailing him. The trouble was, he couldn’t do anything about them.

He peered through Zeiss binoculars at the house in Kanth where the Jews had holed up with the explosive-metal bomb. An artillery shell or a conventional bomb from a dive-bomber might kill all of them before they could detonate the weapon they’d stolen. If it did, the crisis would be over.

Might. If. Those words didn’t carry a lot of punch, not till you measured them against the risk. If the shells, if the bombs, didn’t do the trick…

In that case, Kanth and a good deal of the surrounding countryside would go up in radioactive fire. The Jews would have a measure of revenge on the Reich, and who could guess what would happen next?

He even understood why the Jews holed up in Kanth wanted their revenge. Before the Gestapo hauled Kathe away, he didn’t think he would have. He hadn’t seen Jews as people till then, only as enemies of the Reich. But, considering what he felt toward the goddamn blackshirts, why shouldn’t they feel the same way, only more so? Sure as hell, Germany had given them reason enough.

And Mordechai Anielewicz hadn’t been anything but a husband and father trying to find his family, the same as Drucker himself had been doing. Christ, each of them had even named a son after the same man. Yes, Jews were people, no matter what the SS said.

But Drucker hated Anielewicz anyhow, not for himself but because, through the Jew, the Lizards had been able to ensnare him. If they told his superiors what they knew, he wouldn’t be able to protect Kathe any more.

He also hated Gorppet, and hoped the Jews had cut the miserable Lizard’s throat. For all he knew, they might have. Gorppet had gone into that house, but he hadn’t come out, any more than Anielewicz had.

Despite his loathing of the Race, Drucker found himself having to work through and with the Lizards. He couldn’t very well approach that house in Kanth himself, not in his fancy new major general’s uniform. That would be all the Jewish terrorists needed. They’d set off their bomb just for the fun of blowing up a high-ranking Nazi. Hell, in their shoes he would have done the same thing.

Since he couldn’t approach the Jews, he went into the tent where Gorppet’s superior, a male named Hozzanet, was still working. Another Lizard was talking with Hozzanet, one whose style of body paint he recognized. “I greet you, Shuttlecraft Pilot,” he said-talking with that one was bound to be more interesting than talking with the male from Security.

The Lizard to whom he’d spoken swung a startled eye turret in his direction and asked, “How is it that you know what my body paint means?”

“I have also flown in space, as pilot of the upper stage of an A-45,” Drucker answered. “I tried to destroy one of your starships, but I did not quite succeed.” Since he did not think he had met the pilot before, he also gave his name.

To his surprise, the Lizard said, “Oh, I remember you. I was the shuttlecraft pilot who flew you back to Nuremberg after you were released from captivity. I am Nesseref.”

“Are you?” Drucker said, and knew that sounded foolish as soon as it came out of his mouth. “We have a saying in my language: small world, is it not?”

“So it would seem,” Nesseref said. “It is small enough. I am given to understand that we share Mordechai Anielewicz as a friend.”

“As an acquaintance, at any rate,” Drucker said, though he wondered why he bothered splitting hairs. His acquaintanceship with the Jew was close enough to let the Lizards squeeze him because of it. If that didn’t make it friendship, it came close enough. He asked, “And how did you become acquainted with Anielewicz?”

“My home is in Poland,” the Lizard answered. He-no, she, Drucker recalled-went on, “We met quite by chance, but found we liked each other. That is how any friendship between two individuals begins. Is it not a truth?”

“I suppose so,” Drucker said. “The question now is, what can we do to help him stop the terrorists from setting off that bomb?”

“Truth,” Nesseref said, and Hozzanet echoed her.

The male from Security went on, “I know that your government now perceives we were not responsible for allowing the terrorists to enter the Reich with this bomb. We did not give it to them. In fact, as you will recall, it is of Deutsch manufacture.”

But Drucker shook his head. Walter Dornberger had given him specific instructions on this point. “The Jews are your puppets. You let them keep the bomb for all those years. If they use it against us, we shall hold you responsible for that act of war against the Reich.”

“You would fight us again?” Hozzanet demanded. “You truly would, in view of what happened the last time?”

“I can only tell you what my Fuhrer tells me,” Drucker answered. “We are an independent not-empire even now, and you may not treat us as if we were of no account.”

“If you fight us again, you shall be of no account,” Hozzanet said. “Can you not see that? Whatever you try to do to us, we shall do to you tenfold.”

Back during the Second World War, before the Lizards came, the Germans had always said they would punish their foes ten times harder than they were hurt. Hearing that phrase aimed at the Reich made Drucker wince, especially since he knew the Lizards could so readily carry out their threat. Nevertheless, he spoke as he’d been ordered to speak: “But we will also hurt you again. You know we can. How soon will you be weaker than the Americans and the Russians?”

He knew a good deal about Lizards. He didn’t watch Hozzanet’s face. He watched the tip of the Lizard’s stumpy little tail. Sure enough, it quivered. That meant Hozzanet was upset. The male made a good game effort not to show it, though, saying, “First, the Reich does not have the power to do that to us. Second, regardless of any other concerns, none of you Deutsche would be here to learn the answer to that question.”

Dornberger had foretold that he would say something like that. The former engineer and commandant at Peenemunde was shaping as an effective Fuhrer- as effective as he could be in a crippled Reich. Just as in a well-planned chess opening, Drucker had the next move waiting: “Do you think we are unprepared to sacrifice ourselves now so that Tosevites triumph in the end?”

Hozzanet’s tailstump quivered again. But the Lizard said, “To be perfectly frank, yes. That is exactly what I think. You Big Uglies are very seldom able to think or plan for the long term. Why should this occasion be any different?”

He had a point. Drucker did his best not to acknowledge it, saying, “Precisely because we have so little to lose.”

“Any individual’s life is a lot to lose,” Nesseref put in. “No one can lose anything more important.”

That was sensible. Drucker somehow wasn’t surprised. Anyone who flew into space had to have good sense. Otherwise, you ended up dead before you got the chance to gain much experience.

Hozzanet said, “Let me see if I understand something. The Reich is interested in attacking this house in Kanth, to attempt to put the Jewish Tosevites out of action before they can detonate the bomb.”

