Down to Earth (8 page)

He cared only about the politics involved, not about Anielewicz as an individual. Nesseref supposed she understood that. Bunim would have to go on dealing with whoever Anielewicz’s successor proved to be had the Jew been killed. Still, the attitude saddened her. She returned to her own immediate business: “I do thank you for expediting inspections of the liquid-hydrogen storage system at the shuttlecraft port. An accident would be unfortunate.”

“Truth.” Bunim looked at her sidelong. “You have a gift for understatement, Shuttlecraft Pilot.”

“I thank you,” Nesseref answered. “I would be less concerned had the Race done all the construction. But, even with the Tosevites working to our specifications, I want every possible assurance that they did the job properly.”

“I understand. I shall see to it.” Bunim turned one eye turret toward a chronometer. “And now, if you will excuse me, I also have other things to see to. . . .”

“Of course, superior sir.” Nesseref left Bunim’s office, and also left the building housing it. Having been in the hands of the Race since shortly after the arrival of the conquest fleet, it suited her kind about as well as a building originally put up by Big Uglies could. When she went outside, into the cold of the Bialut Market Square, she found herself back in a different world.

Even Tosevites had to wear layer upon layer of wrappings to protect themselves from their own planet’s weather. That didn’t deter them from gathering in large numbers to buy and sell. Foods of all sorts were on display (no, almost all sorts, for this was a market full of Jews, and so held no pork, which was to Nesseref’s way of thinking most regrettable). So were more of the Big Uglies’ wrappings. So were pots and pans and plates and the curious implements the Tosevites used to feed themselves.

And so were a good many items obviously manufactured by the Race. Nesseref wondered how they’d got there. She wouldn’t have been the least bit surprised to learn it was through no legitimate means. The window in Bunim’s office overlooked the market square. She wondered if the regional subadministrator or his subordinates paid any attention to the commerce the Big Uglies were conducting right under their snouts. Then she wondered if the Tosevites quietly paid some of those subordinates—with ginger, say—to turn their eye turrets in a different direction. She wouldn’t have been surprised about that, either.

Big Uglies were more voluble than males and females of the Race. They shouted and whined and gesticulated and generally acted as if the world would come to an end if bargains didn’t come out exactly the way they wanted them. Their frantic eagerness would have impressed and probably influenced Nesseref. The Tosevites against whom they were dickering, though, were used to such ploys, and took no notice of them—or else they too were shouting and whining and gesticulating.

Someone—a Big Ugly, by the timbre and mushy accent—called her name. She swung an eye turret in the direction from which the sound had struck her hearing diaphragm, and saw a Tosevite approaching, waving as he—she? no, he, by the wrappings and the voice—drew near. A little more slowly than she should have, she recognized him. “I greet you, Mordechai Anielewicz,” she said, annoyed he’d seen and known her first.

“I greet you, Shuttlecraft Pilot,” the Big Ugly said, extending his right hand in the greeting gesture common among his kind. Nesseref took it. His fingers, though large, felt soft and fleshy against hers. They also felt cool; her body temperature was a couple of hundredths higher than his. Speaking the language of the Race pretty well for one of his kind, he went on, “I hope you are well?”

“Well enough, I thank you, though I do not much care for the cold and damp. I am glad spring is coming,” Nesseref replied. She wagged the eye turret with which she was looking at him, as she might have done to commiserate with one of her own kind. “I have heard from the regional subadministrator that you are having a difficult time of it.”

“Why, no, the pains are no worse than—” Anielewicz caught himself. “Oh. You must mean the male with the gun. He missed me. He has not returned since. I do not worry about him . . . too much.” His hand dropped to the butt of the pistol he wore on his hip.

“Who would wish to kill you?” Nesseref asked.

The Big Ugly’s mouth twisted in the gesture Nesseref had come to associate with amusement, though she didn’t understand why the circumstances should amuse him. “Who?” he said. “The Deutsche, the Poles, the Russkis, perhaps, and perhaps also the regional subadministrator.”

“Bunim?” Nesseref made the negative hand gesture. “Impossible! The Race does not do such things. Besides, he would have mentioned it to me. He spoke of its happening through some agency other than his own.”

“He would not admit to it,” Anielewicz said. “Even if he arranged to have it done, he would not admit it, not to anyone who did not have to know of it.”

