Aftershocks (11 page)

“Say something simple and you get into trouble.” Moishe Russie rolled his eyes, precisely as if he hadn’t expected to get into trouble by saying that particular simple thing. Jane Archibald was definitely a girl—a woman—worth seeing.

Laughing still, Reuven’s mother went back to the kitchen. His father pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his breast pocket and lit one. “You shouldn’t smoke those things,” Reuven said, clucking like a mother hen. “You know how many nasty things the Lizards have shown they do to your lungs.”

“And to my circulatory system, and to my heart.” Moishe Russie nodded—nodded and took another drag. “They’ve shown all sorts of horrible things about tobacco.”

“It’s not ginger, for heaven’s sake,” Reuven said. “People
can
quit smoking.”

“And Lizards
can
quit tasting ginger, too, for that matter,” his father answered. “It just doesn’t happen very often.”

“You don’t get the enjoyment out of tobacco that the Race gets out of ginger,” Reuven said, to which his father could hardly disagree, especially when his mother might be listening. He persisted: “What
do
you get out of it, anyhow?”

“I don’t know.” His father eyed the glowing coal on the end of his cigarette. “It relaxes me. And one tastes very good after food.”

“That doesn’t sound like enough,” Reuven said.

“No, I suppose not.” Moishe Russie shrugged. “It’s an addiction. I can hardly deny it. There are plenty of worse ones. That’s about the most I can say.”

“What’s the most you can say about which, Father?” one of the twins asked. Reuven hadn’t heard the twins come into the front room; they’d probably been helping their mother get supper ready. They sounded even more alike than they looked—Reuven couldn’t be sure whether Esther or Judith had spoken.

Moishe Russie held up his cigarette. “That there are worse drugs than the ones that go into these.” A thin, gray column of smoke rose into the air from the burning end of the cigarette.

“Oh.” That was Esther; Reuven was sure of it. “Well, maybe.” She wrinkled her nose. “It still smells nasty.” Her sister nodded.

“Does it?” Their father sounded honestly surprised.

“It does.” Reuven, Judith, and Esther all spoke together. Reuven added, “If you hadn’t killed most of your sense of smell from years of those stinking things, you’d know it yourself.”

“Would I?” Moishe Russie studied the cigarette, or what was left of it, then stubbed it out. “I don’t suppose my sense of smell is really dead—more likely just dormant.”

“Why don’t you find out?” Reuven asked. His sisters nodded, their faces glowing. He and they often rubbed one another the wrong way, but they agreed about this.

His father ran a hand over his bald crown—a silent genetic warning that Reuven wouldn’t keep his own dark hair forever. It was, in fact, already starting to retreat above his temples. Moishe Russie said, “Maybe I will . . . one of these days.”

That meant never. Reuven knew it. His sisters, a lot younger and a lot more naive than he, knew it, too. Disappointment shone from them as excitement had a moment before. He was opening his mouth to let his father know what he thought when his mother preempted him by calling, “Supper!”

Supper was a leg of mutton with potatoes and carrots and onions, a dish they might have eaten back in Warsaw before the war except for the red Palestinian wine that went with it. Holding up his glass of the local vintage, Reuven said, “We’ve got a while to go before we catch up with France.”

“You’re turning into a wine
maven?
” his father asked, chuckling. Moishe Russie sipped the wine, too, and nodded.
“Maven
or not, I won’t say you’re wrong. On the other hand, these grapes are a lot less radioactive than the ones they use to make Burgundy or Bordeaux.”

“A point,” Reuven admitted. “I think we’re pretty lucky the Nazis didn’t try harder to land an explosive-metal bomb on Jerusalem. Then we wouldn’t be able to say that about the wine.” Then, odds were, they wouldn’t have been able to say anything at all, but he chose not to dwell on that.

“Why didn’t they try harder to bomb us?” Judith asked. At fifteen, she didn’t think death was real. Reuven wished he could say the same.

His father answered, “They did send a couple of rockets our way, but the Race knocked them down. They saved most of their firepower to use against the Lizards, though.” Moishe Russie’s face twisted. “Either they hated the Race more than they hated us, or else they thought the Race was more dangerous. If I were a betting man, I’d put my money on the second choice.”

