by neetha Napew
While they walked to the stairs and then down them, he explained more than he'd been able to put in his note. He finished, "So they'll spirit the two of you away somehow, to keep the Lizards from using you to get a hold on me."
"What will they do with us?" she demanded. "Where will we go?"
"I don't know," he said. "Mordechai wouldn't tell me. He may not know himself, but leave the choice to people the Lizards won't automatically question. Though any rabbi would have a fit to hear me say it, sometimes ignorance is the best defense."
"I don't want to leave you," she said. "Running from danger while you stay in it isn't right. I—"
Before she could say won't, he broke in, "This is the best thing you can do to keep me safe, too." He wanted to say more, but by then they were at the entrance to the flats, and he couldn't be sure how much Yiddish or Polish the Lizard guards there knew.
Somehow he wasn't surprised when those guards, instead of staying at their post, started following him and his family. They didn't come right alongside as if they were jailers, but they never let the Russies get more than ten or twelve meters ahead. If he or Rivka had tried to break and run, the Lizards would have had no trouble capturing or shooting them. Besides, if they broke and ran, they'd wreck whatever plan Anielewicz had made.
So they kept walking, outwardly as calm as if nothing unusual were happening. By the time
they got to the market, four Lizards trailed them and two more walked ahead; with their swiveling eyes, the aliens could keep watch without constantly turning their heads back over their shoulders.
Gesia Street, as usual, boiled with life. Hawkers loudly peddled tea, coffee, and hot water laced with saccharine from samovars, turnips from pushcarts. A man with a pistol stood guard over a crate of coal. Another sat behind a table on which he had set out spare parts for bicycles. A woman displayed bream from the Vistula. The weather was cold enough to keep the fish fresh till spring.
Several stands sold captured German and Russian military clothing. More German gear was available, but the Red Army equipment brought higher prices—the Russians knew how to fight cold. Rivka had bought her hat at one of these stands. Now, Moishe saw, even Lizards crowded around them. That made him
abruptly move away.
"Where are we going?" Rivka asked when he swerved.
"I don't exactly know," he said. "We'll just wander about and see what there is to see." Wander about and let Anielewicz's men see us, he thought.
As if from a distant dream, he remembered the days before the war, when he could walk into any. tailor's or grocer's or butcher's in Warsaw, find what he wanted, and be sure he had the zlotys to buy it. Compared to those days, the market on Gesia Street was privation personified. Compared to what the ghetto market had been like when the Nazis ruled Warsaw, it seemed cigar-smoking Wall Street capitalist affluence.
People surged this way and that, buying and bartering, trading bread for books, marks for
meat, vodka for vegetables. The Lizards who were watching Russie and his family had to get closer to make sure their quarry did not somehow vanish in the crowds. Even then, they had no easy time because they couldn't even see over or through the taller humans who kept stepping between them and the Russies.
Moishe suddenly found himself in the middle of a large knot of large men. By main force of will, he made himself keep his face straight— a lot of them came from the ranks of Mordechai Anielewicz's fighters. Whatever happened would happen now.
One of Anielewicz's men bent down, muttered something in Rivka's ear. She nodded, squeezed Moishe's hand hard, then let go. He heard her say, "Come on, Reuven." A couple of burly fighters shouldered themselves between him and his wife and son. He looked away, biting the inside of his lip and fighting
back tears.
A few seconds later, a hand joined his again. He spun round, half afraid something was wrong, half delighted he wouldn't have to be separated from Rivka and Reuven after all. But the young woman whose fingers interlaced with his, though a fair skinned, gray-eyed brunette who wore Rivka's hat, was not his wife. Nor was the boy beside her his son.
"We'll wander around the marketplace a few more minutes, then go back to your flat," she said quietly.
Russie nodded. This impostor's coat was much like his wife's, the hat was hers. He didn't think the ploy would have fooled, say, SS men, but to the Lizards, one human looked much like another. They might well have recognized Rivka by her hat rather than her features— that obviously was Anielewicz's gamble, at any rate.
Russie's first urge was to crane his neck to see where the fighters were taking his family. He fought it down. Then he really realized he was holding the hand of a woman not his wife. He jerked away as if she'd suddenly become red-hot. He would have been even more mortified if she'd laughed at him. To his relief, she just nodded in sympathetic understanding.
But his relief did not last long. "Could we leave now?" he asked. "It's not only the Lizards, and it's not that I'm not grateful, but people will see us together and wonder what on earth we're doing. Or rather, they won't wonder— they'll decide they know."
"Yes, that is one of the things that can go wrong," the woman agreed, as coolly as if she were one of Anielewicz's rifle-toting fighters herself. "But this was the best way we could come up with to make the switch on short notice."
We? Russie thought She is a fighter, then, regardless of whether she carries a gun. So is the boy. He said, "What's your name? How can I thank you properly if I don't know who you are?"
She smiled. "I'm Leah. And this is David."
