by neetha Napew
say, Excellency?"
Zolraag made a noise like a leaky samovar coming to a boil. "Since you Tosevites cannot come close to agreeing among yourselves in matters political, I hardly see how I am to be expected to grasp your incomprehensible feuds. But have I not heard that the Deutsche chose their— what is his name?— their Hitler for themselves in the senseless manner you extol so highly? How do you square this with your talk of freedom?"
"Excellency, I cannot" Russie looked down at the floor. He wished the Lizard had not known about how the Nazis came to power. "I do not claim any system of government will always work well, only that more folk are likely to be made content and fewer harmed with freedom than under any other arrangement."
"Not so," Zolraag said. "Under the Empire, the Race and its subject species have prospered
for thousands upon thousands of years without ever worrying about choosing their own rulers and the other nonsense of which you babble."
"To this I say two things," Moishe answered: "first, that you have not been trying to govern human beings—"
"To which I say, on short experience, that I am heartily glad," Zolraag broke in.
"Humanity would be glad if you still weren't," Russie said. He did not stress that, though; as he'd already admtted, he and his people would have been exterminated had the Lizards not come. He tried another tack: "How would these subject races of yours feel about what you say?"
"They would agree with me, I believe," Zolraag said, "They can scarcely deny their lives are better under our rule than they were
in their barbarous days of what you, I suppose, would call freedom."
"If they like you so well, why haven't you brought any of them with you to Earth?" Russie was trying to make the governor out to be a liar. The Germans had had no trouble recruiting security forces from among the peoples they'd conquered. If the Lizards had done the same, why weren't they using their subjects to help conquer or at least police this world?
But Zolraag answered, "The Empire's soldiers and administrators come only from the ranks of the Race. This is partly tradition, dating from the epoch when the Race was the only species in the Empire... but then, you Tosevites care nothing for tradition."
Russie wanted to bristle at that, belonging as he did to a tradition that stretched back more than three thousand years. But he'd gotten the
idea that, to Zolraag, three thousand years was about the equivalent of summer before last— hardly worth mentioning if you wanted to talk about a long time ago.
The Lizard governor went on, "That the security of the Race's rule is another consideration, I will not deny. You should be honored that you are allowed to aid us in our efforts to pacify Tosev 3. Such a privilege would not be afforded to a Hallessi or a Rabotev, I assure you, though the members of subject races may freely pursue careers in areas not affecting the government and safety of the Empire."
"We do not use the word freely in the same way," Russie said. "If I weren't useful to you, I'm sure you wouldn't grant me this privilege." He packed all the irony he could into that last word. Zolraag had as much as said that if the Lizards brought Earth into their Empire, humans would be reduced to hewers of wood
and drawers of water, with no voice in their own fate forevermore.
Zolraag answered, "You are undoubtedly correct, He/r Russie. I suggest you bear that in mind, make the most of the opportunity you are presented, and cease your foolish complaints against our dominion." Using irony against him was about as futile as German antitank guns firing on Lizard panzers.
Russie said, "I cannot do as you ask of me, not only for the sake of my own self-respect but also because no human who heard me praise you for destroying Washington could ever take my words seriously again."
"You have been useful to us up until this time, so I have given you many chances to change your mind: more than I should have, very likely. But after this you will have no more chances. Do you understand what I say to you?"
"Yes. Do what you want to me. I cannot speak as you wish." Russie licked dry lips. As he had when the Nazis ruled the ghetto, he hoped he could endure whatever the Lizards inflicted on him.
Zolraag said, "We will not do anything to you, Herr Russie. Direct intimidation has shown itself to be less valuable on this world than we might have wished." Russie stared at him, hardly believing his own ears. But the governor was not finished: "Research has suggested another tactic which may prove more effective. As I said, you will not suffer personally for this refusal. But we shall exact reprisals upon the female with whom you are mated and upon your hatchling. I hope this may suggest a possible change in your view."
Moishe stared at him, not so much in disbelief as in dreadful disappointment "And here I thought I'd helped drive the Nazis out of Warsaw," he said at last.
"The Deutsche are indeed well and truly driven from this city, and with your help," Zolraag said, missing the point completely. "We seek your continued assistance in persuading your fellow Tosevites of the justice of our cause."
The governor spoke without apparent irony. Russie concluded he'd noticed none. But even a Nazi might have hesitated to threaten a woman and child in one breath and proclaim the justice of his cause in the next Alien. Russie thought. Not till now had he had his nose rubbed in the meaning of the word.
He wanted to point out to Zolraag the errors in his reasoning, as if he were a rabbi correcting a young yeshiva-bucher. In the first days after the Lizards came, he could have done just that. Since then, little by little, he'd had to learn discretion— and now his temper could endanger not just himself but also Rivka and Reuven. Softly, then.
"You understand you offer me no easy choice," he said.