Rivka Russie sighed. “So would I.” Her eyes, like her husband’s, were bleak and far away, remembering how things had been in German-held Poland before the conquest fleet landed. Reuven recalled that time only dimly, as one of hunger and fear. He was glad his memories held no more detail, too. To the twins, anything before they were born might as well have been the days of ancient Rome.
They’re lucky,
he thought.

Out in the front room, the telephone hooked into the Lizards’ network hissed for attention. Moishe Russie rose. “I’ll get it. Maybe—
alevai
—the fleetlord has changed his mind or thought of something more he can do for poor Anielewicz.” He hurried out. A moment later, though, he called, “Not Atvar at all. It’s for you, Reuven.”

“For me?” Reuven bounded out of his chair, even though he was only halfway through supper. The only person likely to call him on the Race’s telephone system was . . . “Hello, Jane!” he said, switching from the Hebrew usual around the house to English. “How are you?”

“Couldn’t be better.” Jane Archibald’s English had the not-quite-British accent of Australia. Blue eyes glowing, she smiled out of the screen at him. “I’ve passed my comprehensive exams, so I escape at the end of this term.”

“Congratulations!” Reuven exclaimed. He would have been sweating out his comprehensives, too, if he hadn’t left the medical college. He knew what monsters they were. Then he caught the crucial verb. “Escape?”

“That’s right.” She nodded. Her golden hair flipped up and down. “Canada’s accepted me. You’ve known forever that I didn’t want to start a practice anyplace the Lizards rule.” Reuven nodded back at her; the Lizards had been harsh in Australia, seizing the whole continent for themselves, with humans a distinct afterthought. Jane went on, “And so, sweetheart, the time is coming—and it’s coming soon—when we have to figure out where we go from here, or if we go anywhere at all from here.”

“If we’re going anywhere, I’m going to Canada,” Reuven said slowly, and Jane nodded again. He’d known he would have to make a choice like that one day. He hadn’t thought he would have to make it quite so soon. Even more slowly, he went on, “I’m going to have to think about that.”

“I know you will,” Jane replied. “I envy your having a family you can get along with, believe me I do. But I’ve got to tell you one more thing, dear: don’t take too bloody long.” Before he could find an answer, her image vanished from the screen.

Straha was used to fighting cravings. The ex-shiplord had started tasting ginger not long after he’d fled the conquest fleet, and had rarely been without it since. It helped make living among the American Big Uglies tolerable. Even so, now and again he wished he hadn’t antagonized Atvar to the point where it was either flee or face the fleetlord’s fury.

He let out a soft hiss.
If the assembled shiplords had chosen to oust Atvar and name me in his place, all of Tosev 3 might belong to the Race now,
he thought. Surely he could have led the conquest fleet better than that mediocre male. A large majority had thought he could. But the Race required three-quarters concurrence before making such a drastic change, and he hadn’t got that. Atvar remained in command to this day—and Straha remained in exile to this day.

He had all the ginger he wanted. It wasn’t illegal in the USA, as it was everywhere the Race ruled. Stashed away in his house—mostly of Tosevite construction, but with gadgetry from the Race—was almost enough of the precious herb to let him set up as a dealer. If he felt like a taste, he could have one. The Big Ugly who served as his driver and bodyguard wouldn’t say no. If anything, he’d assume the Tosevite facial grimace connoting benevolence and get Straha more ginger still.

But turning his eye turrets away from ginger as much as he could was something Straha had long since got used to doing. Keeping the papers Sam Yeager had given him a secret was something else again. Straha didn’t know exactly what. Yeager had given him those papers, only extracting a promise that he wouldn’t look at them unless the Big Ugly suddenly died or disappeared. Straha had kept the promise, too, regardless of how tempted he was to see what Yeager thought so important.

What does he know?
Straha wondered.
Why does he not want me to know it, too? How much trouble will come if I learn it? Not too much, surely.

That was the voice he sometimes heard inside his head when he wanted one taste of ginger on top of another. It was an ever so persuasive voice, one that could talk him into almost everything. Almost. He counted Sam Yeager a friend in the same way that he counted friends among the Race. Yeager relied on him, trusted him. He had to be worthy of that trust . . . didn’t he?