"Hello, David," Russie said. David nodded back, as soberly as any adult might have. Moishe felt a stab of guilt at using a child to protect himself.
A short woman with curly gray hair pushed her way between the fighters around him. "Reb Moishe, I need to ask you—" she began. Her words trailed away as she noticed Leah was not Rivka. She backed off, her eyes as wide and staring as if Russie had sprouted a second head.
"That's torn it," Leah muttered. "You're right,
Reb Moishe we'd better go. I'm sorry for the damage I'm doing to your reputation."
"If I have to choose between my reputation and my family, I know which is more important," Russie said firmly, adding, "Besides, the way we gossip here, before long everyone will know why I'm playing this game." He spoke for Leah's benefit, but also eased his own mind because he realized he was probably right.
For the moment, though, what would spread was scandal. Before people started gathering around and pointing fingers, he and Leah and David left the market and strolled, not too fast and not too slow, back toward his home. The Lizard guards moving along in front and behind them were in a way a blessing, because they kept most folk from coming too close and puncturing the masquerade.
Russie's conscience twinged again when he
closed the door to his flat behind him. Bringing a woman— a young, attractive woman— here... shameful was the mildest word he thought of. But Leah remained utterly prosaic. She took off the fur hat, handed it back to him, smiled without saying anything: she must have been warned the Lizards might be listening. She pointed to the hat, then to herself, and shrugged as if to ask how anyone, even a Lizard, could imagine she was Rivka if she didn't have it on her head. Then she walked out the door and was gone.
The simplicity of the escape took Moishe's breath away. The Lizards hadn't posted guards right outside the flat, only at the entrance to the building. Maybe they didn't want to act as if they were intimidating him, even though they were. Or maybe, as Anielewicz had said, they were just naive about how tricky human beings could be. Whichever was true, Leah, now that she was no longer disguised as Rivka, plainly intended
to stroll right past them and off to freedom.
The boy David sat on the floor and played with Reuven's toys for a little while. Then he got up and stood by the door. Moishe opened it for him. He nodded again with that surprising gravity, then went out into the hall. Russie closed the door.
The flat seemed achingly huge and achingly empty now that he was here alone. He walked into the bedroom, shook his head, came out again in a hurry. Then he went into the kitchen and shook his head for a different reason— he was no cook, and now he'd have to feed himself for a while. He found some black bread and a slab of cheese on the counter. He picked a knife from the dairy service, made himself a sandwich, if he wanted anything fancier than that, he'd need to get someone else to fix it for him.
Of course, the Lizards might fix things so he
wouldn't have to worry about food any more. He tried not to dwell on that. He went back into the main room, pulled out an old medical text on diseases of the large intestine. His eyes went back and forth, he turned pages, but he remembered nothing of what he read.
He slept badly that night. Rivka's bed next to his, Reuven's little cot, painfully reminded him his loved ones were not here. He was used to soft breathing and occasional snores in the bedroom with him. The silence their absence imposed on him somehow was more disturbing than a dreadful racket; he felt smothered in thick wool batting.
He ate more bread and cheese the next morning. He was still puttering around afterward, trying to figure out what to do next, when something clicked against the front door. Lizard claws tapping the wood in the quick little drum-rattle the aliens used in place of a knock.
Russie's mouth went dry. He'd hoped he'd have a full day in which to pretend to be making up his mind. But no. He opened the door. To his surprise, Zolraag himself stood in the hall, along with a large contingent of guards. "Excellency," Russie stammered. "I am honored. W-won't you come in?"
"There is no need," Zolraag answered. "I ask you one question, Herr Russie: will you speak over the radio as we desire and require of you?"
"No, Excellency, I shall not." Moishe waited for the sky to fall.
The Lizard governor remained businesslike. "Then we shall persuade you." His eyes swiveled toward one of the guards. "Your males shall now seize the Tosevite female and hatchling." He spoke, of course, in his own language, but Russie followed him well enough.
"It shall be done." The guard— officer?— hissed orders to the Lizards with him. One of them pointed his rifle at Russie, who stood very still.
"You will not interfere, Herr Russie," Zolraag said.
"I will not interfere," Moishe agreed.
Some guards went into the kitchen, Others into the bedroom. All returned in short order. "The other Big Uglies are not here, superior sir, Provincelord," one of them reported. Had he been a man, Russie would have said he sounded worried.
"What?" the guard leader and Zolraag said together. The Lizard governor's eyes drilled into Russie. "Where are they?"
"Excellency, I do not know." Russie wished he could be as brave as Anielewicz's fighters,
who seemed to go into combat without a trace of worry. If Zolraag had been angry at him before, he'd be furious now— but at least he could no longer vent that fury on the innocent. Russie went on, "As your male said, they are not here."
"Where did they go?" Zolraag demanded. "I don't know that, either."