“That is a truth,” Drucker agreed.

“But if you try this attack and fail, so that the bomb detonates, you will blame the Race,” the Lizard persisted.

“That is also a truth,” Drucker said.

“How can both these things be true at once?” Hozzanet demanded. “How can you blame us if your assault fails?”

“Because we should not even have to consider the possibility of making an assault,” Drucker answered. “Because these Tosevites had no business having a bomb in the first place, let alone smuggling it into the Reich. That they had it and that they could smuggle it are both the fault of the Race.”

“Whose fault is it that these Tosevites hate the Reich so much?” Hozzanet said. “Whose fault is it that Poland was attacked, which created the chaos that let them move the bomb? Both these things are the fault of the Reich.”

He was probably right about that. No: he was certainly right about that. But Drucker said, “I have stated the Fuhrer’s views on the matter.”

“So you have,” Hozzanet said sourly. “The Race’s view is that they are foolish and irresponsible. The Race’s view is also that, if you will blame us for the failure, you shall not be allowed to make the attempt.”

“I protest, in the name of my government,” Drucker said.

“Protest all you please,” Hozzanet replied. “I tell you, this thing shall not be done.” He added an emphatic cough. “I tell you also that, if your government launches combat aircraft, we shall do everything in our power to shoot them down before they can attack Kanth.”

“What you are saying, then, is that the Reich is depending on a male of the Race and a Jew to save it from this explosive-metal bomb,” Drucker said. Before either Lizard could speak, he held up a hand to show he hadn’t finished. “I have seen that not everything my government has said about the Jews is true. But Anielewicz has reason to hate us, not to wish us well.”

“When Gorppet called him, Anielewicz could have let these other Jewish Tosevites detonate their bomb and punish the Reich,” Hozzanet said. “He did not. He came here to try to stop them. You should remember that.”

By the nature of things, Hozzanet couldn’t know about the parable that spoke of the Pharisee who passed on the other side of the road and the good Samaritan who stopped to help a man in need. Even without knowing it, though, he got the message across.

And, just in case he hadn’t, Nesseref drove it home: “These other Jews, the ones with the bomb, hate the Reich more than Mordechai Anielewicz does. If that were not true, he would not have come here at all.”

Drucker suspected Anielewicz worried more about further damage to Poland than about damage to the Reich. In Anielewicz’s place, he suspected he would have felt the same way. But that didn’t make the Lizards wrong. With a stiff nod, Drucker said, “I shall report your words to the Fuhrer.”

He went back to the German encampment alongside that of the Race and telephoned Walter Dornberger. After he’d given his old commander the meat of the conversation with the two Lizards, Dornberger let out a long sigh. “What you’re telling me, Hans,” the Fuhrer said, “is that we have to rely on this Jew? There’s more irony in that than I really want to stomach.”

“I understand, sir. I feel the same way, pretty much,” Drucker replied. “But I don’t think Anielewicz will leave Kanth alive without getting those terrorists to give up their bomb. The Lizards seem sure he’ll do everything he can.” He didn’t want to let Dornberger know he knew the Jew well enough to have his own opinion.

“But will it be enough?” Dornberger demanded.

“Right now, sir, we can only hope,” Drucker said. He also suspected he hoped even more urgently than the Fuhrer did. Walter Dornberger, after all, was back in Flensburg. He wouldn’t turn to radioactive dust if something went wrong here in Kanth. But I will, Drucker thought. Dammit, I will.

There were, Mordechai Anielewicz thought, nine Jews holed up with the explosive-metal bomb. That was enough to let them have plenty of guards for him, for any other captives they might have, and for the bomb itself. In the end, though, the probably nine boiled down to only one: the Jews’ leader, a fellow named Benjamin Rubin. Mordechai knew that, if he could reach Rubin, everything else would follow.

But could he reach him? For a long time, Rubin hadn’t even wanted to talk to him. Nobody’d wanted to talk to him. He counted himself lucky that the Jews hadn’t just shot him and tossed his body out on the porch as a warning to anyone else rash enough to think about talking to them.

At first, he’d thought they were going to do exactly that. Nobody called him anything but “traitor” till he’d been there for several days. Finally, that made him lose his temper. “I fought the Nazis before most of you mamzrim were born,” he snapped at one of the trigger-happy young Jews who reluctantly came in pairs to bring him food. “I killed Otto Skorzeny and kept him from blowing up Lodz with the bomb you’re sitting on now. And you call me a traitor? Geh kak afen yam.”

That could have got him shot, too. Instead, it got him what he’d hoped it might: a chance to talk with Benjamin Rubin. He didn’t know Rubin well; the fellow hadn’t been any kind of bigwig till he hijacked the bomb. But he was now. One of the toughs who followed him led Mordechai into his presence as if into that of a rabbi renowned for his holiness.

Rubin didn’t look like a rabbi. He looked like a doctor. He was thin and pale and precise, about as far removed as possible from the ruffians he led. “So you want to convince me I’m wrong, do you?” he said, and folded his arms across his chest. “Go ahead. I’m waiting.”

“I don’t think I need to convince you,” Anielewicz said. “I think you see it, too. The way it looks to me, you just don’t want to admit it to yourself.”

Benjamin Rubin scowled. “You’d better come to the point in a hurry, or I’ll decide you haven’t got one.”

“Fair enough.” Mordechai hoped he sounded more cheerful than he felt. He was doing his best. “Suppose you blow up Kanth. What have you got? A few thousand Germans at the outside. I wouldn’t bet on even that many, though-they’re sneaking away every chance they get. Hardly seems worthwhile, for an explosive-metal bomb.”

“We were heading for Dresden,” Rubin said petulantly. “The truck kept breaking down. That’s how we ended up here.”

“Too bad.” Now Anielewicz did his best to simulate sympathy. “But you could do things in-and to-Dresden you can’t even think about here.”

“Maybe. But we’ve still got the bomb, and we can still do plenty with it, even if it’s not so much as we hoped.” Rubin nodded, as if reassuring himself. “I can die happy, knowing what I’ve done to the damned Nazis.”

