Second Contact (36 page)

“Polish delusions, for the time being, are the Lizards’ problem and not mine,” Molotov said. “The Lizards are welcome to the Poles, too. If we cannot embroil the Lizards against the
Reich
, next best is to use them as a buffer against the Nazis and, as you say, as an object for the Poles’ nationalist desires. Russians have filled that role in the past; I am content to leave it to the Race now.”

“That strikes me as wise, Comrade General Secretary,” Nussboym said.

Molotov gave him a hooded stare. He had not asked for any such endorsement. Nussboym plainly had not grown to manhood in the USSR, else he would not have been so quick to speak his mind. Even years in the gulag, evidently, had not taught him that lesson. Then Molotov gave a mental shrug. If Nussboym proved a nuisance, he could go back to the gulag. He wasn’t so important that Beria would lift a finger to protect him.

“And I have another piece of information you need to know,” Nussboym said, doing his best to make himself out to be more important than he was.

“Tell me the information,” Molotov said icily. “Then I will tell you whether I need to know it. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” Nussboym said, flinching: he understood some things, anyhow. “The information is, I have located the hiding place the Jews use for the atomic bomb they stole from the Nazis in Lodz.”

“Have you?” Molotov rubbed his chin. “I do not know yet whether that is information I need to know, but it is certainly interesting.” He eyed Nussboym. “You would sell out your coreligionists and former countrymen to tell me this?”

“Why not?” the Polish Jew now serving in the NKVD replied. “They sold me out. Why should I not repay them? I owe the Party more loyalty than I owe them, anyhow.”

He said that, and said it with evident sincerity, even though the first thing the Party had done when it got its hands on him was throw him in a gulag for some years. Molotov believed him. For one thing, he was far from the only man to come out of the gulag and serve the Soviet Union well. Every time Molotov flew in a Tupolev passenger plane, he remembered how Stalin had plucked the designer out of the camps and set him to work at his proper job when the Germans invaded. General Rokossovsky was another such case. Either of them was worth a hundred of the likes of David Nussboym.

But that did not make Nussboym worthless. Molotov considered how best to use him. Subtlety seemed wasted here. “Very well, then,” Molotov said. “Where is this bomb hidden away? Somewhere not far from Lodz, I am sure.”

“Yes.” Nussboym nodded. “In or near the town of Glowno, to the northeast.”

“In or near?” Molotov raised an eyebrow. “Can you not be more precise than that, David Aronovich? Those first bombs were huge things, weighing tonnes apiece. You cannot hide them under the mattress.”

“Up till now, the Jews have kept this one hidden for close to twenty years,” Nussboym retorted, which held enough truth to keep Molotov from getting angry at the sardonic relish the NKVD man took in saying it.

“Did you also find out whether the bomb could still function?” Molotov asked. “Scientists tell me these weapons must have periodic maintenance if they are to go off.”

“Comrade General Secretary, that I do not know,” Nussboym said. “The Jews have done their best to keep the bomb working, but I do not know how good their best is. From everything I have been able to learn, neither they nor the Poles nor the Lizards know whether the bomb would work.”

“And no one, I suppose, is anxious to find out,” Molotov said. Nussboym nodded. Molotov studied him. “And you have told Comrade Beria the same.”

“He will hear the same from me, yes,” Nussboym said.

Molotov studied him again. Would he report here before he went to Dzerzhinsky Square? Maybe. Molotov dared hope so, but dared not be sure.

What to do about the bomb? Let the Lizards know it was there? He shook his head. They were clever enough to sit tight. Let the nationalist Poles know it was there? That was a happy thought. The Poles were headstrong, foolish, and frustrated. They could almost be relied upon to do something everyone else around them would regret.

Mordechai Anielewicz chuckled as he rode his bicycle toward Glowno. His legs were behaving very well, almost as if he’d never breathed in too much nerve gas. That wasn’t why he chuckled, though. The name of the town never failed to remind him of
gowno
, the Polish word for shit.

No Lizard starships had landed close enough to Glowno to go up if the Jews ever had to set off their atomic bomb—if it could be set off, which Anielewicz did not know. He was a little sorry the Race hadn’t offered him such a hostage to fortune. Samson never would have made it into the Bible if he hadn’t had the Philistines’ temple to pull down.

