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“Fine,” Reuven said. He almost asked her what was so funny, but held off at the last minute because he saw a possible answer. She thinks my father is trying to fix me up with a pretty widow, he realized. That almost started him laughing. Then he wondered what was so laughable about it. With Jane gone to Canada, he wouldn’t have minded getting fixed up with anybody.
As if Mrs. Radofsky cares about you for anything but whether you can make her little girl feel better, he thought. That didn’t bother him. That was the way things were supposed to be.
Even back in his examination room, he could tell when the widow Radofsky brought her daughter into the office. The racket Miriam was making left no possible doubt. Reuven was looking at another widow, a little old lady named Goldblatt whose varicose veins were troubling her. “Gevalt!” she said. “That one’s not very happy.”
“No, she’s not,” Reuven agreed. “I’m going to recommend an elastic bandage on that leg to help keep those veins under control for you. I don’t think they’re bad enough to need surgery now. If they bother you more, though, come back in and we’ll have another look at them.”
“All right, Doctor, thank you,” Mrs. Goldblatt said. Reuven hid his smile. I’m learning, he thought. If he’d told her straight out that she was fussing over very little, she’d have left in a huff. As things were, she seemed well enough pleased, even though all he’d done was sugarcoat essentially the same message.
“Can you see Mrs. Radofsky and Miriam now?” Yetta asked.
“Why not?” Reuven raised an eyebrow. “I’ve been hearing them-or Miriam, anyhow-for a while now.” The receptionist sniffed. No, she didn’t care for anyone’s jokes but her own.
A moment later, the young widow carried her daughter into the examination room. Miriam was still howling at the top of her lungs, and was tugging at the lobe of her left ear and trying to stick her finger into it. That would have been diagnostic all by itself. Mrs. Radofsky gave Reuven a wan smile and tried to talk through the din: “Thank you for seeing me on such short notice. She woke up like this at four in the morning.” No wonder her smile was wan.
Reuven grabbed his otoscope. “We’ll see what we can do.”
Miriam didn’t want to let him examine her, not for beans she didn’t. She screeched, “No!”-a two-year-old’s favorite word anyway, as Reuven remembered from his sisters-and tried to grab the otoscope and keep it away from her ear.
“Can you hold her, please?” Reuven asked her mother.
“All right,” the widow Radofsky said. Even in his brief time in practice, Reuven had discovered that almost no mother would hold her precious darling tight enough to do a doctor one damn bit of good. He’d thought about investing in pediatric straitjackets, or even manufacturing them and making his fortune from grateful physicians the world around. He expected to do half the holding himself this time, too.
But he got a surprise. Mrs. Radofsky battled Miriam to a standstill. Reuven got a good look inside a red, swollen ear canal. “She’s got it, sure enough,” he said. “I’m going to give her a shot of penicillin, and I’m going to prescribe a liquid for her. You have an icebox to keep it cold?” Most people did, but not everybody.
To his relief, Miriam’s mother nodded. She rolled her daughter onto her stomach on the examining table so Reuven could give her the shot in the right cheek. That produced a new set of screams, almost supersonically shrill. When they subsided, the widow Radofsky said, “Thank you very much.”
“You’re welcome.” Reuven felt like sticking a finger in his ear, too. “She should start getting relief in twenty-four hours. If she doesn’t, bring her back. Make sure she takes all the liquid. It’s nasty, but she needs it.”
“I understand.” Mrs. Radofsky didn’t have to shout, for Miriam, finally exhausted, hiccuped a couple of times and fell asleep. Her mother sighed and said, “Life is never as simple as we wish it would be, is it?” She brushed back a lock of dark hair that had come loose.
“No,” Reuven said. “All you can do is your best.” Miriam’s mother nodded again, then sent him a sharp look. Is she noticing me and not just the man in the white coat? he wondered, and hoped she was.
9
“Queek and his interpreter are here, Comrade General Secretary,” Molotov’s secretary told him.
“Very well, Pyotr Maksimovich. I am coming.” It wasn’t very well, and Molotov knew it. He’d hated the Reich, but he missed it now that it was reduced to a battered shadow of itself. And the United States was in trouble. If the Race found an excuse for smashing the USA, how long could the USSR last after that? No matter what the dialectic said about inevitable socialist victory, Molotov didn’t want to have to find out for himself.
