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“If we want this to work, we’re going to have to do something else, you know,” Anielewicz said. At Russie’s raised eyebrow, he elaborated. “We’re going to have to talk with General Bor-Komorowski. The Poles have to be in on this with us. Otherwise the Lizards will turn them loose on us and stand back and smile while we beat each other to death.”
“Yes,” Russie said, though he both distrusted and feared the commander of the Armja Krajowa. But he had other, more immediate concerns. “Even if I manage not to broadcast today, I’ll still have to go back to the studio next week. The week after that at the latest, if I take to my bed and swallow more ipecac in a few days.” His stomach lurched unhappily at the prospect.
“Don’t worry past this afternoon.” Anielewicz’s eyes were cold and calculating. “Yes, I can piece together enough uniforms, and I can find enough blond fighters or fellows with light brown hair.”
“Why do you need fighters with-?” Russie stopped and stared. “You’re going to attack the transmitter, and you want the Nazis to get the blame for it.”
“Right both times,” Anielewicz said. “You should have been a soldier. I just wish I had some men who weren’t circumcised. Humans would know the difference. The Lizards might not, but I hate to take the chance. Some Poles think the only thing the Germans did wrong was to leave some of us alive. They might rat on us if they get the chance.”
Russie sighed. “Unfortunately, you’re right. Send one of your fighters out for the ipecac and another for the purgative. I don’t want to be remembered for getting either one, in case the Lizards ask questions later.” He sighed. “I have the feeling I won’t want to remember the next few hours anyway.”
“I believe that, Reb Moishe.” Anielewicz eyed him with amusement and no small respect. “You know, I think I’d rather be wounded in combat. At least then it comes as a surprise. But to deliberately do something like this to yourself…” He shook his head. “Better you than me.”
“Better nobody.” Russie glanced at his watch (the former property of a German who no longer needed it). “But you’d better arrange for it quickly. The Lizards will be coming in less than three hours, and I ought to be good and sick by then.” He started going through the papers on his desk. “I want to move the ones that truly matter-”
“So you can puke all over the rest,” Anielewicz finished for him. “That’s good. If you pay attention to the small details in a plan, that helps the big pieces go well.” He touched one finger to the brim of his gray cloth cap. “I’ll take care of it.”
He was as good as his word. By the time the Lizard guards came to escort Russie to the studio, he wished Anielewicz had been less efficient. The Lizards hissed and drew back in dismay from his door. He could hardly blame them; the office would need an airing out before anyone wanted to work there again. A pair of good trousers weren’t going to be the same any more, either.
One of the Lizards ever so cautiously poked his head back into the office. He stared at Russie, who sprawled, limp as wet blotting paper, over his chair and befouled desk. “What-wrong?” the Lizard asked in halting German.
“Must be something I ate,” Russie groaned feebly. The small part of him that did not actively wish he were dead noted he was even telling the truth, perhaps the most effective way to lie ever invented. Most of him, though, felt as if he’d been stretched too far, tied in knots, and then kneaded by a giant’s fingers.
A couple of more Lizards looked in at him from the hallway. So did some people. If anything, they seemed more horrified than the Lizards, who did not have to fear catching whatever horrible disease he’d come down with and simply found him most unaesthetic.
One of the Lizards spoke into a small hand-held radio. An answer came back, crisp and crackling. Regretfully, the Lizard advanced into the office. He spoke into the radio again, then held it out to Russie. Zolraag’s voice came from the speaker: “You are ill, Reb Moishe?” the governor asked. By now his German was fairly good. “You are too ill to broadcast for us today?”
“I’m afraid I am,” Russie croaked, most sincerely. He added his first untruth of the afternoon: “I’m sorry.”
“I also am sorry, Reb Moishe,” Zolraag answered. “I wanted your comments on the bombing of Washington, D.C., about which we would have given you full information. I know you would say this shows the need for your kind to give up their foolish fight against our stronger weapons.”