“Why not?” Again, Nesseref was puzzled.

Again, the Tosevite smiled. Again, the shuttlecraft pilot could not see any reason to show amusement. As if speaking to a hatchling barely old enough to understand words, Mordechai Anielewicz replied, “Because if he arranged to have it done, and if I found out he had arranged it, I would probably try to kill him in retaliation, and he knows it.”

He spoke, as far as Nesseref could judge, quite calmly. She reckoned him her friend, as far as she could across the lines of species. But he’d just shown her how alien he was. Her shiver had nothing to do with the chilly weather.

Mordechai Anielewicz could tell he’d horrified Nesseref. He didn’t really think Bunim had tried to assassinate him. Had Bunim done so, he wasn’t sure he would try to take revenge by killing the regional subadministrator. Murdering a prominent Lizard was the best way he could think of to land the Jews of Poland in serious trouble. Of course, if what he said got back to Bunim, it might keep the regional subadministrator from coming up with any bright ideas. He hoped it would.

“And how is your explosive-metal bomb?” Nesseref asked him casually.

Not for the first time, he wished he’d never mentioned the bomb to her. And now, instead of displaying his amusement, he had to hide it. The shuttlecraft pilot was trying to get information out of him the same way he was trying to give it to her. He answered, “It is very well, thank you. And how is yours?”

“I have none, as you know perfectly well,” Nesseref said. “All I have to worry about is a great deal of liquid hydrogen.”

Back before the invasions of first the Nazis and then the Lizards forced him into war and politics, Anielewicz had studied engineering. He whistled respectfully; he knew a little something about the kinds of problems he might be facing. And, of course, when he thought of hydrogen, he thought of the
Hindenburg
; the newsreel footage was still vivid in his mind after more than a quarter of a century. The Lizards were a lot more careful than the Germans ever dreamt of being—the Lizards were, in a word, inhumanly careful—but still . . . .

“How do you make that noise?” Nesseref asked. “I have heard other Tosevites do it, but I cannot see how.”

“What, whistling?” Mordechai asked. The key word came out in Yiddish; if it existed in the Lizards’ language, he didn’t know it. He whistled a few bars. Nesseref made the affirmative hand gesture. He said, “You shape your lips this way. . . .” He started to pucker, then stopped. “Oh.”

Once examined, the problem was simple. Nesseref couldn’t pucker. Her face didn’t work that way. She didn’t even really have lips, only hard edges to her mouth. She could no more whistle than Anielewicz could perfectly produce all the hisses and pops and sneezing noises that went into her language. She realized that at about the same time he did, and let her mouth fall open in a laugh. “I see now,” she said. “It is impossible for one of my kind.”

“I fear that is truth,” Anielewicz agreed. “I also fear I must shop now, or my wife”—another Yiddish word, another concept missing from the language of the Race—“will be very unhappy with me.” He used an emphatic cough to show just how unhappy Bertha would be.

“Farewell, then,” Nesseref told him. “I return to my new town. Perhaps you will visit me there one day.”

“I thank you. I would like that.” Mordechai meant it. Regardless of what they thought of the weather, lots of Lizards were colonizing Poland. He was very curious about how they lived.

But, as Nesseref went about her business, Anielewicz realized he had to go about his. Bertha would indeed be unhappy if he came home without the things she’d sent him to buy. Cabbage was easy. Several vendors were selling it; he had only to choose the one with the best price. Potatoes didn’t prove any great problem, either. And he got a deal on onions that would make his wife smile.

Eggs, now . . . He’d expected eggs to be the hard part of the shopping, and they were. You could always count on plenty of people having vegetables for sale. Ever since the Nazis had been driven out of Poland, there had been enough vegetables to go around. And vegetables, or a lot of them, stayed good for weeks or months at a time.

None of that held true for eggs. You never could tell how many would be on sale when you went to the market square, or what sort of prices the vendors would demand. Today, only a couple of peasant grandmothers, scarves around their heads against the winter cold, displayed baskets of eggs.

Radiating charm, Anielewicz went up to one of them. “Hello, there,” he said cheerfully. He spoke Polish as readily as Yiddish, as did most Jews hereabouts. Unlike a lot of them, he also looked more Polish than Jewish, having a broad face, fair skin, and light brown, almost blond, hair. Sometimes his looks helped him when he was dealing with Poles.