He hurried into the office reserved for visits from the Race’s ambassador. A couple of minutes later, his secretary led in Queek and the Pole who translated his words into Russian. “Good day,” Molotov told the human. “Please convey my warm greetings to your principal.” His words were as warm as a Murmansk blizzard, but he’d observed the forms.
The Pole spoke to the Lizard. The Lizard hissed and popped back at him. “He conveys similar greetings to you, Comrade General Secretary.”
Queek’s greetings were probably as friendly as Molotov’s, but the Soviet leader couldn’t do anything about that. He said, “I thank you for agreeing to see me on such short notice.”
“That is my duty,” Queek replied. “Now that I am here, I will ask why you have summoned me.” His interpreter made it sound as if Molotov would find himself in trouble if he didn’t have a good reason.
He thought he did. “If at all possible, I want to use my good offices to help the Race and the United States come to a peaceful resolution of the dispute that has arisen between them.” He didn’t know why the dispute had arisen, which frustrated him no end, but that didn’t matter.
Queek gestured. The interpreter said, “That means he rejects your offer.”
Molotov hadn’t expected anything so blunt. “Why?” he asked, fighting to keep astonishment from his voice.
“Because this dispute is between the Race and the United States,” Queek replied. “Do you truly wish to include your not-empire and suffer the consequences of doing so?”
“That depends on the circumstances,” Molotov said. “If the Soviet Union were to include itself on the side of the United States, do you doubt that the Race would also suffer certain consequences?”
When the interpreter translated that, Queek made the boiling and bubbling noises he used to show he was an unhappy Lizard. The interpreter didn’t translate them, which might have been just as well. After half a minute or so, the Race’s ambassador started spluttering less. Now the Pole turned his words into Russian: “You would destroy yourselves if you were mad enough to attempt such a thing.”
“Possibly.” Even for Molotov, sounding dispassionate while speaking of his country’s ruin didn’t come easy, but he managed. “If, however, the Race attacked first the United States and then the peace-loving peasants and workers of the Soviet Union, our destruction would be even more certain. If you think the Germans hurt you, you had better think very hard on what the United States and the Soviet Union could do together.”
“Do you threaten me, Comrade General Secretary?” Queek asked.
“By no means, Ambassador,” Molotov replied. “I warn you. If you leave the Soviet Union out of your calculations, you make a serious mistake. This government cannot be, is not, and will not be blind to the danger the Race poses to the other c
hief independent human power, and thus to all of mankind.”
“I assure you that, whatever the danger in which the United States finds itself, it is a danger that that not-empire has abundantly earned,” Queek said. “I also assure you that it is none of your business.”
“If you assure me it is none of my business, I have no way to examine your other assurances,” Molotov said. “Therefore, I must assume them to be worthless.”
“Assume whatever you please,” Queek said. “We are not interested in your efforts to mediate. If we ever do seek mediation, we shall inquire of you. And as for your threats, you will find that you cannot intimidate us.”
“I have no intention of intimidating you,” Molotov said, glad he had the knack of lying with a straight face. “You will follow your interests, and we shall follow ours. But I did want to make sure you understood what the Soviet Union considers to be in its interest.”
“The Soviet Union does not understand what is in its interest, not if it courts destruction like-” The interpreter broke off and went back and forth with Queek in the Lizards’ language. Then he returned to Russian: “The expression people would use is ‘like a moth flying into a flame.’ ”
“It is possible that we might be defeated.” Molotov knew it was as near certain as made no difference that the Soviet Union would be defeated. Sometimes, though, a demonstrated willingness to fight made fighting unnecessary. Switzerland had never become a part of the Greater German Reich. “Think carefully, Ambassador, on whether you and the Race care to pay the price.”
“I assure you, Comrade General Secretary, that our discussions shall revolve around that very subject,” Queek replied. “I think we have now said everything that needs saying, one of us to the other. Is that not a truth?”
“It is,” Molotov said.
Queek rose. So did the interpreter-like a well-trained hound, Molotov thought scornfully. “Perhaps I shall see you again,” the ambassador said. “Then again, perhaps not. Perhaps this ugly building will cease to exist in the not too distant future. It would be no enormous loss if that came to pass.”