"Your lack of cooperation has forced me to this step," Zolraag answered.
"You ask me to betray so much of what I believe in," Russie said. That was nothing but truth. He tried to put a whine in his voice: "Please give me a couple of days in which to think on what I must do." Getting sick wouldn't be enough this time. He was already sure of that.
"I ask you only to go on working with us and for our cause as you have in the past." Just as Russie was getting more cautious in what he said to Zolraag, so Zolraag was getting more suspicious about what he heard from Russie. "Why do you need time in which to contemplate this?" The governor spoke in his own language to the machine on the desk in front of him. It was no telephone, but it
answered anyway; sometimes Moishe thought it did Zolraag's thinking for him. The Lizard resumed: "Our research demonstrates that a threat against a Tosevite's family is likely to be the most effective way to ensure his obedience."
Something in the way he phrased that made Russie notice it. "Is the same not true among the Race?" he asked, hoping to distract Zolraag from wondering why he needed extra time to think.
The ploy worked, at least for a little while. The governor emitted a most human-sounding snort; his mouth fell open in amusement. "Hardly, Herr Russie. Among our kind, matings are but for a season, driven by the scent females exude then. Females brood and raise our young— that is their role in life— but we do not have these permanent families you Tosevites know. How could we, when parentage is less certain among us?"
The Lizards were all bastards, then, in the most literal sense of the word. Moishe liked that notion, especially with what Zolraag was putting him through now. He asked, "This is so even with your Emperor?"
Zolraag cast down his eyes at the mention of his ruler's title. "Of course not, foolish Tosevite," he said. "The Emperor has females reserved for him alone, so his line may be sure to continue. So it has been for a thousand generations and more; so shall it ever be."
A harem, Russie thought. That should have made him all the more scornful of the Lizards, but somehow it did not. Zolraag spoke of his Emperor with the reverence a Jew would have given to his God. A thousand generations. With a past of that depth upon which to draw, no wonder Zolraag saw the future as merely a continuation of what had already been.
The g
overnor returned to the question he'd asked before: "With your family as security for your obedience, why do you still hesitate? This appears contrary to the results of our research on your kind."
What sort of research? Russie wondered. He didn't really want to know; the bloodless word too likely concealed more suffering than he could think about with equanimity. In doing as they pleased to people without worrying about the consequences of their actions, the Lizards weren't too different from the Nazis after all. But all of mankind was for them as Jews were for the Germans.
/ should have seen that sooner, Russie thought. Yet he could not blame himself for what he'd done before. His own people were dying then, and he'd helped save them. As so often happened, though, the short-term solution was proving part of a long-term problem.
"Please answer me, He/r Russie," Zolraag said sharply.
"How can I answer now?" Russie pleaded. "You put me between impossible choices. I must have time to think."
"I will give you one day," the governor said with the air of one making a great concession. "Past that time, I shall have no more patience with these delaying tactics."
"Yes, Your Excellency; thank you, Your Excellency." Russie scurried out of Zolraag's office before the Lizard got the bright idea of attaching a couple of guards to him. Whatever invidious comparisons he'd drawn, he had to recognize that the invaders were less efficient occupiers than the Nazis had been.
What do I do now? he wondered as he went back out into the cold. If I praise the Lizards
for bombing Washington. I deserve an assassin's bullet. If I don't...
He thought of killing himself to escape Zolraag's demands. That would save his wife and son. But he did not want to die; he'd survived too much to throw away his life, if any other way was open, he would seize it.
He was not surprised to find his feet taking him toward Mordechai Anielewicz's headquarters. If anyone could help him, the Jewish fighting leader was the man. Trouble was, he didn't know if anyone could help him.
The armed guards outside the headquarters came, if not to attention, then at least to respectful alertness as he approached. He had no trouble getting in to see Anielewicz. The fighter took one look at his face and said, "What's the Lizard said he's going to do to you?"
"Not to me, to my family." Russie told the story in a few words.
Anielewicz swore. "Let's go for a walk, Reb Moishe. I have the feeling they can listen to whatever we say in here."
"All right" Russie went out into the street again. Warsaw this winter, even outside the former ghetto, was depressingly drab. Smoke from soft-coal and wood fires hung over the city, tinting both clouds and scattered snow a dingy brown. Trees that would be green and lovely in summer now reached toward the sky bare branches that reminded Russie of skeletons' arms and fmgers. Piles of rubble were everywhere, swarmed over by antlike Poles and Jews out to take away what they could.
"So," Anielewicz said abruptly. "What did you have in mind to do?"
"I don't know, I don't know. We expected this would happen, and now it has. But I thought they would strike only at me, not at Rivka and Reuven." Russie rocked back and forth on his heels, as if mourning lost chances.
