Aftershocks c-3 Read online

  “Oh.” That was Esther; Reuven was sure of it. “Well, maybe.” She wrinkled her nose. “It still smells nasty.” Her sister nodded.

  “Does it?” Their father sounded honestly surprised.

  “It does.” Reuven, Judith, and Esther all spoke together. Reuven added, “If you hadn’t killed most of your sense of smell from years of those stinking things, you’d know it yourself.”

  “Would I?” Moishe Russie studied the cigarette, or what was left of it, then stubbed it out. “I don’t suppose my sense of smell is really dead-more likely just dormant.”

  “Why don’t you find out?” Reuven asked. His sisters nodded, their faces glowing. He and they often rubbed one another the wrong way, but they agreed about this.

  His father ran a hand over his bald crown-a silent genetic warning that Reuven wouldn’t keep his own dark hair forever. It was, in fact, already starting to retreat above his temples. Moishe Russie said, “Maybe I will… one of these days.”

  That meant never. Reuven knew it. His sisters, a lot younger and a lot more naive than he, knew it, too. Disappointment shone from them as excitement had a moment before. He was opening his mouth to let his father know what he thought when his mother preempted him by calling, “Supper!”

  Supper was a leg of mutton with potatoes and carrots and onions, a dish they might have eaten back in Warsaw before the war except for the red Palestinian wine that went with it. Holding up his glass of the local vintage, Reuven said, “We’ve got a while to go before we catch up with France.”

  “You’re turning into a wine maven? ” his father asked, chuckling. Moishe Russie sipped the wine, too, and nodded. “Maven or not, I won’t say you’re wrong. On the other hand, these grapes are a lot less radioactive than the ones they use to make Burgundy or Bordeaux.”

  “A point,” Reuven admitted. “I think we’re pretty lucky the Nazis didn’t try harder to land an explosive-metal bomb on Jerusalem. Then we wouldn’t be able to say that about the wine.” Then, odds were, they wouldn’t have been able to say anything at all, but he chose not to dwell on that.

  “Why didn’t they try harder to bomb us?” Judith asked. At fifteen, she didn’t think death was real. Reuven wished he could say the same.

  His father answered, “They did send a couple of rockets our way, but the Race knocked them down. They saved most of their firepower to use against the Lizards, though.” Moishe Russie’s face twisted. “Either they hated the Race more than they hated us, or else they thought the Race was more dangerous. If I were a betting man, I’d put my money on the second choice.”

  Rivka Russie sighed. “So would I.” Her eyes, like her husband’s, were bleak and far away, remembering how things had been in German-held Poland before the conquest fleet landed. Reuven recalled that time only dimly, as one of hunger and fear. He was glad his memories held no more detail, too. To the twins, anything before they were born might as well have been the days of ancient Rome. They’re lucky, he thought.

  Out in the front room, the telephone hooked into the Lizards’ network hissed for attention. Moishe Russie rose. “I’ll get it. Maybe-alevai — the fleetlord has changed his mind or thought of something more he can do for poor Anielewicz.” He hurried out. A moment later, though, he called, “Not Atvar at all. It’s for you, Reuven.”

  “For me?” Reuven bounded out of his chair, even though he was only halfway through supper. The only person likely to call him on the Race’s telephone system was… “Hello, Jane!” he said, switching from the Hebrew usual around the house to English. “How are you?”

  “Couldn’t be better.” Jane Archibald’s English had the not-quite-British accent of Australia. Blue eyes glowing, she smiled out of the screen at him. “I’ve passed my comprehensive exams, so I escape at the end of this term.”

  “Congratulations!” Reuven exclaimed. He would have been sweating out his comprehensives, too, if he hadn’t left the medical college. He knew what monsters they were. Then he caught the crucial verb. “Escape?”

  “That’s right.” She nodded. Her golden hair flipped up and down. “Canada’s accepted me. You’ve known forever that I didn’t want to start a practice anyplace the Lizards rule.” Reuven nodded back at her; the Lizards had been harsh in Australia, seizing the whole continent for themselves, with humans a distinct afterthought. Jane went on, “And so, sweetheart, the time is coming-and it’s coming soon-when we have to figure out where we go from here, or if we go anywhere at all from here.”

