Aftershocks

18

“Yes, Colonel Webster,” Jonathan Yeager’s father was saying into the telephone. “I think we’ll be all right if we keep cool. We have to stay firm out there, but we can’t get pushy about it or we’ll make them nervous. My professional opinion is, everybody’d be sorry if that happened.” He listened for a moment, then said, “Okay, sir, I’ll put it in writing for you, too,” and hung up.

“More trouble about the motors on the rocks in the asteroid belt?” Jonathan asked.

His dad nodded. “You betcha. They can’t blame me for that one, so they’re asking my advice instead.” Sam Yeager’s chuckle sounded sour to Jonathan. “Hell, son, I didn’t even know this was going on-though I’ve got to tell you, I’ve had suspicions ever since that big meteor slammed into Mars.”

“Have you?” Jonathan raised an eyebrow. “You never said anything about it to me-or to Mom, either, that I know of.”

“Nope.” His father shook his head. “Not much point to talking about suspicions when you don’t know for sure. Last time I was back in Little Rock, I did ask President Stassen about it.”

“Did you?” That his father was in a position to ask questions of the president of the United States still sometimes bemused Jonathan. “What did he tell you?”

“Not much.” His father looked grim. “I didn’t really expect him to. He was probably afraid I’d go running to the Lizards with whatever I heard. That’s nonsense, but it’s nonsense I’m going to be stuck with for the rest of my life.”

“That’s not fair!” Jonathan exclaimed with the ready outrage of youth.

“Probably not, but I’m stuck with it, as I said.” His dad shrugged. “I could go on and talk about what sort of lesson that should be for you, and that you should always keep an eye on your reputation no matter what. But if I did that, you’d probably look around for something to hit me over the head with.”

“Yeah, probably,” Jonathan agreed. “You’re not too bad as far as lectures go, but-”

“Thanks a lot,” his father broke in. “Thanks a hell of a lot.”

Jonathan grinned at him. “Any old time, Dad.” But the grin had trouble staying on his face. “What are the Lizards going to do, out there in the asteroid belt? If they try doing anything, will we fight them?”

“It’s like I told Ed Webster: if we don’t do anything to get ’em twitchy, I think we can ride out the storm,” his father answered. “But I also think they have to think we’d fight if they did try anything out there. A lot of the time, you end up not having to fight if you show you’re ready to in a pinch.”

“If we did fight the Race, we’d lose, wouldn’t we?” Jonathan asked.

“Now? Sure we would, same as we would have last summer,” his father replied. “But that’s not the point, or it’s only part of the point. The other part is how bad we’d hurt ’em if we went down swinging. They don’t like what the Nazis did to them, and we’d do more and worse.” He sighed. “If that outbound probe of theirs hadn’t spotted our rocket lighting up, we could have built a much stronger position out in the asteroid belt before the Race caught on.”

A strong position in the asteroid belt was something less than important to Jonathan. “Do you think there’ll be a war, or not?” he asked. “The whole idea of fighting the Race seems like such a waste of everything worthwhile to me…”

“I know it does,” his father said slowly. “It seems that way to a lot of kids in your generation. I’ll tell you something, though: when the Lizards first came to Earth, they shot up the train I was riding on, and I volunteered for the Army as soon as I made it into a town where they’d take me. So did Mutt Daniels, my manager, and he was about as old then as I am now. They took both of us, too. They didn’t even blink. That’s how things were back in those days.”

Jonathan knew that was how things had been back in those days. He tried to imagine it, tried and felt himself failing. Stumbling a little, he said, “But the Race isn’t so bad, really. You know that’s true, Dad.”

“I know it’s true now,” Sam Yeager said. “I didn’t know it then. Nobody knew it then. All we knew was that the Lizards came out of nowhere and started beating the crap out of us. And if we-and the Reds, and the Nazis, and the British, and the Japs-hadn’t fought like mad bastards, the Lizards would’ve conquered the whole world, and you and your pals wouldn’t be looking at them from the outside and thinking how hot they are. You’d be looking at ’em up from under, and no way to get out from under ’em.”

“Okay. Okay.” Jonathan hadn’t expected a speech. Maybe his dad hadn’t expected to make one, either, because he looked a little surprised at himself. Jonathan went on, “I understand what you’re saying, honest. Things do seem different to me, though. I can’t pretend they don’t.”

“I know they do.” His father’s laugh was rueful. “You take the Race and spaceships and explosive-metal bombs and computing machines for granted. They’re part of the landscape to you. You’re not an old fogy who remembers the days before they got here.”

“No, not me.” Jonathan shook his head. The old days, like Dad said, he thought, and then, The bad old days. People didn’t know much back then.

Now his father was the one who said, “Okay. You can’t help being young, any more than I can help being… not so damn young.” He ran a hand through his hair, which really was getting thin on top. But even if he wasn’t so young, even if he was going bald, his eyes could still get a wicked twinkle in them. “Of course, if it weren’t for the Lizards, you wouldn’t be here at all, because I never would have met your mother if they hadn’t come.”

“I know. You’ve told me that before. I don’t like thinking about it.” Jonathan didn’t like thinking about that at all. Imagining his own existence as depending on a quirk of fate was uncomfortable. Uncomfortable? Hell, it was downright terrifying. As far as he could tell, he’d always been here and always would be here. Anything that shook such foundations was not to be trusted.

“What do you like thinking about?” his father asked slyly. “Your wedding, maybe? Or your wedding night?”

“Dad!” Reproach rang in Jonathan’s voice. His father was an old man. He had no business thinking about stuff like that.

“Just wait till you have kids,” his father warned him. “You’ll tell them about what it might have taken to make sure they weren’t born, and they won’t want to listen to you, either.”

“I hope I don’t go and do stuff like that,” Jonathan said. “Maybe I’ll remember how much I hated it when you did it to me.”

His dad laughed at him, which only annoyed him more than ever. Sam Yeager said, “Maybe. But don’t bet anything much on it, or you’ll be sorry. I didn’t like it when my father did it to me, but that’s not stopping me. Once you get to a certain age and see your kid acting a certain way, well, you just naturally start acting a certain way yourself.”

“Do you?” Jonathan said darkly. He wanted to think he’d be different when he turned into an old man, but would he? How could he tell now? A lot of years lay between him and his father’s age, and he was in no hurry to pass through them.

“Yeah, you do,” his father said, “however much you think you won’t till you get there.” He grinned at Jonathan again, this time less pleasantly. Jonathan scowled. His father could outguess him better than the other way round. That struck Jonathan as most unfair, too. Once upon a time, his dad had been young, and he still-sometimes, sort of-remembered what it was like. But Jonathan hadn’t got old yet, so how was he supposed to think along with his father?

He gave ground now: “If you say so.”

“I damn well do,” his dad said. “How are you coming along with figuring out how to tie a bow tie?”

Jonathan threw his hands in the air in almost theatrical despair. “I don’t think I’ll ever get it so it looks right with a fancy tux.”

That made his father laugh. “It wasn’t anything I had to worry about when I married your mother. I was in uniform and she was wearing blue jeans. That great metropolis of-”

“Chugwater, Wyoming,” Jonathan chorused along with his father. If he’d heard about the tobacco-chewing justice of the peace who’d married his folks once, he’d heard about him a hundred times. The fellow had been post-master and sheriff, too. Not having to worry about a tux did give the story a slightly different slant, but only slightly.

