Aftershocks (74 page)

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
Führer?
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?”