“And what will the damned Nazis do once you’re dead?” Mordechai asked. “They’ll hit back with whatever they’ve got left, that’s what. How many Jews in Poland are going to die on account of your stupidity?”

“None,” replied the Jewish leader who’d stolen the bomb. “Not a single one. The Germans know what will happen to them if they try anything like that again.”

Anielewicz laughed in his face. Rubin looked astounded. None of his henchmen would have done anything so rude. Maybe, having henchmen, he’d forgotten there were people who didn’t think so well of him. Mordechai said, “You’re here. You’re willing to die to take revenge on the Nazis. You think there won’t be plenty of Nazis willing to die to take revenge on a pack of kikes?”

He used the slur deliberately, to rock Rubin back on his heels. The other Jew said, “They’d never have the nerve.”

That only made Mordechai laugh some more. “You can call the Nazis all sorts of things, Rubin. I do, every day. But you’re an even bigger idiot than I think you are if you think they don’t know how to die well. Dying well is half of what fascism is all about, for God’s sake.”

“And how do you know so much about it? You’ve been in bed with them, that’s how,” Rubin said.

“Yes, and that’s a load of shit, too,” Mordechai said. “Anybody who’s not blind can see as much.”

One of the bully boys who’d brought him in to Benjamin Rubin tapped him on the shoulder. When he turned, the fellow hit him in the belly and then in the face. He folded up and sank to the floor. He tasted blood in his mouth, but none of his teeth seemed broken when he ran his tongue over them. Somehow, that mattered very much to him. If by some accident he came through this alive, he didn’t care to spend any time sitting in a dentist’s chair.

Slowly, painfully, he got to his feet. What he wanted to do was kill the bastard who’d slugged him. But he couldn’t, not when said bastard’s pal was pointing a rifle at his chest. That being so, he didn’t even waste time glaring at the bully boys. Instead, he turned back toward Rubin. “If you don’t want to listen to me, you don’t have to. If you want your bully boys here to pound on me, they can do that. That’s what I bought when I came through the door. But it doesn’t mean I’m not telling you the truth, even so.”

“Maybe you call it that,” Rubin said. “I don’t. I call it a pack of lies and foolishness. I’d sooner go out like Samson in the temple.”

“I’ve noticed,” Mordechai answered. He’d also noticed that, unlike Samson, Rubin and his pals hadn’t killed themselves as soon as they got in trouble. He didn’t say anything about that, not wanting to goad them into anything. Instead, he went on, “You’re like Samson one way: you don’t worry about what’ll happen to the rest of the Jews once you’re gone.”

“They’ll get by,” Benjamin Rubin said. “They always have. And we’ll punish the Nazis for all they’ve done to us.”

Anielewicz sighed. “You keep saying that. I keep telling you to look out the windows here. You just won’t do them all that much harm.”

Rubin glowered at him. “I don’t have to listen to this. I don’t have to, and I don’t intend to.” He nodded to his henchmen. “Take him away.”

“Come on, pal,” said the fellow who’d slugged Anielewicz. “You heard the boss. Get moving.”

With a rifle pointed at him, Mordechai had no choice. The boss, he thought as they led him away. Why don’t they just call him the Fuhrer? It’s only one step up. He didn’t say that; he judged it too likely to get him killed.

When the bully boys got him back to the basement room where they kept him on ice, they slammed the door behind him with needless violence. Maybe they hoped the bang would make him jump. It did, a little, but they didn’t have the satisfaction of seeing as much.

Nobody could have seen much in that room. It had no lamps and no windows. He got colossally bored when they parked him there. He didn’t know how long at a time they left him in cold storage. He did know, or thought he knew, that he spent inordinate stretches of time asleep. He had nothing better to do. No matter how much he slept, though, he always felt logy, not well-rested.

He tried the door every so often when he was awake. It never yielded. Had he been the hero of an adventure novel or film, he would have been able to pick the lock-either that, or to break down the door without making a sound. Being only an ordinary fellow, he remained stuck where the terrorists had stowed him.

A couple of times, he heard them speaking the language of the Race, and a Lizard answering them. They didn’t mention to him who the Lizard was. He hoped it wasn’t Nesseref. Enough that he was in trouble without dragging his friend in with him. He also hoped it wasn’t Gorppet. If the male from Security hadn’t taken in Heinrich’s beffel, he never would have found his family again. He owed the Lizard too much to want him endangered.

But he didn’t know. He never got the chance to find out. The terrorists efficiently kept him and the Lizard, whoever it was, from having anything to do with each other. In their place, he would have done the same. That didn’t keep him from wishing they’d proved less professional.

And then-it couldn’t have been more than a couple of hours after he’d reluctantly admired their professionalism-they all started screaming at one another. It was like listening to a horrible family row. But everybody in this family packed an assault rifle, and the explosive-metal bomb sat only a few meters away. A family row here could have extravagantly lethal consequences.

At last, silence fell. Nobody’d shot anybody, not so far as Mordechai could tell. But he hadn’t the faintest idea what had happened-he hadn’t been able to make out the words-or why they’d started screaming at one another in the first place, either. All he could do was sit there in the darkness and wonder and wait.

Instead of waiting, he fell asleep. He didn’t think he’d been asleep very long when the door flew open. One of the bully boys shined a flashlight in his face. Another one growled, “Come on. You’re going to see the boss.”

“Am I?” Anielewicz yawned and rose and did as he was told.

He was still yawning when the two toughs escorted him into Benjamin Rubin’s presence. Rubin didn’t beat around the bush: “Is it true that, if we surrender, we can surrender to the Lizards and not the damned Nazis? And there’s supposed to be a safe-conduct out of here and a pardon afterwards. Is that true, or isn’t it?”

“Yes, it’s true,” Mordechai answered, more than a little dazed. “Does it matter?”

“It matters,” Rubin said bleakly. “On those terms, we give up.” He took a pistol off his belt and handed it to Anielewicz. “Here. This is yours now.”

Two more of his followers brought in the Lizard Mordechai had heard. It wasn’t Nesseref; he would have recognized her body paint. “I greet you,” he said. “Are you Gorppet?” When the Lizard made the affirmative gesture, Anielewicz went on, “They are surrendering to the Race, in exchange for safe-conduct and pardon. Will you go make the arrangements for picking them up and getting them out of the Reich?”