Not today. The old lady with the eggs looked him up and down as if he’d just crawled out of the gutter. “Hello, Jew,” she said flatly.

Well, few
goyim
came to buy at the Bialut Market Square. During the Nazi occupation, it had been the chief market of the Lodz ghetto. The ghetto was gone, but this remained the Jewish part of town. Mordechai gathered himself. If she was going to play tough, he could do the same. Pointing to the eggs, he said, “How much for half a dozen of those sad little things?”

“Two zlotys apiece,” the Polish woman said, sounding as calm and self-assured as if that weren’t highway robbery.

“What?” Anielewicz yelped. “That’s not selling. That’s stealing, is what it is.”

“You don’t want them, you don’t have to pay,” the woman answered. “Ewa over there, she’s charging two and a half, but she says hers are bigger eggs. You go on over and see if you can find any difference.”

“It’s still stealing,” Mordechai said, and it was—even two zlotys was close to twice the going rate.

“Feed’s gone up,” the Polish woman said with a shrug. “If you think I’m going to sell at a loss, you’re
meshuggeh.”
Where he stuck to Polish, she threw in a Yiddish word with malice aforethought. A moment later, she slyly added, “And I know you Jews aren’t crazy that way.”

“What are you feeding your miserable chickens, anyhow? Caviar and champagne?” Anielewicz shot back. “Bread’s up a couple of groschen, but not that much.
I
think you’re out for some quick profit.”

Her eyes might have been cut from gray ice. “I think if you don’t want my eggs, you can go away and let someone who does want them have a look.”

Dammit, he did want the eggs. He just didn’t want to pay so much for them. Bertha would pitch a fit; then she’d make disparaging noises about the uselessness of sending a mere man to the market square. Mordechai was, or thought he was, a competent shopper in his own right. “I’ll give you nine zlotys for half a dozen,” he said.

For a bad moment, he thought the egg seller wouldn’t even deign to haggle with him. But she did. He ended up buying the eggs for ten zlotys forty groschen, and won the privilege of picking them himself. It wasn’t a victory—he couldn’t pretend it was, no matter how hard he tried—but it was something less than a crushing defeat.

Weighed down by groceries, he started south on Zgierska Street, then turned right onto Lutomierska; his flat wasn’t far from the fire station on that street. The backs of his legs pained him as he walked. His arms felt as if he were carrying sacks of lead, not vegetables and eggs.

Scowling, he kept on. He’d never been quite right after inhaling German nerve gas half a lifetime before. At that, he’d got off lucky. Ludmila Jäger—Ludmila Gorbunova, she’d been then—was far more crippled than he, while the gas had helped bring Heinrich Jäger to an early grave. Anielewicz found that dreadfully unfair; were it not for the German panzer colonel, an explosive-metal bomb would have blown Lodz off the face of the earth, and probably would have blown up the then-fragile truce between humans and Lizards.

Anielewicz’s younger son was named Heinrich. There was a stretch of several years when he would either have laughed or reached for a rifle had anyone suggested he might name a child after a
Wehrmacht
officer.

Panting, he fought his way up the stairs to his flat. He paused in the hail to catch his breath, gathering himself so Bertha wouldn’t worry, before he went inside. He also paused to examine the new door, after the would-be assassin put a submachine-gun magazine through the old one, it had become too thoroughly ventilated to be worth much. The flat also had new windows.

When he did go inside, the look on his wife’s face said he hadn’t paused long enough. “It must be bothering you today,” Bertha Anielewicz said.

“Not too bad,” Mordechai insisted. If she believed it, maybe he would, too. “And I did pretty well at the market.” That won a smile from his wife. She wasn’t pretty in any conventional sense of the word, but she turned beautiful when a smile lit up her face. Then, of course, she wanted details.

When he gave them to her, the smile disappeared. He’d known it would. “That’s robbery!” she exclaimed.

“I know,” he said. “It would have been worse robbery if I hadn’t haggled hard. We did need the eggs.”

“We needed the money, too,” Bertha said mournfully. Then she shrugged. “Well, it’s done, and the eggs do look good.” Her smile returned. He smiled back, knowing full well she was letting him down easy.