by neetha Napew
He shrugged on the knapsack. His shoulders and back did indeed feel the weight. If he had to haul it around for a while, he might even end up somewhere close to svelte. He hadn't
been anything but portly— or worried about it— since his West Point days.
"I assume you have plans on how to reach, ah, Denver with your burden there," Stansfield said. "I do apologize, for my limited ability to help you in that regard, but we are only a submarine, not a subterrene." He grinned again; he seemed taken with the idea of sailing to Colorado.
"Can't talk about that, I'm afraid," Groves said. "By rights, I shouldn't even have told you where I'm going."
Commander Stansfield nodded in understanding sympathy. He would have been even more sympathetic, Groves thought, had he known just how sketchy the American's plans were. He'd been ordered not to fly toward Denver; a plane was too likely to get knocked down. Not many trains were running, and even fewer cars. That left shank's mare,
horseback, and luck— and as an engineer, Groves didn't take much stock in luck.
Complicating matters further was the stranglehold the Lizards had on the Midwest. Here on the coast, they were just raiders. But the farther inland you went, the more they seemed to have settled down to stay.
Groves wondered why the aliens didn't pay more attention to the ocean and to the land that lay alongside it. They hit land and air transportation all over the world, but ships still had a decent chance of getting through. Maybe that said something about the planet they came from. Groves shook his head. He had more immediate things to worry about.
Not least of them was the battle breaking out right around halfway between here and Denver. If that went wrong, not only would Chicago surely fall, but the United States would be hard pressed to put up more than
guerrilla resistance to, the Lizards anywhere outside the East Coast. For that matter, getting to Denver might not matter if the battle went wrong, though Groves knew he'd keep going until he was either dead or ordered to turn aside.
He must have looked grim, for Commander Stansfield said, "Colonel, I've heard it said that your Navy bans alcohol aboard its vessels. Fortunately, the Royal Navy observes no such tiresome custom. Would you care for a tot of rum to fortify you for the journey ahead?"
"Commander, I'd be delighted, by God," Groves said. "Thank you."
"My pleasure— I thought it might do you some good. Wait here, if you please; I'll be back directly."
Stansfield hurried down the steel tube of the
hull toward the rear of the submarine— aft, Groves supposed it was called in proper naval jargon. He watched the British officer lean into a little chamber off to the side of the main tube. His cabin, Groves realized. Stansfield didn't need to lean very far; the cabin had to be tiny. Bunks were stacked three deep, with bare inches between them. All things considered, the Seanymph was a claustrophobe's nightmare brought to clattering life.
The squat brown glass jug in Commander Stansfield's hand gurgled encouragingly. "Jamaican, than which there is none finer," he said, puffing the cork. Groves could almost taste the thick, heavy aroma that rose from it. Stansfield poured two healthy tots, handed one glass to Groves.
"Thanks." Groves took it with appropriate reverence. He raised it high— and almost
barked his knuckles on a pipe that ran along the low ceiling. "His Majesty, the King!" he said gravely.
"His Majesty the King," Stansfield echoed. "Didn't think you Yanks knew to make that one."
"I read it somewhere." Groves knocked back the rum at a gulp. It was so smooth, his throat hardly knew he swallowed it, but it exploded in his stomach like a mortar round, throwing warmth in all directions. He looked at the empty glass with genuine respect. "That, Commander, is the straight goods."
"So it is." Stansfield sipped more sedately. He proffered the bottle once more. "Another?"
Groves shook his head. "One of those is medicinal. Two and I'd want to go to sleep. I appreciate the offer, though."
"You have a clear notion of what's best for you. I admire that." Stansfield turned so he faced west. The motion was quite deliberate; Groves imagined— as he was supposed to imagine—the Royal Navy man peering out through the sub's hull and across two thousand miles of dangerous country to the promised land of Denver, high in the Rockies. After a moment, Stansfield added, "I must say I don't envy you, Colonel."
Groves shrugged. With the heavy canvas knapsack on his shoulders, he felt like Atlas, trying to support the whole world. "The job has to be done, and I'm going to do it."
Rivka Russie scratched a match against the sole of her shoe. It flared into life. She used it to light, first one shabbas candle, then the other. Bowing her head over them, she murmured the Sabbath blessing.
The puff of sulfurous smoke from the matchhead filled the little underground room and made Moishe Russie cough. The fat white candles were a sign he and his family had survived another week without the Lizards' finding them. They also helped light the bunker where the Russies sheltered.
Rivka lifted the ceremonial cloth cover from a braided loaf of challah. "I want some of that bread, Mama!" Reuven exclaimed.
"Let me slice it first, if you please," Rivka told her son. "Look: we even have some honey to spread on it."
All the comforts of home. The irony of the phrase echoed in Moishe's mind. Instead of their flat, they sheltered in this secret chamber buried under another Warsaw apartment block. In further irony, the bunker had been built to shelter Jews not from the Lizards but from the Nazis, yet here he used it
to save himself from the creatures who had saved him from the Germans.