Anielewicz's eyes were hooded. "They're learning. They aren't stupid by any means, just naive. All right, here's what it comes down to: do you want to disappear, do you want your family to disappear, or should you all vanish at the same time? I've set up plans for each case, but I need to know which to run."
"What I would like," Russie said, "is for the Lizards to disappear."
"Ha." Anielewicz gave that exactly as much laughter as it deserved. "A wolf was devouring us, so we called in a tiger. The tiger isn't eating us right now, but we are still made of meat, so he's not a good neighbor to have, either."
"Neighbor? Landlord, you mean," Russie said. "And he will eat my family if I don't throw myself into his mouth."
"I asked you once already how you want to keep from doing that?"
"I can't afford to disappear," Russie said reluctantly; he would have liked nothing better. "Zolraag would just pick someone else from among us to mouth his words. He may decide to do that anyhow. But if I'm here, I serve as a reproach to whoever might want to take such a course— and to Zolraag himself, not that he cares much about reproaches from human beings. But if you can get Rivka and Reuven away..."
"I think I can. I have something in mind, anyhow." Anielewicz frowned, thinking through whatever his scheme was. In what seemed a non sequitur, he asked, "Your wife reads, doesn't she?"
"Yes, of course."
"Good. Write a note to tell her whatever you need to say about escaping: I'd bet the Lizards can hear what goes on at your flat, too. I'd be able to do that, if I were wearing their shoes."
Russie looked at the Jewish fighting leader in sharp surprise. Sometimes Anielewicz was amazingly matter-of-fact about his own deviousness. Maybe only accident of birth separated him from a Gestapo man. The thought was depressing. Even more depressing that in times like these the Jews desperately needed such men.
Anielewicz had barely paused. Now he went on, "Out loud, you talk to her about the three of you going out shopping to the marketplace on Gesia Street. Then go, but in a couple of hours. Have her wear a hat that stands out."
"What will happen then?"
The fighting leader let out an exasperated snort. "Reb Moishe, the more you know, the more somebody can squeeze out of you. Even after you see what we do, you won't know all of it— which is for the best, believe me."
"All right, Mordechai." Russie glanced over at his companion. "I hope you're not putting yourself in too much danger on account of me."
"Life is a gamble— we've learned about that these past few years, haven't we?" Atiielewicz shrugged. "Sooner or later you lose, but there are times when you have to bet anyhow. Go on, do what I told you. I'm glad you don't want to go into hiding yourself. We need you; you're our conscience."
Moishe felt like a conscience, a guilty one, all the way back to his block of flats. He paused
along the way to scribble a note to his wife along the lines Anielewicz had suggested. As be stuck it back into his pocket, he wondered if he'd really have to use it. When he turned the last corner, he saw Lizard guards standing at the entrance to the apartment building. They hadn't been there the day before. Guilt evaporated. To save his family, he would do what he must.
The Lizards scrutinized him as he approached. "You— Russie?" one of them asked in hesitant German.
"Yes," he snapped, and pushed past. Two steps later, he wondered if he should have lied. The Lizards seemed to have as much trouble telling people from one another as he did telling them apart. He stamped angrily on the stairs as he climbed up to his own flat. Maybe he'd wasted a chance.
"What's the matter?" Rivka asked, blinking,
when he slammed the door behind him.
"Nothing." He answered as lightly as he could, mindful Zolraag's minions might be listening. "Why don't we go shopping with Reuven this afternoon? We'll see what they're selling over on Gesia Street."
His wife looked at him as if he'd suddenly taken leave of his senses. Not only was he anything but an enthusiastic shopper, his cheery manner did not match the way he'd stormed into the apartment. Before she could say anything, he pulled out the note and handed it to her.
"What is—?" she began, but fell silent at his urgent shushing motions. Her eyes widened as she read what he'd written. She rose to the occasion like a trouper. "All right, we'll go out," she said happily, though all the while her glance darted this way and that in search of the microphones he'd warned her about
If we could spot them so easily, they wouldn't be a menace, he thought He said, "When we go, why don't you put on that new gray fur hat you bought? It goes so nicely with your eyes." At the same time, he nodded vigorously to show her he wanted to be certain she did just that.
"I will. In fact, I'll fetch it now so I don't forget," she said, adding over her shoulder, "You shoul
d tell me things like that more often." She sounded more mischievous than reproachful, but he felt a twinge of guilt just the same.
The hat, a sturdy one with earflaps, had once belonged to a Red Army soldier. It wasn't feminine, but it was warm, which counted for more in a city full of scarcity and too near empty of fuel. And it did set off her eyes well.
They made small talk to kill the time
Anielewicz had asked them to kill. Then Rivka buttoned her coat, put a couple of extra layers of outer clothes on Reuven— who squealed with excitement at the prospect of going out— and left the apartment with Moishe. As soon as they were outside, she said, "Now what exactly is this all about? Why are we—?"