“It shall be done,” Gorppet answered. “And you have no idea how glad I am that it shall be done.”

“Oh, I might,” Anielewicz said.

One of the Jews who followed Rubin led the Lizard toward the front door. It opened, then closed again. Rubin said, “I’m counting on the Race to keep its promises.”

“It’s a good bet,” Mordechai said. “They’re better about things like that than we are.” He raised an eyebrow. “What made you change your mind at last?”

“What do you think?” Benjamin Rubin said bitterly. “We tried to touch off the damned bomb, and it wouldn’t work.” He looked as if he hated Anielewicz. “These past twenty years, I thought you were taking care of it.”

“So did I,” Mordechai said. “But do you know what? I’ve never been so happy in all my life to find out I was wrong.”

“Well, there is one crisis solved.” Atvar spoke in considerable relief. “Solved without casualties, too, I might add. That is such a pleasant novelty, I would not mind seeing it occur more often.”

“I understand, Exalted Fleetlord,” Pshing said. “I hope such proves to be the case.”

“So do I.” Atvar used an emphatic cough. So much time on Tosev 3, however, had turned him from an optimist to a realist, if not to an outright cynic. “I would not bet anything I could not afford to lose. Given the present sorry situation on too much of Tosev 3-and, indeed, throughout too much of this solar system-my larger bet would too likely prove doomed to disappointment.”

His adjutant made the affirmative gesture. “I understand,” he repeated. “Shall we now proceed to the rest of the daily report?”

“I suppose so,” Atvar replied. “I am sure I will not like it nearly so well as the news from the Reich.”

Next on the agenda was the latest news on the fighting in China. Atvar promptly proved himself right: he didn’t like it nearly so well as he’d liked the news from the Reich. From somewhere or other, the Chinese rebels had come up with revoltingly large quantities of Deutsch antilandcruiser rockets and antiaircraft missiles. The fleetlord had a strong suspicion where somewhere or other was: the SSSR, with a long land border with China, seemed a far more likely candidate than the distant, shattered Reich. But he couldn’t prove anything there, the Race’s best efforts to do so notwithstanding. And the SSSR, unfortunately, was able to do too much damage to make welcome a confrontation without secure proof of wrongdoing. Molotov, the SSSR’s not-emperor, had made his willingness to fight very clear.

“One thing,” Atvar said after reading the latest digest of action reports from China. “Fleetlord Reffet can no longer object to recruiting members of the colonization fleet to help defend the Race. A few more campaigns like the one now under way there and we will not have enough males from the conquest fleet left to give us an armed force of the size and strength we require on this world.”

“As a matter of fact, Exalted Fleetlord, Fleetlord Reffet is still objecting,” Pshing said. “If you will see item five of the agenda-”

“I shall do no such thing, not now,” Atvar said. “Reffet is welcome to hiss and cough and snarl as much as he likes. He has no authority to do anything more. If he tries to do anything more than object-if, for example, he tries to obstruct-he will learn at first hand just how significant military power can be.”

He relished the thought of sending a couple of squads of battle-hardened infantrymales to seize Reffet and force him to see reason when it was aimed at him from the barrel of a rifle. If the fleetlord of the colonization fleet provoked him enough, he just might do it. So he told himself, at any rate. Would he ever really have the nerve? Maybe not. But thinking about it was sweet.

He needed a few sweet thoughts, for the next agenda item was no more satisfactory than the one pertaining to China: the American Big Uglies were going right ahead with their plan to turn small asteroids into missiles aimed at Tosev 3. Probes had found several new distant rocks to which they’d fitted motors, and analysts were warning in loud and strident tones that they were sure they hadn’t found them all.

“Spirits of Emperors past turn their backs on the Americans,” Atvar muttered. He swung an eye turret toward Pshing. “Our analysts believe the Americans will resist with force if we try to destroy these installations, even if no Big Uglies are presently aboard them. What is your view?”

“Exalted Fleetlord, it might have been better had we not threatened them with war if they attacked our automated probes out in the asteroid belt,” his adjutant replied. “Now they can reverse that precedent and hit us in the snout with it.”

“No doubt you are right about that,” Atvar said unhappily. “But I am more concerned with practical aspects than with legalistic ones here. If we ignore the precedent and resort to force, will they respond in kind?”

“By every indication from Henry Cabot Lodge, they will,” Pshing said. “Do we wish to ignore the express statements of their ambassador? Can we afford to ignore those statements? If we ignore them and find we were mistaken, how expensive and how embarrassing will that prove?”

“Those are all good questions,” Atvar admitted. “They are, in fact, the very questions I have been asking myself. I wish I liked the answers I find for them better than I do.”

“And I also understand that,” Pshing said. “The more technically capable the Big Uglies become, the more difficult in other ways they also become.”

“And the more unpredictably difficult, too.” Atvar swung both eye turrets toward the monitor. “Why are so many American and Canadian manufacturing companies suddenly ordering large quantities of a particular small servomotor from us? To what nefarious purpose will they put the device?”

“I saw that item, Exalted Fleetlord, and checked with our Security personnel,” Pshing said. “The stated reason is, this motor will be the central unit in a toy for Tosevite hatchlings.”

“Yes, that is the stated reason.” Atvar bore down heavily on the word. “But what true reason lurks behind it?”

“Here, I believe, none.” Pshing spoke to the monitor, which yielded Atvar a view of a goggle-eyed, fuzzy object that looked like a cross between a Big Ugly and some of the large wild beasts of Tosev 3. “This thing is called, I believe, a Hairy. By the excitement with which the Tosevites speak of it, it is already remarkably popular, and seems on the way to becoming more so.”

“Madness,” Atvar said with great conviction. “Utter madness, and an utter waste of good servomotors, too.”

“Better they should go to fripperies than to devices that truly would trouble us,” Pshing said.

“Well, that is a truth, and I can hardly deny it.” Atvar looked at the next item on the agenda. It involved talking with Reffet about recruiting males and females from the colonization fleet. “Reffet is a nuisance, and I can hardly deny that, either. Go call him, Pshing. Perhaps the shock will make him fall over dead. I can hope as much, at any rate.”