His father’s eyes went far away. “Things haven’t worked so bad for Barbara and me, though,” he said, more than half to himself. “No, not so bad at all.” For a couple of seconds, he neither looked nor sounded like an old man, not even to Jonathan. He might have been looking forward to a wedding himself, not back on the one he’d had a long time ago.

“Chugwater, Wyoming.” This time, Jonathan spoke the ridiculous name in a different tone of voice. “It must be pretty hot, to be able to remember getting married in a funny place like that. I mean, a church is probably prettier and all, but everybody gets married in a church.”

“It was one of those crazy wartime things,” his father answered. “Nobody knew whether the Lizards could take Chicago, so they pulled all the physicists and the typists-your mom was one-and the Lizard POWs and the interpreter-me-and sent everybody to Denver, where it was supposed to be safer. We almost got killed just when we were setting out. A Lizard killercraft shot up our ship. That was the first time-” He broke off.

“The first time what?” Jonathan asked.

“Never mind. Nothing.” His dad turned red. Jonathan scratched his head, wondering what that was all about. If he didn’t know better, he would have sworn… He shook his head. Nobody was ever comfortable thinking about his father and mother doing that, especially before they got married. Sam Yeager went on, “Isn’t there something useful you could be doing instead of standing around here jawing with me?” By his tone, he didn’t want Jonathan thinking about that, either.

“Like what?” Jonathan didn’t feel like doing anything useful, either. “Mickey and Donald are all taken care of.” That was the chore he most often had to worry about. Not that he didn’t enjoy dealing with the two little Lizards-though not so little now. He did. But he didn’t want to get herded off to take care of them. That made him feel as if he were still little himself.

“I don’t know,” his father said. “Shall I think of something?”

“Never mind.” Jonathan decamped from the kitchen, pausing only to grab a Coke from the refrigerator. He gambled that his dad wouldn’t have time to come up with anything particularly nasty-yardwork qualified, in his opinion-before he did that, and he won his gamble.

Back in the safety of his own room, he took a big swig at the soda and started studying his assignment in the history of the Race: he had exams coming. One more semester after this one, and then I can start making a living with the Lizards, just like Karen, he thought. And, thanks to his dad, he had some of the best connections in the whole world. Friendship counted for an awful lot with the Race, and his father had more friends among the Lizards than any human being this side of Kassquit.

Poor Kassquit, he thought. Much as the Race fascinated him, he wouldn’t have wanted to get to know it the way she had. Thinking about her made him sad and horny, both at once: he couldn’t help remembering what they’d spent so much time doing up on the starship. Thinking about doing that with Kassquit made him think about doing it with Karen, and their wedding, and their wedding night. What with all that, he got very little real studying done, but he had a good time anyhow.

Rance Auerbach stared out the hotel window at the waters of the Mediterranean. Even now, with fall sliding toward winter, they remained improbably warm and improbably blue. Oh, the Gulf of Mexico pulled the same trick, but Marseille was at the same latitude as Boston, more or less. It seemed like cheating.

“We ought to get a blizzard,” he said.

Penny Summers shook her head. “No, thanks. I saw too goddamn many blizzards when I was growing up. I don’t want any more.”

“Well, I don’t, either,” Rance admitted. “But weather this good this late in the year just doesn’t feel right.” He coughed, then wheezed out a curse under his breath. Coughing hurt. It always had, ever since he got shot up. It always would, up till the day they buried him. That, or something close to it, was on his mind these days. “Maybe I’m just antsy. Damned if I know.”

“What’s to be antsy about?” Penny asked. “We’re doing great-a lot better now that they dropped on good old Pierre. Plenty of business, plenty of customers…”

“Yeah.” Auerbach lit a cigarette. That would probably make him cough some more, but he didn’t care. No, that wasn’t right. He did care, but not enough to make him quit. “Maybe it’s just that things are going too good. I keep waiting for the knock on the door at three in the morning.”

Penny shook her head. “Not this time. If they didn’t grab us when they got Pierre the Turd, they aren’t gonna do it. You and me, sweetie, we’re home free.”

Now Rance eyed her with more than a little alarm. “Whenever you start thinking like that, you get careless. Remember what happened when we took that little trip down into Mexico? I don’t want anything like that happening again. They owe us for a lot more now than they did back then.”

“You worry too much,” Penny said. “Everything’s gonna be fine, you wait and see.”

“You don’t worry enough,” Rance returned. “You go around acting like the Lizards and the Frenchmen can’t see us, you’re going to find out you’re wrong. Then you’ll be sorry, and so will I.”

“I’m not the one who’s been taking chances lately,” Penny said. “You’re the fellow who blackmailed that Lizard into finding good old Pierre’s sister a job. Of course, that was just out of the goodness of your heart. Yeah, sure it was.”

“Lay off me on account of that, will you please?” Auerbach said wearily. “I never messed around with her, and you can’t say I did no matter how much you want to pin it on me.”

“If I could, I’d be gone,” Penny answered. “I don’t stay where I’m not wanted, believe you me I don’t.” She glared at him. “But even if you didn’t do anything, I could tell you wanted to.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake.” Rance rolled his eyes. He knew that was overacting, but he needed to overact a little, because Penny wasn’t wrong. Picking his words with care and hoping that care didn’t show, he said, “She’s not ugly, but she’s not anything special. I don’t know what you’re all up in arms about.”

“Cut the crap, Rance,” Penny said crisply. “I’m not blind, and I’m not stupid, either. I said you didn’t do anything, but I know how a man looks at a woman, and I know how a man acts around a woman he’s sweet on, too. You’re not the sort of guy who charges out and does big favors for just anybody.”

That held enough truth to hurt if Rance looked at it closely. He limped over to an ashtray and stubbed out the cigarette. Returning the glare Penny’d given him, he answered, “Yeah, that’s why I threw you out on your can when you called me up out of a clear blue sky.”

“You know how I paid you back, buster.” She tugged at her skirt, as if about to pull it off. “Some other gal could do it the same way.”

“After what Monique Dutourd went through with that damn Nazi, I don’t think she pays in that coin,” Auerbach said, though he would have been interested in finding out whether he was wrong. “And we’ve been round this barn before, babe. Like I said, I sicced the Germans on that goddamn Roundbush because I wanted a piece of David Goldfarb’s ass.”

When he’d used that line before, he’d made Penny laugh. Not this time. She said, “You sicced the Nazis on Roundbush because he pissed you off. That’s the long and short of it.”

That also held some truth, but only some. Stubbornly, he said, “I did it because I don’t like to see anybody getting a raw deal. That goes for Goldfarb, and it goes for the French gal, too.”

“Yeah, a knight in shining armor,” Penny snarled.

“I already told you once, I didn’t throw you out when you called me on the phone,” Auerbach rasped. “I’ll tell you something else, too-I’m getting goddamn sick of you ragging on me all the time. You don’t like it, leave me half the cash and get your own room and run your own business and leave me the hell alone.”

“I ought to,” she said.

“Go ahead,” Rance told her. “Go right ahead. We split up once before. Did you think we were going to last forever this time?” He was spoiling for a fight. He could feel it.

“That’ll give you the excuse you need to hop on the next train for Tours and your little professor, won’t it?”Penny blazed.

