Aftershocks

by Harry Turtledove

  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 wou
ld 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.

  Orbit jumped into the wheel and started to run. Before long, he hopped out again. Maybe he’d worn himself out doing his best to lend Nesseref a hand. Maybe he didn’t feel like running in it no matter what it smelled like. Tsiongyu had a reputation for perversity. On a smaller scale, they were something like Big Uglies.

  “Miserable beast,” Nesseref said, more or less fondly. As if doing her a favor, Orbit deigned to turn an eye turret in her direction for a moment. Then he curled up by the exercise wheel, slapped his tail down on the floor a couple of times, and went to sleep.

  Nesseref’s laugh quickly turned rueful. Orbit had no worries bigger than not being able to go outside for a good run. She wished she could say the same.

  Reuven Russie came home to find his father on the telephone with Atvar. “Anything you might be able to do would be greatly appreciated, Exalted Fleetlord,” Moishe Russie said. “Mordechai Anielewicz is a longtime friend, and he has also helped the Race a great deal in the fight against the Deutsche.”

  “I can do less than you might think,” the fleetlord of the conquest fleet replied. “I can encourage our males and females in the subregion of Poland to assist him, and I shall do that. But the Reich retains political independence. That limits actions available to me there.”

  “How unfortunate,” Reuven’s father said, and used an emphatic cough.

  “I regret not being able to do more.” Atvar didn’t sound regretful. He sounded, if anything, indifferent. After a moment, he went on, “And now, if you will excuse me, I have a great many things to do.” His image vanished from the screen.

  Moishe Russie turned away from the telephone with a sigh. He looked up in surprise. “Hello, Reuven. I didn’t think you’d be back from the office so soon.”

  “My last two appointments canceled on me, one right after the other,” Reuven answered. “You took the afternoon off; I got mine by default. The Lizards don’t care what happened to Anielewicz’s family?”

  “Not even a little.” His father made a disgusted noise, down deep in his throat. “We’re good enough to do things for them. But they’re too good to do things for us, especially if that would take some real work from them. I’ve seen it before, but never so bad as now. You don’t even remember Anielewicz, do you?”

  “I was just a little boy—a very little boy—when we got smuggled out of Poland,” Reuven said.

  “I know that. But if Anielewicz had decided to fight for the Germans against the Race when the conquest fleet landed, Poland might have stayed in Nazi hands,” his father said. “That’s how important he was. And now Atvar doesn’t care whether his family is alive or dead.”

  “Lizards don’t really understand about families,” Reuven said.

  “Emotionally, no,” Moishe Russie agreed. “Emotionally, no, but intellectually, yes. They aren’t stupid. They just don’t want to take the trouble for someone who’s done a lot for them, and I think it’s a disgrace.”

  “What’s a disgrace?” Reuven’s mother asked. She glanced over to her only son. “You’re home early. I hope there’s nothing wrong?”

  He shook his head. “Only canceled appointments, like I told Father.”

  “Better canceled appointments than a canceled family,” Rivka Russie said. She turned a mild and speculative eye on him. “And when will you be bringing Jane by the house again?”

  Was that a hint he should settle down and start having a family of his own? He was within shouting distance of thirty and still single, so it might well have been. On the other hand, Jane Archibald remained a student at the Lizards’ Moishe Russie Medical College, while he’d resigned because he wouldn’t go to their temple and give reverence to spirits of Emperors past.

  And she wasn’t Jewish herself, which struck Reuven as likely to prove a bigger obstacle in his parents’ eyes.

  He wasn’t sure how big an obstacle it was in his own eyes. It certainly hadn’t been enough to keep him from becoming Jane’s lover. Every male student at the medical college had wanted to be able to say that. Now that he’d actually done it, he was still trying to figure out what it meant to his life.

  “You don’t answer my question,” his mother said.

  Bringing Jane by had been simpler in the days when they were just fellow students and friends. Being lovers with her complicated everything, not necessarily because of what it meant now but because of how it might change his whole future. For the time being, he temporized: “I will, Mother, as soon as I can.”

  “Good.” Rivka Russie nodded. “I’ll be glad to see her, and you know the twins will.”

  Reuven snorted. His younger sisters looked on Jane as the font of everything wise and womanly. Her contours were certainly a good deal more finished than theirs, though they’d blossomed to an alarming degree the past couple of years.

  Thoughtfully, Moishe Russie remarked, “I wouldn’t mind seeing Jane again myself.”

  Rivka Russie was wearing a dish towel around her waist. She’d been back in the kitchen, cooking. She took off the towel, wadded it up in her hands, and threw it at her husband. “I’ll bet you wouldn’t,” she said darkly—but not too darkly, for she started to laugh before Reuven’s father tossed the towel back to her.

  “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. “The
y’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.”