“It shall be done, Exalted Fleetlord,” Atvar’s adjutant said, and went off to do it.

Reffet remained among those breathing. Atvar had known his untimely demise was too much to hope for. “I greet you,” Atvar said when his opposite number’s image appeared in the monitor. He’d given up trying to be friendly to Reffet. Perhaps he could still manage businesslike. “Have you seen the latest casualty figures from my males trying to put down the Chinese revolt?”

“They are unfortunate, yes,” Reffet answered. “This planet should never have cost so much to pacify.”

“If you know how to make the Big Uglies ignorant, perhaps you will tell me,” Atvar said. “Since we must deal with them as they are, though, perhaps you will draw the obvious conclusion and stop obstructing what needs to be done.”

More earnestly than Atvar had expected, Reffet said, “Do you not yet grasp how alien this world is to me-indeed, to all the colonization fleet? Do you think we imagined independent Tosevite not-empires, spacefaring Big Uglies armed with explosive-metal bombs, when we set out from Home? Do you think we imagined how disrupted our carefully planned economy would become when we discovered that the Tosevites were already doing so much of the manufacturing we had expected to have to do ourselves? Do you think we dreamt of the staggering effect ginger would have on our whole society? Can you truthfully say you looked for any of these things before going into cold sleep?”

“I looked for not a one of them. I have never claimed otherwise,” Atvar replied. “But what I and what the conquest fleet as a whole have tried to do is adapt to these things, not pretend they do not exist. That pretense is what we see too often from the colonization fleet, and what infuriates and addles us.”

“How long did you take before you began to adapt?” Reffet asked. “If you tell me you did it all at once, I shall not believe you.”

“No, we did not do it all at once,” Atvar said, relieved to find Reffet so reasonable. “But, because we were so outnumbered, we could not pretend that the Big Uglies are in fact what we wish they were, an attitude we have seen too often among you colonists. Sooner or later, we shall grow old and die off. Sooner or later, you will have to defend yourselves. Such is life on Tosev 3, like it or not. Until such time as this planet is fully assimilated into the Empire-if that day ever comes-we shall have to maintain our strength, because the wild Big Uglies assuredly will maintain theirs.”

Reffet sighed. “It could be that you are right. I do not say that it is, but it could be. But if it is, this world will be a long-lasting anomaly within the Empire, with a permanent Soldiers’ Time and with the disruptions springing from ginger. If you think I like or approve of this, you are mistaken. If you think I am incapable of dealing with it, however, you are also mistaken.”

“Do you know what?” Atvar said. Without waiting for a reply, he went on, “I have no difficulty whatsoever in accepting that, Reffet. On that basis, I think we can get along well enough. I certainly hope we can, at any rate.”

Atvar knew he sounded surprised as well as pleased. So did Reffet: “I also hope so, Atvar. Let us make the effort, shall we?”

“Agreed,” Atvar said at once. After he broke the connection, he stared at the monitor in astonished delight. Maybe we really can work together, he thought. I never would have believed it, but maybe we really can. And maybe, just maybe- a stranger thought yet-Reffet is not an idiot after all. Who would have imagined that?

A moment later, Pshing’s face appeared on the monitor. His adjutant said, “Exalted Fleetbord, you have a call from Senior Researcher Ttomalss. Will you speak to him?”

“Yes, put him through,” Atvar said, and then, as he and Ttomalss saw each other, “I greet you, Senior Researcher.”

“And I greet you, Exalted Fleetlord,” Ttomalss said. “As you will know, I have been examining the ways in which the Big Uglies administered their own relatively successful empires, in the hope that we might learn from their history. In this effort, the empire administered by the Big Uglies called Romans has proved perhaps the most instructive.”

“All right, then,” Atvar said. “How did these Romans administer their empire, and how might we imitate their example?”

“Their most important virtue, I think, was flexibility,” Ttomalss replied. “They treated areas differently, depending on their previous level of civilization and on how well pacified they were. They had several grades of citizenship, with gradually increasing amounts of privilege, until finally the inhabitants of a conquered region became legal equal to longtime citizens of their empire. And they did their best to acculturate and assimilate new regions into the broader fabric of their empire.”

“These sound as if they may be ideas we can use,” Atvar said. “The concept of multiple grades of citizenship strikes me as particularly intriguing, and as being worth further exploration. Please prepare a more detailed report and send it to me for consideration and possible action.”

“It shall be done, Exalted Fleetlord,” Ttomalss said. “I thank you.”

“On the contrary, Senior Researcher: I may be the one who should thank you,” Atvar said. After Ttomalss was off the line, Atvar made the affirmative gesture. Maybe, just maybe, the Race would find ways to incorporate Tosev 3 into the Empire after all.

Liu Han sat behind a table on a dais. A disorderly crowd of city folk and soldiers of the People’s Liberation Army filled the hall. Here and there, braziers had been lit, but they did little to fight the chilly wind that howled in through shattered windows. Liu Han brought her hand down sharply on the tabletop. The noise cut through the babbling of the crowd. People looked her way. That was what she wanted.

“We are ready to bring in the next defendant,” she told the soldiers nearest the table. “His name is”-she glanced down at a list-“Ma Hai-Teh.”

“Yes, Comrade,” their leader said. Then he bawled out Ma Hai-Teh’s name at the top of his lungs. More soldiers dragged a man through the crowd till he stood in front of the dais. He wore a frightened expression and the filthy, torn remains of a Western-style business suit. His hands were bound behind him.

“You are Ma Hai-Teh?” Liu Han asked him.

“Yes, Comrade,” he answered meekly. “I want to say that I am innocent of the charges brought against me, and I can prove it.” He spoke like an educated man-and only an educated man was likely to have, or to want, Western-style clothes.

“You don’t even know what those charges are,” Liu Han pointed out.

“Whatever they are, I am innocent,” Ma replied. “I have done nothing wrong, so I cannot possibly be guilty.”

“Did you serve as a clerk for the little scaly devils while they ruled Peking?” Liu Han asked. “Did you help them rule Peking, in other words?”

“I moved papers from one folder to another, from one filing cabinet to another,” Ma Hai-Teh said. “That is all I did. The papers were school records, nothing more. Nothing in them could possibly have harmed anyone.”