Rance laughed in her face. “I knew you were gonna say that. God damn it to hell, I knew you would. But there’s something you don’t get, sweetheart. If I’m by myself, I don’t go to Tours. If I’m by myself, I go to the airport and hop on the first plane I can catch that’s heading for the States.”

Penny laughed, too, every bit as nastily as he had. “And you last about three days before the guys whose hired goons you plugged find out you’re back and fill you full of holes for payback.”

He shook his head. “I don’t think so. Once I’m home, I can fade into the woodwork again. I did it for years before you barged in and livened things up. I figure I can do it again without much trouble.”

“Go back to Fort Worth and finish drinking yourself to death? Quarter-limit poker with the boys at the American Legion hall?” Penny didn’t hide her scorn. “You reckon you can stand the excitement?”

“It wasn’t so bad,” he answered.

Before Penny could say something else nasty, the telephone on the nightstand rang. She was standing a lot closer to it than Rance was, so she picked it up. “Allo?” That tried to be French, but ended up sounding a lot more like Kansas. She listened for a minute or so, then said, “Un moment, s’il vous plait,” and held the phone out to Auerbach. “Talk to this guy, will you? I can’t make out more than about every other word.”

What that meant was, she had no idea what the Frenchman was saying. She spoke some French, but she’d always had a devil of a time understanding it when spoken. Rance limped over and took the phone from her. “Allo?” His own accent wasn’t great, but he managed.

“Hello, Auerbach,” said the frog on the other end of the line. “The shipment is early, for a wonder. You want to pick it up tonight instead of Friday?”

Now Rance said, “Un moment.” He held his hand over the mouthpiece and spoke to Penny in English: “Want to get the stuff tonight?”

“Sure,” she said at once. “Are we still in business?”

“You need me, or somebody who can really talk some, anyway,” Auerbach answered. She made a face at him. He went back to French: “C’est bon.”

“All right,” the ginger dealer said. “Usual time. Usual place. But tonight.” The line went dead.

Auerbach hung up the phone and folded his arms across his chest. “Like I said, you want to walk out on me, go right ahead. We’ll see which one of us lasts longer as a solo act.”

“Oh, screw you,” she said, and then, half laughing and half still angry, she proceeded to do exactly that. She clawed him and bit his shoulder hard enough to draw blood. As he bucked above her, he was trying to hurt her at least as much as he was trying to please her. Afterwards, panting and sweaty, she asked him, “Where you gonna get a lay like that from your professor?”

“She’s not my professor, dammit,” he said. “If you listened as well as you screw, you’d know that.”

“I don’t want to listen,” Penny said. “The more you listen, the more lies you hear. I’ve already heard too many.” But after that she did stop putting him through the wringer about Monique Dutourd, for which he was more than duly grateful.

They got dressed and went downstairs to grab a taxi. “We want to go to 7 Rue des Flots-Bleu, in the Anse de la Fausse Monnaie,” Rance said in French to the driver of the battered VW. In English, he remarked, “Just like Marseille to have a district named for counterfeit money.” Then he had to squeeze into the cab’s cramped back seat. “One more reason to hate the goddamn Nazis,” he muttered as his leg complained.

The Anse de la Fausse Monnaie lay on the southern side of the headland whose northern side helped shape Marseille’s Vieux Port. Being well to the west of the center of the city, it hadn’t suffered badly from the explosive-metal bomb. The locals hardly thought of themselves as citizens of Marseille at all. They hadn’t been till the Germans built roads connecting their little settlement to the main part of the city.

As soon as Auerbach paid off the cabby, the fellow drove away faster than a Volkswagen had any business going. Rance didn’t care for that. “He doesn’t much want to be around here, does he?” he said. “Next question is, what does he know that we don’t?” The hotel couldn’t have been more than a mile and a half away, but was effectively in a different world-and, with Rance’s bad leg, a far distant one.

Penny, as usual, refused to worry. “We’ve been here before. We’ll do fine this time, too,” she said, and headed off toward the tavern that was their target. Sighing, wishing he were carrying a submachine gun, Auerbach followed.

Inside, fishermen and hookers looked up from their booze. The barkeep had seen the two new arrivals before, though. When he jerked a thumb at the staircase and said, “Room eight,” everybody relaxed-even if the newcomers didn’t look as if they belonged, they were known, expected, and therefore not immediately dangerous.

Rance’s leg complained about the stairs, too, but he couldn’t do anything about that. By the moans and low thumpings coming from behind the thin doors upstairs, most of those rooms weren’t being used for ginger deals, but for a much older kind of transaction.

Rance knocked on the door with the tarnished brass 8. “Auerbach?” asked the Frenchman who’d telephoned.

“Who else?” he said in English. He didn’t think the frog knew any, but that didn’t matter. His ruined voice identified him as surely as a passport photo.

The door opened. A blinding light shone in his face. Another one speared Penny. The room was full of Lizards. They all pointed automatic rifles at the Americans. Rance’s imagined submachine gun wouldn’t have done him a damn bit of good. “You are under arrest for trafficking in ginger!” one of the Lizards shouted in his own language. “We shall lock you up and eat the key!”

A human would have spoken of throwing away the key. As Auerbach raised his hands over his head, he wasn’t inclined to quibble about differ-ences in slang. He’d always known this day might come. He found himself less frightened, less furious, than he’d imagined he would or could be if it did. Turning his head toward Penny, he said, “I told you so.”

“Oh, shut up,” she answered, but he still thought he got the last word.

Nesseref always checked her telephone for messages when she got home after walking Orbit. As often as not, the messages she did get were advertisements, some delivered by real members of the Race reading from scripts, some altogether electronic. She deleted both sorts without the least hesitation. Nobody was ever going to convince her that she could set foot on the road to riches by responding to a phone call from someone far likelier to be out for his profit than her own.

Today, though, she had one of a different sort. A weary-looking male’s visage appeared on her monitor. “I am Gorppet, of Security,” he said. “I am calling from Kanth, near Breslau, in the Greater German Reich. We are both acquaintances of the Big Ugly named Mordechai Anielewicz. Please return my call at your convenience. I thank you.” His recorded image disappeared.

What sort of trouble has Anielewicz found now? Nesseref wondered. Gorppet’s phone code was part of the message. She let the computer reply, wondering if she would have to record a message for him in turn. But she got him. “Small-Unit Group Leader Gorppet speaking,” he announced. “I greet you.”

“And I greet you. Shuttlecraft Pilot Nesseref, returning your call.”

“Ah. I thank you for being so prompt,” Gorppet said.

“Mordechai Anielewicz is not just an acquaintance to me,” Nesseref said. “As you will probably know, he is a friend. From your call, I presume that he is now a friend in trouble. How can I help him?”

“He is indeed a friend in trouble.” Gorppet made the affirmative gesture. “He is being held hostage by several males of the Jewish superstition here in Kanth. They may well kill him. It is even possible they have killed him already.”

“Wait!” Nesseref exclaimed. “You must be mistaken. Anielewicz belongs to this superstition himself.”

“I spoke truth,” Gorppet said. “You do know that these Jews in Poland have an explosive-metal bomb.”

“I know Anielewicz claimed to have one,” Nesseref replied. “I never knew whether that was a truth, or only a fiction intended to impress me.”

