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And then it would do what it did with her mind, bringing exaltation and then crushing depression. And it would do what it did with her body, making her randier than any Big Ugly. And she still craved it. “What am I going to do?” she whispered in desperation and despair. “What can I do?”
A male sidled toward Nesseref as she walked through Lodz. The shuttlecraft pilot watched him with a wariness she’d had to acquire in a hurry. Sure enough, his posture was a little more upright than it might have been. Sure enough, the scales along the midline of his skull kept starting to twitch upright. Sure enough, all that meant the pheromones of an upwind female had addled whatever wits he owned.
“I greet you, superior female,” he said, his voice as ingratiating as he could make it. At least he recognized she was of higher rank; she’d met males too far gone in lust to know or to care.
“I greet you,” she answered resignedly. Maybe she was wrong. Maybe he wouldn’t do what she thought he would.
But he did. He reached into his belt pouch and pulled out a small glass vial. “How would you like a taste of this?” he asked.
“No!” she said, and used an emphatic cough. That wasn’t empathic enough to make him understand and pay attention to her. He poured some into the palm of his hand, then invitingly held that hand in front of her snout. All she had to do was flick out her tongue and taste the herb.
She pushed him away. He let out a startled squawk, and then a low cry of dismay as the ginger was lost forever. “Curse you, that is not friendly!” he exclaimed.
“It is not friendly to try to make me want to mate when I do not feel like mating, either,” Nesseref said angrily. The male advanced-now, if she was any judge, to hurt her because she’d made him lose some of his precious herb. Used to making quick decisions, she made one here: she lashed out and kicked him as hard as she could. “Go away!” she shouted.
Maybe he hadn’t expected her to fight back. Maybe he hadn’t expected her to start fighting before she did. Whatever he’d expected, she’d given him something else. He hissed in surprise and pain and did scuttle away.
“Well, well,” said someone-a Tosevite-behind her. “That was interesting. Did it mean what I thought it meant?”
Nesseref whirled. The Big Ugly’s voice was familiar, though she still had scant skill at telling Tosevites apart by appearance. “You are Anielewicz, the male I met in Glowno?” she asked. If she was right, splendid. If she was wrong, she would not be embarrassed.
But, as she had been with the male of her own kind, she was right. The Big Ugly’s head bobbed up and down in his kind’s gesture of agreement. “Yes, I am Anielewicz,” he said. “And you are Nesseref. And I have answered your question, and you have not answered mine.”
Was that irony in his voice? With a male of the Race, she would have been certain. Reading Tosevites was harder. Cautiously-but with less caution than she used with the male of her kind-Nesseref said, “How can I answer your question when I do not know what you thought it meant?”
“Did he give you ginger there, or try to, so you would mate with him?” Anielewicz asked.
“Yes, that is what he did.” Spelling it out infuriated Nesseref all over again. “I have tasted ginger, and I have mated while the herb excited me. That male had no business trying to make it excite me.”
“We think alike there,” Anielewicz said. “Sometimes a male Tosevite will give a female alcohol, to make her want to mate or to make her too drunk to stop him from mating with her. We also think this is wrong. Among us, in fact, it is reckoned a crime.”
“It should be,” Nesseref said. “Among us, it is not, though there is talk of making it one. Among us, no one would have or could have done such a thing without this cursed herb, so we did not even consider such possibilities.” She paused thoughtfully. “You Big Uglies have had to do more planning about problems pertaining to reproduction than we have.”
“It has been necessary for us,” Mordechai Anielewicz answered. “Now, with ginger, it may become necessary for you, too.”
“Us, imitating Tosevites?” Nesseref started to laugh, but stopped. “I suppose it could happen. You may have already found solutions for which we would need to spend a long time searching.”
“Truth,” the Big Ugly said. “And now, Shuttlecraft Pilot, may I ask you one question more?”
“You may ask,” Nesseref told him. “I do not promise to answer.”
“You would be a fool if you did promise,” Anielewicz replied. He had good sense for a Big Ugly. No, Nesseref thought. He has good sense. He would have good sense as a male of the Race. He asked his question: “Did you not crave the ginger when the male offered it to you?”
“Some,” Nesseref said. “But, as best I can, I do the things I ought to do, not the things I crave doing.”
To her surprise, Anielewicz burst into the barking laughter of his kind. “You had better be careful, or you will end up a Jew.”
“I do not understand the differences between one group of Tosevites and another,” Nesseref said. “I know there are differences, but I do not see why you put such weight on them.”
“That… is not simple,” the Big Ugly said. “Not all the differences are weighed rationally. I think you of the Race, taken as a whole, are more rational than we Tosevites. We think with our feelings as much as with our brains.”
“I have heard that this is so,” Nesseref replied. “I have seen that it is so, in my small experience of Big Uglies. I find it interesting that a Tosevite should also believe it is so.”
Anielewicz grimaced in such a way that the outer corners of his mouth turned up. Nesseref could not remember whether that meant he was happy or sad. Happy, evidently, for he said, “One friend should not lie to another.”
“Truth,” Nesseref said, and then decided to tease him: “Were you lying to me when you told me you were going to check on that explosive-metal bomb in Glowno? I thought you were, but was I wrong?”
The Big Ugly stood very still. He had a rifle slung on his back, a weapon of Tosevite manufacture. Nesseref had paid it no mind till that moment. She wouldn’t have then, save that he started to reach for it before arresting the motion. “I made a mistake when I ever mentioned that,” he said slowly. “And you, of course, went and told others of the Race.”
She had told Bunim, who hadn’t believed her. She started to say as much, but checked herself. If Anielewicz had been telling the truth then and did not want her or anyone of the Race to know it was truth, she would be in danger
if she gave the impression she was the only one who did believe it-with her disposed of, no one would credit it. So all she said was, “Yes, I did that.”
“And now the Race knows where the weapon is,” Anielewicz said with a sigh. He began to reach for the rifle again. Nesseref braced herself to leap for him as she’d attacked the male of her own kind. But he checked himself once more. After shaking his head, he continued, “No blame attaches to you. You could not have known how much this would inconvenience me and my fellow Jews.”
“I do not understand why it does inconvenience you,” Nesseref said. “The Race rules here. No group of Tosevites does. No group of Tosevites can. What need has a small faction like yours for an explosive-metal bomb?”
“You are new to Tosev 3, sure enough,” Mordechai Anielewicz answered patiently. “I must remember: this means you are new to the way groups deal with one another, for the Race has no groups, not as we Tosevites do.”
“And a good thing, too,” Nesseref said, with an emphatic cough. “We do not spend our time squabbling among ourselves. In our unity is our strength.”
Anielewicz’s mouth went up at the corners. “That holds some truth, but only some. With us Tosevites, disunity is our strength. Had we not had so many groups competing against one another, we could never have come far enough fast enough to have resisted when the Race landed on our planet.”
Nesseref wished the Big Uglies had not come far enough fast enough to be able to resist the Race. At the moment, though, that was a side issue. She returned to the main point: “I still do not understand why a small group of Tosevites would need such a thing as an explosive-metal bomb.”
“Because even a large group will think twice about harming a small group that can, if pressed, do a great deal of harm in return,” Mordechai Anielewicz replied. “Even the Race will think twice about harming a small group of Tosevites that can do it a great deal of harm in return. Do you understand now, my friend?”