Before temptation could dig its claws into him too deeply, his driver came into the kitchen from the front room and said, “I greet you, Shiplord.”

“And I greet you,” Straha replied. The Big Ugly spoke his language about as well as a Tosevite could. “What do you want now?”

“Why do you think I want anything?” replied the male who served and guarded him.

Straha’s mouth fell open in a laugh. “Because you are who you are. Because you are what you are.”

His driver laughed, too, in the noisy Tosevite way. “All right, Shiplord. I suppose you have a point.” He bent into the posture of respect, though in doing so he showed as much mockery as he did subordination. Given the security clearance and status he had to have to be allowed to work with Straha, that made a certain amount of sense.

“Very well, then,” Straha said with a certain amount of asperity. He was jealous of his rank, despite the realities of the situation. “Suppose you tell me what you do want, then.”

“It shall be done, Shiplord,” the driver said, again mixing obedience with mockery. “You surely know that the colonization fleet has released its domestic animals in the areas the Race rules.”

“I should hope so,” Straha exclaimed, “considering the azwaca and zisuili in my freezer here.”

“Exactly so,” his driver agreed. “Are you also aware how rapidly these animals from Home are spreading in the desert regions of Tosev 3?”

“These are for the most part not deserts to us or to our beasts,” Straha said. “Home is a hotter, drier world than this one. What you call desert is to us more often than not a temperate grassland.”

“However you like,” the Big Ugly said with a shrug very much like one a male of the Race might have used. “But that is not the point. The point is, these beasts are making themselves at home here faster than anyone could reasonably have expected. This is certainly true in northern Mexico.”

“I have heard as much, in fact,” Straha said.

“And you will also have heard that animals from Home respect international borders not at all. They are also establishing themselves in the American Southwest.”

“Indeed: I have heard that, too,” Straha said. “You still have not told me what you want, though.”

“Is it not obvious?” the Tosevite returned. “How do we get rid of the miserable things?
We
do not eat them.”

“Why are you asking me?” Straha said. “I am not an ecological engineer, and I do not know what resources you have available to you.”

“We are willing to commit whatever resources prove necessary,” his driver said. “These animals are highly unwelcome here, and they seem to be spreading very fast. Wherever the weather stays warm the year around, they appear at home.”

“Unless you can hunt them into extinction, they probably will stay that way, too,” Straha said.

“How nice,” the Big Ugly said, his voice sour. That was an English idiom, translated literally into the language of the Race. It didn’t mean what it said, but just the opposite. “I am sure my superiors will be delighted to hear that.” He didn’t mean what he said there, either.

Straha said, “I expect that we are also introducing the plants from Home on which our domestic animals prefer to feed. They too will take advantage of any ecological niches available to them here on Tosev 3. In fact, I am given to understand that this process has already begun in the subregion of the main continental mass called India.”

“Terrific.” The driver didn’t bother to translate that ironic comment into the language of the Race, but left it in English. Straha had grown reasonably fluent in the language of the USA as the years went by. Gathering himself, the Tosevite switched to Straha’s tongue: “How are we supposed to hunt weeds into extinction?”

“As a matter of fact, I doubt you can do it,” Straha replied. “Now that we have come to Tosev 3, we are going to make this world as much like Home as we can. You would be addled to expect us to behave any differently.”

“The war between the Race and us Tosevites has never really stopped, has it?” his driver said. “We are not shooting at each other as much as we used to, but we are still fighting.”

“When there is shooting, you Big Uglies do not usually enjoy it,” Straha said. “I offer the example of the Deutsche for your contemplation.”

“Believe me, Shiplord, my superiors are contemplating it,” his driver said. “But you did not answer my question, or did not answer it fully.”

“I am surprised you needed to ask it,” Straha replied. “Of course the struggle goes on, by whatever means appear convenient. The leaders of the Race will not be excessively concerned as to what those methods are. Results will matter far more to them. They are not in a hurry. They are never in a hurry.”

“That has cost them, here on Tosev 3,” the Big Ugly remarked.

“Truth,” Straha admitted. “I advocated more haste myself, which led to nothing but my exile. But our usual slow pace also has its advantages. We move so slowly, our pressure is all but imperceptible. That does not mean it is not there, however.”