“It is, unfortunately, a truth,” Gorppet told her. “And Jews, it seems, are no more immune to factional squabbles than any other Big Uglies. A faction that wanted to damage the Deutsche to the greatest possible degree seized control of the bomb during the late fighting and moved it to this vicinity.”

“I…see.” Nesseref saw only too well, and liked none of what she saw. “What will the Deutsche do if such a bomb bursts among them? What can they do?”

“No one precisely knows except for their own high-ranking officers,” Gorppet said. “No one is eager to find out. We are operating on the assumption that they have more weapons than they surrendered to us. All evidence strongly points that way. That is why Anielewicz agreed to try to persuade these Jews to give themselves up.”

“To help the Race? To help the Deutsche?” Nesseref said. “That is extraordinarily generous of him.” She used an emphatic cough.

Gorppet’s voice was dry: “I doubt those were his main motivations. I think he was more concerned lest Poland, his homeland, receive the brunt of whatever counterattack the Deutsche might make.”

“Ah. Yes, that does make a certain amount of sense,” Nesseref agreed. “But you have not answered the first question I asked you: how can I help him?”

“I have not thought of any direct way,” Gorppet said. “Still, you know him well and you know Big Uglies well in general, especially for a female from the colonization fleet. Would you be willing to enter the Reich and become part of the team that is seeking to regain control over this bomb?”

“Provided my superiors approve, I would be happy to,” Nesseref said.

“I have taken the liberty of making those arrangements before speaking to you,” Gorppet said. “I will send transportation for you shortly.”

“Have you? Will you?” Nesseref couldn’t decide whether to be grateful or annoyed. “How very…efficient.” She grudgingly gave the male the benefit of the doubt.

He proved as good as his word. Nesseref had just got Orbit’s food and water ready for her own absence when an official motorcar pulled up in front of her apartment building. The driver telephoned from the motorcar, as if to leave her in no possible doubt: “I await you, Shuttlecraft Pilot.”

“Coming.” Nesseref hurried to the elevator, waited impatiently for it to arrive, and then rode down to the lobby. When she went out to the motorcar, she asked the driver, “Will you take me to this town by Breslau?”

“No, superior female,” he said, and drove her out of the new town to where a helicopter waited on the yellowish, dying grass of a meadow. She did not care for helicopters, reckoning them unsafe. But she boarded this one with no more than a minimal qualm. It sprang into the air and flew off toward the west.

When it landed, it came down not far from the wrecked and radioactive Deutsch city, at an encampment almost as large as the nearby Tosevite town of Kanth. At first, Nesseref was surprised to discover that the encampment contained Deutsch Tosevites as well as members of the Race. Then she realized that made good logical sense. The Deutsche, after all, were the ones most intimately concerned with the explosive-metal bomb.

“Yes, it is a considerable embarrassment for us,” Gorppet said when she was escorted to his tent. “The Jews, after all, are Big Uglies who are sup-posed to be under our control. For them to act so emphatically against our interest makes us look like fools to the Deutsche.”

“And to other Big Uglies,” Nesseref remarked.

“And to other Big Uglies,” the male from Security agreed. “The problem the Jews pose the Deutsche is at present the most urgent, however.”

“These Jews refuse to release Anielewicz?” Nesseref asked.

Gorppet made the affirmative gesture. “He went to them, they seized him, and he has not been seen since. We cannot prove he is still alive, but we presume he is, or the Big Uglies with the bomb would likely have tried to detonate it.”

“I…see,” Nesseref said, as she had when he telephoned her. “You have a lot of optimistic speculation resting on very little evidence, or so it seems to me.”

“That may well be so,” Gorppet said.

“Has anyone found a way to extract Anielewicz from his predicament?” Nesseref asked.

Now Gorppet used the negative gesture. “ Not without unacceptable risk of having the bomb go off,” he replied.

“That would be unfortunate,” Nesseref said.

“Truth. And especially for Anielewicz.” Yes, Gorppet’s voice was dry. “Consideration is also being given to a bombardment so sharp and intense, it would kill everyone in the house before anyone could trigger the bomb.”

“That would be wonderful, if it worked,” Nesseref said. “How likely is it to work, do you think?”

“If either we or the Deutsche thought it likely, it would have been attempted by now,” the male replied. “That no one has attempted it shows how risky it is. That it remains under consideration shows how seriously both we and the Deutsche view this situation.”

“I understand,” Nesseref said. “Have you come to any better notion of how I may help rescue Anielewicz and keep the bomb from going off?”

“Unfortunately, no,” the male from Security told her. “But, since you know him well, I was hoping you might have insights and ideas that have not occurred to me.” Another male came in. His body paint was slightly more elaborate than Gorppet’s. To him, Gorppet said, “Superior sir, here is Shuttlecraft Pilot Nesseref. Shuttlecraft Pilot, I present to you Hozzanet, my superior.”

“I greet you,” Nesseref said.

“And I greet you,” Hozzanet replied. “Welcome to the waiting room, Shuttlecraft Pilot. We hope we are far enough away to escape the worst effects of blast and radiation. We also hope we do not have to try to find out experimentally.”

“I can see that you might.” Nesseref swung an eye turret from Hozzanet to Gorppet and back again. “Are all Security males as cynical as the two of you?”

“Probably,” Hozzanet answered. “It is a useful part of our professional baggage. Believing the males and females and Big Uglies we are in charge of investigating would only trap us in a net of lies.”

“From your point of view, I suppose that makes sense,” Nesseref said. “You must have endless trouble with such unreliable and ever-shifting circumstances. I am glad I deal with the physical universe, with constants rather than variables.”

A couple of other males in the body paint of Security pushed their way into the tent. Nesseref paid them no special notice till one of them asked, “Small-Unit Group Leader Gorppet?” When Gorppet made the affirmative gesture, both males drew pistols and aimed them at him. The one who’d spoken before said, “You are under arrest, on suspicion of dealing in ginger and violent assault on the Race in the subregion known as South Africa. Your Tosevite accomplices have been captured in the not-empire of France, and have made full confessions.”

Nesseref stared in astonishment. Gorppet said, “I deny everything.” He sounded convincing. But he’d just shown he, like Hozzanet, believed in very little. He would sound convincing, regardless of whether he spoke truth.

Hozzanet spoke to the males with the pistols: “We are in an emergency situation here. For the good of the Race, I ask that you allow my subordinate to stay free till it is resolved. If it is resolved satisfactorily, he will probably have earned a pardon. If not”-he shrugged-“we are all liable to be dead.”

The Security male who’d been quiet till then said, “We have no authority to bargain with you or with him.”

“Then you had better get some.” Hozzanet was as ready to bend the rules as a Big Ugly. “Go on. I give my pledge, in the Emperor’s name, that he will not flee.”

After whispering to each other, the Security males made the affirmative gesture. “On your snout be it,” one of them said. He left. His partner stayed.

“I thank you, superior sir,” Gorppet said quietly.

“I warned you when I recruited you for Security that we would not tolerate large-scale ginger operations,” Hozzanet said. “But you have a chance to redeem yourself even there-if that bomb does not burst.”

“If it does, spirits of Emperors past will judge us,” Nesseref said, and cast down her eye turrets.

“That is a truth,” Hozzanet agreed. “And they will judge harshly-they have never heard of ginger.”

