Aftershocks (16 page)

He didn’t look as if he were in any imminent danger of starving (he looked plump, as a matter of fact), so Anielewicz took the duck and some cabbage without a qualm. He even let the tavern keeper give him an old, beat-up pot in which to carry them. Either the man was generous by nature or he was a fool or the zloty was worth even more than Mordechai had thought.

Twilight lay over Arnswalde when he came out of the tavern. He’d just climbed onto his bicycle when a young blond woman walked up to him. Pointing to the pot, she came straight to the point: “You have food in there?”

“Yes,” he said, eyeing her. Not too long before, she’d probably been very pretty—
a perfect Aryan princess,
he thought. Now her hair was tangled and matted, her face and legs—she was wearing a short skirt, so he could see quite a lot of them—scrawny rather than pleasantly rounded. His nose wrinkled. She hadn’t bathed in a long time.

Again, she didn’t beat around the bush, saying, “Feed me and you can have me.”

“Here.” He gave her the pot. “Take it. I don’t want you, not for that. I’m looking for my wife and children.”

She snatched the pot out of his hands as if afraid he would change his mind. “Thank you,” she said. “You’re one of the decent ones. There are a few, but only a few, believe me.” She turned her head in the direction of the tavern and spat. “Not him—he takes it all out in trade, believe me.”

Mordechai sighed. Somehow, that didn’t surprise him. The German girl, after all, had no zlotys to pay for roast duck.

She said, “Who are your people? Maybe I know them.”

“I doubt it.” His voice was dry. “They’re Jews. The
Wehrmacht
would have brought them back from Widawa, in Poland. A woman my age, a girl, two boys—and a beffel, if you know what a beffel is. One of the Lizards’ pets.”

She shook her head. “Jews,” she said in tones of wonder. “I thought there weren’t any Jews any more. I thought they were—what’s the word I want?—extinct, that’s it.”

In Germany, in all the Greater German
Reich,
Jews were extinct, or close enough. “You’re talking to one,” Mordechai said, not without a certain sour pride.

“How funny.” The German girl’s laugh was hard. “If you had screwed me, then I’d’ve got in trouble for sleeping with a Jew.”

“Maybe,” Anielewicz said. “Maybe not, too. The rules are liable to change now, you know.” He wondered if they would, if the Lizards would try to enforce tolerance on the
Reich.
He wondered if it mattered, one way or the other. The people—the peoples—the Germans would have had to learn to tolerate were dead now . . . extinct, as the girl had said.

“Who would have thought a Jew could be decent?” she murmured, more than half to herself. She’d learned what her teachers taught, all right.

“What would you say if I said, ‘Who would have thought a German could be decent?’ ” Mordechai didn’t know why he bothered. Maybe because he thought she might be reached. Maybe just because, despite dirt and hunger-induced leanness, she was a pretty girl, and part of him, the eternally optimistic male part, wouldn’t have minded sleeping with her at all.

She frowned. She knew he was trying to tell her something important, but she couldn’t for the life of her figure out what. “But Germans, Germans
are
decent,” she said, as if stating a law of nature.

All at once, Anielewicz wanted to snatch back the pot full of duck and cabbage. The only reason he didn’t was that it would have confirmed her in all the worst things she thought about Jews. Germans could always see when they were being maligned, but rarely noticed when they were maligning anyone else.

The girl could have no idea what was going through his mind. She said, “If you’re looking for people, the army kept falling back to the northwest during the fighting. If they had people along with them, that’s where those people would have gone.”

“Thanks,” Anielewicz said. She was trying to be decent, anyhow. “I guess I’ll go in that direction, then.”

“I hope you find them,” she said. Mordechai nodded. Maybe she could be reached. Maybe she had been reached, a little. She went on, “You can sleep in my bed tonight, if you want to. I mean, do nothing but sleep.”

He smiled. “I don’t think I’d better. If I tried, I would want to do something besides sleeping.” She smiled, too; she took it for a compliment, as he’d hoped she would. And he hadn’t even been lying. With a nod, he got the bicycle rolling and started off toward the northwest, to see what he might find.

