Aftershocks (67 page)

“What exactly do you want me to do?” Mordechai asked. “Go in there and ask them to come out without blowing up the town?”

“As I told you on the telephone, we and the Deutsche will obey your orders here,” Gorppet replied. “These are your followers. The presumption is that you will best know how to deal with them.”

Anielewicz wondered how good that presumption was. Any followers of his who really followed him wouldn’t have absconded with the explosive-metal bomb in the first place. But he had no better notions, and so he said, “We had both better find out where your leaders believe the bomb to be.”

“It shall be done, superior sir,” Gorppet said, for all the world as if Mordechai were a Lizard of higher rank. “Come with me, then. We can both learn.”

Inside one of the tents the Lizards had set up, a monitor displayed a map of Kanth. The map was in German, and must have been copied from a Nazi document. A red square blinked on and off on one street near the edge of town. Anielewicz pointed to it. “Is that the place?”

“Yes, that is the place,” answered a Lizard whose body paint was similar to Gorppet’s but somewhat more ornate. He went on, “I am Hozzanet. You are the male named Anielewicz?” At Mordechai’s nod, Hozzanet went on, “What can we do to assist you in dealing with these individuals?”

“Get me a bicycle,” Mordechai answered. “I do not want to walk all that way.”

“It shall be done,” Hozzanet said, and done it was. He had no idea where the Lizards came up with the bicycle—for all he knew, they borrowed it from the Nazis—but they got it. His legs ached when he started pedaling: the never-failing legacy of German nerve gas more than twenty years before.
Why am I doing this?
he wondered.
Why am I risking my neck to save a bunch of Germans who hate me?
That was the question his wife had asked. It seemed more urgent now. But the answer still came all too clearly.
Because this band of idiots is liable to make the Nazis visit more harm on people I don’t hate, on people I love.

People in Kanth stared at him as he rolled through the quiet, almost empty streets. They knew something was going on, but they had no idea what. If they started fleeing, what would the men with the bomb do? Probably try to set it off, so they could kill folk other than themselves. Anielewicz had played the role of a terrorist. He knew how such folk thought.

Here was the street. Here was the house, on the left-hand side. It had an attached garage that had probably been a stable before the turn of the century. It could easily have held the bomb. Nobody had trimmed the grass in front of the house for a long time, but that was far from unique on the Street. With fall edging toward winter, most of the grass had gone grayish yellow.

Mordechai leaned the bicycle against a beech tree with a couple of bullet holes in the trunk. As he walked up to the door, he felt eyes on him from inside.
What a fool I am for coming here,
he thought, and knocked on the tarnished brass knocker.

The door opened. The man who stood there aimed a submachine gun at Anielewicz’s belly. “All right, you damned traitor,” he growled in Yiddish. “Get your
tukhus
inside! Right now!” Mordechai went in. The door slammed shut behind him.

Ttomalss did not like using a sound-only telephone, but the Race didn’t yet have a consulate in Tours from which he could have had a proper discussion with the Tosevite historian Felless had found for him. Making the best of things, he said, “I greet you, Professor Dutourd.”

A male Big Ugly turned his words into Français. A female Big Ugly answered, presumably in the same tongue. The male Big Ugly spoke in the language of the Race: “And she greets you.”

At least the historian and the interpreter were on the same circuit. As far as Tosevite telephone technology went, that was no small achievement. Ttomalss said, “Professor Dutourd, I gather the Romans whom you study are an important imperial folk among the Tosevites.”

More back-and-forth between the Big Uglies. “Yes, that is a truth,” Monique Dutourd answered through the interpreter. That interpreter, Ttomalss had been given to understand, was a notorious ginger dealer. But he was also a kinsmale to the historian. Knowing from painful personal experience how intimate Tosevite ties of kinship could be, Ttomalss had prevailed upon Ambassador Veffani to allow his release. He hoped he was doing the right thing. He did not want to have to deal with a hostile historian. That would make learning what he needed to know all the more difficult.

“I gather also that these Romans ruled many different kinds of Tosevites, some of them from cultures very different from their own,” Ttomalss said. If he turned out to be wrong there, he would have to ask Felless to find him another historian.