“What you need to do,” Nesseref said, “is to get into communication with Anielewicz and help him persuade his fellow Jews not to detonate the explosive-metal bomb. If not…” She found herself puzzled and dismayed. She had never thought she would have any great use for a ginger dealer, but Gorppet plainly worked hard on his actual duties when he was not involved with the herb. And he didn’t seem to use it as some males did, as a tool to get females to mate with him.

Now he made the affirmative gesture. “That is a truth, superior female. It is what I need to do-or you, if you think the Big Ugly more likely to heed a friend than an acquaintance. But do you have any idea how to accomplish it without inciting the other Jewish Tosevites to set off the bomb?”

Wishing she could do anything else but, Nesseref used the negative gesture.

Prevod was an excellent writer. Straha would never have asked her to collaborate with him had he not liked some of her work he’d seen. And, as he saw from the prose the two of them produced together, his memoirs would be an egg-smasher to set tongues wagging for years…if they were ever published. He’d always expected Atvar to prove an obstacle to publication. He hadn’t expected the same problem from his coauthor.

“But, Shiplord, you cannot say that!” Prevod exclaimed, not for the first time, when Straha outlined another of the quarrels that had led to his barely unsuccessful effort to overthrow Atvar as fleetlord of the conquest fleet.

“And why not?” Straha demanded. He liked it that she was polite enough to call him shiplord, even though he was no longer entitled to wear the body paint showing him to be the third most powerful male in the conquest fleet. “It is a truth. I never stopped warning him that his half measures would lead to trouble. He continued them, and they did indeed lead to trouble.”

“Have you got documentary evidence to support this?” Prevod asked.

“I am sure such evidence exists,” Straha said. “I did not offer this advice in secret, but in meetings of the high-ranking officers of the fleet. Those records would have been preserved.”

“Can we gain access to them?” Prevod asked. “Or are they concealed from general view under secrecy regulations?”

“The latter, I would suspect,” Straha said. “Atvar would not be eager to have his ineptitude displayed for everyone to see.” He hesitated. When he went on, his tone was grudging: “And, I admit, even now we might not want the Big Uglies to learn how divided and uncertain we were in those days. They might think that malady still afflicted us. And”-acid returned to his voice-“with Atvar still in command, they might be right.”

Prevod sighed. “Without the documentation, Shiplord, how can I hope to include this incident in the book?”

Straha sighed, too. “I am not writing a history text here, you know. Footnotes are not mandatory.” He studied Prevod. She was young and bright and highly skilled with words. When he engaged her, he’d thought that would be enough. He’d thought it would be more than enough, in fact. What he thought now was, Maybe I was wrong. Swinging an eye turret her way, he asked, “Have you ever felt inclined to challenge authority?”

“Why, no, Shiplord.” She sounded astonished that he should put such a question to her. “Those senior to me are generally senior for good reason. They know more than I do, and have more experience. Should I not learn from them rather than trying to substitute my inferior judgment for theirs?”

That was the response a female of the Race should have given. It was the response the large majority of males and females would have given. Straha knew as much. But hearing it now frustrated him no end. “If those in authority make a mistake, should you not point it out? If you fail to point it out, will they not go on making it-and probably making other mistakes as well?”

“Their own superiors are the ones who should correct them,” Prevod replied. “That is not an appropriate role for an inferior.”

“Who was Atvar’s superior?” Straha asked. “He made mistakes. He made them in huge lots. Who was to point them out to him? He had no superiors here. He still has none-and he is probably still making mistakes.”

“In my opinion, rehashing a past that cannot be changed will not gain you many readers,” Prevod said. “You would create a far more entertaining and exciting book by concentrating on the foibles of the Big Uglies and on your return to the Race with the information about which group of Tosevites attacked the colonization fleet. Do remember, most of those who read the book will have come here as members of the colonization fleet, not the conquest fleet.”

“I understand that,” Straha said. “You want this to be an entertaining and exciting memoir, then, not an important one?”

“If no one reads it, how can it be an important memoir?” Prevod said.

By the Emperor, how I want a taste of ginger, Straha thought. By the Emperor, how I need a taste of ginger. He refrained, though it wasn’t easy. He knew he would have a harder time putting up with Prevod if he did taste. Picking his words with care, he said, “One of the so-called foibles you mention was an honesty so thoroughgoing, the male who possessed it gave me information that would harm his own not-empire and his own species because he judged that the right thing to do. How many males and females of the Race could hope to match him? But perhaps that would not amuse my readers enough to be entertaining.”

He intended his words for sarcasm. But Prevod took them literally, saying, “Many would think well of the Big Ugly under those circumstances. Having a sympathetic Tosevite appear might make for an interesting novelty.”

“We both use the language of the Race,” Straha said, “but I wonder if we speak the same tongue. Maybe I should go on in English.” He spoke the last sentence in the Tosevite language. He hadn’t used it since fleeing the United States.

“What did you just say?” Now Prevod sounded interested. When he told her, she went on, “Did you have to learn that Tosevite tongue? Were the Big Uglies too ignorant to learn ours?”

“You really ought to know better,” Straha said. “Some of them not only speak it but write it quite well.” That was when he realized he’d lost his temper, for he added, “About as well as you do, in fact.”

Prevod’s tailstump quivered in anger. She said, “That is ridiculous.”

“Is it?” Yes, Straha had lost his temper. He wrote an electronic message to Sam Yeager under the name of Maargyees that Yeager used to fool the Race’s computer network: I am trying to persuade a certain-a very certain-female that you are literate in our language.

Luck was with him, for a reply came back almost at once: I am sorry, Shiplord, but I cannot write it any more than I can speak it.

I see, Straha wrote back. And why not?

Because I am only a Big Ugly, of course, Sam Yeager returned. How can anyone without a tailstump have any brains? That is where the Race keeps them, is it not?

I often wonder if we keep them anywhere, Straha wrote.

Well, in that case you are wasted as a male of the Race, his Tosevite friend answered. You really ought to turn into a Big Ugly.

Straha’s mouth fell open in startled laughter. He swung an eye turret away from the monitor and back toward Prevod. “Do you see what I mean?”

The writer’s tailstump was twitching more than ever. “If you care for his writing so much, Shiplord”-now she used the title as one of reproach, not respect; he could hear the difference in her voice-“maybe you ought to get him to compose your memoirs with you.”

“Do you know,” Straha said slowly, “that is not the worst idea I have ever heard. Of course, most of the worst ideas I have ever heard have come straight from Atvar’s mouth.”

He meant the joke to soften what he’d said just before. It didn’t do the job. Prevod sprang to her feet. “Whomever you use to help you write your memoirs, I shall not be that female,” she said. “As far as I can see, the Race was right to keep you far away-you fit in better with the Tosevite barbarians than you do with us.” She punctuated that with an emphatic cough. And, before Straha could say anything, she stormed out of his chamber in Shepheard’s Hotel and slammed the door behind her.

“Oh, dear,” Straha said aloud. Then he started to laugh. He went back to the computer and wrote, Are you still there, Sam Yeager?

No, I am not here, Yeager replied. I expect to be back pretty soon, though.

That was, on the face of it, absurd. No male of the Race would have thought to write any such self-contradictory sentences. And yet, as an answer to a rhetorical question, why wasn’t no as good as yes? Straha returned to the keyboard and wrote, How would you like to help me put my memoirs together?

What happened to the writer you were working with? the Tosevite asked.

You did, Straha answered.