“Now politicians can kill millions with their jawbones of asses, not just a thousand,” Anielewicz murmured. He grunted. That held true for him, too—if the bomb still worked.

Every now and then, he wished he’d been able to figure out a way to smuggle the bomb into the
Reich
and set it off there. It would have been fitting vengeance for everything the Nazis had done to the Jews. But it might have set the world afire—and the bomb wasn’t easy to smuggle, anyhow. He ordered it moved every so often to keep the Lizards from getting their hands on it, and that wasn’t easy, either, not when the damn thing weighed close to ten tonnes.

Cars and lorries zoomed past him as he pedaled along at the edge of the highway. A lot more of the lorries, these days, were Lizard models with Lizards driving them: males and females from the colonization fleet, no doubt. He wondered how they liked the weather. It was a bright, sunny day, with the temperature only a little below freezing—otherwise, Anielewicz would have taken a car himself instead of bicycling. For a Polish winter, it was good weather indeed. Once he’d gone far enough to warm himself up, Mordechai actively enjoyed it.

But the Lizards didn’t like the cold, not even a little. They didn’t have cold weather on their home planet, and they didn’t know how to deal with it. That thought had hardly crossed Anielewicz’s mind when he came upon a Lizard lorry in the ditch by the side of the road. The driver kept turning his eye turrets from the truck to the road and back again, as if he hadn’t the faintest notion of how he’d come to grief.

Mordechai applied the brake—with care, for the road was icy in places—and stopped alongside the lorry, which was canted at an odd angle in the mud. “What happened?” he asked in the language of the Race.

“I will tell you what happened,” the Lizard said angrily. “I will be glad to tell you what happened. A Big Ugly in a stinking motorcar cut in front of me. I do not think the stupid creature had the faintest notion I was there.” He had to be a newly revived colonist; he had no idea that one human being might find his comments about another offensive. “I hit the brake to keep from colliding with the worthless Tosevite, and the next thing I knew, I was here.”

“You must have hit a patch of ice and skidded,” Mordechai said. “That can happen to anybody. You have to be careful at this season of the year.”

“Ice?” the Lizard echoed, as if it had never heard the word in its own speech before. It was, no doubt, used far less often in the Lizards’ language than in Polish or Yiddish. “Why is ice permitted on the surface of a road?” The poor creature sounded bewildered, as if Anielewicz had started talking about a rain of frogs.

“Ice,” Mordechai repeated patiently. The sooner the Lizard learned the facts of life about weather here, the less likely it was to kill itself—and perhaps several people with it. “The temperature on this part of Tosev 3 is often below freezing, as it is now. Rain will freeze. So will dew. And ice, as you have discovered, is very slippery. Your tires cannot hold their grip on it.”

“Why isn’t it scraped off the road as soon as it forms?” the Lizard demanded. “Your practices here strike me as most unsafe. The Race has held this part of the planet for some time, and should have done a better job of preparing it for colonization.”

Anielewicz didn’t laugh out loud, though holding back wasn’t easy. But he didn’t want to make the poor, ignorant, indignant Lizard any more indignant than it already was. Patiently, he said, “Sometimes there are only patches of ice, as today. Sometimes all the roads are icy, and there is no equipment for all the scraping it would take to keep them clear. Sometimes, when . . .” He hesitated. He didn’t know how to say
snow
in the Lizards’ language. Circumlocution, then: “When powdery frozen water falls from the sky, it covers the roads higher than a male. In this season of the year, that could happen at any time.”

“When I was awakened, I was warned of this kind of frozen water,” the Lizard said. “I still find it hard to believe any planet could have such an absurd form of precipitation.”

“You will find out how absurd it is,” Mordechai said. “And now, I must be on my way.” Off he went, slowly building up speed.

The Lizard looked as if it wanted to order him to stop and help. But, as usual, he had a rifle on his back. Maybe the briefing the Lizard had got included the idea that it wasn’t a good idea to give orders to Tosevites who might open fire instead of obeying. For the colonists’ sake, Mordechai hoped it included that thought. If it didn’t, they’d learn some expensive lessons in a hurry.