Kassquit had known this moment would come. She’d been aware of it ever since the shuttlecraft ferried Jonathan Yeager up to her starship. Sooner or later, he would go back to the surface of Tosev 3. It had turned out to be later, because the fighting that broke out with the Deutsche made it unsafe for him to go home. Now, though, the time for his return was here. Kassquit had known it would come, yes, but she’d never imagined how much it would hurt.

“If the war had not come,” she said as he methodically packed his wrappings and other belongings into the satchel in which he’d brought them, “if the war had not come, I say, you would have been gone much sooner. That might have proved a good thing, for I do not think I would have missed you so much after a briefer acquaintance.”

“Me?” Jonathan Yeager’s expression indicated amusement or friendship or pleasure—maybe some of all three. “Superior female, I am nothing but a wild Big Ugly. How many times did you say so yourself when you were getting to know me?”

He spoke the language of the Race much more fluently than he had when he first came up to the starship. With improved fluency came an ironic slant on the world that reminded Kassquit of the electronic messages his father had posted while pretending to be a male of the Race. Could such things be inherited? Kassquit did not think so, but she knew how ignorant she was of Tosevite genetics.

In any case, such matters were far from the most urgent things on her mind. She clung to Jonathan Yeager, saying, “Do not make yourself less than you are. You are the most exciting thing that ever happened to me.” She used an emphatic cough, not that she really needed one. He knew how she felt.

His arms went around her. He stroked her. She had never imagined how stimulating the touch of another could be. Of course, no male of the Race had ever touched her intending to arouse her. But she relished Jonathan Yeager’s touch even when he wasn’t particularly intending to arouse her.

“I cannot stay here,” he said now. “You know I cannot. Your place is here; my place is down on the surface of Tosev 3. One day, if you can safely arrange it, you shall have to visit me.”

Ttomalss would not approve. Kassquit knew as much. He would cite concern about disease. He would even be sincere. But he would also be afraid to let her go because he would fear the influence of wild Big Uglies on her. And he would not admit that if she subjected him to torment.

Jonathan Yeager was subjecting her to torment by going. Tears slid from her eyes and rolled down her cheeks. He turned away. That wasn’t disgust, as it would have been from a male of the Race. Kassquit had learned as much. It was embarrassment. Jonathan Yeager was emotionally vulnerable to tears to a degree she found amazing.

She said, “Before you came here, I did not realize what an important part of my personality had not fully developed. Because I did not realize that, I did not know what I was missing. Now that I do, the future looks much lonelier than it did before.”

“I am sorry, superior female,” Jonathan Yeager answered. “I did not come up here intending to cause you pain. I came up here intending to give you pleasure, to make you happy. I hope I did that, too.”

“You know you did!” Kassquit exclaimed. “But, because you made me so happy, you make me sad that you will not be making me happy any more.”

That sounded convoluted even to her, but Jonathan Yeager had no trouble sorting it out. He said, “I will always remember you. I will always be fond of you. Even if a time should come that we cannot be anything more than friends, we shall always be friends.”

“Why should a time come . . .?”Kassquit answered her own half-formed question: “Tosevites contract to mate exclusively with only one partner.”

“Yes, that is a truth,” the wild Big Ugly agreed.

“You think you will eventually enter into one of these contracts.” Kassquit knew she sounded grim, but couldn’t help it.

Jonathan Yeager nodded his head, then made the Race’s affirmative gesture. “It is likely. Most males and females do.”

“And at that point, you will not want to mate with me?” Kassquit asked.

The wild Tosevite coughed and looked away. “It is not that I would not want to,” he said. “But then I should not. If an exclusive mating arrangement proves not to be exclusive, complications soon follow. Tosevite sexuality is difficult enough without complications, I think.”

As far as Kassquit could see, any sexuality was difficult. Trying to meet a partner’s needs and trying to get one’s own met by a partner who lacked full understanding of one’s body because his was different were even more difficult than the certainties of stroking oneself. They were also much less lonely, though. She hadn’t understood that, not till Jonathan Yeager came aboard the starship.

And now more loneliness loomed ahead of Kassquit. Jonathan Yeager was likely to enter one of those exclusive partnerships. Even if he didn’t, mating opportunities for him would be down on the surface of Tosev 3. Kassquit wondered where she would ever find another one. She wondered if she would ever find another one. By what she knew of things, it seemed unlikely.