But Monique Dutourd said, “Yes, that is also a truth.”

“Good.” Ttomalss knew he sounded relieved. He wondered if the Tosevite interpreter noticed. The very idea of different cultures had been alien to him before he came to Tosev 3. That of Home had been homogeneous since not long after the Race unified the planet. The Rabotevs and the Hallessi had quickly adopted their conquerors’ ways. He could find more differences crossing a river on this world than he could in crossing light-years of space between worlds in the Empire.

“What is it you wish to know about the Romans and these other cultures?” Monique Dutourd asked.

“I want to learn how the Romans succeeded in incorporating them into their empire and into their culture,” Ttomalss answered.

“Ah, I see,” the Tosevite historian said. “This is relevant to your present situation, is that not a truth?” Either she or her interpreter let out a couple of yips of barking Tosevite laughter. Through him, she went on, “There are those among us who say history is not relevant to anything. I am glad to find the Race disagrees.”

Plenty of males and females of the Race, Ttomalss knew, would not only have agreed but would have added emphatic coughs to their agreement. He did not mention that to the Big Uglies on the other end of the telephone line. Instead, he said, “Yes, I certainly think it is relevant. I am glad to find that you do, too. Whatever you can tell me will be of value to the Race.”

“In that case, perhaps you will understand that I wonder whether I ought to tell you anything at all,” Monique Dutourd said.

“If you do not, someone else will.” Ttomalss did his best to sound indifferent. “Or we will eventually gain the information from your books. Whatever else we may be doing, we are not discussing secret matters here.”

After a pause, the Tosevite female said, “Yes, that is so. Very well; you have reason. I will discuss these things with you.”

“I thank you.” Ttomalss did his best to treat her as he would have treated a savant of his own kind.

She said, “First of all, incorporation into the Roman Empire assumes Roman military victories. I do not think we need to talk about those.”

Ttomalss found himself making the affirmative gesture, which did no good on a phone link without vision. “I would agree with you,” he said. “Our military technology is very different from that of the Romans. And so is yours, nowadays.”
And the Race will be arguing about why that is so for generations to come,
he thought. Never had his species been presented with such a rude surprise.

“All right, then,” Monique Dutourd said. “Once a subregion was conquered, the Romans gave local autonomy to towns and areas that were not in rebellion against them. They did harshly stamp out rebellions where those arose.”

“That is a sensible policy,” Ttomalss said. “In large measure, we follow it here.” The trouble with following it was that Big Uglies who were put in positions of authority often used that authority for themselves and against the Race. Ttomalss wondered if the Romans had had similar problems.

“With very few exceptions,” Monique Dutourd went on, “the Romans allowed the males and females of the conquered subregions to practice whatever superstitions they chose to follow.”

“That is also a sensible policy,” Ttomalss said. “Why did they make exceptions?”

“On account of superstitions they thought dangerous to their empire,” the Tosevite historian replied. “I can think of two examples. One was the superstition of the Druids, which had its center here in what is now France. The Romans feared that these Druids, who were the leaders of the superstition, would also lead the local inhabitants into rebellion against them.”

“And the other?” Ttomalss asked when Monique Dutourd did not name it at once.

“The other, superior sir, was called Christianity,” she replied. “You may perhaps have heard of it.”

“Yes,” he said automatically, before realizing she was being ironic. Then he asked, “But why did they try to suppress it? And why did they fail? This is the largest Tosevite superstition at the present time.”

“They tried to suppress it because the Christians refused to acknowledge any other . . . spiritual forces,” Monique Dutourd said, “and because the Christians refused to give reverence to the spirits of the Roman Emperors.”

“Really?” Ttomalss said in surprise. “In that, they are much like the followers of the Muslim superstition today with respect to the spirits of Emperors past—Emperors of the Race, of course.”

“Yes. Both Christianity and Islam are offshoots of the Jewish superstition, which disapproves of giving reverence to anything but the one supreme supernatural authority,” Monique Dutourd said.

“Ah.” Ttomalss scribbled a note to himself. He hoped and assumed the Race already knew that, but he hadn’t known it himself. He asked, “Why are the Muslims so much more fanatically opposed to the Race at present than the Christians?”

