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“Thanks,” he said. “That’s good.” He put his thumb over the opening so the rain couldn’t get in, passed the flask back to Max.
Off to one side, somebody spoke up in Russian. Jager started, then dropped the chest that had become like an unwelcome part of him and grabbed for the rifle slung on his back. Then a German voice added, “Ja, we could use something good about now.”
“You found them,” Max said to Jager as the panje wagon came up through the muck. “That’s fucking amazing.” Instead of hatred, he looked at Jager with something like respect. Jager, who was at least as surprised as the Jewish partisan, did his best not to show it.
The horse that pulled the panje wagon had seen better days. The light wooden wagon itself rode on large wheels; it was low, wide, and flat-bottomed, so it could float almost boatlike across the surface of even the deepest mud. It looked as if its design hadn’t changed for centuries, which was probably true; no vehicle was better adapted to coping with Russia’s twice-yearly rasputitsa.
The driver and the fellow beside him both wore Red Army greatcoats, but instead of a shelm, a Russian cloth helmet rather like a balaclava, the man who wasn’t holding the reins had on the long-brimmed cap of a German tropical-weight uniform. The weather was anything but tropical, but the cap kept the rain out of his eyes.
He said, “You have the cabbages?”
“Yes, by God, we do,” Jager said. Max nodded. Together, they lifted the lead-lined chest into the wagon. Jager had grown so used to the burden that his shoulder ached when he was relieved of it. Max handed the flask of vodka to the driver, then clambered up over the side of the wagon. Jager followed him. Between them, they almost filled the wagon bed.
The fellow with the shelm spoke in Russian. Max turned it into Yiddish for Jager. “He says we won’t bother with roads. We’ll head straight across country. The Lizards aren’t likely to find us that way.”
“And if they do?” Jager asked.
“Nichevo,” the Russian answered when Max put the question to him: “It can’t be helped.” Since that was manifestly true, Jager just nodded. The driver twitched the reins, clucked to the horse. The panje wagon began to roll.
“It’s true,” Yi Min declared. “I floated through the air light as a dandelion seed in the little scaly devils’ airplane, and it flew so high that I looked down on the whole world.” The apothecary conveniently forgot to mention-in fact, he’d just about made himself forget altogether-how sick he’d been while he floated light as a dandelion seed.
“And what did the world look like when you looked down on it?” one of his listeners asked.
“The foreign devils are right, believe it or not-the world is round, like a ball,” Yi Min answered. “I have seen it with my own eyes, so I know it is so.”
“Ahh,” some of the men said who sat crosslegged in front of him, either impressed at his eyewitness account or astonished that Europeans could be right about anything. Others shook their heads, disbelieving every word he said. Foolish turtles, he thought. He’d had a lot of lies taken for granted in his time; now that he was telling nothing but the truth, half the people in the scaly devils’ prisoner compound made him out to be a liar.
In any case, his audience hadn’t gathered to hear him talk about the shape of the world. A man in a blue cotton tunic said, “Tell us more about the women the little scaly devils gave to you.” Everyone, believers and skeptics alike, spoke up in favor of that; even if Yi Min were to lie about it, he’d still be amusing.
The best part was, he didn’t need to lie. “I had a woman whose skin was black as charcoal all over, save only the palms of her hands and the soles of her feet. And I had another who was pale as milk, even her nipples only pink, with eyes of fine jade and hair and bush the color of a fox’s fur.”
“Ahh,” the men said again, imagining it One of them asked, “Did their strangeness make them better on the mat?”
“Neither of those two was particularly skilled,” Yi Min said, and his audience sighed with disappointment. He quickly added, “Still, their being so different to look at was piquant, like pickle after sweet. If you ask me, the gods first made the black folk, but left them in the oven too long. Then they tried again, but took the white folk-the foreign devils most of us had seen-out too soon. Finally they made us Chinese, and cooked us to perfection.”
The men who listened to him laughed; some of them clapped their hands. Then the fellow in the blue tunic said, “From what oven did the gods take the little scaly devils?”
Nervous silence fell. Yi Min said, “To know that for certain, you would have to ask the little devils themselves. If you want to know what I think, my guess is that a whole different set of gods made them. Why, do you know they have a mating season like, cattle or songbirds, and are impotent all the rest of the year?”