This time, the only symbol Sam Yeager sent was the one the Race used as a written equivalent of an interrogative cough.

It is, unfortunately, a truth, Straha told him. I made an invidious comparison between her writing ability and yours, and, for some reason or other, she took offense. I now find myself without a collaborator. Are you interested in becoming one? You know the story I aim to tell. You should: you have interrogated me about a good deal of it.

The Big Ugly didn’t reply for some little while. When he did, he wrote, Sorry for the delay. I had to find out what “invidious” meant. You must be joking, Shiplord.

By no means, Straha wrote, and used the symbol for an emphatic cough.

Well, if you are not, you ought to be, Sam Yeager wrote back. I do not write your language well enough for males and females of the Race to want to read my words. They would be able to tell I am a Big Ugly. Your computers figured out that I was, because I sound as if I am writing English.

Computers do not read. Readers read, Straha insisted. Your way of writing is interesting and unusual, whatever makes it so.

I thank you, Shiplord, Sam Yeager replied. I thank you very much. You have paid me a great compliment. But I cannot do this. And your chances of getting your memoir published go up if you have a member of the Race writing with you, and go down with me. You cannot say that is not a truth.

If any Tosevite is a hero among the Race, you are that male, Straha wrote. Your name would help the memoir, not hurt it.

Maybe-but maybe not, too, his friend responded. And having my name on your memoir would not help me here in the United States. I may be a hero to the Race, but many Americans still think I am a traitor.

Straha hadn’t considered that. He realized he should have. Very well, then, he wrote. Farewell for nowFarewell, Sam Yeager wrote back. Barbara has just called me to supper. Good luck finding another male or female to work with.

“Good luck,” Straha said mournfully. “I will need more than luck. I will need a miracle. Several miracles, very likely. And I do not believe in miracles. I have been in exile too long to believe in miracles.”

He’d been an exile from the Race, and now he was an exile among the Race. He hadn’t been at home in the United States, and he didn’t feel at home now that he’d managed to return to the society the Race was building on Tosev 3. I probably would not feel at home if I went into cold sleep and flew back to Home. If he didn’t fit in among the Race here, how would the smug and stifling society back on the homeworld seem to him?

He went over to the ginger jar Atvar had let him have. He took a big taste. As euphoria filled him, he patted the jar with an affectionate hand. With ginger, if nowhere else, he found himself at home.

David Goldfarb took a last long look at the notes he’d been fooling with for the past few months. The time for fooling was over. Now he had to get to work. He wasn’t going to refine his concept any further on paper. He would have to see what he got when he turned scribbles and sketches into something real.

Part of him was nervous, heart-poundingly nervous. When he started working for real instead of on paper, he might turn out not to be able to make anything worth having. But the rest of him, the larger part, was eager. He’d learned electronics-or what people knew of electronics before the Lizards came-by tinkering. He still sometimes felt he thought better with his hands than with his head.

He got up from his table. “I’m going out for a bit,” he told Hal Walsh. “I need to pick up a couple of things we haven’t got here.”

His boss nodded. “Okay. Bring the receipts back, too, and I’ll reimburse you.”

“Thanks,” Goldfarb said. “I’m not sure you’ll want to when you see what I’ve got, but…” He shrugged.

“I’m not sure I like the sound of that,” Walsh said, but he was grinning.

Jack Devereaux looked up from the circuit he was soldering. “I’m almost sure I don’t,” he said, which made Walsh laugh. Goldfarb was grinning as he put on his overcoat. Hal was a pretty good chap to work for, no doubt about it.

His grin slipped when he went outside. Edmonton in late November was raw and blustery, with the wind feeling as if there were nothing at all between the North Pole and the street down which he was walking. People seemed to take it in stride. David didn’t think he ever would. The British Isles lay this far north, too, but the Gulf Stream moderated their climate. Nothing Goldfarb had seen moderated the climate here.

Fortunately, the shop he wanted was only a couple of blocks from the Saskatchewan River Widget Works. He bought what he needed and went back to the Widget Works with his purchases in a big paper sack. Before he headed back, though, he made sure he took the receipt out of the sack and stuck it in his pocket. If things went the way he hoped, Hal Walsh would pay him back. If they didn’t, his boss would laugh at him.

He shook his head. Hal wouldn’t laugh. Not everything worked out, and Walsh was smart enough to understand as much. But if this didn’t work, it would fail rather more spectacularly than other failed projects at the Widget Works. And, Goldfarb suspected, Jack Devereaux would never let him forget about it, even if his boss did.

Devereaux and Walsh both looked up when David came in carrying the big sack. “Doughnuts?” Devereaux asked hopefully.

“That would be a lot of doughnuts,” Hal Walsh observed. Devereaux nodded, as if to say that the prospect of a lot of doughnuts didn’t bother him a bit.

“Sorry, blokes.” Goldfarb upended the sack on his work table. Four large, fuzzy teddy bears spilled out. One spilled a little too far, and ended on the floor. He picked it up and put it with the others.

In interested tones, Devereaux asked, “Are those for your second childhood or for your children’s first?”

“With a spot of luck, neither,” Goldfarb replied. As if to prove as much, he seized an Exacto knife and slit one of the bears from neck to crotch. He started pulling out stuffing and tossing it in the wastebasket. Devereaux made horrified noises. Goldfarb looked up from his work with what he hoped was a suitably demented grin. “Didn’t know you were working along-side the Ripper, Jack?”

Devereaux made more horrified noises, this time at the pun rather than at the carnage David was inflicting on the defenseless toy. Hal Walsh in-quired, “What are you doing besides getting this place ankle-deep in fluff?”

“I hope I’m playing Dr. Frankenstein,” Goldfarb answered, whereupon Jack Devereaux lurched stiff-legged around the office in one of the worst Boris Karloff impressions David had ever seen. Refusing to let the other engineer get his goat, or even his bear, he nodded. “That’s right, Jack. Without the little motors and the little batteries the Lizards have shown us how to make-to say nothing of their compact circuits-I never could have imagined this. As things are-”

“You’ve had the chance to go crazy in a whole different way,” Devereaux said.

David shrugged. “Maybe. I’m going to try to find out.”

“Dr. Frankenstein?” Walsh eyed him. The boss was nobody’s fool. “By God, you’re going to make an animated teddy bear, aren’t you?”

“I’m going to try,” Goldfarb answered. “They used to do this kind of thing with gears and clockwork, but I got to thinking that electronics are a lot more flexible.”

Jack Devereaux’s eyes lit up. “That’s a damn good idea, David. I don’t know if you can make it walk on two legs, but something that moves its arms, moves its eyes, and still stays cute as all get-out…We, or somebody, could sell a lot of those.”

With another nod, Goldfarb said, “I’m thinking the same thing. And something that talks, too: those sound chips are cheap to make. And maybe…” He snapped his fingers in delight at coming up with an idea not in his notes; sure as hell, working with his hands was inspirational. “We could hide a little infrared sensor right on the thing’s nose, so nobody would need to actually flip a switch to turn it on.”

“The more I hear of this, the better I like it,” Walsh said. “I really do. We get the design patent, then license it for manufacture, and we might rake in a very nice piece of change, a very nice piece of change indeed. We need a name for ’em, though. What’ll we call ’em? Fluffies?” He batted at a wisp of teddy-bear stuffing floating in the air. “How’s that sound? Fluffies.” He cocked his head to one side, considering the flavor of the name.