When he got into Glowno, he was alarmed to discover a Lizard prowling the streets. He didn’t dare approach the shed where the bomb was kept till he found out why the alien was going around. Glowno wasn’t much more than a wide spot on the highway between Lodz and Warsaw. Lizards came through the place, but they rarely stopped.

He went up to the Lizard and asked his question straight out: “What are you doing here?”

“Freezing,” the Lizard answered, which wasn’t what he’d expected but was perfectly reasonable. As an afterthought, the Lizard went on, “And looking for a place to put a shuttlecraft port.”

“Ah,” Anielewicz said. “I heard you were in Lodz, my home city, not long ago. You did not find any place that suited you there?”

“Would I be here if I had?” the Lizard retorted, again catching him off guard.

He tried to rally: “You are the female Nesseref, not so? That is the name of the shuttlecraft pilot I heard.”

“Yes, I am Nesseref,” she answered. “Who are you, to know who I am?”

He found himself in a trap of his own making. If he admitted who he was and his status, she would wonder why such a prominent personage had come to such an unprominent town as Glowno. After a moment’s thought, he said, “I am Mordechai Anielewicz,” and let it go at that. If she realized who he was, she did; if not, not. To keep her from having much time to think, he went on, “To me, you look much as a male of the Race would. How can a Tosevite tell a female from a male?”

Nesseref’s mouth fell open. She found the question funny. “We have the same trouble with you Big Uglies, you know. You all look the same to us, and you do not even use body paint to help us tell you apart. Some of the males from the conquest fleet can tell your males and females apart, but I cannot, not yet.”

“But you have not answered my question,” Anielewicz said.

“It is easy enough, for anyone with eyes in his head,” the Lizard said with another laugh. “My stance is somewhat wider than a male’s; I am the one who lays the eggs, and so need wider hips. My tailstump is a little longer, my snout is a little more pointed than a male’s would be. Do you understand now?”

“I do, yes. I thank you.” Armed with his new knowledge, Mordechai tried to pick out the things she said made her distinct from males of the Race. For the life of him, he couldn’t. She looked like a Lizard, and that was that. He laughed. “Now I understand why the Race has trouble with us.”

“But our differences are so obvious!” Nesseref exclaimed. “They are not subtle, like the differences between male and female Tosevites.”

“Obvious differences are the differences one is used to,” Anielewicz said. “Subtle differences are the differences someone else is used to.”

Nesseref thought about that. After a moment, she laughed again. “Truth!” she said, and added an emphatic cough. She turned both eye turrets toward Mordechai. “You are different from most Big Uglies I have met. You do not bluster and swagger, as so many of your kind seem to do.”

“I thank you,” Anielewicz said again. It would have been a compliment of a different sort from a female of his own species. In an odd way, he valued it more from the Lizard, who was disinterested—or, at least, uninterested. And he returned it: “Nor do you seem like most males of the Race I know. You are not so certain you know everything there is to know.”

“And I thank you,” Nesseref returned. “Perhaps we shall be friends.”

“Perhaps we shall,” Mordechai said in some surprise. Having a Lizard as a friend had not occurred to him till that moment. He had always dealt with Lizards because he had to, not because he wanted to. The Lizards he’d known had always made it clear they were dealing with him for the same reason. “Are all females like you?”

“By the Emperor, no,” Nesseref said. “Are all Tosevite males—I presume you are a male—like you?”

“No,” Anielewicz said. “All right. We are a couple of individuals who happen to get on well. That will do, I think.”

“Yes, I also think so,” Nesseref said. “From much of what I had heard and seen on this planet, I wondered if having a Tosevite friend was even possible. We of the Race have friendships with Rabotevs and Hallessi, but they are more like us in temperament—not in appearance, necessarily, but in temperament—than you Big Uglies.”

“I have heard that from other members of the Race,” Anielewicz said. “I notice you have not brought any of these peoples to Tosev 3.”

“No: both these expeditions were fitted out from Home,” Nesseref answered. “Once this world is brought fully into the Empire, though, Hallessi and Rabotevs will come here, as they have gone to each other’s worlds and to Home as well.”

“You will find many Tosevites who do not think this world will ever be fully brought into the Empire,” Anielewicz said. “As a matter of fact, I am one of them. I hope this does not offend you.”