“Poor devils,” several men chorused, the first sympathy Yi Min had heard for the Lizards.
“It’s true,” he insisted. “That’s why they took me up into their airplane that never lands in the first place: to see for themselves that real human beings could mate at any season of the year.”
His smile was very nearly a leer. “I proved it to their satisfaction-and to mine.”
He smiled again, this time happily, at the grins and laughter his words won. Being back among people with whom he could speak, back among people who appreciated his undoubted cleverness, was the greatest joy in returning to the ground after so long aloft.
Then a bald old fellow who sold eggs said, “Didn’t the little devils also kidnap that pretty girl who was living in your tent? Why didn’t she come back with you?”
“They wanted to keep her up there,” Yi Min answered, shrugging. “Why, I don’t know; they would not tell me. What does it matter? She’s only a woman.”
He was just as glad Liu Han remained with the scaly devils. she’d been a pleasant convenience to him, certainly, but no more than that. And she’d seen him sick and vulnerable while he floated without weight, a weakness he was doing his best to pretend had never happened. Now, with the prestige of his journey and the connections he retained with the little scaly devils, women both prettier and more willing than Liu Han were happy to share his mat. He sometimes wondered what the little devils were doing to her, but his curiosity remained abstract.
Bowing as he sat, he said, “I do hope I’ve held your interest, my friends, and that you’ll reward me for helping you pass an idle hour.”
The gifts the audience gave were about what he’d expected: a little cash, a pair of old sandals that wouldn’t fit him but which he could trade for something he wanted, some radishes, a smoked duck breast wrapped in paper and tied with string, a couple of tiny pots filled with ground spices. He lifted their lids, sniffed, smiled appreciatively. Yes, he’d been paid well for entertaining.
He gathered up his loot and walked back toward the hut in which he was living. Nothing was left of the tent he’d shared with Liu Han. He could not honestly say he missed it, either; with winter nearly at hand, he was glad to have wooden walls around him. Of course, the people in the camp had also stolen everything he’d accumulated before the scaly devils took him up into the sky, but so what? He was already well on his way to getting more and better. Getting more and better of everything, as far as he could see, was what the world was all about.
From the changes in the camp while he’d been flying, he had to conclude just about everyone agreed with him. Instead of several square li of flapping canvas, it now boasted houses of wood and stone and sheet metal, some of them quite substantial. None of the construction materials had been here when the scaly devils’ prisoners were herded into the wire-enclosed compound, but they were here now. One way or another, people managed. Sharp wire wasn’t en
ough to keep them from managing.
As he came up to his own shelter, Yi Min readied the key that he carried on a bit of string around his neck. Key and lock both had cost only a couple of pig’s feet; the smith who made them out of scrap metal was too skinny to have bargained hard. Yi Min knew they weren’t very good, but what did that matter? The lock on his door publicly proclaimed him a man of property, which was what he had in mind. It wasn’t supposed to keep thieves away. His close connections with the little devils took care of that.
On about the fourth try, the key clicked, the lock opened, and Yi Min went inside. He started a fire in the little charcoal brazier by his sleeping mat. The feeble warmth the brazier gave made him long for his old home, where he slept on top of the low clay hearth and stayed snug even in the worst weather. He shrugged. The gods dealt the tiles in the game of life; a man’s job was to arrange them into the best hand he could.
Sudden silence clamped down on chattering friends, shouting husbands, screeching wives, even squalling children. Yi Min instinctively understood what that meant: little scaly devils close by. He was already turning toward the door when the knock came.
He raised the inner bar (regardless of connections, no sense taking chances), pulled the door open. He bowed low. “Ah, honored Ssofeg, you do me great favor by honoring my humble dwelling with your presence,” he said in Chinese, then went on in the devil’s speech: “What is your will, superior of mine? Speak, and it shall be done.”
“You are dutiful,” Ssofeg said in his own language. It was polite formula and praise at the same time; the scaly devils were even more punctilious than Chinese about respect for superiors and elders. Then Ssofeg switched to Chinese, which he used with Yi Min as the apothecary used the little devils’ language with him. “You have more of what I seek?”
