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Up from the farmhouse came a burly, gray-haired man who walked with a cane and a peculiar, rolling gait that meant he’d lost a leg above the knee. The guard turned back to him with something like relief. “Here’s Herr Kluge, the boss. You can tell him your story.” He stepped aside and let the farmer do his own talking.
Kluge had some of the coldest gray eyes Anielewicz had ever seen. “Who are you, and what are you doing coming onto my land with Lizard soldiers at your back?”
“I’m looking for my wife and children,” Mordechai replied, and gave their names as he had to the guard.
“I don’t have any workers by those names.” Kluge spoke with complete confidence-but then, as a slavemaster, he would.
“I’m going to look,” Anielewicz said. “If I find them after you tell me they’re not here, I’m going to kill you. No one will say a word about it. You can take that to the bank-or to the Pearly Gates. Do you understand me? Do you believe me?”
A German is either at your throat or at your feet. So the saying went. Mordechai watched the farmer crumble before his eyes. Kluge had been on top for a generation-probably ever since he recovered from the wound that had cost him his leg. He wasn’t on top any more, and he didn’t need long to figure it out. In a voice gone suddenly hoarse, he said, “Who are you, anyhow?”
Now was the time to drop the mask. Mordechai smiled a smile that was all pointed teeth. “Who am I?” he echoed, letting himself slide out of German and into Yiddish. “I’m Mordechai Anielewicz of Lodz, that’s who I am. And if you think I wouldn’t shoot you as soon as look at you, you’re out of your goddamn mind.”
“A kike!” the guard exclaimed, which almost got him killed on the spot.
Instead, Anielewicz just smiled again. “Yes, I’m a kike. And how much do you think I owe the Third Reich after all this time? I can take back a little piece of it right now. Talk, Kluge, if you ever want to see your Frau again.”
If his wife and children weren’t here, that thunderous bluster would do Mordechai no good. Even if Kluge had nerve, it might not do him any good. But the farmer pointed past the big house where his wife and children no doubt lived in comfort despite the disaster that had overwhelmed their nation. “There, in that field of rye. Putting families together helps me get the most out of them, I’ve found.”
“Have you?” Mordechai said tonelessly. “What a swell fellow you are. Lead me to them. If you’re lying, somebody else will have to swing the whip for you from here on out. Now get moving, and tell your pals with the rifles not to get cute, or they’ll have themselves one overventilated boss.”
Kluge turned and started shouting at the top of his lungs. After that, Anielewicz’s one big worry was that a guard would try to take out a few Lizards and wouldn’t give a damn about what happened to the fellow who paid his salary. But it didn’t happen. At Kluge’s slow, ponderous pace, they headed down a path toward that field of rye.
Mordechai’s heart thudded faster and faster. Before they’d gone very far, he started shouting his wife’s name and those of his children. He didn’t have lungs to match those of the German farmer. But he didn’t have to shout more than a couple of times before heads came up in the field. And then four figures, three pretty much of a size and one smaller, were running through the field toward him.
“The grain…” Kluge said in pained tones. He could have died right there; Anielewicz started to swing the muzzle of his rifle toward him. But the Jewish fighting leader checked the motion, and the German went on, “You will see they have not been mistreated.”
“I’d better,” Mordechai growled. Then he started running, too.
His first thought was that his wife and sons and daughter were painfully thin. His next was that they were wearing rags. After that, he stopped thinking for a while. He hugged them and kissed them and said as many foolish things as needed saying and listened with delight while they said foolish things, too. The watching Lizards undoubtedly didn’t understand at all.
And then, as bits of rationality returned, he asked, “Are you all right?”
“It could have been worse,” his wife answered. Bertha Anielewicz nodded to David and Heinrich. “He knew we were Jews, of course. But he still fed us-he needed work from us.”
“He bought us,” David said indignantly. “He bought us for a big pile of bread from the soldiers who had us. He looked at Mother’s teeth first. I swear he did. She might have been a horse, for all he cared.”
Gustav Kluge came up to them. “It is as I told you,” he said to Anielewicz, as near a direct challenge as made no difference. “They are here. They are well. They have not been mistreated. I have treated them the same as all the others who work for me.”
Even though they’re Jews. It hung in the air, though he hadn’t said it. Mordechai couldn’t resist a dig of his own: “I’m not sure those last two things are the same-I’m not sure at all.” But the German farmer-plantation owner, Anielewicz thought, remembering Gone with the Wind- hadn’t lied too extravagantly.
“Take them. If they are your kin, take them.” Kluge made pushing motions with the hand not gripping his cane, as if to say he wanted Mordechai’s family off his farm as fast as they could go.
Oteisho and the other Lizards came up, too. They still kept their weapons aimed at Gustav Kluge. The underofficer asked Anielewicz, “Is it well? Have you found your mate and hatchlings?”
“It is very well. I thank you.” Mordechai folded himself into the posture of respect. “Yes, this is my mate. These are my hatchlings.”
Heinrich Anielewicz had been studying the Lizards’ language in school in Lodz, back when there was a school, back when there was a Lodz. He too bent into the posture of respect. “And I thank you, superior sir,” he said.
That seemed to amuse and please the infantrymales. The mouths of three or four of them dropped open in laughter. Gravely, Oteisho answered, “Tosevite hatchling, you are welcome.”
Heinrich returned to Polish, asking, “Father, do you know anythin
g about Pancer? Is he all right?” To the Lizards, he explained, “I have a beffel. I named him for a landcruiser in my language.” That set the troopers laughing again.
Miriam said, “Don’t bother your father about that silly animal now.”
But Mordechai said, “It’s no bother. Pancer’s back at my tent, as a matter of fact. An officer of the Race had him. I heard him beeping and started asking questions about where the male had got him, and that helped lead me here.”
Heinrich let out a whoop of triumph that proved nothing was seriously wrong with him. “You see? Pancer helped save us again, even when he got lost.”
David said, “Where will we live? What will we do? Lodz is gone.”
“I don’t know,” Mordechai answered. “I’ve been in the field since before the fighting started, and I’ve been looking for you since it ended.” He shook his head. He felt dizzy, drunk, though he’d had nothing stronger than water. “And do you know what else? I don’t much care. We’re together again. That’s all that really matters.”
“Can we go someplace now where there’s real food?” David asked.
That spoke volumes about what things were like on the farm. Anielewicz shot Gustav Kluge another venomous glance. But he had to say, “There’s not a whole lot of real food anywhere in Germany right this minute. We’ll do the best we can.”
“We’re free again,” his wife said, which also spoke volumes. She went on, “Next to that, nothing else really matters.”
Mordechai put one arm around her, the other around Miriam. His sons embraced them. “Truth!” he said. They all added emphatic coughs.
Not for the first time, Kassquit was feeling neglected and left out of things. She knew she’d been on the edge of great events, but she hadn’t been able to get any closer than the edge. Only belatedly had she learned that Jonathan Yeager’s father was the wild Big Ugly who’d given the Race the information it needed to show that his not-empire had been responsible for the attack on the colonization fleet.
