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He tried one more thing: “My son, Heinrich, had a beffel for a pet, an animal from the Lizards’ world. It would squeak when it was happy. Does anybody remember that?”
And two people did. “That damned thing,” a woman said. “Yes, the Germans nabbed the people who had it. They took them away when they got run out of here.” The other person, an old man, nodded.
“They did go into Germany, then,” Mordechai breathed. “Thank you both, from the bottom of my heart.” He didn’t know if he ought to be thanking them. Jews who went into Germany were not in the habit of coming out again. But his family hadn’t simply been slaughtered here. That was something… he hoped.
Nesseref was feeding Orbit, her tsiongi, when the telephone hissed for attention. The pet started eating while she hurried into the bedchamber, wondering who was calling. “I greet you,” the shuttlecraft pilot said, waiting to see whose image appeared on the computer monitor.
To her surprise, it was not a male or female of the Race but a Big Ugly. “I greet you, superior female,” he said in the language of the Race. “Mordechai Anielewicz here.”
“Good to see you,” Nesseref answered, glad he’d named himself. No matter how well she liked him, she had trouble telling Tosevites apart.
“I hope you are well,” the Big Ugly said.
“On the whole, yes,” Nesseref replied. “The fallout levels have been high, but my apartment building was damaged only once, and even then the filters functioned well. By now, everything has been replaced, and radioactivity levels are falling. But I hope very much that you are well, Mordechai Anielewicz. You have not been shielded from all the radioactivity that descended on Poland.”
“I am well enough for now,” Anielewicz told her. “Past that, I do not worry about myself. I worry about my mate and my hatchlings. They have been carried back into the Reich by retreating Deutsch armies, and they very well may be dead by now.”
“Yes, they are of the Jewish superstition, as you are-is that not a truth?” Nesseref said. “I have never understood the irrational loathing of the Deutsche for Tosevites of the Jewish superstition.” It struck her as no more absurd than any other Tosevite superstition. Belatedly, she realized she should say something more. She’d forgotten the strong ties of sexuality and other emotions that linked Big Uglies in family units. “For your sake, I hope you find them well.”
“I thank you,” Mordechai Anielewicz said. “They were alive, at least fairly recently. I have found Tosevites who saw and remember my youngest hatchling’s beffel.” He did an excellent job of imitating the squeak of the little animal from Home.
At that squeak, Orbit came racing into the bedroom, plainly furious that Nesseref might have concealed a beffel somewhere in the apartment. His tail lashed up and down, up and down. His mouth was open so his scent receptors could better pick up the hated odor of a beffel. But images on the monitor meant nothing to him. At last, with the air of someone who knew he’d been tricked but couldn’t figure out how, the tsiongi went away.
Nesseref said, “There is still some hope, then. I am glad of that.” She used an emphatic cough to show how glad she was.
“I thank you,” Mordechai Anielewicz said again. “I want you to help me locate them, if that should prove possible.”
“What can I do?” Nesseref asked in some surprise. “If it is within my ability, you may rest assured that I will do it.” As the ties of family were less important among the Race than with the Big Uglies, so the ties of friendship were more important. And Mordechai Anielewicz, though a Tosevite, was unquestionably a friend.
“Once more, I thank you,” he said. “As you surely know, I have some prominence with the Race because of my rank among the Jews of Poland. Still, my primary dealings these past many years have been with the Race’s authorities in Lodz. Now those authorities are reporting only to the spirits of Emperors past.” He didn’t cast down his eyes. Other than that, his knowledge of the Race’s beliefs was flawless. He finished, “I would like you to help me obtain the assistance of the authorities in Warsaw.”
“Warsaw also received an explosive-metal bomb from the Deutsche,” Nesseref reminded him. “The present administration for this subregion is in Pinsk.”
“Ah. Pinsk. Yes. I understand. I had forgotten because of my own troubles.” Anielewicz’s face twisted into a grimace Nesseref believed to denote unhappiness. “The Deutsche would not have tried to bomb that city, for fear the bomb would go wrong and strike the Soviet Union, which they did not want. In any case, this new administration is made up of males and females unfamiliar to me. I would greatly appreciate your good offices in dealing with them.”
“Are you planning to travel there in person?” Nesseref asked.
“If I must, but only if I must,” the Big Ugly answered, and used another unhappy grimace. “I hate to travel all the way to the eastern edge of this subregion when all my concerns are here in the west. That is another reason I want your help.”
“I understand. You shall have it,” the shuttlecraft pilot said. She waved aside the Tosevite’s further thanks. “Friends may ask favors of friends. Let me make inquiries in Pinsk.” She noted the telephone code from which he was calling. It wasn’t his phone, of course, but one belonging to some military detachment or bureaucratic outpost of the Race. “May I leave messages for you here?”