How much of that did Jonathan Yeager understand? He had to be intellectually aware of it; she’d explained till he was probably tired of listening. But did it mean anything to him? Sometimes Kassquit thought one thing, sometimes the other.

She got no more time to wonder now. A hiss from the door announced the presence of a visitor. And only one visitor would be coming at this time. “The shuttlecraft pilot!” Jonathan Yeager exclaimed.

“Yes, the shuttlecraft pilot,” Kassquit said dully. She put on a fingerclaw to open the door.

A male of the Race stood in the corridor. “Which of you Big Uglies is the one called Jonathan Yeager?” he asked, making a botch of the name.

Jonathan Yeager barked Tosevite laughter, then said, “I am.” He turned to Kassquit. “Good-bye. I hope I see you again. I know I will always remember you.”

“Good-bye,” she said, and embraced him.

The shuttlecraft pilot turned both his eye turrets away from them. “Disgusting,” he muttered in a low voice. Kassquit didn’t think she was supposed to hear it, but she did. After a moment, the shuttlecraft pilot spoke louder: “Are you ready to leave, Jonathan Yeager? The launch window will not last indefinitely, in case you are not aware of it.”

“I am aware of it.” Jonathan Yeager picked up the bag of belongings he’d brought up from the surface of Tosev 3. “I am ready.”

“Then let us go,” the shuttlecraft pilot said. And go they did. Kassquit closed the door behind them. The panel smoothly slid shut; the Race’s engineers knew their business. For many years, being alone in her cubicle had seemed a refuge, a place where she was not the strange one in a starship—in effect, in a world—where no one else was like her.

Now, suddenly, the compartment seemed a prison, a trap. When she looked over at the sleeping mat, she imagined mating there with Jonathan Yeager. All she had left now were imagination and memory. The wild Big Ugly was gone. He wouldn’t come back soon, if he ever came back at all.

“What am I going to do?” Kassquit whispered.

She knew what would have been expected of a female of the Race: to return to the way she had been, as if nothing had happened. When males and females of the Race weren’t in season, sexuality meant nothing to them. They would assume it meant nothing to her, either. She wished it didn’t. Part of her wished it didn’t, anyhow. The rest longed for it.

“What am I going to do?” she said again.

Not for the first time, she wished the Deutsche had chosen some other moment to launch their attack on the Race. Her reason for that wish, though, was undoubtedly unique. Had Jonathan Yeager not been forced to stay in the starship so long, she wouldn’t have developed this emotional attachment to him. Her life would have been simpler, in a sense purer.

But now you understand more of what being a Tosevite is truly like,
she thought.
Now you know you are not merely a poor copy of a female of the Race.
Half of her was glad to have the knowledge. The other half would as gladly have done without it.

She sighed. She would never make a proper female of the Race. And she would never make a proper Big Ugly, either. What did that leave her?
I wonder if I could become a proper Rabotev or Hallessi.
She laughed at her own foolishness. Why not? No one else would have found it funny.

But laughter soon faded. What would she do now that she was by herself again? The question wouldn’t go away. No answer suggested itself, either.

Someone outside asked for attention; the speaker by the door hissed again. “Who is it?” Kassquit asked.

“I: Ttomalss. May I come in?”

“Yes, superior sir.” Kassquit opened the door for him, as she had for the shuttlecraft pilot. She bent into the posture of respect. “I greet you, superior sir.”

“And I greet you, Kassquit,” the psychological researcher said. “I came in to inquire about your feelings now that the wild Big Ugly named Jonathan Yeager is returning to the surface of Tosev 3.”

“Yes, I thought you might.” Kassquit didn’t realize how sarcastic she sounded till the words were out of her mouth.

Ttomalss let out a wounded hiss. “Your well-being is a matter of considerable concern to me, you know, not only for personal reasons but also because of what I am trying to learn about successfully integrating the Race’s cultural patterns with the limits imposed by Tosevite biology.”

Yes, I understand that, superior sir, and I apologize,” Kassquit said, on the whole sincerely. “How do I feel?” She took a deep breath.
“Confused
may well be the best word. Too much has happened to me emotionally, and it has happened too fast, for me to be at all certain what it means.
Bereft
is another word that comes to mind.”