And yet the words were not entirely ironic. The vast majority of Warsaw's Jews lived far better under the Lizards than they had when Hitler's henchmen ruled the city. The wheat-flour challah, rich with eggs and dusted with poppy seeds, would have been unimaginable in the starving Warsaw ghetto— Russie remembered too well the chunk of fatty, sour pork for which he'd given a silver candlestick the night the Lizards came to Earth.
"When will I get to go out and play again?" Reuven asked. He looked from Rivka to Moishe and back again, hoping one of them would give him the answer he wanted.
They looked at each other, too. Moishe felt himself sag. "I don't know exactly," he told his son; he could not bring himself to lie to the boy. "I hope it will be soon, but more likely the
day won't come for quite some time." "Too bad," Reuven said.
"Don't you think we could—?" Rivka broke off, tried again: "I mean, who would betray a little boy to the Lizards?"
Moishe usually let his wife run their household, not least because she was better at it than he was. But now he said, "No," so sharply that Rivka stared at him in surprise. He went on, "We dare not let him go up above ground. Remember how many Jews were willing to betray their brethren to the Nazis for a crust of bread regardless of what the Nazis were doing to us? People have cause to like the Lizards, at least compared to the Germans. He wouldn't be safe where anybody could see him."
"All right," Rivka said. 7f you think he'd be in danger up there, here he'll stay." Reuven let
out a disappointed howl, but she ignored him.
"Anyone who has anything to do with me is in danger," Moishe answered bitterly. "Why do you think we never get to talk to the fighters who bring our supplies?" The door to the bunker was concealed by a sliding plasterboard panel; with the panel closed, the entranceway looked like a blank wall from the other side.
Russie wondered if the anonymous men who kept his family in food and candles even knew whom they were helping. He could easily imagine Mordechai Anielewicz ordering them to take their— boxes down and leave them in the basement without telling them whom the things were for. Why not? What the men didn't know, they couldn't tell the Lizards.
He made a sour face: he was learning to think like a soldier. All he'd wanted to do was heal people and then, after the Lizards came like a
sign from heaven, set people free. And the result?
Here he was in hiding and thinking like a killer, not a healer.
Not too long after supper, Reuven yawned and went to bed without his usual fuss. In the dark, closed bunker, night and day no longer had much meaning for the little boy. Had the fighters not furnished the place with a clock, Moishe would have had no idea of the hour, either. One day he'd forget to wind it and slip into timelessness himself.
The shabbas candles were still burning. By their light, Moishe helped Rivka wash the supper dishes (though without electricity, the bunker had running water). She. smiled at him. "The time you lived by yourself taught you some things. You're much better at that than you used to be."
"What you have to do, you learn to do," he answered philosophically. "Hand me that
towel, would you?"
He'd just slid the last dish into its stack when he heard noise in the cellar next to the hidden bunker: men moving about in heavy shoes. He and Rivka froze. Her face was frightened; he was sure his was, too. Had their secret been betrayed? The Lizards wouldn't shout "Juden heraus!" but he didn't want to be caught by them any more than by the Nazis.
He wished he had a weapon. He wasn't altogether a soldier yet, or he'd have had the sense to ask for one before he sealed himself away here. Too late to worry about it now.
The footsteps came closer. Russie strained his ears, trying to pick out the skitters and clicks that would have meant Lizards were walking with the humans. He thought he did. Fear rose up in him like a smothering cloud.
The people— and aliens?— stopped just on
the other side of the plasterboard barrier. Moishe's eyes flicked to the candlesticks that held the Sabbath lights. These were of pottery, not silver like the one he'd given up for food. But they were heavy, and of a length to serve as bludgeons. / won't go down without a fight, he promised himself.
Someone rapped on the barrier. Russie grabbed for a candlestick, then caught himself: two knocks a pause, then another knock was the signal Anielewicz's men used when they brought him supplies. But they'd just done that a couple of days before, and the bunker still held plenty. They seemed to have a schedule of sorts, and even though the signal was right, the timing wasn't.
Rivka knew that, too. "What do we do?" she mouthed silently.
"I don't know," Moishe mouthed back. What he did know, though he didn't want to
dishearten his wife by saying so, was that if the Lizards were out there, they were going to take him. But the footsteps receded. Had he really heard skitterings after all?
Rivka raised her voice to a whisper. "Are they gone?"
"I don't know," Russie said again. After a moment, he added, "Let's find out." If the Lizards knew he was here, they didn't need to wait for him to come out.
He picked up a candlestick, lit candle still inside (the cellar was as dark as the bunker would have been without light), unbarred the door, took half a step forward so he could slide aside the plasterboard panel. No box of food sat in front of it... but an envelope lay on the cement floor. He scooped it up, replaced the concealing panel, and went back into his hidey-hole.
"What is it?" Rivka asked when he was back inside.
"A note or letter of some sort," he answered, holding up the envelope. He tore it open, pulled out the folded sheet of paper inside, and held it close to the candlestick so he could see what it said. The one great curse of this underground life was never having either sunlight or electric light by which to read.