“Not Fluffies,” Goldfarb said. “Furries.”

“David’s right.” Jack Devereaux nodded vigorously. “The fluff’s on the inside, where it won’t show. The fur’s right out there in plain sight.”

After a moment’s thought, Walsh nodded, too. “Okay, Furries it is. We’ve got a name. We’ve got an idea. Now let’s make it real.” He beamed at Goldfarb. “How would you like to be driving a Cadillac by this time next year?”

“I don’t like driving anything here,” David answered. “It still feels like I’m on the wrong side of the bloody road. But if I have to drive anything, a Cadillac wouldn’t be bad. This side of a tank, I couldn’t very well get any more iron around me.”

“This is putting the car before the horse-or before the Furry, I should say,” Devereaux pointed out. “Like Hal said, we need a real one, so we can see if we’ve got anything worth having.”

“If you hadn’t interrupted me at my surgery, I’d be on the way there already.” Goldfarb went over to the parts bin that ran along one wall of the office and started rummaging through them. Though he didn’t know it, his face wore an enormous smile. Tinkering made him happy-yes, indeed.

Once he had the idea and the parts, the Furry presented no enormous technical challenges. The biggest was getting all the components into its belly and still retaining enough stuffing to keep it huggable. A teddy bear that wasn’t soft, he reasoned, would lose half its appeal.

“Now what are you doing?” Devereaux asked a little later. “Brain surgery?”

Exacto in hand, David nodded. “You might say so. Occurred to me this fellow might have big blinking eyes instead of the glass buttons he came with. But if he’s going to get them, I’ve got to open up his head.”

He used the knife to slice up hollow plastic balls, and colored them with the pens in his shirt pocket. They required another little motor, this one inside the head. Jack Devereaux clicked his tongue between his teeth at the result. “If I saw anything with eyes like that, I’d run like hell.”

“It’s a prototype, dammit,” Goldfarb snapped. “It lets me know what I can do and what I can’t. The next one will be prettier.”

He installed the infrared sensor in the Furry’s nose, and some sound chips and a little speaker behind the mouth. When he aimed an infrared beam at the revamped teddy bear, it spoke in muddy tones: “Here, piss off.”

“Hmm,” Hal Walsh said. “We may have to work on that just a bit.”

Everybody laughed. Then Walsh asked, “Do you suppose you can make it move its lips while it talks, the same way it moves its eyes?”

“Hadn’t thought of that,” Goldfarb answered. “I can try. By the time we’re done with the bloody thing, it’ll do everything but make tea.” He paused. “But maybe that’s not so bad. The more it can do, the longer Junior will take to get bored with it.”

Some more tinkering provided the Furry with plastic lips carved from another ball. They didn’t move in a very lifelike way, but they moved. Walsh nodded. “That’s better-or busier, anyhow.”

“I think he’s ugly as sin, myself,” Jack Devereaux said.

David eyed him. “Some people might say the same about you, old chap. The Furry’s a first try. He’ll improve.” He didn’t spell out the implications. Devereaux made a horrible face at him just the same.

“Mutilate another teddy bear, would you, David?” Hal Walsh said. “See if you can do a neater job on this one. I’m going to get on the phone and talk with a couple of manufacturers I know-and with an advertising agent, too. With something like this, we want to make the biggest splash we possibly can.”

“Right,” Goldfarb said, and got to work. Somewhat belatedly, it occurred to him that he might have made more money had he developed this project on his own, not under the auspices of the Saskatchewan River Widget Works. He shrugged as he slit open the belly of a second plush bear. Walsh hadn’t had to hire him, and had backed him up during his troubles with Basil Roundbush. His boss deserved recompense for that-and, if the Furries did even a quarter as well as the men of the Widget Works dreamt they would, there’d probably be plenty of money to go around.

Walsh said, “I just called Jane, too. She can come by and record some prettier phrases than the one you used there.”

“Fair enough,” David answered. Jane Archibald’s voice wasn’t so smashing as her looks, but it was an improvement over his lower middle class, East End London accent.

He was just affixing the second set of plastic lips when Hal Walsh’s fiancee came in. The men from the Widget Works put both prototype Furries through their paces. Jane’s eyes went wide. “Every little girl in the world will want one,” she breathed, and then, “If you have them saying things in a man’s voice-and maybe if they were different colors-you could sell a lot to boys, too, I think.”

“I like that,” Goldfarb said, and scribbled a note.

The toy jobber who came to the Widget Works the next day also liked it. He stared in astonished fascination at the second prototype Furry-by then, the first one was safely out of sight. “Oh, yes,” he said once he’d seen it put through its paces. “Oh, yes, indeed. I think we’ll be able to move a great many of these, provided the manufacturing costs aren’t too high.”

“Here.” Hal Walsh handed him a sheet of paper. “This is my best estimate. Most of the parts are right off the shelf.”

“Oh, my,” the jobber said after glancing over it. “Well, I can see it’s going to be a great deal, a very great deal, of pleasure doing business with you gents.”

“David here gets the credit for this one,” Walsh said; he was, sure enough, a good man to work for. He patted the Furry on the head. “David gets the credit-and, with a little bit of luck, we all rake in the cash.”

Reuven Russie wondered when he’d last been so nervous knocking on a door. It had been a while-he knew that. When he’d come here to look at the widow Radofsky’s toe, that had been business. Now he was coming to look at all of her, and that was anything but.

How long had he been standing here? Long enough to start worrying? He’d been worrying since before he left home, and the “helpful” advice from his twin sisters hadn’t made things any better or easier. Had anybody inside here heard him? Should he knock again? He was just about to when the door opened. “Hello-Reuven,” Mrs. Radofsky said.

“Hello-Deborah,” he answered, at least as tentatively; he’d had to check the office records to find out her first name. “Hello, Miriam,” he added to the widow Radofsky’s daughter, who clung to her mother’s skirt. Miriam didn’t answer. She probably didn’t like him much; he was the fellow who gave her medicines that tasted nasty and shots.

“This is my sister, Sarah,” Deborah Radofsky said, nodding back toward a slightly younger woman who looked a lot like her. “She’ll watch Miriam while we’re out.”

“Hello,” Reuven said. “We’ve spoken on the phone, I think.”

“Yes, that’s right, Doctor,” the widow Radofsky’s sister said. “Have a good time, the two of you. Come here, Miriam.” Reluctantly, Miriam came.

Deborah Radofsky stepped out onto the sidewalk. “Shall we go?”

“Yes, let’s,” Reuven answered. He cast about for what to say next, and did find something: “How is your toe doing?”

“It’s getting better,” she replied. “It’s not quite right yet, but it is getting better.” They walked on for a few paces. The night was clear and cool. It was also peaceful; the Muslims in Jerusalem, and in the Near East generally, had been calm of late, for which Reuven was very glad. Mrs. Radofsky also seemed to be looking for something more to say. At last, she asked, “Where are we going for supper?”

“I had Samuel’s in mind,” Reuven replied. “Have you been there? The food’s always pretty good.”

“Yes, I have.” She nodded. “But not since…” Her voice trailed off. Not since my husband was alive- that had to be what she wasn’t saying.