"You cannot deceive me as easily as you would hope," Zolraag said. "The female and hatchling were observed to return to this dwelling with you yesterday. They were not seen to leave. Therefore they must be in the building somewhere." He turned to the guard officer with whom he'd spoken before. "Summon more males. We shall peel this hovel as if it were a Weggfruit."
"Provincelord, it shall be done." The guard spoke into one of the incredibly small,
incredibly light radiotelephones the Lizards carried.
Watching him, Russie tried not to show the jubilation he felt. Whatever happened to him, Rivka and Reuven were out of Zolraag's clawed, scaly hands. The Lizards were welcome to search the block of flats from now until the Messiah came. They wouldn't find what wasn't there.
They made a good game try of it, though. Moishe didn't hear their lorries pull up, as he had too many times when the Nazis rumbled into the ghetto on a sweep. But the noises that came through his open doorway after the Lizards swarmed into the building were all too familiar— rifle butts hammering on doors, frightened Jews wailing as they were herded into hallways, overturned furniture crashing to the ground.
"Excellency, out of all the people in the world,
we hailed you as rescuers when you came to Warsaw, and fought on your side against other men," Russie said. "Now you are doing your best to turn us into foes."
"You turn yourselves into foes by failing to obey," Zolraag answered.
"We were happy to be your allies. I told you before that being your slaves, obeying because we have to rather than because we think you are in the right, is something else again."
Zolraag made his unhappy-samovar noise. "Your effrontery is intolerable."
Time dragged on. Every so often, a Lizard would come in and report to the governor. Not surprisingly, the searchers had no luck. Zolraag kept right on sounding like a teakettle with something wrong with it. Russie wondered if he could have hidden his wife and
son in plain sight. Maybe so. The Lizards had already shown they weren't any good at telling one human from another. What they were probably doing now was looking for anyone in hiding.
They did bring one little old man with a white beard up in front of Zolraag, but the governor knew enough to dismiss him as a likely spouse for Moishe. By late afternoon, the Lizards confessed failure. Zolraag glared at Russie. "You think you have won a victory, do you, Big Ugly?" He hardly ever hurled the Lizards' offensive nickname for humanity into Moishe's face. That he did so now was a measure of his wrath. "Let me tell you, you shall not prove the happier for it"
"Do what you like with me, Excellency," Russie said. "From your point of view, I suppose you have that right. But I think no one has any business taking hostages and enforcing his will through fear."
"When I seek your opinions, be assured I shall request them of you," the governor replied. "Until that time, keep them to yourself.'
Russie tried to figure out what he would do in Zolraag's position. Probably stick a gun to the recalcitrant human's head, hand him a script, and tell him to read it or else. And what would he do himself in the face of a threat like that? He hoped for defiance, but was far from sure he could come up with it. Few men had within them the stuff of martyrs.
Zolraag was not quite so peremptory as he'd feared. The Lizard said, "I shall consult with my superiors, Herr Russie, over the proper steps to take in response to this unprecedented act of defiance on your part." He strode away, his retinue trailing after him.
Limp as a wet blotter, Russie sank down onto the sofa. Unprecedented, he decided, was the word that had saved him. The Lizards were
not good at thinking on their feet, at knowing what to do when something failed to go according to plan. That didn't mean he was out of danger, though, only that it was deferred for the moment. Somewhere higher in the Lizards' hierarchy was a male who could tell Zolraag what to do. And Zolraag, Russie knew, would do it, whatever it was.
He went into the kitchen, ate more bread and cheese. Then he opened the door— the bathroom was down at the end of the hall. Two armed Lizard guards stood outside; they'd been so quiet, he'd had no clue they were there.
They marched to the toilet with him. Despite his indignant protest, one went inside and kept watch on him while he made water. Then they marched him back to the apartment. He wondered if they'd come in with him, but they didn't.
Still, they made sure he wasn't going anywhere they didn't want him to go. As Mordechai had said, they weren't stupid. He looked around the flat. He was trapped, awaiting sentence.
15
An hour outside Chicago. Crouched behind an overturned drill press in a shattered factory building in Aurora, Illinois, Mutt Daniels reflected that this was about as close to the Windy City as he'd come since he fell out of the big leagues thirty years before.
The noise he made was half laugh, half cough. Steam swirled fro
m his mouth, thick as cigarette smoke. Even in a sheepskin coat he shivered. Snow dnfted down on him through holes in the roof. He kept his hands jammed in his pockets. If he happened to brush them against the frozen bare metal of the drill press, he knew it would strip off his skin like a scaling knife getting a bluegill ready for the frying pan.
Clanking outside in the rubble-strewn street. A few feet away, sprawled in back of a lathe lay Sergeant Schneider. "That there's a Lizard
tank," Daniels whispered, hoping Schneider would tell him he was wrong. But the veteran noncom just nodded. Daniels swore. We didn't have to worry about these god damn things when we were Over There in the last war."
"Too goddamn right we didn't," Schneider said. "And all the time then I thought things couldn't get any worse." He spat on the floor. "Shows what I know, don't it?"