Liu Han nodded. Ma looked relieved. That was a mistake, and would doubtless prove his last. Now she wouldn’t even have to bother calling wit-nesses to confirm that he had been a clerk for the scaly devils. She said, “You have confessed to counterrevolutionary activity, and to being a running dog of the little scaly imperialists. There is only one penalty for this: death. Soldiers of the People’s Liberation Army, take him away and carry out the sentence.”

Ma Hai-Teh stared at her as if he couldn’t believe his ears. He hadn’t understood what sort of trial this was, and he would never get a chance to improve his understanding. “But I am innocent!” he wailed as the bored-looking soldiers dragged him off.

A minute later, a volley of gunfire outside cut off his protests. Liu Han looked at the list again. “Next case,” she said. “One Ku Cheng-Lun.”

Unlike the luckless, naive Ma, Ku Cheng-Lun labored under no illusions about the sort of proceeding in which he found himself. As soon as he had given his name, he said, “Comrade, I used my clerical position to make as many errors as I could and to sabotage the little scaly devils every way I could.”

“I suppose you have some proof of this?” Liu Han’s voice was dry. She supposed no such thing. She’d listened to a lot of running dogs and lackeys trying to justify their treason to mankind. She’d heard a lot of lies.

But, to her astonishment, Ku, whose hands were also bound, turned to his guards and said, “Please take the paper from my shirt pocket here and give it to the judge.” When a soldier did so, the clerk went on, “Comrade, this is a reprimand from my supervisor, warning me not to make so many mistakes and saying I put his whole department in danger because I did. But I kept right on, because I hate the little devils.”

“I will look at this paper.” Liu Han unfolded it and rapidly read through it. It was what the prisoner said it was, and was even written on the stationery of the Ministry of Public Works. Had he written it, to protect himself after the scaly devils were expelled from Peking? Had his boss written it because he was nothing but a lazy good-for-nothing? Or was he really a patriot and a saboteur, as he claimed?

He spoke now with unhesitating pride: “I am not a traitor. I have never done anything but fight for freedom, even if I did not have a rifle in my hands.”

“I suppose that is possible,” Liu Han said: as great an admission as she’d made in any of these summary trials. She scratched the side of her jaw, considering. After half a minute or so, she said, “I sentence you to hard labor, building roads or entrenchments or whatever else may be required of you.”

“Thank you, Comrade!” Ku Cheng-Lun exclaimed. Hard labor was hard labor; his overseers might well end up working him to death. He probably knew that, too-he seemed very well informed. But to come through one of these trials without getting executed was something close to a miracle. Ku had to be aware of that.

Sure enough, Liu Han sent the next man brought before her to the firing squad, and the one after him, and the one after him as well. Revolutionary justice ruled in Peking now. The little scaly devils had held sway for a generation. Traitors and collaborators and running dogs by the thousands, by the tens of thousands, needed to be hunted down and purged.

The fourth man after Ku Cheng-Lun claimed to be in the service of the Kuomintang. That presented Liu Han with another dilemma. The Kuomintang had risen along with the People’s Liberation Army, but, having less in the way of armaments, was very much a junior partner in the struggle against the little scaly devils. Still, Liu Han didn’t want to damage the popular front, so she sentenced the fellow to hard labor. If his fellow reactionaries chose to rescue him later, she wouldn’t worry about it.

Nieh Ho-T’ing had also been trying traitors. They met for supper after nightfall ended the trials till morning. Over buckwheat noodles and bits of shredded pork, Nieh said, “Even if the little devils do end up putting down this revolt, they will have a hard time finding anyone to help them administer China.”

“That is good… I suppose,” Liu Han said. “Better would be driving them back so we go on ruling here.”

“Yes, that would be better,” Nieh agreed. “I do not know if it can happen, though. Wherever they concentrate their strength, they can beat us. That remains true, even with our new weapons-and we’ve used up a lot of those.”

“The Russians will have to send us more, then,” Liu Han said.

“That won’t be so easy, not any more,” Nieh Ho-T’ing replied. “The scaly devils have already shot up a couple of caravans-and Molotov, damn him, doesn’t dare get caught in the act of helping us. If he does get caught, the little devils land on him instead, and he won’t take that chance. So we’re liable to be stuck with what we’ve got.”

“Not good,” Liu Han said, and used one of the scaly devils’ emphatic coughs.

“No, not good at all,” Nieh said. “And we had an unpleasant report today from down in the south.”

“You’d better tell me,” Liu Han said, though she was anything but sure she wanted to hear.

“Here and there, the scaly devils are starting to use human troops against us,” Nieh Ho-T’ing said.

“They’ve tried that before,” Liu Han said. “It doesn’t work well. Before long, the soldiers go over to us, or enough of them do, anyhow. Humans naturally have solidarity with one another.”

But Nieh shook his head. “This is different. Before, they would try to use Chinese soldiers here in China, and you’re right-that didn’t work. But these men, whoever they are, aren’t Chinese. They’re mercenaries in the pay of the little devils. They don’t speak our language, so we can’t reach them. They just do what the scaly devils tell them to do-they’re the perfect oppressors.”

“Now that is not good. That is not good at all.” Liu Han scratched her jaw, as she had while judging Ku Cheng-Lun. What she decided here was a good deal more important than her verdict in the clerk’s case-though Ku would not have agreed with that. After some time, she said, “We will have to speak in the little scaly devils’ language. The mercenaries are bound to understand that, or some of them are. Otherwise, the scaly devils couldn’t give them their orders.”

Nieh Ho-T’ing nodded. “Yes, that is a good idea. Better than anything we’ve tried yet-it’s bound to be. Some people say these soldiers are from South America, others say they’re from India. Either way, they might as well come from Home for all the sense we can make of what they say.”

“We have to make them understand,” Liu Han said. “Once we do, the rot will start.”

“Here’s hoping, anyhow,” Nieh said.

Before Liu Han could answer, jet engines started howling low over Peking. Antiaircraft guns barked. Antiaircraft missiles took off with roaring whooshes. Bombs burst. The ground started to shake. Little waves shimmered in Liu Han’s bowl of broth and noodles. She picked it up. “I wish we had airplanes of our own,” she said. “The way things are, the little devils can hit us, but we can’t hit back.”