  “If we’re going anywhere, I’m going to Canada,” Reuven said slowly, and Jane nodded again. He’d known he would have to make a choice like that one day. He hadn’t thought he would have to make it quite so soon. Even more slowly, he went on, “I’m going to have to think about that.”

  “I know you will,” Jane replied. “I envy your having a family you can get along with, believe me I do. But I’ve got to tell you one more thing, dear: don’t take too bloody long.” Before he could find an answer, her image vanished from the screen.

  Straha was used to fighting cravings. The ex-shiplord had started tasting ginger not long after he’d fled the conquest fleet, and had rarely been without it since. It helped make living among the American Big Uglies tolerable. Even so, now and again he wished he hadn’t antagonized Atvar to the point where it was either flee or face the fleetlord’s fury.

  He let out a soft hiss. If the assembled shiplords had chosen to oust Atvar and name me in his place, all of Tosev 3 might belong to the Race now, he thought. Surely he could have led the conquest fleet better than that mediocre male. A large majority had thought he could. But the Race required three-quarters concurrence before making such a drastic change, and he hadn’t got that. Atvar remained in command to this day-and Straha remained in exile to this day.

  He had all the ginger he wanted. It wasn’t illegal in the USA, as it was everywhere the Race ruled. Stashed away in his house-mostly of Tosevite construction, but with gadgetry from the Race-was almost enough of the precious herb to let him set up as a dealer. If he felt like a taste, he could have one. The Big Ugly who served as his driver and bodyguard wouldn’t say no. If anything, he’d assume the Tosevite facial grimace connoting benevolence and get Straha more ginger still.

  But turning his eye turrets away from ginger as much as he could was something Straha had long since got used to doing. Keeping the papers Sam Yeager had given him a secret was something else again. Straha didn’t know exactly what. Yeager had given him those papers, only extracting a promise that he wouldn’t look at them unless the Big Ugly suddenly died or disappeared. Straha had kept the promise, too, regardless of how tempted he was to see what Yeager thought so important.

  What does he know? Straha wondered. Why does he not want me to know it, too? How much trouble will come if I learn it? Not too much, surely.

  That was the voice he sometimes heard inside his head when he wanted one taste of ginger on top of another. It was an ever so persuasive voice, one that could talk him into almost everything. Almost. He counted Sam Yeager a friend in the same way that he counted friends among the Race. Yeager relied on him, trusted him. He had to be worthy of that trust… didn’t he?

  Before temptation could dig its claws into him too deeply, his driver came into the kitchen from the front room and said, “I greet you, Shiplord.”

  “And I greet you,” Straha replied. The Big Ugly spoke his language about as well as a Tosevite could. “What do you want now?”

  “Why do you think I want anything?” replied the male who served and guarded him.

  Straha’s mouth fell open in a laugh. “Because you are who you are. Because you are what you are.”

  His driver laughed, too, in the noisy Tosevite way. “All right, Shiplord. I suppose you have a point.” He bent into the posture of respect, though in doing so he showed as much mockery as he did subordination. Given the security clearance and status he had to have to be allowed to work with Straha, that made a certain amount of sense.

 
; “Very well, then,” Straha said with a certain amount of asperity. He was jealous of his rank, despite the realities of the situation. “Suppose you tell me what you do want, then.”

  “It shall be done, Shiplord,” the driver said, again mixing obedience with mockery. “You surely know that the colonization fleet has released its domestic animals in the areas the Race rules.”

  “I should hope so,” Straha exclaimed, “considering the azwaca and zisuili in my freezer here.”

  “Exactly so,” his driver agreed. “Are you also aware how rapidly these animals from Home are spreading in the desert regions of Tosev 3?”

  “These are for the most part not deserts to us or to our beasts,” Straha said. “Home is a hotter, drier world than this one. What you call desert is to us more often than not a temperate grassland.”