“To get a proper answer to that, you would need to ask someone who knows more about Islam than I do,” the Tosevite historian answered.

Her reply won Ttomalss’ respect. He had seen a great many individuals—both members of the Race and Big Uglies—who, because they were experts in one area, were convinced they were also experts in other, usually unrelated, areas. When he said as much, Monique Dutourd started to laugh. “And what do you find funny?” he asked, his dignity affronted.

“I am sorry, superior sir,” she said, “but I find it strange that you are making an argument like the one a famous Tosevite savant named Socrates used when he was on trial for his life almost twenty-four hundred years ago.”

“Am I?” Ttomalss wondered who this Socrates was. “Did his argument succeed?”

“No,” Monique Dutourd answered. “He was put to death.”

“Oh. How . . . unfortunate.” Ttomalss found a different question: “Did you use your years or mine there?”

“Mine,” she said, so he mentally doubled the figure. She added, “At that time, the Romans were only a small and unimportant group. They later conquered the Greeks, one of whose subgroups, the Athenians, executed Socrates. The Greeks were culturally more advanced than the Romans, but could not unify politically. The Romans conquered them and learned much from them afterwards.”

“I see,” Ttomalss said. Ancientest history back on Home was full of stories like that, some true, others legendary, with scholars disagreeing over which was which. He asked, “What benefits did the Romans give to keep conquered subregions from rebelling?”

“Security from outside invasion,” Monique Dutourd answered. “Security from feuds with their neighbors also within Roman territory. Local self-government, as I said before. A large area unified culturally, and also unified economically.”

“I see,” Ttomalss repeated. “These are, of course, advantages you Tosevites would receive on becoming subjects of the Empire.”

“Ah, subjects,” the Tosevite historian said. “One thing the Romans did that made them unusual among our empires was to grant full citizenship to more and more groups that had formerly been subjects.”

“You could expect the same from us,” Ttomalss said. “Why, already there is one Tosevite with full citizenship in the Empire.”

“How interesting,” Monique Dutourd replied. “Why only one? Who is he?”

“She,” Ttomalss corrected. “That is a complicated story. It has to do with the unusual circumstances of her hatching.” He said not a word about the continuing dispute with Kassquit over whether he kept the right to monitor her activities if she was a full citizen of the Empire. That was also complicated, and none of Monique Dutourd’s business. Instead, Ttomalss asked, “If these Romans were such successful rulers of their empire, why did it fail?”

“Scholars have been arguing over that ever since it happened,” the Tosevite female answered. “There is no one answer. There were diseases that reduced the population. The economy suffered as a result of this. Rulers grew more harsh, and their bureaucracy grew more stifling. And there were foreign invasions, most importantly from the Deutsche, who lived to the north of the Roman Empire.”

“The Deutsche?” Ttomalss exclaimed in surprise. “The same Deutsche whom the Race knows only too well?”

“Their ancestors, rather,” Monique Dutourd said.

“Yes, of course,” Ttomalss said impatiently. “How interesting. That strikes me as an example of true historical continuity. I have not seen many on Tosev 3.”

“They are here,” Monique Dutourd said. “If you have not seen them, it is because you have not looked for them—or perhaps you have not known where to look.”

“Yes, I suppose that could be,” Ttomalss admitted. “Would you be willing to teach me more Tosevite history?”

“It could be,” the female Big Ugly said. “There would be the question of payment, of course.”

“Of course,” Ttomalss said. “I am sure we can come to some sort of equitable arrangement about that.”

“Payment might not necessarily involve money,” Monique Dutourd said, “or not money alone. I would want my kinsmale fully pardoned, now that I am cooperating with the Race.”

“Regardless of his unpleasant and unsavory dealings,” Ttomalss said.

“Yes. Regardless of them.” Ttomalss noted that the Tosevite female did not deny them. She wanted the ginger smuggler forgiven in spite of them. He sighed.
Kinship, not friendship,
he thought. That showed historical continuity among the Big Uglies, sure enough. He sighed. He could wish—he did wish—it didn’t.