“I know.” Nieh Ho-T’ing shrugged. “Nothing we can do about that, though. Molotov isn’t about to pack fighter planes on camelback, any more than he’s likely to send us landcruisers. But now, at least, we make the scaly devils pay a price when they use those things.”

“Not enough,” Liu Han said. More bombs burst, some not very far away. She glanced at the oil lamps that lit the inside of the noodle shop. So easy for a hit to knock them into the rubble and start a fire… Broad stretches of Peking had already burned from fires of that sort.

“If we fail this time, we try again,” Nieh said, “and again, and again, and as often as need be. Sooner or later, we win.”

Or we give up, Liu Han thought. But she would not say that; saying it seemed to make it more likely to come true. Part of her realized that was nothing but peasant superstition, but she kept quiet all the same. She’d grown up a peasant, never expecting to be anything else, and couldn’t always escape her origins.

Bombs fell again, some nearer, some farther away. Nieh Ho-T’ing said, “If they keep doing this, there won’t be anything left of Peking but ruins.”

“Maybe not,” Liu Han said, “but they’ll be our ruins.”

Nieh eyed her with more than a little admiration. “You would say that about all of China, wouldn’t you?”

“If it meant being rid of the little scaly devils for good, I would,” she replied.

He nodded. “You always have taken the hard line against them.”

“I have my reasons, even if some of them are personal and not ideological,” Liu Han said. “But I am not really a hardliner. My daughter, now, she would say, ‘Let all of China be ruined even if it doesn’t necessarily mean getting rid of the little devils for good, just so they can’t have it.’ ”

Nieh Ho-T’ing nodded again. “I see the difference. Mao would probably agree with Liu Mei, you know.”

“Well, he’ll have his chance with this uprising,” Liu Han said. Unless the people refuse to fight any more-unless they would sooner have peace regardless of who rules them. She kept that to herself, too.

“Mao has been a revolutionary his whole life,” Nieh said. “A lot of us have. We will go on fighting, however long it takes. We are patient. The dialectic is on our side. We will bring the country with us.”

“Of course we will,” Liu Han declared. But then the doubts that never quite went away came out: “The only thing that worries me is, the little scaly devils are patient, too.” Nieh Ho-T’ing looked at her as if he wished she hadn’t said any such thing. She too wished she hadn’t said it. But she feared that didn’t make it any less true. More bombs rained down on Peking.

Just seeing Tosevite railroads had convinced Nesseref that she didn’t like them. Instead of being clean and quiet, they roared and puffed and chugged and belched filthy, stinking black smoke into the air. One of these days, she was told, the Race would replace the horrible engines in Poland with more modern machinery. But it didn’t look as if that would happen any time soon. There were so many more urgent things to do. No matter how filthy the locomotives the Big Uglies built, they did work after a fashion, and so they stayed in service.

And now she found herself in a passenger car behind one of those noxious locomotives. The rolling, swaying, jouncing ride was even worse than she’d expected, and left her as nervous as a wild Big Ugly would have been to fly in a shuttlecraft for the first time.

Fortunately, few Tosevites saw her discomfiture: one car on each train was reserved for males and females of the Race. In fact, Nesseref had the entire compartment to herself. A Tosevite conductor came through and spoke in her language (a relief, because she’d learned only a handful of words in either Polish or Yiddish): “Przemysl is the next stop. All out for Przemysl.”

Out she went, in some anxiety. If no one was waiting for her here at the station, she would have to brave a taxi. That would be doubly difficult: first finding a driver who understood her and then surviving a trip through terrifying Tosevite traffic. Having experienced both, she vastly preferred space travel, which had fewer things that could go wrong.

But a Big Ugly on the platform waved to her, waved and called, “Shuttlecraft Pilot! Nesseref! Superior female! Over here!”

With more than a little relief, Nesseref waved back. “I greet you, Mordechai Anielewicz. I am glad to see you.”

“And I am glad to see you,” her Tosevite friend replied. “I was even gladder to see you when I came out of that house in Kanth. Seeing any friends there was very good indeed.”

“I can understand how it would have been.” Nesseref’s eye turrets swiveled this way and that. To her, this crowded platform in Przemysl, full of shouting, exclaiming Big Uglies, was a frightening place; she would not have wanted to be here without a friend, and especially a Tosevite friend. But this was different from what Anielewicz had gone through inside the Reich. She was, fortunately, sensible enough to understand as much. No one wanted to kill her here-she certainly hoped not, at any rate. But Anielewicz could have died at any moment in Kanth, and he’d volunteered to go there understanding that was so.

Now he said, “Come with me. My apartment is not very far away. My mate and hatchlings look forward to meeting you. Well, Heinrich looks forward to meeting you again. And he looks forward to showing you his beffel.”

Nesseref’s mouth fell open in amusement. “Ah, yes-the famous Pancer.” She pronounced the Tosevite name as well as she could. “He may be interested in meeting me, too-I probably smell like a tsiongi, and that is an odor that will always get a beffel’s attention.”

Anielewicz spoke three words in his own language: “Dogs and cats.” Then he explained: “These are Tosevite domestic animals that often do not get along with each other.”

“I see,” Nesseref said. She skittered after Anielewicz so she wouldn’t lose him in the cavernous train station. Tosevites stared and pointed at her and exclaimed in their unintelligible languages. Many of them inhaled the burning herb that always struck her as noxious; its acrid smoke filled her scent receptors.

Outside, the cold smote her. Mordechai Anielewicz repeated, “It will not be far.”

“Good,” she said, shivering. “Otherwise, I do believe I would freeze before I got there. This winter weather of yours makes me see why you Tosevites deck yourselves in so many wrappings.”

“I have seen members of the Race do it, too,” Anielewicz said. “Staying warm is nothing to be ashamed of.”

“I suppose not.” Nesseref hurried down the street after him. “But wrappings are rarely necessary back on Home. We do not like to think they should be necessary anywhere we live.”

“What you like to think is not always what is true,” Anielewicz remarked, a comment with which she could hardly disagree.

