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“What language are you speaking? Where did you learn it?” Moishe asked his son in Yiddish.
“What do you mean, what language?” Reuven answered, also in Yiddish. “He uses the same words the Stephanopoulos twins did, so I used some of those words, too. I liked playing with them, even if they weregoyim.”
To Rivka, Moishe said, “He learned Greek.” He sounded almost accusing. Then he started to laugh. “I wonder if the Stephanopoulos boys speak Yiddish and surprise their mother.”
“They were using some of my words, too, Papa,” Reuven said. “It’s all right, isn’t it?” He seemed anxious, perhaps afraid he’d revealed too much to his friends. In the ghetto, you quickly learned giving yourself away was dangerous.
“It’s all right,” Moishe assured him. “It’s better than all right, in fact I’m proud of you for learning.” He scratched his head. “I just hope you won’t be the only one who can talk with these sailors.”
When they got up onto theNaxos’ deck, the captain tried several languages with Moishe before discovering they had German in common. “Panagiotis Mavrogordato, that’s me,” he said, thumping his chest with a theatrical gesture. “They’re your enemies, they’re my enemies, and we have to use their tongue to talk with each other.” He spat on the deck to show what he thought of that.
“Now the Lizards are everyone’s enemies,” Moishe said. The Greek rubbed his chin, dipped his head in agreement, and spat again.
TheSeanymph slid beneath the surface of the Mediterranean. That made theNaxos rock slightly in the water. Otherwise, there was no trace the submarine had ever been there. Moishe felt alone and very helpless. He’d trusted the British sailors. Who could say anything about the crew of a rusty Greek freighter? If they wanted to throw him over the side, they could. If they wanted to hand him to the first Lizards they saw, they could do that, too.
As casually as he could, he asked, “Where do we go from here?”
Mavrogordato started ticking off destinations on his fingers: “Rome, Athens, Tarsus, Haifa. At Haifa, you get off.”
“But…?” Was Mavrogordato trying to bluff him? “Rome is in the Lizards’ hands. Most of Italy is.”
“That’s why we go there.” Mavrogordato mimed licking something from the palm of his hand. “The Lizards there will be mightygamemeno glad to see us, too.”
Moishe didn’t know whatgamemeno meant. Reuven let out a shocked gasp and then a giggle, which told him what sort of word it was likely to be-not that he hadn’t figured that out for himself. Even without the word, he understood what the Greek was talking about. So he was running ginger, was he? In that case, the alienswould be glad to see him-and he was less likely to turn over a family of Jews to Lizard officialdom.
Mavrogordato went on, “They give us all kinds of interesting things in exchange for the”-he made that tasting gesture again-“we bring them, yes they do. We would have had a profitable trip already. And when the British paid us to carry you, too-” He bunched his fingertips together and kissed them. Russie had never seen anybody do that before, but he didn’t need a dictionary for it, either.
The captain of theNaxos led them to their cabin. It had one narrow bed for him and Rivka, with a pallet on the floor for Reuven. It was cramped and untidy. Next to the accommodations aboard theSeanymph they’d just left, it seemed like a country estate.
“Don’t turn on the light at night unless you shut the door and pull the blackout curtain over the porthole first,” Mavrogordato said. “If you make a mistake about that, we will be very unhappy with you, no matter how much the British paid us for you. Do you understand?” Without waiting for an answer, he squatted and spoke in slow, careful Greek to Reuven.
“Nee, nee,”Reuven said-that’s what it sounded like to Moishe, anyhow. His son was obviously impatient at being talked down to, and added,“Malakas,” under his breath.
Mavrogordato’s eyes went wide. He started to laugh. Getting to his feet in a hurry, he said, “This is a fine boy you have here. He will make a fine man if you can keep from strangling him first. We’ll have rolls and bad tea for breakfast in a couple of hours, when the sun rises. Come join us then.” With a last dip of his head, he went out of the cabin.
Rivka shut the door and used the blackout curtain. Then she clicked on the light switch. A ceiling bulb in a cage of iron bars lit up the metal cubicle. The cage was much like the ones aboard theSeanymph. The bulb, though, made Moishe squint and his eyes water. It wasn’t-it couldn’t have been-as bright as Gibraltar sunshine, but it seemed that way.