  “However you like,” the Big Ugly said with a shrug very much like one a male of the Race might have used. “But that is not the point. The point is, these beasts are making themselves at home here faster than anyone could reasonably have expected. This is certainly true in northern Mexico.”

  “I have heard as much, in fact,” Straha said.

  “And you will also have heard that animals from Home respect international borders not at all. They are also establishing themselves in the American Southwest.”

  “Indeed: I have heard that, too,” Straha said. “You still have not told me what you want, though.”

  “Is it not obvious?” the Tosevite returned. “How do we get rid of the miserable things? We do not eat them.”

  “Why are you asking me?” Straha said. “I am not an ecological engineer, and I do not know what resources you have available to you.”

  “We are willing to commit whatever resources prove necessary,” his driver said. “These animals are highly unwelcome here, and they seem to be spreading very fast. Wherever the weather stays warm the year around, they appear at home.”

  “Unless you can hunt them into extinction, they probably will stay that way, too,” Straha said.

  “How nice,” the Big Ugly said, his voice sour. That was an English idiom, translated literally into the language of the Race. It didn’t mean what it said, but just the opposite. “I am sure my superiors will be delighted to hear that.” He didn’t mean what he said there, either.

  Straha said, “I expect that we are also introducing the plants from Home on which our domestic animals prefer to feed. They too will take advantage of any ecological niches available to them here on Tosev 3. In fact, I am given to understand that this process has already begun in the subregion of the main continental mass called India.”

  “Terrific.” The driver didn’t bother to translate that ironic comment into the language of the Race, but left it in English. Straha had grown reasonably fluent in the language of the USA as the years went by. Gathering himself, the Tosevite switched to Straha’s tongue: “How are we supposed to hunt weeds into extinction?”

  “As a matter of fact, I doubt you can do it,” Straha replied. “Now that we have come to Tosev 3, we are going to make this world as much like Home as we can. You would be addled to expect us to behave any differently.”

  “The war between the Race and us Tosevites has never really stopped, has it?” his driver said. “We are not shooting at each other as much as we used to, but we are still fighting.”

  “When there is shooting, you Big Uglies do not usually enjoy it,” Straha said. “I offer the example of the Deutsche for your contemplation.”

  “Believe me, Shiplord, my superiors are contemplating it,” his driver said. “But you did not answer my question, or did not answer it fully.”

  “I am surprised you needed to ask it,” Straha replied. “Of course the struggle goes on, by whatever means appear convenient. The leaders of the Race will not be excessively concerned as to what those methods are. Results will matter far more to them. They are not in a hurry. They are never in a hurry.”

  “That has cost them, here on Tosev 3,” the Big Ugly remarked.

  “Truth,” Straha admitted. “I advocated more haste myself, which led to nothing but my exile. But our usual slow pace also has its advantages. We move so slowly, our pressure is all but imperceptible. That does not mean it is not there, however.”

  Pursing his absurdly mobile lips, the Big Ugly let out a soft, low whistle. The sound was utterly different from anything the Race could produce. Straha had needed a long time to figure out what it meant: something on the order of resignation. At last, his driver said, “Well, we shall just have to go on exerting pressure of our own if we intend to survive-is that not also a truth?”

  “Yes, I should say so,” Straha answered. “The question is whether you Tosevites will be able to discover and to use effective forms of pressure.”

  “I think we shall manage,” his driver said. “If there is one thing we Big Uglies are good at, it is making nuisances of ourselves.”

  Straha could hardly quarrel with that. Had the Tosevites not been good at making nuisances of themselves, their world would be firmly under the dominion of the Race today. The ex-shiplord turned an eye turret toward the driver and found a way in which to change the subject: “Are you not letting the hairs between your mouth and your snout escape from cutting?”

  “I’m growing a mustache, yes,” the Big Ugly replied in English.

  “Why?” Straha asked. “I have seen other male Tosevites with such adornments, and I do not have a high opinion of them. When yours is complete, you will look as if you have a large, dark brown moth”-that last, necessarily, was an English word-“perched on your upper lip.”