The candle sufficed for something short, though. He unfolded the paper. On it was a neatly typed paragraph in Polish. He read the words aloud for Rivka's benefit: "Just so you know, your latest message has been received elsewhere and widely circulated. Reaction is very much as we had hoped. Sympathy for us outside the area has increased, and certain parties would have red faces under other circumstances. They still would like to congratulate you for your wit. Suggest you let them continue to lavish their praises from a
distance."
"That's all?" Rivka asked when he was through. "No signature or anything?"
"No," he answered. "I can make a pretty good guess about who sent it, though, and I expect you can, too."
"Anielewicz," she said.
"That's what I think," Moishe agreed. The note had all the hallmarks of the Jewish fighting leader. No wonder it was in Polish: he'd been thoroughly secular before the war. Being typewritten made it harder to trace if it fell into the wrong hands. So did its elliptical phrasing: someone who didn't know for whom it was intended would have trouble figuring out what it was supposed to mean. Anielewicz was careful every way he could think of. Moishe was sure he wouldn't know how the note had got down to the bunker.
Rivka said, "So the recording got abroad. Thank God for that. I wouldn't want you known as the Lizards' puppet."
"No; thank God I'm not." Moishe started to laugh. "I'd like to see Zolraag with his face all red." After what the Lizard governor had done to him, he wanted Zolraag both embarrassed and furious. From what the note said, he was getting his wish.
One of the things with which the bunker had been stocked was a bottle of slivovitz. Till now, Moishe had ignored it. He pulled it off the high shelf where it sat, yanked out the cork, and poured two shots. Handing one glass to Rivka, he raised the other himself.
"Confusion to the Lizards!" he said.
They both sipped the plum brandy. Fire ran down Moishe's throat. Rivka coughed several times. Then she lifted her glass. Quietly, she
offered a toast of her own: "Freedom for our people, and even, one day, for us."
"Yes." Moishe finished the slivovitz. One of the Sabbath candles went out, filling the bunker with the smell of hot tallow— and cutting the light inside almost in half. New shadows swooped.
"The other one will go soon," Rivka said, watching that flame approach the candlestick, too.
"I know," Moishe answered gloomily. Up where Reuven could not knock them over, two little oil lamps burned. But for being made out of tin, they probably weren't much different from the ones the Maccabees had used when they took the Temple in Jerusalem away from Antiochus and his Greeks. The tiny amount of light they gave made Moishe think they were primitive, anyhow.
He carefully refilled them all the same. Waking up in absolute blackness in the crowded little underground room was a nightmare he'd suffered only once. The dreadful groping search for a box of matches made him vow never to go through it again. He'd lived up to the vow so far.
Reuven, Rivka, and he all shared one crowded bed. He gently rolled his son against the far wall. Reuven mumbled and thrashed, but didn't wake up. Moishe got into bed next to him, held up the covers so Rivka could slide in, too.
His hand brushed her hip as he let the blankets down over them. She turned toward him. The lamps gave just enough light to let him see the questioning look on her face. The touch had been as much an accident as a caress, but he drew her to him just the same. The questioning look turned to a smile.
Later, they lay nestled together like spoons, her backside warm against the bottom of his belly. It was a gentle way to make love, and one not likely to disturb their son. Moishe stroked Rivka's hair. She laughed quietly. "What's funny?" he asked. He could hear sleepiness blur his voice.
She laughed again. "We didn't do— this— so much when we were first married."
"Well, maybe not," he said. "I was just starting medical school and busy all the time, and then the baby came..."
And now. he thought, what else is there to do? It's too dark to read much, we're both sleeping a lot— if we didn't take our pleasure from each othet we'd be as cross as a couple of bears cooped up down here.
He didn't think saying he enjoyed Rivka's body
because there wasn't anything else to do would endear him to her. Instead, he said with mock severity, "Most women, I hear, kvetch because their husbands don't pay them enough attention. Are you complaintng because I pay you too much?"
"I didn't think I was complaintng." She moved away from the edge of the bed, and agains
t him. Pressed tight against her firm flesh, he felt himself begin to rise again. So did she. Without a word, she raised a leg enough to let him slip himself back into her. Her breath sighed out when he did.
No hurry, he thought. We aren't going anywhere. Unhurriedly, he tried to make the best of where they were.
The door to Bobby Fiore's cell hissed open. It
wasn't the usual time for food, as well as he could judge without any clock. He looked around hopefully. Maybe the Lizards were bringing in Liu Han.
But no. It was only Lizards: the usual armed guards and another one, the latter with more elaborate body paint than the others. He'd figured out that was a mark of status among them, just as a man who wore a fancy suit was likely to be a bigger wheel than one in bib overalls and a straw hat.
The Lizard with the expensive paint job said something in his own language, too fast for Fiore to follow. He said as much, / don't understand being a phrase he'd found worth memorizing. The Lizard said, "Come—with," in English.