She sighed with relief on entering the lobby to his block of flats, which was heated. “You must understand, you have more tolerance for cold than we do,” she said. “Here, frozen water falling from the sky is something you take for granted. Back on Home, it is a rare phenomenon at the North and South Poles and at the peaks of the highest mountains. Otherwise, for us, it is unknown.”

That made the Big Ugly let out several of the barking yips his kind used for laughter. “It is not unknown here, superior female,” he said, and tacked on another emphatic cough. “If the Race is going to live in large parts of Tosev 3, you will have to get used to cold weather.”

“So we have discovered,” Nesseref said, with an emphatic cough of her own. “The males of the conquest fleet have had more of a chance to grow accustomed to your weather than we newcomers have. I must tell you, my first winter here was a dreadful surprise. I did not want to believe what the males had told me, but it was true. And seasons here on Tosev 3 last twice as long as they do on Home, so that winter seemed doubly dreadful.”

“Without winter, we could not enjoy spring and summer so much,” Mordechai Anielewicz said.

Nesseref answered that with a shrug. Suffering to make pleasure seem sweeter struck her as more trouble than it was worth. She didn’t say so; she didn’t want to offend her friend and host. Instead, she followed him upstairs.

That the apartment building had stairs instead of an elevator said something about the level of technology the local Big Uglies took for granted. Nesseref remembered the fire that had destroyed not just Anielewicz’s apartment but his whole apartment building. Such a disaster would have been impossible in her building, with its sensors and sprinklers and generally more fireproof materials.

On the other fork of the tongue, this building was more spacious than the one in which she lived. Part of that was because Tosevites were larger than members of the Race, but only part. The rest… The Big Uglies didn’t seem to build as if every particle of space were at a premium. The Race did. The Race had to. Home, and especially Home’s cities, had been crowded since before the Empire unified the world. The Tosevites’ architecture said they still felt they had room to expand.

Their technology has come very far very fast, Nesseref thought. Their ideologies lag behind. In a way, that was a comforting thought; it let her view the Big Uglies as primitives. In another way, though, it was frightening. The Tosevites had the means to do things they could scarcely have imagined a few generations before.

She wished she hadn’t thought about how expansive they were.

“Here we are.” Anielewicz led her down the hall and opened the door to what was, she presumed, his apartment. It did not seem so very spacious, not with so many Big Uglies inside it. They greeted her in turn: by their wrappings, she identified two females and two more males besides Mordechai Anielewicz.

And there was a beffel: a very fat, very sassy beffel who swaggered out as if he owned the apartment and the Tosevites in it were his servants. He stuck out his tongue at Nesseref, taking her scent. For a moment, it was as if he had to condescend to remember what a member of the Race smelled like. But then he caught Orbit’s odor clinging to her, and swelled up in anger and let out a sneezing, challenging hiss.

“Pancer!” Heinrich Anielewicz said sharply. He spoke to the beffel in his own language. Nesseref had no idea what he said, but it did the trick. The beffel deflated and became a well-behaved pet once more.

“You have him well trained,” Nesseref told the youngest Tosevite. “I have known many males and females of the Race who let their befflem be-come the masters in their homes. That is not so here.”

“Oh, no,” the hatchling said. “My father would not allow it.”

Mordechai Anielewicz laughed again. “Convincing Heinrich of that was easy enough. Convincing Pancer of it has been harder.”

Nesseref laughed, too. “Even among us, befflem are a law unto themselves.”

Anielewicz’s mate did not speak the language of the Race nearly so well as he did, but she spoke with great intensity: “Superior female, I thank for to help Mordechai for to find us. I thank you for to help to go to Kanth, too.”

“You are welcome, Bertha Anielewicz.” Nesseref was pleased she’d recalled the name, even if she didn’t pronounce it very well. “I am glad to be a friend to your mate. Friends help friends-is that not a truth?”

“Truth,” Anielewicz’s mate agreed, along with what was surely intended to be an emphatic cough.

Nesseref had wondered what sort of food the Tosevites would serve her; Anielewicz had made it plain that following the Jewish superstition limited what he and his kinsfolk could eat. But the shuttlecraft pilot found nothing wrong with the roasted fowl that went on the table. Big Uglies ate more vegetables and less meat than the Race was in the habit of doing, but if Nesseref enjoyed more pieces of the bird and less of the tubers and stalks that went with it than did her hosts, no one seemed to find that out of the ordinary.

“Here.” Mordechai Anielewicz set a glass half full of clear liquid in front of her. “This is distilled, unflavored alcohol. I have seen members of the Race drink it and enjoy it.”

“I thank you,” Nesseref said. “Yes, I have drunk it myself.”

“We have a custom of proposing a reason for drinking before we take the first sip,” he told her. Raising his glass, he spoke in his own tongue: “L’chaim!” Then, for her benefit, he translated: “To life!”

“To life!” Nesseref echoed. Imitating the Tosevites around her, she raised her glass before sipping from it. The alcohol was potent enough to make her hiss; after it slid down her throat, she had to concentrate to make her eye turrets turn in the directions she wanted. She asked, “May I also propose a reason for drinking?”

Anielewicz made the affirmative gesture. “Please do.”

Raising her glass, the shuttlecraft pilot said, “To peace!”

“To peace!” The Tosevites echoed her this time, Anielewicz again translating. They all drank. So did she. The alcohol was strong, but it was also smooth. Before Nesseref quite noticed what she was doing, she’d emptied the glass. Anielewicz poured more into it.

Seeing everyone in the apartment having a good time and no one paying any attention to him, Pancer let out a plaintive squeak. Heinrich Anielewicz patted his own lap. The beffel jumped up into it and rubbed himself against the young Big Ugly as he might have against a member of the Race.

Maybe the alcohol had something to do with the solemnity with which Nesseref spoke: “Watching something like that makes me hope our two species really will be able to live in peace for many years to come.”

“Alevai,” Mordechai Anielewicz said in his language. As he had before, he translated for her once more: “May it be so.”

“May it be so,” Nesseref agreed, and then tried the Tosevite word: “Alevai.” Maybe it was the alcohol, but she had no trouble saying it at all.