Russie groaned again, partly from weakness, partly because he’d expected Zolraag to tell him something like that. He said, “Excellency, I cannot speak now. When I am well, I will decide what I can truthfully say about what your people have done.”
“I am sure we will agree on what you would say,” Zolraag told him. The governor was trying to be subtle, but hadn’t really found the knack. He went on, “But for now, you must get over your sickness. I hope your doctors can cure you of it.”
He sounded unconvinced of the skills of human physicians. Russie wondered again what wonders Lizard medical experts could work. He said, “Thank you, Excellency. I hope to be better in a few days. This sort of illness is not one which is usually fatal.”
“As you say.” Again, Zolraag seemed dubious. Russie supposed he had reason. When the Lizards broke into Warsaw, thousands of starving Jews in the ghetto had suffered from one form of intestinal disease or another, and a great many had died. The governor continued, “If you want, my males will take you from your office to your home.”
“Thank you, Excellency, but no,” Russie said. “I would like to preserve as much as possible the illusion of free agency.” He regretted the words as soon as they were out of his mouth. Better if the Lizards kept on thinking of him as a willing cat’s-paw. He hoped Zolraag wouldn’t understand what he’d said.
But the Lizard did. Worse, he approved. “Yes, this illusion is worth holding to, Reb Moishe,” he answered, confirming that, as far as he was concerned, Russie’s freedom of action was an illusion. Even in his battered, nauseated state, he felt anger stir.
The governor spoke in his own hissing language. The Lizard who held the radiotelephone answered, then skittered out of Russie’s office with every evidence of relief. He and the rest of the aliens left the Jewish headquarters; Russie listened to their claws clicking on linoleum.
A few minutes later, Mordechai Anielewicz came back in. He wrinkled his nose. “It stinks like a burst sewer pipe in here, Reb Moishe,” he said. “Let’s clean you up a little and get you home.”
Russie surrendered himself to the fighting leader’s blunt, practical ministrations. He let Anielewicz manhandle him down the stairs. Waiting on the street was a bicycle with a sidecar. Anielewicz poured him into it, then climbed onto the little saddle and started pedaling.
“Such personal concern,” Russie said. The wind blowing in his face did a little to revive him. “I’m honored.”
“If I’d brought a car for you, then you’d have some business being honored,” Anielewicz said, laughing. Russie managed a wan chuckle himself. These days, gaso
line was more precious than rubies in Warsaw: rubies, after all, remained rubies, but gasoline, once burned, was gone forever. Even diesel fuel for fire engines was in desperately short supply.
A few dry leaves whirled through the streets on the chilly fall breeze, but only a few; a lot of trees had been cut down for fuel. More would fall this winter, Russie thought, and buildings wrecked in two rounds of fighting would be cannibalized for wood. Warsaw would be an uglier city when the fighting ended-if it ever did.
Rain began falling from the lead-gray sky. Mordechai Anielewicz reached up, yanked down the brim of his cap so it did a better job of covering his eyes. He said, “It’s set. We’ll have a go at the transmitter tomorrow night. Stay sick till then.”
“What happens if you don’t take it out?” Russie asked.
Anielewicz’s laugh had a grim edge to it. “If we don’t take it out, Reb Moishe, two things happen. One is that some of my fighters will be dead. And the other is that you’ll have to go on taking your medicines, so that by this time next week you’ll likely end up envying them.”
Maybe the fighting leader meant it for a joke, but Russie didn’t find it funny. He felt as if the Gestapo had been kicking him in the belly. His mouth tasted like-on second thought, he didn’t want to try to figure out what his mouth tasted like.
Many of the Jews the Nazis forced into the Warsaw ghetto had left it since the Lizards came (many more, of course, were dead). Even so, the streets remained crowded. Adroit as a footballer dodging through defensemen toward the goal, Anielewicz steered his bicycle past pushcarts, rickshaws, hordes of other bicycles, and swarms of men and women afoot. No one seemed willing to yield a centimeter of space to anyone else, but somehow no one ran into anyone else, either.