  His driver laughed: loud, noisy Tosevite laughter. “I think it’ll look good,” he said, still in English. “If I decide I don’t like it, I can always shave the damn thing off, you know.”

  “I suppose so,” Straha said. “We of the Race would not be so casual about altering our appearance.”

  “I know that.” The driver returned to the language of the Race. “It is one of the advantages we Tosevites still have over you. Ginger is another.” He held up a fleshy hand to keep Straha from interrupting. “I do not mean its effect on males. I mean its effect on females. Like it or not, you are becoming more and more like us in matters pertaining to mating.”

  Straha’s thoughtful hiss was the Race’s equivalent of the driver’s low whistle. The American authorities had not saddled him with a fool. Life would have been easier if they had. Slowly, the ex-shiplord said, “We are doing our best to resist these changes, and may yet succeed.”

  “And we may succeed in keeping your domestic animals out of the United States,” his driver said, “but I do not think that is the way to bet. Besides, you are not thinking in the long term here, Shiplord. How long before some enterprising male or female sends a big crate of ginger back to Home aboard a starship? What will happen then, do you suppose?”

  This time, Straha’s hiss was more dismayed than thoughtful. Once commerce between Tosev 3 and Home got going, half the males and females involved in it would want to smuggle ginger for the sake of the profits involved in it. Only items of enormous value and low bulk traveled between the stars: nothing else made economic sense. And, without the tiniest shred of doubt, the Tosevite herb fit the bill in every particular.

  Interstellar smuggling between Home and either Rabotev 2 or Halless 1 had never amounted to much. Between Home and Tosev 3…? Well, Straha thought, however large that problem may become, it is not one about which I shall have to worry.

  Winter in Edmonton had put David Goldfarb in mind of Siberia-not that he’d ever been to Siberia, of course, but he was used to the mild temperatures of the British Isles. A great many words might have described winter in Edmonton, but mild wasn’t any of them.

  Goldfarb had almost dreaded summer, wondering if it would rise above the subarctic. To his surprise and relief, it did. It got as warm as London ever did, and even a bit warmer. At the end of June, it soared into the eighties, and stayed there for more than a
week.

  “I should be wearing a pith helmet and shorts,” he told his boss when he came into the Saskatchewan River Widget Works, Ltd.

  Hal Walsh grinned at him. “I wouldn’t lose any sleep if you did,” he answered. “But you’d look like a jerk if it decided to snow while you were dressed that way.”

  To Goldfarb’s still inexperienced ear, Walsh sounded like a Yank. An Englishman would have said something like a right chump in place of the widgetmaster’s American slang. But that, when you got right down to it, was beside the point. “Could it snow?” Goldfarb asked in a small voice.

  Jack Devereaux spoke before Walsh could: “It doesn’t snow in summer here more than every other year.”

  For a horrid moment, Goldfarb thought he was serious. When Hal Walsh’s grin made it plain the other engineer didn’t mean it, Goldfarb glared at Devereaux. “If you pull my leg any harder, it’ll come off in your hand,” he said, doing his best to seem the picture of affronted dignity.

  All he accomplished was to make Walsh and Devereaux both laugh at him. His boss said, “If you can’t look at the world cross-eyed, you shouldn’t be working here, you know.”

  “Really?” Every once in a while, British reserve came in handy. “I never should have noticed.”

  This time, Walsh stared at him, wondering whether to believe. Jack Devereaux was quicker on the uptake. “Okay, David,” he said. “Now you can let go of my leg.”

  “Fair enough.” New boy on the block, Goldfarb often felt he had to make a stand and defend his own turf. He turned to Hal Walsh. “What’s on the plate for this morning?”

  “The usual,” Walsh replied: “Trying to steal more secrets from the Lizards’ gadgetry and turning it into things people can use.”

  “If you’re very, very good, sometimes you’re even allowed to have an idea all your own,” Devereaux added. “But you’re not supposed to let on that you did. Then everybody else might start having ideas, too, and where would we be if that happened?”

  “About where we are, if the ideas we come up with are better than the other blokes’,” Goldfarb answered.