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His wife sent him another reproachful look. He pretended not to see it. They’d been married long enough that he could get away with such things every now and then. The look his wife sent him for ignoring the first one warned him he couldn’t get away with such things any too often.
His daughter Miriam was old enough to make the more regular acquaintance of slivovitz, but she’d had the good sense not to get greedy with what he’d given her. Now she raised her glass, which still held a good deal of the plum brandy. “And here’s to Przemysl, for taking us in.”
Everybody drank to that-everybody except Heinrich, who had nothing left to drink. The town in southern Poland, not far from the Slovakian border, hadn’t been hit too hard in the fighting. And it kept its good-sized Jewish community. Back in 1942, the SS had been on the point of shipping the Jews to an extermination camp, but local Wehrmacht officials hadn’t let it happen-the Jews were doing important labor for them. And then the Lizards had driven the Nazis out of Poland, and Przemysl’s Jews survived.
Thinking of Wehrmacht men who’d been, if not decent, then at least pragmatic, made Mordechai also think of Johannes Drucker. He said, “I wonder if the German space pilot ever found his kin.”
“I hope so,” his wife said. “After all, his wife and children are part Jewish, too.”
“No matter how little they like it.” That was David, Mordechai’s older son.
“He wasn’t the worst of fellows,” Anielewicz said. “I’ve known plenty of Germans worse, believe me.” He used an emphatic cough.
“His own family helped remind him what being a human being meant.” David was, at fifteen, convinced everything came in one of two colors: black or white. What he said here, though, probably held a lot of truth.
Bertha Anielewicz said, “He’ll go his way, we’ll go ours, and with any luck at all we’ll never have anything to do with each other again. Odds are good, anyhow.” That also probably held a lot of truth.
Before Mordechai could say so, Pancer walked up to him and said, “Beep!” The beffel stretched up toward him, extending its forelegs as far as they would go. That, he’d learned, meant it want to be scratched. He obliged. The beffel might have been hatched on Home, but it got on better with humans than the Lizards did.
“We should have drunk a toast to Pancer,” Heinrich said. “If it weren’t for him, we wouldn’t all be here now.”
Mordechai lifted the bottle of slivovitz. “Here, son. Do you want another drink? You can have one.” Heinrich hastily shook his head. Anielewicz’s grin covered his relief. He would have given the boy one more shot of brandy, but he was just as well pleased that Heinrich didn’t want it.
“I’ll tell you what I’d drink a toast to,” Miriam said with a toss of the head, “and that’s a bigger flat.”
“This isn’t so bad,” Mordechai said. “Next to what things were like in Warsaw before the Lizards came, this is paradise.”
“And in Lodz,” his wife agreed. Their children didn’t know how things had been back in the Nazi-created ghettos. That also was all to the good.
Miriam didn’t see the benefits of ignorance. “I’m tired of sleeping on a cot here in the front room,” she said, and tossed her head again.
“We’re all sleeping on cots,” Mordechai pointed out. “Your brothers are in one bedroom, your mother and I in the other, and you have this room here. The only other places for you to sleep are under the shower or on the kitchen table.”
“I know that,” Miriam said impatiently. “It’s why we need a bigger flat.”
“It doesn’t matter so much,” Bertha Anielewicz said. “Everything we used to have went up in smoke. I wish it hadn’t-I’d be lying if I said anything different-but we’ll get by as long as we’ve got each other.”
Miriam started to say something, then visibly thought better of it. Anielewicz wondered what it would have been. Maybe he was better off not knowing.
But his wife didn’t need to wonder. She knew. She wagged a finger at her daughter. “You were going to say we’ve got altogether too much of each other, weren’t you? But that’s not so, either. Just remember what things were like in the barracks at that Nazi’s farm. Next to that, this is paradise, too.”
“We didn’t have any choice there, though,” Miriam said.
“We don’t have any choice here, either, not now,” Bertha Anielewicz said. “But be patient for a little while, and we will. If your father hadn’t tracked us down, we never would have had any choices there.”
“And if Pancer hadn’t beeped when he did, so Father heard him, he might never have tracked us down.” Heinrich scratched his pet. The scaly little animal wiggled sinuously.
Miriam rolled her eyes. “If you were a goy, you’d say that beffel ought to be canonized.”
“Pancer deserves it more than some saints I can think of,” Heinrich retorted.
“Enough of that,” Mordechai Anielewicz said sharply. “The goyim can afford to make jokes about us-they outnumber us ten to one. We can’t afford to make jokes about them. Even with the Lizards to lean on, it’s too dangerous.”
His children looked ready to argue about that, too. They were less aware of how dangerous being a small minority could prove than he was. But before the argument could get going, the telephone rang. Bertha was closest to it. “I’ll get it,” she said, and did. A moment later, she held the handset out to Anielewicz. “For you. A member of the Race.”
“Nesseref?” he asked, and his wife shrugged. He took the telephone. “I greet you,” he said in the Lizards’ language.
“And I greet you,” the Lizard replied. “I am Odottoss, liaison officer between the Race’s military and your Tosevite forces here in Poland. We have spoken before.”
“Truth,” Anielewicz agreed. “Shuttlecraft Pilot Nesseref was kind enough to give me your name. I thank you for the assistance you were able to give my mate and my hatchlings and me.”
“You are welcome,” Odottoss replied. “You and your fighters have served the Race well. It is only fair that you should have some recompense for that service.”
“Again, I thank you. And now, superior sir, what can I do for you?” He did not for a moment believe the male of the Race had called merely to throw bouquets at him.
And he was right, for Odottoss inquired, “Do you know the whereabouts of the explosive-metal bomb you Jews have claimed to have since the end of the first round of fighting?”
“At the moment, I do not know that, no,” Mordechai admitted. “Since the recent fighting against the Reich, I have been concerned with other things. Till now, no one has mentioned any problems with this explosive-metal bomb.”
“I do not know that there are any,” Odottoss said. “But I do not know that there are none, either. As best the Race has been able to determine, the bomb is not where we formerly thought it was. Have you ordered its transfer?”
“Have I personally? No,” Anielewicz said. “But that does not mean other Jewish fighters may not have given such an order. For that matter, we never wanted the Race to know where we keep it.”
“I understand your reasons for that,” Odottoss said. “You will understand, I hope, our reasons for seeking this knowledge.”
“I suppose so.” Anielewicz tried not to sound grudging, but it wasn’t easy.
“Very well, then,” the Lizard said. “If this bomb has been moved clandestinely, you will also understand our concern about where it is now and to what use it may be put.” Clandestinely moving the explosive-metal bomb wasn’t easy. Mordechai wondered how well Odottoss understood that. The device weighed about ten tonnes. The Germans had just been learning how to make such bombs in 1944. They’d got better since.
But even that old, primitive weapon would be devastating if it went off. Anielewicz wasn’t sure it could detonate. He also wasn’t sure it couldn’t. He realized there were too many things about which he wasn’t sure. “I shall do my best to find out what is going on here, superior sir,” he said.
“And the
n you will report to me?” Odottoss asked.
