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Groves wondered why the aliens didn’t pay more attention to the ocean and to the land that lay alongside it. They hit land and air transportation all over the world, but ships still had a decent chance of getting through. Maybe that said something about the planet they came from. Groves shook his head. He had more immediate things to worry about.
Not least of them was the battle breaking out right around halfway between here and Denver. If that went wrong, not only would Chicago surely fall, but the United States would be hard pressed to put up more than guerrilla resistance to, the Lizards anywhere outside the East Coast. For that matter, getting to Denver might not matter if the battle went wrong, though Groves knew he’d keep going until he was either dead or ordered to turn aside.
He must have looked grim, for Commander Stansfield said, “Colonel, I’ve heard it said that your Navy bans alcohol aboard its vessels. Fortunately, the Royal Navy observes no such tiresome custom. Would you care for a tot of rum to fortify you for the journey ahead?”
“Commander, I’d be delighted, by God,” Groves said. “Thank you.”
“My pleasure-I thought it might do you some good. Wait here, if you please; I’ll be back directly.”
Stansfield hurried down the steel tube of the hull toward the rear of the submarine-aft, Groves supposed it was called in proper naval jargon. He watched the British officer lean into a little chamber off to the side of the main tube. His cabin, Groves realized. Stansfield didn’t need to lean very far; the cabin had to be tiny. Bunks were stacked three deep, with bare inches between them. All things considered, the Seanymph was a claustrophobe’s nightmare brought to clattering life.
The squat brown glass jug in Commander Stansfield’s hand gurgled encouragingly. “Jamaican, than which there is none finer,” he said, puffing the cork. Groves could almost taste the thick, heavy aroma that rose from it. Stansfield poured two healthy tots, handed one glass to Groves.
“Thanks.” Groves took it with appropriate reverence. He raised it high-and almost barked his knuckles on a pipe that ran along the low ceiling. “His Majesty, the King!” he said gravely.
“His Majesty the King,” Stansfield echoed. “Didn’t think you Yanks knew to make that one.”
“I read it somewhere.” Groves knocked back the rum at a gulp. It was so smooth, his throat hardly knew he swallowed it, but it exploded in his stomach like a mortar round, throwing warmth in all directions. He looked at the empty glass with genuine respect. “That, Commander, is the straight goods.”
“So it is.” Stansfield sipped more sedately. He proffered the bottle once more. “Another?”
Groves shook his head. “One of those is medicinal. Two and I’d want to go to sleep. I appreciate the offer, though.”
“You have a clear notion of what’s best for you. I admire that.” Stansfield turned so he faced west. The motion was quite deliberate; Groves imagined-as he was supposed to imagine-the Royal Navy man peering out through the sub’s hull and across two thousand miles of dangerous country to the promised land of Denver, high in the Rockies. After a moment, Stansfield added, “I must say I don’t envy you, Colonel.”
Groves shrugged. With the heavy canvas knapsack on his shoulders, he felt like Atlas, trying to support the whole world. “The job has to be done, and I’m going to do it.”
Rivka Russie scratched a match against the sole of her shoe. It flared into life. She used it to light, first one shabbas candle, then the other. Bowing her head over them, she murmured the Sabbath blessing.
The puff of sulfurous smoke from the matchhead filled the little underground room and made Moishe Russie cough. The fat white candles were a sign he and his family had survived another week without the Lizards’ finding them. They also helped light the bunker where the Russies sheltered.
Rivka lifted the ceremonial cloth cover from a braided loaf of challah. “I want some of that bread, Mama!” Reuven exclaimed.
“Let me slice it first, if you please,” Rivka told her son. “Look: we even have some honey to spread on it.”
All the comforts of home. The irony of the phrase echoed in Moishe’s mind. Instead of their flat, they sheltered in this secret chamber buried under another Warsaw apartment block. In further irony, the bunker had been built to shelter Jews not from the Lizards but from the Nazis, yet here he used it to save himself from the creatures who had saved him from the Germans.
And yet the words were not entirely ironic. The vast majority of Warsaw’s Jews lived far better under the Lizards than they had when Hitler’s henchmen ruled the city. The wheat-flour challah, rich with eggs and dusted with poppy seeds, would have been unimaginable in the starving Warsaw ghetto-Russie remembered too well the chunk of fatty, sour pork for which he’d given a silver candlestick the night the Lizards came to Earth.
“When will I get to go out and play again?” Reuven asked. He looked from Rivka to Moishe and back again, hoping one of them would give him the answer he wanted.
They looked at each other, too. Moishe felt himself sag. “I don’t know exactly,” he told his son; he could not bring himself to lie to the boy. “I hope it will be soon, but more likely the day won’t come for quite some time.”
“Too bad,” Reuven said.
“Don’t you think we could-?” Rivka broke off, tried again: “I mean, who would betray a little boy to the Lizards?”
Moishe usually let his wife run their household, not least because she was better at it than he was. But now he said, “No,” so sharply that Rivka stared at him in surprise. He went on, “We dare not let him go up above ground. Remember how many Jews were willing to betray their brethren to the Nazis for a crust of bread regardless of what the Nazis were doing to us? People have cause to like the Lizards, at least compared to the Germans. He wouldn’t be safe where anybody could see him.”
“All right,” Rivka said. “If you think he’d be in danger up there, here he’ll stay.” Reuven let out a disappointed howl, but she ignored him.
“Anyone who has anything to do with me is in danger,” Moishe answered bitterly. “Why do you think we never get to talk to the fighters who bring our supplies?” The door to the bunker was concealed by a sliding plasterboard panel
; with the panel closed, the entranceway looked like a blank wall from the other side.
Russie wondered if the anonymous men who kept his family in food and candles even knew whom they were helping. He could easily imagine Mordechai Anielewicz ordering them to take their-boxes down and leave them in the basement without telling them whom the things were for. Why not? What the men didn’t know, they couldn’t tell the Lizards.
He made a sour face: he was learning to think like a soldier. All he’d wanted to do was heal people and then, after the Lizards came like a sign from heaven, set people free. And the result? Here he was in hiding and thinking like a killer, not a healer.
Not too long after supper, Reuven yawned and went to bed without his usual fuss. In the dark, closed bunker, night and day no longer had much meaning for the little boy. Had the fighters not furnished the place with a clock, Moishe would have had no idea of the hour, either. One day he’d forget to wind it and slip into timelessness himself.
The shabbas candles were still burning. By their light, Moishe helped Rivka wash the supper dishes (though without electricity, the bunker had running water). She. smiled at him. “The time you lived by yourself taught you some things. You’re much better at that than you used to be.”
“What you have to do, you learn to do,” he answered philosophically. “Hand me that towel, would you?”
He’d just slid the last dish into its stack when he heard noise in the cellar next to the hidden bunker: men moving about in heavy shoes. He and Rivka froze. Her face was frightened; he was sure his was, too. Had their secret been betrayed? The Lizards wouldn’t shout “Juden heraus!” but he didn’t want to be caught by them any more than by the Nazis.
He wished he had a weapon. He wasn’t altogether a soldier yet, or he’d have had the sense to ask for one before he sealed himself away here. Too late to worry about it now.
The footsteps came closer. Russie strained his ears, trying to pick out the skitters and clicks that would have meant Lizards were walking with the humans. He thought he did. Fear rose up in him like a smothering cloud.