“Would you rather go somewhere else?” Reuven asked. “If eating there would make you unhappy…”

“No, it’s all right.” The widow Radofsky shook her head. “It wasn’t a special place, or anything like that. It’s just that I haven’t been out to eat anywhere much since he…died. Things have been tight, especially with Miriam.”

Reuven nodded. Samuel’s was only about four blocks away; nothing in Jerusalem was very far from anything else. They had no trouble getting a table. Reuven ordered braised short ribs; Deborah Radofsky chose stuffed cabbage. He ordered a carafe of wine, too, after a glance at her to make sure she didn’t mind.

The wine came before the food. Reuven raised his glass. “L’chaim!”

“L’chaim!” Deborah echoed. They both drank. She set her glass down on the white linen of the tablecloth. After a moment, she said, “Do you mind if I ask you something?”

“Go ahead,” he answered.

Her smile flickered, as if uncertain whether to catch fire. She said, “You’re the son of an important man-a famous man, even. You’re a doctor yourself. Why haven’t you been married for years?”

“Ah.” Reuven had expected something like that, if perhaps not quite so blunt. But he liked her better for the bluntness, not worse. He said, “Up till I left the medical college, I was very busy-too busy to think a whole lot about such things. I was seeing somebody at the college for a while, but she emigrated to Canada as soon as she finished, and I didn’t want to leave Palestine. I have a cousin in the same town she moved to. He says she’s getting married soon.”

“Oh.” The widow Radofsky weighed his words. “How do you feel about that?”

“I hope she’s happy,” Reuven answered, much more sincerely than not. “She’s always done what she wanted to do, and I don’t think this will be any different.” He looked up. “Here comes supper.” Even if he didn’t wish Jane any ill whatsoever, he didn’t feel altogether comfortable talking about her with Deborah Radofsky.

She dug into her stuffed cabbage, too. For a while, they were both too busy eating to talk. Then she found another disconcerting question: “How do you like taking out one of your patients?”

“Fine, so far,” he said, giving back a deadpan stare he’d learned from his father.

She didn’t quite know what to make of that; he could see as much. After a sip of wine, she asked, “Do you do it often?”

“This makes once,” Reuven said, dead pan still. He threw back a question of his own: “How do you like going out with your doctor?”

“This is the first time I’ve been out with anyone since Joseph…died,” Mrs. Radofsky said. “I would be lying if I said it didn’t feel a little strange. It doesn’t feel any more strange because you’re my doctor, if that’s what you mean.”

“All right.” Now Reuven tried on a smile. It fit his face better than he’d thought it would. “I like your little girl.”

That made Deborah Radofsky smile, too. “I’m glad. Someone at the furniture store asked me to go out with him a few weeks ago, but he changed his mind when he found out I have a child.” She stabbed the next bite of stuffed cabbage as if it were her coworker.

“That’s foolishness,” Reuven said. “Life isn’t neat and simple all the time. I used to think it was a lot simpler, back when I was still going to the medical college. The more real practice I see, though, the more complicated things look.”

“Life is never simple.” The widow Radofsky spoke with great conviction. “You find that out the minute you have a baby. And then Joseph went off to work one morning, and the riots started, and he didn’t come home, and two days after that we had a funeral. No, life is never simple.”

“What did he do?” Reuven asked quietly.

“He was a lathe operator,” she answered. “He was a good one, too. He worked hard, and he was going places. His boss thought so, too. And then…he wasn’t any more.” She emptied her wineglass in a hurry. When Reuven held up the carafe, she nodded. He filled her glass again, then poured some more wine for himself, too.

As they finished supper, he asked, “Would you like to go see that new film-well, new here, anyhow-about ginger-smuggling in Marseille? I’m more interested than I would be otherwise, because my cousin-the one who’s in Canada now-got forced into dealing ginger there when he was in the RAF.”

“Vey iz mir!” Deborah Radofsky exclaimed. “How did that happen?”

“His superior was in the business in a big way, and David was a Jew, which meant he had a hard time saying no unless he wanted worse things to happen to him,” Reuven answered. “Of course, the Nazis arrested him, and it’s hard to get a whole lot worse off than that. My father got the Race to pull strings to get him out.”

“Lucky for him your father could,” she said, and then, after a moment, “Marseille’s one of the places that got bombed, isn’t it?”

Reuven nodded. “The film was made before the fighting, obviously. Otherwise, there’d be nothing but ruins. It’s supposed to have some spectacular car chases, too.”

“I’ll come,” Deborah Radofsky said. “Miriam won’t give Sarah too hard a time. She’ll go to sleep, and my sister can look at the television or find something to read.”

“Oh, good.” Whether it was too much trouble for her sister would have been Reuven’s next question.

The theater wasn’t far, either. It was the one Reuven and Jane Archibald had come to on the night they first made love. He glanced over at the widow Radofsky. He didn’t think they’d be sharing a bed tonight. He shrugged. He’d known Jane a long time before they became lovers. He wasn’t going to worry about hurrying things here.

“You’ve got about fifteen minutes to wait before this show lets out,” the ticker-seller told him as he laid down his money.

“That’s not bad,” Deborah Radofsky said. Reuven nodded. They went into the lobby. Reuven got them both some garbanzo beans fried in olive oil and glasses of Coca-Cola. They were just wiping their hands when people started coming out of the film.

Reuven heard Arabic, Hebrew, Yiddish, and something that might have been either Russian or Polish. The film would be subtitled in the first two languages; the dialogue, he knew, was mostly in English. And then, to his surprise, a couple of Lizards came out. They were chattering away in their own tongue.

“What were they saying?” Mrs. Radofsky asked.

“They were wondering how much of the story was true and how much was made up,” Reuven answered. “What I’m wondering is whether they were from Security, or if they were ginger smugglers themselves. One or the other, I’d bet. I wish I’d got a better look at their body paint.”

“If they were in Security, wouldn’t they be smart to wear body paint that said they weren’t?” she remarked.

“Mm, you’re probably right,” Reuven said. “Come on-let’s go in and grab the best seats we can.”

The film wasn’t one for the ages, but it wasn’t bad, either, and the chase scenes were at least as spectacular as advertised. Reuven had no trouble following the English; it was the most widely used human language at the Moishe Russie Medical College. He saw the widow Radofsky’s eyes drifting down to the bottom of the screen to read the Hebrew subtitles.

After the last explosion, after the policeman hero collared the villains, the lights came up. Reuven and Deborah Radofsky rose and headed for the exit. They’d just got out into the lobby again when he took her hand. He wondered what she’d do, what she’d say. She gave him a brief startled look, then squeezed his hand a little, as if to let him know it was all right.

“I hope you had a good time,” he said as they neared her house.

“I did.” If she sounded a little surprised at herself, he could pretend he didn’t notice. And he might have been wrong.

Hoping he was, he asked, “Would you like to do it again before too long?”

“Yes, I’d like that a lot, I think,” the widow Radofsky said. She smiled up at him as they got to her front door.

“Good,” Reuven said. “So would I.” He embraced her, not too tightly, and brushed his lips across hers. Then he stepped back, waiting to see what she’d do about that.

To his relief, she was still smiling. She took keys from her handbag and opened the door. “Good night, Reuven,” she said.

“Good night, Deborah,” he answered, and turned to go. He hoped she’d call him back to come inside with her. She didn’t. She closed the door; he heard the latch click. With a shrug, he headed home. He’d had a good time, too. Maybe it would be even better when they went out again.