Moishe looked around the cabin. It didn’t take long. But for rivets and peeling paint and a couple of streaks of rust, there wasn’t much to see. In his mind’s eye, though, he looked farther ahead. “Halfway there,” he said.
“Halfway there,” Rivka echoed.
“Mama, Papa, I have to make apish,” Reuven said.
Moishe took his hand. “Come on,” he said. “We’ll find out where you do that here.”
Ussmak was dressed in more clothes than he’d ever worn in his life. Back on Home, he hadn’t worn anything beyond body paint and belts hung with pouches. That was the way you were supposed to go through life. But if he went out that door as if he were on Home, he’d freeze to death before he ever got to his landcruiser.
He turned an eye turret down toward the large, heavy gloves on his hands. “How are we supposed to do any sort of work on the machine in clumsy things like these?” he complained, not for the first time. “My grip has about as much precision as if I were using my tailstump.”
“We have to maintain the landcruiser, no matter how hard it is,” Nejas answered. The landcruiser commander was bundled up as thoroughly as Ussmak. “It has to be perfect in every way-no speck of dirt, no slightest roughness in the engine. If the least little thing goes wrong, the Big Uglies will swoop down and kill us before we even know they’re around.” He paused, then added, “I want a taste of ginger.”
“So do I, superior sir,” Ussmak said. He knew he’d probably saved Nejas’ life by giving him ginger when he was wounded in the invasion of Britain. But ginger fit Nejas’ personality only too well. He’d been a perfectionist before; now the least little flaw sent him into a rage. The herb also exaggerated his tendency to worry about everything and anything, especially after he’d been without it for a while.
A lot of males in this Emperor-forsaken frozen Soviet wasteland were like that. But for going on patrol and servicing their land-cruisers, they had nothing to do but sit around in the barracks and watch video reports on how the conquest of Tosev 3 was going. Even when couched in broadcasters’ cheerily optimistic phrases, those reports were plenty of incitement for any male in his right mind to worry about anything and everything.
“Superior sir, will this planet be worth having, once the war of conquest is over?” Ussmak asked. “The way things are going now, there won’t be much left to conquer.”
“Ours is not to question those who set strategy. Ours is to obey and carry out the strategy they set,” Nejas answered; like any proper male of the Race, he was as good a subordinate as a commander.
Maybe it was all the ginger Ussmak had tasted, maybe all the crewmales he’d seen killed, maybe just his sense that the Race’s broadcasters hadn’t the slightest clue about what the war they were describing was really like. Whatever it was, he didn’t feel like a proper male any more. He said, “Meaning no disrespect to the fleetlord and those who advise him, superior sir, but too much of what they’ve tried just hasn’t worked. Look what happened to us in Britain. Look at the poisonous gas and the atomic bombs the Big Uglies are using against us.”
Skoob was also climbing into the gear a male needed to survive in Siberia, the gear that turned quick death into prolonged discomfort. The gunner spoke in reproving tones: “The leaders know better than we what needs doing to finish the conquest of Tosev 3. Isn’t that right, superior sir?” He turned confidently to Nejas.
Skoob had come through the British campaign unwounde
d; he’d also managed to keep from sticking his tongue in the powdered ginger, though he turned his eye turrets the other way when his crewmales tasted. But for that toleration, though, he still seemed as innocent of the wiles of the Tosevites as all the males of the Race had been when the ships of the conquest fleet first came to Tosev 3. In a way, Ussmak envied him that. He himself had changed, and change for the Race was always unsettling, disorienting.
Nejas had changed, too-not as much as Ussmak, but he’d changed. With a hissing sigh, he said, “Gunner, sometimes I wonder what is in the fleetlord’s mind. I obey-but I wonder.”
Skoob looked at him as if he’d betrayed their base to the Russkis. He sought solace in work: “Well, superior sir, let’s make sure the landcruiser is in proper running order. If it lets us down, we won’t be able to obey our superiors ever again.”