“You may,” Mordechai Anielewicz said. “And, again, I thank you from the bottom of my heart.” That was a Tosevite idiom literally translated, but Nesseref figured out what it had to mean.
After Anielewicz broke the connection, Nesseref telephoned the new authorities in Pinsk. “Yes, we have heard from this Tosevite,” a female told her. “We are hesitant to grant his request for assistance in entering the Reich in search of those other individuals, for we know that the Deutsche are liable to make it as difficult as possible for him to carry out the aforesaid search.”
“You are from the colonization fleet,” Nesseref said. That was an obvious truth. No females had been part of the conquest fleet. Nesseref went on, “I think you are too inexperienced to grasp the attachment Big Uglies place on their sexual partners and hatchlings. You would not be doing this male a favor by protecting him from himself.”
“You are also part of the colonization fleet,” the bureaucrat in Pinsk answered sharply. “Why is your experience more valid than mine?”
“I have made a friend of this Tosevite,” Nesseref replied. “Am I mistaken, or would you have recently come from a new town where you had only limited contact with Big Uglies?”
“That is a truth,” the other female admitted in some surprise. “If you can note it, perhaps you do know what you are talking about. I will take what you say under advisement.”
“I thank you.” Nesseref made some more calls, doing all she could to get the Race’s functionaries to help Mordechai Anielewicz. Two or three of the functionaries with whom she spoke said she wasn’t the first person asking them to help the Big Ugly. She was miffed the first time she heard that. Then she decided she’d made a mistake-Anielewicz had the right to do whatever he could to try to recover the Tosevites who were important to him.
Orbit walked into the bedroom a couple of times while Nesseref was on the telephone. The tsiongi prowled around the room and even poked his long-snouted head into the closets a couple of time. He thought he’d heard a beffel, and it hadn’t come out. That meant it should still be in there. His logic was impeccable, or would have been if he’d understood how video monitors worked. As things were, he got to be one increasingly frustrated animal.
And then Nesseref’s telephone hissed again. She thought it would be one of the bureaucrats with whom she’d talked calling back for more information, or possibly Mordechai Anielewicz with a new suggestion or request. But it wasn’t. It was, in fact, a Big Ugly calling on the security hookup of her apartment building. “Yes? What do you want?” she asked him.
“I have for you delivery.” He spoke the language of the Race fairly well. “It is animal
exercise wheel.”
“Oh, yes. I thank you.” Nesseref had ordered that during the fighting, but no one had been able to deliver it. More urgent concerns had all but overwhelmed the Race’s supply system. “Wait one moment. I will admit you.” She let him go through the building’s outer door. Inside, part of the lobby had been turned into what almost amounted to an airlock system, one designed to keep as much radioactive outside air as possible from circulating in the halls and units of the building. Only after fans blew the contaminated air out onto the street did the inner door open and admit the Big Ugly.
Instead of pressing the buzzer by her doorway, as a male or female of the Race would have done, he knocked on the door. Orbit let out a growling hiss. “No!” Nesseref said sharply as she opened the door. “Stay!” The tsiongi lashed its tail, angry that it didn’t get to attack this obviously dangerous intruder.
“Here.” Grunting, the Tosevite delivery male lifted the crate off the dolly he’d used to move it to the elevator. The dolly was of Big Ugly manufacture, heavier and grimier than anything the Race would have used. After setting the crate in the center of the floor, the Big Ugly handed Nesseref an electronic clipboard and stylus, saying, “You sign this here, superior sir.”
“Superior female,” Nesseref corrected him. Before signing, she checked to make sure the crate said it contained the exercise wheel she’d ordered. As soon as her signature went into the system, her account would be debited the price of the wheel. But everything seemed to be in order. She scribbled her signature on the proper line on the clipboard.
“I thank you, superior female.” The Big Ugly got it right the second time. He bent into a clumsy version of the posture of respect, then left her apartment.
“Let us see what we have here,” Nesseref said. Orbit was certainly curious. His tongue lolled out so the scent receptors on it could catch all the interesting odors coming from the crate. Nesseref’s eyes caught something she’d missed when ordering the exercise wheel. On the side of the crate were the dreaded words, SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED. She sighed. Did some mean a little or a lot? She’d find out.
Orbit thought he was a very helpful tsiongi. As soon as she’d opened the crate, he started jumping in and then jumping out again. He tried to kill some of the plastic bags that held fasteners. He poked his snout into every subassembly as Nesseref put it together. Long before she had the whole wheel done, she was ready to throw the animal for whom it was intended right out the window.
“Here,” she said when, despite Orbit’s best efforts at assistance, she finally did put the wheel together. “This says your wheel is impregnated with the odor of zisuili, to make you enthusiastic about using it.” Domestic tsiongyu helped herd zisuili back on Home. Their wild cousins-and occasional unreliable or feral tsiongyu-preyed on the meat animals.
